Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Karol wrote:

Hecaton 806988 11435650 wrote:

I don't think I'd hate on someone for buying the models because they'd like them. The models are pretty cool and their depiction in the setting is pretty neat. The only issue I've seen is people saying that players are wrong for not wanting to play against a codex that's that powerful.

If they didn't do the same, aka ask for bans, for other factions, including the one they may have possibly played themselfs is a huge double standard. When someone who plays or played a top army, and told you stuff like to learn to play and build your army properly, followed by I didn't use a 100% optimised list only a 85% one, it leaves me cold to their arguments to ban LoV. And LoV is a faction that anihilates small meq elite armies that are short/melee focused, which includes my army. There are things you do not do, because if you do it for one thing, it will be done for other things too, and the the flood gates open and there is total chaos.

And as I've stated, I and several others advised against buying new codices but people won't listen. If bans are necessary now, so be it.

Karol wrote:

If they didn't do the same, aka ask for bans, for other factions, including the one they may have possibly played themselfs is a huge double standard.

Not necessarily, if Votann is legitimately the worst faction in the game for power levels.

I'll just C+P what I said about Squats from Discord for how I feel about the 'lil fethers:

Currently there's a lot of talk of banning them and the apparent celebration of "showing it to the man" to GW when the "community" bands together against power creep.

I'm not gonna lie this time it's really fethed me off and it's really, really fethed me off due to the hypocrisy of the movement.

The reason being is that to me Votann represent two larger issues that has plagued 9th edition since Ad. Mech and Drukhari. Hard-Counter subversion of the core mechanics and the proliferation of damage output armies.

If people had a serious problem with how Judgement Tokens and Rail-Cannons then they should have had a problem with perma-transhuman armies, they should have been equally calling for bans on Harlequins or Tyranids and yet nothing stopped them from appearing in tournament games. People should have been calling for bans on Ad. Mech and cult of Strife/Drukhari with their consistent damage output and yet they were allowed to participate and dominate the meta no different to how Tyranids have done.

There are ways to play against Votann and unlike some people who will happily give you that advice behind a paywall I'll give you it for free because I don't fething believe in "Premium-Price 40k coaching":

- 4+ Sv. Yes they have AoC BUT on a 1W model with a 4+ Sv those troops will still suffer because AP2 is still taken in abundance (Turning a 4+ Sv to a 5+ Sv is still rough).

- 5" is exactly that. slow. There will be a lot of faction/units that will outmanoeuvre them.

- They have next to no morale counters. This allows morale to be played as a very big factor against them if you play into that playstyle

- Void Armour doesn't ignore modifiers to wound, so +1 to wound is still viable against them.

- They have FnP mechanics BUT like with any other army they can be weathered down in MW.

- Very little to no LoS ignores. Your army may have with good stats. Use them. There's some funky things that happen with beam but you can't beam through obscuring terrain which allows units to hide which leads to my last point.

- Mid-Range army. Very few things have a long range, that means with a low Movement stat they will be marching on to meet you for a scrum in the middle. Combing the previous point to this one means that you can counter this, it's no different to other armies in that regard.

- Force them to fight last. Votann have only one unit that deals in Fight on Death being the Berserkers, but if you have any units that have fight first or forces them to fight last then against anything else you'll have a fun time.

Votann are designed to get to the middle of the board and shout "deal with me brah".

They can be dealt with. Let them come to you, offer some counter-charges. MW units like their Terminators and Berserkers. You'll be fine.

How did I come to that conclusion? Because there's so many people out there who just love the boiler-plate statements of how 40k "is the most balanced edition to date..." (completely forgetting the other half of that sentence being "... For hyper-competitive GT play" which is not the same experience as it is for the game in general) and so you Just "gotta git gud".

Well, as a Night Lords player it looks like I "got gud" because I actively looked at what they're weakest at to exploit on the table rather than get "shocked" at how powerful they are for Clout. As a Night Lord player I'd much much rather fight Votann than say, Leviathan or Custodes because at least Votann allow me to use my trait to get an engaging play experience as opposed to either which lock me out of my trait which then due to how much point investment I have to make to make the trait functional in order to compete at a bare functional level, never mind play the damn game, therefore locking me out of the playstyle of the VIII!

There's plenty of ways to play around Votann and defend yourself against Votann. GT players aren't used to it because they don't like it when something affects their army lists majorly. They're as guilty as the rest of us when it comes to change and TO's trying to ban Votann is a perfect reflection of that.

For me I just hate the hypocrisy of this alleged movement as well as the false narrative of "trickle down" Game Balance that people think 9E has and Votann are yet again a perfect reflection of that.

There are things that make Votann overbearing for many. I do recognise that JT are inherently strong, they have a good access to great strats as well as some fantastic rules in-built on units. They will need toning down in due time. However to me the communities (or to be more precise the GT scenes) response has been absolutely appalling and manipulative to spearheaded their distain of their narrow-sighted views of change. The hypocrisy is the most frustrating aspect of the whole ordeal.

We've allowed the GT scene to be our mouthpiece for far too long and 9E is the result of that. They got thier balenced edition while so many more who aren't hyper-competitive lost out and walked away to HH or waiting out for 10E.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
If people had a serious problem with how Judgement Tokens and Rail-Cannons then they should have had a problem with perma-transhuman armies, they should have been equally calling for bans on Harlequins or Tyranids and yet nothing stopped them from appearing in tournament games. People should have been calling for bans on Ad. Mech and cult of Strife/Drukhari with their consistent damage output and yet they were allowed to participate and dominate the meta no different to how Tyranids have done.

Why isn't your attitude "better late than never"? It sounds like you don't want the game to be better.

Trickle down game balance is real, at least as far as you're concerned. GT players have a better handle on Votann than you do.

Yeah pretty cringe post ngl. Should the other hot OP armies (at bare minimum Tyranids, Harlequins, Tau, Custodes, and maybe Eldar idk) have been banned? Yes absolutely. And the community should have had the balls to take it further by refusing to participate in GW-sponsored tournaments who naturally wouldn't actually ban them, but I expect that won't happen because most people have no integrity.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Yeah pretty cringe post ngl. Should the other hot OP armies (at bare minimum Tyranids, Harlequins, Tau, Custodes, and maybe Eldar idk) have been banned? Yes absolutely. And the community should have had the balls to take it further by refusing to participate in GW-sponsored tournaments who naturally wouldn't actually ban them, but I expect that won't happen because most people have no integrity.

The key difference being that Votaan are a NEW army, which presents more of an opportunity to actually make a point compared to the armies that people have had for maybe a decade or more.

They are clearly overpowered. Better late than never on the bans. I'm glad they started somewhere otherwise how would anything ever change.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Yeah pretty cringe post ngl. Should the other hot OP armies (at bare minimum Tyranids, Harlequins, Tau, Custodes, and maybe Eldar idk) have been banned? Yes absolutely. And the community should have had the balls to take it further by refusing to participate in GW-sponsored tournaments who naturally wouldn't actually ban them, but I expect that won't happen because most people have no integrity.

The key difference being that Votaan are a NEW army, which presents more of an opportunity to actually make a point compared to the armies that people have had for maybe a decade or more.

Yeah this is the main thing about why they in particular are getting a lot of push to be banned.

That and it's very much a straw that breaks the camels back moment.

Also that above post being an apologist is just embarrassing and shows a severe amount of cope and just plain misunderstanding of basic game mechanics. Squats are not Drukhari, Admech, Tyranids, Ork Buggies, GK, Tau, Custodes or Harlequins. They are WORSE than all of them and this is something that has already been tested for about a month now, as people have been proxying and 3D printing and doing high level practice games with the army. I have never seen pro players and other people deeply embedded in the comp ecosystems be so unanimous about the strength level of an army; there's always been at least some caveats or downplaying going on somewhere. Even that AoW video about the sky not falling and Squats not being unbeatable said that an army in the 45-55% win range just will never beat them, which isn't exactly encouraging.

And for future reference, anyone who tries to say that Squats have drawbacks because they're "slow" or "short range" should be ignored immediately. Absolute nonsense. They are neither of those things.

Hard to say army slow when they have ample options to transport the infantry forward...All the strongest lists have several transports because a) either they pack one of the meanest guns in the game b) they are efficient source to bring out 5 guys costing bit more than 100 that can one shot knight with under the odds rolls...

Yeah your basic votann might not walk fast. But he has a ride to take him to those objectives.

And short range isn't much of issue when terrains tend to block LOS anyway. How much over 24" clear line of sights you expect to have? Especially tournaments where breachable obscuring L walls everywhere is the norm.

Love that people keep calling them slow.

Pioneers literally outpace Harlequin bikes by 2“ (without even considering the pregame), at 2/3 the cost, nearly 5 times the damage output and randomly ObSec on top. And it‘s not even considered a top unit in that book, despite being probably the fastest non-aircraft unit currently in the game, lol

Sagitaur also win the race agains Starweavers btw.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Love that people keep calling them slow.

Pioneers literally outpace Harlequin bikes by 2“ (without even considering the pregame), at 2/3 the cost, nearly 5 times the damage output and randomly ObSec on top. And it‘s not even considered a top unit in that book, despite being probably the fastest non-aircraft unit currently in the game, lol

Sagitaur also win the race agains Starweavers btw.

And Hearthguard can just teleport anywhere every turn. Slow AF.

The only argument I can see is secondary objectives - which I've not looked into closely enough to weigh up. Some of the armies that can stack up secondaries while playing keep away may compete - but this isn't a Squat weakness, they can do this with everyone.

+1 for Squats not being slow, not being short ranged, and the idea they are "vulnerable to morale" is hard to credit, unless someone is going to spam maxed squads of the basic troops (which doesn't seem the obvious way to run them.) They have excellent shooting, assault and defensive stats.

 The Warp Forge wrote:

How did I come to that conclusion? Because there's so many people out there who just love the boiler-plate statements of how 40k "is the most balanced edition to date..." (completely forgetting the other half of that sentence being "... For hyper-competitive GT play" which is not the same experience as it is for the game in general) and so you Just "gotta git gud"

Absolutely. I really do hate when people say that 40k is the most balanced it's ever been. It completely ignores the preferences of players and assumes you'll take a meta list using a meta subfaction while playing GT mission packs. It's also (standard) hyperbole. I seriously doubt it's actually true when you look at the full history of 40k. No clue when that "most balanced" point was, but it's probably not right now. It gives this false narrative that everything is okay now, the game is fixed when in reality the internal balance of most codices is horrid.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

 The Warp Forge wrote:

How did I come to that conclusion? Because there's so many people out there who just love the boiler-plate statements of how 40k "is the most balanced edition to date..." (completely forgetting the other half of that sentence being "... For hyper-competitive GT play" which is not the same experience as it is for the game in general) and so you Just "gotta git gud"

Absolutely. I really do hate when people say that 40k is the most balanced it's ever been. It completely ignores the preferences of players and assumes you'll take a meta list using a meta subfaction while playing GT mission packs. It's also (standard) hyperbole. I seriously doubt it's actually true when you look at the full history of 40k. No clue when that "most balanced" point was, but it's probably not right now. It gives this false narrative that everything is okay now, the game is fixed when in reality the internal balance of most codices is horrid.

It's not uncommon to hate facts that don't match your opinion.

The pre-LoV nephilim mission pack was the version of 40k which has the best external balance. Every 9th edition army had a chance of doing well in competitive gaming and army lists were more diverse than ever before.
Literally every other iteration, even golden ages like pre 8.5, index or 5th edition times did not have as much variety in armies or units.
This is not a matter of opinion, but facts supported by lots and lots of data.

Even if you look at internal balance, most codices have vastly less trash-tier and trap units than they did in any other edition before, and I'm not talking about "everything not OP is trash" hyperbole.
Most codices have second tier archetypes and units which, when used in a coherent army, will still give you a real fighting chance, while straying from the cookie-cutter in older editions usually meant giving up on winning.

However, just because the game is balanced, it does not mean automatically make it fun. Balance is but one pillar of a good game, and while GW somehow managed to do pretty well in that aspect, they failed in others.
For example, I personally hate how orks play in Nephilim - while they have multiple strong builds, none of them feel orky, and the half-assed codex and the removal of most fun mechanics makes playing to win feel like a chore.

And of course, balancing by secondaries does jack for you if you aren't actually playing nephilim - you can't outscore nids with easy secondaries when you are playing crusade or tempest of war, game modes which are both just as popular as nephilim is.

It's worth noting that "most balanced" isn't really a great achievement for 40k. Considering how terrible GW's track record has been in that regard, it was kind of a low hanging fruit. They have now reached the baseline of how balanced any game should be, and there is still plenty of room for improvement.

TL;DR: The game can be both the most balanced and still suck.

 Jidmah wrote:


It's not uncommon to hate facts that don't match your opinion.

The pre-LoV nephilim mission pack was the version of 40k which has the best external balance. Every 9th edition army had a chance of doing well in competitive gaming and army lists were more diverse than ever before.
Literally every other iteration, even golden ages like pre 8.5, index or 5th edition times did not have as much variety in armies or units.
This is not a matter of opinion, but facts supported by lots and lots of data.
.

Not even remotely. Mat Ward become an internet-hate meme and was literally cyber-bullied out of his job for writing a Grey Knights Codex with a 55% win rate, which at the time was the worst thing GW ever did.

These days, 55% is considered almost perfectly balanced by stat-podcasts and internet-pundits.

7th Edition at it's worst with Ynnari Wraithknights hit a low 60-ish win rate, which was still not nearly as bad as, say, current Tyranids are even after like ... 4 nerfs?

I don't think there was a point in time in 9th where there wasn't at least one or two armies more broken then anything ever in 7th Edition, which is often the byword for a busted 40K-Edition.

From what I've heard, the Grey Knights got the 55% winrate if you don't remove mirror matches, but I've never heard what it was without them. If someone more informed is able to tell us, I'd appreciate it.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Not even remotely. Mat Ward become an internet-hate meme and was literally cyber-bullied out of his job for writing a Grey Knights Codex with a 55% win rate, which at the time was the worst thing GW ever did.

These days, 55% is considered almost perfectly balanced by stat-podcasts and internet-pundits.

7th Edition at it's worst with Ynnari Wraithknights hit a low 60-ish win rate, which was still not nearly as bad as, say, current Tyranids are even after like ... 4 nerfs?

I don't think there was a point in time in 9th where there wasn't at least one or two armies more broken then anything ever in 7th Edition, which is often the byword for a busted 40K-Edition.

Mind providing sources for those 55%? I'm not aware of any organized data collection going on at that time.

The other thing is that good balance isn't just about how powerful the best armies are - it's also about how many armies are too weak to compete.
Both during 5th and 7th there was an extremely small number of codices which were able to compete for tournament wins and and everyone else just didn't show up in any tournament rankings unless they were piloted by extremely exceptional players.

Especially 7th was the worst offender of horrible external balance - there were four tiers of armies, and an army in a lower tier had absolutely no chance of beating any army in a higher tier. A match between eldar and orks was decided before a single dice was rolled, irrespective of player skill.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
From what I've heard, the Grey Knights got the 55% winrate if you don't remove mirror matches, but I've never heard what it was without them. If someone more informed is able to tell us, I'd appreciate it.

IMO the worst part about Ward's GK codex wasn't the power level itself, but the built-in I-win buttons against many armies like daemons, nids and orks as well as having no weaknesses whatsoever.

 Jidmah wrote:

The other thing is that good balance isn't just about how powerful the best armies are - it's also about how many armies are too weak to compete.

I'd go further and say it's about how those armies feel and are built. It's all very well having the majority of armies in the 45-55% win rate bracket and declaring the game balanced, but if every faction within that bracket only has 1 or 2 narrow builds to achieve that win rate I'd argue the game isn't well balanced. Even more so if some of those builds are antithetical to the background of the army or player fun. I think this goes back to your point about a balanced game not necessarily being a fun game. For example, if Necrons are doing really well, but every Necron list must contain TSK to compete, that's pretty crappy for anyone who doesn't want to use him every game. Or if BA only work when spamming 30 SG, that leaves most BA players struggling to compete in a supposedly balanced meta.

I think the real reason for past hatreds was GW's refusal to fix stuff. So GK were overpowered for at least the remaining year+ of 5th (and this was "overpowered compared to Ward's other books, which were also overpowered compared to the rest of the game".)

In much the same way Eldar (and Tau) were busted in 6th - and got even more busted in 7th, for a run of 4 years. Cue plenty of hatred.

90 point Voidweavers was insane - but it lasted... 5 weeks? The closest any faction probably gets too in recent memory was DE - and even then, you are looking at about 9 months. Comparable with 8th edition's Castellan Meta. (Which did feel kind of bad/long, because I seemed to be getting games in most weekends back then, which hasn't been the case consistently through 9th.)

===
FWIW - it no doubt is a bit lame that most factions are pushed into competitive builds - but the fact they have one such build at all is infinitely better surely than having zero. Which has more typically been the case throughout editions.

Does Demons have a decent chance against LoV armies?

Their Demon Saves are unmodifiable.

Can LoV spam out mortal wounds?

 Insularum wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Love that people keep calling them slow.

Pioneers literally outpace Harlequin bikes by 2“ (without even considering the pregame), at 2/3 the cost, nearly 5 times the damage output and randomly ObSec on top. And it‘s not even considered a top unit in that book, despite being probably the fastest non-aircraft unit currently in the game, lol

Sagitaur also win the race agains Starweavers btw.

And Hearthguard can just teleport anywhere every turn. Slow AF.

This reminds me of the people that say Necrons are a slow army with the 3rd edition codex, mostly because they built their army to be slow and not take advantage of built-in speed.

Slipspace wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

The other thing is that good balance isn't just about how powerful the best armies are - it's also about how many armies are too weak to compete.

I'd go further and say it's about how those armies feel and are built. It's all very well having the majority of armies in the 45-55% win rate bracket and declaring the game balanced, but if every faction within that bracket only has 1 or 2 narrow builds to achieve that win rate I'd argue the game isn't well balanced. Even more so if some of those builds are antithetical to the background of the army or player fun. I think this goes back to your point about a balanced game not necessarily being a fun game. For example, if Necrons are doing really well, but every Necron list must contain TSK to compete, that's pretty crappy for anyone who doesn't want to use him every game. Or if BA only work when spamming 30 SG, that leaves most BA players struggling to compete in a supposedly balanced meta.

Well, no. What you are talking about is totally correct and I absolutely agree, but that's not related to external balance at all.

 Jidmah wrote:

Mind providing sources for those 55%? I'm not aware of any organized data collection going on at that time.

Woah woah woah...wait a second. You literally just told me that there was "lots and lots of data" and now you're saying there's no organized data collection?

 Jidmah wrote:

Every 9th edition army had a chance of doing well in competitive gaming and army lists were more diverse than ever before.
Literally every other iteration, even golden ages like pre 8.5, index or 5th edition times did not have as much variety in armies or units.
This is not a matter of opinion, but facts supported by lots and lots of data.

Would you like to revise your earlier statement to be based on your experience (which is probably a lot more than mine, to be fair)?

The objection I raised is based on how absolute the statement "most balanced 40k has ever been" is when we're talking about a game that has been around for 30+ years (I also take issue with "balanced" apparently being determined solely by the tournament scene rather than a combination of tournament results and more casual play, but...data limitations, yaknow).

I mean we really can't accurately gauge data from older editions past a certain point because the scene was far smaller and the methods for collecting, recording and analysing that data were just... not there for the most part.

But the question still remains: where was the GK 55% winrate recorded down? For how long did this go on for? Were there even methods to identify if this was at top tables only or all throughout an event?

At the end of the day though people's idea of what is and is not balanced doesn't just have to be based on winrates alone. Necrons are only at a 53% winrate across Nephilim currently, and yet a lot of people really dislike playing against them.

 whembly wrote:
Does Demons have a decent chance against LoV armies?

Their Demon Saves are unmodifiable.

Can LoV spam out mortal wounds?

Probably not. They can't break through their saves but Daemons have to put their eggs in one basket in the form of monster mash and I recall reading the LoV can still fairly easily force you to pick up a GUO a turn or more. We'll see though.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Mind providing sources for those 55%? I'm not aware of any organized data collection going on at that time.

Woah woah woah...wait a second. You literally just told me that there was "lots and lots of data" and now you're saying there's no organized data collection?

No organized data collection is not the same as no data.

Feel free to dig through dakka's archives (you can find tournament reports all the way back to 4th) or those of blogs like 3plusplus who were focused on competitive gaming at that time for actual data on which armies won tournaments and which never did.

No one calculated win percentages in those times or even tracked every single game of an event, so unless there is actual data to back up that 55% claim, I'm fairly sure it's pulled out of thin air.

 Jidmah wrote:

Every 9th edition army had a chance of doing well in competitive gaming and army lists were more diverse than ever before.
Literally every other iteration, even golden ages like pre 8.5, index or 5th edition times did not have as much variety in armies or units.
This is not a matter of opinion, but facts supported by lots and lots of data.

Would you like to revise your earlier statement to be based on your experience (which is probably a lot more than mine, to be fair)?

The objection I raised is based on how absolute the statement "most balanced 40k has ever been" is when we're talking about a game that has been around for 30+ years (I also take issue with "balanced" apparently being determined solely by the tournament scene rather than a combination of tournament results and more casual play, but...data limitations, yaknow).

Absolutely not. Not considering rogue trader (as I really have no idea how that played, it's more of an RPG than a strategy game), 40k has an atrocious track record of terrible balance. Literally every single edition has had massive problems in regards to broken rules and had power level of both codices and units all over the place. These things are well documented in dozens of articles across the web and there still is plenty of data available to back that up. Even today, in the "most balanced edition ever", GW merely reached a level of balance which has been an industry standard for over two decades now.

Name a single edition you think was more balanced than Nephilim was, and I'll prove you wrong.

I don't see how you can argue with internal balance being just about the best its been in particular. Units which have been terrible for literal decades edition after edition are finally playable and in some cases even strong.

 Jidmah wrote:
No organized data collection is not the same as no data.

Nor is it the same as "lots and lots of data"

 Void__Dragon wrote:
I don't see how you can argue with internal balance being just about the best its been in particular. Units which have been terrible for literal decades edition after edition are finally playable and in some cases even strong.

And other units/options which previously have been playable/strong are now terrible...

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
No organized data collection is not the same as no data.

Nor is it the same as "lots and lots of data"

Any yet, we still have lots and lots of data, in the places I just explained to you.

Do you actually have anything to add to this discussion? Because so far, all you have done is argue from incredulity.