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Although I agree, "give it a go and let the community fix the fallout" is somewhat below what I'd expect for the price we're paying.

I would guess the main issue is workload, once upon a time GW was releasing 1 book every few months per system. Now its every few weeks and the amount of writers and staff hasn't scaled to match that. So less testing and more sloppy rushed writing as a result.

And yes for the premium price GW asks the customer should expect better quality.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Honestly, Drukhari wasn't even a big release as models go (nor is AdMech). It's basically a filler book between (for the company's bottom line) much bigger releases of Marines and Sisters with a single model (Lelith) stapled to it.

I don't see how any controlling/management-type not dealing with rules on a day-to-day-basis would have any incentive to bother looking at Drukhari specifically.

Anyone "hypothetically" tasked with massaging the rules to boost sales for the releases this quarter would be looking at Belakor, all the new Sisters-stuff coming up, also Heavy Intercessors and of course making sure AoS 3.0 flies (along with that new Centaur big baddie and whatever else they are currently putting out).

Drukhari is probably broken because it was written by the interns on Friday night in Bugman's bar, because nobody cared.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
55% win rates is 100% fine for how insane 40k is to balance, Chess is a 52%-56% win rate for going first... for crying out loud.

Sure. But chess players can't choose to bring "white" as their army to the tournament. It's balanced assuming you go first half the time over a sufficient large number of games (though you might get lucky for a tournament or two).

The point is for a game that is suppose to be balanced there is still a 55% advantage, how on earth do you think 40k with literally thousands more variables is going to be a perfect 50/50. My point is its impossible and a 55% win rate is perfectly fine.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
/shrug

I mean it took them about 4 re-writes (including playtesters collaborating) to get the character-targeting rules correct for 9th Edition.

AdMech boats can now ship fething Assault Centurions, Repentia and Bullgryn around like nobody's business, while Biker-Breachers are stuck with a 100% redundant rule to let them ignore moving and shooting with Heavy Weapons.

And people expect the same rules-writing team to fine-tune points by 10% or 20% to nudge sales?

How is moving without penalty redundant for breachers ?
They are still infantry, so they should shoot with -1 with heavy weapons after movement without that rule.

 Ordana wrote:
I would guess the main issue is workload, once upon a time GW was releasing 1 book every few months per system. Now its every few weeks and the amount of writers and staff hasn't scaled to match that. So less testing and more sloppy rushed writing as a result.

And yes for the premium price GW asks the customer should expect better quality.

Was quality or balance better back then? No.

Marin wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
/shrug

I mean it took them about 4 re-writes (including playtesters collaborating) to get the character-targeting rules correct for 9th Edition.

AdMech boats can now ship fething Assault Centurions, Repentia and Bullgryn around like nobody's business, while Biker-Breachers are stuck with a 100% redundant rule to let them ignore moving and shooting with Heavy Weapons.

And people expect the same rules-writing team to fine-tune points by 10% or 20% to nudge sales?

How is moving without penalty redundant for breachers ?
They are still infantry, so they should shoot with -1 with heavy weapons after movement without that rule.

I think he is saying they've been turned into bikes, which would be a great change, maybe we'll finally see Riptides become vehicles, one can hope for some consistency and common sense.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
I would guess the main issue is workload, once upon a time GW was releasing 1 book every few months per system. Now its every few weeks and the amount of writers and staff hasn't scaled to match that. So less testing and more sloppy rushed writing as a result.

And yes for the premium price GW asks the customer should expect better quality.

Was quality or balance better back then? No.

I was less into the global community back then so balance I don't know. But looking at Marine 2.0 and Drukari I'm not inclined to say it was worse.

But I certainly don't remember this many errors slipping through. They happened on rare occasions for sure, CSM sorcerer Thralls with 3 wounds and toughness i, but it seems more common now.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


The point is for a game that is suppose to be balanced there is still a 55% advantage, how on earth do you think 40k with literally thousands more variables is going to be a perfect 50/50. My point is its impossible and a 55% win rate is perfectly fine.

Chess's problem is it only has one variable, who has first turn. So which way that variable swings is going to have an effect because there's absolutely nothing the game can do to counterbalance that.

40k on the other hand has a lot it can vary to counter balance stuff.
I think some imbalance is inevitable in 40k, especially if GW keeps the current release schedule. People have scarcely had time to acquire Dark Eldar armies before the new Admec hotness is rolling in to upset things again. But if it weren't for that speed of churn, reasonable balance in the order of 45/55% is definitely achievable.

 Blackie wrote:


Lawrence Baker, probably the most famous Drukhari player, said in a recent video that he doesn't own any Wrack, and his studio has a collection of 10k-ish points of drukhari.

Wracks have always been terrible, that's why so many players don't have any, of if they have some it's just a single min squad. They're also extremely expensive money wise.

I like Lawrence, but I think Skari is a better litmus test of anything Drukhari. Lawrence is most famous for his Reaver Jetbike spam in 7th edition.

Wracks were very strong in 8th, particulary towards the end of the edition as objective holders and Hexrifle spam.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


The point is for a game that is suppose to be balanced there is still a 55% advantage, how on earth do you think 40k with literally thousands more variables is going to be a perfect 50/50. My point is its impossible and a 55% win rate is perfectly fine.

Not sure "supposed to be balanced" applies to either one. At best, it's an incidental quality for both.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Marin wrote:


How is moving without penalty redundant for breachers ?
They are still infantry, so they should shoot with -1 with heavy weapons after movement without that rule.

Breachers are not Infantry no more

 harlokin wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


Lawrence Baker, probably the most famous Drukhari player, said in a recent video that he doesn't own any Wrack, and his studio has a collection of 10k-ish points of drukhari.

Wracks have always been terrible, that's why so many players don't have any, of if they have some it's just a single min squad. They're also extremely expensive money wise.

I like Lawrence, but I think Skari is a better litmus test of anything Drukhari. Lawrence is most famous for his Reaver Jetbike spam in 7th edition.

Wracks were very strong in 8th, particulary towards the end of the edition as objective holders and Hexrifle spam.

Skari is another top drukhari player, and longtime collector, and yet I haven't seen him playing more than 10 wracks in one of his batreps. People that actually can spam wracks, let alone multiple models with liquifiers are extremely rare.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Just b.c they do play multiple games swapping first that doesn't take away the advantage of first turn its just giving each player that advantage. In 40k we don't have the ability to play multiple games with the same person for events.

We do, but that would probably make tournaments take at least a month if they were only played on weekends. On day one you'd play your first-round opponent in a best of 3. Day two you'd play round two in the same fashion. Next weekend you play round three the same way. Past round three the tournament auto drops anybody who's x-2 or worse keeping the highest objective scores around as bracket filler if required. Round 4 is played on the third weekend with best of five matches as is the final round of a 5 round event.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
The point is for a game that is suppose to be balanced there is still a 55% advantage, how on earth do you think 40k with literally thousands more variables is going to be a perfect 50/50. My point is its impossible and a 55% win rate is perfectly fine.

When you filter by win-rate at all skill levels league has a spread between 52.76% at the top and 43.82% at the bottom. The champions at the bottom are often there due to issues in professional play where the heightened levels of skill and team coordination can break something that would be balanced even at the challenger level. This is with 155 champions with 10 picked and 10 banned each game. I expect that if GW went hard on mathematical testing and data collection tey could reach a similar level of balance.

 Blackie wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


Lawrence Baker, probably the most famous Drukhari player, said in a recent video that he doesn't own any Wrack, and his studio has a collection of 10k-ish points of drukhari.

Wracks have always been terrible, that's why so many players don't have any, of if they have some it's just a single min squad. They're also extremely expensive money wise.

I like Lawrence, but I think Skari is a better litmus test of anything Drukhari. Lawrence is most famous for his Reaver Jetbike spam in 7th edition.

Wracks were very strong in 8th, particulary towards the end of the edition as objective holders and Hexrifle spam.

Skari is another top drukhari player, and longtime collector, and yet I haven't seen him playing more than 10 wracks in one of his batreps. People that actually can spam wracks, let alone multiple models with liquifiers are extremely rare.

On TTS Skari played alot of wracks with old codex and 8 pts coast. He was even complaining, that in team Canada TTS tournament he was forced to use liguid wracks.

 Canadian 5th wrote:



When you filter by win-rate at all skill levels league has a spread between 52.76% at the top and 43.82% at the bottom. The champions at the bottom are often there due to issues in professional play where the heightened levels of skill and team coordination can break something that would be balanced even at the challenger level. This is with 155 champions with 10 picked and 10 banned each game. I expect that if GW went hard on mathematical testing and data collection tey could reach a similar level of balance.

But didn't they achive it for 9th to a degree? There are two , too good outlier lists, and there are a few which are in the bad under 40% win rate camp, but the rest of the game sits between near 50% to 55% . Now the question of course is, is the 50-55% a faction number or specific build number, and if it is the second how diluted can the top build be to give a working lists. Nids with the FW super fexs are good, but you can't play the list without those models. CWE, chaos etc are very powerful, but they require people to play soup lists. Even armies like GK have a working tournament build. On the flip side of things, it doesn't really matter what a GSC player will bring, and a DE player can take a mono wych cult list and still win or place high in tournaments, without the DT liqufires or courts etc. So in a way the game is balanced. It is just that the outliers for GW are always a problem. The too bad and too good stuff, in a similar in a way. If you fall in to either cathegory, you aren't just good or bad. You are really good or really bad.

Karol wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:



When you filter by win-rate at all skill levels league has a spread between 52.76% at the top and 43.82% at the bottom. The champions at the bottom are often there due to issues in professional play where the heightened levels of skill and team coordination can break something that would be balanced even at the challenger level. This is with 155 champions with 10 picked and 10 banned each game. I expect that if GW went hard on mathematical testing and data collection tey could reach a similar level of balance.

But didn't they achive it for 9th to a degree? There are two , too good outlier lists, and there are a few which are in the bad under 40% win rate camp, but the rest of the game sits between near 50% to 55% . Now the question of course is, is the 50-55% a faction number or specific build number, and if it is the second how diluted can the top build be to give a working lists. Nids with the FW super fexs are good, but you can't play the list without those models. CWE, chaos etc are very powerful, but they require people to play soup lists. Even armies like GK have a working tournament build. On the flip side of things, it doesn't really matter what a GSC player will bring, and a DE player can take a mono wych cult list and still win or place high in tournaments, without the DT liqufires or courts etc. So in a way the game is balanced. It is just that the outliers for GW are always a problem. The too bad and too good stuff, in a similar in a way. If you fall in to either cathegory, you aren't just good or bad. You are really good or really bad.

Not at all. Half of armies are either below 45% win rate or above 55% win rate. That spread is far too big. Add internal imbalance on top and things look pretty grim.

Marin wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 harlokin wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


Lawrence Baker, probably the most famous Drukhari player, said in a recent video that he doesn't own any Wrack, and his studio has a collection of 10k-ish points of drukhari.

Wracks have always been terrible, that's why so many players don't have any, of if they have some it's just a single min squad. They're also extremely expensive money wise.

I like Lawrence, but I think Skari is a better litmus test of anything Drukhari. Lawrence is most famous for his Reaver Jetbike spam in 7th edition.

Wracks were very strong in 8th, particulary towards the end of the edition as objective holders and Hexrifle spam.

Skari is another top drukhari player, and longtime collector, and yet I haven't seen him playing more than 10 wracks in one of his batreps. People that actually can spam wracks, let alone multiple models with liquifiers are extremely rare.

On TTS Skari played alot of wracks with old codex and 8 pts coast. He was even complaining, that in team Canada TTS tournament he was forced to use liguid wracks.

There is a difference in events and pick up games.

Let be honest here, how many in this thread are playing Comp games more so than Pick ups where these DE lists are a problem?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Just b.c they do play multiple games swapping first that doesn't take away the advantage of first turn its just giving each player that advantage. In 40k we don't have the ability to play multiple games with the same person for events.

We do, but that would probably make tournaments take at least a month if they were only played on weekends. On day one you'd play your first-round opponent in a best of 3. Day two you'd play round two in the same fashion. Next weekend you play round three the same way. Past round three the tournament auto drops anybody who's x-2 or worse keeping the highest objective scores around as bracket filler if required. Round 4 is played on the third weekend with best of five matches as is the final round of a 5 round event.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
The point is for a game that is suppose to be balanced there is still a 55% advantage, how on earth do you think 40k with literally thousands more variables is going to be a perfect 50/50. My point is its impossible and a 55% win rate is perfectly fine.

When you filter by win-rate at all skill levels league has a spread between 52.76% at the top and 43.82% at the bottom. The champions at the bottom are often there due to issues in professional play where the heightened levels of skill and team coordination can break something that would be balanced even at the challenger level. This is with 155 champions with 10 picked and 10 banned each game. I expect that if GW went hard on mathematical testing and data collection tey could reach a similar level of balance.

if going into a 40k game I could ban three units from my opponent's army and we constructed our lists one unit at a time based on a theoretically infinite roster of all possible units, winrates would be a lot closer to 50% there too. If every pro LoL event the teams had to lock in a team comp and play with that in every game of the event the winrate spread would be a lot worse.

No it wouldn't if you ban 3 units from a DE list you can still make a functional list with it. If someone bans three units from a knight faction or GK, then it would sometimes be hard to even build a legal list. Same for harlequins or anything army that has obligatory units to be taken, like DG with their terminators and pox walkers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

Not at all. Half of armies are either below 45% win rate or above 55% win rate. That spread is far too big. Add internal imbalance on top and things look pretty grim.

But almost half are around it.

the only over 55% outlier are harlis and DE, and that is mostly a core terrain rule and open toped transport problem, which can't be fixed without wrecking the armies. And the really bad armies are those that don't have rules that translate in to 9th ed, like tau or gsc or knights. The rest is more or less in the middle. And the good armies aren't , if we don't count the two outliers, a big and diverse group too. SoB are good, chaos soups are good, Eldar soups are good, marines of the WS and Ultramarine version are good. It is not like it was in 8th, where there was one good army and then nothing for a long time.

There are internal balances, because GW doesn't design all codex around the idea of first desiging a way to play for a faction, and then fitting in the rules for it. They make models first and then expect people to find a way to play. And this does give random results, based around combinations of rules changes mostly. Big difference between different armies too. In general some books feel as if they were writen by someone who was forced to do it, while others seem to be writen by someone who wanted to play around with the faction. The SW codex for example feels stale, and is mechanicaly broken. Something like DE, the new ad mecha or the new DA feel as if someone wrote the book thinking about actually wanting to play the army.

Karol wrote:
No it wouldn't if you ban 3 units from a DE list you can still make a functional list with it. If someone bans three units from a knight faction or GK, then it would sometimes be hard to even build a legal list. Same for harlequins or anything army that has obligatory units to be taken, like DG with their terminators and pox walkers.

Archon, Succubus, Haemonculus.

You pick drazh and Rakathrah and play a battalion, like everyone else, instead of free CP triple patrols.

And you still have the raiders, DT wrecks with liquifires, kabalites and trube born and super well costed witchs to carry the whole thing.

Is this discussion about making 3 bans to affect what people can play or put into lists?

Because that has got to the stupidest suggestion Dakka has ever come up with. And that's saying a lot.

It's about implementing a pre-game banning/list-building system a la MOBAs.

Which I think is the basis of some of the European "team" tournaments.

Everyone should just play highlander.

Bans are very common in competitive video game tournaments.
I think the point of bringing them up is that it can helps a lot to improve balance; the over performing outliers are eliminated from the running. It also helps inform the developers of what's overperforming as they can track bans.

Obviously that doesn't work for 40k like in video games due to the investment associated with our armies.

It doesn't work at all when you can just 'ban' basic troop units or transports and shut down how an army either functions or scores in any of the game modes.

Heck you look at Knights and ban super-heavy's... they get nothing to play with apart from the small walkers. Against Drukhari you ban the transports - now it's a foot-slogging t3 army with no armour save worth mentioning. Against Marines, well depends on the flavour or Marine but I'm sure that banning Bike units against DA players or Dreadnoughts for Iron Hands is going to go down well.

Karol wrote:
You pick drazh and Rakathrah and play a battalion, like everyone else, instead of free CP triple patrols.

And you still have the raiders, DT wrecks with liquifires, kabalites and trube born and super well costed witchs to carry the whole thing.

Hey Karol,

How are you going to take Trueborn without Archons?

 BroodSpawn wrote:
Is this discussion about making 3 bans to affect what people can play or put into lists?

Because that has got to the stupidest suggestion Dakka has ever come up with. And that's saying a lot.

Someone brought up how League of Legends has pretty good balance considering the amount of variables.
Someone else countered by mentioning that LoL's balance is affected by there being bans. Aka if something is super duper broken (which happens from time to time) it constantly gets banned and is therefor not a concern for players.

Obviously this wouldn't work in 40k so these occasional spikes don't get self corrected.

Karol wrote:
You pick drazh and Rakathrah and play a battalion, like everyone else, instead of free CP triple patrols.

And you still have the raiders, DT wrecks with liquifires, kabalites and trube born and super well costed witchs to carry the whole thing.

noooo you do not. Rakarth is prophets only, cant take Dark Tech, and your kabalites have no traits (also no black heart on your raiders) also no trueborn because no master archon, also no cult of strife stratagems/trait on your wyches and no blender succubus unless you take lelith in a patrol, which you can do, but point being it 100% reduces the power of the army massively.

Edit: Also how bout this one then?

Kablite Warriors, Wyches, Wracks

 the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
You pick drazh and Rakathrah and play a battalion, like everyone else, instead of free CP triple patrols.

And you still have the raiders, DT wrecks with liquifires, kabalites and trube born and super well costed witchs to carry the whole thing.

noooo you do not. Rakarth is prophets only, cant take Dark Tech, and your kabalites have no traits (also no black heart on your raiders) also no trueborn because no master archon, also no cult of strife stratagems/trait on your wyches and no blender succubus unless you take lelith in a patrol, which you can do, but point being it 100% reduces the power of the army massively.

Clearly knowing nothing about an army save through heresay, rumour, and random toilet graffiti is no barrier to offering insight, advice, and criticism

What the game really needs is a side board.

It would really help bring things within balance.

 BroodSpawn wrote:
Is this discussion about making 3 bans to affect what people can play or put into lists?

Because that has got to the stupidest suggestion Dakka has ever come up with. And that's saying a lot.

I dunno.

I'm tempted to just do that as it seems like another fun way play the game in a way that'll likely be the anti-meta game.