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 addnid wrote:
DDDD will make the 3D printing people rich, more than it will make GW rich, at the current GW stock re-supply rate.

I don't know for sure but I'd wager some paying 3D printer "digital models" looking like wyches, incubi, etc. are being sold A LOT atm

Yeah its pretty funny when people are like 'GW PURPOSEFULLY IMBALANCES THE GAME TO MAKE MONEYZ REEEE" and something like this happens, and 99.9% of drukhari stuff has been out of stock since before anyone ever read the codex. Yeah really raking it the feth in huh, I guess GW must have a sweetheart deal with 3rd party mini manufacturers and ebay resellers.

 addnid wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Seems to me that each new book is vastly more powerful than the last. I remember SM complaints about heavy intercessors, then complaints about death guard, then dark angel deathwing, now dark eldar. The puppet strings are pretty visible at this point.

That's quite untrue and mostly depends on the fact that every time a new dex comes out someone screams "OP!!".

Truth is that right now SM, Necrons, DG BA, SW and DA have around an equal footing, with DA having a slight lead and IF being crap. Even DW which was considered very bad for a while is now rising again.
Barring DE there has been quite the good balance until now.

Also DE doesn't look 100% unbalanced. If you look at the OP lists they are very very similar to each other, meaning that there are a few outliers which can be safely hit to restore balance to that dex.

Whic is the most frustrating thing in this debacle. A first fix is quite easy, just delete dark lotus toxin or rewrite it, do the same for compedge, change dark technomancers for liquifiers (make it +1 strengh on liquiefiers instead of what it does on other weapons), then just add 20 points to each raider (15 then 5 for a dark lance), then add 1 point to each wrack model, 1 point to whych models, 20 to succubus, 30 to drazhar, etc.

Then see what happens. It should not take GW more than a week to do this after the Dallas Drukhari Dominance Debacle (the "DDDD"). Not if they were even remotely serious in their attempts to balance games.

Lets also remind everyone that GW is not making much money out of this codex "OPness", as many kits are out of stock world wide, and have been for weeks.

Dark Lotus is not a problem at all.

 addnid wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Midnightdeathblade wrote:
Seems to me that each new book is vastly more powerful than the last. I remember SM complaints about heavy intercessors, then complaints about death guard, then dark angel deathwing, now dark eldar. The puppet strings are pretty visible at this point.

That's quite untrue and mostly depends on the fact that every time a new dex comes out someone screams "OP!!".

Truth is that right now SM, Necrons, DG BA, SW and DA have around an equal footing, with DA having a slight lead and IF being crap. Even DW which was considered very bad for a while is now rising again.
Barring DE there has been quite the good balance until now.

Also DE doesn't look 100% unbalanced. If you look at the OP lists they are very very similar to each other, meaning that there are a few outliers which can be safely hit to restore balance to that dex.

Whic is the most frustrating thing in this debacle. A first fix is quite easy, just delete dark lotus toxin or rewrite it, do the same for compedge, change dark technomancers for liquifiers (make it +1 strengh on liquiefiers instead of what it does on other weapons), then just add 20 points to each raider (15 then 5 for a dark lance), then add 1 point to each wrack model, 1 point to whych models, 20 to succubus, 30 to drazhar, etc.
quote]

I mean you say this, but deleting a relic, deleting a warlord trait, reworking an army trait, and extensive point nerfs to basically anything an angry person on the internet saw in a competitive list is vastly more than they did to curb, say, Iron Hands.

IIRC that was like, reworking a warlord trait, reworking 2-3 stratagems, and making it so you have to progress to different doctrines instead of being allowed to sit in dev all game.

I would hazard to guess that's what we'd be likely to see coming soon - mechanical changes, to traits abilities stratagems relics etc, and GW is pretty likely to silo points changes to Chapter Approved, as they basically always have done.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

ccs wrote:

True, but do you really think tourney players (other than those running Orks & who remember the old days) are going to leave it to chance to get the perfect drug?
I don't.

Yes. As you can re-roll doubles (unlike Sacred Rites or some such), there's no real risk and neither are there really terrible / super-situational options (again unlike Sacred Rites).

People have been going towards rolling for Exalted Daemons as well, which are also missing enough "bad" options to dis-incentivise just taking 100% more free upgrades for no added cost.

Maybe, but I am still doubtful. Wyches in boats do not want +2M or +1BS&LD. +1T also implies you intend to get hit, wych ( get it?! ) they don't. Unless they're Hellions and facing a lot of heavy bolters.

Sorry, but there's way too much wiggle in that. It even tells you to write random on the roster.

Most competitive drukhari players are rolling random for at least some wych cult units.

Succubi no, because there are multiple whammies - +WS, +BS/LD both do nothing for a succubus - but wyches outside of Cursed Blade and Hellions/Reavers frequently roll 2.

I mean you say this, but deleting a relic, deleting a warlord trait, reworking an army trait, and extensive point nerfs to basically anything an angry person on the internet saw in a competitive list is vastly more than they did to curb, say, Iron Hands.

They change how the relic for dreads worked, how the special character worked, rewrote how the entire chapter tactic thing worked for all marines, leaving those non-IH ones that focused on heavy weapons in a very unfun place, changed how leviathans and chaplain dreads worked, and soon after put the second in to legends. I think they changed a lot to marines. Specially as there was no realistic change slot rules wise between 2.0 marine codex and 9th ed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Irbis wrote:
So, DE are far more broken than IH were (vastly more broken when you consider a big chunk of IH strenght came from broken pay to win FW crap, they were never that strong with Codex dreads the army was designed for) and yet a lot of people are coming up with excuses how this poor xeno army is weak or that incompetent DE player with bad army (who, funnily enough, placed far above where he should land) somehow "proves" DE are balanced.

Imagine if someone at the end of 8th came, and told non IH players, that all they need to do is to adapt and that the games needs a few months to settle in, and that soonish all the other armies will just meta in to being anti IH and everything is going to be alright again

 Ordana wrote:
These discussions focus on the top because there we can expect good players to have played good players and it becomes less likely that skill was the deciding factor.
Skill still influences games and the lower in the standings you go the more skill differences will skew results and make any attempt at declaring army balance harder and harder.

Trying to say that DE has a bunch of bad matchups because 'lesser skilled' players lost against army X is incredibly disingenuous.

Has potential bad matchups. The WS guy knew what he was coming up against. The first DE he beat ( 88 to 59 ) placed 38th. That's typically not a scrub. The second he beat ( 94 to 63 ) placed 11th. The he played Nayden ( 61 to 85 ) and Lennon ( 55 to 85 ). Did he lose because of going second, player skill, the army, or a combination? Did the ones he beat deploy in the open and lose first turn?

If he only won the first two games, because he went first then did those opponents deploy in the open? If the answer to both is yes, then they were probably less experienced and still placed well - that's a huge problem.

I've played a few games on TTS recently that made me react "holy gak that's busted". Namely Sisters with Mortifiers and Admech with flyers and Magera. Upon reflection there were lots of things I could have done differently each game - made more clear by getting an intimate understanding of how the units operate. I went second against the Admech and the flyers still got to me, but I deployed safely so I was able to swing back really hard.

It's with that stuff in mind that I pause and reflect a lot. You guys might feel like I'm an opponent on the opposite side of the discussion, but we're really not entirely. I am just taking as rigorous of an approach as I can.

And with 9th edition they also killed the thunderfire cannon that all IH used both by removing stratagems. massive point increase and nerfing its shooting. The Leviathan also got heavily reworked recently so it can't be an invulnerable center piece anymore. Grav pods also got the boot.

Like the only thing that haven't been nerfed since then that IH lists used to run are the basic troops(if they used scouts to save points then even those got nerfed hard by being elite and expensive now) and the basic Lt. So 75%+ of the list got nerfed or removed in addition to all the changes to stratagems, traits, chapter tactics and doctrines.

IH suffered death by a thousand small cuts and a few sledgehammer blows.

Plus all the changes hit some factions, that weren't IH, with boomerang nerfs. CF and IF didn't really need to get worse, just because IH were considered too good.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


It's with that stuff in mind that I pause and reflect a lot. You guys might feel like I'm an opponent on the opposite side of the discussion, but we're really not entirely. I am just taking as rigorous of an approach as I can.

Well the army has 5 placements in top 8, at a large tournament full of, am assuming here, one of the best w40k players in the US. which from the looks of who they know, could have playtested the armies, before the codex was even out. No other army, including the one that had the top % win before DE, managed to pull of something comperable. This clearly not a people are not used, or didn't play test enough, problem. And I am not saying you say this, but some people not only find a 78% win rate fine, but even consider the list as "just good". From what I have been told when GK were considered OP and unfun to play against for everyone they didn't even have a 60% win rate. I really hope that DE don't get hit by similar 3-4 editions of bad rules after that.
But then again they are eldar, so who knows. Maybe CWE are going to be just as killy, but more tanky at the same time.

Karol wrote:
Imagine if someone at the end of 8th came, and told non IH players, that all they need to do is to adapt and that the games needs a few months to settle in, and that soonish all the other armies will just meta in to being anti IH and everything is going to be alright again

So, after IH had its big nerf it was still winning games in the 65% range. Then we had CA19 that no one used, because of COVID. We never had the chance to settle in. Then everyone just festered and stewed over hating marines for a year when no one was really playing.

I was a big proponent of ITC missions and secondaries, but the people who pointed out the lack of no-kill objectives were absolutely right. IH didn't change much between now and then ( bar forgeworld ), but the game sure did.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 addnid wrote:
DDDD will make the 3D printing people rich, more than it will make GW rich, at the current GW stock re-supply rate.

I don't know for sure but I'd wager some paying 3D printer "digital models" looking like wyches, incubi, etc. are being sold A LOT atm

Yeah its pretty funny when people are like 'GW PURPOSEFULLY IMBALANCES THE GAME TO MAKE MONEYZ REEEE" and something like this happens, and 99.9% of drukhari stuff has been out of stock since before anyone ever read the codex. Yeah really raking it the feth in huh, I guess GW must have a sweetheart deal with 3rd party mini manufacturers and ebay resellers.

Oh come on. You can't possibly expect me to believe you've not noticed that codex after codex, tome after tome (for sigmar), army book after army book (WHFB), edition after edition, that the most powerful/popular builds often coincidentally A) fit very nicely into the standard pt lv of the time & B) are generally the most expen$ive common combo of what a given army "should" look like.

GW (and other companies) most certainly use pts to maximize sales.

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 addnid wrote:
DDDD will make the 3D printing people rich, more than it will make GW rich, at the current GW stock re-supply rate.

I don't know for sure but I'd wager some paying 3D printer "digital models" looking like wyches, incubi, etc. are being sold A LOT atm

Yeah its pretty funny when people are like 'GW PURPOSEFULLY IMBALANCES THE GAME TO MAKE MONEYZ REEEE" and something like this happens, and 99.9% of drukhari stuff has been out of stock since before anyone ever read the codex. Yeah really raking it the feth in huh, I guess GW must have a sweetheart deal with 3rd party mini manufacturers and ebay resellers.

Oh come on. You can't possibly expect me to believe you've not noticed that codex after codex, tome after tome (for sigmar), army book after army book (WHFB), edition after edition, that the most powerful/popular builds often coincidentally A) fit very nicely into the standard pt lv of the time & B) are generally the most expen$ive common combo of what a given army "should" look like.

GW (and other companies) most certainly use pts to maximize sales.

...The most expensive units in terms of $ per points in the drukhari codex are the absolute bottom of the barrel atm in terms of competitiveness in the 'dex. Grotesques, Beasts, Beastmasters, Talos. Some of the least expensive $ for points (wyches, hellions and raiders are pretty cheap kits) are the most competitive.

Only units that are expensive $ per point moderately that are good are Incubi and Wracks.
Mostly though, my point is that LITERALLY NOBODY has been able to give GW money for broken Drukhari after seeing broken rules. Nobody. Everything drukhari ever has been out of stock since BEFORE we saw the new broken rules.

If anyone bandwagoned into drukhari after seeing the new rules, they bought from 3rd party sellers, ebay resellers, or they already had an army.

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 addnid wrote:
DDDD will make the 3D printing people rich, more than it will make GW rich, at the current GW stock re-supply rate.

I don't know for sure but I'd wager some paying 3D printer "digital models" looking like wyches, incubi, etc. are being sold A LOT atm

Yeah its pretty funny when people are like 'GW PURPOSEFULLY IMBALANCES THE GAME TO MAKE MONEYZ REEEE" and something like this happens, and 99.9% of drukhari stuff has been out of stock since before anyone ever read the codex. Yeah really raking it the feth in huh, I guess GW must have a sweetheart deal with 3rd party mini manufacturers and ebay resellers.

Oh come on. You can't possibly expect me to believe you've not noticed that codex after codex, tome after tome (for sigmar), army book after army book (WHFB), edition after edition, that the most powerful/popular builds often coincidentally A) fit very nicely into the standard pt lv of the time & B) are generally the most expen$ive common combo of what a given army "should" look like.

GW (and other companies) most certainly use pts to maximize sales.

God not this again.
No, GW doesn't generally purposefully make stuff OP for sales. For every shiny new thing being OP there is a shiny new utter turd that no one wants.

If this was GW's objective they are so terrible at it that they still repeatedly fail at it.

 Ordana wrote:

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 addnid wrote:
DDDD will make the 3D printing people rich, more than it will make GW rich, at the current GW stock re-supply rate.

I don't know for sure but I'd wager some paying 3D printer "digital models" looking like wyches, incubi, etc. are being sold A LOT atm

Yeah its pretty funny when people are like 'GW PURPOSEFULLY IMBALANCES THE GAME TO MAKE MONEYZ REEEE" and something like this happens, and 99.9% of drukhari stuff has been out of stock since before anyone ever read the codex. Yeah really raking it the feth in huh, I guess GW must have a sweetheart deal with 3rd party mini manufacturers and ebay resellers.

Oh come on. You can't possibly expect me to believe you've not noticed that codex after codex, tome after tome (for sigmar), army book after army book (WHFB), edition after edition, that the most powerful/popular builds often coincidentally A) fit very nicely into the standard pt lv of the time & B) are generally the most expen$ive common combo of what a given army "should" look like.

GW (and other companies) most certainly use pts to maximize sales.

God not this again.
No, GW doesn't generally purposefully make stuff OP for sales. For every shiny new thing being OP there is a shiny new utter turd that no one wants.

If this was GW's objective they are so terrible at it that they still repeatedly fail at it.

Also, yeah, hey, wait a minute, they put that fugly new lelith sculpt on EVERY fething PAGE that includes shots of miniatures in the drukhari 'dex and she's one of the worst units in the 'dex

Yeah the example of Lelith being one of the worst units in the book, combined with "out of stock for all the other druk kits" should prove to anyone that GW didn't anticipate the golden egg goose (druk codex) they were creating. GW is the perfect example of "why see malice when incompetence explains everything perfectly well" (or whatever the exact saying is in English)

Seeing this, perhaps they might wait until they have enough Ad Mech stock before releasing the codex.

I still can't believe how badly they planned this. A new codex comes out, yet 0 stock to please new players. Is that like a new marketing technique, to create client frustration ?

Only a decade long monopole can explain such a commercial feth up for such a large company. Or was it a covid thing ? Surely they could have just waited for restock before releasing the codex no ?

 addnid wrote:
Only a decade long monopole can explain such a commercial feth up for such a large company. Or was it a covid thing ? Surely they could have just waited for restock before releasing the codex no ?

Technical issues as well as likely covid related delays. Other threads have touched on it in more detail.

 addnid wrote:
Yeah the example of Lelith being one of the worst units in the book, combined with "out of stock for all the other druk kits" should prove to anyone that GW didn't anticipate the golden egg goose (druk codex) they were creating. GW is the perfect example of "why see malice when incompetence explains everything perfectly well" (or whatever the exact saying is in English)

Seeing this, perhaps they might wait until they have enough Ad Mech stock before releasing the codex.

I still can't believe how badly they planned this. A new codex comes out, yet 0 stock to please new players. Is that like a new marketing technique, to create client frustration ?

Only a decade long monopole can explain such a commercial feth up for such a large company. Or was it a covid thing ? Surely they could have just waited for restock before releasing the codex no ?

Don't forget that some people here were already going crazy about the lack of information on the Codex combined with the usual doomsaying that everything Dark Eldar will suck because what was previewed did not scream OP into our faces. I fondly remember one person posting that they will sell off their whole collection because of that preview of the day wasn't saying anything on it's own without the rest of the rules.

Delaying the release further would have caused issues as well. Just different ones.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
Imagine if someone at the end of 8th came, and told non IH players, that all they need to do is to adapt and that the games needs a few months to settle in, and that soonish all the other armies will just meta in to being anti IH and everything is going to be alright again

So, after IH had its big nerf it was still winning games in the 65% range. Then we had CA19 that no one used, because of COVID. We never had the chance to settle in. Then everyone just festered and stewed over hating marines for a year when no one was really playing.

I was a big proponent of ITC missions and secondaries, but the people who pointed out the lack of no-kill objectives were absolutely right. IH didn't change much between now and then ( bar forgeworld ), but the game sure did.

That's the truth. And I still say to this day that you could revert most changes directed at Iron Hands except staying in dev doctrine, cogitated martyrdom wording, and maybe the apothecary giving 5+++, they would be just fine for 9th edition missions. Looking back, I do think that was the intent that GW had -- I just think they still had the stubborn mindset of "lalalalal itc missions don't exist to us we can't hear you lalalalala".

They were thinking:
"Since vehicles will not get rerolls and all dreads will get duty eternal, the Ironstone and will be fine."
"Since librarians will be able to cast a 5++ aura invuln for everyone, it's no big deal if Feirros has a bubble invuln that affects vehicles too"
"Since Overwatch costs CP and can only happen once per phase in 9th, it's fine if Iron Hands can do it on 5+ and 4+ with strat"
"Apothecaries giving 5+++ isn't so big a deal since they will be giving 6+++ to everyone else anyway and we don't realize we worded Cogitated Martyrdom in a horrific way that makes this crazy OP"

Lol ok I should stop now (Iron Hands is my main army and they are not "blue iron hands" ) -- I just remember my personal favorite army be the subject of so much rage that I didn't even bother playing it. It's really unfortunate that it's happening again.

Back on subject: I think a mild points hike on Raiders (10 on the hull, then make Dark Lance 5 points and Disintigrator free) and take away the extra 2 cp and razor flail comp edge combo and see where we land. After mulling it over, I wouldn't want to hike both the transports and their contents all at once -- a nerf on transports for drukhari is almost as good as a nerf to their contents. We shouldn't overlook how big a deal 2 extra CP is for Drukhari when combined with how comparably hard to kill Raider are. That's an extra Never Stationary (fire and fade) or two lightning fasts.

Most likely scenario:

GW didn't anticipate in the least the actual power build of the DE codex and was actually expecting most of the sales to fall on kits like Lelith and Drazhar, which are more modern designs and so more likely to sell. Instead, it fell on quite old kits, for which they had really low stocks.

The low stocks are actually easy to explain. The book has a 3 month delay, so the actual stocks of minis for this release were produced a lot of time ago. In the mean time (around February- March), DE became meta. Not many noticed this because there were very few DE players, but even before codex they had seen a quite steady increase in win rates, since the meta was slowly moving to where they wanted it. This obviously resulted in many more kits sold, and is also the reason why so many players suddenly have a built and painted army. In short, the stocks prepared for this release have been already mostly depleted (at least for things like raiders) by the previous popularity surge.

Spoletta wrote:
Most likely scenario:

GW didn't anticipate in the least the actual power build of the DE codex and was actually expecting most of the sales to fall on kits like Lelith and Drazhar, which are more modern designs and so more likely to sell. Instead, it fell on quite old kits, for which they had really low stocks.

I'll say it again: The drukhari kits besides drazar and the new box set were all out of stock before anyone knew what was in the codex.

This is not an 'oh gak, codex is op, buy the stuff' scenario - drukhari kits were almost entirely out of stock during the first early previews, when what we knew was stuff like "Splinter cannon will now be bad heavy bolter" (which incidentally, is true. They did make the splinter cannon into a bad heavy bolter, no unit that can take splinter cannons wants splinter cannons now outside of a couple of super edge cases/units that must take splitner cannons)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

a_typical_hero wrote:

 addnid wrote:
Yeah the example of Lelith being one of the worst units in the book, combined with "out of stock for all the other druk kits" should prove to anyone that GW didn't anticipate the golden egg goose (druk codex) they were creating. GW is the perfect example of "why see malice when incompetence explains everything perfectly well" (or whatever the exact saying is in English)

Seeing this, perhaps they might wait until they have enough Ad Mech stock before releasing the codex.

I still can't believe how badly they planned this. A new codex comes out, yet 0 stock to please new players. Is that like a new marketing technique, to create client frustration ?

Only a decade long monopole can explain such a commercial feth up for such a large company. Or was it a covid thing ? Surely they could have just waited for restock before releasing the codex no ?

Don't forget that some people here were already going crazy about the lack of information on the Codex combined with the usual doomsaying that everything Dark Eldar will suck because what was previewed did not scream OP into our faces. I fondly remember one person posting that they will sell off their whole collection because of that preview of the day wasn't saying anything on it's own without the rest of the rules.

Delaying the release further would have caused issues as well. Just different ones.

This is true and I do find it highly amusing that Vipoid appears to have vasnished into a puff of smoke after the first few tourney results showing drukhari were super good.

They did do an absolutely dogshit job previewing the parts of the codex that were actually good/exciting, though.

"hey, we reworked splinter cannons to be bad now."

"hey look, 2A and 4+ armor on kabalites"

the most exciting previews we got for drukhari stuff was from the new datasheet instruction kits for Wyches and Incubi. They chose not to highlight, for example:

-The succubus being turned from a dogshit crappy second fiddle who had less melee damage output than the haemonculus, the drukhari equivalent to a techmrine, despite being the 'melee duellist hq' into one of the best melee duellist HQs in the biz

-Transports finally, FINALLY being given +1 transport capacity so our mounted faction can actually work without HQs running alongside transports or riding in empty venoms begging for that 1 in 6 chance to get exploded instantly

-The return of Trueborns, Bloodbrides and Haemoxytes (they may have previewed this like, the day before the NDA listed, I dont remember)

-Hellions being reworked from multiple editions of 'worst unit in the game' to a real, actual threat

At this point, this is the best drukhari codex that's ever been made. The fact that the dumb, low-effort day 1 DLC book and the slapped on custom traits and stupid obligatory extra army-wide bonus rule make them broken is a tragedy, because the book is incredible and finally captures the drukhari's intended playstyle really well. If this book had launched without Blade Artists, without BOok of Rust, and without Dark Tech it would have been very nearly a knock out of the park in terms of rules quality - we can talk about a transport being like 10-15pts undercosted, probably unintended bonus 2CP, archons being a bit unsatisfying, baseline succubi being a bit overtuned, whatever, but it would have been more like a Death Guard discussion than the current IH 2.0 debacle.

GW doesn't make balance a big priority in design. Their joke of a playtesting program should make that clear to anybody. I don't think they deliberately set out to make the DE codex the worst thing since IH, it just happened because they don't place a priority on balance.

If they were trying to make a balance monster, it'd be arguably even more incompetent, given how bad their hype for it was and how they're out of stock of everything at the moment anyway so they can't even profit from the monstrosity they've created.

Would nerfing Raiders back down to T5 where they were before and not touching the points be a solution?

I am a drukhari player and haven't had a chance to play with the new rules yet but I've been going through the book a lot. Sure I am not a competitive player but I've been reading this topic because I find these problems interesting and yes I do see problems in the book.

I do not usually follow tournament information but could somebody tell me where can I find the Dallas all DE top 5 lists? I'm curious to see them as I am looking into what is too strong in the book. Partly because I do not want to completely wreck my friends' lists.

I play cult heavy or full cult (beasts included) but having units too strong isn't really what I want to see in my lists.

On the actual topic the liquifier shenanigans do seem quite horrible I agree. If the old S3 for it would be still in use instead of the current S4 would it be as widely effective? But also would it be useful without technomancers? The +1 damage is also a problem when combined with liquifiers but would S3 fix the combo without making the gun just bad?

Is Blade Artists really a problem? It doesn't really seem OP compared to things like Doctrines or Contagions.

gaovinni wrote:
I am a drukhari player and haven't had a chance to play with the new rules yet but I've been going through the book a lot. Sure I am not a competitive player but I've been reading this topic because I find these problems interesting and yes I do see problems in the book.

I do not usually follow tournament information but could somebody tell me where can I find the Dallas all DE top 5 lists? I'm curious to see them as I am looking into what is too strong in the book. Partly because I do not want to completely wreck my friends' lists.

I play cult heavy or full cult (beasts included) but having units too strong isn't really what I want to see in my lists.

On the actual topic the liquifier shenanigans do seem quite horrible I agree. If the old S3 for it would be still in use instead of the current S4 would it be as widely effective? But also would it be useful without technomancers? The +1 damage is also a problem when combined with liquifiers but would S3 fix the combo without making the gun just bad?

For the first time, Liquifiers are an actually good, objectively balanced weapon upgrade on the platforms they can be put on. Putting them back at S3 would make them cost more than and be objectively worse than heavy flamers, not particularly a weapon that's 'tearing it up' on the competitive scene.

The nerf should be to the trait. Not the weapon. Not the points cost of the weapon. Nerf the part of the combo with the least knock-on effects to non-abusive builds.

Similarly, competitive edge is the best way to fix the compedge/flails combo. A +1S +1D trait to a non-relic weapon is not broken, it exists in various forms in many places in the game. If 12A with Grave Lotus is truly just as broken as an average of 36A with them (forgive my skepticism that it actually would be) then the specific interaction with flails can be examined. But on every other weapon Grave Lotus is objectively worse than any competing relic weapon you could choose.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Is Blade Artists really a problem? It doesn't really seem OP compared to things like Doctrines or Contagions.

From a power perspective probably not, it would give heavily armoured melee factions a better chance. I want it gone because it's bad design, the rule has a relatively small impact most of the time but requires attacks to be separated into AP x and AP x-1, add 3 different possible weapons and maybe splitting attacks to two units and that little rule is taking more time than it needs to without doing anything the Drukhari needs to have done.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Is Blade Artists really a problem? It doesn't really seem OP compared to things like Doctrines or Contagions.

It's really dirty on bloodbrides who clean through marines with it. Also consider that regular wyches go to -2.

10 BB - 41 attacks WS2 - 34 wounds - 5.7 can't be saved and another 11.4 (lotus) save on 5+. Then your no AP or AP1 punches are met with a 4++. It's brutal.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Is Blade Artists really a problem? It doesn't really seem OP compared to things like Doctrines or Contagions.

The problem is twofold:

1) it is utterly unnecessary. All armies having an equivalent number of special army wide rules /= balance. The signature drukhari army wide rule, Power from Pain, is just as strong as the combination of rules offered by doctrines+Shock Assault+ATSKNF, because many of the various rules marines have slathered on them only apply in very specific situations to specific units. Invuln saves, advance and charge, +1WS - these sorts of buffs are rarely unwanted, and they all stack. It also works elegantly to counteract the more toxic playstyle of the full-on balls to the wall alpha strike before the opponent gets to make any moves or decisions, by providing an incentive to wait until a turn 2, or tantalizingly strong turn 3 tempo strike, and in later turns allows the glass cannon army to continue to play the objective game without totally crumpling.

2) it is unnecessarily fiddly. separating the wound dice for every attack you make in melee with a melee oriented army is just as obnoxious as trying to remember the AP values of every one of the fething hundreds of astartes weapons in the various doctrines as well as the rules for the stupid super-doctrines. Yes, before you ask, I do think the game would be objectively better without doctrines and equivalent rules, just as I thought, and was correct, that the game would be better without Formations.

3) it reduces or removes the intended drawback of various drukhari melee units, most notably wyches and hellions.It's nice that kabalites have the tiniest bit of an edge going into cc against other cheapo chaff units now, but it just lumps more unncessary power onto wych cult melee units.

Also, lastly, good LORD was the decision to move PFP to the rule you lose if you take any allies and make fething Blade artists the one you keep stupid. I understand this edition GW is just trying to incentise people to build all the allied forces they bought last edition into full 2k lists this edition to get the purity bonus rules, but it sucks to keep this dumb, unfluffy bs when you take allies and lose out on the rule that's always defined drukhari.


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 vict0988 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Is Blade Artists really a problem? It doesn't really seem OP compared to things like Doctrines or Contagions.

From a power perspective probably not, it would give heavily armoured melee factions a better chance. I want it gone because it's bad design, the rule has a relatively small impact most of the time but requires attacks to be separated into AP x and AP x-1, add 3 different possible weapons and maybe splitting attacks to two units and that little rule is taking more time than it needs to without doing anything the Drukhari needs to have done.

The game would be a better place if we removed:

1) doctrines
2) necron conquest protocol fiddly things
3) dakkadakkadakka
4)blade artists
5) all the different choices of special rules you can put onto exarchs/harlequin pivotal roles
6) army wide overwatch on tau
7) plague contagions from DG
8) the 4-5 variable special rules you get on every greater daemon
9) sisters rites

all the bs fiddly time wasting special rules that they just have been slapping onto every faction to make them feel slightly more distinct that 99% of the time just take up extra time and effort and trick you into thinking you're playing a more complex game.

Bearing in mind the Drukhari are very transport dependant, I think the popularity of the Raider is also due to the miserable state of Venoms. The -1 to hit cap hurt them, as did the detrimental changes to Splinter Cannons (would you like one subpar Heavy Bolter on your boat or two?), and the fact that Wyches only get their special weapons if the squad is at least 10 strong.

The raider is objectively far and away the best transport in the game at its current points cost. It's just brutally underpriced. If would still be one of the best transports if it cost the same points and just didn't have any guns at all. That it gets one of the best AT guns in the game on top of that is just crazy.