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Warhammer 40,000 has never been balanced. And honestly, it likely never will be. But Games Workshop at least makes token efforts to introduce competitive balance. In the past, you would just have to hope the next editions fixed the OP BS. Starting in 2022, Games Workshop started releasing Balance Dataslates and Munitorum Field Manuals to change the game each quarter. Of course, unlike an online videogame patch, codexes and rulebooks don't update just because the creators released a new edition. There have even been cases where codexes were inaccurate on the first day of their release. But I digress.

What have been the biggest balance changes that 40k has gone through? I wasn't around for them, but I heard Fish of Fury (T'au) was brutal back in 5th edition, and Necrons were unbeatable when they were first released. Forge World models used to be so strong that tournaments outright banned them. Back in 2nd edition, you needed your opponent's permission to use named characters because they were that much better over the other characters. And 9th edition Drukhari were just something else.

Here's a list of 40k dataslates for reference:

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_warhammer40000_balance_dataslate_december_2024-6zq9ektkkl-l1vgzqlgub.pdf

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_warhammer40000_balance_dataslate_march_2025-xq7ekcwkbm-yq8kyojrbo.pdf

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_jun25_wh40k_core&key_balance_dataslate-lt8xrtdmxq-ehmx9nxsc9.pdf

http://web.archive.org/web/20220714011750/https://warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/UeSNmXryOfMolf39.pdf

http://web.archive.org/web/20230413114220/https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/UgkX20O5FRSztM0r.pdf

Fish of Fury was a tactic, not necessarily a rule, and there wasn't anything that could be done balance wise to stop it (unless they allowed charging through vehicles). However it was only useful in shooting at melee focused units, other shooty units would just shoot the FW back.

Anyway, one of the biggest balance things I saw were just little things, but had a huge impact, was when they clarified how +1 to strength from furious charge type things worked with powerfists. Its simple math, but a SM sarge was now offically S9 not S10 and nobody could argue it.

The other was giving named character Eternal Warrior where they couldn't be insta killed anymore from a single S8 hit.

I think the Votann Bait & Switch scam was pretty big nerf.

Fish of Fury was a gimmicky tactic, but was it any more gimmicky than any other?
- Assault Cannon (Rending) spam
- Fear of Darkness bomb
- Shard of the Monolith mega Librarian
- Chapter Traits ('Cleanse and Purify and We Stand Alone is fluffy for my Ultramarine lookalike Chapter!')
It also wasn't really buffed or nerfed. The way line of sight worked with skimmers just changed with 5th edition.

There have been some wild swings though - who remembers when Catachans were briefly the melee army to beat, when Furious Charge and Counter-attack suddenly stacked..? Or when entire armies of flying Hive Tyrants led to the addition of an entirely new level of army building limitation..?

I think Fish of Fury is an example of 40k finally hitting the internet. So it's a thing everyone hazilly remembers but it was quite limited in scope. Ultimately it was just exploiting that you couldn't charge through them.

Leaf blower lists had a similar sort of moment. They undoubtedly worked - and infamously won tournaments. But they were also a gimmick that was only really effective for a short period of time.

In terms of biggest buffs, I think in recent history it's probably the twoish years of Marines which went from about the big FAQ in April 2019~ until Dark Eldar in 9th around April 2021. GW seemed to have no breaks, Marines got buff after buff and every other game seemed to be against them. Although I guess it did end the 2018 Knight meta which I wasn't a fan of.

9th saw comedically powerful books that all had to be knocked down. But yes pre-nerfing the Squats because the German tournament scene preemptively banned them was a bit nuts.

6e eldar. Across the board power-ups.

To give some scope to that between 3e and 5e the Sisters relied on their 'divine guidance' faith and when they lost it in late 5e it was kind of accepted that it was an overpowered crutch. 6e Eldar then got an improved version of divine guidance for free on every shuriken and monofilament weapon and it wasn't even a top 10 ability in their book, the capstone ability of the old witch hunters just a footnote in their codex.

This was a point in the game where some factions had formations that gave them hundreds of points of freebies on top of other bonuses, from wall to wall rerolls to 'premium' bundle only formations that had troops assaulting and firing heavy weapons from drop pod deployment (with bonuses on top).

6e/7e Eldar were so powerful that they were still top of the tournaments against this madness, and all the other shenanigans of 6e and 7e without even needing to reach for the formations.

----

On the flip side the single largest nerf was voluntary - the old apocalypse Daemonhunters formation gave the following 'bonuses' :
1) "The force may only enter the table if the opponent is using a Greater Daemon and/or Warp Rift"
2) "If there are no Chaos models on the table, the Chaos player may control the Grey Knights as if they were his own troops"
~2000pts to field it at minimum size.

I also remember the original Tau R'varna (forgeworld) had special pulse weapons that could literally strafe an entire line of tyranid MCs off the board in a salvo of 2+ rolls. When the nids got their 6e codex forgeworld revised its rules so that it wasn't all that good against tyranids any more. Some of forgeworlds 'buff for sales, nerf later' swings were extreme but the R'varna was probably the largest.

Very broadly speaking? Dreadnoughts and Elite Infantry in the switch from 2nd to 3rd.

I’m not claiming either were necessarily balanced in 2nd Ed. But they were effective and felt truly Elite. Terminators and Aspect Warriors in particular were units your opponent had to deal with carefully. Give them the chance to do what they do, and they’d punch comfortably above their weight.

In 3rd Ed? Unit sizes grew. Ld didn’t matter as much. And especially for Aspect Warriors, S3 T3 W1 just did not cut any mustard

Space Marine Dreadnoughts went from reliable anchor units (nicer weapons, handy in a punch up) to lumbering, uninteresting heavy weapon platforms.

Two of the biggest damage buffs of all time are to do with the change of the turn structure and the change to hand to hand fighting that took place between Rogue Trader/2nd and everything else from 3rd onwards.

Turn structure - you used to have to decide between shooting and fighting (cannot do both) in a single turn. Out of phase activities like overwatch usually came at the cost of missing your own shooting phase. This led to a maximum number of times a unit could make any kind of attack, in a 5 turn game a unit could only make 5 attack actions unless they were dragged into a melee on the opponents turn. From 3rd onwards it became increasingly more common to be able to move/shoot/charge/fight all in one turn, and overwatch is often in addition to this.

Melee - in Oldhammer editions, hand to hand combat was just that - a single combat between models in base contact. Even if you were something scary and entirely melee focused like a Bloodthirster you could only hit the models you were in base contact with, so usually 1 or 2 models. These days you just hit the unit you are in engagement range with, so you can cause up to as many casualties as you have attacks.

Big nerfs, probably old terminator armour saving on 2D6 and the card deck based psychic phase?

 Jayden63 wrote:
Fish of Fury was a tactic, not necessarily a rule, and there wasn't anything that could be done balance wise to stop it (unless they allowed charging through vehicles). However it was only useful in shooting at melee focused units, other shooty units would just shoot the FW back.

Tyel wrote:
I think Fish of Fury is an example of 40k finally hitting the internet. So it's a thing everyone hazilly remembers but it was quite limited in scope. Ultimately it was just exploiting that you couldn't charge through them.

You missed out on the real cheese. According to 4e the shooter must draw LoS from the model's eyes, but the target can be shot anywhere in the body. There's also a fire warrior modeled prone. If you put the devilfish low on the flying stand and make all your fire warriors the prone model, they can all draw a line underneath it from their eyes while it's impossible for any standing model to do the same back to them.

Granted I never saw anyone try to do that in a real game, but that's the part that made the tactic so infamous on the internet.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

You missed out on the real cheese. According to 4e the shooter must draw LoS from the model's eyes, but the target can be shot anywhere in the body. There's also a fire warrior modeled prone. If you put the devilfish low on the flying stand and make all your fire warriors the prone model, they can all draw a line underneath it from their eyes while it's impossible for any standing model to do the same back to them.

Granted I never saw anyone try to do that in a real game, but that's the part that made the tactic so infamous on the internet.

Aha, but my model's boots are not part of the "body", (where we mean head, torso, legs and arms), so in fact your Tau can't shoot at all.
I'm very clever, and not at all about to be told to go play with someone else.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:
Fish of Fury was a tactic, not necessarily a rule, and there wasn't anything that could be done balance wise to stop it (unless they allowed charging through vehicles). However it was only useful in shooting at melee focused units, other shooty units would just shoot the FW back.

Tyel wrote:
I think Fish of Fury is an example of 40k finally hitting the internet. So it's a thing everyone hazilly remembers but it was quite limited in scope. Ultimately it was just exploiting that you couldn't charge through them.

You missed out on the real cheese. According to 4e the shooter must draw LoS from the model's eyes, but the target can be shot anywhere in the body. There's also a fire warrior modeled prone. If you put the devilfish low on the flying stand and make all your fire warriors the prone model, they can all draw a line underneath it from their eyes while it's impossible for any standing model to do the same back to them.

Granted I never saw anyone try to do that in a real game, but that's the part that made the tactic so infamous on the internet.

In 4th ed, skimmers no longer blocked LOS to anything. So you could have skimmers block assault paths and still let your shooty units shoot past them. It worked as mobile impassible terrain that you could shoot though. That is where the advantage came from. No reason to model the Fire warriors differently.

 Jayden63 wrote:
In 4th ed, skimmers no longer blocked LOS to anything. So you could have skimmers block assault paths and still let your shooty units shoot past them. It worked as mobile impassible terrain that you could shoot though. That is where the advantage came from. No reason to model the Fire warriors differently.

Really? Maybe the prone fire warrior trick was a leftover from 3rd then, I just remember it was one of those infamous RAW loopholes people would bat around.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:
In 4th ed, skimmers no longer blocked LOS to anything. So you could have skimmers block assault paths and still let your shooty units shoot past them. It worked as mobile impassible terrain that you could shoot though. That is where the advantage came from. No reason to model the Fire warriors differently.

Really? Maybe the prone fire warrior trick was a leftover from 3rd then, I just remember it was one of those infamous RAW loopholes people would bat around.

The idea of the kneeling/crawling Wraithlord really was a thing and that might be what your thinking about.

There was never a prone Fire Warrior. There was a prone Pathfinder with Rail Rifle, but that was not generally part of the trick.

There was kneeling legs, which is probably what he’s recalling.

These are probably not the "biggest nerfs" of all time, but they certainly show to me how GW makes a mistake and then tacks something on instead of fixing the mistake.

going from Rogue Trader to 2nd edition: Tactical, Assault, and Devastator squads all used to be able to get jump packs, but then only assault squads could get jump packs.

Hero characters used to be able to get heavy weapons but then no longer could.

Going from 2nd to 3rd and after: Assault squads used to be able to have power weapons, power fists, power axes, plasma pistols, then they got nerfed to just being close combat weapons and max of 2 plasma pistols, and then they "re-added" vanguard vets in like 4th-5th edition but even they didn't have as many options as 2nd edition assault squads.

Adding the vanguard vets didn't need to happen if they just went back and fixed the assault squad to begin with, they could have still sold all the same miniatures.

Not counting edition or codex changes, since those were massive sea changes that affect every faction or unit, I think it's fair to look at balance updates/FAQs, etc.

The biggest nerf is probably the day 0 nerf to the 9th edition launch of Votann. Change to the main army rule, price hikes, the whole bit... all before anybody had even built a model. Some honorable mentions are the Taktikal Brigade and Bridgehead strike detachments, who got nerfed detachment rules, price hikes, and strat cost changes.

The biggest buff? Was it late 8th when all space marines just suddenly got Armor of contempt at all times, plus an extra attack on the charge. Just cause.

I've been playing 40k since 3rd edition, and while I didn't get into the more competitive side until late 9th edition, I've played most of the armies in that time and many have seen their ups and downs.

The biggest single buff I've ever seen, and one that has gone mostly unnoticed since so few people play the sub-faction, is Kroot in 10th.

I got into the army in 8th and for the duration of 8th and 9th, they were essentially a meme army. The best you could do was flood the board with bodies and try to score enough points before you died. It was certainly doable, but the army couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag. The glow up the got in 10th has been the biggest surge from trash to top tier that I've ever seen.

The rules they got in 10th have consistently been very strong where I'd say they are borderline broken, the only reason they aren't talked about more is because they were so bad for so long that so few people have a full army of Kroot to play, and as somewhat of a horde army, they are very expensive to collect. With their seemingly weak datasheets belying the power of the overlapping buffs in the army, people still aren't really investing in them either.

When they first launched in 10th, the Farstalker / Trail Shaper deathball was insane, I never lost a game going first because of it. The way it worked was that the Farstalkers could pick a unit to get Lethal Hits and Precision against at the start of the game. The Trail Shaper let you redeploy it's unit and 1 additional Kroot unit AFTER you knew who had the first turn. So if you went first, you just drop them 9" from the biggest threat on the table, oath them with your Lone Spear use a Trap Well Laid, then use it again with your free strat and you're putting 63 attacks with Lethal Hits and full re-rolls to hit at AP-2 Ignores Cover into whatever you want. Then, if by some miracle it wasn't dead, you charge it (guaranteed because you deployed 9" away and moved 7" toward it) and still have Lethals against it, and now +1 to wound from your detachment rule. If it was dead you could charge nearby infantry and clean then up, or tie down vehicles in close combat. If you didn't go first, you just re-deployed them back to safety and you lost nothing.

This did eventually get nerfed, redeployment had to happen before first turn was decided and you couldn't double up on strats by using the free one anymore. The turn one kills could still happen with them, but it was more of a high risk / high reward gamble because you would be caught in a rough spot if you didn't get first turn. After this nerf, we felt pretty balanced, it was still strong, but the games evened out a lot.

Then we got a bunch of points cuts, and the biggest obstacle in most of our matchups, the Armour of Contempt Strat, got nerfed. Now Kroot Hunting Pack is crushing it again. 7" scout + 7" move on the whole army is just so fast and with actual teeth to fight now, it's able to kill and/or lock down a lot of threats very early.

Going from barely scraping by in 8th and 9th to winning, and in a lot of cases, dominating a lot of matches in 10th, with Death Guard being the only matchup that feels like it really counters Kroot reasonably well. While the are not the strongest army to ever exist in 40k by a wide margin, I'd say that they have been the biggest buff I've ever seen in 40k from where they were at before to where they are at now.

Addendum: As a note for balance in general, GW gets a lot of flak for it, but I think they (more-less) do a damn fine job of it, especially in recent years. Chess, a game with 2 identical sides, has a 52.5% win rate as white vs 47.5% as Black strictly based on first turn advantage. The fact that they can keep 23 separate armies with multiple sub-factions within them all within around a 40%-60% range is remarkable to me. The fact that they aim for 45%-55% is hugely idealistic, but they do sometimes even manage to meet that mark. Balancing a game this large is no easy feat at while slip ups are inevitable, they do a good job with it overall.

The absolute worst was 6th edition Necrons. In 6th edition you could only hit flyers on a 6, unless you had some AA rule which was rare. Most armies flyers were limited stuck in fast attack, so it wasn't super possible to spam them. But Nercons had a flier transport, so not only was the 3 on top of the 3 in heavy support (which was there the doom scyth resided) but as transport you could bring up to 6, so 9 total aircraft. Oh and their "transport" aircraft had one of the better guns in the game, and due to a rule that the planes actually teleport, not carry their cargo, even if you shot them down, the necron player did not lose any of their very efficient infantry squads. And of course the points were a joke, so they were super under-costed. I played this several times and it did not suck just because it was hard to beat, but it was soooooooooooooo boring to play against as melee troops basically did nothing (could not charge aircraft) and most of your shooting was just praying for 6's, and since objectives were only scored at the end, the necron player would just be cagey and wait until closer to the end to drop the infantry to take the objectives. Prior to that codex I believe they were stuck with their 4th edition one almost all of 5th so sucked and I believe this came out at the end and was not so great due to the aircraft rule not yet existing, so this glow up was outrageous.

Runner up, the Flamers of Tzeentch got a glow up in a white dwarf which (to put in today's prospective) gave their flame weapons mortal wounds on a 4+, and their flame temples could cover a lot. It was insanity, I saw a unit of Flamers of Tzeentch destroy a land raider, 5 terminators and a few other models that got caught in the crossfire in one attack. Anything they shot was dead. And I believe they could overwatch as well if you tried to charge them. Oh an they had a 4++ save, and could be taken as allies in almost any army (I played a guy who took them in his Dark Eldar army, it was gross). They were probably the most broken unit to ever exist, or at least in the top 5. Did not get fixed until the next daemon codex nerfed the crap out of them.

 xeen wrote:
Prior to that codex I believe they were stuck with their 4th edition one almost all of 5th so sucked and I believe this came out at the end and was not so great due to the aircraft rule not yet existing, so this glow up was outrageous.

Crons were an end of 5e book. They were top tier in 5th but had a bunch of abilities that didn't make a whole lot of sense... and then 6th came out and they shot up another tier, though not to 6e taudar level.

I remember playing a casual-ish 6e doubles tournament about half way into the edition and the cron player had been using some kind of flyer based wombo-combo to win all of his games. Never found out what it was as I was playing a Red Scorpions siege list with a squadron of intercepting Hunters (aka the 'I don't want to play against flyers' list).
Flyer enters the board, flyer gets blow out of the sky, Necron player quits on the spot.


In terms of buffs though the old 3e Necrons were pretty much down to one or two limited lists trying to grind out wins by late 5e. When the new codex came out the above player switch to them and was all but pushing wraiths up the board with a croupier stick against some of the older books. I played a game with it to help out some friends prep, didn't know what I was doing so netlisted it and pretty much just shot whatever was dead ahead and won, quickly. It was books like crons and GK that Matt Ward is always associated with the insane power creep of 5th even next to stuff like leafblower(cruddace) and the space wolves freebie-dex.