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Having heard some of the stuff that's in the newest codex (Astra Militarum) I am concerned about power creep. However, it surely can't be as absurdly broken as 7th edition Eldar (specifically Warp Spiders, Windriders, and Wraithknights) or SuperFriends lists. I'm liking 8th edition better than 7th, as it seems like more stuff from each army can be competitive, rather than being forced to take some combination of a few good units. I think 8th will be much more balanced once every army has an actual codex, as the codexes seem to make armies perform much better thanks to good stratagems, warlord traits, relics, etc.

Well, its not bad.
Yesterday, I battled AdMech with my BA at the 3000 pt level. It was an enjoying game using open war. At the end, it was a draw since I wasnt able to remove his Robot unit led by Calw.
What bothers me are cover (for vehicles) and line of sight.

I like it even though my orks still such but I find a l8t of other factions upset all the time.

I am enjoying everything minus Mortal Wounds everywhere and the terrain rules.

I find it silly that unless you put a base on the GW ruins, the only way for your infantry to get cover from it is on the second floor or higher.

Was enjoying it but the guard codex has me concerned that balance may be going out the window.

Everyone in our group is enjoying it.

I'm curious as to what peoples issue with mortal wounds is though. By default I assume it's hyperbole because the odd "on to wound of 6" on the odd weapon isn't going to add up to much unless you're playing against Grey Knights and they're flinging a dozen Baby-Smites at you.

I just don't feel like outside of the psychic phase theres that many mortal wounds being caused. Certainly in all my games the shooting phase mortal wounds are reserved for like one hit from 10 ratlings or the like.

Codex armies can spam mortal wounds where index armies can't that's my issue.

hobojebus wrote:
Codex armies can spam mortal wounds where index armies can't that's my issue.

How so?

It's weird how big a deal Mortal wounds are for people. Coming from Sigmar, there's barely any in 40k by comparison. Even full smite spam armies don't do as many mortal wounds as things like Disciples of Tzeentch or Blades of Khorne do incidentally.

Best 40k ruleset yet. However, it should be the bare minimum going forward. I would want to see more playtesting, consistent balancing and a re-evaluation of the I-GO-U-GO turn system.
As it stands, going first is still way too powerful and the CP mechanic is thrown out of whack by armies that favour points-cheap units.

ERJAK wrote:
It's weird how big a deal Mortal wounds are for people. Coming from Sigmar, there's barely any in 40k by comparison. Even full smite spam armies don't do as many mortal wounds as things like Disciples of Tzeentch or Blades of Khorne do incidentally.

They're also not even new to 40k - they've existed at least since 5th and Jaws of the World Wolf, calling them "mortal wounds" just codifies the old "removed from play" mechanic.

Turning out to be equally as bad in its own way.

 Corrode wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
It's weird how big a deal Mortal wounds are for people. Coming from Sigmar, there's barely any in 40k by comparison. Even full smite spam armies don't do as many mortal wounds as things like Disciples of Tzeentch or Blades of Khorne do incidentally.

They're also not even new to 40k - they've existed at least since 5th and Jaws of the World Wolf, calling them "mortal wounds" just codifies the old "removed from play" mechanic.

And yet, GW hasn't figured out a way to cleanly delineate "kill" versus "remove from play" (the one thing of a very small number of things I feel WMH did right), as 7th was a game where Reanimation Protocols could ignore Jaws, yet Magnus got OHKO'd in his debut game by a Helfrost Destructor because its Helfrost "removed the target" but wasn't Instant Death, thus ignoring Eternal Warrior!

And of course, 8th does the same thing as you can use "Feel No Pain" (in its many whacky renamings) to ignore Mortal Wounds. Funny how that goes, no?

Getting a chuckle about all the Mortal Wound grief. Playing Orks teaches you that Saves are for Wusses.

ERJAK wrote:
It's weird how big a deal Mortal wounds are for people. Coming from Sigmar, there's barely any in 40k by comparison. Even full smite spam armies don't do as many mortal wounds as things like Disciples of Tzeentch or Blades of Khorne do incidentally.

In my case, Mortal Wounds are one of the things I hate about AoS, I dont like anything about them in principle and definately did not want to see them anywhere near 40k.

 JimOnMars wrote:
Getting a chuckle about all the Mortal Wound grief. Playing Orks teaches you that Saves are for Wusses.

I'm sure you would feel differently about mortal wounds if they actually scaled with model quality rather than demolishing elite armies while leaving hordes unaffected.

Overall I em enjoying it more than I enjoyed the tail end of 7th. The formation bonuses and deathstars had broken it and a reset was needed.

8th is not perfect but hopefully the new codices will iron out a lot of the wrinkles.

Most of the system gripes have been covered but overall I find they are not bad enough to spoil my enjoyment of the game.

8th is far from perfect but it's a lot better than 7th. We were able to finish a fairly large game in only a couple of hours tonight. Unthinkable beforehand.

7th is a weird bar to put up as a comparison, in a 'can you step over a pebble' way.

But the base game is good. The codexes seem set to drag it back down into the same old problems.

Agree.

Index 8th was some of the best weeks of 40K I ever had the pleasure to experience. Not perfect, but overall pretty sweet.

Recent Codex releases have been dumpster fires though, making 5th Ed. Grey Knights and 7th Ed. Eldar look almost reasonable in comparison.

Awkward question but, what are the codexes doing wrong?

Wonderwolf wrote:
Agree.

Index 8th was some of the best weeks of 40K I ever had the pleasure to experience. Not perfect, but overall pretty sweet.

Recent Codex releases have been dumpster fires though, making 5th Ed. Grey Knights and 7th Ed. Eldar look almost reasonable in comparison.

I don't see how this is the case. The codices have practically been a copy paste of the indexes with a couple of changes. They add in stratagems, relics, 3 psychic powers for those with psychics, and warlord traits. The stratagems are nice but situational and the rerolls, auto pass morale, and counter assault are still used far more often. Relics are normally a slight upgrade to an existing weapon and not game breaking but nice. Warlord traits add more diversity but are not game breaking. The codices make the armies with them overall stronger but not game breaking. Pretty much all of the issues and problems right now are from the indexes and went right through to the codex. I can't think of an issue that's widespread coming from a codex release. The only issue is that codex armies will generally beat non codex armies more often than not due to the extra options and their version of the "chapter tactics".

Just going by the Astra Militarum highlight of today, point reductions, doubling of shooting output, less impact of morals, army-wide re-rolls not present in the Codex. Etc.. etc... and certainly not copy & paste things.

These aren't minor changes.

Strategems and Army traits have also become consistently more powerful with each new codex. And obviously things like Chapter Tactics have without fault been badly balanced internally with some obviously better than others in the same book, resulting in less diversity than in an index-only meta.

Index versus Index was obviously not perfect and people set out (and succeeded) in breaking it very fast.

But I think if you were told no soups and build in the vague spirit of the game (which I realise is subjective and as an idea seems to really piss people off because it makes them WAACers) you generally got games where enough was up to normal luck to give the illusion of balance.

The codexes are now warping this first by creating a tier system of codex/non-codex, but secondly by increasingly damage output to a higher and higher degree.

This was already a problem but we are moving to the point where on normal dice you should expect to be wiping out 40-50% your opponents army on turn 1. I am not sure this is desirable. It might be quick but is it fun? I don't think anyone really enjoys those games.

Enjoyed 7th more. Can't say I dislike 8th, but it's just...meh. Also, way too similar to Sigmar now.

Wonderwolf wrote:
Just going by the Astra Militarum highlight of today, point reductions, doubling of shooting output, less impact of morals, army-wide re-rolls not present in the Codex. Etc.. etc... and certainly not copy & paste things.

These aren't minor changes.

Strategems and Army traits have also become consistently more powerful with each new codex. And obviously things like Chapter Tactics have without fault been badly balanced internally with some obviously better than others in the same book, resulting in less diversity than in an index-only meta.

Point reductions are generally on units that people weren't taking. I don't see the argument that turning non-desirable units into desirable ones is bad. They aren't dropping the prices of things like Scions (who got a point increase for Plasma), Conscripts (who got nerfed but in the wrong way, thanks GW), or anything else being abused. Leman Russes got a big buff because they were completely bad for their points in the index. List one tournament where you saw a single Leman Russ for IG pre-codex. This all adds up to diversity now where you actually have choices to make in what you build.

Stratagems and traits are coming for all armies. IG happens to have a very good codex as far as having meaningful choices to make. You have a huge variety of valid and competitive builds now. The codex is very strong, yes. Is it broken? Don't know. There's no need in crying broken when over half the armies haven't even gotten a codex to even be as competitive yet. When SM came out, everyone was saying how broken they were compared to other armies. Now you have other codices and even Chaos is making huge swaths in the competitive scene. Listening to a podcast earlier and Chaos came in something like 5 of the top 8 ranks. No one on here is moaning about Chaos being overpowered.

Without a shadow of a doubt it is massively better than 7th could ever have dreamed of being.

Hoodwink wrote:
List one tournament where you saw a single Leman Russ for IG pre-codex. This all adds up to diversity now where you actually have choices to make in what you build.

Basing "balance" on tournaments is misleading.

There are maybe ... let's guess ... 100.000 viable legal lists across the different armies, from Guilliman or Chaos soup at No. 1, Tau Commander Spam at maybe No. 15 and ... dunno .. footslogging mono-Bloodletters at No. 100.000.

A list/unit/etc.. that is only "balanced" against the Top 10 or Top 100 or Top 1000 isn't balance. To be balanced, it need to be balanced against .. maybe 90% of possible lists out there.

Leman Russ & Co were very good and even mono Leman Russ Armoured Company was easily in the Top 30% or Top 40% of those100.000 hypothetical lists. They weren't bad and certainly didn't need a buff. Plenty of stuff struggled very hard against a pure Russ list. Genestealer Swarms. Slaanesh Daemons, etc.. , etc..

They probably could've used a slight point increase without any buff, all things considered.

Just because they didn't compete in the Top 100 or so lists that frequent tournaments even Top 1000 of lists doesn't mean they weren't above average.

Enjoying it far more.

Wonderwolf wrote:

Hoodwink wrote:
List one tournament where you saw a single Leman Russ for IG pre-codex. This all adds up to diversity now where you actually have choices to make in what you build.

Basing "balance" on tournaments is misleading.

There are maybe ... let's guess ... 100.000 viable legal lists across the different armies, from Guilliman or Chaos soup at No. 1, Tau Commander Spam at maybe No. 15 and ... dunno .. footslogging mono-Bloodletters at No. 100.000.

A list/unit/etc.. that is only "balanced" against the Top 10 or Top 100 or Top 1000 isn't balance. To be balanced, it need to be balanced against .. maybe 90% of possible lists out there.

Leman Russ & Co were very good and even mono Leman Russ Armoured Company was easily in the Top 30% or Top 40% of those100.000 hypothetical lists. They weren't bad and certainly didn't need a buff. Plenty of stuff struggled very hard against a pure Russ list. Genestealer Swarms. Slaanesh Daemons, etc.. , etc..

They probably could've used a slight point increase without any buff, all things considered.

Just because they didn't compete in the Top 100 or so lists that frequent tournaments even Top 1000 of lists doesn't mean they weren't above average.

In an edition where you can spam the best units, no Leman Russes were not good. They never showed up in anything but casual and semi-competitive games because they were not worth their points compared to other units. You want balance? Look at how often units are being taken competitively. When a unit never shows up, that means there isn't a balance in power. That unit is not strong enough compared to other units that have the same role or not strong enough to justify their cost. Saying "well they didn't show up but they are strong" isn't really a very good backup to your inference. Giving someone the option and choice based on multiple units being viable is what creates balance.