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Tyel wrote: I think its fair to say some people (I'd probably number amongst them) would prefer unit's "power" to be rooted in their statline and their weapons statline.
I get where this is coming from, but such a game would almost exclusively decide the game by listbuilding and dice, with very little player agency.
Why do you reckon?
As I see it these rules put the emphasis on list building. Because there's a major difference in output to compiling all your bonuses together and not doing so. (To a degree you have execution on the table, but that's largely just character buffs.)
Both characters and stratagems are conditional. You can plan around super-buffing a unit of melee plague marines (to get away from those 8th edition codices): - Lord (re-roll ones) - Tallyman (+1 to hit) - Pyker (-1 to hit, +1S/+1T) - Foul blightspawn (fight last aura) - Plague surgeon (6+++, heal wounded models) - Bologus putrifier (Mortal Wounds on sixes, better grenades) - Marines with 2 flail of corruption, 2 mace of contagion, 2 great plague cleaver, 2 bubonic axes, an icon and powerfist/sword for the champion. - Plague Marine Champion gets the Plague Bringer relic sword for 1 CP
There are also some stratagems which can be used by those super-plague marines: - Trench Fighters (extra attack with plague knives) - Creeping Blight (6s to wound have AP-4) - Haze of Corruption (excess damage is not lost) - Eternal Hatred (+1 to wound) - The Blightening (3 grenades lose blast, auto-hit and become pistol 6) So, essentially 600+ points of "kills anything it touches" if you invest 8 CP.
Now the game starts. Those marines then get shot off the table, and you can't just switch all those buffs to another unit because those characters can't be everywhere and cannot buff everything. Your opponent can snipe your characters, deny the powers or switch off your auras. Characters get left behind because of bad advance rolls or charges or terrain chokepoints. Your opponent can delay them by calling an orbital bombardment in their path or simply feed that super-block of stuff a few cheap units to delay them or even hand over one or two objectives to them and hold all the others. By the time they actually get to fight anything they don't steam-roll already you might even have run out of CP.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption. What actually happens in a real game is that you pick one character, for example the biologus and stick them with your melee unit. Depending on who you are fighting you might use one of the stratagems to help you with that specific type of opponent (haze vs hordes or hatred vs vehicles, for example). There might be some opportunities where a plague caster or tallyman who is not dedicated to that unit have lost their subjects or just happen to be nearby and buff them as well. But at that point we are no longer talking about list building.
In reality, there is no point in stacking all those buffs, because stacking them makes your army worse, not better. If if your plague marines, repentia unit or ork boyz can in theory one-shot the castellan on the other side of the board, guess what that castellan is going to shoot first? Instead they provide choice - you pick one support character or two and buff them with a stratagem where necessary.
For example take your properly buffed up unit of Bloody Rose Repentia (I mean you won't have all the buffs they can get - but you'll have a few). Then... idk, compare with someone who has a Sacred Rose Sister's army cos they painted them that way, and bought some Repentia because they liked the models.
Points are the same but what they can plausibly be expected to accomplish on the table is massively different.
I don't want to handwave your argument, because it's a valid one, but I do want to point out that painting space marines red has made them more powerful in combat for pretty much all of 40ks history.
That said, I don't play sisters and rarely face them, so I don't know if -1 AP and an extra attack is vastly more powerful for them than it would be for orks or marines. I'll just assume it's in the same ballpark. I'll just say that it should be possible to properly balanced then anyways, if the baseline repentia is a solid assault unit, an extra AP and strength is not going to make them over the top insane everything shredders. In a perfect world, the different orders should all provide benefits of similar power, so the sisters army, as a whole, should be of similar power - one will hit harder in combat, the other ignores attrition, has more miracle dice and better overwatch.
Now you can argue - not unreasonably - that this listbuilding exercise to maximise synergy is part of 40k (or at least being good at 40k). Its not overly difficult to learn - and some people really enjoy it. For instance I do - I like looking through a codex and looking for combos. I don't want it to be got rid of entirely. Special rules are fun.
I'm kind of arguing the opposite though. In older editions most support characters were just unit upgrades bought at the start of the game, now they are separate units and while they often die along with their unit, more often than not you have some of them hanging around on the battlefield with no real job to, resulting in situations where a character just buffs a different unit because theirs is out of targets, the biggest value of a biologus putrefier comes from being able to chuck grenades or where a weird boy and a nob waaagh! banner tag-team a unit of intercessors. Essentially, if you build your list to maximize synergies, you are assuming that everything goes right, but more often than not it doesn't. In 9th I pretty much build 60-70% of my army to follow *The Plan* and the rest is for when everything goes south. I don't need units of 20 poxwalkers to hold objectives if my terminators crush everything in their path, but I as sure as hell need them if my opponent dodged the wall of cataphract armor and wants to take my backfield objectives.
But at the same time I think there's a question of *how far* the difference should be. Should you have combos that double or triple the offensive output of a unit? The concern would be that GW seems to be exaggerating these rules. I don't think shrinking this gap would reduce player agency. In theory it would allow for less cookie cutter builds and more varied meta. It should also produce an easier to balance game.
It is worth noting that all the examples in this thread are melee units. Even if you can buff your unit to ten times its output, it doesn't really matter when you can't apply all that damage or it is lost to overkill. There also is the cost of opportunity to consider when you blow that many points and CP on one combo - spreading those out will likely add up to a much better result. GW is cracking down hard on stacking ranged buffs and units that can very reliably apply their combat damage (good riddance, Smash Captains). As long as there is counter-play beyond "hope for dice" available to your opponent, I don't see an issue with stacking buffs.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/06/06 10:44:10
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
The problem with balancing these buff-bombs is their power can vary dramatically between competitive and casual play.
A casual player is unlikely to get the perfect buff combination, although its possible they will.
A tournament player almost certainly will.
40k is stuck catering to audiences with wildly different expectations; if you match balance for tournament players and assume every unit is going to have the optimum buffs, casual players will suffer.
Or vice versa.
As someone who runs VH Repentia (lol) unbuffed they still work in a casual setting, they aren't top table and require a bit more judgement to use. But still work.
Tyel wrote: I think its fair to say some people (I'd probably number amongst them) would prefer unit's "power" to be rooted in their statline and their weapons statline.
I get where this is coming from, but such a game would almost exclusively decide the game by listbuilding and dice, with very little player agency.
Why do you reckon?
As I see it these rules put the emphasis on list building. Because there's a major difference in output to compiling all your bonuses together and not doing so. (To a degree you have execution on the table, but that's largely just character buffs.)
Both characters and stratagems are conditional. You can plan around super-buffing a unit of melee plague marines (to get away from those 8th edition codices):
- Lord (re-roll ones)
- Tallyman (+1 to hit)
- Pyker (-1 to hit, +1S/+1T)
- Foul blightspawn (fight last aura)
- Plague surgeon (6+++, heal wounded models)
- Bologus putrifier (Mortal Wounds on sixes, better grenades)
- Marines with 2 flail of corruption, 2 mace of contagion, 2 great plague cleaver, 2 bubonic axes, an icon and powerfist/sword for the champion.
- Plague Marine Champion gets the Plague Bringer relic sword for 1 CP
There are also some stratagems which can be used by those super-plague marines:
- Trench Fighters (extra attack with plague knives)
- Creeping Blight (6s to wound have AP-4)
- Haze of Corruption (excess damage is not lost)
- Eternal Hatred (+1 to wound)
- The Blightening (3 grenades lose blast, auto-hit and become pistol 6)
So, essentially 600+ points of "kills anything it touches" if you invest 8 CP.
Now the game starts. Those marines then get shot off the table, and you can't just switch all those buffs to another unit because those characters can't be everywhere and cannot buff everything. Your opponent can snipe your characters, deny the powers or switch off your auras. Characters get left behind because of bad advance rolls or charges or terrain chokepoints. Your opponent can delay them by calling an orbital bombardment in their path or simply feed that super-block of stuff a few cheap units to delay them or even hand over one or two objectives to them and hold all the others. By the time they actually get to fight anything they don't steam-roll already you might even have run out of CP.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption. What actually happens in a real game is that you pick one character, for example the biologus and stick them with your melee unit. Depending on who you are fighting you might use one of the stratagems to help you with that specific type of opponent (haze vs hordes or hatred vs vehicles, for example).
There might be some opportunities where a plague caster or tallyman who is not dedicated to that unit have lost their subjects or just happen to be nearby and buff them as well. But at that point we are no longer talking about list building.
In reality, there is no point in stacking all those buffs, because stacking them makes your army worse, not better. If if your plague marines, repentia unit or ork boyz can in theory one-shot the castellan on the other side of the board, guess what that castellan is going to shoot first?
Instead they provide choice - you pick one support character or two and buff them with a stratagem where necessary.
For example take your properly buffed up unit of Bloody Rose Repentia (I mean you won't have all the buffs they can get - but you'll have a few).
Then... idk, compare with someone who has a Sacred Rose Sister's army cos they painted them that way, and bought some Repentia because they liked the models.
Points are the same but what they can plausibly be expected to accomplish on the table is massively different.
I don't want to handwave your argument, because it's a valid one, but I do want to point out that painting space marines red has made them more powerful in combat for pretty much all of 40ks history.
That said, I don't play sisters and rarely face them, so I don't know if -1 AP and an extra attack is vastly more powerful for them than it would be for orks or marines. I'll just assume it's in the same ballpark.
I'll just say that it should be possible to properly balanced then anyways, if the baseline repentia is a solid assault unit, an extra AP and strength is not going to make them over the top insane everything shredders. In a perfect world, the different orders should all provide benefits of similar power, so the sisters army, as a whole, should be of similar power - one will hit harder in combat, the other ignores attrition, has more miracle dice and better overwatch.
Now you can argue - not unreasonably - that this listbuilding exercise to maximise synergy is part of 40k (or at least being good at 40k). Its not overly difficult to learn - and some people really enjoy it. For instance I do - I like looking through a codex and looking for combos. I don't want it to be got rid of entirely. Special rules are fun.
I'm kind of arguing the opposite though. In older editions most support characters were just unit upgrades bought at the start of the game, now they are separate units and while they often die along with their unit, more often than not you have some of them hanging around on the battlefield with no real job to, resulting in situations where a character just buffs a different unit because theirs is out of targets, the biggest value of a biologus putrefier comes from being able to chuck grenades or where a weird boy and a nob waaagh! banner tag-team a unit of intercessors.
Essentially, if you build your list to maximize synergies, you are assuming that everything goes right, but more often than not it doesn't. In 9th I pretty much build 60-70% of my army to follow *The Plan* and the rest is for when everything goes south. I don't need units of 20 poxwalkers to hold objectives if my terminators crush everything in their path, but I as sure as hell need them if my opponent dodged the wall of cataphract armor and wants to take my backfield objectives.
But at the same time I think there's a question of *how far* the difference should be. Should you have combos that double or triple the offensive output of a unit? The concern would be that GW seems to be exaggerating these rules. I don't think shrinking this gap would reduce player agency. In theory it would allow for less cookie cutter builds and more varied meta. It should also produce an easier to balance game.
It is worth noting that all the examples in this thread are melee units. Even if you can buff your unit to ten times its output, it doesn't really matter when you can't apply all that damage or it is lost to overkill. There also is the cost of opportunity to consider when you blow that many points and CP on one combo - spreading those out will likely add up to a much better result.
GW is cracking down hard on stacking ranged buffs and units that can very reliably apply their combat damage (good riddance, Smash Captains). As long as there is counter-play beyond "hope for dice" available to your opponent, I don't see an issue with stacking buffs.
This should be required reading.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
kirotheavenger wrote: The problem with balancing these buff-bombs is their power can vary dramatically between competitive and casual play.
A casual player is unlikely to get the perfect buff combination, although its possible they will.
A tournament player almost certainly will.
40k is stuck catering to audiences with wildly different expectations; if you match balance for tournament players and assume every unit is going to have the optimum buffs, casual players will suffer.
Or vice versa.
Being casual doesn't mean they're incapable of learning and growth. That experience should spur a renewed vigor to go back to the drawing table.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/06 13:13:20
kirotheavenger wrote: The problem with balancing these buff-bombs is their power can vary dramatically between competitive and casual play.
A casual player is unlikely to get the perfect buff combination, although its possible they will.
A tournament player almost certainly will.
You got it backwards.
A tournament player will almost definitely dismantle such a combo and you will auto-lose.
A casual player is less likely to know how to counter such things, but they are also less likely to face one. Even in the worst case, these combos are still one-trick ponies.
In the end, an army that is aiming to stack that many buffs on one unit is extremely weak on the table.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
Tyel wrote: I think its fair to say some people (I'd probably number amongst them) would prefer unit's "power" to be rooted in their statline and their weapons statline.
I get where this is coming from, but such a game would almost exclusively decide the game by listbuilding and dice, with very little player agency.
Why do you reckon?
As I see it these rules put the emphasis on list building. Because there's a major difference in output to compiling all your bonuses together and not doing so. (To a degree you have execution on the table, but that's largely just character buffs.)
Both characters and stratagems are conditional. You can plan around super-buffing a unit of melee plague marines (to get away from those 8th edition codices):
- Lord (re-roll ones)
- Tallyman (+1 to hit)
- Pyker (-1 to hit, +1S/+1T)
- Foul blightspawn (fight last aura)
- Plague surgeon (6+++, heal wounded models)
- Bologus putrifier (Mortal Wounds on sixes, better grenades)
- Marines with 2 flail of corruption, 2 mace of contagion, 2 great plague cleaver, 2 bubonic axes, an icon and powerfist/sword for the champion.
- Plague Marine Champion gets the Plague Bringer relic sword for 1 CP
There are also some stratagems which can be used by those super-plague marines:
- Trench Fighters (extra attack with plague knives)
- Creeping Blight (6s to wound have AP-4)
- Haze of Corruption (excess damage is not lost)
- Eternal Hatred (+1 to wound)
- The Blightening (3 grenades lose blast, auto-hit and become pistol 6)
So, essentially 600+ points of "kills anything it touches" if you invest 8 CP.
Now the game starts. Those marines then get shot off the table, and you can't just switch all those buffs to another unit because those characters can't be everywhere and cannot buff everything. Your opponent can snipe your characters, deny the powers or switch off your auras. Characters get left behind because of bad advance rolls or charges or terrain chokepoints. Your opponent can delay them by calling an orbital bombardment in their path or simply feed that super-block of stuff a few cheap units to delay them or even hand over one or two objectives to them and hold all the others. By the time they actually get to fight anything they don't steam-roll already you might even have run out of CP.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption. What actually happens in a real game is that you pick one character, for example the biologus and stick them with your melee unit. Depending on who you are fighting you might use one of the stratagems to help you with that specific type of opponent (haze vs hordes or hatred vs vehicles, for example).
There might be some opportunities where a plague caster or tallyman who is not dedicated to that unit have lost their subjects or just happen to be nearby and buff them as well. But at that point we are no longer talking about list building.
In reality, there is no point in stacking all those buffs, because stacking them makes your army worse, not better. If if your plague marines, repentia unit or ork boyz can in theory one-shot the castellan on the other side of the board, guess what that castellan is going to shoot first?
Instead they provide choice - you pick one support character or two and buff them with a stratagem where necessary.
For example take your properly buffed up unit of Bloody Rose Repentia (I mean you won't have all the buffs they can get - but you'll have a few).
Then... idk, compare with someone who has a Sacred Rose Sister's army cos they painted them that way, and bought some Repentia because they liked the models.
Points are the same but what they can plausibly be expected to accomplish on the table is massively different.
I don't want to handwave your argument, because it's a valid one, but I do want to point out that painting space marines red has made them more powerful in combat for pretty much all of 40ks history.
That said, I don't play sisters and rarely face them, so I don't know if -1 AP and an extra attack is vastly more powerful for them than it would be for orks or marines. I'll just assume it's in the same ballpark.
I'll just say that it should be possible to properly balanced then anyways, if the baseline repentia is a solid assault unit, an extra AP and strength is not going to make them over the top insane everything shredders. In a perfect world, the different orders should all provide benefits of similar power, so the sisters army, as a whole, should be of similar power - one will hit harder in combat, the other ignores attrition, has more miracle dice and better overwatch.
Now you can argue - not unreasonably - that this listbuilding exercise to maximise synergy is part of 40k (or at least being good at 40k). Its not overly difficult to learn - and some people really enjoy it. For instance I do - I like looking through a codex and looking for combos. I don't want it to be got rid of entirely. Special rules are fun.
I'm kind of arguing the opposite though. In older editions most support characters were just unit upgrades bought at the start of the game, now they are separate units and while they often die along with their unit, more often than not you have some of them hanging around on the battlefield with no real job to, resulting in situations where a character just buffs a different unit because theirs is out of targets, the biggest value of a biologus putrefier comes from being able to chuck grenades or where a weird boy and a nob waaagh! banner tag-team a unit of intercessors.
Essentially, if you build your list to maximize synergies, you are assuming that everything goes right, but more often than not it doesn't. In 9th I pretty much build 60-70% of my army to follow *The Plan* and the rest is for when everything goes south. I don't need units of 20 poxwalkers to hold objectives if my terminators crush everything in their path, but I as sure as hell need them if my opponent dodged the wall of cataphract armor and wants to take my backfield objectives.
But at the same time I think there's a question of *how far* the difference should be. Should you have combos that double or triple the offensive output of a unit? The concern would be that GW seems to be exaggerating these rules. I don't think shrinking this gap would reduce player agency. In theory it would allow for less cookie cutter builds and more varied meta. It should also produce an easier to balance game.
It is worth noting that all the examples in this thread are melee units. Even if you can buff your unit to ten times its output, it doesn't really matter when you can't apply all that damage or it is lost to overkill. There also is the cost of opportunity to consider when you blow that many points and CP on one combo - spreading those out will likely add up to a much better result.
GW is cracking down hard on stacking ranged buffs and units that can very reliably apply their combat damage (good riddance, Smash Captains). As long as there is counter-play beyond "hope for dice" available to your opponent, I don't see an issue with stacking buffs.
This should be required reading.
Thanks for the praise
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption.
Basically: Power Pairs > Megabuffstars
Seriously, keeping the buffs small and simple keep you from putting too many eggs in one basket while still adding efficiency to units. It's honestly the better way to approach modern 40k.
The problem is some units don't need supporting characters. They just need one or two strategems to go off, and they still do massive damage.
20 man rangers, two strategems. One to make their guns rapid fire 2, and the other called wrath of mars so that 6s to wound do mortal wounds. Within rapid fire range of a 30 inch gun (which is 15 inches), that 20 man blob will now almost certainly do 6 MW, plus whatever 80 shots of AP 1 is going to do (hint, a lot).
20 man vanguard blob. Use enriched rounds strategem. Fire off your 60 shots and hits of 4 will auto wound. So, without any rerolling or even any support characters. That's still 30 wounds on average dice.
Whatever support they have is just icing on the cake at that point.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/06 16:39:48
Thanks! Dogemata just clicked in my head as a stupid joke I had to make.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eldenfirefly wrote: The problem is some units don't need supporting characters. They just need one or two strategems to go off, and they still do massive damage.
20 man rangers, two strategems. One to make their guns rapid fire 2, and the other called wrath of mars so that 6s to wound do mortal wounds. Within rapid fire range of a 30 inch gun (which is 15 inches), that 20 man blob will now almost certainly do 6 MW, plus whatever 80 shots of AP 1 is going to do (hint, a lot).
20 man vanguard blob. Use enriched rounds strategem. Fire off your 60 shots and hits of 4 will auto wound. So, without any rerolling or even any support characters. That's still 30 wounds on average dice.
Whatever support they have is just icing on the cake at that point.
Strats are limited by CP which is a limited resource making it an opportunity cost you need to budget for.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/06 17:29:46
Strats are limited by CP which is a limited resource making it an opportunity cost you need to budget for.
When 1CP for one army does 1MW and 1CP for another army does 2MW then that makes balance more difficult. It also stacks with any other buffs a unit might have. If a 100 pt value unit fights twice then that's one thing, if a 200 pt value unit fights twice then that's a lot better. the same Stratagem used on units from different chapters can have different impacts. Blood Angels smash Captains with relic, WL trait and two different Stratagem buffs getting to swing another time versus a random Ultramarine Captain nobody with no relic or WL trait or other Stratagems, yes that's a problem, even if "CP is a limited resource".
Stacking 3 buffs isn't really that hard, Daemon Prince with Prescience, DS 3 Obliterators near him and use the Slaanesh Stratagem Endless Cacaphony on them to shoot twice. 1 Obliterator inflicts 1x worth of damage on average. Buffed by re-roll 1s is 1,17x, buffed by Prescience is 1,25x, buffed by Endless Cacaphony is 2x. Buff 3 Obliterators with all three and you get 8,75x.
A Chapter Master and Chaplain giving a MM Attack Bike unit a good luck kiss before they go isn't hard to do either and can be done on a unit that is benefitting from a Chapter Tactic and Super Doctrine to make the unit a lot better than its baseline in a multiplicative, not additive way.
If people were really just using their character to buff one unit at a time then buffs could simply work on the same vector or non-multiplicative vectors by making them better at different things, rather than just better. This could mean all SM character giving re-rolls to hit and never bonuses to hit or to wound and never re-roll wounds or extra attacks or it could mean one character buffing damage versus vehicles while another buffed them against monsters or infantry.
Karol wrote: Ah. Thanks for explaining. That does sound powerful. Well at least the game had to be very fast with all armies throwing instant kill on +2 stuff around.
Still must have made people that like to paint really unhappy. paint for 2-3 months, remove it from the table after 5 min on turn 1.
See, the thing is 7th was more absurd on both ends of the spectrum. Offense and defense.
I briefly mentioned Invisibility - that was a psychic power that almost any psyker in the game could attempt to roll for (you used to randomly roll for your powers, so a 2-power psyker would have a bit above a 1/3 chance of getting invis in the partiuclar discipline it was in) and what it did was "the psyker and the unit he is attached to may only be shot with Snap Shots (always only hit on a 6 no matter your BS) and may not be targeted with template weapons"
so if your opponent had a D-cannon, which was a Strength D blast, and you had invisibility, congratulations! You have complete, total immunity to that D cannon as long as he doesn't peril the cast. It just came down to that good good random roll right at the beginning of the game. And people think who goes first in 9th swings the game a lot, LOL.
You also had multiple popular combos that would allow you to get a unit up to a re-rollable 2++ invulnerable save - 35/36 chance to save. So mathmatically, you could get a unit of screamers plus a lord of change to the point where it could literally stand in front of the entire opposing army, tanking all of its fire and doing nothing for a full 6 turns, and have a decent chance of survival.
Invisibility really fethed over my Guard army. Suddenly all my leman russ tanks and artillery was useless. What did I do instead? Saved the points on the Russes, took 3 primaris psykers for my own invisibility, 3 ministorum priests for fearless, took 3 blobs of 50 guardsmen and just annoyed that player.
I remember another time, I bought the hardcopy cards for powers. I asked an opponent if I could just shuffle the cards, have them break it, and then just take the ones I drew. They said yes. I drew invisibility and they literally accused me of cheating. The TO came over and told me I had to roll. So I did, and got invisibility anyway.
I have been playing Kings of War lately and it have shown me that 40k is really bloated. Outside some special characters that might have an unique rule the game have a few pages of Universal special rules that all armies use, one spell list and 2 item lists that are also shared between all factions. Besides some names special characters there are at most 1 rule unique for a faction and that one comes as a unit upgrade for some of the core units of that faction, costs points and usually is as relevant as a point of extra Leadership or extra ap on 6s to wound in 40k.
Like a single Astartes model can have more rules text on them than the 4 different 1500pts armies with literally hundreds of models clogging the table had combined like in a game I played last month. Yet the ratkins/Skaven, orcs, elves and KoM/Empire all felt like 4 different armies while sharing common rules.
Bloated special rules just adds superficial "character" to models and factions. The important part should be in how models are used and feel like on the tabletop. Not what their A4 of special rules tell you. All the extra rules even removes character from certain factions.
Like they have removed a few of the ways Blood Angels could ensure charges from deepstrike and move around the table. In itself it wouldn't be much of a problem but lots of other factions now have access to charge bonuses(+1 to charge and advance abilities are really common) and extra dice on charges. If I understood correctly ad mech can now deepstrike more reliably than Blood Angels with jump packs and also have +1 to wound in combat. White Scars also do not only run over the table faster than Blood Angels but they even deepstrike with Jump packs better. Raven guard also does jump packs better than BA and not just infiltrate better. Only reason BA do any jumping at all is because their unique units (mostly SG are cheap for being such an elite unit) are still good. Here we have rules bloat unintentionally undermining faction identity due to combo stacking making some subfractions do things better than what is part of the primary identity of others.
I would if I could remove like 90% of all the special rules. Be it bolter variations, warlord traits, relics, stratagems, chapter tactics, doctrines or just word salad on the data sheets. Then change stat lines for lots of things instead. Like remove moral mitigation by increasing base leadership, remove shock assault and just add 1 base attack to most marine units, add toughness and wounds to monsters and vehicles and remove most defensive rules they have etc. Then give like 1 rule at most to differentiate elite/special units from the troop equivalents and then a handful of rules, like 5-10 rules in total between stratagems and tactics and not a dozen pages of them, in total to subfractions to make them different from the base faction(that also only get a handful of rules).
If every unit have 5+ rules that modifies a units behaviour from what can be glanced from their statline, how do you indentify what that unit really does and make it different from another unit in another faction that also have a bunch of rules that make them do the same thing just with different names? As it is now it might just be the model and names itself that are different because all the superficial rules just dilutes their flavour from other similar units.
If every unit have 5+ rules that modifies a units behaviour from what can be glanced from their statline, how do you indentify what that unit really does and make it different from another unit in another faction that also have a bunch of rules that make them do the same thing just with different names?
Generaly if you can't find it out on your own, you just check 2-3 big tournaments from 2-3 different countries, and if the top army seem to be running a specific unit in all or most of those events, then you know that it is different from other units, because it is spamed or it is not taken at all, and you know this way, that it is bad. There is really no need to reinvent the wheel each time someone builds an army. There is a ton of people that can do it for you. And as for the how a unit works it is generally very obvious, and for more specific ways of handling a unit, a person can just watch some event streams and showcase games alongside reading some reports. The rest has to be learned by playing.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
When 1CP for one army does 1MW and 1CP for another army does 2MW then that makes balance more difficult. It also stacks with any other buffs a unit might have. If a 100 pt value unit fights twice then that's one thing, if a 200 pt value unit fights twice then that's a lot better. the same Stratagem used on units from different chapters can have different impacts. Blood Angels smash Captains with relic, WL trait and two different Stratagem buffs getting to swing another time versus a random Ultramarine Captain nobody with no relic or WL trait or other Stratagems, yes that's a problem, even if "CP is a limited resource".
In theory it shouldn't be a problem. Armies have their own strenghts and weaknesses so it's perfectly reasonable that the same mechanic (Smash Captain for a specific chapter or an equivalent stratagem applied to two different armies) is more powerful for faction A compared to faction B, even way more powerful, as long as the whole set of rules puts both factions on a comparable level.
I mean a BA captain SHOULD be more killy than an ultramarine one as BA have always been close combat oriented marines and one of the most effective chapters in melee, both in rules and lore. Ultramarines should have others strenghts that BA don't get access though.
So the concept isn't a problem, and I actually think it's good as variety is always welcome. Sometimes there are some disparities that have gone too far though, but nothing that really can't be fixed if GW wants to do it.
Perfect balance is impossible to achieve if factions are designed with different rules and stats, we're not playing chess where both players have exactly the same models and exactly the same rules. A reasonable balance is what we're seeking, but "reasonable" is a subjective concept. In fact IMHO we already have it, while for other players the game is extremely unbalanced.
If every unit have 5+ rules that modifies a units behaviour from what can be glanced from their statline, how do you indentify what that unit really does and make it different from another unit in another faction that also have a bunch of rules that make them do the same thing just with different names?
Generaly if you can't find it out on your own, you just check 2-3 big tournaments from 2-3 different countries, and if the top army seem to be running a specific unit in all or most of those events, then you know that it is different from other units, because it is spamed or it is not taken at all, and you know this way, that it is bad. There is really no need to reinvent the wheel each time someone builds an army. There is a ton of people that can do it for you. And as for the how a unit works it is generally very obvious, and for more specific ways of handling a unit, a person can just watch some event streams and showcase games alongside reading some reports. The rest has to be learned by playing.
Or, you just try out yourself what works and accept that you don't always win all the time
I have played almost everything but some of the named characters I don't own from the ork codex at least once, and am quite sure what each unit really does.
Strats are limited by CP which is a limited resource making it an opportunity cost you need to budget for.
When 1CP for one army does 1MW and 1CP for another army does 2MW then that makes balance more difficult. It also stacks with any other buffs a unit might have. If a 100 pt value unit fights twice then that's one thing, if a 200 pt value unit fights twice then that's a lot better. the same Stratagem used on units from different chapters can have different impacts. Blood Angels smash Captains with relic, WL trait and two different Stratagem buffs getting to swing another time versus a random Ultramarine Captain nobody with no relic or WL trait or other Stratagems, yes that's a problem, even if "CP is a limited resource".
With all due respect, but I think this the wrong way of looking at things. It doesn't really matter whether the blood angel captain is doing the exact same amount of damage as the ultramarine captain.
In the end what matters is whether a blood angel army with a captain has the same chance of winning a game as an ultramarine army with a captain. Same goes for the stratagems dealing Mortal wounds, for example it's ok for DG to deal more mortal wounds than others because they tend to have vastly less shooting than other armies.
Stacking 3 buffs isn't really that hard, Daemon Prince with Prescience, DS 3 Obliterators near him and use the Slaanesh Stratagem Endless Cacaphony on them to shoot twice. 1 Obliterator inflicts 1x worth of damage on average. Buffed by re-roll 1s is 1,17x, buffed by Prescience is 1,25x, buffed by Endless Cacaphony is 2x. Buff 3 Obliterators with all three and you get 8,75x.
I think it has been stated multiple times that this kind of stacking is not healthy for the game and unlikely to survive the 9th edition CSM codex. My bet is that Endless Cacophony will be limited to noise marines, if it survives as shoot twice at all.
A Chapter Master and Chaplain giving a MM Attack Bike unit a good luck kiss before they go isn't hard to do either and can be done on a unit that is benefitting from a Chapter Tactic and Super Doctrine to make the unit a lot better than its baseline in a multiplicative, not additive way.
Would you still think this is a problem if those attack bikes were sporting heavy bolters? Or if the buffed unit is any other bike unit? I think the MM is the problem here, not the ability of 200 points of characters doubling the output of a CORE unit.
If people were really just using their character to buff one unit at a time then buffs could simply work on the same vector or non-multiplicative vectors by making them better at different things, rather than just better. This could mean all SM character giving re-rolls to hit and never bonuses to hit or to wound and never re-roll wounds or extra attacks or it could mean one character buffing damage versus vehicles while another buffed them against monsters or infantry.
Multiplicative buffs are fine if the factor is low enough. With cacophony out of the picture, prescience, chaos lord aura and VotLW would end up at significantly less than double damage, for quite a huge investment (two HQs and 2CP according to Codex: DG).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/07 10:32:07
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
You know that is something someone that owns a FLGS or GW stock would say.
Just buy 6k of models and find out if it works, or if it doesn't. Not a problem when most of the stuff works and you end up with an army, or even multiple armies to play with. It is a totaly different can of worms, when you end up twice or three times as much money spend as someone with one lists and face the harsh truth of , this faction was not ment for this edition. And that is assuming the army has extra stuff to buy. How many knights does a knight player need ? For custodes and harlequins the armies more or less come pre build. And it is nice that this edition both armies work well.
Plus there is also the end game of collecting an army over the regular edition build, and not being happy with it for years, and then GW pulling a bretonia on you. I can only imagine how someone who spend a few thousand dollars on GW models and books, because they like knights, feels after their army gets squated with no warrning too.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Karol wrote: You know that is something someone that owns a FLGS or GW stock would say.
Just buy 6k of models and find out if it works, or if it doesn't. Not a problem when most of the stuff works and you end up with an army, or even multiple armies to play with. It is a totaly different can of worms, when you end up twice or three times as much money spend as someone with one lists and face the harsh truth of , this faction was not ment for this edition. And that is assuming the army has extra stuff to buy. How many knights does a knight player need ? For custodes and harlequins the armies more or less come pre build. And it is nice that this edition both armies work well.
Plus there is also the end game of collecting an army over the regular edition build, and not being happy with it for years, and then GW pulling a bretonia on you. I can only imagine how someone who spend a few thousand dollars on GW models and books, because they like knights, feels after their army gets squated with no warrning too.
TTS is 20€, 10€ if it's on sale which is like every other month.
Borrowing models is free, as is proxying and using card-board cut-outs.
By your own claims, you haven't made a single change to your army ever, so you don't get to complain about your sixth edition army not working in 9th edition.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
I can only imagine how someone who spend a few thousand dollars on GW models and books, because they like knights, feels after their army gets squated with no warrning too.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption.
Basically: Power Pairs > Megabuffstars
Seriously, keeping the buffs small and simple keep you from putting too many eggs in one basket while still adding efficiency to units. It's honestly the better way to approach modern 40k.
^this.
If the buff from a particular admech character becomes problematic, that character's points can be increased. If a particular holy order's buff is too powerful, that's also go a point cost.
Admech might be strong (honestly, in the games I've played against them with my less competitive armies I'm not really convinced personally? They seem fine, but my first outing against them I brought GSC and won pretty handily...) but everything in them is at least built with the levers necessary to be balanceable.
Removed
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/07 14:03:06
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
The only element that frustrates me in 9th specifically is the addition of the stupid, stupid purity bonus rules, which are just clear bloat and compound in complexity with the new stanard of every single subfaction trait being 2 separate abilities.
And also really painful for factions where souping in is either encouraged or at least half the army's arsenal, especially with the 9ed objective structure. (Imperial knights being an example of the former, and GSC being an example of the latter.) For knights, while they can function, they really need some form of infantry support to function well, and for GSC, while Brood Brother's have never been especially worth taking, some of these purity rules will really hurt them more.
The only element that frustrates me in 9th specifically is the addition of the stupid, stupid purity bonus rules, which are just clear bloat and compound in complexity with the new stanard of every single subfaction trait being 2 separate abilities.
And also really painful for factions where souping in is either encouraged or at least half the army's arsenal, especially with the 9ed objective structure. (Imperial knights being an example of the former, and GSC being an example of the latter.) For knights, while they can function, they really need some form of infantry support to function well, and for GSC, while Brood Brother's have never been especially worth taking, some of these purity rules will really hurt them more.
being gsc though the purity bonus will be like:
"if 100% of your army is <cult> keyword and does not contain any GENESTEALERS units, why, because shut up that's why there's no room for genestealers in genestealer cults you dumb idiot, then one PSYKER keyword model in your army can once per game deny 1 additional psychic power, and one model in your army can reroll 1 hit roll once per battle, and your VEHICLE keyword models can move and shoot heavy weapons.
Also, you can take one single Aberrant model at a point value that a sane human being came up with, but you have to use the lobotomized rhesus monkey value for the rest of them."
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/07 14:53:49
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
The only element that frustrates me in 9th specifically is the addition of the stupid, stupid purity bonus rules, which are just clear bloat and compound in complexity with the new stanard of every single subfaction trait being 2 separate abilities.
And also really painful for factions where souping in is either encouraged or at least half the army's arsenal, especially with the 9ed objective structure. (Imperial knights being an example of the former, and GSC being an example of the latter.) For knights, while they can function, they really need some form of infantry support to function well, and for GSC, while Brood Brother's have never been especially worth taking, some of these purity rules will really hurt them more.
It's worth noting that GW gave AdMech a free pass to bring one knight and similar things have been done for assassins and inquisitors. It's not unlikely that GSC will gain their bonus as long as the entire army is Cult or Blood Brothers.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
Both characters and stratagems are conditional. You can plan around super-buffing a unit of melee plague marines (to get away from those 8th edition codices):
Spoiler:
- Lord (re-roll ones) - Tallyman (+1 to hit) - Pyker (-1 to hit, +1S/+1T) - Foul blightspawn (fight last aura) - Plague surgeon (6+++, heal wounded models) - Bologus putrifier (Mortal Wounds on sixes, better grenades) - Marines with 2 flail of corruption, 2 mace of contagion, 2 great plague cleaver, 2 bubonic axes, an icon and powerfist/sword for the champion. - Plague Marine Champion gets the Plague Bringer relic sword for 1 CP
There are also some stratagems which can be used by those super-plague marines: - Trench Fighters (extra attack with plague knives) - Creeping Blight (6s to wound have AP-4) - Haze of Corruption (excess damage is not lost) - Eternal Hatred (+1 to wound) - The Blightening (3 grenades lose blast, auto-hit and become pistol 6) So, essentially 600+ points of "kills anything it touches" if you invest 8 CP.
Now the game starts. Those marines then get shot off the table, and you can't just switch all those buffs to another unit because those characters can't be everywhere and cannot buff everything. Your opponent can snipe your characters, deny the powers or switch off your auras. Characters get left behind because of bad advance rolls or charges or terrain chokepoints. Your opponent can delay them by calling an orbital bombardment in their path or simply feed that super-block of stuff a few cheap units to delay them or even hand over one or two objectives to them and hold all the others. By the time they actually get to fight anything they don't steam-roll already you might even have run out of CP.
So my answer to "how do you balance this?" is "you don't need to". These super-buff constellations look powerful on paper, in a vacuum, but are extremely unwieldy in practice because they are both expensive and vulnerable to disruption. What actually happens in a real game is that you pick one character, for example the biologus and stick them with your melee unit. Depending on who you are fighting you might use one of the stratagems to help you with that specific type of opponent (haze vs hordes or hatred vs vehicles, for example). There might be some opportunities where a plague caster or tallyman who is not dedicated to that unit have lost their subjects or just happen to be nearby and buff them as well. But at that point we are no longer talking about list building.
Most balance discussions focus on comparative points for units. They typically start and stop at the point of list building.
This approach to balance ignores the complexity of the rest of the game. What stands out to me the most is dependencies between units. There are too many situations where removing a key unit diminishes the abilities of the rest of the army, making points comparisons less relevant.
I'm traditionally a Chaos player, since about 6th edition CSM armies have depended on one or more HQs to get any kind of performance out of our troops (Abaddon, Sorcerer, DP, Dark Apostle, etc.) Remove one of them, the performance of the remainder drops heavily in comparison with Imperial counterparts. The design of 9th edition limits the number and type of HQs that can be taken in a CSM detachment. How do you balance for that, where do formations, auras, and tabletop-situations play a role in discussions of balance?
They don't have a place. We ignore them because we can't get past points comparisons between different factions.
Deathwatch are the best place to see this. You can pay the points for very expensive Kill Teams that are every bit as fragile as their standard counterparts in other factions. But the army size is limited, and you *really* need the right mix of buffs / artefacts / Stratagems / placement of cover / execution to be successful with your Deathwatch army.
Deathwatch is not limited to 3 or 4 troop choices, there are permutations of standard line troops that can be used in Kill Teams. Trying to balance the game off points alone is probably impossible so long as Deathwatch exist, they're literally a different army depending on what goes into those Kill Teams.
Which brings up an interesting question. If it's impossible to balance the game based on points, what other metric(s) should be considered for the purpose of balance? If there's not a reliable alternative metric, what should be done? Should DW be taken out of the game because it's not possible to balance? Should auras / effects be eliminated because they throw off points balance?
I don't know. But I don't think it's possible to balance 40k on points alone.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/07 15:07:02
Balance is not a formula that you can solve for the one balanced state.
Balance is a model that needs to be iterated over and over again. Each step either brings you closer or further away from balance, you keep the things that work and change those that don't.
Eventually the game will be sufficiently balanced that the difference will matter no more than dice, player skill or having a good/bad day.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
The only element that frustrates me in 9th specifically is the addition of the stupid, stupid purity bonus rules, which are just clear bloat and compound in complexity with the new stanard of every single subfaction trait being 2 separate abilities.
And also really painful for factions where souping in is either encouraged or at least half the army's arsenal, especially with the 9ed objective structure. (Imperial knights being an example of the former, and GSC being an example of the latter.) For knights, while they can function, they really need some form of infantry support to function well, and for GSC, while Brood Brother's have never been especially worth taking, some of these purity rules will really hurt them more.
It's worth noting that GW gave AdMech a free pass to bring one knight and similar things have been done for assassins and inquisitors. It's not unlikely that GSC will gain their bonus as long as the entire army is Cult or Blood Brothers.
This is mostly a joke, based on the fact that the latest GSC codex essentially took every possible, conceivable design restriction from the entirety of 8th edition and slapped them all onto one of the most limited model ranges in the game.
It was like a weird "best of hits" album of all the arbitrary 8th ed restrictions:
-subfaction traits that are only applicable to one optional upgrade available to one squad
-subfaction traits that don't apply to vehicles, and also don't apply to various random subgroups of units for an extremely shaky "Because Fluff"
-limits on the number of times you can take particular units (i.e. all characters in the codex)
-limits on which units can use the special rules that every unit pays extra points for
-limits on the number of times you can use particular stratagems
I can't wait for GSC to be the last codex of 9th edition, and for GW to leave all those restrictions in place while also applying their hilarious nightmare zone datasheet virus to kits like Atalan Jackals.
Can you fething imagine what the atalan jackal datasheet will look like when GW starts applying the "only what's in the kit" restrictions to them? The Atalan Jackals kit has bits with rules that appear
-in the model's hands
-sculpted onto the model's waist
-in the saddlebags of the bike
-some bits scaled to fit the female models on the sprue, some bits scaled to fit the male models on the sprue
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
The only element that frustrates me in 9th specifically is the addition of the stupid, stupid purity bonus rules, which are just clear bloat and compound in complexity with the new stanard of every single subfaction trait being 2 separate abilities.
And also really painful for factions where souping in is either encouraged or at least half the army's arsenal, especially with the 9ed objective structure. (Imperial knights being an example of the former, and GSC being an example of the latter.) For knights, while they can function, they really need some form of infantry support to function well, and for GSC, while Brood Brother's have never been especially worth taking, some of these purity rules will really hurt them more.
It's worth noting that GW gave AdMech a free pass to bring one knight and similar things have been done for assassins and inquisitors. It's not unlikely that GSC will gain their bonus as long as the entire army is Cult or Blood Brothers.
If I recall, they still have to pay the three CP, since the strategem that changes it to Admech, rather than ImperialKnights only applies to the stratagem, and not any other rules interactions.
This is mostly a joke, based on the fact that the latest GSC codex essentially took every possible, conceivable design restriction from the entirety of 8th edition and slapped them all onto one of the most limited model ranges in the game.
It was like a weird "best of hits" album of all the arbitrary 8th ed restrictions:
-subfaction traits that are only applicable to one optional upgrade available to one squad
-subfaction traits that don't apply to vehicles, and also don't apply to various random subgroups of units for an extremely shaky "Because Fluff"
-limits on the number of times you can take particular units (i.e. all characters in the codex)
-limits on which units can use the special rules that every unit pays extra points for
-limits on the number of times you can use particular stratagems
I can't wait for GSC to be the last codex of 9th edition, and for GW to leave all those restrictions in place while also applying their hilarious nightmare zone datasheet virus to kits like Atalan Jackals.
Can you fething imagine what the atalan jackal datasheet will look like when GW starts applying the "only what's in the kit" restrictions to them? The Atalan Jackals kit has bits with rules that appear
-in the model's hands
-sculpted onto the model's waist
-in the saddlebags of the bike
-some bits scaled to fit the female models on the sprue, some bits scaled to fit the male models on the sprue
Indeed, it's gonna be great!
Can't wait until we get our obligatory new HQ, to add yet more options to the slot. Not like a hardy Troops option would be appreciated, don't need those at all!
I think you are right that they are trying to pull back on shooting buffs. Its a bit early days - but it looks like Retributors have taken a hit in the new Sisters Codex for instance.
Really I don't think its a balance issue (which I think can be brought into reasonable line via points) but a philosophical one. How powerful should chapter tactics be, how powerful should stratagems be etc. Because you could have a game where most factions approach a 50% win rate with high-impact stratagems and low impact-stratagems.
This is sort of becoming devils advocate because I'm not really bothered either way. I feel GW has tried to balance the 9th chapters more than they did the 8th ones.
