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I really hate the fact they made Orks into T5. They are supposed to be a horde army, not a semi-elite one.

How in the hell does Termagant cost more than Guardsman? Why is a freaking Termagant so strong?

And now I see Bloodletters with +1 to both S and T in the next Codex. What is going on here?

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

bibotot wrote:

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

Well, there's kind of a lower limit on how cheap you can make a weak unit before you create new problems. A gretchin might be bad enough to warrant a really, really low cost, but if you're only charging, like, 2 points per gretchin, then the raw number of bodies you can spam might make a skew list viable where you win games by just having more wounds than your opponent has bullets. Which is an issue they could have fixed at the start of 8th when they were fiddling with points costs, but they decided gretchin, cultists, and guardsmen were all worth 5 points. So now their weakest units are basically at the lower limit they can use without creating skew issues, but they're reluctant to make guardsmen too pricey because then things get awkward with the slightly more expensive models.

But yes, the stat creep is annoying. To the point that I looked at the updated lasblaster stats in the new eldar codex and was more annoyed than excited to see that they'd become stronger. The game would probably benefit a lot from rolling back all the statline changes made since the start of 8th and then re-evaluating which (if any) ought to be kept. Just speaking for my eldar armies, you could reasonably take back...

* The extra AP on hekatarii blades and wrack tools. And glimmersteel blades. And just, any melee weapon that got an extra pip of AP, really.
* The Blade Artists rule.
* The 4+ save on kabalites. (It makes sense, but it's not necessary.)
* The extra -2 AP on shuriken weapons on to-wound rolls of 6; the flat AP-1 we have now is perfectly fine.
* Most of the buffs swooping hawk lasblasters have received in recent editions; they can just be S3 or Assault 3, and they don't need the new special rule they have.
* Probably something from howling banshees. I'm glad they're finally good again, but they have every special rule under the sun right now.
* The extra shot from dire avengers. Just make them troops again, and maybe give them an option for the old version of bladestorm where you gave up your shooting on the following turn.
* Maybe the extra Attack on most eldar units. It feels like this awkward attempt to make up for taking away initiative, and it just comes across as doubling down on needing to get the charge off.
* Bring back the negative version of spirit sight on wraith units. It was kind of cool needing our own version of "synapse" to keep our unusually chonky ghost robots in the fight. It was fluffy and made wraiths feel unique.
* The splinter cannon can stop being a transparent and unsatisfying anti-marine gun; just make it a pile of splinter shots again.
* Make windriders 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes again. And then put bikes back in the troop slot. Lowers power creep. Makes it easier to play a distinctive style of army.
* Strands of Fate. It's a pretty good mechanic, but it doesn't add a lot of interesting decisions to the game. Get rid of it alongside most of the other doctrine-equivalents in the game.
* Death Spinners might be a bit too much right now. Although the new to-wound chart may have made Assault 2 too underwhelming for them to avoid feeling redundant.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could comfortable do away with besides. So much of the power creep feels like it was either totally unasked for in the first place or else was a bandaid fix for a more complicated problem.

I would have rather seen all full-size orks get an additional wound to reflect how much punishment they can take. You can punch holes in an ork or take its arms off but it's not easy to get a fatal wound. To me that isn't stats creep, that's just how it should have always been.
But Orks and Astartes have been single wound infantry alongside Guardsmen for most of the game's history, so I suppose their superhuman vitality was reflected in their armor save.

9th edition has been all about making the game faster and more compact -- smaller boards, smaller armies, and no more 200-model horde lists. Stat creep is one of the ways they're going about achieving this.

 kingpbjames wrote:
I would have rather seen all full-size orks get an additional wound to reflect how much punishment they can take. You can punch holes in an ork or take its arms off but it's not easy to get a fatal wound. To me that isn't stats creep, that's just how it should have always been.
But Orks and Astartes have been single wound infantry alongside Guardsmen for most of the game's history, so I suppose their superhuman vitality was reflected in their armor save.

The thing about 2W hordes is that they can result in slow rolling. Especially if they have access to any FNP+++ rolls. You shoot a volley of overcharged plasmaguns into them, but the painboy is giving them a 6+++. So you have to slow roll each successful plasma wound to see if the boy got lucky and managed to roll a 6 and thus tank an extra shot for his squad.

Making them W1 but with a FNP works, but adds a bit of extra rolling/slowdown. Making them T4 W1 and pricing them accordingly leaves them too squishy for the current game and makes them feel a bit shrimpy. T5 is a weird solution in that it makes them tougher against bolters but not against lasguns, but maybe that's what they were going for?

I feel like the best solution is to leave them at T4 W1, but reduce the lethality of the game. Which is, unfortunately, a tougher fix to implement.

Power creep is the result of constant scale creep and of the incessant need to give new units slightly better guns than old units so you'll buy them. On top of that the 8e Indexes made some math mistakes when doing the base rules (the to-wound table makes it too easy to wound on 3+/5+ and too hard to wound on 2+/6+), which has had the effect of making Strength and Toughness much less relevant and forcing a lot of design space into Wounds, Damage, Save, and AP that it doesn't really have the range to handle.

If you wanted to reset power creep at this point I don't think there's a fast fix other than burning the whole thing down and starting over (or playing Prohammer, oldhammer, HH, something like that).

A more modular wounding system would help, completely agreed. Switching to D12 would enable some better values.

Because points are, whether you agree with it or not, balanced within a given Codex.

Termagants can benefit from Synapse, meaning you need to kill every last one of them. Guardsmen, not so much. That’s something that needs to be factored in, as they can hold/contest Objectives for longer and with much greater reliability.

T5 orks are fine for everyone but two kinds of people:
1) people with a hateboner for losing to orks
2) people who use tabletop stats to measure and compare the power of units in the lore

Neither is worth arguing with.

I do like the idea of everything being a bit better, and more expensive and lead to smaller armies overall.

Just needs to be done holistically. Stats are fine, but I do feel that ap and damage are a bit high on a lot of things. The extra wound marines got doesn't really seem all that exciting when everyone has d2 weapons.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

bibotot wrote:

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

Well, there's kind of a lower limit on how cheap you can make a weak unit before you create new problems. A gretchin might be bad enough to warrant a really, really low cost, but if you're only charging, like, 2 points per gretchin, then the raw number of bodies you can spam might make a skew list viable where you win games by just having more wounds than your opponent has bullets. Which is an issue they could have fixed at the start of 8th when they were fiddling with points costs, but they decided gretchin, cultists, and guardsmen were all worth 5 points. So now their weakest units are basically at the lower limit they can use without creating skew issues, but they're reluctant to make guardsmen too pricey because then things get awkward with the slightly more expensive models.

But yes, the stat creep is annoying. To the point that I looked at the updated lasblaster stats in the new eldar codex and was more annoyed than excited to see that they'd become stronger. The game would probably benefit a lot from rolling back all the statline changes made since the start of 8th and then re-evaluating which (if any) ought to be kept. Just speaking for my eldar armies, you could reasonably take back...

* The extra AP on hekatarii blades and wrack tools. And glimmersteel blades. And just, any melee weapon that got an extra pip of AP, really.
* The Blade Artists rule.
* The 4+ save on kabalites. (It makes sense, but it's not necessary.)
* The extra -2 AP on shuriken weapons on to-wound rolls of 6; the flat AP-1 we have now is perfectly fine.
* Most of the buffs swooping hawk lasblasters have received in recent editions; they can just be S3 or Assault 3, and they don't need the new special rule they have.
* Probably something from howling banshees. I'm glad they're finally good again, but they have every special rule under the sun right now.
* The extra shot from dire avengers. Just make them troops again, and maybe give them an option for the old version of bladestorm where you gave up your shooting on the following turn.
* Maybe the extra Attack on most eldar units. It feels like this awkward attempt to make up for taking away initiative, and it just comes across as doubling down on needing to get the charge off.
* Bring back the negative version of spirit sight on wraith units. It was kind of cool needing our own version of "synapse" to keep our unusually chonky ghost robots in the fight. It was fluffy and made wraiths feel unique.
* The splinter cannon can stop being a transparent and unsatisfying anti-marine gun; just make it a pile of splinter shots again.
* Make windriders 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes again. And then put bikes back in the troop slot. Lowers power creep. Makes it easier to play a distinctive style of army.
* Strands of Fate. It's a pretty good mechanic, but it doesn't add a lot of interesting decisions to the game. Get rid of it alongside most of the other doctrine-equivalents in the game.
* Death Spinners might be a bit too much right now. Although the new to-wound chart may have made Assault 2 too underwhelming for them to avoid feeling redundant.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could comfortable do away with besides. So much of the power creep feels like it was either totally unasked for in the first place or else was a bandaid fix for a more complicated problem.

To be far Shuriken always had rend as far as I remember, and Windriders always been 1 weapon per bike. But the extra attacks, re-rolls, and AP across the board is bad. Some units can get 6-7 attacks with -2ap.... Why does a single unit model outside of a character need 6 attacks, why does a 5 man unit need 30+ attacks and -2 ap? Why does CWE need multiple ways to get exploding hits and re-rolls? Why does marines need army wide re-roll hits and wounds?

Tone all this gak down and then Shuriken cannons, Plasma, and HBs will be the mid-big weapons that are scary but also not god tier or completely gak bc 1 is too strong and the other is too weak.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

bibotot wrote:

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

Well, there's kind of a lower limit on how cheap you can make a weak unit before you create new problems. A gretchin might be bad enough to warrant a really, really low cost, but if you're only charging, like, 2 points per gretchin, then the raw number of bodies you can spam might make a skew list viable where you win games by just having more wounds than your opponent has bullets. Which is an issue they could have fixed at the start of 8th when they were fiddling with points costs, but they decided gretchin, cultists, and guardsmen were all worth 5 points. So now their weakest units are basically at the lower limit they can use without creating skew issues, but they're reluctant to make guardsmen too pricey because then things get awkward with the slightly more expensive models.

But yes, the stat creep is annoying. To the point that I looked at the updated lasblaster stats in the new eldar codex and was more annoyed than excited to see that they'd become stronger. The game would probably benefit a lot from rolling back all the statline changes made since the start of 8th and then re-evaluating which (if any) ought to be kept. Just speaking for my eldar armies, you could reasonably take back...

* The extra AP on hekatarii blades and wrack tools. And glimmersteel blades. And just, any melee weapon that got an extra pip of AP, really.
* The Blade Artists rule.
* The 4+ save on kabalites. (It makes sense, but it's not necessary.)
* The extra -2 AP on shuriken weapons on to-wound rolls of 6; the flat AP-1 we have now is perfectly fine.
* Most of the buffs swooping hawk lasblasters have received in recent editions; they can just be S3 or Assault 3, and they don't need the new special rule they have.
* Probably something from howling banshees. I'm glad they're finally good again, but they have every special rule under the sun right now.
* The extra shot from dire avengers. Just make them troops again, and maybe give them an option for the old version of bladestorm where you gave up your shooting on the following turn.
* Maybe the extra Attack on most eldar units. It feels like this awkward attempt to make up for taking away initiative, and it just comes across as doubling down on needing to get the charge off.
* Bring back the negative version of spirit sight on wraith units. It was kind of cool needing our own version of "synapse" to keep our unusually chonky ghost robots in the fight. It was fluffy and made wraiths feel unique.
* The splinter cannon can stop being a transparent and unsatisfying anti-marine gun; just make it a pile of splinter shots again.
* Make windriders 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes again. And then put bikes back in the troop slot. Lowers power creep. Makes it easier to play a distinctive style of army.
* Strands of Fate. It's a pretty good mechanic, but it doesn't add a lot of interesting decisions to the game. Get rid of it alongside most of the other doctrine-equivalents in the game.
* Death Spinners might be a bit too much right now. Although the new to-wound chart may have made Assault 2 too underwhelming for them to avoid feeling redundant.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could comfortable do away with besides. So much of the power creep feels like it was either totally unasked for in the first place or else was a bandaid fix for a more complicated problem.

You do realise that most of these changes and improvements were made because nobody took these units?

Unless there is a DRASTIC collapse in overall stats (like we're talking Marines going to T3 with 4+ saves) all this would do is ensure all these Aspect Warrior units go back on the shelves again, like they were throughout 8th.

What's extra funny about this is most of the Aspect warrior damage is coming from the Exarch's who are now, for better or worse, the mini-characters they arguably should have been for multiple editions. Try actually charging these supposedly OP and scary Aspect units into the enemy without a properly tooled up Exarch and a full suite of Psychic power buffs up and watch how they still mostly hit like kittens.

Like, it's meant to be an elite hard-hitting army already and these are the ELITE of this elite army. That's why every Aspect Unit outside of Crimson Hunters, Reapers and Spears felt like total ass to use in 8th. These supposedly deadly elite warriors were not threatening or scary in the slightest and were not used. So they make improvements to them and now there's actual choices and variety and Aspect Warriors more properly embody the way they come off in-lore and people call it power creep and want it ALL reversed? People also forget the reason for this general trend for more damage is because end of 8th was becoming characterized by unkillable power armour armies sitting in cover with 1+ or 2+ saves and FNP's and transhuman. It was miserable to play against because it power creeped lots of units completely out of consideration and just forced people into smaller and smaller ranges of units to take.

Absolute insanity. Especially when the army itself is decidedly mid-tier currently, so it's not even on the upper end of the power scale.

If anything orks should be far stronger and tougher than humans and nobs should be larger stronger an d tougher than primaris. It's litteraly the races whole thing the more they fight the more they win the bigger and stronger they are. If anything orks need a major up sizing and massive state boost. And then they can give us the beast an ork the size of a hab block.

 Bosskelot wrote:

Spoiler:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

bibotot wrote:

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

Well, there's kind of a lower limit on how cheap you can make a weak unit before you create new problems. A gretchin might be bad enough to warrant a really, really low cost, but if you're only charging, like, 2 points per gretchin, then the raw number of bodies you can spam might make a skew list viable where you win games by just having more wounds than your opponent has bullets. Which is an issue they could have fixed at the start of 8th when they were fiddling with points costs, but they decided gretchin, cultists, and guardsmen were all worth 5 points. So now their weakest units are basically at the lower limit they can use without creating skew issues, but they're reluctant to make guardsmen too pricey because then things get awkward with the slightly more expensive models.

But yes, the stat creep is annoying. To the point that I looked at the updated lasblaster stats in the new eldar codex and was more annoyed than excited to see that they'd become stronger. The game would probably benefit a lot from rolling back all the statline changes made since the start of 8th and then re-evaluating which (if any) ought to be kept. Just speaking for my eldar armies, you could reasonably take back...

* The extra AP on hekatarii blades and wrack tools. And glimmersteel blades. And just, any melee weapon that got an extra pip of AP, really.
* The Blade Artists rule.
* The 4+ save on kabalites. (It makes sense, but it's not necessary.)
* The extra -2 AP on shuriken weapons on to-wound rolls of 6; the flat AP-1 we have now is perfectly fine.
* Most of the buffs swooping hawk lasblasters have received in recent editions; they can just be S3 or Assault 3, and they don't need the new special rule they have.
* Probably something from howling banshees. I'm glad they're finally good again, but they have every special rule under the sun right now.
* The extra shot from dire avengers. Just make them troops again, and maybe give them an option for the old version of bladestorm where you gave up your shooting on the following turn.
* Maybe the extra Attack on most eldar units. It feels like this awkward attempt to make up for taking away initiative, and it just comes across as doubling down on needing to get the charge off.
* Bring back the negative version of spirit sight on wraith units. It was kind of cool needing our own version of "synapse" to keep our unusually chonky ghost robots in the fight. It was fluffy and made wraiths feel unique.
* The splinter cannon can stop being a transparent and unsatisfying anti-marine gun; just make it a pile of splinter shots again.
* Make windriders 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes again. And then put bikes back in the troop slot. Lowers power creep. Makes it easier to play a distinctive style of army.
* Strands of Fate. It's a pretty good mechanic, but it doesn't add a lot of interesting decisions to the game. Get rid of it alongside most of the other doctrine-equivalents in the game.
* Death Spinners might be a bit too much right now. Although the new to-wound chart may have made Assault 2 too underwhelming for them to avoid feeling redundant.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could comfortable do away with besides. So much of the power creep feels like it was either totally unasked for in the first place or else was a bandaid fix for a more complicated problem.

You do realise that most of these changes and improvements were made because nobody took these units?

People take units more based on their looks and points cost, not their stats. Look at Ork Boyz as an example, do you see more of them with their improved stats? How about Drukhari Khymera? They weren't taken in 8th, got an AP and S, still not taken in 9th.

...Aspect warrior...

Like, it's meant to be an elite hard-hitting army already and these are the ELITE of this elite army.

This is a reason to change stats I can support, whether Dire Avengers should have been changed is debatable, but at least it is a debate worth having. Whether the unit's stats were so awful they weren't worth it is not is not because it misses out the easy solution of just lowering pts as OP pointed out, stats should come from the fluff and fluff should be inspired by the models and models should be cool.

That's why every Aspect Unit outside of Crimson Hunters, Reapers and Spears felt like total ass to use in 8th.

You would have been an oddity if you didn't say Spears felt like ass to use in 8th if they were 60 pts per model, it's all relative to the cost. Vypers would have been amazing in 8th at 20 pts per model.

*Edit removed my last point.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Power creep is the result of constant scale creep and of the incessant need to give new units slightly better guns than old units so you'll buy them. On top of that the 8e Indexes made some math mistakes when doing the base rules (the to-wound table makes it too easy to wound on 3+/5+ and too hard to wound on 2+/6+), which has had the effect of making Strength and Toughness much less relevant and forcing a lot of design space into Wounds, Damage, Save, and AP that it doesn't really have the range to handle.

If you wanted to reset power creep at this point I don't think there's a fast fix other than burning the whole thing down and starting over (or playing Prohammer, oldhammer, HH, something like that).

Don't confuse stat creep and power creep. This post is about stat creep.

Stat creep is indeed happening in 9th, and I see it more as a result of GW getting more confident with the stat system of 8th/9th. That's why we are finally seeing T9 land raiders.
Stat creep isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Power creep means having new releases be stronger than the older ones, and this is an issue which isn't really felt in this edition. 5th/6th/7th and to a lesser extent 8th were plagued by this, with 7th being the most clear example of it.
This is the first edition where I can look at one year back and confidently say that the average power level of competitive builds has gone considerably down compared to then. CK/IK/CMS and now Demons releases have nothing comparable to the power of pre nerf Admech/DE. If it wasn't for the constant update of the older rules, the new factions wouldn't be able to play in the same field.

Amishprn86 wrote:
To be far Shuriken always had rend as far as I remember, and Windriders always been 1 weapon per bike.

Then you don't remember pre-6th edition, my friend. The rending on 6s thing was added in the 6th edition codex. The jetbikes getting 1 heavy weapon per bike was also added in 7th (maybe 6th?) when they got their new kit with extra guns on the sprues. They then proceeded to be the pain in the neck known as "scatbikes" for an edition before being booted out of the troop slot to atone for their sins. So GW power crept the unit, then balanced the power creep in a way that made it harder to put a fluffy, canonical, bike-heavy playstyle on the table.

Bosskelot wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

bibotot wrote:

If the unit is weak, just decrease the point cost. Radically changing the stats of spamable Troops unit will alter the state of balance, causing some combinations/counters to be either broken or crap.

Well, there's kind of a lower limit on how cheap you can make a weak unit before you create new problems. A gretchin might be bad enough to warrant a really, really low cost, but if you're only charging, like, 2 points per gretchin, then the raw number of bodies you can spam might make a skew list viable where you win games by just having more wounds than your opponent has bullets. Which is an issue they could have fixed at the start of 8th when they were fiddling with points costs, but they decided gretchin, cultists, and guardsmen were all worth 5 points. So now their weakest units are basically at the lower limit they can use without creating skew issues, but they're reluctant to make guardsmen too pricey because then things get awkward with the slightly more expensive models.

But yes, the stat creep is annoying. To the point that I looked at the updated lasblaster stats in the new eldar codex and was more annoyed than excited to see that they'd become stronger. The game would probably benefit a lot from rolling back all the statline changes made since the start of 8th and then re-evaluating which (if any) ought to be kept. Just speaking for my eldar armies, you could reasonably take back...

* The extra AP on hekatarii blades and wrack tools. And glimmersteel blades. And just, any melee weapon that got an extra pip of AP, really.
* The Blade Artists rule.
* The 4+ save on kabalites. (It makes sense, but it's not necessary.)
* The extra -2 AP on shuriken weapons on to-wound rolls of 6; the flat AP-1 we have now is perfectly fine.
* Most of the buffs swooping hawk lasblasters have received in recent editions; they can just be S3 or Assault 3, and they don't need the new special rule they have.
* Probably something from howling banshees. I'm glad they're finally good again, but they have every special rule under the sun right now.
* The extra shot from dire avengers. Just make them troops again, and maybe give them an option for the old version of bladestorm where you gave up your shooting on the following turn.
* Maybe the extra Attack on most eldar units. It feels like this awkward attempt to make up for taking away initiative, and it just comes across as doubling down on needing to get the charge off.
* Bring back the negative version of spirit sight on wraith units. It was kind of cool needing our own version of "synapse" to keep our unusually chonky ghost robots in the fight. It was fluffy and made wraiths feel unique.
* The splinter cannon can stop being a transparent and unsatisfying anti-marine gun; just make it a pile of splinter shots again.
* Make windriders 1 heavy weapon per 3 bikes again. And then put bikes back in the troop slot. Lowers power creep. Makes it easier to play a distinctive style of army.
* Strands of Fate. It's a pretty good mechanic, but it doesn't add a lot of interesting decisions to the game. Get rid of it alongside most of the other doctrine-equivalents in the game.
* Death Spinners might be a bit too much right now. Although the new to-wound chart may have made Assault 2 too underwhelming for them to avoid feeling redundant.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other things I could comfortable do away with besides. So much of the power creep feels like it was either totally unasked for in the first place or else was a bandaid fix for a more complicated problem.

You do realise that most of these changes and improvements were made because nobody took these units?
...
People also forget the reason for this general trend for more damage is because end of 8th was becoming characterized by unkillable power armour armies sitting in cover with 1+ or 2+ saves and FNP's and transhuman. It was miserable to play against because it power creeped lots of units completely out of consideration and just forced people into smaller and smaller ranges of units to take.

Sounds like you're saying that the offensive power creep was a response to the defensive power creep. Which, sure. We can tone down the defense along with the offense if need be. But a Swooping Hawk probably shouldn't need two bolters' worth of shots that auto-wound on 6s to-hit to be considered useful. That feels like a bit much, right?

I think that a lot of the problem comes form GW stacking vertical buffs instead of creating horizontal options. That is, they started experimenting with things like chapter tactics, stratagems, and doctrine-equivalents. Generally, those rules are designed to make your unit straight up "better" in some way; usually by making them more killy or more durable. But this means that you end up with things like marine units that are -1 to-hit, can only be wounded on a 4+, ignore the first pip of AP, and prevent you from rerolling wounds all while rocking a 2+ save in cover. And on the flip side, my banshees are now +1 strength, +1 to-wound, +1 to their number of attacks, always strike first, run and charge, all while their exarch is doing as many as 6 mortal wounds as part of the charge (crone helm + nerve-shredding shriek) or else doing double the number of attacks that do double the damage each (whirling blades + piercing strikes). Again, just feels like too many layers of things. (Also, banshees were actually pretty decent against anything but marines (due to the extra wound) after power swords got updated to be +1 Strength. )

There's a lot I like about my space elves this edition, but it really feels like GW opted to just slap bigger numbers on a lot of things rather than finding more elegant solutions.

Absolute insanity. Especially when the army itself is decidedly mid-tier currently, so it's not even on the upper end of the power scale.

We're presumably talking about lowering the lethality game-wide. That would be a major shakeup to everyone. I'm not suggesting just nerfing aeldari in a vacuum. I was trying to point out some of the lethality buffs my armies have received just for the sake of creating/keeping up with power creep.

 Jidmah wrote:
T5 orks are fine for everyone but two kinds of people:
1) people with a hateboner for losing to orks
2) people who use tabletop stats to measure and compare the power of units in the lore

Neither is worth arguing with.

I don't have a problem with T5 Boys, but I wouldn't agree to the second part. Lore and stats are closely related, even if a 1:1 transition is not possible. It is a bit of a "hen or egg?" topic, but creatures in the fluff do what they do because of their stats (and the plot) and creatures on the table have the stats they have because of the fluff. T10 Gretchins for example would feel very awkward, regardless wether or not you could point them perfectly.

I think the stat creep is a legitimate complaint since, when everything is balanced up, you essentially end up back where you started - but with a load more rules to remember and/or dice to roll.

There's also a bit of false marketing. "Orks are T5 wow" ran instantly into "nearly every weapon is getting a point of strength and AP or double the shots/reroll everything, so it works out essentially the same as T4 in older editions (possibly worse)."

GW have finally got 9th into a sort of balanced state due to marrying up offence/defence/points, which was clearly out of whack throughout 2021 making for very lethal games - but this could be exploded at any time.

This is especially acute for Daemons, because it looks like GW are imagining them as a fundamentally different way. So for instance Daemonettes could have remained the same but gone down to 6 points - but instead they are getting a decent bunch of buffs, but going to 12 points. "Its like a wych for half the points" - would be quite broken. "Its a wych but paying an extra point" - "eh, might be fine?"

I actually like the stat changes. It creates a sense of diversity in the game that is much appreciated.

Like another poster I think its the extra vertical buffing that is the problem. Super doctrines, stratagems, and warlord traits and relics that are more the issue.

I would also point out that a T5 on an Ork is surprisingly lore consistent. They are thick skinned and you require a lot of bullets to take them down. This is reflected by having them slightly harder to wound which the T5 gives them, but since they don't have much in the way of armor any armor piercing round will do a proper job when it wounds.

Ultimately the problem of any lore discussion in relation to stats is that each and every viewpoint is highly interpretive and subjective. I think T5 is lore appropriate and could argue about it for days, whereas others think it is not lore appropriate and can argue for days, therefore creating an impasse that is neither useful nor productive.

I'm okay with stats changing. What I'm not okay with is that the changes are seemingly randomish and done in a vacuum, but that seems to be GWs main way of designing the game. They have so many ways to balance units but rather than using the systems they have (stats, keywords, special rules) they just add more rules or adjust points.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I'm okay with stats changing. What I'm not okay with is that the changes are seemingly randomish and done in a vacuum, but that seems to be GWs main way of designing the game. They have so many ways to balance units but rather than using the systems they have (stats, keywords, special rules) they just add more rules or adjust points.

I could really use an example to help understand your post.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
T5 orks are fine for everyone but two kinds of people:
1) people with a hateboner for losing to orks
2) people who use tabletop stats to measure and compare the power of units in the lore

Neither is worth arguing with.

I don't have a problem with T5 Boys, but I wouldn't agree to the second part. Lore and stats are closely related, even if a 1:1 transition is not possible. It is a bit of a "hen or egg?" topic, but creatures in the fluff do what they do because of their stats (and the plot) and creatures on the table have the stats they have because of the fluff. T10 Gretchins for example would feel very awkward, regardless wether or not you could point them perfectly.

I think everything about that is wrong, even though it's just slightly so.

Lore and stats are absolutely not closely related - first of all lore is wildly inconsistent and second the game is not granular enough to properly portrait it anyways. Third, the game stats are used to represent armies, not units or models. Any single number on a statline is roughly related to lore, if at all. T10 with six wounds might an adequate way to portrait a mob of 30 gretchin, and it absolutely doesn't matter whether that value is higher or lower than that of different unit or model, especially if it's from a different army.

There also is no hen or egg issue here at all, as that would imply a circle. An army needs to play as you would expect it to play from how their members are portrayed in the fluff. Tabletop mechanics do not influence the lore at all, which is frequently criticized by many people as immersion breaking. Orks haven't gotten more durable or less numerous in fluff because of the toughness change, death guard don't die easier because of the DR nerf, railguns still have the same flavor as they had before they got cranked to 11 and five marines are still sufficient to stop a xenos invasion force.

Last, but not least, "measure and compare" implies exactly what you said is impossible - applying stats 1:1 to the lore, which is the very thing the OP is doing.

Boosykes wrote:
If anything orks should be far stronger and tougher than humans and nobs should be larger stronger an d tougher than primaris. It's litteraly the races whole thing the more they fight the more they win the bigger and stronger they are. If anything orks need a major up sizing and massive state boost. And then they can give us the beast an ork the size of a hab block.

This is fluff and model scale creep. For the first 2 or 3 editions an ork boy was no bigger or better than a guardsman in fluff or stats really. They were 1 pip tougher but had 1 pip less jnitiative...that was it. And the models were about the same size as a guardsman. They were not supposed to be even close to as elite as a marine.

Its still how i see them. The nobz are there to rep the big bad orkz.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
T5 orks are fine for everyone but two kinds of people:
1) people with a hateboner for losing to orks
2) people who use tabletop stats to measure and compare the power of units in the lore

Neither is worth arguing with.

I don't have a problem with T5 Boys, but I wouldn't agree to the second part. Lore and stats are closely related, even if a 1:1 transition is not possible. It is a bit of a "hen or egg?" topic, but creatures in the fluff do what they do because of their stats (and the plot) and creatures on the table have the stats they have because of the fluff. T10 Gretchins for example would feel very awkward, regardless wether or not you could point them perfectly.

T5 Orks make it so a Lasgun is just as equal at wounding an Ork as a Bolter, which is simply not right and bass-ackwards. That is more of a fault of the barebones wounding chart than anything, but it is still dumb as feth.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
I'm okay with stats changing. What I'm not okay with is that the changes are seemingly randomish and done in a vacuum, but that seems to be GWs main way of designing the game. They have so many ways to balance units but rather than using the systems they have (stats, keywords, special rules) they just add more rules or adjust points.

I could really use an example to help understand your post.

Example of what?

Lore and stats are absolutely not closely related - first of all lore is wildly inconsistent and second the game is not granular enough to properly portrait it anyways. Third, the game stats are used to represent armies, not units or models. Any single number on a statline is roughly related to lore, if at all. T10 with six wounds might an adequate way to portrait a mob of 30 gretchin, and it absolutely doesn't matter whether that value is higher or lower than that of different unit or model, especially if it's from a different army.

It would be absolutely terrible because Gretchin should be weak to lasguns and mortars, not multi-lasers and lascannons. You don't need that much granularity, is the thing a lot tougher than a human then it gets T4+, is it a lot easier to kill then it gets T2. You can represent half points of toughness through other rules, like theoretically if Gretchin belong at T2,5 then you can give them T2 and a durability buff of some kind via the Runtherd, a Stratagem or an ability that applies against certain weapons or make them T3 with certain durability drawbacks like being more easily hit by melee or Blast weapons.

 Grimtuff wrote:
T5 Orks make it so a Lasgun is just as equal at wounding an Ork as a Bolter, which is simply not right and bass-ackwards. That is more of a fault of the barebones wounding chart than anything, but it is still dumb as feth.

That is an arbitrary nitpick, the specific breakpoints generally don't matter and a wounding chart should be barebones, there is no reason for it not to be. The important thing is that weapons which are meant to be good against certain unit types are good against them and units that are meant to be durable against certain weapon types are durable against those weapon types.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
I'm okay with stats changing. What I'm not okay with is that the changes are seemingly randomish and done in a vacuum, but that seems to be GWs main way of designing the game. They have so many ways to balance units but rather than using the systems they have (stats, keywords, special rules) they just add more rules or adjust points.

I could really use an example to help understand your post.

Example of what?

A randomish change done in a vacuum and a better stat, keyword or special rule that should have been used to balance the unit.

I think stuff like 2ed wound on marines, or even the whole primaris marines being a separate thing could be a good example of GW doing changes for reasons other then making the game play better.

But it goes in cycles. Marines are too weak to the existing weapons, so they have to be buffed, because the stat spread in w40k is small a change of "1" on many things can give huge end results. So then GW buffs other factions, not all and not all to the same degree to match the buffed marine stats. But not the one from games that community did, by the time those were done GW was finished with a lot of the non marine testing. They adjust to what ever studio and playtest games gave them as a result. The buffs can be too weak or too strong. Which ends with some books getting luke warm welcome, while others being game changers. After GW enters the 1+ of an edition, they start basing their updates and books on the current edition meta game. But of course it is a meta game 6-9 months in the past, so again changes can be too big or too small. With changes to faction GW desing team likes, they can make very powerful book. With those they don't care much about the books can be anything from bland and weak to someone puting down a rules, but not testing much and suddenly the army is wrecking stuff with some oddball build.

This seems to be an on going thing in w40k since for ever. And it won't change considering how GW writes their rules.

That is an arbitrary nitpick, the specific breakpoints generally don't matter and a wounding chart should be barebones, there is no reason for it not to be. The important thing is that weapons which are meant to be good against certain unit types are good against them and units that are meant to be durable against certain weapon types are durable against those weapon types.

There is a small problem with that, when you create a spamable and/or multi shot anti marine weapon it often ends ups good vs everything, light and medium vehicles, non marines, non marine elites etc and this is a good on top of being good vs majority of the factions being played. And with a d6 being used to decide a to wound roll, any change of 1 up or down can make a huge impact on how valid a weapon is.

There are stat lines that are good against SM but not so good against other things. Like S8 AP-4 D2 is great against SM, but it is way overkill for Guardsmen. S4 AP-3 is great against SM and fine against Guardsmen but totally fails against T8. My opinion is that Space Marines should benefit from not being the targets of any Secondary Objectives to make up for the fact that they are countered by more or less every weapon.

I think me and Jidmah can agree that weapon profiles can be abstract and Heavy 1 does not necessarily mean fewer shots fired than RF 1 every 10 seconds in the 40k universe, it might just be an abstraction and if the math checks out then it is fine. The problem with Jidmah's Gretchin example is that the math does not check out, it would create unintuitive incentives, like wasting Blasts against a unit that looks like it should be weak to them and should probably (I don't know the lore on Gretchin) be effective against in the lore.

T5 vs T6 really just says something about what the unit is weak to, a T4 monster could work, it would be super resilient to poison and relatively resilient to other things, but that might be super appropriate lore-wise.

Boosykes wrote:
If anything orks should be far stronger and tougher than humans and nobs should be larger stronger an d tougher than primaris. It's litteraly the races whole thing the more they fight the more they win the bigger and stronger they are. If anything orks need a major up sizing and massive state boost. And then they can give us the beast an ork the size of a hab block.

Yep I want Boyz to be T5 and 3W but cheap enough so I can organise a Green Tide, lets say 8 points per model.

 vict0988 wrote:

A randomish change done in a vacuum and a better stat, keyword or special rule that should have been used to balance the unit.

Nah. Don't have the energy for thinking up something off the top of my head you can nitpick to death.