Are the armies in 8th fairly well balanced?

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**Unit1126PLL**

I think things are balanced.

Honestly, based on what I've read of the tournament winnings, even tournaments have stuff that's pretty fair. One time tactical marines win. Another time berzerkers win. I've been tabled by Admech with my Guard and tabled Admech with my Guard.

The codices are rather balanced, and in casual play even more so.

And even the imbalance between the indexes and the codices is less than some 7th Edition imbalances. At the end 7th, my foot horde Sororitas essentially auto-lost by Turn 3 to Codex :Tau Empire. In this edition, my Index foot Sororitas have beaten Codex Guard with Manticores and Basilisks and conscripts fairly routinely.

**Melissia**

Yes, but only between armies that have their codices out.

**Hollow**

Yes. They are. Is everything perfectly balanced like chess? No... because this isn't chess.

**Vector Strike**

codex - codex: mostly so
index - index: mostly so
codex - index: with a few exceptions, index-only armies are considerable worse than codex armies. So yeah, glaring imbalances still exist.

However, GW promised us by next year everyone will get their own codex. Until then... second option.

**Unit1126PLL**

Hollow wrote:
Yes. They are. Is everything perfectly balanced like chess? No... because this isn't chess.

Ironically, Chess has about a 54/46 percent win rate in favor of white due to the first turn advantage, if played perfectly. And it even uses alternating activations to avert alpha strikes!

**KTar**

People keep bringing up how balanced 3rd edition was. I will say 3rd edition was the least balanced edition. Space marines were balanced against space marines, but they got 2 vanilla codexes that edition. I played tyranids and had to play out of an 8 page index entry for 7 years. I lost every game while space marines stroked their egos.

That said this edition seems more faire, but if people aren’t playing with enough terrain then often the game comes down to who goes first with some armies.

**argonak**

I think its pretty balanced if you follow the normal deployment rules and build a normal list, but there are some broken combos.

**Unit1126PLL**

You know, I'm going to add to my earlier post:

I'm surprised at how balanced it is, at least from a competitive standpoint.

E.G. Even after codex IG dropped, my triple superheavy IG list has lost games, now and again. I don't think it's 50/50 (probably closer to 60/40, or even 70/30).

It used to be the three-superheavy list was generally really really bad, and now it's good - but not face-stomping good (in general. Some lists, of course, struggle).

The issue I have run into with people not wanting to play it is that they see it as a "boring" list, and for someone not into the narrative of my tanks (i.e. not me), I can totally get that. So I've adapted and played it less. But that has nothing to do with balance.

**Vankraken**

Army internal balance is still a joke still for many factions and while the extremes between top and bottom tier has been reduced from 7th, its mostly because GW gutted everything down to basics for the sake of simplicity. Just because its being compared to the mass power creep of 7th doesn't mean 8th is this shiny beacon of game balance and design choice.

**Racerguy180**

I have played roughly 15-20 games in 8th (only factions I haven't played are SOB,TAU, pure daemon and GK). Up till then I haven't played a 40k (or other wargame) since rogue trader.

I think the game is roughly balanced. still needs help but fosho going in the right direction.

I believe ChapApp is sign of things to come ie "realtime" adjustments "regularly".

**Slipspace**

I'm going to guess most people voting "balanced" use Codex armies and those voting "unbalanced" use Index armies.

For Codex vs Codex and Index vs Index games it seems pretty good. The imbalance between Codex and Index armies is ridiculous, though. It's at the point where I'm wondering whether to bother using my Necrons at all if I'm playing against a Codex army. You can claim everything will be fine once everyone has a Codex but, as it stands now, I'm not sure how anyone can claim the game is anywhere near balanced.

Internal balance is still an issue, and I'm also a little concerned at the reliance on re-rolls in lots of armies. That makes the game pretty dull and, worse than that, frustrating to play in a lot of ways. Watching opponents consistently get 85%+ hits and wounds gets boring fast. Now that GW have started doing that, I don't see it being easy for them to stop if they want to balance things properly.

**Quickjager**

internal balance is out of whack still. So no it isn't.

**SemperMortis**

Well, since the only way I can play against my opponents and have a chance to be victorious is to field at a minimum 90 Boyz/Stormboyz/Kommandos and the only way to realistically make a list better is to take out anything except Boyz/Stormboyz/Kommandos....no, the game isn't balanced. MY army is shoe horned into a single play style, and if you don't like it to bad. I have 15 Walkers, 36 Warbikes, 6 Deff Koptas, 30 Lootas, 3 Trukkz, 3 Wagonz, 2 flyers, 6 Meganobz, 20 Nobz, 12 Burnas, 15 Tank Bustas, 5 Mek Gunz and most of my characters/HQs collecting dust on a shelf right now because they are so heavily over priced or so incredibly bad that it isn't worth taking them out to play in any league or tournament game.

**wuestenfux**

Well, I think balancing is an NP-hard problem and therefore not possible for a larger game such as 40k.
My experience is that AM is rather hard to defeat this edition.
Look at an army at the 2000 pt level with Baneblade, four Leman Russes, 3x30 Conscripts, and whatnot. Scary if you ask me.

**Darsath**

Right now I doubt there would be many people thinking all armies were well balanced. Some armies don't have codexes, and some units and armies are certainly overcosted. With the release of Chapter Approved coming next week, maybe we'll see some steps towards better balance. Hopefully some points changes for units that are overcosted and undercosted, and some powerful stratagems for armies waiting to receive anything (the teased ones look hit-or-miss. Hopefully the ones we don't see are better).

**Yarium**

There are some major outliers, and some armies have vast strengths over others, but if two players wanted to try out the game and both picked up a random set of models of about the same Power, then I think they'll find the game to be balanced enough that they wouldn't even be thinking about how one thing is "too good for what it costs".

**Daedalus81**

Mostly balanced with the following caveats:

1) FW units skew perceptions heavily, but are getting point changes by GW
2) Armies without stratagems are a bit behind
3) A handful of outliers remain, but GW has shown themselves willing and capable to continue addressing those items.

**CREEEEEEEEED**

I voted no, because the Tau index exists at the same time as the Guard codex.
Edit: hell, even against the SM codex (which is one of the worse codexes) I got wiped by turn three against an all primaris force, and I was using plenty of fire warriors with the fireblade, which is too OP according to Martel but hey ho.
Edit 2: to the people saying there's variety in the winners of major tournaments, have Tau won any tournaments, or orks?

**Martel732**

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I voted no, because the Tau index exists at the same time as the Guard codex.
Edit: hell, even against the SM codex (which is one of the worse codexes) I got wiped by turn three against an all primaris force, and I was using plenty of fire warriors with the fireblade, which is too OP according to Martel but hey ho.
Edit 2: to the people saying there's variety in the winners of major tournaments, have Tau won any tournaments, or orks?

Getting wiped by Primaris is very embarrassing with any faction, imo. They get what? Maybe a dozen shots a turn at you? With their 20 models? LOL Primaris are just about the worst thing in the game atm. Tau should have no problems with primaris marines.

Tau need a lot of changes, but not to beat Primaris marines.

Overall, I'd say armies are not well balanced at all right now. The shootiest ones have a massive, massive advantage.

**Unit1126PLL**

Aaaaand there's Martel to tell people to be embarrassed because they lost a game.

**CREEEEEEEEED**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Aaaaand there's Martel to tell people to be embarrassed because they lost a game.

Ngl I do feel slightly honoured to be directly insulted by my favourite dakkanought, but in my defence it was a casal PL game on a 4x4' board so I'm not too embarrassed

**Martel732**

So you brought me into your reply even though you weren't even playing in the context that I have discussed fire warriors. I have no clue how they play out in PL. In points-based games, they are very, very efficient. That's what I've claimed.

**CREEEEEEEEED**

But the strength 5 Martel! The 30" strength 5!

**Martel732**

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
But the strength 5 Martel! The 30" strength 5!

It's really good. Are you trying to say it's not?

**Galas**

It is not as good as it used to be.

**JNAProductions**

Galas wrote:
It is not as good as it used to be.

True that. Wounds T3 on 3s now.

**Martel732**

T3 is a problem for everyone, especially and twin assault cannons are going up in CA.

**Unit1126PLL**

I never thought I would see the day that Space Marine players would rather their marines be T3.

**Martel732**

If we get a price cut, sure. It's all about cheap bodies now. If I could field a list of 1 pt infiltrator models with 1's for stats, no save, no gun and just clog the board to let big guns fire I would.

**wuestenfux**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Aaaaand there's Martel to tell people to be embarrassed because they lost a game.

Does Martel still play BA?