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So one thing that has became apparent in 9th edition is that horde armies are on in the receiving end of a very large stick. For this statement I refer to 3 key rules and I use the scenario of units at least 11 models in size:

New coherency rules Means each model must remain within 2 inches of another. That’s actually quite hard to do when you start removing models unless you run your unit in a regimented fashion.

The formula used to determine points increases disproportionately impacted horde units where even a 1 point change could represent a 20% increase.

The implementation of blast weapon rules (which GW apparently list 150 weapon profiles as blast) meaning weapons with random shots pretty much get the maximum in the majority of scenarios.

The improvement to weapons such as flamers by increasing their range.

To counter this, also look at The other changes recently such as to terrain, the boosts in wounds to marines, the range increase of bolters etc - of of which are of major benefit to MEQ type units while to the determined of horde units. That’s not including the other changes such as hateful assault to increase melee potential.

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

Honestly? I just assumed they want to suppress horde armies for a sufficiently long period of time so that people who collect those armies become tempted to invest in one of the 'better' armies, then when the individual codex for each horde army comes out they'll give them special rules or stratagems to circumvent some of the 'anti-horde' elements of 9th (along with a general power-boost) to reinvigorate sales of that army.

Look at the SM supplements: They wanted to make SM better, but they couldn't give them just one buff, they had to give them Doctrines and Chapter-specific super-Doctrines and a new suite of Chaplain buffs and a new suite of Librarian buffs and a bunch of extra Stratagems and some new units and price changes, and ended up over-correcting. Same problem here, they wanted to nerf horde armies, but their design team is a federation of warring tribes so every single designer had to get their specific idea for nerfing hordes into the game to justify their presence on the team and it's going to end up over-correcting back again.

The most charitable interpretation I have presumes in playtesting sessions, people were able to stand on objectives unopposed by bringing 300 cultists or grots or Daemonettes or whatever and while yes, not the most killy, it may have been impossible to wipe out and score objectives in 5 turns against that many bodies sitting in defensive buff auras absent things like the Blast rules.

If this was not the case, even then I don't really believe that this is some underhanded and brilliant Just as Planned to sell models; I'm far more inclined to go with Hanlon's Razor on this one, e.g. there are rules writers not talking to one another who couldn't find their arses with 8 hands and an auspex.

The elimination of a kill primary and the reduction of the game to 5 turns means that if horde units aren't seriously discouraged, just taking several hundred models and sitting there all game doing nothing would win games. GW doesn't like that, because GW thinks that's not a good way to play the game.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The elimination of a kill primary and the reduction of the game to 5 turns means that if horde units aren't seriously discouraged, just taking several hundred models and sitting there all game doing nothing would win games. GW doesn't like that, because GW thinks that's not a good way to play the game.

Because it isnt.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The elimination of a kill primary and the reduction of the game to 5 turns means that if horde units aren't seriously discouraged, just taking several hundred models and sitting there all game doing nothing would win games. GW doesn't like that, because GW thinks that's not a good way to play the game.

Because it isnt.

Neither is cardhouse alphastrike buffstacking.
And yet gw put that in.

Or tack on rules for the tack on GOD.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Look at the SM supplements: They wanted to make SM better, but they couldn't give them just one buff, they had to give them Doctrines and Chapter-specific super-Doctrines and a new suite of Chaplain buffs and a new suite of Librarian buffs and a bunch of extra Stratagems and some new units and price changes, and ended up over-correcting. Same problem here, they wanted to nerf horde armies, but their design team is a federation of warring tribes so every single designer had to get their specific idea for nerfing hordes into the game to justify their presence on the team and it's going to end up over-correcting back again.

Which is nice and all until you realize that two of the most immediately powerful lists to hit 9th edition were 'As many intercessors as I can fit in a standard deployment zone' and 'as many nurglings as I can possibly get my hands on.

The thing a lot of people in this thread are missing is that hordes are still pretty darn good. Are they top tier competitive? No, but you can go into a game with a 300 model Nid list and unless your opponent throws down 9 wyverns and 3 thud guns, you'll probably do fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The elimination of a kill primary and the reduction of the game to 5 turns means that if horde units aren't seriously discouraged, just taking several hundred models and sitting there all game doing nothing would win games. GW doesn't like that, because GW thinks that's not a good way to play the game.

Because it isnt.

Neither is cardhouse alphastrike buffstacking.
And yet gw put that in.

Or tack on rules for the tack on GOD.

Difference is that neither of those take 48 hours to get through a standard movement phase.

I'd rather get through that movement Phase then through the stacking process and Elimination of huge junks of my army or my enemies..

I suspect that the smaller table size might have something to do with horde discouragement, too... buuuuuut on the other hand, that might be giving too much credit.
Bear in mind that we haven't seen any new Codexes, yet. It looks to be a while before any of the horde armies get one, unfortunately... but the balance could well be redressed when they drop.

And as has been mentioned, horde armies aren't exactly bad right now. Comparing their OP-ness to Marines specifically is a little counter-intuitive, because Marines are so good right now that the comparison doesn't really prove anything. Ask yourself instead how hordes were doing against just about every other non-horde army, with exception to possibly Tau.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The elimination of a kill primary and the reduction of the game to 5 turns means that if horde units aren't seriously discouraged, just taking several hundred models and sitting there all game doing nothing would win games. GW doesn't like that, because GW thinks that's not a good way to play the game.

Because it isnt.

I wasn't making a value judgment. What I think doesn't matter to GW. GW doesn't like lists that win by standing around and existing. The horde nerfs are because despite not liking those lists, GW's changes to the board size and mission structure in 9th made that sort of list very strong, so they reacted quite decisively by cutting it off at the knees. It might still work - because after all, the list is just about existing, so being cut off at the knees doesn't necessarily matter - but if it does, you can be sure GW will keep chopping until it doesn't any more.

This is the Tournamenthammer edition. Tournament players hate hordes.

I dunno, I kinda think if anything it's the opposite - tournament players are a lot more likely to respect the "I win by existing on the board" list than Little Timmy who gets deeply frustrated that all his pewpewing isn't winning him the game.

Sumilidon wrote:
So one thing that has became apparent in 9th edition is that horde armies are on in the receiving end of a very large stick. For this statement I refer to 3 key rules and I use the scenario of units at least 11 models in size:

New coherency rules Means each model must remain within 2 inches of another. That’s actually quite hard to do when you start removing models unless you run your unit in a regimented fashion.

The formula used to determine points increases disproportionately impacted horde units where even a 1 point change could represent a 20% increase.

The implementation of blast weapon rules (which GW apparently list 150 weapon profiles as blast) meaning weapons with random shots pretty much get the maximum in the majority of scenarios.

The improvement to weapons such as flamers by increasing their range.

To counter this, also look at The other changes recently such as to terrain, the boosts in wounds to marines, the range increase of bolters etc - of of which are of major benefit to MEQ type units while to the determined of horde units. That’s not including the other changes such as hateful assault to increase melee potential.

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

I suspect this is being done for competitive play. The amount of crying that goes on at high level events about having to lug around 100+ models all day has necessitated the response of making all armies smaller. I am finding it painful to craft an army in 9th with my primaris marines because points as they are, I just can't fit in everything I want.

Even though some of the new rules hurt horde armies it seems unlikely that they were implemented primarily to harm horde armies, if that was even their purpose at all.

For example, the blast weapon rules seem to be an effort to make weapons behave in a more "realistic" way, inflicting greater casualties on densely packed enemies. Likewise, while the new unit coherency rules may restrict things that horde armies were good at (like daisy chaining a unit to stay in range of an aura, or spreading out to deny deep strike) it is more likely that their actual purpose is to make units deploy and move in a more realistic or visually pleasing manner.

 Togusa wrote:

Sumilidon wrote:
So one thing that has became apparent in 9th edition is that horde armies are on in the receiving end of a very large stick. For this statement I refer to 3 key rules and I use the scenario of units at least 11 models in size:

New coherency rules Means each model must remain within 2 inches of another. That’s actually quite hard to do when you start removing models unless you run your unit in a regimented fashion.

The formula used to determine points increases disproportionately impacted horde units where even a 1 point change could represent a 20% increase.

The implementation of blast weapon rules (which GW apparently list 150 weapon profiles as blast) meaning weapons with random shots pretty much get the maximum in the majority of scenarios.

The improvement to weapons such as flamers by increasing their range.

To counter this, also look at The other changes recently such as to terrain, the boosts in wounds to marines, the range increase of bolters etc - of of which are of major benefit to MEQ type units while to the determined of horde units. That’s not including the other changes such as hateful assault to increase melee potential.

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

I suspect this is being done for competitive play. The amount of crying that goes on at high level events about having to lug around 100+ models all day has necessitated the response of making all armies smaller. I am finding it painful to craft an army in 9th with my primaris marines because points as they are, I just can't fit in everything I want.

But shouldn't "not being able to have everything we want" be a sign of good game design? Force us to make choicecs?

 Sim-Life wrote:
This is the Tournamenthammer edition. Tournament players hate hordes.

I don't mind horde units. I do mind entirely horde armies. Chess clocks help, but it's a boring, thoughtless, tactical dud of an army.

I don't see why horde armies are any less thoughtful or tactical than elite armies or anything else, such things aren't really determined by model count in 40k, unless one's perceptions of horde armies are just repeat iterations of the same large model count units. The game was also never designed or intended for play with clocks in mind.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I don't see why horde armies are any less thoughtful or tactical than elite armies or anything else, such things aren't really determined by model count in 40k, unless one's perceptions of horde armies are just repeat iterations of the same large model count units. The game was also never designed or intended for play with clocks in mind.

My definition would be 120 to 150 Boyz or more. Because there isn't much else you do other than push models forward and roll lots of dice. It's a novelty. Chess wasn't designed with clocks in mind, either, but they still use them in competitive games.

That's not much different than many other armies except there's just lots of models to move, tactically there's certainly often more going on than many gunline armies that'll throw buckets of dice without bothering to even move forward, or ultra elite armies that'll have the same total unit count just concentrated in smaller numbers of harder to kill models. 120-150 boyz is still probably 4-5 distinct elements of maneuver and often only comprise ~50% of the points in many Ork lists, meaning there's likely other elements doing different things.

Additionally, in Chess both sides have the same force, the clocks aren't impacting one side potentially more than the other in any way aside from player thought/reaction time.

Sumilidon wrote:

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

Sales. They sold so much during 8th that selling more isn't easy. Elites/solo models are less saturated. Thus time to sell those more.

Gw uses rules as way to adjust what sells and aren"t subtle about it.

Horde still works, its just balancing to make sure weapons meant to kill hordes can. In the past a flamer could hit 10+ models, a Blast weapon could hit up to 20 models.

Not its D6... sure a lot of guns got more shots in general but weapons design to kill hordes can now.

Coherency changes are there b.c people conga line with buffs can control 1/2 the board with 2-5 buffs from heroes. And to sell their movement trays.

If you think about it from a sales perspective. Horde armies are not newbie friendly. A newbie starting out in 40k can just buy one or two starter box, round out with some other cool elite or heavy support choices and have an army for a regular 40k army.

But if you want to start off immediately with a horde army as a newbie, think of the number of "same" troop boxes you have to buy.

And then assemble and paint the same models 100 times for a 100 model horde army...

So, my opinion is that GW feels that horde armies are not "newbie" friendly and don't help sales as much as other stuff. Also consider, Horde armies tend to just focus on troop choices and little of much else.

So, all the effort they put into making and releasing cool elite choices, fast attack choices, and heavy support choices in that army is wasted. Thats bad too from GW's perspective.

One final point. Horde armies are not great publicity for GW if they win tourneys. So player A took a all troop horde army and beat every other army out there in a tourney. Hey, here is this guy that beat out all other armies using just mostly troop choices. Its great trumpeting for him, but whats a newbie reading that news going to think? Why am I buying all these cool heavy choices or elite choices when I can just spam one troop choice in an army and win...

tneva82 wrote:

Sumilidon wrote:

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

Sales. They sold so much during 8th that selling more isn't easy. Elites/solo models are less saturated. Thus time to sell those more.

Gw uses rules as way to adjust what sells and aren"t subtle about it.

If they do, I Do not think they are good at it. Not being Subtle is more to how awful at game design they can be.

 Sim-Life wrote:
This is the Tournamenthammer edition. Tournament players hate hordes.

No this is the narrative edition. Narrative players hate balance so we cannot have balance. Thanks knife-ear podcast!

Apple fox wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Sumilidon wrote:

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

Sales. They sold so much during 8th that selling more isn't easy. Elites/solo models are less saturated. Thus time to sell those more.

Gw uses rules as way to adjust what sells and aren"t subtle about it.

If they do, I Do not think they are good at it. Not being Subtle is more to how awful at game design they can be.

Yeah, this idea has been debunked so many times. There are a lot of units that not only aren't good, but have never been good, and yet others that went OOP still not being good.

Sumilidon wrote:
So one thing that has became apparent in 9th edition is that horde armies are on in the receiving end of a very large stick. For this statement I refer to 3 key rules and I use the scenario of units at least 11 models in size:

New coherency rules Means each model must remain within 2 inches of another. That’s actually quite hard to do when you start removing models unless you run your unit in a regimented fashion.

The formula used to determine points increases disproportionately impacted horde units where even a 1 point change could represent a 20% increase.

The implementation of blast weapon rules (which GW apparently list 150 weapon profiles as blast) meaning weapons with random shots pretty much get the maximum in the majority of scenarios.

The improvement to weapons such as flamers by increasing their range.

To counter this, also look at The other changes recently such as to terrain, the boosts in wounds to marines, the range increase of bolters etc - of of which are of major benefit to MEQ type units while to the determined of horde units. That’s not including the other changes such as hateful assault to increase melee potential.

Nobody can argue that horde armies were OP, fact was that at the end of 8th, the meta was dominated by Marines who don’t have that playstyle (every other type, just not that type). So why such a heavy handed and blatant nerf to horde armies?

because having unique different armies is apparently something GW hates

Hordes are usually more complex and tactically difficult to play than gunlines, not less.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
This is the Tournamenthammer edition. Tournament players hate hordes.

No this is the narrative edition. Narrative players hate balance so we cannot have balance. Thanks knife-ear podcast!

GW seems to take the "Timmy" view on games where they want their power units to be awesome and want things to do exactly what it says on the tin. Big stompy center piece units, named characters, and their pet factions being very powerful or able to do a lot of things. That said they lack the insight into how people think outside the box which is often why they make rules that people can easily find ways to use outside the designers intended purpose. They also lack that min/max optimized play perspective which is why they are often surprised at how tournament players approach the game or how the meta/balance shakes out (meta is a foreign concept it seems to them).

Hordes are exceptionally good in 9th, so something had to be done to help against them. The most important change is the coherency one, which prevents one 40 model unit to simply cover the entire battlefield, which was dumb.

The blast rule is a nerf against MEQ and PEQ units mostly, hordes didn't really care. There are very few blast weapons which are good against hordes, but a lot that love shooting at elite units. The blast rule practically caps MEQ, PEQ, bikes and gravis units at 5 models, making all those extremely good stratagems much worse.