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 Continuity wrote:

My theory for the SW book is that it is the victim of GW aggressively reining back the potential power creep created by knights and dark eldar, resulting in an extremely safe and sanitized book where 'muh balance' is everything. SW has the potential to be an absolute monster for mono-marine lists (and it still is right now, that's how bad marines are by themselves). If that's the case I applaud GW's attempt but the genie is out of the bottle when you made dissy ravagers and 4 point guardsmen. Hopefully SW was written with the upcoming chapter approved and FAQ in mind so it has been adjusted in preparation for that.

Edit: Got a couple of points wrong here, skimmed the book too fast and jumped to conclusions

You think GW would change codex because of codex not yet even released?-) Nope.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Justyn wrote:

If by worse you mean different. The Eldar one requires you to choose a friendly <CRAFTWORLD> unit. The Space Wolf one only requires a friendly unit. 'Hello friendly Shadowsword, see captain Slamguinius who just arrived via deepstrike, remove him please."

True, but given the flavour text on the stratagem, it seems likely this was not the intention and will probably be FAQed. It might not, but I wouldn't rush out right now and buy an army on this stratagem, at least not before the post-Codex-release quick-FAQ.

If you already have Space Wolves + Shadowsword/Castellan/whatever, it might be a fun way to annoy people this weekend, maybe next weekend if you're lucky and GW doesn't get around to the FAQ due to NOVA.

Yup agreed. Remember case "Deep striking Magnus/Mortarion".

Use if you want, don't invest to big huge model hoping to use this quite yet.

Well if the intention of the stratagem is <Space Wolves> units only, it's pretty appalling that they failed to write it as such in the first place.

That said, I would wait for the FAQ anyway.

 Continuity wrote:


My theory for the SW book is that it is the victim of GW aggressively reining back the potential power creep created by knights and dark eldar, resulting in an extremely safe and sanitized book where 'muh balance' is everything.

That's not how writing, editing, typesetting and sending a book to printers in China, having it ship back for a few months to warehouses and stores around the world works. When GW rule-writers put their finishing touches on this book, people were probably doing some Christmas shopping, and Knights, Drukhari or the spring FAQ were all still in the relatively distant future.

 Weazel wrote:
Well if the intention of the stratagem is <Space Wolves> units only, it's pretty appalling that they failed to write it as such in the first place.

That said, I would wait for the FAQ anyway.

Well we are talking about GW that considers game to be played by friends rather than WAAC players so what is intentional and what is unintended mistake is sometimes hard...

True, but given the flavour text on the stratagem, it seems likely this was not the intention and will probably be FAQed. It might not, but I wouldn't rush out right now and buy an army on this stratagem, at least not before the post-Codex-release quick-FAQ.

If you already have Space Wolves + Shadowsword/Castellan/whatever, it might be a fun way to annoy people this weekend, maybe next weekend if you're lucky and GW doesn't get around to the FAQ due to NOVA.

I disagree. I believe the intent was there. Oh probably not for Shadowswords and Castellans, but for cross faction. We'll see when the FAQ comes. As careful as they were with the rest of the Codex about not erring on the side of too powerful (read nerfed the crap out of a great many things) I can't imagine they missed this. I can picture a FAQ that changes it to friendly infantry or some such.

The Warlord Traits were more a "Hey this is cool and fluffy" rather than a huge nerf or boost. Some got worse admittedly. Some will be better if they get activated before it no longer matters in a game.

I definitely agree about not rushing out to purchase anything.

Ice_can wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Justyn wrote:

If by worse you mean different. The Eldar one requires you to choose a friendly <CRAFTWORLD> unit. The Space Wolf one only requires a friendly unit. 'Hello friendly Shadowsword, see captain Slamguinius who just arrived via deepstrike, remove him please."

True, but given the flavour text on the stratagem, it seems likely this was not the intention and will probably be FAQed. It might not, but I wouldn't rush out right now and buy an army on this stratagem, at least not before the post-Codex-release quick-FAQ.

If you already have Space Wolves + Shadowsword/Castellan/whatever, it might be a fun way to annoy people this weekend, maybe next weekend if you're lucky and GW doesn't get around to the FAQ due to NOVA.

I'm actually thinking this is working as intended, it's why it's such a nerfed form of Auspex Scan and whatever the Eldar one is because it's so much more open.

You think it's a nerfed version of auspex scan? It's different yes but I'm not going to agree that spacewolfs are marines -1.

Seriously most of this thread sounds like the stuff your salty about is stuff that should never have been things in the first place
3++ dreadnaughts
+1 to invulnerable saves (hello 2++ deathstars)

They aren't marine -1 they are just inline with the rest of the marine codex's which leaves room for point drops or other marine wide changes to make them all playable instead of it being play your marines as marines + or loose.

I'm not saying it's marines -1, I'm saying it's a weaker form of auspec scan and because of that I think it's "any friendly" MIGHT be working as intended.
Noty that it is, but I think it's too early to say and this is a definate FAQ question. that said I'd not wanna build a list around using this with a shadowsword or something. because it's 50/50 if they FAQ it IMHO

The codex disappoint me. I know that all marine codex at the bottom of power curve now, and should the wolves become competitive as standalone codex a wave of hate will be unleashed, but was that nerfs be so necessary?.. Why nerf dread, nobody use it anyway. Why overnerf wolves? GW force us to take guard ally? No internal bubblewrab unit allowed here. Why nerf battleleader, we a supposse to use lots of character heavy hitters, and that one was not OP.
And warlord traits was nerfed before the codex was shipped to players. Such a dirty move, give at least option to use ones in codex...

But compare to other marines it's good. Sad that marines in a bad place overal.

Spacewolves got a good codex because they boosted shooting and not only melee combat , like the blood angels.


Stormfangs went down 50 pts and are playble now

Keen senses is one of the best stratagems because minus to hit modifiers are a huge game changer

Longfangs got reroll wounds for 1 CP

Chooser of the slain is way better than auspex scan because there is no limit in the range and also its not only for infantry units

Warlord traits are good buffs because our warlords tend to be beatsticks and the aura thing is a secondary buff which provides flavor (saga and all) and an additional boost

Our chapter tactic is very good

wulfenstone and arnour of russ are good relics

All in all a good book and for me its better overall than any other marine book.

 beir wrote:
Why is it to be expected that 8th is a large step back from 7th in terms of army customization and rule variety?

Because 7th was a bloated monstrosity that almost killed off the game.

I'll be in minority, but I am really GLAD that there is no more companies. There will be 1 or 2 playable and the rest will suck.
Want to play wolves - play X company. You paint your guys as Y lord's warriors? Sad to be you. And if you play X company, you cannot use that awesome strategem and named character for Y one. I own a codex, I want to use all it's toys c:

I've had Wolves since 3rd. I'm not a fan of this codex but that's because I lost the ability to field bike and twolf Iron Priests and any mention of Lone Wolves have gone. I'm stoked I can run fighter support for my gunships and aerial transports, and I can't wait to stick pelts and stuff all over a Hunter or three.
That said I also run vanilla marines, and I LOVED the Angels of Death formations for them and am gutted I lost those.

I think the only "marine" book that could give SW book a run for best well rounded marine book, is death guard.

Kurnost wrote:
I've had Wolves since 3rd. I'm not a fan of this codex but that's because I lost the ability to field bike and twolf Iron Priests and any mention of Lone Wolves have gone. I'm stoked I can run fighter support for my gunships and aerial transports, and I can't wait to stick pelts and stuff all over a Hunter or three.
That said I also run vanilla marines, and I LOVED the Angels of Death formations for them and am gutted I lost those.

If it's in the index it's still legal to take. They're just taking stuff out of the codexes that don't have actual model kits and require conversion to run.

Formations died for good reason and while I fully support stuff that rewards people for the models in their collections, the way it's done via strategems (and by forcing you to pay CP to use them) is better balanced than it ever was. Any of the formations that gave you free stuff had to go though as there is no way to do free models like that in 8th, and it's for good reason.

Kurnost wrote:
I've had Wolves since 3rd. I'm not a fan of this codex but that's because I lost the ability to field bike and twolf Iron Priests and any mention of Lone Wolves have gone. I'm stoked I can run fighter support for my gunships and aerial transports, and I can't wait to stick pelts and stuff all over a Hunter or three.
That said I also run vanilla marines, and I LOVED the Angels of Death formations for them and am gutted I lost those.

1) no you didn't. Index flowchart exists. If you're whining that you lost the same stuff literally every codex "lost" then I'm not sure what to say to you. No model, no rules.

2) no they're not. Either A, use them from index, or B, use the new stratagem (it's called "lone wolf" if that's not a big enough hint as to what it does) to make a lone wolf dynamically in game.

Welcome to 8th edition...where have you been?

the_scotsman wrote:

Kurnost wrote:
I've had Wolves since 3rd. I'm not a fan of this codex but that's because I lost the ability to field bike and twolf Iron Priests and any mention of Lone Wolves have gone. I'm stoked I can run fighter support for my gunships and aerial transports, and I can't wait to stick pelts and stuff all over a Hunter or three.
That said I also run vanilla marines, and I LOVED the Angels of Death formations for them and am gutted I lost those.

1) no you didn't. Index flowchart exists. If you're whining that you lost the same stuff literally every codex "lost" then I'm not sure what to say to you. No model, no rules.

2) no they're not. Either A, use them from index, or B, use the new stratagem (it's called "lone wolf" if that's not a big enough hint as to what it does) to make a lone wolf dynamically in game.

I've seen this type of conversation happen in every codex thread since vanilla marines dropped. Folks are really bad at articulating what they mean to say it seems. They also seek out hyperbole almost immediately, too. What this scot is saying is absolutely correct - nothing was lost. Just...changed. Balanced differently.

But what Kurnoth is trying to say is that he lost the ability to do it the way he remembered/wanted/some other qualifier that isn't clearly explained or articulated in his original post. I think the reason the hyperbole is clear - he's trying to highlight the loss of it in its previous form as an issue in a way that exaggerates the impact, even if it's not really that big of a deal objectively as it is to him subjectively.

It's fascinating to watch, but makes it a true exercise in futility to try and get a read on the quality and balance of codexes from those with past experiences with the army. It's pure madness.

Lemondish wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Kurnost wrote:
I've had Wolves since 3rd. I'm not a fan of this codex but that's because I lost the ability to field bike and twolf Iron Priests and any mention of Lone Wolves have gone. I'm stoked I can run fighter support for my gunships and aerial transports, and I can't wait to stick pelts and stuff all over a Hunter or three.
That said I also run vanilla marines, and I LOVED the Angels of Death formations for them and am gutted I lost those.

1) no you didn't. Index flowchart exists. If you're whining that you lost the same stuff literally every codex "lost" then I'm not sure what to say to you. No model, no rules.

2) no they're not. Either A, use them from index, or B, use the new stratagem (it's called "lone wolf" if that's not a big enough hint as to what it does) to make a lone wolf dynamically in game.

I've seen this type of conversation happen in every codex thread since vanilla marines dropped. Folks are really bad at articulating what they mean to say it seems. They also seek out hyperbole almost immediately, too. What this scot is saying is absolutely correct - nothing was lost. Just...changed. Balanced differently.

But what Kurnoth is trying to say is that he lost the ability to do it the way he remembered/wanted/some other qualifier that isn't clearly explained or articulated in his original post. I think the reason the hyperbole is clear - he's trying to highlight the loss of it in its previous form as an issue in a way that exaggerates the impact, even if it's not really that big of a deal objectively as it is to him subjectively.

It's fascinating to watch, but makes it a true exercise in futility to try and get a read on the quality and balance of codexes from those with past experiences with the army. It's pure madness.

Without owning and playing it yourself, the only way to recieve a reasonable opinion on a dex is from a voice you know and recognise to be impartial on such matters, or from top players. Putting faith to the opinions of anyone else on this site is a recipe for disaster. I've never seen so much downplay, and there is some extremely low level opinions on here with no real way to filter it. Even the Reddit is higher level than here, I'd recommend just listening to tournament players podcasts or reading their blogs if you want a more knowledgeable or nuanced opinion concerning anything competitive.

The_Scotsman, thanks for pointing me towards the stratagem. I'd missed it in my first read through.

Where can I find this Index Flowchart you speak of?

Kurnost wrote:
The_Scotsman, thanks for pointing me towards the stratagem. I'd missed it in my first read through.

Where can I find this Index Flowchart you speak of?

https://whc-cdn.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/warhammer_40000_designers_commentary_en-1.pdf

Last page.

Anything that *is* in the index, but *isn't* in the codex - be that wargear, or unit - can still be used with the index rules, unchanged.

Personally, I think the Lone Wolf stratagem is way cooler than Lone Wolf the index unit (because it happens organically, in game, a model who is the last survivor of the unit becomes a character and starts doing awesome stuff) but you can still take Lone Wolf the index unit.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
For the life of me, I can't figure out why Space Wolf players believed that being the last Space Marine release meant they were going to be treated significantly better than everyone else.

SW players are used to be Codex: SM+1. Not getting it means tantrums

whoa whoa whoa guys, let's not refer to this as "Space Wolf Players" this is "A Space Wolf player"

Nah I gotta agree with Shuppet on this one. Space Wolves are always consistently better and their players are super entitled because of it.

In every edition I have played this has been consistently true.

Greyhunters have always been a super tactical for like +1 point.
Thunder-wolves - super bikes for not much more points
Dreads better because reasons
Frost weapons the best at same points
Relics better because reasons
psychic better even though they don't use psychics
more heavies in the devs squads because reasons (have split fire because reasons) (same cost)
Special storm raven with more guns because reasons
Oh - you can take an army with all free drop pods? Oh so can we except - all our drop pod arrive at the same time.

I could go ON AND ON AND ON. But it would be pointless.

Space Wolves have gotten some great stratagems. Long Fangs shooting people in the ass is going to be annoying.

Awesome stratagem - reroll all hits or wounds for 5 heavies? That is massive. Then if you fail to kill off a unit and leave 1...he becomes lone wolf and now has character protection. This is a pretty cool rule I must say.

So many people in this thread totally missing my point. I was never talking about competitive power level. It was the second sentence.

I suppose it's true that most people only read headlines.

 beir wrote:
So many people in this thread totally missing my point. I was never talking about competitive power level. It was the second sentence.

I suppose it's true that most people only read headlines.

The problem is that most of your complaints directly tie to the competitive power of the army. Yes you mentioned a bit here and there about lore but most of your complaints were tied to options, particularly options we've known for a long time that were broken last edition and you wanted put into this edition regardless.

It's hard to divorce competitive power from the list when thing things you specifically want are a leap up in the power level of the army as a whole.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 beir wrote:
So many people in this thread totally missing my point. I was never talking about competitive power level. It was the second sentence.

I suppose it's true that most people only read headlines.

The problem is that most of your complaints directly tie to the competitive power of the army. Yes you mentioned a bit here and there about lore but most of your complaints were tied to options, particularly options we've known for a long time that were broken last edition and you wanted put into this edition regardless.

It's hard to divorce competitive power from the list when thing things you specifically want are a leap up in the power level of the army as a whole.

No, most of my complaints were about lack of flavor/diversity and lack of painted and converted model photos of new units in the book.

I can see now why you got so angry at my post - you didn't even understand it in the first place.

They didn't even put pictures of several models they already have in their unit entries.

 gwarsh41 wrote:
I think the only "marine" book that could give SW book a run for best well rounded marine book, is death guard.

Since those are your main armies, you must be a happy camper right about now?

 beir wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 beir wrote:
So many people in this thread totally missing my point. I was never talking about competitive power level. It was the second sentence.

I suppose it's true that most people only read headlines.

The problem is that most of your complaints directly tie to the competitive power of the army. Yes you mentioned a bit here and there about lore but most of your complaints were tied to options, particularly options we've known for a long time that were broken last edition and you wanted put into this edition regardless.

It's hard to divorce competitive power from the list when thing things you specifically want are a leap up in the power level of the army as a whole.

No, most of my complaints were about lack of flavor/diversity and lack of painted and converted model photos of new units in the book.

I can see now why you got so angry at my post - you didn't even understand it in the first place.

They didn't even put pictures of several models they already have in their unit entries.

You complained about a lack of formations, which are a significant power boost to the army. You also complained about not having additional subfaction rules which would further boost army strength as well.

Yes, you complained about missing pictures (something that tells me you need to look at more codexes, they're all a bit bare bones in that regard, something that has me disappointed as well) but you had plenty of complaints for wanting more stuff from 6th/7th back that have no point being in the game and would just give the codex a massive power boost.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 beir wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 beir wrote:
So many people in this thread totally missing my point. I was never talking about competitive power level. It was the second sentence.

I suppose it's true that most people only read headlines.

The problem is that most of your complaints directly tie to the competitive power of the army. Yes you mentioned a bit here and there about lore but most of your complaints were tied to options, particularly options we've known for a long time that were broken last edition and you wanted put into this edition regardless.

It's hard to divorce competitive power from the list when thing things you specifically want are a leap up in the power level of the army as a whole.

No, most of my complaints were about lack of flavor/diversity and lack of painted and converted model photos of new units in the book.

I can see now why you got so angry at my post - you didn't even understand it in the first place.

They didn't even put pictures of several models they already have in their unit entries.

You complained about a lack of formations, which are a significant power boost to the army. You also complained about not having additional subfaction rules which would further boost army strength as well.

Yes, you complained about missing pictures (something that tells me you need to look at more codexes, they're all a bit bare bones in that regard, something that has me disappointed as well) but you had plenty of complaints for wanting more stuff from 6th/7th back that have no point being in the game and would just give the codex a massive power boost.

Why would they have to give a massive power boost? I wouldn't mind if old formations, retooled as stratagems, came back and 'sucked' from a competitive point of view. I wouldn't mind if Arjac's Shieldbrothers cost 6cp as long as it was there somewhere. My point was that we got a lot of vanilla marine stratagems and not much new/unique for us while there was plenty of source material to draw from. The unique stratagems we did get were mediocre in general with 1-2 exceptions (AGAIN from a flavor point of view, not a game winning point of view). I think that's lame.

Do you understand now or is your SW prejudice so thick that you simply can't understand?

And just because every 8th edition codex has sucked as a book doesn't mean this one doesn't suck too. Compare the codices to the AoS battletomes. Clearly one is a cash grab and the other is actually pretty awesome.

My prejudice definitely doesn't compare to your projection and levels of salt that's for sure.

Look, if you were first out of the chute and had this list of complaints I'd have more sympathy but this late into the initial release cycle of this edition it comes across as ignoring the warning signs you should have been able to spot a mile away. Then again your Primarch blindly followed a traitor's orders to purge Magnus so maybe that's to be expected.

Joking aside, the point isn't that things couldn't have been better, the point is you blindly expected too much at this point and when we say as much you claim we just hate Space Wolves or something and act like we're the problem. Emperor knows I want cool Imperial Fists stuff back but it's too soon in this edition to really expect to see the level of support that something like the supplements gave subfactions.

And AoS Battletomes are released at a MUCH slower release cycle with model support. That's like comparing the a race car to a family sedan. Sure they'll both get to the destination, but one is doing it a lot faster and is more stripped down than the other one.

Seriously, I would LOVE for "more" in a lot of respects, we can't have that AND the hyper fast release cycle we have. If we were following AoS style releases to give us more we would have gotten two armies and an updated index last year after the new edition dropped. You'd be waiting for YEARS to see Space Wolves get an update and be living from update to update via index changes over anything actually aimed at your army specifically. Are you honestly claiming that's what you wanted? To still be waiting just so you could have a codex with more substantial updates instead of getting something out of the gate with room for expansion later?

Formations were never coming back though. It's not space wolf hate, it's people trying to point out your expectations were not realistic and are counter to GW game design.