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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The new lord is probably the weakest lord out of the ones available, and despite its rather decent rules the fortification is just as unplayable as all others due to the 3" rule.

The DG release is pretty clear evidence that GW doesn't know their game well enough to make new stuff OP.

There also isn't really a point in messing with the rules to sell models when you are having troubles keeping your product stocked.

It's also evidence they can't even write rules reflect fluff. Remember when we were excited to see what the LoV would do, and it turned out he had nothing to do with Daemon Engines (gotta love the CORE rule!) and benefited basically only a select few weapons for squads? That was pretty hilarious not gonna lie.

Haha, for once I actually agree with you. Yes, the LoV is a total dud and could have been so much more.

Hah, well, I was concerned the LoV was going to be OTP so color me relieved that the extent of his ability is a CP discount.

I'm not sure Death Guard as a faction are overpowered. They seem fun, strong and have a good matchup against Space Marines.

All (but Necrons) the rest of the 9th ed. Codexes are Space Marines. If they have a good game vs SM and the rest of the field is 8th edition Codexes, seems fair that they are top dogs right now.
Not sure how they play vs Necrosn, but on paper, Gauss seems good vs Plague Marines.

But of course, GW wants to sell miniatures, and poor rules makes people not guy plastic.

The issue always has been that they write things seemingly random. What a lot of us suspect is they divide books among their team and everybody goes off and does their own thing with little to no communication between each other. That's why you see such a disparity between books, because the person writing book A is working in isolation while the person writing book B is doing the same and both of them are trying to come up with rules that fit but approach the game differently. of course they never specifically say how they write rules but given their track record this seems like the most likely process they follow.

When you have five different people working on five different books almost at the same time, and each of those people play the game differently, you're going to get five different armies of varying power based on what the person writing it thinks works well in the game. there's also the fact that they are restricted to how the model is designed and from what we've gathered from their interviews don't have any or very little say in that to begin with. So if the model design team creates a Plague marine with two axes and a third arm holding a grenade then The guy writing the rules has to make the model have two axes and some sort of grenade and fit that in.

The problem with that, of course, is that there's no consistency which is why you have one book come out that seems ridiculously overpowered, then the next book is middle of the road, the book after that is overpowered again, and the one following that is weak. Different people working on them in isolation seemingly without communicating with the rest of the team about how things should work or what the interactions could be.

I don't think there's any ulterior motive because it's too random. It's just a really stupid way of writing rules to keep things churning out monthly. The only thing that does seem to be common is at some point they will shift the games design paradigm but because of how they operate never go back and bring codexes written before that paradigm shift up to the new style they will just let them rot while new books are written with the new design philosophy in mind.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Actually laying out releases to look at what is strong, weak, in between, and how they change reveals a strong pattern of complete chaos with some effort made to reign in outlying elements.
...
the idea that new kits are intentionally made OP to sell better does not have actual basis in the evidence.

Speaking from 20+years experience with GW games I have to say this is spot on. They have no clue.

Cyel wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Actually laying out releases to look at what is strong, weak, in between, and how they change reveals a strong pattern of complete chaos with some effort made to reign in outlying elements.
...
the idea that new kits are intentionally made OP to sell better does not have actual basis in the evidence.

Speaking from 20+years experience with GW games I have to say this is spot on. They have no clue.

I would not even say "no clue" but it's clear and they have strongly indicated in interviews that:

A) They have a relatively small design team. I would be surprised if it was more than 5 people. Definitely nowhere near the size it should be for a massive tabletop game.

B) Each person works on a book on their own, with maybe collaboration meaning "Hey fancy a game at lunch?" if that. There's seemingly very little collaboration and communication about how rules work, even among upcoming codexes which is why we often see Army A have a rule and then Army B have a similar but different (more/less OP) rule; it seems like the designers didn't really work together to have consistent rules.

C) Models are designed first, presumably with little or no discussion with the rules team beforehand, and the rules team is handed a mockup or something of the final model and told to write rules for it to make it fit. This is all but confirmed for AOS in a White Dwarf interview with Jervis Johnson so likely applies to 40k as well.

D) When writing rules for a model they keep in mind how the model looks and try to incorporate that into the design. Which leads to the limited choices we usually see. This was also all but confirmed for AOS so probably holds true for 40k.

E) Because it's probably one person writing a book, they can't/won't be able to know all the potential interactions with other rules, so we often see broken combos that slip through the cracks because the person writing it didn't consider them.

F) When writing rules they focus on "does this fit the fluff/model" first and "is this balanced" second, if at all. I have to assume they give SOME consideration to balance but it's clearly a very minuscule amount if anything, again due to "E" above where it's entirely dependent on the skill/knowledge of the person writing the book to check against various combinations. Not that easy when you are on a tight deadline due to a monthly release schedule.

Wayniac there are some interesting observations in there. However I don't know how much that can be applied to the 9th ed books so far - there's a very clear design policy across the books in 9th.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The new lord is probably the weakest lord out of the ones available, and despite its rather decent rules the fortification is just as unplayable as all others due to the 3" rule.

The DG release is pretty clear evidence that GW doesn't know their game well enough to make new stuff OP.

There also isn't really a point in messing with the rules to sell models when you are having troubles keeping your product stocked.

It's also evidence they can't even write rules reflect fluff. Remember when we were excited to see what the LoV would do, and it turned out he had nothing to do with Daemon Engines (gotta love the CORE rule!) and benefited basically only a select few weapons for squads? That was pretty hilarious not gonna lie.

Haha, for once I actually agree with you. Yes, the LoV is a total dud and could have been so much more.

Just read all the fluff snippets for him dotted throughout the DG book. It's clear he had an entirely different set of rules at one point.

I don't know, 8th codexes seemed very well balanced between each other, except SM 2.0 but that was definitely intentional.

9th edition codexes seems pretty balanced between each other as well.

Umbros wrote:
Wayniac there are some interesting observations in there. However I don't know how much that can be applied to the 9th ed books so far - there's a very clear design policy across the books in 9th.

Is there though? I mean, inexplicably the Death Guard plague companies don't get special rules like say Necron dynasties, just WLT/Relic/Stratagem. So I suspect things are largely the same but may have (hopefully) improved somewhat. We will see as new books come out if they keep to a design policy or change direction midway through like history indicates happens.

Wayniac wrote:

Umbros wrote:
Wayniac there are some interesting observations in there. However I don't know how much that can be applied to the 9th ed books so far - there's a very clear design policy across the books in 9th.

Is there though? I mean, inexplicably the Death Guard plague companies don't get special rules like say Necron dynasties, just WLT/Relic/Stratagem. So I suspect things are largely the same but may have (hopefully) improved somewhat. We will see as new books come out if they keep to a design policy or change direction midway through like history indicates happens.

In general GW has more direction in the books. I don't think everything has to be apples to apples, but there is consistency in the stratagems and more clarity in the rules ( some old strats were really bad ). There also seems to be a drive for really detailed fluffiness, which has the potential side-effect of going sideways.

To add on to Wayniacs list, let's not forget:

G) designers get assigned to army books depending on who's enthusiastic or has ideas for the army. Which tends to lead to enthusiasm for power options.

It also leads to
H) sometimes no one has any enthusiasm or ideas, and the book just gets assigned. And we get stuff the Ward Orc and goblins army book, with no enthusiasm or real understanding of an army, just a chore the designer wants to finish and move on from.

And for the O &G example, Wardh actually said as much in WD article afterwards,

Voss wrote:
To add on to Wayniacs list, let's not forget:

G) designers get assigned to army books depending on who's enthusiastic or has ideas for the army. Which tends to lead to enthusiasm for power options.

It also leads to
H) sometimes no one has any enthusiasm or ideas, and the book just gets assigned. And we get stuff the Ward Orc and goblins army book, with no enthusiasm or real understanding of an army, just a chore the designer wants to finish and move on from.

Or the 3.5 CSM codex, which- whilst being a work of art (fight me IRL) has power levels all over the place. Iron Warriors? Oh look, the author's own army, and were one of the more broken lists in that book. Thousand Sons? Well, an army with two wounds has a lot going for it, amirite?

Voss wrote:
To add on to Wayniacs list, let's not forget:

G) designers get assigned to army books depending on who's enthusiastic or has ideas for the army. Which tends to lead to enthusiasm for power options.

It also leads to
H) sometimes no one has any enthusiasm or ideas, and the book just gets assigned. And we get stuff the Ward Orc and goblins army book, with no enthusiasm or real understanding of an army, just a chore the designer wants to finish and move on from.

And for the O &G example, Wardh actually said as much in WD article afterwards,

We have an even more recent example with the 8th Ed Tau Codex, where the Lead Designer admitted he didn't even play the army.

Anyone that is naive enough to believe that sales does not affect game design needs to really sit down and think about how the game works.

Look at why rick priestly left GW.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Anyone that is naive enough to believe that sales does not affect game design needs to really sit down and think about how the game works.

Look at why rick priestly left GW.

In a hobby where people buy miniatures that never see a table beyond that of the Golden Demon judging table and where there are just as many duds as there are heroes? No. Exciting rules sell more, but there's no invisible hand micromanaging all the rules. Sometimes the designers do a bang up job. Sometimes not.

Priestley left a decade ago under the old management.

BIFFORD: When did you leave Games Workshop, and why?

PRIESTLEY: Well I was made redundant so didn't have much choice in the matter! By that time I think the GW management team had changed a great deal and the business was run by people very disconnected from the hobby. The company had settled down into a very limited product range and a single-minded business model - so there was increasingly little for me to do. There were some aspects of the business that I felt were not being handled well and at that time 'other voices' were in the ascendant. I would point out that immediately after I left the whole 'finecast' project emerged - which is just the sort of thing I would normally have been involved with - but in fact I wasn't involved at all... which tells you something! GW endured seven years of poor results after I had left. They went through the whole saga of dumping WD as a monthly magazine, abandoning all social media, a very messy and controversial AoS/Warhammer relaunch, running stores as one-man affairs, withdrawing their fiction range from the book trade, and a lot of other rather misguided decisions (IMO) which resulted in poor company results, declining sales, and very poor shareholder returns. I have to say they do seem to have seen sense in the last year or so and maybe we can now look forward to 'seven plentiful years'

I'm fine with, even happy, that models get designed THEN rules written for them. I'd suspect that is how we end up with so much theme and 'pop' to the GW product line overall, and I wouldn't want an extremely artistic process to be interrupted by interfacing with rules design during the sculpting. I would want some back-and-forth in regards to roles an army needs filled and I think we have enough evidence to suggest that there is. But by being flexible with fluff and then with rules a given sculpt can be bent to fill all sorts of different niches. Take the LoV for example; obviously he is not a melee badass but beyond that? He could be a hybrid ranged/melee combat character, a debuffer, a buffer, even a psyker, or any combination of the above. If the fluff and rules aren't written yet there is a broad canvas of what a given sculpt could be.

This is also to say that being handed finished miniature designs and told to write rules for them is no excuse at all for poor quality of those rules. That process is not something that would negatively impact rules design.

This is also to say that being handed finished miniature designs and told to write rules for them is no excuse at all for poor quality of those rules. That process is not something that would negatively impact rules design.

It definitely does, and doesn't seem avoidable to me. Rules design has enough constraints already- setting, power level of the edition, specific book, etc. Chaining them even further that they _must_ go with whatever specific bits and bobs are on the model is an unnecessary limitation that produces bizarre results.

It isn't the only problem with GW rules writing, but it definitely contributes. Roles and capabilities should be decided first, not thrown in on a whim after seeing what a model turns up with.

Trying to push a faction is silly because you can't sell a pet tarantula to someone who just doesn't like spiders. The putrid theme of the Deathguard is not something every player wants to spend their hobby time looking at...

That said, I'm happy for those players who have enjoyed the Deathguard focus of 8th edition so far. Its a great buzz when its your faction asked to stand on the hotspot.

Voss wrote:

This is also to say that being handed finished miniature designs and told to write rules for them is no excuse at all for poor quality of those rules. That process is not something that would negatively impact rules design.

It definitely does, and doesn't seem avoidable to me. Rules design has enough constraints already- setting, power level of the edition, specific book, etc. Chaining them even further that they _must_ go with whatever specific bits and bobs are on the model is an unnecessary limitation that produces bizarre results.

It isn't the only problem with GW rules writing, but it definitely contributes. Roles and capabilities should be decided first, not thrown in on a whim after seeing what a model turns up with.

Ehhh... As someone who has written rules for units based off existing models it does not seem all that restrictive to me. If the fluff or battlefield role has already been decided then yes, definitely. But restriction needs to get (relatively) quite narrow before it limits the quality of rules. And given that we see rules quality being consistent across both pre-existing units getting re-written and new units I would say such restrictions are unlikely to be the factor making the difference.

Voss wrote:
To add on to Wayniacs list, let's not forget:

G) designers get assigned to army books depending on who's enthusiastic or has ideas for the army. Which tends to lead to enthusiasm for power options.

It also leads to
H) sometimes no one has any enthusiasm or ideas, and the book just gets assigned. And we get stuff the Ward Orc and goblins army book, with no enthusiasm or real understanding of an army, just a chore the designer wants to finish and move on from.

And for the O &G example, Wardh actually said as much in WD article afterwards,

Or pretty much most Phil Kelly dex's. Goodness knows he was a strong G option.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Voss wrote:
To add on to Wayniacs list, let's not forget:

G) designers get assigned to army books depending on who's enthusiastic or has ideas for the army. Which tends to lead to enthusiasm for power options.

It also leads to
H) sometimes no one has any enthusiasm or ideas, and the book just gets assigned. And we get stuff the Ward Orc and goblins army book, with no enthusiasm or real understanding of an army, just a chore the designer wants to finish and move on from.

And for the O &G example, Wardh actually said as much in WD article afterwards,

Or pretty much most Phil Kelly dex's. Goodness knows he was a strong G option.

Phil Kelly is more offensive to balance than Matt Ward, and you're gonna have a lot of trouble convincing me otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The new lord is probably the weakest lord out of the ones available, and despite its rather decent rules the fortification is just as unplayable as all others due to the 3" rule.

The DG release is pretty clear evidence that GW doesn't know their game well enough to make new stuff OP.

There also isn't really a point in messing with the rules to sell models when you are having troubles keeping your product stocked.

It's also evidence they can't even write rules reflect fluff. Remember when we were excited to see what the LoV would do, and it turned out he had nothing to do with Daemon Engines (gotta love the CORE rule!) and benefited basically only a select few weapons for squads? That was pretty hilarious not gonna lie.

Haha, for once I actually agree with you. Yes, the LoV is a total dud and could have been so much more.

At minimum he could've affected ALL Plague Weapons instead of just range ones for CORE units, it's so fething stupid.

GW has always taken the position that they are in the business of selling miniatures, not rules. It therefore stands to reason that they write rules to sell models. We can see evidence of this in the cyclical nature of codex releases and associated power creep with reset switches in editions and (more recently) with chapter approved and FAQ releases.

So, yes.

OF COURSE! That's why Primaris were almost universally TERRIBLE upon release right? Probably same explanation for why Reavers have been virtually useless for most of their life-span. That's also why the new DG character - one of two new models released with the book garbage level right? Also why, upon release, the Stormhawk sucked, and why Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, Maulerfiends, and Warpsmiths were darn near unusable upon release right? Because, if what you're saying is true ... then, that can't possibly have happened. But ... it did ...

Fact is, "GW has always taken the position that they are in the business of selling miniatures, not rules." has NOT "always been the case". You can track down ONE TIME this was said, and it was a very unique artifact of the late Kirby era (basically middle-7th up until his replacement by Rountree roughly 6-8 months later). I will grant that in 7th, this was pretty clearly true given the way that edition worked, but - yeah - you're gonna hav e a pretty hard time convincing me of it now. For every single thing you can say was "OP" upon release (which is actually fairly rare), I can show you one that was utterly terrible, and a bunch more examples that were somehere in between.

So ... I really don't get where this attitude comes from outside of "I'm jealous my army hasn't got the same treatment". What's really funny in relation to DG - this codex isn't really making most experienced DG players buy very many new models. Many (myself included) are going to have fewer Pox Walkers and more marines, but, the things that were good before are typically still good, and I'm not seeing too many DG players needing to buy a whole lot of new units because of this book ...

Or pretty much most Phil Kelly dex's. Goodness knows he was a strong G option.

This becomes especially obvious when you compare any of his Eldar work agains his work on the 6th ed CSM book. Man that CSM book was TERRIBLE. One of the worst we CSM players have seen. He's actually responsible for some of the units I mention above. He's good at having, maybe three ideas, and then providing a million ways to accomplish ... those three ideas. So you end up with books that people will claim have lots of "nuance", but, in the books where he biffs it - what you really end up with is a book where 2/3 of the units could be removed ... and it would still be just as capable as it was before, but way better because all the "trap" options are now gone ...

I strongly suspect he wrote the new 'Cron dex. Command Protocols and several other things like Skorpehks vs Ophyidans have his signature all over them imo.

Well, 5 man finished recently - four DG, two with Morty. One placed at #6. 110 points behind #1.

13/30 was marines. Top 5 was SW, RG, SW, Sisters, Sisters.

#1 - lots of TFC & Gravcannon Longfangs
#2 - 15 Centurions, 5 Aggressors, VV
#3 - 25 Infiltrators, Levi, 3 Redemptors, Some TFC and BGV

So either DG

a) still need to find their legs
or b) aren't as easy to pilot as one might assume

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Well, 5 man finished recently - four DG, two with Morty. One placed at #6. 110 points behind #1.

13/30 was marines. Top 5 was SW, RG, SW, Sisters, Sisters.

#1 - lots of TFC & Gravcannon Longfangs
#2 - 15 Centurions, 5 Aggressors, VV
#3 - 25 Infiltrators, Levi, 3 Redemptors, Some TFC and BGV

So either DG

a) still need to find their legs
or b) aren't as easy to pilot as one might assume

I'm assuming this was an Aussie Tourny? If so, I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

Yes, but definitely more marines than previous Aussie games it seems. There shouldn't really be anything stopping DG from performing well ( if they're OP ) regardless of the meta though.

Then again...a Kustom Stompa went 3-2...

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, but definitely more marines than previous Aussie games it seems. There shouldn't really be anything stopping DG from performing well ( if they're OP ) regardless of the meta though.

For the record, I don't feel DG are OP.

That being said I don't think one Aussie tournament, especially the first one after release, would be substantial enough evidence to say one way or the other. Honestly, for the first out the gate tournament with the new book, 6th place is pretty good.

I'm not certain they're overpowered. GW mostly gave them a bunch of tools because "Hey this would be fun and fluffy!" then it just so happens they do or don't combine to make that magic sauce. DG players still seem to be somewhat unhappy regarding the change to their signature rule. And beyond a few durability buffs and mortarian by himself their damage output seems on the low end of things. But they have a few rules to make those boltguns and CCW hurt a little more.

All and all they feel okay, nothing more, nothing less. Dark angels are more likely to cause a splash, and they don't have any new models to my knowledge. (or at least, nothing that was released in 8th or later.)

 Sasori wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, but definitely more marines than previous Aussie games it seems. There shouldn't really be anything stopping DG from performing well ( if they're OP ) regardless of the meta though.

For the record, I don't feel DG are OP.

That being said I don't think one Aussie tournament, especially the first one after release, would be substantial enough evidence to say one way or the other. Honestly, for the first out the gate tournament with the new book, 6th place is pretty good.

I'm not trying to make any finite assertions. It could just be that people haven't had time with them - a better pilot will get better results. #6 is good, but the others were 10, 20 ( the other Morty ), and 27.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yes, but definitely more marines than previous Aussie games it seems. There shouldn't really be anything stopping DG from performing well ( if they're OP ) regardless of the meta though.

Then again...a Kustom Stompa went 3-2...

That's also a lot of TFCs considering they've been "nerfed". And I agree with Sasori, Death Guard aren't OP. Good, yes, OP, no.

Any chance of a link with the full lists? Was that #6 finishing DG army with or without Mortarion?