Can the recent codexes hint at things to come in 10th?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Obviously the last few codexes of an edition should be designed with the rules of the upcoming edition in mind, so is there anything rules and/or mechanic wise that ties the last couple of codexes together, that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense in the context of 9th edition?

I'm not particularly familiar with the stats for LOV, but if i'm remembering correctly their shooting is fairly strong at fairly long ranges. the new guard codex has a lot of long range shooting, however fairly small play areas, and recommended terrain layouts make long range on direct fire weapons kind of pointless and useless, so if both LoV and guard have long range direct fire shooting, is it reasonable to think that in 10th tables may grow in size again, or possibly see a change to the recommended terrain layout, or changes in LOS or how terrain works?

[TheMawr]

Well Guard was always going to be a long range focused army, so it isnt saying much. I dont know either but I dont have the feeling the focus with LoV is long range when looking at the units/models. They might be good at it, but its more because they focus on high tech, rather than an indicator of anything.. and the next codex definitely doesnt favor long range or large boards ;)

 

I did wonder something similar but different though, the guard codex completely changes the <subfaction> approach if I understand it correctly.. now at one side that fits the guard classical (2nd edition) mixture of different regiments forming your army and could mean nothing but a nostalgia check. But on the other hand not only have Harlequins also made a similar transformation, but the eldar codex has recurring images of a ynnari-bieltan hybrid army, and there is also the case for Snakebitez Beastsnaggas wich can be taken by all clans.

I could potentially see the guard approach to <subfaction> (at least if I understand it correctly) becoming the standard in 10th edition. A more abstract and flexible but also more limited way to build your army to flavor instead of "culture" (and in a way a hybrid between <subfaction> and the old detachments)
As for GW it has several advantages to consider such a switch :

- For most armies they are through updating the generic stuff, and if for example not every ork player can use Snakebitez Beastsnaggas it could mean much lower sales.

- In the same category, it gives a continued motivation for established players.. an Iyanden player might not have lots of jetbikes, and might not be tempted to make a second saimhann army, but if he can now unawkwardly switch between playing his army as <Necromantic wraithhost> or <Wildrider skyhost> they are more inclined to add things they previously hadnt.

- Its easier to control the balance for them, alot of rule unbalance past 2 editions seems to me to involve <subfaction> and especially the make your own combine 2.

- Likewise, its easier and less aggrivating for fans to ( temporarily or not ) ban a <Phobos Stealthforce> from rules than to prevent people playing <Ravenguard>

 

It could just as easily all mean nothing, though.. I mostly mean to say that I could see them do it and what the advantage is for them, but it doesnt mean I necessarily believe they will do it that way.

 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I don't think we can draw a lot of conclusions from these books. We've been complaining about needing multiple books to play since late 6th early 7th and now with Arks of Omen they mention that concern and that it's a narrative campaign series. To me this suggests that we might be looking at an index edition with 10th (hopefully free ones instead of a money grab). This is just me speculating it's not a rumor, but I think it's a weird enough move on their part where I would expect anything to possible.   

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, TheMawr said:

Well Guard was always going to be a long range focused army, so it isnt saying much. I dont know either but I dont have the feeling the focus with LoV is long range when looking at the units/models. They might be good at it, but its more because they focus on high tech, rather than an indicator of anything.. and the next codex definitely doesnt favor long range or large boards ;)

 

I did wonder something similar but different though, the guard codex completely changes the <subfaction> approach if I understand it correctly.. now at one side that fits the guard classical (2nd edition) mixture of different regiments forming your army and could mean nothing but a nostalgia check. But on the other hand not only have Harlequins also made a similar transformation, but the eldar codex has recurring images of a ynnari-bieltan hybrid army, and there is also the case for Snakebitez Beastsnaggas wich can be taken by all clans.

I could potentially see the guard approach to <subfaction> (at least if I understand it correctly) becoming the standard in 10th edition. A more abstract and flexible but also more limited way to build your army to flavor instead of "culture" (and in a way a hybrid between <subfaction> and the old detachments)
As for GW it has several advantages to consider such a switch :

- For most armies they are through updating the generic stuff, and if for example not every ork player can use Snakebitez Beastsnaggas it could mean much lower sales.

- In the same category, it gives a continued motivation for established players.. an Iyanden player might not have lots of jetbikes, and might not be tempted to make a second saimhann army, but if he can now unawkwardly switch between playing his army as <Necromantic wraithhost> or <Wildrider skyhost> they are more inclined to add things they previously hadnt.

- Its easier to control the balance for them, alot of rule unbalance past 2 editions seems to me to involve <subfaction> and especially the make your own combine 2.

- Likewise, its easier and less aggrivating for fans to ( temporarily or not ) ban a <Phobos Stealthforce> from rules than to prevent people playing <Ravenguard>

 

It could just as easily all mean nothing, though.. I mostly mean to say that I could see them do it and what the advantage is for them, but it doesnt mean I necessarily believe they will do it that way.

 

Yeah guard were always going to be ranged shooting but the rogal dorn has a cannon with like a 96” range for example. And khorne could get VERY mobile in their next dex to compensate for a future edition with larger boards. Guard definitely got the potential to be way more mobile in this codex.

 

how does the LoV deal with subfactions.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Lord_Ikka]

Leagues of Votann are not long ranged, at all. They are powerful at their ranges, which max out at 36", but they are not considered a long-ranged army per se. LOV are powerful because they have good base stats, powerful weaponry that is effective at both shooting and melee, and very good rules/strat support. 

 

The Dorn having an extremely long-range gun is not indicative of anything- Earthshaker cannons on Basilisks have been 240" for two editions now and the board size only decreased. 

[WrathOfTheLion]

With them mentioning LoV being playtested with Eldar and Tyranids, if we take that statement at face value, we should consider it 'older' than Chaos Marines, Chaos Daemons and Guard.

 

Both CSM and Daemons had atypical subfactions as well, with CSM having no custom faction traits being notable compared to other Codices.

[The Emperors Champion22]

54 minutes ago, Lord_Ikka said:

Leagues of Votann are not long ranged, at all. They are powerful at their ranges, which max out at 36", but they are not considered a long-ranged army per se. LOV are powerful because they have good base stats, powerful weaponry that is effective at both shooting and melee, and very good rules/strat support. 

 

The Dorn having an extremely long-range gun is not indicative of anything- Earthshaker cannons on Basilisks have been 240" for two editions now and the board size only decreased. 

So the leagues are good because they have everything?

[Lord_Ikka]

12 minutes ago, The Emperors Champion22 said:

So the leagues are good because they have everything?

Somewhat- they are definitely good at a lot. While only the Beserks are super-good at melee, their other units aren't bad and Void Armor makes them more resilient than DG in some ways (no re-rolling Wound rolls can be better than -1 damage depending on the situation), making trading into them a slog for quite a few armies. Their shooting, while mid/short ranged, is pretty nasty at that range and buffed by strats like Ion Storm or Optimized Volley. Combine that with the Eye of the Ancestors (Judgement Token) rule and you have an army that has a one in six chance of wounding anything that has a JT anytime they attack it. The only thing that is making the Votann not killing it in the tournament scene is that their secondaries are pretty blah in terms of ease of scoring and the early FAQ/point increase kind of killed their momentum out of the gate. If the next GT gives them some better secondaries, I can see a lot of LOV coming out of the woodwork and laying down some pretty rough games to the competition. 

[XeonDragon]

Well, I'm hoping that the GSC codex might point to some improvement for my beloved Raven Guard in 10th edition, 

Edited December 2, 2022 by XeonDragon

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Lord_Ikka said:

Leagues of Votann are not long ranged, at all. They are powerful at their ranges, which max out at 36", but they are not considered a long-ranged army per se. LOV are powerful because they have good base stats, powerful weaponry that is effective at both shooting and melee, and very good rules/strat support. 

 

The Dorn having an extremely long-range gun is not indicative of anything- Earthshaker cannons on Basilisks have been 240" for two editions now and the board size only decreased. 

Like I said wasn’t familiar with their weapons but I remembered their land fort had a hellacious gun option, so figured there was a decent chance they had some range lol.

earthshaker has had a 200+” range for decades when it had a weird niche rule that allowed you to shoot models on another table in a completely different game, so they’ve just kept the stupid long range.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Lord_Ikka]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

earthshaker has had a 200+” range for decades when it had a weird niche rule that allowed you to shoot models on another table in a completely different game, so they’ve just kept the stupid long range.

Storm Eagle rockets are still 120", Volcano cannon is still 120", Quake Cannon is 96", and that's just in the IG codex- they haven't increased the range on big guns, they've merely kept it. It is a niche thing where sometimes you'll have people playing Apocalypse-level games (without the Apo rules usually, just giant 40k games) and then you see something like a 120" range possibly coming into effect. I wouldn't read anything into the fact that the Dorn has a long-range gun; it is a vehicle just below a super-heavy, so having a gun that is longer ranged than most MBT but shorter than some super-heavy weapons makes sense.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Lord_Ikka

[MARK0SIAN]

I’ve only seen reviews of the Guard codex but am I right in thinking it’s the first one that has forgone any special progressive faction ability that changes every turn like doctrines?

 

If so, maybe there’s a layer of bloat they might be aiming to reduce in future codexes/editions. 
 

 

[Emperor Ming]

If gw rolled out the guard changes to other dexs the game would be more balanced, but people wouldn't like having to choose between their faction bonus and whichever rules got added in on top

[Karhedron]

One thing that caught my eye is the special rules baked into units such as Cadian shock troops. Maybe in the next Marine dex we will see the Doctrine bonuses baked into Devastator, Tactical and Assault squads respectively?

[Rogue]

2 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

I’ve only seen reviews of the Guard codex but am I right in thinking it’s the first one that has forgone any special progressive faction ability that changes every turn like doctrines?

 

If so, maybe there’s a layer of bloat they might be aiming to reduce in future codexes/editions. 
 

 

 

Can't speak for codexes in general, but the Genestealer Cult codex doesn't have any progressive rule equivalent to Marine doctrines. So Guard aren't the first.

[WrathOfTheLion]

49 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

One thing that caught my eye is the special rules baked into units such as Cadian shock troops. Maybe in the next Marine dex we will see the Doctrine bonuses baked into Devastator, Tactical and Assault squads respectively?

Or the 'special' doctrine bonuses may be removed entirely. CSM only get the 'raw' doctrine ability, no special chapter/legion addition to it.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, Lord_Ikka said:

Storm Eagle rockets are still 120", Volcano cannon is still 120", Quake Cannon is 96", and that's just in the IG codex- they haven't increased the range on big guns, they've merely kept it. It is a niche thing where sometimes you'll have people playing Apocalypse-level games (without the Apo rules usually, just giant 40k games) and then you see something like a 120" range possibly coming into effect. I wouldn't read anything into the fact that the Dorn has a long-range gun; it is a vehicle just below a super-heavy, so having a gun that is longer ranged than most MBT but shorter than some super-heavy weapons makes sense.

I never claimed they increased range on any legacy weapons…

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

Or the 'special' doctrine bonuses may be removed entirely. CSM only get the 'raw' doctrine ability, no special chapter/legion addition to it.

 

A good point. Interesting to note that CSM still have a win rate over 10% higher than their loyalist counterparts despite this omission. What rules, points costs or other bonuses accounts for this discrepancy? Is "Creations of Bile" really skewing the results that much? Are CSM being supported by their stronger unique units like Daemon Princes?

 

I note that some units seem better than their closest equivalents. For example, Havocs have +1T and ignore movement penalties for firing Heavy weapons but are no more expensive than Devastators (cheaper with some loadouts in fact).

Edited December 2, 2022 by Karhedron

[WrathOfTheLion]

49 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

A good point. Interesting to note that CSM still have a win rate over 10% higher than their loyalist counterparts despite this omission. What rules, points costs or other bonuses accounts for this discrepancy? Is "Creations of Bile" really skewing the results that much? Are CSM being supported by their stronger unique units like Daemon Princes?

 

I note that some units seem better than their closest equivalents. For example, Havocs have +1T and ignore movement penalties for firing Heavy weapons but are no more expensive than Devastators (cheaper with some loadouts in fact).

They were in the playtests for CSM, but were removed by final print, probably because they'd be busted, or as I might theorize, a design shift happened as well. I think with the newer books (CSM, Daemons and maybe Guard), they've been a lot better at catching that stuff.

 

CSM also have marks. Solid things like getting fight first with Mark of Slaanesh, etc. They do have stronger units as well, things like Possessed, Chosen and Terminators are fantastic units.

 

I don't think Creations of Bile are skewing it that much, were they to get nerfed some combo of Emperor's Children/Word Bearers/Black Legion/Red Corsairs would be right there in my opinion, with probably not too much drop.

 

Edit: To add, I looked up the stats on Goonhammer from October to now. CoB are at 55% win rate, while all of Black Legion, Word Bearers and Emperor's Children are above 50% win rate, BL notably being at like 52.5% (Red Corsairs are lower than I thought, but have a really small sample size). So I think they'd maintain around the same win rate if CoB were toned down, as they still have three factions anchored near their average, with BL and EC being just as popular. Taking the month of November only, Iron Warriors are also on the rise and are a really popular one too, probably due to their faction trait being reworked to not overlap with AoC.

 

For the design shift, I think some of the subfaction rules may get trimmed down (removal of superdoctrines), and possibly that custom faction traits are the end of the line as well. Maybe it's just for CSM because of how unwieldy it could be, but custom faction traits are completely nonexistent.

Edited December 2, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion
added stats

[MARK0SIAN]

3 hours ago, Rogue said:

 

Can't speak for codexes in general, but the Genestealer Cult codex doesn't have any progressive rule equivalent to Marine doctrines. So Guard aren't the first.

Ah, fair enough, it seemed like they were giving those out as standard at one point. I obviously missed that GSC didn’t have it. 
 

I guess my theory/hope is out the window then :)

[Marshal Rohr]

If recent codexes are foreshadowing what 10th edition will be like, its bad news. The guard codex is so bereft of customization it might as well come with standard issue army lists. The Votann codex is the same way. You cant personalize your army or characters at all. Its worse than its ever been. All this 'times change' and 'streamlining' has completely neutered a setting that used to be about making an army that reflected your personality and the things you like. Unless 10th is a complete and total rework that matches the army building of Heresy, Necromunda, and Titanicus its going to suffer from the same problems as 9th: a total lack of soul. 

 

I have a folder on my PC of poorly screenshotted pictures from wayback machine and old white dwarf articles with armies from Dave Taylor, John Shaffer, and others that created whole converted armies using counts as and kitbashing and its insane to see those armies now and realize none of them could be used in a modern 40k game. 

[Redcomet]

Lauyout wise the Guard dex is the best one so far for me, I haven’t read LoV, with a lot more fluff and with the Crusade content in the back of the dex, which reduces my rules confusion a lot. 
 

In the past they have claimed that the last dex or two of an edition have been “future proof”. 
 

But not knowing what design direction they are going with in 10th it makes it hard to judge

[Redcomet]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

If recent codexes are foreshadowing what 10th edition will be like, its bad news. The guard codex is so bereft of customization it might as well come with standard issue army lists. The Votann codex is the same way. You cant personalize your army or characters at all. Its worse than its ever been. All this 'times change' and 'streamlining' has completely neutered a setting that used to be about making an army that reflected your personality and the things you like. Unless 10th is a complete and total rework that matches the army building of Heresy, Necromunda, and Titanicus its going to suffer from the same problems as 9th: a total lack of soul. 

 

I have a folder on my PC of poorly screenshotted pictures from wayback machine and old white dwarf articles with armies from Dave Taylor, John Shaffer, and others that created whole converted armies using counts as and kitbashing and its insane to see those armies now and realize none of them could be used in a modern 40k game. 

It has been heading in this direction in years. 
 

And claiming you cant personalize, convert, kit bash or counts as any more is just blatantly false.

 

You just can’t micromanage gear anymore like in the olden days. 
 

And the reason for that is fairly easy to grasp. Whether it is a good one id certainly debatable. 

[Marshal Rohr]

9 hours ago, Redcomet said:

It has been heading in this direction in years. 
 

And claiming you cant personalize, convert, kit bash or counts as any more is just blatantly false.

 

You just can’t micromanage gear anymore like in the olden days. 
 

And the reason for that is fairly easy to grasp. Whether it is a good one id certainly debatable. 

 

Tell that to Recon vets, grenadier vets, and sniper teams. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

13 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

If recent codexes are foreshadowing what 10th edition will be like, its bad news. The guard codex is so bereft of customization it might as well come with standard issue army lists. The Votann codex is the same way. You cant personalize your army or characters at all. Its worse than its ever been. All this 'times change' and 'streamlining' has completely neutered a setting that used to be about making an army that reflected your personality and the things you like. Unless 10th is a complete and total rework that matches the army building of Heresy, Necromunda, and Titanicus its going to suffer from the same problems as 9th: a total lack of soul. 

 

I have a folder on my PC of poorly screenshotted pictures from wayback machine and old white dwarf articles with armies from Dave Taylor, John Shaffer, and others that created whole converted armies using counts as and kitbashing and its insane to see those armies now and realize none of them could be used in a modern 40k game. 

What are you talking about? This is the most customization we’ve had in all of the editions I’ve been involved with

 

lack of options for characters was a thing 8th for marines at least, and just seems to be the direction the game is going.

 

kitbashes and custom armies are still 100% legal in the game even in tournaments.

 

if you have a gaming group you play with you can agree to do nearly anything, if you made all of your infantry out of orlock models I doubt you’ll regularly have problems using them in games with randoms, even tournaments you could use them…so what’s the issue exactly that you’re having?

Edited December 3, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven