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 oni wrote:
Looks like GW's new sales model is in full effect.

Step 1. Make OP AF datasheets for models whose sales are low.
Step 2. Wait for the meta chasers to buy up those models.
Step 3. After enough models have sold, use FAQ's and the new "Balance" Data slate to reign them in.

For what reason would they want to stop selling any particular model?
How is it that they're selling enough models at exactly the time they would normally put an FAQ out?

 Rihgu wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Replace bonesword with heavy venom cannon. Replace heavy venom cannon with shardgullet. Replace monstrous scything talons with heavy venom cannon. I dont have more than 1 heavy venom cannon, because shardgullet is a different weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nomeny wrote:
Not really. The model doesn't come with two venom cannons.

WYSIWYG is not a rule. If you really want two HVC 3D print it, or buy it from a bits dealer.

You muster armies, THEN select a Warlord, and having a HIVE TENDRIL Warlord is what allows picking relics from the codex, so you can't go back and change your mustered army.

There is no fixed sequence how you build your army. What does muster armies even mean exactly ? Can you provide a rules quote ? All it says that you muster an army from the miniatures from your collection. It says nothing about when you pick equipment, wargear, weapons.

 p5freak wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Replace bonesword with heavy venom cannon. Replace heavy venom cannon with shardgullet. Replace monstrous scything talons with heavy venom cannon. I dont have more than 1 heavy venom cannon, because shardgullet is a different weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nomeny wrote:
Not really. The model doesn't come with two venom cannons.

WYSIWYG is not a rule. If you really want two HVC 3D print it, or buy it from a bits dealer.

You muster armies, THEN select a Warlord, and having a HIVE TENDRIL Warlord is what allows picking relics from the codex, so you can't go back and change your mustered army.

There is no fixed sequence how you build your army. What does muster armies even mean exactly ? Can you provide a rules quote ?

Step 2 or 3 of every mission pack I have available to reference is titled Muster Armies. it contains the line "Details of how to battle-forge an army, how to use a points limit, how to select a WARLORD, and what information your army roster must contain can be found in the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book". Looking at the Core Book, that is linking back to the Muster Armies step of the Only War mission, which says
"Once you have mustered your army, select one of your models to be your Warlord."

Therefore, you muster your army (selecting ONE venom cannon for your hive tyrant), then you pick your Warlord, and now since you have a HIVE TENDRIL warlord you can select to replace the venom cannon with Shardgullet. You cannot now go back to mustering your army to replace the scything talons with a second venom cannon.

 Nazrak wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

We shouldn't be using fresh week old codexes, in competitive events imho. There needs to be a 1-2 month period of competitive play testing or something. Hell, even 2 weeks. Better that they don't get to play the new rules, then they have to go through all the trouble of getting to top 8 and having it all be the exact same book/sub faction.

But who's gonna do that 1-2 month period of competitive play testing? GW stuff? In an ideal world yes.

Otherwise I'm perfectly fine with GTs being the beta testers. This way in most of the real world metas the top lists that are nerfed ASAP never show up. It's thanks to allowing new codexes to GTs that voidweavers have been nerfed pretty soon so very few people actually bullied their opponents by bringing tons of those undercosted skimmers.

Now tyranids need (needed?) nerfs soon, if that means that they get to dominate a couple of GTs to make GW aware of their power I'll take it.

Yeah, this is the thing – as soon as the book's out there, and particularly in the hands of the sort of people who have a vested interest in breaking things in completely unintended ways, there's a level of computation power that would take years for any combination of writers/playtesters to arrive at.

Lol, I don't think so. It only takes the casual players at the shop about half an hour of perusing a codex to spot this stuff.
And these are the casuals who pay no attention to leaks etc. They are not patched into a gestalt hive-mind like the truly obsessed.
So if casual Joe can spot it within 30m.....

Best of luck finding a TO who agrees with the two-venom-cannons-but-one-is-actually-a-relic loophole

 xttz wrote:
Best of luck finding a TO who agrees with the two-venom-cannons-but-one-is-actually-a-relic loophole

Incoming Knight Castellans with two Volcano Lances, except one is a relic.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 oni wrote:
Looks like GW's new sales model is in full effect.

Step 1. Make OP AF datasheets for models whose sales are low.
Step 2. Wait for the meta chasers to buy up those models.
Step 3. After enough models have sold, use FAQ's and the new "Balance" Data slate to reign them in.

For what reason would they want to stop selling any particular model?
How is it that they're selling enough models at exactly the time they would normally put an FAQ out?

You might be taking my post a little too seriously, maybe.

But... It's no secret that, in the past, GW has intentionally made under-selling models more powerful in their updated codexes specifically to sell those models. This 'old way' of doing it would allow for a long span of time to sell models; essentially until their next codex update.

With the current codexes it feels like they're dialing the power of the under-selling models up a bit more, comparatively, to account for a shorter sales period. The shorter sales period is due to the current precedent that GW is trying to keep the game in-line and will FAQ 2-weeks after codex release and "Balance" Dataslate every 3-4 months. It's like chumming for sharks, but it's chumming for meta-chasers... Draw them in for a temporary feeding frenzy (no pun intended for the current Tyranid meta).

tneva82 wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:
Other things would need to get nerfed to see gaunt swarm or heavy little bug lists back in action


I assume they'll have a 1 page FAQ hotfix about the Maleceptor cast and might change some points by 10-30 here and there. Nothing too wild.

Remember this Tyranid Codex has to last us another 2-3 editions until 2030... let it be powerful so it lasts for years

Like 8e codex had to last you for 2-3 editions until 2027...oh wait.

In fact only editions tyranids haven't had codex been rogue trader(duh. No codexes there) and 7th.

So basically your post is worthless hyperbole.

I was remembering the stagnation of the release of the 5th edition codex until it's current iteration

The faction wasn't treated as poorly as Dark Eldar but we've had awkward codexs to play with odd crutch units and combos. I didn't really have much fun with the last book

40k is such a gakshow these days.

You'd think that would have started back-firing on them by now, they've done it enough times that you'd have to be either kind of dumb or unhealthily obsessed with your tournament stats to make purchasing decisions based on what's broken at release instead of waiting for the week-two FAQ.

 Nazrak wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

We shouldn't be using fresh week old codexes, in competitive events imho. There needs to be a 1-2 month period of competitive play testing or something. Hell, even 2 weeks. Better that they don't get to play the new rules, then they have to go through all the trouble of getting to top 8 and having it all be the exact same book/sub faction.

But who's gonna do that 1-2 month period of competitive play testing? GW stuff? In an ideal world yes.

Otherwise I'm perfectly fine with GTs being the beta testers. This way in most of the real world metas the top lists that are nerfed ASAP never show up. It's thanks to allowing new codexes to GTs that voidweavers have been nerfed pretty soon so very few people actually bullied their opponents by bringing tons of those undercosted skimmers.

Now tyranids need (needed?) nerfs soon, if that means that they get to dominate a couple of GTs to make GW aware of their power I'll take it.

Yeah, this is the thing – as soon as the book's out there, and particularly in the hands of the sort of people who have a vested interest in breaking things in completely unintended ways, there's a level of computation power that would take years for any combination of writers/playtesters to arrive at.

The problem, in my view, isn't that this stuff slips through the net from time to time (although there are some obvious proofreading howlers which in my view are less forgivable than not having been able to test every single possible combination of all the moving parts at play) but rather that GW are treating the books as premium collectors' items (and pricing them accordingly), rather than the ephemeral documents they are. Personally, I like books as my hobby time is my non-screen time, but the disparity between the way the books are sold/presented and their actual usable lifespan is the aspect that bugs me the most. And that's before we even get to the environmental/sustainability aspect of creating enormous hardback books with a useful lifespan of sometimes little more than a year.

A lot of the recent balance issues are not the result of unforeseen possible combinations.

Yes there is no substitute for thousands of eyes on a document when it hits the streets but you don't ned the computation power of the internet to see Voidweavers were beyond stupid, Tau shooting was going to be utterly broken or that being able to pick up your flyrant after it shot and charged to put it safely back in reserves might be dumb.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 oni wrote:
Looks like GW's new sales model is in full effect.

Step 1. Make OP AF datasheets for models whose sales are low.
Step 2. Wait for the meta chasers to buy up those models.
Step 3. After enough models have sold, use FAQ's and the new "Balance" Data slate to reign them in.

For what reason would they want to stop selling any particular model?
How is it that they're selling enough models at exactly the time they would normally put an FAQ out?

Why doesn't this appear to be the case with Imperial Knights or Chaos knights? Why wasn't this the case with any of this edition's space marine releases?

Yeah this isn't some conspiracy to sell models.

Rather it is simply the reality that GW's writers are underpaid and GW has no interest in spending money in quality control.

 oni wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 oni wrote:
Looks like GW's new sales model is in full effect.

Step 1. Make OP AF datasheets for models whose sales are low.
Step 2. Wait for the meta chasers to buy up those models.
Step 3. After enough models have sold, use FAQ's and the new "Balance" Data slate to reign them in.

For what reason would they want to stop selling any particular model?
How is it that they're selling enough models at exactly the time they would normally put an FAQ out?

You might be taking my post a little too seriously, maybe.

But... It's no secret that, in the past, GW has intentionally made under-selling models more powerful in their updated codexes specifically to sell those models. This 'old way' of doing it would allow for a long span of time to sell models; essentially until their next codex update.

With the current codexes it feels like they're dialing the power of the under-selling models up a bit more, comparatively, to account for a shorter sales period. The shorter sales period is due to the current precedent that GW is trying to keep the game in-line and will FAQ 2-weeks after codex release and "Balance" Dataslate every 3-4 months. It's like chumming for sharks, but it's chumming for meta-chasers... Draw them in for a temporary feeding frenzy (no pun intended for the current Tyranid meta).

At what point does buffing a bad unit go from 'objectively necessary for internal balance reasons' to 'trying to push the power of underselling models for money'? Also, why are they so inconsistent with it?

Almost every primaris unit has been mediocre since the very first release. The Sisters of Battle book made most existing units worse. Necrons. Genestealer cults. Tsons and DG just made what they were already using better. Same with GK.

Also, why are super commonly owned units like Hive Tyrants and Repentia left (or made) extremely powerful? Every Tau Player owns multiple Suitmanders, yet they remain consistently one of the most powerful units in the book.

 Ordana wrote:
Yes there is no substitute for thousands of eyes on a document when it hits the streets but you don't ned the computation power of the internet to see Voidweavers were beyond stupid, Tau shooting was going to be utterly broken or that being able to pick up your flyrant after it shot and charged to put it safely back in reserves might be dumb.

To be fair to GW, you have benefit of a hindsight. For all we know they removed 99 broken combos and just 1 or 2 slipped through.

Of course, this benefit only applies to the writers who have a clue. Kelly and Cruddace often break 10 things trying to "fix" one

 oni wrote:
But... It's no secret that, in the past, GW has intentionally made under-selling models more powerful in their updated codexes specifically to sell those models. This 'old way' of doing it would allow for a long span of time to sell models; essentially until their next codex update.

That's not a 'secret', that's stupid conspiracy theory, often made by kids who have no idea about balance (see all the screeching about ""OP"" Marines in 8th edition when update turned them from worst army to midfield, by salty xenos players whining they can't autowin anymore). If GW wanted to sell new, shiny models, primaris wouldn't have so trash rules that after THREE rounds of buffs their stats were still mediocre (then were made even more mediocre by beyond idiotic buff of old, cheap, ugly squats to primaris statline that only shattered game balance into million pieces killing 90% of 40K vehicle kit sales, unless GW doesn't want to sell these big, shiny, expensive kits anymore?). Reivers are still trash 5 years later, where is the buff that is supposed to finally sell them?

Then you look at that is actually made broken and the whole insane conspiracy theory falls apart. See Eldar in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th - insanely busted and broken beyond belief, to sell... Oh wait, not shiny, expensive, refreshed plastic kits, but ugly 20 year old resin aspect gak that most of WAAAC types were just buying recast or knockoffs. On what world this makes any sense at all?

The Newman wrote:
You'd think that would have started back-firing on them by now, they've done it enough times that you'd have to be either kind of dumb or unhealthily obsessed with your tournament stats to make purchasing decisions based on what's broken at release instead of waiting for the week-two FAQ.

It isn't something that has immediate consequences. People put a lot into building their armies for 40k, they don't change their habits at the drop of a hat. Thing is the problem isn't really about tournaments--ITC ensures that even with a balanced setup their tourneys would be a crapshow anyways. The reality is if something is sweeping the tourney scene it is absolutely crushing the casual scene, eroding enjoyment of the game and chipping away at the player base. It takes time for someone to want to give up on that game they put so much into, but when they do it often takes significantly more in game improvement to bring them back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
Yeah this isn't some conspiracy to sell models.

Rather it is simply the reality that GW's writers are underpaid and GW has no interest in spending money in quality control.

Bingo.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 oni wrote:
Looks like GW's new sales model is in full effect.

Step 1. Make OP AF datasheets for models whose sales are low.
Step 2. Wait for the meta chasers to buy up those models.
Step 3. After enough models have sold, use FAQ's and the new "Balance" Data slate to reign them in.

For what reason would they want to stop selling any particular model?
How is it that they're selling enough models at exactly the time they would normally put an FAQ out?

There's limit how many you can sell. Are you buying 100 malefactors ever? 1000? 10000?

Once try hard's have got the op stuff unless gw changes what's op they aren't selling all that much. That's why balance is something gw hates. If game was balanced try hard's would be able to just tune own tactics rather than rush buy next op stuff

A question for those with experience with Psychic Actions:

1. Are there any other abilities in other armies that allow Psykers to cast powers and do Psychic Actions in the same turn?

2. If the above is yes, does the Psychic Action those psykers can take count as one of their casts for the turn?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A question for those with experience with Psychic Actions:

1. Are there any other abilities in other armies that allow Psykers to cast powers and do Psychic Actions in the same turn?

2. If the above is yes, does the Psychic Action those psykers can take count as one of their casts for the turn?

I think there are a few ones. And with the FAQ they should, so this FAQ is a stealth nerf to those armies.

 Tyran wrote:
And with the FAQ they should, so this FAQ is a stealth nerf to those armies.

To me this implies that the answer to my second question is "No". Because this isn't a 40k FAQ, this is a Tyranid FAQ, meaning that if what I suspect is true, other armies that have the ability to do powers and psychic actions in a single turn don't count the actions as powers, but Maleceptors/Tyranids do, because GW are morons and have to overbalance every little thing in the world.

Wait for the next points update where they put Maleceptors up in price despite all these nerfs. And limit them to one per detachment or something equally as nonsensical.

And them also somehow feth over Winged Hive Tyrants because hot damn were they powerful at the start of 8th, and we've got to keep paying for that now don't we...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
To me this implies that the answer to my second question is "No". Because this isn't a 40k FAQ, this is a Tyranid FAQ, meaning that if what I suspect is true, other armies that have the ability to do powers and psychic actions in a single turn don't count the actions as powers, but Maleceptors/Tyranids do, because GW are morons and have to overbalance every little thing in the world.

It wouldn't be the first time a faction specific FAQ has an effect on the game as a whole. But it would be nice if GW included it in the general 40k FAQ.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A question for those with experience with Psychic Actions:

1. Are there any other abilities in other armies that allow Psykers to cast powers and do Psychic Actions in the same turn?

2. If the above is yes, does the Psychic Action those psykers can take count as one of their casts for the turn?

Thousand Sons have a Stratagem that allows them to manifest One (1) Psychic Power after performing a Psychic Action and a character upgrade that allows them to trade One (1) Psychic Power Casting Attempt for One (1) Psychic Action (instead of trading ALL Psychic Power attempts)

Eldar have an identical stratagem.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A question for those with experience with Psychic Actions:

1. Are there any other abilities in other armies that allow Psykers to cast powers and do Psychic Actions in the same turn?

2. If the above is yes, does the Psychic Action those psykers can take count as one of their casts for the turn?

Thousand Sons has a strat.

"Use this Stratagem in your Psychic phase, after attempting to perform a psychic action with an ARCANA ASTARTES PSYKER unit from your army. That unit can attempt to manifest one psychic power this phase."

And well as a legion upgrade:

"This model can attempt to perform a psychic action in its Psychic phase instead of attempting to manifest one psychic power, rather than any."

Edit - ninjad


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean it's in the gd rulebook.

While psychic actions are not in and of themselves psychic powers, they function in much the same way. For all intents and purposes, when a unit attempts a psychic action, this is treated the same as if they were attempting to manifest a psychic power, and as such triggers any rules that interact with manifesting a psychic power (e.g. rules that enable you to deny a psychic power can also be used to deny a psychic action). Note that a PSYKER can still only attempt to perform one psychic action in their Psychic phase instead of attempting to manifest any other psychic powers.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Has anyone or event ever tried saying something along the lines of: This codex is too new, in order to create a more fun and competitive environment, we will only be allowing this faction to use "pre-codex rules and costs"? Give the new faction time to breath and open it's eyes before smothering it. Also, unleashing it onto a competive scene that has likely not played against it or had time to functionally alter it's lists is just BEGGING for skewed results and snap nerfs.

We shouldn't be using fresh week old codexes, in competitive events imho. There needs to be a 1-2 month period of competitive play testing or something. Hell, even 2 weeks. Better that they don't get to play the new rules, then they have to go through all the trouble of getting to top 8 and having it all be the exact same book/sub faction.

I think the complete opposite is true, expose the gakky balance ASAP in competitive so the game becomes playable for casuals.

 Nazrak wrote:
as soon as the book's out there, and particularly in the hands of the sort of people who have a vested interest in breaking things in completely unintended ways, there's a level of computation power that would take years for any combination of writers/playtesters to arrive at.

GW has a vested interest in breaking things in completely unintended ways to fix it before launch and deliver a good product that is healthy for the game.

ccs wrote:
Lol, I don't think so. It only takes the casual players at the shop about half an hour of perusing a codex to spot this stuff.
And these are the casuals who pay no attention to leaks etc. They are not patched into a gestalt hive-mind like the truly obsessed.
So if casual Joe can spot it within 30m.....

I think there is a saner middle ground between saying it takes 10000 games to figure out if something is broken and saying Benny who has played 10 9th edition games can play 0 times with a new codex and quickly find 90% of the broken stuff and useless stuff in the codex. I think GW can afford an Indian from Fiverr with a spreadsheet and spending one meeting hashing out how to set up a better playtesting scheme.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
40k is such a gakshow these days.

Always has been.

The Newman wrote:
You'd think that would have started back-firing on them by now, they've done it enough times that you'd have to be either kind of dumb or unhealthily obsessed with your tournament stats to make purchasing decisions based on what's broken at release instead of waiting for the week-two FAQ.

If you can write it off as a business expense and/or resell the models for 50% of their value at a later date or just keep them for your hobby collection? I bought my Lokhust Destroyers when they were at their most OP, but I didn't lose them just because they're not tonnes better than most of the Necrons codex anymore.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


While psychic actions are not in and of themselves psychic powers, they function in much the same way. For all intents and purposes, when a unit attempts a psychic action, this is treated the same as if they were attempting to manifest a psychic power, and as such triggers any rules that interact with manifesting a psychic power (e.g. rules that enable you to deny a psychic power can also be used to deny a psychic action). Note that a PSYKER can still only attempt to perform one psychic action in their Psychic phase instead of attempting to manifest any other psychic powers.

You know, funny you mentioned this. Because I always argued that the Maleceptor shouldn't be able to trigger Psychic Overload 4 times because it could only cast a maximum of 3 times. I was shouted down and obviously tournament players played it such that you could get a total of 4 powers + actions, but it looks like it was never really kosher? I mean, I would argue that "number of times a psyker can cast" is very much "a rule that interact(s) with manifesting a psychic power". Anyway, it's moot now, I'm glad GW shut it down, but it still feels like it should never have been on the table in the first place, RAI.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
You know, funny you mentioned this. Because I always argued that the Maleceptor shouldn't be able to trigger Psychic Overload 4 times because it could only cast a maximum of 3 times. I was shouted down and obviously tournament players played it such that you could get a total of 4 powers + actions, but it looks like it was never really kosher? I mean, I would argue that "number of times a psyker can cast" is very much "a rule that interact(s) with manifesting a psychic power". Anyway, it's moot now, I'm glad GW shut it down, but it still feels like it should never have been on the table in the first place, RAI.

I think the way it was described previously it felt like a binary. A bit like "you can advance, but then you can't shoot". If however you have a rule that says "you can still shoot" - it seems logical that you can do both.

Frankly they should just ditch the idea that if you have 2 casts normally, you lose both if you use a psychic action. Just have it be a power you manifest and you wouldn't really have to jump through all these rules hoops. I guess it would remove those stratagems/bonuses but... eh. Its kind of lame and I don't think it would hurt the game much.

Tyel wrote:
Frankly they should just ditch the idea that if you have 2 casts normally, you lose both if you use a psychic action. Just have it be a power you manifest and you wouldn't really have to jump through all these rules hoops. I guess it would remove those stratagems/bonuses but... eh. Its kind of lame and I don't think it would hurt the game much.

I don't have a strong opinion, but it would make it way easier on Thousand Sons in terms of scoring. There's a hard choice to sacrifice casting for scoring.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I don't have a strong opinion, but it would make it way easier on Thousand Sons in terms of scoring. There's a hard choice to sacrifice casting for scoring.

I'd have thought it would make psychic secondaries more attractive for everyone with psykers.

Tyel wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
You know, funny you mentioned this. Because I always argued that the Maleceptor shouldn't be able to trigger Psychic Overload 4 times because it could only cast a maximum of 3 times. I was shouted down and obviously tournament players played it such that you could get a total of 4 powers + actions, but it looks like it was never really kosher? I mean, I would argue that "number of times a psyker can cast" is very much "a rule that interact(s) with manifesting a psychic power". Anyway, it's moot now, I'm glad GW shut it down, but it still feels like it should never have been on the table in the first place, RAI.

I think the way it was described previously it felt like a binary. A bit like "you can advance, but then you can't shoot". If however you have a rule that says "you can still shoot" - it seems logical that you can do both.

Frankly they should just ditch the idea that if you have 2 casts normally, you lose both if you use a psychic action. Just have it be a power you manifest and you wouldn't really have to jump through all these rules hoops. I guess it would remove those stratagems/bonuses but... eh. Its kind of lame and I don't think it would hurt the game much.

Yeah, fully agree. That requirement is a big part of why psychic actions are kind of bad for many armies (even the ones where psychic actions are quite fluffy, like TS and Eldar.)

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
A question for those with experience with Psychic Actions:

1. Are there any other abilities in other armies that allow Psykers to cast powers and do Psychic Actions in the same turn?

2. If the above is yes, does the Psychic Action those psykers can take count as one of their casts for the turn?

The only one I know offhand is a Crusade ability for CWE/Harlequin psykers called "layered consciousness." It allows a psyker who makes a Psychic Action to cast *one* psychic power for the turn.

Oh yeah, and there's a Stratagem which does the same thing. In both cases it's "Psychic Action + ONE psychic power," not Psychic Action plus manifest freely.