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 Kanluwen wrote:
We have enough stuff, period, missing that it isn't beyond belief we might get the Sisters of Battle treatment and get a Codex instead of a PA book.

Who says Sisters won’t get stuff from PA in addition to their codex? The sheet of faction logos GW released saying “These factions will get new stuff from PA” included the Sisters emblem.

Pomguo wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
We have enough stuff, period, missing that it isn't beyond belief we might get the Sisters of Battle treatment and get a Codex instead of a PA book.

Who says Sisters won’t get stuff from PA in addition to their codex? The sheet of faction logos GW released saying “These factions will get new stuff from PA” included the Sisters emblem.

Yeah, and purportedly the Sisters of Battle army pack had "Faith and Fury" tagged on it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

I'm not saying we don't have enough, what I'm saying is what we have needs to be tweaked.

We might be talking past each other. When I said "we have enough", I'm referring to the actual units. Between the Manipulus, the Skorpius and its variants, the new flyer, the new Knights(if they decide to put them back into the codex), and what looks like at least two new Skitarii units(the Galvanic rifle looking rumor engine being one and the wings being another) I feel we have enough units for a codex relaunch like Marines or Sisters.

I don't want new dogmas, I want the ones we have to work. Metallica just needs to be switched to "advance and fire any weapons as if you hadn't advanced". Bam, done. The others need similar tweaks aside from Stygies and maybe Mars.

I fully expect Stygies to get changed to be Raven Guard's current setup. It won't be beneficial to vehicles, sadly, but our infantry will get some "oomph".

I don't want new relics so much as the ones we have to actually be useful (i.e. the Metallica fist gets more than one swing for example) we have so many terrible relics many aren't even worth it as joke items.

We don't need the canticles to be replaced, just fixed a bit. I.e. Litany of the electromancer to not be hilariously garbage, maybe its a chance to do MW on any charges or receiving any charges for the rounds on a 6 or 5+, so you can control it and not have it be completely useless turn one.

You get the idea. Admech have a ton of stuff that doesn't really function that needs to be tweaked. I don't want a brand new codex so much as something like space marines got where they looked at it, went 'ah, this ability was trash' and fixed it. Id prefer were not as busted as new marines, just get the options to be viable, unlike now where half our flavor options are so bad a new player can spot them in about a 5 minute read.

That's what happens when you jam two distinct armies into one book with little to no thought as to how it gets worked.

Our relics are a weird mishmash of things that were intended to be placed onto Skitarii Alphas/Princeps and things that would have been considered "Meh" at best in the Cult Mechanicus book. Most of our relics are also, at best, things I would consider roughly equivalent to the new "Special Issue Wargear" we've seen in the Marine supplements(as they can be taken by characters or sergeants with a specific stratagem).

Canticles were designed to be a 'stepped' mechanism that scaled based upon the number of units you had on the board. It's literally why Cult players whined last edition that "they had to take Convocations", because their army was "too expensive" otherwise. Apparently in the transition to the combined book, someone said "HOLD UP SKITARII ARE CHEAP! THIS WILL BE OP!" or something similar and prevented the stepped mechanism from being present.

And that's not even getting into all the stuff just yanked from Skitarii, period. We lost our free Scout move, our Galvanic Rifles lost their Precision Shots trait, our wonderful little Doctrina Imperatives, our Ironstriders with guns lost their Precision Shots, and our ace in the hole in the form of Onager Squadrons(which was just...no. Whoever's responsible for that needs a serious reprimand) and their overlapping Emanatus Shields.

Also I agree PA is definitely leading up to something. Interesting question is is it 8.5 or an actual 9th.

Psychic Awakening seems to be Malign Portents, broken up based upon the feedback for Malign Portents. One of the big feedbacks that I kept seeing was "It would have been nice to have the event staggered more". It was a one and done release, effectively, with short stories released for awhile after/before the actual release of the Grand Alliance characters and book(which was for everyone).

Cant agree more

I also hate that our special relationship with Knights became more of an afterthought.

 Suzuteo wrote:
I also hate that our special relationship with Knights became more of an afterthought.

Pft. No, it really didn't. If anything our "special relationship with Knights" is overblown to the point we had them put into our Codex--which I, personally, believe is a source of some of the issues with the book. It was an issue with that stupid Convocation that everyone kept insisting "broke" Skitarii("OMG! SKITARII GET FREE UPGRADES! IT'S BROKEN!", remember that wonderful rallying cry? ) and Knights shouldn't have been put into our book without an explicit "Oathsworn" style setup, where they don't ruin your army benefits but also don't benefit from them.

I would not mind more restrictions as long as they were more tightly integrated. I really do think Imperial Knights should be their own thing and Mechanicus Knights just a part of AdMech. Half-measures like what happened with Knights "in" our codex were just totally unhelpful.

Knights, period, should be in their book. We got the 'OG' Knights added to our Codex at launch, then Armigers came in with Forgebane.

And then they got Household benefits, which really screwed everything up.

Hopefully any new AdMech book just flat cuts Knights out of the mix. We can still have the "Knight of the Cog" Stratagem in our book certainly, but since Questor Mechanicus is something that could realistically be placed into an Imperial Knights book--there is no downside.

Replacing Stygies with RG’s tactic wouldn’t be giving our infantry some oomph, it would be an unmitigated disaster. What does admech need with a THIRD way to grant army-wide cover? And a mechanic that asks us to put units into terrain anyway to gain a bonus? It would make Canticles almost completely pointless, instead of its already sorry state now. I know GW designs some books and bonuses seemingly without understanding the army, but this would really take the cake.

I’m hoping that like Eldar and CSM, they leave our Stygies alone.

@Kanluwen
I honestly don't even think there should be an Imperial Knights codex or Super-Heavy detachment at all. Nor household traditions or relics for that matter. Because what EW essentially did when they created these things is allow people to take a handful of homogeneous high-points units, which introduces inherent structural advantages and/or disadvantages. This is detrimental to the health of both narrative and matched play, as we saw for the better part of a half-year where nobody ran any non-flyer vehicles at all in matched play because they would all be wiped off the map or charged within two rounds. And then, after the Castellan nerf and the abundance of flyer spam lists, we pretty much saw Knight lists dry up.

It would be much easier to balance within the detachments framework if they were merely a part of another army, such as Guard (as Auxilia) for Imperial Knights and AdMech for Mechanicus Knights. This way, people could just bring one or two as they would any other super-heavy unit.

I'm slightly editing your post to reply to your points in a fashion that flows better with my early morning thoughts. I hope you don't mind, but the first and last two seem to have a flow/patter that is easier to reply to at the same time.

 Suzuteo wrote:
@Kanluwen
I honestly don't even think there should be an Imperial Knights codex or Super-Heavy detachment at all. Nor household traditions or relics for that matter. Because what EW essentially did when they created these things is allow people to take a handful of homogeneous high-points units, which introduces inherent structural advantages and/or disadvantages.
It would be much easier to balance within the detachments framework if they were merely a part of another army, such as Guard (as Auxilia) for Imperial Knights and AdMech for Mechanicus Knights. This way, people could just bring one or two as they would any other super-heavy unit.

I disagree that the codex shouldn't exist. It's a unique and interesting book, but it's a weird one in that Imperium and more recently Chaos are the only ones to have a composition like that. I realistically do not think that these units had a 'problem' with the introduction of Relics, Household rules, etc.

Ideally, the big 'fix' is to remove the fact that the Auxiliary Superheavy Detachment(the detachment granting a single Lord of War) is uniquely immune to the "Auxiliary Detachments cost you a Command Point to take" thing that the others have. Additionally, another solve is to add a rule that Knights can't share in Command Points from non-Knight Detachments.

This is detrimental to the health of both narrative and matched play, as we saw for the better part of a half-year where nobody ran any non-flyer vehicles at all in matched play because they would all be wiped off the map or charged within two rounds. And then, after the Castellan nerf and the abundance of flyer spam lists, we pretty much saw Knight lists dry up.

It's important to remember that "half-year where nobody ran any non-flyer vehicles at all in matched play" also coincided with:
a) Command point surplus soup lists of Loyal 32+Castellan, where the Loyal 32 were just there to supercharge up the Castellan.
b) Suicide Scion lists packed to the brim with plasma
c) No real "Rule of 3" to limit spammy things like Smashcaptains that could, again, get supercharged by Loyal 32.

The biggest issue there wasn't the Knights(and I say this, btw, as someone who doesn't own a Castellan) it was the ability for these things that clearly weren't intended to have those amounts of CP easily. They still haven't gotten the grit, seemingly, to hardlock CP to factions.
We saw similar issues last edition when IK first dropped in that people would cut down their army to the barebones in order to squeeze a Knight in...and outside of Eldar and Orks, not many factions really had superheavy units(and Wraithknights were considered a whole other beast entirely since they were Gargantuan Monstrous Creatures and had protections that the others didn't have) in their army lists.

I feel like the Castellan nerf and the flyer spam lists are getting credit for 'Knight lists drying up', but didn't ITC do a bunch of nonsense that also affected them? There was also the introduction of GSC which, from my understanding, shook things up a bit.

Sure. But it's a problem when the best counter to fire is fire. People ran Castellans, which were vehicles that countered vehicles, so the things that countered Castellans also countered vehicles. I ran 4x Kastelan Robots plus Dagger Ryzaphrons, then a Krastsader and 4x Las Striders. I was 100% a part of the problem, but there was no way around it. Haha.

I think there were many issues that contributed to the fall of Knights, but the problem was that they were set up in such a way that they had to fall in order for the rest of the meta to develop. GW clearly messed up and designed Knights in isolation rather than as a part of a system. Thus, people immediately found ways around the limitations that GW expected to keep them in check. The only way to restore balance was pretty much to nerf problem units into the ground; in terms of the meta, we had to wait for another dominant strategy to arise to make them non-viable. This is the reason why I am so against the Knight codex and SH detachment now. Had they never existed, you would see one or two Knights as a part of a healthy metagame rather than the stark divide between zero Knights or nothing-but-Knights that we see now.

Example: If Valiants were simply designed to be a part of Guard Brigades and Castellans a part of AdMech Brigades, then they would be able to take into account how much CP they would have access to and have far fewer stratagems, relics, etc. Thus, Castellans would be more like our version of the Baneblade rather than a part of the Imperium Soup terrors that we experienced earlier this year.

And had GW left the Ion Shields to operate the way they originally had(you picked a facing), there's a very good likelihood that the 'Knight meta' wouldn't have existed.
Had GW made it so CPs couldn't be used by Knights from the rest of the army? Likely not an issue.

The Superheavy Detachment in and of itself wasn't an issue, the Knights weren't necessarily an issue. ITC played a big chunk of the issue, IMO, as did the nature of netlists and the 'batteries' that people were able to bring for their Knights.

eh i feel personally the ion rotating effect just kept melee variants from existing.

Long range castellan or crusaders would still be a problem if that was the only difference and all other rules remained in place. Their base is wide, that front arc at a distance is incredibly difficult to get around. Sure a few would sneak past it but with say 80% of the army plinking off a 3++ and 20% either not being reliable against T8 or only doing 1-2 or D3 damage but not hitting an invul at all....it would still be a major problem.

Thats kinda how i felt before when it was a rotate. If it stayed at a distance it was annoyingly hard to get rid of but the moment it closed to melee i could just sneak around and poof its in trouble. Assuming i still had threats in its face to keep that shield forward, that is.

I blame stratagems for the issue. Too many effects that should have been one-shot rules are instead 1-2CP stratagems. For most units thats annoying because it limits how many can actually use that rule, but for a knight theres generally only 1 anyway so it gets ALL THE RULES and you have the CP to keep doing it.
If i had to pick one thing to change in 8th, the way stratagems work would be it. I enjoy the idea, i think they did it in a pathetic way.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
eh i feel personally the ion rotating effect just kept melee variants from existing.

Long range castellan or crusaders would still be a problem if that was the only difference and all other rules remained in place. Their base is wide, that front arc at a distance is incredibly difficult to get around. Sure a few would sneak past it but with say 80% of the army plinking off a 3++ and 20% either not being reliable against T8 or only doing 1-2 or D3 damage but not hitting an invul at all....it would still be a major problem.

Thats kinda how i felt before when it was a rotate. If it stayed at a distance it was annoyingly hard to get rid of but the moment it closed to melee i could just sneak around and poof its in trouble. Assuming i still had threats in its face to keep that shield forward, that is.

Truthfully, I was under the impression that when we got the second Knights book(that introduced the Warden, Gallant, etc) that the Gallant was a pretty popular choice for its Thunderstrike Gauntlet and the Reaper.

I blame stratagems for the issue. Too many effects that should have been one-shot rules are instead 1-2CP stratagems. For most units thats annoying because it limits how many can actually use that rule, but for a knight theres generally only 1 anyway so it gets ALL THE RULES and you have the CP to keep doing it.
If i had to pick one thing to change in 8th, the way stratagems work would be it. I enjoy the idea, i think they did it in a pathetic way.

There's definitely something to be said for this, but I don't think it's "a pathetic way". There was an okay concept in there(taking army wide rules or weird cornercase situations and making them into a thing) but whoever was in charge of changing rules into stratagems seemed to have had their hands tied and I wouldn't be shocked if part of it was from feedback from a certain group of players

A good example of this, in my opinion, is the Skitarii Doctrina Imperatives. What was an army wide rule with three different subrules(two of which had downsides associated with the benefits) instead became one unit a turn with no downside and the requirement of a piece of gear practically nobody took unless they were building using spares. The better way to have done it would have been to make it so that there were three steps and it affected everything keyworded "Skitarii".

Additionally, I always found it odd that we got a "Rotate Ion Shields" Stratagem...when they removed the need to rotate them.

A good example of this, in my opinion, is the Skitarii Doctrina Imperatives. What was an army wide rule with three different subrules(two of which had downsides associated with the benefits) instead became one unit a turn with no downside and the requirement of a piece of gear practically nobody took unless they were building using spares. The better way to have done it would have been to make it so that there were three steps and it affected everything keyworded "Skitarii".

This is kinda what i mean. Theres a lot of stratagems that sure they should be limited use stuff such as bombardments, fight again, shoot again, or various heavy-impacting effects that a unit doesnt bank on to be useful, such as Elimination Volley

But then theres a BUNCH that feel like they should have just been a base rule, such as the strider/dragoon advancing stratagem or Deafening Assault. Admech arent the worst offenders of this issue but its still a thing. (orks suffer from this way more than admech but wrong thread)

Its more that some stratagems that cost 1cp are millions of times better than others that cost the same though. As orks theres a lot of stratagems i'd love to use, but simply cant spare the CP because its such a mediocre effect.

Honestly, I would really cut down on army-wide bonuses and drastically limit stratagems in general. Quickest fix would just be to increase the baseline cost of all stratagems to 3 CP, double all CP pools, and either limit CP use by faction or apply more strict faction rules (which GW should have done given their approach to designing codexes). EDIT: I say we should increase costs simply because it would be a more flexible baseline to balance around. Going from 1 to 2 to 3 are all very harsh penalties.

 Vineheart01 wrote:

But then theres a BUNCH that feel like they should have just been a base rule, such as the strider/dragoon advancing stratagem or Deafening Assault. Admech arent the worst offenders of this issue but its still a thing. (orks suffer from this way more than admech but wrong thread)
Its more that some stratagems that cost 1cp are millions of times better than others that cost the same though. As orks theres a lot of stratagems i'd love to use, but simply cant spare the CP because its such a mediocre effect.

Every army suffers from this. Do you think I would ever spend 1CP to turn a Chimera into a vox for an officer just to order a single unit?

To an extent, we are seeing some of these concepts rolled back into units. The Haywire Mines on the Incursors, the Manipulus' abilities, Infiltrator Omni-Scramblers, GSC stuff, etc.

It just seems like we might be waiting until 8.5 for the changes to really take root.

I'd much rather Strategms utilised a kind of deck builder system where your detachments + characters determine your pool of command points and each card is worth X cp as it is now. But you can only use/take into battle the cards whose CP adds up to less than or equal to your CP pool, with each card being single-use and the deck having only so many available. Then you restrict use of stratagems used per turn by how many your HQ options allow you to use.

For example, lets say a Battallion gives you a pool of 20cp.

From your available deck you take

3 x Protector Doctrina (3cp)
3 x Conqueror Doctrina (3cp)
1 x Wrath of Mars (3cp)
1 x Electro-priests fight again (3cp I forget the name lol)
2 x Aquisition at all costs (4cp)
3 x Double repair (3cp)
1 x Cognis overwatch (1cp)

For your 20cp allocation.
Say a dominus allows 2 per turn and an enginseer 1. Cawl might allow 3, I dunno.
Obviously the card deks would have to be re-worked to include duplicates of the strategms you can use multiple times but I think this is a much more strategic way of allowing moments of glory. It even give them the options of including units that are purely their to bolster command abilities or increase cp pool. It also reduces the amount of crap you take into battle, instead of having that entire deck of strategms and having to remember whats useful, you build your deck in advance as part of your army build and only take those cards.

IMO

Auras and rerolls should be kept to a minimum, prevents castling and less time rerolling around, which takes ages.

The only cool way for the stratagem case, is that it should give a rare moment of glory and unique stratagems to show the uniqueness of the forgeworlds for example, like ours are ( except metallica)
But the way stratagems are right now, is that a lot of units are picked solely on their synergy, which gets spammed every round with detachment batterys. There really is a simple fix for this.
Roll back CP farm, make those moments rare and not spammable, lessen detachment cps for this manner, especially battalion and brigade.
Lack of fluff ( which is already really present in 8th, at least for admech) can be fixed by giving units their rules back and not have them fixed to stratagems, like tech priests dataspike for example

Dataspikes were on Sicarian Ruststalker Princeps, not Techpriests.

It's worth mentioning, again apparently, that every army has lost big chunks of what they had.
Auras and rerolls aren't as big of an issue as being made out as.

im fine with multiple buffs from a character being around but i dont think they should be auras.
Even if all HQs with an aura got a bit of a hefty price reduction but their auras only affected 1 unit (nominated at the start of their turn, remains until next turn) it wouldnt be as bad as it would fall under previous editions of a character is brought to buff a single unit up, not an entire army.
Castling would be much less likely, more focus on keeping that important unit alive rather than giving maximum reroll potential army-wide.

Also @Octovol, so something similar to what Apoc does, only not quite as random? (smaller deck, repeat cards, etc)
One thing i like about apoc is almost all of those really powerful rules are in a card, not a datasheet. So odds are it only happens once, but you also dont really know WHEN since he may not even have the card yet.

Auras being limited to "one unit" defeats the purpose of an aura.

Serious statement time:
A lot of the complaints about "castling" are complaints that have existed before auras and other factors like that. We had a similar problem with characters in units, similar problem with indirect fire weapons, etc etc etc.

Auras just seem to be the 'new' hot topic.

Agreed on that bit about auras just being the convenient target. Really, the way to solve castling is to remove all the killy secondaries, add anti-aura rules (basically, rules that penalize things for being in aura range, like the blast templates of old), and force people to move around.

I think the new CA19 missions help against castling. Although I never played ITc, only watched a battle rep once.
It helpes in 4 ways:
1. Being 2nd isnt as bad anymore ( CA18 helped with the deployment and fixed going first rule) as you often score at the end of the battleround, so you can position yourself and shoot at the enemys units objective holders.
2. Hordes and a little bit min sized units (for elite armies) get buffed by giving VP for holding more objectives.
3. Elites and max sized units get buffed by giving VP for killing more units than the enemy, so it evens out.
4. Playing Maelstrom(with cards) is less random and thus one sided as you now draw 5 cards and pick 3.

is there ANY reason to use a datasmith at all?
Dakkabots either just eradicate the enemy or dont live more than a couple turns after they "turret up" anyway so unlikely to need to move them again
Meleebots (hypothetical havnt actually used them) are going to leave the datasmith in the dust given they move faster and probably want the Stygies 9" scout as well.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
is there ANY reason to use a datasmith at all?
Dakkabots either just eradicate the enemy or dont live more than a couple turns after they "turret up" anyway so unlikely to need to move them again
Meleebots (hypothetical havnt actually used them) are going to leave the datasmith in the dust given they move faster and probably want the Stygies 9" scout as well.

Not that I can tell. Only real reason is fluff sadly. He's not a bad character for fighting stuff and has a neat pistol, but really until he becomes an HQ choice or can change their mode on a quicker basis he doesn't have much of a purpose.

 0XFallen wrote:
I think the new CA19 missions help against castling. Although I never played ITc, only watched a battle rep once.
It helpes in 4 ways:
1. Being 2nd isnt as bad anymore ( CA18 helped with the deployment and fixed going first rule) as you often score at the end of the battleround, so you can position yourself and shoot at the enemys units objective holders.
2. Hordes and a little bit min sized units (for elite armies) get buffed by giving VP for holding more objectives.
3. Elites and max sized units get buffed by giving VP for killing more units than the enemy, so it evens out.
4. Playing Maelstrom(with cards) is less random and thus one sided as you now draw 5 cards and pick 3.

Agreed! GW has done a really good job with the new missions/scenarios in CA2018 and 2019. I like them more than the ITC ones.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
is there ANY reason to use a datasmith at all?
Dakkabots either just eradicate the enemy or dont live more than a couple turns after they "turret up" anyway so unlikely to need to move them again
Meleebots (hypothetical havnt actually used them) are going to leave the datasmith in the dust given they move faster and probably want the Stygies 9" scout as well.

As a Daeadalosus.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
is there ANY reason to use a datasmith at all?
Dakkabots either just eradicate the enemy or dont live more than a couple turns after they "turret up" anyway so unlikely to need to move them again
Meleebots (hypothetical havnt actually used them) are going to leave the datasmith in the dust given they move faster and probably want the Stygies 9" scout as well.

i play him in a lucius fistellan cybernetica cohort. I deepstrike the bots and lucius flare the datasmith near them so he can give them +3" to their charge.

Thats basically the only way i can see him being playable as he currently is.

Is this way too cheesy at 1000pts?
The units are based on my 750pts list that i made for escalation league.

LVO gave us the reveal we expected (flying skitarii) and a couple maybe we didn’t (robot horse skitarii cavalry)!






I assume/hope this means 3-4 new Fast Attack options, which covers one of our codex’s biggest gaps quite nicely! Brigades may have just got a whole lot easier and more competitive. With the new flyers too, now all we need is a non-repairbot HQ and we’re basically a fully fleshed out (non-psychic) codex.