Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

We've complained for years about the chaff units being better troops than Chaos Marines. GW has decided to take those criticisms seriously, it seems...

sanguine40k wrote:
I'm a little grumpy about the Infernal Fusilades nerf - going from double shoot to +1 shot seemed a little excessive.

Extremely necessary. With +1S plus +1 to wound plus remove cover plus remove modifiers it would be an over the top combo. Then add in that you would only ever use it on Scarabs and it makes a whole lot more sense.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

We've complained for years about the chaff units being better troops than Chaos Marines. GW has decided to take those criticisms seriously, it seems...

Its consistent with chaos cultists and the nurgle nerfherds (and gretchin, though I haven't had a look at the new ork codex). GW seems to hate the idea that people will build armies in different ways, so the cheaper alternatives to boys or chaos marines have to be made worse so the units you 'should be' fielding look better in comparison. That's true of kroot, too, now that I think about it.

Though the soft unit caps to directly force marines onto the table seems to only affect chaos.
Nevermind that the cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite chaos marines is the absolutely fluffiest version of the army.

Voss wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

We've complained for years about the chaff units being better troops than Chaos Marines. GW has decided to take those criticisms seriously, it seems...

Its consistent with chaos cultists and the nurgle nerfherds (and gretchin, though I haven't had a look at the new ork codex). GW seems to hate the idea that people will build armies in different ways, so the cheaper alternatives to boys or chaos marines have to be made worse so the units you 'should be' fielding look better in comparison. That's true of kroot, too, now that I think about it.

Though the soft unit caps to directly force marines onto the table seems to only affect chaos.
Nevermind that the cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite chaos marines is the absolutely fluffiest version of the army.

But they already did that with the limitation of one Tzaangor unit per Rubric/Scarab. They didn't need to also make them crap at the same time. And if they were concerned about people taking cheaper alternatives...why did they make Tzaangor much cheaper, and then nerf their stats? Seems like it'd have been better to keep them at 9 points and with the better WS3+ stat line, and maybe an extra attack on the charge, to make them worth those 9 points. If anything, the points and WS reductions that reduce them to essentially just a T4 5++ meat shield make them more attractive to take in that "stand around and do nothing" role, not less.

Voss wrote:
Its consistent with chaos cultists and the nurgle nerfherds (and gretchin, though I haven't had a look at the new ork codex). GW seems to hate the idea that people will build armies in different ways, so the cheaper alternatives to boys or chaos marines have to be made worse so the units you 'should be' fielding look better in comparison. That's true of kroot, too, now that I think about it.

Though the soft unit caps to directly force marines onto the table seems to only affect chaos.
Nevermind that the cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite chaos marines is the absolutely fluffiest version of the army.

I've mentioned it before, but there's a basic value for holding stuff and doing actions.

Backfield objective holders are in peril less often since few people are taking OOLOS weapons and even if they do the current morale system prevents from them being easily removed. That also makes small deepstrike units valuable to pull them out if your opponent doesn't have redundancy.

I can almost guarantee that you're going to see a CSM army interact more directly with cultists in a powerful way - particularly Word Bearers. Open mouth - insert foot on anything CSM with GW, but they did a damn good job with TS on first impressions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Seems like it'd have been better to keep them at 9 points and with the better WS3+ stat line, and maybe an extra attack on the charge, to make them worth those 9 points. If anything, the points and WS reductions that reduce them to essentially just a T4 5++ meat shield make them more attractive to take in that "stand around and do nothing" role, not less.

There's enough there for people to make 20 man blobs work if they wanted to. It just isn't as sexy as pew pew and sorcerers.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

Because they need to make the underpowered units overpowered to sell them!

Wait...

The problem with that theory is it ascribes too much thought and care to GW's balancing decisions. It's more like a blindfolded drunk guy playing pin the tail on the donkey than a calculated conspiracy to sell certain models.

Well, with the release of AOS3.0, they are releasing a new Tzeentch army, or update, I thought. Wouldn't it make sense to release a 40k faction update that relies HEAVILY on a AOS model line, ala daemons, horrors, and Tzangors? I don't think that was a random guess. I think it was a smart business decision.

As for the GMDK, I have no clue. It was a shelf sitting box for the past two entire editions, and aside from a single top 3 tourny placing before covid or DE 2.0, I can't think of a major list that ran them competitively.

I think the GMDK is far more, "hey, we gotta give them SOMETHING or else their entire faction will still be crap." "Lets buff the model that is the basic staple of 95% of the lists out there."

GW likely didn't buff GK to sell models, because they had to know that almost no one plays them. But demons of TZeench I totally could believe was market driven....

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Well, with the release of AOS3.0, they are releasing a new Tzeentch army, or update, I thought. Wouldn't it make sense to release a 40k faction update that relies HEAVILY on a AOS model line, ala daemons, horrors, and Tzangors? I don't think that was a random guess. I think it was a smart business decision.

I've heard of no such update for AOS Tzeentch. Certainly nothing has shown up on WHC. Moreover Thousand Sons no longer have a summoning ability so daemons are non-existent and any soup would be punished. And to pile onto that Tzaangors are heavily muted in the codex ( and have been for some time ).

GW likely didn't buff GK to sell models, because they had to know that almost no one plays them. But demons of TZeench I totally could believe was market driven....

Does GW make strong rules to sell models or not? It can't be whatever you decide, when you decide it. If GK don't get played wouldn't it make sense to make them even stronger, if that were the case?

You're literally conjuring reasons to believe what you believe. You should take some time to reassess your position.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Voss wrote:
Its consistent with chaos cultists and the nurgle nerfherds (and gretchin, though I haven't had a look at the new ork codex). GW seems to hate the idea that people will build armies in different ways, so the cheaper alternatives to boys or chaos marines have to be made worse so the units you 'should be' fielding look better in comparison. That's true of kroot, too, now that I think about it.

Though the soft unit caps to directly force marines onto the table seems to only affect chaos.
Nevermind that the cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite chaos marines is the absolutely fluffiest version of the army.

I've mentioned it before, but there's a basic value for holding stuff and doing actions.

Backfield objective holders are in peril less often since few people are taking OOLOS weapons and even if they do the current morale system prevents from them being easily removed. That also makes small deepstrike units valuable to pull them out if your opponent doesn't have redundancy.

I can almost guarantee that you're going to see a CSM army interact more directly with cultists in a powerful way - particularly Word Bearers. Open mouth - insert foot on anything CSM with GW, but they did a damn good job with TS on first impressions.

How would Word Bearers use them differently? As sacrifices for summoning purposes? Iron Warriors and Black Legion would use them as chaff, same as now. Alpha Legion would use them as Agents, give them special abilities like they could in 3.5. Night Lords would use them as......"Special Leather"?

And no, "Cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite Chaos Marines" isn't the "fluffiest version" of every Legion.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
How would Word Bearers use them differently? As sacrifices for summoning purposes?

Sacrificing would be super cool. The biggest way it could fail is if there isn't enough space in the CSM book to accommodate all the extra rules. The book would either be massive or they'd have to split it up.

Night Lords would use them as......"Special Leather"?

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Does GW make strong rules to sell models or not? It can't be whatever you decide, when you decide it. If GK don't get played wouldn't it make sense to make them even stronger, if that were the case?

You're literally conjuring reasons to believe what you believe. You should take some time to reassess your position.

That depends on what the project managers think and what is considered to be strong by them. Anyone is interested in playing the game at the studio, also has a huge impact. Just compare what was done with DE or Admecha and GK. Each one book got a new set of rules. There were buffs, side grades and down grades. But it is impossible to say that the person writing the first two, and then the person who okeys the books to print put the same amount of care in to GK. And this was suppose to be a last year early this year book. So we can't even claim that GW after making OP books for some armies decide to stream line the rules and make them more balanced. GW writers can give any army any rules they want, as long as the sells and higher up green light it. And from what we have seen, they can green light some crazy stuff, and no wonder, those people don't have to know a thing about the game.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Moreover Thousand Sons no longer have a summoning ability so daemons are non-existent

I keep seeing this and I'm not sure where it's from? Daemons are no longer included in the codex for reference but Daemonic Ritual still exists in the Daemons codex and still allows any CHAOS CHARACTER to summon. Sure, it's still an utterly terrible strategy but you can do it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
How would Word Bearers use them differently? As sacrifices for summoning purposes?

Sacrificing would be super cool. The biggest way it could fail is if there isn't enough space in the CSM book to accommodate all the extra rules. The book would either be massive or they'd have to split it up.

Not necessarily. The best codex CSM ever had, and the one that best represented all of the Legions, was 80 pages. The current 8th edition CSM codex is 186 pages. Considering how much 9th edition codexes have been cutting down on lore sections, I don't think a 9th edition CSM codex that accurately covers each Legion would have to massive. Especially if it only has to cover 5 instead of the 9 that 3.5 had to cover. If Emperor's Children and World Eaters get their own codexes there should be plenty of room for the remaining 5 Legions.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Moreover Thousand Sons no longer have a summoning ability so daemons are non-existent

I keep seeing this and I'm not sure where it's from? Daemons are no longer included in the codex for reference but Daemonic Ritual still exists in the Daemons codex and still allows any CHAOS CHARACTER to summon. Sure, it's still an utterly terrible strategy but you can do it.

Yes, you can still do it because it's in the Daemons codex...but they took it out of the DG and TSons codexes in 9th. In 8th, it appeared there too. They also axed the TSons strat that used to boost their summoning ability. There does appear to be a concerted push to remove summoning as a part of those books. Any remnants seem to be just that, remnants that will presumably go away once Daemons get a new book too.

Let's put it this way, I certainly wouldn't be buying any daemons to summon into your CSM armies right now.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

GW didn't like that in eighth apparently most mono-TS lists made use of Tzaangors as their troop choice for most of the edition and can't stand that people were relying more on gak like that rather than Rubric Marines. So they made them just a little bit less exciting and nice by gutting their lethality. GW doesn't want you leaning on Tzaangors so made them inefficient for anything but being a fairly durable cheap objective holder. And to be fair, if you can spare the twenty points they are much better at that job than an equally large cultist squad. Sucks that they have pretty much no support as a bomb unit though. I definitely don't agree with what they did but this is I believe the reasoning.

Karol wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Does GW make strong rules to sell models or not? It can't be whatever you decide, when you decide it. If GK don't get played wouldn't it make sense to make them even stronger, if that were the case?

You're literally conjuring reasons to believe what you believe. You should take some time to reassess your position.

That depends on what the project managers think and what is considered to be strong by them. Anyone is interested in playing the game at the studio, also has a huge impact. Just compare what was done with DE or Admecha and GK. Each one book got a new set of rules. There were buffs, side grades and down grades. But it is impossible to say that the person writing the first two, and then the person who okeys the books to print put the same amount of care in to GK. And this was suppose to be a last year early this year book. So we can't even claim that GW after making OP books for some armies decide to stream line the rules and make them more balanced. GW writers can give any army any rules they want, as long as the sells and higher up green light it. And from what we have seen, they can green light some crazy stuff, and no wonder, those people don't have to know a thing about the game.

I know it's fun to just parrot stuff with no rhyme or reason, but I hope you circle back on this some day in a way that let's you reflect on why it is such terrible logic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Moreover Thousand Sons no longer have a summoning ability so daemons are non-existent

I keep seeing this and I'm not sure where it's from? Daemons are no longer included in the codex for reference but Daemonic Ritual still exists in the Daemons codex and still allows any CHAOS CHARACTER to summon. Sure, it's still an utterly terrible strategy but you can do it.

Summoning was tenous WITH the bespoke stratagem. It's fairly useless now.

Why not just make Rubrics actually good enough to be worth using, though - which they may have actually managed this time around, at least in MSU sizes? It's like an admission on GW's part that incapable of making multiple equally attractive choices, that the only way it can find to make people take CSM in CSM armies is to just nerf the competition and/or limit your ability to take them at all with detachment rules.

And they still haven't got it working, either. Most competitive DG armies ignore PM entirely, or at least as much as possible. So even after all that work, GW still can't find a way to force people into taking them.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
How would Word Bearers use them differently? As sacrifices for summoning purposes?

Sacrificing would be super cool. The biggest way it could fail is if there isn't enough space in the CSM book to accommodate all the extra rules. The book would either be massive or they'd have to split it up.

Not necessarily. The best codex CSM ever had, and the one that best represented all of the Legions, was 80 pages. The current 8th edition CSM codex is 186 pages. Considering how much 9th edition codexes have been cutting down on lore sections, I don't think a 9th edition CSM codex that accurately covers each Legion would have to massive. Especially if it only has to cover 5 instead of the 9 that 3.5 had to cover. If Emperor's Children and World Eaters get their own codexes there should be plenty of room for the remaining 5 Legions.

Don't forget the 6 renegade chapters and Fallen, that for some reason had to be crammed in there, too, instead of being in the Dark Angels supplement where they belong .

 Void__Dragon wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Yeah, Tzaangors got done dirty for no apparent reason. Hard to understand why in an edition where in general they've been buffing all the cheap stock infantry they decided that Tzaangors should instead get a big fat nerf to the face.

GW didn't like that in eighth apparently most mono-TS lists made use of Tzaangors as their troop choice for most of the edition and can't stand that people were relying more on gak like that rather than Rubric Marines. So they made them just a little bit less exciting and nice by gutting their lethality. GW doesn't want you leaning on Tzaangors so made them inefficient for anything but being a fairly durable cheap objective holder. And to be fair, if you can spare the twenty points they are much better at that job than an equally large cultist squad. Sucks that they have pretty much no support as a bomb unit though. I definitely don't agree with what they did but this is I believe the reasoning.

There were several indirect nerfs during 8th that took tzaangors way down. They were limping long before 9th.

Let's not forget rubrics can no longer come in blocks of 20 and all is dust no longer affects their invuln among other changes.

Tzaangors are T4 daemons. If you want to support them they'll still do work, but asking a 7 point model to murder the table just won't be a thing.

They aren't daemons any more, either. They weren't even daemons in 8th, for that matter - only the ones on discs were.

And they do virtually nothing now, even at max size. A max sized squad of 20 all getting to attack kills...wait for it...all of two and a half MEQ. Lol. You put all the buffs you can on them and they might kill a 100 point MSU squad of intercessors. Maybe.

They're cheap ob-sec wounds at this point, they do virtually nothing else but exist on a place and die in fairly points-efficient way.

yukishiro1 wrote:


And they still haven't got it working, either. Most competitive DG armies ignore PM entirely, or at least as much as possible. So even after all that work, GW still can't find a way to force people into taking them.

It isnt that PMs aren't good. It's that taking a melta to the face mitigates a lot of their advantages. Deathshrouds at least take out half the shots and make half the damage rolls unable to kill.

Couple that with limited ways for DG to counter those threats and you get current lists.

With meltas falling quickly out of sisters lists and marines leaning on contemptors they may have more space to work.

I'm surprised that Tzaangors in 40k get nothing for those shields.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Why not just make Rubrics actually good enough to be worth using, though...

'Cause that's hard!

yukishiro1 wrote:
They aren't daemons any more, either. They weren't even daemons in 8th, for that matter - only the ones on discs were.

And they do virtually nothing now, even at max size. A max sized squad of 20 all getting to attack kills...wait for it...all of two and a half MEQ. Lol. You put all the buffs you can on them and they might kill a 100 point MSU squad of intercessors. Maybe.

They're cheap ob-sec wounds at this point, they do virtually nothing else but exist on a place and die in fairly points-efficient way.

Daemons in the sense of low cost with invulnerable.

140 points maybe killing 100. That doesn't sound all that terrible. I bet you those marines never survive subsequentrounds of combat.

Rubrics are expensive for damage efficiency, but not for utility and durability. The value of a unit isn't just the kill count.

140 points plus the exalted for the reroll 1s, plus prescience, plus whatever other buffs you can come up with to boost their pathetic damage. On base, 140 points of Tzaangor kill ~50 points of MEQ. That's terrible offensive output for a melee unit.

You said they "do work." They really don't. They sit there and die in a relatively efficient manner while having ob-sec. There is value in that, but they do virtually nothing offensively.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The problem with that theory is it ascribes too much thought and care to GW's balancing decisions. It's more like a blindfolded drunk guy playing pin the tail on the donkey than a calculated conspiracy to sell certain models.

I really think they are conflicting interest involve in the process... some in the design team might actually want a playable and balance game, others only enforce the marketing decisions, and others act like punks looking for fun and rule of cool... the result is mostly a mess.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Voss wrote:
Its consistent with chaos cultists and the nurgle nerfherds (and gretchin, though I haven't had a look at the new ork codex). GW seems to hate the idea that people will build armies in different ways, so the cheaper alternatives to boys or chaos marines have to be made worse so the units you 'should be' fielding look better in comparison. That's true of kroot, too, now that I think about it.

Though the soft unit caps to directly force marines onto the table seems to only affect chaos.
Nevermind that the cultist masses backed up/controlled by a handful of elite chaos marines is the absolutely fluffiest version of the army.

I've mentioned it before, but there's a basic value for holding stuff and doing actions.

Backfield objective holders are in peril less often since few people are taking OOLOS weapons and even if they do the current morale system prevents from them being easily removed. That also makes small deepstrike units valuable to pull them out if your opponent doesn't have redundancy.

I can almost guarantee that you're going to see a CSM army interact more directly with cultists in a powerful way - particularly Word Bearers. Open mouth - insert foot on anything CSM with GW, but they did a damn good job with TS on first impressions.

Arguably you picked the wrong legion for strong interaction with "cultists"
IW have guard style equipped and trained supplementary forces and Alpha legion baseline seems to run on operatives.
Why in hell should cultists then be a thing WB do good? They are there for sacrifice and summoning purposes.


Also, its a bloody shame that culitsts are once again just reduced to the "mooks" for the spikey marines, when infact it is these armies that are the rank and file for chaos and the actual problem due to their effect on morale, quantity and capability through numbers and infiltration.

alas... spikey marines and their mooks it is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm surprised that Tzaangors in 40k get nothing for those shields.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Why not just make Rubrics actually good enough to be worth using, though...

'Cause that's hard!

There's sadly but one exalt per comment.

The more free Ap enters the game the less interesting SV3 + becomes.
The less interesting it becomes the worse become wearers of it.
By extension it is still a stat that is priced quite heavily aswell.
Cultmarines then suffer from the above but due to "unnecessary " stat increases pay even more. Hence why cultmarines are worse of than CSM in regards to playability, which are worse off than the nerfed to death cultists. Which however also has to do with the overly expensive charachter of these armies requiring HQ / HS/ Elite choices for the heavy lifting which baseline make the elite troop archetype a pts waste.


In essence its the economic game of opportunity cost. And Neither CSM nor Cultmarines play it well.

That's all very well but it seems like rubrics and scarab occult are good? So I'm not sure what you are going on about.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Arguably you picked the wrong legion for strong interaction with "cultists"
IW have guard style equipped and trained supplementary forces and Alpha legion baseline seems to run on operatives.
Why in hell should cultists then be a thing WB do good? They are there for sacrifice and summoning purposes.

I defer to others as I'm no cultist expert for sure. Looks like we have to wait until 2022 to shed light on the subject though.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
140 points plus the exalted for the reroll 1s, plus prescience, plus whatever other buffs you can come up with to boost their pathetic damage. On base, 140 points of Tzaangor kill ~50 points of MEQ. That's terrible offensive output for a melee unit.

You said they "do work." They really don't. They sit there and die in a relatively efficient manner while having ob-sec. There is value in that, but they do virtually nothing offensively.

Don't need rr1s, really. Shaman will do fine. That makes it 41 * .666 * .5 * .5 = 6.8 / 2 * 20 = 68 points and it isn't like the Shaman doesn't cast.

Is there something inherently wrong about a durable unit? People constantly complain about the lethality of the game.

Wouldn't you say the sorcerers who don't like combat would like something in front that doesn't die to a stiff breeze?

yukishiro1 wrote:Sanctic powers now only work on the caster. Hammerhands, Astral Aim, and Armoured Resilience fall into this category. Each unit typically has a fixed loadout of these - e.g. Strikes can only take Hammerhand. Paladins get two of their choice, making that their gimmick.

Dominus powers can target anyone. So you can still Gate and Sanctuary other units. Characters can *only* take Dominus, they can't take Sanctic (aside from Crowe who knows one Dominus + Purifying Flame from Sanctic).

It's really weird that they were so restrictive with GK, especially since TSons got two trees of 9 that every psyker can just pick freely from.

Depends on how you look at it, but Sanctic seems like a bonus on top of psychic offense.

Each unit gets full Smite and a Brotherhood Power. Seems like Sanctic gives you a choice whether to Smite your opponent or buff your unit.

Thinking about GK's smite in 8th edition, which was very limiting compared to other armies.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:Did I hear right that GK can only cast certain powers on themselves? Like AA and HH? Isn't that a nerf in and of itself? What is the point of taking Voldus now if he can only cast things on himself?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:So I guess again, what is the point of Voldus? If he can't be a buff bot, then he's basically an overcosted smiter/teleporter?

yukishiro1 wrote:Well there's not much point to Voldus in the new book period, he went down to only 2 casts so he's just a crappy, budget version of Draigo that's worse literally in every way, for 30 points cheaper. He's also locked to a specific Brotherhood.

But Dominus has Gate and Sanctuary, so you can both teleport stuff and give them a 4+ invuln, plus a couple offensive powers as well. And Warp Shaping, though I'm not sure how much you're actually going to be wanting to change Tides now.

The point of Voldus is anti-buff.

Voldus is a cc monster and character killer. He's going to use Projection of Purity to debuff something and crush it with his hammer. He's Wardmakers, a good roll means his powers can't be denied.

Under the Escalation tide, the entire army can debuff each of their opponents. With Nemesis Weapons, that would be devastating against a lot of armies.