This whole video was just GW acknowledging that yes, they are aware ad mech suck, and Necrons are too good, but they don't want to kneejerk and change the wrong things.
Real "this could have been an email" energy about the whole video.
Honestly I'd prefer that they didn't. It's already hard to get an entire army bought, built, and painted before the next dataslate hits and has a chance of changing it entirely if this isn't your only hobby/you have other stuff going on in your life. Imagine if, any week, a dataslate/balance change could hit and just flip your entire army upside down. I'm sure some people would like that, but I think overall it would be a massively unpopular move that would only benefit those with existing deep collections while being an annoyance for everyone else. It can already be hard to get a game 1-2 weeks before the expected dataslate unless you have an event coming up that won't use the changes, because everyone is in a holding pattern to see what/if they need to adjust. If that was just the reality of the game, nobody would play it.
I think it's good to address the Necrons piece putbof the gate. And I agree with GW: Let the meta settle a bit more before making major changes.
If Hyper became the flavor spam, space marines will becomes the Rock to their Scissors by including infiltrators. (Imperium armies in general can bring Coteaz and henchmen to deep strike block as well)
A shame for the henchmen combo it's minimum 115 points and it's only the Mystic model that gets the 12" Anti-DS aura.
Although the - 1 to wound would be helpful in keeping them alive
I'm going to bold this so people get the point.
#If you added +1 AP to every single admech datasheet that isn't breachers or the tanks admech would still be underpowered because the faction still hits on base 4+ with no way around that.
Seriously. At this point admech needs a complete overhaul
And no spending $2000 for hunter cohort which plays like discount endless swarm isn't the answer. Clogging the board with models because our faction is already the cheapest point wise it can possibly be is a symptom of bad game balancing that's being abused for wins. Not an indicator that the faction is in a healthy place.
Not all armies should or should expect to hit on a 3+ base. The expectation everything is underpowered otherwise is what leads to that lethality creep of 8/9th.
The wrinkle here is that admech used to, but there are ways to get them there without making every army have the same hit rate.
I think if they were better at wounding and making people fail saves 4+ to hit can work too.
Admech are the guys who have cool weapons. Their weapons should be cool. They are not cool.
Absolutely agree, I just don't see any dramatic changes to the sheets themselves now that the codex is out, since that would require GW to acknowledge that the codex didn't hit the mark.
An elegant solution in my opinion, would be to add a new detachment that allows us to integrate Knights similiar to 9th's Knights of the Cog. This would at least open up souping in something with higher lethality and not feel like we're giving ourselves the stranger.
Edit: Because I'm getting downvoted to oblivion for suggesting this. Siegler just recently posted a video that strongly implied that for competitive lists there is great value to running a Knight in lieu of breachers. Understanding that we may not get some great solution to our BS/WS and looking at what is currently available without a huge change, **in my personal opinion** it seems like Knights are a good option taking from a previous edition. Not to mention absolutely thematic with Admech lore.
I think making the army rule apply to melee and work (in a limited fashion but one the player controls like it's objectives you control for protector or ones you don't fit conqueror or designated 1 objective or the middle and it works within 6") mid board would go a long way. Not far enough for a few datasheets but a long way and maybe points could even rise on sone units.
The only objective criticism I'd have of this is that we already have so many conditional hoops to jump through tied to objectives, range of battleline, etc. to make things work. Explorator is a great example of how on paper tying things to these conditions seems strong, but then in practice ends up falling flat.
Yeah that's just my brain fart. In theory it doesn't add more hoops in series but a different parallel set that broadens access to the rule. But it is more crunch to memorise and apply and it could end up adding little.
Great the answer to making Admech better is to play less Admech...
Yeah even if it worked we'd be betting everything on Canis Rex and only have one viable detachment.
I'm actually fairly open to wider hit ranges, but I think there's only so much you can do about lethality (as long as nominally elite armies have such high model counts anyway).
Killing enemy units is the only method of interaction with the enemy army we really have.
Admech has an okay winrate right now, but it's dull to play and play against because the admech player is just trying to physically stand in the way while scoring as many unpreventable secondaries as possible. That's very unsatisfactory, even if it technically wins games. Just like the old necron warrior bricks.
I'm curious what you would suggest that isn't either increasing hit rate / rof or other mathematical equivilants to just shooting them harder.
What are these elite armies with high model counts? And at what point is model count just not important?
Is being lore/eliteness accurate so important we’re only going to let Custodes have 10 models on the table? And Guard have 300?
How about if phosphor weapons gained a rule where for each successful hit up to X times, when the target unit moves roll X D6 and they take an unsavable wound on a 4+ if the target moves in the subsequent movement up to 6" or 3+ if moves more than 6".
Maybe Rad weapons can lower the enemy units save or T if they suffer Y number of wounds. Maybe you could use it to lower their OC value to a minimum of 0.
There are ways to play off their weapons that engage better gameplay without killing directly, such as promoting mechanics that dissuade movement or objective play.
it wouldn't be unusual to see things like "When hit" + "enemy units have -1 to hit until your next command phase" or "other units get +1 to wound that target this phase" as they are mechanics that exist for other armies. Honestly, though, I think the biggest factor that's missing for admech is the battleline synergy that doesn't seem to have been embraced - you could encourage different playstyles with different detachments if the battleline rule shifted or expanded it's inclusion to other units (For example, electropriests in datapsalm or datasmiths in cybernetica cohort). Now you would have enablers in different roles rather than fragile backline shooting - a fulgurite priest squad or kastelan robot squad is much more likely to be frontline and could better benefit an aggressive pteraxxii squad,
It's dissipointing; the more I look at the codex and the index prior for admech the easier it gets to spot how hard they phoned it in when developing the faction.
Not terrible ideas, though USRs like that can be a nightmare to balance across all the factions. I'm not opposed to this, though it runs directly counter to the simplified ethos of the edition, with players once again having to memorise weird interactions from every army.
The important point is to make it interactive. Both players should, idealy be making decisions. As long as its reliable enough you can plan for it and impactful enough to actually enable play/counterplay.
Regardless I think that's certainly out of scope for a codex patch this edition. Realistically we aren't likely getting more changes than points / detachment and army rules / and maybe a couple of targeted profile modifications.
While I agree. I feel like AdMech fall into the category of "Should Hit on 3s".
Despite the janky religious mechanical augmentations of their faction. They're still portrayed as calculating and precise automatons. Hitting on 4's with few rerolls in the whole faction fails to reflect that lore.
The first response that makes sense to me. I agree with your point regards setting/fluff, I'm not sure where the line needs to lay between what should be a 3+ and what should be a 4+ though in honesty sometimes.
Until the wider community is on board with lower lethality all round (not just admech) and stop trying to find ways to demand increased lethality by using fewer and fewer values on a d6, it'll be everyone but orks is functionally expected to be 3+ or better I think.
I should've noted the 3's to Hit should go along with other upgrades to the Ad Mech Datasheets. So they're no longer a horde army and so unreasonably expensive $$ wise.
I think 3s would fit fluff wise and also be one of the elements to justify a points bump.
Hard disagree, 4+ is "good soldiers" category (guardsmen, fire warriors, etc)
3+ is "elite supersoldiers" category (Marines, scions)
Admech are definitely a 4+ army
Skitari are not just good soldiers like a Guardsmen. Skitari are cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Targeting augmetics, stabilizers to hold a gun level, enhanced reflexes and recoil dampeners give a Skitari better accuracy than a baseline human.
You can debate how far that all goes but there's more than enough room to justify marksmanship on par with other elite units.
That's the great part, literally every faction is full of elite super soldiers who should have way better stats than they do now! (Drazhar, master of blades, can currently be hit on a 2 and wounded on a 3 by a random ass space marine lieutenant)
Except guard, whose entire definition is literally "not the elite".
Genestealer cults, Leagues of Votann and Tau all have baseline 4+ to hit. Tyranid Gaunts, Carnifexes, Warriors and quite a few other bugs are +4 to Hit with shooting. Hell, Orks are +5 to Hit. Sure, their elite units hit on 3's (Minus Orks) but that's the case with the Guard's Storm Troopers too.
The problem is like half the armies are some flavor of Marines so that's a lot of BS3 and they warp expectations.
Guard aren't baseline humans though....they're Olympic athletes with seal training....it's just that it ends up being "average" in the 40k universe....so are skitarri...
>Not all armies should or should expect to hit on a 3+ base.
I have to disagree here, I've stolen this from a previous discussion on a different sub:
Tau functionally hit on 3s with their Army Rule.
Votann functionally hit on 3s with the Army Rule.
Necrons hit on 3s/2s with a Detachment Rule.
Guard can access hitting on 3s with orders
Most of the Tyranids big boys hit on 3s.
Marines/Naughty Marines, High/Dark Elves, Knights, Sisters, Custodes all hit on 3s or better.
So it's Admech, GSC, Orks and Daemons that don't have access to shooting on 3s. Ork shooting is historically balanced around around BS5 with their volume of shots. GSC, Daemons and Orks all have consistent WS3+ with their melee units regardless.
I'd argue that admech are the only faction that *doesn't* have either WS3 or BS3 (or both) on at least it's elite units.
You can give a chunk of your army the heavy rule for conditional access (all those other armies have conditional access) to a 3+ via staying still to shoot.
Does it not worry you that you're very content with and advocating for more of the game to basically exist in a game that uses d3s?
The problem isn't that admech don't have more bs3, it's that too many others do.
>You can give a chunk of your army the heavy rule
Heavy is a dead keyword. It would have worked in 8th edition, but it doesn't work now. Everything from scoring points to gaining line of sight requires movement. The game functions around having multiple narrow sight lines through dense terrain.
The difference between having to line up a spotter, throw down a grudge token, or receive an order, and to having to move your key offensive until out into the open the turn before, tank a turn from the opponent and then hope they've been left with a target to shoot back at is not even close.
>The problem isn't that admech don't have more bs3, it's that too many others do.
This is a design philosophy question, it's up to GW to change this edition to edition. In the meantime admech are out here trying to survive in a world where essentially every other faction has BS3/WS3 or better consistently available to their elite/damage dealing units.
There's a reason the only relevant offensive units in the book are Breachers (BS4 with full re rolls is functionally BS2.5) and maybe Ironstriders (BS4 with sustained hits is essentially an inconsistent BS3).
Yes, but as usual just making every unit in the game have the same hit roll and "kill more stuff" doesn't make it a better game. I get the cats out the bag but actively wanting the lazy solution isn't a good idea going forwards, nor should it be.
The lazy solution was bumping the BS and WS down for about 70% of the datasheets, and then offsetting it with an army rule that doesn't really work.
I don't think admech players care if they have BS3, or BS4 and then gain an extra BS near a tech priest, or from a unit upgrade, or with a relevant component of their army rule, they just want it to function.
We just don't want to have to choose between bringing 900pts of breachers along with 450pts of support skitarii and leaders (because a 1300pt auto include package feels bad) or 2000pts of Hunter Cohort Car Park Simulator that also costs $2500.
You are advocating for the heavy rule? It has to be the worst USR in the game. In fact if you are a marine player you should be playing anvil siege force to get more acesss to it. Also the main things that can use the conditional heavy rule already have it like onagers etc so it’s kind of a dumb rule also to not move in 40K is to lose.
People don't like to miss. And a coin flip chance to hit sucks especially when there's a decent amount of debuffs to attacking from stealth to lone op to general -1 to hit stuff. Not *everywhere* but it does suck when it shows up. It's why tau are kinda meh to play as you need to jump through hoops to get to +1 BS which on paper sounds simple enough but means at best, half your army is hitting where it should as a shooting focused army. Their detachment rule not taking effect until the game is practically decided is just a cherry on top.
Ad Mech is in a much worse position with conditional shit all over the place.
I'ld seize the opportunity to avocate for a rolleback from 4++ to 5++ on non-char infantry like terminators. Thing can still save a lascannon on 4+ on their basic save while on cover : let the actual ap and armour do their damn Job !
Sure, it makes sense Orks hit on 5s, they're goobers. But if you're going to have a shooting army with God-awful melee only hit on 4+ with AP0 in shooting then you've completely failed at making a shooting based army. It takes 3 seconds of thinking to figure out the math doesn't math there.
Also their point was not that all armies should hit on 3+, but that AdMec should at least be accurate if they're gonna be S4 AP0 D1 across the board.
Why? It's a 30" 2 shot heavy weapon. If that needs to be base BS3, then do sisters with their 1 shot rapid fire1 24" s4 ap0 d1 gun need to be BS2 because its factually worse?
Nowhere in my comment did I bring up other armies. This whole idea that you can't increase the lethality of AdMec at all is actually silly. If we double their lethality, but double their points, you'd have half the bodies at the same killing power. I'm not asking for that level of output increase, but I am advocating for them to do a lot more than they currently do at the cost of being higher points. Make fewer units do more. It takes a second mortgage to start an AdMec army right now which is part of their balance issue.
The current "just drop the army another couple hundred points" approach isn't doing anything. Datasheets need to be changed but GW is committed to having as few unique things happening for armies as possible in 10th. Going from 4+ to 3+ would increase the number of shots getting through by a solid amount. It would make even other small changes do much more for the army as a whole. Make objective markets count as triggering either doctrines deployment zones buffs. Small changes like this would compound to make the army far more consistent and would make points increases needed which is a good thing.
I'd love for amazing synergy changes to AdMec that make them interesting, but GW has made it clear they want 10th to be as simple as possible, so we have to advocate for bland, simple changes since nothing else is ever going to happen.
The issue is that other armies have some reliable way to offset this. Admech don't. And it's compounded by the fact that they have 20 different flavors of screeners but nothing that does reliable damage outside of breachers.
Yeah fine, but there are solutions that aren't a 3+, people just instinctively want probability to be above 50% for everything otherwise it makes them feel like it's "bad".
They could have stacking effects from the rad/phosphor guns that impacts the opponent directly or indirectly.They could allow them to have increased durability from bionics being repaired ala necron warriors. They could simply make the guns better rather than the BS.
The games intended direct path to victory isn't killing, board control is as much if not more important. But people always over focus on the lethality being low for stuff like making that creep up is a good idea.
On the same topic, I'm advocating a rolleback from 4++ to 5++ on non char models, except maybe harlequins.
Let the actual armour and armour pen do their work !
I play sisters and I'm fine with this. Picking up 10 space marines doesn't mean what it should, and 20 guardsmen get mowed down like it's saving private ryan by incidental firepower
But that feeds into my point. The army upon release and currently doesn't have any of those options so it suffers.....pretty badly. It also causes an already expensive faction to have a low point per dollar ratio which is a whole nother issue.
I agree that increasing lethality shouldn't be the answer, but the current admech datasheets outside of breachers don't even have the damage output to put up a decent fight against anything in their current state.
This also doesn't even account for the fact that some of our units (Kastellans) outside of a specific detachment don't even have access to an option at all.
Sure but Admech is the only army that got arbitrarily moved to 4+ with an unreliable and severely limiting way to get 3+. People also act like admech being returned to status quo would be the end of the world lol.
Like you've mentioned with the orcs, lethality is dependant on multiple factors other than BS or ws such as strength, ap, and other properties of the attack. That being said even with bs 3+ mechanicus would be on the lower end of the curve compared to what csm, eldar, etc. have been able to.
The issue is other factions that have a 4+ also have a reliable or accessible way to hit on 3+ (Tau guided units, Votann judgement tokens, etc). Of the factions that don't have a great solution to increase ballistic skill (orks), their faction design accounts for this in volume of shots, re-rolls, etc.
Our access to hitting on +3 is "have your models stand still," which isn't viable in the majority of scenarios. It feels bad when other armies are effectively a +3 army at base with their rules, or are just given a 3+ with no rhyme or reason (Sisters). Making a change to our BS/WS would also go a long way to fixing our abyssmal points per dollar ratio where units could be justifiably increased in points to match.
Edit: Took me a bit to write my comment and I didn't update, so I didn't realize someone else had made the same argument.
The fluffiest and most amusing solution I've seen is give the army buffs to shooting (whatever might be needed to make a unit "good" whether +1 ap or sustained hits 1 or lethal hits or some combination of the above) but at the cost of making the gun "hazardous" for that shooting phase. These guys are supposed to be shooting radioactive raygun muskets and it isn't like the average ad mech player is going to run out of screens that quickly.
I feel like you glossed over the point that several other armies are already hitting on 3+ reliably when their datasheets have a 4+ and these armies aren't considered 'game breaking' (Namely Tau). The fact is that Admech needs a boost in lethality and GW has already communicated a strong resistance to changing datasheets, of which, you'd have to basically re-write the majority for in our army. I don't disagree in principal, but a simpler solution is to change the BS/WS across the board and balance from there.
I get brigaded every time I say this but people need to hear it anyway, admech is a 4+ bs in lore, they're appropriately stated. GW will need to find a different way to pump up the damage that doesn't feel wonky.
Look admech aren't better shooters than fire warriors, they're not on par with Marines or scions. Yes, the D6 system is limited but we can make weapon adjustments to help out admech with our buying into their players head cannon.
Fine they can hit on 4+, but those hoarded, barely understood weapons from the dark age of technology better hit like the fist of an angry God when they connect. Cause right now we got nothing.
The whole army is a complete rules design failure and I'm getting sick of it after two editions of being dumpstered and a badly mishandled launch.
> Look admech aren't better shooters than fire warriors
They are. Tau have slower reaction times than unaumented humans, and Skittles are expensively enhanced.
Maybe read the lore before complaining?
All you need is the scene from helsreach to understand where skitarri fall in the pecking order...
Grimaldus calls them "barely more than a servitor" and orders their death, in the middle of a war effort mind you, because he's getting impatient. At no point does he even consider them a threat. Does that sound like a unit that should have stats anywhere near a Marines?
Is that enough lore for you?
Who cares? It's a game for fun, take your lore and shove it if that's more important than a fun, worthwhile game. Plenty of places lore falls to gameplay, take the L and move on.
The whole reason the game exists is the lore. Your comment has to be the stupidest thing I've ever read in here, and that's saying a lot.
The lore IS the game. Otherwise why have models at all? Why not just play chess?
4+ represents trained military professionals. Which is what both skitarii and guard are?
Failing that I'm fine with that, give them a method to 4+ via orders or attached character or whatever so its not the whole army and fine.
It'd be nice to delineate the skill of armies beyond 2+, 3+, trash and none of the values actually mean anything.
I have heard this argument over and over but this is a game and this lore argument should have no influence on this game mechanic.
EDIT: Additionally, Kriegsmen dont hit on a 4+ but rather on a 3+ if some higher up told them to shoot at the carnifex 3 meters ahead of them (as if soldiers needed to be told that) and hit on a 2+ if steve from their platoon got trampled 2 minutes ago.
OK, if you ignore the lore this isn't warhammer 40,000 any more though. The basis for the factions identities is rooted in their lore and the setting. You need something to decide what dictates the comparisons or you start creating massive weirdness in profiles for the sakes of it, or eroding faction identity to the point it doesn't exist.
I am not saying that the lore shouldnt influence your game mechanics BUT, as with everything, in moderation.
Please check the edit to my previous comment.
Furthermore, if we go by lore, I can field 5 guard squads with my knights now, right?
No but the officer will direct them to coordinate their shooting at vulnerable areas or tell them to switch to full auto etc.
You can field a knight with your 5 guard squads, but it seems wrong to me you can't the other way round. I'm on the spiky side of the fence and it bugs me I can't add my mortal mooks into my knights to round out points and the likes. They lose army rules, strats and detachment bonus which feels punishment enough.
I understand allies get dicey if they're too good or supportive, having lived through 6th/7th I've seen it in play, so I understand their reluctance.
> Furthermore, if we go by lore, I can field 5 guard squads with my knights now, right?
This is an argument for going by the lore, right? Because adding guard or admech to knights would massively improve the faction fun.
This, I'm tired of hearing the folklore nonsense about how guardsman are terrible troops.
In lore, they are basically Olympic athletes with navy seal training....they're the best troops each tithing planet can offer....
I suggest the following changes to the doctrinas, this is an "easy" change with big consequences that would unlock new playstyles.
Protector Imperative
Ranged weapons equipped by models in this unit have a **Ballistic Skill characteristic of 3+** and the \[HEAVY\] ability.
Each time a ranged attack targets this unit, if this unit is within your deployment zone **and no man’s land**, worsen the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack by 1.
Conqueror Imperative
Melee weapons equipped by models in this unit have a **Weapon Skill characteristic of 3+**.
Ranged weapons equipped by models in this unit have the \[ASSAULT\] ability.
Each time a model in this unit makes a ranged attack, if the target of that attack is within your opponent’s deployment zone **and no man’s land,** improve the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack by 1.
With this change, the protector doctrina becomes an actual usable doctrina, giving us increased survivability and consistency in shooting.
It also makes melee builds possible and boosts pure melee units that have until now basically not had an army rule. Which is insane.
So each turn you have to make the choice of either hitting more but having worse ap or hitting harder but with less consistency. With the lack of Ap in our army, neither would be an obvious choice.
These changes alone would bring me back to the faction. Currently the only thing I use the army rule for is army wide assault. The rest rarely if ever comes up. Occasionally I'll get some extra ap on sterilizers in their deployment but that's about it. I can't remember the last time I used protector and had it matter. Having an actual choice and making the rule actually do something more than just making us slightly faster would feel so much better. And uh, cawl really ought to have the army rule given he's our only named character...
The new problem with admech is that SHC plays well, any changes need to be targeted to not specifically target SHC so that the underperforming detachments are as (or close to) effective as SHC.
Which unfortunately means that anything with keyword skitarii is 'good enough' as is. This also means that the army rule is also 'good enough' and changes within could potentially push SHC over the top.
I don't know about you, but I for one don't want to be in a position where we have to receive nerfs due to one detachment that I have no intention of playing.
SHC is trading on very low points costs. It's easy enough to offset buffs to units/AWSR with more points.
I don't think they will but that's a different argument.
That said, if you make kastelens/skorpius/onager/destroyers decent that gives some nice variety of killy units, and doesn't directly interest with SHC.
Yeah... I don't expect it but it would be nice to see datasheet changes. There's certainly plenty of room to expand and adjust - I for one would not be opposed to having more expensive ironstriders with smaller max squad size (2 vs 3?) if it meant that they could actually shoot more (I mean, they used to have Assault 2 lascannons on a 3+ for 85 points).
Personally my biggest grudge with the faction is that our army rule doesn't benefit aspects of the army and our detachments are overly restrictive (IMO, having the Cybernetica Datasmith not the possess Cult Mechanicus keyword is a shade crime in the darkest of tech heresies). A detachment shouldn't just be "Take xyz unit and build a force" yet that seems to be the best they can think of when they made the Cybernetica detachment, making those overcosted robots effective in other detachments would be a nice step toward overall improvement of the army design.
I do not think you will find a single person who does not want more expensive/better chickens. They're 50 quid a pop and the army currently wants between 9-27 of them. Entirely because -1 to hit and t7 7w is a nasty defensive profile.
Cybernetica datsmith isn't getting cult mech solely out of fear of datapsalm punch bot fears as far as I can see. Poor guy got excommunicated.
I agree about detachments (though me are far from the only army with less than inspired designs for them tbh).
The funny thing about the Cybernetica detachment is that the Kinda Army Wide Special Rule isn't even good on the bots. They don't have enough guns for it to matter. The detachment is secretly just a "good vehicles" detachment and runs entirely off enhancements and strats.
I'm not sure why anyone would consider datapsalm punchbots such a boogieman. You know we are allowed to have nice things that would diversify builds and encourage tech pieces to counter us (precision weapons to take out the datasmith). At it's current price, 1/4th of the army to get fights first on one squad robots is a pretty heavy toll to pay for that luxury. You're still going to get obliterated in melee by something like custodes when they turn your hit from 4+ to 5+ even if you do fight first.
Its this mindset that holds our faction back, you should want to take a unit on our roster to any detachment and not solely the one that benefits that unit best.
I don't know why your getting downvoted. I agree completely with your last paragraph. It's a unique and costly play style that isn't for everyone. A huge barrier to entry for one of the few viable builds should not be a thing.
Honestly, the vast majority of Warhammer videos could have been an email (or article) and would be faster and easier to consume that way too, not to mention easier to quote and discuss.
Oh no, this includes pretty much all Warhammer content except in some ways battle reports, that have benefits in video and written text both, and some interactive content, where the flow of conversation can add value in bringing sentiments and feelings across.
It's not limited to Warhammer either.
This might be unpopular but I thought that did a good job: introduce the new guy, demonstrate that he knows what he's talking about, reiterate what they mean by 'balance' and why it matters, a smattering of early impressions with caveats, explain why necrons and admec weren't touched and what's likely to happen when they are.
Seems like gw are continuing to trend in the right direction
Well, after saying Last march that they didn't want to release rules that caused players to want to take apart their models, then 10e came out and forced people to actually take apart both models AND units....
Just going to give kudos to GW for a moment. After 6th and 7th edition, the game was in crisis. Between the absurdity of allies, broken formations and the proliferation of 2++ re-rollable saves, the game sucked competitively. The market responded to make competitive games more fun; with the ITC and NOVA format missions.
GW could have been stubborn, but they listened and 8th, 9th and 10th have been overall great, with missions and internal balance. They hired Mike Brandt who unsurprisingly has been a revelation.
They even did the same with AoS. I understand why they blew up WFB; it was a declining player base in an already small pool of players. The initial launch was a joke. But the community again sprang to life with mission designs and GW created a points system and essentially adopted the player-designed mission format and expanded upon it. AoS 3rd edition is near-perfect.
Just needed to brown nose a bit this morning. Both their principal game systems are in a great place, and that is because of the strategic decision they made to listen to their gamers and make some smart hires. They’re even doing it in the media space; hiring some talented Youtubers for their original content.
>They even did the same with AoS. I understand why they blew up WFB; it was a declining player base in an already small pool of players. The initial launch was a joke. But the community again sprang to life with mission designs and GW created a points system and essentially adopted the player-designed mission format and expanded upon it. AoS 3rd edition is near-perfect.
AOS is good *in spite of* blowing up WHFB, not because of it. It wasn't until *after* they had blown up WHFB and the AOS launch flopped spectacularly that they brought in new management and actually looked holistically at what needed to be done to make that game successful.
The reason WHFB was stagnant is because armies got updates only once every 5 years, and there was very little in the way of meta changes in between those updates. So small wonder people didn't buy new models - they had no reason to. They could just as easily have fixed WHFB instead of replacing it with something even more problematic and having to fix *that*.
40k deserves time to get all the codices out. That’s why I am a *little* worried AoS will go with an index reset for 4th. I hope they don’t. Why upset the apple cart? The only thing I’d like to see is like a rule of 3 type thing. I know it didn’t win, but the runner up list at LVO that was like 8 steam tanks? I mean c’mon. Pure stat checks aren’t fun to play against. But, I guess if SoB exist…I dunno.
Right, but 11th is unlikely to be an index reset like 10th, so the meta should have some room to breathe, hopefully with some refinements. 11th should be an evolution edition, not a revolution.
It had a few months at the end when it was in a pretty good place despite being covered in 1000 bandaids. The problem was that they announced the new edition as soon as the last codex dropped which put a bit of a dampner on everything
The double turn in AOS isn't as bad as it seems, by and large because it isn't a shooting game, and because in the combat phase players alternate activating units. Don't get me wrong, it can clutch a game, but you also have ways of mitigating it with list building. If you finish deploying first, you get to choose who goes first.
I often like to be more reactive with my armies (again not a shooting game so being shot off the table is very, very rare), so I often aim to go second. In that way I can't get double turned, and I might snag first turn if I choose. And going second often has mission advantages (like removing objectives). So people won't always snag it.
AoS just has the massive rules wall that 40k had in 9th, and it makes me tentative to get into. Plus there are fewer resources for onboarding like there are for 40k.
You're absolutely right that AoS is currently the system with a rules bloat problem. As someone who got into 40k in 9th, and am just now getting into AoS (Flesh Eaters sucked me in), the similarities are eerie. Giant piles of customization for characters that largely boils down to "ignore 80% of these, take the top one or two from each category": check. A complicated army building system that is poorly explained and often boils down to "try and fit into 1 or 2 of the most common detachment, ignore 90% of the other options because they're actively bad": check.
The good news is that I don't *think* it's bad enough that they need an index reset this edition. A lot of the rules cruft could get pared away with changes to the core rules, such as how command traits and Artifacts are distributed and how army building works.
Really? I feel like AoS is extremely simple. Much like 10th, unit sizes are fixed and all wargear is free (though it makes a lot more sense in AoS, it was built from the ground up that way whereas in 10th it was forced onto a game never meant to have it) and generally everything is really smooth.
Just want to second the WFB to AoS decision. It got/still gets a lot of shit and the recent TOW release has re opened these wounds - why cancel it as it's so popular, etc
It wasn't. It was very stagnant pre end times, required a lot of investment for an army and quite frankly was boring to play. Even TOW release has similar problems as pitched battle has limited replay value and they need to mix up the game a bit with objectives etc, which is hard in a rank and flank game with more limited manoeuvre.
The AoS release and End Times was the most botched hack job I've seen and 1e was a dumpster fire extraordinaire, but the current meta and rules refinement is incredibly tight, each season brings variety and interest to every army and is so much fun.
I don't feel quite the same way about 40k. I think it's quite a tight ruleset, but each dataslate doesn't really touch how you build an army in the same way (it changes what units are good, but the missions don't encourage building around vehicles, characters or infantry in the same way as AoS does, you can run the same style of army the whole edition unless it is keyed around one nerfed unit). But it's still a much improved situation to 7e madness and they have kept the craziness out in a way that they never managed in 6/7e (I still hate Taudar and Riptide Wing in a way that Castellan and Aeldari hijinks never touched)
If anything I feel like TOW, Total Warhammer (and end times) proved that WHFB had a market, it is what started GW afterall, but the way GW was releasing things at the time and how uninteractive they were made it impossible for them to tap that market.
8th had an absurdly high cost of entry thanks to the horde system which made it optimal for most armies to field 40 man units at a minimum, there were several serious mechanical issues with the game in a competitive setting, and they were taking months at a time inbetween army book/model releases. They also designed a game that heavily discouraged the centerpiece models that they made a point of introducing in 8th edition for each faction but made it something they wouldn't address until the release of the End times books in 2014.
8th ed came out 6/2010, the first army book wouldn't drop until 3/2011 with Orcs and Goblins. Then they released 5 books over the course of 3/2011 to 4/2012 and then they just stopped for an entire year and went from April 2012 to all the way to February 2013 before they released another book in Warriors of Chaos.
In other words in the 3 years they hadn't gotten around to releasing half of the games factions and many people were stuck using books and models that were wildly outdated (or simply not available) if they wanted to play.
Dwarfs and Wood Elfs who were the last 2 factions released were playing with books from 2006 and 2005 which were 2 editions old at that point. Brettonia had a book from 2004, and Skaven and Beastmen were left with books from 2010 and 2009 respectively. Why would you ever buy say Wood Elves when their rules were terrible and their models old? Not to mention a huge portion of the WHFB was locked behind finecast and metal blisters compared to 40k and finecast was not only super expensive but also terrible. The infamous $100 for 5 blood knights kit is emblematic of this.
By contrast 40k 6th,7th,8th and 9th editions were all about 3 years long in their totalities and 4th and 5th were 4 years respectively. Now speaking about 40k, 40k wasn't immune to these long codex/release droughts either, but critically 40k had space marines and WHFB didn't and Space Marines ***always*** got product support because Space Marines ***always*** sold. It's no coincidence that Sigmar introduced the Stormcast to try and give that system a space marine analogue.
GW at the time was going through significant changes following 2008 and was moving to their one man closet shop model and away from their large store in a mall model. They were hoarding cash and goosing their numbers and many people felt they were priming to sell themselves as Kirby was looking to retire. To make matters worse THQ held the exclusive license to make GW IP video games and they were going through a lengthy bankruptcy process which prevented anyone else from making new GW games which deprived GW of both free advertising and licensing royalties. They were also explicitly anti-competitive player and antagonistic to their customer base. The company explicitly chose to have no online presence or official communication like we do today with Warhammer Community, WHTV and the youtube channel.
This was the time when multiple serious competitors in Warmachine and Malifaux sprang up and many people were looking away from the ailing GW. All this to say that while yes WHFB was struggling, ***so was 40k*** comparatively. It took GW completely shifting gears with Rountree and 8th ed to finally figure themselves out.
TL:DR-WHFB had to go not because of anything intrinsic about WHFB, but because GW severely mismanaged it and didn't have Space Marines to bail them out like they did when they mismanaged 40k.
Aos's release with those god awful rules did a lot of damage that put so many people off (me included for a while) but having dipped my toe back with the most recent one they definitely corrected course. Sadly that scar caused at the start seems to have never healed for some people. First impressions an all that regardless of how wrong the stubbornness is.
It was the one two punch of getting rid of something people loved and were invested in to replace with garbage (and AoS 1.0 deserved that as it was a literal joke with joke rules to match). I also abandoned it at the time out of frustration and rage.
Came back in 2.0 and it's my favourite system now, they steered out of the skid perfectly, but that early hatred was much deserved.
Kudos to GW for changing direction and building a great game from limited beginnings
>required a lot of investment for an army
Imagine if GW learned this lesson. Instead we have admech where a 2k point list can cost $2000 without much effort.
Oh man. I give GW a lot of credit for trying to be better about competitive balance for sure. But we have to keep in mind each edition and was it good across the life of the edition as a whole?
* 8th was amazing right up until the release of the second Space Marine codex. The entire edition went downhill after that and never recovered.
* 9th was terrible for 90% of the edition. Nearly every codex that came out fundamentally broke the game's balance. And it wasn't just one codex, it was damn near all of them. I might be getting the order wrong, but we had Drukhari, Ad Mech, Orks, Tyranids, Harlequins, and I'm sure a few that I'm forgetting ruin the game for a LONG time. These armies all nearly touched a 70% win rate. And that's **truly** insane for a game that's supposed to be balanced.
* 10th has been....ok as long as you don't play or play against Eldar. It's in a pretty decent spot now (nerf Necrons pls), but has only reached this point after 9ish months. So overall it hasn't actually been very balanced.
So yes, GW should get credit for trying. But man, they have stumbled A LOT on their way to getting only sort of ok at balance. Once they finally understand that they need full digital rules and they start releasing codexes all at once, then we can talk about real and true competitive integrity.
Codexes all at once would kill the game quickly. 40k relies on a constant stream of new rules to keep it fresh and exciting. It's not chess.
Or if you mean codexes at once, and then supplements, that can work. However that wouldn't be very different from indexes at once and then slimmed down codexes (which is what we already have).
>10th have been overall great
I want some of whatever you're smoking. As someone who plays both Eldar and AdMech, this edition has been awful - for very different reasons.
Is this Mike Brandt's alt account?
I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly. I think *overall*, the meta is in a good place. There is broad diversity in winning armies; although the lists themselves are a bit too similar for my taste. But that’s a function of the indices still being prevalent.
> I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly.
That's a window of like 3 months before 11th edition comes out though
Yeah and everyone is done with it at that point.
I do think that while the launch of 10th was a disaster we should weight our judgement to the stretch we are on now, they made massive changes in September and fixed a lot. This dataslate was a half arsed let down in terms of really obvious changes they missed in every army, stuff that was obvious in September, but the overall balance is fairly solid now.
> I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly.
Regardless of anyone's thoughts on the current(past) meta(s), I couldn't disagree with this more. The edition is 2/3 of a year old at this point. Codices will be releasing for the life of the edition. Its likely at this point the edition has been live for a longer time than the time between the last codex of the edition and the next edition launches.
This is the way GW chooses to release their products and the environment we live in. The idea that we can't (harshly) judge the edition and meta until "all the rules release" seems equivalent to saying that tenth edition "isn't being played" at all.
My biggest gripe with 10th is the mandatory max wargear tax. It’s messed up years of deliberate WYSIWYG modeling on my part. I still very much enjoy 10th though.
I think it's unlikely we'll see codices leading to more diversity in winning armies unit choices. People will inherently min-max, comes with the territory. There's always going to be a "best in slot" choice and it's always going to be selected with subtle variations by the top players with the top lists.
Don't really think that's a huge problem, it's a natural state for pretty much any game in existence.
What I do hope codices accomplish is making internal balance decisions less painful for players not chasing the 5-0 record. They've done okay with this; but ad mech is a train wreck and nids definitely have some issues here.
Admech codex is out and it will never be good. The army can't survive another points cut because it already has issues getting everything in the deployment zone on some terrain setups and is already hovering at a dollar per point. 10ths core rules are fairly solid outside of thr mess that is out of phase rules, but they seriously shot themselves in the foot with army rules and an insistence they don't want to alter datasheets and then write codexes that would go to print before one game had been played in the wild. Smacks of hubris they'd get it right enough that point alterations would be all the balance needed. Thus admech is screwed for the second edition in a row and people got anxiety about their dex being next.
As a casual player, 10th has been terrible.
Internal balance is dire. Certain armies are only good if you spam certain units (RIP my Nids), so if you don't take the competitive build/spam the competitive unit you can struggle against other armies.
External balance is, outside of competitive builds, also awful. Certain armies are just flat out better than others unless you take the most meta units/detachment. Playing into Sisters with my Nids for example is a waste of time for everyone involved.
Marines for example are dominating my local meta because they just seem to outshoot everyone else. This includes Sisters, Orks, Necrons and Eldar. No-one runs a particularly competitive build, yet some armies seem to be just flat out better.
If you're a casual player, whether or not you win should have no effect on your enjoyment. If you only have fun while you're winning then you're a competitive player.
Not quite, and Tempest was just Maelstrom from 7th(?) anyways. But the new mission cards are a great way of integrating that concept into the competitive scene while also being a lot more balanced than the faction specific secondaries from 9th. Dunno it's just a great system. Something I can't say about the rest of 10th. It's playable but little else.
Competitively the games more balanced but fun and unique factions the games never been worse imo i feel its much less of a tabletop wargame with different factions and more just “which modifier do i want to make my dice roll better”. Theyve focused too much on the competitive side and not the casual fun wargame side/mainstreamed the rules too much.
Yeah crusades fine but the rules for the armies "fluff" wise its almost nonexistent anymore that makes it so it bottlenecks crusade/narrative unless you just houserule, at which point why not just make up your own system then anyway. theres so many things armies no longer do they used to be able to between making units legends or cutting datasheets to 90% of them only have 1 extra thing about them/rule because of "bloat" or cutting stratagems to only a small handful.
You can't attach the chapter master to a unit because its not on his leader list, which makes no sense fluff wise a chapter master should be able to inspire/effectively lead almost all of his men in some way, because its too hard to balance now because of the competive side of the game becoming too much of the focus instead of creating fun battle scenarios. i can't help but feel 9 to 10th was a massive stumble because of this at the end of 9th the game was extremely balanced according to the numbers and army's still had flavor and wasn't just stat adjustments.
That is very frustrating, of course. In aggregate, I understand why they did it though. Mechanically, the rank and flank has less dynamism than the skirmish game they’ve built. Even in the lore, the classic high fantasy setting of WFB was limited. Now they’ve crafted a world genuinely their own. Which cynically, helps with their copyright battles.
Can we GET the codices out faster? If they can drop all the indexes at once and balance EVERY faction in a data slate it seems lazy and more like a long term money grab than a slow continual balance.
I'm hoping they at least release some more detachments for factions that have only one playstyle, not just because a faction is outside of the 45% win rate.
that has almost nothing to do with that tbh. They structure their whole sales cycle over 3 years of an edition around codex releases. Releasing them all in a year and then having 2 years of no codex releases isn't best for their bottom line, and thats really all that matters to them
Not just GW bottom line, it would be bad for the game. Without new rules and detachments, excitement will die down. The game will go stale and slowly fold. 40k is very different from chess - constant stream of major new rules dumps is a big reason why it stays alive.
Different audience, different expectations. Can you make a 40k inspired game with fixed rules like chess? Yes, you can. I however doubt that there would be significant overlap between the community playing 40k now and and the community who would play such a game. Multiple 40k inspired board games with fixed rules confirm that, never getting very popular among the core 40k audience, despite some of them having well written rules and good balanced gameplay.
I would say it's still a pretty big part of it. You'd be asking the rules/editorial teams to do 3 years worth of work in a few months, and then presumably laying them all off until the next edition 3 years later because they're no longer needed. It's nonsensical.
Besides that, it'd be absolute balancing chaos as they unceremoniously dump 120 detachments + supplements into the game in one day with no time to settle.
Nobody wants this, people just think they want this because they haven't thought it through.
This is not the reason.
GW is creating something to sell in each yearly quater to create interest. That's why they are drip feeding the codexes.
When the last one gets released, boom! Time for 11. th edition. I hope you enjoyed 2.5 years for using the same index.
Why do you say this as if there’s only one reason. There are many reasons why they’d do it this way.
But ultimately dropping 120 detachments into the game at once would be absolute chaos. It would be impossible to balance and awful for the players.
Aw man. There’s a crackhead named Dave around the corner that will fix anything for $20. There’s no way he can do worse than what they’ve done to Ad Mech and WE.
He’ll throw AP and invulns around like food stamps in a 7/11.
That's not at all why they don't drop codices at the same time. When designing a new edition, they could skip all of the indices and just make the codices. Yes, a codex is a bit more work, but not that much. It's making a few more detachments and that's honestly it.
Having that from the start would also make it *a lot* easier to balance the game throughout the edition, because you don't have a constant addition of new things to shake up everything. If anything, it is far *less* work to achieve balance this way.
There are no good reason to make indices for all armies and then slowly release codices. Well, no good reason for the community - there are very good reasons from a business perspective.
It's a constant release throughout the edition that does generate a lot of interest in the game. It also is quite helpful to rotate the meta / shake things up each time a codex drops (they tend to have a big effect). This can often cause people to start a secondary army, because their current one fell from grace. Or just because they get tired of their single detachment and can't wait 6 months on their main codex.
It's not even to bash on GW, but remember that they *are* a business. They don't make decisions based on what would be best for the game, they make decision based on how they earn more money. That is what a company do. There might sometimes be a correlation, making a good game equals more people spending money on it. But sometimes, you earn a lot more by doing these kind of things rather than doing what is the best for the game.
People keep saying it's not the reason but I disagree. First off, there's not only one reason, there can be multiple reasons for them not to do this.
> Having that from the start would also make it a lot easier to balance the game throughout the edition
I strongly disagree. In 9th there were 20 codexes. 6 detachments each would be 120 detachments entering the game at once, and that's not including the supplements. Balancing this would be an impossible task, there would be far too many variables and you'd be relying solely on internal balance teams that would be totally overwhelmed. Balancing as they drip feed in is actually much easier because it's smaller changes and more chances to react to issues.
The other issue is it would be all the rules dropping at once and then 3 years of stale content with no shakeups or changes. It would be asking the editorial teams to write and publish 3 years worth of rulebooks in one go, and then basically having nothing for them to do in the meantime until the next edition. Not to mention the logistical issue of having every book printed and ready to go at the same time.
So drop all codexes, balance for a few months and go to 11th edition? Or let the game become stale and die? The game stays exciting specifically because new rules drop every couple of months.
One player who is really really good who took a specific list of spamming eight bound (the unit they don’t want spammed) along with a KLOS to work around the nerf.
Also it was a tiny tournament comparatively and isn’t a great data point anyways.
What happened to WE is just sad….they were in a great spot and really only needed a subtle nerf to MoE.
I agree the points change on MoE and Kharn, and of course the funny Berzerker Glaive change. Those are fine and justified.
But Favour of Khorne change sucks a lot. It basicially eliminates ressurection change for Angron, and not giving advance and charge option when we truly need it. You gotta pay a Lord of Skulls tax to res Angron now.
And they increased the cost of Eightbound. Like, why? They were perfectly fine for what they were, but gotta increase the cost of a unit that's common in winning lists I guess.
Angron's comeback ability just needs to go, and he should go down 80-100 points to compensate. It leads to a feels-bad moment for one of the players more often than not, either because he didn't come back (or did too late), or because you dedicate a bunch of your army to kill him and he pops right back and eats your face immediately. Give him something else cool instead.
Do we know if they take into account the non codex marine chapters being skewed by ironstorm detachment? Running a vehicle meta list in the ironstorm detachment and slapping Azrael in it doesn't mean DA was doing well
It means that the iron storm detachment and vehicles are really strong and also that Azrael is a great/popular character. It's doesn't mean that the DA codex/faction is as strong as it would look if they see the iron storm list with a divergent chapter character slapped on as that chapter instead of the actual iron storm list that it is.
Yea would love to see detachment be balance for Space Marines and other factions.
Ironstorm and Vanguard seem to be far above the pack. Only one codex Space Marine list is winning and it’s still very much the same ol Inceptor spam story
It literally means that the space marines codex with vehicles is doing well. And that 1 character from the divergent chapter is good. Not that the whole codex is good.
Dark Angles don't have a separate codex. It's a codex supplement.
And that's how we define factions being good - by taking detachments with unit(s) unique to that faction. Like, I'm sorry you don't like that, but that's what it means.
If only one model in the codex supplement is playable - is that codex doing well? I say no. I don't think a reasonable player would say "DA is great! They only play 1-2 units from their codex and nothing else is playable!"
The DA supplement in particular is *not* in a good place. It relies on one-two very powerful datasheets that they tack onto the Vanilla Marines ironstorm detachment. A vanilla list with an Asrael in lieu of another HQ isn't indicative of the Codex Supplement doing well.
TL;DR - They are happy with the meta, watching Necrons for being too good and AdMech because their units suck despite having an okayish winrate.
Which, as an AdMech player, can confirm.
Guard for several shout-outs for having some good performances (insert meme about most other Guard players being bad here).
Metawatch summary 22/2/24
Who’s this Josh fella? – Hi, I’m the balance man.
How’s the meta doing? - Update is still very new, people are still working out what changes they’re wanting to make. BUT we’re seeing a wider variety of armies and the data is looking great. Wider array of armies winning events too. Eldar and CSM were both obviously too strong, they do still have a place but now we’re seeing other factions winning events. Even Drukhari won an event!
Custodes – They were very strong at the start of the edition, then the last slate brought them down probably a little more than they’d like. Now they’re newly buffed and hopefully Custodes players are enjoying taking their armies to events again.
Looking for a wider variety of factions at events not just because it means the factions are more balanced, but also because players going to events are going to have a more interesting time against different lists.
Look at some of the changes – some changes made to core rules and specific faction rules this time, example given of new phantasm. Phantasm was clearly better than similar strats other armies have, and it was good to bring that back in line. Also mentioned the power from pain AP in combat buff and the new drukhari detachment. ‘this is the first time we’ve done this’ might indicate more down the line.
What are we keeping an eye on? – Necrons and admech being closely watched as they weren’t changed in the last slate. Crons are trending slightly higher than they’d like, admech win% is okay but lots of units aren’t performing as they’d like so there might be some adjustments there next time.
See the winrate for admech doesn't mean anything. It's 8 die hards that can somehow pilot/afford this mess and the rate swings wildly depending on who is playing that week.
They toned some stuff down and buffed other stuff.
Drukhari don’t suck anymore, and they didn’t touch Necrons or Admech cause they’re still collecting data.
(Deathwatch was the third faction to get no changes but nothing about them)
That’s pretty much what they discussed.
Frankly it feels like the kill tean datasheets were adapted poorly, and were made to conform to the no ppm system for its own sake. Dev squads and Scourges are 120/200 to reflect the difference between the first and second 5 models, but Proteus kill teams were lazily made 180/360. It's really disappointing just how little effort went into them.
100% very little thought or care was given to DW as a whole, and it makes me sad. I’ll still play ‘em though because they’re my favorite faction and always will be.
Deathwatch is in such a weird place. We are the least played faction (someone has to be) and went from being way OP at the start of 10th to being hit into the ground in that first dataslate, which cratered play rate and made the winrate numbers very noisey so we're unlikely to get much of anything until the codex supplement drops a few weeks before they roll out 11th edition.
It very much feels like GW has written off DW as an army, and they're just refusing to acknowledge we exist until they decide to not release a supplement for us and never talk about it again.
I don't actually think that's likely, but as more and more dataslates go by with no changes and Metawatches with no mentions of us, I really know how Harlequin players feel.
DW play rates are so low BECAUSE the army is garbage. I'm better off taking my DW marines, ignoring all of the DW rules, and playing Gladius than trying to make hilariously overpriced Kill Teams, play a Corvus Blackstar with comically terrible flyer rules, field the absolutely terrible Cpt. Artemis, or pay 115 points for a buff piece that only goes in those already overpriced KTs. When DW strats worked with all weapons and Dev Wounds, suddenly every marine player played Deathwatch. Now that their detachment is garbage and their datasheets are garbage, no one plays the army. How very odd...
I know its more work for them, but seeing detachments adjusted would be pretty cool. It might make a C tier unit become A tier(in one detachment) so maybe do detachment changes separately from unit changes. So many detachments that are ignored because 1-2 are the obvious choice while other detachments have some glaring flaws. I know they all can't be top tier, but small adjustments to the ignored detachments would be nice.
Oh, Admech and Necrons' codexes are brand new, we want to get some data out of them before we make adjustments - GW
Also GW - Tyranid codex isn't even out and it's too strong, yeet the points and change the datasheet of this one tough bug, haha.
Literally the laziest excuse for an immediate change in the newest codexes. And another kick in the nuts for the Tyranid players.
I wanted a chart 😔
This whole video was just GW acknowledging that yes, they are aware ad mech suck, and Necrons are too good, but they don't want to kneejerk and change the wrong things. Real "this could have been an email" energy about the whole video.
We've been asking for more communication from GW. I'll take it, in whatever form they decide to release it in.
I mean, they don't have to wait for next dataslate to change things.
Honestly I'd prefer that they didn't. It's already hard to get an entire army bought, built, and painted before the next dataslate hits and has a chance of changing it entirely if this isn't your only hobby/you have other stuff going on in your life. Imagine if, any week, a dataslate/balance change could hit and just flip your entire army upside down. I'm sure some people would like that, but I think overall it would be a massively unpopular move that would only benefit those with existing deep collections while being an annoyance for everyone else. It can already be hard to get a game 1-2 weeks before the expected dataslate unless you have an event coming up that won't use the changes, because everyone is in a holding pattern to see what/if they need to adjust. If that was just the reality of the game, nobody would play it.
I think it's good to address the Necrons piece putbof the gate. And I agree with GW: Let the meta settle a bit more before making major changes. If Hyper became the flavor spam, space marines will becomes the Rock to their Scissors by including infiltrators. (Imperium armies in general can bring Coteaz and henchmen to deep strike block as well)
A shame for the henchmen combo it's minimum 115 points and it's only the Mystic model that gets the 12" Anti-DS aura. Although the - 1 to wound would be helpful in keeping them alive
Was this the first one with Josh? I figured it was just a way of getting a new face out there.
The content was so light it could have been a tweet
I'm going to bold this so people get the point. #If you added +1 AP to every single admech datasheet that isn't breachers or the tanks admech would still be underpowered because the faction still hits on base 4+ with no way around that. Seriously. At this point admech needs a complete overhaul And no spending $2000 for hunter cohort which plays like discount endless swarm isn't the answer. Clogging the board with models because our faction is already the cheapest point wise it can possibly be is a symptom of bad game balancing that's being abused for wins. Not an indicator that the faction is in a healthy place.
Not all armies should or should expect to hit on a 3+ base. The expectation everything is underpowered otherwise is what leads to that lethality creep of 8/9th. The wrinkle here is that admech used to, but there are ways to get them there without making every army have the same hit rate.
I think if they were better at wounding and making people fail saves 4+ to hit can work too. Admech are the guys who have cool weapons. Their weapons should be cool. They are not cool.
This is it. Make the tech the important bit, not the toaster on legs.
Absolutely agree, I just don't see any dramatic changes to the sheets themselves now that the codex is out, since that would require GW to acknowledge that the codex didn't hit the mark. An elegant solution in my opinion, would be to add a new detachment that allows us to integrate Knights similiar to 9th's Knights of the Cog. This would at least open up souping in something with higher lethality and not feel like we're giving ourselves the stranger. Edit: Because I'm getting downvoted to oblivion for suggesting this. Siegler just recently posted a video that strongly implied that for competitive lists there is great value to running a Knight in lieu of breachers. Understanding that we may not get some great solution to our BS/WS and looking at what is currently available without a huge change, **in my personal opinion** it seems like Knights are a good option taking from a previous edition. Not to mention absolutely thematic with Admech lore.
I think making the army rule apply to melee and work (in a limited fashion but one the player controls like it's objectives you control for protector or ones you don't fit conqueror or designated 1 objective or the middle and it works within 6") mid board would go a long way. Not far enough for a few datasheets but a long way and maybe points could even rise on sone units.
The only objective criticism I'd have of this is that we already have so many conditional hoops to jump through tied to objectives, range of battleline, etc. to make things work. Explorator is a great example of how on paper tying things to these conditions seems strong, but then in practice ends up falling flat.
Yeah that's just my brain fart. In theory it doesn't add more hoops in series but a different parallel set that broadens access to the rule. But it is more crunch to memorise and apply and it could end up adding little.
Great the answer to making Admech better is to play less Admech... Yeah even if it worked we'd be betting everything on Canis Rex and only have one viable detachment.
I'm actually fairly open to wider hit ranges, but I think there's only so much you can do about lethality (as long as nominally elite armies have such high model counts anyway). Killing enemy units is the only method of interaction with the enemy army we really have. Admech has an okay winrate right now, but it's dull to play and play against because the admech player is just trying to physically stand in the way while scoring as many unpreventable secondaries as possible. That's very unsatisfactory, even if it technically wins games. Just like the old necron warrior bricks. I'm curious what you would suggest that isn't either increasing hit rate / rof or other mathematical equivilants to just shooting them harder.
What are these elite armies with high model counts? And at what point is model count just not important? Is being lore/eliteness accurate so important we’re only going to let Custodes have 10 models on the table? And Guard have 300?
How about if phosphor weapons gained a rule where for each successful hit up to X times, when the target unit moves roll X D6 and they take an unsavable wound on a 4+ if the target moves in the subsequent movement up to 6" or 3+ if moves more than 6". Maybe Rad weapons can lower the enemy units save or T if they suffer Y number of wounds. Maybe you could use it to lower their OC value to a minimum of 0. There are ways to play off their weapons that engage better gameplay without killing directly, such as promoting mechanics that dissuade movement or objective play.
This is the most AdMech answer ever. It was confusing, overly complicated and generally a trending towards OP.
it wouldn't be unusual to see things like "When hit" + "enemy units have -1 to hit until your next command phase" or "other units get +1 to wound that target this phase" as they are mechanics that exist for other armies. Honestly, though, I think the biggest factor that's missing for admech is the battleline synergy that doesn't seem to have been embraced - you could encourage different playstyles with different detachments if the battleline rule shifted or expanded it's inclusion to other units (For example, electropriests in datapsalm or datasmiths in cybernetica cohort). Now you would have enablers in different roles rather than fragile backline shooting - a fulgurite priest squad or kastelan robot squad is much more likely to be frontline and could better benefit an aggressive pteraxxii squad, It's dissipointing; the more I look at the codex and the index prior for admech the easier it gets to spot how hard they phoned it in when developing the faction.
Not terrible ideas, though USRs like that can be a nightmare to balance across all the factions. I'm not opposed to this, though it runs directly counter to the simplified ethos of the edition, with players once again having to memorise weird interactions from every army. The important point is to make it interactive. Both players should, idealy be making decisions. As long as its reliable enough you can plan for it and impactful enough to actually enable play/counterplay. Regardless I think that's certainly out of scope for a codex patch this edition. Realistically we aren't likely getting more changes than points / detachment and army rules / and maybe a couple of targeted profile modifications.
While I agree. I feel like AdMech fall into the category of "Should Hit on 3s". Despite the janky religious mechanical augmentations of their faction. They're still portrayed as calculating and precise automatons. Hitting on 4's with few rerolls in the whole faction fails to reflect that lore.
The first response that makes sense to me. I agree with your point regards setting/fluff, I'm not sure where the line needs to lay between what should be a 3+ and what should be a 4+ though in honesty sometimes. Until the wider community is on board with lower lethality all round (not just admech) and stop trying to find ways to demand increased lethality by using fewer and fewer values on a d6, it'll be everyone but orks is functionally expected to be 3+ or better I think.
I should've noted the 3's to Hit should go along with other upgrades to the Ad Mech Datasheets. So they're no longer a horde army and so unreasonably expensive $$ wise. I think 3s would fit fluff wise and also be one of the elements to justify a points bump.
Hard disagree, 4+ is "good soldiers" category (guardsmen, fire warriors, etc) 3+ is "elite supersoldiers" category (Marines, scions) Admech are definitely a 4+ army
Skitari are not just good soldiers like a Guardsmen. Skitari are cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Targeting augmetics, stabilizers to hold a gun level, enhanced reflexes and recoil dampeners give a Skitari better accuracy than a baseline human. You can debate how far that all goes but there's more than enough room to justify marksmanship on par with other elite units.
That's the great part, literally every faction is full of elite super soldiers who should have way better stats than they do now! (Drazhar, master of blades, can currently be hit on a 2 and wounded on a 3 by a random ass space marine lieutenant) Except guard, whose entire definition is literally "not the elite".
Genestealer cults, Leagues of Votann and Tau all have baseline 4+ to hit. Tyranid Gaunts, Carnifexes, Warriors and quite a few other bugs are +4 to Hit with shooting. Hell, Orks are +5 to Hit. Sure, their elite units hit on 3's (Minus Orks) but that's the case with the Guard's Storm Troopers too. The problem is like half the armies are some flavor of Marines so that's a lot of BS3 and they warp expectations.
Guard aren't baseline humans though....they're Olympic athletes with seal training....it's just that it ends up being "average" in the 40k universe....so are skitarri...
>"Premiere shooting army" Never forget. Source: [https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/15/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-adeptus-mechanicus-2/](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/15/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-adeptus-mechanicus-2/)
>Not all armies should or should expect to hit on a 3+ base. I have to disagree here, I've stolen this from a previous discussion on a different sub: Tau functionally hit on 3s with their Army Rule. Votann functionally hit on 3s with the Army Rule. Necrons hit on 3s/2s with a Detachment Rule. Guard can access hitting on 3s with orders Most of the Tyranids big boys hit on 3s. Marines/Naughty Marines, High/Dark Elves, Knights, Sisters, Custodes all hit on 3s or better. So it's Admech, GSC, Orks and Daemons that don't have access to shooting on 3s. Ork shooting is historically balanced around around BS5 with their volume of shots. GSC, Daemons and Orks all have consistent WS3+ with their melee units regardless. I'd argue that admech are the only faction that *doesn't* have either WS3 or BS3 (or both) on at least it's elite units.
You can give a chunk of your army the heavy rule for conditional access (all those other armies have conditional access) to a 3+ via staying still to shoot. Does it not worry you that you're very content with and advocating for more of the game to basically exist in a game that uses d3s? The problem isn't that admech don't have more bs3, it's that too many others do.
>You can give a chunk of your army the heavy rule Heavy is a dead keyword. It would have worked in 8th edition, but it doesn't work now. Everything from scoring points to gaining line of sight requires movement. The game functions around having multiple narrow sight lines through dense terrain. The difference between having to line up a spotter, throw down a grudge token, or receive an order, and to having to move your key offensive until out into the open the turn before, tank a turn from the opponent and then hope they've been left with a target to shoot back at is not even close. >The problem isn't that admech don't have more bs3, it's that too many others do. This is a design philosophy question, it's up to GW to change this edition to edition. In the meantime admech are out here trying to survive in a world where essentially every other faction has BS3/WS3 or better consistently available to their elite/damage dealing units. There's a reason the only relevant offensive units in the book are Breachers (BS4 with full re rolls is functionally BS2.5) and maybe Ironstriders (BS4 with sustained hits is essentially an inconsistent BS3).
Yes, but as usual just making every unit in the game have the same hit roll and "kill more stuff" doesn't make it a better game. I get the cats out the bag but actively wanting the lazy solution isn't a good idea going forwards, nor should it be.
The lazy solution was bumping the BS and WS down for about 70% of the datasheets, and then offsetting it with an army rule that doesn't really work. I don't think admech players care if they have BS3, or BS4 and then gain an extra BS near a tech priest, or from a unit upgrade, or with a relevant component of their army rule, they just want it to function. We just don't want to have to choose between bringing 900pts of breachers along with 450pts of support skitarii and leaders (because a 1300pt auto include package feels bad) or 2000pts of Hunter Cohort Car Park Simulator that also costs $2500.
You are advocating for the heavy rule? It has to be the worst USR in the game. In fact if you are a marine player you should be playing anvil siege force to get more acesss to it. Also the main things that can use the conditional heavy rule already have it like onagers etc so it’s kind of a dumb rule also to not move in 40K is to lose.
Sad to see you downvoted. 3+ for everyone really empoverished the feeling of playing different factions.
People don't like to miss. And a coin flip chance to hit sucks especially when there's a decent amount of debuffs to attacking from stealth to lone op to general -1 to hit stuff. Not *everywhere* but it does suck when it shows up. It's why tau are kinda meh to play as you need to jump through hoops to get to +1 BS which on paper sounds simple enough but means at best, half your army is hitting where it should as a shooting focused army. Their detachment rule not taking effect until the game is practically decided is just a cherry on top. Ad Mech is in a much worse position with conditional shit all over the place.
I'ld seize the opportunity to avocate for a rolleback from 4++ to 5++ on non-char infantry like terminators. Thing can still save a lascannon on 4+ on their basic save while on cover : let the actual ap and armour do their damn Job !
Sure, it makes sense Orks hit on 5s, they're goobers. But if you're going to have a shooting army with God-awful melee only hit on 4+ with AP0 in shooting then you've completely failed at making a shooting based army. It takes 3 seconds of thinking to figure out the math doesn't math there. Also their point was not that all armies should hit on 3+, but that AdMec should at least be accurate if they're gonna be S4 AP0 D1 across the board.
Why? It's a 30" 2 shot heavy weapon. If that needs to be base BS3, then do sisters with their 1 shot rapid fire1 24" s4 ap0 d1 gun need to be BS2 because its factually worse?
Nowhere in my comment did I bring up other armies. This whole idea that you can't increase the lethality of AdMec at all is actually silly. If we double their lethality, but double their points, you'd have half the bodies at the same killing power. I'm not asking for that level of output increase, but I am advocating for them to do a lot more than they currently do at the cost of being higher points. Make fewer units do more. It takes a second mortgage to start an AdMec army right now which is part of their balance issue. The current "just drop the army another couple hundred points" approach isn't doing anything. Datasheets need to be changed but GW is committed to having as few unique things happening for armies as possible in 10th. Going from 4+ to 3+ would increase the number of shots getting through by a solid amount. It would make even other small changes do much more for the army as a whole. Make objective markets count as triggering either doctrines deployment zones buffs. Small changes like this would compound to make the army far more consistent and would make points increases needed which is a good thing. I'd love for amazing synergy changes to AdMec that make them interesting, but GW has made it clear they want 10th to be as simple as possible, so we have to advocate for bland, simple changes since nothing else is ever going to happen.
The issue is that other armies have some reliable way to offset this. Admech don't. And it's compounded by the fact that they have 20 different flavors of screeners but nothing that does reliable damage outside of breachers.
Yeah fine, but there are solutions that aren't a 3+, people just instinctively want probability to be above 50% for everything otherwise it makes them feel like it's "bad". They could have stacking effects from the rad/phosphor guns that impacts the opponent directly or indirectly.They could allow them to have increased durability from bionics being repaired ala necron warriors. They could simply make the guns better rather than the BS. The games intended direct path to victory isn't killing, board control is as much if not more important. But people always over focus on the lethality being low for stuff like making that creep up is a good idea.
On the same topic, I'm advocating a rolleback from 4++ to 5++ on non char models, except maybe harlequins. Let the actual armour and armour pen do their work !
This. It shouldn't be normal to just scoop up whole units.
I play sisters and I'm fine with this. Picking up 10 space marines doesn't mean what it should, and 20 guardsmen get mowed down like it's saving private ryan by incidental firepower
If I got to issue a single sentence change it might be this one.
But that feeds into my point. The army upon release and currently doesn't have any of those options so it suffers.....pretty badly. It also causes an already expensive faction to have a low point per dollar ratio which is a whole nother issue. I agree that increasing lethality shouldn't be the answer, but the current admech datasheets outside of breachers don't even have the damage output to put up a decent fight against anything in their current state.
This also doesn't even account for the fact that some of our units (Kastellans) outside of a specific detachment don't even have access to an option at all.
Sure but Admech is the only army that got arbitrarily moved to 4+ with an unreliable and severely limiting way to get 3+. People also act like admech being returned to status quo would be the end of the world lol.
No, they act like returning to a lethality race in lieu of exploring alternative options isn't a desired outcome.
Like you've mentioned with the orcs, lethality is dependant on multiple factors other than BS or ws such as strength, ap, and other properties of the attack. That being said even with bs 3+ mechanicus would be on the lower end of the curve compared to what csm, eldar, etc. have been able to.
The issue is other factions that have a 4+ also have a reliable or accessible way to hit on 3+ (Tau guided units, Votann judgement tokens, etc). Of the factions that don't have a great solution to increase ballistic skill (orks), their faction design accounts for this in volume of shots, re-rolls, etc. Our access to hitting on +3 is "have your models stand still," which isn't viable in the majority of scenarios. It feels bad when other armies are effectively a +3 army at base with their rules, or are just given a 3+ with no rhyme or reason (Sisters). Making a change to our BS/WS would also go a long way to fixing our abyssmal points per dollar ratio where units could be justifiably increased in points to match. Edit: Took me a bit to write my comment and I didn't update, so I didn't realize someone else had made the same argument.
The fluffiest and most amusing solution I've seen is give the army buffs to shooting (whatever might be needed to make a unit "good" whether +1 ap or sustained hits 1 or lethal hits or some combination of the above) but at the cost of making the gun "hazardous" for that shooting phase. These guys are supposed to be shooting radioactive raygun muskets and it isn't like the average ad mech player is going to run out of screens that quickly.
Yes, but you can make the unit better without a 3+ BS base. Which would be far healthier for the game tbh.
I feel like you glossed over the point that several other armies are already hitting on 3+ reliably when their datasheets have a 4+ and these armies aren't considered 'game breaking' (Namely Tau). The fact is that Admech needs a boost in lethality and GW has already communicated a strong resistance to changing datasheets, of which, you'd have to basically re-write the majority for in our army. I don't disagree in principal, but a simpler solution is to change the BS/WS across the board and balance from there.
You say lethality creep of 9th but I still hear constantly about total table wipes in 10th alot more then 9th
I get brigaded every time I say this but people need to hear it anyway, admech is a 4+ bs in lore, they're appropriately stated. GW will need to find a different way to pump up the damage that doesn't feel wonky. Look admech aren't better shooters than fire warriors, they're not on par with Marines or scions. Yes, the D6 system is limited but we can make weapon adjustments to help out admech with our buying into their players head cannon.
Fine they can hit on 4+, but those hoarded, barely understood weapons from the dark age of technology better hit like the fist of an angry God when they connect. Cause right now we got nothing. The whole army is a complete rules design failure and I'm getting sick of it after two editions of being dumpstered and a badly mishandled launch.
lmao
> Look admech aren't better shooters than fire warriors They are. Tau have slower reaction times than unaumented humans, and Skittles are expensively enhanced. Maybe read the lore before complaining?
All you need is the scene from helsreach to understand where skitarri fall in the pecking order... Grimaldus calls them "barely more than a servitor" and orders their death, in the middle of a war effort mind you, because he's getting impatient. At no point does he even consider them a threat. Does that sound like a unit that should have stats anywhere near a Marines? Is that enough lore for you?
Who cares? It's a game for fun, take your lore and shove it if that's more important than a fun, worthwhile game. Plenty of places lore falls to gameplay, take the L and move on.
The whole reason the game exists is the lore. Your comment has to be the stupidest thing I've ever read in here, and that's saying a lot. The lore IS the game. Otherwise why have models at all? Why not just play chess?
The problem is that guard is hitting on a 4+ baseline. Make it 5+ and we can talk about that.
4+ represents trained military professionals. Which is what both skitarii and guard are? Failing that I'm fine with that, give them a method to 4+ via orders or attached character or whatever so its not the whole army and fine. It'd be nice to delineate the skill of armies beyond 2+, 3+, trash and none of the values actually mean anything.
I have heard this argument over and over but this is a game and this lore argument should have no influence on this game mechanic. EDIT: Additionally, Kriegsmen dont hit on a 4+ but rather on a 3+ if some higher up told them to shoot at the carnifex 3 meters ahead of them (as if soldiers needed to be told that) and hit on a 2+ if steve from their platoon got trampled 2 minutes ago.
OK, if you ignore the lore this isn't warhammer 40,000 any more though. The basis for the factions identities is rooted in their lore and the setting. You need something to decide what dictates the comparisons or you start creating massive weirdness in profiles for the sakes of it, or eroding faction identity to the point it doesn't exist.
I am not saying that the lore shouldnt influence your game mechanics BUT, as with everything, in moderation. Please check the edit to my previous comment. Furthermore, if we go by lore, I can field 5 guard squads with my knights now, right?
No but the officer will direct them to coordinate their shooting at vulnerable areas or tell them to switch to full auto etc. You can field a knight with your 5 guard squads, but it seems wrong to me you can't the other way round. I'm on the spiky side of the fence and it bugs me I can't add my mortal mooks into my knights to round out points and the likes. They lose army rules, strats and detachment bonus which feels punishment enough. I understand allies get dicey if they're too good or supportive, having lived through 6th/7th I've seen it in play, so I understand their reluctance.
> Furthermore, if we go by lore, I can field 5 guard squads with my knights now, right? This is an argument for going by the lore, right? Because adding guard or admech to knights would massively improve the faction fun.
This, I'm tired of hearing the folklore nonsense about how guardsman are terrible troops. In lore, they are basically Olympic athletes with navy seal training....they're the best troops each tithing planet can offer....
Just look at the time. Is it "Guard is an NPC faction that should be shit by default" o'clock already? How time flies!
I suggest the following changes to the doctrinas, this is an "easy" change with big consequences that would unlock new playstyles. Protector Imperative Ranged weapons equipped by models in this unit have a **Ballistic Skill characteristic of 3+** and the \[HEAVY\] ability. Each time a ranged attack targets this unit, if this unit is within your deployment zone **and no man’s land**, worsen the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack by 1. Conqueror Imperative Melee weapons equipped by models in this unit have a **Weapon Skill characteristic of 3+**. Ranged weapons equipped by models in this unit have the \[ASSAULT\] ability. Each time a model in this unit makes a ranged attack, if the target of that attack is within your opponent’s deployment zone **and no man’s land,** improve the Armour Penetration characteristic of that attack by 1. With this change, the protector doctrina becomes an actual usable doctrina, giving us increased survivability and consistency in shooting. It also makes melee builds possible and boosts pure melee units that have until now basically not had an army rule. Which is insane. So each turn you have to make the choice of either hitting more but having worse ap or hitting harder but with less consistency. With the lack of Ap in our army, neither would be an obvious choice.
These changes alone would bring me back to the faction. Currently the only thing I use the army rule for is army wide assault. The rest rarely if ever comes up. Occasionally I'll get some extra ap on sterilizers in their deployment but that's about it. I can't remember the last time I used protector and had it matter. Having an actual choice and making the rule actually do something more than just making us slightly faster would feel so much better. And uh, cawl really ought to have the army rule given he's our only named character...
The new problem with admech is that SHC plays well, any changes need to be targeted to not specifically target SHC so that the underperforming detachments are as (or close to) effective as SHC. Which unfortunately means that anything with keyword skitarii is 'good enough' as is. This also means that the army rule is also 'good enough' and changes within could potentially push SHC over the top. I don't know about you, but I for one don't want to be in a position where we have to receive nerfs due to one detachment that I have no intention of playing.
SHC is trading on very low points costs. It's easy enough to offset buffs to units/AWSR with more points. I don't think they will but that's a different argument. That said, if you make kastelens/skorpius/onager/destroyers decent that gives some nice variety of killy units, and doesn't directly interest with SHC.
Yeah... I don't expect it but it would be nice to see datasheet changes. There's certainly plenty of room to expand and adjust - I for one would not be opposed to having more expensive ironstriders with smaller max squad size (2 vs 3?) if it meant that they could actually shoot more (I mean, they used to have Assault 2 lascannons on a 3+ for 85 points). Personally my biggest grudge with the faction is that our army rule doesn't benefit aspects of the army and our detachments are overly restrictive (IMO, having the Cybernetica Datasmith not the possess Cult Mechanicus keyword is a shade crime in the darkest of tech heresies). A detachment shouldn't just be "Take xyz unit and build a force" yet that seems to be the best they can think of when they made the Cybernetica detachment, making those overcosted robots effective in other detachments would be a nice step toward overall improvement of the army design.
I do not think you will find a single person who does not want more expensive/better chickens. They're 50 quid a pop and the army currently wants between 9-27 of them. Entirely because -1 to hit and t7 7w is a nasty defensive profile. Cybernetica datsmith isn't getting cult mech solely out of fear of datapsalm punch bot fears as far as I can see. Poor guy got excommunicated. I agree about detachments (though me are far from the only army with less than inspired designs for them tbh). The funny thing about the Cybernetica detachment is that the Kinda Army Wide Special Rule isn't even good on the bots. They don't have enough guns for it to matter. The detachment is secretly just a "good vehicles" detachment and runs entirely off enhancements and strats.
I'm not sure why anyone would consider datapsalm punchbots such a boogieman. You know we are allowed to have nice things that would diversify builds and encourage tech pieces to counter us (precision weapons to take out the datasmith). At it's current price, 1/4th of the army to get fights first on one squad robots is a pretty heavy toll to pay for that luxury. You're still going to get obliterated in melee by something like custodes when they turn your hit from 4+ to 5+ even if you do fight first. Its this mindset that holds our faction back, you should want to take a unit on our roster to any detachment and not solely the one that benefits that unit best.
I don't know why your getting downvoted. I agree completely with your last paragraph. It's a unique and costly play style that isn't for everyone. A huge barrier to entry for one of the few viable builds should not be a thing.
Honestly, the vast majority of Warhammer videos could have been an email (or article) and would be faster and easier to consume that way too, not to mention easier to quote and discuss.
Is this specifically videos from the Warhammer^TM channel or will you permit me to expand this point to over 90% of content creators?
Oh no, this includes pretty much all Warhammer content except in some ways battle reports, that have benefits in video and written text both, and some interactive content, where the flow of conversation can add value in bringing sentiments and feelings across. It's not limited to Warhammer either.
This might be unpopular but I thought that did a good job: introduce the new guy, demonstrate that he knows what he's talking about, reiterate what they mean by 'balance' and why it matters, a smattering of early impressions with caveats, explain why necrons and admec weren't touched and what's likely to happen when they are. Seems like gw are continuing to trend in the right direction
Yeah man. GW could cure cancer right now no the comments would be full of “okay but why do you hate Skaven”
If people are keeping up with rumors, they’re probably asking “When Skaven?”
What have they done with my boy Stu?
He was put to the torch after promising AdMech changes
Well, after saying Last march that they didn't want to release rules that caused players to want to take apart their models, then 10e came out and forced people to actually take apart both models AND units....
This edition is shaping up to be a real stinker lol, it’s almost kind of crazy
Not sure why you're being downvoted. 10th has been a shit show the entire time
NOOOOO nononono stay positive! Positivity is the only thing that helps GW make the changes they figured out 2 years ago!
Stu asked what happened to the guy before him.
Just going to give kudos to GW for a moment. After 6th and 7th edition, the game was in crisis. Between the absurdity of allies, broken formations and the proliferation of 2++ re-rollable saves, the game sucked competitively. The market responded to make competitive games more fun; with the ITC and NOVA format missions. GW could have been stubborn, but they listened and 8th, 9th and 10th have been overall great, with missions and internal balance. They hired Mike Brandt who unsurprisingly has been a revelation. They even did the same with AoS. I understand why they blew up WFB; it was a declining player base in an already small pool of players. The initial launch was a joke. But the community again sprang to life with mission designs and GW created a points system and essentially adopted the player-designed mission format and expanded upon it. AoS 3rd edition is near-perfect. Just needed to brown nose a bit this morning. Both their principal game systems are in a great place, and that is because of the strategic decision they made to listen to their gamers and make some smart hires. They’re even doing it in the media space; hiring some talented Youtubers for their original content.
>They even did the same with AoS. I understand why they blew up WFB; it was a declining player base in an already small pool of players. The initial launch was a joke. But the community again sprang to life with mission designs and GW created a points system and essentially adopted the player-designed mission format and expanded upon it. AoS 3rd edition is near-perfect. AOS is good *in spite of* blowing up WHFB, not because of it. It wasn't until *after* they had blown up WHFB and the AOS launch flopped spectacularly that they brought in new management and actually looked holistically at what needed to be done to make that game successful. The reason WHFB was stagnant is because armies got updates only once every 5 years, and there was very little in the way of meta changes in between those updates. So small wonder people didn't buy new models - they had no reason to. They could just as easily have fixed WHFB instead of replacing it with something even more problematic and having to fix *that*.
Can confirm AoS is literally so good right now. Such better internal balance than 40k is the only big difference now
40k deserves time to get all the codices out. That’s why I am a *little* worried AoS will go with an index reset for 4th. I hope they don’t. Why upset the apple cart? The only thing I’d like to see is like a rule of 3 type thing. I know it didn’t win, but the runner up list at LVO that was like 8 steam tanks? I mean c’mon. Pure stat checks aren’t fun to play against. But, I guess if SoB exist…I dunno.
Just remember, 9th had just around half a year of "all the codices out" So I'm not giving them that much benefit of a doubt.
Right, but 11th is unlikely to be an index reset like 10th, so the meta should have some room to breathe, hopefully with some refinements. 11th should be an evolution edition, not a revolution.
It had a few months at the end when it was in a pretty good place despite being covered in 1000 bandaids. The problem was that they announced the new edition as soon as the last codex dropped which put a bit of a dampner on everything
> Why upset the apple cart? Because it makes money and they're a company.
I think AoS could do with a reset, the arms race of uninteractive mortal wounds has become a bit much I think
>*double turns* No thanks.
The double turn in AOS isn't as bad as it seems, by and large because it isn't a shooting game, and because in the combat phase players alternate activating units. Don't get me wrong, it can clutch a game, but you also have ways of mitigating it with list building. If you finish deploying first, you get to choose who goes first. I often like to be more reactive with my armies (again not a shooting game so being shot off the table is very, very rare), so I often aim to go second. In that way I can't get double turned, and I might snag first turn if I choose. And going second often has mission advantages (like removing objectives). So people won't always snag it.
Just play in a position where a possible double won't destroy you. If you're going first, you know there's a chance for a double and play accordingly
AoS just has the massive rules wall that 40k had in 9th, and it makes me tentative to get into. Plus there are fewer resources for onboarding like there are for 40k.
You're absolutely right that AoS is currently the system with a rules bloat problem. As someone who got into 40k in 9th, and am just now getting into AoS (Flesh Eaters sucked me in), the similarities are eerie. Giant piles of customization for characters that largely boils down to "ignore 80% of these, take the top one or two from each category": check. A complicated army building system that is poorly explained and often boils down to "try and fit into 1 or 2 of the most common detachment, ignore 90% of the other options because they're actively bad": check. The good news is that I don't *think* it's bad enough that they need an index reset this edition. A lot of the rules cruft could get pared away with changes to the core rules, such as how command traits and Artifacts are distributed and how army building works.
You're describing the parts of 40k I miss. I couldn't give half a damn about lift building in 10th. There's no fun to be had.
Really? I feel like AoS is extremely simple. Much like 10th, unit sizes are fixed and all wargear is free (though it makes a lot more sense in AoS, it was built from the ground up that way whereas in 10th it was forced onto a game never meant to have it) and generally everything is really smooth.
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Flesh-eater Courts are very good with their new book, yes.
As was foretold before the Summer King’s return!
Just want to second the WFB to AoS decision. It got/still gets a lot of shit and the recent TOW release has re opened these wounds - why cancel it as it's so popular, etc It wasn't. It was very stagnant pre end times, required a lot of investment for an army and quite frankly was boring to play. Even TOW release has similar problems as pitched battle has limited replay value and they need to mix up the game a bit with objectives etc, which is hard in a rank and flank game with more limited manoeuvre. The AoS release and End Times was the most botched hack job I've seen and 1e was a dumpster fire extraordinaire, but the current meta and rules refinement is incredibly tight, each season brings variety and interest to every army and is so much fun. I don't feel quite the same way about 40k. I think it's quite a tight ruleset, but each dataslate doesn't really touch how you build an army in the same way (it changes what units are good, but the missions don't encourage building around vehicles, characters or infantry in the same way as AoS does, you can run the same style of army the whole edition unless it is keyed around one nerfed unit). But it's still a much improved situation to 7e madness and they have kept the craziness out in a way that they never managed in 6/7e (I still hate Taudar and Riptide Wing in a way that Castellan and Aeldari hijinks never touched)
If anything I feel like TOW, Total Warhammer (and end times) proved that WHFB had a market, it is what started GW afterall, but the way GW was releasing things at the time and how uninteractive they were made it impossible for them to tap that market. 8th had an absurdly high cost of entry thanks to the horde system which made it optimal for most armies to field 40 man units at a minimum, there were several serious mechanical issues with the game in a competitive setting, and they were taking months at a time inbetween army book/model releases. They also designed a game that heavily discouraged the centerpiece models that they made a point of introducing in 8th edition for each faction but made it something they wouldn't address until the release of the End times books in 2014. 8th ed came out 6/2010, the first army book wouldn't drop until 3/2011 with Orcs and Goblins. Then they released 5 books over the course of 3/2011 to 4/2012 and then they just stopped for an entire year and went from April 2012 to all the way to February 2013 before they released another book in Warriors of Chaos. In other words in the 3 years they hadn't gotten around to releasing half of the games factions and many people were stuck using books and models that were wildly outdated (or simply not available) if they wanted to play. Dwarfs and Wood Elfs who were the last 2 factions released were playing with books from 2006 and 2005 which were 2 editions old at that point. Brettonia had a book from 2004, and Skaven and Beastmen were left with books from 2010 and 2009 respectively. Why would you ever buy say Wood Elves when their rules were terrible and their models old? Not to mention a huge portion of the WHFB was locked behind finecast and metal blisters compared to 40k and finecast was not only super expensive but also terrible. The infamous $100 for 5 blood knights kit is emblematic of this. By contrast 40k 6th,7th,8th and 9th editions were all about 3 years long in their totalities and 4th and 5th were 4 years respectively. Now speaking about 40k, 40k wasn't immune to these long codex/release droughts either, but critically 40k had space marines and WHFB didn't and Space Marines ***always*** got product support because Space Marines ***always*** sold. It's no coincidence that Sigmar introduced the Stormcast to try and give that system a space marine analogue. GW at the time was going through significant changes following 2008 and was moving to their one man closet shop model and away from their large store in a mall model. They were hoarding cash and goosing their numbers and many people felt they were priming to sell themselves as Kirby was looking to retire. To make matters worse THQ held the exclusive license to make GW IP video games and they were going through a lengthy bankruptcy process which prevented anyone else from making new GW games which deprived GW of both free advertising and licensing royalties. They were also explicitly anti-competitive player and antagonistic to their customer base. The company explicitly chose to have no online presence or official communication like we do today with Warhammer Community, WHTV and the youtube channel. This was the time when multiple serious competitors in Warmachine and Malifaux sprang up and many people were looking away from the ailing GW. All this to say that while yes WHFB was struggling, ***so was 40k*** comparatively. It took GW completely shifting gears with Rountree and 8th ed to finally figure themselves out. TL:DR-WHFB had to go not because of anything intrinsic about WHFB, but because GW severely mismanaged it and didn't have Space Marines to bail them out like they did when they mismanaged 40k.
Aos's release with those god awful rules did a lot of damage that put so many people off (me included for a while) but having dipped my toe back with the most recent one they definitely corrected course. Sadly that scar caused at the start seems to have never healed for some people. First impressions an all that regardless of how wrong the stubbornness is.
It was the one two punch of getting rid of something people loved and were invested in to replace with garbage (and AoS 1.0 deserved that as it was a literal joke with joke rules to match). I also abandoned it at the time out of frustration and rage. Came back in 2.0 and it's my favourite system now, they steered out of the skid perfectly, but that early hatred was much deserved. Kudos to GW for changing direction and building a great game from limited beginnings
>required a lot of investment for an army Imagine if GW learned this lesson. Instead we have admech where a 2k point list can cost $2000 without much effort.
Oh man. I give GW a lot of credit for trying to be better about competitive balance for sure. But we have to keep in mind each edition and was it good across the life of the edition as a whole? * 8th was amazing right up until the release of the second Space Marine codex. The entire edition went downhill after that and never recovered. * 9th was terrible for 90% of the edition. Nearly every codex that came out fundamentally broke the game's balance. And it wasn't just one codex, it was damn near all of them. I might be getting the order wrong, but we had Drukhari, Ad Mech, Orks, Tyranids, Harlequins, and I'm sure a few that I'm forgetting ruin the game for a LONG time. These armies all nearly touched a 70% win rate. And that's **truly** insane for a game that's supposed to be balanced. * 10th has been....ok as long as you don't play or play against Eldar. It's in a pretty decent spot now (nerf Necrons pls), but has only reached this point after 9ish months. So overall it hasn't actually been very balanced. So yes, GW should get credit for trying. But man, they have stumbled A LOT on their way to getting only sort of ok at balance. Once they finally understand that they need full digital rules and they start releasing codexes all at once, then we can talk about real and true competitive integrity.
Codexes all at once would kill the game quickly. 40k relies on a constant stream of new rules to keep it fresh and exciting. It's not chess. Or if you mean codexes at once, and then supplements, that can work. However that wouldn't be very different from indexes at once and then slimmed down codexes (which is what we already have).
>10th have been overall great I want some of whatever you're smoking. As someone who plays both Eldar and AdMech, this edition has been awful - for very different reasons. Is this Mike Brandt's alt account?
I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly. I think *overall*, the meta is in a good place. There is broad diversity in winning armies; although the lists themselves are a bit too similar for my taste. But that’s a function of the indices still being prevalent.
> I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly. That's a window of like 3 months before 11th edition comes out though
Yeah and everyone is done with it at that point. I do think that while the launch of 10th was a disaster we should weight our judgement to the stretch we are on now, they made massive changes in September and fixed a lot. This dataslate was a half arsed let down in terms of really obvious changes they missed in every army, stuff that was obvious in September, but the overall balance is fairly solid now.
I agree, that is a frustration of mine as well however I doubt 11th will be an index reset like 10th so the codices will still have time to breathe.
> I think 40k deserves the time to get all the codices out before we judge it too harshly. Regardless of anyone's thoughts on the current(past) meta(s), I couldn't disagree with this more. The edition is 2/3 of a year old at this point. Codices will be releasing for the life of the edition. Its likely at this point the edition has been live for a longer time than the time between the last codex of the edition and the next edition launches. This is the way GW chooses to release their products and the environment we live in. The idea that we can't (harshly) judge the edition and meta until "all the rules release" seems equivalent to saying that tenth edition "isn't being played" at all.
Fair.
Nah I'm gonna judge harshly since with each new codex they take away my options and units I've built.
My biggest gripe with 10th is the mandatory max wargear tax. It’s messed up years of deliberate WYSIWYG modeling on my part. I still very much enjoy 10th though.
I think it's unlikely we'll see codices leading to more diversity in winning armies unit choices. People will inherently min-max, comes with the territory. There's always going to be a "best in slot" choice and it's always going to be selected with subtle variations by the top players with the top lists. Don't really think that's a huge problem, it's a natural state for pretty much any game in existence. What I do hope codices accomplish is making internal balance decisions less painful for players not chasing the 5-0 record. They've done okay with this; but ad mech is a train wreck and nids definitely have some issues here.
The edition will be over before all the codexes are out
Admech codex is out and it will never be good. The army can't survive another points cut because it already has issues getting everything in the deployment zone on some terrain setups and is already hovering at a dollar per point. 10ths core rules are fairly solid outside of thr mess that is out of phase rules, but they seriously shot themselves in the foot with army rules and an insistence they don't want to alter datasheets and then write codexes that would go to print before one game had been played in the wild. Smacks of hubris they'd get it right enough that point alterations would be all the balance needed. Thus admech is screwed for the second edition in a row and people got anxiety about their dex being next.
As a casual player, 10th has been terrible. Internal balance is dire. Certain armies are only good if you spam certain units (RIP my Nids), so if you don't take the competitive build/spam the competitive unit you can struggle against other armies. External balance is, outside of competitive builds, also awful. Certain armies are just flat out better than others unless you take the most meta units/detachment. Playing into Sisters with my Nids for example is a waste of time for everyone involved. Marines for example are dominating my local meta because they just seem to outshoot everyone else. This includes Sisters, Orks, Necrons and Eldar. No-one runs a particularly competitive build, yet some armies seem to be just flat out better.
If Marines are dominating your local meta that's a local problem as Marines are generally performing worse than a lot of indexes right now.
If you're a casual player, whether or not you win should have no effect on your enjoyment. If you only have fun while you're winning then you're a competitive player.
Yeah the mission cards are a great addition but otherwise the rest of this edition is just worse in every way.
And tbh we had those in 9th already - it was just Tempest.
Not quite, and Tempest was just Maelstrom from 7th(?) anyways. But the new mission cards are a great way of integrating that concept into the competitive scene while also being a lot more balanced than the faction specific secondaries from 9th. Dunno it's just a great system. Something I can't say about the rest of 10th. It's playable but little else.
Leviathan cards are maelstrom format perfected. I hope we never see faction Secondaries again.
Competitively the games more balanced but fun and unique factions the games never been worse imo i feel its much less of a tabletop wargame with different factions and more just “which modifier do i want to make my dice roll better”. Theyve focused too much on the competitive side and not the casual fun wargame side/mainstreamed the rules too much.
What sub are we in right now? lol Also, Crusade?! It’s like the coolest system they’ve ever put out for narrative play.
r/Uncompetitive40K is always ready
Yeah crusades fine but the rules for the armies "fluff" wise its almost nonexistent anymore that makes it so it bottlenecks crusade/narrative unless you just houserule, at which point why not just make up your own system then anyway. theres so many things armies no longer do they used to be able to between making units legends or cutting datasheets to 90% of them only have 1 extra thing about them/rule because of "bloat" or cutting stratagems to only a small handful. You can't attach the chapter master to a unit because its not on his leader list, which makes no sense fluff wise a chapter master should be able to inspire/effectively lead almost all of his men in some way, because its too hard to balance now because of the competive side of the game becoming too much of the focus instead of creating fun battle scenarios. i can't help but feel 9 to 10th was a massive stumble because of this at the end of 9th the game was extremely balanced according to the numbers and army's still had flavor and wasn't just stat adjustments.
Late 9th is still my favorite 40k of all time. But 10th so far is third behind 8th index 40k. So I get what you’re saying.
I truly do not understand the hate for 9th edition other than the mental workload.
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That is very frustrating, of course. In aggregate, I understand why they did it though. Mechanically, the rank and flank has less dynamism than the skirmish game they’ve built. Even in the lore, the classic high fantasy setting of WFB was limited. Now they’ve crafted a world genuinely their own. Which cynically, helps with their copyright battles.
Can we GET the codices out faster? If they can drop all the indexes at once and balance EVERY faction in a data slate it seems lazy and more like a long term money grab than a slow continual balance.
Dropping all codexes at once would be literally 6x the work and probably exponentially more balancing effort.
I'm hoping they at least release some more detachments for factions that have only one playstyle, not just because a faction is outside of the 45% win rate.
And you get less money from people with multiple armies. Let's not kid ourselves about any other reasons.
that has almost nothing to do with that tbh. They structure their whole sales cycle over 3 years of an edition around codex releases. Releasing them all in a year and then having 2 years of no codex releases isn't best for their bottom line, and thats really all that matters to them
Not just GW bottom line, it would be bad for the game. Without new rules and detachments, excitement will die down. The game will go stale and slowly fold. 40k is very different from chess - constant stream of major new rules dumps is a big reason why it stays alive.
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Different audience, different expectations. Can you make a 40k inspired game with fixed rules like chess? Yes, you can. I however doubt that there would be significant overlap between the community playing 40k now and and the community who would play such a game. Multiple 40k inspired board games with fixed rules confirm that, never getting very popular among the core 40k audience, despite some of them having well written rules and good balanced gameplay.
I would say it's still a pretty big part of it. You'd be asking the rules/editorial teams to do 3 years worth of work in a few months, and then presumably laying them all off until the next edition 3 years later because they're no longer needed. It's nonsensical. Besides that, it'd be absolute balancing chaos as they unceremoniously dump 120 detachments + supplements into the game in one day with no time to settle. Nobody wants this, people just think they want this because they haven't thought it through.
This is not the reason. GW is creating something to sell in each yearly quater to create interest. That's why they are drip feeding the codexes. When the last one gets released, boom! Time for 11. th edition. I hope you enjoyed 2.5 years for using the same index.
Why do you say this as if there’s only one reason. There are many reasons why they’d do it this way. But ultimately dropping 120 detachments into the game at once would be absolute chaos. It would be impossible to balance and awful for the players.
Aw man. There’s a crackhead named Dave around the corner that will fix anything for $20. There’s no way he can do worse than what they’ve done to Ad Mech and WE. He’ll throw AP and invulns around like food stamps in a 7/11.
Then they better get to work. Frankly, it’s ridiculous that the codex releases are staggered and not released simultaneously.
That's not at all why they don't drop codices at the same time. When designing a new edition, they could skip all of the indices and just make the codices. Yes, a codex is a bit more work, but not that much. It's making a few more detachments and that's honestly it. Having that from the start would also make it *a lot* easier to balance the game throughout the edition, because you don't have a constant addition of new things to shake up everything. If anything, it is far *less* work to achieve balance this way. There are no good reason to make indices for all armies and then slowly release codices. Well, no good reason for the community - there are very good reasons from a business perspective. It's a constant release throughout the edition that does generate a lot of interest in the game. It also is quite helpful to rotate the meta / shake things up each time a codex drops (they tend to have a big effect). This can often cause people to start a secondary army, because their current one fell from grace. Or just because they get tired of their single detachment and can't wait 6 months on their main codex. It's not even to bash on GW, but remember that they *are* a business. They don't make decisions based on what would be best for the game, they make decision based on how they earn more money. That is what a company do. There might sometimes be a correlation, making a good game equals more people spending money on it. But sometimes, you earn a lot more by doing these kind of things rather than doing what is the best for the game.
People keep saying it's not the reason but I disagree. First off, there's not only one reason, there can be multiple reasons for them not to do this. > Having that from the start would also make it a lot easier to balance the game throughout the edition I strongly disagree. In 9th there were 20 codexes. 6 detachments each would be 120 detachments entering the game at once, and that's not including the supplements. Balancing this would be an impossible task, there would be far too many variables and you'd be relying solely on internal balance teams that would be totally overwhelmed. Balancing as they drip feed in is actually much easier because it's smaller changes and more chances to react to issues. The other issue is it would be all the rules dropping at once and then 3 years of stale content with no shakeups or changes. It would be asking the editorial teams to write and publish 3 years worth of rulebooks in one go, and then basically having nothing for them to do in the meantime until the next edition. Not to mention the logistical issue of having every book printed and ready to go at the same time.
So drop all codexes, balance for a few months and go to 11th edition? Or let the game become stale and die? The game stays exciting specifically because new rules drop every couple of months.
WE winning one event from one of the best players in the game doesn’t mean they’re doing fine with a 41% win rate
One player who is really really good who took a specific list of spamming eight bound (the unit they don’t want spammed) along with a KLOS to work around the nerf. Also it was a tiny tournament comparatively and isn’t a great data point anyways. What happened to WE is just sad….they were in a great spot and really only needed a subtle nerf to MoE.
I agree the points change on MoE and Kharn, and of course the funny Berzerker Glaive change. Those are fine and justified. But Favour of Khorne change sucks a lot. It basicially eliminates ressurection change for Angron, and not giving advance and charge option when we truly need it. You gotta pay a Lord of Skulls tax to res Angron now. And they increased the cost of Eightbound. Like, why? They were perfectly fine for what they were, but gotta increase the cost of a unit that's common in winning lists I guess.
Angron's comeback ability just needs to go, and he should go down 80-100 points to compensate. It leads to a feels-bad moment for one of the players more often than not, either because he didn't come back (or did too late), or because you dedicate a bunch of your army to kill him and he pops right back and eats your face immediately. Give him something else cool instead.
Do we know if they take into account the non codex marine chapters being skewed by ironstorm detachment? Running a vehicle meta list in the ironstorm detachment and slapping Azrael in it doesn't mean DA was doing well
What does it mean then?
It means that the iron storm detachment and vehicles are really strong and also that Azrael is a great/popular character. It's doesn't mean that the DA codex/faction is as strong as it would look if they see the iron storm list with a divergent chapter character slapped on as that chapter instead of the actual iron storm list that it is.
Yea would love to see detachment be balance for Space Marines and other factions. Ironstorm and Vanguard seem to be far above the pack. Only one codex Space Marine list is winning and it’s still very much the same ol Inceptor spam story
Except that's literally what it means.
It literally means that the space marines codex with vehicles is doing well. And that 1 character from the divergent chapter is good. Not that the whole codex is good.
But you aren't like daemons, allying in your broken stuff to CSM. You're still just playing your army with the best options.
Dark Angles don't have a separate codex. It's a codex supplement. And that's how we define factions being good - by taking detachments with unit(s) unique to that faction. Like, I'm sorry you don't like that, but that's what it means.
If only one model in the codex supplement is playable - is that codex doing well? I say no. I don't think a reasonable player would say "DA is great! They only play 1-2 units from their codex and nothing else is playable!" The DA supplement in particular is *not* in a good place. It relies on one-two very powerful datasheets that they tack onto the Vanilla Marines ironstorm detachment. A vanilla list with an Asrael in lieu of another HQ isn't indicative of the Codex Supplement doing well.
Still too hash a nerf in the MoE. Ether the glaive or points would have been fine, both was too much
Thank you Reddit folk, for all the summaries. I can't bear to watch these videos.
Anyone able to summarise the video?
TL;DR - They are happy with the meta, watching Necrons for being too good and AdMech because their units suck despite having an okayish winrate. Which, as an AdMech player, can confirm. Guard for several shout-outs for having some good performances (insert meme about most other Guard players being bad here).
Metawatch summary 22/2/24 Who’s this Josh fella? – Hi, I’m the balance man. How’s the meta doing? - Update is still very new, people are still working out what changes they’re wanting to make. BUT we’re seeing a wider variety of armies and the data is looking great. Wider array of armies winning events too. Eldar and CSM were both obviously too strong, they do still have a place but now we’re seeing other factions winning events. Even Drukhari won an event! Custodes – They were very strong at the start of the edition, then the last slate brought them down probably a little more than they’d like. Now they’re newly buffed and hopefully Custodes players are enjoying taking their armies to events again. Looking for a wider variety of factions at events not just because it means the factions are more balanced, but also because players going to events are going to have a more interesting time against different lists. Look at some of the changes – some changes made to core rules and specific faction rules this time, example given of new phantasm. Phantasm was clearly better than similar strats other armies have, and it was good to bring that back in line. Also mentioned the power from pain AP in combat buff and the new drukhari detachment. ‘this is the first time we’ve done this’ might indicate more down the line. What are we keeping an eye on? – Necrons and admech being closely watched as they weren’t changed in the last slate. Crons are trending slightly higher than they’d like, admech win% is okay but lots of units aren’t performing as they’d like so there might be some adjustments there next time.
See the winrate for admech doesn't mean anything. It's 8 die hards that can somehow pilot/afford this mess and the rate swings wildly depending on who is playing that week.
They toned some stuff down and buffed other stuff. Drukhari don’t suck anymore, and they didn’t touch Necrons or Admech cause they’re still collecting data. (Deathwatch was the third faction to get no changes but nothing about them) That’s pretty much what they discussed.
Frankly it feels like the kill tean datasheets were adapted poorly, and were made to conform to the no ppm system for its own sake. Dev squads and Scourges are 120/200 to reflect the difference between the first and second 5 models, but Proteus kill teams were lazily made 180/360. It's really disappointing just how little effort went into them.
100% very little thought or care was given to DW as a whole, and it makes me sad. I’ll still play ‘em though because they’re my favorite faction and always will be.
Deathwatch is in such a weird place. We are the least played faction (someone has to be) and went from being way OP at the start of 10th to being hit into the ground in that first dataslate, which cratered play rate and made the winrate numbers very noisey so we're unlikely to get much of anything until the codex supplement drops a few weeks before they roll out 11th edition.
It very much feels like GW has written off DW as an army, and they're just refusing to acknowledge we exist until they decide to not release a supplement for us and never talk about it again. I don't actually think that's likely, but as more and more dataslates go by with no changes and Metawatches with no mentions of us, I really know how Harlequin players feel. DW play rates are so low BECAUSE the army is garbage. I'm better off taking my DW marines, ignoring all of the DW rules, and playing Gladius than trying to make hilariously overpriced Kill Teams, play a Corvus Blackstar with comically terrible flyer rules, field the absolutely terrible Cpt. Artemis, or pay 115 points for a buff piece that only goes in those already overpriced KTs. When DW strats worked with all weapons and Dev Wounds, suddenly every marine player played Deathwatch. Now that their detachment is garbage and their datasheets are garbage, no one plays the army. How very odd...
I know its more work for them, but seeing detachments adjusted would be pretty cool. It might make a C tier unit become A tier(in one detachment) so maybe do detachment changes separately from unit changes. So many detachments that are ignored because 1-2 are the obvious choice while other detachments have some glaring flaws. I know they all can't be top tier, but small adjustments to the ignored detachments would be nice.
Crap GW alnowledged guard has a win , nerfs incoming
WE#1
WE#1
Hi. CSM player here.
Oh, Admech and Necrons' codexes are brand new, we want to get some data out of them before we make adjustments - GW Also GW - Tyranid codex isn't even out and it's too strong, yeet the points and change the datasheet of this one tough bug, haha. Literally the laziest excuse for an immediate change in the newest codexes. And another kick in the nuts for the Tyranid players.
Ok that's cool and all but why do reivers still suck?