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Spoletta wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
Raising the Banner starts at the end of your movement phase, and gets completed at the end of your turn. The enemy can't really do anything to stop it. They have to go an reclaim the objective to turn it off, they can't just shoot the unit that did the action (it already put up it's flag).

BUT, units taking actions cant advance, fallback, shoot or charge while they're doing them, so in the case of Raise the Banners, if you did it with a big expensive 30 man unit, you've now just sacrificed that units combat capability for the turn. I'm sure there will be other actions that make taking large units a bonus, but it sure ain't for that example one.

Oh that's true I missed that.

So we are going to have actions that are completed in the same turn and actions that require you to make it through the round.... interesting.

I guess that a lot of the balance of 9th edition will be defined by the secondary missions available.

I mean, we do not actually know that there will be actions requiring you to make it thru the round. That's pure conjecture at this point from the folks who want to believe there's some bonus to taking larger units in light of the tremendous heap of gak that's been piled on them as if they're some kind of relevant in the current competitive meta

Well GW certainly led people down that garden path by previewing a mission that stated you had to hold the objective untill the start of your command phase to score the victory points.

However the newer previews contradict that heavily and allow people to score objectives with actions entirely in their own turn means you'll never be able to interact with them they just automatically get that bonus for holding that objective

 skchsan wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
The only horde army worth playing is going to be IG because GW is going to maintain their stance on 4 ppm guardsmen.

Keep dreaming. Guardsmen will be 6ppm, just like cultists. Wait and see.

We'll see. I would not be surprised if guardsmen survive the culling like last time GW tried to even out the horde issue.

Looks like guardsmen survived the culling after all.

Guardsmen are the undercosted troop unit by definition. Now just consider that gretchins are 5ppm....

 Blackie wrote:
Guardsmen are the undercosted troop unit by definition. Now just consider that gretchins are 5ppm....

Cultists 6,
Because csm are not supposed to be a Horde faction, yet are priced Like Scouts now too.


Also r&h , the Horde Revolution blob army is no more .
The stompas up aswell..

 Jidmah wrote:
People, it's "HORDE" not "HOARD"...

I'm sorry did you say WHORED?

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
People, it's "HORDE" not "HOARD"...

I'm sorry did you say WHORED?

No, that’s how you pay for your new army.

Must admit that despite not seeing the complete picture, it's looking like this edition isn't going to be good for hordes. My orks, daemons and genestealer cult will probably have to be adjusted accordingly. The genestealer cult I think will be hardest hit

 Huron black heart wrote:
Must admit that despite not seeing the complete picture, it's looking like this edition isn't going to be good for hordes. My orks, daemons and genestealer cult will probably have to be adjusted accordingly. The genestealer cult I think will be hardest hit

There are certain units I'm looking at and thinking to myself "Maybe..."

Take orks, for example. Went from 7 to 8 ppm. Now that big scary thunderfire cannon does do a solid 35% more damage to them, that's true. But it went up in price SIXTY PERCENT. Whirlwind got dunked on even more. There were two big boons orks got, number one, that price jump on boyz was mercifully small and the price jump on almost every blast weapon is high enough that I don't think many people are going to be including them. Number two, while we end up with fewer CPs, our big CP combo went from 5CP (guarantee morale survival for 2cp, then resummon 30 boyz for 3cp) to 3cp, because unless your opponent leaves you with literally one or two models, your unit IS going to survive a morale phase. 30 boyz dropped down to 4 models, that unit has a less than 4% chance of getting fully wiped.

Certain cheap units, the ones that got modest price increases while the weapons that hunt them got heavy price increases, will probably be OK, but their strength is definitely going to be transferred from their effectiveness and killing to their effectiveness at scoring.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
I asked a similar question about army soup and not I'm tackling this topic. I fully agree with GW's decision to reform things in the 9th edition and to not allow crap like a few grots holding up tanks, but to just punish them all strikes me as wrong. Lore-wise, IG, orks, tyranids, certain CSM armies and daemons generally revolve around hordes of some kind, to varying degrees. Am I really a bad person for wanting to swarm the field with load of berzerkers and bloodletters? Thoughts on this issue.

i dunno with other factions, but real horde factions like Tyranids and Orks, who focuses on mostly melee, are being absolutely smashed in this 9th edition.


And im honestly baffled because melee was never super duper good in 8th edition anyway. its been going down hill for melee and i dont know why. Sure its a futuristic setting and we have ranged weapons so why should melee be good? but that realistic way of looking is just terrible and not logical at all.

Why add melee and for that matter, species and factions like Khorne and Tyranids and orks if melee is meant to suck?

At the very least melee factions are getting a nerf, and if you happen to be a horde faction on top of that, you've just been double bamboozled by GW in this edition.

Some of the changes makes sense, as you say, a grot holding a tank up didnt make sense. but even if it didnt and its a good change, it still is a nerf. Other things dont make sense at all. Like having to re-roll both die everytime you want to re-roll your charge. thats an uncalled for nerf.

And my biggest issue yet, is the whole blast weapon situation. It basically forces me, the ork player and im guessing tyranids too, to run smaller squads. which is stupid, because it invalidates many of my stratagems. like, who would use the green tide on a 10 man ork unit? no one.


Horde armies are going to suck ass n 9th edition. and i cant for the love of god figure out why they thought this was a good idea.

Did horde factions usually show up as the winners in tournements?
As far as i recall, not necessarily.

Did orks and tyranids somehow destroy the competition in competitive tournements?

no.

Did orks and tyranids somehow always end up as top 5?

no.

Were other factions left unable to win facing off against horde factions in general that werent necessarily orks or tyranids? as far as i know?

Still a big no.

So if there hasnt been a problem with melee horde factions, why on gods green earth would they need MASSIVELY nerf those factions? I mean nerfing horde factions is one thing, but nerfing horde factions, AND melee just makes melee horde factions a pretty much unplayable and uncompetitive thing to play now.

And that sucks because i dont want to play gun-line orks.

Tyranids and orks are going to get hit so hard i dont even know what to say.

Also why does a Gretchin cost 5 points to field? They were hardly ever used in large quantities in competitive plays before but now they wont be used at all except for the occational grot shield.

Beardedragon wrote:


Also why does a Gretchin cost 5 points to field? They were hardly ever used in large quantities in competitive plays before but now they wont be used at all except for the occational grot shield.

Truth? Because the most competitive ork lists in late 8th edition had 90-120 gretchins when in no prior edition players weren't even thinking of fielding that many little fellas. Which means that during 8th gretchins sold a lot, and now GW wants player to buy something else, something most player don't own in large numbers. Like buggies.

I'm fairly sure that at some point hordes will become top tier meta once again, just let the players buy more vehicles and elite before that

They nerfed them because balance is a tool to be leveraged for profit. And it turns out the Space Marine power fantasy is wildly profitable. Challenges for melee, horde, and deep strike assault? 90% of the player base is shooty and happy, and most the people negatively affected are too casual to realise or care anyway.

Hordes and melee definitely were not nerfed in 9th.

With Eradicators out there, hordes is the only thing certain factions like Tyranids can play, and it is going to work well, because blasts are crap for T3 targets. The ones that were decent against them have been priced into the sky.

Melee is what wins games in 9th apparently, and one of the biggest problems I'm facing with nids in list building is that I can't find a good melee infantry. We have a grand total of ONE multi damage weapon on an infantry unit, and it hits on 4+ on a unit with 3 attacks (for only d3 damage) while costing more than an aggressor.

Not Online!!! wrote:

The stompas up aswell..

Well of course. There's no way it could continue at its current price point with how overpowered it was.

Same thing with the Obelisk.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

The stompas up aswell..

Well of course. There's no way it could continue at its current price point with how overpowered it was.

Same thing with the Obelisk.

TBF, it's the most overpowered gardengnome in all off 40k history....

I remember watching a video on YouTube. I can’t remember if it was table top tactics or titans but one of them basically said that the way the new missions were designed for 9th were being broken by the horde armies ability to field so many cheap bodies. I’m thinking that’s why the big points jump, to stop that from happening.

I actually would like it if GW changed horde armies a bit. Instead of having 30 individual ork boyz for example we would have 3 or 6 larger bases with multiple ork models on one base in groups of 5 or 10 respectively and just keep track of how many models are alive by wounds. That should solve a lot of issues and still allow the horde armies to retain their flavor.

Beardedragon wrote:


i dunno with other factions, but real horde factions like Tyranids and Orks, who focuses on mostly melee, are being absolutely smashed in this 9th edition.

Slightly early to be claiming that melee armies are being smashed right? We've only had the rules/points leaked few a handful of days, and even then we've not been able to read through every one of them.

Let alone had a couple tourneys to gather more data.

Mind you it's possible you're right, just a bit early to say for sure.

Orks also don't "focus mostly on melee" any more than marines do. The vast majority of ork units are shooting units, and all successful ork armies have relied heavily on shooting stuff off the board.

If anything, the major pain point for orks will be overpriced troops, but it's also too early to draw conclusions about that as well.

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I remember watching a video on YouTube. I can’t remember if it was table top tactics or titans but one of them basically said that the way the new missions were designed for 9th were being broken by the horde armies ability to field so many cheap bodies. I’m thinking that’s why the big points jump, to stop that from happening.

I think this is one of those things that needs to be discovered by playing games.

Without playing a load of games, its not clear how hard it will be to max out the primary. You really need to be holding two objectives a turn - but that's not overly arduous, unless you castle up on a backline and never move.

At the same time, someone holding more from turn 2 would cap out in turn 4 - at which point, assuming anything's left, they can abandon that (while keeping say 2 objectives) to just try and deny their opponent holding 2.

Secondaries obviously further complicate things - but when a lot of the mission secondaries can be capped with a hold more strategy, I think this is going to be a key feature.

So if you could just turn up with your 150 hormagaunts/boyz and some reasonable shooting in the back, it might be that you could just win a lot of games by default in testing.
The problem is that if that were the meta, I don't think its difficult to build lists that can clear 60-90 of these models a turn. In which case its probably not a problem.

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks also don't "focus mostly on melee" any more than marines do. The vast majority of ork units are shooting units, and all successful ork armies have relied heavily on shooting stuff off the board.

If anything, the major pain point for orks will be overpriced troops, but it's also too early to draw conclusions about that as well.

Well, while gretchin got gretched, the boyz came out pretty well this time. Also considering that all the toyz got cheaper or stayed the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I remember watching a video on YouTube. I can’t remember if it was table top tactics or titans but one of them basically said that the way the new missions were designed for 9th were being broken by the horde armies ability to field so many cheap bodies. I’m thinking that’s why the big points jump, to stop that from happening.

I think this is one of those things that needs to be discovered by playing games.

Without playing a load of games, its not clear how hard it will be to max out the primary. You really need to be holding two objectives a turn - but that's not overly arduous, unless you castle up on a backline and never move.

At the same time, someone holding more from turn 2 would cap out in turn 4 - at which point, assuming anything's left, they can abandon that (while keeping say 2 objectives) to just try and deny their opponent holding 2.

Secondaries obviously further complicate things - but when a lot of the mission secondaries can be capped with a hold more strategy, I think this is going to be a key feature.

So if you could just turn up with your 150 hormagaunts/boyz and some reasonable shooting in the back, it might be that you could just win a lot of games by default in testing.
The problem is that if that were the meta, I don't think its difficult to build lists that can clear 60-90 of these models a turn. In which case its probably not a problem.

There is an important distinction to be made.
The game has 3 missions with 4 objectives. When playing on these, getting more than 5 points from your primary per turn means that you are dominating the battlefield and are keeping your opponent holed in his deployment.
Scorched hearth makes getting 10 points easier and punishes the same approach that wins in the 4 objective ones. If you rush to your enemy to keep him holed, he can take control of your rear objectives and burn them for 15 points.
Vital data requires you to have 3 objectives to score 10, so it is quite hard. Since the points stay capped even without anyone on them, it rewards ultra aggressive lists.
Retrieval missions is a castler dream. Getting 10 every turn is easy, and it also has a secondaries that rewards castling. Since probably both players will max the primary on this one, the game will be decided by the secondaries.

I think big blobs of shoota boyz is actually quite solid now.

The benefit of boyz is having 30 5++ 6+++ bodies in an objective that an enemy has to wade through. Their melee damage was kneecapped, but still good enough (even as shootas) to clear light infantry or small units, and it takes a lot of effort to shift, especially when you have 3 units of them.

 Blackie wrote:

Beardedragon wrote:


Also why does a Gretchin cost 5 points to field? They were hardly ever used in large quantities in competitive plays before but now they wont be used at all except for the occational grot shield.

Truth? Because the most competitive ork lists in late 8th edition had 90-120 gretchins when in no prior edition players weren't even thinking of fielding that many little fellas. Which means that during 8th gretchins sold a lot, and now GW wants player to buy something else, something most player don't own in large numbers. Like buggies.

I'm fairly sure that at some point hordes will become top tier meta once again, just let the players buy more vehicles and elite before that

Yes i get that, in order to get more CP by putting weak HQ units and 3x 10 gretchins you could gain a decent stack of CP by making more batallions.

But thats changed in 9th edition and we kinda get hurt by doing this now. We dont gain CP by making more batallions, we lose CP, so theres no point in filling out troop slots with gretchin units.

So theres no reason to field large armies of Gretchin as it stand right now. So why would they need a point increase to 5 when they have already lost a somewhat big potion of their usage? Also a guardsman is 6 points...

Gretchins are not useless at all, but they are also not worth 5 points when you get more out of using boys as it stands. they should remain 3 points or increase to 4 like everyone else gets a single point increase around the troop slots.

A gretchin is not worth 5 points and they are completely over priced now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

cody.d. wrote:

Beardedragon wrote:


i dunno with other factions, but real horde factions like Tyranids and Orks, who focuses on mostly melee, are being absolutely smashed in this 9th edition.

Slightly early to be claiming that melee armies are being smashed right? We've only had the rules/points leaked few a handful of days, and even then we've not been able to read through every one of them.

Let alone had a couple tourneys to gather more data.

Mind you it's possible you're right, just a bit early to say for sure.

No its actually a pretty valid claim when looking over some of the rules that have been released so far.

And they are definitly not in favor of horde melee factions.

Which is weird because neither was 8th but it was doable. 9th is just making it that much more harder.

What rules could they possibly release that makes up for the new coherency rule? For the blast weapon rule? for the "unable to tag tanks" rule? even if some of those rules didnt make sense (like the last rule) it still made melee easier. Easier, but not easy. Melee armies, especially horde melee armies, have been slam dunked a huge nerf.

Even the objectives are mainly focused around staying on the victory points and they remove many of the secondary objectives you could get, which, again, helped melee factions. Now you cant charge out away from your victory point and still gain points by killing units, now you have to be a sitting duck with your slugga boys being unable to fight back.

There hasnt been a single released info so far that in any way balances out all the negatives so far released for horde melee factions.

Spoletta wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks also don't "focus mostly on melee" any more than marines do. The vast majority of ork units are shooting units, and all successful ork armies have relied heavily on shooting stuff off the board.

If anything, the major pain point for orks will be overpriced troops, but it's also too early to draw conclusions about that as well.

Well, while gretchin got gretched, the boyz came out pretty well this time. Also considering that all the toyz got cheaper or stayed the same.

Boyz weren't that great to begin with, and while 1ppm doesn't seem much, it's actually 30 additional points you pay per unit. Whether this breaks the camel's back remains to be seen.

Our vehicles got cheaper, remained the same or only got slight increases, but a vehicle-heavy list would also mean abandoning boyz, as there is no synergy between boyz (and the units to make them work) and vehicles


Automatically Appended Next Post:

stratigo wrote:
I think big blobs of shoota boyz is actually quite solid now.

The benefit of boyz is having 30 5++ 6+++ bodies in an objective that an enemy has to wade through. Their melee damage was kneecapped, but still good enough (even as shootas) to clear light infantry or small units, and it takes a lot of effort to shift, especially when you have 3 units of them.

I know all the play testers and bloggers keep echoing this. but in practice, none of that is true though. Shootas are terrible at shifting anything with a decent armor save, and even without TF cannons or whirlwinds, marines have no troubles making 60 or more of them disappear per turn.
If you assume 5++/6+++ you are looking at ~320 points per unit, if you spend that much on something else, it will be just as hard to shift, if not harder.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks also don't "focus mostly on melee" any more than marines do. The vast majority of ork units are shooting units, and all successful ork armies have relied heavily on shooting stuff off the board.

If anything, the major pain point for orks will be overpriced troops, but it's also too early to draw conclusions about that as well.

Well, while gretchin got gretched, the boyz came out pretty well this time. Also considering that all the toyz got cheaper or stayed the same.

Boyz weren't that great to begin with, and while 1ppm doesn't seem much, it's actually 30 additional points you pay per unit. Whether this breaks the camel's back remains to be seen.

Our vehicles got cheaper, remained the same or only got slight increases, but a vehicle-heavy list would also mean abandoning boyz, as there is no synergy between boyz (and the units to make them work) and vehicles


Automatically Appended Next Post:

stratigo wrote:
I think big blobs of shoota boyz is actually quite solid now.

The benefit of boyz is having 30 5++ 6+++ bodies in an objective that an enemy has to wade through. Their melee damage was kneecapped, but still good enough (even as shootas) to clear light infantry or small units, and it takes a lot of effort to shift, especially when you have 3 units of them.

I know all the play testers and bloggers keep echoing this. but in practice, none of that is true though. Shootas are terrible at shifting anything with a decent armor save, and even without TF cannons or whirlwinds, marines have no troubles making 60 or more of them disappear per turn.
If you assume 5++/6+++ you are looking at ~320 points per unit, if you spend that much on something else, it will be just as hard to shift, if not harder.

This, totally agree. Boyz were already overcosted at 7ppm since their strenght has always been to shield a single dude that could melt stuff with his klaw. Now single klaws don't do anything, hence boyz had little purpose anyway other than controlling the table with tons of bodies. Which means that the standard 3 troops cost now +81 points if the nobz had the klaw or +90 if they had a big choppa. 3 troops of intercessors cost just +45 points.

3x30 boyz are 750 points, 2 KFFs another 120 (since one can't shield them all) and with 1-2 painboyz and a warboss to keep them in line we already have invested more than half points in a 2000 points list. For units that don't do anything than soaking damage. And anything else won't have enough redundancy against the enemy anti tank to matter. With the new coherency rules it's also harder to use blob of boyz as tarpits, which was their only effective role in 8th.

Different army players need to keep in mind that 30 shootas grant on average 23 hits at S4 ap-. Enough to kill 40 points of intercessors (if in cover is just one dead 20ppm dude) or 10 T3 5+ models (a couple less if they are in cover). After Rolling 60+10 (thanks to DDD) dice.

In my meta this kind of lists never worked, too easy to remove loads of boyz as hordes always got people to panic.

Boyz actually had it better than intercessors. Boyz increased by 14,3%, which puts them around the average increase of points in the game.

Intercessors increased by 17,6%, so they were actually nerfed (for a good reason).

It is just that if you try to shoot them with small caliber weapons, you are not going to get much. Even under the old rules, when they were considered absolutely terrible, they were always really durable against small caliber weapons. Intercessors have always been a unit that required something bigger to go down.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks also don't "focus mostly on melee" any more than marines do. The vast majority of ork units are shooting units, and all successful ork armies have relied heavily on shooting stuff off the board.

If anything, the major pain point for orks will be overpriced troops, but it's also too early to draw conclusions about that as well.

Well, while gretchin got gretched, the boyz came out pretty well this time. Also considering that all the toyz got cheaper or stayed the same.

Boyz weren't that great to begin with, and while 1ppm doesn't seem much, it's actually 30 additional points you pay per unit. Whether this breaks the camel's back remains to be seen.

Our vehicles got cheaper, remained the same or only got slight increases, but a vehicle-heavy list would also mean abandoning boyz, as there is no synergy between boyz (and the units to make them work) and vehicles


Automatically Appended Next Post:

stratigo wrote:
I think big blobs of shoota boyz is actually quite solid now.

The benefit of boyz is having 30 5++ 6+++ bodies in an objective that an enemy has to wade through. Their melee damage was kneecapped, but still good enough (even as shootas) to clear light infantry or small units, and it takes a lot of effort to shift, especially when you have 3 units of them.

I know all the play testers and bloggers keep echoing this. but in practice, none of that is true though. Shootas are terrible at shifting anything with a decent armor save, and even without TF cannons or whirlwinds, marines have no troubles making 60 or more of them disappear per turn.
If you assume 5++/6+++ you are looking at ~320 points per unit, if you spend that much on something else, it will be just as hard to shift, if not harder.

I mean, it worked well enough on Tabletop titans. The trick isn't not dying, it's dying slow enough to max your primaries while always having a threat to an objective.

Honestly, I don't think warbosses are worth much any longer. two KFF and two wierdboyz. teleport boyz squads onto objectives, in front of advancing enemies. Don't look to kill with them. Use your shooting to kill.

Now, I admit, this kinda sucks for orks to not be great at melee any more, and more about shooting/trying to die slowly. And they aren't the best faction in the game. But they're mid tier. Better than GSC and demons for sure. And maybe dark eldar at this point too, poor dark eldar. I think they'll be a good counter against armies set up to kill marines.

stratigo wrote:
I mean, it worked well enough on Tabletop titans. The trick isn't not dying, it's dying slow enough to max your primaries while always having a threat to an objective.

I watched their battle report because I play both DG and orks, and the ork player should not have won that game if both had known what they were doing. The DG player made lots of big mistakes and had an odd army to begin with, and the ork player got tons of rules wrong and was quite lucky. Clearly neither had a lot of experienced in operating their corresponding armies, the were both just running one of the armies that they happen to own. They are great guys and I really enjoyed watching them play, but I'd take the opinion from someone who knows orks inside out and has years of experience playing them like blackie or other posters on this forum over their any day. Someone who has played orks for a decade simply has a different insight on what works and what doesn't than someone who played the top tier build of 8th edition a couple of times.

Not to mention that one of the main weaknesses of DG is killing hordes, their best shot at doing so is a unit of terminators with storm bolters.

Honestly, I don't think warbosses are worth much any longer. two KFF and two wierdboyz. teleport boyz squads onto objectives, in front of advancing enemies. Don't look to kill with them. Use your shooting to kill.

Considering how you suggest wasting most of your CP and over half your points on boyz squads, what shooting do you suggest is doing the killing?
A klaw warboss is mandatory to kill certain things, and it does so at a great value. Heck, with death skulls I could even see the foot warboss making a return because he has objective secured.

Now, I admit, this kinda sucks for orks to not be great at melee any more, and more about shooting/trying to die slowly. And they aren't the best faction in the game. But they're mid tier. Better than GSC and demons for sure. And maybe dark eldar at this point too, poor dark eldar. I think they'll be a good counter against armies set up to kill marines.

Orks haven't been great at melee since 5th.

You also don't need to convince me that orks aren't having it bad. I said as much in the very first post, precisely because of all the great shooting units we have. Sparkly morkanaut, mek guns, wazbomm, burna bommers, SJD, scrapjet, KBB, da boomer and tank bustas all got below average price hikes and many of them will be better than before due 9th edition rules. The only thing that's deader than dead are lootas.
If orks will be struggling in 9th - of which I'm not sure of yet - it will be because of overcosted troops.

Flash gitz are also dead with their new price hike. Maybe SAG also.

But 80%+ of the current viable ork units are shooting only, shooting mostly of pure buffing/supporting characters. Dedicated melee units that actually work are really just a handful on choices: warboss (useful also, if not mostly, for the morale aura), meganobz, nobz, and dreads. Gorkanaut is a mixed bag of shooting/melee. The majority of ork lists don't have more 300 points invested in those units, unless bringing the gorkanaut.

Why don't you consider DG good at taking out hordes? I rate them second best after AM, simply because they can nade you to oblivion.

Spoletta wrote:
Why don't you consider DG good at taking out hordes? I rate them second best after AM, simply because they can nade you to oblivion.

One squad can. If they get within 6".

That's not exactly premier horde-clearing power.