10th edition tournament results - it doesn't look good

[Captain Idaho]

Greetings, fellow programs. A friend of mine linked me to the data of a Polish 10th edition tournament where the results were heavily skewed towards one particular faction dominating... you guessed it, Death Guard.

 

Only kidding, we all know it's Eldar.

 

Here's the link to a discussion of it on Reddit, where you can find the additional data in the comments through links if you want to check the lists etc:

 

Link

 

Now, from what I can find on this information, we can be sure that there is time for optimisation for both anti-Eldar lists and Eldar lists to get more cutting edge. There's always the idea of things being edges too.

 

I do expect the win percentage to come down somewhat, but I think it won't come down by much truth be told.

 

Other non-surprises are Thousand Sons and Knights placing well. And Death Guard down there at the bottom too, bless that plucky young buck.

 

To me, GW have really messed things up with this edition regarding balance and playtesting. Straight out the gate. How will the Codex books fix things, since historically they give bonuses to factions rather than make them weaker? It's only going to get worse and remember, not all Codex books come out at once so this state of affairs looks to be a potential problem for quite a while.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Interrogator Stobz]

Maybe Aeldari players are just better players than us mere mortals?

 

No one has ever won 40k purely with a better army; nor has anyone ever chased the meta in this perfectly balanced game of ours. 

 

[Captain Idaho]

It is a very eldar attitude to believe they're just better than the rest of us, so least they're playing more fluffy now than ever!

[Valkyrion]

I think Eldar have consistently been the 'best' army ever since 2nd. Others may have had their time in the spotlight, but for as long as I can remember Eldar have always been capable when played by a good player. It was always a hard army to learn, and making mistakes was very unforgiving, but as a general rule they've always been top tier. 

[Captain Idaho]

Not sure how unforgiving they are now. I'm getting lots of references to "casual" games where Eldar have been wrecking face and tabling people in turns 3 and 4.

 

But yeah, they're always top tier. GW have had an "Eldar problem" for a while, oddly enough.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Bung]

Reminds me at earlier Editions pre-8th.

 

Eldar were always good at beating Marines, may i guess which faction (including all variants in Power Armour) was most common at that tourney?

[Captain Idaho]

Here's the Link to the players, their standing and what they took.

 

Click on the armies and it'll come up with their lists... top Marines was 8th. Seems to be Desolation squads and vehicles is the order of the day. With Bladeguard, Hellblasters etc as you see fit.

 

Early days to be fair, I see a lot of utility with some Firstborn options competitively speaking. Predators, Whirlwinds and Vindicators look great as well as Assault Marines etc. But then tournaments often concentrate on new units to buy (and then sell on...) and that's often Primaris.

 

Shooting sells too.

 

***

 

As for Eldar in that list... 4 players all in top 7...

[TrawlingCleaner]

Eldar and Tau players also tend to get a lot of guff (putting it far too politely) from people just for playing the faction which is really cool and really fun enviroment

 

TLDR at the bottom

 

Aeldari are a problem in their current form but are relatively easily fixed. I think they seem to exemplify 3 major problems with the core rules (in my opinion):

 

1) Devastating Wounds

2) Towering

3) Indirect

 

DevWounds should only activate on a natural Crit-Hit (6s). Things like Anti or Fate Dice shouldn't proc DevWounds and they should be counted as "modified" 6s. Anti still works as it wounds the target on 4+, or whatever the number is but doesn't proc DevWounds and Fate Dice are still good. It just stops the dumb interactions

 

Towering is a hard one as currently, it means that Knights of all sorts (including WK) aren't playing the same game as all other units. They ignore basically all LoS and generally have incredibly good shooting. I understand the realism or the fluff that you would be able to see these things but it's an abstraction and needs balance. The 9th ed rules weren't much better as generally it went too far in the other direction, knights struggled to see things but could be seen plainly. Just get rid of Towering except on Titans. Can the Knight see the enemy unit? No, there's intervening terrain. Can the Knight be seen by the enemy unit? No, there's intervening terrain. Rather than planet bowling ball, your postitioning means little, both get the benefits rather than no one getting anything.

 

Indirect Fire currently means that you're -1 to hit and the unit gets cover if you can't see the enemy model. That's fine as is but why do most Indirect Fire units have [Heavy] and have rules that ignore cover? Desolators are a good example of problematic units that have both (I'll get onto these guys), to me it's very counter intuitive. There's no point not to use Indirect (competitively speaking) as you can effectively kill units without any downsides, you can't see me but I can shoot you at full efficency. My honest hottake is that Indirect should make the firer BS6+ unless that model has LoS to the target or a spotting unit (specific keyword), games like Bolt Action have the right of Indirect.

 

How to Eldar exemplifiy these problems? We've got 2 units that use 2 of the 3 of these very efficently: Wraithknights with DevWounds and Towering and Support Platforms with Devwounds and Indirect. The player who came first list was:

Spoiler

1x Asurmen, [120]

10x Dire Avengers, [140]

1x Farseer, [65]

11x Guardian Defenders, [110]

1x Autarch Wayleaper, [80]

1x Death Jester, Enhancement: THE WEEPING STONES [85]

5x Rangers, [55] Unit8: 1x Support Weapons, [85] D-CANNON

1x Support Weapons, [85] D-CANNON

1x Support Weapons, [85] D-CANNON

5x Warp Spiders, [100]

5x Warp Spiders, [100]

1x Wraithknight, [370] 2x Heavy Wraithcannon

1x Fire Prism, [125]

1x Fire Prism, [125]

1x Fire Prism, [125]

1x Night Spinner, [140]

Support platforms, WK, Night Spinner (Indirect with Devwounds), FirePrisms (can essentially Indrect with their ability only needing to see another Fire Prism)

 

If they were to only change DevWounds+Fate Dice to be Unmodified 6s, it's a decent change that directly effects the 2 best units in the Index/Game. Fine.

Eldar would likely then still be top dog or be overtaken by Space Marines and Imperial Knights who are incredibly hot on their heels. The top SM list in that same tournament have 20 Desolators, sniper scouts and 2 Whirlwinds, most of the other SM lists also have at least 10. They're very efficent at their points level, trade well and ignore all penalties for Indirect. Oaths of Moment is crazy good, against certain armies there's no counter-play. Imperial Knights are very efficient, have rerolls out the wazzoo and incredibly good weapons, Towering pushes that even further

 

In my opinion, the healthier choice for the entire game and not just Eldar is to hit DevWounds, Indirect and Towering. You knock Eldar down a peg but also bring SM and Knights roughly inline too. Some points tweaks for units are needed too I think. Fire Prisms are too cheap for example, I do think their ability essentially fire Indirect should come at a higher points cost or rules cost like making it -1 to hit  or something similar. Could you do more to Fate Dice? You definitely could, currently though, it's very hard to tell what that would do to the army. Perhaps worth waiting to see more data or seeing how that leaves the army. Phantasm also probably needs a change.

 

Call me an apologist or shill or whatever but an interesting point can be made at the same tournament the Aeldari list that came 6th didn't have any Wraithknights, Support Weapons and had a record of W-W-W-L-D.

If you remove 2 units from your lists, how oppresive is the Index then? Honestly, it's quite hard to tell with minimal data, however I think the majority of the Index outside of a few very problematic units is probably good to okay.

 

Outside of the above, I think there's a couple of other things they need to take a look at or keep an eye on, the first big one being Overwatch and the proliferation of "if you've already used this stratagem this phase, do it again" type abilites.

Overwatch makes moving up the board for combat armies very tough, good posistioning from a shooting army/unit means they can be shot at in the movement phase, even if they're not charging. They can be Overwatched by a unit not being charged in the charge phase. Shooting at 24" is cool in premise but just pushes the armies to shoot more. It should be reduced to 12" in my opinion.

 

Death Guard need some help. Points drops are nice but not going to bring the faction back up. Would Disgustingly resilient? -1DMG probably isn't what it used to be with the amount of 1DMG there is. A faction wide 5+ FNP is cool and fluffy but does it fix the faction or just fix the feeling of the faction? I'm not too sure to be honest, they seem to have some decent rules mixed in there but just suffer from being close range with no real damage behind them

 

The thing to note about all of the above is that most of this is only going to come up in Competitive games. Most casual players aren't going to be taking Wraithknights or Support Weapons or Desolators. I've seen some truly smoothbrain takes about not letting people play Eldar at local clubs or wanting to play Eldar etc.

People shouldn't feel bad playing the armies they enjoy

 

Having said all of that, I do think the edition at it's core is very enjoyable and actually balanced. If you get rid of the Top 3 faction outliers and the bottom 3 you've got about 20 indexes that are pretty evenly balanced. There's a good amount of things they can change and need balancing but overall I think the indexes and the core rules are pretty great.

 

TLDR: Eldar are a problem, change DevWounds, Towering and Indirect and that's big hits to Eldar but also brings IK and SM down too which is needed plus makes the game generally healthier. Other things need tweaking at but otherwise the edition actually looks balanced and fun

 

 

[Karhedron]

55 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

But yeah, they're always top tier. GW have had an "Eldar problem" for a while, oddly enough.

 

GW have always struggled with the synergy and skill threshold for Eldar. They are an army that requires a certain amount of skill to master but with experience can play better than other armies. Making the benefits of synergies proportional to the effort required to get all the moving parts lined up is a trick GW seem to have struggled with repeatedly.

 

To be fair, Wraithknights, D-Cannons and Fire Prisms were identified fairly early as the top offenders in the Eldar Index and are not actually that hard to fix. Fire Prisms need a bit of a points bump. At 150 points they would be good but other grav tanks might see some play. Wraithknights and D-Cannons both need a bit of a tweak with Fate Dice. Limiting FDs to one per unit per phase would probably be enough to do the trick. Even simpler would be FDs not counting as "natural" 6s for the purpose of Criticals.

 

Most of the Eldar list is actually fairly innocuous. Most of their infantry are pretty fragile and short-ranged. Dark Reapers have nerfed into a shadow of their former selves. Wraiithguard/blades are solid but slow and need Spiritseer support to be effective. I don't think it will take a great deal to bring Eldar into line. At the moment FDs + Devastating Wounds allow them to generate a disproportionate Alpha strike. Tone that down and I think the rest of the list is fine.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Karhedron

[Kastor Krieg]

The Aeldari winner won with a -20 Penalty xD

3rd Place (after another Eldar player) was Grzelich with DA, a guy I know for being an extremely good Dark Angels player. One of the old guard National Team for Poland, as well. The winner was in the 2022/23 season team, as well. Not sure about this season.

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Kastor Krieg

[Emperor Ming]

I think if they amended certain things like dev wounds:

 

Cant interact with other rules such as anti, and only causes 1 mw in addition to normal damage. 

 

Sounds more balanced right?

 

At least I hope so

[Captain Idaho]

I can't argue with much of what you say, guys. I'd wield the knife a little differently but with a similar theme, personally:

 

• Desolation squads points bump. 150pts for 5 seems much fairer.

 

• Fireprim points bump approx 165pts. Toyed with 180pts but with other changes that'll be too much.

 

• Some minor points bumps to things like Warp Spiders, Gladiator Lancers etc.

 

• Fate Dice dropped to 6 dice pre-game, not random but a score of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. New dice get rolled, Farseers still have purpose etc.

 

• Fate dice can count as a successful roll but never critical regardless of the score.

 

• I'd even change Oath of Moment to be just reroll wounds. That's powerful enough as is.

 

Marines aren't quite devastating wounds spamming at the moment but I'd adjust the core rules to confirm a rerolled die never counts as a critical success, only a regular success. I'd probably change the Overwatch wording to say "critical hits", but that might not be needed with all the other changes here.

[Stofficus]

So Idaho's point about how do we get better from here really resonates with me. Imbalance is always there in a game like this, but that the updates codexes will be scattered over years completely takes the steam out of this edition for me. 

 

Eldar dominate at present, with knights and psychic armies otherwise over performing somewhat, and will generally expect some improvements in their codex. I'm sure the most egregious stuff will get knocked down a bit, but they'll still overall have powerful armies and just become more flexible. 

 

Meanwhile, as. Guard player, I'm looking at "???" For when my army might get some attention, and in the mean time has one powerful build - sit in a corner and spam artillery. Even in casual play, everything that isn't that lacks interesting synergy and options, with tanks being some of the most expensive in the game with almost no way to improve their terrible BS, infantry being clunky and weird with the "by the box" build restrictions and all their passive rules telling you to stand still and just form a gunline. 

 

My current army has the principle sin of being boring and mediocre, and will wait years of seeing constant domination by a select few armies to start, but will grow as the drip feed of codexes come out as GW pretends its 1997 with its codex model. 

 

8th indexhammer was at least relatively flat playing field, and I played Index guard for a long time and generally had fun. What I'm seeing now is just dissapointing to the extent I'm more or less content to shelve/repurpose my 40k entirely and play other games. I endured 7th edition, and nearly sold everything I owned, I don't feel like beating my head against something and end up in the same place. 

 

 

[TrawlingCleaner]

30 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

I think if they amended certain things like dev wounds:

 

Cant interact with other rules such as anti, and only causes 1 mw in addition to normal damage. 

 

Sounds more balanced right?

 

At least I hope so

 

I've seen people mentioned the old Rending rule as a possible fix too. Bascially just means that you can't make saves (Armour or Invuln) against a Devastating Wound attack.

Currently a D-Cannon Support Weapon could do D6+2 wounds across a unit of infantry or a tank, so up to 8 guardsmen, 4 Intercessor etc often making it more efficent into infantry per shot. If it was essentially Rending, it could only ever kill 1 Guardsmen but is still very good into tougher targets. Does it mean people would pivot into 1DMG Rending? Probably, I have no idea if that would still make it a problem

 

32 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

I can't argue with much of what you say, guys. I'd wield the knife a little differently but with a similar theme, personally:

 

• Desolation squads points bump. 150pts for 5 seems much fairer.

 

• Fireprim points bump approx 165pts. Toyed with 180pts but with other changes that'll be too much.

 

• Some minor points bumps to things like Warp Spiders, Gladiator Lancers etc.

 

• Fate Dice dropped to 6 dice pre-game, not random but a score of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. New dice get rolled, Farseers still have purpose etc.

 

• Fate dice can count as a successful roll but never critical regardless of the score.

 

• I'd even change Oath of Moment to be just reroll wounds. That's powerful enough as is.

 

Marines aren't quite devastating wounds spamming at the moment but I'd adjust the core rules to confirm a rerolled die never counts as a critical success, only a regular success. I'd probably change the Overwatch wording to say "critical hits", but that might not be needed with all the other changes here.

 

I can agree with points changes, however for me I think it's better to fix the Core rules first and then see how that shakes things out for factions rather than swing the hammer and hit something hard once. It makes it harder to see which changes have actually made a difference and which ones don't work. A recent example would be AdMech in 9th. They were fit far too hard across the board with no real recourse to figure out what worked as the nerf they needed and what was too harsh.

 

"Okay, so the points tweaks and the Core rules changes haven't knocked Eldar down far enough, let's look at Fate Dice"

Rather than bashing them over the head too harshly and dropping below what they should be. The nice thing about Indexes being digital is that they should feel free to edit and change rules without issue as only the cards have been printed so there's relatively little physical things invalidated

[ThePenitentOne]

17 minutes ago, Stofficus said:

with almost no way to improve their terrible BS,

 Do you mean "other than the Take Aim Order" which every comander in your army can issue?

[Xenith]

 

Drawing definite conclusions from a single data point aside...I guess this balances out the bugeater where Eldar didnt win a single game?

 

4 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Maybe Aeldari players are just better players than us mere mortals?

 

Quite possibly, however all the 'top' players immediately pivot, without fail, to the army perceived as the strongest, further reinforcing that armies perceived dominance. It's happened with Mechanicum, Dark Eldar (toxin thing then wych cult), Tau, Crusher Stampede, Harlies, 9th ed Leviathan Nids, then Deathwing, etc.

 

Likewise, why would a top player bring a slightly weaker army like Death Guard when they can bring one of the seemingly stronger armies.

 

Both of these reasons skew the results and accentuate the perceived power levels of armies. Traditionally, the tourney scene has then pivoted to deal with a elf rich environment, or a marine rich environment, and the situation becomes self limiting. With the contstant changes from GW, however, we never reach the stability in meta needed to achieve this self-limiting effect - one army gets nerfed then tryhards immediately jump to the next most broken thing in line.

 

1 hour ago, Captain Idaho said:

• Fate dice can count as a successful roll but never critical regardless of the score.

 

I think that this is the most elegant solution to the strength of the Fate Dice rule. Eldar are still soft and weak and need to be able to guarantee saves sometimes. Stopping them from using it on a damage roll is also probably good.

 

Dropping to 6 is too harsh. They went from 20-25 per game in 9th to 12+ already, one per turn is too crippling. 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Xenith

[Stofficus]

33 minutes ago, ThePenitentOne said:

 Do you mean "other than the Take Aim Order" which every comander in your army can issue?

Which means you're spending hundreds of addition points, if you have more than a single tank, on top of very expensive platforms to be able to hit anything, and are then not using orders on anything else since it's 1-per.

 

Regardless, my principle issue is it is boring and will take years before it changes - in the mean time Eldar have 3 fire prisms for every Leman Russ with a babysitting command squad with attached infantry. 

 

Eldar will eventually get a pass, and maybe some of heavy hitters will go up in price and other stuff made attractive - but Guard will still be huddling in the corner with an artillery park or at massive disadvantage. 

 

Other armies will feel similar pinches, I don't recall the release schedule off hand, but it was less than half the armies for the first year - and that model doesn't work, doesn't encourage engagement when initial balance is so out of whack.

[TheMawr]

When I saw 86% winrate I got curious.. I already know that the AoW matchups were almost exclusively against variants of power armor or knight armies ( so a small amount of high value targets.) and indeed those who beat the Aeldari armies were anything but that.   https://tourneykeeper.net/Shared/TKShowGame.aspx?GameId=158126

Aeldari succes seems very tied to them being the natural bane of the most popular armies cheese-type lists, they are the "paper" to the spacemarine deathstar "rock".. and when nobody plays the "scissor" aeldari seem unbeatable.

 

 

Not using this to say "Aeldari are not as broken as people think".. fixes are definitely needed. ( I just hope those fixes do not ruin the things that are not overpowered or even a bit underpowered as it just so happens that thats were my lists are ;) )

 

However I think this is more indicative of how GW playtested and how they missed some of the brokenness, and how the situation is way more nuanced.

If GW tested with what they tought are more fluffy lists and tested equally against the entire spectrum of factions... the wins eldar had over spacemarines and knights might have not looked as terrible to them if Orks, Nids, GSC and other heavy on bodies and units armies could beat them ( wanna bet that wednesdays Aeldari vs Drukhari battlereport results in a win for drukhari ? just so GW could say.. see "not unbeatable" )

 

But that is void when in the tournament scene nobody plays those other armies, and the armies that get played arent played the way GW tested them... wich still is GWs mistake, not the players.

But even previously I suspected that GW tested balance over the entire spectrum instead of a ( very heavy duty, but healthier) case by case basis. And that is expectable... the players evidently look at the balance the same way.

 

 

 

 

None of this explains deathguard treatment though... ( though I still really like the idea and theme behind their army rule... but probably it shouldnt have been only that... and the detachment one is bonkers bad, should have straight out been part of the faction mechanic)

 

[Xenith]

To be honest, I'm amazed Thousand Sons did well, however I presume that's due to 3x Mutaliths and Magnus, the strong/standout units in a rather poor offering overall. 

 

One can't judge or nerf an entire army based on a few overpowered units alone. Though we can try! 

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

I think I would change indirect game wide it's just too good. They already have a good way of showing modes so I think if they give  all of those options a mode with a worse BS  with the indirect ability that would do a lot of heavy lifting.

 

Then I would make strands of fate count as a modified roll, and future proof miracle dice with the same terminology.

 

After that I would concentrate on boosting the bad fractions. With the codex roadmap out I don't think it makes sense to nerf the strong ones because most of them are getting books faster. Plus people weren't excited with the fraction rules for most of the bad ones. 

 

 

[Ahzek451]

3 minutes ago, Xenith said:

To be honest, I'm amazed Thousand Sons did well, however I presume that's due to 3x Mutaliths and Magnus, the strong/standout units in a rather poor offering overall. 

 

One can't judge or nerf an entire army based on a few overpowered units alone. Though we can try! 

We can point at specific units with Eldar and space marines and say Desolators, wraithknights, and fire prisms are the problem, coupled with 1 strat or army rule. Thousand sons uniquely don't have any datasheets that we can point at and say that it is broken. The MVB could probably use a small bump up in pts, but that would be about it for specfic unit tweeks IMHO. Instead, they draw their power from a very specific web of buffs and army rules. Specific chains of strats and abilities that need to line up in just the right way to make them super killy. Fluffy as hell, but arguably out of balance. 

I would wager that if marines, eldar, and knights got knocked down a peg, the sons would either join their ranks, or barely squeek by at being at the top. But only in the hands of skilled players, this data could be skewed by those that don't understand how to pull off the before mentioned chain of abilities and strats. 

[Ulfast]

It´s strange that at the end of 9ed I felt that most armies where in balance with each other. So why did GW make so huge changes in so many diffrent ways with the index armies? This tournament report shows what many people allready have said.

[Captain Idaho]

It's always important not to cut too deeply, but I really do think the Fate Dice mechanic, bearing in mind it combines in effect with the Detachment mechanic offensively too, is too skewed alongside Eldar firepower. It's not the Devastating Wounds mechanic on its own. It's just being able to "Nope" whatever your opponent's attempts to counter his play are. Here's Overwatch where I nuke your tank with a Fireprims that also gets to reroll a wound etc.

 

Dropping it down to 6 might be a bit much, but the way I was looking at it is as the faction having those 6 Dice, Farseers, Guardians and the other methods of raising more Fate dice... I don't think Eldar will stop being oppressive until we take this game skewing mechanic on head on.

 

But sure I would happily concede that GW should cut smaller bits off first before hacking into everything in 1 big go.

 

@Xenith I would contend that self limiting and correction is not desirable in extremes, which is what we have right now. Taking aside the fact anti-eldar weapons were traditionally massed Autocannons or defences against massed Mortal Wounds and firepower, the issues are you can't counter Fate Dice and the Detachment rule combo. At all. They just get them.

 

The example of Angron charging an Avatar was given by someone in another thread, with the Avatar just Fate dicing the saves in a crucial clutch moment then curb stomping the rest of the army.

 

Added to that, even if you could anti-eldar, that skews your list for other factions so something else becomes dominant disproportionately.

 

Extremes don't balance themselves with time is what I'm saying.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Focslain]

Making it so things like fate dice, miracle dice and anti-X count as modified succusses would go a long way to stalling dev wounding. That would have fixed the DW strat issue just fine. Lethal hits doesn't proc dev wounds, neither should any wounding mod rule.

 

Towering should just confer true line of sight. If I can see you I can shot you and vis-versa. Granted this is how I'm playing it personally in friendly games.

 

Not sure on how to mod indirect other then indirect weapons shouldn't have ignore cover.

[Cactus]

45 minutes ago, Xenith said:

 

Drawing definite conclusions from a single data point aside...I guess this balances out the bugeater where Eldar didnt win a single game.

 

 

Isn't Bugeater the event that banned eldar after their preview article was published? Hard to win when you can't play!