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 Backspacehacker wrote:
Its just gonna get worse and worse until GW realizes that the power creep they created primarily because of the Rending AP system for ranged screwed everything. The worst part is people are still going to pretend that its not the core issue of the problem, but it really is.

It really isn't.

There are multiple problems, but they start from two - not thoroughly reviewing how they want units to perform relative to each other when moving from 7th to 8th, in favour of keeping stat lines in line with the legacy of 7th; and having less self-restraint than a sugar addict in a sweet shop when it came to handing out (and escalating) AP.

And, as noted, the latter applied just as much during 3rd to 7th with the increasing number of weapons with AP1, 2 or 3 as time went on through those editions.

The thing is they had to upgrade stuff, specialy marines, because they were under powered and over costed from day 1 of 8th ed. Then there was the first time books like DG, which had to have something to make people want to buy and play with the army.

The game is just impossible to balance, and I mean this by on avarge for most books, at the scale the game is played, unless everyone is playing only tournament lists and have substential skills in play w40k.

What use is the AP system if every 6 rolled is essentially a poisoned weapon? What good is a S/T system, if a las pistol can kill a Titan? Or a Russ can't wound a space marine because its 0AP attack of literally hitting the space marine with it's hull and treads does less damage than a Gene Stealer hitting it with a piece of Rebarr?

This game's damage system is complete garbage. I hope 10th reverts all troops and infantry back to 1W and gets rid of AP entirely. You get hit, you take damage. End of phase.

Good luck getting current books work with that

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What use is the AP system if every 6 rolled is essentially a poisoned weapon? What good is a S/T system, if a las pistol can kill a Titan? Or a Russ can't wound a space marine because its 0AP attack of literally hitting the space marine with it's hull and treads does less damage than a Gene Stealer hitting it with a piece of Rebarr?

This game's damage system is complete garbage. I hope 10th reverts all troops and infantry back to 1W and gets rid of AP entirely. You get hit, you take damage. End of phase.

Before commenting on the games design you might want to take a statistical probability 101 class.

I'm sorry you didn't get an education that taught you the difference between needing to roll a 6 on 1 dice and not needing to roll at all.

The thing is (within reason) - I think the jump from 7th to 8th worked okay. The issue is that almost every codex had to be an upgrade - and that went double in 9th. With GW's usual problem "chuck out power creep cos its cool" and "try to fix issues identified in the meta made by older codexes".

Beyond that, there's probably a possibly underdiscussed issue that the professional scene hates leaving things up to chance. And since that scene has more influence than ever before, its why the stats tend to be skewed.

Hitting or wounding on a 4+ is bad. Or rather has high variance. You will lose games on bad dice.
Doing so on a 2+ is just about okay. But a 3+ with full rerolls is better.

It wasn't just the tournament scene, it was hard to justify some of the lore behind some of the WS or BS stats.

E.g Tyranid monster specifically designed for shooting or melee = BS 4+ and/or WS 4+. For more than a decade it was hard to justify bringing a Tyrannofex or a Haruspex because hitting on 4s kinda meant they sucked at their roles (and in the Tyrannofex case before 8th ed, gun that according in the lore can punch holes in Necron Monoliths = AP 4)

I feel that the stat inflation could become a (certainly not ideal) way of getting the game to a better place. I feel that if a guardsman is S3 T3 W1 a marine should be S5 T5 W2 and that then leaves a solid amount of room to build out different unit profiles.

But there are key parts missing to make that work. Swarm units like termagants, cultists, or guardsman still need to keep up without creating practical problems in regards to model count. GW seems to have gone with an approach of inflating their capacity too (via stats and/or abilities) which I disagree with; instead these units should come with a free respawn mechanic. Yeah, make grots 5 pts each with their terrible stats but let the controlling player have a fresh unit deploy from reserves when the first one dies, for free, the entire game. Less swarmy units could come with restrictions like respawning at half size, no special weapons, or any number of alternatives. Let players realize the narrative of the elite space marines mowing down incoming enemies with abandon. It is a mechanic I have utilized a number of times in narrative scenarios and it works far better in practice than it seems.

Speaking of elites, there are no limits on how high stats can go. Use that. Bring back a system where a given S simply cannot wound something of triple T. Make the Leman Russ T12, make Land Raiders T15, but have them with comparable wounds count to now to represent the reality that once vehicle's tremendous armour is cracked their squishy bits get wrecked in short order. Make monstrous creatures the inverse; similar T to now but with huge wound counts, because theirs is a different sort of durability.

On a similar note, the AP inflation could be fine; it allows for more diversity and better representation. But it needs a counter-stat of 'resilience'; how much AP armour ignores. Power armour could be resilience 1; it worsens incoming AP by 1. Instead of handing out invulnerable saves like candy it could be resilience, and ignoring invulnerables could also be removed (that is what MWs are for).

I dunno, just wild dreams I've had since 5th.

They should come out with a parallel game that handles these differences better.

Tyel wrote:
The thing is (within reason) - I think the jump from 7th to 8th worked okay. The issue is that almost every codex had to be an upgrade - and that went double in 9th. With GW's usual problem "chuck out power creep cos its cool" and "try to fix issues identified in the meta made by older codexes".

I think most of the issues stem from the 7th to 8th change because of the minimalist foundation they laid out for the core rules. It left them with zero design space to work with as there aren't any USRs (besides fly and vehicle for the most part) for things to do special actions or have certain functionality so everything turns into a stat block for moving, shooting, stabbing, and dying/not dying.

With no meat on the bones of the core rules, it turns to pumping up the codex rules with so much bloat and fat to make them work or be interesting that it requires constant adjustments to units and codex rules (see a Space Marine unit having half a dozen codex specific special rules) to create some sort of balance. As new things come out and power creep rears its ugly head, things swing out of balance even faster as the power of each codex is independent from each other so there isn't much in the way of commonality between each other to help keep things on common ground balance wise.

The lack of what I call "soft power" in 8th/9th in the form of utility functionality makes things boil down to being mostly about how well a thing kills things and survives being killed. It doesn't leave a lot of space for gadget units that can do certain things well or do something unorthodox compared to other units which makes them less reliant on hard power. For example 7th edition Land speeder Storms having those large blast flashbang like weapons that where only good at killing fodder infantry but the blind mechanic they had could throw a wrench into the enemy's combat ability if their units failed any initiative checks (brutal against Orks and especially Necrons). A lot of these things rely on core rules that every faction plays by (and are designed around) as having codex specific special rules that do these sorts of things often makes them unable to have much counter play against it.

Even excluding the lack of USRs and utility mechanics, the codex centric rule sets are way more prone to power creep. Instead of having core rules govern the bulk of a units or weapons mechanics and letting the codex fill in the number plus adding in that coded specific spice as needed. It just ends up with a lot of oneupmanship between the codexes (often in the form of rules bloat) instead of having more design space to tweek numbers and utilizing mechanics that everyone has some access to.

Hmmm. Not really convinced.

9th has lots of soft power, relating to the fact there's progressive scoring. All those rules that facilitate claiming/denying primary and secondary points (be they movement, be they "do X and still perform an action", be they "turn off your opponents obsec" etc) count for this.

I'm afraid I don't find the idea a more detailed rule-book based ruleset would in any way tone down GW's tendency towards creep. In 7th edition GW couldn't limit their rules writing to even the 100~ USRs (most of which were hardly universal) in the rulebook. I know this gets the rebuttal of "no, USRs can work, GW just suck" - but it happened. Just like every broken codex released over the last 20+ years.

The main issue is that GW have no interest in creating some sort of "balanced living rule book" that is expected to run on for decades, perhaps forever.

In this respect, Marines can be obscenely broken, as they were from Marines 2.0 until the 9th edition DE codex. They can then be crept down to being quite weak, only be bailed out with things like AoC. Until the inevitable Marines 4.0 - in this edition or the next - likely puts them right back on top. For 12-24 months, until the wheel sends them back down again.

9th "soft" power sucks. Either it doesn't work, or when it works it is what necron or sob to a degree are doing now. When there is zero interaction with the opponents army, or to be more precise, the opposing army can't really stop the accumulation of points, bar almost tabling the given army in a single turn, around turn 1-2.

And with the marines being too powerful in 9th till DE came out is just wrong. Orks, Custodes and harlequins were having much higher win rates then the best marine armies, And the non best armies are either non reporting any wins, no one plays them they are so bad, or have 1-2 dudes playing them. AoC didn't bail them out of anything, their win rates didn't suddenly catapult them to the top. In fact it is just easy to see by checking what armies have what win rates. Heck marines aren't even the most popular army played, which shows how good they are in 9th.

Yeah "Soft power" in this case is more orthagonal methods of mitigating the effectiveness of opposing units. Pinning, failing break tests, holding down in CC, stunned/shaken results to vehicles are good examples of non-lethal ways of controling the table without killing.

Karol wrote:
9th "soft" power sucks. Either it doesn't work, or when it works it is what necron or sob to a degree are doing now. When there is zero interaction with the opponents army, or to be more precise, the opposing army can't really stop the accumulation of points, bar almost tabling the given army in a single turn, around turn 1-2.

And with the marines being too powerful in 9th till DE came out is just wrong. Orks, Custodes and harlequins were having much higher win rates then the best marine armies, And the non best armies are either non reporting any wins, no one plays them they are so bad, or have 1-2 dudes playing them. AoC didn't bail them out of anything, their win rates didn't suddenly catapult them to the top. In fact it is just easy to see by checking what armies have what win rates. Heck marines aren't even the most popular army played, which shows how good they are in 9th.

But here's a big issue.

I, like many other players, could care less about the win rates and meta.

I just want to tell stories with my armies that reflect what I've read in the lore. I want to have fun playing instead of cramming a 3hr game (the book's suggested play time for a 2k game), into an hour and a half (roughly the time to play a 750 point game going by the book's numbers, with a 500 point game taking an hour, and 1,000 taking 2hrs).

They need to actually use the space the rules give them, stretch out the S/T/W numbers until they fit. That doesn't mean points changes.

Also: "Heck marines aren't even the most popular army played, which shows how good they are in 9th."

Please provide proof. GK are Adeptus Astartes. They are also Marines. Chaos Marines, DG, and TS are also Marines.

Tyel wrote:

In this respect, Marines can be obscenely broken, as they were from Marines 2.0 until the 9th edition DE codex.

Until the ninth edition Dark Eldar codex Harlequins were the strongest army and Chaos Daemons were also outperforming Marines at minimum. The myth of super overpowered 9e Marines is largely just that: a myth. They just looked incredibly strong compared to the dogwater Necron codex at the time.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Tyel wrote:

In this respect, Marines can be obscenely broken, as they were from Marines 2.0 until the 9th edition DE codex.

Until the ninth edition Dark Eldar codex Harlequins were the strongest army and Chaos Daemons were also outperforming Marines at minimum. The myth of super overpowered 9e Marines is largely just that: a myth. They just looked incredibly strong compared to the dogwater Necron codex at the time.

I'll give Iron Hands credit on being really powerful, but otherwise you're correct people were just more annoyed with the fact they got a second codex on top of the supplements.

I think all people were annoyed with it. Even marines. Of all types. If someone was a power gamer, they hated that the army they had got at best a side grade, and at worse a down grade. The people that weren't tournament players often got hit with nerfs, for which they had to pay. On top of it all the releases clogged stuff up, because GW can not drop all marine books within a single month+ there was covid so some people didn't even get to play with their OP rules and went straight from good to same old.
But hey still better then being a csm or an IG player, so there is that. Well maybe not if you play IF or their successor.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Tyel wrote:

In this respect, Marines can be obscenely broken, as they were from Marines 2.0 until the 9th edition DE codex.

Until the ninth edition Dark Eldar codex Harlequins were the strongest army and Chaos Daemons were also outperforming Marines at minimum. The myth of super overpowered 9e Marines is largely just that: a myth. They just looked incredibly strong compared to the dogwater Necron codex at the time.

Before DE marines were some of the best though..... do you not remember DA ATV spam until it was nerf? DW dreads? WS VGV spam? pre-nerf RG rush lists? DA terminator was also early strong in 9th, etc.... after DE it didn't go to Quins it went to Admech and Orks tablling to them being nerf to Tau to them being nerf to Custodes to them being nerfed, then Nids to them being nerfed, and then Quins, once Quins got to the top DE was already nerfed to a 50% win rate (and still are but slowly going down to a 47% win rate) and has not been a top army since the release of the Nids books.

Marines got a lot of early nerfs bc power creep wasn't as bad and was very strong, now yeah they are not all that strong mostly bc of power creep, even with AoC they still struggle, but even DE now actually struggle into Marines if they dont have loads of Incubi, i've seen 8 Hellions (3 attacks each 2D) literally do no damage to Sguard and other 2+ save marines bc 2+ save with AoC against -1ap (and a few -2ap) attacks is very strong. Marines for a lot of players feels strong when you dont net list and play with fun units. Imagine a DE player with 15-20 Kabals, 15-20 Wyches, some Hellions, mix of Venoms and raiders, and minimal Incubi/Grots, just a fun army, well it does literally zero damage to marines outside the lances/blasters.

To make things worst, some Marines factions are also dog sh t bad while others are actually good, having flat buffs that effect all the same is bad, the lower 4-5 marines needs a buff that just effects their traits at this point.

Harlequins were the best army at the release of 9th yes. But given the number of players running Harlequins could almost be counted on one hand, whereas something like 1 player in 3 showed up with Marines, I'm fairly confident you had far more Marine lists placing in tournaments throughout that period. (Obviously the whole phase was a bit weird due to Covid.)

Tyel wrote:
Harlequins were the best army at the release of 9th yes. But given the number of players running Harlequins could almost be counted on one hand, whereas something like 1 player in 3 showed up with Marines, I'm fairly confident you had far more Marine lists placing in tournaments throughout that period. (Obviously the whole phase was a bit weird due to Covid.)

Whoever thought Voidweavers are 90pts was a good idea should be fired. Same with buffing DT.

Probably the same person who thought Wracks should be the cost they came out at. Which I think was 5-6 right? I remember it was stupidly low. Then they raised it to 8 and the world almost ended. I think the banking system has finally started to recover.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Probably the same person who thought Wracks should be the cost they came out at. Which I think was 5-6 right? I remember it was stupidly low. Then they raised it to 8 and the world almost ended. I think the banking system has finally started to recover.

Pretty sure wracks were 8 points in the new codex (down from 12 in the initial 9th points for everyone document) and have remained at 8 throughout 9th. Various people have suggested they should probably be higher, but GW have instead tried to change/nerf just about everything else that can effect them instead.

Pretty sure the Voidweaver is just classic GW having no idea how the mathematics behind their own game works.
Someone at GW wrote the 8th edition rules, and probably thought they were good.
The community however said they sucked - because they did.
So they massively boosted the guns and defense, producing the most efficient 90 points in the game.

You had a very similar dynamic with the Squigbuggy's joke release, meteoric 9th edition rise and subsequent nerf into oblivion.

While Wracks are probably still too cheap they were never as low as 5 or 6 points. Fezzik is probably thinking of Razorwing Flocks, which were stupidly cheap for the number of wounds they had at the start of 8th. That was when GW hadn't done even basic playtesting to discover there was a lot of value in units simply existing.

The Voidweaver is a classic GW overcorrection. I sometimes feel they have 2 or 3 different people looking at how to make substandard units better in a new Codex. It's like all 3 groups suggest a different fix that would be fine in isolation but GW ends up implementing all 3 fixes at once. It doesn't help that GW never seem to ask the very simple question of what happens if you spam a particular model. It feels like their playtesting is using one of each thing and assuming it's fine if it doesn't break things too hard.

Slipspace wrote:
While Wracks are probably still too cheap they were never as low as 5 or 6 points. Fezzik is probably thinking of Razorwing Flocks, which were stupidly cheap for the number of wounds they had at the start of 8th. That was when GW hadn't done even basic playtesting to discover there was a lot of value in units simply existing.

The Voidweaver is a classic GW overcorrection. I sometimes feel they have 2 or 3 different people looking at how to make substandard units better in a new Codex. It's like all 3 groups suggest a different fix that would be fine in isolation but GW ends up implementing all 3 fixes at once. It doesn't help that GW never seem to ask the very simple question of what happens if you spam a particular model. It feels like their playtesting is using one of each thing and assuming it's fine if it doesn't break things too hard.

Didn't wracks briefly dip pretty low in points as part of a Chapter Approved update shortly before their codex came out? I feel like there was a period of time where their new and improved rules had been leaked/teased and their points had been recently lowered, so people were mistakenly thinking they'd get both the improved rules and the lower points cost at the same time. And then The codex came out and their points were somewhat higher than they had been in the recent Chapter Approved. But maybe I'm misremembering.

 Blndmage wrote:
I'm still waiting for them to put in making your opponent reroll successful hits/wounds/saves.

Huge untapped design space.

A fast-play system could leverage those mechanics but I don't see the point in 40K when it's redundant to essentially modifiers.

Like instead of AP you could have 'low-AP' weapons that allow the target to re-roll a failed save, or 'high-AP' weapons that force the target to re-roll successful saves. But with an AP modifier system, what's the utility?

GW keeps cramming more and more mechanics into the game to compensate for the shallowness of the existing ones. Rather than throw in new ways to affect what you have to do to score a wound, I'd just like a S v T system that actually works.

Well GW could make some heavy weapons, lets say melta, do a lot of wounds d6+6 etc and then have other heavy weapons , lets say lascanon type ones, do mortal wounds but with lower number of wounds caused. Then there could be anti infantry units, lower AP for more shots.

Hybrid weapons or stuff like rocket launchers would be balanced against those with weapon cost and through utility. Lowering of units speed, making it unable for unit to perform actions, maybe grenade launchers, mortars etc could shot LoS blockers.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Its just gonna get worse and worse until GW realizes that the power creep they created primarily because of the Rending AP system for ranged screwed everything. The worst part is people are still going to pretend that its not the core issue of the problem, but it really is.

It's not, it's just GW's issue with power creep. 2e wasn't like this and it had rending ap.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Harlequins were the best army at the release of 9th yes. But given the number of players running Harlequins could almost be counted on one hand, whereas something like 1 player in 3 showed up with Marines, I'm fairly confident you had far more Marine lists placing in tournaments throughout that period. (Obviously the whole phase was a bit weird due to Covid.)

Whoever thought Voidweavers are 90pts was a good idea should be fired. Same with buffing DT.

They're almost certainly insulated by the organizational structure of GW, which seems to reward incompetence.

SemperMortis wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

People take units more based on their looks and points cost, not their stats. Look at Ork Boyz as an example, do you see more of them with their improved stats? How about Drukhari Khymera? They weren't taken in 8th, got an AP and S, still not taken in 9th.

The reason they fell off a cliff in 9th compared to 8th is because the rules dramatically changed which made them go from B tier units to F Tier units. For most of this edition they were 50% more expensive then they were in 7th (now only 33%) and yeah they gained T5 and Base S4 they also lost morale and a host of other buffs while point for point becoming less durable then they were in 7th.

People stopped taking them because their pts efficiency as I pointed out was one of the two main reasons people pick or do not pick units, sorry if my message was unclear. Changing stats and adding Stratagems to improve balance is like trying to knock in a nail with a sledgehammer, wrong tool for the job because it is much more likely to end up damaging the wall you are knocking the nail into.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Yeah "Soft power" in this case is more orthagonal methods of mitigating the effectiveness of opposing units. Pinning, failing break tests, holding down in CC, stunned/shaken results to vehicles are good examples of non-lethal ways of controling the table without killing.

Would anyone be willing to trade their improved anti-vehicle profiles for anti-vehicle suppression mechanics on their anti-vehicle weapons? Like making dark lances D6 Damage again and making vehicles and monsters damaged by any dark lances -1WS/BS. I personally just want 8th edition profiles back on Necron weapons, the only one that would hurt is the Lokhust Heavy Destroyer weapon but that could be fixed by nerfing the Lokhust Destroyer gun so that it isn't as good as Heavy Destroyers against vehicles.

The stats go along with the resolution method.

When it was 4+, 5+, 6+, to wound it was restricting stats.

Now it's 4+, 5+ doubles 6+, S vs T has become far less useful and often gets ignored anyway.

They also almost doubled the basic wounds value of characters in 8th. It had been 3 since the 80s, now its 5-6.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Tyel wrote:

In this respect, Marines can be obscenely broken, as they were from Marines 2.0 until the 9th edition DE codex.

Until the ninth edition Dark Eldar codex Harlequins were the strongest army and Chaos Daemons were also outperforming Marines at minimum. The myth of super overpowered 9e Marines is largely just that: a myth. They just looked incredibly strong compared to the dogwater Necron codex at the time.

Yeah...that isn't true. Marines DOMINATED early 9th no matter how much you want to rewrite history. July 2020 9th came out, between then and the start of 2021 Marines of all flavors racked up 19 top placings at Big events, Aeldari (Eldar, DEldar, Ynnari and Harlquins) combined racked up...wait for it....19. Yeah Harlies were damn good but they weren't head and shoulders better than Marines who were the dominant release faction. Mind you, when DE and Ad Mech came out both were thoroughly dethroned

Tyel wrote:

Pretty sure the Voidweaver is just classic GW having no idea how the mathematics behind their own game works.
Someone at GW wrote the 8th edition rules, and probably thought they were good.
The community however said they sucked - because they did.
So they massively boosted the guns and defense, producing the most efficient 90 points in the game.
You had a very similar dynamic with the Squigbuggy's joke release, meteoric 9th edition rise and subsequent nerf into oblivion.

I love the fact that anytime Orkz have anything remotely competitive its labeled broken or absurdly powerful. A Squigbuggy ON ITS OWN, as in no other buffs was getting 2D6 shots at BS4 and 1D6 shots at BS5 with the smaller gun getting 18' range compared to the 36 of the bigger one. The big gun AVERAGED 7 shots, 3.5 hits, 2.3 wounds and 1.5 dead Marines. The little gun at half the range averaged 3.5 shots, 1.16 hits, 0.77 wounds and 0.51 dead Marines. All told this thing AVERAGED 2 dead Marines a turn. Now, lets compare it to the ridiculous Voidweaver that you said was just as bad as the squigbuggy. Voidweaver, without buffs averaged 1.3 dead Marines with just its secondary guns, add in the Prismatic cannon and it became 2.4 dead Marines with ease, the biggest difference being the Squigbuggy couldn't hurt vehicles very well, the Voidweaver could switch to a secondary weapons type and plunk S12 -4AP 2D3 dmg shots into vehicles.

Both those were 90pts btw.