CSM (Competitive) Post Arks, LVO, Uprising

[WrathOfTheLion]

3 hours ago, Prot said:

I heard the vacation thing as well, but I have to be honest I'm looking at the 4th (redacted) book of Arks as lining up pretty close with June. I think that might cause a ton of orders. 

 

More on topic though, I did watch a few of the games on a major tournament this past weekend, and Chaos has fallen off the edge of a cliff competitively it seems. Really disappointed with how they handled this. Everything else got 'baby stepped' into compliance, Chaos gets a rug pull. 

 

That said, if they do another balance, I'd have to really hope this is where they come back around on some of those harsher decisions to nerf CSM.

4th Arks of Omen should be out at the beginning of April, they're doing one a month quite regularly, and the 3rd will probably be this Sunday preview. The 5th Arks book should be out in May, of which there are five as stated in the designer interview in WD 484.

 

To be back on topic though, they did not handle that well, I really just don't know what they were thinking. The only way I can rationalize it, is that they thought somehow this would just change internal balance, which just isn't how that works.

Edited February 27, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[MegaVolt87]

CSM comp win rate was fine for once, the nerfs didn't need to happen. I'm beginning to believe many CSM players are fine with this since new WE seems to have sold well judging by people's "haul" posts on socials. CSM sales are probably because our new models are nice VS actual game play. It's the only explanation I can think of for CSM simultaneously receiving new releases constantly while having potato rules all these years. People wanting good rules for CSM must be a vocal minority, this has to be GW's internal data we are not privy to. I just can't explain the phenomena otherwise. 

[Prot]

7 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

CSM comp win rate was fine for once, the nerfs didn't need to happen. I'm beginning to believe many CSM players are fine with this since new WE seems to have sold well judging by people's "haul" posts on socials. CSM sales are probably because our new models are nice VS actual game play. It's the only explanation I can think of for CSM simultaneously receiving new releases constantly while having potato rules all these years. People wanting good rules for CSM must be a vocal minority, this has to be GW's internal data we are not privy to. I just can't explain the phenomena otherwise. 

 

I'd agree with that. I think the models are amazing, and those of us slinging CSM armies for a decade plus have had to deal with some very old models, and arguably worse rules since 3.5. 

 

Competitively speaking I will say I believe GW typically gives Chaos a short term 'boost' towards the end of an edition. I have no evidence to back this up, but I recall really getting into Crimson Slaughter, then they pretty much destroyed the army towards the end of an edition. They've done that in a few editions... where they introduce something 'chaos' and it doesn't get a very long time in the lime light.

 

Even though I do play a lot, I do consider myself a hobbiest first. So I absolutely fall in that category of just happy to have a fresh line up.

 

With word dropping that there is another FAQ coming, I have hope still they will reverse some of the nerfs especially after the numbers come out from this week.

[SyNidus]

Oof. Not gonna lie, i just stepped back into 40k with my Night Lords and reading this thread is really putting a dampening my desire to play.

 

Is there really no ray of hope for us?

[WrathOfTheLion]

You can still play if you're just there to play games as long as things are a bit casual, but there's not really anything going for us in tournaments until some things are addressed.

[Prot]

3 hours ago, SyNidus said:

Oof. Not gonna lie, i just stepped back into 40k with my Night Lords and reading this thread is really putting a dampening my desire to play.

 

Is there really no ray of hope for us?

 

Well Night Lords had a pile of great tricks that didn't rely on MoS and Termies specifically. 

 

I often see you dip your foot back into the project Syn and then quickly back out. How about this.... play 5 games with them using the cool traits/strats and let us know how it goes?

 

Just my opinion but what I think happened is the competitive world at large saw a nerf to the most common element of the 'easy' competitive build: IE: Termies/MoS/Rune of Damnation. And putting Abaddon in the middle of that brick and knocking teeth out. I have a suspicion that wasn't part of your plan...?

 

So armies that worked on that premise are effectively dead. Since Abe + Termie Brick doesn't really work I strongly believe the competitive scene took the path of least resistance and flocked to the loyalist discount party and didn't come back. Again just my opinion but I will go on to say this is probably a group largely comprised of bandwagon jumpers. 

 

Since this nerfing I have seen some Chaos Space Marines do very well, but just not win a tournament. By no stretch of the imagination are CSM dead. Just if you look at those people trying to score top ITC points, this is too hard now. Look at the player base I'm speaking of; guys from top competitive channels that don't even have a real colour scheme on their armies, or they flip/flop the flavour of the month. That's the group that largely left Chaos. You can trust me or check out their social media(s). They just put 'random chaos blokes' back in the box, and pulled out 'random colour scheme loyalists' out of the box. You tube is full of this. But we're far from finished.

 

It was just super disheartening to me because 1) I had played Black Legion all through the garbage era's, including tournaments up til Covid. 2) I used Abaddon when he was considered hot trash. 3) My Iron Warriors were so pathetic, and all I wanted to do was run these armies with Termies. So yes, for a very brief time, GW let me have fun with this. But that's just what I looked for in the codex, it doesn't mean the other playstyles or Legions can't do well.

[WrathOfTheLion]

Unless you're playing against real oppressive lists, something like the nastiest Dark Angels Ravenwing/Deathwing army they can, there's still fun to be had and games to be won.

 

If you don't play often, then you're probably not playing against that kind of stuff.

Edited March 1, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[Iron Father Ferrum]

4 hours ago, SyNidus said:

Oof. Not gonna lie, i just stepped back into 40k with my Night Lords and reading this thread is really putting a dampening my desire to play.

 

Is there really no ray of hope for us?

 

I think the doom & gloom is unwarranted.  Yes, loyalists got more out of the recent "balancing" than Chaos did, but Chaos still has a lot of punch.  I cleaned up a tank-heavy Guard army two weeks ago and while the first turn was a little rough, once the hammerblow fell it fell hard.  As long as you're not trying to roll into big GTs and clean house Chaos is usually just fine.

 

Now I will say that Night Lords have Legion Traits that are not useless but are hard to really wield effectively against Loyalist Space Marines because of their comparatively high leadership.  Space Marines being probably the single most common army obviously hurts them as a result.  At that point, you have to lean harder into stratagems, relics, and WLTs than your actual Legion Trait to get the work done.

[WrathOfTheLion]

Dark Angels being one of the strongest doesn't help for Night Lords, as they're usually resilient or outright immune to morale debuffs.

Edited March 2, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[SyNidus]

9 hours ago, Prot said:

 

Well Night Lords had a pile of great tricks that didn't rely on MoS and Termies specifically. 

 

I often see you dip your foot back into the project Syn and then quickly back out. How about this.... play 5 games with them using the cool traits/strats and let us know how it goes?

 

Just my opinion but what I think happened is the competitive world at large saw a nerf to the most common element of the 'easy' competitive build: IE: Termies/MoS/Rune of Damnation. And putting Abaddon in the middle of that brick and knocking teeth out. I have a suspicion that wasn't part of your plan...?

 

So armies that worked on that premise are effectively dead. Since Abe + Termie Brick doesn't really work I strongly believe the competitive scene took the path of least resistance and flocked to the loyalist discount party and didn't come back. Again just my opinion but I will go on to say this is probably a group largely comprised of bandwagon jumpers. 

 

Since this nerfing I have seen some Chaos Space Marines do very well, but just not win a tournament. By no stretch of the imagination are CSM dead. Just if you look at those people trying to score top ITC points, this is too hard now. Look at the player base I'm speaking of; guys from top competitive channels that don't even have a real colour scheme on their armies, or they flip/flop the flavour of the month. That's the group that largely left Chaos. You can trust me or check out their social media(s). They just put 'random chaos blokes' back in the box, and pulled out 'random colour scheme loyalists' out of the box. You tube is full of this. But we're far from finished.

 

It was just super disheartening to me because 1) I had played Black Legion all through the garbage era's, including tournaments up til Covid. 2) I used Abaddon when he was considered hot trash. 3) My Iron Warriors were so pathetic, and all I wanted to do was run these armies with Termies. So yes, for a very brief time, GW let me have fun with this. But that's just what I looked for in the codex, it doesn't mean the other playstyles or Legions can't do well.

Yeah, I think I'll definitely give it a try. Although I am looking at getting a terminator brick because I like the idea of dropping them turn 1 in my opponent's line. Hence all the doom and gloom surrounding the termie brick has me worried. I know I'm not likely to get to the top table, but i'd still like to give a decent go of it.

That's a good point on the player base who have left. I'm not going anywhere as I have a sizable 30k Night Lords army.

 

9 hours ago, Iron Father Ferrum said:

 

I think the doom & gloom is unwarranted.  Yes, loyalists got more out of the recent "balancing" than Chaos did, but Chaos still has a lot of punch.  I cleaned up a tank-heavy Guard army two weeks ago and while the first turn was a little rough, once the hammerblow fell it fell hard.  As long as you're not trying to roll into big GTs and clean house Chaos is usually just fine.

 

Now I will say that Night Lords have Legion Traits that are not useless but are hard to really wield effectively against Loyalist Space Marines because of their comparatively high leadership.  Space Marines being probably the single most common army obviously hurts them as a result.  At that point, you have to lean harder into stratagems, relics, and WLTs than your actual Legion Trait to get the work done.

Glad to hear you've been doing good IFF. Yeah, the Night Lords traits have long been useless in 40k (because morale plays such a small part in the game), but I am keen to use the tricks that they've got in their starts and WL traits.

[ChazSexington]

I mean, CSMs (as a whole) have had something like 4 months (Nephilim) of being above average since 2017's 40-man Cultist squads with Prescience and VotLW (not counting the TJ Lannigan/Jim Vesal Chaos All-Stars lists). We're not Loyalists, whose tricycles have training wheels. This isn't anything new. Also, playing 120 Cultists sucked for those who remember. 

 

CSMs can still win GTs, Arks of Omen nonwithstanding - Black Legion won the 42-player Winter Ruin GT.  CSMs are still, generally, in a better position that we've historically been. I honestly think our win rate at tournaments suffers more from player skill than our codex. 

[Wayniac]

My main concern is and always has been how they kind of crap on true undivided.  What I mean is you tend to be encouraged to take things like possessed or even allied daemons but if you're playing say night lords or iron warriors or alpha legion, they don't generally use anything daemonic so by not fielding the strong units you're putting yourself at a disadvantage by wanting to stay true to a theme. I hate that more than anything else. 

 

Sure you can come up with an excuse to justify it, but that feels like a cop out for the sake of the game.  On the flip side if you play something like word bearers or black legion, you can freely field basically whatever in the codex without it feeling like you're going against the background. 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Wayniac

[ChazSexington]

On 3/18/2023 at 1:01 AM, Wayniac said:

My main concern is and always has been how they kind of crap on true undivided.  What I mean is you tend to be encouraged to take things like possessed or even allied daemons but if you're playing say night lords or iron warriors or alpha legion, they don't generally use anything daemonic so by not fielding the strong units you're putting yourself at a disadvantage by wanting to stay true to a theme. I hate that more than anything else. 

 

Sure you can come up with an excuse to justify it, but that feels like a cop out for the sake of the game.  On the flip side if you play something like word bearers or black legion, you can freely field basically whatever in the codex without it feeling like you're going against the background. 

 

 

Honestly, that's not correct. The Warbands of all of those Legions have way more than enough diversity to make any sort of unit choice lore-friendly. There seems to be some weird online myth that says they are somehow so much less receptive of the gifts of the gods that they shouldn't field Possessed or Daemon Princes when there are shelves of books proving otherwise, from ADB's tales of the lovable rapscallions and rogues of First Claw (whom are rife with corruption) to the Hunt for Voldorius. 

 

From the Exalted to Lucoryphus, to the Alpha Legion Index Astartes article denoting that they hide their mutations for shock value, to the Iron Warriors' Daemonculaba and Obliterator techno-virus, there's pleeeeeenty of lore to justify any kind of unit. 

 

Obviously, it doesn't mean you must run Daemon Engines and Obliterators in an Iron Warriors Warband, but there's all kinds of freedom in unit selection. 

 

And I'm not sure what you mean by "true undivided." Other than the Cult Legions and Warbands, they're all Undivided. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by ChazSexington

[MegaVolt87]

On 3/22/2023 at 12:51 AM, ChazSexington said:

 

Honestly, that's not correct. The Warbands of all of those Legions have way more than enough diversity to make any sort of unit choice lore-friendly. There seems to be some weird online myth that says they are somehow so much less receptive of the gifts of the gods that they shouldn't field Possessed or Daemon Princes when there are shelves of books proving otherwise, from ADB's tales of the lovable rapscallions and rogues of First Claw (whom are rife with corruption) to the Hunt for Voldorius. 

 

From the Exalted to Lucoryphus, to the Alpha Legion Index Astartes article denoting that they hide their mutations for shock value, to the Iron Warriors' Daemonculaba and Obliterator techno-virus, there's pleeeeeenty of lore to justify any kind of unit. 

 

Obviously, it doesn't mean you must run Daemon Engines and Obliterators in an Iron Warriors Warband, but there's all kinds of freedom in unit selection. 

 

And I'm not sure what you mean by "true undivided." Other than the Cult Legions and Warbands, they're all Undivided. 

 

Not everyone wants to run chaos in CSM. We can do lost and the damned with the new codex, but its very difficult to run minimum chaos with old legion equipment, its just not workable. Its a playstyle many want to have. Hopefully with 10th ed and the new HH plastic tanks + dreads, we can do it in 40k. Its about the only army style we can't do at the moment. 

[ChazSexington]

On 3/24/2023 at 12:20 AM, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Not everyone wants to run chaos in CSM. We can do lost and the damned with the new codex, but its very difficult to run minimum chaos with old legion equipment, its just not workable. Its a playstyle many want to have. Hopefully with 10th ed and the new HH plastic tanks + dreads, we can do it in 40k. Its about the only army style we can't do at the moment. 

 

I'm not saying anything about that though? I was just saying that the Undivided Legions all have elements of more Chaos-y stuff and that it's not unfluffy to e.g. run Alpha Legion Possessed. It goes the other way too - there's nothing unfluffy about much less mutated Alpha Legionnaires either. Within the scope of the Legions, there's plenty of variety within the different Warbands. 

 

I don't disagree with you, I think you may have seen something that certainly wasn't intended to in my argument :)