Balance Dataslate and Munitorum Field Manual changes

[Relic]

19 hours ago, Prot said:

 

I don't want to be a doomsayer, and maybe the 'floor' isn't where I'd put them..... there's always Imperial Fists for that! However, it's pretty bleak looking.

 

 

...I don't know, Dev Doctrine all game Imperial Fists with the end of 9th edition free for all points adjustments for Marines and take what you want Force Org chart looks like a more shiny floor then ours currently! 

 

As mentioned - I really don't like the approach of free points and non restrictive Force Org charts. The free points is not good for internal balance of a Codex either as some options will always be more efficient. 

 

As a lot of us also have Marine armies sitting on a shelf somewhere, they will be out in force again now. Everyone else will then build lists to kill marines. Leaving us dedicated to the long war playing with expensive elite infantry predominantly in a meta that is very offensive, anything in the open dies bar very few exceptions. 

 

Still, I was playing CSM until the end of the last codex and that was fairly bleak at times, so i'll roll with it. Realistically we are likely facing 6 months of the end of edition wild west that GW sometimes does and then we will head into 10th with whatever that entails. I'm sure clever players will find a niche for CSM to play in the meantime. 

 

As a general end of edition note, I would not buy/build new forces with these changes in mind. Play/paint what is cool with the expectation of some reset in a few months. 

 

I'll be playing my first game with the new pts/mission pack next week. First thoughts is just a fun Iron Warriors legionnaire heavy list, something like 12 x 5 MSU squads each with a powerfist/daemon blade, heavy chainaxe and meltagun/plasma gun in a bunch of rhinos (with havoc launcher/combi-melta because why not) and 3 havoc squads (reaper chaincannons/heavy bolters). Basically try to play a trading game/lots of obsec rather then trying to be durable. 

 

[Prot]

19 hours ago, SanguinaryGuardsman said:

These changes are baffling but shouldnt really surprise anyone given how things have gone for CSM in the past.  These last 6 months have been the exception not the norm.    

you know I’ve been playing CSM as my main tournament army since before beloved Pete Haines gave us Basilisks, and right through the beginning of what I perceive the worst of times… “ Gav Dex”.  And in that time I found people just never cared about Chaos, and if you complained about it you more less got ignored. 
 

But what made this time different to me at least was GWs goal of presenting the most balanced game we’d see to date. So as disappointed as I am I still hope they keep a close watch on this. 

16 hours ago, Relic said:

 

...I don't know, Dev Doctrine all game Imperial Fists with the end of 9th edition free for all points adjustments for Marines and take what you want Force Org chart looks like a more shiny floor then ours currently! 

 

As mentioned - I really don't like the approach of free points and non restrictive Force Org charts. The free points is not good for internal balance of a Codex either as some options will always be more efficient. 

 

I'll be playing my first game with the new pts/mission pack next week. First thoughts is just a fun Iron Warriors legionnaire heavy list, something like 12 x 5 MSU squads each with a powerfist/daemon blade, heavy chainaxe and meltagun/plasma gun in a bunch of rhinos (with havoc launcher/combi-melta because why not) and 3 havoc squads (reaper chaincannons/heavy bolters). Basically try to play a trading game/lots of obsec rather then trying to be durable. 

 

First off as a fellow IW player, you gotta learn to sock it to those fellow plebs any chance we get

 

and I agree that this isn’t a long term solution. I think this is an end of edition Hail Mary to get everyone buying and playing marines. And just like last edition I will restart World Eaters only to arch the edition end and watch them become dated before I’m finished painting them!

 

I’ve been playing my loyalist marines mostly against Chaos. It hasn’t been pretty (for chaos). I’m planing on pulling out my IW again and just accepting this and learning to live with it. Heck maybe the mild improvement to the IW secondary will finally make it playable!  

 

 

[WrathOfTheLion]

Yeah, their presentation there was definitely baffling. Hitting a faction that was near enough to 50%, where they want things, was very bizarre.

 

But, it's the end of the edition Hail Mary as you said. I'm already working on my World Eaters, I'll probably have two rhinos and two terminator squads done before the Codex even comes out. I don't play competitive, so I plan on just enjoying myself as much as I can until the dust settles.

 

Space Marines are probably going to be quite busted with these changes. It's basically doing what made Beasts of Chaos broken in AoS - combine aggressive point reductions with buffs and things go a bit wild. But it's six months at this point, it really just doesn't matter.

Edited January 9, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[WatchCaptainNavar]

I didn’t take my iron warriors to our club night last week, opting to see how my iron hands ran under the new points. 
comparing and contrasting the two, without AoC armies that have a lot of base AP hurt marines again, I was trading a unit of tacticals per turn into eldar shruikan fire as high volume of ap1 fire does the trick. However with all the freebies and how cheap nearly all the marine units are now it was a trade game I was winning, a feeling I’ve not had with my iron warriors since the codex came out.
Multi melta, combi melta tacticals popping hard targets while redemptors being effective in shooting and fighting, even a predator earning its keep at the new cheaper price point and although they didn’t do much loyalist terminators are so cheap I was running 15 of them and it didn’t feel like a significant chunk of my list.

 

Now for my iron warriors I’m a little more concerned as I initially thought I’d just offset the cost rise of terminators, Abaddon and the mark of slanesh by dropping a rhino. However   Seeing the difference in terminator cost in action has me worried, with the base points rise and the cost of weapons I’m not sure the 10 terminator brick with the rune and buffing HQs is an effective points spend compared to  the loyalists who can just bring more terminators to the party for the same points especially hammer and shields. 
I’m a bit limited on alternate elite infantry choices as I have 15 terminators, 5 chosen and 5 possessed. My untested gut feeling is iron warriors terminators can still be effective with the 5+ invun and going back to the codex legion trait of -1ap, but are they to expensive for a meta of cheap units and free war gear as my alternate thought is to go big on full sized legionarie squads now the war gear is free and just play attrition like a true iron warrior. 

[Prot]

4 hours ago, WatchCaptainNavar said:

 

 

Now for my iron warriors I’m a little more concerned as I initially thought I’d just offset the cost rise of terminators, Abaddon and the mark of slanesh by dropping a rhino. However   Seeing the difference in terminator cost in action has me worried, with the base points rise and the cost of weapons I’m not sure the 10 terminator brick with the rune and buffing HQs is an effective points spend compared to  the loyalists who can just bring more terminators to the party for the same points especially hammer and shields. 
I’m a bit limited on alternate elite infantry choices as I have 15 terminators, 5 chosen and 5 possessed. My untested gut feeling is iron warriors terminators can still be effective with the 5+ invun and going back to the codex legion trait of -1ap, but are they to expensive for a meta of cheap units and free war gear as my alternate thought is to go big on full sized legionarie squads now the war gear is free and just play attrition like a true iron warrior. 

I'm looking at eliminating one of my troops.

 

The Chosen I managed to get working, only with AoC, and MoS. So I want the terimies back in my IW, and I don't know if it's plausible. So what I'm looking at is adding a large Plaguemarine squad (free wargear) and just having them take the place of the Termies for an experiment.

[Karhedron]

Plague Marines can probably match the Termies on durability but I am not sure on the damage output, even with free upgrades. Then again, if you simply need them to stomp into the midfield and hard to shift, maybe that is enough. And the points freed up can put more damage dealing stuff elsewhere.

 

EDIT - I have just looked at how much free wargear a PM squad can take and I may have to revise my opinion of their damage output. 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Karhedron

[Prot]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Plague Marines can probably match the Termies on durability but I am not sure on the damage output, even with free upgrades. Then again, if you simply need them to stomp into the midfield and hard to shift, maybe that is enough. And the points freed up can put more damage dealing stuff elsewhere.

 

EDIT - I have just looked at how much free wargear a PM squad can take and I may have to revise my opinion of their damage output. 

 

Yup, exactly. I didn't find a ton of output from the Termies anyway, but I'm thinking with proper usage this might be the way to go for my IW anway.

[Gree]

Terminators got more expensive, but the actual combo is still unchanged. You can stack Black Rune + Illusionary Supplication + Delightful Agonies + Mutated Invigoration for a very durable unit. The loss of AoC hurt, but everybody else lost that. Even without AoC, that’s a really tough unit. Chaos Terminators are more expensive than loyalist Terminators, but Chaos Termies have access to much better defensive synergies.

 

The 10-man MoS unit got 35pts more expensive compared to the old points value, but I’d still readily drop a couple of Spawn or a Cultist squad in order to take them.

 

4 hours ago, Prot said:

I'm looking at eliminating one of my troops.

 

The Chosen I managed to get working, only with AoC, and MoS. So I want the terimies back in my IW, and I don't know if it's plausible. So what I'm looking at is adding a large Plaguemarine squad (free wargear) and just having them take the place of the Termies for an experiment.

 

Keep in mind, Plague Marines don't benefit from the IW Legion trait.

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

8 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Plague Marines can probably match the Termies on durability but I am not sure on the damage output, even with free upgrades. Then again, if you simply need them to stomp into the midfield and hard to shift, maybe that is enough. And the points freed up can put more damage dealing stuff elsewhere.

 

EDIT - I have just looked at how much free wargear a PM squad can take and I may have to revise my opinion of their damage output. 

If you plan on going to any events keep in mind the new rules rules for ignoring dmg caps/rules that now bypass flat damage modifiers like duty eternal or disgustingly resilient.  Every single guard army will have the new relic banner which will make all your plague marines disappear super fast.  

[WatchCaptainNavar]

One option I’m being tempted by as a next purchase is a squad of 10 rubrics with flamers, the sorcerer can cast warp time to give them a lot of movement with an advance and 10 d6+2 s4 ap-2 shots seems very good into now AoC is gone along with there other buffs.

[WatchCaptainNavar]

2 minutes ago, SanguinaryGuardsman said:

If you plan on going to any events keep in mind the new rules rules for ignoring dmg caps/rules that now bypass flat damage modifiers like duty eternal or disgustingly resilient.  Every single guard army will have the new relic banner which will make all your plague marines disappear super fast.  

I’d forgotten about that, GW sure like kicking deathguard while they’re down. Here’s army wide -1 damage in place of your old disgustingly resilient.

 

some time later……

 

this oh this is a new option that allows armies to ignore damage caps and modifiers. What do you mean were bypassing your armies usp and the band aid we applied to other factions when they’re dropping like flys.

 

I haven’t taken my deathguard out since I was introduced to the reaper of oblitorax and the flyrant that went straight through a 10 man blight lord unit.

[WrathOfTheLion]

10 minutes ago, SanguinaryGuardsman said:

If you plan on going to any events keep in mind the new rules rules for ignoring dmg caps/rules that now bypass flat damage modifiers like duty eternal or disgustingly resilient.  Every single guard army will have the new relic banner which will make all your plague marines disappear super fast.  

Man, they just can't help themselves, can they? 

 

I'm surprised they don't have something to ignore Daemon saves on top of it all.

[Kythnos]

Looking at these changes as an IW player who only plays in narrative mode,  the only change is the loss of AoC, so reverting back to the regular IW trait (aka AoC light). Since everyone else lost AoC as well,  this feels like a net win,  despite loosing immunity to wound rerolls. 

Or am I overlooking something?

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

5 hours ago, WatchCaptainNavar said:

I’d forgotten about that, GW sure like kicking deathguard while they’re down. Here’s army wide -1 damage in place of your old disgustingly resilient.

 

some time later……

 

this oh this is a new option that allows armies to ignore damage caps and modifiers. What do you mean were bypassing your armies usp and the band aid we applied to other factions when they’re dropping like flys.

 

I haven’t taken my deathguard out since I was introduced to the reaper of oblitorax and the flyrant that went straight through a 10 man blight lord unit.

Well in fairness to GW, the new rules ignore both the previous version of DR and the current version.  :)

[WatchCaptainNavar]

I for one can’t wait for the introduction of a super duper feel no pain that allows units to ignore wounds that would otherwise be unignorable. 
on a serious note though I wonder how deathguard will be written and balanced in there next codex / 10th as what used to be their thematic rules has become common to a lot of armies or bypassed by later weapons, rules or mortal wounds out put. Plus with world eaters coming out I don’t see them getting a third wave of releases any time soon.

[Khornestar]

I guess the major change in my lists for Word Bearers will likely mean I won’t load up on flamers and heavy flamers with my 10-man terminators. I probably won’t be taking a 20 terminator list again any time soon.

 

It’s possible the rest of the list having free wargear will make up for that price increase at least, but I haven’t had a chance to do the math yet.

 

I was already planning a list variant that involved 10 terminators, 10 possessed, and 10 chosen for some sweet sweet 3-wound-spam. I might shift the black rune to the possessed, since they’d be the most immediate threat much of the time. That is a lot of low/mid strength melee attacks, which are nice, but I need some good shooting and high strength/damage melee attacks in the mix. I haven’t quite worked out the best way to achieve that in my collection.

 

Blood slaughterers are on the menu again for sure, combined with maulerfiends might be extra sweet.

 

The above mentioned double fist/flamer helbrute, or at least lascannon/fist/flamer helbrute seems cool too.

 

[Sception]

On 1/9/2023 at 4:56 PM, Gree said:

The loss of AoC hurt, but everybody else lost that.

 

everybody lost that, but loyalist got a good bit more in return.  regardless, armor of contempt was added for a reason - 6 editions of offensive power creep with next to no defensive boosts had elite marine units dying as fast as guardsman, grots, & gaunts, which feels wrong & messes up points calculations and has the whole game skewing towards obnoxious games of rocket tag.  that underlying problem never went away, so dropping armor of contempt (and replacing it with offensive boosts of all things, via free weapon upgrades and all the time dev order marines) feels like putting your umbrella away before the rain has stopped.

 

But whatever, we've been in worse spots.  Most of the changes & nerfs I can deal with.  Abaddon was immefiately pegged as way too cheap the moment the book came out.  I love how strong they made him, he really feels like a warmaster on par with the primarchs, as he should.  the new points feel more approproate for that power lebel, & should make him less of an auto-run outside of his own unit.

 

free upgrades on troops... i get the complaints, but i like it.  full upgraded units just look and feel cooler than base gear units.

 

The terminators price hike hurts, though.  nerfing the base unit on account of a broken combo, instead of dismantling the combo, just means people get unfairly punished for running them without the cheese.

 

I'd have much rather rather seen a nerf to black rune of damnation.  Maybe make it only usable 1 phase per game.  maybe just cant put it on terminators.  maybe just remove the damn thing outright.  or maybe wait and see how removing AoC affects the combo before layering more punishment on it.  termies are one of if not the most iconic csm units - is it so bad if they're a staple unit in chaos marine armies?

[Galron]

As someone who uses lots of legionary troops anyway, the terminator nerf was a wash. I never used Abby as I thought he was a crutch. No big deal. I play IW so we kept a weak AoC which will help against small arms at least. Over all, no big deal to me. Need to finish my last Vindicator and do weathering, life rolls on and cannons gonna cannon.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Galron

[WatchCaptainNavar]

I’ve been doing some more list thinking and for my iron warriors and my latest idea is-

 

like others here I’m going to drop Abaddon for the points and try a list around the usual cheese 10 mos, black rune terminators with the usual character support but keep them cheap with combi bolters, 6 power fists and 2 heavy flamers (I’ve been having a lot of fun with flamers recently so I’ll take the points hit).

a second 5 terminators with mon, but otherwise kept cheap.

5 possessed.

3 vindicators. 

venom crawler.

Dark apostle, master of possession, warpsmith and then either a sorcerer or lord depending on the new secondary game or a reroll buff for the terminators.

then to finish off the list as many msu legionary squads as I can take kitted out with all the special, heavy and sgt weapons I can find amongst my marines. Unfortunately as they’re built from mk3 marines, so I don’t have any heavy chain axes so can’t take any of those freebies.

 

as such the terminators play the usual table centre board control and threat magnet, venom crawler and possessed are early game fast threats, vindicators kill the big stuff and the marines trade onto objectives while also having all the gear they can take for 90pts to lend some firepower and melee threat.

[Toldavf]

Venom crawlers are actually really nasty right now, lots of mid str/ap damage 2 attacks