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What exactly is the deal with these things? I've gotten a rough description of some of the formations (they sound alright), but I have no idea how they are supposed to be implemented. Same goes for any of the formations, for that matter.
I picked up the Damnos book a while back (cuz Crons!) and it made clear the formations contained were meant as an expansion to the existing Apocalypse formations. Do the dataslates make similar allowances or are they, as the black library description seems to imply, just for recreating some scenarios?
In other words, what impact on regular play do these things have?

edit: hrm, thought I was on the general discussion forum. not sure if it's right for the tactics.

The nids one allows you to take the formations in a standard 40k game. They are separate from the FoC, and as of right now our only way to have "allies" of sorts.

I'm not sure how they fit into a standard 40k game. I dunno the deal with turning up and saying,
"hey i'm using extra rules that i bought"

Either way, the first Dataslate looks like a big fat MEH i don't care.

They have new missions, but i have a single friend who plays 40k. So no use to me.

I think you can just use them. They dont take up a force org slot... if you have them, you can just use them with the appropriate army. Thats how I read the description in the belakor dataslate, anyway.

 eskimo wrote:
I'm not sure how they fit into a standard 40k game. I dunno the deal with turning up and saying,
"hey i'm using extra rules that i bought"

Either way, the first Dataslate looks like a big fat MEH i don't care.

They have new missions, but i have a single friend who plays 40k. So no use to me.

It is true that, if you don't really have anyone to play with, the dataslates aren't that useful.

Possibilities of the 'slate aren't overwhelming - you can infiltrate your stealers much closer, and use deathleaper without taking up an HQ slot, which makes him a lot more useful.

And you don't have to pick between having flyers and gargoyles anymore. All in all I see some posibilites here.

How much does one of these dataslates cost? To me the fluff is a by-product and something that should be free, for encouragement.

The non-foc Deathleaper is cool.

From the rules i've seen, i don't understand how they expect to sell any more Genestealers though.

Pretty expensive to get that close.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Pretty expensive to get that close.

A minimal Broodlord Hunter Brood (or whatever it's called) is less than the Swarmlord. For that you get three broods that can pop up in any building in the board, plus a Broodlord. Pre-game put some objectives in buildings (and scare your opponent into not doing this, making troops vulnerable to Biovores.) and you now have three units that can just pop up and go chase them.

 jifel wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:
Pretty expensive to get that close.

A minimal Broodlord Hunter Brood (or whatever it's called) is less than the Swarmlord. For that you get three broods that can pop up in any building in the board, plus a Broodlord. Pre-game put some objectives in buildings (and scare your opponent into not doing this, making troops vulnerable to Biovores.) and you now have three units that can just pop up and go chase them.

If you play with ruins and buildings that is. Or if I block up the ruins etc. There is dozens of ways around it then anyone can employ. You could always spam it but the stealers do not have the staying power. I used stealer shock in 4th, and had over 70 of the buggers with 4+ armour and scout, it wasn't a good army then, and it isn't a good army now.

What? The assassin lictors and brood lord hunter pack give you direct counters to power players...and the forest lictors and manufactorum stealers let you kit you army to you meta or tounament play...allowing you to be even more in people's faces...

For the points cost of free? That's awesome.

Hit and Run for Manufactorum Genestealers? FO FREE?

Yes, PLEASE!

Five man squads that you can't add more to. That have to survive a minimum of 1 shooting phase and overwatch.

The best thing I think i heard out of this was non-force org gargoyles...

 hyv3mynd wrote:
Five man squads that you can't add more to. That have to survive a minimum of 1 shooting phase and overwatch.

That also force the enemy to dedicate an entire squad to shoot at, so that at worst case scenario forces the hand of 5 separate units. Also most units won't kill 5 stealers in one turn if they GtG for a 3+ cover save then pop up next turn with Synapse, although I agree I they kill 3 of them off then the unit has practically no combat potential save to absorb over watch. I think the idea with these was to put a load of pressure onto enemy gun lines, where the safest place is in combat which H'n'R helps with. Not the most competitive build, but after what GW did the ENTIRE codex, what where you honestly expecting?

 eskimo wrote:
How much does one of these dataslates cost?

I meant the actual price, not points

 eskimo wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
How much does one of these dataslates cost?

I meant the actual price, not points

Free...if you talk to the internet gnomes...

People actually buy GW's DLC instead of downloading it off the pirate bay?

 PrinceRaven wrote:
People actually buy GW's DLC instead of downloading it off the pirate bay?

Shockingly enough, not all of us are freeloading scum.

Look at it this way. More piracy = less sales. Less sales = increased price per unit. Increased price per unit = pirates making life harder for people who actually want to obey the law.

Why do you all think video games are so expensive, because over 75% of their users aren't paying for them and the studio wants to actually make money so they can make more video games and stay in business (shocking right?).

Ah well, there's my rant for the day.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Look at it this way. More piracy = less sales. Less sales = increased price per unit. Increased price per unit = pirates making life harder for people who actually want to obey the law.

Why do you all think video games are so expensive, because over 75% of their users aren't paying for them and the studio wants to actually make money so they can make more video games and stay in business (shocking right?).

Ah well, there's my rant for the day.

Because they're the same cost as they've always been?

Steam proved that offering items for cheaper will beat out piracy when they entered the Russian market.

For those who don't know; Russia has historically had abysmal video game sales because piracy is rampant. Steam decided to allow Russians access to games at a significant discount compared to the rest of the world. Everyone expected them to still sell poorly, as pirates would just buy the games for cheap then redistribute and the end result would be lower sales. Contrary, sales skyrocketed and overall profits dramatically increased.

Anecdotal evidence - I know tons of people who pirate, yet they all also own the core books they use because most gaming stores require it and it's easier to have a book on hand versus a laptop.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Look at it this way. More piracy = less sales. Less sales = increased price per unit. Increased price per unit = pirates making life harder for people who actually want to obey the law.

Why do you all think video games are so expensive, because over 75% of their users aren't paying for them and the studio wants to actually make money so they can make more video games and stay in business (shocking right?).

Ah well, there's my rant for the day.

Yeah that makes sense when you're talking about something time consuming like creating a video game. GW dataslates require so little effort (and its obvious by how poor the rules and execution is) that you can't even begin to compare them to video games which require a huge team and budget nowadays. You can create these rules in under 1 hour on a friday afternoon, unlike a DLC for a video game.

Let's try not to defend GW by comparing them to companies that put effort into products :p

thanatos67 wrote:
The best thing I think i heard out of this was non-force org gargoyles...

Except how often do you want *three* units of gargs, and you have to pay for 3 units of DSing spore mines....

Really what I think this data slate made me realize is that 83% of the time I am not playing kill points...and MSU bugs are very viable if not more viable in many cases than large broods.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Look at it this way. More piracy = less sales. Less sales = increased price per unit. Increased price per unit = pirates making life harder for people who actually want to obey the law.

Why do you all think video games are so expensive, because over 75% of their users aren't paying for them and the studio wants to actually make money so they can make more video games and stay in business (shocking right?).

Ah well, there's my rant for the day.

More piracy = less sales of dataslates, more sales of models buffed by dataslate. Less sales of dataslates = Games Workshop abandons the dataslate idea and decides to release these supplemental rules in a less blatantly money-grabbing way.

 ductvader wrote:

 eskimo wrote:

 eskimo wrote:
How much does one of these dataslates cost?

I meant the actual price, not points

Free...if you talk to the internet gnomes...

As expected. Though i was just curious. I have no intent on buying anything related to this dataslate, Lictors, Genestealers, forests etc.


For the video game argument. N64 games were £64. I've never seen a game sell on a disc for that much, unless it was on PC about 15 years ago. But regardless, my point being, never saw a cartridge game pirated.

I don't torrent myself, just cause i don't watch movies, play more than 1 game (Halo fanboy), and my audio setup prefers lossless quality. Couldn't give a rats if people want to rob GW, actually i commend their behaviour. Because then i get to read about it on the internet.

 Kirasu wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
Look at it this way. More piracy = less sales. Less sales = increased price per unit. Increased price per unit = pirates making life harder for people who actually want to obey the law.

Why do you all think video games are so expensive, because over 75% of their users aren't paying for them and the studio wants to actually make money so they can make more video games and stay in business (shocking right?).

Ah well, there's my rant for the day.

Yeah that makes sense when you're talking about something time consuming like creating a video game. GW dataslates require so little effort (and its obvious by how poor the rules and execution is) that you can't even begin to compare them to video games which require a huge team and budget nowadays. You can create these rules in under 1 hour on a friday afternoon, unlike a DLC for a video game.

Let's try not to defend GW by comparing them to companies that put effort into products :p

Nevermind the fact that GW sell this DLC at 5 times the price of your average video DLC.

It was overpriced before internet piracy was a thing. If this release was priced reasonably, I would have purchased it.

For now I'm perfectly comfortable using my printed out rules and my group is perfectly fine with me doing so. The amount of people who don't think they are being ripped off with every purchase by GW are rare. It's a necessary evil to play the game, and avoiding fattening their pockets is never frowned upon in my group. Don't know why others would be different unless its for tournament play.

I've bought the Eldar codex, Tau codex, SM codex and Farsight Enclaves codex in digital form from GW. I've got a copy of the new Dark Angels and Tyranid codexes in hardback. I don't really have any compunctions against downloading digital PDFs of those documents, since I've already paid for the content (and sometimes I prefer a standard codex to the enhanced version.)

I also don't really have problems with downloading copies of other codexes for the purposes of understanding the rules my opponents may be playing with. I'm still not sure which category (must-buy or can-download) dataslates will fall into my own particular morality, but I'm leaning towards downloading -- these really should have been included in the Tyranid codex in the first place. Day-of-release DLC is despicable.

$18 is pretty ridiculous for a few digital pages when I can get an entire eBook for under half that price. If Games Workshop actually priced these things reasonably I might actually buy them.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
$18 is pretty ridiculous for a few digital pages when I can get an entire eBook for under half that price. If Games Workshop actually priced these things reasonably I might actually buy them.

We own the dataslate (Christmas iTunes voucher) and it's not a bad little package. But I agree, these crimes are a question of degree. At £7 or so, this would be a cool little niche item, that gives players more flexibility and allows GW to make a reasonable sum. But £9.99 is outrageous. and when an item looks like a flagrant rip-ff, it does indeed tend to encourage piracy.