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Well, my Tyranids and GSC are absolutely neutered. Between trial games of 9th, videos of 9th, and the release of basic FAQ's and leaked points yesterday, I have seen that my GSC and Nids are absolutely god awful at the current version of the game, and are absolutely over-costed for it. Now, that's not just Nids, there are other forces in the same boat too, and yet others that are seeing big buffs. That's all fine, because I finally understand the updates and FAQ changes.

These points updates and the FAQs were honestly just meant to IMMEDIATELY port over units and abilities to 9th edition and shrink the size of the games. With just a few rare exceptions for the absolutely most EGREGIOUSLY over-performing units, the port over was achieved through use of a formula that they just plugged into current points costs, with absolutely no care or concern for how that impacted these unit's abilities. They know that this will cause a big upset in the game, and they want that. They want people to be chomping at the bit to get their new codex that will fix up their issues. They want people to be shocked by how good or bad their previous strategies from before have changed over. They do NOT want to try and fix the game early.

So, I'm going to sit back, patiently wait, and take the hits on the chin. I'm going to become a better player while playing with terrible stuff, and when the cult and nids do get better, I'll be better able to use them.

Let's go.

You are absolutely right, that's what this point update is all about. No rebalances, just simple rescaling. And probably not even from the most recent point values from the last CA.

Let's see how many months/years we will have to wait for the books that will "fix" us this time. I've been playing Nids for a decade now, I am getting really good at waiting.

And GSC, the poor Cult has spent more of the 8th edition lifetime on the broken index life-support than with the actual codex. And it lasted for months, months!

It's a shame what they have done' but atleast GSC and nids had a dex compared to some other armies.

I think cult might be.....OK, but only if you're using them as a mostly shooty army that has maybe one big melee bomb planned out instead of some kind of "ambush-based melee army" or some dumb thing like that.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough points of the current viable choices to make a 2k list, as I have too many garbage units like aberrants and genestealers. So my GSC will be 1500 points only from now until points are fixed.

I think understanding GW points is very much about taking hits, but 'hits' in the sense of 'to the chin' is not what I was thinking...

The purpose of the points changes was to upscale games (i.e. reduce the number of models on the table)? Riiiiiiiiggghhhtt.

GW could actually have done that by not touching a damn thing in the delicate balance... whatever they had from chapter approved 2019... and simply writing in the rules "The game is intended to be played around (X) points, as that is where we are targeting our balancing efforts." where X is lower than 2000. Whatever you want really - 1500, 1750, 1800, 1689, whatever.

Instead, they put in more work and totally dicked everything over. Fewer models on the table was not the purpose of the points changes.

 Yarium wrote:
Well, my Tyranids and GSC are absolutely neutered. Between trial games of 9th, videos of 9th, and the release of basic FAQ's and leaked points yesterday, I have seen that my GSC and Nids are absolutely god awful at the current version of the game, and are absolutely over-costed for it. Now, that's not just Nids, there are other forces in the same boat too, and yet others that are seeing big buffs. That's all fine, because I finally understand the updates and FAQ changes.

These points updates and the FAQs were honestly just meant to IMMEDIATELY port over units and abilities to 9th edition and shrink the size of the games. With just a few rare exceptions for the absolutely most EGREGIOUSLY over-performing units, the port over was achieved through use of a formula that they just plugged into current points costs, with absolutely no care or concern for how that impacted these unit's abilities. They know that this will cause a big upset in the game, and they want that. They want people to be chomping at the bit to get their new codex that will fix up their issues. They want people to be shocked by how good or bad their previous strategies from before have changed over. They do NOT want to try and fix the game early.

So, I'm going to sit back, patiently wait, and take the hits on the chin. I'm going to become a better player while playing with terrible stuff, and when the cult and nids do get better, I'll be better able to use them.

Let's go.

Brave of you to assume that Nids will get better.

Play against Drukhari, we are in a similar (overpriced) boat.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The purpose of the points changes was to upscale games (i.e. reduce the number of models on the table)? Riiiiiiiiggghhhtt.

GW could actually have done that by not touching a damn thing in the delicate balance... whatever they had from chapter approved 2019... and simply writing in the rules "The game is intended to be played around (X) points, as that is where we are targeting our balancing efforts." where X is lower than 2000. Whatever you want really - 1500, 1750, 1800, 1689, whatever.

Instead, they put in more work and totally dicked everything over. Fewer models on the table was not the purpose of the points changes.

They could have, but then they wouldn't give more room to balance things within a points space. They didn't with this change because, like I said, they just applied a formula without care specifically to get it out the door as fast and with as little effort as possible. This change let's them keep 2000 points as the "preferred" method of play, and they get to re-excite people by decreasing their points again later. It's like when companies jack up the price of a product for the direct purpose of slapping a discount on it later. The real price is the discounted price, but it looks like a deal this way. That's what the increase in points was for. They've made everything more expensive points-wise so that you get surprised and excited when you see those points come down again later.

 Yarium wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The purpose of the points changes was to upscale games (i.e. reduce the number of models on the table)? Riiiiiiiiggghhhtt.

GW could actually have done that by not touching a damn thing in the delicate balance... whatever they had from chapter approved 2019... and simply writing in the rules "The game is intended to be played around (X) points, as that is where we are targeting our balancing efforts." where X is lower than 2000. Whatever you want really - 1500, 1750, 1800, 1689, whatever.

Instead, they put in more work and totally dicked everything over. Fewer models on the table was not the purpose of the points changes.

They could have, but then they wouldn't give more room to balance things within a points space. They didn't with this change because, like I said, they just applied a formula without care specifically to get it out the door as fast and with as little effort as possible. This change let's them keep 2000 points as the "preferred" method of play, and they get to re-excite people by decreasing their points again later. It's like when companies jack up the price of a product for the direct purpose of slapping a discount on it later. The real price is the discounted price, but it looks like a deal this way. That's what the increase in points was for. They've made everything more expensive points-wise so that you get surprised and excited when you see those points come down again later.

Guardsmen went up exactly 1ppm. This doesn't give them any more room. Well, scratch that, it gives them exactly 1 pt more room than they had before. If they drop things again, Grot's will be at 3, cultists at 4 or 5... and we're back to the CA2019 values anyways. They didn't make like, Guardsmen 10 pts or something (and then increase the game size to 3000 or whatever to compensate). That would have given them extra space to design in.

And tbf you'd think GW would want people more surprised and excited for the launch of a new edition than you would for that edition's codex for their army 9 months to three years later. The points changes they implemented have been more divisive and problematic than it would have been if they just left things alone - and if they're ending up with similar points costs anyways, give or take 1 whole point, then why bother?

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Brave of you to assume that Nids will get better.

Oh, I know this song and dance. Been playing since 3rd edition with Nids. But over time we honestly do get cool new and powerful stuff, and what it is just changes. 8th edition wasn't the first time Genestealers were good. Wasn't even the second time. Most of the codex will always be bad (we'll never get an "everything is good!" codex), but we have had times where we've had multiple good builds.

 Yarium wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Brave of you to assume that Nids will get better.

Oh, I know this song and dance. Been playing since 3rd edition with Nids. But over time we honestly do get cool new and powerful stuff, and what it is just changes. 8th edition wasn't the first time Genestealers were good. Wasn't even the second time. Most of the codex will always be bad (we'll never get an "everything is good!" codex), but we have had times where we've had multiple good builds.

We get strong stuff at times but none of them ever was a product of planning or intention, it's just that GW did not realize that Nids don't follow the normal rules of power level of the other armies. GW never thought or intended that kraken stealers could slingshot 50" in a single turn. They never thought that Doom of Malantai could siphon more wounds than the enemy could do to it. They never planned that it was an actual posibility that people would field 7 flyrants.

Next time we get something strong, it's going to once again be a byproduct of a mistake and we will be paying the penalty for 3 more editions after that.

It appears the GW did a few things that you might not have noticed:

1) Put a minimum value on models: No model is worth less than 5 points. This appears to be the value of taking up space and needing to be killed. The biggest outlier here is that IG Infantry Squad made the 5 point cut rather than being 6 points.

2) Cheaper Upgrade: Many unit upgrades have gotten cheaper while the units have gotten more expensive. Thus, the more optimized your squads, the higher the points increase percentage-wise. The more upgrades, with certain exceptions, the less you unit's value increased.

Kitane wrote:
You are absolutely right, that's what this point update is all about. No rebalances, just simple rescaling. And probably not even from the most recent point values from the last CA.

Yeah, its weird. Necrons ended up in line with their base codex values surprisingly often, and bigger stuff ended up cheaper
It seems like a coincidence, because there are places it doesn't work, but enough lines up to raise my eyebrows.

Tesla Tomb blades 14+9+9=32 --> 17+15=32
Tesla Immortals 8+9=17 --> 18 [I suspect these explicitly got a tax for being MSU spam and heavily used over warriors for the duration of 8th]
Warriors 12-->12
Overlord 84-->85 [but gets a discount on a lot of gear: warscythe 11-->0]

then things start getting cheaper
Deathmarks 19-->16
Praetorians 22+10 (went to 16+10 in 2018) --> 23+0 for gear
Ghost arc 160-->140

Since I never bought CA2019, Necrons amusingly feel like they got a points decrease out of the increase, with a slight tax on immortals.

9th was heavily playtested by lots of groups, it was not pushed out ASAP, it's been in the works for a long time from what I've heard from playtesters, what makes you believe otherwise other than a shoddy job? Having 5-600 pts as the value for 99% of models in the game instead of 3-600 pts is a drop in the bucket compared to allowing another decimal on the costs of weapons and models where appropriate (keeping it to ,5 unless absolutely necessary), with the app math stops being a reason to not have done this. You can also only fill the board so much now that Detachments cost CP and huge squads take 50-72% more damage from Blast weapons.

I'd like to know what equation they used for increasing prices in your opinion? If GW had wanted to do a rough port they could have made a modifier based on vehicle buffs, blast buff, changes to melee and changes to FLY, I'm personally not seeing much rhyme or reason to the changes for Necrons. In particular, the change to Necron weapons is utterly bonkers, the internal balance between HQ weapon options was the best it's ever been in CA19 and now a +2 -4 D2 weapon costs as much as a +1 -3 D1 weapon which is blatantly silly. Monoliths got a buff though so I'm not too sad.

 vict0988 wrote:
the internal balance between HQ weapon options was the best it's ever been in CA19 and now a +2 -4 D2 weapon costs as much as a +1 -3 D1 weapon which is blatantly silly. Monoliths got a buff though so I'm not too sad.

I think that's because of Lychguard.

Lychguard were 17
Warscythe was 9
Hyperphase and Dispersion was 9

Now Lychguard are 30 and all that stuff is 0, which creates the odd scenario for characters, but I don't think anyone was taking the sword anyway.

 vict0988 wrote:
9th was heavily playtested by lots of groups, it was not pushed out ASAP, it's been in the works for a long time from what I've heard from playtesters, what makes you believe otherwise other than a shoddy job? Having 5-600 pts as the value for 99% of models in the game instead of 3-600 pts is a drop in the bucket compared to allowing another decimal on the costs of weapons and models where appropriate (keeping it to ,5 unless absolutely necessary), with the app math stops being a reason to not have done this. You can also only fill the board so much now that Detachments cost CP and huge squads take 50-72% more damage from Blast weapons.

I'd like to know what equation they used for increasing prices in your opinion? If GW had wanted to do a rough port they could have made a modifier based on vehicle buffs, blast buff, changes to melee and changes to FLY, I'm personally not seeing much rhyme or reason to the changes for Necrons. In particular, the change to Necron weapons is utterly bonkers, the internal balance between HQ weapon options was the best it's ever been in CA19 and now a +2 -4 D2 weapon costs as much as a +1 -3 D1 weapon which is blatantly silly. Monoliths got a buff though so I'm not too sad.

I think 9th was playtested thoroughly, but I don't think the playtesters were involved in the costing of units, or perhaps just minimally so. As for cost "formula", I think it was mostly in the same vein as "If this, then this". So "If Infantry AND Horde, increase cost by %, unless unit is made for Horde, then increase cost by % instead" and/or "round up to nearest 5/10pt interval". Things like that. For weapons it's "if Blast, increase cost by %, otherwise, increase cost by %" and/or "if weapon can only be used by UNIT, shift lowest cost into UNIT and subtract from other weapons only available to UNIT".

That's what I mean, just generic increases, some shifts, and then when all of that was done they said "hey, I hear unit X, Y, and Z are really problematic, let's increase those", which is why there's about 20 or so units that get some major cost hikes outside of the range of the formula.

Now, it's not these specific ones, but my thinking is that it's a concept similar to this that was implemented.

Given the points came out yesterday, how many trial games have you had?

 Yarium wrote:

I think 9th was playtested thoroughly, but I don't think the playtesters were involved in the costing of units, or perhaps just minimally so. As for cost "formula", I think it was mostly in the same vein as "If this, then this". So "If Infantry AND Horde, increase cost by %, unless unit is made for Horde, then increase cost by % instead" and/or "round up to nearest 5/10pt interval". Things like that. For weapons it's "if Blast, increase cost by %, otherwise, increase cost by %" and/or "if weapon can only be used by UNIT, shift lowest cost into UNIT and subtract from other weapons only available to UNIT".

That's what I mean, just generic increases, some shifts, and then when all of that was done they said "hey, I hear unit X, Y, and Z are really problematic, let's increase those", which is why there's about 20 or so units that get some major cost hikes outside of the range of the formula.

Now, it's not these specific ones, but my thinking is that it's a concept similar to this that was implemented.

That's my assumption as well. Playtesting was likely done with 8th edition point values, possibly at a lower cap or something to account for the planned adjustment.

I honestly think nids didn't get hit that hard. I was looking at them b.c i am sad about my DE adn i was considering them again or GSC, Nids is looking like a winner to me.

But i have also played many games with leaked 9th rules and 9th missions. Primaries are the most important thing to get in 9th. Nids can do that well. Gants only went up by 1 points, Neurothropes didn't even go up and yes Genestealers went up 5pts, but some armies like DE every troop went up by 3pts and both transports by 15pts at least (they are spammed transport on purpose) a 10man wych with raider is now 230pts where it was 180pts, thats +50pts. Compare to the Genestealers old was 15 at 180, new its 16, so you GAINED 1 Genestealer over DE not gaining anything.

To me GW saw Speed + take and hold as the most important thing in 9th, gants got +1 where genestealers got +3, b.c they are faster and cna take and hold, thats why transports when up more so too and a DE unit + transport that can take and hold went up a LOT.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Yarium wrote:

I think 9th was playtested thoroughly, but I don't think the playtesters were involved in the costing of units, or perhaps just minimally so. As for cost "formula", I think it was mostly in the same vein as "If this, then this". So "If Infantry AND Horde, increase cost by %, unless unit is made for Horde, then increase cost by % instead" and/or "round up to nearest 5/10pt interval". Things like that. For weapons it's "if Blast, increase cost by %, otherwise, increase cost by %" and/or "if weapon can only be used by UNIT, shift lowest cost into UNIT and subtract from other weapons only available to UNIT".

That's what I mean, just generic increases, some shifts, and then when all of that was done they said "hey, I hear unit X, Y, and Z are really problematic, let's increase those", which is why there's about 20 or so units that get some major cost hikes outside of the range of the formula.

Now, it's not these specific ones, but my thinking is that it's a concept similar to this that was implemented.

That's my assumption as well. Playtesting was likely done with 8th edition point values, possibly at a lower cap or something to account for the planned adjustment.

Then they'd have however, hiked all the prices by the same amount really to achieve a somewhat similar state.

Yet we don't see that .

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
the internal balance between HQ weapon options was the best it's ever been in CA19 and now a +2 -4 D2 weapon costs as much as a +1 -3 D1 weapon which is blatantly silly. Monoliths got a buff though so I'm not too sad.

I think that's because of Lychguard.

Lychguard were 17
Warscythe was 9
Hyperphase and Dispersion was 9

Now Lychguard are 30 and all that stuff is 0, which creates the odd scenario for characters, but I don't think anyone was taking the sword anyway.

I think its also because weapons on necron characters just don't matter that much. If you have an overlord with a warscythe fighting alongside a unit of lychguard with warscythes, it would be disappointing but not terribly shocking if one of the lychguard did more damage than the overlord. Defensively he's better off because more wounds and the 4++, but the value of the overlord isn't really in the fight. And obviously this gets compounded with even more melee stuff being added to the army.

Knowing GW, I would assume that they used the base points and completely forgot that they've changed them several times over the years

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I honestly think nids didn't get hit that hard. I was looking at them b.c i am sad about my DE adn i was considering them again or GSC, Nids is looking like a winner to me.

But i have also played many games with leaked 9th rules and 9th missions. Primaries are the most important thing to get in 9th. Nids can do that well. Gants only went up by 1 points, Neurothropes didn't even go up and yes Genestealers went up 5pts, but some armies like DE every troop went up by 3pts and both transports by 15pts at least (they are spammed transport on purpose) a 10man wych with raider is now 230pts where it was 180pts, thats +50pts. Compare to the Genestealers old was 15 at 180, new its 16, so you GAINED 1 Genestealer over DE not gaining anything.

To me GW saw Speed + take and hold as the most important thing in 9th, gants got +1 where genestealers got +3, b.c they are faster and cna take and hold, thats why transports when up more so too and a DE unit + transport that can take and hold went up a LOT.

I'm also fairly optimist on Nids, they came out quite well overall. My only gripe is that our only anti elite comes from monsters, and right now you need anti elite. You can't play monsters though, because someone decided that they really had to sell those melta marines.

If it wasn't for that one datasheet, I would be very optimist about this edition. But I have vented enough in other threads...

All you need to know about GW's competence is that they are releasing a new rulebook that states objectives are 40mm across on the same day they are releasing official plastic objectives that are 50mm across.

Spoletta wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I honestly think nids didn't get hit that hard. I was looking at them b.c i am sad about my DE adn i was considering them again or GSC, Nids is looking like a winner to me.

But i have also played many games with leaked 9th rules and 9th missions. Primaries are the most important thing to get in 9th. Nids can do that well. Gants only went up by 1 points, Neurothropes didn't even go up and yes Genestealers went up 5pts, but some armies like DE every troop went up by 3pts and both transports by 15pts at least (they are spammed transport on purpose) a 10man wych with raider is now 230pts where it was 180pts, thats +50pts. Compare to the Genestealers old was 15 at 180, new its 16, so you GAINED 1 Genestealer over DE not gaining anything.

To me GW saw Speed + take and hold as the most important thing in 9th, gants got +1 where genestealers got +3, b.c they are faster and cna take and hold, thats why transports when up more so too and a DE unit + transport that can take and hold went up a LOT.

I'm also fairly optimist on Nids, they came out quite well overall. My only gripe is that our only anti elite comes from monsters, and right now you need anti elite. You can't play monsters though, because someone decided that they really had to sell those melta marines.

If it wasn't for that one datasheet, I would be very optimist about this edition. But I have vented enough in other threads...

IMO just weight of dice them down with -1ap if you can. Or just shoot with Hive guard. The only real thing that hurt nids is no 2 detachments.

OH and OOE nerf.

 vict0988 wrote:
9th was heavily playtested by lots of groups, it was not pushed out ASAP, it's been in the works for a long time from what I've heard from playtesters, what makes you believe otherwise other than a shoddy job? Having 5-600 pts as the value for 99% of models in the game instead of 3-600 pts is a drop in the bucket compared to allowing another decimal on the costs of weapons and models where appropriate (keeping it to ,5 unless absolutely necessary), with the app math stops being a reason to not have done this. You can also only fill the board so much now that Detachments cost CP and huge squads take 50-72% more damage from Blast weapons.

I'd like to know what equation they used for increasing prices in your opinion? If GW had wanted to do a rough port they could have made a modifier based on vehicle buffs, blast buff, changes to melee and changes to FLY, I'm personally not seeing much rhyme or reason to the changes for Necrons. In particular, the change to Necron weapons is utterly bonkers, the internal balance between HQ weapon options was the best it's ever been in CA19 and now a +2 -4 D2 weapon costs as much as a +1 -3 D1 weapon which is blatantly silly. Monoliths got a buff though so I'm not too sad.

They might have playtested but either it was same as 8th ed and they were given ready army lists without points or they weren't listened. Or playtesters were running their own agenda which wasn't good balance...seeing we are talking about guys who made rules favouring marine gunlines...

Just quick glance at points show that a) it was done with formula unrelated to balance b) it's total junk in balance. Then you dig deeper and see the actual level of dog's pile

Either playtesters put no input on points, they were ignored or playtesters were just having favorism.

I think that Spider guy from Tabletop Tactics was both a playtester for 9th and honestly thrilled for Drukhari and nids on this edition. I think you guys are up for pleasant surprises from now on.

 Kithail wrote:
I think that Spider guy from Tabletop Tactics was both a playtester for 9th and honestly thrilled for Drukhari and nids on this edition. I think you guys are up for pleasant surprises from now on.

I'll never listen to Lawernce again for DE after what he did early 8th.

He went on and on and on about Venom spam being OP (at the time Razorback spam was a thing and Venom spam was 100% dead b.c you can not compete with Razorback spam) asked him for his next event to put his words on the table and show us. Well.... he took Razorback spam and won the event, no DE even got top 10.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
All you need to know about GW's competence is that they are releasing a new rulebook that states objectives are 40mm across on the same day they are releasing official plastic objectives that are 50mm across.

Those are not tournament objectives - as in objectives you can stand on. The acrylic coins were 40mm. You kind of can't design miniatures to rules that don't exist and I think you'll notice almost none of those pieces would fit on 40mm - they'd look pretty stupid.