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I'm going to buck the trend here. News just broke (Still unconfirmed) that Daemons are getting an Invuln save that can not be changed, IE No more special rules which change the Invuln to a worse number or in the case of some of the newer weapons/abilities which turn off invuln saves entirely. So in effect its a SUPER invuln.

I actually like this. Stay with me on this one and I'll explain.

One of the biggest complaints about 40k is that there isn't enough granularity in the rules/stats. This actually increases that and helps units that might otherwise be rendered useless. In the case of Chaos, some Daemon models only have a invuln save, so if you turn it off he is basically dead to every single attack that wounds. I can also see this being used on some rare instances that allow for units that really need that level of invulnerability. Another benefit is that this also allows regular invulns to be more ubiquitous which will also help in some cases while making the "ignores invuln" weapons/abilities more valuable.

I get people not liking rules bloat, but in this case I am ok with it since it adds more layers to the game as far as durability goes.

I like the leaked demon save being unable to reduce. I was not a fan of anything lowering invulnerable saves in the first place though barring titan or apoolypse scale weapons. A knight valiant shooting its harpoon at any infantry should probably overpower any invulnerable save (other than in lore a displacer field but that is a whole other ball of wax) If it were up to me on invunerable saves I would probably just add caps like the old instant death where the save just stops working if the thing is 2x str.

Demon saves in this case though make sense as they have a loose hold in reality so might phase out of realm just as a lascannon would have hurt it or have a warp bubble that pushes that beam into the warp killing some luckless nurgling just harvesting disease in nurgle's garden.

I just had a hilarious mental image of a nurgling sitting in that garden just randomly looking up and BZZZZT straight through the face

SemperMortis wrote:
I just had a hilarious mental image of a nurgling sitting in that garden just randomly looking up and BZZZZT straight through the face

I'd sign up for WH+ if that was animated...

I think its part of this wider debate of whether you view balance through the lens of a tournament - and so lists have to cope with all these various potential elements - or through 1v1s.

Clearly you can't have railguns, stratagem'd fire prisms, tooled up Chaos characters with the Tzeentch daemon weapon etc eating greater daemons for breakfast. But equally how do you balance it on the reverse when these abilities do nothing?

I think a better way to increase granularity would be to switch vehicle saves (and possibly more than just vehicle saves) to D12s.

Leman Russes saving on a 3+ on D12 (notate it 3/12, maybe?) would still be a 2+ armor save, but you wouldn't have to apply Armor of Contempt anymore to make the tank feel stronger. You could still keep the "Up-Armored" Tank Ace and have it give an "Armor of Contempt" style benefit. Leman Russes saving on 7/12 vs Melta would mean they could be properly expensive and still be worth it.

Then Devilfish (for example) could have a 6+ save and Rhinos could be slightly tougher with a 5+ save, but Tauroxen, for example could be weaker with a 7+ save and all still have a small chance to survive multi-melta blasts or superplasma or railguns (I guess except the Tauroxen, which makes sense).

Also, D12s are pretty easy to store and roll - much better than D8s or D10s. And really heavily armored infantry units could be moved to D12 saves, like Terminators or Centurions, or Broadsides.


One other thing I'd like to see is more damage ranges. Positive integers, D3, D6, D3+x, D6+x, etc are okay. Why isn't there a D6-1 or D6-2 with a minimum of 1? I recognize that the statisticians among the playerbase would shun anything with D6-x damage, due to the increased chance of damage =1, but I think there are several weapons in the lore for which that damage range makes a lot of sense.

It is a good thing that demons get something like that. I just hope that we won't be seeing other factions get it too. Because then late early or mid 10th we are going to start seeing rules and weapons that ignore the unignorable inv saves.

If its true that daemons get a unmodifiable invuln, i was proven 100% right in my predictions of what was going to happen to the game, not just once, but twice. With the addtion of AoC and now the addtion of an unmodifiable invuln all steaming from the rending AP system.

God damn, it feels good to be right.

 dadx6 wrote:
I think a better way to increase granularity would be to switch vehicle saves (and possibly more than just vehicle saves) to D12s.

Leman Russes saving on a 3+ on D12 (notate it 3/12, maybe?) would still be a 2+ armor save, but you wouldn't have to apply Armor of Contempt anymore to make the tank feel stronger. You could still keep the "Up-Armored" Tank Ace and have it give an "Armor of Contempt" style benefit. Leman Russes saving on 7/12 vs Melta would mean they could be properly expensive and still be worth it.

Then Devilfish (for example) could have a 6+ save and Rhinos could be slightly tougher with a 5+ save, but Tauroxen, for example could be weaker with a 7+ save and all still have a small chance to survive multi-melta blasts or superplasma or railguns (I guess except the Tauroxen, which makes sense).

Also, D12s are pretty easy to store and roll - much better than D8s or D10s. And really heavily armored infantry units could be moved to D12 saves, like Terminators or Centurions, or Broadsides.


One other thing I'd like to see is more damage ranges. Positive integers, D3, D6, D3+x, D6+x, etc are okay. Why isn't there a D6-1 or D6-2 with a minimum of 1? I recognize that the statisticians among the playerbase would shun anything with D6-x damage, due to the increased chance of damage =1, but I think there are several weapons in the lore for which that damage range makes a lot of sense.

God I'd love to see a shift towards a D12 system....never going to happen though unfortunately.

Regarding the demon ignore ignore invulns....I think it's funny and shows that the rules team has no overarching plan.

Oh god WTF this is a stupid change. Invulnerable saves as the save that ignores AP and can't be modified, abilities that ignore invulnerable saves, now invulnerable saves that ignore abilities that ignore invulnerable saves. Layer after layer after layer of rules bloat, and I can't wait until the next codex has a weapon that ignores invulnerable saves that ignore abilities that ignore invulnerable saves. GW, go home, you're drunk.

Tyel wrote:
Clearly you can't have railguns, stratagem'd fire prisms, tooled up Chaos characters with the Tzeentch daemon weapon etc eating greater daemons for breakfast. But equally how do you balance it on the reverse when these abilities do nothing?

Why not? Apparently it's fine for those weapons to one-shot everyone else's tanks and tank equivalents.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
If its true that daemons get a unmodifiable invuln, i was proven 100% right in my predictions of what was going to happen to the game, not just once, but twice. With the addtion of AoC and now the addtion of an unmodifiable invuln all steaming from the rending AP system.

God damn, it feels good to be right.

Unless there's been a more credible leak, the initial statement was this:

Instead of invulns armour that is unaffected by AP (why?) and different in melee vs range

So it's NOT an unmodifiable Invulnerable save, but rather it's an armour save that can't be affected by AP and is different in melee and range.

It smacks of how they did the Nighthaunt for AoS, where they cannot be affected by negative Rend OR bolstered by positive modifiers like Cover.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
If its true that daemons get a unmodifiable invuln, i was proven 100% right in my predictions of what was going to happen to the game, not just once, but twice. With the addtion of AoC and now the addtion of an unmodifiable invuln all steaming from the rending AP system.

God damn, it feels good to be right.

Unless there's been a more credible leak, the initial statement was this:

Instead of invulns armour that is unaffected by AP (why?) and different in melee vs range

So it's NOT an unmodifiable Invulnerable save, but rather it's an armour save that can't be affected by AP and is different in melee and range.

It smacks of how they did the Nighthaunt for AoS, where they cannot be affected by negative Rend OR bolstered by positive modifiers like Cover.

It still does not change the fact that i predicted that we would see models with unmodifiable saves. It does scream of night haunt i agree.

Frankly, Daemons have always been a clusterfeth.

You don't need to "predict" anything. This was inevitable, since otherwise they end up being dumb or necessitating more "ignore invulnerable save" weapons coming out there.

we never had "Ignore invun saves" those were the end all be all of saves, you got them no matter what, hence invuln.

As soon as they made a way to ignore them i said we were going to get a save that could not be rended at all. And low and behold here we are.

It was not "inevitable" in that it was not going to happen if GW did not keep this creep up as bad as it is now.

I absolutly said we were going to get an AoC like ability before it was out, i called that we were going to get some sort of unrentable save or super invuln which it appears we have that now. IF this ends up being true.

So this is more akin to proposed rules, but it fits the topic so hear me out on this one.

What if invulns worked like this: Ap does not modify them, but if an attack wounds that has double the strength of the defending models toughness, the defending models invuln gets a - 1 modifier...so a 4++ becomes a 5++ if a S8 weapon wounds a T4 model. This way you could theoretically also go back to giving out 3+ invulnerable saves more regularly since they can be, albeit only slightly, modified.
And in the rare case when an attack has triple the strength of the defending models toughness, the invuln gets a - 2modifier. So a S16 titan weapon would put more of a dent into a T4 models invuln.

CadianSgtBob wrote:
Why not? Apparently it's fine for those weapons to one-shot everyone else's tanks and tank equivalents.

Generally because you have a choice if you want to go that way or not.

Daemons are kind of stuck. (There's an argument for say Harlequins - but lets be honest, they aren't exactly suffering.)

Tyel wrote:
Generally because you have a choice if you want to go that way or not.

Demons have a choice, they can choose not to bring tank equivalents at all. A horde of cannon fodder demons doesn't care if you ignore their saves, just like a horde of cannon fodder guardsmen doesn't care. So why should "our small stuff only has an invulnerable save, not a weaker armor save" be justification for having their tank equivalents get a buff?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
we never had "Ignore invun saves" those were the end all be all of saves, you got them no matter what, hence invuln.

lol, you forget that things like Eternal Warrior, FNP, etc also existed I guess?

As soon as they made a way to ignore them i said we were going to get a save that could not be rended at all. And low and behold here we are.

Okay, do you want a cookie or something?

It's not like there is no precedent in the form of a 100% similar army called "Nighthaunt" in Age of Sigmar, which cannot suffer Rend nor could they benefit from bonuses...

It was not "inevitable" in that it was not going to happen if GW did not keep this creep up as bad as it is now.

It absolutely was inevitable. Things like Daemons have ALWAYS been a problematic army. You cannot have an army built around having an "unignorable" save that isn't really a save and nobody has things to do anything to it except craploads of dice thrown at them.

Jeez, it's like you were not here for High Elves and their "Banner of the World Dragon" vs Daemons. It literally was an "off" button for fighting Daemons in WHFB. It showcased why Daemons are such a swingy army.

I absolutly said we were going to get an AoC like ability before it was out,

lol, well if we're gonna play "I predicted it"...

I called that we would see an AoC-like ability an edition ago. It literally was a rule in AoS on a few weirder units.

i called that we were going to get some sort of unrentable save or super invuln which it appears we have that now. IF this ends up being true.

It's literally none of what you're saying, at least from what the rumour is.

It's an armour save that cannot be modified. That means it likely cannot be bolstered in cover nor can it be degraded by AP.
If you want to pretend that's the same thing as an invulnerable or whatever? Cool. But it's not.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You cannot have an army built around having an "unignorable" save that isn't really a save and nobody has things to do anything to it except craploads of dice thrown at them.

And yet here we are, getting exactly that.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Generally because you have a choice if you want to go that way or not.

Demons have a choice, they can choose not to bring tank equivalents at all. A horde of cannon fodder demons doesn't care if you ignore their saves, just like a horde of cannon fodder guardsmen doesn't care. So why should "our small stuff only has an invulnerable save, not a weaker armor save" be justification for having their tank equivalents get a buff?

That's not the choice being referred to though.

Invulnerable Saves were SUPPOSED to be worse saves that could not be modified, outside of some weird cases like Null Zone turning them "off" or some Psyker abilities bolstering them.

It's an absolutely piss-poor design to mandate you always have a bad save.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's an absolutely piss-poor design to mandate you always have a bad save.

Kind of like my entire army having a 5+ save that most things ignore entirely? Sorry, still zero sympathy for demon players.

And things that ignore invulnerable saves are still rare. We did not need a new mechanic to cancel them.

You're not playing previous editions anymore where AP is an all or nothing system.

 Kanluwen wrote:
You're not playing previous editions anymore where AP is an all or nothing system.

I'm playing 9th edition where AP -1 or better is on pretty much anything and a 5+ save might as well not exist. But please do tell me about the poor demon players who might only get their 5++/4++ against 99% of weapons in the game and why we had to make it a perfect 100%.

Honestly I think you can get more layers like this if the games general lethality were reduced. The issue as I see it is that GW keeps pushing the damage up, which makes them come up with new blocks for that damage which they then very quickly find ways around again. It's a constant escalation arms race.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You're not playing previous editions anymore where AP is an all or nothing system.

I'm playing 9th edition where AP -1 or better is on pretty much anything and a 5+ save might as well not exist.

Then stop parking your Guardsmen out in the open? Don't play on tables with literally no terrain? You know that some types of cover can modify your armour save, right? Or (gasp! shock!) do other nifty things like making your unit harder to hit?

But please do tell me about the poor demon players who might only get their 5++/4++ against 99% of weapons in the game and why we had to make it a perfect 100%.

Cool, so tell me again about how Guardsmen are basically built strictly around melee?

I think Sgt Bob's point is that if almost every unit has -1AP then, by default any 5+ save is in effect a +6.

Ergo you could just take the -1 ap off every single model and give every 5+ save a 6+ and have the same results.


Again its building into the escalation of arms that the game has. It makes things like ap -1 so common that its no longer a granular element, but a default value. At which point you've basically lost 1 point of AP and saves. It reduces the granular nature of the games save and ap breakup

 Overread wrote:
I think Sgt Bob's point is that if almost every unit has -1AP then, by default any 5+ save is in effect a +6.

I understand his point just fine. I just find it ridiculous.

Ergo you could just take the -1 ap off every single model and give every 5+ save a 6+ and have the same results.

Or you could bump the -1 ap to -2 ap and give every 5+ save a 4+ and have the same results.
Or...or...or...

Again its building into the escalation of arms that the game has. It makes things like ap -1 so common that its no longer a granular element, but a default value. At which point you've basically lost 1 point of AP and saves. It reduces the granular nature of the games save and ap breakup

Oh please. It's not just the "escalation of arms". It's also the slavish devotion to keeping things "as they were".

With Guardians being a 4+, Fire Warriors being a 4+, Skitarii being a 4+, etc--there's zero reason for Flak Armored Guardsmen to not be a 4+ with Carapace Armor being the "3+" in-faction.

Because, frigging spoiler alert, there's zero reason why we can't have that be a thing. Hell, Scions are even issued their own unique version of "Carapace Armour" that could be used to justify them getting a 3+ while Grenadiers/Kasrkins/Carapace Armored equivalent Guardsmen get a 4+ or whatever.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Then stop parking your Guardsmen out in the open? Don't play on tables with literally no terrain? You know that some types of cover can modify your armour save, right? Or (gasp! shock!) do other nifty things like making your unit harder to hit?

Then stop parking your demons out in the open? Don't play on tables with literally no terrain? You know that some types of cover can modify your armour save, right? Or (gasp! shock!) do other nifty things like making your unit harder to hit?

Cool, so tell me again about how Guardsmen are basically built strictly around melee?

What does melee vs. ranged have to do with anything? Do only melee units get saves in 9th?

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Kind of like my entire army having a 5+ save that most things ignore entirely? Sorry, still zero sympathy for demon players.

And things that ignore invulnerable saves are still rare. We did not need a new mechanic to cancel them.

Why are you so petty? "Waaaahhhhh my faction sucks I want this faction that has nothing to do with my faction to suck too!"

Get over yourself. Your army has received nothing but buffs to it since the season started and yes, I'm aware they've still been about the worst army all season despite that. So what? It's certainly still more love than Daemons have received all season, what with being gutted in points when they weren't even strong and being disproportionately punished by the Nephilim update. And yes, I'm aware that Daemons have generally been better than guardsman in season nine. Doesn't matter, stop taking our your frustrations on an army that has nothing to do with you.

"my army doesn't get saves so yours shouldn't either" is the absolute pinnacle of ignoring both balance and lore when making rules changes.

When did Cruddace make an account?