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 bullyboy wrote:
So now it pretty much comes down to a case of when will GW adjust rather than if.

First turn seems to decide games vs Freebooterz/buggy orks.

Its always a when - the question is whether they do some sort of emergency nerf (see DE, Ad Mech) or just wing it.
Given DE, Ad Mech and possibly GK are arguably superior to Speedwaaagh, its hard to argue it deserves such an intervention - even if it is very obnoxious.

I'd hope we'd get a CA in January that serves to reset the meta. But I'm not sure I'd trust GW to do it and I'm not sure points alone can cut it at this point. Every army seems to be getting tuned up to do absurd damage.

 Bosskelot wrote:
AoW tier list video, specifically it talks about why Orks are one of the S-tier factions in the game currently and why the Buggy/Plane spam list is so strong and problematic (timestamped at the start of that discussion):

I mean I agree with them orks are the 4th best codex and S tier…
They actually may go to 2nd best after campaign book releases. And that basically removes freebooter out of the reason.
Ultimately squigbuggies should go up in points. Maybe a smidge on scrapjets and dakkajets but a lot of the other units are only good in specific klans and/or burning Strats to make them useful that turn.

Overall I like thier reasoning. Admech crushes everyone, drukari manhandles all the A and below codexs has hard counter w orks, grey knights does well against all, orks can win against all but can lose against all and manhandles drukari.

Side note: maybe stratagems should not exist in narrative or casual play?

macluvin wrote:
Side note: maybe stratagems should not exist in narrative or casual play?

Correct.

I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.

Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.

I like pretty much enjoy every flavorful strategem but I don't care for any of the stratagems which are a could just be on the unit profile sheet instead. I think Stratagems add a dimension of play and they were fine at first but GW being GW churned out a boat load of them now they are too many to remember and too few that are meaningful.

 bullyboy wrote:
I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.

Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.

The way AOS has implemented stratagems is IMO perfect.

There's about...six? universal, useful stratagems, primarily focused on allowing you to have some agency during your opponent's turn.

You get 2-4CP per turn, depending on a few factors, and it is "use it or lose it" no hoarding it.

No unit can be affected by a stratagem more than once per turn, no comboing, Period.

And instead of 'commander' type characters having a flat aura, most of the time, they have a unique stratagem that they can give to a unit within 12".

It perfectly dodges everything that makes stratagems a nightmare in 40k: the number of them, the amount they can combo to create huge power spikes, the 'blow them all in one turn' aspect....it's great.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
I actually like the concept of strategems, but there are too many and they are balanced poorly.

Personally, I think they belong more to narrative play than tournament, but that's just me. Tournaments should allow the book ones and perhaps only 1-3 additional ones from the codex (after balancing of course) that are preset before the event. Or a player has a small deck he can choose from (including book), say 10, and this is included in the list building stage. It would certainly be easier to reduce the "gotcha" moments.

The way AOS has implemented stratagems is IMO perfect.

There's about...six? universal, useful stratagems, primarily focused on allowing you to have some agency during your opponent's turn.

You get 2-4CP per turn, depending on a few factors, and it is "use it or lose it" no hoarding it.

No unit can be affected by a stratagem more than once per turn, no comboing, Period.

And instead of 'commander' type characters having a flat aura, most of the time, they have a unique stratagem that they can give to a unit within 12".

It perfectly dodges everything that makes stratagems a nightmare in 40k: the number of them, the amount they can combo to create huge power spikes, the 'blow them all in one turn' aspect....it's great.

^Well shoot, that sounds great. 40k when?

(Not holding my breath)

Heh. That was actually my recommendation in the Survey. Either rework strats and CP along the same lines as AoS or enforce a 'hand size' for strats, because the plethora is abusive*. (And more-so for factions with sub-faction books).
I explicitly referred to AoS to sound more positive about GW games in general rather than a 'your rules design is terrible' take, which I assumed would just be dumpstered.

*as are some strats just for existing: Double fight and double shoot are ridiculous and only adds to the absurd lethality levels. Also they're just blatantly unreasonable from a balance perspective, as double fighting TAC squad is a completely different beast from double fighting <insert combat monster here>

Yeah the way AoS handles Stratagem equivalents sounds great! I'd also prefer that unique ability to the current Auras.

AoS is the testing ground of 40K, so you can be pretty sure that we are getting that CP system.

I mean like half the survey questions is if you like and want to change strategems

AOS is basically a couple house-rules away from being a good, solid beer and pretzels battle wargame while 40k is in "oh god, oh no, what the feth, what do we do" territory rn.

Main problems with AOS 3rd are:

1) double turn shooting is the big one. if you either ditch the double turn, or combine the shooting+charging phase into another alternating phase like Combat, this issue basically goes away

2) stat cap makes cover kind of pointless. (you can only have +1 to all stats including save, and one of the generic strats is +1sv, so cover is very very unimpactful). Exempt sv from +1/-1 cap instead of current situation, which is Rend (AP) is the only thing that ignores the cap, and youre good to go.

People talk about how AOS is real loose with the mortal wounds but overall damage output in AOS is so much more reasonable that its so silly to even make the complaint. Aint no fething D3+3 wound attacks on 60pts models in AOS...

 the_scotsman wrote:
Aint no fething D3+3 wound attacks on 60pts models in AOS...

A kabalite with a dark lance is only 23...

 the_scotsman wrote:
AOS is basically a couple house-rules away from being a good, solid beer and pretzels battle wargame while 40k is in "oh god, oh no, what the feth, what do we do" territory rn.

Main problems with AOS 3rd are:

1) double turn shooting is the big one. if you either ditch the double turn, or combine the shooting+charging phase into another alternating phase like Combat, this issue basically goes away

2) stat cap makes cover kind of pointless. (you can only have +1 to all stats including save, and one of the generic strats is +1sv, so cover is very very unimpactful). Exempt sv from +1/-1 cap instead of current situation, which is Rend (AP) is the only thing that ignores the cap, and youre good to go.

People talk about how AOS is real loose with the mortal wounds but overall damage output in AOS is so much more reasonable that its so silly to even make the complaint. Aint no fething D3+3 wound attacks on 60pts models in AOS...

Eh... the range in AoS is definitely shorter, but as far as damage goes... nope, it is possibly even higher than in 40k.
Being thrown 40-50 ranged MW in a turn is perfectly possible.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:
Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?

Back with their first codex during 3rd and 4th edition, the basic DE squad was able to field 2 Dark Lances in each squad, minimum 10 models, iirc. 60 Dark Eldar Warriors with 12 Dark Lances between them was a really wicked amount of firepower in relatively cheap Troops choices in those days, and list would still have plenty of points left over for other choices. Iirc, Wytches used well could be pretty irritating in those days too.

Edit: Posted without seeing stonehorses post, but everything said there rings true. I didn't play DE then, but I played against them all the time and they could be dangerous AF.

I remember the Talos being a pain, but that might have been when brought through a warp gate or something? Hard to remember.

I think it's unfortunate this isn't really a viable approach anymore. I think GW really needs to stop pigeonholing them into the "only with vehicles" approach.

 blood reaper wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:
Serious question here - have Dark Eldar on foot (not counting Wracks, but more Kabalites and Wyches) *ever* been viable (especially in a competitive sense) in an edition of the game? I know GW is eager to get as much money out of its players as possible and so has always promoted Kabalites (and practically all Dark Eldar troops) being mounted in Raiders, but was there ever a point in the armies history in which footslogging light infantry was a legitimate way to play?

Back with their first codex during 3rd and 4th edition, the basic DE squad was able to field 2 Dark Lances in each squad, minimum 10 models, iirc. 60 Dark Eldar Warriors with 12 Dark Lances between them was a really wicked amount of firepower in relatively cheap Troops choices in those days, and list would still have plenty of points left over for other choices. Iirc, Wytches used well could be pretty irritating in those days too.

Edit: Posted without seeing stonehorses post, but everything said there rings true. I didn't play DE then, but I played against them all the time and they could be dangerous AF.

I remember the Talos being a pain, but that might have been when brought through a warp gate or something? Hard to remember.

I think it's unfortunate this isn't really a viable approach anymore. I think GW really needs to stop pigeonholing them into the "only with vehicles" approach.

The problem with this (and this applies to other factions as well), is GW doesn't think they are. The Ivory Tower effect is in full play, and GW really thinks that people with play with large infantry blobs to get the multiple heavy weapons and etc, and stand on the ground and shoot despite how quickly t3 units just get erased. And when people complain about how this doesn't really work, GW writes weird articles about the 'spirit of the game' and people complain about 'competitive players' ruining everything (even though it doesn't work for 'casual players' either).

Drukhari isn't even hard countered by Orks, venoms are.

Venoms weapons lost shots from 8th to 9th and gained damage 2. Against Ork buggies they are effectively half as good as an eighth edition venom.

I realize Sean is a good player but he mostly lost in the list building phase in this particular match up, and then made a poor first turn plan, and then didn't roll well enough to keep playing the game when he was left out and exposed not making assault.
.

Moving all his stuff up turn 1 to try and make multiple risky charges means if he fails he is within optimal shooting range of most of the opponents list.

This is the problem with skew lists. Also DE have lots of reserves options outside of the basic SR options, you start with less CP but maybe that is worth it in some cases. Maybe letting the Orks extend the fliers out and trying to pick them off turn 1-2 then spread out into the buggies and objectives turn 3+ would have played better. Maybe not, venoms are really bad into anything that gets -1 damage.

blaktoof wrote:
Drukhari isn't even hard countered by Orks, venoms are.

Venoms weapons lost shots from 8th to 9th and gained damage 2. Against Ork buggies they are effectively half as good as an eighth edition venom.

I realize Sean is a good player but he mostly lost in the list building phase in this particular match up, and then made a poor first turn plan, and then didn't roll well enough to keep playing the game when he was left out and exposed not making assault.
.

Moving all his stuff up turn 1 to try and make multiple risky charges means if he fails he is within optimal shooting range of most of the opponents list.

This is the problem with skew lists. Also DE have lots of reserves options outside of the basic SR options, you start with less CP but maybe that is worth it in some cases. Maybe letting the Orks extend the fliers out and trying to pick them off turn 1-2 then spread out into the buggies and objectives turn 3+ would have played better. Maybe not, venoms are really bad into anything that gets -1 damage.

Did Sean lose the game in the list building phase? Most probably. Then again when I was a chaos space marine player in 7th edition every game was lost in the list building phase the moment I opened my codex XD

Anyways, yes he hit a hard counter. We did discuss earlier in this thread a similar match up where the Drukhari player turtled up in the deployment zone and still got wrecked in the first turn because of all the ignore line of sight and flyers in the ork list, and reserves is only delaying the inevitable in the best of circumstances when the overwhelming majority of your opponents list doesn’t care about line of sight blocking terrain. So no, Sean did the best he could with his first turn, he did not miscalculate it like we have discussed previously. We have also established that reserves will not change the outcome of the game. Heck the board would probably look almost exactly the same had Sean tried to use reserves or hide in terrain.

The point of the whole thread is to investigate or discuss whether or not games like this are fun (on either side of this beat down) and why we have seen two instances of pretty much this game in two tournaments. And ultimately, is 9th edition too lethal. We have also explored similar outcomes with admech as well as drukhari when they were the new OP brokenness, so it’s not like we mean to single out orks. In my opinion drukhari admech and now orks are glaring symptoms of an issue with escalating lethality.

You are allowed to enjoy the game in its current form, and you can enjoy the amount of lethality in the game. Maybe you want shorter or faster paced games. Maybe you play tournaments and it makes your day less exhausting to only have to play one or two turns per game. Maybe you just inexplicably like how everything is now or find its current state the best you’ve seen it. Maybe you enjoy watching a wombo combo you discovered in the list building phase clear a board. Some posters in here like the OP have made a case for the game being too lethal though. And have proposed touching up terrain rules and scaling back the bonkers rules.

macluvin wrote:


Did Sean lose the game in the list building phase? Most probably. Then again when I was a chaos space marine player in 7th edition every game was lost in the list building phase the moment I opened my codex XD

Yeah, but Chaos marines had a terrible codex in 7th, Drukhari are one of the best armies in 9th, arguably still much better than the faction that removed 1800 of stuff in one turn. That's why losing that hard is entirely on the drukhari player.

If he was playing AM or Tau, or an optimized drukhari list, I would agree that games like this are a problem, but average collections of drukhari (let alone tournament players' ones) have plenty of tools to compete with orks, including this specific archetype. He basically wanted to autowin against some factions, he ended up autolosing against an hard counter.

He probably learnt his lesson and won't happen again. Maybe, since those tournament players love to build their list around the rock/paper/scissor concept and hope to find the best match ups possible.

People love to claim it was fault of DE players but ignore it doesn't actually matter whether it's T1 or T2 wipeout.

And game where rock scissor paper enough that 1800 pts can be wiped out in any situation is just sign of unhealthy game. 1800 pts shouldn't be killable in turn period especially without ridiculous rolling of 6's(hit, wound, damage) and 1's(saves).

tneva82 wrote:


[...]

And game where rock scissor paper enough that 1800 pts can be wiped out in any situation is just sign of unhealthy game. 1800 pts shouldn't be killable in turn period especially without ridiculous rolling of 6's(hit, wound, damage) and 1's(saves).

case closed

Competitive gaming is never healthy .

 Blackie wrote:
Competitive gaming is never healthy .

Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.

Waaaghbert wrote:


Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.

But it's their fault to actively exploit them and end up having that result.

Rules in themselves do nothing. It's always the players who use them.

I think that particular matter can be indeed solved by GW, but to me it will mean another edition. The real question is : is it really worth it to "fix" the rules to such a deep level that may be having consequences on, for example, the length of games, or is it rather easier to put more restrictions on the way of building lists so that these extreme army lists can't happen ?

Sarouan wrote:

Waaaghbert wrote:


Absolutely not true, also this again shifts the focus on the "competitive scene" aka the players. It's not the players fault that those extremes exist.

But it's their fault to actively exploit them and end up having that result.

Rules in themselves do nothing. It's always the players who use them.

I think that particular matter can be indeed solved by GW, but to me it will mean another edition. The real question is : is it really worth it to "fix" the rules to such a deep level that may be having consequences on, for example, the length of games, or is it rather easier to put more restrictions on the way of building lists so that these extreme army lists can't happen ?

Why have rules in the first place, if they do nothing? Of course there are different approaches (people who want to tell a story, play a themed army with self inflicted restrictions on one end of the spectrum and WAAC players on the other ) and none of those approaches is wrong, so you need to have a certain rule framework that keeps those two ends as close to each other as possible.

Sorry, what is the DE army that dumpsters on Speedwaaagh?

Because its not traditional raiders.

I mean, I will say to all you folks that are like 'welp, nothing to be done!' that it really...doesnt take all that much to give lethality a little bit of a nudge downward.

Just my last game, we tried out a simple redesign to the cover system, basically:

1) regular cover is claimed like Dense Cover (so if sight lines cross cover pieces that are not within 1" of the firing unit, the target unit gets +1sv) and we also lifted the infantry/swarms/beasts limitation

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

3) made any terrain 2x or more the height of a model in the target unit count as Obscuring if both firer and target weren't within 1" and Dense if target and not firer was within 1".

This sufficiently beefed up cover rules such that even up against a currently fairly competitive admech setup there was a solid 500-600pts on the board from either army at the end of the game.

All it took was taking so much of the fiddly wonkiness from the cover system, and understanding that cover is a fairly basic, minor bonus and so it should be fairly easy to lay claim to, and most of the time if you're shooting at a unit that's not been purposefully exposed by the opposing player for some purpose, you should be firing into 1-2 layers of defensive cover bonuses.

 the_scotsman wrote:

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

What I would give for this rule to be official.

Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.

 blood reaper wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

2) added a "cant kill what you can't see" clause, so if your opponent willingly removes models such that the unit is now out of LOS, no more saves need to be taken from the attack

What I would give for this rule to be official.

Can we also just change the terrain bonus to be like "This terrain gives a 4+" save, etc.? That was much better. Also it had the effect of making light infantry, well, very good and indeed made taking up defensive positions feel well, meaningful.

In most instances, the setup that we used (-1 to hit and +1 to sv) works better for most light infantry than the old 4+ pseudo-invulnerable-but-also-a-bunch-of-weapons-ignore-it thing. Seeing as most light infantry is sitting at a 5+ or 4+ base anyway, theres a couple 6+sv units like Cultists and Boyz where it technically breaks even but its usually better.

Personally, as much as I am an advocate for increasing durability, bringing back un-interactive game mechanics like common high invulnerables (3++ and better), flat cover saves, instant death and the old all-or-nothing AP system just make particular stat values artificially too strong or too weak.

Like remember when almost every gun in the game was at least AP5, how great it felt to go from that no save to that 6+sv to that 5+sv? Yeah, really awesome, now once every 2 games I'll get to make an armor save roll instead of once every 4 games.

Its the same exact reason I hate the stupid modifier cap thing that's present now - it devalues a bunch of random crap for units that have -1 to hit as an ability or an available stratagem in a counter-intuitive way. Why are the fast/sneaky factions the ones who are the least likely to care about hiding behind concealing terrain? Why is it logical to move and shoot your heavy lascannon only when youre trying to use it to down a speeding airplane? The only real effect it had was curbing the worst excesses of stacking up to-hit mods which could have easily been done by just updating the one eldar trait to the exact thing they updated the raven guard trait to and implementing the "6s always hit" rule.