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 EnTyme wrote:
Just a general statement here: GW uses points to encourage armies to be built in certain ways. The reason Grots are the same price as Guardsman despite being inferior means that GW would rather you take Guardsman in an IG army than take a Grot in an Ork army. Same with 6 point Cultists. They're intentionally overcosted to encourage you to take CSM instead (though not so overcosted as to be completely useless if you do want to take them). Some of the other changes are . . . odd to say the least (who took Obelisks anyway?), but Grots and Guardsman being the same price has a simple explanation.

Post proofs. People say this all the time and it's conjecture.

You can say whatever you want but you'll never outcut Hanlon's Razor.

tneva82 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:

Goonhammer generally writes from a competitive point of view and if viewed in that way, CWE did actually get off relatively lightly. Weirdly, all of their good competitive units saw relatively low increases and some of the most improved units in 9th (War Walkers) saw practically nothing. Meanwhile all of their irrelevant, sub-optimal or niche units stayed that way or have gotten EVEN WORSE. I had been trying out Storm Guardians in my test games as cheap objective holders, but now that they're more expensive than an Ork Boy they're going back on the shelf.

Wanna bet what kind of armies eldar playtester likes to run?

I still don't get how anyone can justify 5ppm guard when Firewarriors, Admech etc all went to 9ppm, they are 1ppm short of 2 guardsmen FFS.

Someone is just breaking the game intentionally at this point as so far Marines and Guard seem to be coming out on top while their army lists change the least.

Quick and dirty "how to make yourself a competitive 9th list"

step 1: Take your competitive 8th list.

Step 2: Drop anything that was for killing infantry until you're down to 2k.

That's it! you're done!

GW has shown over and over they don't understand how their own game is being played. Remember their team being embarrassed by flyrants? Yeah..

 EnTyme wrote:
Just a general statement here: GW uses points to encourage armies to be built in certain ways. The reason Grots are the same price as Guardsman despite being inferior means that GW would rather you take Guardsman in an IG army than take a Grot in an Ork army. Same with 6 point Cultists. They're intentionally overcosted to encourage you to take CSM instead (though not so overcosted as to be completely useless if you do want to take them). Some of the other changes are . . . odd to say the least (who took Obelisks anyway?), but Grots and Guardsman being the same price has a simple explanation.

That makes sense. So the increase to all three of the Drukhari troops options was just a nudge to play Harlequins instead.

 Trickstick wrote:
You know, I'm beginning to think that this is a quick and dirty placeholder job until codexes come. Not a good look really, but what can you do?

Basically. It's them trying to do a points reset like the Indexes without wholly invalidating the existing books. This is just their baseline so they have room to adjust as new Codexes and CA2021 are released after actual event data comes in. I have a feeling a lot of the units people are complaining about going up too much drop when the next adjustment comes.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
My DE are very sad.

Their points makes ZERO SENSE, all weapons are basically 5 points now, even tho some are 2x as strong as others, but yet they are both 5pts on the same model.

Cronos went up almost twice as much as the Talos when no one plays it anyways.

Hellions went up 3pts when their ONLY change to be playable was to stay the same points.

All Troupes +3pts so that means no one will take more than the 3 from raiding force.

Dis cannon went up, which is ok, but went up 10pts over 5pts.

Flyers went up when all DE players testing 9th basically said they are not worht it at current points, meaning new points are even worst.

My list will now look like everyone else something like this.
Raiding Force
Drazhar
Kabal
Ravager
Venom

Archon
Kabal
Ravager x2
Venom

Haemon x2
Wrack x2
Talos x6

Honestly, It's getting to the point where I doubt I'll even play my DE in 9th. GW has already spent a great deal of time and effort systematically stripping them of anything remotely fun or flavourful. The only thing they had left was that they were at least functional. Now it seems even that has gone down the toilet.

 Trickstick wrote:
You know, I'm beginning to think that this is a quick and dirty placeholder job until codexes come. Not a good look really, but what can you do?

Just an idea but one thing you could do is not discard everything you learned in 8th.

What is the point of gradually adjusting costs so that a lot of poor wargear is cheap enough to finally see some play, only to then throw all of those lessons in the bin and make said wargear the exact same cost as alternatives that are vastly better?

Now points being fethed in the start of the edition is not exactly surprising. It is probably really difficult to accurately gauge the power of units only via playtesting.

However, there are some systematic and completely intentional changes that are not explained by this. One is no model costing less than five points. This obviously causes issues with super crappy things like the gretchin, which probably should cost less than that.

Another that really bugs me personally is rounding the equipment cost to nearest five points. This destroys the granularity that existed in the 8th. Now some options are just flat out better for their points. Whilst balancing under the previous paradigm wasn't perfect, at least it tried to price the weapons for what they were worth. This is simply a step backwards.

I guess there is less reason to use points over PL now... The upside of points if the increased accuracy afforded by the granularity, but if that granularity is not utilised the that benefit is gone.

So this was quick. Here's a very simplified shooting match between "equal" points of CSM and Intercessors. Everybody's in rapid fire range all the time, no morale, no stratagems, no doctrines.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Sob walker melee weapons same price. Lol. One is simply inferior version.

And which one is that?

The one that makes 5 S8 AP3 D2?
Or the one that makes 15 S6 AP2 D1?

Because those serve two different purposes.

Even going against an ideal target(rhino) the buzzblades only do 1.5 more wounds on average Against a Knight it's .5, against an intercessor it's .2; against any other toughness level outside of 12 the Flail does more, also on any single wound models and on most models with Invuls greater than 6++ or no invul and a save worse than 4++.

Basically the flail is the better weapon unless you're SURE you're up against a ton of rhinos.

That doesn't seem like a distinction worthy of a notable point difference does it though? You drop the buzzblades and suddenly they're much better against the targets they're good at and equal to the flails - why then take the flails?

Even if the Buzzblades are better against the targets they're good at taking out, there honestly aren't a lot of those targets kicking around. Most armies don't use many T7, no invul vehicles and the only T8 no invul things that see play are knights and repulsors.

It's not worth a huge difference but if Buzzblades were 5pts cheaper it might be worth taking one pair on the Anchorite just in case, as opposed to just praying whatever T8 thing they have is a psyker.

GW has shown over and over they don't understand how their own game is being played. Remember their team being embarrassed by flyrants? Yeah..

I'm trying to stay positive here, but I have to admit that Martel isn't wrong with that comment ...

 Crimson wrote:
Now points being fethed in the start of the edition is not exactly surprising. It is probably really difficult to accurately gauge the power of units only via playtesting.

However, there are some systematic and completely intentional changes that are not explained by this. One is no model costing less than five points. This obviously causes issues with super crappy things like the gretchin, which probably should cost less than that.

Another that really bugs me personally is rounding the equipment cost to nearest five points. This destroys the granularity that existed in the 8th. Now some options are just flat out better for their points. Whilst balancing under the previous paradigm wasn't perfect, at least it tried to price the weapons for what they were worth. This is simply a step backwards.

I guess there is less reason to use points over PL now... The upside of points if the increased accuracy afforded by the granularity, but if that granularity is not utilised the that benefit is gone.

Which would be true if 3 years of not updating the PL didn't result in that being totally batgak fething insane at this point.

A lot of these points are way off, not nearly as bad as PL has gotten though.

 Crimson wrote:
Now points being fethed in the start of the edition is not exactly surprising. It is probably really difficult to accurately gauge the power of units only via playtesting.

However, there are some systematic and completely intentional changes that are not explained by this. One is no model costing less than five points. This obviously causes issues with super crappy things like the gretchin, which probably should cost less than that.

Another that really bugs me personally is rounding the equipment cost to nearest five points. This destroys the granularity that existed in the 8th. Now some options are just flat out better for their points. Whilst balancing under the previous paradigm wasn't perfect, at least it tried to price the weapons for what they were worth. This is simply a step backwards.

I guess there is less reason to use points over PL now... The upside of points if the increased accuracy afforded by the granularity, but if that granularity is not utilised the that benefit is gone.

This all seems pretty reasonable to me. Particularly – if you're going to say "right, nothing can go below 5 pts", then you set the crappiest model in the game (a gretchin) at 5 points and adjust anything better upwards from there. You don't arbitrarily whack a massive points boost on it relative to other units.

Tbh, I think I'll just be sticking to PL and the Open War deck for the forseeable future.

Ice_can wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:

Goonhammer generally writes from a competitive point of view and if viewed in that way, CWE did actually get off relatively lightly. Weirdly, all of their good competitive units saw relatively low increases and some of the most improved units in 9th (War Walkers) saw practically nothing. Meanwhile all of their irrelevant, sub-optimal or niche units stayed that way or have gotten EVEN WORSE. I had been trying out Storm Guardians in my test games as cheap objective holders, but now that they're more expensive than an Ork Boy they're going back on the shelf.

Wanna bet what kind of armies eldar playtester likes to run?

I still don't get how anyone can justify 5ppm guard when Firewarriors, Admech etc all went to 9ppm, they are 1ppm short of 2 guardsmen FFS.

Someone is just breaking the game intentionally at this point as so far Marines and Guard seem to be coming out on top while their army lists change the least.

Don't really agree with the intentionally part, but looking at xenos and AdMech, I would agree that the guardsmen are the problem, not grots or brimstones. Especially with orders on top of regiment bonuses. They should 6 or maybe even 7 given their non-stat line bonuses.

Based on these points, guardsmen should be 7 ppm. That's inbetween FW and grots. Done.

Nope.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nope.

Yup.

 Crimson wrote:
Now points being fethed in the start of the edition is not exactly surprising. It is probably really difficult to accurately gauge the power of units only via playtesting.

I mean, that would make more sense if it actually was a new edition, rather than just being '8th edition but with a new coat of paint'.

 Crimson wrote:

However, there are some systematic and completely intentional changes that are not explained by this. One is no model costing less than five points. This obviously causes issues with super crappy things like the gretchin, which probably should cost less than that.

IMO they should have just doubled the points of everything. This would have given them far more wriggle-room than this mess of 'Er... well, we'll increase stuff by... er... I don't know... a bit, maybe? And then w'll round up to the nearest 5. Or maybe we'll round down to the nearest 5. Depends which way the wind is blowing, I guess. Unless it's raining, of course, then we'll leave the cost as not being a multiple of 5.'

Martel732 wrote:
Based on these points, guardsmen should be 7 ppm. That's inbetween FW and grots. Done.

Should probably be more than 7 ppm to be honest.

But then again 40PPM with an assualt 2 MM made it past GW's 9th edition rebalance so complaining about guard is redundant Marines, GK, TS are probably going to be stomping everyone anyway.

You've been almost bluntly told by GW that you shouldn't use skew lists and the game is designed for more balanced lists across the board for years, decades even.

Don't get salty now they have actually pushed to ensure that.

If grots were designed to be a full army, they'd have their own codex.

Time to suck it up and stop whinging and start playing the game in the way its intended, the time of unfluffy spam and skew is over.

You want ultra competitive specificity? Go play sports guys, this isn't that.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
You've been almost bluntly told by GW that you shouldn't use skew lists and the game is designed for more balanced lists across the board for years, decades even.

Don't get salty now they have actually pushed to ensure that.

If grots were designed to be a full army, they'd have their own codex.

Time to suck it up and stop whinging and start playing the game in the way its intended, the time of unfluffy spam and skew is over.

You want ultra competitive specificity? Go play sports guys, this isn't that.

Yes, and their own systems and points values DON'T EVER ENCOURAGE THIS. Again, GW doesn't understand how their own game is played.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Based on these points, guardsmen should be 7 ppm. That's inbetween FW and grots. Done.

Should probably be more than 7 ppm to be honest.

But then again 40PPM with an assualt 2 MM made it past GW's 9th edition rebalance so complaining about guard is redundant Marines, GK, TS are probably going to be stomping everyone anyway.

I'll leave that for you and Kanluwen, but I think 7 ppm is a good starting place given the other units.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
You've been almost bluntly told by GW that you shouldn't use skew lists and the game is designed for more balanced lists across the board for years, decades even.

Don't get salty now they have actually pushed to ensure that.

If grots were designed to be a full army, they'd have their own codex.

Time to suck it up and stop whinging and start playing the game in the way its intended, the time of unfluffy spam and skew is over.

You want ultra competitive specificity? Go play sports guys, this isn't that.

Does GW pay you by the comment, or by the hour? I'm really trying to not ad hom here, since you know exactly what GW wants games to look like, you must work for them. But on the off chance you don't work for them, can you show me where they've told us what lists need to look like? And what's the party line on DE, where all their troops went up in points?

Removed - Rule #1 Please

In the grim darkness of 9th edition, everything is 5 points.

Martel732 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nope.

Yup.

Nope.

You have always been wrong about this, will continue to be wrong about this, and will never be right except in the eyes of anyone who wants to see Guard nerfed because of a wild lack of understanding as to how the units function.

You want 7ppm Guardsmen(which is a trash statement, by the by, because it could mean Conscripts or Infantry Squads or Veteran Squads)? You're buffing them first. There is no way, shape, or form where a 9 model lasgun squad(because like we went over at the start of 8th and back in 7th and probably back before then: the squad only starts with 9 lasguns. Sergeant can't get one. End of story.) needs a points hike because you're bad at this game.

There is a reason why I have continually harped upon the infantry squads needing to get redesigned from the ground up. There is a reason why I have continually harped upon Conscript Squads needing a redesign from the ground up. There is a reason why I have continually harped upon the Guard book needing a redesign from the ground up.

And it's not because "OMG THESE THINGS ARE BROKEN!". It's because there is functionally no design space within the book to make any kind of meaningful change for one unit without it affecting the other two that are effectively built off of it.
Infantry Squads never should have started 8th edition as a catch-all for everything from the flak vest wearing Catachans to the effectively carapace armored Cadians.
Conscripts never should have started life with the same statlines as regular Guardsmen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

Does GW pay you by the comment, or by the hour? I'm really trying to not ad hom here, since you know exactly what GW wants games to look like, you must work for them. But on the off chance you don't work for them, can you show me where they've told us what lists need to look like? And what's the party line on DE, where all their troops went up in points?

You didn't try very hard then, because you did this in two threads.

If you cannot engage without resorting to calling people white knights or ad homs, then stop posting here.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nope.

Yup.

Nope.

You have always been wrong about this, will continue to be wrong about this, and will never be right except in the eyes of anyone who wants to see Guard nerfed because of a wild lack of understanding as to how the units function.

You want 7ppm Guardsmen(which is a trash statement, by the by, because it could mean Conscripts or Infantry Squads or Veteran Squads)? You're buffing them first. There is no way, shape, or form where a 9 model lasgun squad(because like we went over at the start of 8th and back in 7th and probably back before then: the squad only starts with 9 lasguns. Sergeant can't get one. End of story.) needs a points hike because you're bad at this game.

There is a reason why I have continually harped upon the infantry squads needing to get redesigned from the ground up. There is a reason why I have continually harped upon Conscript Squads needing a redesign from the ground up. There is a reason why I have continually harped upon the Guard book needing a redesign from the ground up.

And it's not because "OMG THESE THINGS ARE BROKEN!". It's because there is functionally no design space within the book to make any kind of meaningful change for one unit without it affecting the other two that are effectively built off of it.
Infantry Squads never should have started 8th edition as a catch-all for everything from the flak vest wearing Catachans to the effectively carapace armored Cadians.
Conscripts never should have started life with the same statlines as regular Guardsmen.

Tell it to the Drukhari players. You're spoiled and high on cheap, undercosted units. You're the one who has always been in denial about the effectiveness of guardsmen at their 8th ed price point. Redesigns aren't coming. Points values are. And they got it wrong. Again.

They need a points hike because of how GW pointed OTHER units in the game, not because of my games. I was using guardsment for most of 8th in my lists. Specifically, because they were nonsense.

 Crimson wrote:
[snip]
Another that really bugs me personally is rounding the equipment cost to nearest five points. This destroys the granularity that existed in the 8th. Now some options are just flat out better for their points. Whilst balancing under the previous paradigm wasn't perfect, at least it tried to price the weapons for what they were worth. This is simply a step backwards.

This would bother me more if a lot of the point values hadn't been complete nonsense to begin with.

Martel732 wrote:

Tell it to the Drukhari players. You're spoiled and high on cheap, undercosted units. You're the one who has always been in denial about the effectiveness of guardsmen at their 8th ed price point. Redesigns aren't coming. Points values are. And they got it wrong. Again.

And you're the one who continually argued that it was the Guardsmen that were the problem, not the Command Point spammage or easy access to allies.

Looks like you're wrong on that front too, given that they fixed that before Guard points. Funny how wrong you can be in one day, huh Martel?

Hey all, this last page is starting to get a bit heated, lets calm in down here or take it to PM's please.

Looks like I'm going to be using alot of chosen over berzerkers. Now it's just an issue of gluing the bolters to the models. At least Kharn got a decrease.