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It's pretty clear that T'au and Custodes are waaay overtuned.

They've pushed Crusher and DE right down. There's some other armies popping their heads up - Necrons, Harlies, Salamanders, but that's all pretty irrelevant.

Custodes are the easiest army to get into. There's no way those points "fixes" should stand and their strats are just absurdly undercosted. The ease of entry and the superb rules just makes for a huge cluster where soon tables will be filled with them like the old GK days.

T'au feels mostly just undercosted, but the full rerolls to wound and Mont'ka need a look as well as no LOS shooting

This past weekend Custodes had a 60% WR vs even Tau.

What will GW do now? Are they going to ( try to ) hot fix these armies like DE ( and possibly fail )? Or are they going to make us wait 3 to 6 months?

It seems pretty clear to me that we can't wait for them to let us know. We need to start asking. I'm sending the message below to 40KFAQ@gwplc.com and I urge all of you to send a polite message as well.

I welcome other constructive thoughts on the matter.

And to be clear - I am not in favor of a sledgehammer.

Dear GW,

I am petitioning you on behalf of myself and other like minded players who have become upset with the poorly handled releases ( presently Custodes and T'au ). They cause far too much chaos at all levels and forms of play and I would ask that you communicate to the community how you intend to deal with these issues. I understand that factors like COVID, crazy work schedules, or poor management can exacerbate issues, but we are in the dark.

While you work through these problems I would ask that you start to consider digital rules as a method to allow you to make changes more flexibility and players less confused and stressed. Books will still be a valuable product, but perhaps we decouple points from them?

Just my thoughts. I do hope you take the time to consider this as I've had lots of fun, but I fear that could be placed in jeopardy with the loss of confidence in the releases.

Sincerely,

A concerned decades long customer

Yeah, armies like custodes or harlequins being OP are always a huge problem. They're the cheapest and quickest armies to get and they have a pretty limited roster so if they crush tournaments they'd definitely crush casual metas, since lists would be pretty much the same.

Some of those OP drukhari lists have never been a problem for casual metas since they are kinda skew. I haven't seen a single player owning tons of wracks, grots and pain engines in my life and I faced multiple drukhari armies in 9th.

Nah, surely GW actually knows what they're doing. You said Ork players were complaining about nothing, and they are dling much worse than these factions, sooo....

Nah, balance for 40k has never been better. Have you tried playing with more terrain? You're probably not using enough terrain.

Don't worry. When GW has sold enough kits to saturate market they will change what's op to something else.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Nah, balance for 40k has never been better. Have you tried playing with more terrain? You're probably not using enough terrain.

I legitimately can't tell if comments like this are a joke or a serious opinion anymore.

GW needs to get their gak together, now.

They need to fix the game and its *present* issues ASAP, and bring it back to a state where all armies have a similar shot at winning again.
CA was a complete failure, and they need to bring a similar update based on current data, not on that from half a year ago.

Power creep and balance is so bad right now that it's starting to ruin casual and crusade. If this continues, the game will start bleeding players 7th edition style again.

GW really need to put a pause on the upcoming book releases and dial everything in them back pre release. I imagine the community would much rather have a new book released deliberately underpowered and then tuned up in the following weeks, rather than release something that's absolutely bonkers and just makes the game not fun for six months at a time.

Or, treat all new books equally. If a book is problematic and clearly overpowered, nerf it into the ground and work your way back up later.

Or don't nerf anything and let the game eat itself alive.

One possibility I've seen mentioned for the tournament scene is to not allow any books to be used until they've had their initial FAQ/ Of course, a lot of the data for that FAQ comes from tournament games, so that my be a bit problematic.

In general, GW need to do better and quickly. We're starting to lose players locally because the power levels are so far out of whack. These aren't meta-chasing tournament players either. They're just becoming disheartened by the mismatches in power level and even some of those playing Tau and Custodes are feeling it because they realise their success has very little do with anything other than the ridiculousness of their Codices.

Slipspace wrote:
One possibility I've seen mentioned for the tournament scene is to not allow any books to be used until they've had their initial FAQ/ Of course, a lot of the data for that FAQ comes from tournament games, so that my be a bit problematic.

In general, GW need to do better and quickly. We're starting to lose players locally because the power levels are so far out of whack. These aren't meta-chasing tournament players either. They're just becoming disheartened by the mismatches in power level and even some of those playing Tau and Custodes are feeling it because they realise their success has very little do with anything other than the ridiculousness of their Codices.

Have they tried playing Crusade?

 Sim-Life wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
One possibility I've seen mentioned for the tournament scene is to not allow any books to be used until they've had their initial FAQ/ Of course, a lot of the data for that FAQ comes from tournament games, so that my be a bit problematic.

In general, GW need to do better and quickly. We're starting to lose players locally because the power levels are so far out of whack. These aren't meta-chasing tournament players either. They're just becoming disheartened by the mismatches in power level and even some of those playing Tau and Custodes are feeling it because they realise their success has very little do with anything other than the ridiculousness of their Codices.

Have they tried playing Crusade?

Nope. In general, we prefer playing our own campaigns to Crusade. The general impression of the Crusade rules are that they are more bloat on an already bloated system. While they do somewhat change the parameters of a "successful" game by giving players different victory conditions they don't really mitigate the core problem of the huge power imbalance in the books turning a lot of games into foregone conclusions. While it's nice t play a game and further an Agenda even after losing it still sucks to feel like you never really had a chance of winning the actual mission.

An actual sensible post from Daedalus.

We do need people to make GW aware via all avenues of social media that releasing an ever escalating set of powerful codexes is not clever game design.

I think the big tournament organisers may need to shame GW into action by comping books.

-200 point handicap to Custodes (mixed or pure) and Tau,

+200 point benefit to Death Guard (pure), Imperial Guard (pure), Space Marines (pure Fists, Ravenguard, Salamanders, Ultramarines). +100 point benefit to Sisters.

See how that changes results. After 2 weeks maybe add a couple more books to the comp system. As new factions should drop to below 40% and Crusher Stampede will probably jump up (but by how much).

If Custodes or Tau are still dominating with a -200 handicap then it will make GW look like total chumps.

From a casual perspective I don't mind these things. Didn't mind the ad-mech and DE power creep either. I rarely do "pick-up games" anymore since our gaming group (8 people) typically plays at my home rather than a lgs.

However, if I were to get back into the LGS scene and was looking for a pick-up game, I would likely just turn down the game offer with anyone who was bringing an over-tuned "meta" list.

Games Workshop rules have always been a bumbled mess of power scaling and debauchery. This power meta culture can only be solved by the community. If you don't want to see these lists casually, then refuse to play against them. The problem will self-correct.

*This advice is how to prevent these lists from running away in the casual/narrative/non-comp environments. The comp meta can suffer for all I care, they encouraged this WAAC culture.

EightFoldPath wrote:
An actual sensible post from Daedalus.

We do need people to make GW aware via all avenues of social media that releasing an ever escalating set of powerful codexes is not clever game design.

Depends. If it gives GW bigger profit then that's good game design. It accomplishes goal of the designers.

Slipspace wrote:
While they do somewhat change the parameters of a "successful" game by giving players different victory conditions they don't really mitigate the core problem of the huge power imbalance in the books turning a lot of games into foregone conclusions.

I agree with this. In addition, recent codices also have added a problem of people not even being able to complete any agendas because an overtuned codex has blown them off the table T2. Loosing twice in one crusade game is even worse than getting curb-stomped 100:0 in a GT game.

Does anyone else think it's scary how many posters who tend to be at each other's throats agree in this thread?

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
While they do somewhat change the parameters of a "successful" game by giving players different victory conditions they don't really mitigate the core problem of the huge power imbalance in the books turning a lot of games into foregone conclusions.

I agree with this. In addition, recent codices also have added a problem of people not even being able to complete any agendas because an overtuned codex has blown them off the table T2. Loosing twice in one crusade game is even worse than getting curb-stomped 100:0 in a GT game.

Does anyone else think it's scary how many posters who tend to be at each other's throats agree in this thread?

GW will alienate everyone eventually. Its just that some of us have a head start.

tneva82 wrote:

EightFoldPath wrote:
An actual sensible post from Daedalus.

We do need people to make GW aware via all avenues of social media that releasing an ever escalating set of powerful codexes is not clever game design.

Depends. If it gives GW bigger profit then that's good game design. It accomplishes goal of the designers.

It really doesn't depend. Bad game design may be popular, successful or profitable and thus good business, but it's still bad game design.

I forgot CSM, they probably need to be comped too. But I would be tempted to do it on a legion by legion basis, just to see if +400 Word Bearers still have a sub 50% win rate.

Yeah, it might be good business while being bad game design. I've seen this with other businesses though, what they are currently doing is turning "goodwill" value into cash. There is an inertia to this, but eventually the goodwill runs out and you stop being able to cash it in. It can then take a while to re-earn the goodwill you previously had.

Just forge the narrative and negotiate the game!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

It seems pretty clear to me that we can't wait for them to let us know. We need to start asking. I'm sending the message below to 40KFAQ@gwplc.com and I urge all of you to send a polite message as well.

Just want to say I appreciate this constructive approach to fixing issues. It's far too common to see people howling into the online void about things they don't like, but still don't do anything to get them fixed.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, I would suggest providing specific data in support of the claim that the releases are "poorly handled" as this is more likely to result in action. I haven't looked, but I assume there extremely skewed win rates for these factions in the last few weeks?

I fully agree that they need a different model of managing rules, however a change like this is only realistically going to happen following a new edition. There will be active projects and supplier contracts in place for the remaining codexes (or other books) in the pipeline, and plans like those won't be changed on a whim. By all means we can still ask for improvements, but if we want any short-medium term improvements too then I'd highly recommend clearly stressing an overhaul of the Chapter Approved model:

The delay in physically printing updated points plus gathering the required data means GW are effectively updating a game that no longer exists.

Balance issues that surface too late for the CA printing deadline result in either ongoing disruption or emergency balance dataslate fixes as a stopgap measure.

A common opinion in 40k communities is that CA Nachmund was poor value for money and most refused to purchase it.

The bi-annual points changes should ideally be worked on much closer to final release and distributed via PDF download.

That's something they could still potentially change in time for this Summer, and if not still before the next edition.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
While they do somewhat change the parameters of a "successful" game by giving players different victory conditions they don't really mitigate the core problem of the huge power imbalance in the books turning a lot of games into foregone conclusions.

I agree with this. In addition, recent codices also have added a problem of people not even being able to complete any agendas because an overtuned codex has blown them off the table T2. Loosing twice in one crusade game is even worse than getting curb-stomped 100:0 in a GT game.

Does anyone else think it's scary how many posters who tend to be at each other's throats agree in this thread?

GW will alienate everyone eventually. Its just that some of us have a head start.

Seems a bit doompillish for me.

I think part of the problem right now is a lot of what we're seeing release-wise right now is stuff that was finished during Covid and likely got far less play testing and time working on it collectively than it should have.

I'm telling you, "Nerfing your army on purpose" is a thing. Try it, you might like it

I mean GW have a pretty consistent history of screwing everything up eventually. Its not so much a doompill as it is pattern recognition.

So GSC and Custodes FAQs dropped an hour ago. Does anyone think any of this helps anything?

GSC: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/HcRU2JKXHoXqrGzd.pdf

Custodes: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/osTrVtUQdSidgXpR.pdf

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
While they do somewhat change the parameters of a "successful" game by giving players different victory conditions they don't really mitigate the core problem of the huge power imbalance in the books turning a lot of games into foregone conclusions.

I agree with this. In addition, recent codices also have added a problem of people not even being able to complete any agendas because an overtuned codex has blown them off the table T2. Loosing twice in one crusade game is even worse than getting curb-stomped 100:0 in a GT game.

Does anyone else think it's scary how many posters who tend to be at each other's throats agree in this thread?

GW will alienate everyone eventually. Its just that some of us have a head start.

At least until 10th is out and everyone comes running back because "my friends are all playing it again. They said GW has changed!"

Jidmah wrote:...and bring it back to a state where all armies have a similar shot at winning again.

When was that?

Afrodactyl wrote:I imagine the community would much rather have a new book released deliberately underpowered and then tuned up in the following weeks, rather than release something that's absolutely bonkers and just makes the game not fun for six months at a time.

That means they don't get the sales spike from something being the new shiny and OP at the same time.
As a public company; GW's first obligation is to make dividends for their shareholders, not what the community that makes a hobby out of their products would like.

GW has no intention of making a balanced game. If they did they would have with 8th edition.
They will continue to drive sales at the expense of their games for as long as people keep buying into it.

If you don't like those practices there are plenty of companies that make good games (and that will cost you less to play).
I jumped out when the 8th codexes were are balance shitshow too and have not regretted it.
Still have more hobby than time.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So GSC and Custodes FAQs dropped an hour ago. Does anyone think any of this helps anything?

GSC: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/HcRU2JKXHoXqrGzd.pdf

Custodes: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/osTrVtUQdSidgXpR.pdf

Not sure if it fixes anything from a balance perspective, but I do like the change in the Custodes one so Custodes and SoS units count as the same faction for detachment-building purposes. Mind you, this initial FAQ/errata release was unlikely to do balance fixes, and instead be mechanical fixes they've realised since the books went to print (or were released).

Hecaton wrote:
Nah, surely GW actually knows what they're doing. You said Ork players were complaining about nothing, and they are dling much worse than these factions, sooo....

Don't put words in my mouth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Nah, balance for 40k has never been better. Have you tried playing with more terrain? You're probably not using enough terrain.

It still plays very well and the armies in question don't need massive nerfs. They just need prompt attention.

 DarkBlack wrote:

Jidmah wrote:...and bring it back to a state where all armies have a similar shot at winning again.

When was that?

Afrodactyl wrote:I imagine the community would much rather have a new book released deliberately underpowered and then tuned up in the following weeks, rather than release something that's absolutely bonkers and just makes the game not fun for six months at a time.

That means they don't get the sales spike from something being the new shiny and OP at the same time.
As a public company; GW's first obligation is to make dividends for their shareholders, not what the community that makes a hobby out of their products would like.

GW has no intention of making a balanced game. If they did they would have with 8th edition.
They will continue to drive sales at the expense of their games for as long as people keep buying into it.

If you don't like those practices there are plenty of companies that make good games (and that will cost you less to play).
I jumped out when the 8th codexes were are balance shitshow too and have not regretted it.
Still have more hobby than time.

as far as when that was, 8th edition index was in my opinion about as balanced as it has been ever, but even then there were some factions that were ahead/behind, just much better than say now.

to the OP I think GW's saying they will do quarterly updates might help though i think it means every quarter a new book might move to the top as previous top books are put in line. hopefully people keep emailign respectful messages to GW with balance issues and GW listens incorporating feedback into their updates. I still think balance would be better achieved through making games logging a thing and doign monthly updates via algorythm for points but i doubt GW will go that method any time soon sadly, and meat bags (people) are terrible at balancing numbers, until they transfer points to machine learning we will never actually get balance.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So GSC and Custodes FAQs dropped an hour ago. Does anyone think any of this helps anything?

GSC: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/HcRU2JKXHoXqrGzd.pdf

Custodes: https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/osTrVtUQdSidgXpR.pdf

No. Some good FAQ clarifications at least (not going to complain too much about those - bit slow would be the main grumble). But they don't really change the balance of the armies.