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So we have the points, and the rules.

According to Lawrence off TTT the reason things just seem to make very little sense right now, is that the points have been done in mind of rules that don't exists yet. I.E. New Codex's/Supplements which have not been yet released.

It stands to reason to suspect there is going to be a steady stream of codexes coming in to plug the gaps and Eperor provide we keep on track getting the world back to normal functioning.
Also there are a lot of places in the world (my area included) that are not open for business in terms of playing games sadly. This will probably delay the "meta" from shaping.


All that being said I think reasonably it will take about 12 month for 9th ed to settle.
Its possible they will churn out about 2 codexes a month so in 12 months we could all well have 9th ed codexes by then and hopefully have the ability to get back to playing games as normal.

Do people think its likely to be longer or sooner? How have things looked historically ?

Pure speculation ramblings naturally here.. If any rumours to back any theories out id be keen to hear.

As things stand it seems its a bit of a crap show and im not really stoked for playing until most people/everyone have a new codex and FAQs have taken place to iron out some of the creases... So I think about a year dedicated to painting and modelling should be a good target to have some sort of "settled" meta by then.

GW doesn't like letting meta things settle. They want every army book to upset the meta and make people buy new stuff, and then once they're done with army books we'll get 10th edition.

Meta settles independently of future books. It then adjusts for those books as they happen.

Since the 8th edition books are still compatible, don't expect a rush to get 9th ed books out.

The TTT guy seems full of it, as the new books will have brand new points.

---
Keep in mind that despite internet arguments, meta often settles based on locale. People in shop X don't necessarily play the way they do in country Y and shop Z.


In general, pandemic conditions may stretch out the usual settling time, but it will happen as normal- a general pattern of playstyles will be disrupted by a new book, then settle again, then a new book, etc.

The cornerstone events like LVO and Adepticon and Nova are what usually hard define the meta for a lot of places that follow the competitive scene religiously (like my region).

Without those events, the longer the rona lasts, the longer it will take for things to settle in.

I get all that.

Certainly dont think GW wants or plans for a "perfectly balanced game". Naturaly it wants things ever changing and shifting to sell models. Its a no brainer. I have no delusions things will permanently settle in soem srot of "balanced game".

I haven't been playing back 40k for all that long but to be honest I think post CA 2018 things were pretty dandy for a good while (ynnari nerfed and castellan nerf)

Everything seemed fairly on par until the marines for a good 6 months+ until the marine supplement dropped.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I certainly think there are periods where things are allowed to settle.

As to them being content with books as they are..I dont think you can stop the codex creep.. Creep for the creep gods.

The SM codex is coming out and the 8th one has been out for what, just over a year ? I dont think GW will loose out an opportunity to make all the bank from books.

Voss wrote:
Meta settles independently of future books. It then adjusts for those books as they happen.

Since the 8th edition books are still compatible, don't expect a rush to get 9th ed books out.

The TTT guy seems full of it, as the new books will have brand new points.

---
Keep in mind that despite internet arguments, meta often settles based on locale. People in shop X don't necessarily play the way they do in country Y and shop Z.


In general, pandemic conditions may stretch out the usual settling time, but it will happen as normal- a general pattern of playstyles will be disrupted by a new book, then settle again, then a new book, etc.

Have to agree with this. The meta will shift with each new release, and primarily be local, especially in our current situation.

And the new points aren't for future changes in future codexes, they're for the current 8th edition codexes with the new core rules, new points will come with the new codexes. Plasma and flamers will eventually cease to be considered equal, same for all contemptors, and, hopefully, csm will cease to be "Marines -1".

“We deliberately unbalanced our game so that we can change it to balanced later!” is the dumbest design philosophy ever. If you’re gonna be changing it later you can change the pts with it. Until that pt you’ve fethed the game for undoubtably years for some factions

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
“We deliberately unbalanced our game so that we can change it to balanced later!” is the dumbest design philosophy ever. If you’re gonna be changing it later you can change the pts with it. Until that pt you’ve fethed the game for undoubtably years for some factions

Well, yeah. Can you please explain that to gw?

thats the tricky part aint it

Not sure if this is the right way of thinking, but it was explained to me that GW doesn't want people to buy one army and play with it for 2 years. They want their buyers to constatly have a non working army, or be able to buy whole 2k ones in one go, and get those 2-3 months of fun, before GW brings out something that invalidates the army or their errata/faq pack changes it for the worse.

Well, the pt changes alone change the meta to a certain degree as a 2000 pt army in the 8th will cost about 2100 to 2250 pts in the 9th.
Together with the (minor) rule changes and the rearrangement of missions (primaries, secondaries) the meta will inevitably shift.

But the trend goes to Primaris as they steadily get more and more shiny new toys.
My guess is that the tourney scene will shift so that about 80% of the tourney armies will be Primaris.
If so, tourneys will get more and more boring.
Who likes to play with his IH army two times vs. IH and once vs. IF and RG?
Definitely a move in the wrong direction.

in the short term the meta doesn't really stabilise as has been said, each new codex will have something that shifts it. However the edition may settle after a few months, once people work out whether hordes are good or bad, superheavies, primarchs etc are worth their points. Is it going to be gunline edition, will close combat will be king, perhaps even manoeuvring will have it's day.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
thats the tricky part aint it

No it isn't, its just GW speaks M O N E Y, and only that, Unbalance into balance into unbalance, staggered dex release rates, Make sense in the language of M O N E Y, for them.

Meta never settles unless there is a clear OP list/group of units that don't have much counter play. See old IH and Castellans.

If a great deal of lists, units,a nd books are all equal to level then the meta shifts normally to counter popular local and net builds.

Sadly for 40k book released are normally some type of power creep and GW over looks OP combos and units.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
And the new points aren't for future changes in future codexes, they're for the current 8th edition codexes with the new core rules, new points will come with the new codexes. Plasma and flamers will eventually cease to be considered equal, same for all contemptors, and, hopefully, csm will cease to be "Marines -1".

You're looking forwards to being "Marines -2" instead, huh?

In normal circumstances the competitive meta tends to shake out quickly - but as said, with the virus, there isn't much a competitive scene.

To my mind 8th had:
About 6 months of various bugged stuff (that often got hard FAQed out)+Guilliman. Much of this may never have made it to your local meta, because it was often weird collections of models.
From the CWE Codex release (then IG, DE, Knights) you saw the formation of Imperial/Eldar Soup, which would dominate the meta for about 15~ months.
The 2019 FAQ killed the Castellan and hurt Eldar Soup, so you got a period of some flux, with various lists doing well that clearly upset GW (sorry GSC, Thousand Sons+Nurgle) when they were looking at writing CA19.
Then Marines 2.0 appeared in the middle of the year, and the next 6 months was essentially all Marines all the time, and they got nerfed just before the virus ended tournaments so its unclear where things are now.

Since 9th is an evolution of 8th rather than a fundamental change, I wouldn't expect there to be as many problems like razorwing flocks, spite spam, all flyer+guilliman lists etc that have to be deliberately cut out. But what works and what doesn't should still be pretty obvious.

Balancing units points costs around Codexes that haven't been released yet and might be 6-12 months away for all we know is quite frankly the one of the dumbest things GW has ever done.

When they released the indexes in 8th and reset the entire game it was actually a fun period where every faction had some play and the edition worked from the get go.

GW harps on about how we can all still use our current codexes and everything is fine, but with the new points adjustments we blatantly can't as its like boxing with one arm behind your back.

Will only get worse when Marines and Necrons get their new toys and dexes in a couple of months.

I strongly doubt that GW really pointed things out with the future codici in mind. As already said, new codex means new points.
Also, I know that my opinion on this is quite unpopular, but apart from a few glaring mistakes (guardians, kabalite, condemnor boltguns and the like), the point changes are not good, but acceptable.

What I could see in particular for Guardians and Kabalites, is that they were indeed pointed with the codici in mind, because the rules that they are going to receive are so good that they would have to rise the cost a lot. Instead of doing that in the codex, which would hurt the sales, they do it now and then just give you new rules. Less marketing impact.

So, models being costed for future releases isn't something that I'm going to buy as a general rule, but I could see it being done as a marketing move for those models that were going to shoot up in price a lot.

 auticus wrote:
The cornerstone events like LVO and Adepticon and Nova are what usually hard define the meta for a lot of places that follow the competitive scene religiously (like my region).

Without those events, the longer the rona lasts, the longer it will take for things to settle in.

Pretty much this

And whilst im a tech luddite is it possible to collect data from table top simulator ? Back in my mtg playing days the meta seemed to evolve out of the online game just because of sheer volume of games played

Im likewise skeptical of Lawrences cheerleading as it may turn out to top Reeces Stompa proclamation

Well, yeah. Can you please explain that to gw?

You all dump money on their doorstep for horribly balanced game. That explains everything gw needs to know about their product. This conversation seriously happens every edition change with people continually writing GW a blank check every edition.

With as shake-up as big as this, it takes roughly four to six months before the game is considered to be "solved" for an army, as would a new codex or some of the bigger PA upgrades.

When another army shakes up the meta, it's more a matter of reacting to those changes with known solutions, rather than finding new ones. This usually takes a month or two.

Current popular theory is that Custodes, Death Guard and Space Marines are primed to be the top with Harlequins, Craftworld Eldar and Thousand Sons as solid 2nds, I believe.

So that is quite a shake-up over 8th which was Craftworld Eldar, Space Marines and Possessed as the top.

Current popular theory is that Custodes, Death Guard and Space Marines are primed to be the top with Harlequins, Craftworld Eldar and Thousand Sons as solid 2nds, I believe.

I suspect that Cult of Duplicity Tsons will leap-frog DG due to being able to shunt quickly around the board to grab objectives, but so far, in our groups highly scientific, and not at all anecdotal games of 9th, your list there is panning out. lol

Would add that Mechanicus has a ton of potential as well as they seem to have an answer for just about everything 9th asks of an army.

In terms of the meta setting and actually stabilizing for a bit like we're used to? Probably a long long time. It will be interesting to see what the garage-hammer home-brew metas end up looking like as the lock down continues and we're only able (if lucky) to have socially distanced games with friends in basements and don't have the constant influx of tourney data to influence list building.

Tycho wrote:

Current popular theory is that Custodes, Death Guard and Space Marines are primed to be the top with Harlequins, Craftworld Eldar and Thousand Sons as solid 2nds, I believe.

I suspect that Cult of Duplicity Tsons will leap-frog DG due to being able to shunt quickly around the board to grab objectives, but so far, in our groups highly scientific, and not at all anecdotal games of 9th, your list there is panning out. lol

Would add that Mechanicus has a ton of potential as well as they seem to have an answer for just about everything 9th asks of an army.

In terms of the meta setting and actually stabilizing for a bit like we're used to? Probably a long long time. It will be interesting to see what the garage-hammer home-brew metas end up looking like as the lock down continues and we're only able (if lucky) to have socially distanced games with friends in basements and don't have the constant influx of tourney data to influence list building.

I personally think people are underestimating TSons myself so I can see that. I forgot AdMech, sorry, they're theorized to be one of the #1 slots too.

Pickled_egg wrote:

GW harps on about how we can all still use our current codexes and everything is fine, but with the new points adjustments we blatantly can't as its like boxing with one arm behind your back.

But you can. Really easily.
I'll just leave it to you to puzzle over it for awhile. Afterall, your a 40k player. And no doubt smarter than the designers of the game. As you can grok pts & combos & strats & all kinds of other crap, you should be able to see it....

I think the pts are so poorly balanced that the meta will settle in 1 month, we might have a shakeup in 3 months as people discover 1 or 2 lists that weren't discovered by the end of August. New books will change things up as they come and FAQ/CA won't be stopping so the meta won't stay stale for more than 6 months.

Take the worst system possible, Warhound Titans cost 1 pt, everything else costs 2001 pts, meta is settled before release, everyone will bring as many Warhound Titans as they own and nobody else will play. Have a tightly balanced game and you see units and combinations popping up and randomly winning tournaments throughout the lifetime of your game as was seen with Starcraft 1, increase Kabalites by 50% and Intercessors by 15% for no apparent reason and you're moving towards the "solved before release" scenario.

Karol wrote:Not sure if this is the right way of thinking, but it was explained to me that GW doesn't want people to buy one army and play with it for 2 years. They want their buyers to constatly have a non working army, or be able to buy whole 2k ones in one go, and get those 2-3 months of fun, before GW brings out something that invalidates the army or their errata/faq pack changes it for the worse.

It would certainly seem that way.

My Black Legion gunline made it through most of 8th without being invalidated. 20+ lascannons lined up on the edge of the table with full rerolls from Abaddon was pretty powerful.

My Daemon Primarch army is now invalidated, there's no way to field it b/c of changes to the Supreme Command Detachment. So I think the gunline was the exception.

Even with that... not sure it's deliberate. There doesn't seem to be a master plan, it's just a continuous stream of new releases that occasionally get balanced.

auticus wrote:The cornerstone events like LVO and Adepticon and Nova are what usually hard define the meta for a lot of places that follow the competitive scene religiously (like my region).

Without those events, the longer the rona lasts, the longer it will take for things to settle in.

Not sure they define the current meta so much as expose it's realities.

I've never paid too much attention to winning lists, they seem mostly intuitive with few surprises. I learn a lot from battle reports that show off specific tactics from top players.

vict0988 wrote:I think the pts are so poorly balanced that the meta will settle in 1 month, we might have a shakeup in 3 months as people discover 1 or 2 lists that weren't discovered by the end of August. New books will change things up as they come and FAQ/CA won't be stopping so the meta won't stay stale for more than 6 months.

Take the worst system possible, Warhound Titans cost 1 pt, everything else costs 2001 pts, meta is settled before release, everyone will bring as many Warhound Titans as they own and nobody else will play. Have a tightly balanced game and you see units and combinations popping up and randomly winning tournaments throughout the lifetime of your game as was seen with Starcraft 1, increase Kabalites by 50% and Intercessors by 15% for no apparent reason and you're moving towards the "solved before release" scenario.

Another possibility: people stop playing certain factions until the rules get updated. Because some factions are so outclassed it's just not worth it.

I've played Chaos since... a very long time ago. Really hard to see how to make a TAAC list in 9th, I'd have to go pure objective denial and I'm not sure those would be satisfying games.

Probably playing Grey Knights or Chaos Knights because they fit the meta better.

 auticus wrote:
The cornerstone events like LVO and Adepticon and Nova are what usually hard define the meta for a lot of places that follow the competitive scene religiously (like my region).

Without those events, the longer the rona lasts, the longer it will take for things to settle in.

This was my thought. Every game store in my area, except for one is still 100% closed. The other is only allowing two people in at a time, and checks your temp before letting you come in the store. Once inside it's buy your stuff and move out. So much so that you actually are encourage to shop on their online store, and at the very least pay on that store, even for in store pick up. No one in our hobby groups have played since before March 23rd. So far, I don't see that changing anytime before the end of September, depending on how things go.

If Americans would just wear their flipping masks, stay home we'd be able to get back to normal more quickly. But nnnoooooo.

 Argive wrote:
So we have the points, and the rules.

According to Lawrence off TTT the reason things just seem to make very little sense right now, is that the points have been done in mind of rules that don't exists yet. I.E. New Codex's/Supplements which have not been yet released.

That would make sense IF the points wasn't so formulaic. 1-9 pts=+1 pts, minimum 5 pts, 11-20=+2 pts, 21-30=+3 pts etc.

It's formulaic increase with only couple manual adjustement. How any rules would apply so equally everything?

tneva82 wrote:

 Argive wrote:
So we have the points, and the rules.

According to Lawrence off TTT the reason things just seem to make very little sense right now, is that the points have been done in mind of rules that don't exists yet. I.E. New Codex's/Supplements which have not been yet released.

That would make sense IF the points wasn't so formulaic. 1-9 pts=+1 pts, minimum 5 pts, 11-20=+2 pts, 21-30=+3 pts etc.

It's formulaic increase with only couple manual adjustement. How any rules would apply so equally everything?

I totally agree.

To be fair, what Lawrence said is:

"For those of you frustrated by the points in the Munitorum Field manual, we understand. The Munitorum Field Manual points ARE a massive ball drop by GW. That doesn’t however mean that it won’t get fixed with new releases. Will it take ages to release these things? We have no idea! Am we frustrated at the prospect of it taking too long? Of course we are! Have we fed back what could be better changed in the interim? Of course we have!"