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 Blackie wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.

You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?

Because they unintentionally over nerfed those ad mech maybe? I talked about the company's strategy and I believe in what I said. But I'm also aware that balancing things in order to achieve the desired goals can be extremely difficult for something as wide as 40k and we all know that GW don't really play test a lot.

I can clearly see a pattern in GW's "fixes", but I'm also aware that a lot of the things they do end up with unexpected (for them) results. You should be able to see units that are intentionally pushed to increase sales like ork squigbuggies (trash before the new codex, OP after the release of the book) o unintentional cheesy combos such as liq guns spam in early 9th for DT drukhari. Other things are harder to define.

They're harder to define, because there is no strategy. You're just cherry picking the winners and showing those as proof.

If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?

Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?

Your whole perception of what "GW is trying to sell" is predicated on what a handful of top players decided to take to tournaments and did well with and then everyone hitched their thoughts to that horse.

What did Siegler's Thicc City cost before the dataslate? 2025. Twenty five points - or 1.25% - is your tipping point for GW pushing models.

This entire time he could have run that exact list with just one fewer unit of wracks. The rules didn't change. This list was available the entire time.

What this forum and 40K players in general fail to recognize time and time again is how complicated the game is and that it isn't solved simply because certain lists played by good players float to the top. This forum trashed on Cronos when the book came out and they take a 5 point INCREASE and now they're great? The Talos went down 10 and that isn't the favored model -- and they share a god damn dual kit.

GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


You're using a form of survivorship bias and ignoring all evidence to the contrary to make your point and then post-hoc rationalizing changes as if things didn't need changes. The stupid thing GW did was alter points down for DE for unused units before they allowed nerfs in the remaining book to settle in.

You'll sit here and claim they wanted to see grots and wracks meanwhile the play percentage for Admech completely fell off a cliff. How does it make sense for them to disincentivize Admech entirely?

Because they unintentionally over nerfed those ad mech maybe? I talked about the company's strategy and I believe in what I said. But I'm also aware that balancing things in order to achieve the desired goals can be extremely difficult for something as wide as 40k and we all know that GW don't really play test a lot.

I can clearly see a pattern in GW's "fixes", but I'm also aware that a lot of the things they do end up with unexpected (for them) results. You should be able to see units that are intentionally pushed to increase sales like ork squigbuggies (trash before the new codex, OP after the release of the book) o unintentional cheesy combos such as liq guns spam in early 9th for DT drukhari. Other things are harder to define.

They're harder to define, because there is no strategy. You're just cherry picking the winners and showing those as proof.

If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?

Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?

Your whole perception of what "GW is trying to sell" is predicated on what a handful of top players decided to take to tournaments and did well with and then everyone hitched their thoughts to that horse.

What did Siegler's Thicc City cost before the dataslate? 2025. Twenty five points - or 1.25% - is your tipping point for GW pushing models.

This entire time he could have run that exact list with just one fewer unit of wracks. The rules didn't change. This list was available the entire time.

What this forum and 40K players in general fail to recognize time and time again is how complicated the game is and that it isn't solved simply because certain lists played by good players float to the top. This forum trashed on Cronos when the book came out and they take a 5 point INCREASE and now they're great? The Talos went down 10 and that isn't the favored model -- and they share a god damn dual kit.

GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?

Exalted, great points all around. Never forget Hanlon's razor, people. I'm not trying to bash GW, just saying there really is no evidence for malice on their part here.

After reading all the Eldar rumors i could find on reddit and various forums... I think they will be competitive with most the space marine books in power level but Admech will throttle them still. Drukari will still be the better elves, it seems liek a decent power increase though to make them catch up to par and maybe into the upper third of books

To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.

Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".

Spoletta wrote:
That's just one side of the coin.
Lethality has indeed increased, but durability did too.
We have had a wide spread of -1 hit, -1 damage, can't reroll, fail on 3-, increase in armor values...
Invul saves on 3+ and 4+ have been cut for the most part, but instead the ones on 5+ have increased.
Even with all the buffs to Melta for example, the amount of them required to take down a Dreadnaught hasn't really changed compared to 5th.
Proof of that is that the current competitive builds are durability based. If the game had followed a pure lethality increase without equivalent increases to durability, current lists would all firepower and mobility (i.e. pre-dataslate meta).

Lethality vs Durability: Most factions have gotten massive lethality increases. Durability wise...not so much. Yes there is widespread -1 to hit and -1dmg now not to mention the transhuman you allude to, but in reality they aren't as widespread.

Case and point, Melta literally gained 2dmg across the board, GW created a unit that not only uses ONLY melta weapons but then created a SUPER melta weapon that increased its dmg by 4! AND then they allowed it to fire twice. -1dmg isn't going to do a whole lot in the face of D6+4dmg

I always do this, but going back to Orkz, we got Ramshackle as our "durability" boost, and as I mentioned already, I can literally count on one hand how many times Ramshackle has been used in my army. My opponents are either packing S8+ or they just save their multi-dmg low S weapons for other targets. Snakebites got a version of Transhuman and it was hilarious with how much people complained about it. S7 and below can't wound snakebites except on a 4+. Sounds great until you realize all orkz are already T5 so it only impacted S6 and S7 weapons, not exactly a big portion of the game right now. What about Durability loss? Well for starters, the KFF went from a 5++ to a 6++, they also nerfed the KFF itself by drastically raising its price (50%). They also removed morale rules for the army so we lose significantly more to attrition and morale then ever before. I had forgotten, they also stripped the 6+ FNP from snakebites and made the Painboy even more expensive not to mention limiting who can heal what.

I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.

All told thats 3 Melta shots = 38-39% chance to destroy a dread. To make it almost guaranteed would take 2.5x that so you are talking about 7.5 melta shots.

In 9th edition, 9 Melta shots is 6 hits, against a T7 Dread thats 4 wounds, no armor save thanks to -4AP and thats 4xD6-1 for 10dmg. that's 1 guaranteed dead dreadnought, and you've actually over killed it by 25% where as the OLD 5th edition dread is not guaranteed dead with 7.5 melta shots.

And of course, all of that isn't counting the fact that now at half range a Multi-Melta is D6+2 nor the fact that a MM is now 2 shots instead of 1, and of course that isn't factoring in the special rules/weapons like the D6+4 melta or the shoot twice marines.

Spoletta wrote:
Ork buggy lists were considered OP due to Ramshackle coupled with the firepower of the freebooterz.
Sure, all those previous lists also pack quite a punch, but all of them clearly invest in durability.

This isn't strictly true. Ramshackle is one of the most heavily over-rated abilities in the game right now. I can literally count on 1 hand the number of times Ramshackle has mattered in all my games so far in 9th. No, Ork Buggies were COMPETITIVE not OP because when combined with freeboota they could reliably hit things.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Well first, these are rumors, so ignore them.
Second, CWE are in a terrible spot, most of their units are literally unplayable if you want to win any games, so while it might look strong its more just getting equal to Marines. Remember a Falcon is suppose to be a large Heavy Anti-tank transport, it is their Razorback with a better Twin Las Cannons (Admech versions, GASP that is what Admech has....), so why wouldn't it be str 9 high D? Also the Dark lance and Bright lance has always been about the same, yes it is going to get the DL treatment as well.

Also Banshee's... WHO THE feth CARES THEY ARE 150% more damage, they deal zero damage now and are one of the worst units in CWE.

Fusion Guns are melta, why would they not get the Melta treatment? All imperium and some xenos already got the updated rules, why would you deny it to CWE and not everyone else?

This is not really power creep, this is equalizing the stats to eldar. Now.... could there also be power creep? yes there can be, but so far I don't see it, if anything i still think they are a bit weaker.

As I already mentioned, the leaks so far in 9th have been almost 100% accurate, so unless you have some evidence which suggests this new batch is somehow inaccurate I am more inclined to believe they are true rather then the other way around.

Banshees atm are under powered but not by an appreciable amount, they are close to being competitive and a dmg increase puts them over the edge. An Ork is 9ppm right now, is significantly slower, worse BS, better S and T, same Wounds, same attacks, much worse leadership and much worse save. An Ork comes equipped with the equivalent of a chainsword and a pistol which is generally not even used in game because its so pathetic especially when you consider BS5+.

So, what does a banshee bring thats better? As mentioned 3' faster, it has inbuilt advance and charge, You add 3' to your charge rolls if you advance (Why wouldn't you?) You can't overwatch them, oh and remember that advance? Yeah that doesn't count, you can still shoot all your weapons at normal BS. Weapon wise, it gets a power sword that gives it +1 strength and -3AP and their pistols are just bolt pistols EXCEPT a wound roll of 6 gives you AP-3

durability vs Small arms.
12 bolter HITS against an Ork works out to 3.3dmg
12 Bolter HITS against Banshees works out to 4dmg So banshees are slightly less durable then T5 Ork boyz. Unless you include leadership in which case Banshees win hands down.

Dmg vs Marines
90pts of Ork boyz is 10 boyz, 30 attacks, 20 hits, 10 wounds and 5dmg
90pts of Banshees is 6 Banshees, 12 attacks, 8 hits, 4 wounds and 3.3dmg So banshees are slightly less deadly to Marines then Ork Boyz. Ready though?

New Banshees (pts unknown yet) works out to 18 attacks, 12 hits, 6 wounds and 10dmg on the charge vs Marines. Or another way to put that...twice as deadly as Ork boyz.

as far as melta, I already mentioned it but, Orkz never got the D3+3 treatment or D6+2, so why didn't we when everyone else got it?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

You still see Wazboms poking out, because they get more "super lascannon" shots ( on average ) than nearly 4 las chickens and hit on the same BS most of the time. Pre-nerf you didn't see a lot of las chickens. The Admech flyers were scary, but the density of lascannons was way lower. It was the other supporting rules on top of maneuverability.

Wazbom with Tellyporta Mega Blastas is 190pts The TMB averaged 7 shots and 3.5 hits a turn at S9 -2AP D3+3dmg. If you were playing Freeboota and proc'd its special rule it went to 4.6 hits a turn. Pre-nerf the Chickens were 65pts I believe, you could take 3 for the about the same price, and if you used the units free doctrina rule it worked out to 6 shots and 5 hits (BS2 with doctrina). So Wazbom did almost the same if it got an army wide buff, the chickenwalkers did more with their own internal buffs and nothing else. And while the Wazbom has ramshackle and -1 to hit, the chickenwalkers had an invuln save, more wounds, better armor save and could take cover. So nope, Chickenwalkers were better hands down.

 Nevelon wrote:
Codex creep is bad, but the Eldar codex is a bit dated and could use a boost.

I’m taking those rumors/leaks with a LOT of salt. I’ll wait to get bent out of shape about them being busted until we get something more concrete.

So far, the leaks for 9th have been the most accurate ever. I had basically the entirety of the ork kultures leaked weeks before the codex came out. Yes skepticism is warranted, but not nearly as much as it used to be. Not to mention most of the buffs fall in line with what we have already seen so far in 9th.

 Gert wrote:
I don't see it as a problem for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don't actually find this to be an issue in my games. We regularly get to turn 4 with about 40-50% of our armies left (my opponent usually moreso due to Necron shenanigans) and this is the first edition where conceding games early has been a genuine rarity. There were times in 5-7th (not so much 8th because Covid kind of screwed my play time) where I'd play for an hour then just pack up because I'd lost the game by turn 2, sometimes even turn 1. Thus far with 9th playing even with my CSM I've still managed 4 turn games on average with only losses but nothing like 70-10 or having lost half my army in the first turn.
Secondly, I try to get in at least one game a week but since everyone I game with is either working or studying, we don't have loads of time to go somewhere and play. Having a game take 2 hours rather than 4 but keeping the same points/power and maintaining the same feeling of 4 hours of gaming is a lot better for us.
I play 40k, 30k and AoS, and all these games take about roughly the same army size and all end at roughly the same time, with similar losses and often decided in the last few turns.
I dunno maybe it's just an issue for mathhammer and competitive gaming.

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

 Gert wrote:

And I've had 20 games where nothing like that has happened ever. I don't see us agreeing at all so let's just leave it here.

I play competitively, I've won a bunch of FLGS Tournaments in 9th, including a recent one which fell just shy of being a Grand Tournament by ITC standards (26 people instead of 28). I've played more games then I care to remember and I would wager that since the Ork codex came out I have won 70-80% of my games by turn 3 at the absolute latest.

My last tournament I won all 5 games by turn 2, 1 of those games my opponent conceded turn 1 after my alphork strike list took out basically 90% of his deployed forces, leaving him with a single character, and an infantry squad both of which were tied up in CC and would likely die on his turn. Yes he had 800pts in reserve, but they would have been functionally useless at that point since any hope of waiting to take objectives was gone.

Your friendly little group of players anecdotally playing with one another is not a good metric to judge the aforementioned statement by. The lethality in 9th has gone through the roof.

^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.

Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.

(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.

Tyel wrote:
To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.

Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".

You have the units switched a little -- Talos was the winner under Dark Tech. Cronos was never really considered then ( no liquifiers and no autohit weapons ). People were kind of scoffing at Cronos resurrecting cheapo troops and apparently we only just discovered that a Cronos can heal itself ( being slightly facetious ) and that coupled with 6++/5+++/-1D makes for very durable units when you can take 3 of them.

The dumb thing GW did was drop points on Talos and Ravagers before they let the other changes marinate, but some of the outrage might be too premature. This is this past weekend's top 5 performance:

So Semper you say the damage out put of ork boyz IS extremely low.... And present banshee do nearly half the damage agaisnt their preferred target (heavy infantry)...
And you say they are nearly competitive?

Banshee were used in 8th for how cheap , fast and able to deny overwatch. But overwatch in 9th isnt really relevant

 Insectum7 wrote:
^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.

Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.

(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.

Most common opponent in 40k is Marines of one flavor or another. CSM are getting 2 wounds, All loyalist Marines have 2 wounds, Greyknights and custodes same thing. Not to mention the -3AP is incredibly good. But the other big buff Banshees are getting is going to 3 attacks base. Thats a 50% increase in dmg on its own. They went from 12 attacks to 18, even without the D2 thats 12 hits, 6 wounds and 5dmg which is what orkz are getting right now. I think Orkz need to be bumped up a bit but these buffs for Banshees are going to make them better then boyz in my opinion, especially the movement, they are effective 8+D6 movement since they suffer zero penalties for advancing.

 Galas wrote:
So Semper you say the damage out put of ork boyz IS extremely low.... And present banshee do nearly half the damage agaisnt their preferred target (heavy infantry)...
And you say they are nearly competitive?

Banshee were used in 8th for how cheap , fast and able to deny overwatch. But overwatch in 9th isnt really relevant

I'm saying in the context of 8th edition they were ok, not great but almost competitive. In 9th with the aforementioned buffs they will be competitive. And Overwatch is relevant in 9th, just depends on matchups, some factions right now give 5+ to hit on overwatch, but most importantly, Tau are getting their codex and they are the de-facto Overwatch faction.

Also, in the context of 9th they need a hefty increase in dmg to matter, and if this rumor turns out to be true they are getting a 50% increase in dmg AND on the charge they are getting a 150% increase in dmg, that is pretty damn good. And we still don't know what else there might be in the codex.

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

Those people dont come back. When the shop moved, the club organizers and I were concerned that going down from 9 40k tables to 7 would be a huge crimp in our ability to gather. Doesnt matter now, only 2-3 tables get used per week. It sucks to watch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.

Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.

(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.

I want to make an amendment to my initial post - Banshees may actually be getting less effective boosts than D2 on the charge.

The rumors are comign from playtest packets, which are different for different groups of people. One group is reporting a playtest version of banshees with 2d on the charge, the other is reporting +1 to wound on the charge, which would be a far lesser buff, BUT the effect of banshee masks is now "Fight Last" which would be a massive boon to their utility.

Still more than 1.5x the damage - the standard in 9e - but not 3x.

I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.

Higher then that. A walker dread basically counts immobilized as dead, destroyed a weapon often tends to be their main weapon so their often useless anyways, and being stunned every turn often counted easily enough towards ensuring that it was useless anyways.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^I think most of your post is right, but the bit about the Banshees is a bit misplaced, I think. The reason Banshees do double the damage against Marines is because they have D2 on the charge.

Which is not to say that D2 isn't a nice buff (because it totally is) but that against most other infantry the Banshees do much closer to what the Orks do. Traditionally Banshees were a unit that was specifically good against Elite units, and the D2 makes them so. Plus they lose it after the first fight phase.

(and it's all still rumor) AND Arguably Orks should still be better at fighting Marines than they are.

Most common opponent in 40k is Marines of one flavor or another. CSM are getting 2 wounds, All loyalist Marines have 2 wounds, Greyknights and custodes same thing. Not to mention the -3AP is incredibly good. But the other big buff Banshees are getting is going to 3 attacks base. Thats a 50% increase in dmg on its own. They went from 12 attacks to 18, even without the D2 thats 12 hits, 6 wounds and 5dmg which is what orkz are getting right now. I think Orkz need to be bumped up a bit but these buffs for Banshees are going to make them better then boyz in my opinion, especially the movement, they are effective 8+D6 movement since they suffer zero penalties for advancing.

Well, in my view Banshees have been doing sub-par damage for multiple editions now. Imo they're starting from way behind.

@Scotsman: It will be pretty disappointing if Banshees receive less buffing than initially thought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_scotsman wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

Those people dont come back. When the shop moved, the club organizers and I were concerned that going down from 9 40k tables to 7 would be a huge crimp in our ability to gather. Doesnt matter now, only 2-3 tables get used per week. It sucks to watch.

Brutal. Just brutal. Not good for the game.

 the_scotsman wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.

 the_scotsman wrote:
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....

2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.

You don't know this and are just insinuating it. It could have been a situation where it was the only available targets (rokkitz are 24' range) and trust me, Shoota boyz are the most sub-optimal of sub-optimal. Think about how bad boyz are right now, Shoota boyz make choppa boyz look like gods of war by comparison. 30 shoota boyz (270pts) ALL in dakka range (9 inches or less) get 90 shots, 30 hits, 15 wounds and a grand whopping total of 5dmg vs Marines, or 2.5 dead Marines. So a predominately shooting unit under optimal conditions at 270pts killed 50pts of Marines. Tell me that sounds competitive and I'll gladly call you a fething liar

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....

2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.

1) I can actually answer this one because I'm fairly active in my FLGS and was the same in a few others during my long travels around the country. Because usually the have set aside 4-5 hours to play a nice long game of 40k. Calling it quits at the 2-2.5 hour mark means that by the time they've secured another game, even against the same opponent, they don't have enough time left to play another game to completion, and leaving a game at turn 2-3 undecided is annoying to say the least. I mean hell, the FLGS 3 round tournaments we host here for ITC start at 10AM (About 1 hour of setup) and go to 7PM (Awards) usually. 2 hour rounds, 15 minute break in between with a 30 minute lunch break after the first game.

2) I have yet to see an Ork player EVER steam roll a newbie on purpose. I mean...its literally a meme/stereotype ork players have. In friendly environments and hell, even tournament play we tend to win the Sportsmanship award and the "Fun to play against" awards. Sometimes the dice roll hot and you can't stop a blowout. I remember where i purposefully fired all my lootas in 8th into a Landraider my opponent brought because it was the worst target available to them and I didn't want to ruin this kid's (about 16-18) day, especially since it was his first game ever. Whoops dice gods rolled hot and 15 lootas put out 45 shots and got 30 hits somehow which caused the landraider to explode instantly. No strats used, no external buffs, no Freeboota kulture nothing. Luckily that player stuck around and is really good now, sadly he also has a mental block against Lootas and thinks they are the most broken unit in the game

Shoota Boyz are obviously dreadful - although the numbers look a bit better if you factor in a successful charge and assault phase. But yeah. The softest Ork list I can imagine is probably 180ish Shoota Boyz and some HQs.

Really I think part of the issue of balancing the game - which is a good thing - is that its harder to write an explicitly softer list with the 9th edition codexes. I mean there's a step up to "winning a GT meta list" - but for playing someone relatively new, what would you take with various factions?

Barring idk, massed Foot Wyches I don't think I could make a "soft" DE list. Obviously a lot easier with Tau at the moment - but I suspect that will be changed very soon. Similar with CWE.

Necrons maybe.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

As much as I hate the so-called "morale" rules in 9th, the first thing I'd change is the stupid threshold for what constitutes a horde and what doesn't. 11+, and nothing below that. 6-10 is so stupid. Frustrating beyond all belief.

 the_scotsman wrote:
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

There's only one Battle Report YT channel I watch where I actually watch the Battle Reports - Priority Orders Discarded by fellow Dakkanaut Twilight Pathways - and his most recent report is Orks v Necrons. Neither list is optimised for the competitive scene in real any way, and whilst there are certainly some good units on both sides, these are far from tournament lists.

Game doesn't get to turn 3.

And then I see GW increasing the lethality of Tau suit weapons, including another thing that feths units of 6+ models over again.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Those people dont come back.

I'm starting to wonder if any of us should...

 Daedalus81 wrote:


If they were pushing liquifiers then why did they nerf them within a month? If people rushed out and bought a ton of grots/wracks for the liquifiers then why would GW push grots and wracks again when people should likely have lots of them? Why is GW's strategy revolving around a singular trait for covens?

No, I've said that the whole liq thing was clearly a mistake, there wasn't the intent to push it and in fact it was corrected as soon as possible. Some cheese is intended, some happens by accident. Wracks didn't need it to be pushed, in fact we still see lots of wracks.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Were grots worthwhile before at 40 points?
Cronos went up 5 points, but they are getting used more.
Ravagers went down 10, but are they getting used as much as Cronos?

They all are used much than before. +5 points on a 70ppm model is completely irrelevant.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


GW is pushing sales on a dual kit when one model went up in points and the other went down. Come on. And that kit is sold out in the US so...great preparation from GW to maximize sales, right?

Exactly. They sold every kit they had in stock. Job's done Now people can concentrate on Christmas boxes or whatever the new releases are.

They're both excellent units. One went down because it was considered too expensive, the cheaper one in fact became a bit more expensive. Originally on the codex there was a 40ppm gap between the two units, which was too wide. Now, how much is the gap between cronos and talos in terms of points?

Overall, don't you think that the ultimate goal of GW is to sold more stuff? They can't sold what people already has. So they enhance units that they think most of the players don't own in large numbers, then nerf those in order to convince (or sometimes force, see ork players) those guys to buy something else. Sometimes the pattern is extremely clear, sometime it isn't. But the ultimate goal isn't to make a better or more balanced game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
To be annoying - I agree with the principles behind Daedalus's argument - but would critique the point about the Cronos. People said it looked okay on the book first being leaked - and it promptly went to incredible in about 48 hours when people put 2 and 2 together with DT. We then had about a week of debate on whether mass DT was a meme build that couldn't work (because it hadn't worked previously) - but results rather settled the matter. DT would subsequently be nerfed in a way that didn't impact its interaction with Cronos.

Equally however I'd exaggerate the points made about the Talos. There was a period when the Talos was seen (dubiously imo, but still) as one of the weaker DE units. Then, as the meta shifted over the six months, it started creeping into lists that were performing very well. And then it got a 10 point reduction presumably because the community's perception when this stuff was first being drafted was negative. As a result they are great now. But they were probably *quite good* before. Its just other stuff was even better - but as you say, that's partly a meta function of "what are the top players playing".

I think you nailed it. Most of the drukhari units that weren't used much at events weren't bad, simply other things that compete with them were massively OP. Units like ravagers or cronos were (very) good since day one, regardless of what lists top players were fielding. Court of the archon was considered useless, now we see it pretty often and nothing significantly has changed in the meantime. Not for them, not for pretty much the whole drukhari roster.

Suffering from internal competition doesn't mean sucking, a lot of people can't (or are not willing to) spam the most powerful unit of the moment and most of the tournament lists aren't exactly what the average player actually sees in his/her own meta.

Tyel wrote:
Shoota Boyz are obviously dreadful - although the numbers look a bit better if you factor in a successful charge and assault phase. But yeah. The softest Ork list I can imagine is probably 180ish Shoota Boyz and some HQs.

Really I think part of the issue of balancing the game - which is a good thing - is that its harder to write an explicitly softer list with the 9th edition codexes. I mean there's a step up to "winning a GT meta list" - but for playing someone relatively new, what would you take with various factions?

Barring idk, massed Foot Wyches I don't think I could make a "soft" DE list. Obviously a lot easier with Tau at the moment - but I suspect that will be changed very soon. Similar with CWE.

Necrons maybe.

honestly, 180 shoota boys in msu with warboss/ Mekboss and dok support might very well turn from meme to surprisingly annoying for some lists to deal with.

I'd even skip freebota for bad moons.

(180 boys are probably bit much but 150 might work better.)

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.

 the_scotsman wrote:
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....

2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.

40k is the only game I've ever seen where people think "just play worse" is a legitimate defence in favor of the game.

Also
1) I doubt they have time, since setting up the game alone takes about half an hour usually and the first turns are also about an hour for each player.

2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.

Playing worse and bringing sub-optimal lists are completely different things though. The former in my opinion is unacceptable, the newbie won't learn anything or she/he'll learn how to play way too slowly. People have to learn from their mistakes in order to master the game, next time that guy won't field large squads of elites oriented models anymore. Someone could have told the newbie before but this way the newbie understands why. It took me like 20ish games back in 3rd, as a kid, in order to fully understand how my army had to be played, and I lost the vast majority of those games. Now with internet things are indeed much faster but still a few games just to experience the weaknesses and the strenghts of the armies are necessary.

The latter sometimes is just a consequence of real life armies, most people can't or don't want to chase the flavour of the month, even if they are into the hobby since decades. Units that are never taken at GT could easily be pretty common in casual games. And sometimes there's nothing someone can do to improve their lists outside buying new stuff which might not be an option.

The Scotsman mentioned boomdakkas or dreads, tankbustas and wagons but none of those units are bad, let alone trash. They're all sub-optinal in the sense that there are better options available in the codex for their role but they're still quite good units, not really that far from the units that outperform them. And optimizing a list (by choosing the best equipments and sizes for the units, synergies between the units, etc...) that involves a few or even a good number of those units might still provide a pretty good list overall. If he had played a non optimized list with those units he wouldn't have crushed the opponent. Try large ork squads for example, sub-optimal gear and/or units with no synergies. A veteran player using an optimized list, not even that far from competitive ones, should definitely stomp a newbie with little effort. There's no edition of 40k in which that wasn't true.

So toning up and down the lists, for those who can, in order to play a more balanced and fun game sounds reasonable. And good players should be able to get great results even with sub-optimal lists against newbies.

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

You play friendly games with likely sub-optimal lists, yes if I took the crap units from my codex I could likely make my games last until turn 4-5 with a lot of units left over, if my opponent did the same thing.

The reason this is such a bugbear for me is I DO this, CONSTANTLY, and it doesn't matter.

My last game I didnt know what my opponent was bringing so I purposefully built a sub-optimal ork list. I brought 50% melee units, 50% ranged units, used a lesser-utilized kultur (evil sunz) and brought some of what are considered the worse units in the book - shoota boyz, gunwagon, tankbustas in a battlewagon, deff dreads with 2x rokkit launchas, boomdakka snazzwagons...it did not matter, at all. Because of the newbie "Mistake" of my opponent bringing units from his army in 10-man squads, my rokkits which now have the blast rule dropped 3 shots each on basically all his elite infantry squads, and he was near-tabled in a 2-hour, 2.5 turn bloodbath.

And you of course no doubt HAD to take advantage of that newbie mistake & dump all of your rokkits on those squads.
Sure, you claim to have brought a sub-optimal list. But you could've probably afforded to have played a bit sub-optimally as well.

 the_scotsman wrote:
This happens EVERY week. AT LEAST two tables end up with people wandering away after 1.5-2hrs, one person always grumbling because they didnt know about this or they shouldnt have brought that, feeling like theyve wasted their drive out because they planned on spending the afternoon gaming but instead the game was just a pointless, frustrating blowout.

1) Why don't those wanderers just play another game? They came, they have their stuff, they planned to spend x time....

2) Since this keeps happening maybe some of you need to further tone down your lists. Scale your lists (or at least playstyle) based upon who you're actually facing. Give the new players a chance to learn the game before you drive them away.

...It's kind of difficult to express to you how I literally could not do that.

My opponent brought a list where he had like 60 of the zombie duders, a half dozen or so support characters, and then 3x10 plague marine squads and 1x10 terminator squad. I had never played DG before in 9e, and didnt know what to expect. My opponent set up the zombies in a big screen on the board and deep struck everything else besides 1 plague marine squad, and then used a stratagem that meant I couldnt target the marines, so my top of 1 zombies were the only available target. I charged in at them and declared speedwaagh, thinking I WAS playing suboptimally. I just flung orks at what looked like this super well supported screen line...and then they all evaporated. Like one squad of 10 warbikes took out 1/3 of them with just the first shooting attack of my army. By the time I got to the units that had rokkits, I was actually choosing between shooting them into the support characters and shooting them into the plague marines that had used the stratagem, and I DID choose to shoot them into the support characters to keep the plague marines on the board.

There's "just play suboptimally" and the level of "Literally do not shoot 3-4 of your units at something."

And laughably thinking back I actually DID DO THAT TOO. I had a unit of Stormboyz in reserve that I never even brought in.

The power curve of armies is so fething bonkers right now (on a competitive level ranging from 30% wr to 65% wr at any given time) and in what are supposed to be 'casual' games the spread is even more insane. The precision with which you have to nail the target of how tough of a list to bring to get a balanced game means you can basically only succeed if you know what your opponent's list is, know all of its capabilites, and very carefully tailor your list to match it, which as I end up playing more casually and more occasionally I just can't do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:


The Scotsman mentioned boomdakkas or dreads, tankbustas and wagons but none of those units are bad, let alone trash. They're all sub-optinal in the sense that there are better options available in the codex for their role but they're still quite good units, not really that far from the units that outperform them. And optimizing a list (by choosing the best equipments and sizes for the units, synergies between the units, etc...) that involves a few or even a good number of those units might still provide a pretty good list overall. If he had played a non optimized list with those units he wouldn't have crushed the opponent. Try large ork squads for example, sub-optimal gear and/or units with no synergies. A veteran player using an optimized list, not even that far from competitive ones, should definitely stomp a newbie with little effort. There's no edition of 40k in which that wasn't true.

So toning up and down the lists, for those who can, in order to play a more balanced and fun game sounds reasonable. And good players should be able to get great results even with sub-optimal lists against newbies.

Yeah youd have to do something like make half of the units in the list melee oriented and half of the units in the list shooting oriented to purposefully dilute the power of the new army-wide Waaagh rule to make those units really suboptimal huh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:


40k is the only game I've ever seen where people think "just play worse" is a legitimate defence in favor of the game.

Also
1) I doubt they have time, since setting up the game alone takes about half an hour usually and the first turns are also about an hour for each player.

2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.

Yeah, also, sometimes YOURE NOT PLAYING as well. A game shop near my house just started carrying warhammer and I agreed to run some tutorial games with loaner minis to help get them going, and when two complete newbies play against each other, this causes them to have gak games as well. Its a one-step process to ensure that any new player has a bad time:

1) Give them one big-ish impressive looking tank, like a leman russ or a predator or something

2) there is no step 2, that will guarantee that at some point during the game that tank will get instantly exploded by something stupid, and that player will go "awwww....." and their opponetn will go "what? I just killed it?"

 Sim-Life wrote:
2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.

This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.

This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.

yiikes, why preciscly did it swing so brutally?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
2) again, "just play worse" is not a defence, nor is this scenario exclusive to new players. I've seen the same thing happen in our group where even the newest player has been in the hobby for nearly 10 years and we all play with sub-optimal lists in most games.

This. In our last campaign round one of our veterans played is newly acquired TS for the first time ever, in a scenario not favoring him, with the simplest list you could think: Sorcerer, Rubrics, Terminators, Cultists. He accidentally tabled his pretty experienced dark angel opponent in turn 2.

yiikes, why preciscly did it swing so brutally?

A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.

 Jidmah wrote:

A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.

basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...

yeah..

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.

basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...

yeah..

DA can use WotDA to force Scarabs into Unwavering Phalanx. If it's a 6+ model unit ( it should be 10 to get the most out of those strats ) you'll bleed the TS player faster than you bleed yourself, which means fewer buffs for those Scarabs. Alternatively you using it when shooting Rubrics and force them to eat it. It would be crucial to protect the helblasters so they have an opportunity to trade.

As with most games if a player lost and thinks they didn't do anything wrong they should reflect a little more.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

A single round with high rolls on the psychic powers killing off expensive models in droves, the TS player dumping CP on stratagems to improve shooting (extra shots, +1 to wound) and psy (extra cast, 3MW smite) because he was deadly afraid of DA helblasters, sprinkled with some bad luck on rolling 5+ saves on the DA side.
The game just imploded and they agreed to not have it count (Tzeench rolled back time, just as planned) and played a second match.

basically the usual high swing psy and stratagem damage fuelling...

yeah..

DA can use WotDA to force Scarabs into Unwavering Phalanx. If it's a 6+ model unit ( it should be 10 to get the most out of those strats ) you'll bleed the TS player faster than you bleed yourself, which means fewer buffs for those Scarabs. Alternatively you using it when shooting Rubrics and force them to eat it. It would be crucial to protect the helblasters so they have an opportunity to trade.

As with most games if a player lost and thinks they didn't do anything wrong they should reflect a little more.

Hey i've got a secret for you

>.>

<.<

A player can know exactly what they did wrong in a game, and it can still result in a stupid, frustrating experience.

The DG opponent that I played against post-game understood exactly what he did wrong - he should have started all his terminators/death guard marines on the table, behind the copious obscuring terrain, and just rolled all his zomboids onto the objectives. I had to get within 9" or melee of the zombos to properly wipe them out, and if I had done so, it would have been easy for the DG to just kool aid man thru the wall of the ruin and table me instead of me tabling him. All my bikers, trukk boyz, kommandos etc had to be right up on top of the zombos to hurt them. easy melee range for all the DG squads.

.............that doesnt change the fact that our armies being perfectly capable of tabling one another in a couple of turns is dogshit game design.

 Blackie wrote:

They all are used much than before. +5 points on a 70ppm model is completely irrelevant.

And yet the Cronos is the unit "nerfed" and is used more than the Talos who took a 10 point drop. If +5 is irrelevant than likely so is -10.

Exactly. They sold every kit they had in stock. Job's done Now people can concentrate on Christmas boxes or whatever the new releases are.

The total quantity they would have available is absolutely irrelevant to their total sales.

£29M a month average revenue. Selling 1,000 Cronos/Talos kits represents 0.1% of their revenue for that MONTH. That's more enough to give 6 Cronos and 4 Talos to every single Drukhari player in the ITC who has played four events.

You know what? There's 954 Drukhari players ranked globally ( over 600 have not played more than one large event ). Let's get them all 10 kits. That's £310,050 or 1% of sales for the month ( far less during holiday sales season if we're being honest ) if all those players decide to do that and we ignore what they currently own, the secondary market, and 3d prints.

It's absolutely preposterous that they even need to bother to force a particular kit to sell.

And you know what's more? DE players aren't uniformly going Cronos/Talos. You only think they are, because your expectation that the buffed units were there to make sales. Yet Nayden just won with Wyches, Incubi, Raiders, and two individual Cronos -- you know -- the nerfed model. The DE who went 4-1 at Sunken City GT? No Cronos, Talos, or Grots and 10 Wracks.

If anything DE list just became more diverse instead of the same tired lists they had before.

Overall, don't you think that the ultimate goal of GW is to sold more stuff? They can't sold what people already has. So they enhance units that they think most of the players don't own in large numbers, then nerf those in order to convince (or sometimes force, see ork players) those guys to buy something else. Sometimes the pattern is extremely clear, sometime it isn't. But the ultimate goal isn't to make a better or more balanced game.

There's the source of your hang up. You don't like what they did to Orks, which is literally counter to your logic - they completely removed the desire for people to buy more than a handful of buggies and flyers and you still think this plays into their hands to sell more.

Their goal is to sell more by continuously making more stuff and keeping people engaged. The more people talk about Warhammer the more get involved. It's as simple as that.

Kastelan Robots dropped 10 points, but we're not talking about a surge of Admech Robot lists. If GW's strategy relies on someone winning a tournament with said units then it's going to take a hell of a lot more than 5 or 10 points and a single faction trait to force that outcome.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

There's the source of your hang up. You don't like what they did to Orks, which is literally counter to your logic - they completely removed the desire for people to buy more than a handful of buggies and flyers and you still think this plays into their hands to sell more.

My logic is: "we invalidate buggy spam so ork players who already had tons of buggies now need more stuff since their lists are illegal. Time to get the super expensive kill rigs, the squig riders and the squigboss now. At the same time we didn't invalidate the ork buggies, just the spam of them; in fact they're still very competitive, so players who don't have tons of them are still buying those buggies. Same with planes, and mek gunz before them".

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Their goal is to sell more by continuously making more stuff and keeping people engaged. The more people talk about Warhammer the more get involved. It's as simple as that.

Naaa, lots of the armies don't have new kits in ages, or maybe they get just one or two kits in 5+ years. GW simply need to change the rules after a while to shake things up, and push people buying more. When the greentide becomes the most common and most effective archetype to field the army then it's time to nerf all the synergies that makes it good and push for other archetypes. That's exactly what happened.

Ork buggies were terrible or mediocre when they were released but awesome models that a lot of players wanted anyway. At some point they wanted also the competitive players to get them, so they boosted them. At first 2-3 of them, then progressively the other 2-3. Only one among the five kinds of buggies always stayed good (or bad), the jack of trades one of course.

They did the same with primaris. At first they just relied on the hype which was enough to sell enough models. At some point they needed to boost sales and they made them much better in terms of rules. So they kept selling.

It's not new kits that sell stuff in droves, it's new rules. Always. Unless maybe it's SM stuff. Make the Stompa, a pretty old model, utterly OP: it will be sold out soon. Release a new stompa model keeping the current rules: only a few dudes will buy it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


You know what? There's 954 Drukhari players ranked globally ( over 600 have not played more than one large event ). Let's get them all 10 kits. That's £310,050 or 1% of sales for the month ( far less during holiday sales season if we're being honest ) if all those players decide to do that and we ignore what they currently own, the secondary market, and 3d prints.

There's much more than a thousand drukhari players in the world . I was one and never been ranked somewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


If anything DE list just became more diverse instead of the same tired lists they had before.

That's exactly my point. They shake things up by changing the rules in order to convince players to field units that before the new rules you didn't see that often. They do that in order to avoid players settling down with one list for long.

SemperMortis wrote:


I do want to address your Melta vs 5th edition dread. Its been a long time so please bear with me and correct me on any mistakes. I believe dreads were 12/12/10, meaning for a melta to wound a dread on the front or side required a 4 and to "penetrate" it took a 5. So assuming you are facing the front or sides (most likely) a Melta required a 4 to glance and a 5-6 to penetrate. So you had a 1/2 chance to do dmg of some kind, a 1/6th chance to glance/stun/ and a 1/3rd chance to penetrate. On the glance result, you add +1 due to AP-1 but -2 because glance, meaning a roll of a 6 had a chance to "wreck" the vehicle, a 5 immobilized, a 4 destroyed a weapon, 3 stunned and 2 is shaken while a 1 does nothing. On the penetration results its +1 for AP-1 and no subtractions so the vehicle was destroyed on a 5 or a 6, it was wrecked on a 4, immobilized on a 3, weapon destroyed on a 2 and stunned on a 1. Assuming a Marine is armed with the melta at BS3+ its 3 shots is 2 hits, 2 hits is 1 dmg results. Of those dmg results its 1/3rd glance and 2/3rd pen. The pen is destroying on a 4+ the glance on a 6, So 50% chance of destroying on a 66% chance, and the glance is 16.6% chance on a 33% chance. So total is 33%+5.5% so 38-39% chance to destroy a Dread.

All told thats 3 Melta shots = 38-39% chance to destroy a dread. To make it almost guaranteed would take 2.5x that so you are talking about 7.5 melta shots.

In 9th edition, 9 Melta shots is 6 hits, against a T7 Dread thats 4 wounds, no armor save thanks to -4AP and thats 4xD6-1 for 10dmg. that's 1 guaranteed dead dreadnought, and you've actually over killed it by 25% where as the OLD 5th edition dread is not guaranteed dead with 7.5 melta shots.

And of course, all of that isn't counting the fact that now at half range a Multi-Melta is D6+2 nor the fact that a MM is now 2 shots instead of 1, and of course that isn't factoring in the special rules/weapons like the D6+4 melta or the shoot twice marines.

You did a very strange analysis, with chances on one side and averages on the other.

Let's use some actually comparable numbers.
1 MM shot in 5th edition at long range has 12.4% chances to wreck a Dnaught.
The equivalent 2 MM shots in 9th edition have a 3.2% chance to do the same.

2 MM shots in 5th edition have a 23.2% chance.
The equivalent 4MM shots in 9th edition have a 19.5% chance.

3MM shots in 5th edition have a 32.76% chance.
6MM shots in 9th edition have a 43.5% chance.

Increasing the MM, the gap increases.

As can be seen, the MM in 5th edition has the advantage when 1 or 2 MM are shooting, while 9th edition has better results when 3 or more MM are shooting at the Dnaught.

Let's go in short range.

One MM shot in 5th edition has a 30% chance to wreck the target.
2 MM shots in 9th edition have a 14.4% chance.

2 MM shots in 5th edition have a 51.2% chance.
4 MM shots in 9th edition have a 49% chance.

From 3 or more MM shooting, the 9th edition ones are better.
So it follows kind of the same trend as the long range one.

One important distinction to make though, is that if the 9th edition weapons fail to kill the target, there is no result obtained.
5th edition MM will at the very least disable the target for a turn, even in case they fail at destroying it.