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Almost put this in Proposed Rules, but it seemed broad and undefined enough to make more sense here.

So I think most of us are aware that the game is in the midst of another round of codex creep that is increasing the lethality of the game again. Personally, I don't like it. I love my drukhari, but I don't love that half their changes in the new 'dex were just raw lethality boosts. (I'm looking at you, 2 Damage incubi klaives.)

Assuming we were to try and reverse the arms race a bit, what are some healthy, fluffy changes to your codex (or codices) that would either lower your overall lethality or (re)introduce a fluffy weakness to your army? Off the top of my head:

ELDAR:
* I'd love for guardians to go back to hitting on 4+.
* I'd welcome a return to 1 heavy per 3 bikes windrider troops.
* Combat Attrition test penalties if they've lost more than half their non-vehicle units? (They're despairing at the loss of life. Incentivizes keeping your space elves alive.)
* Make wraith sight a bad thing again. -1 to hit if there's no psyker within 12"? (Spirit seers could negate wraith sight out to like, 24" instead or something.)

MARINES
* Probably just ditch doctrines.
* Maybe ditch bolter discipline.
* Consider making some primaris units WS/BS 4+ unless you upgrade them to be veterans. (Can you tell I just read Avenging Son?)

NECRONS
* Maybe bring back some form of Phase Out. Something less punishing than what it used to be. Maybe cause them to autofail morale at the end of any player turn in which there are no 'cron characters alive on the table to direct them?

TYRANIDS
* Non-infiltrator types cannot use stratagems when outside of synapse?

DRUKHARI
* We could probably stand to return every weapon that just became D2 back to D1.
* Kabalite warriors could stand to go back to 5+ saves.
* The +1 Attack on everything may be a bit unnecessary. (Though I'm glad they seem to be trying to acknowledge the loss of speed caused by removing Initiative.)

ANY MELEE-CENTRIC ARMY
* Has a chance of being baited into charging the closest enemy unit unless there's a character around.

Obviously any of these in a vacuum would create a lot of balance issues that would need to be addressed. I just kind of hate the sense that we're tip-toe'ing back towards 7th edition levels of lethality, and I miss some of the fluffy drawbacks armies used to have.

My CSM army is already pretty unplayable. If I try and nerf them again there may be nothing left.

AD MECH
* Play with 8th edition rules

WS/BS 4+ Necron Warriors instead of 3+. I think they'd need a points cost reduction, but that would still make them relatively less killy and relatively more tanky.

Revenge of the Doomstalker Stratagem 3CP instead of 2CP.

Relentlessly Expansionist custom dynasty pre-game move made before roll for first turn.

Quantum Deflection, Shadows of Drazak and Whirling Onslaught Stratagems for 4+ invul/-1 to hit/-1 to wound used at the beginning of any phase instead of when targeted by an attack.

Solar Pulse Stratagem for removing cover works for one Necron unit instead of the entire army.

Storm of Flensing Blades Stratagem for fighting twice 3CP instead of 2CP.

-1 to Time's Arrow C'tan power against CHARACTERS.

Purge the Vermin 1VP per table quarter free of enemies at the end of turn starting turn 1 instead of 2VP starting turn 2.

Necrons cannot take Abhor the Witch.

@AnomanderRake I can do it for you, I love nerfs

I have (Primaris) Space Marines. I would wholeheartedly get behind removing Doctrines. If more was required, I'd look at removing Bolter discipline and/or shock assault.

I wouldn't be against removing ATSKNF too.

You could make Canoptek Scarabs count each wound as a model for the purpose of blast and such. Small nerf, to be sure, but it's one of those things that makes so much flavor sense I'm kinda surprised GW doesn't already have that rule.

Point increse for Units of Redemption

AdMech:

1. Enriched rounds go to a 5+ auto wounds and 1 CP for 10, 2CP for 11+ (I would also argue that the ranger version should also be 1CP for <10 too though)
2. The Fusilave bomber has a -1 to hit on characters with its bombs (i.e. so the mortals wound them on 5+) as they are really good at vehicle/monster character sniping atm.
3. Rangers & Vanguard go up 1-2pts per model base.
4. Ironstriders go up +5 for the base model and +10 for the lascannon (so they are 70/90 for Auto/Las respectively)
5. ???

If I need to weaken my army in order to get a more balanced game against someone that cannot field a very optimized list I simply take the units I usually shelve. That's it.

Instead of removing doctrines bring a Land Raider .

 KingGarland wrote:
AD MECH
* Play with 8th edition rules

Or just go "oops, my list is missing 500 points, oh well, lets try it out anyway against that 2000 point list my opponent has brought". And crush their soul by telling them this only at the end, when they have been defeated. Yes, I am Evil. At least I would be, if I had an ad mech army :(

 Blackie wrote:
If I need to weaken my army in order to get a more balanced game against someone that cannot field a very optimized list I simply take the units I usually shelve. That's it.

Instead of removing doctrines bring a Land Raider .

I think the premise of the OP was rather than limiting yourself in list building, imagine GW were to make changes to the rules in order to reduce the lethality of the game, what sort of rules changes do you think would be effective at achieving this in the various factions?

For Tyranids, I'd like to see some of the extremely useful but at the same time suffocating gimmicks to be redesigned.

Hive Commander - The Swarmlord is a game-changer - his ability makes or breaks multiple tactics, army compositions, and units in general. The Swarmy should be redesigned into a proper Supreme Commander as per lore (only Primarchs and The Silent King are really comparable) with more abilities but each ability somewhat weaker.

Single-minded Annihilation - A 2CP stratagem to fire again with any infantry unit. This stratagem is used over and over, a turn after a turn, a game after a game as long as there is a viable unit on the table and CPs in the bank. It's a no-brainer.

Symbiostorm - Change the extra hit to an unmodified hit roll of 6. It has an unique interaction with Exocrine's natural +1 to hit that disproportionally boosts its effectivity way above everything else in the codex. The spell on anything else is just decent, though a simple presence of dense cover cancels it completely.

These gimmicks are what keeps the terribly outdated Tyranids in the game. Single-Minded Annihilation brings shooting of one unit to the contemporary average. Hive Commander makes up for many shortcomings of weak and slow units. Symbiostorm + Exocrine gives us one real way to threaten multiwound models with high saves from distance.

Removing those clutch gimmicks without significant stat and ability buffs across the entire range would be a disaster comparable with the 6th edition codex or the 8th edition GK codex.

I would basically like to see Subfaction Traits and maybe one signature army-wide rule go back to being the standard.

I do not find that:

-doctrines
-super-doctrine (in my case, being able to do any doctrine on any turn)
-ignoring the morale mechanic, functionally
-double tapping bolters if I dont move
-plus 1 attack on the charge

Significantly improves my play experience with marines. Instead, it just tends to make it a miserable nightmare to track everything all the time.

Purity bonuses aren't necessary and are obviously not working. Ditch Doctrines, Blade Artists, Command Protocols, Canticles/Doctrinas, Sacred Rites and then do a balance pass to reduce costs for units for factions (like marines) that were more heavily invested into the purity bonus mechanic.

The new CP system is the only anti-soup measure the game needs. Every Skitarii unit does not have to have the capability to be 2+sv or 2+BS on any given turn, every drukhari unit does not need an invuln and advance+charge and WS2+, every marine weapon does not need AP-2, every sister of battle unit does not have to deny the witch D6+3....etc etc etc.

For certain armies I think merging the generic armywide bonus with the purity bonus may be warranted to add some flavor back in - say, merge PFP and Blade Artists into a system whereby lets say Drukhari units get WS2+ for the rest of the game after they've destroyed 1 enemy unit, and they get a 6++ invuln after resolving the first attack against the unit that causes unsaved wounds but doesnt destroy the unit, something like that.

But good lord is the ol' GW tendency of kidnapping core mechanics into these stupid purity bonuses in order to get buy-in from the playerbase fething obnoxious. Its the same gak they pull every edition with their manufactured discontent mechanic but it sucks every time.

As Orks, I would happily sacrifice some control for more randomness.

Used to be that shokk attack guns could charge 60" if they rolled well/badly enough, trukks would explode, kareen then explode, or just fall apart when they died, kill tanks could fire 3 shells, but sometimes the grots would fire a boom shell no matter what because grots love the boom, mad dok grotsnik had to move towards and charge the enemy, and so on.

I miss the level of random orks had.

 some bloke wrote:
As Orks, I would happily sacrifice some control for more randomness.

Used to be that shokk attack guns could charge 60" if they rolled well/badly enough, trukks would explode, kareen then explode, or just fall apart when they died, kill tanks could fire 3 shells, but sometimes the grots would fire a boom shell no matter what because grots love the boom, mad dok grotsnik had to move towards and charge the enemy, and so on.

I miss the level of random orks had.

Yeah, this lack of orky randomness really dampens my enjoyment of playing against orks & worse doesn't encourage me to complete my own ork project.

GSC: (hmmmm, how do I make the worst army in the game even worse without totally destroying them?)
- Change Perfect Ambush from either shoot or move d6" after deep strike to JUST moving 3" after deep striking. This is, on average, a debuff, but the predictability of it is something both the GSC player and their opponent would appreciate.

- Make it that GSC has to pay CP to put units into deep strike.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Assuming we were to try and reverse the arms race a bit, what are some healthy, fluffy changes to your codex (or codices) that would either lower your overall lethality or (re)introduce a fluffy weakness to your army?

My main army is Tau, 38% win rate since the start of the year (the absolute lowest among proper factions according to 40kstats.com) is not low enough?

ccs wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
As Orks, I would happily sacrifice some control for more randomness.

Used to be that shokk attack guns could charge 60" if they rolled well/badly enough, trukks would explode, kareen then explode, or just fall apart when they died, kill tanks could fire 3 shells, but sometimes the grots would fire a boom shell no matter what because grots love the boom, mad dok grotsnik had to move towards and charge the enemy, and so on.

I miss the level of random orks had.

Yeah, this lack of orky randomness really dampens my enjoyment of playing against orks & worse doesn't encourage me to complete my own ork project.

I would honestly prefer multiple profiles for orks, a narrative/open war profile with things being wacky orky, and a separate more reliable less swingy match play profile. One issue with orks with all the old charts from our 4th/5th edition random tables was just things like SAG could not be on a table , it was a fun pick up game tool but had no place in the competitive scene. I don't' see why we can't have the table in some game modes and a more reliable anti tank gun in more organized play.

Remove Primaris

I get the grousing from players of weak armies but you're missing Wyldhunt's point. Yeah, the army is weak but it assuredly has some sort of crutch that ventures into the realm of the unfluffy. Things like how shield drones function, or how Kraken Genestealers with Hive Commander move as fast as dogfighters.

I talked about this in another thread but I'd put a 10 model cap on Guardians. A mob of Guardians doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'd probably also change Fire and Fade to not allow you to embark into a transport. The idea of a bunch of Dark Reapers continually Chinese Firedrill-ing and letting loose a bunch of missile shots is just dumb. And wraiths probably shouldn't be eligible to Fire and Fade either (though I would up their durability and their damage output also.)

Oh I'd totally change how drones work, they are the most annoying unit to play with and probably against as well.
I want to play a mobile shooty army (as per the Tau fluff), not a static castle that relies on layers of drones and screening units.

 Yarium wrote:
GSC: (hmmmm, how do I make the worst army in the game even worse without totally destroying them?)
- Change Perfect Ambush from either shoot or move d6" after deep strike to JUST moving 3" after deep striking. This is, on average, a debuff, but the predictability of it is something both the GSC player and their opponent would appreciate.

- Make it that GSC has to pay CP to put units into deep strike.

Just get rid of army wide deep strike. Please, god, it's never been a fun mechanic to play as or against, and the board is the size of a denny's napkin now. Just please, please, I'm begging you GW, stop making me pay bonkers absurd taxes for the dubious utility of being able to deep strike my stuff, like how the Magus is literally statistically identical to a guard Primaris Psyker but costs fething 2x as much presumably because of deep strike???

I'd make Marines 1W again.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Purity bonuses aren't necessary and are obviously not working. Ditch Doctrines, Blade Artists, Command Protocols, Canticles/Doctrinas, Sacred Rites and then do a balance pass to reduce costs for units for factions (like marines) that were more heavily invested into the purity bonus mechanic.

Hate to break it to you but DE's purity bonus is not Blade Artists but Power from Pain . . . though removing it would certainly weaken them.

And sister's is Miracle dice and AoF.

I do agree that the new detachment/ CP rules are the only dis-incentive for soup we need. But some of what has become Purity bonuses in this ed are essential rules that can't be lost.

I understand OP's intent, and I understand all the reminders that have been posted along the way to post in that vein, but I need to say this anyway:

The best way to nerf any army is to pick the units you want to use without reading the codex- pick for pure aesthetics or fluff and do zero number crunching for competitiveness. In other words, play the game like GW seems to think most people play it.

 vict0988 wrote:
@AnomanderRake I can do it for you, I love nerfs

There isn't anything I've got that's good enough that I could target a nerf in an interesting way. Best I can do is something like "-1 to all stats across the board" or some such.

In all honesty the best way to tone down the lethality of the game isn't a one-by-one examination of each codex, it's fixing some of the core rules.

Just for example: Bolt Action's moral system is to put a pin marker on a unit every time it gets hit by another unit's attacks, even if they don't wound, and then that unit suffers a to-hit penalty for every pin marker and also needs to take a moral check to do anything other than hunker down and attempt to rally. That hugely cuts down the lethality of the game because you have to weigh up rallying the unit vs the chance of losing the unit's activation and still having all the pin counters and being a lot less likely to hit.

Bolt Action also handles to-hit numbers worse than six by rolling sixes again, if you needed a 7 now you need a 4, 8 becomes 5, 9 becomes 6, 10 becomes 6 and then roll again needing a 4, etc. so it can afford MUCH steeper to-hit penalties from terrain without a "max 1" cap like 40k has and that also cuts down lethality a lot.

You could swap out 40kxs morale and to-hit rules for something like that and not need to touch any individual army at all.

The Newman wrote:
In all honesty the best way to tone down the lethality of the game isn't a one-by-one examination of each codex, it's fixing some of the core rules.

Just for example: Bolt Action's moral system is to put a pin marker on a unit every time it gets hit by another unit's attacks, even if they don't wound, and then that unit suffers a to-hit penalty for every pin marker and also needs to take a moral check to do anything other than hunker down and attempt to rally. That hugely cuts down the lethality of the game because you have to weigh up rallying the unit vs the chance of losing the unit's activation and still having all the pin counters and being a lot less likely to hit.

Bolt Action is alternate activation, isn't it? If you just transported this rule into 40k then what would happen is the second turn player would not only have lost units but would also have hit penalties on the units they were lucky enough not to lose.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

The Newman wrote:
In all honesty the best way to tone down the lethality of the game isn't a one-by-one examination of each codex, it's fixing some of the core rules.

Just for example: Bolt Action's moral system is to put a pin marker on a unit every time it gets hit by another unit's attacks, even if they don't wound, and then that unit suffers a to-hit penalty for every pin marker and also needs to take a moral check to do anything other than hunker down and attempt to rally. That hugely cuts down the lethality of the game because you have to weigh up rallying the unit vs the chance of losing the unit's activation and still having all the pin counters and being a lot less likely to hit.

Bolt Action is alternate activation, isn't it? If you just transported this rule into 40k then what would happen is the second turn player would not only have lost units but would also have hit penalties on the units they were lucky enough not to lose.

In fairness Bolt Action's default unit stat lines are close enough to 40k's that you could probably just take 40k's units, Strats, and CP generation and play Bolt Action with them without too much grinding of the gears, but having played it some I find BA's method of alternating activations frequently leads to one player getting really hosed if the other player gets several activations in a row.

 vipoid wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

Purity bonuses aren't necessary and are obviously not working. Ditch Doctrines, Blade Artists, Command Protocols, Canticles/Doctrinas, Sacred Rites and then do a balance pass to reduce costs for units for factions (like marines) that were more heavily invested into the purity bonus mechanic.

Hate to break it to you but DE's purity bonus is not Blade Artists but Power from Pain . . . though removing it would certainly weaken them.

Yeah, I'm aware.

GW's typical MO with their little manufactured discontent mechanics is to start taking rules and units that players want to field hostage behind them, to avoid players beginning to reject the mechanic.

Blade Artists and Acts of Faith, if those have been swapped to purity bonus rules, could simply be swapped back, and the obvious superfluous new rules that were added in to the new mechanics can simply be removed in their stead.

The best, easiest, and least painful way for players to balance the game themselves is simply to drop the layers of rules bloat away. Having bad games with your Admech versus your friend's older codex? Ditch Canticles and Doctrinas, or if you like those rules too much, ditch subfaction traits. It's quick, easy, and does the job.

Most games I play with my drukhari I exchange the new PFP+Blade Artists for how PFP used to work.

Obviously, GW balancing the game better themselves would be the most preferable situation, but I don't have a Cousin Eddy to go drag the GW game designers into my living room so I can yell at them to do a better job.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

The Newman wrote:
In all honesty the best way to tone down the lethality of the game isn't a one-by-one examination of each codex, it's fixing some of the core rules.

Just for example: Bolt Action's moral system is to put a pin marker on a unit every time it gets hit by another unit's attacks, even if they don't wound, and then that unit suffers a to-hit penalty for every pin marker and also needs to take a moral check to do anything other than hunker down and attempt to rally. That hugely cuts down the lethality of the game because you have to weigh up rallying the unit vs the chance of losing the unit's activation and still having all the pin counters and being a lot less likely to hit.

Bolt Action is alternate activation, isn't it? If you just transported this rule into 40k then what would happen is the second turn player would not only have lost units but would also have hit penalties on the units they were lucky enough not to lose.

you could easily have them apply in the following battle round.