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Tyel wrote:
I'd have an easier time believing GW balance around Abaddon+Terminators if they showed any consistency of doing so across their game. I'm fairly confident this stuff is just arbitrary.

Oh initially it is and was arbitrary, until some combination of stratagems and points in specific form made it so that GW needed to step in ( or felt compelled to do so, cue obliterators).

Basically it goes back again to a seeming lack of QA-longterm testing. Granted GW requires a new ruleset every 3 years for that is the cycle they are going for right now and which seems to guarantee with the spread out rules releases recurring revenue, for the rules from a quality standpoint though, that is a serious flaw.

nekooni wrote:
A single possible deathstar that also generates CP is not a good justification to make that stratagem 2CP - if you use it, you get extra CP to offset the cost, basically. So it really only affects csm when they dont play him, and that seems pretty stupid to me.

This is how modern 40k is balanced. It's balanced around tournament play and tournament play is about slamming the nastiest broken things the book can do into other armies doing the same. Thus GW has to balance around the best combination of special rules and stratagems because if they don't those combos are oppressive at the tournament level and give pub stompers an even larger edge over casual players.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Oh initially it is and was arbitrary, until some combination of stratagems and points in specific form made it so that GW needed to step in ( or felt compelled to do so, cue obliterators).

Basically it goes back again to a seeming lack of QA-longterm testing. Granted GW requires a new ruleset every 3 years for that is the cycle they are going for right now and which seems to guarantee with the spread out rules releases recurring revenue, for the rules from a quality standpoint though, that is a serious flaw.

Sure, GW evolves the game to deal with perceived issues. Stuff gets "stuck" (as you observe with Obliterators) because of them arbitrarilly nerfing one thing rather than the whole combo etc.
Where I am suspect is on this idea that *in this instance* someone at GW went "look, Abaddon and Terminators looks pretty strong, better make this stratagem expensive". When there's almost no evidence of similar joined up thinking across the range.

A few tournaments where Abaddon and friends are winning and GW would adopt "nerf by throwing darts". As of these new 10th edition rules however, I don't believe they have any idea what tournament players will do. So I find the idea that it was pre-emptively nerfed hard to believe. They don't know what the best combination of rules is.

If I'm remembering right from my quick skim of the index, Chaos Lords let you use stratagems on their units for 0cp. That offsets the long term cost if nothing else. It's still a kick in the teeth, but it's better than nothing.

I think it's clear that the game designers want us having characters in as many units as possible. Kind of scaling the game down by making us want/need more buffing characters.

Bencyclopedia wrote:

At some point though don't we have to accept that GW are trying to make a rule applicable all heretic astartes even if not all heretic astartes are into spooky daemon stuff? Given the diversity in the fluff between chapters and warbands no global rule will ever be a great representation of any of any particular one. I'd be interested to see some alternative ideas for a faction rule if anyone has some though.

Of course they could split the legions out even more, but frankly I don't the game needs that any more than it needs more loyalist marine factions.

If they can't come up with a one-size-fits-all rule that fits well, then my suggestion would be to not force it. Instead, either...

A.) Have several army-wide rules CSM players can choose from. Maybe one for mono-god devotees, generically chaos-y armies, and something emphasizing mundane tactics less chaos-y warbands. Or, if you're worried about people optimizing their choice of army-wide rule + detachment rule, do B instead.

B.) Don't have an army-wide rule at all. Just take that design budget and use it to expand each of the detachment benefits. So if your whole army is Heretic Astartes, you get both the normal benefits of your detachment AND some extra rules unique to each detachment.

I'm a relatively new player and was wondering if RAW Abbadon can even be in an EC army? (Yes, I'm an EC player.) Abbadon is considered to have every mark and, I thought, that EC armies are only allowed Mark of Slaanesh.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
I'm a relatively new player and was wondering if RAW Abbadon can even be in an EC army? (Yes, I'm an EC player.) Abbadon is considered to have every mark and, I thought, that EC armies are only allowed Mark of Slaanesh.

EC armies aren’t a thing right now.

Taking Lucius as Warlord (which blocks Abaddon as he has to be Warlord) allows Noise Marines as Battleline (so you can have 4-6 units) and restricts you to Slaanesh daemons, but that’s as far as EC specific rules go.

Otherwise they’re just CSM with the right mark painted pink.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

nekooni wrote:
A single possible deathstar that also generates CP is not a good justification to make that stratagem 2CP - if you use it, you get extra CP to offset the cost, basically. So it really only affects csm when they dont play him, and that seems pretty stupid to me.

This is how modern 40k is balanced. It's balanced around tournament play and tournament play is about slamming the nastiest broken things the book can do into other armies doing the same.

Such combinations shouldn't be possible to begin with. In 7th, Invisibility was broken whether you just used it on your Centurion Assault Squad or a Barkstar.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


If they can't come up with a one-size-fits-all rule that fits well, then my suggestion would be to not force it. Instead, either...

A.) Have several army-wide rules CSM players can choose from. Maybe one for mono-god devotees, generically chaos-y armies, and something emphasizing mundane tactics less chaos-y warbands. Or, if you're worried about people optimizing their choice of army-wide rule + detachment rule, do B instead.

B.) Don't have an army-wide rule at all. Just take that design budget and use it to expand each of the detachment benefits. So if your whole army is Heretic Astartes, you get both the normal benefits of your detachment AND some extra rules unique to each detachment.

Multiple faction rules seems to me to be just making more CSM factions (at least in the way that GW currently have things structured). Moving those rules to detachments insetad and scrapping faction rules is an alternative, but I imagine that makes internally balancing them against each other more difficult. Still that could be an interesting alternative.

Given the direction they've chosen, even though Dark Pacts doesn't fit all the Legions particularly well, I think it fits enough of the units well enough once you factor in all the cultists and daemon engines. That said I'm not looking forward to making loads extra of leadership tests every turn.