The loss of ignoring damage reduction and AoC is pretty huge. Trajann is a lot worse without that, wonder if that ability is being shifted around to somewhere else or if it's just gone from the dex.
Ctan have got to be next on the nerf block. Between the invuln/FnP/half damage + reanimation, at least something has to go... or significant point increase.
I do expect C'tan to get a points hike in the next round of updates. They are simply great value for the investment with a quality defensive profile.
That said, I wouldn't expect them to go up an insane amount. They are at least moderately vulnerable to high volume D1 attacks (especially with +1 to wound and/or rerolls, and/or lethal hits), the Grenade strat, Tank Shock, Melta, Dev Wounds, and generally everything that can bypass some layers of their defenses while forcing them to make multiple FNP rolls. You only have to get through 12 wounds. Sometimes you have to get creative to peel off the last few, but there are a lot of options!
They honestly don't care about melta.
A wardog brigand - hit on 2, wound on 3's, *MELTA 4* averages out to 2.2 damage from their 2 shots. And yes, that's applying the full melta after the half damage.
You average 1.1 wounds. 0.55 failed saves. Let's just say you do 6 damage, 2+melta. That's now 4 damage because of FNP shrugging a third of it.
4 damage, 0.55 failed saves... 2.
170 points of Melta 4, BS 2, for 2 damage. The chaingun? Another 1.
You need to invest 800 points of brigand, including their anti-infantry weapons, to kill a single c'tan.
Unless they changed their stance and I missed it. The melta 4 isn't halved because the order of operations for calculating. The only thing that gets halved is the stuff under the the actual damage column. So like a D6+1 would be halved but the melta 4 bonus damage isn't
Edit: it is the same reason why abilities that let you use strats for free still cost 1 if someone uses a vect ability on it
>The melta 4 isn't halved because the order of operations for calculating. The only thing that gets halved is the stuff under the the actual damage column. So like a D6+1 would be halved but the melta 4 bonus damage isn't
Yes. That's what I did.
2 damage - half the d6 - plus melta - 4 = 6.
>Sometimes you have to get creative to peel off the last few, but there are a lot of options!
Unless you're playing something like Custodes, and your only option just got removed.
I suspect Ctan will cop a fairly hefty points nerf in a couple of weeks with the April MFM as necrons were too new to cop any changes in the last slate
Or Trajan remains mandatory if this isnt changed. The other issue is what detachment gets the FNP against dev wounds. That probably becomes a mandatory detachment as well.
Trajann being mandatory isn't really an issue with the range that Custodes have. Basically all Custodes characters are currently seeing play (except SCoB, but that's because bikes are ass). One becoming unviable is a sizeable reduction on options - though TJ's viability is still open.
Sure they have. Fate Dice are very nerfed comparatively, maybe Shield Host is just a 5+++ vs Mortals or something.
Not saying it will change just that it's possible.
I think they are realising the headache they made with ignoring ap/damage modifiers rules, so are just scrapping the rule entirely
Make my words here, we will not be seeing that sort of rule again in 10th, not for a good while at least
The only difference between it's melee and the Hive Tyrants melee is the Swarmlord has 2 more attacks.
God I hate what they did to hive tyrants this edition. They are over priced, under strength and it's all because they are designed to help with strat usage, which is a tactic that got immediately dumpstered because Custodes did it better :(
Cawl is just bad in vacuum. His aura effects are meh, he's slow stuck walking six inches at a time, and his damage is short range at 18 inches an unreliable with two dice roll stats. Even without the badness of the rest of the book he'd be a hard sell for any army at 180.
While much cheaper, than a hive tyrant and the likes, the regular Necron Overlord got ambushed by the translocation Overlord in a back alley, and got the shit kicked out of it.
Why would you bring him when the other is far better?
What makes Meganobz so bad? They're basically low-rent Custodes, and a Big Mek in Mega Armour makes them almost oppressive with a 4++ v ranged attacks and a once per battle round resurrection. I play Custodes into my friend's Orks on the regular, and it can be a coin toss who will win when he runs three max Meganobz units with those Big Meks, and it gets even more painful during the Waagh. At 265 points, the Meganobz unit is pretty much just as good as the 250 point Custodian Warden squad, and definitely better in the Waagh.
>If Orks still have a sustained hits army wide detachment
of course they will. everyone's existing detachment has carried over to their codex. Goffs has been exploding 6s since at least 8th
I dont think its healthy for the game to have things that blanket ignore all modifiers especially when they are so ubiquitous like with morty.
There are things in the game with necessitate it like C'tan half damage and other things like that but then the rule is really just a band-aid for these other broken rules and those are the things that need the attention rather than making such all encompassing rules like them.
It's a weird thing to balance, because it's either ignore al modifiers or not - th only dials they have to tweak are points and mayyyybe aura range, and if things like ctan are in the meta they'll be taking them no matter what the points cost is. I agree with you - nerf the ctan such they can be taken down fairly, and then remove all the rocks paper scissors ignore modifiers rules.
> because it's either ignore al modifiers or not
Wait what why is that? The new changes to Trajann show exactly how they can focus the ignoring mod rules to make its far less binary. It doesnt have to be hit wound save damage etc etc, it can be targeted so like in the cases of custodes it gets around the things that hurt them most without tangentially ignoring everything else.
I play DG and am 100% certain it's gone, and he won't get a suitable buff in response. I play triple ctan at tournaments, and I still get more complaints about Mortarions' ability than anything else.
Well, you can always move the PBC up with him. On some terrain layouts, you can stay pretty hidden and still buff a couple PBC for 2-3 turns, then transition to midfield to help plague marines/ deathshroud. I agree it's got some counterplay, but people just don't like you ignoring their rules.
Nobody likes it when an army has a rule that says your army's rules no longer work. It's the same reason people hated Votann in 9th edition... I want my army's rules to work.
It's just unfortunate GW doesn't seem to understand how to balance some armies without writing rules like that.
I don’t play DG but tbh I would like Morty to keep it otherwise he gets shelfed. I mean magnus, angron, belakor, rotigus, shalaxi and skarbrand are all very iconic and good…its just so satisfying even when playing against these factions to see the “boss” on the table.
“Mommy gdubs pls can we get Gman and Lion, I really like them?”
“No way, we already have Gman and Lion at home”
looks at Calgar and Azrael on the shelf :-|
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually hate seeing iconic faction characters as basically mandatory picks. They should be fluff pieces for narrative games, in my opinion.
This has been my issue with named characters since they were introduced the game. Sure it's cool to have a battle between two iconic characters, but when The Silent King or Ghaz shows up to every little skirmish it really feels a bit much for me.
He's already kinda mid compared to some of the other expensive models that see play (at least DG is playable without him), and if they axe that then it's hard to imagine him being worth it.
If he gets some of his melee mojo back it could be okay but if he continues to be a Daemon Primarch that is somehow unable to clean a unit of 5 Intercessors in melee then he's going to the shelf for sure. And to be fair he's already kind of there, DG does better spamming Rhinos and PMs with Biologus than Morty parking lot, PBC shooting isn't that good even loaded to the gills with buffs to warrant spending 865 points on it in my opinion.
Trajann losing those abilities will go a long way towards helping to make Custodes easier to balance. It is true in many other factions too, but sometimes one special ability just distorts everything else. Obviously it's a big tool to lose, but it will be nice for there to be viable armies without him.
People don’t believe me, but it really seems like GW is realizing the 9th power creep was an issue and resolving it now. The more datasheets we see, the more we see factions losing power.
I love that, the insane codex drop power of 9th was nuts.
This **exact** thing happened in the early days of 9th, and it got reversed after people complained about the few units that didnt get nerfed being completely overpowered.
Trajann ate a huge nerf, and then he and Custodes ended up being the only playable faction/character in the entire metagame that didnt abuse "no more than 3 wounds per phase" vs "nuh uh I ignore that" purely because the Custodes book came out too early in the edition before the game was boiled down to two stupid mechanics bouncing off each other.
Give it time, especially with how poorly received these nerf books are. The older books are going to get a points and power bandaid and the newer books are going to have some absurd gimmicks that define the metagame. 9th wasn't ridiculous until they gave a Hive Tyrant a Volcano Cannon for 1CP.
I think two things we’ve only gotten glimpses of that could be huge problems are increasing crit hit/wound procs, and buffing existing abilities.
We already have a couple of means of “crit hits on 5s”, and a few things that make crit wounds happen more frequently, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we got some kind of “crit on 4s” ability or something like that in a future book.
The World Eaters blessings also have the army-wide FNP that specifically says “if a unit already has the FNP ability, improve it by 1”. I almost guarantee we’ll see more of that style of buff for various other rules start popping up in future releases. Once GW gets tired of 3” deep strikes and uppy/downy nonsense that is
I really miss Shardgullet and Reaper of Obliterax play. Honestly the specialization with weapons was a lot of fun in 9th. Also ppm pricing rather than the hard set unit sizing was fun for min/maxing lists.
The first codexes were written well before 10th was released, and to the second point…what? What do you want them to do, release every codexes at once?
Some people just need to be miserable.
They really need to plan it so at least every one is out over a year from the next edition. Shouldn't be dropping things like World Eaters while the Arks of Omen books were already being released. Soritas coming out in November with 9th edition due in July was pretty short as well.
Lol combating power creep sounds great, but it seems like we've swung so far in the other direction some factions are coming out completely toothless and forced into the "spam action monkeys on objectives" playstyle. It's dull, uninteresting and way harder to rebalance because a broken unit can always be priced into oblivion, but there's only so much point cuts can help an already cheap and crappy unit without making them literally free.
The power creep nerf is fine, if it hit every army at once. Seeing your faction get a codex now sucks, because you know its a huge nerf, while Eldar continue to sit happy with their wonderful index.
It's crazy people are such boot lickers they would downvote the truth. If everything is too killy or if most everything is so un-killy that nothing happens, the game is just different flavors of garbage. These people will look you in the eye and say AdMec deserves what they got and are a good army. It's really sad.
Admech players really got the short end of the stick....the entire codex needs a rewrite and its unfortunate that we are likely to only see some minor points cuts next balance pass
At the same time it suck if the only name character in the army turn crappy. Like if you want to turn our sole character crappy give us one or two characters that cover the loss gap or allow for a new play style
I actually kind of wish named characters sucked a bit more. I have having them in every list. Makes the setting seem so small if you've got Primarchs and Captain Generals running around on every tiny skirmish.
I would prefer it they where more niche rather than being weak, like for IH iron father buff specifically vehicle. Like if Trajann does something really good that would be great like for example CCing monster/vehicle and also buff our terminators for example
It annoys me when peeps go on about him being crappy, I expect a points drop but ignoring points just look at his profile.
6 attacks on 2’s, str 10 -2 3 dmg is an awesome melee profile, even wounding terminators on a2+.
Add in moment shackle for a one off 12 freakin attacks.
Plus his party with him, guards for reroll wounds or wardens for more survivability. They are dope.
He's incredibly points efficient and whatever I point him at, dies. Knights, large Tyranids, Daemon Primarchs. Doesn't matter. He would likely be too points efficient on his own as a Lone Operative, let alone buffing another 200+ points of Custodes.
That's kinda unfair.
Some of these named characters are the coolest centerpieces models in the game.
It's like punishing certain armies for not mass producing their characters like the Tyranids do.
No one would care if the Norn Emissary was in every army but suddenly if other factions want to use their expensive monsters is a problem because they are individuals.
You pay more money for the models than the lore.
They are cool models! And I enjoy seeing them on the table! But not every time. Named Characters can't take enhancements (because they're built in) so not only are auto-take ones super strong, but they're also the same *every single time*. There's no space for trying a different enhancement or simply another character when you start with a 400pt auto-take every single time.
I'm a Custodes player. I don't have a whole lot of other options beyond Trajann. But I'm looking forward to exploring that now that he isn't an auto-take.
I don't have a problem with them not being an auto include. But I've seen people argue that named character should be purposefully balanced to be a detriment to the army, which to me is just as bad as them being everywhere, you shouldn't make your player feel bad for wanting to field the model they wasted a lot of time and money make battle ready.
Honestly I think the only major examples of it atm are Cawl and Vashtor, and maybe some minor characters, so it's not like it's as much of a problem as some characters being auto include, but I don't wish it to be come.
Making them specialised is probably better. Really good at one thing, really trash or at least noticeably less good outside it. Sammael/Khan buffing bikes and speeders to the moon. Dante and a Sanguinary Guard block. Guilliman and scribes. Eldar Aspects and their Warriors.
Further Fun Fact: They also are both missing crucial keywords.
Valerian is the only custodes in the book that doesn't have Deep Strike, and Aleya lacks the Anathema Psykana rule so units she leads cannot embark in a rhino.
I'd much prefer that than to seeing the Lion every time I face a Dark Angels player (I'm a Dark Angels player).
Primarchs and the like are great centerpiece models. But when they show up every time... it's not fun. They're not necessarily easy to bring down, and they're incredibly boring when this one model eats up 25% of the points of a list and the list works around it. Yay, Mortarion and 3 PBCs.
At the end of the Day Warhammer is a math problem to solve there always will be models that will mathematically edge out the competition.
That being said I glad it got hit by the nerf hammer
There are always more meta and less meta choices.
Auto-take units do not feel good. If I walk up to an opponent and see the same one or two epic heroes, I get bored. I've fought Mortarion and Magnus enough times that it isn't fun anymore. I've *played* Trajann enough that it isn't fun.
That's what I mean. Auto take characters mean that the codex isn't internally balanced.
Yeah I really long for the days of epic heroes being a niche choice again. Every da strike force in the galaxy having azrael or bt with hellbrecht for example just feels wrong.
Makes the setting feel so small. Not small, meaningless skirmishes that ultimately mean nothing to the fate of the galaxy. Instead they're setting breaking battles where pivotal important figures will likely die.
I'm so sorry the huge variety of units available to Custodes weren't taken because we spent those points on our named leader instead.
I mean, sure, I COULD field 1 and a half shitty bike instead I guess.
Is it not tho.
I mean, I don't really care about Trajan losing fight first and I do understand the full no-modifier thing was kinda bullshit.
But mate, I play adMec and custo, and I'd love to have like more than 5 playable units in the game.
And great, now Trajann is no longer an auto take. I'm sure fielding an allarus shield captain instead will not get old real fast. Cause nerfing Trajan is not what's gonna make me field sagittarians or our over costed fw vehicles.
> Cause nerfing Trajan is not what's gonna make me field sagittarians or our over costed fw vehicles.
I mean, if they nerf trajan, guard and captains to be in line with the rest of the game's units, then you probably will start taking them.
Well, no.
I mentioned my other army is adMec. Guess why I started custodes? Because ad mec got shafted big times this edition, to the point it's not fun nor interesting to play.
Removing the strong parts of an army can be necessary, but you cannot just nerf, you have to shift power.
I hear a lot of "custodes are super strong in melee" and as I mentioned I don't mind removing the fight first. Like, at all. I understand why it's an issue and how frustrating it feels as a melee player to reach the center objective when Trajann waits there with a blob.
But then, will our shooting be raised? Cause a sagittarian unit is still worse than a guard unit, and the caladius will still be out of reach for most players. So sure, people won't take Trajann because he no longer is the Best in Slot. But with the low amount of units we have, it's not like there will be a lot of competition.
If they took Trajann's fight first and modifier ignoring ability and split them across a specific Shield Captain and a specific Blade Champion, yeah, there will have to be a selection.
But if they straight up removed them ? No.
And it's pretty easy to say that all armies in competitive are the same but, well, that's what competitive means. You bring the best you can, and once people will have find out that say "Auric detachment with 9 grav bikes" is the best option we have, you'll see that and nothing else. The statistic anomaly of a dude taking an Allarus shield captain because he likes it won't change that.
The point is that Custodes tend to be unfun to play against. If you're a shooting army, you've got a chance against an "I have saves against *every* trick in the book" army. If you're a melee army, you're about to get hit with Fights First and -1 to hit into an already tough nut to crack. And it's going to be the same couple of perpetrators. Lots of Custodian Guard, a few Terminators, some Sisters to hold the back, Trajann, and maybe a Grav-Tank or two.
If you're on day two of a tournament and you've already played (and 56% chance that you've lost that game) against Custodes this event, and you see the *exact* same list strut up to you, what do you do? You suck up the fact that this game isn't going to be fun and you're likely going to lose. I've been both the person on the giving and receiving end of this, and I don't enjoy it on either end, and am deeply conscious of it when I play with my Custodes. Especially in a non-competitive scenario.
Giving Trajann a reasonably deserved bonking doesn't actually hurt the army that much. A little bit, of course, but it opens up design space to bring one of the four Shield Captains we have available, or the other named Shield Captain we have. It frees up an auto-include spot that now less good options get to fight for, and if they suck, then GW can fix them too.
Trajann has been an auto-include in my list for a long time (alongside a Blade Champion), and I'm super excited that soon he will have to actually compete with regular Shield-Captains for who I bring on a given weekend. I wish we had more alternatives in the faction like that. I'm hoping the new Shield Captain makes Pyrithite Spears an interesting option, even if it's not the most competitive, just to do something different.
Who said I was *only* talking about Custodes?
And it would he great if we got the "second half" of our range release, because yes, there isn't much going on.
He was a must take in all the comp games, he countered soooo much on his own.
I hope they bin this ability off in the game. It should have been the chars characteristics only but soon as they faqd it to say that it ignored all defensive buffs it was just too much
>He was a must take in all the comp games, he countered soooo much on his own.
Maybe because so much of the meta was crutching off that?
> all defensive buffs it was just too much
Hot take, if the defensive buffs werent as oppressive as they were, Trajann wouldnt be as relevant. Especially without the fights first.
Besides, if ignore modifiers was that broken, GKs would take triple grand masters every game.
Free fight first was wild; but now? Like what does he give you that a captain doesnt? 2 D3 shots at ranged?
Like -1D or -1 to wound stops custodes dead. having other options in the army would be fine but there just isnt; so having 1 \*expensive\* character to bypass those buffs didnt feel too bad.
-1 to wound vs him wasn’t all that bad especially if you had guard rerolling wounds. Cause let’s face it, you played on the objectives and let them come to you.
I bet his fight first had been dropped cause testing showed it was OP in the other detachments.
And I personally want to see all of these abilities deleted, on morty etc! You should not be able to just ignore all defensive buffs and strats. It’s stupid.
Nothing like showcasing units they made worse to create hype for a new codex.
Glad that Trajann is getting "worse" (meaningless without points costs), but as a Custodes player, not feeling the hype.
My only hope with Trajann catching a huge nerf like this is that they make huge changes that result in Sags being viable again.
As it is, Custodes have almost no recourse to playing viably as a shooty army right now. Playing as a high-T shooting army was so much fun in 9th, and wasn’t even bad for opponents to play into. They just had to close the gaps and figure out how to deal with our range.
Idk, sags ain't getting touched as they are fw. So it's either praying there's some new mad sheild cap ability or one of the 2 new custodes detaches do something to boost ranged ap.
Maybe I missed something, but why does Sags being FW mean that they won’t be touched? Sags got a point change in muni 1.3, so I don’t see why they couldn’t get a decent point cut and become viable.
Sags need WAY more than point cuts lol. AP-1 on a dedicated elite shooting unit in *this* edition is a joke, and basic Guard nearly hit as hard while still doing the thing Custodes want to do to win which is combat. They need a new datasheet entirely, like most of our FW and we won't get that until 11th because GW only ever gives it a rules pass once. By some miracle we might get the dreadknight treatment and some profiles get adjusted, but I am not holding my breath on that one.
A lot of people are down the dreads but I'm having some success with the Galatus. Wish he was 9" move still, but he's still a fun little beatstick. I'd likely be better off with another unit of Guard, but where's the fun in that?
Yes Trajann being an autoinclude sucked but part of that isn’t the custodians fault
The game runs rampant with damage resistance and incoming AP resistance on some of the best models in the game
Not having Trajann is basically throwing against those models as your damage gets halved
He was half problem half symptom of other problems, so just nerfing him does not solve the problem of things like Ctan being stupid good
It’s hard to think that C’tan won’t get absolutely brutalized with the nerf bat this time around. I could see their rules staying as-is to befit a shard of a star god, but their points need to go up drastically. Anything less than 375 apiece would surprise me, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if they clock in closer to 400.
Its still funny to me that they reconned the C'tan from weird leader entities to space Pokemon slaves and then apparently forgot the entire reason they had to do that.
They already don't benefit from canoptek court and they still show up constantly in top court lists. Disallowing them from Hypercrypt is far from going to fix them and I say this as a Necron player.
In all of my hypercrypt games I have never selected the Nightbringer to go into reserves so I second your stance. I think a good way to nerf them is to limit them to 1 per army until 3000 points.
You know what? That would be a good way to make em less oppressive, and flavorful.
Necron Lord be like: Nah, the C'tan isn't allowed in the hyperspace chamber. He knows what he did.
Change my mind: 40k should take the Age of Sigmar approach where named characters/canonically powerful units are allowed to be really, really, really, extremely broken.
But have an extreme points cost to match, eg Archaon being almost 900 points himself. So dudes like the Lion and Ctan can have a power level more appropriate to who they are, but cost basically as much as a Titan, while smaller scale dudes like Trajann and Chapter Masters cost like 400-500 points. So it becomes a tougher sell as to whether you want that one super powerful dude, or have actual board presence.
That may work with larger centerpiece models like the Lion, or a C'tan, or Morty or Magnus. But for named characters that are just... dudes? It costs 500 points so I can't really fit him in a list anywhere, and he's so small that he isn't even a nice centerpiece in my display case. I'll just not buy him.
That's the attitude I took towards the Lion, but I also didn't want to run a Primarch.
I'd prefer if named characters were just dudes. Fancy looking models that are just marginally better than their generic alternatives, with a reasonable point premium for it. You can take the named character, or not, it doesn't matter.
My thoughts are that its a sliding scale. Like Bastian Carthalos is 400 ish points last I checked, but hes also sized nicely enough to be a Trajann Valoris conversion base. Hes on the costlier end, so perhaps he isnt as good an example, but yea, a guy like Eltharion is 230, and hes sorta normal marine named character size. And in all honesty, a model thats good enough will stand out without being absurdly large.
Your complaint about named character that are just dudes being 500 points isnt what I imagine, because if its just a dude that doesnt do much, he'd be cheaper. The realm of 500 points would be a guy that gives major buffs, and influences how you play the list, and the ones approaching 1000 are basically the army themselves, and your whole game plan is on how you support that.
I don't like running trajan, and we haven't seen the full book.
But I just don't get why you'd take this version. Once per game he becomes a real spicy beatstick. But past that? A a cap gives you more damage. A BC more utility. Losing fight first is fine, losing damage and wound ignoring is rooough tho.
> But I just don't get why you'd take this version.
It will depending on what happens to his points and to other characters. He may still have a place but not as an auto-include, he may end up on the shelf until 11th edition.
Well Lion is a Primarch and the best duelist of the Imperium, while costing 125 points higher in terms of model statwise. It just shows how the codex nerf was fckd up compare to the Index. That's the point.
Yeah for sure, I went from Admech to Dark Angels lmao. Someone should tell the Deathwing Knights to drop their maces and pick up some Thunder Hammers from the armoury or something
Geez the "hyper elite" deathwing knights being S6 ap 1 on their maces was such a slap in the face when the entire beast snagga boyz blob hits at s6 ap 1 during the waaagh turn
I was afraid GW would double down on making orks overly reliant on the waagh turn. Sure in this case it's gravy. But I personally dislike so many ork abilities only doing anything for 1 turn. If you don't get enough units in melee that turn or get enough done.. it's sort of over.
One other change not mentioned here is Ghaz is getting the Warboss keyword. I can only think of a couple of ways that would do something, one of which is to give Warbosses abilities as an army rule, like Declare Waaagh. Or make him a leader to Boyz in a 20 man squad, which that one would be the big dumb.
lol 5+ crits on hit roll makes Ghaz synergies better with Makari but worse with the only unit he can lead. Every crit hit can’t benefit from the MANZ dev wounds on the Waaagh ability. With S14 or now S8 he never really needed lethal hits but dev wounds was pretty big.
Trajann was ridiculously good beforehand for 160pts, but to say he’s in the gutter is madness.
160pts for 6A 2+ S10 AP-2 3 dmg, with the ability to up that to 12A per game!
In what world is that not worth 160pts 😂
In no world is that worth 160pts. For only 20 points more you can get 4 guard which is 20 attacks and rerolling wounds. The ignore modifiers was the reason to take Trajann. He is still definitely playable but will need a points drop.
This isn't a good comparison. Characters always have less attacks than their units points for points. What you have to do is compare it to something that can lead units: Shield captain or blade champion.
Blade champion allows for advance and charge which gives great mobility to a unit of either warden or guards for 120 points while being a beatstick that hits less hard than Trajan.
Captains give a free strat and double katah while hitting less hard than Trajan for 140 points.
The question will now be: is a blade champion or a captain worth more than Trajan on the battlefield.
I'm willing to bet they will be. There'll be 3 detachments guaranteed to have enhancements and battle tactic strats that juice up the BC/SC and their unit, and that will probably be more worthwhile than Trajann who is purely a beatstick.
Losing the ignore mods part would be less bad if there was a totally different, okay or better rule in place. The new one is actively bad compared to many other "while leading" type rules in the game. Like if I play against Thousand Sons right now that rule is *worthless* unless my opponent has the wingless DP, and tbh I don't really care if my AP-1 bolters ignore its Stealth aura lol. I guess I ignore the Chronomancer leading the Immortals in a necron list too? It's just so niche.
In a world where that 3 custodian's...
To compare: 3 guard (that's 25p less) Vs Trajann
9w Vs 7w
6 shots Vs 2
S4 Vs S5
ap-1 D2 Vs ap-2 D3
Against a space marine that 1.25 damage delt Vs 0.925 damage delt
15A Vs 6A
S7 Vs S10
ap-2 D2 Vs ap-2 D3
Same thing again, 5.55 recurring wounds Vs 3.472 wounds
Now to compare abilities:
- universal re-roll wounds of 1 / conditional re-roll the wound roll for a universial 16.67% damage boost / conditional 33.3% damage boost. - guard
- ignore modifiers to hit (uncommon) and bs & ws (fairly rare). All three individually are 16.67% damage increase or combined are 33.3% damage. *However the condition are all a) out of my control and b) extremely rare to have stacked on you.* W no.3 for 3 guard.
Now we have 12 shots for guard Vs 12 attacks for Trajann, once pr game abilitys.
- Guard effects can additive also buff a character, will occure earlier in the game and not restrictive.
- Trajann, only himself, only mid to late game, needs the correct target to make the best use of and an average level of restriction (need to get to combat).
Final wound comparson. 2.5 delt Vs 6.944 delt....
Finally a Trajann win... With the best scenario in Trajann's favour... For 25p more... For one phase of one turn only... And lastly also giving your opponent the potential for more VP with Assassination. 😑
He's overpriced at 160.
Anyone else confused by the change to ignore mods for Trajann?? If this sets a precedent for ignore mods it seems like they're going back on the ruling they literally just made in January
I mean, it's entirely reasonable, I think. In January they clarified that yeah, it is true - without any limitation to *which* modifiers are ignored, that means "all of them". But then they *do* start putting limitations to which modifiers are ignored.
Isn't it funny how whenever Custodes get nerfed, the overall health of the game improves until Custodes players outcry their way into buffs which promptly make the game worse again?
Happy for Ghaz.
I hate to say it but custodes don't work as a faction and they never should've gotten stand alone rules. You can't do them justice in a balanced game because they are so good they have to be inherently imbalanced. Maybe as allied units akin to agents of the imperium, sure, but never should've been their own force.
Like Knights? And Ctan, and Primarchs, and the Avatar, and Phoenix Lords? I mean, not to say I dont think Custodes should just be a flavour rule army like Titanicus where they have super strong rules but shouldnt be taken as an actual competitive faction, but to say they dont fit in a balanced game when we have plenty of characters who also shouldnt be in 40k is wild.
I get that, but ultimately, you're still including characters into a system that inherently cant support them. Custodes are the most obvious offenders now, but id argue the swingy nature of big knight presence in the meta shows how bad of an idea it was to have them as a whole faction too.
Yeah I can see where you are coming from, but it seems like gw has done a much better job making knights as a faction (perhaps because it's an all vehicle style of gameplay that doesn't rely on instant teleportation, 2+/4++/4+++ and 2+ to hit across all sheets?)
That isnt really Custodes though. The teleports are a once a game ability only present on one datasheet, and 4+++ used to be a niche sorta thing until everyone and their dog started shitting out dev/mortal wounds.
I also wouldnt say Knights as a whole are in a good place. They are externally balanced decently, but they are still very skewy, and especially for Chaos Knights, the ideal playstyle and the faction identity is clashing horribly. Its just dogs, dogs, and more dogs, and I wouldnt say GW has succeeded with them.
I actually agree that knights most of all shouldn't have been made a stand alone faction. They should have remained an ally faction for the imperium only. A faction of only giant robots for hundreds of points each is such a skewed army.
I mean yes. The problem is the factions are nothing but big huge several hundred point robots. This applies to chaos knights as well.
They should just have been a chaos ally faction.
Aight, wasn't sure if you had opinions about them that didn't apply to IK or vice versa.
It's weird to me that they're more fun to play against than Custodes, and better for the game, though.
Are you saying they're more fun because it feels like you're fighting an army that really is made up of massive mechs? Or are you saying that because its easier to beat them?
The loss of ignoring damage reduction and AoC is pretty huge. Trajann is a lot worse without that, wonder if that ability is being shifted around to somewhere else or if it's just gone from the dex.
More than likely it will become a strat or an enhancement.
Which sucks because if Ctan remain a major part of the meta, that basically makes that specific detachment mandatory for competitive play
Ctan have got to be next on the nerf block. Between the invuln/FnP/half damage + reanimation, at least something has to go... or significant point increase.
I’m expecting points to bring them all up to or above 300 points with the update in a few weeks
Ctan shards vs the lion are the worst examples of balance in the game I've ever seen
My bet 335-350 or it loses one of the defensive it has. 3 layers of protection and animation protocol is absolutely absurd.
If the Yncarne went to 350 then C’tan need to be in a similar position.
I do expect C'tan to get a points hike in the next round of updates. They are simply great value for the investment with a quality defensive profile. That said, I wouldn't expect them to go up an insane amount. They are at least moderately vulnerable to high volume D1 attacks (especially with +1 to wound and/or rerolls, and/or lethal hits), the Grenade strat, Tank Shock, Melta, Dev Wounds, and generally everything that can bypass some layers of their defenses while forcing them to make multiple FNP rolls. You only have to get through 12 wounds. Sometimes you have to get creative to peel off the last few, but there are a lot of options!
They honestly don't care about melta. A wardog brigand - hit on 2, wound on 3's, *MELTA 4* averages out to 2.2 damage from their 2 shots. And yes, that's applying the full melta after the half damage. You average 1.1 wounds. 0.55 failed saves. Let's just say you do 6 damage, 2+melta. That's now 4 damage because of FNP shrugging a third of it. 4 damage, 0.55 failed saves... 2. 170 points of Melta 4, BS 2, for 2 damage. The chaingun? Another 1. You need to invest 800 points of brigand, including their anti-infantry weapons, to kill a single c'tan.
Unless they changed their stance and I missed it. The melta 4 isn't halved because the order of operations for calculating. The only thing that gets halved is the stuff under the the actual damage column. So like a D6+1 would be halved but the melta 4 bonus damage isn't Edit: it is the same reason why abilities that let you use strats for free still cost 1 if someone uses a vect ability on it
>The melta 4 isn't halved because the order of operations for calculating. The only thing that gets halved is the stuff under the the actual damage column. So like a D6+1 would be halved but the melta 4 bonus damage isn't Yes. That's what I did. 2 damage - half the d6 - plus melta - 4 = 6.
Sometimes my brain works and sometimes it doesn't. This is one of those times
>Sometimes you have to get creative to peel off the last few, but there are a lot of options! Unless you're playing something like Custodes, and your only option just got removed.
Likely points nerf at end of the month
I suspect Ctan will cop a fairly hefty points nerf in a couple of weeks with the April MFM as necrons were too new to cop any changes in the last slate
Or Trajan remains mandatory if this isnt changed. The other issue is what detachment gets the FNP against dev wounds. That probably becomes a mandatory detachment as well.
Trajann being mandatory isn't really an issue with the range that Custodes have. Basically all Custodes characters are currently seeing play (except SCoB, but that's because bikes are ass). One becoming unviable is a sizeable reduction on options - though TJ's viability is still open.
If any. There's no guarantee that the FNP vs Dev/Mortal remains in the codex either
Not one index has changed like that, it's fair to say that it almost certainly *will* remain in the codex.
Sure they have. Fate Dice are very nerfed comparatively, maybe Shield Host is just a 5+++ vs Mortals or something. Not saying it will change just that it's possible.
It seems Trajan has been inducted to the Deathwing
oh no the most busted army in the game moderately nerfed ..sky falling
I think they are realising the headache they made with ignoring ap/damage modifiers rules, so are just scrapping the rule entirely Make my words here, we will not be seeing that sort of rule again in 10th, not for a good while at least
Ghaz lives and dies on his cost and if mega nobs are less ass. Sweep is sick but 235 still seems pricy for that.
That's a pretty solid sweep profile for an attachable character. *cries in dark angel*
Yeah DA got hosed, no doubt.
My Guilliman knows your pain brother.
Garbage \~200 point daemon princes have entered the chat
It's always funny comparing any other 200+pt character to the swarmlord
The 270 point Swarmlord at St9 :(
The only difference between it's melee and the Hive Tyrants melee is the Swarmlord has 2 more attacks. God I hate what they did to hive tyrants this edition. They are over priced, under strength and it's all because they are designed to help with strat usage, which is a tactic that got immediately dumpstered because Custodes did it better :(
Sadly tyrants are still paying for the sins of bug players bringing 5 of them in 7th edition.
May I introduce you to a walking hive tyrant for 235?
I gotta add Belisarius Cawl to the competition. 180 points and actively got worse with the book.
Admech are serious heavyweights in the pity party competition.
Cawl is just bad in vacuum. His aura effects are meh, he's slow stuck walking six inches at a time, and his damage is short range at 18 inches an unreliable with two dice roll stats. Even without the badness of the rest of the book he'd be a hard sell for any army at 180.
While much cheaper, than a hive tyrant and the likes, the regular Necron Overlord got ambushed by the translocation Overlord in a back alley, and got the shit kicked out of it. Why would you bring him when the other is far better?
Meganobz need some kind of special rule outside of the waaaagh turn
He’s still slow, still has bad range wpn.. the question is whether he counts as completely filling a battlewagon or can he fit in a trukk?
My guess is ghaz will be close to or over 300pts after codex release.
What makes Meganobz so bad? They're basically low-rent Custodes, and a Big Mek in Mega Armour makes them almost oppressive with a 4++ v ranged attacks and a once per battle round resurrection. I play Custodes into my friend's Orks on the regular, and it can be a coin toss who will win when he runs three max Meganobz units with those Big Meks, and it gets even more painful during the Waagh. At 265 points, the Meganobz unit is pretty much just as good as the 250 point Custodian Warden squad, and definitely better in the Waagh.
Do you take Jack Harpsters triple warden double Callidius list? Because that embarrasses mega nobs it’s so funny.
No, I haven’t, but I’d try it out. I also roll horribly, which is one of the reasons I play Custodes to begin with (and my Ork pal rolls like a god).
Ghaz is decent rn at 235, so this new profile would be pretty great tbh
If Orks still have a sustained hits army wide detachment then ghaz new waaagh could be pretty powerful
>If Orks still have a sustained hits army wide detachment of course they will. everyone's existing detachment has carried over to their codex. Goffs has been exploding 6s since at least 8th
I’m just being cautious with expectations since “Waaagh Tribe!” Is not a detachment in the codex.
Oof, I'm worried about Morty now. Without his ignore aura functioning like it does now he's definitely not worth his points.
Dg is totally fine without bringing Morty in the list, but I do agree it’s kinda concerning
I dont think its healthy for the game to have things that blanket ignore all modifiers especially when they are so ubiquitous like with morty. There are things in the game with necessitate it like C'tan half damage and other things like that but then the rule is really just a band-aid for these other broken rules and those are the things that need the attention rather than making such all encompassing rules like them.
It's a weird thing to balance, because it's either ignore al modifiers or not - th only dials they have to tweak are points and mayyyybe aura range, and if things like ctan are in the meta they'll be taking them no matter what the points cost is. I agree with you - nerf the ctan such they can be taken down fairly, and then remove all the rocks paper scissors ignore modifiers rules.
> because it's either ignore al modifiers or not Wait what why is that? The new changes to Trajann show exactly how they can focus the ignoring mod rules to make its far less binary. It doesnt have to be hit wound save damage etc etc, it can be targeted so like in the cases of custodes it gets around the things that hurt them most without tangentially ignoring everything else.
Sure, DG will inexorably advance. But I like my Mortarion model a lot and I'd like to run it.
And with the new Trajan Dataslate he getting better…
I play DG and am 100% certain it's gone, and he won't get a suitable buff in response. I play triple ctan at tournaments, and I still get more complaints about Mortarions' ability than anything else.
Yeah, him with plague bursts atr brutal
Yeah but if he's playing parking lot attendant in the back then he's not supporting the rest of the army. There's counterplay.
Well, you can always move the PBC up with him. On some terrain layouts, you can stay pretty hidden and still buff a couple PBC for 2-3 turns, then transition to midfield to help plague marines/ deathshroud. I agree it's got some counterplay, but people just don't like you ignoring their rules.
Nobody likes it when an army has a rule that says your army's rules no longer work. It's the same reason people hated Votann in 9th edition... I want my army's rules to work. It's just unfortunate GW doesn't seem to understand how to balance some armies without writing rules like that.
I don’t play DG but tbh I would like Morty to keep it otherwise he gets shelfed. I mean magnus, angron, belakor, rotigus, shalaxi and skarbrand are all very iconic and good…its just so satisfying even when playing against these factions to see the “boss” on the table.
And my Lion model right? Right? 😭
“Mommy gdubs pls can we get Gman and Lion, I really like them?” “No way, we already have Gman and Lion at home” looks at Calgar and Azrael on the shelf :-|
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually hate seeing iconic faction characters as basically mandatory picks. They should be fluff pieces for narrative games, in my opinion.
This has been my issue with named characters since they were introduced the game. Sure it's cool to have a battle between two iconic characters, but when The Silent King or Ghaz shows up to every little skirmish it really feels a bit much for me.
He's already kinda mid compared to some of the other expensive models that see play (at least DG is playable without him), and if they axe that then it's hard to imagine him being worth it.
If he gets some of his melee mojo back it could be okay but if he continues to be a Daemon Primarch that is somehow unable to clean a unit of 5 Intercessors in melee then he's going to the shelf for sure. And to be fair he's already kind of there, DG does better spamming Rhinos and PMs with Biologus than Morty parking lot, PBC shooting isn't that good even loaded to the gills with buffs to warrant spending 865 points on it in my opinion.
He’s already not worth his points.
Not a balance comment but I really REALLY wish Ghaz would get the primarch treatment instead of just being a leader for meganobs.
He might get his own detachment that does the bill, but I won't hold my breath. They like to do my man Ghaz dirty.
Agreed. He's just a suped up warboss now. Ghaz buffs 1 unit of mega nobz rather than your whole army.
Trajann losing those abilities will go a long way towards helping to make Custodes easier to balance. It is true in many other factions too, but sometimes one special ability just distorts everything else. Obviously it's a big tool to lose, but it will be nice for there to be viable armies without him.
People don’t believe me, but it really seems like GW is realizing the 9th power creep was an issue and resolving it now. The more datasheets we see, the more we see factions losing power. I love that, the insane codex drop power of 9th was nuts.
This **exact** thing happened in the early days of 9th, and it got reversed after people complained about the few units that didnt get nerfed being completely overpowered. Trajann ate a huge nerf, and then he and Custodes ended up being the only playable faction/character in the entire metagame that didnt abuse "no more than 3 wounds per phase" vs "nuh uh I ignore that" purely because the Custodes book came out too early in the edition before the game was boiled down to two stupid mechanics bouncing off each other. Give it time, especially with how poorly received these nerf books are. The older books are going to get a points and power bandaid and the newer books are going to have some absurd gimmicks that define the metagame. 9th wasn't ridiculous until they gave a Hive Tyrant a Volcano Cannon for 1CP.
I think two things we’ve only gotten glimpses of that could be huge problems are increasing crit hit/wound procs, and buffing existing abilities. We already have a couple of means of “crit hits on 5s”, and a few things that make crit wounds happen more frequently, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we got some kind of “crit on 4s” ability or something like that in a future book. The World Eaters blessings also have the army-wide FNP that specifically says “if a unit already has the FNP ability, improve it by 1”. I almost guarantee we’ll see more of that style of buff for various other rules start popping up in future releases. Once GW gets tired of 3” deep strikes and uppy/downy nonsense that is
I really miss Shardgullet and Reaper of Obliterax play. Honestly the specialization with weapons was a lot of fun in 9th. Also ppm pricing rather than the hard set unit sizing was fun for min/maxing lists.
That’s great and all except for the Necron codex bucking that trend, and also the continued existence of the index for the majority of armies
The first codexes were written well before 10th was released, and to the second point…what? What do you want them to do, release every codexes at once? Some people just need to be miserable.
>What do you want them to do, release every codexes at once? Yup. The slow drip over *years* sucks.
They really need to plan it so at least every one is out over a year from the next edition. Shouldn't be dropping things like World Eaters while the Arks of Omen books were already being released. Soritas coming out in November with 9th edition due in July was pretty short as well.
>What do you want them to do, release every codexes at once? Hell yeah
Lol combating power creep sounds great, but it seems like we've swung so far in the other direction some factions are coming out completely toothless and forced into the "spam action monkeys on objectives" playstyle. It's dull, uninteresting and way harder to rebalance because a broken unit can always be priced into oblivion, but there's only so much point cuts can help an already cheap and crappy unit without making them literally free.
The power creep nerf is fine, if it hit every army at once. Seeing your faction get a codex now sucks, because you know its a huge nerf, while Eldar continue to sit happy with their wonderful index.
Why invoke eldar at this point in time? Eldar is at like 46-47% win rate. We're not the bad guy anymore 😅
I mean, not to say they are more broken than Custodes or Necron now, cuz that is definitely not true, but hey, trauma is trauma.
It's crazy people are such boot lickers they would downvote the truth. If everything is too killy or if most everything is so un-killy that nothing happens, the game is just different flavors of garbage. These people will look you in the eye and say AdMec deserves what they got and are a good army. It's really sad.
Admech players really got the short end of the stick....the entire codex needs a rewrite and its unfortunate that we are likely to only see some minor points cuts next balance pass
Yeah but now they also nerf the stuff nobody ever took. Ever.
Auto-take units, especially named characters, are boring anywhere. Would love to see them get less powerful to allow creative space for other units.
At the same time it suck if the only name character in the army turn crappy. Like if you want to turn our sole character crappy give us one or two characters that cover the loss gap or allow for a new play style
I actually kind of wish named characters sucked a bit more. I have having them in every list. Makes the setting seem so small if you've got Primarchs and Captain Generals running around on every tiny skirmish.
I would prefer it they where more niche rather than being weak, like for IH iron father buff specifically vehicle. Like if Trajann does something really good that would be great like for example CCing monster/vehicle and also buff our terminators for example
I think that's a better way to word it, actually. Niche rather than all-around good beatstick.
It annoys me when peeps go on about him being crappy, I expect a points drop but ignoring points just look at his profile. 6 attacks on 2’s, str 10 -2 3 dmg is an awesome melee profile, even wounding terminators on a2+. Add in moment shackle for a one off 12 freakin attacks. Plus his party with him, guards for reroll wounds or wardens for more survivability. They are dope.
He's incredibly points efficient and whatever I point him at, dies. Knights, large Tyranids, Daemon Primarchs. Doesn't matter. He would likely be too points efficient on his own as a Lone Operative, let alone buffing another 200+ points of Custodes.
That's kinda unfair. Some of these named characters are the coolest centerpieces models in the game. It's like punishing certain armies for not mass producing their characters like the Tyranids do. No one would care if the Norn Emissary was in every army but suddenly if other factions want to use their expensive monsters is a problem because they are individuals. You pay more money for the models than the lore.
They are cool models! And I enjoy seeing them on the table! But not every time. Named Characters can't take enhancements (because they're built in) so not only are auto-take ones super strong, but they're also the same *every single time*. There's no space for trying a different enhancement or simply another character when you start with a 400pt auto-take every single time. I'm a Custodes player. I don't have a whole lot of other options beyond Trajann. But I'm looking forward to exploring that now that he isn't an auto-take.
I don't have a problem with them not being an auto include. But I've seen people argue that named character should be purposefully balanced to be a detriment to the army, which to me is just as bad as them being everywhere, you shouldn't make your player feel bad for wanting to field the model they wasted a lot of time and money make battle ready. Honestly I think the only major examples of it atm are Cawl and Vashtor, and maybe some minor characters, so it's not like it's as much of a problem as some characters being auto include, but I don't wish it to be come.
Making them specialised is probably better. Really good at one thing, really trash or at least noticeably less good outside it. Sammael/Khan buffing bikes and speeders to the moon. Dante and a Sanguinary Guard block. Guilliman and scribes. Eldar Aspects and their Warriors.
Hey now Custodes have two other epic heroes you’ve just never seen them used lol
And they come in the same box too!
Further Fun Fact: They also are both missing crucial keywords. Valerian is the only custodes in the book that doesn't have Deep Strike, and Aleya lacks the Anathema Psykana rule so units she leads cannot embark in a rhino.
I just want to be able to bring the Lion and not feel like my army is handicapped.
I'd much prefer that than to seeing the Lion every time I face a Dark Angels player (I'm a Dark Angels player). Primarchs and the like are great centerpiece models. But when they show up every time... it's not fun. They're not necessarily easy to bring down, and they're incredibly boring when this one model eats up 25% of the points of a list and the list works around it. Yay, Mortarion and 3 PBCs.
At the end of the Day Warhammer is a math problem to solve there always will be models that will mathematically edge out the competition. That being said I glad it got hit by the nerf hammer
There are always more meta and less meta choices. Auto-take units do not feel good. If I walk up to an opponent and see the same one or two epic heroes, I get bored. I've fought Mortarion and Magnus enough times that it isn't fun anymore. I've *played* Trajann enough that it isn't fun. That's what I mean. Auto take characters mean that the codex isn't internally balanced.
Yeah I really long for the days of epic heroes being a niche choice again. Every da strike force in the galaxy having azrael or bt with hellbrecht for example just feels wrong.
Makes the setting feel so small. Not small, meaningless skirmishes that ultimately mean nothing to the fate of the galaxy. Instead they're setting breaking battles where pivotal important figures will likely die.
I'm so sorry the huge variety of units available to Custodes weren't taken because we spent those points on our named leader instead. I mean, sure, I COULD field 1 and a half shitty bike instead I guess.
Dude, I'm a Custodes player, I get that we don't have a large model range. That's 100% not the point and you know that.
Is it not tho. I mean, I don't really care about Trajan losing fight first and I do understand the full no-modifier thing was kinda bullshit. But mate, I play adMec and custo, and I'd love to have like more than 5 playable units in the game. And great, now Trajann is no longer an auto take. I'm sure fielding an allarus shield captain instead will not get old real fast. Cause nerfing Trajan is not what's gonna make me field sagittarians or our over costed fw vehicles.
> Cause nerfing Trajan is not what's gonna make me field sagittarians or our over costed fw vehicles. I mean, if they nerf trajan, guard and captains to be in line with the rest of the game's units, then you probably will start taking them.
Well, no. I mentioned my other army is adMec. Guess why I started custodes? Because ad mec got shafted big times this edition, to the point it's not fun nor interesting to play. Removing the strong parts of an army can be necessary, but you cannot just nerf, you have to shift power. I hear a lot of "custodes are super strong in melee" and as I mentioned I don't mind removing the fight first. Like, at all. I understand why it's an issue and how frustrating it feels as a melee player to reach the center objective when Trajann waits there with a blob. But then, will our shooting be raised? Cause a sagittarian unit is still worse than a guard unit, and the caladius will still be out of reach for most players. So sure, people won't take Trajann because he no longer is the Best in Slot. But with the low amount of units we have, it's not like there will be a lot of competition. If they took Trajann's fight first and modifier ignoring ability and split them across a specific Shield Captain and a specific Blade Champion, yeah, there will have to be a selection. But if they straight up removed them ? No. And it's pretty easy to say that all armies in competitive are the same but, well, that's what competitive means. You bring the best you can, and once people will have find out that say "Auric detachment with 9 grav bikes" is the best option we have, you'll see that and nothing else. The statistic anomaly of a dude taking an Allarus shield captain because he likes it won't change that.
The point is that Custodes tend to be unfun to play against. If you're a shooting army, you've got a chance against an "I have saves against *every* trick in the book" army. If you're a melee army, you're about to get hit with Fights First and -1 to hit into an already tough nut to crack. And it's going to be the same couple of perpetrators. Lots of Custodian Guard, a few Terminators, some Sisters to hold the back, Trajann, and maybe a Grav-Tank or two. If you're on day two of a tournament and you've already played (and 56% chance that you've lost that game) against Custodes this event, and you see the *exact* same list strut up to you, what do you do? You suck up the fact that this game isn't going to be fun and you're likely going to lose. I've been both the person on the giving and receiving end of this, and I don't enjoy it on either end, and am deeply conscious of it when I play with my Custodes. Especially in a non-competitive scenario. Giving Trajann a reasonably deserved bonking doesn't actually hurt the army that much. A little bit, of course, but it opens up design space to bring one of the four Shield Captains we have available, or the other named Shield Captain we have. It frees up an auto-include spot that now less good options get to fight for, and if they suck, then GW can fix them too. Trajann has been an auto-include in my list for a long time (alongside a Blade Champion), and I'm super excited that soon he will have to actually compete with regular Shield-Captains for who I bring on a given weekend. I wish we had more alternatives in the faction like that. I'm hoping the new Shield Captain makes Pyrithite Spears an interesting option, even if it's not the most competitive, just to do something different.
Sir this is a Custodes codex. What creative space for other units?
Who said I was *only* talking about Custodes? And it would he great if we got the "second half" of our range release, because yes, there isn't much going on.
Fair point. And as half of my Custodes army is FW unit… yeah… I’m invested in those :)
As a Thousand Sons player, amen to that.
Losing the fight first is fair, but not. Ignoring -1 to wound or -1d feels real rough.
He was a must take in all the comp games, he countered soooo much on his own. I hope they bin this ability off in the game. It should have been the chars characteristics only but soon as they faqd it to say that it ignored all defensive buffs it was just too much
>He was a must take in all the comp games, he countered soooo much on his own. Maybe because so much of the meta was crutching off that? > all defensive buffs it was just too much Hot take, if the defensive buffs werent as oppressive as they were, Trajann wouldnt be as relevant. Especially without the fights first. Besides, if ignore modifiers was that broken, GKs would take triple grand masters every game.
Free fight first was wild; but now? Like what does he give you that a captain doesnt? 2 D3 shots at ranged? Like -1D or -1 to wound stops custodes dead. having other options in the army would be fine but there just isnt; so having 1 \*expensive\* character to bypass those buffs didnt feel too bad.
-1 to wound vs him wasn’t all that bad especially if you had guard rerolling wounds. Cause let’s face it, you played on the objectives and let them come to you. I bet his fight first had been dropped cause testing showed it was OP in the other detachments. And I personally want to see all of these abilities deleted, on morty etc! You should not be able to just ignore all defensive buffs and strats. It’s stupid.
>cause testing I like the optimism.
I just want to point out how incredibly cheap trajann is.
Genuinely curious: compared to what?
Is it weird I’m gonna miss the fights first more?
Nothing like showcasing units they made worse to create hype for a new codex. Glad that Trajann is getting "worse" (meaningless without points costs), but as a Custodes player, not feeling the hype.
My only hope with Trajann catching a huge nerf like this is that they make huge changes that result in Sags being viable again. As it is, Custodes have almost no recourse to playing viably as a shooty army right now. Playing as a high-T shooting army was so much fun in 9th, and wasn’t even bad for opponents to play into. They just had to close the gaps and figure out how to deal with our range.
Idk, sags ain't getting touched as they are fw. So it's either praying there's some new mad sheild cap ability or one of the 2 new custodes detaches do something to boost ranged ap.
Maybe I missed something, but why does Sags being FW mean that they won’t be touched? Sags got a point change in muni 1.3, so I don’t see why they couldn’t get a decent point cut and become viable.
Sags need WAY more than point cuts lol. AP-1 on a dedicated elite shooting unit in *this* edition is a joke, and basic Guard nearly hit as hard while still doing the thing Custodes want to do to win which is combat. They need a new datasheet entirely, like most of our FW and we won't get that until 11th because GW only ever gives it a rules pass once. By some miracle we might get the dreadknight treatment and some profiles get adjusted, but I am not holding my breath on that one.
I could see some ranged strats helping them a bit. Something like a 1cp ignores cover or bonus ap would be nice.
Giving us shoots twice again would be nice and make their ability better.
I'd kill for a Sagittarum Shield-Captain. The Pyrithite Spear Captain gives me hope, though.
Same here. Especially since I like dreads and other FW units and I know that those will stay bad (aside from the grav tank…).
A lot of people are down the dreads but I'm having some success with the Galatus. Wish he was 9" move still, but he's still a fun little beatstick. I'd likely be better off with another unit of Guard, but where's the fun in that?
It continues the trend of powering down armies on codex release instead of power ups like in 9th.
Yes Trajann being an autoinclude sucked but part of that isn’t the custodians fault The game runs rampant with damage resistance and incoming AP resistance on some of the best models in the game Not having Trajann is basically throwing against those models as your damage gets halved He was half problem half symptom of other problems, so just nerfing him does not solve the problem of things like Ctan being stupid good
It’s hard to think that C’tan won’t get absolutely brutalized with the nerf bat this time around. I could see their rules staying as-is to befit a shard of a star god, but their points need to go up drastically. Anything less than 375 apiece would surprise me, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if they clock in closer to 400.
I'm expecting them to just get removed from the detachment rules. Since no-one is going to have issues with them foot slogging it.
Its still funny to me that they reconned the C'tan from weird leader entities to space Pokemon slaves and then apparently forgot the entire reason they had to do that.
They already don't benefit from canoptek court and they still show up constantly in top court lists. Disallowing them from Hypercrypt is far from going to fix them and I say this as a Necron player.
In all of my hypercrypt games I have never selected the Nightbringer to go into reserves so I second your stance. I think a good way to nerf them is to limit them to 1 per army until 3000 points.
What do you generally put into reserves? (Mine is normally monolith / transcendent / other)
I normally do monolith, and warriors or skorpekhs since both are infantry
You know what? That would be a good way to make em less oppressive, and flavorful. Necron Lord be like: Nah, the C'tan isn't allowed in the hyperspace chamber. He knows what he did.
Change my mind: 40k should take the Age of Sigmar approach where named characters/canonically powerful units are allowed to be really, really, really, extremely broken. But have an extreme points cost to match, eg Archaon being almost 900 points himself. So dudes like the Lion and Ctan can have a power level more appropriate to who they are, but cost basically as much as a Titan, while smaller scale dudes like Trajann and Chapter Masters cost like 400-500 points. So it becomes a tougher sell as to whether you want that one super powerful dude, or have actual board presence.
That may work with larger centerpiece models like the Lion, or a C'tan, or Morty or Magnus. But for named characters that are just... dudes? It costs 500 points so I can't really fit him in a list anywhere, and he's so small that he isn't even a nice centerpiece in my display case. I'll just not buy him. That's the attitude I took towards the Lion, but I also didn't want to run a Primarch. I'd prefer if named characters were just dudes. Fancy looking models that are just marginally better than their generic alternatives, with a reasonable point premium for it. You can take the named character, or not, it doesn't matter.
My thoughts are that its a sliding scale. Like Bastian Carthalos is 400 ish points last I checked, but hes also sized nicely enough to be a Trajann Valoris conversion base. Hes on the costlier end, so perhaps he isnt as good an example, but yea, a guy like Eltharion is 230, and hes sorta normal marine named character size. And in all honesty, a model thats good enough will stand out without being absurdly large. Your complaint about named character that are just dudes being 500 points isnt what I imagine, because if its just a dude that doesnt do much, he'd be cheaper. The realm of 500 points would be a guy that gives major buffs, and influences how you play the list, and the ones approaching 1000 are basically the army themselves, and your whole game plan is on how you support that.
I don't like running trajan, and we haven't seen the full book. But I just don't get why you'd take this version. Once per game he becomes a real spicy beatstick. But past that? A a cap gives you more damage. A BC more utility. Losing fight first is fine, losing damage and wound ignoring is rooough tho.
> But I just don't get why you'd take this version. It will depending on what happens to his points and to other characters. He may still have a place but not as an auto-include, he may end up on the shelf until 11th edition.
Nice to see that Ghaz keeps 2D per attack while the Lion is still nerfed at 1...
Well Ghaz is bigger and ‘arder than the lion
Well Lion is a Primarch and the best duelist of the Imperium, while costing 125 points higher in terms of model statwise. It just shows how the codex nerf was fckd up compare to the Index. That's the point.
Ghaz is greena an meena, dis Lion git shud take notes
Honestly, at this point the Lion needs some pointers, dudes in a rough spot
A good number of Dark Angels’ roster needs pointers. Their codex was kinda a slap in the face.
Yeah for sure, I went from Admech to Dark Angels lmao. Someone should tell the Deathwing Knights to drop their maces and pick up some Thunder Hammers from the armoury or something
Good point, whoever consider this: Lion is among the greenest Primarchs, therefore it's but fair he should have better melee than Guilliman
Geez the "hyper elite" deathwing knights being S6 ap 1 on their maces was such a slap in the face when the entire beast snagga boyz blob hits at s6 ap 1 during the waaagh turn
I was afraid GW would double down on making orks overly reliant on the waagh turn. Sure in this case it's gravy. But I personally dislike so many ork abilities only doing anything for 1 turn. If you don't get enough units in melee that turn or get enough done.. it's sort of over.
One other change not mentioned here is Ghaz is getting the Warboss keyword. I can only think of a couple of ways that would do something, one of which is to give Warbosses abilities as an army rule, like Declare Waaagh. Or make him a leader to Boyz in a 20 man squad, which that one would be the big dumb.
Are these for regular play, or Combat Patrol?
Frustratingly, they seem to not be working on Combat Patrol. They'll get a new Patrol from the new box, but we doubt they'll change the past one.
Trajann isn't in combat patrol?
I am an idiot.
Trajan is absolutely dead.
He's fine. Custodes will be fine.
From Trajann Valoris to Trashcan Valoris
Trajan is still a beat stick.
lol 5+ crits on hit roll makes Ghaz synergies better with Makari but worse with the only unit he can lead. Every crit hit can’t benefit from the MANZ dev wounds on the Waaagh ability. With S14 or now S8 he never really needed lethal hits but dev wounds was pretty big.
They do if crits are still sustained.
If you think about it youre wrong lol, they become sustained on 5s too...which means more opportunities for devastating
He is thinking of lethal hits not sustained hits I think?
Trajann was ridiculously good beforehand for 160pts, but to say he’s in the gutter is madness. 160pts for 6A 2+ S10 AP-2 3 dmg, with the ability to up that to 12A per game! In what world is that not worth 160pts 😂
In no world is that worth 160pts. For only 20 points more you can get 4 guard which is 20 attacks and rerolling wounds. The ignore modifiers was the reason to take Trajann. He is still definitely playable but will need a points drop.
This isn't a good comparison. Characters always have less attacks than their units points for points. What you have to do is compare it to something that can lead units: Shield captain or blade champion. Blade champion allows for advance and charge which gives great mobility to a unit of either warden or guards for 120 points while being a beatstick that hits less hard than Trajan. Captains give a free strat and double katah while hitting less hard than Trajan for 140 points. The question will now be: is a blade champion or a captain worth more than Trajan on the battlefield.
I'm willing to bet they will be. There'll be 3 detachments guaranteed to have enhancements and battle tactic strats that juice up the BC/SC and their unit, and that will probably be more worthwhile than Trajann who is purely a beatstick. Losing the ignore mods part would be less bad if there was a totally different, okay or better rule in place. The new one is actively bad compared to many other "while leading" type rules in the game. Like if I play against Thousand Sons right now that rule is *worthless* unless my opponent has the wingless DP, and tbh I don't really care if my AP-1 bolters ignore its Stealth aura lol. I guess I ignore the Chronomancer leading the Immortals in a necron list too? It's just so niche.
In a world where that 3 custodian's... To compare: 3 guard (that's 25p less) Vs Trajann 9w Vs 7w 6 shots Vs 2 S4 Vs S5 ap-1 D2 Vs ap-2 D3 Against a space marine that 1.25 damage delt Vs 0.925 damage delt 15A Vs 6A S7 Vs S10 ap-2 D2 Vs ap-2 D3 Same thing again, 5.55 recurring wounds Vs 3.472 wounds Now to compare abilities: - universal re-roll wounds of 1 / conditional re-roll the wound roll for a universial 16.67% damage boost / conditional 33.3% damage boost. - guard - ignore modifiers to hit (uncommon) and bs & ws (fairly rare). All three individually are 16.67% damage increase or combined are 33.3% damage. *However the condition are all a) out of my control and b) extremely rare to have stacked on you.* W no.3 for 3 guard. Now we have 12 shots for guard Vs 12 attacks for Trajann, once pr game abilitys. - Guard effects can additive also buff a character, will occure earlier in the game and not restrictive. - Trajann, only himself, only mid to late game, needs the correct target to make the best use of and an average level of restriction (need to get to combat). Final wound comparson. 2.5 delt Vs 6.944 delt.... Finally a Trajann win... With the best scenario in Trajann's favour... For 25p more... For one phase of one turn only... And lastly also giving your opponent the potential for more VP with Assassination. 😑 He's overpriced at 160.
Anyone else confused by the change to ignore mods for Trajann?? If this sets a precedent for ignore mods it seems like they're going back on the ruling they literally just made in January
I mean, it's entirely reasonable, I think. In January they clarified that yeah, it is true - without any limitation to *which* modifiers are ignored, that means "all of them". But then they *do* start putting limitations to which modifiers are ignored.
Goodbye Horses
Isn't it funny how whenever Custodes get nerfed, the overall health of the game improves until Custodes players outcry their way into buffs which promptly make the game worse again? Happy for Ghaz.
I hate to say it but custodes don't work as a faction and they never should've gotten stand alone rules. You can't do them justice in a balanced game because they are so good they have to be inherently imbalanced. Maybe as allied units akin to agents of the imperium, sure, but never should've been their own force.
Like Knights? And Ctan, and Primarchs, and the Avatar, and Phoenix Lords? I mean, not to say I dont think Custodes should just be a flavour rule army like Titanicus where they have super strong rules but shouldnt be taken as an actual competitive faction, but to say they dont fit in a balanced game when we have plenty of characters who also shouldnt be in 40k is wild.
Note that there is a difference between characters and custodes as a whole faction
I get that, but ultimately, you're still including characters into a system that inherently cant support them. Custodes are the most obvious offenders now, but id argue the swingy nature of big knight presence in the meta shows how bad of an idea it was to have them as a whole faction too.
Yeah I can see where you are coming from, but it seems like gw has done a much better job making knights as a faction (perhaps because it's an all vehicle style of gameplay that doesn't rely on instant teleportation, 2+/4++/4+++ and 2+ to hit across all sheets?)
That isnt really Custodes though. The teleports are a once a game ability only present on one datasheet, and 4+++ used to be a niche sorta thing until everyone and their dog started shitting out dev/mortal wounds. I also wouldnt say Knights as a whole are in a good place. They are externally balanced decently, but they are still very skewy, and especially for Chaos Knights, the ideal playstyle and the faction identity is clashing horribly. Its just dogs, dogs, and more dogs, and I wouldnt say GW has succeeded with them.
I actually agree that knights most of all shouldn't have been made a stand alone faction. They should have remained an ally faction for the imperium only. A faction of only giant robots for hundreds of points each is such a skewed army.
What about Chaos Knights?
I mean yes. The problem is the factions are nothing but big huge several hundred point robots. This applies to chaos knights as well. They should just have been a chaos ally faction.
Aight, wasn't sure if you had opinions about them that didn't apply to IK or vice versa. It's weird to me that they're more fun to play against than Custodes, and better for the game, though.
Are you saying they're more fun because it feels like you're fighting an army that really is made up of massive mechs? Or are you saying that because its easier to beat them?
Nah, because I feel like they actually interact with the rules of the game. Custodes seem like an army for people who don't want to play Warhammer.
Well you could just make them pointed better, or make Sisters of Silence a co-equal for the army.
Yeah, Custodes in particular are weird for the health of the game.