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tneva82 wrote:

 MJRyder wrote:
Agree with ClockworkZion ^. You can't infer the things you are inferring from such a limited amount of information.

There's also the issue of comparing percentage rises, when clearly, a 50% rise from 4 to 6pts has a different impact on the overall game than a 20% rise on a significantly more expensive unit. The devil is in the detail, and the way the new rules are reflected in the amended points costs and the granularity they bring.

But if marines are said to lose squad we can tell pretty safely they aren't getting 50% price hike in average. Unless the Stu means having to lose some FW super heavy from his army to fit every point increase...but that would be seriously misleading way to say it. From main codex no unit is so expensive that losing it would indicate average point increase of 50%. 20% however is pretty much spot on.

And 20% is 20%. 50% is 50%. It's % that's safe to compare. Absolute points is the one where impact is different based on unit.

Losing a squad of Marines could mean anything from 60 points to nearly 200 points. It's not enough to base anything on, all we know is that his list as a whole lost a "squad" of Marines.

It has nothing to do with the points cost of a single unit, it has to do with the points shift for the entire army.

I would also add that the 50% increase of cultists just reflects on the lack of granularity in the current point system rather than anything else.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What is the incentive to take big units that start at 10 at anything other than 10 now?

Nothing if they weren't morale imune or imunisable and even less in the future.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I like that cultists don't get the benefit. It is very fluffy and underlines their role as expendable scrubs. Plus, if it would not benefit them much anyway it is also not much of a loss. If it would benefit them significantly... well, there's the reason for them not to have it.

I could see a strategem for 'veteran cultists' that lets a unit get included though, maybe with some other benefit to represent CSM-aspirants.

Fluffy he says:
Alpha legion, and IW would disagree.
As should you know, the bile ones because bile would make them into new man, respectively should make them into new man.

People need to stop going into panic mode so soon. We don't even have the complete rules or picture yet. Maybe a big melee squad with large numbers have some advantages given to it that a small squad doesn't ? Its really too soon to conclude anything about how melee will do when they haven't released anything regarding how melee will work in 9th edition.

Given that I am sure they understand how shooty 9th ed was, I believe they will give melee something.

And also. Lets not forget Tabletop tactics are the playtesters too. Have you seen their genestealer armies? their orc armies? Their astra militarium army? They play horde lists quite often and they have more than one horde army. Trust me, if horde is broken (as in totally stomped), they would have surely feedback on that.

Blast and Hordes. Why take more than 10?

We don’t know at the moment, do we? We know 11+ is risking Blast related obliteration. But.....that’s it. That’s all we know,

We don’t know if Hordes will get other perks. We don’t know how all this interacts with the new terrain rules, because we don’t know what those are.

It could well be just don’t see Hordes anymore. And that would suck, as I don’t like rules excluding choices in such a simple manner.

Possibilities? Even with Blasts, you can only Kill What You Can See. So if I’ve a mob of 30 Boyz huddling in cover, and you can only see 3 of them? That’s all your Blast can kill.

Overall, we’re being deliberately drip fed info. Until we’ve seen the whole picture, we just don’t know anything like enough to pass judgement.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I would also add that the 50% increase of cultists just reflects on the lack of granularity in the current point system rather than anything else.

it's also a problem with how cheap units like cultists have gotten. the bottem area of troop choices (cultists guard etc) where so cheap it was proably becoming a problem, when you're so cheap a single point adjustment is a 25% increase, it gets REALY hard to add options or tweek points.

BTW there may well be more for hoards coming up. I know that AOS rewarded you with certain things if your unit size was above X. and this could be how GW does it. for example CSMs can take squads of up to 20 but never do, it might be tempted if a squad of 11+ CSMs could re-roll their armor save

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Blast and Hordes. Why take more than 10?
[...]
Possibilities?

some options could be:
- some Missions require Hordes to get points and/or Hordes get a Bonus
- 1x20 Models will be chaper in than 2x10
- changes in Cover might benefit Hordes


What I expect:
GW wants to make the game smaller by reducing the amounts of models used and instead of going back in points they change the army composition thru the backdoor
so people still play 2000 points, they can still play as many models as they want, but the rules are in a way that there is just no reason to go with 150 Orks instead of taking the big stuff (and it is more likley that we will see Knight style armies and tank companies over mass infantry)

It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

Eldar don’t have many from a brief thinking. D-Cannons were name checked, but other than it’s Grenades and Missile Launchers? Possibly the Prism Cannon on the right setting?

Guard? Yeah they’re gonna have loads, because Guard!

Orks? Squig Launcha, Stikkbommz. And then memory fails.

Blast Weapons May also come at a price premium. We just don’t know yet.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
People need to stop going into panic mode so soon. We don't even have the complete rules or picture yet. Maybe a big melee squad with large numbers have some advantages given to it that a small squad doesn't ? Its really too soon to conclude anything about how melee will do when they haven't released anything regarding how melee will work in 9th edition.

Given that I am sure they understand how shooty 9th ed was, I believe they will give melee something.

And also. Lets not forget Tabletop tactics are the playtesters too. Have you seen their genestealer armies? their orc armies? Their astra militarium army? They play horde lists quite often and they have more than one horde army. Trust me, if horde is broken (as in totally stomped), they would have surely feedback on that.

In 20+ years I have been in 40k what you said has been said every time.

Every time they have been proven false.

"maybe maybe maybe". Lol. GW doesn't do subtle interactions. Top of that changes arent' even about balance but about GW deciding what they want to sell. And they are about as subtle in making sure players know what they want you to buy as is using nuke to get rid of fly.

And as for playtesters...yeah the guys that have been making house rules for their tournaments that favour marine gunlines and give 20% winrate loss to orks who already had under 50% WR at by the book 40k. The playtesters who have thus shown they want elite gunlines over hordes.

And yeah playtesters have already stated units like ork boyz and hormagaunts are going to drop out and we haven't even seen all the nerfs hordes get...

You assume they are aiming for balance. GW is going for marketing and playtesters to get game to be what they want. Elite gunlines rather than horde armies.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

we already know that 174 weapons and artifacts will get the Blast keyword

BrianDavion wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I would also add that the 50% increase of cultists just reflects on the lack of granularity in the current point system rather than anything else.

it's also a problem with how cheap units like cultists have gotten. the bottem area of troop choices (cultists guard etc) where so cheap it was proably becoming a problem, when you're so cheap a single point adjustment is a 25% increase, it gets REALY hard to add options or tweek points.

BTW there may well be more for hoards coming up. I know that AOS rewarded you with certain things if your unit size was above X. and this could be how GW does it. for example CSMs can take squads of up to 20 but never do, it might be tempted if a squad of 11+ CSMs could re-roll their armor save

You know you can increase granularity without giving hordes higher point increase % than elites right?

And hordes haven't been balance problem for well over a year minimum now.

 kodos wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

we already know that 174 weapons and artifacts will get the Blast keyword

But how many of those are common?

Another points why I think that GW is turning 40k into a "big" model game:

it is easier for beginner to spend more money on 4 Gorkanauts and paint them than on 120 Boys
also more likley that the buy the 4 big units at once while none is doing that with infantry, so faster profit for GW

also, a big model only army, is cheaper at the moment than an infantry based one, also better for beginners

we have seen more big stuff in the Necron preview than infantry units, so the new models focus shifts as well


but instead of just changing the game by itself, they add rules so players get the impression/illusion that it was their free decsion to play that way

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

Blast Weapons May also come at a price premium. We just don’t know yet.

Actually we do know, as they said so: "Weapons with blast will receive a price increase to match their new benefits" (can't remember the exact words but the jist was pretty clear).

That is really the part that reassures me. We will probably have an elite meta (GW wants it that way and they have testers this edition) so no that much of an incentive to take expensive blasty weapons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

we already know that 174 weapons and artifacts will get the Blast keyword

But how many of those are common?

I imagine blast weapons will be pretty predictable "did it have a blast template prior to 8E?" if yes it's proably a blast weapon.

tneva82 wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
People need to stop going into panic mode so soon. We don't even have the complete rules or picture yet. Maybe a big melee squad with large numbers have some advantages given to it that a small squad doesn't ? Its really too soon to conclude anything about how melee will do when they haven't released anything regarding how melee will work in 9th edition.

Given that I am sure they understand how shooty 9th ed was, I believe they will give melee something.

And also. Lets not forget Tabletop tactics are the playtesters too. Have you seen their genestealer armies? their orc armies? Their astra militarium army? They play horde lists quite often and they have more than one horde army. Trust me, if horde is broken (as in totally stomped), they would have surely feedback on that.

In 20+ years I have been in 40k what you said has been said every time.

Every time they have been proven false.

"maybe maybe maybe". Lol. GW doesn't do subtle interactions. Top of that changes arent' even about balance but about GW deciding what they want to sell. And they are about as subtle in making sure players know what they want you to buy as is using nuke to get rid of fly.

And as for playtesters...yeah the guys that have been making house rules for their tournaments that favour marine gunlines and give 20% winrate loss to orks who already had under 50% WR at by the book 40k. The playtesters who have thus shown they want elite gunlines over hordes.

And yeah playtesters have already stated units like ork boyz and hormagaunts are going to drop out and we haven't even seen all the nerfs hordes get...

You assume they are aiming for balance. GW is going for marketing and playtesters to get game to be what they want. Elite gunlines rather than horde armies.

No way. "Every time"? Not at all.

I've been playing for 10 years and that isn't true in even just that period of time.

When they said HQs would no longer join units, everyone was up in arms about how it would be impossible to protect them, they'd get shot off the table, etc. Because they were reacting on limited information without knowing that the untargetability rule would be implemented (for better or worse).

When it was announced that flyers would no longer be snap-shottable-only, everyone predicted the end of flyers (and "immersion" arguments also came up quite a bit then too). That was before people knew about the penalties to hit/etc rules would be implemented (for better or worse).

On the opposite side, people thought that the simplified terrain rules would be a great change--it would simplify terrain rules, it would allow more varied and fluffier terrain types--and this has become one of the larger gripes in the competitive community (hence ITC/ETC terrain rules).

Absolutely we can (and should!) theorycraft about potential impact from the rules changes coming down the pike as we learn about them piece-meal. But making sweeping negative (or positive) conclusions is totally wrong. And with as much experience as you evidently have, you'll know that.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Hard to believe they'd hike cultists' price by 50% without giving them something significant to boost their value. All the indications are that not a 50% price hike is far more than most units are seeing.

Of course, this is GW, so you never know. They might have just woke up, rolled out of bed, and decided "cultists should be terrible and nobody should use them, let's hike their points to the point where nobody will."

They probably viewed it under the lens of, "Cultists should not be the core of a Chaos Space Marine army, it should be the Marines", which is why Guardsmen didn't go up in the past when Cultists did.

As others have said, just being present on the board has an intrinsic value, regardless of Stats and relative ability.

Cultists, even at 6 points are pretty cheap, especially in their wider army setting (another factor). They’re pretty much ideal for holding backfield objectives, and deflecting charges. That in turn affects what I can do with the rest of my force.

It’ll also factor in to how terrain works in the new rules, which I believe is today’s topic?

Consider the humble Gobbo in WHFB. Traditionally they were dirt cheap, because you needed a lot of them. They largely relied on static combat res bonuses, and their Fanatics. But, they were also for a long time highly vulnerable to Routs.

See, it used to be in WHFB that if your General snuffed it, your whole army had to take a panic test. Every unit not immune to breaking had to test. When you had maybe Ld6 at most, that was a real problem for Gobbos.

Then....the death of the general was toned down. And as a result, Gobbos went up in points, because without that interaction, they were a slightly nastier prospect to fit, as I couldn’t ripple panic most of their army off the board.

I was thinking about the boxed game for 9th, but I'm starting to think that they might include 2 killzone boards in the box.

It would meet the minimum size for 1000pts and would be aimed at new players who can then play with the forces in the starter box on the "official GW game board".

Just speculation on my part. Thoughts?

 Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Hard to believe they'd hike cultists' price by 50% without giving them something significant to boost their value. All the indications are that not a 50% price hike is far more than most units are seeing.

Of course, this is GW, so you never know. They might have just woke up, rolled out of bed, and decided "cultists should be terrible and nobody should use them, let's hike their points to the point where nobody will."

They probably viewed it under the lens of, "Cultists should not be the core of a Chaos Space Marine army, it should be the Marines", which is why Guardsmen didn't go up in the past when Cultists did.

When I started playing CSMs didn't even have access to cultists

Aash wrote:
I was thinking about the boxed game for 9th, but I'm starting to think that they might include 2 killzone boards in the box.

It would meet the minimum size for 1000pts and would be aimed at new players who can then play with the forces in the starter box on the "official GW game board".

Just speculation on my part. Thoughts?

I wondered the same thing many pages back, you can't buy the boards at the minute so they need a way to get out there and the price hop up to £120 would be a little better explained at that point.

Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Hard to believe they'd hike cultists' price by 50% without giving them something significant to boost their value. All the indications are that not a 50% price hike is far more than most units are seeing.

Of course, this is GW, so you never know. They might have just woke up, rolled out of bed, and decided "cultists should be terrible and nobody should use them, let's hike their points to the point where nobody will."

They probably viewed it under the lens of, "Cultists should not be the core of a Chaos Space Marine army, it should be the Marines", which is why Guardsmen didn't go up in the past when Cultists did.

Then wouldn't it make more sense to make csm better instead of just making cultists worse? Most csm players would much rather run actual csm in their armies, but gw seems intent on making them Inferior Marines compared to our loyalists counterparts.

tneva82 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
I would also add that the 50% increase of cultists just reflects on the lack of granularity in the current point system rather than anything else.

it's also a problem with how cheap units like cultists have gotten. the bottem area of troop choices (cultists guard etc) where so cheap it was proably becoming a problem, when you're so cheap a single point adjustment is a 25% increase, it gets REALY hard to add options or tweek points.

BTW there may well be more for hoards coming up. I know that AOS rewarded you with certain things if your unit size was above X. and this could be how GW does it. for example CSMs can take squads of up to 20 but never do, it might be tempted if a squad of 11+ CSMs could re-roll their armor save

You know you can increase granularity without giving hordes higher point increase % than elites right?

And hordes haven't been balance problem for well over a year minimum now.

The horde problem is a deceptive one. They can be really annoying in drawn out fights, but in the time span most tourneys allow a game to last they rarely get their full effectiveness on the field.

We don't know if they have changed the weapon cost on intercessors so the cost of an equipped intercessor is currently not known.
Either way, if they had raised the cultists by only 1 point people would still be complaining about a 25% point increase. It's the problem of the cultists being so cheap in the first place: No room for changes.

In the end I just want to see the full data set. I am not that worried about anti-horde right now as the armies fielding 11+ models in a unit on a regular basis aren't that many, meaning that if you bring in a lot of anti-horde weaponry you may end up lacking the tools to deal with elite and monster/vehicle heavy armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Aash wrote:
I was thinking about the boxed game for 9th, but I'm starting to think that they might include 2 killzone boards in the box.

It would meet the minimum size for 1000pts and would be aimed at new players who can then play with the forces in the starter box on the "official GW game board".

Just speculation on my part. Thoughts?

Would be cool to be honest. Could also be one of those poster maps that came with the First Strike box, and those suck.

I do, however, remember that in one stream they talked about plans for Kill Team in the near future so my guess is we'll see some of the Kill Team terrain boxes having a comeback along with repackaging for 40k. Personally I am kinda happy I bought quite a few Kill Team terrain boxes when they were first released, as well as Warcry. I now have a mat, Realms of Battles, and the paper boards for whatever I fancy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could also be that Blast weapons turn out to be relatively rare.

we already know that 174 weapons and artifacts will get the Blast keyword

But how many of those are common?

There is probably a pub quiz to be found in seeing who knows and remembers all those 174 weapons. I would guess there is a lot of redundancy in the weapon profiles. Weapons with the same weapon profile, but given separate names due to how alien their factions are.

The reasons have been mentioned and it really has nothing to do with game mechanics. It is about the direction GW wants to take with their sale of models. There are various reasons to update the game to warrant the use of smaller model count armies. Many have been stated on this thread, but seemingly gets discarded in favor of debating 9th edition rules with only a fraction of information available.

Look, nobody ENJOYS buying 4x as many models as the guy you're playing against. I would love for GSC neophytes to be 7ppm, and acolytes to be like 9ppm, that'd be great, models are fething expensive and GSC take ages to paint.

...As long as that's not "I still have to play your 60% wr marines with my 38% wr GSC but now you get 2000 points to my 1850" then that's fine. If there's something in the core rules that favors cheaper models such that cheaper models get a price hike, that's fine. Honestly, that's GREAT.

The problem is when GW has been pretty much only previewing rules that benefit marines, talking about how great marines are going to be, saying how the armies people are playing have gotten so much more elite, in the middle of a marine meta that makes the most uninteractive, dull tau meta look like amazing fun in comparison.

Marine players got off a solid decade of bitching about how "tau only participate in one phase of the game mlehh they don't belong in 40k play the game" and went and bought up an army that sits utterly stationary, 30" away, and pumps shots into you until you're tabled. And then went "Wow it's great marines finally feel like they're supposed to in the fluff!"

If they were coming in to this edition going "Hey, we started designing the codexes with marines 2.0 with 9th edition in mind, and now we hope everyone is excited because now they get to get in on the fun!" that'd be one thing, but instead we've gotten pretty much just gushing about marines and dreadnoughts and tanks mowing down hordes of orks and hormagaunts and how much great fun that's going to be.

Aash wrote:
I was thinking about the boxed game for 9th, but I'm starting to think that they might include 2 killzone boards in the box.

It would meet the minimum size for 1000pts and would be aimed at new players who can then play with the forces in the starter box on the "official GW game board".

Just speculation on my part. Thoughts?

That certainly would be cool and would make the box very beginner-friendly.

The problem is when GW has been pretty much only previewing rules that benefit marines, talking about how great marines are going to be, saying how the armies people are playing have gotten so much more elite, in the middle of a marine meta that makes the most uninteractive, dull tau meta look like amazing fun in comparison.

how many blast weapons do Marines even have? compared to say... the Guard, not a whole lot I wager

BrianDavion wrote:

The problem is when GW has been pretty much only previewing rules that benefit marines, talking about how great marines are going to be, saying how the armies people are playing have gotten so much more elite, in the middle of a marine meta that makes the most uninteractive, dull tau meta look like amazing fun in comparison.

how many blast weapons do Marines even have? compared to say... the Guard, not a whole lot I wager

Marines never have to worry about getting hit by the new blasts rule (even if they decide to take 10 man squads most of the time, as they can just split them) and have plenty of blast weapons. Guard might have more (honestly, I don't know, marines have like 2 times as many units in general as any other faction so they might actually have more) but having fewer blast weapons than the army that has the most blast weapons in the game (but also has hordes) doesn't mean that isn't a rule that blatantly benefits elites over everybody else.

BrianDavion wrote:

The problem is when GW has been pretty much only previewing rules that benefit marines, talking about how great marines are going to be, saying how the armies people are playing have gotten so much more elite, in the middle of a marine meta that makes the most uninteractive, dull tau meta look like amazing fun in comparison.

how many blast weapons do Marines even have? compared to say... the Guard, not a whole lot I wager

No, but they are uniquely equipped to avoid blast weapons with their ability to break their infantry units into combat squads. Playing a guard list with lots of blast weapons? Break your 10 man squads into 5s, break your 6 man squads of aggressors and the like into 3s. Can anyone else do that? Maybe they can and I'm forgetting.

Roundly discourages large squads of CSM though.