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Pain4Pleasure wrote:

To be fair I actually feel 40k is in one of the BEST spots now more than ever. Every army has some sort of representation in competitive 40k whether you “like” the rules the tournament uses or not. They are still sanctioned and recognized even by GW. What I’m saying is other than clarifications and minor MINOR adjustments, nothing REALLY needs changing. Even fliers have weaknesses, like the chaos knight that ignores negative to hit modifiers. If you disagree with this, well idk what Fritz are doing

And never have I said Tau are utterly unbeatable or every newb picking up a Riptide will auto-win everything around here (or in Nottingham).

But 40K is in one of the best spots, now more than ever, because GW is making adjustments. And given the track record of Tau over the past 12-24 months, they are probably good for a minor adjustment. They certainly perform a lot stronger than Eldar Flyers or the Castellan last year or even in the last two weeks or so the new Space Marines (UM/WS, havent seen the rest).

In my personal, humble opinion, some adjustment to the shield drone mechanic would be the way to go. Or at least it was without spending months thinking about it, but simply responding to this thread on a whim. I am sure a more thorough rules-analysis is hopefully done at GW HQ.

Tau do very well in ITC too and could probably do with some adjustment.

Shield drones are difficult though, because if you take them away Tau suddenly become garbage but they are are also not fun to play against. Really they should never have been added in the way they have. It is a poor mechanic that could have been implemented better.

I doubt much will change with the FAQ though, I bet it'll be a few QoL changes and that's it.

They'll want us to purchase CA for the proper balance changes.

A part of me agrees with Scotsman's perspective too - we're either in the twilight years for 8th or GW are going to give other factions the SM treatment. Which of these is true remains to be seen.

I think Shield Drones would be a lot less... OP, I guess... if they worked like Grot Shields. Not "deal 1 MW per attack they eat" but "remove 1 model for each attack they eat and end the attack sequence".

Yeah, the issue with shield drones isnt that they are overpowered in general. I think moving them to a 3+ protocols to be a bit less reliable and adjusting them accordingly (get a better FnP or something?) to make it less frustrating to play against while keeping them competitive and useful would be ideal.

I'm hoping they address the 30 model 4++ -2 to hit plaguebarers squads. Crazily resilient for the points.

Shield drones are a little too good and can be obnoxious because of the OoLoS shooting some suits can do.

Tau are surely the best mono faction right now, that is a given at least with standard game rules. I cannot speak for ITC.

That said, they are not that much above the other factions, so i'm not sure that there is enough disparity to call something "best".

40K is without a doubt in the best spot it has ever been balance wise (you can table a tournament list with a fluffy list against an experienced opponent, did it just a few days ago, i don't remember this EVER being possible in 40K), so this FAQ will be probably weaksauce, we simply don't need stuff changed right now.

Oh, but FW stuff will be nerfed, just to keep the trend going.

the_scotsman wrote:


I would classify as gimmicks rules either intentionally made to be supremely powerful in order to convince you to buy a new book (Stuff like marines now getting 5-6 army-wide rules that for other factions would be chapter tactics) or rules that sound amazing and convince you to make a purchase but in effect change very little of anything at all, like the new banshee powers, Jain's new special attack rule, or the new Chaplain/Dark Apostle prayers.

Gotcha. I think the market is already captured. You might have people jumping to IH, but most people will stick with their beloved faction. GW isn't presenting them any differently from each other - the level of enthusiasm is the same. They also have nothing to gain by making IH better than any of the other supplements. There isn't a reason to have a new codex unless it's alongside new models so the promotional nature of it does not bother me. Jury is out on Banshees and Jain. There are inklings of other things there. Also, I love Apostles.

We're in something like phase 4 of this edition:

Phase 1 - Early days; exploring the system
Phase 2 - Majority of books are out and we see how it is impacting the system
Phase 3 - Campaigns and formations appear
Phase 4 - Design standards change

GW has placed themselves in an awkward position. Their release schedules are so heavy that they're having trouble keeping up with their own updates. It seems very evident to me, in the way they write rules lately, that someone new has joined the team and is lending a bit of professionalism to the process (despite ongoing errors), which has precipitated some of this schism.

How much actual, substantive, healthy balance change did we see in the latter third of 7th edition's lifespan, with the campaign books and the gathering storms and the special limited edition formations they packaged in with box sets?

I dunno. Maybe I'll be surprised. I hope I'll be surprised. But we did just have the back-to-back release of CSM 2.0 and Marines 2.0, and those books do not make me feel like GW is striving for fair balance in the twilight months of 8th edition warhammer 40,000.

Balancing formations with CP helps considerably more than the wild west of 7th edition decurions.

I feel like CSM was a product put together in a rush to finish up Vigilus. They didn't really think out the updates and just intended a formation update for CSM. The 2.0 book was just a waste of time and money, because of this.

GW is too rushed. They need to slow down. They'll sort it eventually, but too many players will fell left in the dust if CA doesn't make a proper sweep through.

Really dumb question:

Aside from making the games WAAY faster, what would be the effect of removing all Invuln saves, but keeping Armor saves, Ability saves, and FNP?

What would be the major downside to everything being a lot more, well, vulnerable?

The biggest drawback would be that there is SOOOOO much AP in the game that Saves would basically be useless. The game would need sweeping adjustments to AP.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Points Costs are the realm of CA which is coming later this year.

GW has changed points in FAQ's before as well. No reason there cannot be any now.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Really dumb question:

Aside from making the games WAAY faster, what would be the effect of removing all Invuln saves, but keeping Armor saves, Ability saves, and FNP?

What would be the major downside to everything being a lot more, well, vulnerable?

Have you played 8th edition at all?
Have you noticed the lethality?
And your wondering what effect further increasing that lethality would have?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Points Costs are the realm of CA which is coming later this year.

GW has changed points in FAQ's before as well. No reason there cannot be any now.

Yeah, if its needed they intervene outside of CA but since that is coming shortly I would certainly not expect it.

 Ordana wrote:
Yeah, if its needed they intervene outside of CA but since that is coming shortly I would certainly not expect it.

There are no massively glaring Castellan sized issues so I expect no points as well. Maybe half a page of influential changes and a bunch of fixes for poorly worded items.

Ultimately at this point, for as many issues as 40k has, I think the biggest outliers have been taken care of. I'm not sure theres much id want to see get nerfed at this point, there arent any glaring obvious issues as there was earlier in the edition that utterly dominate metagames, but there's a lot of stuff that could use some buffing/recosting like GK's and FW stuff.

Mostly thats what Id like to see, buffing of weake armies and units.

 Crimson wrote:
Do not name threads this way. A lot of people will click this and expect to see the FAQ having been released.

Please rename it to: "Pointless FAQ Wishlisting' or something informative like that.

I thought it had been released and was looking forward to finding all the rules errors in it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Ultimately at this point, for as many issues as 40k has, I think the biggest outliers have been taken care of. I'm not sure theres much id want to see get nerfed at this point, there arent any glaring obvious issues as there was earlier in the edition that utterly dominate metagames, but there's a lot of stuff that could use some buffing/recosting like GK's and FW stuff.

Mostly thats what Id like to see, buffing of weake armies and units.

I fear they are making another outlier as we speak in the (over) buffed space marines. Time will tell.

 Ordana wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Ultimately at this point, for as many issues as 40k has, I think the biggest outliers have been taken care of. I'm not sure theres much id want to see get nerfed at this point, there arent any glaring obvious issues as there was earlier in the edition that utterly dominate metagames, but there's a lot of stuff that could use some buffing/recosting like GK's and FW stuff.

Mostly thats what Id like to see, buffing of weake armies and units.

I fear they are making another outlier as we speak in the (over) buffed space marines. Time will tell.

The Arms race must Go on.

For monetary reasons alone.

 Ordana wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Ultimately at this point, for as many issues as 40k has, I think the biggest outliers have been taken care of. I'm not sure theres much id want to see get nerfed at this point, there arent any glaring obvious issues as there was earlier in the edition that utterly dominate metagames, but there's a lot of stuff that could use some buffing/recosting like GK's and FW stuff.

Mostly thats what Id like to see, buffing of weake armies and units.

I fear they are making another outlier as we speak in the (over) buffed space marines. Time will tell.

That's entirely possible, we'll see going forward, and I would absolutely expect that from GW, but to be honest I havent had a chance to play against it yet.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Really dumb question:

Aside from making the games WAAY faster, what would be the effect of removing all Invuln saves, but keeping Armor saves, Ability saves, and FNP?

What would be the major downside to everything being a lot more, well, vulnerable?

It's not invuln saves that slow everything down. It's all the damned re-rolling & rolling for how many shots you get that'll each require a roll to see how much damage the cause that gums things up.

Yeah, if you were to say "Magic wand, change anything you want about 40k" I would not even hesitate for a second before saying "reduce lethality by about 30-40%."

I don't know what the best way to do that is, in a perfect ideal world it'd be something like just micro-level durability buffs to basically all elite units. Imperfect world, it'd be redesigned cover and LOS to be far more abstracted.

Change the rules for Ruins/Buildings to match Apocalypse (Essentially, make them work like Transports, where any unit ending their move within 3" can choose to remove themselves from the board, gain Cover bonus to their saves, and draw LOS to/from the building itself. This removes all the micro-management and super invincibility platforms) and make it so all Ruins and Forests block line of sight regardless of TLOS. Leave Statues, Craters, and Statuary where it's at.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Really dumb question:

Aside from making the games WAAY faster, what would be the effect of removing all Invuln saves, but keeping Armor saves, Ability saves, and FNP?

What would be the major downside to everything being a lot more, well, vulnerable?

Well, several races (Harlequins, DE, Daemons etc.) would basically become unplayable - since they are wholly or almost wholly reliant on invulnerable saves in place of armour.

I suspect IG would become dominant due to their lack of invulnerable saves.

The game would still take bloody ages because rolling Invulnerable Saves isn't what slows it down.


If you *really* want to speed up the game, start by removing every reroll 1s aura and ditching Overwatch.

As a tau player if you remove overwatch...... you better give. Me kick ass kroot or more shooting cause I'm boned

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, if you were to say "Magic wand, change anything you want about 40k" I would not even hesitate for a second before saying "reduce lethality by about 30-40%."

I don't know what the best way to do that is, in a perfect ideal world it'd be something like just micro-level durability buffs to basically all elite units. Imperfect world, it'd be redesigned cover and LOS to be far more abstracted.

Change the rules for Ruins/Buildings to match Apocalypse (Essentially, make them work like Transports, where any unit ending their move within 3" can choose to remove themselves from the board, gain Cover bonus to their saves, and draw LOS to/from the building itself. This removes all the micro-management and super invincibility platforms) and make it so all Ruins and Forests block line of sight regardless of TLOS. Leave Statues, Craters, and Statuary where it's at.

Funny you don't mention weapons when talking about lethality.
Why increase durability instead of reducing weapon lethality?

A space marine is pretty durable when shot at by bolters, i'd look for the blame being to liberal with handing out ap.

The only change I'd like to see would be all "gets hot" style weapons now only take mortal wounds on unmodified ones.

I would love to see some actual help for Daemons, they feel like Codex Plaguebearers at this point. And as a Daemons player RoF is a much greater problem than AP when it comes down to lethality. Also FW stuff could need some help, GKs, most Tyranid monsters and warriors, and so on.

Cinderspirit wrote:
I would love to see some actual help for Daemons, they feel like Codex Plaguebearers at this point. And as a Daemons player RoF is a much greater problem than AP when it comes down to lethality. Also FW stuff could need some help, GKs, most Tyranid monsters and warriors, and so on.

Yeah, the only things I see regularly out of the Daemon codex is Plaguebearers, Khorne Axe Prince and Bloodletters. I'm hopeful that since Daemons where one of the beginning codicies, they'll get a 2.0 as well. So I'm not so sure they'll do anything to help us in the FAQ. However, I'm hoping they'll do something to curb the abuse of zomboids.

 Horst wrote:
The only change I'd like to see would be all "gets hot" style weapons now only take mortal wounds on unmodified ones.

Oh that's a good one, particularly with some of the more absurd to-hit modifiers out there in some cases.

Who's takin' bets on when this thread's getting locked for useless arguements that'd completely derailed from the original question?

Considering the "GW Intent" thread is still going, I'm gonna bet on "never". If that salt pile can continue trucking along, anything can.

IHO a september FAQ isn't likely to happen, they're still, effectively, releasing Marines, I'd expect a FAQ to come out in mid to late October and mostly be some adjustments to any outstanding issues and errata for the marine supplements

Horst wrote:The only change I'd like to see would be all "gets hot" style weapons now only take mortal wounds on unmodified ones.

Yeah, quite why this hasn't happened yet is anyone's guess. Possibly worth a question next time GW do a seminar with a Q&A section?

Cinderspirit wrote:I would love to see some actual help for Daemons, they feel like Codex Plaguebearers at this point. And as a Daemons player RoF is a much greater problem than AP when it comes down to lethality. Also FW stuff could need some help, GKs, most Tyranid monsters and warriors, and so on.

I doubt we'll see significant tweaks to GK in the FAQ (or CA) - they are the faction that needed a second Codex before anyone else, if we're being honest.

BrianDavion wrote:IHO a september FAQ isn't likely to happen, they're still, effectively, releasing Marines, I'd expect a FAQ to come out in mid to late October and mostly be some adjustments to any outstanding issues and errata for the marine supplements

Good job it got renamed to being the Autumn FAQ last year, really