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We have already heard talk that 9th was designed to be a more tournament friendly edition and can clearly see from their mission pack they have taken inspiration from others.

Why not continue that in rules design.

Easy to see how this is gonna go, were going to have power cycles.

Marines and Necrons get the first major buffs, and will dominate the scene for the first few months, then we should expect to see major buffs for every faction when their codex comes out, leading to new top dogs every few months.

Magic the Gathering, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc., and other competitive games all have cycles of power with each new release and update and we shouldnt be surprised to see it here.


Biggest take away is that I think every army will have their time in the sun this edition. If you stick to one army, you will eventually be on top, and tournament goers will have to chase that "flavor of the month".


Me personally, am gonna stick to one army for tournaments all throughout the 2021 season, but i'll definately be trying some other stuff locally for fun.

Codex creep has been a thing since forever though, that's why the term exists.

That's how terrible P2W online games work. They overpowered things in turn to get people to buy them, before the new hotness is overpowered to make people buy that. It only works because it is easy for people to open their wallets and get the new overpowered thing.

40k is a fundamentally different beast. Buying a new army costs you a thousand quid and dozens of hours of painstaking painting, and people grow strong attachments to "their dudes" and are unlikely to take kindly to their dudes being made terrible compared to the new hotness. Very few people have the time or budget to bandwagon to the latest overpowered thing.

If GW is actually dumb enough to go along this route, they deserve what they are going to get.

40k has always had codex creep, but it's usually been within fairly defined boundaries. One faction doesn't suddenly just get Super Saiyan Mode; broken things get released, but usually because of specific gimmicky combo interactions that GW's rules team is simply not competent enough to avoid.

This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
We have already heard talk that 9th was designed to be a more tournament friendly edition and can clearly see from their mission pack they have taken inspiration from others.

Why not continue that in rules design.

Easy to see how this is gonna go, were going to have power cycles.

Marines and Necrons get the first major buffs, and will dominate the scene for the first few months, then we should expect to see major buffs for every faction when their codex comes out, leading to new top dogs every few months.

Magic the Gathering, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc., and other competitive games all have cycles of power with each new release and update and we shouldnt be surprised to see it here.


Biggest take away is that I think every army will have their time in the sun this edition. If you stick to one army, you will eventually be on top, and tournament goers will have to chase that "flavor of the month".


Me personally, am gonna stick to one army for tournaments all throughout the 2021 season, but i'll definately be trying some other stuff locally for fun.

GW has never and will never had nuanced enough understanding of how the game is played to pull something like this off.

Every book is a D20 roll on release day to see how strong it is. It's how it's always been and how it always will be.

 LunarSol wrote:
This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

I disagree about the design space issue - it's because GW has been unwilling to expend the effort to make a balanced game, and much more willing to expend the effort to make a game unbalanced in such a way that it drives sales.

It really is a design space issue.

We haven't had some of the same issues in AoS with the fact that 2W isn't exactly uncommon there.

 LunarSol wrote:
This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

Fundamental redesigns of the design space should come with new editions, not be dolled out piecemeal over months or years based on whether your faction is top of the queue or not.

If they had done this as part of the start of 9th edition reactions would be really different. It's so disappointing to see this done book by book, as it certainly does lead credence to the "cycles of overpoweredness" complaint.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It really is a design space issue.

We haven't had some of the same issues in AoS with the fact that 2W isn't exactly uncommon there.

Obviously not, because these multi-wound statlines are coexisting with 8e codices.

I feel like this could be all a setup for people to get the app when it's suddenly updated with new profiles and point values.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

Fundamental redesigns of the design space should come with new editions, not be dolled out piecemeal over months or years based on whether your faction is top of the queue or not.

If they had done this as part of the start of 9th edition reactions would be really different. It's so disappointing to see this done book by book, as it certainly does lead credence to the "cycles of overpoweredness" complaint.

I don't actually disagree with any of that, just recognizing what is happening. Its also how they rolled out Strategems and keyword bonuses in 8th.

Hecaton wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

I disagree about the design space issue - it's because GW has been unwilling to expend the effort to make a balanced game, and much more willing to expend the effort to make a game unbalanced in such a way that it drives sales.

You're both right. So long as GW continues to only write with a D6 in mind, design space will only go so far. Now, do I think this is the correct way to go for Manlet Marines? Probably not. Am I against 95% of what GW does? You betcha. Do I want to see what the various codices actually bring though? Yeah, sure. Do I think GW will LIKELY screw it up? Yeah but let's wait for more leaks first.

Hecaton wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
This feels like less of a creep and more of a fundamental redesign of the design space. The game has been plagued for years with the minimal space left with 1W tac marines leaving little room to design variety for the rest of the game. This is a bump that leaves a lot more room to adjust how Wounds, Saves, and Toughness interact to define durability for the rest of the game.

I disagree about the design space issue - it's because GW has been unwilling to expend the effort to make a balanced game, and much more willing to expend the effort to make a game unbalanced in such a way that it drives sales.

This point comes up a lot and is arse slowed every time. It's literally that southpark meme: Step 1: Unbalanced game Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit.

How is the game unbalanced in such a way that it drives sales? Because space marines are good? Space marines are one of the most commonly discounted armies and are dirt cheap on the secondhand market. Even accounting for the fact that a huge percentage of the playerbase plays marines doesn't necessarily make them the most profitable faction, especially when you look at what kits are 'OP'.

Look at what space marine units have been good. Intercessors (literally a dime a dozen thanks to all the starter sets and discount bundles) aggressors (cheap ETB kits) Centurions (popular 7th ed kit that isn't hard to come by second hand) eradicators (relatively cheap discount box) outriders (relatively cheap discount box.), and leviathan dreads (one of these most popular recast pieces in the entire forgeworld line).

If they ACTUALLY wanted to make the game unbalanced in a way that drove sales then Sisters and GSC(some of the newest and most expensive armies) would be hilariously OP alongside weird marine units no one ever uses or has ever used. Yet neither one of those armies are anywhere near broken and people still won't be taking hunters OR stalkers.

Yeah, GW less sets out to create overpowered stuff on purpose as it seems to just put an army into a box with a bunch of holes in it labeled stuff like "totally overpowered," "somewhat overpowered," "balanced," "somewhat underpowered" and "joke faction" and then shake the box until the army falls out one of the holes.

My thinking on this is that GW has always had cycles, and does indeed introduce purposeful imbalance to drive sales - but not with individual armies. Rather, it tries to do it with specific unit types (with varying degrees of success).

Look at how powerful flyers were when they were first introduced - virtually every flyer model was brand new and, as vehicles, not exactly cheap. To a lesser extent, vehicles have become more and less powerful with edition changes - hordes too, look at the likes of Conscript lists from before and now they're being taken down a peg with Blast weapons. (That last one really needed to happen in the name of balance, mind.)
Even as far back as 2nd edition, we got the Dark Millennium expansion that introduced a whole slew of wargear options, vast improvements for previously lackluster psykers, and a few other bits besides - before scaling it aaaaaall back again with the simplification that 3rd edition brought. Wargear options were vastly reduced and psykers might as well have had their bases swept out from underneath them.

As far as the cycle's concerned, again it's always been there - I can't be the only one that's noticed a new edition drops conveniently just when almost all the Codexes are updated - it's just more aggressive in recent years than before. We're looking at 3 years between editions as opposed to the 4 or 5 years we had before.

I will say one thing - whatever the end goal is with increased points values, on paper, that actually translates to less models sold if you're aiming for a set points value (even if most people don't actually collect that way). So I can applaud them still going ahead with that, at least.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
We have already heard talk that 9th was designed to be a more tournament friendly edition and can clearly see from their mission pack they have taken inspiration from others.

Why not continue that in rules design.

Easy to see how this is gonna go, were going to have power cycles.

Marines and Necrons get the first major buffs, and will dominate the scene for the first few months, then we should expect to see major buffs for every faction when their codex comes out, leading to new top dogs every few months.

Biggest take away is that I think every army will have their time in the sun this edition. If you stick to one army, you will eventually be on top, and tournament goers will have to chase that "flavor of the month".

That's exactly what privateer tried with CID and it will fail for the tournament minded players just as miserably. The people who make purchases with rules in mind will get tired of not knowing if x powerful unit will still be good in 2 months. If you think getting burnt out on wild imbalance between codices and editions was bad, imagine that compressed into a small time frame. In order to keep wm from being destroyed by a few top themes, pp was dropping new stuff, erratas, and re-balancing older units every other month. If the wm crowd was exhausted then the "Competitive" 40k players who think this is a good idea will regret it.

 Irkjoe wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
We have already heard talk that 9th was designed to be a more tournament friendly edition and can clearly see from their mission pack they have taken inspiration from others.

Why not continue that in rules design.

Easy to see how this is gonna go, were going to have power cycles.

Marines and Necrons get the first major buffs, and will dominate the scene for the first few months, then we should expect to see major buffs for every faction when their codex comes out, leading to new top dogs every few months.

Biggest take away is that I think every army will have their time in the sun this edition. If you stick to one army, you will eventually be on top, and tournament goers will have to chase that "flavor of the month".

That's exactly what privateer tried with CID and it will fail for the tournament minded players just as miserably. The people who make purchases with rules in mind will get tired of not knowing if x powerful unit will still be good in 2 months. If you think getting burnt out on wild imbalance between codices and editions was bad, imagine that compressed into a small time frame. In order to keep wm from being destroyed by a few top themes, pp was dropping new stuff, erratas, and re-balancing older units every other month. If the wm crowd was exhausted then the "Competitive" 40k players who think this is a good idea will regret it.

Serves them right for trying to make everything a tourney game & by default poisoning it for the rest of us. If they burn out? Then it'll be like a good cleansing brush/forest fire.

Great attitude.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
We have already heard talk that 9th was designed to be a more tournament friendly edition and can clearly see from their mission pack they have taken inspiration from others.

Why not continue that in rules design.

Easy to see how this is gonna go, were going to have power cycles.

Marines and Necrons get the first major buffs, and will dominate the scene for the first few months, then we should expect to see major buffs for every faction when their codex comes out, leading to new top dogs every few months.

Magic the Gathering, League of Legends, Overwatch, etc., and other competitive games all have cycles of power with each new release and update and we shouldnt be surprised to see it here.


Biggest take away is that I think every army will have their time in the sun this edition. If you stick to one army, you will eventually be on top, and tournament goers will have to chase that "flavor of the month".


Me personally, am gonna stick to one army for tournaments all throughout the 2021 season, but i'll definately be trying some other stuff locally for fun.

Uuuhh....you realize right that's been GW's strategy all along? You describe their 30 year old strategy...Changing imbalance.

Dude, back when I was new to 40k, I thought it was 'Warhammer Fantasy in the Future', a large portion of the models were metal, 'Finecast' didn't exist, and I couldn't tell you the first thing about how the game actually worked...

The first thing I learned was that Space Marines are the army that everything else scaled from. They come out first, everyone dives in to complain about how ridiculous the Codex is, and whatever Space Marines do- every other faction gets a way to work around it, counter it, and they generally come along and outperform them once people figure out how the other armies work.

Then everyone stands around talking about how garbage of an army Space Marines are, and pretends they didn't go out and buy a whole bunch of them when the Codex first dropped.

I saw this happening in the late 90's, FFS.

Oh, yeah- this time they're putting all the Marines except Grey Knights into one book, so now you don't have to worry about your release taking longer because 4 other slight variations of Space Marines need a Codex staggered into the release schedule.

Undermined your own point with calling Overwatch a "Competitive" game there, buddy.

They have to drive sales somehow. Shaking up a faction so you can't comfortably continue using your old rules is a surefire way to get folks to part with their old codexes and such.

Or, like me, to get off the edition merry-go-round.

They learn nothing , their update schedule has simply been streamlined and accelerated.

Hecaton wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
It really is a design space issue.

We haven't had some of the same issues in AoS with the fact that 2W isn't exactly uncommon there.

Obviously not, because these multi-wound statlines are coexisting with 8e codices.

And why is that relevant?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stormonu wrote:
They have to drive sales somehow. Shaking up a faction so you can't comfortably continue using your old rules is a surefire way to get folks to part with their old codexes and such.

Or, like me, to get off the edition merry-go-round.

Dude, they don't need to shake up anything. The second a codex comes out the old one is invalid. It's been like this for 15 years at least.