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I think a lot of the balance can be attributed to GW just being much faster to balance than they used to be too, rather than it being an intrinsic merit to the mechanics of the edition itself. Ie, it's a managerial improvement, more than anything else.

Setting aside release day 10th (which was one of the most imbalanced game states 40k has ever seen, rivaling the worst excesses of 7th edition - index Aeldari laughed at peasants who needed to concern themselves with such things as "line of light" or "rolling to wound"), imagine if More Dakka had been allowed to sit unnerfed for months instead of being rapidly hammered down. In the short time it existed it swamped the podiums of every tournament it was allowed in.

Conversely, imagine how 5th edition would have been if its balance errors had been swiftly rectified instead of GW essentially going "wait until your next codex".

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Yeah. I think a lot of people were surprised by how good it felt to have some normal humans around to compare your super soldiers against. When it's just marines on the table, it's easy to forget how much more durable and reliable they are compared to guardsmen. I kind of wish GW had given us better support for the idea of a small group of powerful marine supplementing an otherwise unaugmented human faction.

I've always hated Scouts and wished that the role was replaced with 10 man Guardsman units instead.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Never as bad in terms of balance. Never as good in terms of flavor. Which is weird because between setting aside page space for both army-wide rule sand detachment rules, you'd think they'd have plenty of opportunities to make armies feel flavorful. 10th is probably both the best balanced and least flavorful edition I've played since I got into the game in 5th.

I'm not sure I agree. I think 10th has some major flavor fails, but I think a lot of what was cut was stuff that was only theoretically on the table in prior editions. In terms of actual, on the table games, I've seen more cool stuff than ever before. Part of it for me is just Deathwatch Kill Teams actually working like they're supposed to instead of being obnoxious min/max flavor fails, but I've been pretty happy with other armies too. I guess I'd say that I've felt more flavor on the table, even if there's a notably loss of flavor outside of the game being played.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm not sure I agree. I think 10th has some major flavor fails, but I think a lot of what was cut was stuff that was only theoretically on the table in prior editions. In terms of actual, on the table games, I've seen more cool stuff than ever before. Part of it for me is just Deathwatch Kill Teams actually working like they're supposed to instead of being obnoxious min/max flavor fails, but I've been pretty happy with other armies too. I guess I'd say that I've felt more flavor on the table, even if there's a notably loss of flavor outside of the game being played.

I can give you my perspective as a Chaos Knights player from 9e.

10e butchered my army. Favours of the Dark Gods, which allowed me to make each Knight really feel like its own distinct character, gone with no replacement. Traits and relics gone, replaced by enhancements that do not even remotely manage to fill their shoes. Worse external balance, and heavily watered down mechanics that don't really work. GW jumped through some big hoops to make the morale-focused faction function in 9e, but it achieved the goal of doing so. In 10e it's like they've not even tried.

Yeah there are some units and armies that lost a lot in the transition.

Tyranid Warriors are some of my all-time favorite models, and I despise how their signature flexibility and variation got boiled down to a ranged variant with exactly one obvious optimal build and a melee variant that abstracts all their various melee weapons into a single profile.

I'm glad that the number of layers of stacking rules has been heavily pruned, but the depth within those layers has been inconsistently cut back. I will freely admit that how significant this feels likely has as much to do with investment in prior editions as it does with the end result on the table.

 catbarf wrote:
Yeah there are some units and armies that lost a lot in the transition.

Tyranid Warriors are some of my all-time favorite models, and I despise how their signature flexibility and variation got boiled down to a ranged variant with exactly one obvious optimal build and a melee variant that abstracts all their various melee weapons into a single profile.

Yeah agreed - I get that the army is different to what it was 20years ago and that there's a lot more model variety going on; but at the same time boiling warriors down to 1 close combat profile feels like (as with a LOT of GW fixes/solutions/ideas) insane overkill and such a huge shame for a kit that they've been expanding on close combat weapon variety over the last few years anyway.

I did wonder if GW was going to spring a surprise of new warrior kits with perhaps a new closecombat and ranged versions as separate models with their own profile, look and weapon gear options; but they've not even given us a new kit with just wings in the box to go with the new launch edition leader

There's definitely elements that did not work as intended at all and required such a major redesign that I imagine they mostly just patched them out and went back to the drawing board for 11th. Battleshock is probably the king of that hill, though Mortal/Dev Wounds are definitely on that list.

FWIW, I really liked the "kill cultists" detachment and wish it worked better. I think Chaos Knights are one of the best examples of a codex that got its flavor diluted too much making more detatchment than there is unit variety to support. You've got one with cool enhancements and one with cool strategems and each of them are very bland in the other aspects.

I think 10ths biggest weakness is that the launch detachments were great proof of concepts, while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

 LunarSol wrote:
while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

I think this is pretty obvious with how some recent detachments are just completely the same as previous detachments on a thematic level, just with buffs that the previous detachment should have had.

Like Nightmare Hunt is just a fixed Dread Talons. Dread Talons is obsolete and abandoned. Which is cool and all that they fixed it, but that's not really a new detachment then is it?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

I think this is pretty obvious with how some recent detachments are just completely the same as previous detachments on a thematic level, just with buffs that the previous detachment should have had.

Like Nightmare Hunt is just a fixed Dread Talons. Dread Talons is obsolete and abandoned. Which is cool and all that they fixed it, but that's not really a new detachment then is it?

Yeah, and doing it that way is just terrible design. It is very confusing and creates newbie traps.

Warptide wrote:

It's been awhile since a starter set box has has had historical lore significance (Macragge was the setting in 4th ed) so GW is probably trying to generate some nostalgia hype.

The retro looking Blood Angles in most of the promo images really spiked my nostalgia glands. The flames and checks... yeah they look great. I was hoping for a 2nd ed box set re-release and this is probably the closest we'll get so this old fart will most likely pick up a box for a hefty painting project.