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So get this. I had a space marine player i was playing against today tell me on turn 1 after only i took my first turn that dark eldar were 'broken'. The thought amused me considering in 7th dark eldar had to fight tooth and nail to manage a victory and against some armies like tau it was almost impossible for the dark eldar player to win unless they played godly and took absolutely all the right units. I kid you not one tau player i know tabled a guy having maybe lost a couple models or a couple wounds in 7th and another saying they could table anybody in 3 turns with tau.

Apparently being able to shoot 30 poisoned shots (shardcarbines) with a 140 pts unit that can move 14" base and advance d6" at the cost of -1 BS is broken. They have a 4+/6++ with a 6+ feel no pain starting on turn one. In a straight out fight they'd lose to marines i think but the difference is movement. Honestly i think what it shows is that jump packs with guns are actually really effective in this 8th esp. if they're heavy or assault based.

It's funny because we both have about 3 or so games of 8th under our belt so this is a rather interesting thing to announce that dark eldar are now broken. I mean maybe they are but i've only really played against mechanicus (an absolute newbie) and space marines (an 'old guard' player from way back) and beat them both.

I can't help but not feel sorry at all for OP armies in 7th complaining that they suck now because we completely switched power levels only they were much, much worse. Honestly in my game vs the marines player yes i did win and he had a couple alright strategies which i also used against him. It was actually a really close game. He gave up when all he had was one marine and one predator left (both in melee). I still had 2 incubi, a raider with dark lance, 2 dark lance ravagers (one mostly full health and the other with half), my archon (honestly forgot about him), my void raven (down to 1/3 or 1/4 health left and no ammo) and like 2 reavers left. Keep in mind i play pure dark eldar and this was a 1600 pts game where i had a lot of scourge which are really good now and a couple ravagers which are also really good with dark lances.

If i had to honestly say most of this came down to army composition, not knowing 8th well enough and pure luck. My luck was really good first turn and his luck in general all game long was garbage. I'm sorry if you think my faction is OP because your luck is garbage when you statistically should roll better than you are. In fact i've only heard of one guy in the whole store using primaris marines on the field so maybe those are good. I have no idea.

---------

Far as other stories go i've heard a necrons player saying necrons suck now or at least they didn't like 8th. Honestly i'd feel worse but i really, really don't because overall the power level has changed hands and i was there the whole time i heard a smug tau player act smugly about his tau. Honestly i think it's time they know what it feels like.

Anyway in other news space marines are getting a new codex in a month. Like i'm sure it won't be absolutely broken *rolls eyes* (we all know GW gets too much money on marines to let them suck for long).

I wouldn't call what anyone has so far. "broken"; yes some armies have some powerful options available to them but nothing game breakingly broken.

I have noticed the shift in power too but I don't believe it to be a reversal. Rather a dramatic leveling of the playing field across the board. In 7th, I had to fight tooth and nail against pretty much everything I went up against with Sisters and would flat out refuse to play some armies as it would be an utter waste of time to even put the models on the table.
Now, in 8th, it feels like everyone is on a much more equal footing. I can throw my Sisters on the table and know that I'm going to get a fun, interesting game that can go one way or the other. It's not a foregone conclusion. I love it!

A lot of the old top dogs are just reeling from the change. They're not the OP flavours they used to be or get the free shinies for no reason other than GW wanted to sell models.
This of course is only temporary as codex are incoming.

Personally hope that this equal footing feeling remains when the new dex' drop. The last thing I want is a return to 7th ed codex power creep.

A couple of thoughts:

1. The "pendulum" is a thing. In the past, it hasn't been uncommon for really good options to become really meh and vice versa. Which makes sense, right? If a unit is notoriously good, and you want to tone it down, the potential is always there to tone it down a bit too much. Similarly, trying to buff a bad option to make it worthwhile introduces an opportunity to accidentally make that option too good. For those more conspiratorially-minded, there's also the theory that a certain game company has a tendency of inetntionally making certain units really good for an edition to bolster sales before intentionally making them less desirable and boosting some other option instead. See: D-strength wraith guard and scatbikes after those new kits came out. Though as a counterpoint to such theories: malenceptors.

2. 8th is a different ball game. Players that aren't especially conscious of this fact can easily fall prey to tactics that wouldn't have worked in a previous edition. "My scatbikes were awesome in 7th, and now they can't even take down this stupid rhino. Vehicles OP!" Part of a new edition is learning the new tactic for dealing with things. The fact that we got new rules for every army in the game all at once also means it's trickier to digest and prepare for things at this point in time.

3. For the record, I kind of think dark eldar might have gotten a tiny bit nerfed this edition... Though I'm probably in the minority here. Vehicles became a much bigger deal, but most of our anti-tank guns got minorly nerfed in my eyes. Splinter cannons on venoms only hit as hard as they used to if you're within 18" instead of the old 36". We no longer swing first against 90% of our enemies by virtue of a high initiative stat. Similarly, we can no longer potentially sweep an enemy unit. Etc. I like how 8th edition dark eldar play so far, but I think we basically just broke even on the power curb rather than getting dramatically better.

The only thing I think is currently really broken is Forgeworld. The costing of units is way out in my opinion.

Currently not bringing any more Forgeworld to friendly games.

Depends on which FW units. They have always been poor at balancing unit costs with abilities, in both directions...

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
So get this. I had a space marine player i was playing against today tell me on turn 1 after only i took my first turn that dark eldar were 'broken'. The thought amused me considering in 7th dark eldar had to fight tooth and nail to manage a victory and against some armies like tau it was almost impossible for the dark eldar player to win unless they played godly and took absolutely all the right units. I kid you not one tau player i know tabled a guy having maybe lost a couple models or a couple wounds in 7th and another saying they could table anybody in 3 turns with tau.

Your suspicions are so far confirmed. Out of a thread about win/loss reports by Dakkanoughts, we've collected some data. Out of every army with 40 or more reported battles, here is a list of the number of wins each army had per loss so far:

 Selym wrote:
Time for another W/L ratio, this time of any army with more than 40 games :

 mrhappyface wrote:

1) Astra Militarium - 1.889
2) Space Wolves - 1.643
3) Dark Eldar - 1.471
4) Eldar - 1.192
5) Tyranids - 1.061
6) Necrons - 1
7) Space Marines - 0.743
8) Chaos Space Marines - 0.714
9) Orks - 0.566
10) Tau - 0.429

Tau and Orks are a clear bottom-tier, while DE, SW and AM are right up top.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Far as other stories go i've heard a necrons player saying necrons suck now or at least they didn't like 8th. Honestly i'd feel worse but i really, really don't because overall the power level has changed hands and i was there the whole time i heard a smug tau player act smugly about his tau. Honestly i think it's time they know what it feels like.

Necrons are going both ways atm, with various players either claiming that they are unkillable asshats, or they're totally killable asshats.

Though as noted in that thread, Space Marines have a ratio much closer to one if you include variant marine armies. Marines benefit massively from characters, and a lot of the best characters are locked to specific chapters.

Tau have been hit incredibly hard this edition, with ludicrous point increases and a noticeable decrease in effectiveness almost across the board. The larger battlesuits are now not worth taking in a competitive list, the markerlight table has been gutted, and only spam-based lists seem to have potential. Say you want about nerfing the power armies of last edition, but I don't see SM, Eldar, or Ynnari players' best units being turned into paperweights.

 Ascalam wrote:
Depends on which FW units. They have always been poor at balancing unit costs with abilities, in both directions...

True, Plague Hulk of Nurgle is too expensive, Spartan Assault tank and contemptor dread very under costed.

Orks say "no."

According to the win/loss table posted above, the best army doesn't even win 2 out of 3 games and the worst army wins nearly half of its games. Sounds a lot better than 7th to me.

True kin is the beast in 8ed. Poison/desintegrator/lance spam is unimaginably good right now. I fear nothing in 8ed. My necron opponent is still looking how to beat me. After almost 20 games i lost only 2 times against necrons, and only because i decided to spam wytches instead of dakka. This ratio was totally opposite in 7ed. SM are even easier to beat as they dont have quantum shields on theirs vehicles. This topic was matter of time to show up. It took so long probably because there is so few de players out there.

Real News wrote:
According to the win/loss table posted above, the best army doesn't even win 2 out of 3 games and the worst army wins nearly half of its games. Sounds a lot better than 7th to me.

Not Quite. The table is W/L, not W/(W+L). Tau is winning less than a third of their games and Orks just barely a third.

It IS better than 7th, though.

I quite like the Necron perfection at 50.000000000000000000000000.

Wow the new power levels for armies are odd. It's like UP faction and then OP faction every other army from top to bottom tier as far as where they were in 7th. For instance guard were underpowered but wolves were always good and dark eldar were also underpowered.

Well i guess space marines and chaos marines can both complain till they get their new codexes in a month. I highly doubt marines would ever suck for very long.

I'm rather curious to see the results of faction to faction battles and how they go. For instance in 7th dark eldar actually had a hard fight vs necrons but it was actually fairly winnable. In fact i almost beat a guy i think that had necron decurion with those canoptek wraiths like two units of 6 and a lot of nasty units. However vs tau winning was next to impossible esp. if you didn't do like covens units with talos or bikes maybe. It was rough.

Skill might also be a factor here.

Let's assume, for a moment, all armies are equal. (biiig assumption but truer in this edition then in the past) now you have Bob who played a weak army, he had to WORK for every one of his victories, know his army intimately, take stock of the terrain, know the rules etc. those are gaming habbits and habbits tend to be hard to break. he's gonna carry those into 8th edition and likely, once he makes the adjustment, have a high level of technical skill as a result.
Then you have Tim, Tim, played an OP army, that was pretty point and click, he won tons of games based on the pure strength of his army, he didn't need tactics or anything, he had units twice as good as bobs but only half the price.

now 8th edition comes along, Bob and Tims armies are now, more or less equal.

Whose gonna win?

 Selym wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
So get this. I had a space marine player i was playing against today tell me on turn 1 after only i took my first turn that dark eldar were 'broken'. The thought amused me considering in 7th dark eldar had to fight tooth and nail to manage a victory and against some armies like tau it was almost impossible for the dark eldar player to win unless they played godly and took absolutely all the right units. I kid you not one tau player i know tabled a guy having maybe lost a couple models or a couple wounds in 7th and another saying they could table anybody in 3 turns with tau.

Your suspicions are so far confirmed. Out of a thread about win/loss reports by Dakkanoughts, we've collected some data. Out of every army with 40 or more reported battles, here is a list of the number of wins each army had per loss so far:

 Selym wrote:
Time for another W/L ratio, this time of any army with more than 40 games :

 mrhappyface wrote:

1) Astra Militarium - 1.889
2) Space Wolves - 1.643
3) Dark Eldar - 1.471
4) Eldar - 1.192
5) Tyranids - 1.061
6) Necrons - 1
7) Space Marines - 0.743
8) Chaos Space Marines - 0.714
9) Orks - 0.566
10) Tau - 0.429

Tau and Orks are a clear bottom-tier, while DE, SW and AM are right up top.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Far as other stories go i've heard a necrons player saying necrons suck now or at least they didn't like 8th. Honestly i'd feel worse but i really, really don't because overall the power level has changed hands and i was there the whole time i heard a smug tau player act smugly about his tau. Honestly i think it's time they know what it feels like.

Necrons are going both ways atm, with various players either claiming that they are unkillable asshats, or they're totally killable asshats.

Tau armies aren't bottom tier by a long shot. When you can buzz around the battlefield with high output battlesuits that don't take a penalty for wimping out of combat and inflict a -2 to hit penalty to all shooting aimed at them you're a far cry from bottom tier. The problem is that Tau players coughed up big bucks and purchased the right suits for 7th which aren't so special in 8th. They'll be back after they save up their pennies for the new hotness.

From what I've seen of Necrons-
Necrons will simply outlast most general lists by suffering almost equal losses to them in any particular phase then getting their numbers replenished and thrashing the depleted enemy forces more and more as the game rolls on.
A list that can destroy the Necron's reanimation boosts early in the game will spend the rest of the game on equal or better footing than the Necrons themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:
Skill might also be a factor here.

Let's assume, for a moment, all armies are equal. (biiig assumption but truer in this edition then in the past) now you have Bob who played a weak army, he had to WORK for every one of his victories, know his army intimately, take stock of the terrain, know the rules etc. those are gaming habbits and habbits tend to be hard to break. he's gonna carry those into 8th edition and likely, once he makes the adjustment, have a high level of technical skill as a result.
Then you have Tim, Tim, played an OP army, that was pretty point and click, he won tons of games based on the pure strength of his army, he didn't need tactics or anything, he had units twice as good as bobs but only half the price.

now 8th edition comes along, Bob and Tims armies are now, more or less equal.

Whose gonna win?

Agree.
Totally agree.

I've played about a dozen games or so and have a 100% win ratio with my Daemons. But other than that I think you're totally right, closest fights I've had we're v Orks and sisters!

Real News wrote:
According to the win/loss table posted above, the best army doesn't even win 2 out of 3 games and the worst army wins nearly half of its games. Sounds a lot better than 7th to me.

The worst are winning around 1/3 - half a win per loss.

 Rippy wrote:
The only thing I think is currently really broken is Forgeworld. The costing of units is way out in my opinion.

Currently not bringing any more Forgeworld to friendly games.

you sure? what about 2pt troop cost, casting smite and save at 4++? place 100 (for just 200ot) on the table and good luck remove anything.what about plasma at 7pt? what about sundercosted stormraven? cmon Gw made things far more broken

 blackmage wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
The only thing I think is currently really broken is Forgeworld. The costing of units is way out in my opinion.

Currently not bringing any more Forgeworld to friendly games.

you sure? what about 2pt troop cost, casting smite and save at 4++? place 100 (for just 200ot) on the table and good luck remove anything.what about plasma at 7pt? what about sundercosted stormraven? cmon Gw made things far more broken

My Spartan assault tank solo'd an Orks army, and ended up on full hull points at the end of the game, plus it held 20 zombies, Typhus and Necrosius which dominated the late game.
Plasma at 7pts is fine in comparison.

The contemptor is only a little bit more expensive than a normal dread and absolutely dominates both shooting and CC with a butcher cannon and a fist.

 Rippy wrote:

 blackmage wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
The only thing I think is currently really broken is Forgeworld. The costing of units is way out in my opinion.

Currently not bringing any more Forgeworld to friendly games.

you sure? what about 2pt troop cost, casting smite and save at 4++? place 100 (for just 200ot) on the table and good luck remove anything.what about plasma at 7pt? what about sundercosted stormraven? cmon Gw made things far more broken

My Spartan assault tank solo'd an Orks army, and ended up on full hull points at the end of the game, plus it held 20 zombies, Typhus and Necrosius which dominated the late game.
Plasma at 7pts is fine in comparison.

The contemptor is only a little bit more expensive than a normal dread and absolutely dominates both shooting and CC with a butcher cannon and a fist.

There's good Forgeworld stuff.
120 points for a Lucius DreadPod is hardly broken or OP.

forgeworld was clearl;y rushed to get their indexes out and it shows.

FW made some mistakes with their releases however with how quick the first FAQ came out for the GW ones gives me hope that FW will do the same and get better moving forward. Just like GW they have some insanely powerful units and others that are absolute garbage, personally in my mind it is still way too early to declare FW being OP. I play Death Korps of Krieg and though we got one or two things that are really good overall it's at most on par with how strong Landraiders are IMO.

That being said it is a weird feeling to have been playing with IG for so long and be told all of a sudden that your army is OP/to strong. So far with IG I'm 8-3 with those losses coming to:

-Orks: Found out after we screwed up the rules really badly with his Stormboyz
-Other IG: Slugfest that came down to the wire
-Khorne Chaos: Lord of Skulls refused to fail a demon save the last three turns of the game.

I don't think IG/SM has the right to call anyone else Broken when they are basically the top army in 8E

Altho FW is stupid broken, don't use FW in 8e

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
Personally hope that this equal footing feeling remains when the new dex' drop. The last thing I want is a return to 7th ed codex power creep.

Creep isn't the word I would use, so much as favoritism and preferential treatment. I remember people said 40k was going to be more balanced for 7th, because Orks received such a shoddy codex...then a painfully "phoned it in" Decurion, well after Eldar came out. Not to mention Eldar were still a top army even with their 6e codex, due to Serpents being the best option. 7e made Bikes better than Serpents, only for the pendulum to swing back to Serpents for 8e!

 blackmage wrote:

 Rippy wrote:
The only thing I think is currently really broken is Forgeworld. The costing of units is way out in my opinion.

Currently not bringing any more Forgeworld to friendly games.

you sure? what about 2pt troop cost, casting smite and save at 4++? place 100 (for just 200ot) on the table and good luck remove anything.what about plasma at 7pt? what about sundercosted stormraven? cmon Gw made things far more broken

Those I haven't had much trouble with. They can't manage smite but one third of the time, brimstones have no ranged attacks, and big blobs wilt under morale tests if you concentrate fire. Being able to autopass morale 1/6th of the time is no replacement for the morale rules the stronger horde armies have. They aren't a bad choice, but they have more balancing factors than AM does for example.

Players don't enjoy losing, and most people are dumb enough to think that the same units/tactics should work every edition, every game, without ever changing.

Most of these players also happen to be marines, but that's not the point. Can't fault them for being gw's chosen children for 40ks entire existence; if you went from always winning with whatever you wanted to bring, to having to fight a battle the same way as a xenos does, with actual strategy and diverse unit choices, I'd call broken too.

People don't adapt, and are quicker to call broken on something before they even consider that their own choices reason they lost.

fe40k wrote:
Players don't enjoy losing, and most people are dumb enough to think that the same units/tactics should work every edition, every game, without ever changing.

Most of these players also happen to be marines, but that's not the point. Can't fault them for being gw's chosen children for 40ks entire existence; if you went from always winning with whatever you wanted to bring, to having to fight a battle the same way as a xenos does, with actual strategy and diverse unit choices, I'd call broken too.

People don't adapt, and are quicker to call broken on something before they even consider that their own choices reason they lost.

riiight we all know Eldar had to use complicated strageties to win games last edition!

BrianDavion wrote:

fe40k wrote:
Players don't enjoy losing, and most people are dumb enough to think that the same units/tactics should work every edition, every game, without ever changing.

Most of these players also happen to be marines, but that's not the point. Can't fault them for being gw's chosen children for 40ks entire existence; if you went from always winning with whatever you wanted to bring, to having to fight a battle the same way as a xenos does, with actual strategy and diverse unit choices, I'd call broken too.

People don't adapt, and are quicker to call broken on something before they even consider that their own choices reason they lost.

riiight we all know Eldar had to use complicated strageties to win games last edition!

Don't forget the tau. There was some deep strategic complexity involved in taking as many riptides as possible.

I usually see marine players use diversity in their army lists far more often than eldar and tau. I think that the lack of diversity and actual understanding of the Tau units is what caused their W/L ratio to be sub-average than any favoritism shown by GW. As for strategy, most of 7th was riptide spam, wraithknight + warp spider spam, and scatter spam.