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Lately I've realized that my personal experience with balance in 40k 9th edition has been very contrary to what I've read on forums and heard talked about online, so I wanted to get some more thoughts on the matter.

To be VERY clear, this is a question about your average everyday player that does not go out and buy every list the tops the major tournaments, clearly armies that can end the game in turn one are imbalanced, but I'm talking about playing an army with whatever force you have personally collected over the years. How many of you Ork players actually have 3 dakkajets, and all those trucks and bikes just laying around that you would have thought to put in a list if it weren't for it crushing that tournament?

Just getting back into the hobby and playing in my first league in ages, I wanted to go with something that I thought would be super casual. Everyone says the Tau Codex is in rough shape right now, but they've always been one of my favorites thematically, so I took a bit of time to learn why. 9th is all about objectives and fighting for the midfield. With Tau's out of date rules, slow units, and weakness up close, it makes handling that very difficult, so I went with something that both countered that, and felt very fun and thematic to me, an all Kroot list. From everything I expected going into this, I thought I would get totally wrecked, learn a lot, and come back with a stronger army knowing more about the edition next time. That's not what happened; turns out, I'm crushing it, 5-0 with 4 games left in the league. (I've posted the army and match details in the army lists for any interested in what I run and who I've been up against.) For the TLDR, I've handily defeated Blood Angels, Guard Armour, Farsight Enclaves and Necrons. My only reasonably close game was against Custodes, but even then, it was by over 10 VP (and would have been more if I hadn't made a huge mistake due to general lack of experience).

Now certainly some of the lists I've been up against even I can tell aren't tournament grade (the Guard one in particular), but others seemed quite strong, and as the league goes on, I'm fighting better and better lists as it is partially rank based matchmaking. Which is what got me thinking, if I can walk into a league with only an intermediate understanding of 9th edition, play the memeist part of a widely believed to be very underpowered army and do this well, how imbalanced can the game actually be? Is it actually a matter of the armies being THAT unbalanced, or is it that people look to competitive tournament lists as their go to and measure everything against them? It seems to me if people are just building their own lists for their armies without chasing the meta, that the game is reasonably balanced.

So what do you all think, am I just a fluke, or have you had this kind of experience as well?

This anecdote is entirely meaningless. Even if you had all the necessary background information to make that valid data, it's too small a sample size to be useful. I played a Crusade league and after bringing moderately viable units annihilated my opposition so badly so consistently it killed the entire league. Does that automatically mean 40k is unbalanced?

As a side note all the armies you've defeated have serious problems atm, you aren't likely to see any of them at the top tables of an event.

Edit: The ones you defeated handily, that is. Farsight Enclaves are Tau, Necrons already have 'first codex disease', Blood Angels got shafted in their supplement which at this point is totally propped up by sanguinary guard (I know, I play them) and guard armour is just kinda bad.

The biggest standout for me is that it is an escalation league, with the 2000 point game being only the last.

At smaller points games, 9th edition is wholly different.

Last question is: what table sizes are you guys playing your games on?

There's an awful lot of people not contesting you midboard, which tells me either they are too slow to do so or aren't trying. If they're too slow to do so, make sure you're using the board sizes in the rulebook, as that can DRAMATICALLY affect the game's course.

Playing 750 on a 6x4 is going to give a high mobility army with lots of bodies a great advantage compared to playing 750 on a 44"x30" tiny board where there's barely enough room to maneuver without accidentally bumping into Close Combat.

For example, I'm fairly certain my Slaanesh Daemons 50pl Crusade list could do quite well - if we were playing on a tiny board.

 Ventus wrote:
This anecdote is entirely meaningless. Even if you had all the necessary background information to make that valid data, it's too small a sample size to be useful. I played a Crusade league and after bringing moderately viable units annihilated my opposition so badly so consistently it killed the entire league. Does that automatically mean 40k is unbalanced?

As a side note all the armies you've defeated have serious problems atm, you aren't likely to see any of them at the top tables of an event.

Edit: The ones you defeated handily, that is. Farsight Enclaves are Tau, Necrons already have 'first codex disease', Blood Angels got shafted in their supplement which at this point is totally propped up by sanguinary guard (I know, I play them) and guard armour is just kinda bad.

I think you missed the point. The reason I made this post is BECAUSE the sample size is so small. That's why I'm asking people who have played far more games than I have what their experience has been. How to you get a big sample size, ask a bunch of people.

True, they aren't top tier (really looking forward to a match vs AdMech or Drukari) but even so, Blood Angels are still Space Marines and Necrons aren't exactly dumpster tier. Also... Kroot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest standout for me is that it is an escalation league, with the 2000 point game being only the last.

At smaller points games, 9th edition is wholly different.

Last question is: what table sizes are you guys playing your games on?

There's an awful lot of people not contesting you midboard, which tells me either they are too slow to do so or aren't trying. If they're too slow to do so, make sure you're using the board sizes in the rulebook, as that can DRAMATICALLY affect the game's course.

Playing 750 on a 6x4 is going to give a high mobility army with lots of bodies a great advantage compared to playing 750 on a 44"x30" tiny board where there's barely enough room to maneuver without accidentally bumping into Close Combat.

For example, I'm fairly certain my Slaanesh Daemons 50pl Crusade list could do quite well - if we were playing on a tiny board.

We've been following the recommended table size, so 30"x44" (Actually 30" x 48" since that's the table split in half) for games of 1000 points of less. When I hit the next bracket of 1500pts, it'll be 60"x48".

Points variance is part of balance too. Not everyone plays 2k points. So from a balance perspective, you'd want the game to play reasonably well at any points level, even if some armies might have a bit more of an edge in a particular bracket for one reason or another.

I have been playing my Black Templars a lot recently for obvious reasons. I do not play a meta-build or anything, just a primaris only BT and BT are not exactly tearing up the meta right now. Some of the games I have played are so one sided it is not even funny and that is against both 9th and 8th codexs. I am talking 72-34 level of stomping in one example where I crushed a Guard player. Now, I know that Guard are in a real bad place but my counter example is when I play my Daemons. Yeah, yeah, yeah I can hear the naysayers now but I am sorry, I do not run 5x KoS cause I really like my Bloodcrusher and Blood Throne blob cause it looks so awesome on the table. The only problem is I get shot off the table usually by the end of turn 2 in most of my games. Or when I play my Tyranids where it really feels like I spend an hour deploying out the swarm only to pick it back up over the next hour without really doing any dice rolling of my own, cause I don't even get armor saves against most armies. The fact that most armies I play against have no issue taking 120+ bodies off the table in two turns of shooting means that I can't even play my bugs unless I buy a bunch of monsters and play a list that I am not really interested in.

The game is horribly balanced but it isn't really codex to codex at this point, the core rules and how lethal the game is make it so that some armies can't even compete.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
I have been playing my Black Templars a lot recently for obvious reasons. I do not play a meta-build or anything, just a primaris only BT and BT are not exactly tearing up the meta right now. Some of the games I have played are so one sided it is not even funny and that is against both 9th and 8th codexs. I am talking 72-34 level of stomping in one example where I crushed a Guard player. Now, I know that Guard are in a real bad place but my counter example is when I play my Daemons. Yeah, yeah, yeah I can hear the naysayers now but I am sorry, I do not run 5x KoS cause I really like my Bloodcrusher and Blood Throne blob cause it looks so awesome on the table. The only problem is I get shot off the table usually by the end of turn 2 in most of my games. Or when I play my Tyranids where it really feels like I spend an hour deploying out the swarm only to pick it back up over the next hour without really doing any dice rolling of my own, cause I don't even get armor saves against most armies. The fact that most armies I play against have no issue taking 120+ bodies off the table in two turns of shooting means that I can't even play my bugs unless I buy a bunch of monsters and play a list that I am not really interested in.

The game is horribly balanced but it isn't really codex to codex at this point, the core rules and how lethal the game is make it so that some armies can't even compete.

Thanks for your input. Your comment about Tyranids was exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about. An army that plays similar to mine but a player who's had different experiences with it. Have you tried shielding them with Catalyst for the 5+ FNP, and returning them with Endless swarm? If they get through that, they shouldn't have any issue taking out all the models I've got. That being said, I suppose being on essentially every objective turn 1 does help me out a lot, but you need some advantages to counter all the disadvantages. Also, is that a consistent every game / most games thing you experience, or just sometimes?

Totally agree about the lethality angle, even in games that are close, I feel like way to many models die way too fast.

Personally, I've been struggling with trying to figure out how to have a fun game against a friend of mine who's (very understandably) quite excited with the powerful new rules that his brand new adeptus mechanicus army has gotten after slowly buying and building it up over months. This is a guy who commits to a theme and deals with it no matter how poorly it plays and for two editions dealt with extremely unsatisfying, lackluster performance from a guard all-tanks army and a CSM all daemon engines army, so to build up his all-skitarii army and lo and behold it's now the super powerful mega codex of your dreams, it's tough to hold it against him.

But it is, regardless, EXTREMELY hard to set up a scenario or to pick an army against him that allows me to get anything out of the game that I want to get out of it.

If I play one of my less competitive armies, I get absolutely hosed off the board by turn 3. If I pick one of my more competitive armies, we both get absolutely hosed off the board by turn 3. There's no 'telling a story about the cool gak that this unit or that unit did over the course of the game' because simply nothing survives longer than taking a single action.

I'm going to be bringing just the absolute toughest most durability-skewed list I can possibly come up with to try and face him - thousand sons Rubrics and scarabs with all the durability spells paired with a Tzeentch daemon allied contingent featuring a big block of splitting horrors, Changeling, and the unkillable ultra-chicken with the durability warlord trait+relic+exalted trait.

Is this, strictly speaking, imbalanced? Theoretically no, because I could actually win and I know of other folks who have been able to beat him with less than tournament-quality lists (albeit other lists that have fared quite well with recent codexes) and I know I could probably set something up to beat him if I went more cutthroat with my Drukhari.

But it's really tough to find the fun. What secondaries should I take? Who cares, the game will be decided by turn 3. How should I try to deploy? Anything not set up behind Obscuring is dead turn 1, guaranteed. What parts of the list should I target? I MUST target this unit, then this unit, then this unit in order or they will instantly make their points back in a single round of attacks.

The shoe was on the other foot with him for such a long time (especially with that poor tank list that would just get these 200pt models instantly kersploded with a single lucky roll from a D6 damage weapon, or just perma-stunlocked if even one single model touched it in close combat) so I really really don't want to take away from the enjoyment of him having a period of getting to have a powerful army that gets to win games. I just wish GW would show just a modicum more restraint and try to pretend once in a while that the game isn't on a constant, rotating merry-go-round where if you've recently purchased a codex book, you're supposed to get to win your next 5-10 games, and if you've had your codex book for 2 years you should basically never get to win.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Personally, I've been struggling with trying to figure out how to have a fun game against a friend of mine who's (very understandably) quite excited with the powerful new rules that his brand new adeptus mechanicus army has gotten after slowly buying and building it up over months. This is a guy who commits to a theme and deals with it no matter how poorly it plays and for two editions dealt with extremely unsatisfying, lackluster performance from a guard all-tanks army and a CSM all daemon engines army, so to build up his all-skitarii army and lo and behold it's now the super powerful mega codex of your dreams, it's tough to hold it against him.

But it is, regardless, EXTREMELY hard to set up a scenario or to pick an army against him that allows me to get anything out of the game that I want to get out of it.

If I play one of my less competitive armies, I get absolutely hosed off the board by turn 3. If I pick one of my more competitive armies, we both get absolutely hosed off the board by turn 3. There's no 'telling a story about the cool gak that this unit or that unit did over the course of the game' because simply nothing survives longer than taking a single action.

I'm going to be bringing just the absolute toughest most durability-skewed list I can possibly come up with to try and face him - thousand sons Rubrics and scarabs with all the durability spells paired with a Tzeentch daemon allied contingent featuring a big block of splitting horrors, Changeling, and the unkillable ultra-chicken with the durability warlord trait+relic+exalted trait.

Is this, strictly speaking, imbalanced? Theoretically no, because I could actually win and I know of other folks who have been able to beat him with less than tournament-quality lists (albeit other lists that have fared quite well with recent codexes) and I know I could probably set something up to beat him if I went more cutthroat with my Drukhari.

But it's really tough to find the fun. What secondaries should I take? Who cares, the game will be decided by turn 3. How should I try to deploy? Anything not set up behind Obscuring is dead turn 1, guaranteed. What parts of the list should I target? I MUST target this unit, then this unit, then this unit in order or they will instantly make their points back in a single round of attacks.

The shoe was on the other foot with him for such a long time (especially with that poor tank list that would just get these 200pt models instantly kersploded with a single lucky roll from a D6 damage weapon, or just perma-stunlocked if even one single model touched it in close combat) so I really really don't want to take away from the enjoyment of him having a period of getting to have a powerful army that gets to win games. I just wish GW would show just a modicum more restraint and try to pretend once in a while that the game isn't on a constant, rotating merry-go-round where if you've recently purchased a codex book, you're supposed to get to win your next 5-10 games, and if you've had your codex book for 2 years you should basically never get to win.

First off, respect for sticking it out, he sounds like a cool guy and you too for continuing to play with him. I've known quite a few people over the years that are happy to do the stomping, but suddenly when the shoe is on the other foot, they can't take it themselves.

I think your last point hits home really well. Even if you can come up with a "balanced game" it doesn't really matter if you're having the exact same balanced game each time. This is a good counter-point to what I said too, even in casual play, if by their own skill or simple dumb luck, people do have the potential to come up with very powerful forces so long as the potential exists. Thanks for sharing.

That being said, with how fast the "merry go round" goes, do you think it's actually that the new codices are in general OP, or that they come out so fast that by the time people are used to fighting them and it levels out a bit, there is a new top dog? Your example seems very much the former, but I mean in general. One or the other, bit of both? I certainly feel that I do get an intangible benefit to running all Kroot because no one I've played has ever seen it before and doesn't know how to handle it.

A game with that many moving parts and different factions and units can never be truly balanced, but I don't find it so unbalanced as to be unplayable. Even when the outcome of the game is very one-sided, I'm not usually under the impression that the game was lost or won at the listbuilding step.

 Tawnis wrote:

First off, respect for sticking it out, he sounds like a cool guy and you too for continuing to play with him. I've known quite a few people over the years that are happy to do the stomping, but suddenly when the shoe is on the other foot, they can't take it themselves.

I think your last point hits home really well. Even if you can come up with a "balanced game" it doesn't really matter if you're having the exact same balanced game each time. This is a good counter-point to what I said too, even in casual play, if by their own skill or simple dumb luck, people do have the potential to come up with very powerful forces so long as the potential exists. Thanks for sharing.

That being said, with how fast the "merry go round" goes, do you think it's actually that the new codices are in general OP, or that they come out so fast that by the time people are used to fighting them and it levels out a bit, there is a new top dog? Your example seems very much the former, but I mean in general. One or the other, bit of both? I certainly feel that I do get an intangible benefit to running all Kroot because no one I've played has ever seen it before and doesn't know how to handle it.

Yeah, GW pretty clearly operates on a marketing principle of 'Manufactured Discontent.'

This is the reason why, for example, phone manufacturers removed the capability for users to replace the batteries from their phones and ship updates that both take up device storage space and cause the older generation phones to run more slowly. When you only get money from consumers switching over to the new thing you make (as is the case with any product that is not a by nature fleeting experience that someone ostensibly gets to own and keep) the incentive from the profit motive is to ensure that the more out of date a product is, the worse a user experience it should deliver.

There's a very good reason why every new edition of the game 'coincidentally' ends up designed to advantage a particular category of unit and disadvantage another category that was strong in the previous edition of the game, and why each wave of new codexes adds an additional rules layer that older books do not get anywhere near fair compensation for. You get your Chapter Traits with your new codex, until then, your opponent gets a Chapter Trait and you get nothing.

You get your Doctrine bonus with your new codex, until then, your opponent gets Doctrines and you get nothing.

You get your super-formation with your new codex, until then, your opponent gets super-formations and you get nothing.

It changes with each edition, but it's always there. And it's not IMPOSSIBLE to beat the stronger ffactions with the weaker ones...but they are made stronger and weaker very much on purpose.

I found, as a player of both 8th and 9th, that these editions were very heavy on the layered rules and light on the actual tactical decision-making. That is to say, decisions you'd expect to make playing a simulation of warfare aren't made. It comes down to whose list is better and who can remember their stratagems more often than not. Decision-making, thus, devolves into what is shooting what and little more. Maneuver is non-existent.

Oftentimes, units that you'd expect to be good - vehicles, for example - are broken the other way. As in, they're unplayably bad. The current Space Marine umbrella meta is foot infantry, not a mobile mechanized infantry list or anything of the sort.

Most of the games we have here are landslide wins.

Overall the OP is right, a normal 40K game (read: non-competitive garagehammer between friends is what I consider the usual 40K game) doesn't have the imbalance I've experienced in pre 8th edition. That being said, there are outliers or current problems in 9th, mostly based on the fact that GW didn't give anything to outdated, 8th edition codizes and this mostly hits CSM and Tau. CSM aren't even that bad but they just don't feel like CSM if you compare them to the loyalist scum that are just better at everything and make the veterans of the long war look like redshirts.

Tournaments feature a very narrow kind of 40K, forums focus on that kind of play because most data available are about those kinds of play and they are the most streamlined, basic versions of 40K so it's easy to draw conclusions. However, what happens in tournament play has little to do with what's going on in real life and most of that has to do with how the hobby works: People play what they've painted last, or bought recently, or what theme they made up, or what fits the narrative of the army/ mission/ campaign. Every now and then someone will throw in a "meta unit" he read about on the internet or sometimes the pendulum swings and a themed list becomes the meta (say you've played Evil sunz speedfreaks for ages and suddenly those became tournament material in 8th/ 9th).

 Tawnis wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
I have been playing my Black Templars a lot recently for obvious reasons. I do not play a meta-build or anything, just a primaris only BT and BT are not exactly tearing up the meta right now. Some of the games I have played are so one sided it is not even funny and that is against both 9th and 8th codexs. I am talking 72-34 level of stomping in one example where I crushed a Guard player. Now, I know that Guard are in a real bad place but my counter example is when I play my Daemons. Yeah, yeah, yeah I can hear the naysayers now but I am sorry, I do not run 5x KoS cause I really like my Bloodcrusher and Blood Throne blob cause it looks so awesome on the table. The only problem is I get shot off the table usually by the end of turn 2 in most of my games. Or when I play my Tyranids where it really feels like I spend an hour deploying out the swarm only to pick it back up over the next hour without really doing any dice rolling of my own, cause I don't even get armor saves against most armies. The fact that most armies I play against have no issue taking 120+ bodies off the table in two turns of shooting means that I can't even play my bugs unless I buy a bunch of monsters and play a list that I am not really interested in.

The game is horribly balanced but it isn't really codex to codex at this point, the core rules and how lethal the game is make it so that some armies can't even compete.

Thanks for your input. Your comment about Tyranids was exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about. An army that plays similar to mine but a player who's had different experiences with it. Have you tried shielding them with Catalyst for the 5+ FNP, and returning them with Endless swarm? If they get through that, they shouldn't have any issue taking out all the models I've got. That being said, I suppose being on essentially every objective turn 1 does help me out a lot, but you need some advantages to counter all the disadvantages. Also, is that a consistent every game / most games thing you experience, or just sometimes?

Totally agree about the lethality angle, even in games that are close, I feel like way to many models die way too fast.

A 5+++ doesn't do a great deal for ONE squad, if my opponent is really worried about it they can shot everything off the table then shoot the squad with catalyst when everything else is gone. Again, going back to Daemons, how good do you think a 5+ save is? Saving a third of all wounds means very little in the current state of the game.

Endless swarm is great, except that gaunts suck of all variety. Hormagaunts are worse off than Termagaunts in almost every way, why rely on 2A's hitting on 4's at S3 when I can have a unit that does S4 hits at 12" range and has 1A at S3 in melee? Both of which are T3 with a 6+ save. A squad of 30 Horagaunts kills about 1 Space Marine on the charge. Those same space marines, if it were a 5 man squad, kill roughly 3-4 gaunts when swinging back.

8th codexs can't really compete in the same game as 9th codexs, which should give an idea of how much lethality is being added to the game.

I think that you're experiencing a skew effect that people at that league aren't prepared to deal with either through their list or their tactics. You're using an aggressive ( pregame move ) obsec with superb morale and help from ethereals to keep them on the table. That isn't easy to deal with if they brought a bunch of big guns to deal with dreadnoughts.

At higher point levels they'll likely have the extra tools to deal with it more effectively.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think that you're experiencing a skew effect that people at that league aren't prepared to deal with either through their list or their tactics. You're using an aggressive ( pregame move ) obsec with superb morale and help from ethereals to keep them on the table. That isn't easy to deal with if they brought a bunch of big guns to deal with dreadnoughts.

At higher point levels they'll likely have the extra tools to deal with it more effectively.

Very true, though that door swings both ways. If I had the models to run 2k points, my list would add 9 more Knarloc Riders, 4 more Greater Knarlocs, 30 more Infantry, another Ethereal/Shaper Combo another pack of hounds 2 more Krootox and another extra shaper for the backline. This balances out the list a lot more and gives me some of the big punching power that I'm lacking. Sure the argument could be made that these are Legendary units and not current codex, but I'd counter that with the fact that as stated it's not tournament focused and, you know... Kroot.

Even if that wasn't the case the fact that I can bring a list that's from an old book that is supposed to be out of date and do well with it is kinda the point. Balance isn't just about the 2k games, balance matters at every point level, 500-3000 as that's what the game is supposed to be built for.

 Tawnis wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think that you're experiencing a skew effect that people at that league aren't prepared to deal with either through their list or their tactics. You're using an aggressive ( pregame move ) obsec with superb morale and help from ethereals to keep them on the table. That isn't easy to deal with if they brought a bunch of big guns to deal with dreadnoughts.

At higher point levels they'll likely have the extra tools to deal with it more effectively.

Balance isn't just about the 2k games, balance matters at every point level, 500-3000 as that's what the game is supposed to be built for.

wait you're serious



500 point games are not balanced - skew is the perfect example. Your anecdote even confirms this imbalance - running a skew list at 1kish and below.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:


A 5+++ doesn't do a great deal for ONE squad, if my opponent is really worried about it they can shot everything off the table then shoot the squad with catalyst when everything else is gone. Again, going back to Daemons, how good do you think a 5+ save is? Saving a third of all wounds means very little in the current state of the game.

Endless swarm is great, except that gaunts suck of all variety. Hormagaunts are worse off than Termagaunts in almost every way, why rely on 2A's hitting on 4's at S3 when I can have a unit that does S4 hits at 12" range and has 1A at S3 in melee? Both of which are T3 with a 6+ save. A squad of 30 Horagaunts kills about 1 Space Marine on the charge. Those same space marines, if it were a 5 man squad, kill roughly 3-4 gaunts when swinging back.

8th codexs can't really compete in the same game as 9th codexs, which should give an idea of how much lethality is being added to the game.

If you use them in units of 30, it's not bad. I know you're more vulnerable to blast, but still, I'd say the 5+ FNP on 30 models vs 10 is worth it. As someone who doesn't chase the meta, I honestly thought deamons would be pretty good. The 6+ FNP I get saves a surprising amount of bodies when you've got as many as I run.

True, though those are vanilla Hormagaunts. If you're going a Hormagaunt heavy list, you're probably Hive Fleet Hydra for re-roll hits if you outnumber your target. Or a custom hive fleet with Pack Hunter and Bio Metalic cysts, bringing you up to AP-2. There's also the additional -1 AP with the feral instincts stratagem. That will mince quite a few more marines.

Not trying to say you're wrong or anything, just thinking of my own experience with Tyranids this edition as I run gaunt heavy as well. (50 Termagaunts (10/10/30 split fleshborer/fleshborer/devourer, 60 Hormagaunts, 30 Gargoyles in my 1500 pt list.)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think that you're experiencing a skew effect that people at that league aren't prepared to deal with either through their list or their tactics. You're using an aggressive ( pregame move ) obsec with superb morale and help from ethereals to keep them on the table. That isn't easy to deal with if they brought a bunch of big guns to deal with dreadnoughts.

At higher point levels they'll likely have the extra tools to deal with it more effectively.

Balance isn't just about the 2k games, balance matters at every point level, 500-3000 as that's what the game is supposed to be built for.

wait you're serious



500 point games are not balanced - skew is the perfect example. Your anecdote even confirms this imbalance - running a skew list at 1kish and below.

I did say "supposed to"

I'm looking forward to my higher point games. I won't be able to run all Kroot as I don't have the models, but I've already got a plan for how I'm going to tackle it.

 Tawnis wrote:


I did say "supposed to"

I'm looking forward to my higher point games. I won't be able to run all Kroot as I don't have the models, but I've already got a plan for how I'm going to tackle it.

The game is "Supposed to" feel like absolute gak at 500pts.

You're "Supposed to" have to buy in 500$ of models to play a decent quality game. And then you're "Supposed to " be so sunk in to your investment that you'll defend the game still feeling hollow.

Or not, who cares, GW got your money already.

Whatever the edition, 40k has always been poorly balanced. Or can be. Doesn't really matter if it's outside of "competitive" or not.

But no, you're league experience isn't unique. In a Crusade/Escalation league it's possible to find some mix that works very well at lower levels & only gets better as it increases. And if it's something few involved are familiar with, like your Kroot? Bonus! Other forces only come on-line at higher lvs. Meanwhile though you've racked up plenty of wins.
My own Necrons are a good example. Sure, you have all these people claiming they aren't top tier tourney-wise, suffer from being one of the 1st codices, etc. But you know what? I'm not in a tourney. I'm playing against a meta of 10-20some known foes, many of whom I'm a better player than. And I have several mixes that'll do quite well as the force grows over the first 5-7 games (our Crusades are 12 games long). The next several games is where my being a better player starts actually factoring into my wins.
And then the last game or two is where I finally face something that gives me what I consider a good game.
In our last Crusade this was game #11 - vs a fully tooled up AdMech - we tied & game #12 - vs another Necron player - I lost by several VP.
Nobody will cry if I don't bring Necrons to the 5th Crusade....

I can only speak from 8th, as I haven't tried 9th.

With small games, without named characters the game plays "ok".

Until someone stumbles on some wombo-combo by accident (or a semi-diligent hunt).

The problem is the game is filled with unbalanced landmines all over the place and it's too easy to latch onto them and make them a part of your repertoire. Bigger games exasperate the problem because you can repeat and/or enlarge the combos.

 Tawnis wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:


A 5+++ doesn't do a great deal for ONE squad, if my opponent is really worried about it they can shot everything off the table then shoot the squad with catalyst when everything else is gone. Again, going back to Daemons, how good do you think a 5+ save is? Saving a third of all wounds means very little in the current state of the game.

Endless swarm is great, except that gaunts suck of all variety. Hormagaunts are worse off than Termagaunts in almost every way, why rely on 2A's hitting on 4's at S3 when I can have a unit that does S4 hits at 12" range and has 1A at S3 in melee? Both of which are T3 with a 6+ save. A squad of 30 Horagaunts kills about 1 Space Marine on the charge. Those same space marines, if it were a 5 man squad, kill roughly 3-4 gaunts when swinging back.

8th codexs can't really compete in the same game as 9th codexs, which should give an idea of how much lethality is being added to the game.

If you use them in units of 30, it's not bad. I know you're more vulnerable to blast, but still, I'd say the 5+ FNP on 30 models vs 10 is worth it. As someone who doesn't chase the meta, I honestly thought deamons would be pretty good. The 6+ FNP I get saves a surprising amount of bodies when you've got as many as I run.

True, though those are vanilla Hormagaunts. If you're going a Hormagaunt heavy list, you're probably Hive Fleet Hydra for re-roll hits if you outnumber your target. Or a custom hive fleet with Pack Hunter and Bio Metalic cysts, bringing you up to AP-2. There's also the additional -1 AP with the feral instincts stratagem. That will mince quite a few more marines.

Not trying to say you're wrong or anything, just thinking of my own experience with Tyranids this edition as I run gaunt heavy as well. (50 Termagaunts (10/10/30 split fleshborer/fleshborer/devourer, 60 Hormagaunts, 30 Gargoyles in my 1500 pt list.)

Bringing Hormagaunts up to AP -2 by using the custom hive fleet still only kills one more space marine on average, maybe another wounded one. That also relies on somehow getting 30 T3 6+ models into 1" of the space marines.

My point is that your experience in your meta seems WILDLY different from what I have experienced. I've picked up 90+ gaunts a turn against guard, not exactly a meta army right now either. Against marines I usually lose about 50 per turn, which is better but even when I get to punch back I can barely scratch a space marine. Tyranids are in a bad place right now unless you go monster mash, I expect they will get better with their next codex but that doesn't help me for the past year or for the foreseeable future because I know that they are not coming by the end of the year and 2022 is going to be the year of Chaos apparently.

It is negligibly easy for armies to remove 1W low save bodies from the table. Orks at T5 with a 6+ are still easy enough to remove from the table AND they suffer horribly from morale. This edition of 40k has yet to show how horde type armies can work, cause so far they don't.

This is how I view balance:

There are only so many combinations of units one can make within a 2000 point army for each faction. If you measured the power/performance of each combination, you would get a power spread for each faction. Obviously I haven't done it but that is my thought excercise. You could see the quarter intervals of each faction, top 25% of a faction, the middle half of a faction, and the bottom 25% as well as the median power level.

The top 10% of each faction is where competitive lies and that's what's compared. But for the rest is where us filthy casual/narrative types lay.

From what I've seen, for some factions like Space marines and Mechanicus, their distributions are bunched up near their top quarter, and it's easier for the average army to be powerful. For other factions, their top quarter is more an outlier and the bulk of lists are not that powerful.

The median army list is far from equal across the board, IE the chance any two slapped together lists between 2 factions will be similar power wise is unlikely. That is how I see ot as unbalanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is how I view balance:

There are only so many combinations of units one can make within a 2000 point army for each faction. If you measured the power/performance of each combination, you would get a power spread for each faction. Obviously I haven't done it but that is my thought excercise. You could see the quarter intervals of each faction, top 25% of a faction, the middle half of a faction, and the bottom 25% as well as the median power level.

The top 10% of each faction is where competitive lies and that's what's compared. But for the rest is where us filthy casual/narrative types lay.

From what I've seen, for some factions like Space marines and Mechanicus, their distributions are bunched up near their top quarter, and it's easier for the average army to be powerful. For other factions, their top quarter is more an outlier and the bulk of lists are not that powerful.

The median army list is far from equal across the board, IE the chance any two slapped together lists between 2 factions will be similar power wise is unlikely. That is how I see it as unbalanced.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:


It is negligibly easy for armies to remove 1W low save bodies from the table. Orks at T5 with a 6+ are still easy enough to remove from the table AND they suffer horribly from morale. This edition of 40k has yet to show how horde type armies can work, cause so far they don't.

What's been working for me is not worrying about killing things, because you more-less can't. It's been about playing the objectives and putting yourself so far ahead on points that it doesn't matter if you die. If you can get on the objectives first turn and just hold on, then your golden. For what I know about Tyranids, I'd try this with Devourer Termagaunts backed up with Catalyst advancing up to gum up the objectives turn 1 and shooting any troop units they can see and just ignoring and taking your lumps from anything that's not obsec. Then Hormagaunts and Warriors bannering up objectives then thrown into the inevitable melee that will ensue. I'd go with Adaptive Exoskeleton for the 6++ for survivability and Hypermetabolic Acceleration to get on those objectives. Basically, how I've been paying my Kroot with the units swapped appropriately. The one thing you don't have is a cheap but durable ranged unit to take the place of the Krootox for holding backfield objectives, maybe a few Biovores, but at 50 points a piece, eh, that's a lot to invest and they're pretty squishy. Maybe just more warriors, the Deathspitters do have decent range, but that's really bogging down the Troop slot now.

Not saying it will work wonders by any means, just thinking how I'd play the list where the codex is at. Again, I've only ben playing the 1k bracket so far, so I can't speak to 2k from experience. Could easily be the weight of firepower is too heavy for this to work, but you really only need to hold on until the end of turn three for a solid shot at winning, then just focus on denying any primaries you can. Again, at least from my limited experience.

To me this is really the most balanced edition for non tournament players. In my experience with older editions (8th and 7th in particular) pre-game fixes to put both lists on the same league had to be more frequent and more significant than now.

Of course I'm only considering failry TAC lists and average/reasonable collections of models. Extremely skew lists lead to extreme results, as always. I flat out ignore results for lists involving 18 buggies or 4-5 planes as I would never play with or against those, regardless of how good/bad they are.

Biggest downside of 9th (but still much better than 8th) is the volume of dice that is too high, plus tools to enhance the results. Less dice, less ways to fix the results and the game would be much better, at the moment it's too much the game of averages.

In a small/local meta player skill is the biggest determinant of winning games. Arguably this has always been the case but 9th's missions probably exaggerate the effect. Its however far harder to describe what makes a player "good" than why faction/list X is stronger than faction Y.

The fact you have an odd list may also effect your opponents decision making.

At competetive tournaments you can assume most placing players know what they are doing. So the faction probabilities - and therefore imbalances - start to shine through as you measure the outcomes of all such games.

No game based on dice rolls can ever be truly balanced. Similarly, No game based on a foundation of 'universal' in-game unit costs and values that ignore context can ever be balanced either.

Is 40k balanced outside of competitive play?

Yes, and no. With caveats.

40k is modular. Individual lists can be made tens of thousands of different ways. Some things match up relatively well. If you approach a game right and are willing to collaborate and 'list-match', there's no reason your games can't be balanced. You may need to step outside of some constraints though (eg more points for one side or ignore some over the top advantage for the other) to acheive this and you need to appreciate this puts a lot of the onus on the front end ie the players.

On the other hand, go in blind put, put the wrong things up against each other (eg list tailoring, or fielding what amounts to the other armies' 'silver bullet,) and there's every chance you'll have a one sided stomping, irregardless of whether it's a top table tournament game or a casual beer hammer and bbq type game.

As long as you can find a like minded opponent, then yes 40k can be quite balanced and reasonable. Communicate with your opponent before the game is key, discuss what army you'll use and any problematic units you may or may not want. EG, if I was to bring Mortarion to a friendly match I'd let my opponent know ahead of time and I'd happily leave the big guy at home if he felt it would ruin the game.

All bets are off for blind pick up games and tournaments but outside of those you just need to be lucky enough to know someone who isn't a jerk.

As a side note, I think the 9th edition codexs are looking pretty decent from a balance point of view. Out of 9 codexs and 5 supplements we only have 2 being noteworthy as too strong (Ad Mech and Dark Eldar) and 1 being noteworthy as too weak (necrons). Not too bad by GW's standards.

-Guardsman- wrote:
A game with that many moving parts and different factions and units can never be truly balanced, but I don't find it so unbalanced as to be unplayable. Even when the outcome of the game is very one-sided, I'm not usually under the impression that the game was lost or won at the listbuilding step.

I definitely thing the business model/cycle of new rules (rule edition + codecies) and new miniature releases means that you have a continuous pressure wave of 'latest and greatest' that people feel they need to invest in and buy more miniatures. This priority for GW comes above the priority of them making the game balanced (and therefore suited for tournament play. )

Believe James Hewitt said as much in those social media posts a while back, although the truth has been evident for many years now (and I would say at least going back to 3rd or 4th edition) to anyone who has played the games. Also, its important to mention that many other games manage to have a far better semblance of balance and can produce 'fair' tournament play. GW themselves have managed it in the past with other games they have released. So for it to be 'broken' for so long, you have to think it is the consequence of a deliberate decision, or at least evidence that balancing the game isn't a priority at all.

The problem is of course is that if balance isn't a concern at all, and the ball has been struck so hard and so wildly that not only has it missed the goal but it has gone into the crowd up on the third tier, that 'casual' players aren't able to get along with the game, let alone tournament netlisters, because the balancing issues are so egregious.

 Pacific wrote:
Also, its important to mention that many other games manage to have a far better semblance of balance and can produce 'fair' tournament play. GW themselves have managed it in the past with other games they have released.

I don't disagree but it must be stated though that 'better' is somewhat relative (you say it well - the 'semblance' of balance). even those games commonly regarded as 'better' balanced, even like warmachine or x-wing often also boiled down to a handful of lists that dominated over others. Every game has 'trap' choices, 'crutch' choices, poor synergies and 'go to' lists. Ttgs are rough, limited systems- I've never come across a game that could handle the requirements demanded of it in the name of achieving the mythical 'balance'.

It should also be noted you tend to get 'better' balance in games with less moving parts and smaller rosters (less factions, units etc) as a game with 2 factions each of 4 unit/loadout choices will be easier to balance than a game with 30 factions each of thirty units. Fine for a new game or boxed game but after even a handful of expansions this won't last. And games/businesses need to those expansions or else they die. Now, as useful as that is, I can't imagine ones popularity being very high if they turned round and tried to make illegal 99% of 40ks current roster across all factions in the name of 'balance' - there'll be lots of angry players out there.