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

[Helias_Tancred]

On 7/12/2023 at 3:53 AM, The Unseen said:

 

Having an index release be horrifically imbalanced is ABSOLUTELY indicative of a bad game; GW couldn't even get the game to a halfway decent state in the simplest form its ever going to be for the edition cycle. It only gets more complicated from here as codex's and the near-inevitable creep begins, because GW has to sell the new stuff.

 

This ^

 

Is a clutch comment. It totally bewilders me how far some of the indexes are apart from one another in terms of power? I could take 30 people from this  board, and in 4 months design a much better balanced set of indexes. It would be work, serious work, but we could produce a better product. So what is going at GW in this regards? Is it sheer incompetence?

 

The only caveat is they do use rules to sell models as time goes on in a new 40k edition. So you will always have that vector of corruption when it comes to better balancing the factions. But aside from that, a better product can be produced in terms of faction balance. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Eilio Tiberius

[Sea Creature]

Out of curiosity for those unhappy, which you have every right to be, how many games of 10th edition have you played so far?

[Azekai]

23 minutes ago, Sea Creature said:

Out of curiosity for those unhappy, which you have every right to be, how many games of 10th edition have you played so far?

I am not even going to attempt a game with my Death Guard. It isn’t just a waste of time because I won’t likely win, it just is not an attractive use of my limited time. My line troops are nonfunctional and my HQ options are boring and weak compared to their former iterations.
 

I *have* been present to watch an army of daemons of Tzeentch battle hopelessly against a silver tide of Necrons. I think three necron models had actually died by the end of the game.
 

I don’t have to taste a crap sandwich to know it’s bad.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Enough to consider shelving my entire and only army this edition, and enough to realize that most of the good units are things that weren't selling last edition

Edited July 17, 2023 by Mechanicus Tech-Support

[NatBrannigan]

1 hour ago, Sea Creature said:

Out of curiosity for those unhappy, which you have every right to be, how many games of 10th edition have you played so far?

About 10 now, they’ve not all been awful but I can’t say I’ve really enjoyed them like 9th edition games. I play Space Wolves so the fact that every one of my old favourite units have been made irrelevantly bland and bad doesn’t help. I can’t take a few of my favourite characters in a unit without buying a whole new unit either. Taking any close combat units is an active detriment so making a good flavourful army is impossible, but if I wanted I could make a decent Marine army. The core rules mean you should just take the best shooting units you can and roll better then your opponent.

 

The list building is awful, I never enjoyed power level and the fact they just made points power level so they could claimed to have removed it is farcical. A company with the resources of GW should really be able to write an app that can handle points. So now we’re stuck with a solution that hamstrings new players and annoys experienced or competitive ones.

 

The rules are more complicated than 9th contrary to what the designers seem to think, but the game feels dumber. Charging for instance is now something I dread, takes far longer and every model needs to be measured exactly. It’s like they came up with rules but didn’t play a single game before releasing them, one attempt at charging a unit behind a wall would have gotten them to change those rules. There is supposed to be less to remember by cutting Strategems down (slightly) but now every unit has its own unique special rule, even the different types of landspeeder each have their own unique rule! 
 

So TLDR, the game is a complex mess of badly thought out rules and no amount of balance patches is going to help that, the utter lack of balance that’s possibly the worst the game has been in that regard is just the crowning turd in the waterpipe.

 

At least in my opinion!

[Kallas]

1 hour ago, Sea Creature said:

how many games of 10th edition have you played so far?

Before too many people answer, let me ask the important addendum to your question: how many games do you think people need to have before they're allowed to voice their complaints? This is such a classic gatekeep-y question, especially when many of the issues with the edition are either so immensely evident from a simple browse of rules, or are part of the wider game that is not necessarily the actual moving of figures (eg, list building is a big one; it's not actually part of the game once models are on the table, but it is a huge aspect of the hobby in general).

[MARK0SIAN]

3 hours ago, Redcomet said:

It might seem harsh, but give all the issues the game has had during his leadership, I am not sure Stu is up to the task of managing this game

I think this is a fair point. Although I do feel that although he’s head of the rules studio he actually doesn’t have that much authority over the rules of the game. I get the impression he (and the rules team in general) have a lot dictated to them by the higher ups. Particularly in regard to timescale, resources and limits placed on the things they can change.

 

That said, some of the stuff that’s slipped through that would definitely be under his authority/supervision is awful.

[Captain Idaho]

I was thinking on that, always assuming it's the evil executives who refuse to allow the game to be balanced, but on reflection I have a hard time believing these same corporate monsters we're all picturing, they even play the game.

 

Likely they're not involved in anything other than business decisions. Purely. 

 

Some manager would have a vision, he might be on the board but likely just reports to one of them. This dude would likely give a brief to the design team and that's it; the rest is on them.

 

It's very possible, in a sort of reverse optimistic kinda way for the design team, that the manager(s) in charge of the brief for 40K received an update from the design team, weren't happy with the direction the design team took the game and slashed everything last minute before a printing deadline.

 

That would explain the poor quality of the Index books and the exhaustive lack of balance...

 

But then logic kicks in and I realise I'm defending the design team when I shouldn't be. Let's be right on this; it took 30 seconds for many people to read the Eldar rules for example and see the unbalanced nature of it. Just because you haven't time to make the quality product you might have wanfed doesn't mean you can't see what doesn't work.

 

So unfortunately, this is a long winded way of saying I just feel like the design team has a lot of incompetence involved in it.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Special Officer Doofy]

7 hours ago, Sea Creature said:

Just seems like GW can’t win. There was an uproar to reset ninth edition. Personally I’m enjoying the new edition. Sure it’s not perfect but they are working on addressing these, many of which have been.

 

For me the issues are on two fronts. I don't like the core rules, and my faction is unplayable (death guard). I could deal with one at a time, but both made me walk away from the hobby. I wanted a reset because I thought it would be the only way to tone down the lethality, which I think we can all agree got out of control in 9th. I doubt if every codex that came out made every army weaker that it would work, so it would all have to be at once. The reset portion is fine. It was other decisions that made this edition worse (my opinion of course).

 

The biggest issue for 10th's core rules for me doesn't even need me to play a game, it's at the list building stage. EVERYONE I know played matched points, not power level. I'm willing to bet a majority of people played points. Well GW went ahead and made the stupid decision to force everyone to play power level. Instead of 1 PL = 20 points and games are 100 PL, it's 1 PL = 5 points and games are 400 PL. Free wargear is terrible because wargear is not balanced. I don't need to play a game to realize how much worse this mechanic is, it is at the list building stage. Then there are alot of little other things I don't care for, like all the new keywords that have to be constantly referenced, changes to certain mechanics like heavy weapons (instead of penalizing them for moving, they are now rewarded for standing still). Characters joining units is a step backwards too in my opinion, it works for marines but alot of other faction's have varying units with different toughness values and movement. By themselves none of those are exactly deal breakers, but stack them all up and it doesn't look good.

 

And my faction death guard got hosed and is easily the worst faction (not just an opinion, the data supports it). Stripped away it's entire identity by removing disgustingly resilient. Lowered the lethality of everything. Lost its endurance. Cherry on top, slowed them even more to cement them as the slowest army. They are terrible. Mortarion got strapped to a table and straight up neutered.

 

Dont get me wrong, there are things I like about 10th, like limiting the strats and enhancements and the whole 2 page rule thing, but for me the negatives outweigh the positives to the point I don't enjoy the hobby anymore. I have no problem sitting an edition out, I sat out 7th. But if 11th edition isn't back to points instead of power level and Death Guard don't get disgustingly resilient back, I'm going to sell my armies and walk away from the hobby for good. I don't see this as a "GW can't win" moment. GW intentionally made alot of bad decisions like forcing the less popular power level on people instead of points. They made their bed, they can sleep in it.

[Dont-Be-Haten]

13 hours ago, Sea Creature said:

Out of curiosity for those unhappy, which you have every right to be, how many games of 10th edition have you played so far?

2. I haven't played meaningful 40k since a Death Company Captain 1 shot Mortartion in 8th edition.

 

I moved to 30k and haven't really looked back. Of my two games,  the absurd amount of dice manipulation, "critical" hits, and VP mechanics have not felt like a 40k should. Critical hits on a D6 system is absurd. Pull off the bandaid and go D 10 or D20 for this type of shenanigans. Lethal hits modified to a 5+ or better means toughness doesn't matter. S5 Weapons auto wounding T12? Neat. 

 

Battle shock is pointless. Bugs have to make an 8+ on 3D6, LD 6+ on 2D6 means most units are rarely having anything meaningful happen to them.

 

Playing the mission packets from Leviathan's box are complicated and don't require a ton of interaction with your opponents. VP has felt like some side quest that has nothing to do with the overall point of the game. 

 

Gambits are pretty much auto losses against anyone who is tactically good.

 

The TLDR is horde armies sit on objectives and free score, fast units quick cap secondaries, and you find yourself down 30 to 0 at the tip of a hat. But we have a max you can score right? So after you go up by 30~40 points heck, even 10 you just switch to kill more mode and you pretty much win.

 

That's my initial impressions after playing 2 games.

 

[Redcomet]

7 minutes ago, Dont-Be-Haten said:

2. I haven't played meaningful 40k since a Death Company Captain 1 shot Mortartion in 8th edition.

 

I moved to 30k and haven't really looked back. Of my two games,  the absurd amount of dice manipulation, "critical" hits, and VP mechanics have not felt like a 40k should. Critical hits on a D6 system is absurd. Pull off the bandaid and go D 10 or D20 for this type of shenanigans. Lethal hits modified to a 5+ or better means toughness doesn't matter. S5 Weapons auto wounding T12? Neat. 

 

Battle shock is pointless. Bugs have to make an 8+ on 3D6, LD 6+ on 2D6 means most units are rarely having anything meaningful happen to them.

 

Playing the mission packets from Leviathan's box are complicated and don't require a ton of interaction with your opponents. VP has felt like some side quest that has nothing to do with the overall point of the game. 

 

Gambits are pretty much auto losses against anyone who is tactically good.

 

The TLDR is horde armies sit on objectives and free score, fast units quick cap secondaries, and you find yourself down 30 to 0 at the tip of a hat. But we have a max you can score right? So after you go up by 30~40 points heck, even 10 you just switch to kill more mode and you pretty much win.

 

That's my initial impressions after playing 2 games.

 

Not to sound harsh, but if you only play one faction and prefer 40k to how it was 15 years ago, you aren’t the person GW is making products for. At least not for 40k. Sometimes it is just the way things are, and it might be a bitter pill to swallow. I know because I did that. 

[Captain Idaho]

Thing is, I agree GW is actively preferring one type of customer over another, but I see this as part of the problem.

 

It's just bad business sense. Apart from alienating part of your life blood revenue, it demonstrates a massive misunderstanding of the way the hobby not only grows, it maintains. Existing players bring additional players into the hobby. Existing players have money and despite the claim little Timmy and his mum can bulk buy a boxed set and several paint sets, we all know existing players purchase all sorts of different kits all year round.

 

Customer retention is business lesson day one. For our hobby, without it the hobby dies.

 

This isn't Bethesda, EA or Activision. Games Workshop think they can operate like them by releasing unfinished products the consumer will test for them and patch them later, or releasing a quarterly updating business model. That is driving established players away and sooner or later it'll hit a point where the consumer base diminishes.

[Dont-Be-Haten]

2 hours ago, Redcomet said:

Not to sound harsh, but if you only play one faction and prefer 40k to how it was 15 years ago, you aren’t the person GW is making products for. At least not for 40k. Sometimes it is just the way things are, and it might be a bitter pill to swallow. I know because I did that. 

But I don't play just one faction. I have an entire house of Vyronii painted Knights...I -had- several thousand points of painted Kraken, and GW banned my Dimacheron's, FW weapons on my Flyrants, and my Malonthrope. Then I have a fully painted Raven Guard army, an almost fully painted Death Guard Army. I've sold Blood Angels armies twice, and started a third successor chapter of Carmine Blades as an all Primaris army. Oh...and I have a Dark Eldar army (all them wasted khymera now...)

 

I've played narratives and competively. I mean, AoS in Space is how this edition feels. I timidly excited about the Old World, but considering the Average American reads at a third grade reading level, and some of the just absolutely terrible questions asked over social media, I understand why the game has turned into this simplified silliness.

 

 

[Redcomet]

8 minutes ago, Dont-Be-Haten said:

But I don't play just one faction. I have an entire house of Vyronii painted Knights...I -had- several thousand points of painted Kraken, and GW banned my Dimacheron's, FW weapons on my Flyrants, and my Malonthrope. Then I have a fully painted Raven Guard army, an almost fully painted Death Guard Army. I've sold Blood Angels armies twice, and started a third successor chapter of Carmine Blades as an all Primaris army. Oh...and I have a Dark Eldar army (all them wasted khymera now...)

 

I've played narratives and competively. I mean, AoS in Space is how this edition feels. I timidly excited about the Old World, but considering the Average American reads at a third grade reading level, and some of the just absolutely terrible questions asked over social media, I understand why the game has turned into this simplified silliness.

 

 

Times change. Most people don’t enjoy complex things anymore. They just don’t have the time and effort to invest in something that takes more than 15 minutes to learn

[Karhedron]

13 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

Times change. Most people don’t enjoy complex things anymore. They just don’t have the time and effort to invest in something that takes more than 15 minutes to learn

 

The problem is that 9th edition had complexity in the wrong places and this lead to book keeping issues. A Knight armiger could potentially have up to 8 levels of buffs applied to it at any one time but in order to check which ones were active you had to check its position relative to other models, the number of Honour Points you had currently accumulated and sometimes even other factors. Those buffs were then listed in different sections of the codex so just to work out what you could roll (and reroll) often required quite a bit of flipping back and forth. That is complexity but it was not particularly fun.

 

I want the complexity to lie in the application, not in endless layers of rules slapped on top of each other. I will put my hand up to not having played a game of 10th yet (first game next week) so I will hold my judgement until then. However the metawatch suggesting winrates between 65%-30% is pretty disappointing. GW seemed to have gotten most factions in the 45%-55% rate by the end of 9th and I was hoping to see further improvement on that rather than seeing everything ditched.

[Ahzek451]

16 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

I think this is a fair point. Although I do feel that although he’s head of the rules studio he actually doesn’t have that much authority over the rules of the game. I get the impression he (and the rules team in general) have a lot dictated to them by the higher ups. Particularly in regard to timescale, resources and limits placed on the things they can change.

 

That said, some of the stuff that’s slipped through that would definitely be under his authority/supervision is awful.

Agreed. if anything is ary, its usually not the fault of a single person. At the end of the day however, it is the responsability of his supervisor. But I would beleive that what we are seeing is the result of a lot of mismanaged moving parts, contradictory dictations from upper management, organization and communication faults amongst peers, and rough timetables. 

And I totally admit I am no stock genius, but as most of us agree there is an issue, GW stocks look to be rising. I do wonder if this is just the natural climb due to new edition....or will there be a delayed reaction as more people become disatisfied at the current state. I geuss I am only pointing at the rising stock as a factor for incentive for GW to really do anything about these issues. 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Ahzek451

[crimsondave]

Until GW fixes the too strong and too weak indexes 10th is not going to be fun to play for a lot of people.  It's a great time to take on the old pile of shame.  I'm more into modeling/painting so it's easy for me to say.  The newer kits are so good and the new paints are so easy to use, building and painting are a dream right now.  I highly recommend concentrating on that aspect until this nonsense gets sorted.  For those of you who don' t enjoy the modeling/painting part of the hobby, I hate it for you right now.  If I were going to play right now, I'd just play 9th for the time being.  It was overly  complicated but at least it was balanced.  I'm afraid you tourney players are just out of luck.

[Captain Idaho]

1 hour ago, Ahzek451 said:

.And I totally admit I am no stock genius, but as most of us agree there is an issue, GW stocks look to be rising. I do wonder if this is just the natural climb due to new edition....or will there be a delayed reaction as more people become disatisfied at the current state. I geuss I am only pointing at the rising stock as a factor for incentive for GW to really do anything about these issues. 

 

Yeah they're doing fine now. Any issues would be a medium to long term issue.

[Sea Creature]

I know that GW has made it a point to hire someone whose a grognard to be CEO. They do not want another Tom Kirby era.

[Rain]

3 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

And I totally admit I am no stock genius, but as most of us agree there is an issue, GW stocks look to be rising. I do wonder if this is just the natural climb due to new edition....or will there be a delayed reaction as more people become disatisfied at the current state. I geuss I am only pointing at the rising stock as a factor for incentive for GW to really do anything about these issues. 

 

Equities are just up across the board after 2 years of stagnation. The S&P 500 is up almost 20% YTD. When the market is doing well a monkey with a dart board can pick successful stocks.

[MegaVolt87]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:49 PM, Redcomet said:

Not to sound harsh, but if you only play one faction and prefer 40k to how it was 15 years ago, you aren’t the person GW is making products for. At least not for 40k. Sometimes it is just the way things are, and it might be a bitter pill to swallow. I know because I did that. 

 

What's the hate on mono faction people I see lately? GW has failed if a long term fan leaves. Where is the garuntee their new replacement will stick around even half as long to foster a community and continue spending? Then who will the next products be for if GW keeps churning and burning it's potential customer base like Amazon with the labour pool ? The buck has to stop somewhere. 

[Rain]

2 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

What's the hate on mono faction people I see lately? GW has failed if a long term fan leaves. Where is the garuntee their new replacement will stick around even half as long to foster a community and continue spending? Then who will the next products be for if GW keeps churning and burning it's potential customer base like Amazon with the labour pool ? The buck has to stop somewhere. 

 

I think GW thinks of old fans the same way that drug dealers think about their long time customers. "Those suckers aren't going anywhere." 

 

Hence the flippant attempts to resell vets the same crap over and over. The majority of vets have a marine army as an army, if not their exclusive army, so they resold them the same marines but this time as Heresy marines for playing Heresy games. Then they resold them the same marines, but as Primaris marines, because your old marines don't work anymore. Then they resold them the same marines, but as upscaled Heresy marines. On and on. This is what annoys me about when people recommend HH for those disaffected by current 40k. They want to sell you the solution to the problem that they create. They will then make the "solution" itself obsolete, and sell you a new "solution." I like the lore of 40k, I want to play 40k, I just don't want it to suck.

 

Edit: I guess to be fair at least Heresy marines are for a technically separate game system. Primaris were entirely a ploy to obsolete and resell the most popular army to those that already had thousands of points of it without any real value added. They could have added Primaris as an entirely new army, like other marine derivatives which would have made more sense in lore and allowed people to keep their legacy armies, but they specifically did not do that.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Rain

[Sea Creature]

The Tacoma Open GT had over 370 players and got a lot of props overall. The finals was a Custodes mirror match.

[Captain Idaho]

Yeah seems like more of the same. GW needs to do much more to fix the edition.

 

 

 

The Eldar win rate dropping to 64%, but 69% excluding mirror matches, post changes... 

 

Ok then GW.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

2 admech players of 370

Highest rank 177 

At least we're not the absolute worst I suppose  

The codex can't come quick enough, though I'm feeling distinctly pessimistic about the thing.