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Can someone call it? We have zero clue where GW is going now. IG squads are basically the same cost no matter what you put into them, Custodes are getting a "once per game" special rule that only effects specific units anyhow, Harlequins are barely touched, but Tau are nerfed, in that a SMS now has less accuracy than a HWT Mortar, a Tactical Marine is now somehow More durable than a Terminator, and DE are basically untouched.

We're already seeing people calling it quits in the Tactica threads over this "balance" patch. You can't balance your way out of 9th now. Just cut the life support and call the remaining codexes the start of 10th.

Only problem now is you can't artificially delay their release "due to COVID" or "Brexit" since the world has had 3 years to get that under control. Well except for the British, but they think Boris Johnson is still a capable leader of a nation, so I guess they can get a pass. They did it to themselves.

Oh wait, we now have WW3 for them to say is hurting shipping.

You know what? Just screw this all. Screw 10th. A new paid CA is coming out in two months anyway, where I'm sure everything will be fixed, and Trajann will now cost 110 points, but Voidreavers will cost 165 points per model. Because this game is a dead horse, that keeps popping it's pustules and farting out corpse gas in the form of "balance updates", and we keep paying to give it another kick.

A tac marine was already more durable then a terminator, save for DA ones. That goes for other marines too. 200pts of GK termis give you more wounds, more storm bolters, more melee attacks and more models at the cost of not having a +5inv.


9th died when someone designed the DE codex and then decided that it was okey to be the way it ended up to be in the actual book.

It is best compared with similar armies. Take BT or GK, and then compare them to how other marines are. Aside for DA and WS, the rules feel as if they were writen for another edition of the game.

What really gets up my craw about this balance sheet is rather than fixing anything that already exists they've just piled on more bloat and rules.
On top of that they've just given all power armoured factions (so like 90% of armies in the game by player count) an ability that's "feth your AP1". I really hate any and all rules that just hard counter abilities that you've got like that. At least when they're universal.

Point to where on the doll GW touched you.

I think there's a lot of people that will still be enjoying the game just fine.

 deviantduck wrote:
Point to where on the doll GW touched you.

I think there's a lot of people that will still be enjoying the game just fine.

Absolutely this. What a waste of time and space for a forum post.

I do admire GWs brazen "We fixed the lethality. Only for the PC factions though, NPC factions can get fethed."

They had to raise the points on gants and orks, partially because of the ap on their weapons, which is now meaningless.

They then raised points and nerfed HG and squigbuggies to the ground for indirect fire issues, only to nerf it harder now.

I just wish points would keep up with rules. Now already bad units are just worse for no reason.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I do admire GWs brazen "We fixed the lethality. Only for the PC factions though, NPC factions can get fethed."

basically sums it up neatly with a bow on top

I mean....its been that way for a long time, the doctor just wont call time of death while everyone tries to keep a corpse going.
IMO.

That's an awful lot of hyperbole for changes that will be a net benefit to the game. They barely touched Harlequins? Their best unit got a nearly 50% point increase. You really don't think space marines needed extra survivability in the current meta? The strongest, newest space marine chapter had a 31% win rate last week and gets countered even harder by the new tyranid codex. Proliferation of AP was the reason SM were suffering, so they did something to fix it. I would like to wait and see the tournament results over the next month or so before I cry "dAeD gAeM" over this dataslate. I especially like that GW saw the win rates for a couple big events and immediately said "ok, this is a problem, we need a balance patch out asap". Contrast this to earlier editions where an army would be broken for 2-3 years until they got a new codex or a new edition of the BRB was released. The changes aren't going to be perfect but it's far better than seeing Harlequins at 80%wr and space marines at 30% for 3 years straight.

What do you mean harlies did not get touched. The top harlequin army went up by 435. Most of the abusive stuff doesn't effect void weaver and star weavers that was making them broken. Death jester has been very heavily nerfed. Harlequin players are now wondering if they should even take death jesters. I am not complaining since point jump was justified and only affecting core is in line with other armies.

Toofast wrote:
That's an awful lot of hyperbole for changes that will be a net benefit to the game. They barely touched Harlequins? Their best unit got a nearly 50% point increase. You really don't think space marines needed extra survivability in the current meta? The strongest, newest space marine chapter had a 31% win rate last week and gets countered even harder by the new tyranid codex. Proliferation of AP was the reason SM were suffering, so they did something to fix it. I would like to wait and see the tournament results over the next month or so before I cry "dAeD gAeM" over this dataslate. I especially like that GW saw the win rates for a couple big events and immediately said "ok, this is a problem, we need a balance patch out asap". Contrast this to earlier editions where an army would be broken for 2-3 years until they got a new codex or a new edition of the BRB was released. The changes aren't going to be perfect but it's far better than seeing Harlequins at 80%wr and space marines at 30% for 3 years straight.

The problem is not the attempt to balance and correct. The problem lies at more fundamental issues that they're trying to correct for, but correcting in a way that just exacerbates other issues that have already trending downwards.

Toofast wrote:
That's an awful lot of hyperbole for changes that will be a net benefit to the game. They barely touched Harlequins? Their best unit got a nearly 50% point increase. You really don't think space marines needed extra survivability in the current meta? The strongest, newest space marine chapter had a 31% win rate last week and gets countered even harder by the new tyranid codex. Proliferation of AP was the reason SM were suffering, so they did something to fix it. I would like to wait and see the tournament results over the next month or so before I cry "dAeD gAeM" over this dataslate. I especially like that GW saw the win rates for a couple big events and immediately said "ok, this is a problem, we need a balance patch out asap". Contrast this to earlier editions where an army would be broken for 2-3 years until they got a new codex or a new edition of the BRB was released. The changes aren't going to be perfect but it's far better than seeing Harlequins at 80%wr and space marines at 30% for 3 years straight.

with harliquins getting over a 75% win rate no faction did well last week/ the last few weeks. Space marines were not the weakest codex. I will say this does make power armored armies all go from middle of the pack to strong, but in bringing them up they pushed those at the bottom even farther down. Necrons, Orks and GSC are probably hanging out a the bottom now with very little that can do anything against a marine army. look at the factions as a whoel and honestly i am not sure a ork list can beat a marine list, pick your worst marine units put em against an ork list and they still cannot do enough damage and will get shot down/ outmelee'd

I like the guard buffs though, brings em to more power without beign over the top, I think they just got into the middle of the pack for power.

Oh look, its Fezzik doomposting again.

harlequins barely touched? One of their strongest Aura got nerfed, their best datasheet got a huuuge point increase and their obnoxious sniper character also got nerfed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
A tac marine was already more durable then a terminator

Lol what the feth are you on about?

you heard it here first, 2W 3+ is more durable than 3W 2+ 5++

Necrons and GSC will be fine, it's Orks that will really struggle after this. Maybe they'll get to use more than 0-1 of their toys in the next balance pass.

Nah. This balance sheet is simply incredible. Utterly amazing.

It shows us, without a shadow of a doubt, that they haven't the faintest clue what they're doing there.

It's a fireworks display of stupid.

Guardsmen getting auto wound on 6s is the dumbest, least internally consistent, least fluff-based balance decision I've seen this edition. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but when someone decides that Guardsmen with lasguns should be better at killing tanks than Intercessors, it's very clear that the guys writing the rules are trying to balance tournament win rates without regard for the verisimilitude or even just matching the fluff.

Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

 catbarf wrote:
Guardsmen getting auto wound on 6s is the dumbest, least internally consistent, least fluff-based balance decision I've seen this edition. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but when someone decides that Guardsmen with lasguns should be better at killing tanks than Intercessors, it's very clear that the guys writing the rules are trying to balance tournament win rates without regard for the verisimilitude or even just matching the fluff.

Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

This 1000%

They're too far into pure game design thinking and pulling further and further away from "representational" design thinking. It's really bad.

 catbarf wrote:
Guardsmen getting auto wound on 6s is the dumbest, least internally consistent, least fluff-based balance decision I've seen this edition. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but when someone decides that Guardsmen with lasguns should be better at killing tanks than Intercessors, it's very clear that the guys writing the rules are trying to balance tournament win rates without regard for the verisimilitude or even just matching the fluff.

Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

to be fair if it comes to game balance vs fluff i say go game balance 4/5 times. it is an abstract game, one could say a guad squad is 10 models representing 30 guardsman for the fluff. I don't want it disregarded entirley but even the fluff is so inconsistant that in some books as an example orks die in droves to las gun and in others they shrug off bolter hits and only removing the head does the job.

I do think this dataslate will make games slightly more even (until players find the next big F U, hello nids).

However, it's just bad writing, bad overall idea, bloat upon bloat.

Honestly,it's all part of the GW plan. Codex creep to hell....add "patches" to attempt to fix, then announce 10th edition to clean it up, and we'll rejoice because we think we want simplicity and it's what the game needs.... rinse and repeat, dollars keep coming in.

My post about the way armor of contempt interacts with Sisters of Battle is much more reasonable than I feel right now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Oh look, its Fezzik doomposting again.

harlequins barely touched? One of their strongest Aura got nerfed, their best datasheet got a huuuge point increase and their obnoxious sniper character also got nerfed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
A tac marine was already more durable then a terminator

Lol what the feth are you on about?

you heard it here first, 2W 3+ is more durable than 3W 2+ 5++

Per point. He didn't say it but it's always implied. Durability is ALWAYS a per point metric.

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Guardsmen getting auto wound on 6s is the dumbest, least internally consistent, least fluff-based balance decision I've seen this edition. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but when someone decides that Guardsmen with lasguns should be better at killing tanks than Intercessors, it's very clear that the guys writing the rules are trying to balance tournament win rates without regard for the verisimilitude or even just matching the fluff.

Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

to be fair if it comes to game balance vs fluff i say go game balance 4/5 times. it is an abstract game, one could say a guad squad is 10 models representing 30 guardsman for the fluff. I don't want it disregarded entirley but even the fluff is so inconsistant that in some books as an example orks die in droves to las gun and in others they shrug off bolter hits and only removing the head does the job.

The issue is that there are numerous other ways to address verious issues going on, that could have been more lore-consistent, and for some inexplicable reason they went with these ones.

 catbarf wrote:
Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

Well allow me to retort.

*clears throat*

They're still just Damage 1.

Or, perhaps even:

The target still gets their save!

These are two "arguments" I've seen people put forward. Impressive.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
it is an abstract game

Come on dude. There's "abstraction" and then there's "Lasguns auto-wounding a Warlord Titan on a 6".

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Toofast wrote:
That's an awful lot of hyperbole for changes that will be a net benefit to the game. They barely touched Harlequins? Their best unit got a nearly 50% point increase. You really don't think space marines needed extra survivability in the current meta? The strongest, newest space marine chapter had a 31% win rate last week and gets countered even harder by the new tyranid codex. Proliferation of AP was the reason SM were suffering, so they did something to fix it. I would like to wait and see the tournament results over the next month or so before I cry "dAeD gAeM" over this dataslate. I especially like that GW saw the win rates for a couple big events and immediately said "ok, this is a problem, we need a balance patch out asap". Contrast this to earlier editions where an army would be broken for 2-3 years until they got a new codex or a new edition of the BRB was released. The changes aren't going to be perfect but it's far better than seeing Harlequins at 80%wr and space marines at 30% for 3 years straight.

with harliquins getting over a 75% win rate no faction did well last week/ the last few weeks. Space marines were not the weakest codex. I will say this does make power armored armies all go from middle of the pack to strong, but in bringing them up they pushed those at the bottom even farther down. Necrons, Orks and GSC are probably hanging out a the bottom now with very little that can do anything against a marine army. look at the factions as a whoel and honestly i am not sure a ork list can beat a marine list, pick your worst marine units put em against an ork list and they still cannot do enough damage and will get shot down/ outmelee'd

I like the guard buffs though, brings em to more power without beign over the top, I think they just got into the middle of the pack for power.

If it makes you feel better, it didn't bring ALL power armored armies up. They're 6 for 6 on Sisters nerfs now.

It will probably improve the game balance, but that doesn't mean it isn't a disaster from a game design point of view. It's yet another document to layer on top of all your other documents, each of which adds new rules and bloat. And a lot of the fixes are just fundamentally stupid.

The -1AP thing is a perfect example of how much of a mess the game is. You put far too much AP in the game...so now you're compensating by giving certain factions something that reduces AP. Instead of just attacking the actual problem and getting rid of the excessive AP. Compensate for bad design with more bloat, rather than just fixing the bad design directly.

Or look at the indirect rule. We dolled out too much indirect that's too effective. So we'll nerf it with a universal rule that just makes it all worse, instead of just fixing the problematic indirect itself. Oh, and it's also not actually a universal rule, guard gets to ignore it because <reasons>. Oh and they also get to auto-wound on 6s to hit, something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever no matter how you cut it. Because they suck, but again we can't be bothered to actually fix them.

We're at the stage of the edition where there are so many leaks springing up all over the place that they're so desperate for material to patch the existing leaks that they're stripping the parts of the boat that do work, which leads to new leaks, which leads to more stripping, and before long the entire boat is just a bunch of patches and nothing actually works any more.

Guard needed the change, anything to help.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Two Infantry Squads rapid firing with FRFSRF can just about bracket a Leman Russ. What the feth?

Well allow me to retort.

*clears throat*

They're still just Damage 1.

Or, perhaps even:

The target still gets their save!

These are two "arguments" I've seen people put forward. Impressive.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
it is an abstract game

Come on dude. There's "abstraction" and then there's "Lasguns auto-wounding a Warlord Titan on a 6".

lasguns on a titan is another one of those for the game to work part. my preferred solution is no lord of war units in games under 2001 points, but that breaks a codex out. If the guard player forgets to bring a shadowsword do they just have to auto lose to an titan/knight list? One of the things that brough on all these 6's always wound rules were those armies and issues where the game was breaking down and an army could lose in the list phase before putting a model down. do you remember the days of 3 wraighknights and eldar flyers being unbillable for a lot of codexes?

 G00fySmiley wrote:

it is an abstract game

The thing is, it kinda isn't.
They go into excruciating detail to make sure everything is represented on the table. Down a grot with a pistol hanging out the side of a buggy.
They're trying to have a highly representative game mixed with these weird abstract mechanics and it's a horribly poisonous soup.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

it is an abstract game

The thing is, it kinda isn't.
They go into excruciating detail to make sure everything is represented on the table. Down a grot with a pistol hanging out the side of a buggy.
They're trying to have a highly representative game mixed with these weird abstract mechanics and it's a horribly poisonous soup.

grotty the gunner is a nice model addition there is a lot of cute stuff like that for detail on a buggy. Ask any ork player how useful that is though and how often they even roll for the grot pistol. but as i said above i am more for game balance than 100% matching the inconsistent fluff. If we were being accurate to ork vehicles they would need a couple tables and you would mix and match weapons without being able to have 2 identical vehicles in the whole army like in gorka morka the vehicle and crew custom stuff. if lasguns have to wound titans to make the game work then that is how it needs to be

It's the most out of touch, laziest, most unbelievable change GW has made.

They could have ACTUALLY fixed things. It didn't even need to be a lot.

Revert some points hikes, reasses some stratagem costs, upgrade a couple of datasheets, fix a couple of army rules, and that, along with the nerfs, could have gotten us somewhere decent.

Instead they demonstrate that they have no idea how the game works and that no one at GW has ever even SEEN a Sisters of Battle army.