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 vict0988 wrote:

I don't think it is possible by defintion to have multiple best lists.

It depends on what you mean by "best list" One List To Rule Them All? or Best List for Player A being different than the best list for Player B yet Player A and Player B end up in a 50/50 stand off? I'd argue the purpose of Dets wasn't necessarily to make multiple best lists - the purpose of Dets is to replace Chapter Tactics for theme building/shifts. That said, yes, it is possible to make multiple "best lists" if the lists are relatively a wash, because then the "best list" changes based on player style, habits, etc. It's currently not - but for the sake of argument let's say all the Dets and all the armies built from the dets are within a percent or so of each other. So the "best list" for John - who likes movement shenanigans - is the Stormlance because of the Det Rule. Meanwhile Bill has a wicked sense of spatial reasoning allowing him to take maximum benefit from the Vanguard Spearhead without measuring to tip off his plans. Both of them have a "best list" but its not the same best list. Then we find out about Steve who plays Bill an awful lot and makes the most out of the Firestorm list because of the +1S within 12" which carries over when he's not playing Bill. That's the ideal. I'm not sure it's 100% possible, but I'm pretty sure GW could get a lot closer to that than they do.

GW allowing units with fly to cross terrain much easier than those without would be a good start. The datasheet unique abilities are bloated garbage and should be replaced with fewer recurring abilities. I am a big fan of the thery that points make or nreak units, not rules, I was vindicated again when I saw Plaguebearers having become popular despite their awful profile (which is better than ever, but got confused for being bad because they were overcosted).

I think a single unit of Windriders being mandatory is heaps better than 3x Windriders being mandatory, more units still means more Strat targets, it is just not a linear increase in power.

I do not think you credit GW enough Breton, I found only one sub 40% WR detachment in all of current 10th and that is amazing, in most editions I think certain themes would have half the win rate of the meta theme for the faction.

 vict0988 wrote:
GW allowing units with fly to cross terrain much easier than those without would be a good start. The datasheet unique abilities are bloated garbage and should be replaced with fewer recurring abilities. I am a big fan of the thery that points make or nreak units, not rules, I was vindicated again when I saw Plaguebearers having become popular despite their awful profile (which is better than ever, but got confused for being bad because they were overcosted).

I think a single unit of Windriders being mandatory is heaps better than 3x Windriders being mandatory, more units still means more Strat targets, it is just not a linear increase in power.

I do not think you credit GW enough Breton, I found only one sub 40% WR detachment in all of current 10th and that is amazing, in most editions I think certain themes would have half the win rate of the meta theme for the faction.

1) How many plays of each Det were there?

2) Det and Theme are not synonymous anymore. There's another thread on another board with people telling the Imperial Fists player to use the "Raven Guard" Det for taking on Nidzilla. There's no theme there. I'm pretty sure I heard something similar about a DA list using a someone-else Det. That said I could see a DA list using the Vanguard Det representing their history as "Hunters" and it could absolutely be fluffed as such with the "right" units being taken. But whatever it was that I can't remember wasn't. It was just gaming the system in a likely unanticipated way. And more power to them to find creative ways to list build - however that doesn't translate into GW success if they fall backwards into a working list for the Det.

Source=40kstats
Win Rate by Detachment
Detachment Games Win %
Necrons - Annihilation Legion 483 48.03%
Necrons - Awakened Dynasty 5424 45.89%
Necrons - Canoptek Court 2353 45.05%
Necrons - Hypercrypt Legion 9278 51.81%
Necrons - Obeisance Phalanx 925 56.76%
Necrons - Starshatter Arsenal 1839 55.79%

Hundreds of games, win rates mostly within a 45-55% window, I think the window has to be larger than 1%, that's an impossible standard for detachments I think. As long as Necrons don't take most top 4s at tournaments and sometimes take some top 4s and have an overall faction win rate of 45-55% then I think 40-60% is fine for detachments. They just need to not be terrible. I get more concerned when models become unviable or auto include.

How do you define theme? How can a detachment help build a theme? I think you might be on to something with chapter tactics, which I felt were badly designed and implemented worse. I think removing colour scheme from the equation and allowing Imperial Fists to be sneaky is both more lore friendly and better for the game.

vict0988 wrote:GW allowing units with fly to cross terrain much easier than those without would be a good start. The datasheet unique abilities are bloated garbage and should be replaced with fewer recurring abilities.

I'm of a mixed mind on this. I think forcing their designers to give everyone a bespoke rule is how we finally ended up with guardian defenders and storm guardians that have a role in in an eldar army. But I also don't think every single unit needs a special rule. And some of the special rules we've gotten really don't feel like the kind of rule that unit needed. See: windriders not being mobile or survivable but being good at killing things standing on objectives for some reason?

I am a big fan of the thery that points make or nreak units, not rules,

Ehhhh. Sometimes. Kinda. You can always dump a unit's points cost so low that it becomes competitively viable. That doesn't necessarily mean the unit is fluffy or feels good to use or that it has a distinctive niche to avoid overshadowing other units. Points are a good tool for addressing issues of cost efficiency, but you wouldn't necessarily want to fix a custodes unit by making them 10 points per model even if that was balanced, you know?

I think a single unit of Windriders being mandatory is heaps better than 3x Windriders being mandatory, more units still means more Strat targets, it is just not a linear increase in power.

"More strat targets" doesn't really mean much if you can only target 1 of the 3 squads and 2 of them are dead as soon as they pop out to participate in the game though. Any unit feeling "mandatory" is bad. Being punished for wanting to run more than one copy of your subfaction's iconic unit is also bad. There are a thousand ways to make it viable to field multiple windrider squads without making them OP/"mandatory."

And that's my gripe about strats. They often reward you for having one instance of a unit on the table, but not more than that. So where past editions made it viable to field multiple squads of jetbikes, thus fitting the fluff of a major subfaction, telling the story of a mobile army, and generally giving eldar a radically different way to play their army... 8th-10th kind of just punishes you for having more than one squad of them. Ideally, players should be comfortable fielding multiples of a unit (especially for thematic/fluff reasons) without that unit being OP.

I think removing colour scheme from the equation and allowing Imperial Fists to be sneaky is both more lore friendly and better for the game.

This I agree with.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm of a mixed mind on this. I think forcing their designers to give everyone a bespoke rule is how we finally ended up with guardian defenders and storm guardians that have a role in in an eldar army.

I guess there's a danger of being devils advocate - but this is why I like the unique datasheet rules, and to a degree also why I like Stratagems encouraging a mixed army. It was the same feeling about say Exarch powers.
I can maybe understand the idea that you should be able to unlock some abilities with points - but GW has infamously been bad at getting that right. Whereas "you get 1 CP every player turn, maybe get an extra one if you go for it" is a much more restricted system. (Arguably you still see some stratagems used constantly while others are never used, but its a work in progress.)

I think a lot of this kind of boils down to hypotheticals. For example I don't know how good or bad Windriders are. I feel my long-standing dream of Shuriken Catapult spam suffered a lot from the changes to twin-linked so now you'd be mad not to take Scatter Lasers or Shuriken Cannons.
But... I'm not trying to win the LVO. They only have to be "viable" to be okay.

I think GW has got quite close on a lot of units to being reasonable for the points. Way closer at least than the dark days of 5th-7th where over half a codex (or 90% in some weaker factions) would feel unplayable. Which is in turn why I think win rates aren't too bad - and we see more units than has historically been the case.