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So, this is a wild and unusual situation I know, because nobody plays an army like this, but let's say just hypothetically you end up in a situation where your opponent has an army list that's like this:

~40 elite infantry models
A really durable, character protected, super obnoxious to kill HQ smack dab in the middle of his army, basically making warlord kill as hard as it possibly can be to achieve
2-3 vehicles, only allowing Bring it Down to be 8 or 9 victory points

What third secondary objective do you take against an army like that?

You're going to take Battlefield Supremacy because everyone always does, and you're going to take Shadow Operations because it's something you might be able to actually achieve. And let's say you're playing one of those weird factions that doesn't have psykers or whose psykers are all 100+ points so wasting their turns trying to do psychic actions removes a large lynchpin of your strategy and losing that psyker means losing 15vps if your opponent focuses fire and takes them out.

What in No Mercy, No Respite or Purge The Enemy do you take against an army like this? Thin Their Ranks is going to be worth 4-5 points max. Grind them Down is going to be obviously difficult, since they probably have 1/2 to 1/3 as many units on the table as you do unless you're also playing elite infantry. While we Stand We Fight maybe, if you're in a situation where you think you can protect your 3 most expensive figures, or bring it down maybe and just suck up the fact that you're not going to get 15 points from that objective.

You could just rely on the mission specific secondary being a good one, I guess.

But we have killing secondaries for opponents spamming vehicles, spamming bodies, spamming MSU, spamming characters, spamming psykers (or not having a choice to not spam psykers RIP tzeentch and GK armies lol) - how did GW forget what is the single most common army type in the entire game - 2000 points of elite infantry/bikers?

I don't think GW forgot the elite infantry/biker army even for a second. Maybe, before corona etc, in prior years when they were doing the testing, someone decided that it would be good to have 3-6 months of marine players having it real good. And that changes to secondaries may come with extra books. Doesn't really matter, for GW at least, if those books are going to be CA, codex or special mission books, the way AoS has books for spells and relics. It does matter that people are going to want to buy them to fix their armies.

Karol wrote:
I don't think GW forgot the elite infantry/biker army even for a second. Maybe, before corona etc, in prior years when they were doing the testing, someone decided that it would be good to have 3-6 months of marine players having it real good. And that changes to secondaries may come with extra books. Doesn't really matter, for GW at least, if those books are going to be CA, codex or special mission books, the way AoS has books for spells and relics. It does matter that people are going to want to buy them to fix their armies.

Yeah, I'm sure every army is going to get their own "here's a subcategory of secondary objectives that are real real easy for your army to do and they'll be named things like "Waaaaagh the enemy!" and "Zoggin' Gitz!" in their codexes."

And armies that have codexes will have a significant advantage in doing the missions as well as having the best most up to date rules, because of course they will, if you don't power creep why will people buy codexes?

Silly, silly me.

the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
I don't think GW forgot the elite infantry/biker army even for a second. Maybe, before corona etc, in prior years when they were doing the testing, someone decided that it would be good to have 3-6 months of marine players having it real good. And that changes to secondaries may come with extra books. Doesn't really matter, for GW at least, if those books are going to be CA, codex or special mission books, the way AoS has books for spells and relics. It does matter that people are going to want to buy them to fix their armies.

Yeah, I'm sure every army is going to get their own "here's a subcategory of secondary objectives that are real real easy for your army to do and they'll be named things like "Waaaaagh the enemy!" and "Zoggin' Gitz!" in their codexes."

And armies that have codexes will have a significant advantage in doing the missions as well as having the best most up to date rules, because of course they will, if you don't power creep why will people buy codexes?

Silly, silly me.

It is less powercreep and more buisness model.
By spreading out their release cycle, even though we know that the rules are allready finished thanks to playtesters, they gain a nice balanced sales picture.
For the players that play anything not initially released, that means getting curbed until their dex releases, which is no guarantee that even happens and or if it is worth the buy.

also the lack of such an secondary points excactly into the nice little fact that these are the armies that get promoted atm by GW for their new and improved smaller tables and smaller model counts.

You're looking at it the wrong way around. A couple of HQ's, some infantry units and armoured support is EXACTLY the type of army that GW want's to promote, as it "looks" like what they think an army should be. Nearly every image GW releases of the game looks like this.

The kill secondaries are partially there as a soft nerf on skewed lists and to encourage peeps toward this. Don't take a skewed list, and you're not taking that penalty.

You're thinking they missed something - i'm suggesting it's exactly intended for gameplay reasons

MaxT wrote:
You're looking at it the wrong way around. A couple of HQ's, some infantry units and armoured support is EXACTLY the type of army that GW want's to promote, as it "looks" like what they think an army should be. Nearly every image GW releases of the game looks like this.

The kill secondaries are partially there as a soft nerf on skewed lists and to encourage peeps toward this. Don't take a skewed list, and you're not taking that penalty.

You're thinking they missed something - i'm suggesting it's exactly intended for gameplay reasons

It is really not possible for me to take an army of several of the factions I play without offering up 15cp for either bring it down or for thin their ranks.

Seriously - make an ork army that doesn't do one of those two things. it's really not possible. If you bring ork infantry, you're going to have over 150 models on the table (or like 100 + a few models with 10+ wounds more likely) and if you bring mechanized orks, you're going to have enough vehicles to fill up that tally. It's the same for GSC, or for Guard - both of them have ~70pt vehicles that give up 3VP for Bring it Down. A single unit of killa kanz in my ork army is worth 10VP to my opponent.

This is only possible with Marine-equivalent factions. And for those factions, it happens essentially automatically. You construct your army in a normal way, and you deny your opponent the ability to take a third secondary without either relying on the mission or getting 6-7pts instead of 15pts for one of their secondaries.

Oh i agree it sucks for certain factions. In theory come a new Codex this disadvantage could be mitigated or balanced in another way. But GW rarely stick with a plan over years it takes to propagate throughout all codexes. But you never know, it may happen this time :-p

The actual anomaly is Abhor the Witch.

All the other ones are there to punish a kind of skew which is always optional. Overloading the opponent with a single kind of target puts him at a disadvantage as we all now, that's why we do it. The secondaries are there to help against that.
Sure, there are some factions that fall more likely into it, but even nids and orks have lists which have no problems in that sense, without recurring to anything weird (which doesn't mean that those lists are competitive, but that's another issue).

There are some factions though that cannot avoid skewing on psykers, because even the troops are psykers.

If there was a gangbuster like objective, it would be the same. You cannot punish something that is not an option. If you punish elite infantries, there are a lot of factions which simply cannot avoid that.

Where those factions can actually fall into a skew, is going full MSU to avoid the blasts that are a huge problem to elite models. MSU marine units fall around the 100-130 point mark, so grind them down is actually quite a decent secondary against many marine lists. The lists that instead go for bigger units, like 5x gravis and the like, quickly find themselves short of units when it comes to Battlefield Supremacy and anything requiring actions.

The situation isn't as cut and dry as you are painting it. I would wait for some results before worrying about something like this, and the first data, while insufficient, is pointing toward marines being no where in the top and carried only by eradicators and contemptors.

While We Stand does seem like the best out of that, but the mission specific secondary looks like it might usually be the better option, IMO.

So focus on the primary objectives, and preventing them from achieving their secondary's. You can still win by preventing them from scoring - and you will know what their objectives are. Pick the ones that give you the most, and work to deny them theirs.

Your guys on objectives may be dying in droves, but so long as you still have 1 more ObSec body in range than your opponent, you control the objective.

 Kcalehc wrote:
So focus on the primary objectives, and preventing them from achieving their secondary's. You can still win by preventing them from scoring - and you will know what their objectives are. Pick the ones that give you the most, and work to deny them theirs.

Your guys on objectives may be dying in droves, but so long as you still have 1 more ObSec body in range than your opponent, you control the objective.

Not exactly. The Obsec bodies don't really matter, if I have one obsec body and 3 other bodies and you have 3 obsec bodies, the objective is mine.
Obsec is a Yes/No check, the actual number of obsec models on the objective doesn't count. The obsec rule checks only if only one player has obsec models on the point.

You take the Mission-specific secondary.

The lack of any option that punishes skew on elite infantry (that's just as much skew as going heavy on tanks or horde infantry, I dunno why anyone thinks it isn't) is baffling, but not as baffling as the fact that Abhor the Witch made it through development, and particularly that it made it through development while stacking with assassinate.

These secondaries are just badly tuned. I 100% expect Abhor to go away or be fundamentally reworked in the first CA, because we're already seeing that it pushes most armies to be run without psykers and needlessly punishes those few armies that have to run psykers. I can't imagine GW wanted to push psykers out of the competitive game, but that's essentially what they've done.

They bizarrely decided to adopt ITC-style secondaries while completely ignoring everything ITC had learned over the years about how to create well-balanced secondaries. So we are basically back to where ITC was 3 years ago, and they are going to have to relearn the exact same lessons all over again because they were too stubborn to learn from someone else's mistakes.

Spoletta wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:
So focus on the primary objectives, and preventing them from achieving their secondary's. You can still win by preventing them from scoring - and you will know what their objectives are. Pick the ones that give you the most, and work to deny them theirs.

Your guys on objectives may be dying in droves, but so long as you still have 1 more ObSec body in range than your opponent, you control the objective.

Not exactly. The Obsec bodies don't really matter, if I have one obsec body and 3 other bodies and you have 3 obsec bodies, the objective is mine.
Obsec is a Yes/No check, the actual number of obsec models on the objective doesn't count. The obsec rule checks only if only one player has obsec models on the point.

Yes you're right, I stated that poorly, should have been, "ObSec and 1 more body in range".

I think Purge the Enemy either needs to be changed such that in 99% of games its a gimme 15 points for every faction versus every faction providing you pick the right one and *kill something* over the course of the game - or they all need to be pulled. Along with Abhor the Witch. Its just daft how easy these 15 points are compared with other options.

Its not strictly game breaking - but I expect you will see a meta develop to de facto do this by eliminating the various options and lists that can't stop giving these away. It won't happen immediately - after all most people are still playing their first games - but in time.

That or just cap all the kill secondaries, including abhor, at 10 points. Making them a tradeoff between reliability and efficacy - you'll get 10 points from them almost every game, but that's 5 less than you could get on one of the harder to do secondaries.

It shows the problems with having "hard to do" secondaries. It's much easier to balance easy-to-do secondaries than hard-to-do ones, because it's easy to make everything equally easy, but much harder to make everything equally difficult.

Tyel wrote:
I think Purge the Enemy either needs to be changed such that in 99% of games its a gimme 15 points for every faction versus every faction providing you pick the right one and *kill something* over the course of the game - or they all need to be pulled. Along with Abhor the Witch. Its just daft how easy these 15 points are compared with other options.

Its not strictly game breaking - but I expect you will see a meta develop to de facto do this by eliminating the various options and lists that can't stop giving these away. It won't happen immediately - after all most people are still playing their first games - but in time.

Bring it Down and Abhor do seem absolutely CRAZY easy to achieve vs several factions.

Your opponent playing mechanized orks, or mechanized IG? Congrats on your free 15 points that he for sure is not going to be able to avoid giving you, because killing a Chimera = 3pts.

MaxT wrote:
You're looking at it the wrong way around. A couple of HQ's, some infantry units and armoured support is EXACTLY the type of army that GW want's to promote, as it "looks" like what they think an army should be. Nearly every image GW releases of the game looks like this.

The kill secondaries are partially there as a soft nerf on skewed lists and to encourage peeps toward this. Don't take a skewed list, and you're not taking that penalty.

You're thinking they missed something - i'm suggesting it's exactly intended for gameplay reasons

Except... Let's say I'm guard, tyranids, orks, or really most non-elite armies:

I can go all infantry and give 15 points. I can go all vehicles/monsters and give 15 points. I can make a balanced list, and still give up both with my Guardsmen/Termagaunts/Boyz of which Ive completely filled my detachments allocation of for under a third of my list and my Leman Russes/Basilisks/Carnifexes/Tyrants/Buggies/Battlewagons of which 5-7 is also like a third of my list. Thats still a third of my list remaining for more balanced Ogryn/Warriors/Nobs completing a list with every kind of target profile and still giving up basically any kill objective you want for existing.

At least they can't double or triple up on them.
I might as well go full armor or something, because there's no way I'm preventing myself from giving up those points.

The fact that no objectives hit a small number of high-power W2 infantry but objectives existed to punish everything else was something I disliked about ITC secondaries, and there's still no objective to punish Space Marines and they got rid of Gangbuster so there's nothing at all to punish my basic model just being more costly and better than yours.


Playing not-MEQ is playing from a position 15/90 points in the hole. (Which is technically better than before, where playing IG or Tyranids was essentially playing 8-12/42 in the hole before even considering that you'd probably also lose kill more out of the primary because killing 2,3,4 etc of your units was the same as killing one of theirs, but still.)

I agree the lack of either a specific secondary for killing non vehicals W2-4 giving say 4 VP per 10 models and W5-8 giving 3 VP per 5 model's.

Or they could have just allowed Thin Thier Ranks to count wounds not models.

Ice_can wrote:
I agree the lack of either a specific secondary for killing non vehicals W2-4 giving say 4 VP per 10 models and W5-8 giving 3 VP per 5 model's.

Or they could have just allowed Thin Thier Ranks to count wounds not models.

Even then, when you're fielding 10 point per wound infantry verusus 5, the numbers still don't work out.

A SM army won't amass 15 points at a rate of 1/10W of infantry and 1/vehicle, it just lowers the "in the hole" by a couple of points. And even then, getting those points requires tabling the enemy army, while getting your full 15 against. Guard or Ork or Tyranids army can happen with a minimum of effort

MaxT wrote:
You're looking at it the wrong way around. A couple of HQ's, some infantry units and armoured support is EXACTLY the type of army that GW want's to promote, as it "looks" like what they think an army should be. Nearly every image GW releases of the game looks like this.

The kill secondaries are partially there as a soft nerf on skewed lists and to encourage peeps toward this. Don't take a skewed list, and you're not taking that penalty.

You're thinking they missed something - i'm suggesting it's exactly intended for gameplay reasons

Rather because its opposite of what has sold. Market saturated by hordes so time to sell elite. Gw doesn't care what army looks like. Just what sells atm and steadily change so different stuff sells.

Eventually gw will go for cheap hordes are king again

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
I agree the lack of either a specific secondary for killing non vehicals W2-4 giving say 4 VP per 10 models and W5-8 giving 3 VP per 5 model's.

Or they could have just allowed Thin Thier Ranks to count wounds not models.

Even then, when you're fielding 10 point per wound infantry verusus 5, the numbers still don't work out.

A SM army won't amass 15 points at a rate of 1/10W of infantry and 1/vehicle, it just lowers the "in the hole" by a couple of points. And even then, getting those points requires tabling the enemy army, while getting your full 15 against. Guard or Ork or Tyranids army can happen with a minimum of effort

I didn't want to go too hard on the balance as Marine players are likely to start a Reeeeee Mob

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Spoiler:

MaxT wrote:
You're looking at it the wrong way around. A couple of HQ's, some infantry units and armoured support is EXACTLY the type of army that GW want's to promote, as it "looks" like what they think an army should be. Nearly every image GW releases of the game looks like this.

The kill secondaries are partially there as a soft nerf on skewed lists and to encourage peeps toward this. Don't take a skewed list, and you're not taking that penalty.

You're thinking they missed something - i'm suggesting it's exactly intended for gameplay reasons

Except... Let's say I'm guard, tyranids, orks, or really most non-elite armies:

I can go all infantry and give 15 points. I can go all vehicles/monsters and give 15 points. I can make a balanced list, and still give up both with my Guardsmen/Termagaunts/Boyz of which Ive completely filled my detachments allocation of for under a third of my list and my Leman Russes/Basilisks/Carnifexes/Tyrants/Buggies/Battlewagons of which 5-7 is also like a third of my list. Thats still a third of my list remaining for more balanced Ogryn/Warriors/Nobs completing a list with every kind of target profile and still giving up basically any kill objective you want for existing.

At least they can't double or triple up on them.
I might as well go full armor or something, because there's no way I'm preventing myself from giving up those points.

Go all Sentinels and Bullgryn/Ogryn/Ogryn bodyguards? Maybe a 30 model list or so. About the only way guard can avoid giving up some of the easy secondaries. Not the most interesting list though.

Really the kill count one should be wounds done, not just models killed.

While I do agree that there's a gap in the secondary objectives that Marines manage to fall into rather conspicuously and Thin Their Ranks is advantageous to elite armies...
I don't know how reliably folks are really going to max Thin Their Ranks so readily. That's a lot of wounds to deal when you don't have a list skewed directly against someone else's skew.
Similarly, if you're in a tournament or something where you aren't list tailoring per-opponent, dumping the psyker or two from your list so you can run Abhor against a couple factions leaves you more vulnerable to others' warpcraft secondaries and leaves those points on that table for you against armies that can't deny (which are far more common than the armies full of psykers you need to make Abhor better than average).

None of the warpcraft objectives are very good, even if your opponent has no denial at all (and lots of armies now have psychic denial that doesn't come from psykers). They're all balanced around the assumption that your opponent can't deny them; if they can, you'll never, ever take them because it's too risky, but even if they can't, they are set up to not be auto-takes the way that abhor is against any psychic army.

If people start taking psykers again outside the dedicated psyker factions it will only be because abhor has so skewed the meta that you never encounter those lists any more and therefore never get to take it for the free 15 points against them.

The whole warpcraft section is just abysmal from a design perspective. Encouraging people not to take cool parts of their armies is bad design. Locking secondary points behind a simple roll-off mechanic (the deny roll) is bad design: dice shouldn't be so central to scoring. Requiring you to keep your opponent's characters alive to score points is frankly just downright bizarre. And that's not even getting into the questionable location requirements and the requirement on psychic ritual that your psyker survive at the center of the board for three whole turns while never being denied in order to score the points.

The idea that a fairly small number of total possible victory points in a matchup that's also going to be a small fraction of total machups played is meta-skewing just doesn't stand to scrutiny. Abhor should be a very small part of the considerations for most armies (when they aren't able to just tailor their list, like in a tournament. But if you're going hardcore tailoring in a friendly that's a whole different concern IMO).

Lets say a player usually takes a psyker in their army. This player isn't stupid, but maybe not fantastic, and any given secondary they pick is going to average 8 points.

Then, lets say they could always get 15 on Abhor vs. Tsons and GK if they dropped the psyker.
So, basically they're trading a part of thier army for an extra 7 points in some number of games they play.
Tsons and GK are 2 out of 20+ factions. But lets say they're both quite good armies and see lots of use - say they're 1/10 of all games this person plays in.
This guy is looking at gaining less than one extra point per game he's in.

Of course that only holds true if the psyker actually has no other impact on scoring.
But removing the psyker from the army surely has a victory points cost of its own. If the psyker is an actually useful part of this person's army it's surely bringing them 1 victory-point-over-replacement in value if not more. (3 rounds of interrogation would be an above average 9 points all on its own after all)
You can change the numbers above, as far as average scoring and army-matchup rate, but the nature of it means you've gotta average VERY low on secondaries or fight half-dozen psyker armies quite a lot before you've got big margins.

It doesn't need to be big margins. Small margins determine who wins an event and who places 5th.

You don't need to take my word for it - abhor is ALREADY skewing the meta. Look at the first three GTs to happen in 9th. Of the top 11 lists at those three events (top 4, top 4, top 3 - don't have the 4th place list for one of them for some reason), only 3 took any psykers at all, and one of those was a quins list with a single shadowseer, i.e.a 100% mandatory choice for the faction from a competitive perspective. The others were GK (literally mandatory) and nurgle (also mandatory for a competitive list). So we have only 25% of lists running a psyker at all, and not one single list that ran a psyker in a faction where it wasn't a 100% competitive necessity. Blah blah blah re: not drawing conclusions based on small sample sizes, but the data we do have supports the idea that psykers are getting squeezed.

As I said, the main reason people might start taking a psyker is if they are knocked out of the meta so hard by abhor that it stops being a secondary anybody ever takes because armies with multiple pskyers just don't exist in the meta at all. But that shows why abhor is skewing the meta, not why it isn't.

how have you guys had any games ? :(

Its all bat reps here :(

What a load of nonsense. Even besides the clear sample size issues, you rightfully point out, you've also miscounted and attributed all lack of psykers to skew even when some armies can't take psykers to begin with.
Lets pretend it's a useful sample size and actually look at why there aren't psykers? You still don't have good evidence.

Of what I see, at Vanguard Tactics and Adelaide (these are the only two on 40kStats even though it says they added three, where are you finding the third?) 3 of the 8 top 4s contain psykers. You clearly missed the Rune Priests in the 2nd place Space Wolves list. You've said "but these armies need them to be competitive" Space wolves certainly can build a lot of lists without them.

Of the remaining 5 non-psyker lists:
One simply can't have any - Drukhari
One is Custodes who only has the option by bringing an Inquisitor. They took an Assassin, that's a lot of flexibility to have now that you can't change as much pre-game.
One is a troops-less and awesome Ork vehicle-only list. They could have taken a wierdboy I guess, but non are on a bike so that would clearly be a theme violation.
One is a Salamanders Successor list - I feel like a librarian might be decent in this one. Only two HQs so he had ForceOrg space if he cut something to make room for one. Abhor could have mattered.
One is an Ultramarines Sucessor - they brought a Primaris Chaplain and are full-up on HQs. Have to find 5-10points someplace to take a flavor of Librarian instead. But Recitation of Focus fits well in this very shooty army.

So, If I'm being generous, like 2.5 out of 5 psyker-less Armies might have had Abhor the Witch be a decision point but the lists themselves certainly don't make much of a case for it.

yukishiro1 wrote:
None of the warpcraft objectives are very good, even if your opponent has no denial at all (and lots of armies now have psychic denial that doesn't come from psykers). They're all balanced around the assumption that your opponent can't deny them; if they can, you'll never, ever take them because it's too risky, but even if they can't, they are set up to not be auto-takes the way that abhor is against any psychic army.

If people start taking psykers again outside the dedicated psyker factions it will only be because abhor has so skewed the meta that you never encounter those lists any more and therefore never get to take it for the free 15 points against them.

The whole warpcraft section is just abysmal from a design perspective. Encouraging people not to take cool parts of their armies is bad design. Locking secondary points behind a simple roll-off mechanic (the deny roll) is bad design: dice shouldn't be so central to scoring. Requiring you to keep your opponent's characters alive to score points is frankly just downright bizarre. And that's not even getting into the questionable location requirements and the requirement on psychic ritual that your psyker survive at the center of the board for three whole turns while never being denied in order to score the points.

Those rules cannot deny a psychic action, since it is not a psychic power.
Only a psyker can attempt to deny a psychic action.