Strongest and weakest in tenth

[tzeentch9]

Just curious what people think are the strongest and weakest factions in tenth edition, solely from the previews/faction focuses.

 

For me it’s Strongest: tau, weakest: Votann

[Bouargh]

For the moment I would say the weakest is the one we did not see yet... 

 

I have not been convinced by the Aeldari so far, and I see them potentially weakened by this reboot, even if the fate dice,looks powerful. But why do you need fate dices? Well to cempensate for weakneeses. But I might over-interpreting, probably for the limited level of details given.

For the ones that looks quite powerful, Necrons and Death Guard come to my mind. 

 

Might be a good topic for a pool....

[Karhedron]

Without knowing the points costs, it is hard to say at this point. I actually think Eldar are looking pretty good. Votann, Necron and Tau basic infantry all took a hit compared to 9th edition with some mechanics to compensate if you play them right (Command Protocols, Guiding etc). Guardians kept all their stat buffs from 9th, gained a decent army rule and gained a new unit ability that synergises with the overall army rule meaning they look worth taking for the first tie in several editions. Obviously there is a huge amount still to find out but I am happy with what I have seen for my Eldar so far.

 

Knights definitely look strong. I am interested to see how they pan out. Vehicles on the whole look more durable in 10th which should benefit them. They also have big enough guns to routinely make a mess of other people's vehicles. Also their new faction ability looks good while being far more streamlined than the old one. Again we need to see points though before we will know for sure.

[Xenith]

Surprised to see no one has mentioned Ad-Mech - the rad bombardment thing to me seems insanely powerful, essentially give up scoring, or using strats in your turn 1 or take D3 mortals on every single unit in your army. For stuff like attack bikes, aggressors etc, losing 2-3W before the game even begins is bad. 

[Captain Idaho]

Death Guard look fairly poor at this point. Their objectives being held after they leave ("sticky objectives") is nice but the army is paying for expensive troops designed to be more survivable on objectives.

 

Likewise, their rules reduce toughness against nearby enemies yet have close ranged weapons (and modus operandi of getting in close) that have lethal hits which bypass the mechanic of lower the toughness! So again, rules that contradict or undermine each other, yet have to be factored into points so will inflate points costs.

 

They're slow and their weapons are just a little lacklustre in their infantry. Which is fine normally as Death Guard can normally grind you out with attrition... except they have become easier to kill. Toughness 5 infantry are cool, but there are no mechanics inside the faction rules that added to the resilience whereas they previously had it.

 

Death Guard are easier to kill. Taken Blightlords for example. T6 yeah sure, helps against bolters and heavy bolters etc. But they are a horde blending unit that are actually quite a lot easier to kill with Terminators thanks to power fists not caring about T6, with no drop in damage anymore.

 

I get the argument is "well there might be a unit designed to give feel no pain to them". Yeah maybe. But not across the board for every unit, considering how the leader mechanic works. And that's creating a unit reliant on other units to function  how it should anyway, of which it paid points for etc.

 

Just not good design as a faction with rules that are counter intuitive to what value they bring, in a faction already known for not being very "killy".

 

***

 

As for strongest I think it is clearly Eldar and it's been said multiple time elsewhere. In contrast to Death Guard, their rules are stand alone and not situational - the units are always going to be benefiting from their faction and Detachment special rules without caveats. They won't need to get close, or find the rules ever don't work for a reason - if they make an attack they benefit from their rules always.

 

It's been said that other Factions get rerolls so how can Eldar be overpowered in comparison. Well this is a little bit of cherry picking. An example is the Ballistus Dreadnought gets rerolls to hit against units over half strength. Apart from the situational manner of this rule, that's the unit special rule. When we consider Eldar units will have their own special rules for units, they get those in addition to the Detachment and faction special rules, you can see it's still less than Eldar.

 

Oath of Moment is really powerful. Sure I get that. But the Detachment rules for Marines are definitely weaker than Eldar - they are 3 once per game abilities that are going to be only useful for 1 or 2 units at best at a time. So a whole Detachment ability for 1 unit to fall back and shot and charge, once per game?

 

****

 

I think a good way to judge is how the community has reacted to the rules shown. On the one hand every Death Guard player I've seen has been unhappy or neutral at best.

 

On the other, I've not seen a single Eldar player complaining their rules seem weak.

[Tokugawa]

DG is weak, we lost damage negation mechanics and just become normal CSM now.

 

When range of unit toughness stretched to 3-14, -1t is a joke. 

 

Long ears factions always made balance problems in competitive plays, every edition, almost every book. Many of them straightly become the most broken thing in whole 40K. 8th free shoot and charge in opponent turn Ynnari, 8th -3 to hit Alaitoc planes spam, 9th v1.0 druks, 9th 90pts Harlequin gunship…the criminal namelist is long. So I guess the most broken faction in early 10th may come from them. 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Tokugawa

[Slat3]

6 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

DG is weak, we lost damage negation mechanics and just become normal CSM now.

 

When range of unit toughness stretched to 3-14, -1t is a joke. 

 

Long ears factions always made balance problems in competitive plays, every edition, almost every book. Many of them straightly become the most broken thing in whole 40K. 8th free shoot and charge in opponent turn Ynnari, 8th -3 to hit Alaitoc planes spam, 9th v1.0 druks, 9th 90pts Harlequin gunship…the criminal namelist is long. So I guess the most broken faction in early 10th may come from them. 

I haven’t played 8th, I’m a 9th baby. But the Eldar preview was a little lackluster IMO. Those shenanigans probably worked well when Farseers & friends could fling mortal wounds across the map and nothing could stop them. Now he deals 0 mortal wounds and his offensive psychic abilities can be handled even by infantry guardsman (5+ Sv / singing spear is AP0) or anything with 4+ Sv or better against Eldritch storm. This assumes nothing changes with the psychic keyword across the game.

[Brother Nathan]

have to say i think the nids look like they could be stong. flexable rules that should allow the to nearly talor for play against most army builds, ability to force arys to take battleshock test, with modifiers, etc. they dont look op yet but like they have the abilitys to take em all on. potentially.... 

[TrawlingCleaner]

Based purely on the previews:

 

The strongest we've seen is between Space Marines, Eldar, Admech, Nids and Daemons and Knights so far.

Knights have great OC and platforms in the Armigers, the Battlecannons are absolutely nuts and Canis Rex has been drastically improved.

Space Marines can just reroll down any target, are able to pivot onto another target with Gman, give Lethal hits with Lieutenants, able to pivot army wide with the Detatchment rules (I'm just going to advance and charge/advance and shoot/fall back and shoot army wide). Oath of Moment is an incredible ability. Both armies points will definitely make or break them I think (as with all armies).

Eldar are strong with a Reroll to hit and wound army wide, Regenerating SoF dice from Guardians is great and so is the Auto-6 with a Farseer (albiet once per turn army wide). I think it definitely comes down to how fragile they make the army. The benfit of increasing everything's toughness is that it means things like the Serpent Chasis can be a lower toughness than their SM counterparts without feeling too fragile.

Admech, Nids and Daemons all utilise Morale massively in their Army or Detatchment rules to the point where I actually think they're most likely to win games off the back of making units 0 OC, unable to fallback and unable to use strats. They're not the "Blow everything off the board" armies like the SM, Eldar and Knights are but utilise other parts of the game  very well

 

I think the weakest is probably Death Guard (we haven't seen GSC yet and I fear our hayday has been had), that isn't to say that DG are bad though. I think their power will come down to how and when Objectives are scored and what Plague Marines can do.

 

 

[jaxom]

7 hours ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

The strongest we've seen is between Space Marines, Eldar, Admech, Nids and Daemons and Knights so far.

Personally, I think certain styles of Daemon are strong. Anything with Slaaneshi style high movement to make an early grab at no-man's land objectives for example. From there is becomes a lot easier to Warp in Bloodletters to do the business or Plaguebearers to babysit the objectives while the fast units keep moving forward.

[Antarius]

I don't think we'll really know enough to say, at this point.

Yeah, some army rules might look better/worse in isolation, but points cost and actual gameplay will be the deciding factor.

[Emperor Ming]

Melta not scaling enough will be a problem for some factions, they should have had anti vehicle or be s12 really

 

Wounding rhinos on 4s, melta weapons are just going to disappear overnight

 

 

[phandaal]

Everyone is bringing up points cost, and rightfully so.

 

However, it will be interesting to see how those points costs are used to address the relative strengths and weaknesses of the faction.

 

For example, the Votann preview was basically nerfs across the board compared to 9th edition rules. If all that did was bring Votann in line with everyone else who also came down, then you can expect points to not shift all that much.

 

If it represents a large reduction in individual unit power relative to other armies in 10th, you can expect a more significant points drop.

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

10 hours ago, Xenith said:

Surprised to see no one has mentioned Ad-Mech - the rad bombardment thing to me seems insanely powerful, essentially give up scoring, or using strats in your turn 1 or take D3 mortals on every single unit in your army. For stuff like attack bikes, aggressors etc, losing 2-3W before the game even begins is bad. 

Situationally good, maybe. Any army that can regenerate wounds is going to laugh at it. 

...that might just be Necrons and Tyranids, to be honest, but I'd certainly gladly take d3 MW on a 3+ on my backline than not have strat support or be able to control my objectives. 

[ThePenitentOne]

Isn't the rumour that we don't start with CP anymore and just get one per turn? Because if so, not being able to use strats turn one ain't no biggie.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, Emperor Ming said:

Melta not scaling enough will be a problem for some factions, they should have had anti vehicle or be s12 really

 

Wounding rhinos on 4s, melta weapons are just going to disappear overnight

 

The point is that they don't want infantry-portable weapons being able to easily delete tanks the way they did in 9th. If they boosted Melta to S12 then we would be back to exactly where we were before with no one taking tanks. Melta goes from wounding tanks on a 3+ or 4+ to a 5+. It is still the best spammable anti-tank, it is just less effective than it used to be as part of 10th's philosophy of vehicles staying around longer.

 

So far all the S12+ weapons we have seen are vehicle-mounted. That means you either need to take tanks of your own to counter enemy tanks or bring significantly more anti-tank than was common in 9th. Marines will be able to get away with just melta through use of OOM but other factions will need to adapt. Melta won't disappear, it will still be one of the most effective anti-tank weapons, it is just that all anti-tank weapons have been tuned down in order to make tanks more viable.

[MegaVolt87]

Chaos knights look interesting, messing with battle shock, although the 5++ seems weak. You take melta to kill tanks, I take melta to kill MEQ infantry we are not the same .jpeg

[Special Officer Doofy]

Impossible to say without point costs. But guessing point costs are roughly the same (which is a guess) I'm going to agree with some others that DG look the worst so far.

 

Lost DR and some movement. Faction bonus is -1T in short range, which means much less now that toughness values are going as high as 14. 

[spessmarine]

21 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

Lost DR and some movement. Faction bonus is -1T in short range, which means much less now that toughness values are going as high as 14. 

 

Amusing to me how you lost it in 10th and it popped up in HH 2.0 (in the recent book, new content for DG), robbed of DR by your past self.

[Lord_Ikka]

It'll definitely depend on both points costs and any additional faction rules that are currently not shown in the previews- such as Imperial Knights' Bondsman abilities which were referenced but not described really. Those little rules could massively change up an army's utility and power.

 

As quite a few people have said, it looks like the plague boys are currently losing out in the preview phase. For me it isn't so much that they lost Disgustingly Resilient so much as their current faction rule is so...weak. A minus to Toughness is all well and good, but we've seen that 10th is increasing Toughness quite a bit across the game, making it a net neutral gain. Combine that with the short range and it is hard to get excited about trying out a DG list right now. Increase the range (would be much better if it was (9 - 18 -24 inches), and/or make it clear that the ability stacks so that you can pile on the Toughness debuffs (to a certain maximum like -3/-4) and you'd have something much more interesting and unique to plan around. 

 

Still, until we get the full set of previews and then the full index rules we'll just be guessing at the top armies.