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So this is not a troll post more a reflection on the various things we are seeing. First and foremost, read this from a business perspective. You own a company, you have shareholders to answer to, employees to be paid and bills to pay.

9th edition needs to see dramatic changes to the game, so much so that those stat line changes we are starting to see emerge are a necessary part of it. Back when 8th came out, Index books were released to replace all codexes and as time went by, people got their Codex with what was essentially a few extra rules such as stratagems and army-wide rules. Stats stayed mostly the same.

This edition, the codexes are not replaced - they are all still valid. You now need to sell the new upcoming codexes but what new things can you add which are big enough to justify a new book? Points costs? You have Chapter Approved for that. Rules modifications? The FAQs have dealt with that mostly. You could remove and add some stratagems but that just means you are playing around with some wording and lets be honest, there are huge numbers of stratagems that are just not worth using.

If you change the model stats however, that makes business sense.

By doing this you can switch the dynamic of an army. More wounds make it more durable, higher strength makes it more Killy in situations etc. You may find that of the 5 boxes you offer for an army, only 3 of them sell because the other 2 are situationally useless Or incompatible in games - doesn’t matter how much they are points wise. As such, you change their stats to make them more appealing. Same applies to a unit that is just too good in a certain situation.

You therefore encourage different army compositions - that means models to be bought to fill those gaps or to capitalise on those changes. It’s far more effective than point changes as it addresses the core use of the model and effects it’s playstyle.

So let’s go back to those codexes. It’s not just some extra rules, it’s potentially a fundamental shift in their stats which have a much greater impact. You now NEED that Codex much more than before and that’s a sale. You read the rules and fancy trying to field more models of a type as their playstyle now seems feasible - that drives sales. You opponents see that trend emerges and wants to counter it - that drives sales and so forth.

That battery of players you have that don’t buy much as they have their armies which they are happy with, are now encouraged to adapt and do so through purchases.

I am not against the stat changes and think it will make for some new and wonderful gameplay options, especially after years of the same. My only concern is this - how much of the drive to do this is financially based rather than balance-based? If you have a non-marine army, these kinds of changes run the risk of nerfing your army for years simply as an oversight and stat changes, are one of the biggest changes you can make to any game.

Were I the big boss I wouldnt care about what the nerds in the studio are up to. I want the machines pumping out plastic models as fast as possible. I want the trucks delivering on time. I want the books printed and shipped. I want the retail outlets to stay open amid a pandemic.
The least of my worries is some stats in the products setting. Are the stocks gaining value? How mich money am I making? Is there any further way to cut costs?

Sumilidon wrote:
So this is not a troll post more a reflection on the various things we are seeing. First and foremost, read this from a business perspective. You own a company, you have shareholders to answer to, employees to be paid and bills to pay.

9th edition needs to see dramatic changes to the game, so much so that those stat line changes we are starting to see emerge are a necessary part of it. Back when 8th came out, Index books were released to replace all codexes and as time went by, people got their Codex with what was essentially a few extra rules such as stratagems and army-wide rules. Stats stayed mostly the same.

This edition, the codexes are not replaced - they are all still valid. You now need to sell the new upcoming codexes but what new things can you add which are big enough to justify a new book? Points costs? You have Chapter Approved for that. Rules modifications? The FAQs have dealt with that mostly. You could remove and add some stratagems but that just means you are playing around with some wording and lets be honest, there are huge numbers of stratagems that are just not worth using.

If you change the model stats however, that makes business sense.

By doing this you can switch the dynamic of an army. More wounds make it more durable, higher strength makes it more Killy in situations etc. You may find that of the 5 boxes you offer for an army, only 3 of them sell because the other 2 are situationally useless Or incompatible in games - doesn’t matter how much they are points wise. As such, you change their stats to make them more appealing. Same applies to a unit that is just too good in a certain situation.

You therefore encourage different army compositions - that means models to be bought to fill those gaps or to capitalise on those changes. It’s far more effective than point changes as it addresses the core use of the model and effects it’s playstyle.

So let’s go back to those codexes. It’s not just some extra rules, it’s potentially a fundamental shift in their stats which have a much greater impact. You now NEED that Codex much more than before and that’s a sale. You read the rules and fancy trying to field more models of a type as their playstyle now seems feasible - that drives sales. You opponents see that trend emerges and wants to counter it - that drives sales and so forth.

That battery of players you have that don’t buy much as they have their armies which they are happy with, are now encouraged to adapt and do so through purchases.

I am not against the stat changes and think it will make for some new and wonderful gameplay options, especially after years of the same. My only concern is this - how much of the drive to do this is financially based rather than balance-based? If you have a non-marine army, these kinds of changes run the risk of nerfing your army for years simply as an oversight and stat changes, are one of the biggest changes you can make to any game.

A lot of valid points and I'm actually excited for the scope in wound and damage application they can have from this. Something for people to remember is there isn't a codex: dark angels, blood angels, space wolves or deathwatch any more. That's 4 release windows freed up assuming they don't dedicate a full release to each supplement, so that they can maybe address other factions a bit faster.

 DeffDred wrote:
Were I the big boss I wouldnt care about what the nerds in the studio are up to. I want the machines pumping out plastic models as fast as possible. I want the trucks delivering on time. I want the books printed and shipped. I want the retail outlets to stay open amid a pandemic.
The least of my worries is some stats in the products setting. Are the stocks gaining value? How mich money am I making? Is there any further way to cut costs?

Congratulations, you are Kevin Rountree. Look at GW from about 2010 to 2017, that's what you get having a business brain at the top that doesn't also understand (or pay any attention to) why wargaming is appealing.

I dont mind the statlines changing as long as what results is a better representation of the lore. Orks and marines should be much harder to kill than guardsmen, regardless of armour. The extra wound reflects that nicely.

It would, if Orks had them!

I feel 8th was the time they had to really change things up, But now. Its going to be a lot of little changes that do as much harm as good.

And hopefully it doesn't push my factions into death. :(

There is a lot they could do with stats, that have little changes i think would be really good and a few really big changes in how things are calculated.
But i feel they want a super simple game, without much complexity by design. Even if i think its failing at that.

 Super Ready wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
Were I the big boss I wouldnt care about what the nerds in the studio are up to. I want the machines pumping out plastic models as fast as possible. I want the trucks delivering on time. I want the books printed and shipped. I want the retail outlets to stay open amid a pandemic.
The least of my worries is some stats in the products setting. Are the stocks gaining value? How mich money am I making? Is there any further way to cut costs?

Congratulations, you are Kevin Rountree. Look at GW from about 2010 to 2017, that's what you get having a business brain at the top that doesn't also understand (or pay any attention to) why wargaming is appealing.

Uhh, Kevin Rountree is the current CEO, who is extremely successful and really dgaf about the game itself and is purely focused on business operations and developing the IP through multimedia. DeffDred is right, the stats are largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

 Super Ready wrote:

Congratulations, you are Kevin Rountree. Look at GW from about 2010 to 2017, that's what you get having a business brain at the top that doesn't also understand (or pay any attention to) why wargaming is appealing.

1) Kevin Rountree is the current CEO of GW and has been since 2015. He's by large considered a 'good' CEO in more ways than one. It's during his reign we got 8th Ed. 40k, GCG, plastic SoB, etc, AoS actually became playable and, GW started communicating with their fanbase, WFB 2.0 is in the works. Basically, GW has been continuously improving since he became CEO.

2) The previous CEO (who I assume you tried to pin DeffDred as) was Tom Kirby, he stepped down 2015 and during his reign we saw WFB get squatted in favour of AoS 1.0, the worst editions of 40k ever got released (6th and 7th), the infamous mentality of "we're a model-company, not a gaming-company" spread, and the company was in a general decline, especially during his last years at the helm.

Both of these men however, are at their cores very much CEO's, and I doubt either of them care much for what statlines a tactical marine has.

Big Oof there Super Ready.

I am of the opinion that the statlines needed changing all through 8th. My only hope is that they change statlines across the board and not just a couple units in one or two armies.

Look at the rules from 7th vs 8th and then realize how many stats didn't change between them. What good is Tau plasma being cheaper than imperium but also less strong, when Plasma for imperium loses the Gets Hot rule? The Tau Railgun at S10 used to wound everything T8 and below on 2's. Now T6,T7,T8 models (It's primary targets mind you) are only being wounded on 3s. You could argue this was intended in the change, except when 8th first launched they actually raised the cost of the railgun despite the weapon now being worse. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of units and guns becoming fundamentally broken because of rules changing and stats remaining the same.

Some people say 8th edition was like a beta of 9th edition and with the changes to statlines now I would agree.
Overall 8th simply translated previous statlines to the new system without changes. It's good that they now write profiles with the actual edition in mind and not just copying/translating what was there since 3rd edition.

What the OP said about Codizes though... I'm not sure I agree. People bought SM Codex 2.0 despite zero(?) changes to statlines. People bought Codizes from 3rd to 7th edition despite their profiles hardly ever changing and despite some Codizes being strictly inferior versions to their predecessors (CSM, Orks). So, every Codex offers something new, be it new stratagems (SM 2.0), army rules (decurions in 7th, SM 2.0), new fluff, new models, new ways to pay the army etc. You don't necessarily need to change statlines to sell a codex, but it's good they're doing it now.

Ahh nuts!! Big oof indeed. I did indeed mean Tom Kirby...

I'm not sure how Rountree could be said not to care about the game still when it's his changes that have led to things like Sisters returning, though...?

Anyway, back to the point. I completely see how dramatic changes are necessary for continued sales, but I'm not sure major sweeping stat changes are the way to go. The new edition's just attempted to wrap up a few things in the name of making games faster - changing stats across the board so that people have to look things up every couple of minutes would undo that for some time.

 MinscS2 wrote:

 Super Ready wrote:

Congratulations, you are Kevin Rountree. Look at GW from about 2010 to 2017, that's what you get having a business brain at the top that doesn't also understand (or pay any attention to) why wargaming is appealing.

1) Kevin Rountree is the current CEO of GW and has been since 2015. He's by large considered a 'good' CEO in more ways than one. It's during his reign we got 8th Ed. 40k, GCG, plastic SoB, etc, AoS actually became playable and, GW started communicating with their fanbase, WFB 2.0 is in the works. Basically, GW has been continuously improving since he became CEO.

2) The previous CEO (who I assume you tried to pin DeffDred as) was Tom Kirby, he stepped down 2015 and during his reign we saw WFB get squatted in favour of AoS 1.0, the worst editions of 40k ever got released (6th and 7th), the infamous mentality of "we're a model-company, not a gaming-company" spread, and the company was in a general decline, especially during his last years at the helm.

Both of these men however, are at their cores very much CEO's, and I doubt either of them care much for what statlines a tactical marine has.

Big Oof there Super Ready.

This.

And from what I understand (especially in light of the James Hewitt interviews and other comments he made), Tom Kirby - or at least his management team - was very much involved in gameplay related decisions and forcing top-down marketing-based stipulations as to what should be done with the game(s) mechanically speaking. Kevin Rountree is hands-off on the studio and trusts the studio leads to be good stewards of the game and the community. Its clear which approach has worked, and which didn't.

I think I'm starting to see the logic of some of the things they're doing. It seems to me, like there are a few major goals:

1) simplify some of the listbuilding aspect of the game by having fewer weapons being "upgrades" over other weapons. So rather than having a 4pt flamer, 7pt melta, 12pt plasma 10pt grav, whatever, you change the stats of all those guns to make them equally appealing, and make them all 10pts

2) hopefully, god DAMN do I fething hope, make armies less dependent on army-wide rules to be successful and instead just make their core statlines useful.

3) introduce some more gameplay distinction between heavy infantry and light infantry so that anti-light infantry weapons are not just as efficient at carving up heavy infantry.

8th ed had kind of a weird, sagging middle, where there were a TON of statlines hovering in the zone of 1W, T3-T4, Sv5+-Sv3+ and then a TON of statlines hovering in the zone of 10-12W, T7-T8, Sv3+, and this biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig gap in the middle where every codex had like one, or maybe 2, profiles sitting in the T5 W3-5, Sv4+-Sv3+ area.

GW moving marines universally to a W2-W3 zone starts to prop up that gap, and HOPEFULLY comes with them either ditching or largely de-clawing doctrines and the other various crazy army-wide rules they used to just as quickly and low-effortly as possible boost marines up from their midtier-lowtier status to tippity-top S-tier.

This all is dependent on a couple things though. what I dont see is a corresponding shift with necrons to do something similar, and that's worrying. Now, maybe, they've decided to go some real radical direction with necrons and make Res Prots actually work, which added SO much to their durability that giving them the same wounds boosts marines got just was awful and obnoxious, maybe. They seem like they mostly got boosts to their damage from the new datasheets, which just like with marines was never the PROBLEM with necrons, the problem was they died just as easily as everyone else and now necrons are going to have more attacks than my wyches noimnotsalty, but, who knows.

The 8th edition was clearly aimed at increasing the design space they could work with.
Evidently during 6th and 7th they noticed that they couldn't do anything interesting without breaking the game, especially at the end of the 7th edition.

They tried to portrait Eldar as they shoud have been in the fluff. The result was an extremely interesting codex, but also the most broken in the history of the game. You can't do that without pricing stuff out of any possible business plan. Remember GW's definition of those times "Points are the enemy of the game".

AoS was born on that definition, they tried to make a game without points, and failed.
AoS had to be salvaged by reintroducing points to it.

8th is born from that. A complete redesign of the game, to make it possible to do interesting things without breaking the game. In no small part, those are the stratagems whose definition given by GW is "Fluff effects which are cool but cannot be allowed to be always in effect."

8th started from what they had, which were the statlines from previous editions. Acting on that while also changing all rule interactions would have created a complete chaos. So they largely kept the old statlines, while using AoS 2.0 to gather data on a 40K like game which was instead developing his own statlines from scratch.

Since 2015 AoS has been used as a test bed for future 40K rules.

Now that they feel confident with the 8th system, they can now change the statlines. What I wasn't expecting was the 9th edition, I seriously thought they would do this without changing edition.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a greater spread of standard statlines. Although I question whether rolling it out codex by codex is a remotely sensible way to do it, unless we get two codexes every month.

Triarch Praetorians for example going to 3 attacks, 2 damage with the rods, is a clear buff (sorry wyches). But if anyone had used them throughout 8th - this was surely inevitable.

They were awful - even with repeated points drops - due to sitting in that terrible mid point. They had too few attacks (shooting or assault) to mulch chaff. They also however did too little damage to meaningfully touch vehicles/monsters. They were (like quite a few things) priced to kill reasonably expensive MEQ - in an edition where basic MEQ was progressively stripped from the game (to be replaced with... PEQ?)

So the options were either keep dropping their points (and at T5/2 wounds, you can surely only go so low) - or up their damage so they have the teeth their points would indicate.

Now they would actually be quite good (points depending) - because they have the attacks to clear screens, and the damage to hurt anything in the game. Not having a chapter tactic still feels bad though. Unless that's going too.

Arguably though this is indicating the *despecialisation* of assault. There's no room for doing it lightly.

Tyel wrote:
I don't think there's anything wrong with a greater spread of standard statlines. Although I question whether rolling it out codex by codex is a remotely sensible way to do it, unless we get two codexes every month.

Triarch Praetorians for example going to 3 attacks, 2 damage with the rods, is a clear buff (sorry wyches). But if anyone had used them throughout 8th - this was surely inevitable.

They were awful - even with repeated points drops - due to sitting in that terrible mid point. They had too few attacks (shooting or assault) to mulch chaff. They also however did too little damage to meaningfully touch vehicles/monsters. They were (like quite a few things) priced to kill reasonably expensive MEQ - in an edition where basic MEQ was progressively stripped from the game (to be replaced with... PEQ?)

So the options were either keep dropping their points (and at T5/2 wounds, you can surely only go so low) - or up their damage so they have the teeth their points would indicate.

Now they would actually be quite good (points depending) - because they have the attacks to clear screens, and the damage to hurt anything in the game. Not having a chapter tactic still feels bad though. Unless that's going too.

Arguably though this is indicating the *despecialisation* of assault. There's no room for doing it lightly.

yeah, that's my primary concern. If this is going to happen through a codex roll-out, things could be stupid for a very, very, VERY long time...like they were in 8th, when people routinely had to play with an army that literally just got "reroll 1 die per phase", 3 psychic powers, and "your warlord gets a 6+FNP" against armies that had customized warlord traits, relics (lol you didn't get those!), army-wide chapter tactics, twice as many psychic powers, and way, WAY WAYYYYY better stratagems than "reroll 1 fething die".

I had to play like that for a year any time I wanted to put my GSC on the damn table. every game had to be against someone who had those advantages, AND midway through the edition they stripped out the only advantage you could claim to have, which was taking combined detachments united by a general broad faction keyword, because lol that was toooooo op.

And of course when GW banned the Tyranid, Imperium, Eldar and Chaos keyword detachments because some tournament jagoffs were abusing them, everyone who was happy to play against your "no chapter tactic" with their "I get a 6++ fnp on literally everything" or "every single unit gets to reroll 2 dice per phase for free" also, oooh, you know, they just felt more COMFORTABLE if you'd just follow the tournament standard and not bring your brood brothers and your GSC in the same detachment...you know, just to be fair...

The game does need some dramatic changes to be a good game. However... everyone shovels money at GW for producing what they produce. There is no incentive for them to change what they are doing because you all will buy it regardless.

 Super Ready wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
Were I the big boss I wouldnt care about what the nerds in the studio are up to. I want the machines pumping out plastic models as fast as possible. I want the trucks delivering on time. I want the books printed and shipped. I want the retail outlets to stay open amid a pandemic.
The least of my worries is some stats in the products setting. Are the stocks gaining value? How mich money am I making? Is there any further way to cut costs?

Congratulations, you are Kevin Rountree. Look at GW from about 2010 to 2017, that's what you get having a business brain at the top that doesn't also understand (or pay any attention to) why wargaming is appealing.

Well he's describing GW from 1988 or so all the way to now. GW has never really changed through that time.

Spoletta wrote:
AoS was born on that definition, they tried to make a game without points, and failed.

This is incorrect. It was designed with points, but released without it because of internal micromanagement.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
AoS was born on that definition, they tried to make a game without points, and failed.

This is incorrect. It was designed with points, but released without it because of internal micromanagement.

I will die on the hill that the game really was better off without points. Some of the early scenarios in there were fantastic, where you had a limit as to how many of specific unit types(monster, hero, cavalry, etc) you would take.

Plus, people were burning armies. We just don't get that kind of quality entertainment now that they do points adjustments!

I'd like to see some changes to the core gameplay.

1. Replace IGOUGO with some form of alternating activations. Whether this is per phase, per unit, I don't care - it could be made to work.
2. Attacks hitting need to be rolled against a stat. I didn't have a problem with WS vs WS to-hit in melee, and I think BS vs I to-hit for shooting could capture some of the speed/hard-to-hit/evasiveness that many units rely on for survivability. The current trend of pumping up W and trying to use to-hit modifiers (which now cap at +/-1) does not provide suitable design space on a D6 system.
3. Speaking of D6 system, this leads me to the 3rd point. Using a D10 system would align nicely with the majority of profiles being seemingly out of 10, and allows nicer granularity between levels, as opposed to the current D6.

These are obviously radical changes which I expect to never happen, but alas. It's also not what the thread is about, but it is what I was thinking when I read the title. So I thought to post it.

As per thread topic, I agree it makes a lot of sense to change unit stats in order to drive sales. Really GW should have not dropped the ball so hard with their app. A better app would allow them to gather a lot of metagame data, which when combined with sales data, would allow them to shift balance in subtle ways in order to drive sales.

Tying it all together, a more granular game system based on D10's, accompanied with the game-wide change to both unit and weapon profile that we are currently seeing, would allow GW a lot of design space. Increased design space would both provide new opportunities for cool unit designs (and therefore models, and sales!) as well as give them more room to tweak balance to get their sales numbers at whatever levels they desire internally.

 auticus wrote:
The game does need some dramatic changes to be a good game. However... everyone shovels money at GW for producing what they produce. There is no incentive for them to change what they are doing because you all will buy it regardless.

Could not have said it better myself.

I'm reminded of something Barak Obama once said: "I promised to change the tone in Washington, I realize now that I should have been more specific."

They need two major changes to gameplay writing:
1. They need to write based on the D8 or D10 or D12
2. We need AA as the basis of taking turns
Those both would go far to help curb future problems

"You now need to sell the new upcoming codexes but what new things can you add which are big enough to justify a new book?"

They've never been concerned with "justifying" this. At all. It's a new edition - you're going to buy a new book ... assuming your army gets one.

I don't about "needs" dramatic changes to the game but we're getting them so there is that.

You seem to misunderstand the Games Workshop business model, which is, "We release new books. You buy them."

The actual content has no effect on our purchasing decisions. That's really only an academic concern; something for us to piss and moan about after we've already bought the books.

Screamingfanbois: GW needs to make dramatic changes to the 40k game ...

GW: OK, we'll make some changes to the game.

No, not those changes. DIFFERENT changes.


I've got back into playing 40k after 4 editions of not playing.
I'm only playing 5th ed and some 2nd ed, though. So I don't really care what GW do with the rules in later editions.

So, let me get this straight:

9th Edition has been around for about a month.
Today they announced Space Marines are getting an extra wound, and that everyone is getting a buff on weapons.
And now this is a crisis and screws everything up.
...right.

True, 9th comparing to anything, but the very end of 8th is a great time to play.