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Yes it is. Much more than during 8th in my opinion: the only reason why we haven't had an internal discussion about what to play in our gaming group moving forward is because Covid shut us down and we already have. Mordheim campaign in the making that has to begin...

I don't think WH40k will be prevalent in the next 2-3 year (or at least as long as 9th is around)

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The problem isn't faction based, but rather stratagem and/or subfaction -based: You could face the exact same unit multiple times, but it can have radically different abilities depending on what colour it is painted, or if your opponent spends command points on it.

But that's a good thing IMHO. This way I can play a limited collections of models in multiple ways, it actually adds longevity.

A single OP unexpected combo that really breaks the game is something that shouldn't appen very frequently in friendly games. Didn't happen very often to me, and I litterally have 0 knowledge about half factions.

 Blackie wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The problem isn't faction based, but rather stratagem and/or subfaction -based: You could face the exact same unit multiple times, but it can have radically different abilities depending on what colour it is painted, or if your opponent spends command points on it.

But that's a good thing IMHO. This way I can play a limited collections of models in multiple ways, it actually adds longevity.

A single OP unexpected combo that really breaks the game is something that shouldn't appen very frequently in friendly games. Didn't happen very often to me, and I litterally have 0 knowledge about half factions.

I'm not talking about game breaking combos - I mean things as simple as a unit of Seraphim.

I can look at the rules for Seraphim, understand their stats, and the what their weapons are capable of. I can know how their version of Not-Deep Strike works and can plan accordingly to face them... and then my opponent can declare 'Deadly Descent' and now their weapons have a longer range, they can shoot in the movement phase, and can fire twice in a turn with no potential counterplay.

Yes, there is a counterplay, although it's actually a move to prevents the max amount of damage rather than countering it. Just screen the units that will suffer the most against those melta pistols. Done. SM also have a unit that prevents that by just doing nothing.

And to be honest Seraphims can't fire twice if they use Deadly Descent, that stratagem allows them to fire ONCE with their best weapons since those pistols have 6'' and nothing will be in range in their shooting phase no matter what. 3 pairs of bolt pistols firing twice shouldn't be a problem, assuming they can actually fire twice since they'll just have 12'' in the shooting phase and no enemy can be within 9'' in that turn.

 Blackie wrote:

cjmate8 wrote:
Warhammer 40k is dead at my shop, and everyone has moved on to Blood Bowl or Star War Legion.

I asked my friend, who used to run tournaments at our shop, and he said there were too many "gotcha" moments and cheap units that could do extreme amounts of damage. It feels bad to spend money and time on a knight only to have it get blown off the board in a single charge of vanguard veteran or a single round of shooting from Retributors.

Does anyone feel this way, and what caused it? I'm wondering if it's legitimate concern, or if we just need to wait for everyone to get a codex.

Gotcha moments are a natural consequence of having 20+ different factions. People can't possibly know every rule of any unit in the game. I don't really see how gotcha moments are an issue though, people should learn from experience and the next time they'll avoid those moments.

Stratagems have made it worse then it has ever been before.

before 8th I had a basic understanding of almost all armies. Since the pile of more and more special stuff and more and more special rules and trap cards introduced in 8th, 40k has become nigh impossible to have even a base understanding of what all armies and units can do.

I agree, 40k is declining here. Warcry, killteam, marvel crisis, sw legion, and coop mini based board games are on the rise.

Besides legion, most of those listed above take up for less space on a table and are more portable.

Sad as 40k and mage knight were my first game systems.

 jeff white wrote:
Yes. Clunky, ad hoc, and juvenile.

You don’t even play. You just post bile.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Yes. Clunky, ad hoc, and juvenile.

You don’t even play. You just post bile.

*quietly starts beatboxing while we wait for Jeff's reply*

I've been playing more 40k lately then I have in most editions, against a small player base so certainly a skewed perceptive.

9th seems slightly more balanced then some of the older editions I've played, just from the point system allowing under gunned codex's to still ply for a win.

That said, I'm even less interested in the game then normal. Its not a fault of 9th edition per say, there are just so many better gaming systems on the market now. I'd gladly shelve all my 40k stuff, but its still the most popular game, so if you want to game at all, its usually a game of 40k.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I get the sense that the posters so far haven't played 9th edition books. The rerolls are way down and durability is up.

I just played T'au with a mountain of rerolls and still survived long enough to score well with Necrons.

Maybe the sentiment is correct for 8th, but not so much for 9th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rihgu wrote:
Or you can have the opposite problem, like I do, and your entire army can't lay down meaningful damage while units are getting blown away by the handfuls.

It took 6 melta shots, 2 of which from a unit with +1 to wound and re-rolling all hits AND in melta-range, to do 11 wounds to an armiger. a combi-bolter did the last wound.

People talk about how lethal 40k is but why doesn't it at least go both ways

The odds of that happening are a little under 1 in 3.

This. 100% this. I try to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the people i am talking to know more about the game than I do, but it is feeling like it is obvious most of those complaining about the game havent played a game of 9th.

The lethality is higher than I'd like, but we're not at 7th edition levels. There's more resource management and bookkeeping than ever before thanks to the jumble of strats, chapter tactics, and doctrine-level abilities (PFP, the necron thing, the sisters thing, the moving parts mechanicus thing coming out soon). The number of moving parts has become mildly annoying, but not to the point of ruining my fun.

I probably like 9th more than any other edition I've played (starting in 5th), but I also hope that 10th edition streamlines a few things.

 Blackie wrote:
Yes, there is a counterplay, although it's actually a move to prevents the max amount of damage rather than countering it. Just screen the units that will suffer the most against those melta pistols. Done. SM also have a unit that prevents that by just doing nothing.

I think the point is that you have to know the unit can do that in the first place. Before formations took off in 7th you had all the rules you needed for a given unit on the unit entry and in the weapon list. That was all you needed. As an opponent it meant if I wasn't familiar with a certain unit I could ask to see its unit entry and have a pretty good idea what it was capable of. Now you can radically alter how units work just by using a single stratagem but more often than not it's the combination of overlapping auras, stratagems, sub-faction rules and unit special rules that cause these gotcha moments. In practical terms it's almost impossible for someone unfamiliar with the army to be prepared for. It doesn't lead to any superior tactical gameplay because, as you point out, if you know about these interactions many of them are easily countered.

Seabass wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I get the sense that the posters so far haven't played 9th edition books. The rerolls are way down and durability is up.

I just played T'au with a mountain of rerolls and still survived long enough to score well with Necrons.

Maybe the sentiment is correct for 8th, but not so much for 9th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rihgu wrote:
Or you can have the opposite problem, like I do, and your entire army can't lay down meaningful damage while units are getting blown away by the handfuls.

It took 6 melta shots, 2 of which from a unit with +1 to wound and re-rolling all hits AND in melta-range, to do 11 wounds to an armiger. a combi-bolter did the last wound.

People talk about how lethal 40k is but why doesn't it at least go both ways

The odds of that happening are a little under 1 in 3.

This. 100% this. I try to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the people i am talking to know more about the game than I do, but it is feeling like it is obvious most of those complaining about the game havent played a game of 9th.

There is a reason many people have not played a single game of 9th. I think i speak for many when I say the game feels inaccessable, here are some reasons:
- expensive new rule books wich feels they released when 8th was in a decent place
- bloated rules system including terrain, matched play rules and list building.
- 9th feels unfinnished as many armies are not up to date with the system.
- covid

I have a feeling that besides covid it could be said about any edition of w40k. I for one know that 8th was full of books race, bloated rule sets in no small way because of how soup focused the game was, and at least my army felt unfinished codex as far as codex goes.

Well at least in 8th they had indexes. There is really no excuse why chaos marines have 1 wound, or xenos have old melta rules. Give us proper erratas at least. 9th is the worst in this regard

9th is going strong in my local area, BUT Kings of War, Age of Sigmar (which is looking to be the top dog for friendly games) and strangely enough Warhammer Fantasy Battle (Various editions, mostly around 6th)

We're enjoying crusade immensely, the tournament goers are loving the increased support and the community has its grumbles but there's people supporting all style of play so the wargaming community is happy and thriving

Karol wrote:
I have a feeling that besides covid it could be said about any edition of w40k. I for one know that 8th was full of books race, bloated rule sets in no small way because of how soup focused the game was, and at least my army felt unfinished codex as far as codex goes.

Prior to 8th the game was just a BRB, a paperback codex that cost about half as much as they do now and maybe an FAQ and that was all you would need for around 4-5 years per army sometimes. The harback document bloat is definitely an 7th Ed onwards thing.

There could be a cyclical thing going on as well. I and many players started 40k again after dropping it after 2nd edition. Others came back from later editions. But certainly a fair number picked the game up again. Then it got increasingly fiddly, but that is fine because you are playing while it gets worse so keep abreast. Now a new edition is out, its as fiddly as the end of 8th but we have all had a big break due to Covid.

Personally every time someone brings up X point now about the game the phrase 'I would rather be playing Epic A' rolls around my head. Problem with shooting? With melee? Do you know the Epic assault phase deals with all of that? And so on. Or failing that AT, Aeronautica, Blood Bowl, underworlds or 'Quest if I want to stick with GW, and myriad if I don't. Blood bowl is a good counter example with 20+ teams, but I can know the rules for all of them and the 'gotcha's' are fun. Underworlds requires a bit too much effort currently to get back into. But the other games are still good.

40K has always been about "Over The Top".. Automatic weapons firing rockets, chainsaws as swords, colossal mecha punching daemons as big as a small building, and on and on...

so I don't understand the OP's point. Its a beer and pretzels game FFS, not a proper wargame.

Maybe you just want to play something else for a change. Fair enough.

Gitdakka wrote:
Well at least in 8th they had indexes. There is really no excuse why chaos marines have 1 wound, or xenos have old melta rules. Give us proper erratas at least. 9th is the worst in this regard

The imbalance between 8th index vs 8th codex was much higher than 9th vs 8th codex though. At least now everyone has points costs adjusted to 9th edition, chapters traits, stratagems, etc... a fair number of armies using 8th codexes (Sororitas, Harlequins, Custodes, Orks, Daemons at least) are even getting high results in tournaments.

 Blackie wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
Well at least in 8th they had indexes. There is really no excuse why chaos marines have 1 wound, or xenos have old melta rules. Give us proper erratas at least. 9th is the worst in this regard

The imbalance between 8th index vs 8th codex was much higher than 9th vs 8th codex though.

The imbalance in 9th is the largest in documented 40k history.

At least now everyone has points costs adjusted to 9th edition, chapters traits, stratagems, etc... a fair number of armies using 8th codexes (Sororitas, Harlequins, Custodes, Orks, Daemons at least) are even getting high results in tournaments.

Daemons, Ynnari and AM were doing great with their index vs SM as well.

I dunno. Honestly, I think since starting 9th I've had vastly more games that did not end in total destruction than I did back in 8th. The pool of CP is generally smaller, and the stratagems especially in the 9th ed dexes are quite a lot less likely to be able to allow you to just wham bam thank you maam 800pts of models out of existence with a supercombo.

My last game I basically dialed a basic drukhari list back one notch (Lelith instead of a regular succubus, Co12 instead of Dark Tech, Archon instead of Drazar and a Realspace Raid instead of +2CP patrols) and there was no way I was going to be tabling my opponent, even though I did end up winning the game on points at the end like 70 to 62. Both armies had over 500 points on the board at the end of the game.

The only time I see games that end in tabling these days are when you have like two close combat armies up against eachother. in the last 5 games I've played the only game that ended up with one army tabled (turn 5) was Blood Angels vs Dark Eldar.

 vict0988 wrote:

Daemons, Ynnari and AM were doing great with their index vs SM as well.

They weren't just doing great, for most of 8th Inari were just plain better then marines. And that was the main problem, the most popular armies weren't much fun to play till 2.0. Right now aside for the harli/DE match up, playing marines doesn't make you feel as if you were wasting your time. Plus there is no need to run other armies.

 vict0988 wrote:
The imbalance in 9th is the largest in documented 40k history.

I remember there being a point in 7th where you could field two units of mechanised marines for the same points as a single squad of mechanised sisters. Same guns, vehicles, model count, etc. And if 2:1 odds were all that you were facing then the marine player was going soft on you.

 vict0988 wrote:

Daemons, Ynnari and AM were doing great with their index vs SM as well.

Ynnari and AM had an OP index, and mostly got high results in tournaments by spamming a few OP units. None of the 8th codexes that I mentioned are actually OP, and all can work very well without spamming anything. And I listed almost twice the factions, also deliberately omitting those armies that are actually doing good by using odd spammy/FW based lists like Tyranids.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

The imbalance in 9th is the largest in documented 40k history.

Source?

 tauist wrote:
40K has always been about "Over The Top".. Automatic weapons firing rockets, chainsaws as swords, colossal mecha punching daemons as big as a small building, and on and on...

so I don't understand the OP's point. Its a beer and pretzels game FFS, not a proper wargame.

Maybe you just want to play something else for a change. Fair enough.

He doesn't mean the setting. He means the gameplay. Also yes, its a beer and pretzels game. So if people aren't having fun then its not doing what it should and a lot of people don't have fun when their army is crippled on turn 1 and then spending 3 hours fighting a losing battle.

yes you don't want to choke on the pretzels and have the beer go up your nose...

 Blackie wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

The imbalance in 9th is the largest in documented 40k history.

Source?

I suspect he's talking about how the tourney data put the DE win rate at 67% or something- it's all in the 50 pages of the DE are overpowered thread; apparently Iron Hands and DE have the highest WR stat since they've been collecting data.

BTW, I don't necessarily agree or anything, I just thought I'd try and be helpful since I suspect that's where he's coming from.

"I remember there being a point in 7th..."

We don't have good data on those tournaments. It was Sisters then, it's Tau now, now it's not so much a question of one army just fielding tonnes more free units or upgrade and more being able to play the missions super effectively relative to other armies. But saying that the game is balanced in 9th does not make any sense.

 Blackie wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Daemons, Ynnari and AM were doing great with their index vs SM as well.

Ynnari and AM had an OP index, and mostly got high results in tournaments by spamming a few OP units. None of the 8th codexes that I mentioned are actually OP, and all can work very well without spamming anything. And I listed almost twice the factions, also deliberately omitting those armies that are actually doing good by using odd spammy/FW based lists like Tyranids.

Sororitas became OP partly because of MM errata, Harlequins got OP because they skipped out of getting the same points nerfs as other factions. Why does it matter whether an army is good for one reason or another? We have 5 old armies being great now, 3 old armies being great then. We had garbage armies then, we have garbage armies now, Necrons had a fairly bad index but the FW Gauss Pylon was really good, so relying on FW for viability isn't something new either. Having ObSec and Chapter Tactics is great, but being able to change the victory conditions by having unique Secondary Objectives is no joke either. I am not defending Chapter Tactics, I have come to hate the design but from the get go it was obviously unfair power creep gak and my playgroup at the time banned the use of Chapter Tactics.

 vict0988 wrote:

The imbalance in 9th is the largest in documented 40k history.

Source?

You show yours first

 the_scotsman wrote:
I dunno. Honestly, I think since starting 9th I've had vastly more games that did not end in total destruction than I did back in 8th. The pool of CP is generally smaller, and the stratagems especially in the 9th ed dexes are quite a lot less likely to be able to allow you to just wham bam thank you maam 800pts of models out of existence with a supercombo...

The only time I see games that end in tabling these days are when you have like two close combat armies up against each other...

Removing Specialist Detachments also helped. GT missions are very geared towards board control, there is relatively little punishment for not consistently killing units compared to 8th edition Champions or Maelstrom of War.

My experience in regards to models left on the table has been the same, I have played 20 games over the past month and a half. But then I will offer to surrender if my opponent gets tired of beating me and I have had quite a few opponents surrender, I think maybe a couple of them would have ended in actual tablings. 5 turns also helps on that front.

The 9th edition codexes have made some great design choices, getting rid of army-wide FNP and decreasing the power or breadth of use of offensive Stratagems and auras.

yeah I think it's pretty telling to compare a typical strat combo from late-8th with one from right now:

Late 8th: I take a warlord trait that allows me to redeploy D3 of my units if I want to. I take a 20-man block of rubric marines, pay 1cp to deploy them anywhere I like on the board, let's say, within 24" of your gak.

We roll to go first. If I lose, I use my warlord trait to just put them back behind my light screening unit. If I win, I pay 1CP to give me +1 to wound rolls on all of that unit's 34 inferno boltgun shots and 8 soulreaper cannon shots, and then I pay another 1CP to shoot with them twice. 2CP = 133% offensive firepower increase on a 400 point unit.

9th ed CraaaAaaAAzy stratagem: admech can pay 1cp to scoop a unit of pteraxi back into deep strike after their turn.

pretty powerful. basically that's gonna double the firepower you get out of that unit that would probably be a fairly suicidal situation. Basically always worth the 1cp unless you're up against an army that just straight up does not care about pteraxi's 4d6 S4 AP-1 D1 hits. It's also strong because if youre not playing vs marines, eldar, tau with velocity trackers or admech mirror match many opponents just do not have an answer to that unit, and even if they do theyve only killed a relatively cheap 95pt squad.

But I have seen that Thousand Sons combo singlehandedly wipe what felt like 1/2 of an opposing space marine player's army off the board in a single turn before. It's apples to oranges.