Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Im hoping for more suicide tactic strategems, but ill take whats given happily. Also, 2 cp to CA a leman russ? Ive got shivers up and down my spine.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/10/30 22:35:58
PourSpelur wrote: It's fully within the rules for me to look up your Facebook page, find out your dear Mother Gladys is single, take her on a lovely date, and tell you all the details of our hot, sweaty, animal sex during your psychic phase.
I mean, fifty bucks is on the line.
There's no rule that says I can't.
I'd argue that while combative females might not be quite as common as combative males for the GSC, we have to remember that there would still be working females (too young or old to have kids, infertile, lose the ability due to complications raising an alien-hybrid fetus, early to mid stages of pregnancy, a planet that has a high population of women but low population of men due to the warp, ect, ect, ect). Basically, there isn't a reason not to mix some gals into the mix. Plus I like my cultists crews extra motley whenever possible.
I'm considering getting some Cawdor minis to mix into a couple of squads with some parts swapping to give me even visual variety.
Lorek wrote: I used Orlock gangers as a base for some Chaos cultists, and it worked very nicely. Cawdor is up next for my GSC!
Oh, that sounds nice. I'm definitely considering doing basically a unit of 10 from each gang to go with my regular cultists and my IG cultists. I know I could go with unit markings but I really like the idea of a motley looking mob of different groups (which allows me to tell units apart really easily too), the only concern of course is fitting the less human arms onto some of the models. I'm thinking of basically having my cult basically having infiltrated almost every level of the planet and even involving a Rogue Trader mixed into the group and using the same colors across the clothes as what ties the less uniform model design into each other.
If I can figure out a way to mix Orks in as a GSC unit (I mean they showed up on Necromunda, right?) I'd do it, the question is more how to make it work on the models without spending too much on the old metal ones.
Then again I've always assumed I'm just a little prone to deciding on projects that make my wallet cry.
1st, 2nd and 3rd generation hybrids don't have a sex. Female 4th generation? Maybe, but there's not a snippet of fluff about that.
The problem is that GW made hybrids the bulk of the GSC instead of Brood Brothers. Originally only the first-born was a hybrid, protected by parents and later human siblings.
Dryaktylus wrote: 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation hybrids don't have a sex. Female 4th generation? Maybe, but there's not a snippet of fluff about that.
The problem is that GW made hybrids the bulk of the GSC instead of Brood Brothers. Originally only the first-born was a hybrid, protected by parents and later human siblings.
[Citation needed] on hybrids having no sex since breeding is an important part of the life cycle of the cult and we have no evidence that Genestealers have a means of asexual reproduction like Orks or regular Nids do (and the Nids normally need a Norn Queen to do most of their breeding). Each generation gives birth to the next, and seeing as they retain traits of their parent species, for humans at least, that means some kind of sexual characteristics should still be there, even if they are all bald.
Orkstealer Cults on the otherhand get kind of nuts since they breed via spores which means they can be popping out purestrains in a few months instead of years.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/10/31 02:57:21
[Citation needed] on hybrids having no sex since breeding is an important part of the life cycle of the cult and we have no evidence that Genestealers have a means of asexual reproduction like Orks or regular Nids do (and the Nids normally need a Norn Queen to do most of their breeding). Each generation gives birth to the next, and seeing as they retain traits of their parent species, for humans at least, that means some kind of sexual characteristics should still be there, even if they are all bald.
Err... no. The first three generations just infect humans, male or female, in the same way as Purestrains. They don't impregnate the victim, they just alter the DNA to make the next child a hybrid. The host species breeds as normal. If you want sources, just start with Paul Murphy and his background for the Stealers.
First two have oviposters. Doesnt mean they dont have gender. Third and fourth are near human or almost human, and would reproduce like the host species. The only thing that all generations share is the hypnotic eyes of a genestealer. Refer to the current publications (7e codex has a few blurbs about it.)
A note as well, most tyranids have a gender, and its female. Previous fluff publications in th codexes have stated that female termigants are larger than males, and most hormigaunts have egg sacks they lay underground before going to die in droves. Not to mention the Tervigon that is literally a brood mother with an actual reproduction organ on display.
PourSpelur wrote: It's fully within the rules for me to look up your Facebook page, find out your dear Mother Gladys is single, take her on a lovely date, and tell you all the details of our hot, sweaty, animal sex during your psychic phase.
I mean, fifty bucks is on the line.
There's no rule that says I can't.
[Citation needed] on hybrids having no sex since breeding is an important part of the life cycle of the cult and we have no evidence that Genestealers have a means of asexual reproduction like Orks or regular Nids do (and the Nids normally need a Norn Queen to do most of their breeding). Each generation gives birth to the next, and seeing as they retain traits of their parent species, for humans at least, that means some kind of sexual characteristics should still be there, even if they are all bald.
Err... no. The first three generations just infect humans, male or female, in the same way as Purestrains. They don't impregnate the victim, they just alter the DNA to make the next child a hybrid. The host species breeds as normal. If you want sources, just start with Paul Murphy and his background for the Stealers.
While original lore is always interesting, since things change (a lot) I'm going to go with the most recent lore presented on this kind of thing which doesn't follow your claims. Just a preference on lore sources I guess.
And quibbles like this remind me how likely it is the Imperium would get into wars over what color the Emperor's tea doillies were.
And quibbles like this remind me how likely it is the Imperium would get into wars over what color the Emperor's tea doillies were.
They're gold with lightning bolts and Eagles in the pattern. Everyone knows that. Only heretics would even question such a thing.
*interfaith war commenced*
Binabik15 wrote: IF stealers get a limo I'll steal it from them for da waaaagh.
I'd want a few more barely altered cultists, though, the Neophytes are such good human sculpts.
I'd like some female cultists because that'd be a nice way to add some more variety to the army, but more than anything I want Orkstealer Cultists.
A bit off topic, but I really must recommend these heads from Statuesque to make women for the cult. They look really good on cadian bodies and are absolutely perfect on neophytes.
Pro tip: glue the heads a bit further back and maybe slightly higher up, that changes the percieved chest profile.
Binabik15 wrote: IF stealers get a limo I'll steal it from them for da waaaagh.
I'd want a few more barely altered cultists, though, the Neophytes are such good human sculpts.
I'd like some female cultists because that'd be a nice way to add some more variety to the army, but more than anything I want Orkstealer Cultists.
A bit off topic, but I really must recommend these heads from Statuesque to make women for the cult. They look really good on cadian bodies and are absolutely perfect on neophytes.
Pro tip: glue the heads a bit further back and maybe slightly higher up, that changes the percieved chest profile.
This makes sense. Put a pair of overalls on and strap an armoured or reinforced brace over the torso and the only visible difference between male and female would be the head. I wonder would daemonette heads also work? Or Dark Eldar?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Back on topic, I don't think there'll be a huge raft of models in the release. The Abominant and new Aberrants are probably enough to get by. Clam pack the characters. Job done. And the GSC have some of the nicest models in the entire game.
I do have my fingers crossed for a limo, though.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/10/31 07:46:38
This makes sense. Put a pair of overalls on and strap an armoured or reinforced brace over the torso and the only visible difference between male and female would be the head. I wonder would daemonette heads also work? Or Dark Eldar?
Yeah, I've used both daemonette heads and DE wyches heads. They look suitably inhuman :-)
Escher heads are a bit on the small side for cadian bodies, but looks allright on neophytes. Also, escher bodies with acolyte heads is really good to make primus/iconward/etc so nothing goes to waste.
This makes sense. Put a pair of overalls on and strap an armoured or reinforced brace over the torso and the only visible difference between male and female would be the head. I wonder would daemonette heads also work? Or Dark Eldar?
Yeah, I've used both daemonette heads and DE wyches heads. They look suitably inhuman :-)
Escher heads are a bit on the small side for cadian bodies, but looks allright on neophytes. Also, escher bodies with acolyte heads is really good to make primus/iconward/etc so nothing goes to waste.
This makes sense. Put a pair of overalls on and strap an armoured or reinforced brace over the torso and the only visible difference between male and female would be the head. I wonder would daemonette heads also work? Or Dark Eldar?
Yeah, I've used both daemonette heads and DE wyches heads. They look suitably inhuman :-)
Escher heads are a bit on the small side for cadian bodies, but looks allright on neophytes. Also, escher bodies with acolyte heads is really good to make primus/iconward/etc so nothing goes to waste.
Pictures?
Primus to the left has a simple daemonette headswap. Iconward and primus to the right is escher bodies, acolyte heads.
Dryaktylus wrote: 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation hybrids don't have a sex. Female 4th generation? Maybe, but there's not a snippet of fluff about that.
The problem is that GW made hybrids the bulk of the GSC instead of Brood Brothers. Originally only the first-born was a hybrid, protected by parents and later human siblings.
Per the new Genestealer books and I think the codex, no they most definitely have changed this. Folks who get hit by genestealers go off and have sex and their children are hybrids, there's an entire bit about being declared consort of the hiring ranking cult members and expanding the cult's influence. Cycle continues four generations and out pops a cute little genestealer ready to hop on a hulk and say hello to a new world.
They just describe the implant by the purestrain and that 4 generations later another purestrain is born. They describe what the generations look like but they gloss over how they procreate. In the absence of any new information the old description is all we have really. I think they left it open to the player since it really isn't super important and it's not something I'd imagine GW wants to go into detail about, it better that way since they player can decide that about their cult. If your cult wants female soldier then get to it. It's silly how easy it is anyway since it's just a head swap as has been demonstrated, your not going to see a difference in stature since it's got purestrain genestealer in it's veins, and the mining suit would cover most distinguishing human traits. Then they are bald lol.
So I went digging into the 4chan thread the WT dropped from to see if I could find some more goodies and here we go [Some of this will go a bit off topic due to the AMA style of the posts, but I like giving context to everything so I'm throwing it ALL in]:
[Regarding the ability to get more than one warlord trait or warlord] No stratagem for this. There was, however, an idea for a Primus to get a relic allowing for a WL trait (to represent the fact that in the fluff it's described as a warlord), but it was taken out last minute.
[Regarding points costs for Acolytes, Hybrids and Goliaths] Those things are indeed cheaper, combined with a stratagem or two there's much more of an incentive to take Goliaths.
[Regarding if they're the same source as the Stratagem leak]: That's another person on the GSC team I think. Either way the stratagems etc. they linked were accurate.
[Regarding if he changed any rules writer's minds on things]: I'm a new member of the team, brought in after one of the GSC playtesters complained heavily about the previous members of the GSC codex team. I worked with that guy on Tyranids. He must have got rid of the Brood Brothers rule that was making its rounds a while back - I can't see it anywhere in the codex right now.
I did some digging about that last comment, and this was what I could find regarding the removed Brood Brother rule:
Sorry about the poor image quality, I had to upsize a picture that was made for Rippers.
And then some more info from two 40k general threads later:
[Regarding identity (again): So to clarify, I'm not the same person who leaked the Stratagems and the Brood Brother leak (which has since been removed from the codex). I'm working on the same team as that guy. He's really fecking into maths and probability, he's got dozens of charts he uses, it's pretty cool.
I can't answer questions in too much detail. We did use Codex:Orks to playtest against Codex:GSC, so they are likely of a similar power level to one another. The [The post literally stops there]
[Regarding Subfaction Traits]: Yes, but for the most part they're a copy/paste of the generic subfaction traits you see in other codexes (or more specifically for GSC, from the guard and tyranid codex, e.g. jormungandr). We added in a generic <SUBFACTION> keyword, which is a first for 8e (previously indexes without them didn't get subfaction traits). Brood Brothers have their own trait (+1 Ld when within 6" of a friendly GSC CHARACTER).
[Regarding concern over the removal of "Brood Brothers"]: No, as in the awful rule that the previous playtesters implemented [see above picture]. We're not the GK rules team, we are aware of how to make a codex.
[Clarification on the Codex's Brood Brother's rule]: To clarify, the Brood Brothers rule is pretty much a copy+paste job from the index rules.
[Regarding "#ShotsFired" over the GK Team comment]: Eh, playful rivalries exist between codex design teams. The GK team get particular flakk because, well, they wrote the GK book as it is.
[Regarding the Tau Codex Team]: There are 1-2 newer designers on that team who pretty much follow the orders of the guys higher up, for better or worse. For a while they wouldn't do too much without going to ask the higher ups about it.
[Regarding a request to leak points]oints are probably the worst thing for me to leak, so screenshots of the full page at once might be tricky. There have been a large number of points reductions across the board. The head guy for GSC (the one who worked on the initial team, and to my knowledge worked on DE and Nids) put a feckton of maths behind it, and he playtests them outside of work.
[Regarding a comment about the maths guy being the good kind of neckbeard]: He's a really nice guy, just really into maths. It's an ongoing joke between us two that he's the "Anti-Crud". I've heard Cruddace has quite the reputation here? Something about "maths is just an opinion"? Not sure how true that is, but if true they're polar opposites I guess.
[Regarding posting stratagems]: I could post the stratagems, but they've been leaked previously. If you've not seen those it's worth checking them out. I can't drop leaks all at once - you might have noticed that the GSC leaks have been once every 2-3 weeks so far. I might be able to post more as the codex approaches.
[Regarding how he got the job if he isn't into maths]: I'm into maths and spreadsheets, it's just this guy is above and beyond. He taught us how to do the maths, and we basically follow his principles. Because of him our design team is known as the "Mathtropaths"
[Regarding subfaction specific strats]: There are a few subfaction specifics, but we decided it would be best not to reveal the subfaction stratagems (as it would give away subfactions existed, which might be problematic).
[Regarding the type of maths used]: It's more statistical based. Algebra and Calc are part of it of course, but more specifically we use binomial probability a lot.
[Regarding leaks and if its known if the anon is doing it]: The team are generally aware I think. The bosses do sometimes tell us to "leak a little bit", but some leaks we've done (e.g. the stratagem leak) weren't exactly authorised. As such, we didn't post screenshots, and only made it text-based, to add a layer of plausible deniability (i.e. "anyone could make these up and post them".
[Regarding Metamorphs]: Metamorphs are cheaper. Holy feck they were overpriced before. Their weapons all have AP-1 now, or better (for rending claws), and they're cheaper than Genestealers (rightfully). Hand flamers also went down from 8 points, they're about half that price now.
[Regarding a post about the army being the right pick for an anon due to the passionate people working the company]: A lot of GW design staff are actually rooting for GSC, as many have kill teams or small armies. There are a few who don't like them as much (scared of turn 1 deep strikes), but the guy who does the maths on the GSC team is widely regarded as a brilliant playtester. He's not paid enough in my opinion, but he doesn't care too much. It's slightly cheesy, but he usually says something like "actually having a balanced army is its own reward, no-one wants to play a gakky army".
[Regarding how new units are handled for playtesting and who to thank for the Abominant]: New units are handled with the codex rules, rather than index ones.
Who to thank? Thank yourself, for playing the best army out there :-)
[Regarding the work enviroment]: Pretty chill, but strict deadlines. I can see myself working here for quite some time.
[Regarding an assumption about Stateside based playtesters]: They have playtesters in the States, but for the most part the design is handled in Nottingham
[Regarding how easy it is to make fake leaks]: Exactly. Any text-based leak will generally be ignored, hence why it's easier to do unauthorised leaks that way. If they're ignored, there's less coverage of it too.
[Regarding how playtesting is handled]: It depends on the team. Some teams playtest only internally, within the same codex. Some playtest against whatever army someone can throw together on the day.
The guy on our team playtests them against loads of different builds, usually ones that seem to be doing "pretty well" in tournaments. The top tourney builds get changed quickly, so it's often not worth testing against them (all the time, at least). You don't test as often vs. gakky armies either, as then you're setting the "power bar" way too low.
[Regarding Goliaths]: We realised that if a GSC player wants to get something to the front line quicker, then they'll just cult ambush stuff. If they want to protect their Neophytes, they just get more Neophytes (which is also cheaper). We've reduced points and added a few stratagems that might help.
[Regarding the possibility of getting new units]: There are a few new units making their way in. The gunslinger model has a number of awesome rules, I imagine it'll show up in a large number of lists.
Also, if anyone wants to see the stratagems I've been referencing, most of them are here I believe:
They're paraphrased and a couple of details are missing from what I can tell, but they're pretty accurate. My favourite personally being this one:
> Sabotaged! (1CP) - When an enemy unit is destroyed and has an explosion effect, do not roll any dice - that effect automatically triggers.
[Regarding improving weapons for the army]: We did take a look at the weapons, and a number of them have been improved slightly. The mining laser is not a flat amount of damage, for example.
[Regarding the poster's vagueness about details]: To be honest it's better if there's still a high level of "needs to be taken with salt" about the leaks. We can't release the whole codex in one go, and points values/new units are the worst things for us to leak. There /is/, however, a "primus-lite" model coming to the codex, for Cult Ambush guidance (though weaker than a Primus, for example no aura of +1 to hit).
The Drukhari and Tyranids codices are a pretty good pedigree for the lead designer. Everything I'm seeing about GSC makes me feel really excited for the army, which is a problem because I can not start a new project right now...
Arachnofiend wrote: The Drukhari and Tyranids codices are a pretty good pedigree for the lead designer. Everything I'm seeing about GSC makes me feel really excited for the army, which is a problem because I can not start a new project right now...
It's making me glad that I was getting burnt out on painting yellow and started working on GSC as a means of taking a break.
This makes sense. Put a pair of overalls on and strap an armoured or reinforced brace over the torso and the only visible difference between male and female would be the head. I wonder would daemonette heads also work? Or Dark Eldar?
Yeah, I've used both daemonette heads and DE wyches heads. They look suitably inhuman :-)
Escher heads are a bit on the small side for cadian bodies, but looks allright on neophytes. Also, escher bodies with acolyte heads is really good to make primus/iconward/etc so nothing goes to waste.
Pictures?
Primus to the left has a simple daemonette headswap. Iconward and primus to the right is escher bodies, acolyte heads.
They look great, especially the Escher bodies.
Shame I sold mine and kept the Goliaths..
Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
Cephalobeard wrote: Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
I hope it is. It means we have room for a revamp of the Guard codex without having to worry about whining from GSC players who "buy in" specifically to bring CP batteries.
So I went digging into the 4chan thread the WT dropped from to see if I could find some more goodies and here we go [Some of this will go a bit off topic due to the AMA style of the posts, but I like giving context to everything so I'm throwing it ALL in]:
[Regarding the ability to get more than one warlord trait or warlord] No stratagem for this. There was, however, an idea for a Primus to get a relic allowing for a WL trait (to represent the fact that in the fluff it's described as a warlord), but it was taken out last minute.
[Regarding points costs for Acolytes, Hybrids and Goliaths] Those things are indeed cheaper, combined with a stratagem or two there's much more of an incentive to take Goliaths.
[Regarding if they're the same source as the Stratagem leak]: That's another person on the GSC team I think. Either way the stratagems etc. they linked were accurate.
[Regarding if he changed any rules writer's minds on things]: I'm a new member of the team, brought in after one of the GSC playtesters complained heavily about the previous members of the GSC codex team. I worked with that guy on Tyranids. He must have got rid of the Brood Brothers rule that was making its rounds a while back - I can't see it anywhere in the codex right now.
I did some digging about that last comment, and this was what I could find regarding the removed Brood Brother rule:
Sorry about the poor image quality, I had to upsize a picture that was made for Rippers.
And then some more info from two 40k general threads later:
[Regarding identity (again): So to clarify, I'm not the same person who leaked the Stratagems and the Brood Brother leak (which has since been removed from the codex). I'm working on the same team as that guy. He's really fecking into maths and probability, he's got dozens of charts he uses, it's pretty cool. I can't answer questions in too much detail. We did use Codex:Orks to playtest against Codex:GSC, so they are likely of a similar power level to one another. The [The post literally stops there]
[Regarding Subfaction Traits]: Yes, but for the most part they're a copy/paste of the generic subfaction traits you see in other codexes (or more specifically for GSC, from the guard and tyranid codex, e.g. jormungandr). We added in a generic <SUBFACTION> keyword, which is a first for 8e (previously indexes without them didn't get subfaction traits). Brood Brothers have their own trait (+1 Ld when within 6" of a friendly GSC CHARACTER).
[Regarding concern over the removal of "Brood Brothers"]: No, as in the awful rule that the previous playtesters implemented [see above picture]. We're not the GK rules team, we are aware of how to make a codex.
[Clarification on the Codex's Brood Brother's rule]: To clarify, the Brood Brothers rule is pretty much a copy+paste job from the index rules.
[Regarding "#ShotsFired" over the GK Team comment]: Eh, playful rivalries exist between codex design teams. The GK team get particular flakk because, well, they wrote the GK book as it is.
[Regarding the Tau Codex Team]: There are 1-2 newer designers on that team who pretty much follow the orders of the guys higher up, for better or worse. For a while they wouldn't do too much without going to ask the higher ups about it.
[Regarding a request to leak points]oints are probably the worst thing for me to leak, so screenshots of the full page at once might be tricky. There have been a large number of points reductions across the board. The head guy for GSC (the one who worked on the initial team, and to my knowledge worked on DE and Nids) put a feckton of maths behind it, and he playtests them outside of work.
[Regarding a comment about the maths guy being the good kind of neckbeard]: He's a really nice guy, just really into maths. It's an ongoing joke between us two that he's the "Anti-Crud". I've heard Cruddace has quite the reputation here? Something about "maths is just an opinion"? Not sure how true that is, but if true they're polar opposites I guess.
[Regarding posting stratagems]: I could post the stratagems, but they've been leaked previously. If you've not seen those it's worth checking them out. I can't drop leaks all at once - you might have noticed that the GSC leaks have been once every 2-3 weeks so far. I might be able to post more as the codex approaches.
[Regarding how he got the job if he isn't into maths]: I'm into maths and spreadsheets, it's just this guy is above and beyond. He taught us how to do the maths, and we basically follow his principles. Because of him our design team is known as the "Mathtropaths"
[Regarding subfaction specific strats]: There are a few subfaction specifics, but we decided it would be best not to reveal the subfaction stratagems (as it would give away subfactions existed, which might be problematic).
[Regarding the type of maths used]: It's more statistical based. Algebra and Calc are part of it of course, but more specifically we use binomial probability a lot.
[Regarding leaks and if its known if the anon is doing it]: The team are generally aware I think. The bosses do sometimes tell us to "leak a little bit", but some leaks we've done (e.g. the stratagem leak) weren't exactly authorised. As such, we didn't post screenshots, and only made it text-based, to add a layer of plausible deniability (i.e. "anyone could make these up and post them".
[Regarding Metamorphs]: Metamorphs are cheaper. Holy feck they were overpriced before. Their weapons all have AP-1 now, or better (for rending claws), and they're cheaper than Genestealers (rightfully). Hand flamers also went down from 8 points, they're about half that price now.
[Regarding a post about the army being the right pick for an anon due to the passionate people working the company]: A lot of GW design staff are actually rooting for GSC, as many have kill teams or small armies. There are a few who don't like them as much (scared of turn 1 deep strikes), but the guy who does the maths on the GSC team is widely regarded as a brilliant playtester. He's not paid enough in my opinion, but he doesn't care too much. It's slightly cheesy, but he usually says something like "actually having a balanced army is its own reward, no-one wants to play a gakky army".
[Regarding how new units are handled for playtesting and who to thank for the Abominant]: New units are handled with the codex rules, rather than index ones. Who to thank? Thank yourself, for playing the best army out there :-)
[Regarding the work enviroment]: Pretty chill, but strict deadlines. I can see myself working here for quite some time.
[Regarding an assumption about Stateside based playtesters]: They have playtesters in the States, but for the most part the design is handled in Nottingham
[Regarding how easy it is to make fake leaks]: Exactly. Any text-based leak will generally be ignored, hence why it's easier to do unauthorised leaks that way. If they're ignored, there's less coverage of it too.
[Regarding how playtesting is handled]: It depends on the team. Some teams playtest only internally, within the same codex. Some playtest against whatever army someone can throw together on the day.
The guy on our team playtests them against loads of different builds, usually ones that seem to be doing "pretty well" in tournaments. The top tourney builds get changed quickly, so it's often not worth testing against them (all the time, at least). You don't test as often vs. gakky armies either, as then you're setting the "power bar" way too low.
[Regarding Goliaths]: We realised that if a GSC player wants to get something to the front line quicker, then they'll just cult ambush stuff. If they want to protect their Neophytes, they just get more Neophytes (which is also cheaper). We've reduced points and added a few stratagems that might help.
[Regarding the possibility of getting new units]: There are a few new units making their way in. The gunslinger model has a number of awesome rules, I imagine it'll show up in a large number of lists.
Also, if anyone wants to see the stratagems I've been referencing, most of them are here I believe:
They're paraphrased and a couple of details are missing from what I can tell, but they're pretty accurate. My favourite personally being this one:
> Sabotaged! (1CP) - When an enemy unit is destroyed and has an explosion effect, do not roll any dice - that effect automatically triggers.
[Regarding improving weapons for the army]: We did take a look at the weapons, and a number of them have been improved slightly. The mining laser is not a flat amount of damage, for example.
[Regarding the poster's vagueness about details]: To be honest it's better if there's still a high level of "needs to be taken with salt" about the leaks. We can't release the whole codex in one go, and points values/new units are the worst things for us to leak. There /is/, however, a "primus-lite" model coming to the codex, for Cult Ambush guidance (though weaker than a Primus, for example no aura of +1 to hit).
And that's everything I could find. For now.
It's a shame you weren't there at the time of the leak on the boards. He posted a load more stuff, but hurriedly deleted a load of it, fearing he had posted too much (hence why a lot of the thread seems to be replying to deleted posts, and why the conversation seems to cut off and continue, as though it were skipping parts. I have a load of screenshots somewhere before a most of it was deleted, I might try fishing them out. Things like the Brood Brother regimental bonus being +1 Ld when a <GENESTEALER CULTS> character is within 6". He wasn't able to delete all of it, as 4chan has a limit to the amount of stuff you can delete at once (I think he mentions it in the thread).
It's also worth noting that the original leaker (Brood Brothers etc., back in June) is a different leaker to the one that's more recent.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/10/31 20:45:54
Cephalobeard wrote: Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
Based on rumors, the limited version was killed and we're keeping something pretty close to the index version.
So I went digging into the 4chan thread the WT dropped from to see if I could find some more goodies and here we go [Some of this will go a bit off topic due to the AMA style of the posts, but I like giving context to everything so I'm throwing it ALL in]:
[Regarding the ability to get more than one warlord trait or warlord] No stratagem for this. There was, however, an idea for a Primus to get a relic allowing for a WL trait (to represent the fact that in the fluff it's described as a warlord), but it was taken out last minute.
[Regarding points costs for Acolytes, Hybrids and Goliaths] Those things are indeed cheaper, combined with a stratagem or two there's much more of an incentive to take Goliaths.
[Regarding if they're the same source as the Stratagem leak]: That's another person on the GSC team I think. Either way the stratagems etc. they linked were accurate.
[Regarding if he changed any rules writer's minds on things]: I'm a new member of the team, brought in after one of the GSC playtesters complained heavily about the previous members of the GSC codex team. I worked with that guy on Tyranids. He must have got rid of the Brood Brothers rule that was making its rounds a while back - I can't see it anywhere in the codex right now.
I did some digging about that last comment, and this was what I could find regarding the removed Brood Brother rule:
Sorry about the poor image quality, I had to upsize a picture that was made for Rippers.
And then some more info from two 40k general threads later:
[Regarding identity (again): So to clarify, I'm not the same person who leaked the Stratagems and the Brood Brother leak (which has since been removed from the codex). I'm working on the same team as that guy. He's really fecking into maths and probability, he's got dozens of charts he uses, it's pretty cool.
I can't answer questions in too much detail. We did use Codex:Orks to playtest against Codex:GSC, so they are likely of a similar power level to one another. The [The post literally stops there]
[Regarding Subfaction Traits]: Yes, but for the most part they're a copy/paste of the generic subfaction traits you see in other codexes (or more specifically for GSC, from the guard and tyranid codex, e.g. jormungandr). We added in a generic <SUBFACTION> keyword, which is a first for 8e (previously indexes without them didn't get subfaction traits). Brood Brothers have their own trait (+1 Ld when within 6" of a friendly GSC CHARACTER).
[Regarding concern over the removal of "Brood Brothers"]: No, as in the awful rule that the previous playtesters implemented [see above picture]. We're not the GK rules team, we are aware of how to make a codex.
[Clarification on the Codex's Brood Brother's rule]: To clarify, the Brood Brothers rule is pretty much a copy+paste job from the index rules.
[Regarding "#ShotsFired" over the GK Team comment]: Eh, playful rivalries exist between codex design teams. The GK team get particular flakk because, well, they wrote the GK book as it is.
[Regarding the Tau Codex Team]: There are 1-2 newer designers on that team who pretty much follow the orders of the guys higher up, for better or worse. For a while they wouldn't do too much without going to ask the higher ups about it.
[Regarding a request to leak points]oints are probably the worst thing for me to leak, so screenshots of the full page at once might be tricky. There have been a large number of points reductions across the board. The head guy for GSC (the one who worked on the initial team, and to my knowledge worked on DE and Nids) put a feckton of maths behind it, and he playtests them outside of work.
[Regarding a comment about the maths guy being the good kind of neckbeard]: He's a really nice guy, just really into maths. It's an ongoing joke between us two that he's the "Anti-Crud". I've heard Cruddace has quite the reputation here? Something about "maths is just an opinion"? Not sure how true that is, but if true they're polar opposites I guess.
[Regarding posting stratagems]: I could post the stratagems, but they've been leaked previously. If you've not seen those it's worth checking them out. I can't drop leaks all at once - you might have noticed that the GSC leaks have been once every 2-3 weeks so far. I might be able to post more as the codex approaches.
[Regarding how he got the job if he isn't into maths]: I'm into maths and spreadsheets, it's just this guy is above and beyond. He taught us how to do the maths, and we basically follow his principles. Because of him our design team is known as the "Mathtropaths"
[Regarding subfaction specific strats]: There are a few subfaction specifics, but we decided it would be best not to reveal the subfaction stratagems (as it would give away subfactions existed, which might be problematic).
[Regarding the type of maths used]: It's more statistical based. Algebra and Calc are part of it of course, but more specifically we use binomial probability a lot.
[Regarding leaks and if its known if the anon is doing it]: The team are generally aware I think. The bosses do sometimes tell us to "leak a little bit", but some leaks we've done (e.g. the stratagem leak) weren't exactly authorised. As such, we didn't post screenshots, and only made it text-based, to add a layer of plausible deniability (i.e. "anyone could make these up and post them".
[Regarding Metamorphs]: Metamorphs are cheaper. Holy feck they were overpriced before. Their weapons all have AP-1 now, or better (for rending claws), and they're cheaper than Genestealers (rightfully). Hand flamers also went down from 8 points, they're about half that price now.
[Regarding a post about the army being the right pick for an anon due to the passionate people working the company]: A lot of GW design staff are actually rooting for GSC, as many have kill teams or small armies. There are a few who don't like them as much (scared of turn 1 deep strikes), but the guy who does the maths on the GSC team is widely regarded as a brilliant playtester. He's not paid enough in my opinion, but he doesn't care too much. It's slightly cheesy, but he usually says something like "actually having a balanced army is its own reward, no-one wants to play a gakky army".
[Regarding how new units are handled for playtesting and who to thank for the Abominant]: New units are handled with the codex rules, rather than index ones.
Who to thank? Thank yourself, for playing the best army out there :-)
[Regarding the work enviroment]: Pretty chill, but strict deadlines. I can see myself working here for quite some time.
[Regarding an assumption about Stateside based playtesters]: They have playtesters in the States, but for the most part the design is handled in Nottingham
[Regarding how easy it is to make fake leaks]: Exactly. Any text-based leak will generally be ignored, hence why it's easier to do unauthorised leaks that way. If they're ignored, there's less coverage of it too.
[Regarding how playtesting is handled]: It depends on the team. Some teams playtest only internally, within the same codex. Some playtest against whatever army someone can throw together on the day.
The guy on our team playtests them against loads of different builds, usually ones that seem to be doing "pretty well" in tournaments. The top tourney builds get changed quickly, so it's often not worth testing against them (all the time, at least). You don't test as often vs. gakky armies either, as then you're setting the "power bar" way too low.
[Regarding Goliaths]: We realised that if a GSC player wants to get something to the front line quicker, then they'll just cult ambush stuff. If they want to protect their Neophytes, they just get more Neophytes (which is also cheaper). We've reduced points and added a few stratagems that might help.
[Regarding the possibility of getting new units]: There are a few new units making their way in. The gunslinger model has a number of awesome rules, I imagine it'll show up in a large number of lists.
Also, if anyone wants to see the stratagems I've been referencing, most of them are here I believe:
They're paraphrased and a couple of details are missing from what I can tell, but they're pretty accurate. My favourite personally being this one:
> Sabotaged! (1CP) - When an enemy unit is destroyed and has an explosion effect, do not roll any dice - that effect automatically triggers.
[Regarding improving weapons for the army]: We did take a look at the weapons, and a number of them have been improved slightly. The mining laser is not a flat amount of damage, for example.
[Regarding the poster's vagueness about details]: To be honest it's better if there's still a high level of "needs to be taken with salt" about the leaks. We can't release the whole codex in one go, and points values/new units are the worst things for us to leak. There /is/, however, a "primus-lite" model coming to the codex, for Cult Ambush guidance (though weaker than a Primus, for example no aura of +1 to hit).
And that's everything I could find. For now.
It's a shame you weren't there at the time of the leak on the boards. He posted a load more stuff, but hurriedly deleted a load of it, fearing he had posted too much (hence why a lot of the thread seems to be replying to deleted posts, and why the conversation seems to cut off and continue, as though it were skipping parts. I have a load of screenshots somewhere before a most of it was deleted, I might try fishing them out. Things like the Brood Brother regimental bonus being +1 Ld when a <GENESTEALER CULTS> character is within 6". He wasn't able to delete all of it, as 4chan has a limit to the amount of stuff you can delete at once (I think he mentions it in the thread).
It's also worth noting that the original leaker (Brood Brothers etc., back in June) is a different leaker to the one that's more recent.
Sadly my work schedule doesn't let me be on all hours of the day and night like I could kind of do in the past. I snagged the Brood Brothers thing though:
[Regarding Subfaction Traits]: Yes, but for the most part they're a copy/paste of the generic subfaction traits you see in other codexes (or more specifically for GSC, from the guard and tyranid codex, e.g. jormungandr). We added in a generic <SUBFACTION> keyword, which is a first for 8e (previously indexes without them didn't get subfaction traits). Brood Brothers have their own trait (+1 Ld when within 6" of a friendly GSC CHARACTER).
Sadly my work schedule doesn't let me be on all hours of the day and night like I could kind of do in the past. I snagged the Brood Brothers thing though:
Yeah, that's understandable. I just happened to be there at the right time, and got the screenshots to look over them later. I really hope these leaks aren't fake - they look really good and thematic. If they are fake, I wonder if GW could ever do a job as incredible as the leaks above, or whether the codex would be worse by comparison.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/10/31 20:52:36
Cephalobeard wrote: Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
I hope it is. It means we have room for a revamp of the Guard codex without having to worry about whining from GSC players who "buy in" specifically to bring CP batteries.
I cannot imagine caring what other people do or don't do with their dolls.
Cephalobeard wrote: Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
I hope it is. It means we have room for a revamp of the Guard codex without having to worry about whining from GSC players who "buy in" specifically to bring CP batteries.
Even if we did buy in to run a CP battery, the Loyal 32 (I guess in this case, the Disloyal 32?) are the basis of an allied Brigade so it's not like it's a bad shake up for us anyways.
Cephalobeard wrote: Im really hoping Brood Brothers isn't super, super limited. Would be nice to take Heavy Weapon teams, for example, alongside Infantry squads and Neophytes and just bask in the glory of mortars.
I hope it is. It means we have room for a revamp of the Guard codex without having to worry about whining from GSC players who "buy in" specifically to bring CP batteries.
Even if we did buy in to run a CP battery, the Loyal 32 (I guess in this case, the Disloyal 32?) are the basis of an allied Brigade so it's not like it's a bad shake up for us anyways.
I'm someone who has an allied brigade that I bought, built, and painted simply because of how well they work as an allied faction in 8th.
Because of them i'm more willing to buy GSC now, because they naturally work with part of my collection already.
GWs system is working, and I'm happy to contribute because it makes the game fun, for me.