January 2024 MFM and Dataslate

[Kallas]

55 minutes ago, OttoVonAwesome said:

Why?

Money. Because they don't actually care about the customer, they only care about your wallet, so they will squeeze "whatever the market can bear" can out of anyone they possibly can.

 

10 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

The actual rules are so bad now points adjustments are no longer enough to balance the inter faction power. Ok points increase, you still reaching for that triple cyclic crisis suit/ aggressors etc because it's still better than adjacent units.

The cherry on top is still things like the Wraithknight: multiple points hikes because of the Heavy Wraithcannons; multiple core rule changes to curtail the power of HWCs (indirectly, but these were high profile abusers of DevWnds) - and because of this, the Sword&Board WK is utterly pathetic for the cost. And to truly cap it off, they couldn't even realistically split out the profiles, because they'd need at least three WK Datasheets to reasonably balance the different profiles against one another, when they could just, y'know, use wargear pointing for targeted nerfs.

 

It's astonishing how back-asswards they're being about 10th.

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Kallas said:

It's astonishing how back-asswards they're being about 10th.

 

Said this before, but even extremely simplistic wargames have costs associated with gear. Shockingly, it tends to work out better when more powerful equipment comes with a higher cost.

 

The only company I know that does Power Level like this is Games Workshop. Someone there had this brainwave and they just will not let it go.

[Scribe]

11 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Said this before, but even extremely simplistic wargames have costs associated with gear. Shockingly, it tends to work out better when more powerful equipment comes with a higher cost.

 

The only company I know that does Power Level like this is Games Workshop. Someone there had this brainwave and they just will not let it go.

 

As long as they keep the merry-go-round going, shift the 'balance' for units and factions up and down constantly, keep people who are riding the tiger of 'competitive play' buying new things, they dont care.

 

This is not a game designed with any kind of integral balance in mind. Its a dart board.

 

Power Level can simply never actually reflect the balance of multiple options, and the idea of 'buy the box, you have the unit' with zero thought is unappealing to say the least.

 

GW lost me hard.

[Dark Legionnare]

3 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

As long as they keep the merry-go-round going, shift the 'balance' for units and factions up and down constantly, keep people who are riding the tiger of 'competitive play' buying new things, they dont care.

 

This is not a game designed with any kind of integral balance in mind. Its a dart board.

 

Power Level can simply never actually reflect the balance of multiple options, and the idea of 'buy the box, you have the unit' with zero thought is unappealing to say the least.

 

GW lost me hard.

Same. This is the least people have played 40K in our circles since I came back to the game in 2017. Even less games and drive than at the height of covid lockdowns.

 

It's so bad, people who couldn't be arsed to give oldhammer (7th without any formations and other BS from the edition kept out) a time of day before are buying old dexes to join our laid back 7th ed games. And will probably go back to 9th a bit eventually too for the folks who want primaris and such.

 

What a crapshow.

Edited February 1 by Dark Legionnare

[Cpt_Reaper]

I was thinking that by the general sentiment of this thread that 11th will be another full reset, which I was opposed to 10th being a full reset and I am opposed to 11th being a full reset.

 

But it doesn't have to be a full reset, invalidating codexes and the like. The answer is the same thing causing issue - the Field Manual. GW can literally print a field manual that adds back in granular points for wargear. The codexes stay the same, until their new edition book includes the same granular points.

[MegaVolt87]

30 minutes ago, Cpt_Reaper said:

I was thinking that by the general sentiment of this thread that 11th will be another full reset, which I was opposed to 10th being a full reset and I am opposed to 11th being a full reset.

 

But it doesn't have to be a full reset, invalidating codexes and the like. The answer is the same thing causing issue - the Field Manual. GW can literally print a field manual that adds back in granular points for wargear. The codexes stay the same, until their new edition book includes the same granular points.

 

This makes sense but I am dismayed we are going backwards again to fix core issues like how the 8th-9th ed chapter approved and the malestorm of war supplements did. It's basically going to the waste bin to grab the old band aids to fix old re-opened bullet wounds that should have healed and recovered from. 

[Mogger351]

8 hours ago, crimsondave said:

Yet we had granularity before.  Now we have neither.

Yeah, but you framed the context in the window of the Marine subfactions, who are finding themselves being caught up in incidental balance changes because of an Ultramarine list using the units. That's both nothing to do with granularity and the exact same happened in 9th where they all used the same points still.

 

Not saying you haven't got a point but it was the worst possible thing to try and make it with.

[Mogger351]

7 hours ago, Spurspinter1 said:

 

But the bootlickers are used to the absurdity so it's par for the course.

 

First of all that's a bit rude.

 

Quote

The point of allies in the case of knights at least was to be able to get models that are of a different profile of the bulk of the army that can do the tasks that the knights cannot. Nurglings being nurgle battleline obviously means they can still fulfill that role, but I don't think many people want to clog up their list with blue horrors to be able to field the changeling. It was a cheap backline board model but now you might as well have another war dog because of how changeling and the horrors add up points wise. It's real life money and in game points I don't really want to spend but that's only my opinion of course.

The point of the ally rules were to let people make thematic lists and use more of their collection. If they fixed the rules imbalances that led you to want to take the thematically weird choices in the first place, you'd still not be taking them and buying something else.

 

Quote

Rather than the weird ass daemon rule change I thought they'd actually look at chaff units winning games by doing nonsensical secondaries ie kroot hounds / literal wolves getting asked to investigate signals, but that would have made too much sense.

It's not weird ass, it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the changeling bumming around with a set of knights so he can sit on an objective due to an in game rule or whatever.

 

Yes those units are a bit weird in their ability to complete those tasks, but it makes slightly more sense than your stance does.

 

Which seems to be "I took the meta choices fluff or setting be damned, don't change it, change other people's, now my list isn't as good so I'm angry".

[Kharn13]

3 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

First of all that's a bit rude.

 

The point of the ally rules were to let people make thematic lists and use more of their collection. If they fixed the rules imbalances that led you to want to take the thematically weird choices in the first place, you'd still not be taking them and buying something else.

 

It's not weird ass, it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the changeling bumming around with a set of knights so he can sit on an objective due to an in game rule or whatever.

 

Yes those units are a bit weird in their ability to complete those tasks, but it makes slightly more sense than your stance does.

 

Which seems to be "I took the meta choices fluff or setting be damned, don't change it, change other people's, now my list isn't as good so I'm angry".

I play WE and had Skarbrand and Skulltaker to mix up my list and for fluff daemonkin reasons. For me it wasn’t about making a meta list. It’s annoying that I will now have to take Bloodletters for both units, which breaks the 500pt cap. GW are going backwards (has to be a patrol) after changing that rule during AoO! My annoyance is the fact that they change rules so often, not that “my meta list is broken”. WE specifically got rules that lasted 3 months, then 10th and now a third set of rules 12 months later. It’s too much.

Edited February 1 by Kharn13

[OttoVonAwesome]

10 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Yeah 9th was a good edition. My problems with it were chip dmg, strategem bloat, lack of unit entry consolidation for adjacent units and fixed box unit loadouts.

 

The actual rules are so bad now points adjustments are no longer enough to balance the inter faction power. Ok points increase, you still reaching for that triple cyclic crisis suit/ aggressors etc because it's still better than adjacent units. Points increases just means a lower model count and the "bad" units still not being taken or sold. If you wanted to be facetious about it, the game is cheaper $$$ because you just take the good units to be viable, they are a lot of points so you have less minitures to buy to have a viable/playable/ competitive army list. 

Yeah inter faction balance doesn't exist at all. Everyone has a unique gimmick and the ones that are better aren't taken into account whatsoever like how many armies are or were sitting at the top just based on how powerful thier faction buff was over the last 5 years. Having that along with detachment/subfaction buffs just makes it that much harder to wiegh points vs raw stats. every layer they add strategems etc is another thing that needs to be quantified. 40k is just broken and I believe the whole experiment from 8th edition on is a failure. 7th actually cuase formations were a great example of a busted mechanic layering on that can't be balanced either based on the fact it's free. Take X gets Y buff pay nothing but dollars for it gain edge over opponent with no downside.

 

Now it's army then meta then detachment then unit abilities and strategems and at the very bottom raw stats and they still trying to get you to buy boxed armies you can't pick and people get excited oh whats in the new combat patrol or battle box or early release set with that one new thing I'll tell you what 1 unit you want and a bunch of garbage you might use in a casual game but will never take to a tournament cuase of all the layers of BS congratulations you just subsidized the bad rules design buy buying the crap they can't sell but it's all good cuase you got it at discount welcome to 40k whatever you do don't get competitive.

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, Kharn13 said:

I play WE and had Skarbrand and Skulltaker to mix up my list and for fluff daemonkin reasons. For me it wasn’t about making a meta list. It’s annoying that I will now have to take Bloodletters for both units, which breaks the 500pt cap. GW are going backwards (has to be a patrol) after changing that rule during AoO! My annoyance is the fact that they change rules so often, not that “my meta list is broken”. WE specifically got rules that lasted 3 months, then 10th and now a third set of rules 12 months later. It’s too much.

In my lifetime with the game I've seen:

- share a codex

- get turned into bland vanilla representations with iirc no ally rules

- A further release of no ally rules and really confused identity

- ally rules come in with very little recourse for anyone about anything

- daemons being summoned by nearly anyone

 

These were all pre-8th. During this time the player base complained about long standing stale rules, a lack of faqs, no attempts to balance things and slow releases.

 

Post 7th:

- Some chaos soup via detachments

- chaos soup with mono god detachments both between codexes and inside of their own (daemons) codex

- armies getting weaker due to losing rules if allies appear

- that got fixed

- 25% limit

- fixed points limit

- fixed pointed limit + troops tax

 

People dislike the rapid rules changes.

 

Point still stands, why would WE summon just a pair of named daemons on their own?

[Kharn13]

11 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

In my lifetime with the game I've seen:

- share a codex

- get turned into bland vanilla representations with iirc no ally rules

- A further release of no ally rules and really confused identity

- ally rules come in with very little recourse for anyone about anything

- daemons being summoned by nearly anyone

 

These were all pre-8th. During this time the player base complained about long standing stale rules, a lack of faqs, no attempts to balance things and slow releases.

 

Post 7th:

- Some chaos soup via detachments

- chaos soup with mono god detachments both between codexes and inside of their own (daemons) codex

- armies getting weaker due to losing rules if allies appear

- that got fixed

- 25% limit

- fixed points limit

- fixed pointed limit + troops tax

 

People dislike the rapid rules changes.

 

Point still stands, why would WE summon just a pair of named daemons on their own?

Fluff reasons - in the AoO story Angron spawns 8 bloodthirsters. It’s just fun.

 

Also, why is it just for daemon allies? Regular armies don’t have to take battleline. I could make a daemon list with just HQ if I wanted, in fact the same goes for any army. 

Edited February 1 by Kharn13

[Blindhamster]

16 minutes ago, Kharn13 said:

Fluff reasons - in the AoO story Angron spawns 8 bloodthirsters. It’s just fun.

 

Also, why is it just for daemon allies? Regular armies don’t have to take battleline. I could make a daemon list with just HQ if I wanted, in fact the same goes for any army. 

To be fair, Angron and the blood thirsters weren't the whole of it I didn't think, that might genuinely have still only been 25% of the total forces, who knows.

 

But your second point really is very simple and I 100% agree, demons shouldn't have more restrictions in terms of allying than other factions allying do.

I do think they shouldn't allow epic heroes in allies though.

[Doctor Perils]

Tbf, I think the "min 1 BATTLELINE per other unit" should be generalised, but so should detachments that give the BATTLELINE keyword out to new units (a bit like how the ravenwing detachment is set to grant it to bikers/outriders). But also allowing alliances a bit more liberally than at present: it's all very good being able to summon daemons, but why can't I play my death guard models alongside my black legion ones?

[Dark Legionnare]

1 hour ago, USNCenturion said:

Regarding the issue of GW doing away with pointed gear… they’ll reintroduce it in an edition or two, tout it as the greatest thing ever, and make everyone who built models for this edition where points don’t matter buy new boxes to kit out their units with cheaper wargear. 

Oh, for sure, 1000%

I've built two more bolter-pig plague marines in 10th, so I can have 3 squad of 10 instead of my old squads of 7 w/2 plasma and such, but that's about it (And that was 9th's fault, not 10th).

My Kabalite drive-by squads still weep being priced like they all carry around lances, shredders, and splinter cannons on top of blasters but I'm not making 4 more of each of those instead of saying they do while riding around in their raiders.

[The Spitehorde]

2 hours ago, USNCenturion said:

Regarding the issue of GW doing away with pointed gear… they’ll reintroduce it in an edition or two, tout it as the greatest thing ever, and make everyone who built models for this edition where points don’t matter buy new boxes to kit out their units with cheaper wargear. 

 

Yeah, I can see that happening. The reason proffered will be something along the lines of  "It allows us to more finely tune points changes when it comes to balancing the different factions".

 

Edited February 1 by The Spitehorde

[Blurf]

18 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Yeah 9th was a good edition. My problems with it were chip dmg, strategem bloat, lack of unit entry consolidation for adjacent units and fixed box unit loadouts.

 

The actual rules are so bad now points adjustments are no longer enough to balance the inter faction power. Ok points increase, you still reaching for that triple cyclic crisis suit/ aggressors etc because it's still better than adjacent units. Points increases just means a lower model count and the "bad" units still not being taken or sold. If you wanted to be facetious about it, the game is cheaper $$$ because you just take the good units to be viable, they are a lot of points so you have less minitures to buy to have a viable/playable/ competitive army list. 

While I personally thought 9th was fine towards the end of its lifespan, that was very much NOT the general sentiment.

A lot of people were happy with faction balance, but the core rules were seen as incredibly bloated and lethality was to one of the highest points we've seen since 7th edition. This is very much a 'the prequels were great, actually' revisionism of the end of 9th.

[Scribe]

7 minutes ago, Blurf said:

This is very much a 'the prequels were great, actually' revisionism of the end of 9th.

 

100% this. 9th was an abomination lol.

[ThaneOfTas]

3 hours ago, Blurf said:

While I personally thought 9th was fine towards the end of its lifespan, that was very much NOT the general sentiment.

A lot of people were happy with faction balance, but the core rules were seen as incredibly bloated and lethality was to one of the highest points we've seen since 7th edition. This is very much a 'the prequels were great, actually' revisionism of the end of 9th.

I can't speak for the general sentiment, but by this point in 9th edition I had made the effort to play a LOT more games than I have of 10th, like I think I've played at most 6-10 games of 10th, and that was back in the first few months, and I just wasn't having fun. 

[Blindhamster]

Ive found 10th to be more enjoyable so far personally, I didn't enjoy 9th as much honestly, the lethality was just silly.

[brother_b]

GW convinced themselves that people wanted smooth playing games for tournaments. Sorry for every tournament game there has to be, what, 10,000 club/garage games?

 

I don’t think people wanted bloat requiring numerous books for the rules; they wanted an app that worked and was accessible and rules that were easy to reference and armies that felt competitive and fluffy.

 

Now we’ve got a super simple game that lacks granularity and ultimately will make balancing harder IMHO.

 

And to top it off 9th edition was pretty balanced and the armies FELT and played like their lore.

 

I do like some aspects of 10th, I hope we get more granularity and a nice mix of rules in the future.

 

 

[ThePenitentOne]

RE: Allies

 

For me, 9th did it best: you can field allied detachments, that way each detachment keeps its abilities without interfering with the others. And if you played Crusade, you could even ally subfactions- a detachment of Sacred Rose + a Detachment of Bloody Rose (the update that stopped people from doing this was a Matched play only rule).

 

This style of allied forces worked for me because I Crusaded a bunch of 25PL forces, and just grouped them together when someone wanted a 50 - 100 PL game. Thus, the act of allying became a narrative event within the campaign.

 

Squeezing an allied unit or two into someone else's detachment never really worked for me on either a mechanics or a fluff level. Mechanically, the allied units don't have the keywords to benefit from detachment rules or use strats and enhancements, which makes them just weaker than another unit of the faction. This ids the current problem with Agents of the Imperium- sure you can add a decent number of them, but they'll never get to use any detachment rules, strats, or enhancements, so why bother? So much better to bring an allied detachment- that way, for example, Sisters get to use the Sisters detachment rules, enhancements and strats, while the Agents get to use Ordo Hereticus detachment rules, enhancements and strats.

 

From a fluff perspective, I see the issue being command structures. Like if an Inquisitor wants to requisition some units from their Chamber Militant, they aren't going to just grab a unit of Elites, two units of troops, and a fast attack choice- they're also going to insist an HQ to coordinate the actions of those four units. This way, they tell the HQ what they want his or her forces to do, and they do it. It's more efficient for units to follow the command structure that is ingrained in their training. When forces ally, their leaders coordinate. The force just does what it always does- follow the chain of command that has been hammered into them since bootcamp.

 

Now some factions are different. Like in the Khorne example above, I think I could see Skulltaker showing up just to brawl- just to claim blood for the Blood God, or perhaps to proove that the Warlord of his allied detachment will outshine him in Khorne's eyes.

 

But there's also a case to be made that in his twisted, blackened heart, Skulltaker is a leader- commanding daemons is as much his nature as swinging his blade. And if he shows up to someone else's party, no matter how many skulls he takes there is still shame in having been a commander of no one. Now I would say that the accompanying unit need not be battleline to fit the bill- a unit of Flesh Hounds still gives Skulltaker a unit to command. But having some kind of unit from his own faction for backup just seems like a wise command decision.

 

Different strokes for different folks, and each person's narrative is their own.

[SvenONE]

2 hours ago, brother_b said:

GW convinced themselves that people wanted smooth playing games for tournaments. Sorry for every tournament game there has to be, what, 10,000 club/garage games?

 

I don’t think people wanted bloat requiring numerous books for the rules; they wanted an app that worked and was accessible and rules that were easy to reference and armies that felt competitive and fluffy.

 

Now we’ve got a super simple game that lacks granularity and ultimately will make balancing harder IMHO.

 

And to top it off 9th edition was pretty balanced and the armies FELT and played like their lore.

 

I do like some aspects of 10th, I hope we get more granularity and a nice mix of rules in the future.

 

 

 

I think that granularity is going to come from the codex detachments. Dumb it down at the unit/datasheet level, use the detachments as your knobs and levers for balance. If the pace continues, by the time we approach the end of the codex cycle, there are going to probably be around 70ish different detachments! On paper I think it would actually be hard to balance around all of that, but in reality I think a fair bit of those detachments will be duds, maybe a few "luls" detachments.

 

One piece of granularity they lost was point adjustments. When they dropped a unit by 1-2ppm or adjusted wargear it would throw a list off. Now I'm finding they drop a unit by 10 pts, now my 1950 list is 1930 and there isnt really anything meaningful I can do without throwing the list out.

 

Spot on about the bloat/app. One thing that's curious to me is printed presentation of the rules between 40K and AoS. AoS is written like a legal document, which while stiff reading makes it super easy to reference to someone. "Oh, it's rule section 13.1.2". Surprised for all the few other AOS things 40K adopted, this wasn't one of them.

Edited February 2 by SvenONE

[brother_b]

1 hour ago, SvenONE said:

 

I think that granularity is going to come from the codex detachments. Dumb it down at the unit/datasheet level, use the detachments as your knobs and levers for balance. If the pace continues, by the time we approach the end of the codex cycle, there are going to probably be around 70ish different detachments! On paper I think it would actually be hard to balance around all of that, but in reality I think a fair bit of those detachments will be duds, maybe a few "luls" detachments.

 

One piece of granularity they lost was point adjustments. When they dropped a unit by 1-2ppm or adjusted wargear it would throw a list off. Now I'm finding they drop a unit by 10 pts, now my 1950 list is 1930 and there isnt really anything meaningful I can do without throwing the list out.

 

Spot on about the bloat/app. One thing that's curious to me is printed presentation of the rules between 40K and AoS. AoS is written like a legal document, which while stiff reading makes it super easy to reference to someone. "Oh, it's rule section 13.1.2". Surprised for all the few other AOS things 40K adopted, this wasn't one of them.

Yeah I don’t play AOS but what you describe seems like a better way to set up the rules.

 

I liked the granularity of points. One thing I like to point out are acolytes from the GSC

they have two options for pistol, a hand flamer, or auto pistol. The hand flamer is just always better.
 

Before I had to worry about coming up with points to outfit some units with the flamer. Now, there is no reason to have an auto pistol. They all cost the same. Games workshop basically invalidated  the auto pistol, there is never a reason to choose it, and this is an actual piece of plastic on the sprue that is now worthless. 

 

We used to be able to adjust points on weapons, too, thereby making the best option, cost more and tweaking it that way. We don’t have that option now, and just hit the whole unit with a points increase which may invalidate some of the options, referenced above, someone mentioned, sword wraith knights, which are now just hugely over costed apparently.
 

 

[01RTB01]

1 hour ago, brother_b said:

Yeah I don’t play AOS but what you describe seems like a better way to set up the rules.

 

I liked the granularity of points. One thing I like to point out are acolytes from the GSC

they have two options for pistol, a hand flamer, or auto pistol. The hand flamer is just always better.
 

Before I had to worry about coming up with points to outfit some units with the flamer. Now, there is no reason to have an auto pistol. They all cost the same. Games workshop basically invalidated  the auto pistol, there is never a reason to choose it, and this is an actual piece of plastic on the sprue that is now worthless. 

 

We used to be able to adjust points on weapons, too, thereby making the best option, cost more and tweaking it that way. We don’t have that option now, and just hit the whole unit with a points increase which may invalidate some of the options, referenced above, someone mentioned, sword wraith knights, which are now just hugely over costed apparently.
 

 

I can understand why they just moved to points for units. There are so many in 40k that balancing the unit and all weapon options would be a hideous task.

 

However, again the casual players suffer for the meta chasers. I'd an event list ready for March and I'm having to drop a unit of grots because my solo unit of boarboyz (squighogs) takes me over.

 

Drives me loops that I'm being punished for the planks that take 18 squighogs every game plus mozrog etc.