Ideas and Hopes for the next Codex

[Orange Knight]

@Blindhamster I love the idea of giving different armour types more varied profiles. I also really love what they've done with the HH profiles.

Mk X Tacticus armour should confer AoC, 7" movement and a 3+ save  (Artificer armour confers +1 wound and a 2+ save)

Mk X Phobos armour should confer AoC, 8" movement and a 4+ save

Mk X Gravis armour should confer AoC, 6" movement, +1 toughness/wounds and a 2+ save (can advance and shoot with rapid fire weapons, can advance/shoot/charge with assault weapons, can move and shoot with heavy weapons with no penalty)

Astartes should have bonus attacks rolled into the profile, the same way Chaos did.

[Emperor Ming]

A nice idea and simple hope, is for the next codex to be decent for more than 5 minutes

It always seems to be, when a marine dex is released its very good, until the power creep gets ramped up in following codexs and then its a quick slide to the bottom from there

[Subtleknife]

11 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Most strats seem like they could just be special rules included in datasheets.

general bonuses that can be used on all units are the only thing that should be in strats.

If it can’t be used on everyone and it can’t be put into a datasheet do we really need it?

I couldn't agree more. Strats should be army wide effects. 

I lot of the uniqueness of units is taken away because they need strats to work imo. 

[Orange Knight]

1 hour ago, Subtleknife said:

I couldn't agree more. Strats should be army wide effects. 

I lot of the uniqueness of units is taken away because they need strats to work imo. 

Absolutely. It has completely spiralled out of control at this point. Most are so useless they aren't worth the paper they are written on. Some should simply be special rules that apply to units, and turning them into strats actually robbed a lot of those units of their unique flavour.

All the while, some strats are so powerful that entire armies are built around their effect, which is equally bad for the game as the quality strats are not shared equally across all the factions and sub factions.

And of course, drowning us all in so many equates to additional book keeping and confusion.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

Well, of course the bigger problem is that they didn't just move all of those should-be abilities to strats, but they've now turned around and axed the amount of CP players have to employ those strats.

The idea of introducing the SMOKESCREEN keyword and needing to spend CP on a strat to activate an effect probably made sense in the runup to 9th Ed, where it was clear that one of the design imperatives was to increase the number of CP most players would have on-hand.

But in the current Nephilim and presumable future post-Nephilim environment, where not only do players get less CP overall but actually have to spend MORE CP just to get a Warlord Trait and Relic, siphoning all of those abilities off to Stratagemland is going to have a significant impact on their use.

Shotguns that can fire twice sounded like a decent idea last year when the Black Templars came out. Now that option just ends up being effectively a nerf to what should have just been part of the weapon's statline.

And of course that's a concern with the upcoming codex - was Nephilim's major CP nerf anywhere near to being finalized when the book was written? And even if it was, would GW switch course at this relatively late stage of 9th or will they just punt and trust that "everything will work out" when 10th rolls around?

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

There’s A LOT of new strats in the CSM codex… so I doubt they are planning to reduce them in number.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Black Blow Fly

[CCE1981]

I second the whole good for more than 5 mins.  I can hardly get an army put together and painted before the next codex comes out and crushes it.

[Lemondish]

30 minutes ago, CCE1981 said:

I second the whole good for more than 5 mins.  I can hardly get an army put together and painted before the next codex comes out and crushes it.

I've been in this boat. I now just build a collection that I like the look of and magnetize where it makes sense rather than worrying too much about making a viable competitive army. Eventually the pendulum swings back and there's enough in the collection to make just of it. That's more a factor of how slow my hobby is, though lol

[CCE1981]

I have been doing tons of magnetizing as well.  I love my DIY, let’s me play and Marine list I want.  It just sucks I add something, take my time with it and it sucks by the time I get it tabletop ready. 

[Lemondish]

45 minutes ago, CCE1981 said:

I have been doing tons of magnetizing as well.  I love my DIY, let’s me play and Marine list I want.  It just sucks I add something, take my time with it and it sucks by the time I get it tabletop ready. 

I can definitely understand that frustration. I would probably feel it too if I wasn't so bloody stubborn when it comes to models I like. I'll play the Corvus all day every day no matter what because I'm entranced by that model, but it certainly isn't doing anything to make my list more competitive.

I usually end up playing things that took forever for me to get to the table even though it was junk before I even started the project. I suppose knowing it's bad is better than being blindsided by a change.

There's so many moving parts, too. I'm not one that puts huge stock into points efficiency since I'm not a tournament level pilot playing against the best out there, but even things like missions and secondary objectives can swing the value of a unit wildly. I recall in the ITC days many of those secondaries ended up invalidating otherwise solid units because they sat in a sweet spot that gave up too many victory points. 

I know their cadence was likely informed by the data collected in one of those big community surveys, but I wonder if the question should be asked again now that we've seen a few quarters pass by. 

 

[CCE1981]

I want to get a Kratos, it’ll look incredible between my two Sicaran Battle tanks.  My DIY Chapter, helps a small Mechanicus sect pursue archeotech.  The same sect maintains a Heresy Era Forge Ship located in the Space Hulk they cut their Fortress Monastery out of. All under the watchful eye of an Ordo Astartes Inquisitor, who ensures that everything is on the up and up.  

[Captain Idaho]

Been thinking about Warlord Traits and how they do quite a lot in the new Codex releases and maybe the Marine ones need to achieve more. Most new Warlord Traits seem to do multiple things at once.

[The Emperors Champion22]

On 7/18/2022 at 1:06 PM, Captain Idaho said:

Been thinking about Warlord Traits and how they do quite a lot in the new Codex releases and maybe the Marine ones need to achieve more. Most new Warlord Traits seem to do multiple things at once.

honestly i would like to see a reroll hits and wounds warlord trait. ours are kinda lackluster atm

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

14 minutes ago, The Emperors Champion22 said:

honestly i would like to see a reroll hits and wounds warlord trait. ours are kinda lackluster atm

God please no more rerolls. There’s so many and they Add so much extra time to a turn.

 

[UnkyHamHam]

Wild idea, but it would be kind of cool if you had 3 tiers of WL traits based on how good they are. And you could take either a T3 trait, or a T2 and T1, or three T1 traits. 

Then you could kind of do away with the second trait strat, and hero of the chapter could be used to only give out T1 traits. 

It is kind of hard to balance all the available traits against each other. Not every trait is worthy of the finite recource of WL traits. If there was more granularity, it be a harder choice between taking the 1 "autopick" vs 3 other versatile but clutch traits. 

[Lemondish]

I want a reason to bring my vehicles without wishing I had just packed in more Redemptors. 

But realistically, I wish everything was all in one book so we didn't have instances where part of your army is updated while the other part languishes in ruin. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Lemondish

[Captain Idaho]

8 hours ago, Lemondish said:

But realistically, I wish everything was all in one book so we didn't have instances where part of your army is updated while the other part languishes in ruin. 

You know, I'd be okay with the same treatment as the Chaos Marines Codex - all the Chapters in a single book.

In practice it works for everything but the datasheets, however. There are ways round that, like supplements for the Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves, but then Ultramarines have quite a few datasheets for characters which is kinda problematic.

9 hours ago, UnkyHamHam said:

Wild idea, but it would be kind of cool if you had 3 tiers of WL traits based on how good they are. And you could take either a T3 trait, or a T2 and T1, or three T1 traits. 

Then you could kind of do away with the second trait strat, and hero of the chapter could be used to only give out T1 traits. 

It is kind of hard to balance all the available traits against each other. Not every trait is worthy of the finite recource of WL traits. If there was more granularity, it be a harder choice between taking the 1 "autopick" vs 3 other versatile but clutch traits. 

I actually like the idea of tiers.

I'd like similar for Relics too, if I'm honest. Powerful Relics or slightly weaker ones that can potentially be stacked but then I'm getting a little deeper out there now.

I'm all for more flavour but less complexity and being able to give more sergeants special stuff could be a way round that.