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Doohicky wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Four new battle forces announced.

Guard, Necrons, Chaos and Nids.

Wonder if these might be a hint at early codexes for 11th Ed?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/n5pspedx/new-warhammer-40000-battleforces-revealed/

From what I read the roadmap is:

marines, orks, tyranids, death guard, votann. No order given (presumably marines/orks as #1 and #2)

Chaos Battleforce is basically the same as the other one but they replaced the Rhino with 10 cultists. They must really want to get rid of the excess Obliterator/Venomcrawler/Lord Disco stock.

Where did you read that as the first released codices?
Seems very strange as Death Guard and Votann were some of the last released in 10th, so would be strange them getting of the first this edition. DG in particular are only a year old

I dont know where it came from, was talking to a friend. Take with salt as usual. I also thought it sounded very weird.

They are saying Balance updates every month for the first 3 months of 11th edition. I recommend anyone passionate about "balance" uses this 3 month period to spam them with messages for every little niggle regrding game balance, as chances are highest for your feedback getting tracktion within this timeframe.

 LunarSol wrote:
Points really don't work as an absolute value. They're more like an economy, with relative value shifting constantly depending on the state of the meta. Point adjustments tend to be more about adjusting the shape of the meta than providing true parity and this system is really just a means to tap down some things that are out of hand without pushing the unit out entirely. Getting the points "right" is less important than having a way to punish specific builds without too much collateral damage.

I'm not sure about this. It *should* happen - and 40k should have a much more dramatic meta built around rock/paper/scissors. But the evidence for it is very thin. People tend to just push the undercosted stuff and often various (most?) factions have no clear answer to it.
You'd think we'd see builds developing that were especially designed to counter triple defiler - and there are some that will do better than others. But its much easier to just join them.
The problem perhaps is how tournaments work. Even if defilers are dominant, they aren't universal. So if you built your dedicated anti-large army... you could just draw against something else and lose all your opening matches so you never get to the finals anyway. A dominant list has to stomp on all the gatekeepers along the way.

Which is why I don't think it is purely relative. If something is more efficient than the rest of the game, its usually obvious and very quickly abused to the point of being nerfed. Even in the era when GW didn't patch the game for half a decade, we didn't really see this kind of evolving meta develop. The OP stuff remained OP until it was replaced by some new OP.

I agree that what matters is how the army is formed. If 3 Defilers go from 750 points to 780 points then you are potentially just juggling some enhancements and the impact on how the army would be played is very modest.
You need to hit it harder than that such that a "3 defiler list" is having leave a unit (or three) at home. Or having to completely re-write the non-defiler part of the list. That will impact its performance across the game and get its win rate down.
While the relative value of things can change with a meta, you can still have rather obvious errors - which is where the defiler is.

Ignoring wider rules/points changes, if they made a Defiler 250/350/450 then you'd have hard nerfed the 3 defiler lists. But I wouldn't consider it great that just about every chaos army (+/- world eaters) should include one at 250 points because its still the biggest bang for your 250 points.

Arguments about skew would make sense if the Defiler was somewhat unique. But I'm not sure that's true. I.E. Yes I could run 3 Defilers. But I could also run 1 Defiler and 3 Forgefiends for about the same points. Or 1 Defiler, One Land Raider and 2 Predators. My whole army could be 3 Land Raiders, 6 Predators and 3 Forgefiends (+/- anyway). This would be a skew - arguably more skewed than your traditional 3 defiler list right now - but it would also be considerably worse. There are many lists which can overwhelm a modest amount of dedicated anti-large.
They aren't posting 65-70% win rates.

 Ashiraya wrote:

This is also what wargear points help with, by the way. People will always identify the best loadout and run that. Always have, always will. But points adjustments allow you to throw a bone to the off-meta choices, so your Shredder Scourges feel like just an odd pick instead of blatantly trolling the opponent.

It's not that I don't understand the purpose of points; its just that I don't think they actually create the kind of choices they promise. It's just another way to get to a point where one choice is better than the other but tends to result in the stronger choice being worse while being dramatically more finnicky to adapt to. They're far from useless but 40k has traditionally crutched way too hard on points to create diverse options instead of making options that serve diverse roles. There's absolutely wargear that fundamentally changes a unit into something else like Las Fusils on Eliminators where points make a lot of sense but for the vast majority of them, I've just found that points remove any interesting advantages they might provide because its a lot more punishing to pay extra for something than to get less for what you had to pay for.

 LunarSol wrote:
its a lot more punishing to pay extra for something than to get less for what you had to pay for.

Aren't these just two different ways of writing that something is overcosted?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
its a lot more punishing to pay extra for something than to get less for what you had to pay for.

Aren't these just two different ways of writing that something is overcosted?

Kind of, but not exactly. Actually really enjoyed some of the recent debates because they've helped me wrap my head around the difference.

So, to use an example of what I'm talking about, Intercessors have a non-choice option in the Grenade Launcher. There's literally no reason not to take it and it just adds to the unit. I however, don't actually have an intercessor modeled with a grenade launcher and have pretty regularly taken the unit in 10th without it because the bulk of their value is a sticky objective and 10 OC plus some anti horde firepower. I gain nothing from not taking it, but the punishment has little real impact on my games though I'm sure the extra shot would be beneficial.

In the scenario where I have to pay for the grenade launcher, its actually generally punishing to do so because those points could be spent elsewhere. No matter what cost is assigned to it, its generally probably optimal not to take it but in this case the wrong choice has a more detrimental effect on my list. This gets particularly true at the macro scale where all these costs add up to something substantial. I could in theory, suffer a similar fate by leaving off too much optimal gear, but in the grand scheme of things so many bits of wargear matter so little, there's really only a few things so impactful they alter a unit rather than define it.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Doohicky wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Four new battle forces announced.

Guard, Necrons, Chaos and Nids.

Wonder if these might be a hint at early codexes for 11th Ed?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/n5pspedx/new-warhammer-40000-battleforces-revealed/

From what I read the roadmap is:

marines, orks, tyranids, death guard, votann. No order given (presumably marines/orks as #1 and #2)

Chaos Battleforce is basically the same as the other one but they replaced the Rhino with 10 cultists. They must really want to get rid of the excess Obliterator/Venomcrawler/Lord Disco stock.

Where did you read that as the first released codices?
Seems very strange as Death Guard and Votann were some of the last released in 10th, so would be strange them getting of the first this edition. DG in particular are only a year old

Well, 2 of them are a given.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
its a lot more punishing to pay extra for something than to get less for what you had to pay for.

Aren't these just two different ways of writing that something is overcosted?

Kind of, but not exactly. Actually really enjoyed some of the recent debates because they've helped me wrap my head around the difference.

So, to use an example of what I'm talking about, Intercessors have a non-choice option in the Grenade Launcher. There's literally no reason not to take it and it just adds to the unit. I however, don't actually have an intercessor modeled with a grenade launcher and have pretty regularly taken the unit in 10th without it because the bulk of their value is a sticky objective and 10 OC plus some anti horde firepower. I gain nothing from not taking it, but the punishment has little real impact on my games though I'm sure the extra shot would be beneficial.

In the scenario where I have to pay for the grenade launcher, its actually generally punishing to do so because those points could be spent elsewhere. No matter what cost is assigned to it, its generally probably optimal not to take it but in this case the wrong choice has a more detrimental effect on my list. This gets particularly true at the macro scale where all these costs add up to something substantial. I could in theory, suffer a similar fate by leaving off too much optimal gear, but in the grand scheme of things so many bits of wargear matter so little, there's really only a few things so impactful they alter a unit rather than define it.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Sounds like a case where an upgrade should be very, very cheap, but not entirely free.

The adding up is essentially the point. A single upgrade is very rarely going to be a big deal. But all the weapons upgrades across an army are a big deal, present a very measurable increase in performance, and therefore genuinely are a worthy tradeoff for, say, an extra unit.

The costs don't have to be perfect, nothing is. But a somewhat sensible cost opens up more options.

This is not helped by the presence of the chess clock. I know that Guard players often don't bother to roll their Guardsmen's shots because it takes more time off their chess clock budget than it's worth. Of course, on such a unit you'd never pay for upgrades, but it's not as if such units care if they have said upgrades either, free or not.

But I believe it's meaningful. Would you take another guardsman squad or two, or would you rather add lascannon sponsons to all your Leman Russ tanks? This is a genuine choice. That many lascannons are going to hurt something real, but equally those guardsmen can score all manner of objectives, move block and other things, even if given no upgrades. This is a good tradeoff.

The list of changes in the Warhammer Community article is interesting. They called out fourteen ways that point values are changing for units and why.

And, considering how much everyone is talking about triple Defilers, GW even calls them out specifically:

Some units now cost more when included in your army more than once. These tend to be very powerful units with the potential to dominate in competitive games when used in multiples (we’re looking at you, Defilers). This change helps limit their impact when taken en masse, but doesn’t overly punish players who want to bring a balanced list or just include one of all the coolest models in their army. (And in fairness, Defilers are really cool.)

I mean... It's not going to be perfect but at least they've recognized the problem and are taking a swing at it.

Secondly, some weapon upgrades now cost points if they are significantly more powerful or effective than the other available options. For example, the macro plasma incinerator on a Redemptor Dreadnought now costs 10 points to equip (though the basic cost of the Dreadnought drops by 10, so it nets out the same – or 10 points less if you choose the heavy onslaught gatling cannon).

And I want to see how this shakes out. List-building and agonizing about how to equip my guys is surprisingly engrossing, but I tend to default to "equip them with everything because it's cool."

I guess you can say "its moving in the right direction" - but the example used of the Redemptor dreadnought seems one where points isn't really the issue.

Arguably neither gun is that great by the standards of late 10th and you might hope for a re-write in the 11th codex. But the Macro Plasma is at least okay into just about anything (and could out-perform versus 3 wound models). While the gatling cannon is very slightly better into light units the trade off is being hopeless against MEQ and up. Do you really care if you are odds on to kill 5 guardsmen rather than 3 or 4? Its therefore only "interesting" if you were very specifically list tailoring against your friend knowing he's running pure horde infantry.

Tyel wrote:
I guess you can say "its moving in the right direction" - but the example used of the Redemptor dreadnought seems one where points isn't really the issue.

Arguably neither gun is that great by the standards of late 10th and you might hope for a re-write in the 11th codex. But the Macro Plasma is at least okay into just about anything (and could out-perform versus 3 wound models). While the gatling cannon is very slightly better into light units the trade off is being hopeless against MEQ and up. Do you really care if you are odds on to kill 5 guardsmen rather than 3 or 4? Its therefore only "interesting" if you were very specifically list tailoring against your friend knowing he's running pure horde infantry.

I agree. The problem here isn't really the difference in quality between the plasma and gatling cannon. The problem is the gatling cannon is fundamentally useless. There are still too many options like this in the game and it's especially obvious when it comes to anti-infantry weapons. The problem is, all troops have anti-infantry weapons of some kind and it's not usually something an army needs lots of help with. If my SM want to kill guardsmen I've got Intercessors with a million shots, heavy stubbers everywhere and a smattering of random weapons across multiple vehicles that all do that job without having to make it the main gun on a 200-point model.

Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

Not like people before didn't write the list at all until they knew which army they were facing

switching weapons and models around was pretty common in pick-up games already before the "no points upgrades"

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

I believe this didn't happen in 10e, because weapons across the board aren't generally balanced enough that you'd ever want to swap.

There are a rare handful of units that could (Scourges could swap out their usual Dark Lances for haywires if they're facing vehicle spam, for example). But otherwise units tend to have one obviously best weapon that previously was an expensive upgrade and now is free, which is therefore always taken.

As has already been said for the Redemptor, the gatling cannon isn't good enough to be worth considering pretty much ever. The Riptide is in a similar boat.

 kodos wrote:
Not like people before didn't write the list at all until they knew which army they were facing

switching weapons and models around was pretty common in pick-up games already before the "no points upgrades"

As someone who plays almost exclusively pick up games, this has not been my experience. People write their list, pack it to the FLGS, and play as written.

Swapping once you know your opponent is generally frowned upon as list tailoring. Unless you look across the table and the matchup look to be so bad that it’s going to be no fun for anyone.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

Generally, no. Most of the time it's because there was an obvious best choice. GW absolutely suck at understanding which stats are actually useful and meaningful on weapons and models.

Gatling weapons in general are a casualty of 10th's rough launch. They're entirely designed around Devastating Wounds and specifically fishing for crits via the original form of Oath of Moment. They were initially VERY powerful but when they cut that part out of Oath the whole design was just left non-functional.

 LunarSol wrote:
Gatling weapons in general are a casualty of 10th's rough launch. They're entirely designed around Devastating Wounds and specifically fishing for crits via the original form of Oath of Moment. They were initially VERY powerful but when they cut that part out of Oath the whole design was just left non-functional.

They are also good at clearing chaff infantry units, which most marine lists don’t have an issue with, even if you happen to see one across the table.

It will be interesting to see if orks get a boon with the new edition and we see more green tide normalized. If hordes make a strong showing, it might be worth packing the guns designed to kill them.

But the practical issues with horde armies still remain outside the rules. The time/money to build and collect them, plus the issue with game length and just pushing that many models around and rolling their dice.

 Nevelon wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Gatling weapons in general are a casualty of 10th's rough launch. They're entirely designed around Devastating Wounds and specifically fishing for crits via the original form of Oath of Moment. They were initially VERY powerful but when they cut that part out of Oath the whole design was just left non-functional.

They are also good at clearing chaff infantry units, which most marine lists don’t have an issue with, even if you happen to see one across the table.

It will be interesting to see if orks get a boon with the new edition and we see more green tide normalized. If hordes make a strong showing, it might be worth packing the guns designed to kill them.

But the practical issues with horde armies still remain outside the rules. The time/money to build and collect them, plus the issue with game length and just pushing that many models around and rolling their dice.

The 9th total unit coherency greatly limits the utility of hordes. I'd be surprised to see them as a big thing in 11th unless they get a heavy discount.

One problem the game has is honestly that "unit archetypes" is basically a faction characteristic.
There's limited use in anti-horde weapons because 75% of armies contain zero horde units.
So you see people massively skewing towards anti-MEQ - because MEQ is the most common anyway and being the middle option it flexes up/down the archetypes best. And you see people into anti-vehicle/monster because everyone has those.
Niche weapons only really get a look in if they're *really* good at that niche (and probably also not too bad outside that niche). But then that's hardly fair for the players of that weapon's niche because they find themselves against a hyper-efficient counter to themselves.

You could probably increase the diversity of options taken if you enabled players to select their wargear after seeing their opponent's faction, Killteam does this.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Gatling weapons in general are a casualty of 10th's rough launch. They're entirely designed around Devastating Wounds and specifically fishing for crits via the original form of Oath of Moment. They were initially VERY powerful but when they cut that part out of Oath the whole design was just left non-functional.

They are also good at clearing chaff infantry units, which most marine lists don’t have an issue with, even if you happen to see one across the table.

It will be interesting to see if orks get a boon with the new edition and we see more green tide normalized. If hordes make a strong showing, it might be worth packing the guns designed to kill them.

But the practical issues with horde armies still remain outside the rules. The time/money to build and collect them, plus the issue with game length and just pushing that many models around and rolling their dice.

The 9th total unit coherency greatly limits the utility of hordes. I'd be surprised to see them as a big thing in 11th unless they get a heavy discount.

From WarCom:
Large units of 20 or more models, which were previously used to fill up large parts of the battlefield, can no longer spread out as much, due to the 9” coherency rule. Many of their points go down.

Enough to overcome all the issues and make chaff hordes viable? I’d guess not. But it’s something they acknowledge.

As it is now, things like gatlings and flamers are the right tool to solve a problem that’s not actually an issue that needs to be delt with.

Always a challenge between "making something a problem in need of an answer" and "turning games into gear checks."

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

List tailoring by definition, and therefore frowned upon.

In the past I've argued that GW could curb some of the issues with skew and balancing wargear by embracing some form of sideboard mechanic, which could include picking your wargear options at deployment rather than during listbuilding. Underpowered or more specialized options like the gatling cannon might see more play if they could be chosen after seeing the opponent and judging whether they'll be situationally useful, rather than having to compete against better options in a vacuum.

But that has to be a by-design part of the game. And WYSIWYG goes out the window, of course.

 catbarf wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

List tailoring by definition, and therefore frowned upon.

In the past I've argued that GW could curb some of the issues with skew and balancing wargear by embracing some form of sideboard mechanic, which could include picking your wargear options at deployment rather than during listbuilding. Underpowered or more specialized options like the gatling cannon might see more play if they could be chosen after seeing the opponent and judging whether they'll be situationally useful, rather than having to compete against better options in a vacuum.

But that has to be a by-design part of the game. And WYSIWYG goes out the window, of course.

They'd also have to understand their own game properly. At the moment, the plasma weapon on the Redemptor is arguably better into hordes than the gatling because of blast and superior AP so it's not even a choice about horde vs heavy infantry. n other games suppression mechanics usually help with this kind of thing, or some sort of restraint in terms of stats on the plasma weapon, but GW just keep making the numbers bigger and bigger.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't want the game to be 0-1.
I hate the 'highlander' system, it just makes every army a jumbled mess of random units devoid of all theme or cohesiveness.

I don't like everyone spamming the single best unit to the maximum either.

So a system that allows multiples whilst discouraging spam is the optimum sort of system, imo.
I'd also be pretty confident that this is far from a niche opinion.

I'm with you on this. If you really want to run that themed list, great! But you're paying for it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

At tournaments, no. Your list is fixed and posted if you use BCP or some other list submission system.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question re no points upgrades.

Did people find opponents only adding say, “Redemptor Dreadnoughts”, to carry the above theme to their written list, then deciding which gun it had once they knew which army they were taking on?

I've seen that happen.
And I've had a few people try it against me.

My solution to this crap is simple.
Games I'm in?
Lists are written & set BEFORE the minis come out of the cases.
You might know the overall faction I'm playing, SM/Admech/Drukhari/etc, but the actual mix....

I don't think I've ever had a game where my opponent hasn't had their full wargear picked out ahead of time.

 Nevelon wrote:
It will be interesting to see if orks get a boon with the new edition and we see more green tide normalized. If hordes make a strong showing, it might be worth packing the guns designed to kill them.

Don't bet on it. Every time a horde build has gotten good in 10e (not oppressive, merely good) the balance team has gotten out of the couch immediately and hammered it down without a moment's hesitation. The only survivor is recon horde Guard, and only because practically no one can or wants to play recon horde Guard (it sucks to build, sucks to paint, and sucks to play).

Contrast with, say, C'tan, who are allowed to run roughshod over the meta, getting only light tap nerfs each time to slowly taper them back down. Hordes get destroyed if they dare to be good. GW just doesn't want that to happen for whatever reason.

So, that's another reason why anti-horde guns aren't relevant.

 Nevelon wrote:

 kodos wrote:
Not like people before didn't write the list at all until they knew which army they were facing

switching weapons and models around was pretty common in pick-up games already before the "no points upgrades"

As someone who plays almost exclusively pick up games, this has not been my experience. People write their list, pack it to the FLGS, and play as written.

Swapping once you know your opponent is generally frowned upon as list tailoring. Unless you look across the table and the matchup look to be so bad that it’s going to be no fun for anyone.

I once got accused to list tailoring my FLGS (and to be honest it was an uphill match for him). I then pointed out I'd been using almost the exact same Necron list from 2001 (when they only had the White Dwarf list) all the way through 4th edition, with the only changes being that Scarabs changed to swarms.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Don't bet on it. Every time a horde build has gotten good in 10e (not oppressive, merely good) the balance team has gotten out of the couch immediately and hammered it down without a moment's hesitation. The only survivor is recon horde Guard, and only because practically no one can or wants to play recon horde Guard (it sucks to build, sucks to paint, and sucks to play).

Contrast with, say, C'tan, who are allowed to run roughshod over the meta, getting only light tap nerfs each time to slowly taper them back down. Hordes get destroyed if they dare to be good. GW just doesn't want that to happen for whatever reason.

So, that's another reason why anti-horde guns aren't relevant.

This is 100% true. The pros, who make up the most vocal sector in terms of GW balancing, explicitly hate horde lists working. They are sometimes pretty open about it.
Ork players can perhaps put the boot in better, but it was comical how the 8th edition Ork codex had to be delayed because it was going to be "too good", the whole pro scene was convinced it was going to completely break the edition and then... it was okay? Because you can't play it like SM or Eldar.
But subsequent SM dominance for about 20~ months was just fine, normal. Just go play Space Marines lol.

I think there is an issue of jail lists, or just moving 40-60 OC onto objectives that you can't kill fast enough so they just win by default.
But its amazing how if this ever starts working its prompts incredible quick responses from GW. Whereas an "elite list" dominating the meta tends to prompts a shrug and "well, something has to be best? We'll get to it in about 3-6 months." (Index Eldar waves as another example.)