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Can you all like please just use spoilers from now on or go to PMs? Like, half of the page is taken up by just your comments.

 jeff white wrote:
Khorne without berserkers? W T F?

Remember, World Eaters are getting their own book at some point.

Hecaton wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Khorne without berserkers? W T F?

Remember, World Eaters are getting their own book at some point.

I want this to be true, but this is also one of those, ill believe it when i see it.

Hecaton wrote:
Tiberias, your comment isn't worth replying to line by line. You, again, are contradicting yourself and refusing to cop to what you're saying. You want to castigate everyone who doesn't perform an ad hoc rebalancing of 40k before every game, but you don't want any of the smoke when called out on how cumbersome that is. That's childish.

I don't want to have to rebalance the game every Friday night for a few hours before I spend a few hours playing the game. GW's supposed to do that for me. And you say it's wrong to criticize them, get off it. The meta is not fine, and it's fine to point that out.

Learn to read comprehensively. I clarified my point multiple times now regarding GW...two times in the last post even, yet you still purposefully misconstrue my words.

I don't want to castigate anyone. But what I will do relentlessly is hold you, you specifically, to the BS you are spewing rather constantly.

Before I answer the question I would like to say, I remember a time when powerful codexes were released and there was no chance in hell you would even see an attempt by GW to balance it! GW has improved in that area by 100%, literally going from unresponsive to Balanced Dataslates and FAQs. Which is a vast improvement that sometimes seems as if only players who played in earlier editions can appreciate because there was a time when it did not exist. How do you complain when you know the company is constantly trying to improve the quality of matched play games via Balanced Dataslates and Faqs? Yes, they will make mistakes but you must give them time to attempt to fix it. There was a time when tournament organizers were the ones trying to balance the game and it was somewhat of a mess as the rulings varied depending on the tournament you went to. Now every tournament is the same, I don't have to worry about one judge ruling something differently from my local judge.

To answer the question, the metagame doesn't bother me at all, I will adapt. In my mind, there will always usually be S-tier armies and I don't care if it is the newest codex. I recently got back into 40k after taking a break with corona out there. I won my first local tournament with Necrons with the final round being against Tau and, I plan to go to a bigger tournament using Astra Militarum. I believe player skill is the most important ingredient in the competitive scene. I will acknowledge that you can buy the new stuff and have a high win rate because of it and not skill.

I do not like hearing about 65% winning percentages at events which means there is a list out there that doesn't require a lot to win with. Those numbers are caused when average players can not overcome the various overpowered upgrades of the new codex. There is a problem when both players are of equal skill compete but the end results do not show that because the codex gives one player an advantage.

Hecaton wrote:
Remember, World Eaters are getting their own book at some point.

Which is all well and good for those wanting to play World Eaters. But for those of us who just want to keep using Cult Troops in our Chaos armies, we're just gak outta luck. Well, except for Noise Marines, but Noise Marines are also gak out of luck as well, given they're a resin conversion kit for a model that GW doesn't even produce anymore.

First they took away our Daemons. Now our Cult Troops. Why do they hate us?

Tiberias wrote:
Learn to read comprehensively. I clarified my point multiple times now regarding GW...two times in the last post even, yet you still purposefully misconstrue my words.

I don't want to castigate anyone. But what I will do relentlessly is hold you, you specifically, to the BS you are spewing rather constantly.

You clarified your point, but it's an absolutely boneheaded and contradictory statement *in a thread where critique of the current meta is invited.*

Go bother OP for making this thread and how it's wrongthink if you're so obsessed with the idea.

Hecaton wrote:


I own 2 voidweavers atm, I've never run more than 1 in a game. But the point is, if I win a game, since I'm playing Harlequins, other players assume that it's because of how broken my army is, so the meta is negatively affecting my casual play.

That's something common unfortunately. I got the same reactions when I played orks during the period in which buggy and planes spam outraged competitive players, even if I actually played with 5 buggies, each of a differents kind and no planes at all.

Hecaton wrote:

Yes but if someone is like "Custodes are cool, imma run these big golden guys" and another player is like "IG are cool, imma run some tanks and infantry" they cannot have a good game.

I think it is possible. I played orks in 7th, the absolute bottom tier of the edition, and I had great games against an eldar player who didn't want to field a single bike or D weapon platform. Those IG and custodes players cannot have a good game assuming they can't change anything or anything significant in their lists. Which is also something that always has been an issue in friendly games and the reason why I suggest people to avoid playing with their entire collection and/or to build skew lists. Custodes for example can bring lots of garbage units and can be toned down significantly just by avoiding a named character and lots of bikes.

 CKO wrote:
Before I answer the question I would like to say, I remember a time when powerful codexes were released and there was no chance in hell you would even see an attempt by GW to balance it! GW has improved in that area by 100%, literally going from unresponsive to Balanced Dataslates and FAQs. Which is a vast improvement that sometimes seems as if only players who played in earlier editions can appreciate because there was a time when it did not exist. How do you complain when you know the company is constantly trying to improve the quality of matched play games via Balanced Dataslates and Faqs? Yes, they will make mistakes but you must give them time to attempt to fix it. There was a time when tournament organizers were the ones trying to balance the game and it was somewhat of a mess as the rulings varied depending on the tournament you went to. Now every tournament is the same, I don't have to worry about one judge ruling something differently from my local judge.

To answer the question, the metagame doesn't bother me at all, I will adapt. In my mind, there will always usually be S-tier armies and I don't care if it is the newest codex. I recently got back into 40k after taking a break with corona out there. I won my first local tournament with Necrons with the final round being against Tau and, I plan to go to a bigger tournament using Astra Militarum. I believe player skill is the most important ingredient in the competitive scene. I will acknowledge that you can buy the new stuff and have a high win rate because of it and not skill.

I do not like hearing about 65% winning percentages at events which means there is a list out there that doesn't require a lot to win with. Those numbers are caused when average players can not overcome the various overpowered upgrades of the new codex. There is a problem when both players are of equal skill compete but the end results do not show that because the codex gives one player an advantage.

Doing better than nothing at all is literally the faintest praise you can give to GW.

As for player skill vs list, I think the numbers speak for themselves. Oppressive books like DE, AdMech, Tau, Custodes and Harlequins (God, that's a depressingly long list of broken gak) consistently manage, or managed, 65% win rates or above, across all levels of the game. This isn't because average players overwhelmingly played against broken armies, which is a ridiculous statement. It's because those armies are broken and give an instant power boost to anyone using them. In fact, given these win rates come from tournament data, it's more likely that average or worse players end up facing fewer of these top tier lists because they're languishing towards the middle or bottom tables where list variety is greater.

Player skill obviously plays a part, but the most important thing in determining player success overall is what list they're running. There's a reason the most successful players tend to be the ones who have access to multiple armies and can switch to new ones at a moment's notice. If player skill was a more important factor in success we'd see far more outliers at the top than we currently do.

Hecaton wrote:

Tiberias wrote:
Learn to read comprehensively. I clarified my point multiple times now regarding GW...two times in the last post even, yet you still purposefully misconstrue my words.

I don't want to castigate anyone. But what I will do relentlessly is hold you, you specifically, to the BS you are spewing rather constantly.

You clarified your point, but it's an absolutely boneheaded and contradictory statement *in a thread where critique of the current meta is invited.*

Go bother OP for making this thread and how it's wrongthink if you're so obsessed with the idea.

Huh? This is starting to take on hilarious levels of ridiculousness....I started this thread you complete dingleberry. Nothing I said about GW was contradictory, you just made that up in your head...again.
Maybe if I use less words:
GW at fault for messy balance, critiquing GW fine....maybe even better though to try to do someting about it and talk to people to try to have more fun in this messy state of game.
Calling me boneheaded there is borderline slapstick, love it.

I'm allowed to not know exactly what either of you are arguing about?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm allowed to not know exactly what either of you are arguing about?

Hecaton is basically saying that because I suggested that it might be better to try to talk to people before a game to maybe turn down stronger factions a bit so that a Guard player for example might get to have a bit more fun (especially in friendly games) by taking more experimental and fun lists for example and/or playing smaller games, I am also absolving GW of all blame for this mess and that I'm somehow not ok with people criticizing GW.

See Hecaton doesn't really read the posts they are responding to comprehensively, but probably flies over them and makes up gotcha moments in their mind. And I'm calling them out on their BS, especially because of their tendency to literally accuse people who play imperium factions and like imperium lore as actual real life fascists in multiple threads.

Tiberias wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm allowed to not know exactly what either of you are arguing about?

Hecaton is basically saying that because I suggested that it might be better to try to talk to people before a game to maybe turn down stronger factions a bit so that a Guard player for example might get to have a bit more fun (especially in friendly games) by taking more experimental and fun lists for example and/or playing smaller games, I am also absolving GW of all blame for this mess and that I'm somehow not ok with people criticizing GW.

See Hecaton doesn't really read the posts they are responding to comprehensively, but probably flies over them and makes up gotcha moments in their mind. And I'm calling them out on their BS, especially because of their tendency to literally accuse people who play imperium factions and like imperium lore as actual real life fascists in multiple threads.

You're pissed off at me for stuff I said in another thread to the point that you're grossly misrepresenting me here. Get off it. You don't have anything worthwhile to add here.

It's GW's fault the rules and balance suck, and players shouldn't be expected to do GW's job for them, that's unreasonable.

What does "talking before a game" even look like. "Run this list of underpowered models or I won't play you?" What do you do if your opponent wants to run a list you think is gonna beat yours with no effort? Or if they insist you nerf your list to the point where they can just steamroll you, as some scrubby CAAC players insist? That basically shows that 40k can't handle pick up games, which is something worth complaining about.

Also, the Imperium is intentionally evocative of fascism, if you think it's unironically heroic you learned the wrong lesson.

Hecaton wrote:

Tiberias wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm allowed to not know exactly what either of you are arguing about?

Hecaton is basically saying that because I suggested that it might be better to try to talk to people before a game to maybe turn down stronger factions a bit so that a Guard player for example might get to have a bit more fun (especially in friendly games) by taking more experimental and fun lists for example and/or playing smaller games, I am also absolving GW of all blame for this mess and that I'm somehow not ok with people criticizing GW.

See Hecaton doesn't really read the posts they are responding to comprehensively, but probably flies over them and makes up gotcha moments in their mind. And I'm calling them out on their BS, especially because of their tendency to literally accuse people who play imperium factions and like imperium lore as actual real life fascists in multiple threads.

You're pissed off at me for stuff I said in another thread to the point that you're grossly misrepresenting me here. Get off it. You don't have anything worthwhile to add here.

It's GW's fault the rules and balance suck, and players shouldn't be expected to do GW's job for them, that's unreasonable.

What does "talking before a game" even look like. "Run this list of underpowered models or I won't play you?" What do you do if your opponent wants to run a list you think is gonna beat yours with no effort? Or if they insist you nerf your list to the point where they can just steamroll you, as some scrubby CAAC players insist? That basically shows that 40k can't handle pick up games, which is something worth complaining about.

Nono don't get me wrong, I'm also very much pissed off about the drivel you posted in this thread. And I did not misinterpret you one bit, you however almost elevate it to an artform. Problem is you do it purposefully to win an argument.

Also how purposefully dense can you actually be? I never even insinuated that that you should start a conversation about this by saying "Run this list of underpowered models or I won't play you" thats not how a conversation between two reasonable people usually starts. Well maybe it is for you, don't know.

Hecaton wrote:

Also, the Imperium is intentionally evocative of fascism, if you think it's unironically heroic you learned the wrong lesson.

I'll just link this thread so everyone can see for themselves what an utter dingleberry you are on this issue:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/799764.page

Here's an example from my game last night;

I'm playing Tau, vs Necrons.
This Tau army predates the codex, it's a themed list of all the units I think are awesome. Mechanised infantry supported by mobile armoured and battlesuit assets. It just so happens that every unit is "high B tier" at a minimum in the new codex.
I have barely 1000pts, only about 970 before frivolous upgrades.

My opponent is playing Necrons. I don't know what a meta Necron army looks like, but I'm pretty sure he didn't pick units based on meta performance.

I knew it would be a slaughter, but I decided I'd actually try and give them a turn, I basically didn't use any abilities or strategems and left about a quarter of my list at the back to not do anything.
I still got an easy win without any significant casualties myself by turn 2.

How the hell are we supposed to have a quick discussion balancing that?
I can't run a weaker list because I'm fielding everything I own, running smaller games wouldn't help because my units are all that good, even not using my abilities didn't help all that much.
Balance is fethed beyond the point of players reasonably balancing them.

Well I have switched to Kill team, so not at all. But for those still playing some of the people at the club will turn up with the tweaked armies and some, especially newer players won't. We let the 40k suffers arrange games amongst themselves and from the outside looking in it seems the games are horrifically one sided.

But 40k doesn't have a culture of balancing sides to missions pre game like a lot of wargames (what you have got an army my can't touch, ok, 25% extra to you, these tweaked objectives etc.). They game GT scenario games with GT rules, and don't seem to enjoy it. A lot of new faces seem to only come once, which is sad, but as far as I can tell that is the game now.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

3rd to 6th? - Its busted, poor writing exposes rifts between comp and casual - Did I say GW still writes poor rules?

5th edition was a solid foundation. It just needed a good FAQ to iron out things like allocating wounds to multi-wound models. A cross the board increase on cheap vehicles. Then a nerf for Grey Knights and Space Wolves.

Honestly, if 5th edition had the same support 9th has today it would have been the perfect edition with the old ruleset.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Here's an example from my game last night;

I'm playing Tau, vs Necrons.
This Tau army predates the codex, it's a themed list of all the units I think are awesome. Mechanised infantry supported by mobile armoured and battlesuit assets. It just so happens that every unit is "high B tier" at a minimum in the new codex.
I have barely 1000pts, only about 970 before frivolous upgrades.

My opponent is playing Necrons. I don't know what a meta Necron army looks like, but I'm pretty sure he didn't pick units based on meta performance.

I knew it would be a slaughter, but I decided I'd actually try and give them a turn, I basically didn't use any abilities or strategems and left about a quarter of my list at the back to not do anything.
I still got an easy win without any significant casualties myself by turn 2.

How the hell are we supposed to have a quick discussion balancing that?
I can't run a weaker list because I'm fielding everything I own, running smaller games wouldn't help because my units are all that good, even not using my abilities didn't help all that much.
Balance is fethed beyond the point of players reasonably balancing them.

It's nothing different than older editions though.

The point of balance in something as wide as 40k is that each faction should have solid odds to compete each other. Factions, not lists. 40k is not a game in which random X points of a faction MUST be on par against same X points of another faction, and then it's entirely down to players skills or luck, never has been.

For what is worth there's always open play and house rules to help with that, and I believe that players that want to field themed lists should look at those type of games, rather than matched which is aimed at competitive gaming instead. And competitive gaming requires updating players' rosters. Maybe not every month or every year, but at some point players are supposed to expand their collections, unless their collections are already designed on having a bit of everything rather than being themed, spammy or focussed around a flavour of the month. And that's a good thing since it helps keeping the overall balance in check. Themed lists are always hard to play in competitive gaming, for their own nature.

But 1000 points of tau vs 1000 points of necrons, or even higher formats involving the same factions, can definitely result in pretty close and balanced games.

I agree that skew lists shouldn't necessarily be competitive.

But neither me nor my opponent were playing skew and both had pretty balanced lists.

He had a brick of Warriors, a unit of Immortals, some Wraiths, floaty Destroyers, and a Praetorian walker.

I had a battlesuit commander and battlesuits, a fireblade and two units of firewarriors, pathfinders, a devilfish, and a hammerhead.

It feels like for that to have been a fair game I'd have had to skew into all the crap units. That's the opposite of what it should be.

I know 40k has never had good balance, and I hesitate to comment too much on the balance of 5th because I was but a sapling feeling my way into the game at the time, I didn't start to understand what was going on until 6th/7th and I certainly won't defend their balance.

But that's almost besides the point "balance has always been bad" does not excuse the present problem.

Tiberias,

I've never been involved in any activity where some effort on my part was not required.

We have a role to play too. We are part of the equation. Especially when gw is so blasé about not bothering. Id like to think we are better than that. And especially when we all want something slightly different out of our games.

Gw absolutely bear responsibility for not balancing the game, though to be fair there is only so much that can be expected without negative consequences- ttgs are limited systems and can't hold much weight. players are also absolutely responsible when they take all of the broken things exclusively, especially where they're not appropriate, doubling down and inflicting them on their peers and then saying 'there was nothing i could or should have done'. Yes, hun there was. You are not without power. And with power comes responsibility. players should approach games with an understanding they play a role in it too, and have some of the respinsibility for their enjoyment and also that of the folks across thr table, but again with the caveat that players can only be expected to do so much, both with a broken system and a game provider that doesn't really care.

For me, not all things are workable all the time, under all circumstances and against every match up. If it looks a poor fit see if it can be tweaked, if not consider an alternative.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
But that's almost besides the point "balance has always been bad" does not excuse the present problem.

Its sort of splitting hairs - but I suspect your issue isn't balance exactly - but lethality.

Because yes - its very hard to build a Tau army that doesn't rip people to bits if they can't hide from you.

You can take a bunch of Piranhas and Ghostkeels and sure, its not as competitive - but it still still tend to tear people up if you get to shoot first.

When do we start holding players accountable for taking the broken stuff?

Lethality is certainly a problem, but balance is too.

I'd like to see a Necron list annihilate my Tau in two turns no matter how hard they were trying.

If the problem was lethality alone factions would see even distribution in tournaments. That is very much not the case.

 CKO wrote:
When do we start holding players accountable for taking the broken stuff?

When do we start holding GW accountable for publishing broken stuff?

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Lethality is certainly a problem, but balance is too.

I'd like to see a Necron list annihilate my Tau in two turns no matter how hard they were trying.

If the problem was lethality alone factions would see even distribution in tournaments. That is very much not the case.

I beat Tau with Necrons in the last round of a tournament to win the tournament. I charged multiple units by turn 2 and it broke the Tau players back. Minus 1 to hit and minus 1 to wound stratagems helped me survive their first turn of shooting. Wraiths being able to charge after falling back and maximizing terrain coverage due to the ability to move through everything as if it wasn't there.

I didn't annihilate the Tau player by turn two but turn 3 we called it. Every army can compete and I will be putting that theory to test when I use Astra Militarum at my next tournament later on this month.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Lethality is certainly a problem, but balance is too.

I'd like to see a Necron list annihilate my Tau in two turns no matter how hard they were trying.

If the problem was lethality alone factions would see even distribution in tournaments. That is very much not the case.

Well you could perform the experiment by marching your Tau into no-mans land, and then letting the Necrons jump out from their ruins to shoot/charge you and see what happens. I think you'd lose a lot.

But yes. Its not hard to observe that crisis suits are just better than destroyers. That a hammerhead is just better than a Triarch Stalker. That basic Fire Warriors and Pathfinders are probably better than Necron Warriors and certainly immortals. The Tau units are generally faster so tend to get the jump. They also do more damage due to much better internal synergy. All of which means they are much easier to play and should expect to win the matchup.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 CKO wrote:
When do we start holding players accountable for taking the broken stuff?

When do we start holding GW accountable for publishing broken stuff?

Do you blame Wal-mart for selling alcohol or gas stations for selling tobacco?

 CKO wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 CKO wrote:
When do we start holding players accountable for taking the broken stuff?

When do we start holding GW accountable for publishing broken stuff?

Do you blame Wal-mart for selling alcohol or gas stations for selling tobacco?

No, because I can respect someone's bodily choices to harm themselves as long as they don't harm me.

Not really sure why GW's 2 player game being trash for one or the other player has anything to do with that.

I see that Hecaton is proudly stepping into BaconCatBug’s shoes on this one

Maybe this will help.

In all sorts of iterations of the following sentence: ”You can’t expect GW to fix your gaming experience for you”, the ‚can’t expect’ part does not mean, that it is forbidden, or that GW is absolved of all guilt, or that is all on the players, etc. What it means is that in the last 30 years GW has proven again and again, that they won’t deliver. And it doesn’t matter if they won’t because they don’t know how, are not willing or are straight up evil and lure oblivious players into 40k just to make them miserable. The reality of this game is that if you don’t like the way it works then the only way for you to improve your own enjoyment of the game is to work with the other player towards that common goal - enjoyment for both parties.

What Tiberias is trying hard to relay to you is that if you are in a place when the game breaks under it’s own weight you can either sit and complain, waiting for GW to fix the game, or you can try to work out some rough patches so you can play and enjoy your time while you wait for GW to fix the game.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
No, because I can respect someone's bodily choices to harm themselves as long as they don't harm me.

Not really sure why GW's 2 player game being trash for one or the other player has anything to do with that.

I understand you but the enjoyment of the game responsibility falls directly upon the players playing the game not GW. If a player wants their friend who isn't a tournament player to enjoy the game do not bring a tournament list. The player knows that their friend just got into the game and his options are few.

Is it GW's fault when a player takes 3 Crisis suit units against a new player? I feel the Tau player made the decision to take the enjoyment out of the game.

At tournaments you know players want to win and will bring whatever gives them the best chance to win. Do not go to a tournament with high expectations if you know you cannot beat the top armies, and it is not your fault that you have a bad match-up against the new shiny stuff.