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Well well well... a civil discussion. It warms my heart. You are true gentlemen.

I agree that reducing points only goes so far.

Better unit/ army rules, and improved mission secondaries would help far more and be healthier across the board i believe. Points drops only go so far. It can work. And i would argue it does work to a degree but it cannot be an answer.

I think eveeyone agree the 9e point costs to everyone but rules only to some is dumb...

There hasn't been some big 300~ player tournaments, but there are regularly 30-50 player tournaments that seem to result in the same pool of factions providing winning lists.

Win rate I think can be concealing due to seal clubbing or whatever you want to call it - but assuming the tournaments want to generate winners (i.e. winners fight winners in the next round) going 4-0 is going to produce a reasonable bar. You might have beaten some weak players at the start, you shouldn't be facing them by the end, unless they've just been lucky to win their first 2 or 3 games.

Karol wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

aren't you already giving max secondaries anyway?

what if they removed abhor the witch and added an "abhor the elite" instead. that way scoring against marines and quins would actually become possible

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Karol wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

aren't you already giving max secondaries anyway?

what if they removed abhor the witch and added an "abhor the elite" instead. that way scoring against marines and quins would actually become possible

how would an "elite secondary" even work. we keep hearing people saying "we need an anti-elite secondary" ok, and how would that WORK?

BrianDavion wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Karol wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

aren't you already giving max secondaries anyway?

what if they removed abhor the witch and added an "abhor the elite" instead. that way scoring against marines and quins would actually become possible

how would an "elite secondary" even work. we keep hearing people saying "we need an anti-elite secondary" ok, and how would that WORK?

This is what ITC had:

"Gang Busters: For every 6 wounds inflicted on a non Troop battlefield role multi-model unit composed entirely of models with 3 or more wounds that does not have the Vehicle, Swarms or Monster keywords, score 1 point.
Once any wounds from a unit are counted towards your Gang Busters Secondary Objective, that unit may not score points for another Seek and Destroy Secondary Objective."

Note in the ITC packet I took that from you can only score 4 pts per secondary. So if you wanted to use this for 9th you would probably up the points scored to 2 or 3 per 6 wounds.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Karol wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

aren't you already giving max secondaries anyway?

what if they removed abhor the witch and added an "abhor the elite" instead. that way scoring against marines and quins would actually become possible

how would an "elite secondary" even work. we keep hearing people saying "we need an anti-elite secondary" ok, and how would that WORK?

This is what ITC had:

"Gang Busters: For every 6 wounds inflicted on a non Troop battlefield role multi-model unit composed entirely of models with 3 or more wounds that does not have the Vehicle, Swarms or Monster keywords, score 1 point.
Once any wounds from a unit are counted towards your Gang Busters Secondary Objective, that unit may not score points for another Seek and Destroy Secondary Objective."

Note in the ITC packet I took that from you can only score 4 pts per secondary. So if you wanted to use this for 9th you would probably up the points scored to 2 or 3 per 6 wounds.

It was also a kind of busted secondary and promoted Intercessor spam (and certain other units) because 2W models slipped under the radar (while armies like Custodes got murdered).

I would just change the one we have no that's based on how many models you destroy to be for every wound dealt to non-vehicle units.

Easy. Change Thin Their Ranks so that the kill point tally is 1 for each model with 1 wound, 2 for Models with 2-9 wounds, and 10 for models with 10+ wounds.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
However Salamanders are still trash so I don't know how people are doing anything with them.

Most likely by being better at the game than you are.

 alextroy wrote:
Easy. Change Thin Their Ranks so that the kill point tally is 1 for each model with 1 wound, 2 for Models with 2-9 wounds, and 10 for models with 10+ wounds.

Or just make it 1 pt per wound on non-vehicle/monster. Then it’s simple, and you choose either that or Big Game Hunter based on your opponent’s list.

Their podcast is a much better product and really is a good way to understand how the game balance, from a competitive point of view, is working out.
This is the watered down, corporate, version, still interesting but a bit vanilla.

SecondTime wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

False. Anything made sufficiently cheap is playable.

There are units in both 40k and AoS that are too crappy to balance with points changes. You have to remember that points reflect both the value of a models physical presence on the battlefield and its output. Increasing or decreasing points changes the value proposition of BOTH. If output and base stats are out of sync enough (imagine something like a 3 wound terminator with a regular bolter and no melee weapon with only 1 attack) it becomes impossible to balance with points because they're usually useless until you hit the breakpoint where you're only paying for their base stats at which point they get spammed.

The example I always use for this is a unit from AoS called blood stalkers. They were 2 wounds each with a 5+ save and 8" move (which is a pretty reasonable statline for AoS) and had a single 24" range shot, 3+, 3+, -1, 1 damage and no meaningful melee ability. This meant that on average, one blood stalker would do about .3 of a wound per turn including saves (which works out to it taking around 6 turns for one to do enough damage to kill ITSELF). They were originally priced at 160 for 5 and were useless. Then they dropped to 140 for 5 and were useless. Then they dropped to 120 for 5 and were useless. At 100 they probably still wouldn't have seen any play.

GW could have kept dropping their points until around the 80 points mark, at which point taking 50-100 of the things would have been pretty much mandatory just due to how efficient they were. It would have warped the entire Daughters of Khaine list building paradigm around just flooding the board with snake bodies. Instead they doubled to number of shots the snakes have (and made some QoL changes to them that aren't really relevant here) and now they're a perfectly decent option at 140pts.

I think the problem is you have a divide between "10/10, would bring to tournament again" and "Playable/viable".

I mean to go with another unit - everyone's favourite, the meta defining squigbuggy. Its main problem is obvious - it's got rubbish shooting for the points. The obvious fix in a new codex (since apparently altering guns via FAQ is bad until it isn't) is to give it twice, perhaps even 3 times as many shots.

But in the short run, you could move it down from 110 points to 80/90 points. Would it be *good* at that point level? I doubt it, because its still got about 50 points worth of shooting. But it would clearly be *better* than 110 points. In other words its less of a trap choice than now if you were to include one in a more casual game.

Now its fair point that if it *was* 50 points, what you'd have is an exceptionally tough model, that you might as well spam for cheap wounds and consequent board control. But there is an in between point which is better than now even if a proper rules re-write would be better.

 kingheff wrote:
Their podcast is a much better product and really is a good way to understand how the game balance, from a competitive point of view, is working out.
This is the watered down, corporate, version, still interesting but a bit vanilla.

This. They don't hold back in their criticism in their podcast (and on the 4DK Adjacent Show on The Honest Wargamer), this was clearly a way to present their data on GW proper website.
They're definitely worth listening to imho, fun and informative 40k content..

ERJAK wrote:

SecondTime wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

False. Anything made sufficiently cheap is playable.

There are units in both 40k and AoS that are too crappy to balance with points changes. You have to remember that points reflect both the value of a models physical presence on the battlefield and its output. Increasing or decreasing points changes the value proposition of BOTH. If output and base stats are out of sync enough (imagine something like a 3 wound terminator with a regular bolter and no melee weapon with only 1 attack) it becomes impossible to balance with points because they're usually useless until you hit the breakpoint where you're only paying for their base stats at which point they get spammed.

The example I always use for this is a unit from AoS called blood stalkers. They were 2 wounds each with a 5+ save and 8" move (which is a pretty reasonable statline for AoS) and had a single 24" range shot, 3+, 3+, -1, 1 damage and no meaningful melee ability. This meant that on average, one blood stalker would do about .3 of a wound per turn including saves (which works out to it taking around 6 turns for one to do enough damage to kill ITSELF). They were originally priced at 160 for 5 and were useless. Then they dropped to 140 for 5 and were useless. Then they dropped to 120 for 5 and were useless. At 100 they probably still wouldn't have seen any play.

GW could have kept dropping their points until around the 80 points mark, at which point taking 50-100 of the things would have been pretty much mandatory just due to how efficient they were. It would have warped the entire Daughters of Khaine list building paradigm around just flooding the board with snake bodies. Instead they doubled to number of shots the snakes have (and made some QoL changes to them that aren't really relevant here) and now they're a perfectly decent option at 140pts.

I still think there is a numerical point where you are paying more than for the base stats enough to make spamming not sufficiently attractive EXCEPT for the bottom of the barrel units where going from 3pts to 4 pts to 5 pts is too imprecise. If something has good stats and terrible output, its probably a middling unit and should be priced as such.

You have repeated that opinion multiple times now without providing any reason or anything to support it.

You are entitled to your opinion, but there is no reason for anyone so far to believe that it has any value.

 Jidmah wrote:
You have repeated that opinion multiple times now without providing any reason or anything to support it.

You are entitled to your opinion, but there is no reason for anyone so far to believe that it has any value.

You aren't a court, nor do you have any influence with GW. I'm not working that hard. Sorry.

You just confirmed that you are content with adding nothing of value to this discussion, so why are you bothering to post in the first place?

 Jidmah wrote:
You just confirmed that you are content with adding nothing of value to this discussion, so why are you bothering to post in the first place?

Because I think for mid to high price models, point values can be found. Others might be reading as well and not posting. I don't need to prove to you why I think this is the case. I don't care if you agree, so that's why I'm not adding the stuff that you want.

To spin things another way...

Tau have a range of units with deployment rules that should be good in this edition. Kroot, Stealth Suits and Ghostkeels should all allow for solid board control before the first turn. You also have a range of units with deepstrike, or are just generally fast and flying anyway.

The problem is that they are too bad/expensive for this to prove a significant boon. Also the response from almost everyone is just "you moved closer? Great. Now I can just make a fairly reliable charge to tie up/kill and get on the objectives".

But I'm not sure this is just a Tau thing. Guard are seemingly in a similar parlous state - although I think the Goonhammer stats suggest they do a bit better if going first. I suspect though this is due to builds that look like oldschool leafblower lists, and you just pray the dice are with you turn 1 and 2, then move move move some surviving mooks onto objectives later in the game.

Guard can throw 5 pt bodies in the way and not run out in a 5 turn game. Evidently not enough to win consistently, but do better than Tau. If 9th ed is king of the hill in the middle of the board, Tau are gonna need price cuts for sure.

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

SecondTime wrote:
Guard can throw 5 pt bodies in the way and not run out in a 5 turn game. Evidently not enough to win consistently, but do better than Tau. If 9th ed is king of the hill in the middle of the board, Tau are gonna need price cuts for sure.

Tau (and to an extent Guard) have the problem of being only able to act meaningfully in the shooting phase via gunline. It's a degenerate playstyle that ninth edition was deliberately designed to punish. If you make Tau cheap enough that they can overcome their limitation of having no way to flip or even really contest objectives in close quarters as well as compensate for the shorter board size then you've just made them broken. You've made them points-efficient enough that they can just evaporate enough of the army in a single shooting phase to compensate for their poor ability to score.

Tau, more than any army in the game save perhaps both knight armies (who are probably conceptually unsalvageable) need a full rework. They need to have more to their identity than the guys who stand really far away and roll dice at you until you die.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah it's blatant shilling. This dude sold out harder than the Indomitus Box pre-orders did.

Ice_can wrote:

 Oaka wrote:
I agree with that line of thinking as we are currently giving our Tau player an extra 20% points in 9th edition games and the games are much better for it.

So basically just undo the "Balance improvements" of CA 2020 and go back to CA 2019 points for Tau.

Got to love GW'S attempts at Balance.

Won't help. Tau's main problem is that the army doesn't work with 9th's missions which require aggressively coming forward to claim midfield objectives and the Tau army can't survive standing around in midfield.

"You've made them points-efficient enough that they can just evaporate enough of the army in a single shooting phase to compensate for their poor ability to score."

Not necessarily. The devil is in the details, as usual.

SecondTime wrote:
"You've made them points-efficient enough that they can just evaporate enough of the army in a single shooting phase to compensate for their poor ability to score."

Not necessarily. The devil is in the details, as usual.

Martel, please provide said details. You can't just keep stamping your feet and asserting that something is true without putting forth even a shred of effort to prove it.

the_scotsman wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

people keep saying that but if it was true why do we see other marine armies at all?

the_scotsman wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

Salamanders 51 lists
Blacktemplars 8 lists
Whitescars 48 lists
Ultramarines 50 lists
Imperial Fists 21 lists
Spacewolfs 43 lists
Ironhands 32 lists
Dark Angles 34 lists
Raven guard 16 lists
Blood Angles 51 lists
Crimsonfists 1 list

Funny that at the end of 8th raven guard where showing up way more than they do in the 9th edition showings, same with Imperial Fists and obviously well what happend to all the ironhands armies?

Ice_can wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

Salamanders 51 lists
Blacktemplars 8 lists
Whitescars 48 lists
Ultramarines 50 lists
Imperial Fists 21 lists
Spacewolfs 43 lists
Ironhands 32 lists
Dark Angles 34 lists
Raven guard 16 lists
Blood Angles 51 lists
Crimsonfists 1 list

Funny that at the end of 8th raven guard where showing up way more than they do in the 9th edition showings, same with Imperial Fists and obviously well what happend to all the ironhands armies?

except that if his assertation was right wouldn't we ONLY see one or two subfactions. there are by that count, 355 marine armies in play. yet the army most played makes up only about ~1/7th of that (thereare 11 total armies) by and large, aside from a few outliers, it would seem the spread is, reasonably even, MUCH MUCH more even I suspect then you'd find if you broke down any other army by subfaction.

BrianDavion wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

Salamanders 51 lists
Blacktemplars 8 lists
Whitescars 48 lists
Ultramarines 50 lists
Imperial Fists 21 lists
Spacewolfs 43 lists
Ironhands 32 lists
Dark Angles 34 lists
Raven guard 16 lists
Blood Angles 51 lists
Crimsonfists 1 list

Funny that at the end of 8th raven guard where showing up way more than they do in the 9th edition showings, same with Imperial Fists and obviously well what happend to all the ironhands armies?

except that if his assertation was right wouldn't we ONLY see one or two subfactions. there are by that count, 355 marine armies in play. yet the army most played makes up only about ~1/7th of that (thereare 11 total armies) by and large, aside from a few outliers, it would seem the spread is, reasonably even, MUCH MUCH more even I suspect then you'd find if you broke down any other army by subfaction.

You always get a certain amount of people going for best in faction or they may not have another army or whatever other reason like the fluffbunny, yes you even get tournament going fluff bunnies.
Who will play that faction be it unplayable trash and going 2-3 is an achievement, that doesn't mean balance that's just the diehards keeping numbers in certain factions ticking over.

How do you see 51 salamanders lists and 16 ravenguard lists and say that looks evenly distributed?

Salamanders 51
Whitescars 48
Ultramarines 50
Top 3 supliments have 149 lists

Imperial fists 21
Ironhands 32
Raven Guard 16
Bottom 3 performing supliments have 69 lists

That clearly shows marine players chasing subfactions its over a 2:1 ratio.