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Reemule wrote:
And Stratagems limited to your Warlord's choices?

Hell no!

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
Have a problem with Doom? Then bring something to counter it. Inquisitor Greyfax is actually a great addition. 2 denies and a +1 to deny, what's not to like? Simply spend a CP to bring her along. Either that or a Culexus. Other armies have to modify lists to counter specific threats, why should Imperium be different? It's not like they are short on options.

...Great. What does the Tau or the Necron player do? Bring Greyfax?

Necrons get a deny from the Immortal Pride Warlord trait, which seems to be the go-to trait for many lists anyway.

Tomb Sentinels also get a gloom prism - just like Spiders. They might not be the best choices atm, but at least we have to option to field them (unlike Tau) and CA might help out fix that particular problem.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
But some CP are more cost effective than others.

The rage about that on Dakka would be epic.

You mean stratagems ? Because if the amount of CP is based on points, they're all worth the same thing.
Btw, it would be easier to balance stratagems costs (inside and outside of any ally setting) if each army had the ability to generate just as much CPs.

I'm pretty sure it's one of the best solution anyway, CP being generated mainly by troops creates huge gaps between codexes (and the different armies available to them).

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
Have a problem with Doom? Then bring something to counter it. Inquisitor Greyfax is actually a great addition. 2 denies and a +1 to deny, what's not to like? Simply spend a CP to bring her along. Either that or a Culexus. Other armies have to modify lists to counter specific threats, why should Imperium be different? It's not like they are short on options.

...Great. What does the Tau or the Necron player do? Bring Greyfax?

This is just my two cents so take it as it is.

But it would seem that the recent lore has been hinting at the possibility of "Dark Tau." If the Ethereal were actually demons in disguise, then having them take on psycker attributes would alleviate this issue. Also, I know that the T'au recently captured a down imperial vessel and reverse engineered the Warp Drive from it. This was a disaster for them, but suffice it to say they are now aware of the Warp and of Chaos. There isn't any reason as to why they couldn't take the technological approach to research and find some sort of warp dampening technology.

There are plenty of avenues for the story writers to come up with a fix that can be reflected in the base rules.

Imagine a new Suit System that has the capacity to dampen warp fethery within x inches. It might cause the caster to have a harder time casting a spell (+1 to WC within 6,8,12 inches of the suit) or it could cause them to destabilize ( any doubles will cause perils within 6,8,12 inches of the suit)

Both of those are viable I think.

Reemule wrote:
Can't we just go to points based CP for everyone? And Stratagems limited to your Warlord's choices?

I actually really like the apparent intent of elite armies having much more effective stratagems but at a higher cost and lower pool juxtaposed against armies with weaker, lower cost strats they used more often from a higher pool.

Points cost balance the pool size - can't bring a brigade or multiple battalions in an effective list in some armies while some other armies can bring both easily.

The problem is cross contamination. Separate detachments as allies should not deny you access to their stratagems. That seems boring and all but removes allies from competitive play. Likewise, the status quo gives the best of both and shouldn't continue. Conflating issues doesn't help, either. Tackle CP batteries and then tackle points imbalance.

I think the more likely and subtle solution is to limit CP to the force that generates it. There's just two major issues that need to be addressed...

1. How to make this happen without harming mono-builds. Use the battle brothers rule here perhaps?
2. Where do the 3CP from being BF come from? Managing four potential pools seems unwieldy, so my thought is to attribute these 3 to the Warlord's force.

While the idea of a complete revamp of the CP process is awesome..

It seems pretty clear that GW is going to avoid that.

If you go off what GW has proven it likes to do to fix stuff..

Expect detachments to get CP changes. Expect Stratagems to get CP cost changes. Expect new Stratagems to address some issues.

What I took away from the FAQ is that I probably shouldn't expect CA to fix mono-build Marines.

I'd speculated that GW doesn't see a problem with 'The Loyal 32' or with BA/IK/GK/vanilla Marines not being good on their own because GW sees "Imperium" as the faction, and when we complain that mono-build Marines don't work GW reacts the same way one of us would react to someone complaining that am army comprised entirely of Centurion Devastators doesn't work; "well duh, you're obviously not supposed to play it like that you thick burk".

By toning down CP regeneration and slightly raising the cost of some of the more overused strategems instead of admitting that the effect of increasing the CPs for Battalions and Brigades was the opposite of the stated intention (helping elite armies compete*) GW has basically signaled that taking a cheap Guard battalion to power your Knight/Smash Captain/whatever is Imperium working as intended. If you want to play Marines start with the loyal 32, and if that gives you heartburn paint 'em to match your Marines and call 'em initiates or whatever.

If that is where GW is at then I wouldn't expect any really major shake-ups.

* That does suggest a fix to the CP Battery issue, which is to adjust that stuff in the other direction. Set the base CP from 3 to 10, Brigades grant +3, Battalions grand +2, the currently 3-5 point ones grant +1, everything else is 0.

The Newman wrote:
What I took away from the FAQ is that I probably shouldn't expect CA to fix mono-build Marines.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't expect that.

By toning down CP regeneration and slightly raising the cost of some of the more overused strategems instead of admitting that the effect of increasing the CPs for Battalions and Brigades was the opposite of the stated intention (helping elite armies compete*)

I don't quite understand how you think it was opposite. Elite armies needed more CP. They got more CP. It's just that those elite armies can get even moar CP from IG. It's generally accepted that no matter how you cut it extra CP helps marines more than it helps guard.

The increase in CP for battalions and brigades was surely an help for elite armies, it just wasn't enough.

Monoguard didn't take much from it, they went from 21 to 27 CPs (with the old Kurov and strategist).

Custodes went from 6 to 8 CPs.

Increasing the CP given by battalions and brigades is surely good for elite armies. After all if battalions were 100 CP no one would soup in CP batteries.

Recent GT (battle for salvation) with some of the top players confirms what a lot of people were saying.

Eldar soup still top of the pile (2/top 3 lists)
BA got dropped from IG/IK lists. IG bat replaced with Brig. It's still top of the pile.

BCP had issues with the results of this tourney so I can't get any more info. Anyone else boots on the ground have any idea how the FAQ shaped what happened?

Spoletta wrote:
The increase in CP for battalions and brigades was surely an help for elite armies, it just wasn't enough.

Monoguard didn't take much from it, they went from 21 to 27 CPs (with the old Kurov and strategist).

Custodes went from 6 to 8 CPs.

Increasing the CP given by battalions and brigades is surely good for elite armies. After all if battalions were 100 CP no one would soup in CP batteries.

It was a silly way to go about it. They should have just increased the standard battleforged CP instead. That would have achieved their stated goal without making the cheap allied IG battalions and brigades even more attractive.

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The increase in CP for battalions and brigades was surely an help for elite armies, it just wasn't enough.

Monoguard didn't take much from it, they went from 21 to 27 CPs (with the old Kurov and strategist).

Custodes went from 6 to 8 CPs.

Increasing the CP given by battalions and brigades is surely good for elite armies. After all if battalions were 100 CP no one would soup in CP batteries.

It was a silly way to go about it. They should have just increased the standard battleforged CP instead. That would have achieved their stated goal without making the cheap allied IG battalions and brigades even more attractive.

Yep

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The increase in CP for battalions and brigades was surely an help for elite armies, it just wasn't enough.

Monoguard didn't take much from it, they went from 21 to 27 CPs (with the old Kurov and strategist).

Custodes went from 6 to 8 CPs.

Increasing the CP given by battalions and brigades is surely good for elite armies. After all if battalions were 100 CP no one would soup in CP batteries.

It was a silly way to go about it. They should have just increased the standard battleforged CP instead. That would have achieved their stated goal without making the cheap allied IG battalions and brigades even more attractive.

This is part of where the problem with FAQ 2 started, strategums cost a lot of CP and many armies were struggling to generate them.
But by making only battalion and even brigade more CP it made competitive lists become very dependent upon making double battalions as a base for an army to ensure sufficient CP

That made the points cost of these "Tax" formations critical.
Simply put IG being Cheapest made them the problem and fall guy simultaneously, GS& Kurov's not helping.

To give everyone an equal boost they should have changed the battle forged CP and that woulf have been fine.

But once again GW's 40K design team showed they are fluff bunnies and bumbled blissfully unaware into the next abusive meta of IG plus X.

But GW while improving is still like most people reluctant to admit that it's "fix" is actually causing more problems than it solved.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The Newman wrote:
What I took away from the FAQ is that I probably shouldn't expect CA to fix mono-build Marines.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't expect that.

Almost everything else I said was explaining that statement, which part didn't make sense?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

By toning down CP regeneration and slightly raising the cost of some of the more overused strategems instead of admitting that the effect of increasing the CPs for Battalions and Brigades was the opposite of the stated intention (helping elite armies compete*)

I don't quite understand how you think it was opposite. Elite armies needed more CP. They got more CP. It's just that those elite armies can get even moar CP from IG. It's generally accepted that no matter how you cut it extra CP helps marines more than it helps guard.

Because context matters. GW flat out said that they were increasing the CPs for Battalions and Brigades because elite armies were struggling with CPs, but it helped hoard armies more and made the existing imbalance worse. Mono-build elite armies might have better strategems, but not by nearly enough to offset being outspent two or three to one.

GW could have addressed that, but they didn't. They addressed that CP regeneration is abusive (yay!) and that some strategems are better than others for the points (also yay) but they didn't do anything about how CP are populated to begin with and that suggests they don't see a problem. If they don't see the problem with CP generation for mono-build Marines/IK/whatever it suggests that they think CP generation for Imperium as a whole is fine.

That chain of logic ends with GW only addressing the issues with Marines within the context of Imperial Soup, and they need more than that for mono-building.

While knife-ears did get 2 of the top 3 at Salvation, neither list was anything like what we used to see.

Neither were Ynnari. Both had *non-Alaitoc* Craftworlders. And not just for a relic!

Both took almost entirely short range weapons. One took a ton of CC. Avatar, Phoenix Lord, and Wyches.

No Shining Spears. No Reapers. No Alaitoc.

Was there some weird Comp rule here?

I don't think BFS is a good meta-litmus test.


Knights were still half the lists at the event and with the FAQ out just 6 days or so before the event, most people simply took the lists they planned for anyhow. Sean Nayden's been playing is Avatar/Wyches list for ever.

Most (non-Knight) lists in the top were very much anti-Knight lists designed to beat Knights as much as possible in the pre-FAQ Knight-meta, (lots of Haywire, no juicy targets for Volcano Lances, shooting denial, lots of cc to clear Catachan Brigades, etc..) and just happened to potentially get a slightly easier ride because Knights got a dampener.

We'll have to wait and see how this shakes out when there's both less Knights around and thus perhaps less turkey-shooting for dedicated anti-Knight-meta-lists.

What makes you think we'll see less knights and subsequently less anti-knight?

Maybe the rise (from 2 to 1?) of eldar may make the meta more anti-eldar but I'm not sure how you go more anti-eldar with anything but eldar...

Eldar being more than just ynarri shows how powerful they are. They have lots of viable builds which the FAQ did NOTHING to reign in (doom, stacking negs to hit, wave serpents, disi cannons, OP units, snowflake rules, characters...)

Although 6 days does seem like a short amount of time to digest the FAQ. I'm curious how SoCAL looks as that seems a more reasonable amount of time to digest the FAQ and make army changes.

bananathug wrote:
What makes you think we'll see less knights and subsequently less anti-knight?

Maybe the rise (from 2 to 1?) of eldar may make the meta more anti-eldar but I'm not sure how you go more anti-eldar with anything but eldar...

Eldar being more than just ynarri shows how powerful they are. They have lots of viable builds which the FAQ did NOTHING to reign in (doom, stacking negs to hit, wave serpents, disi cannons, OP units, snowflake rules, characters...)

Although 6 days does seem like a short amount of time to digest the FAQ. I'm curious how SoCAL looks as that seems a more reasonable amount of time to digest the FAQ and make army changes.

Are you referring to Aeldari or Eldar (aka CWE)?

Also, show me a codex which doesn't have any of the following:
"OP units, snowflake rules, characters..."

Having digested it and playing with the updates:

I'm a big fan. Good job GW.

 mokoshkana wrote:

bananathug wrote:
What makes you think we'll see less knights and subsequently less anti-knight?

Maybe the rise (from 2 to 1?) of eldar may make the meta more anti-eldar but I'm not sure how you go more anti-eldar with anything but eldar...

Eldar being more than just ynarri shows how powerful they are. They have lots of viable builds which the FAQ did NOTHING to reign in (doom, stacking negs to hit, wave serpents, disi cannons, OP units, snowflake rules, characters...)

Although 6 days does seem like a short amount of time to digest the FAQ. I'm curious how SoCAL looks as that seems a more reasonable amount of time to digest the FAQ and make army changes.

Are you referring to Aeldari or Eldar (aka CWE)?

Also, show me a codex which doesn't have any of the following:
"OP units, snowflake rules, characters..."

I think he's referring to the fact that Eldar are not just Ynnari. The have a host of undercosted units with a host of special rules to use. Without targeted nerfs to OP models. The game will never get better.

Ynnari is a problem CWE, much less so. Change Doom to only work for CWE and that problem is solved. After that, what else is truly broken from a CWE perspective? Stacking hit modifiers is quite strong, but outside of flyers, specters, and rangers, no units get an innate modifier. Shining spears need a point increase, but the fly change negatively impacts them (again, ynnari is a separate issue). So what else is so broken that they cannot be beaten?

@Moko,

Mainly the 3 things you named. Although just limiting doom to CWE doesn't go far enough (18" range + LOS required would be a better move or just be able to cast it on one unit and allow that unit to re-roll wounds. Army wide re-rolls is so unbalancing.)

The durability of serpents needs an adjustment, more of the powers need to require LOS with reduced range, character sniping with a reaper launcher needs a FAQ, the flyers need point increases (crimson hunter exarchs and hemlocks are too good for their points) and reapers need to have their max size reduced to 5 (and maybe another 2 point price bump but that's splitting hairs at this point).

A couple of things in the dex need to move the other way (fire prisms, your knight equivalents, the other biker units and maybe a couple of others that I'm not familiar with.)

I think the bigger "nerf" will be to boost up the other dexes so that they can compete with the eldar factions.

DE, Ynnari and Harlies have their own problems (ravagers, grots, disi cannons, flyers, generally undercosted units, str from death, stacking negatives, haywire and some others). Similar to Knights and IG being really good creates super imperium lists Aeldari draws from the rest of the OP dexes to create another super army.

Doom=WC 8 would help too. All the "grand slam" powers cost WC 8.

It's been said somewhere here before but I believe if you want to achieve proper balance, they should bring back the old pre 5th FOC.

Restrict to single codex, eliminate soup entirely (can still have allies in narrative based games)

Something I've seen crop up in one of the podcasts I listen to while painting or doing other hobby stuff proposed an interesting idea: some of the reason this is the "soft touch" FAQ compared to the Spring FAQ is because CA has a lot of the rest of the changes that were already planned. This FAQ is basically everything CA didn't already include (points bumps, possible rule changes to army tactics that give a -1 to hit being a cover save instead, ect).

And considering what GW has shown us so far this edition, I'm inclined to buy in on this claim. I mean CA would have gone to print before the FAQ was even started in Sep to be ready to go by December and considering how much railing on about some of this stuff we've been doing and how ear-to -the-ground GW is trying to be, it's possible that we may be seeing more changes coming in CA as well.

One could hope that CA 2018 will be more substantial.

Personally hoping there's a line in there to allow SM/CSM of all varieties to use their chapter/legion trait for the whole army, not just infantry/dreads. Always hated how every other codex applies to the whole army and for marines it's infantry only.

DG preds with Inexorable Advance? Yes please.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Something I've seen crop up in one of the podcasts I listen to while painting or doing other hobby stuff proposed an interesting idea: some of the reason this is the "soft touch" FAQ compared to the Spring FAQ is because CA has a lot of the rest of the changes that were already planned. This FAQ is basically everything CA didn't already include (points bumps, possible rule changes to army tactics that give a -1 to hit being a cover save instead, ect).

And considering what GW has shown us so far this edition, I'm inclined to buy in on this claim. I mean CA would have gone to print before the FAQ was even started in Sep to be ready to go by December and considering how much railing on about some of this stuff we've been doing and how ear-to -the-ground GW is trying to be, it's possible that we may be seeing more changes coming in CA as well.

back before the first CA came out, GK player were told the same, that their FAQ is the way it is, because the real changes to costs and rules are going to happen in CA. That did not happen. But who knows maybe the new CA is going to be a 400pages book.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
I don't think BFS is a good meta-litmus test.


Knights were still half the lists at the event and with the FAQ out just 6 days or so before the event, most people simply took the lists they planned for anyhow. Sean Nayden's been playing is Avatar/Wyches list for ever.

Most (non-Knight) lists in the top were very much anti-Knight lists designed to beat Knights as much as possible in the pre-FAQ Knight-meta, (lots of Haywire, no juicy targets for Volcano Lances, shooting denial, lots of cc to clear Catachan Brigades, etc..) and just happened to potentially get a slightly easier ride because Knights got a dampener.

We'll have to wait and see how this shakes out when there's both less Knights around and thus perhaps less turkey-shooting for dedicated anti-Knight-meta-lists.

I 100% agree, the BFS event should not be used as an indication of any FAQ meta changes. This is simply because list submission had a deadline of the 29th, just 1 day after the FAQ was released.

In addition to this, after looking over their event pack, their format is… Different. After 3 games they split everyone into groups of 8, with only the top 8 armies in a position to win the event. They ran a 90-man event, which means that there was a potential of 11 people with 3 max point wins or a real close set of scores between those 11 players. 3 of those players never even got a chance to then compete and it means that it is impossible to tell, with their top 16 rankings who got their positions due to bracket splitting. (we also don’t know if the top 16 is just everyone in the top 2 brackets after day 1, or, everyone placed according to their total score over the 6 games).
Usually you’d see a lot more movement in who places where, as someone who went L-W-W-W will be on roughly the same points as those 4-7 players that go W-W-W-L, but, those in the first group essentially have a lower SoS and are more likely to win their day 2 games than those in the top bracket.
This is also further proven, that the person that technically won the event overall (highest competitive and appearance score combined) didn’t even make the top 16 in terms of competitive scores. (that or it just indicates that a lot more weight was put in the appearance score than the actual gaming score).

I’ll be more interested in the results coming from standard large-scale events happening in the last 2 weeks of October and beyond. It is from them, that we can begin to monitor new trends.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
One could hope that CA 2018 will be more substantial.

Personally hoping there's a line in there to allow SM/CSM of all varieties to use their chapter/legion trait for the whole army, not just infantry/dreads. Always hated how every other codex applies to the whole army and for marines it's infantry only.

DG preds with Inexorable Advance? Yes please.

Yup, C'tan with Dynastic codes and reanimates and !! Praetorians and Triarch units too, yuss please!

mind you Soulburst for every elf in the galaxy ... Hmmm suddenly not a fan

but back on topic of soup (or allies) and balance ...

I like the imperials having access to those options, it's flufffy and someone said it earlier it represents a weakened imperium that needs to rely on the other military arms to be effective rather than face another Heresy moment.

and rather than drag them further down with increased costs or CP taxes or whatever .. maybe the answer is to give a benefit to those other mostly Xenos codex that have no allies ..

I liked (some) formations and force orgs from 7th ... it doesn't need to be Decurion or Skyhammer strength ... but a few more points worth of stuff (10% of list total) or even 5 CP for being super friendless!

extra CP would not break mono guard? or mono BA ...


just my preference

Xenomancers wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The increase in CP for battalions and brigades was surely an help for elite armies, it just wasn't enough.

Monoguard didn't take much from it, they went from 21 to 27 CPs (with the old Kurov and strategist).

Custodes went from 6 to 8 CPs.

Increasing the CP given by battalions and brigades is surely good for elite armies. After all if battalions were 100 CP no one would soup in CP batteries.

It was a silly way to go about it. They should have just increased the standard battleforged CP instead. That would have achieved their stated goal without making the cheap allied IG battalions and brigades even more attractive.

Yep

I disagree, every time you increase the CP for battleforged, you decrease the value of taking battalions and brigades. The CP system exists exactly to encourage the use of those 2 detachments, CPs are not free resources that anyone should get access to, they are rewards for bringing an organic army. The good solution here is to make battalions and brigades reward CP based on the amounts of points you pour in them.

NurglesR0T wrote:It's been said somewhere here before but I believe if you want to achieve proper balance, they should bring back the old pre 5th FOC.

Restrict to single codex, eliminate soup entirely (can still have allies in narrative based games)

That is really bad IMHO. Eliminating allies is something that no one wants, and getting rid of the FOC was the best achievement of 7th. The FOC was a terrible system, may it rest forever.