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Seeing how the armies of WHFB seem to be more balanced since the beginning of 8th ed (from what I've heard), do you think GW will do the same thing with the codex of 6th ed ?

No.

Never going to happen.

Unless they remove GK as a codex etc.


nothing gets fixed.

Not knowing anything factual about 6th ed, I can't say for sure, but GW has been slowly writing better rules over time, and have certainly been writing better codices which, with a couple of exceptions, have actually been getting reasonably balanced over time. I mean, for how much hate there is over BA or GK, look at all of the codices that have come out over the last 5 years as a whole. For how much whining there has been about said two, there has been a notable lack of whining about the Ork, demons, tyranid, dark eldar, necron and space marines and to a only slightly lesser extent guard. Most codices have been pretty well balanced, while giving players more options over time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the trend continues. If WHFB is further along this path, it's probably more to do with that it came out earlier and thus has had more time.

The new 8th edition Fantasy books are well balanced.

But the 7th edition ones still out are either overpowered abominations like Daemons, Dark Elves and Skaven or very weak like Wood Elves and Brettonians.

So if they follow the path of WHFB then Chaos/Dark Angels/Tau will be well balanced but Grey Knights and Space Wolves will be overpowered abominations for years to come.

Nope.

Regardless of how the rules turn out, there's the codex books as well. That's where we've seen the biggest imbalances in 5E.

GW could put out an amazingly streamlined and simplified, yet elegant and deep core ruleset, and then bonkers it all with their codex's. 5E has seen an explosion of ridiculous stuff ignoring core game mechanics, special rules overload, and poor FoC slot allocation (e.g. giving AV13 heavy battle tanks Fast and Scout rules and hamfisting them into Fast Attack slots, one-shot random diameter rockets that ignore half the indirect and blast template mechanics, psychic shooting powers that ignore almost all the attack mechanics in the game).

Expect a meta shift. Do not expect balance. 8E Fantasy is a bit more balanced between armies but has overemphasized magic and horde units leading to a new imbalance.

I agree, the meta will change, that's about it. The rulebook will get slightly more balanced (hopefully), but codexes will remain how they are.

Depending on how things change, certain armies will end up being more powerful. Who? Cant say until 6E comes out. But somehow I dont see GK or SW taking any major dives in 6E. I think it is going to continue to be the newest codex over powers the rest, as gw needs to continue to provide new experiences for the 40k players.

As someone playing Strategy games ever since the dawn of computer gaming, I have found very few games actually being balanced at all. The few that actually archived something along the lines of balance for every faction and most units (StarCraft, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft3, C&C Generals) did so over a lot of iterations of their rulesset. As I don't see GW doing such iterations, I doubt true balance will ever be archived.

As 6th itself (hopefully) is such an iteration, balance should be better than in 5th though.

O come on, Persian War Elephants were the most broken thing EVER!!! , it totally threw the metagame

Grey Templar wrote:O come on, Persian War Elephants were the most broken thing EVER!!! , it totally threw the metagame

Bombard Cannons and Halberdiers are your friends.


But yes, they're pretty crazy.

By balance I was more thinking about GW making the upcoming codexes more balanced or middle-powered rather than making each one stronger and OP than the previous one.

The only way to balance out the system is to make all the codex books simultaneously.

That will never happen, so the answer is: No.


The problem with 40K is that it bites off too much to chew. Most wargames have a common theme. 40K tries to do it all. Armies that shoot things, armies that have tanks. Armies that punch the crap out things. The problem is, after 2nd Edition, it strayed away from its Sci-Fi theme. In 2nd and Rogue Trader, every army could shoot, and then had some specialized CC troops. Some had more than others, but nobody messed with the guns of the Tyranids, lol. A clump of termagants with stranglewebs could be the end of your Abaddon, lol. Once they started introducing these Horde armies that were designed to overwhelm in CC (read: sell more models), they broke their own system. 2nd Ed had balance issues, but it was codex design based, not rulesbased.

Khornate25 wrote:By balance I was more thinking about GW making the upcoming codexes more balanced or middle-powered rather than making each one stronger and OP than the previous one.

This is already reality. Most codices are properly balanced when they come out. Don't let the couple of exceptions make you think that imbalance is the rule.

That's true. We have seen more mixed codexes. Rather than an army being good at a single thing, codexes have been becoming more flexible in terms of what types of armies can be run with each dex

Right, and if there's codex creep, it's really because of this. Old codices used to be really one-sided, putting the entire army into a niche that it couldn't escape from (cf. tau in close combat). All of the newer codices give you at least SOME option to run a shooty or a choppy army successfully, and give you the ability to run foot or mech with roughly equal viability.

Once the old codices get brought up to standard, things will be more comprehensively balanced again. Any other illusion of codex creep is merely the fact that newer codices are written for the rules edition that they're played in, while older ones are less likely for this to be true.

The other consideration is that some of the overpowered codices might have been written with 6th in mind. So while the balance is off in the later days of 5th when 6th hits the balance is restored.

For instance the "random psychic powers" rumor (dont know if this has been debunked yet) would be a nerf to some of the GK imbalance issues.

Milisim wrote:No.

Never going to happen.

Unless they remove GK as a codex etc.


nothing gets fixed.

I'd just like to add that Grey Knights are not unbalanced/overpowered. While they may be one of the better codices at the moment, they are by no means "OP".

Iranna.

Iranna wrote:

Milisim wrote:No.

Never going to happen.

Unless they remove GK as a codex etc.


nothing gets fixed.

I'd just like to add that Grey Knights are not unbalanced/overpowered. While they may be one of the better codices at the moment, they are by no means "OP".

Iranna.

They have a few units that are severely undercosted for what you get. SW Long Fangs and Grey Hunters are almost universally understood to be signficantly cheaper than what they should cost in order to maintain balance. The GK have units with the exact same issues, such as Psyrifledreads.

Yep, your right the GK aren't OP.

Its just me and about 300 000 40k players who are in the wrong.

Unless this book includes a full set of new codexes, there will always be high and low tier armies. Game balance is nearly impossible without rewriting every book.

Again, can we just wait and see before we set fire to the GW stores?

This is a system where one faction has all the press and most of the support.

Game balance isn't likely

That said, i'm really looking forward to 6th Ed.

Milisim wrote:Yep, your right the GK aren't OP.

Its just me and about 300 000 40k players who are in the wrong.

It's perception issue really. You can either say that GK are OP and by same logic go to say SW, IG, BA and Necrons are all OP.
And when you have nearly 1/3rd of armies being OP, the OP tag loses lot of its descriptive power.

Or you can argue that when doing comparison within tier 1 armies, none of them is truly above all others in all aspects. This means none of those armies is OP. (If one of those armies were in fact so OP, it would basically mean that all other armies would have to have their tier value dropped by one).

Obviously GK have lot of undercosted units. Same goes for all the armies I mentioned. My guess is that in 6th multiple shaken/stunned results on single vehicle will cause extra damage, meaning Fortitude, which currently is far too good for 5 points, gets nerfed and Living Metal getting boost.

Personally, I think Necrons are as good as GK. Necrons have some hugely undercosted special characters and units, Imhotek, Wraiths and Scarabs for example.
They can shut down enemy shooting by forcing enemy to use Night Fighting for 2 turns while not being hampered by it.
Warscythes are better than MEQ powerfists in 90% of cases: They wound up to T5 as well as S8, they have far better armor penetration (avg 14 instead of 11.5), strike at I2 instead of I1. The only place they're worse is that they don't ID MEQ's (Note that MEQ powerfists don't ID most of Necron characters either).

Milisim wrote:Yep, your right the GK aren't OP.

Its just me and about 300 000 40k players who are in the wrong.

Argumentum ad populum. Doesn't mean a damn thing.


Back on topic: Hopefully GW will put out Erratas and stuff to bring stuff more in line with 6th, just as they did with 8th in Fantasy.

...speaking of faulty reasoning...

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:Unless this book includes a full set of new codexes, there will always be high and low tier armies. Game balance is nearly impossible without rewriting every book.

I hear this a lot, and it's never made sense. If GW released their codices at the same time, what guarantee do you have at all that it will be balanced? There are a lot of games out there that are very poorly balanced that have their equivalent of a codex all put out at the same time. Most strategy video games fall in this camp.

The only thing you'd gain by having the new rulebook and all codices coming out at the same time is that you wouldn't have codices that are a rules edition out of date, which would be nice, but not necessary (as any ork player can tell you).

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Milisim wrote:Yep, your right the GK aren't OP.

Its just me and about 300 000 40k players who are in the wrong.

Argumentum ad populum. Doesn't mean a damn thing.


Back on topic: Hopefully GW will put out Erratas and stuff to bring stuff more in line with 6th, just as they did with 8th in Fantasy.

Check out most of the one's based on fact, points cost, and the various things that are based in rules.

Wouldn't it be possible for GW to release an FAQ for every army at the same time as 6th in order to address any balance issues? Slightly nerf or buff as required with respect to new rules?

I suppose that is too difficult to do with a new rule set when they can't possibly play test every combination. It seems strange to me that they don't more frequently release FAQ updates which not only provide clarification, but also slight balance-related changes like one would do with computer game patches.

Ailaros wrote:Not knowing anything factual about 6th ed, I can't say for sure, but GW has been slowly writing better rules over time, and have certainly been writing better codices which, with a couple of exceptions, have actually been getting reasonably balanced over time. I mean, for how much hate there is over BA or GK, look at all of the codices that have come out over the last 5 years as a whole. For how much whining there has been about said two, there has been a notable lack of whining about the Ork, demons, tyranid, dark eldar, necron and space marines and to a only slightly lesser extent guard. Most codices have been pretty well balanced, while giving players more options over time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the trend continues. If WHFB is further along this path, it's probably more to do with that it came out earlier and thus has had more time.

There's still plenty of whining about 'Nids, (because they're lackluster and don't fit into this edition's meta), Dark Eldar & Necrons, (who apparently OP?! )

I'm really hoping 40k follows the 'new balancing' act of Fantasy personally. Sure magic is bork and great weapon hordes are a problem, but they're managible overall, outside of some spanker being a TFG and purposfully tailoring his list to abuse the insta-kill spell/combo that hurts the most.

And actually, there's a very good reason that the balance so far in the new Fantasy books hasn't been turned on its head yet;
Orcs & Gobbo - written by Vetock iirc
Tomb Kings - written by Cruddance
Ogres - written by Jervis & Vetock
VC's - written by Kelly
Empire - written by Cruddance

anyone notice who's name is missing yet?!

Nitros14 wrote:The new 8th edition Fantasy books are well balanced.

But the 7th edition ones still out are either overpowered abominations like Daemons, Dark Elves and Skaven or very weak like Wood Elves and Brettonians.

So if they follow the path of WHFB then Chaos/Dark Angels/Tau will be well balanced but Grey Knights and Space Wolves will be overpowered abominations for years to come.

8th ed nerfed VC into the dirt. It did not touch Daemons, rebalanced DE, and brought Skaven who were meh in 7e to freaking amazing in 8th. So actually Daemons stayed as powerful as before, made Skaven more powerful (through steadfast and SUPERcheap hordes) and brought DE to balanced status (by having Step-up to counter their high I value and making them suffer for their poor AS and and T values.)

WE and Brets are still 6e armies. So the dichotomy isn't "the 7e armies still out are either broken cheese or blackholes of suck," but "7e vs 6e." With the exception of Dwarves who were 6e also, but are still holding their own. Well, better than WE or Brets, surely.

Following that pattern I see the likelyhood that BA/SW and possibly even DE (god I hope not) will get nerfed by the rule changes, but somehow GK will remain untouched. Some codices are too powerful to be affected by something as mundane and irrelevant as the core rule set.

I have come to accept GW and 40K will never be balanced. Alot and I mean alot of people need the "easy button" to play or will quit. That is why SM are so cheap for their points.

I should clarrify not ALL SM players need or want the "easy button" and play because they love their chapter or just love the fluff, but many young kids and grown ups do need and want it.

So since SM is the bread and butter of 40K there will be not balance. You telling me the price of two Tyranid Spore mines almost cost more than 1 SM and they are suppose to be equall? That is what I mean by not ballanced point for point wise.

I just got done winning a 3 vs 3 tyranids, tau, daemons vs SM, SW, SW

And won.

There is balance, you just have to find it.

That's not necessarily an indicator of game balance though

I've won vs GK before with daemons, doesn't make my Daemons on par with them

Luck and superior skill count for a lot in this game, but they shouldn't be counted on to balance OP codexes with UP ones, as they aren't equal with players of equal skill and experience.