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I'd have to go

1. Space Marines
2. Space Marines
3-8. Space Marines
9. Custodes (Golden Giant Space Marines)
10. Necrons

The title started out well, too bad the content of the OP was silly.

I don't have all of the books, but with what I know so far...

Grey Knights might have been number 1. They were so bad before, and gained a lot from the release.
Dark Angels got significantly better, but due to Covid...didn't get much of a chance to shine (like many others)
Regular marines certainly benefited from the Master of Sanctity and Apothecary upgrade, but the were doing well anyway.
Craftworlds got a huge boost, primarily from Expert Crafters.

Hard to rank them though due to the reduction in games.

Right, it's entirely subjective. I mean obviously Space marines got the biggest boost, depending on what color they were. But honestly, I hasn't thought that Eldar were that massively buffed. I have a few friends that play Aledari, and were generally Meh about the release. Nothing earth Shattering.

Now on your point about GK, that was earth shattering. They went from zero to hero literally overnight. The only other faction that recieved a buff that major in my view was Custodes. Several major play testers/you tubers have said Custodes might possibly be top 3 when play resumes, just solely off the new Dread Host buffs.

It's funny, because Guard didn't really get anything major.

Sadly CW Eldar had to pilfer Marine traits for the best two updates

The critical roles for Harlequins was big.
Sisters of Silence have strats now.

Regarding the Eldar, the other thing I liked about what CWE got were the extra Exarch power options and the strat that lets them take one in addition to their base power.

I haven't picked up Engine War, Web of the Spider or Pariah, though I do want all of them; my copy of Faith and Fury is a stupid epub that doesn't display properly on a computer so I'll have to buy a paper copy of it too. I don't have Saga of the Beast either, but I don't really need/want that one.

1º Grey Knights, making the worst army a fun and competitive one, whats not to love.
2º-Tau. The Farsight rules are phenomenal, much more fun and engaging and actually competitive than tririptide tau.
3º- Tempestus Scions, adding variety to a relatively simple part of a bigger faction.
3º 2.0- Harlequins. Fun rules, that were actually quite original. Good on them!

The rest have been meh or "right" not good or great.

The worst ones are genestealer cult and dark eldar, of course. Those PA were an insult.

PA added quite something for orks. At least one kustom job or stratagem are going to be part of any ork game actually.

 Galas wrote:
1º Grey Knights, making the worst army a fun and competitive one, whats not to love.
2º-Tau. The Farsight rules are phenomenal, much more fun and engaging and actually competitive than tririptide tau.
3º- Tempestus Scions, adding variety to a relatively simple part of a bigger faction.
3º 2.0- Harlequins. Fun rules, that were actually quite original. Good on them!

The rest have been meh or "right" not good or great.

The worst ones are genestealer cult and dark eldar, of course. Those PA were an insult.

Custodes and Thousand Sons I also would add I think got an excellent boost.

The only one I feel deserves the #1 spot is GKs. Beyond a huge buff. At the bottom though is poor poor deathwatch who might as well not have even gotten an update.

Beyond GKs, custodes won big and harlequins got a massive boost. I would say space marines depending on color got great milage out of their PA. I would rank SMs higher but the only buffa used from the book were the character upgrades which, though greatl, didn't wholly change the army's power.

Other armies fall into the "good" like DG and TS to "meh" like drukhari.

GSC & Drukhari

What too soon ?

Id say the op isisn't far off. But I would rank CWE pretty high. EC has been a huge boon in terms of both power and also list building flexibility.

Tau seem to have gotten some mean toys.

 buddha wrote:
The only one I feel deserves the #1 spot is GKs. Beyond a huge buff. At the bottom though is poor poor deathwatch who might as well not have even gotten an update.

Beyond GKs, custodes won big and harlequins got a massive boost. I would say space marines depending on color got great milage out of their PA. I would rank SMs higher but the only buffa used from the book were the character upgrades which, though greatl, didn't wholly change the army's power.

Other armies fall into the "good" like DG and TS to "meh" like drukhari.

Deathwatch got a useful slew of buffs. They didn't get anything that wasn't recycled, but what they did get was impactful.

The lower end is easy. Sisters got literally zero rules and inquisition got restrictions added onto their forces.

ERJAK wrote:
The lower end is easy. Sisters got literally zero rules and inquisition got restrictions added onto their forces.

What we the restrictions for Inquisitors?

I haven't picked up my copy yet, but I think we have two new strats and we kept our original 4; I heard they use an Imperial Agent keyword now, which prevents us from adding both and inquisitor and an assassin to the same detachment, but that's not specifically a restriction on Inquisition forces. If you take the Inquisitor as a leader of their own detachment, you could add an imperial agent to that detachment as I understand it. I don't have the book though, so I could literally be wrong about everything.

I think that many people underestimate the utility of the Drukhari name generator

I've read through them all so will have a stab at a complete list, looking at them through an 8th edition lense and imho of course:


1: Grey Knights - Massive changes to make the faction more functional, fun and competitive.

2: Adeptus Mechanicus - Powerful new units, loads of extra strats and a host of other rules.

3: Tau - Loads of extra stuff that gives them different viable ways to play, a great boost.

4/5/6: Dark Angels/Blood Angels/Space Wolves - In whatever order you like, the boost these got was more about bringing them up to standard spacemarine level which was a massive increase.

7: Orks - Similar to the Tau, this release really pushed other viable options to the front, in terms of power the flying 'eadbutt and Big Boss strats are game changers for the faction.

8: Deathguard - These made out the best of the Chaos factions, they've always had solid base units but were lacking in strats and this release gave them bucket loads.

9: Craftworld Eldar - Whilst they didn't gain alot they were working from such a good base that even small improvements go along way. They got one of the best selections of build your own rules and the exarch power are generally just extra win.

10: Militarum Tempestus - A massive boost in terms of usefulness and power, makes them a playable faction again, at least in smaller games.

11: Astra Militarum - Lots of options, not all great but some are pretty usable, especially the tank upgrades.

12: Custodes - Great new options but I think most of the custode hype being talked about is due to the extra CP 9th will give them. In 8th edition terms they just wouldn't be able to utilise half of this update.

13: Space Marines - didn't get much overall other than character options, but those options are great and flavourful.

14: Deathwatch - There update was boring, luckluster and lazy but still actually quite a buff to the faction.

15: Harlequins - Some really nice buffs and strats but didn't really change their style overall.

16: Chaos Knights - Got some good stuff, nothing mind blowing.

17: Imperial Knights - Similar to their evil cousins but slightly less so.

18: Chaos Space Marines - Options and flavour but they really needed more to bring them in line and make them a more playable solo faction.

19: Tyranids - Mostly rubbish but with a few very usable gems thrown in,

20: Chaos Daemons - Whilst the exalted daemons are fun it doesn't fix any of the issues the book has and its my number one pick for codex most in need of an apdate, it just doesn't work.

21: Thousand Sons - There are some decent options but many of the rules just don't really work as intended.

22: Assassins - Can be taken without breaking detachment bonuses, that's the most significant thing they got.

23: Inquisition - Didn't really change much, slightly more usable and got a cool new character.

24: Genestealer Cults - Likely the worst of the actual main updates, pick you own powers that are mostly trash and other poor minor options you will never use.

25: Drukari - Nothing here is really on par with what was in the codex, very lackluster.

26: Necrons - A single updated datasheet, enough said....

27: Adeptus Sororitas - A new model that has not of your unique faction rules and can be used by half the factions in the game as well as yours.



Whoa, 27 factions! Let me know where you think I went badly wrong.

In my opinion the book that had the best bang for the buck was War of the Spider. So much content in it. Pariah is probably my least favorite as it is more or less just Index: Inquisition and nothing more.

Regarding faction effect I have found the Drukhari one to be very limited, especially after its FAQ came out. Craftworlds got a better deal. Dark Angels update was really nice and brought the army to functional level.

That really all depends on what your defining as best, impacted the competitive meta, well obviously the answer is spacemarines, but when they are 80% of the meta it's not a shock.

Most improved GK they went from even less than a Zero to Meta breaking hero's.

Most complained about Deathwatch saltier than a salt mine those players.

Most underappreciated Probably Guard, they got a lot of decent stuff but non of it is meta breaking so the internet doesnt seem to be appreciative of it.

Least delivery on promises, thats going to be a close fight between SoB and Necrons

ERJAK wrote:
The lower end is easy. Sisters got literally zero rules and inquisition got restrictions added onto their forces.

Is that really a surprise though? Their codex only came out in the middle of the PA campaign. Personally, if I was playing Sisters I'd have been more miffed if I'd needed to buy another book straight away, and would be thinking 'well why wasn't that gak in the codex that literally just came out?'

Dark Angels needed a boost and were pretty damn good when Ritual of the Damned came out. Then they got nerfed a bit with the changes to doctrines as Devistator is their super doctrine. However, they are still on par with Codex Marines now which isn't bad.

Echo what ice_can said about Guard. They weren't in a bad place, and what they got, particularly tank aces, was pretty neat but not game breaking so it didn't make as many ripples.

GK for sure. Then normal marines, specialy WS, RG and IH. GK are higher, because unlike IH they didn't get hit by the doctrine nerf, because they didn't have doctrins.

Other PA updated armies, were hardly updated at all. DA codex was meh, the PA was fun, but then got nerfed because IH were too strong and 9th makes a ton of their rules make no sense.

when they wrote SW, both the codex and PA, they must have thought of something, I just don't know what it was.

The DW codex was okey when it came out, but didn't stood the taste of time.

And csm players have my condolances, their PA books were gimmiky, am not even sure if the good stuff was the stuff that csm players wanted.

My list is short:
Engine War.

It's the only volume I bothered with as without it I can't use the new Admech stuff I'm building.
Other than that I didn't even read, let alone buy any of the others.

What really sucks is now people have to wait an ENTIRE edition before SoB get any new rules or units (Joke about how they only drop at the end of an edition)

1) GK for sure. For reasons already stated. Went from zero to high tier army in one go.

2) Admech, if you count the new units as their PA release, which I think it is fair to do. Got a fair bit of free stuff, and a bunch of new models that came with solid rules.

3) I'll lump Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, and to a lesser extent Deathwatch in together, as they all basically got the same treatment. Huge buffs, head and shoulders above every other faction, for no real reason, and nobody got a corresponding ability to Doctrines or Superdoctrines in PA so they maintain their large competitive gulf.

4) Chaos Space Marines. blatantly a second fiddle to the Mary Sue marines treatment, but the abilities and strats they received were enormous in terms of competitive power, and fairly cool and fluffy.

5) Orks. Less strictly competitive than the CWE buffs, but IMO far more fun and opened up more units that previously were crap to being useful.

6) CWE. Great in that it was free power, rather than something youd have to invest into. Put a few previously terrible units on the map and gave them their new strongest craftworld trait, which to be fair isn't tough to do because they have early-8th garbo traits.

7) Scions (Guard) and Farsight (Tau). Guard in parenthesis because mostly they just got a few extra options, while scions went from very dull to very solid. Less of a meteoric rise than GK, SW and the like, but you now have a reason to take scions again. for the first time since the olden days of early-8th. Same story for Farsight, which had very good content for that subfaction, and a small bit of content for others that was passably good.

8) Custodes. Some very potent stuff here, but now we get into the things you really ahve to invest into to get anytning out of, while other factions got their stuff for free. Custodes PA content is inevitably going to be overshadowed by the HUGE buff they get from 9th ed in terms of CP, board size, missions, etc.

9) Harlequins. Oddly, not in the PA book, even though it's quite a bit better than most factions content from PA. Why not in paraiah? Who knows, but I ain't complaining.

10) Tsons/DG. I'll lump them together since it's basically the same content style, also similar to Custodes in that it's "Pseudo-subfactions." I've greatly enjoyed my Tsons stuff.

11) Daemons. Getting down into the low tier now. Exalted greater daemons are pretty cool, everything else, suuuuuuper trash and, like all daemons stuff, both worse than the competition's stuff AND bizarrely and uniquely limited! Woohoo! Cannot WaIT for 9th ed when daemons get to properly feel like 1 faction that got fully sawed apart into 4 that don't work at all.

12) Nids. Kind of a similar style/presentation to other armies' stuff, but just kind of garbage. A few usable stratagems.

13) Drukhari. Usable, free, but INCREDIBLY sparce in terms of content. I think with Drukhari being the "Designated Soup Faction" going into 8th we may see more of this content in lists, but it's not...good.

14) GSC. Talk about a swing and a miss to carry you RIGHT into the edition specifically designed to shaft your whole steez. Terrible strats, TERRRRRRIIIIIBLE custom traits, and terrible powers. Hooray.

15) inquisition/Agents. Mostly reprints, but got a few things you'd use and a couple new units.

16) Ynnari. Purely reprints.

17) Necrons and Sisters. Didn't get anything. Whoops!

Interesting to see the different perspectives on this. The Imperial Guard looked really good to me, particularly the Basilisk Ace which seems just insane when combined with strats/tactics/detachment. The Stormtroopers look really good too.

I agree the Admech and GK seems to be the best. Looking at those Admech fliers and then looking at Swooping Hawks....yikes.

1) Space Marines – Chief Apothecary won the LVO hands down (as well as Master of the Forge with +1 BS to vehicles being the main contender).

2) AdMech. That stuff is nuts. All round buff to pretty much everything as well as new units that essentially plug all the weaknesses the army used to have.

3) Chaos Space Marines. There’s a reason CSM builds, mainly Possessed-variants took home most big tournaments after the Doctrines nerf, often being all 3 of the top 3 as in battlefield Birmingham. Probably need a nerf the most currently after Marines were toned down.

4) Death Guard – Absolutley nuts. The power level of that army went through the roof, possibly being broken.

5) Thousand Sons – Absolutely nuts. New Rubrics are insane (and doubly ridiculous as you can use the strats on soup-rubrics using CSM above). Giving the ubiquitous TS smite spam even more Mortal Wounds must’ve been one of the dumbest game design choices ever.

6) Tau (Farsight). Again, the power-level just went through the roof for that army.

7) Blood Angels / Space Wolves / Dark Angels / Deathwatch. Solid Buffs throughout. People kinda got board of the repetitiveness, but their new stuff is super strong. Most factions would’ve loved to get half of that.

8) Imperial Guard – Came out very strong. Arguably a smidgen too strong IMO. Combining Vigilus stuff with Tank Aces stuff, etc… is just a good example of stacking too many buffs (see pre-nerf Ynnari), which IMO is just bad design.

9) CWE – Uninspired. It has 2-3 powerful rules (which are Space Marine Copy&Paste like Master Artisans for the most part), but little to actually revitalize the army.

10) GK – People love the GK changes, and they certainly improved. But it seems to have kinda fizzled and resulted mostly in a predictable mono-build, putting them somewhere in the category of 2019 Necrons or so. Not that much of a fan.

11) Inquisiton / Assassins – Kinda bland, but changing what needed to be changed to have them see play. I think those rules are solid, even if they lack spice.

12) Orks – Pretty good buff. Not super-OP, but fluffy. Arguably the gold standard of what a PA buff could and should have been.

13) Custodes – haven’t done the deep dive. Seems fun and fluffy in line with Orks. There might be broken combos, but to me they don’t seem as in-your-face-obvious as they are with things like the Chaos factions or the Chief Apothecary and stuff like that.

14) Chaos Daemons – Good and flavorful stuff for the big guys. Kinda lacking to make it a genuinely rounded mono-army.

15) Harlequins – Similar to Daemons. Good stuff boosting characters in particular, but probably still more powerful in a soup and “not enough” for a mono-army.

16) Tyranids – Entering the trash Territory, of which Nids arguably came away as “the best of the worst”. Probably gonna drop further in 9th.

17) Drukhari – Trash

18) GSC – Insultingly lazy and bad.

19) Necrons / Sisters – New new rules at all, but at least new models (yeah?)

20) Ynnari – GW hates you (though they still loved taking your cash for giving you absolutely nothing).

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What really sucks is now people have to wait an ENTIRE edition before SoB get any new rules or units (Joke about how they only drop at the end of an edition)

Yeah but the SOB codex is pretyt robust and you can see is pretty on point for new edition.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What really sucks is now people have to wait an ENTIRE edition before SoB get any new rules or units (Joke about how they only drop at the end of an edition)

Yeah, well that's how this all goes.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What really sucks is now people have to wait an ENTIRE edition before SoB get any new rules or units (Joke about how they only drop at the end of an edition)

SoB were clearly written with 9th in mind. Look a lot of their stratagems for instance. They line up with a lot of the stuff armies were getting via PA.

Addtionally, they were one of the few armies with the multiple rule types I think we are going to see going forward. They have their Baseline Rules, their Rites Bonus and their subfaction bonus. I expect we'll see this similar set of rules for all new 9th edition dexes going forward.

 harlokin wrote:
I think that many people underestimate the utility of the Drukhari name generator

On the contrary I get much use of the guard name generator ! It gives me extra flair in every single game I play ! Take that marines !

Necrons got the short stick, but I'm completely ok with that. Rather have a new codex with everything 100% new and 1 less book to carry around.

But I also hope it'll have stuff other PAs got - custom dynasties, new relics, stratagems, the works (even the silly name generator)