Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Slipspace wrote:

No you don't. You just have to show that points are used as a balancing factor, not that it's their primary purpose. We can pretty easily see they are used for this purpose by referring to the many points changes GW made for balance reasons in CA during 8th edition.

Balance reasons? No they didn't. They did to keep their changing imbalance stratagem. Points are rather GW's method for creating imbalance. GW's goal is not balance but changing imbalance. They want players to stop using old models and buy new ones constantly for £££££££. Getting stuff to balance is nightmare scenario for GW.

 Blackie wrote:
Lists with 12+ Mortifiers and/or 3x5 Melta Retributors (you need 6 box to get 12 MM), 15+ Meganobz, 12 ork buggies, 18 Skyweavers are not common at all. Not even the Goff greentide is actually that common. All those lists are based on spamming an overperforming unit or two, which is something the majority of the player base avoids because it it gets nerfed basically the entire list become unplayable.

Daemonettes are Slaanesh. I think I've played two or three times against a Slaanesh based army in 20+ years of 40k.

During 8th for some people SM couldn't live without the loyal32 but out of 20+ SM players I regularly face not a single one actually bought the AM dudes and the AM codex to be more competitive. The only guy who fielded the loyal32 + SM already had an AM army. And I've also never seen a Castellan in real life.

Most competitive ork list and the end of 8th was based around 100-150 Gretchins, 10 Flash Gitz and 12+ Smasha Gunz. Of course it has never been real outside a few big events. What about the 5 Stormravens?

I never played Necrons in my area until I got into them - that doesn't mean much for accessibility though.

There's nothing to the #1 Harlie/DE list, #5 is more than half old marines, #6 is silent king and indomitus boxes, #7 is 3 greater daemons and simple daemon units (no expensive beast of nurgle spam), #8 is harlies and shining spears, #9 is 4 greater daemons and basic daemons, #10 is skorpekhs, scarabs, and wraiths.

Even if you only had two greater daemons, or half as many wraiths, or w/e you can still easy come close to these lists without a lot of effort.

 Blackie wrote:
Lists with 12+ Mortifiers and/or 3x5 Melta Retributors (you need 6 box to get 12 MM), 15+ Meganobz, 12 ork buggies, 18 Skyweavers are not common at all. Not even the Goff greentide is actually that common. All those lists are based on spamming an overperforming unit or two, which is something the majority of the player base avoids because it it gets nerfed basically the entire list become unplayable.

Daemonettes are Slaanesh. I think I've played two or three times against a Slaanesh based army in 20+ years of 40k.

During 8th for some people SM couldn't live without the loyal32 but out of 20+ SM players I regularly face not a single one actually bought the AM dudes and the AM codex to be more competitive. The only guy who fielded the loyal32 + SM already had an AM army. And I've also never seen a Castellan in real life.

Most competitive ork list and the end of 8th was based around 100-150 Gretchins, 10 Flash Gitz and 12+ Smasha Gunz. Of course it has never been real outside a few big events. What about the 5 Stormravens?

Go look at tournament lists from actual 9th edition tournaments rather than lists from a dead edition if you want to make this argument.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Go look at tournament lists from actual 9th edition tournaments rather than lists from a dead edition if you want to make this argument.

My argument was about 40k in general, not specifically about 9th edition of 40k. Some of the examples I made were actually referred to 9th edition tournament lists.

My point is that tournament lists aren't common in real metas. I know that someone always play cut-throat 40k, but it's not the norm.

Therefore data aren't information, they need some analysis (this is always true, not only for 40k).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I never played Necrons in my area until I got into them - that doesn't mean much for accessibility though.

If a list, including a necron one, is based around spamming a few units it's not really accessible unless the whole lot comes very cheap (like multiple Indomitus halves). Only people with extremely large armies could play them or eventually meta chasers. It's not likely to face one or more of those lists regularly. Most of the hobbists avoid building their armies around skew lists as they know that a single turn of FAQ could invalidate their entire army.

Hmmm. Forgeworld and Soup represent reasonable bars for a substantial proportion of the playerbase.

I'm not convinced about anything else. I tend to think most new collectors don't like spamming the same thing - but if it remains the best in faction unit, they tend towards acquiring it over time. (I realise there are also people who bought an army of ebay back in 2014 and will never ever add to it, but still.)

I can't say for 9th cos Covid, but for 8th my local store had a relatively soft meta compared with 7th (or at least before Marines 2.0 - and even then we didn't have chaplain dreads and flamer centurions), because "the hotness" tended to keep changing, so people couldn't just tailor their purchases. The winter of 2018 was however probably the worst, because Knights started to appear everywhere, and it was a single kit you could pick up in the store and theoretically play with the next day.

I watched some of the Adelaide open streams over the weekend.
Some more interesting results from down under. The commentators did mention in passing that a couple of the top marine players couldn't make it. I'm assuming, the new deathguard codex wasn't allowed too.
But the results do seem to show a pretty good balance at the sharp end of the competitive scene, at least in Australia.
In the top 10 were chaos soup lists favouring spikey marines that finished 1&2, grey knights in third, black templars, deathskull orks, Harlequins, sisters, aeldari soup, custodes and drukhari.
Obviously the pandemic is going to have some effect on attendance but it does show a great spread of factions competing for honours.

I see 5 Tau players attended the event. Do we know if they used the "Montka enables to fallback and shoot" interpretation, or if they went with the "nope, montka doesn't do that" interpretation ?

 Blackie wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Go look at tournament lists from actual 9th edition tournaments rather than lists from a dead edition if you want to make this argument.

My argument was about 40k in general, not specifically about 9th edition of 40k. Some of the examples I made were actually referred to 9th edition tournament lists.

My point is that tournament lists aren't common in real metas. I know that someone always play cut-throat 40k, but it's not the norm.

Therefore data aren't information, they need some analysis (this is always true, not only for 40k).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I never played Necrons in my area until I got into them - that doesn't mean much for accessibility though.

If a list, including a necron one, is based around spamming a few units it's not really accessible unless the whole lot comes very cheap (like multiple Indomitus halves). Only people with extremely large armies could play them or eventually meta chasers. It's not likely to face one or more of those lists regularly. Most of the hobbists avoid building their armies around skew lists as they know that a single turn of FAQ could invalidate their entire army.

I think all metas are "real" if there are players in them. The most important meta, though, is the meta that you belong to. You can have two disconnected metas in the same city, but at the same time you can have metas influencing each other around the world through social media.

I am in two "metas" as I work in one city and live in another while playing 40K in both. One meta is broadly more competitive than the other, but I absolutely see "meta-chasers" in both. Local metas can certainly vary from the "40K GT tourney Meta," but things can certainly port over.

All that to say it is comforting to dismiss tournament data that does not agree with our point of view. It might even be valid to dismiss such data, but its equally likely that its not a good practice.

 addnid wrote:
I see 5 Tau players attended the event. Do we know if they used the "Montka enables to fallback and shoot" interpretation, or if they went with the "nope, montka doesn't do that" interpretation ?

I'm not sure, tau weren't on stream when I watched so it didn't come up.

 Blackie wrote:

If a list, including a necron one, is based around spamming a few units it's not really accessible unless the whole lot comes very cheap (like multiple Indomitus halves). Only people with extremely large armies could play them or eventually meta chasers. It's not likely to face one or more of those lists regularly.

?? Other than FW, almost everything is readily available just by walking into your local shop (GW or independent). It's either on the shelf, or they can order it. Or you can order virtually anything on-line through GW, Amazon, Ebay, etc
The major hiccups here is;
A) GW is out of stock atm - can't ship what's not in the warehouse....
B) FW prices.
C) The big one, GW has only released the model in 1 set & hasn't released the solo kit yet (like Eradicators). You want them atm, off to Ebay or etc with you.

But something like me making 3 squadrons of Necron Tomb Blades? Not a problem. Doesn't require an existing extremely large army. Just the desire to field the units, $, and - in the case of my 3rd squad - a bit of patience as I had to wait for a re-stock.

 Blackie wrote:
Most of the hobbists avoid building their armies around skew lists as they know that a single turn of FAQ could invalidate their entire army.

Nah, that's how we develop those extremely large armies. You buy something, GW nukes it. So you buy the next thing. And it gets wrecked. So you buy a 3rd thing.... A few cycles of this & you've ended up with a large collection & can toggle between units depending upon what's currently good/bad.

How does it work when you don't like the rest of the stuff your army has. For example I like how termintor models look, I don't like power armoured ones. If GW decides to ,as you said it, nuke termintor class models, even if I had money, I would not go out and buy 6-9 box of strikes just because they are better.

ccs wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

If a list, including a necron one, is based around spamming a few units it's not really accessible unless the whole lot comes very cheap (like multiple Indomitus halves). Only people with extremely large armies could play them or eventually meta chasers. It's not likely to face one or more of those lists regularly.

?? Other than FW, almost everything is readily available just by walking into your local shop (GW or independent). It's either on the shelf, or they can order it. Or you can order virtually anything on-line through GW, Amazon, Ebay, etc
The major hiccups here is;
A) GW is out of stock atm - can't ship what's not in the warehouse....
B) FW prices.
C) The big one, GW has only released the model in 1 set & hasn't released the solo kit yet (like Eradicators). You want them atm, off to Ebay or etc with you.

But something like me making 3 squadrons of Necron Tomb Blades? Not a problem. Doesn't require an existing extremely large army. Just the desire to field the units, $, and - in the case of my 3rd squad - a bit of patience as I had to wait for a re-stock.

 Blackie wrote:
Most of the hobbists avoid building their armies around skew lists as they know that a single turn of FAQ could invalidate their entire army.

Nah, that's how we develop those extremely large armies. You buy something, GW nukes it. So you buy the next thing. And it gets wrecked. So you buy a 3rd thing.... A few cycles of this & you've ended up with a large collection & can toggle between units depending upon what's currently good/bad.

Yeah everything is available at the store but not all hobbists are willing to collect armies of 7000 points or more. Now I see lists that require to buy 5 boxes of Retributors and 6 boxes of Mortifiers. Combined to all the other necessary stuff to make a reasonably working Adepta Sororitas collection that's a huge investment. Same with 5 boxes of Meganobz or 12 ork buggies. Most of the players will never reach that numbers for a single unit, unless maybe they're Harlequins and don't have much choice.

Some prefer to start different projects, maybe even different games. Not many people actually have "extremely large armies".

I remember during 7th edition when I had 10-12k of orks I couldn't still field all the possible most competitive ork builds, as I didn't have 5 Battlewagons ("just 3") or 30+ bikes ("just" 20ish). In 8th I couldn't field 90-120 gretchins despite my collection was still huge. I knew they weren't going to last so I've played the entire 8th with 30 gretchins (all I have). Buying and painting 60-90 more just to be tournament level competitive? Lol.

Maybe your meta is different than mine, here the majority doesn't chase the meta burning hundreds every 6 months. They build fairly TAC armies and slowly expand them. New SM are some kind of exception because even if Eradicators don't have a stand alone kit people could buy multiple Indomitus halves for cheap. That starter is a huge deal. And you don't need more than 6-9 Eradicators anyway (so 2 or 3 halves). In reality the needed Eradicators are much more accessible than 15 Retributors with 12 multi meltas even if the store doesn't sell them separately. With a couple of Indomitus halves you already get an army, even a good one, with those 11 boxes of Retributors+Mortifiers you can only expand an already exsiting army, you need other 10+ boxes to play.

That's why I don't often see tournament lists that spam a few units, and why SM are a problem. SM can be tournament level without spamming anything or relying on ancient kits or FW stuff, they just need basic stuff.

Karol wrote:
How does it work when you don't like the rest of the stuff your army has. For example I like how termintor models look, I don't like power armoured ones. If GW decides to ,as you said it, nuke termintor class models, even if I had money, I would not go out and buy 6-9 box of strikes just because they are better.

1st, that was kind of a joke. But for when it's not....

1) In other posts you've indicated that you like the look of some of the Primaris stuff (I forget wich ones). So here's the excuse to buy some of those. For awhile, assuming you don't buy all 2k pts/whole army at once, you soup them into a GK list. From the sounds of it you won't be harming yourself to much rules-wise or play-wise.... Over time with a few more purchases you end up with a Primaris army.
Now you've got options. You can play GK, you can play Primaris, or you can do various mixes of soup.

2) How do you feel about the vehicles & dreadnaughts in your codex?

Karol wrote:
How does it work when you don't like the rest of the stuff your army has. For example I like how termintor models look, I don't like power armoured ones. If GW decides to ,as you said it, nuke termintor class models, even if I had money, I would not go out and buy 6-9 box of strikes just because they are better.

I don't know, what would you say to an Eldar player who doesn't like the playstyle of an all-flyer army that can't achieve objectives, don't interact with terrain and don't do melee?

Playing flyers is about as fun as playing as the aliens in a game of Space Invaders. You fly around the board - doesn't really matter where, can't achieve objectives anyway and your facing doesn't matter and your guns have like range = board, plus you're so high up that you can't hide and nothing can hide from you. And you just, try to remove some models from your opponent's army to prevent them from scoring while your 10 or so models that can actually play the game try and score a couple points.

Ok, 1st, much like Karol, you missed that that was sort of a joke.
But OK;

 Blackie wrote:

Yeah everything is available at the store but not all hobbists are willing to collect armies of 7000 points or more. Now I see lists that require to buy 5 boxes of Retributors and 6 boxes of Mortifiers. Combined to all the other necessary stuff to make a reasonably working Adepta Sororitas collection that's a huge investment.

(sigh) Where to start with this....
YES, co$t to field the army you want is absolutely a factor for most people. It's exactly the reason why, long ago as an 18 year old collage student discovering WHFB, I didn't build Skaven. I couldn't afford it then. Instead I went with a force I both liked and was in budget. So yes, there well may be people who cant afford to build a SoB army. Or at least a 2k pt one.

But you CAN build smaller forces &/or other types of detachments.
*Yes, 12 mortifiers - 3 full squads- are quite a punch to your wallet. And there's not much that can be done to lessen that price tag (well, short of 3d printing/re-casters - but we'll assume your not going that route).
*3 squads of Retributors with full MM though? THOSE can be built on a budget. 3 boxes. + 6 MM bits sourced from ebay. You don't have to use SoB MMs. At the min. you just need melta barrels of any edition to replace the barrels of the heavy flamers you've already got. Considerably cheaper than full squad boxes.

 Blackie wrote:
Some prefer to start different projects, maybe even different games. Not many people actually have "extremely large armies".

These other projects are generally how most extremely large armies/collections I've ever seen occur. Most people I know playing these games (including myself) who have large collections build 1 force up to x pts. Then we move on to some other project. And another. And another after that.... We circle back to forces as new units/editions come out.
My own Necrons for example:
*I had 2k pts of original Necrons back in early 3rd edition.
*When the 1st codex & new models arrived I added some of the new stuff (monoliths, wraiths, dedicated heavy destroyers, 2 destroyer lords, the 2 C'tan of the time).
*Eventually FW released the Pylon. So I added a Pylon.
*Then 10 years(?) ago a new codex & a wave of new stuff - Barges, Arks, Triarch Stalkers, tomb blades, Doom/night scythes. So I added some of those things....
*Summer-Nov. of 2020 - Oh look, a new edition, new codex, & a whole lot of pretty new models. Between the Indom launch set & solo releases I've added a considerable amount of new things (+ several more things/kits from the previous release - + a 3rd squadron of 'Blades, + 1 box of wraiths) to my collection. I will admit that this years expansion has been pricey. But it's within the current hobby budget.
I now definitely have what you'd define as an extremely large army/collection of Necrons.
But it was built in chunks over 23 years, with ever improving finances, and for the current stuff over the course of 5 months.....

 Blackie wrote:
Maybe your meta is different than mine, here the majority doesn't chase the meta burning hundreds every 6 months. They build fairly TAC armies and slowly expand them.

That's mostly the approach most in my circles use. When they start an army they pick what they want to build, build that, and then expand as they please/need from there over time. Some times that's a TAC list, other times more skewish.
Now the people at the shop(s) that I don't consider "in my circles"? I couldn't tell you what their approach is and I don't care.

 Blackie wrote:
New SM are some kind of exception because even if Eradicators don't have a stand alone kit people could buy multiple Indomitus halves for cheap. That starter is a huge deal. And you don't need more than 6-9 Eradicators anyway (so 2 or 3 halves). In reality the needed Eradicators are much more accessible than 15 Retributors with 12 multi meltas even if the store doesn't sell them separately. With a couple of Indomitus halves you already get an army, even a good one, with those 11 boxes of Retributors+Mortifiers you can only expand an already exsiting army, you need other 10+ boxes to play.

Cheap Indom Primaris doesn't help anyone looking to play something else (like SoB) & who're not interested in playing SMs.
Eradicators are just as accessible as MM bits.
Do you realize that you can build an entire army focused on say a Spearhead detachment, invest the pts/$ in mostly 1 HQ, 6 heavy slots + bitz. After that play smaller pt games, add only minimal other stuff, & even spend pts/CP on units you don't own to place into strat reserve and never bring them into play? *I make no claim to how well this force might play, but you can keep a Mortifier/Retributor list within some sort of budget comparable to many other average costed forces.

 Blackie wrote:
That's why I don't often see tournament lists that spam a few units, and why SM are a problem. SM can be tournament level without spamming anything or relying on ancient kits or FW stuff, they just need basic stuff.

Cheap SMs are not a problem. Cheap effective tourney viable forces aren't either. They merely provide a slightly more affordable entry lv to our hobby. That's a good thing. Even if you're tied of killing SMs.

ccs wrote:

Do you realize that you can build an entire army focused on say a Spearhead detachment, invest the pts/$ in mostly 1 HQ, 6 heavy slots + bitz. After that play smaller pt games, add only minimal other stuff, & even spend pts/CP on units you don't own to place into strat reserve and never bring them into play? *I make no claim to how well this force might play, but you can keep a Mortifier/Retributor list within some sort of budget comparable to many other average costed forces.

You definitely can. But you should be aware that a single round of FAQ could cripple (or even invalidate) your entire army then. Best case scenario it will be completely destroyed with the new codex/edition, so 2-3 years at most. That's why I don't see people investing that much to spam a few specialists units, unless they already have a large army which is typically a luxury reserved for long time players. Finding cheap bitz on ebay or sites that sell bitz isn't that easy, a weapon like a MM which is the new hot won't be available for cheap and/or in large numbers.

Of course it's also possible to build smaller forces but then you'll miss the average game. Here everyone plays the standard 2000 points format. Sometimes there are some Crusade games but they don't involve skew armies, they're mostly for very casual dudes with basic armies.

But I understand your meta is basically ultra competitive like a permanent tournament, with people investing hundreds if not thousands every year to buy new stuff. Mine isn't anything like that, nor is any other meta I know from players I have contacts with that live in different cities.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:


Cheap SMs are not a problem. Cheap effective tourney viable forces aren't either. They merely provide a slightly more affordable entry lv to our hobby. That's a good thing. Even if you're tied of killing SMs.

They might be if you get bored of constantly playing against SM .

ccs 795520 11040155 wrote:
1st, that was kind of a joke. But for when it's not....

1) In other posts you've indicated that you like the look of some of the Primaris stuff (I forget wich ones). So here's the excuse to buy some of those. For awhile, assuming you don't buy all 2k pts/whole army at once, you soup them into a GK list. From the sounds of it you won't be harming yourself to much rules-wise or play-wise.... Over time with a few more purchases you end up with a Primaris army.
Now you've got options. You can play GK, you can play Primaris, or you can do various mixes of soup.

2) How do you feel about the vehicles & dreadnaughts in your codex?

1) Jokes, the things I seldom get, and which I learned to not make as they always get me in trouble. I don't think I like the idea of GK primaris. I like how the aggresor ones look and the heavy gravis models. But I wouldn't want them in GK. Primaris GK would mean GW would never fix non primaris stuff.

2) I do have a dreadnought and 2 rhinos, but in general I don't like vehicles. They are hard to transport without a car, and the kits cost a lot , specialy the new stuff.

I don't know, what would you say to an Eldar player who doesn't like the playstyle of an all-flyer army that can't achieve objectives, don't interact with terrain and don't do melee?

I don't think I am following your train of thoughts here. What do GK and how they are set up in the game have in common in how eldar are played. From what I understand GK were good for a few months at the end of one editions. Eldar are good and beyond in every editions they get a codex. There seems, at least to me, be a difference between someone being told wait for another 3-4 editions and maybe your army will be good, or phase out, and your army will be OP as soon as it gets a new book for this edition.