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 Slaphead wrote:
I wonder if this means that Dark Angels will actually be a much more powerful army to field and a heck of a lot more competitive when they get their book. I really hope so, those shady dudes need some time in the spotlight.

Wasn't there a rumor that Dark Angels are getting nerfed by 1 in every stat, but if you take their decurion detachment they get +1 in every stat, though it requires at least 8 of the new dark angels battleforces, new kits only.


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Murrdox wrote:

 ProwlerPC wrote:
I think a thread needs to be made suggesting ideas to give the other races Decurion style formations at least until the hopeful day comes that some external balance is made.

It's pretty simple... make a rule at your table that everyone plays with a CAD. Disallow all formations. Consider allowing for dual CADs and an Allied Detachment, and keep it at that.

Eldar don't need the Warhost formation. Necrons don't need the Decurion. They won't break if they don't use them.

I mean are Eldar actually taking the Warhost formation? In general if your Eldar opponent is taking the Warhosts they are probably playing pretty nice if you are using any sort of tournament rules as your general list standard in your area. Even if they are playing mean (Warhost to get 5 WKs, they are literally gaining no benefit from the Warhost bonuses other then the ability to take 5 WKs (which they could just take anyway in an Unbound list and be way better off since you are playing without any standard meta list rules to begin with). When you look at it your general competitive Eldar player is taking a CAD as his primary and then adding one or some of a Seer Council, Aspect Host, or Crimson Death formations combined with allies and avoiding the "decurion" entirely.

IMO competitive play should be based around CADs and allies with 0 formations. The formations are nice, fluffy, etc, but they are clearly imbalanced and are designed purely to sell models by enticing you with broken things.

SilverSaint wrote:
I mean are Eldar actually taking the Warhost formation? In general if your Eldar opponent is taking the Warhosts they are probably playing pretty nice if you are using any sort of tournament rules as your general list standard in your area. Even if they are playing mean (Warhost to get 5 WKs, they are literally gaining no benefit from the Warhost bonuses other then the ability to take 5 WKs (which they could just take anyway in an Unbound list and be way better off since you are playing without any standard meta list rules to begin with). When you look at it your general competitive Eldar player is taking a CAD as his primary and then adding one or some of a Seer Council, Aspect Host, or Crimson Death formations combined with allies and avoiding the "decurion" entirely.

IMO competitive play should be based around CADs and allies with 0 formations. The formations are nice, fluffy, etc, but they are clearly imbalanced and are designed purely to sell models by enticing you with broken things.

Nope.gif

Welcome to Formationhammer 40,000. Yes, it is a total model-sell on GW's part, but I would argue that with lots of factions now having access to formations in one form or another something resembling balance has been achieved. Formations are here to stay, just like Forgeworld models. Really, the formations we're talking about are not as broken as people make them out to be. The unit taxes and restrictions often serve as a balancing factor for the benefits of the formation.

As a side note, Eldar are apparently the opposite of Necrons: don't play them if they aren't taking their Decurion!

Naw wrote:

 Slaphead wrote:
I wonder if this means that Dark Angels will actually be a much more powerful army to field and a heck of a lot more competitive when they get their book. I really hope so, those shady dudes need some time in the spotlight.

My guess is that DA will be SM-1 and the new SM will be SM+1. Just to balance things out.. Oh, and L2P, ok?

Actually I'm pretty sure that's being saved up for the new Chaos Marine codex... along with nerfing our currently OP marks of Chaos back to a snipable flag that'll cost 75pts/squad to include.

Murrdox wrote:
It's pretty simple... make a rule at your table that everyone plays with a CAD. Disallow all formations. Consider allowing for dual CADs and an Allied Detachment, and keep it at that.

I would agree with this, except that formations seem to be the new way of doing FOC swaps. For example, IG players have been asking for a "rough riders as troops" option for a long time, and we finally got it in IA:Vraks. Except instead of saying "rough riders are troops" it's an alternate FOC that has mandatory HQ + fast attack slots (with rough riders required for the mandatory FA) instead of HQ + troops. It's only bonus is fear (lol) when charging, otherwise it's just a normal FOC. But under a "CAD only" rule that option would be banned. And of course the armies with no HQs and special no-HQ detachments would be impossible to play.

I'd rather keep the formations and simply add decurion types to the ones who don't have it until such time as they do get one published too. I also am in the belief that formations is the direction 40k is going, willing to embrace it, and work with others to make tweaks as needed (like temporary made up decurions for the others that don't have it). Because quite frankly, Orks are screwed with Codex and Rule Book alone.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Space wolves, blood angels, inquisition, dark Eldar....

You know it's funny how many armies there are in the game when you just choose to ignore everything you don't play and say "L2P" when you have the single most universally broken army in the game.

How many times do I have to explain this? Eldar have broken units. As an army, however, they are hardly overpowered or broken. Anyone who's complaining about Aspect Warriors really does need to L2P.

Lets be real here, we can find some pretty silly things about Aspect Warriors too things like Fire Dragons getting BS5 in formations and a total of +3 on vehicle damage chart, for zero additional points cost, is pretty absurd. They were hardly broken or in need of a buff before, and they simply got massively buffed.

The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

text removed.
Reds8n

I agree that formation gives an edge. But separating the 2 game is a bit to harsh I think. I was playing Ork before, and now I'm Dark Angels. I know what it is to be underwhelming lol.

At my local store, we plan our game beforehand on facebook, then meet at the shop and find the other player, and play. So it's easier for everybody to find a game which is fun. If I play my DA, and I can ask an Necron player if he could play a Combined Arm instead of his formation. If he does, we play, if he don't we don't. When my codex will be updated, and if I have good formation and option, I could decide to advertise for game on a more competitive side.

Until then, it's a matter of waiting for your codex to be updated, or pre-plan your game to get the most out of it. Remember that 90% of the fun you get out of a boardgame is coming out from the interaction between you and the other player. If you find someone that think alike you to play the game, I can garanty you that GW poor balance won't ever bother you.


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And man do I love your profile pic JohnHwangDD

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Space wolves, blood angels, inquisition, dark Eldar....

You know it's funny how many armies there are in the game when you just choose to ignore everything you don't play and say "L2P" when you have the single most universally broken army in the game.

How many times do I have to explain this? Eldar have broken units. As an army, however, they are hardly overpowered or broken. Anyone who's complaining about Aspect Warriors really does need to L2P.

Lets be real here, we can find some pretty silly things about Aspect Warriors too things like Fire Dragons getting BS5 in formations and a total of +3 on vehicle damage chart, for zero additional points cost, is pretty absurd. They were hardly broken or in need of a buff before, and they simply got massively buffed.

The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

I can't tell if this was intended to be a sarcastic imitation of a late night 4chan post or not.

If not, the L2P argument is essentially a non-argument, it says nothing and adds nothing.

Most codex books are relatively new, less than a couple of years old. However, there's a stark and clear divide in books even less than a year old in terms of power level and capability, and it's gigantic. Talking about such issues doesn't make one a bad player. You can hand-wave away every argument as "sour grapes", it doesn't make them any less valid. Hell, I've got probably over 4,000pts worth of Eldar sitting around that I could absolutely run around and wreck face with if I wanted to, but that's not really what I'm into.

So, if you have an argument that amounts to something other than "you're just bad", I'll listen to it, but otherwise, I'm not sure what you're getting out of a post like the above other than projecting your issues onto me.

Quite.

Comments that other people simply need to "l2p" or whatever hilarious term is currently in vogue add nothing to any discussion.

Further usage of any such term will be treated as spam.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Do people really think that Knights had that much of an impact on the game?

the_scotsman wrote:Honorable mention to 1000 free points of skitarii AdMech and knight upgrades for a 2000pt list.

What are you doing to get 1000 points worth of upgrades?

Genuinely curious, as Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus upgrades are on the fairly low side(with the exception of Skitarii weapons that aren't Arc Rifles).

yeah, even taking every relic in the book skitarii/mech/knights top out in that formation around 600 points.

The Cult Mech side can get bigger, but cult mech really lack upgrades.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I can't tell if this was intended to be a sarcastic imitation of a late night 4chan post or not.

If not, the L2P argument is essentially a non-argument, it says nothing and adds nothing.

Most codex books are relatively new, less than a couple of years old. However, there's a stark and clear divide in books even less than a year old in terms of power level and capability, and it's gigantic. Talking about such issues doesn't make one a bad player. You can hand-wave away every argument as "sour grapes", it doesn't make them any less valid. Hell, I've got probably over 4,000pts worth of Eldar sitting around that I could absolutely run around and wreck face with if I wanted to, but that's not really what I'm into.

So, if you have an argument that amounts to something other than "you're just bad", I'll listen to it, but otherwise, I'm not sure what you're getting out of a post like the above other than projecting your issues onto me.

I will agree that there is a definite disparity in power between the pre-Necron and post-Necron codexes. Again, It's my theory that GW's design team was testing the waters with the earlier 7th edition codexes and then went all the way with Necrons onward. In any case, this is likely to be remedied via GW's new release schedule.

However, I don't believe that this power level is "broken" or insurmountable for the remaining 6th edition codexes. These types of formations are probably too strong to be used in casual/friendly play. I think that it's a combination of the rapid release schedule and the changing meta that is causing so much uproar. The game is changing in ways that people haven't seen before, and there's naturally same resistance to these changes.

There is also the factor of new players to consider. To outsiders, list building in 40k can seem like an extremely esoteric art, akin to preparing taxes or math beyond calculus. With these formations, list building is much more approachable. Just take these specific units, season to taste with upgrades, and there's your army. You even get a nice bonus for doing this!

I'm not defending how imbalanced the various codexes are against each other. Orks, Dark Angels, CSM, Sisters, and IG have definitely drawn the short stick in terms of this edition, both in terms of formations and in changes to the core rules. But I don't think that formations in Warhammer 40k are a bad thing, and it wouldn't serve any purpose to arbitrarily divide the game into "pre-formation" and "post-formation" codexes.

Murrdox wrote:

 ProwlerPC wrote:
I think a thread needs to be made suggesting ideas to give the other races Decurion style formations at least until the hopeful day comes that some external balance is made.

It's pretty simple... make a rule at your table that everyone plays with a CAD. Disallow all formations. Consider allowing for dual CADs and an Allied Detachment, and keep it at that.

Eldar don't need the Warhost formation. Necrons don't need the Decurion. They won't break if they don't use them.

And Skitarri and Harequins are apparently banned as they cannot take a CAD or Allied Detachment.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

I can't tell if this was intended to be a sarcastic imitation of a late night 4chan post or not.

The entire thread is a sarcastic imitation of the earlier "refuse to play against Eldar" thing, is it not? That's what it boils down to, just more trollish, as it's now adding Necrons, Khorne, Knights and SMs to the list of things that are "too broken" to play against.

The metagame is far less broken than certain Fantasy eras of DE/Daemon domination, and it's not like playing any of these newer Codices is auto-win. Didn't Orks and/or Nids come out on top post-Necrons? Eldar's been out for a month, are they auto-winning events, tabling everybody by Turn 2? No? Then this overblown whining should stop.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

I can't tell if this was intended to be a sarcastic imitation of a late night 4chan post or not.

The entire thread is a sarcastic imitation of the earlier "refuse to play against Eldar" thing, is it not? That's what it boils down to, just more trollish, as it's now adding Necrons, Khorne, Knights and SMs to the list of things that are "too broken" to play against.

It's a discussion of the clear, and radical, change in codex design paradigm GW decided to enter into about 7 or 8 months into a new edition after having a nearly diametrically opposed paradigm for the ~year before that. That distinction is readily clear to most people.

The metagame is far less broken than certain Fantasy eras of DE/Daemon domination

I would say it's more diffuse, we certainly have balance issues just as big, but it's spread over a wider number of things and even within individual books .In my experience, at local events, in pickup play in various cities, and the like, games are increasingly one-sided than in previous editions. 40k has always had this problem, but tablings are much more common than I can recall them being in the past. As I've mentioned in other threads, the stuff that's possible now was literally pure hyperbolic exaggeration, you'd only see when people were being intentionally silly, just three years ago.

and it's not like playing any of these newer Codices is auto-win. Didn't Orks and/or Nids come out on top post-Necrons?

At specific events? Possibly. But overall? I certainly don't think available data would support that. When we look at large events like Adepticon and the like, armies like Necrons and Eldar did extremely well in terms of overall rankings, which is far more indicative than simply whatever managed to pull 1st place alone.

Eldar's been out for a month, are they auto-winning events, tabling everybody by Turn 2? No? Then this overblown whining should stop.

Are we defining auto-winning as tabling by turn 2 only?

Two weeks ago I was witness to a relatively sub-par player (who routinely needs to be reminded of rules, even those to his own benefit) coming out as Best General at a local event running a D-weapon spam Eldar army against far more experienced players running KDK, Tau, and Space Wolves. I didn't play him in that tournament, but he swept all three games and he certainly never did as well at any other event against similar players with other builds.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

I can't tell if this was intended to be a sarcastic imitation of a late night 4chan post or not.

The entire thread is a sarcastic imitation of the earlier "refuse to play against Eldar" thing, is it not? That's what it boils down to, just more trollish, as it's now adding Necrons, Khorne, Knights and SMs to the list of things that are "too broken" to play against.

The metagame is far less broken than certain Fantasy eras of DE/Daemon domination, and it's not like playing any of these newer Codices is auto-win. Didn't Orks and/or Nids come out on top post-Necrons? Eldar's been out for a month, are they auto-winning events, tabling everybody by Turn 2? No? Then this overblown whining should stop.

I disagree. The poster who started that thread seemed like they were a 4chan operative. The OP for this one is just annoyed and upset to the point of being misguided.

Orks and Tyranids might have come out on top in recent tournaments, but from what people have been posting Eldar and Necrons have been dominating the meta of local scenes. I would agree that, at least for more friendly games, I would not want to face one of the new types of Decurion-style detachments unless I had one of my own ( ). Fortunately, with the new Space Marine codex, the majority of players will have access to some form of this type of detachment. But for more laid-back games, I could understand why people would want to just stick to the standard CAD.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
I would not want to face one of the new types of Decurion-style detachments unless I had one of my own ( ).

Fortunately, with the new Space Marine codex, the majority of players will have access to some form of this type of detachment. But for more laid-back games, I could understand why people would want to just stick to the standard CAD.

Sure, I get that. But armies go up and down all the time. As for CAD, that's banning certain armies outright, which is far worse. Given the truly unprecedented pace at which GW is rolling out formations, there really is no basis for complaint. It's not like Eldar are getting a couple years head start over everyone else like when GW took 3 years to update 2/3 of the books. It's a month, maybe 2, with the vast bulk of players having a new Codex within 8 months.

Back in my day...

Murrdox wrote:

It's pretty simple... make a rule at your table that everyone plays with a CAD. Disallow all formations. Consider allowing for dual CADs and an Allied Detachment, and keep it at that.

Shortsighted, sweeping rulings like this that haven't been thought out are why I'm not allowed to play Harlequins at 2 of the gaming stores here in town. When you attempt to make rules changes to a game that someone else designed, you have to account for EVERY army that's available, and all the rules that will still effect the game. Otherwise you're excluding people, models, and armies that you really have no reason to exclude.

I don't think the decurion style detachments is really the problem in and of itself. It IS concerning that GW is getting into the habit of awarding taking certain formations with free points worth of stuff though, instead of a quirky special rule. The space marine formation that let's everyone take free obsec dedicated transports of their choice is certainly worthy of mention. As an Eldar player, I was excited to see many of the changes in the codex, but disappointed with other things. To be honest, I'd be willing to play D-weapons as they were in last edition, and take only 1 heavy weapon per jetbike. Without the 2 main things people have complained about, I think the Eldar Codex would still be good without being considered OP. As it is now, I think it's a sign of things to come for future codices, such as the Space Marine codex we're seeing now. Over a thousand free points worth of vehicles in a formation is definitely OP. It'd be the points equivalent of the Craftworld Warhost getting 3 Free Wraithknights and an Avatar of Khaine instead of automatic 6" run moves.

My concern, then, is that the power creep of the game is going into hyperdrive, paired with massive price spikes from GW(10 Man Assault Marine Squad is now over $80). What this means for us players is that, in order to keep up with the power creep and equip our armies with the free stuff GW is giving us in our codex, we're going to need to buy more models, which GW is also raising the prices on. So, GW's strategy seems to be: Double the number of models we need to buy + Double the Prices = Quadruple the profit.

All this ridiculousness actually makes me wonder if someone has offered or is considering a complete purchase of the IP from GW or something. If the GW board knew for sure they were going to sell the 40k IP, it would make sense for them to make a bunch of quick changes to the game in order to cash in on fistfuls of models and inventory before the sale. Then, if someone else buys the IP and owns the rights to all of the games, it's no longer GW's problem to try to fix the game or reverse the massive power creep they initiated right before selling out.

Then again, it COULD be a fairly effective strategy, making players say the following to themselves: "Ok, so now I have to pay hundreds of dollars to be able to effectively play using the thousands of dollars of models I already have..."

The trick is getting people invested to begin with. Once someone has thousands of dollars invested in the hobby, what is another $300-400 to be able to continue to use it? The long-term viability of that strategy, however, is questionable. It creates a massive barrier to entry for new players, on top of the already daunting amount of work it takes to produce a tabletop standard army.

I play Mass Infantry Guard with a Lord Commissar leading my forces. I had a 750 point army with mostly Infantry Squads and a Chimera with a Multilaser and a Heavy Flamer.

His army was a Necron Decurion with 2 squads of warriors, 1 flying ship thing that gives them +1 reanimation, 5 immortals with some lord that gives them better reanimation, 3 wraiths and some ignores cover bikes.

I killed 5 necron warriors with a heavy flamer. He killed my entire army of massed infantry by turn 3.

I feel as if there's something wrong here. I'm under the impression when a new Guard codex comes out, it will have a huge power spike like the Necron and post Necron codexes have.

I don't agree with formations that give armies large bonuses for nothing. Even without formations, with a simple CAD, I'm sure Necrons are perfectly fine destroying the army I have without problem.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Space wolves, blood angels, inquisition, dark Eldar....

You know it's funny how many armies there are in the game when you just choose to ignore everything you don't play and say "L2P" when you have the single most universally broken army in the game.

How many times do I have to explain this? Eldar have broken units. As an army, however, they are hardly overpowered or broken. Anyone who's complaining about Aspect Warriors really does need to L2P.

Lets be real here, we can find some pretty silly things about Aspect Warriors too things like Fire Dragons getting BS5 in formations and a total of +3 on vehicle damage chart, for zero additional points cost, is pretty absurd. They were hardly broken or in need of a buff before, and they simply got massively buffed.

The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

The issue, is that a handful of armies actually do have their new books, but GW decided halfway through an edition to ramp up the power level of their books, leaving those that had just got a book in the dirt. 'They're all broken so none are' only works if everything is broken, not if half of it is and half isn't.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Space wolves, blood angels, inquisition, dark Eldar....

You know it's funny how many armies there are in the game when you just choose to ignore everything you don't play and say "L2P" when you have the single most universally broken army in the game.

How many times do I have to explain this? Eldar have broken units. As an army, however, they are hardly overpowered or broken. Anyone who's complaining about Aspect Warriors really does need to L2P.

Lets be real here, we can find some pretty silly things about Aspect Warriors too things like Fire Dragons getting BS5 in formations and a total of +3 on vehicle damage chart, for zero additional points cost, is pretty absurd. They were hardly broken or in need of a buff before, and they simply got massively buffed.

The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

The issue, is that a handful of armies actually do have their new books, but GW decided halfway through an edition to ramp up the power level of their books, leaving those that had just got a book in the dirt. 'They're all broken so none are' only works if everything is broken, not if half of it is and half isn't.

Exactly. Orks, IG, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar and Blood Angels all got major "toning down" treatments over the last ~year or so. Many of these armies lost large numbers of units and wargear options. While some got Formations or unique Detachments, they don't have anything near the power or flexibility of those found in the newer books (mostly, a couple exceptions aside) and have a far lower average unit power level. These books likely aren't going to be updated for another couple of years yet, and that's assuming GW sticks to their current release schedule and codex design paradigm and don't change it yet again.

 Kain wrote:
I can see it now, the Living tide dataslate formation becomes a Decurion esque formation.

If you kill anything it immediately re-enters ongoing reserves. No matter if it's a termagant brood or a Heirophant. Everything has objective secured and you get a free tervigon with every troop choice that never runs out of termagants. Then everyone can get free biomorphs because screw you.

It'd be fitting with the general trend of the game.

Too optimistic for a cruddex. More like any gaunts without devourers killed enters ongoing reserves, which must enter from your board edge. 2 free pyrovores, 1 free spore mine. Formation cannot include anything with wings. (Also, pyrovore is now -1T, weapon is -1S, +1AP, because cruddace)

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

I like how elf players love to cry and whinge that SM are on their power level, when elves far eclipses them. Also, khorne? seriously? knights? your wraithknight is cheaper, tougher and has better weapons. elves and necrons are on a whole other universe compared to the rest of the codexes.

Its alright, we're sour grapes and jealous. Have fun playing by yourself. The elven attitude has been grating on the nerves on many, won't be long till they're even boycotted from friendly play.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Exactly. Orks, IG, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar and Blood Angels all got major "toning down" treatments over the last ~year or so. Many of these armies lost large numbers of units and wargear options. While some got Formations or unique Detachments, they don't have anything near the power or flexibility of those found in the newer books (mostly, a couple exceptions aside) and have a far lower average unit power level. These books likely aren't going to be updated for another couple of years yet, and that's assuming GW sticks to their current release schedule and codex design paradigm and don't change it yet again.

One could make the argument that the "toning down" treatment should have been given to certain other armies...

We have suffered a major paradigm shift halfway through 7th edition. We had the first half of the releases toning down and reducing armies' options, and then the design philosophy suddenly changes and the next few releases are increased in power level.

There have always been a top tier of armies due to the release schedule and poor external balance. Eldar, Necrons, Mechanicus, and potentially the new Space Marines are undoubtedly more powerful than the previous 7th edition releases. But I disagree that these weaker armies stand no chance as to be futile against the new "power" codexes, especially when those codexes are toned down with house rules and FAQs. But I don't think that banning formations will serve any purpose in balancing these codexes out externally.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The sour grapes and jealousy here is unreal. A handful of armies don't have their new Codex, and it's so unfair? Too bad.

40k has never been fair, never will be. Whining about Necrons / Khorne / Eldar / Knights / Space Marines is ridiculous. They're all broken, which means that none of them are broken,

The issue, is that a handful of armies actually do have their new books, but GW decided halfway through an edition to ramp up the power level of their books, leaving those that had just got a book in the dirt. 'They're all broken so none are' only works if everything is broken, not if half of it is and half isn't.

Then I guess you have a couple options:

1. shelve your weak army and play one of your strong(er) armies.

or

2. talk to your opponent and negotiate a "balanced" game.

GW knows that most of their players lack the social skills for 2, so they make the purchase of multiple armies the preferred solution. Easy and fair.

And, yes, it's no accident that I own multiple armies for 40k, and have shelved each of them in turn for various reasons.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


Then I guess you have a couple options:

1. shelve your weak army and play one of your strong(er) armies.

or

2. talk to your opponent and negotiate a "balanced" game.

GW knows that most of their players lack the social skills for 2, so they make the purchase of multiple armies the preferred solution. Easy and fair.

And, yes, it's no accident that I own multiple armies for 40k, and have shelved each of them in turn for various reasons.

So if we segregate the two you get to play your shelved armies with far less frustration and still get to enjoy your post-Necron Armies with competent enemies. I don't see why you are even complaining.

If the solution to balance issues is to buy another army, something is wrong. There are a gigantic number of reasons why people wouldn't want to buy another army. Most people don't have multiple different armies, those of us that do are in the minority. Preference, feel, look, and cost really are all very powerful factors here.

Likewise, implying that people "lack the social skills" to talk about a balanced game is being disingenuous. The problem isn't with players lacking social skills. First and foremost, that really shouldn't be necessary, and isn't when any other game I can think of really. There's a ton of reasons why negotiating stuff about a game just doesn't really work in the real world. The other player might not have anything else with them. They may be at a tournament or playing a league game where such would be both counterproductive and ruled illegal by the organizer. There's a huge number of other reasons one could go into. Ultimately, it makes it easier on everyone when the game addresses those imbalances fundamentally instead of relying on the players to negotiate it.

As far as I recollect, 40k has only ever been balanced for the 1 month when everybody played out of the 40k3 rulebook. As long as there are Codices, there will be imbalances. Also, as long as players have varying luck and varying skill.

And the idea that you can't accept an imbalanced game? That's kinda immature. Hope you never play a Trasimene scenario in Ancients, or really, any WW2 scenario. Even Chess is hopelessly imbalanced because White has Always Moves First...

Yes, every game is imbalanced but 40k doesn't have to be that way. Through space wolves, guard, CSM, grey knights, dark Eldar, orks, we had balance. Everyone was relatively happy because every army could be played against everyone else.

And then we got frickin' Decurion and busted ass wraiths, and then we got Eldar. Overnight, that one guy whose army had two wraithknights because he thought they were cool suddenly has the option of A) not playing one or both of his 100+$ purchases, or never having a fun game because that 600 points of his army can table whole 2000 point lists of other peoples stuff

This is power creep beyond the previous "tiers". Before, you might play bottom tier orks against top tier SM and go "damn, Smashbane is annoying." Now, every single unit of the Necron army fielded against you gets enormous blanket buffs to become this uncrackable juggernaut, and you're lucky if you can down 10 warriors in a 2k game.

So yeah. I guess we just sit here, twiddle our thumbs and wait our turn to hand 66$ so our armies can be playable again. If they decide to make them playable again. I half expect the ork decurion to be similar to many of the ork "benefits". Maybe if we take 500 boyz we can get "you can waaaagh every turn!!!!!1!!! Twice! And Ghazgkull gets a 6++!"

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
As far as I recollect, 40k has only ever been balanced for the 1 month when everybody played out of the 40k3 rulebook. As long as there are Codices, there will be imbalances. Also, as long as players have varying luck and varying skill.

And the idea that you can't accept an imbalanced game? That's kinda immature. Hope you never play a Trasimene scenario in Ancients, or really, any WW2 scenario. Even Chess is hopelessly imbalanced because White has Always Moves First...

Same old fallacies from the same old elf players.

WW2 scenarios, or military scenarios have asymmetrical victory conditions. US marines win if they kill 20 IS troops, or IS wins if they kill 3 marines. Soviets win if the Germans don't cross a line, Germans win if they do.

All games have imbalance, and most good game designers accept them and try to improve on them. People complain, but they still feel happy, because the gap is narrowing across editions. The difference is not so large that games are unwinnable.

The reason certain games, like 40k, have editions, is because players expect power levels and imbalances to be smoothed out. We are in our 7th iteration of rules.

40k is broken. Certain matchups are effectively unwinnable, while requiring the same victory conditions from both parties (DA/nids/orks VS elves) Discrepancies in power levels are not narrowed down across editions, but rather enhanced, with elves being supercharged, and tyranids being stomped to the ground. There is little point for certain armies to play because they have a near 90% chance of losing through no fault of their own. There is also little point for decent players of overpowered factions, because they have a near 90% win rate, and playing is pointless.

The ones without shame will continue stomping others with their 90% win rate codex, because perhaps, they have nothing else going for them in life?

I believe that the reason it feels like two different games for some, and less so for others, has to do with where you fit in the player spectrum.

Casual-Only Player: (COP)
- Rules are good, but fun is better. (see - piling Orks over models to show that more are getting into close combat)
- Never uses Forge World
- Only uses alternate detachments if it makes sense.
- Tends to have one single army, maybe few small ones.

Casual-And-Tourney: (CAT)
- Tries to keep current with rules, but doesn't know them inside-out.
- Plays multiple armies.
- Uses Forgeworld as necessary.
- Likes using alternate rules to experience new things.

Tourney-Only Player (TOP)
- Thoroughly knows the rules.
- Plays tons of armies, but only with the top models/units from each.
- Uses Forgeworld extensively.
- Plays to win (because it's a tourney, duh)

COPs and TOPs aren't overly affected by the new codex. COPs don't care, because codex changes are just things that happen, and they're playing for the love of their fluff anyways. So what if Siam Hann have the best bikes in the game? They're playing Alaitioc, and by golly, they're going to use those Pathfinders!

TOPs don't care, because codex creep just means a new change to the tourney scene, and things at that level are fundamentally ridiculous. They need to be at the edge of power creep so they can win, and they face others doing the same, and that's a fun game too!

But CATs... they care, a lot! CATs play both COPs and TOPs. Against TOPs they need to bring the super A-game, and these new detachments allow them to compete while staying true to their roots. Finally they can take a "classic" army list and it'll go toe to toe with the TOPs. But then they play COPs, and because they want to still take this "classic" army list, they end up beating the COPs so bad that it's no fun. CATs are now in a situation where they have to be a lot more aware of their meta and who they're playing against if they way to have fun.

Which is unfortunate, because I think myself and most other players are CATs, with COPs and TOPs being far less common.

Now, it's not enough to say it's a different game, but you can definitely say that 7th has moved into a new "Decurion" era.

 Yarium wrote:
Casual-Only Player: (COP)
- Never uses Forge World

Casual-And-Tourney: (CAT)
- Uses Forgeworld as necessary.

Tourney-Only Player (TOP)
- Uses Forgeworld extensively.

What does FW use have to do with casual vs. tournament? If anything the opposite should be true, since a lot of tournaments still have their "no FW" rules (for a variety of stupid reasons). And TBH "uses FW extensively" is going to be a drawback most of the time if you want a competitive list.

COPs and TOPs aren't overly affected by the new codex. COPs don't care, because codex changes are just things that happen, and they're playing for the love of their fluff anyways. So what if Siam Hann have the best bikes in the game? They're playing Alaitioc, and by golly, they're going to use those Pathfinders!

Until the "COP" player plays a game against someone who happens to have a more powerful army, gets wiped off the table in 1-2 turns, and wonders why they play 40k at all. Even if it's entirely a "COP" group and nobody tries to abuse the broken rules there's still the opportunity for someone to bring their fluffy Eldar jetbike army and massacre everyone.