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Just finnished games 10 and 11. Prophets of flesh rolling against stupid buffed waith blades and an Avatar. Wraith blades have 3 or4 up invul save (one spell) and a 5 up feel no pain, another spell. I had 4 up invul on the Grots and talos, and a 6+ feel no pain. Wytches the same.

Avatar against 2 Talos wasn't quite as bad on his side but the Talos just ingnored 2 or 3 rounds of attacks.

We had a round where we had over 100 attacks between us and did 1 wound apiece. Thats dumb.

I don't know what the answer is but the game needs rebalancing. Not to make anyone better or worse but to make things faster.

The proliferation of invuln saves is a wonky fix for a system where otherwise nothing is durable for its points other than dirt cheap mooks.

Wraithblades can take a single 4+ invulnerable save with a piece of wargear (sacrificing a weapon), and there is a spell to make it 3+.

An Avatar has a 5+ invulnerable save, and a 5+ feel-no-pain save. So they could be buffed to a 4+.

I don't feel that I run into many invulnerable saves really. At least not good ones. I agree that a 3+ invulnerable save is pretty tough and annoying. You'll find in eight you're almost always better off rolling more light attacks vs. strong heavy attacks. When people ask how to kill most of my Eldar I tell them "bolt guns and lasguns...and lots of them". It's better than most stronger weapons.

Generally speaking though - if you guys are running those units that way...target anything else. The spells can only be cast once and on one unit...so skip that unit for a turn when possible and shoot something else. As a lot of folks say "attack what you can kill". If a unit has a 3+ invulnerable...ignore it at all costs (particularly if it loses that buff later).

Keep in min Wraithguard and their versions are super tough, lots of wounds...but slow and short ranged. If you're playing Dark Eldar just ignore them as best you can and kill the rest of the army first.

I agree, it does. Comes down to the mechanics though, as has been mentioned, it is a cheap fix for a system where things die too easy for the points you pay. Though even invulns are being cancelled out against weight of fire now (which is why guard are so good in many cases).

Unless an army can dish out obscene amounts of firepower, mortal wounds or tamper with invulns, it's at a huge disadvantage this edition.

I agree, even as a Daemons player.

My local group essentially agrees that unless it has an invuln, it's really not a good unit, unless its job is to die. I forget the context, but essentially something either has to be cheap, or have an invuln, or it's not good.

Invuls are a part of the problem in 8th, I think.

The main issue i have with them are 4++ or better invuls on vehicles.

Good invuls on vehicles heavily counter the AP of most "anti tank" D6 damage guns such as melta, las, etc that rely on good AP and S to get their damage through, to the point where pretty much the all the "good" vehicles in the game are the ones with invul saves, and high AP guns aren't typically as worthwhile as high rate of fire low AP guns. Getting past a single hit roll, wound roll, save roll, and then a random damage roll is already annoyingly swingy enough without having the save rolls ignore the AP of the weapon.

I honestly don't think that the AP system was thought through properly. Too many units pay too much for armor that just ends up being ignored by AP, and too many guns pay too much for AP that ends up getting ignored by invul saves, to the point where all you really want are lots of bodies with bad armor saves, or units with good invuls defensively, and offensively just need lots of shots with low to medium AP.

high invul saves on tanks is also a problem for things like terminators as it ensures people take more anti tank. and thus you run into people who have las cannons to spare

I disagree, I think the game has too many good AP weapons. The only way you'd even notice too many invuln saves is if you were shooting way too many AP weapons, and if it weren't for those pesky invuln saves, you'd be blowing everything away with your AP.

Yeah the Avatar was running a 5 invul 5 feel no pain. And its the Avatar. Thats fine. Its dead hard but not obnoxious. And its one guy. But I had a 4 6 against it. And that was on 2 guys. He was expecting to wreck me and would have but his ap didn't matter.

The Wraith blade were something else. They had a 3/4. Which was buffed to 2/3 2 rounds out of 3. And fortune for a 5 up feel no pain, toughness 6 and 3 wounds. 10 of 'em.

I had the 4 6s as I said.


Its not that there are invulsits that there are so many of them. So many of them that fire power is balanced to take down huge invuls, so when you shoot at something with out an invul it melts.



It I was to re balance, i would set some design parameters. Nothing gets better than a 5 up invul. Invuls can only ever be improved to 4. Units must make a sacrifice to get an invul. Like the Wraith shields.

I don't think its a problem for wytches, they are thoughness 3, 1 wound and they only have a 6 up to shooting, so they have a weakness. Grotesques in the prophets have t5 (or6) 5 wounds and a 4 up. They have no weakness and no reason to put them in cover. They should be tough, but they shouldn't ignore your fire power. And right now they do.


There are other units like that. Don't even get me started on Tau with shield drones.

In 7th edition 2++ invuls were common, and you could re-roll a lot of them. 8th isn’t nearly as bad

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
I disagree, I think the game has too many good AP weapons. The only way you'd even notice too many invuln saves is if you were shooting way too many AP weapons, and if it weren't for those pesky invuln saves, you'd be blowing everything away with your AP.

The issue is that it creates a large gap in power between the armies that rely on armor saves to survive and the ones that do not.

Guns with low rates of fire and high AP are supposed to be able to hurt models with lots of wounds (vehicles) with some semblance of effectiveness. They are also notably bad at killing things like infantry, which makes sense.

If whole armies (harlequins and DE for example) don't care about your AP (because everything has an invul, really bad armor saves, and/or FNP) then the meta has to shift to weapons that do hurt them. It turns out these are things with lots of shots and low AP. These weapons are not quite as good against the more typical vehicles with only armor saves, but they aren't terrible, and any high AP weapons that are still taken are still radically effective.

In the end invuls have no downside except cost, and that is typically too low for how much enemy power they allow you to ignore.

I think the main solution is to either increase the cost of invul saves (especially 4++ or better) or reduce the cost of armor saves (especially 3+ or better).

Headlss wrote:
Just finnished games 10 and 11. Prophets of flesh rolling against stupid buffed waith blades and an Avatar. Wraith blades have 3 or4 up invul save (one spell) and a 5 up feel no pain, another spell. I had 4 up invul on the Grots and talos, and a 6+ feel no pain. Wytches the same.

Avatar against 2 Talos wasn't quite as bad on his side but the Talos just ingnored 2 or 3 rounds of attacks.

We had a round where we had over 100 attacks between us and did 1 wound apiece. Thats dumb.

I don't know what the answer is but the game needs rebalancing. Not to make anyone better or worse but to make things faster.

Wraith units and coven units are some of the most durable units in their respective books, and you both made them even more tanky with your choice of psychic powers and obsessions. In the case of the craftworld units, much of the appeal of their offense is the AP of their weapons, which your army doesn't really care about for the most part. I'm not sure that's really indicative of how durable units are in general.

Also, doing 1 or 2 wounds with 100 attacks is statistically anomalous.

I don't think I really agree with the premise that invuln saves are a problem. One of the very best armies, Guard, have almost no invuln saves at all. And, even if invulnerable saves were commonplace, would that really a problem? The meta shifting away from low volume heavy AP weapons doesn't mean the game got any worse.

The problem isn't invul vs armor saves, it's armies with invul, armies with armor, armies with both, all having increase rate of fire to balance that out against each other.

And then those armies play against armies that have neither invuls, armor, nor rate of fire. That's the real problem.

 JimOnMars wrote:
The problem isn't invul vs armor saves, it's armies with invul, armies with armor, armies with both, all having increase rate of fire to balance that out against each other.

And then those armies play against armies that have neither invuls, armor, nor rate of fire. That's the real problem.

I do agree that right now invul saves and high rate of fire high AP weapons are the problem, as they tend to get caught in a bit of a feedback loop. IMHO the biggest problem right now are high AP "spalsh" weapons, that can effectively mean a high rate of fire. I don't mind getting rid of templates but we NEED some sort of "ordinance" rules that restricts how many times a flamer or a battle cannon (just for example) can hit the same fething unit.

You can pry my 3d6 flamer shots on a single model unit from my cold, dead hands.

BrianDavion wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:
The problem isn't invul vs armor saves, it's armies with invul, armies with armor, armies with both, all having increase rate of fire to balance that out against each other.

And then those armies play against armies that have neither invuls, armor, nor rate of fire. That's the real problem.

I do agree that right now invul saves and high rate of fire high AP weapons are the problem, as they tend to get caught in a bit of a feedback loop. IMHO the biggest problem right now are high AP "spalsh" weapons, that can effectively mean a high rate of fire. I don't mind getting rid of templates but we NEED some sort of "ordinance" rules that restricts how many times a flamer or a battle cannon (just for example) can hit the same fething unit.

Eh. Do we though? I'm pretty okay with d6 shots from a flamer having the potential to kill off my 5 man squad if the dice are against me. A d6 shot flamer should probably be pretty decent at killing off the 2 survivors of my squad. If you're spaying prometheum at someone for X seconds and you only have two guys to point the nozzle at, you can spend more time spritzing those two guys than you would if you were spraying a wide arc at more dudes.

Against larger targets, spraying a carnifex with a flamer for 5 seconds is probably more damaging than spraying him for 1 second. As for blast weapons that "hit" multiple times, I just sort of see that as an abstraction for how well the shot was placed. A well-placed shot will land in the middle of a squad and kill a bunch of guys instead of just catching one or two at the edge of the squad's formation. A well-placed shot against a tank or carnifex will hit it in the head/engine instead of just blasting its limbs/treads.

meleti wrote:
You can pry my 3d6 flamer shots on a single model unit from my cold, dead hands.

the ideal would be to make stuff that is supposed to be splash hit more models then before, so that suddenly a flamer is a real threat to a horde.

I'd support giving every flamer type weapon an extra d6 but making them do a maximum number of hits equal to the size of the unit.

 greyknight12 wrote:
In 7th edition 2++ invuls were common, and you could re-roll a lot of them. 8th isn’t nearly as bad

The situation with covers saves got significantly better in the 8th ed.
We had editions with a 4+ cover save for tanks and infantry. As a consequence, almost nothing died.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I'd support giving every flamer type weapon an extra d6 but making them do a maximum number of hits equal to the size of the unit.

sounds like a plan, but flamers aren't the only example of this, as such if I could make ONE rule change for a hypothetical 9th edition it would be to add the following weapon TYPES to 40k.

Ordinance: *all rules for heavy weapon* also may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Blast: may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Tempest:follow rules for assault weapon but may have a maxium number of... yadda yadda ya.

The big advantage here is it gives GW some added variaty which means more tools for the toolbox other then"X and X+1"

I don't think you can derive general balance problems from games between different Aeldari subfactions.

CWE and Drukhari are two of the best codices atm.

If anything the game doesn't have high enough INVs. +5 on terminators is laughable, Strikes have no invs and die to lasguns and mortars, where in the fluff their armors take blows from demon weapons.

What really blew my mind though was the fact that termintor armor was build around a civilian suit created to work in plasma reactors, yet somehow plasma is the best way to deal with termintors. Now am not saying an IG dude should be running around with a +3 inv, but those factions that have models that cost 20+ or even 40+pts each , before weapons, should get good invs to be semi playable.

Karol wrote:
If anything the game doesn't have high enough INVs. +5 on terminators is laughable, Strikes have no invs and die to lasguns and mortars, where in the fluff their armors take blows from demon weapons.

What really blew my mind though was the fact that termintor armor was build around a civilian suit created to work in plasma reactors, yet somehow plasma is the best way to deal with termintors. Now am not saying an IG dude should be running around with a +3 inv, but those factions that have models that cost 20+ or even 40+pts each , before weapons, should get good invs to be semi playable.

the problem IMHO is that we have so many invul saves, and so many high AP weapons that a 2+ armor save combined with a 5++ invul isn't all that great

Terminators should be highly survivable tough nuts to crack. the ideal way to do that is to makes multi shot High AP weapons extremely rare.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I'd support giving every flamer type weapon an extra d6 but making them do a maximum number of hits equal to the size of the unit.

sounds like a plan, but flamers aren't the only example of this, as such if I could make ONE rule change for a hypothetical 9th edition it would be to add the following weapon TYPES to 40k.

Ordinance: *all rules for heavy weapon* also may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Blast: may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Tempest:follow rules for assault weapon but may have a maxium number of... yadda yadda ya.

The big advantage here is it gives GW some added variaty which means more tools for the toolbox other then"X and X+1"

If only there was some kind of elegant solution to this bass akwardsness made from Perspex or something? But sadly such a thing does not exist. A man can dream...

I'd rather see more wounds on those models than invulns.

 Grimtuff wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
I'd support giving every flamer type weapon an extra d6 but making them do a maximum number of hits equal to the size of the unit.

sounds like a plan, but flamers aren't the only example of this, as such if I could make ONE rule change for a hypothetical 9th edition it would be to add the following weapon TYPES to 40k.

Ordinance: *all rules for heavy weapon* also may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Blast: may have a maximum number of hits equal to the number of units it targets.
Tempest:follow rules for assault weapon but may have a maxium number of... yadda yadda ya.

The big advantage here is it gives GW some added variaty which means more tools for the toolbox other then"X and X+1"

If only there was some kind of elegant solution to this bass akwardsness made from Perspex or something? But sadly such a thing does not exist. A man can dream...

Except thats the definition of an inelegant solution, as it's just a step back to movement phase taking up most of the game time as everything has to be spaced to the limit for maximum minimization of templates. 8th edition is slow enough as it is with roll-reroll, roll-reroll, for every roll in the game.

Ah yes, let's follow the GW edict of templates being the devil incarnate (just like points 3 years ago), despite numerous other games using them perfectly fine.

No. Templates worked and didn't cause gak like this with stupid "solutions" given to blast weapons that can seem as useful as Ann Frank's drum kit at times. Sorry bud, your devastating Battle Cannon that makes craters in the ground itself hits 1 guy despite all his mates standing around him.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah yes, let's follow the GW edict of templates being the devil incarnate (just like points 3 years ago), despite numerous other games using them perfectly fine.

No. Templates worked and didn't cause gak like this with stupid "solutions" given to blast weapons that can seem as useful as Ann Frank's drum kit at times. Sorry bud, your devastating Battle Cannon that makes craters in the ground itself hits 1 guy despite all his mates standing around him.

Please please please no, I don't want to go back to having to space every model to maximum coherency with every move. You can't make me!

You decided to pit Wraith Constructs against Haemonculus Covens, two subfactions who's entire point is to be amongst the most durable forces in any army and so designed to reflect that, against each other and your complaining that they're resiliant?

Do you not see a problem with this?