warhammer 10th edition June Balance Dataslate and Field Manual

[Nagashsnee]

10 minutes ago, FarFromSam said:

Digital bookkeeping would help, but by the time you get an army painted, GW has changed the rules and removed its teeth.  I want to like the game, help me understand. 

Short version is GW realised there is allot of money to be made by changing the meta semi often. 

 

As a huge % of their player base just play casual or barely plays at all this only affects people looking at competive play. The trick is to keep the factions at a level where two normal gamers playing a casual game feel like they both have a shot/equal win rate. 

 

Then you just shift the competitive stuff around and watch the WAACs and tournie chasers constantly try to adjust. 

 

It affects everyone ( as they need to keep on top of changes and points), but it gives a segment of the community a dragon to chase and oh boy oh boy how some people like chasin it. 

 

My best advice. try to find people who want to play like you do, and if that is WAAC and tournies get ready to chase that dragon. 

Edited June 21 by Nagashsnee

[phandaal]

25 minutes ago, Nagashsnee said:

As a huge % of their player base just play casual or barely plays at all this only affects people looking at competive play. The trick is to keep the factions at a level where two normal gamers playing a casual game feel like they both have a shot/equal win rate. 

 

My impression is a lot of people also are almost never painting their models, which is the most time consuming part of getting an army ready to play. It is a lot of Grey Tide or even just unassembled boxes in the Pile of Shame that someone picked up because a unit got strong with the latest update.

 

So they never really get to the stage of realizing that the hamster wheel of rules changes does not feel all that good to participate in. From the corporate perspective, the sale still happened though so all good.

 

When you think about it, there are a lot of things working against moving towards a longer rules cycle with a more balanced game up front.

[Captain Idaho]

As great as digital stuff is, both useful and wanted, I live in a country town and get no reception in the 2 gaming locations we play. Of these one is a garage so doesn't benefit from WiFi, whilst the other is a rural home which has limited WiFi shared by a number of other sources. If I can download stuff then great! But streaming it live on an APP isn't ideal.

 

What I'm saying is requiring physical copies of rules and references is still relevant to many who aren't urbanites. It's not black and white.

 

Pun intended.

Edited June 21 by Captain Idaho

[Mogger351]

5 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

As great as digital stuff is, both useful and wanted, I live in a country town and get no reception in the 2 gaming locations we play. Of these one is a garage so doesn't benefit from WiFi, whilst the other is a rural home which has limited WiFi shared by a number of other sources. If I can download stuff then great! But streaming it live on an APP isn't ideal.

 

What I'm saying is requiring physical copies of rules and references is still relevant to many who aren't urbanites. It's not black and white.

 

Pun intended.

The app works offline, so as long as you updated it prior, you're good (mishaps like the archon noted of course).

[Captain Idaho]

There's a few Legions Imperialis and Old World army builders that are browser based, which does suck a little.

 

*** Edit ***

 

Oh yeah and Yaktribe for Necromunda is browser based.

 

Edited June 21 by Captain Idaho

[DemonGSides]

23 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

As great as digital stuff is, both useful and wanted, I live in a country town and get no reception in the 2 gaming locations we play. Of these one is a garage so doesn't benefit from WiFi, whilst the other is a rural home which has limited WiFi shared by a number of other sources. If I can download stuff then great! But streaming it live on an APP isn't ideal.

 

What I'm saying is requiring physical copies of rules and references is still relevant to many who aren't urbanites. It's not black and white.

 

Pun intended.

 

The app works without wifi just fine; unit pictures don't always populate but the rules are there and searchable.

 

It is black and white in that regards. If you want to start claiming that so many people don't have access to technology that can handle an app, well, then those same people probably shouldn't be heavily investing into their hobby right now and should focus on getting back on the right foot. Plastic can wait. 

Edited June 21 by Xenith
language

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, Nagashsnee said:

As a huge % of their player base just play casual or barely plays at all this only affects people looking at competive play. The trick is to keep the factions at a level where two normal gamers playing a casual game feel like they both have a shot/equal win rate. 

 

Disagree 100% here.

1) The power level variation between armies is only really a factor in the higher ends of competitive play, using extreme builds with the most efficient units - at local tourney or beer and pretzels, 'bring what you have' level, the armies were pretty balanced - as evidenced by internal playtesting, where they apparently found zero issue with the game state at release. 

2) For casual gamers, it's a huge turn off to come to their game and find out the rules have changed and they have to read 40 pages of updates to play, to the point where even hobby influencers can't keep up, or just dont enjoy it anymore. 

 

The entire season thing, is by competitive gamers, for competitive gamers. Everyone else is getting left behind. 

Edited June 21 by Xenith

[DemonGSides]

3 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

There's a few Legions Imperialis and Old World army builders that are browser based, which does suck a little.

 

This is a 40k forum (red text). 

Edited June 21 by DemonGSides

[Captain Idaho]

1 minute ago, DemonGSides said:

 

This is a 40k forum (red text). 

 

https://bolterandchainsword.com/forum/35-the-horus-heresy/

 

https://bolterandchainsword.com/forum/40-other-games/

 

https://bolterandchainsword.com/forum/76-the-black-library/

 

Hope this helps.

[DemonGSides]

Man you can't even have a little bit of fun without being a grump, can you?

 

Fine, I'll be more accurate with my fake mod voice;

 

"Discussions of game systems outside of the 40k meta update are for a different thread." (Red text)

Edited June 21 by DemonGSides

[jaxom]

7 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

As long as the core rules and individual faction rules are good enough and tested, it should only take point tweaks to get everyone into that 45-55% win rate. It shouldn't take going back through and changing half a codex from 4+ BS to 3+ for example.

I kind of feel like that's where we are now, after this update. The most recent codexes haven't been duds and the previous duds got major updates. Similarly, the FAQ is now pretty comprehensive. I think it brings the game to place where it can be stable and steady even for folks who use points from the back of codexes.

[Karhedron]

10 minutes ago, Xenith said:

The entire season thing, is by competitive gamers, for competitive gamers. Everyone else is getting left behind. 

 

Conversely, anyone who finds the updates more of a hassle than a benefit is free to ignore them and play rules as they are written in the books, as long as both parties are happy with that approach. For tournament play, I can understand always using the latest version of the ruleset. For casual play, using the printed rules is not going to spoil anyone's fun and may reduce stress.

[sarabando]

it bugs me that there are changes for codexs that have not even been released. GW need to work on their timing and testing better. 

[TrawlingCleaner]

3 minutes ago, jaxom said:

I kind of feel like that's where we are now, after this update. The most recent codexes haven't been duds and the previous duds got major updates. Similarly, the FAQ is now pretty comprehensive. I think it brings the game to place where it can be stable and steady even for folks who use points from the back of codexes.

 

I think things have mostly been there-ish for a little while with most of the outliers being at the low end of things like Admech with very little popping it's head above 55%. Space Wolves are at 55% on the dot (they're the highest). The factions that got the largest share of the buffs being Custodes, Admech and Nids and all having dropped below 45% in the last 6 weeks.

 

The only other outlier is basic space marines, although I think they've bourne the brunt of the "Snowflake" chapters. They really would be better off stopping them from using the base codex detatchments I think but perhaps they'll only do that when they all have their codexes

[Marshal Mittens]

11th Edition will drop summer of 26, most likely, so it will probably be finished writing by summer of 25. I wonder if a lot of the changes we are seeing here are almost like them play testing changes they are considering for 11th edition. 

[SvenIronhand]

8 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

I agree. I hope my post read more of I'm not against the updates, more so its just stupid that the product wasn't better and more thoroughly tested in the first place. Take something like indirect fire for example. In a game where there are so many line of sight and terrain rules and interactions, you would think they would know the strength of indirect fire and the value it can have at the drawing board instead of nerfing it later in an edition. 

 

As long as the core rules and individual faction rules are good enough and tested, it should only take point tweaks to get everyone into that 45-55% win rate. It shouldn't take going back through and changing half a codex from 4+ BS to 3+ for example.

Y'know what, fair.

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, Xenith said:

1) The power level variation between armies is only really a factor in the higher ends of competitive play, using extreme builds with the most efficient units - at local tourney or beer and pretzels, 'bring what you have' level, the armies were pretty balanced - as evidenced by internal playtesting, where they apparently found zero issue with the game state at release. 

 

Disagree 100% here. Played a few casual Death Guard games with the index just after launch. They were rough to play and not balanced. Lost disgustingly resilient, barely went up in toughness compared to others, shooting didn't really go up in strength, Mortarion was neutered, lost movement on some units, terrible detachment bonus and more. Win rate was in the 30% for a reason.

[Schurge]

Its amusing to see apologia from newer players. Its like looking back in time at the bright eyed newbie I once was, who hadn't yet been burnt out by GWs standard operating procedure.

[phandaal]

36 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Disagree 100% here. Played a few casual Death Guard games with the index just after launch. They were rough to play and not balanced. Lost disgustingly resilient, barely went up in toughness compared to others, shooting didn't really go up in strength, Mortarion was neutered, lost movement on some units, terrible detachment bonus and more. Win rate was in the 30% for a reason.

 

Likewise for Votann. It was obvious that the rules were somewhere in the middle of the drafting process after someone else took the first draft and deleted all the scary bugbears from 9th edition. Like a kid showing up to the science fair with 9 pieces of macaroni taped to a board labeled "Solar System," nobody was fooled about what happened. There was no balancing process that took place, just an unfinished job.

 

Those are the sorts of rules where people are OK with getting drastic changes.

[Captain Idaho]

I don't know about whether it was unfinished (due to whatever reasons) but the fact it took so long to fix Eldar when 10th came out strikes me as there's bigger problems with quality control than just a rushed job. I mean, we all saw the problems instantly and the amount of fixes proposed in a short amount of time indicates a deep issue that GW failed to enact the changes.

 

Especially as they eventually did.

[Mogger351]

33 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

I don't know about whether it was unfinished (due to whatever reasons) but the fact it took so long to fix Eldar when 10th came out strikes me as there's bigger problems with quality control than just a rushed job. I mean, we all saw the problems instantly and the amount of fixes proposed in a short amount of time indicates a deep issue that GW failed to enact the changes.

 

Especially as they eventually did.

Honestly it seems rushing was the issue, I think they'd taken and lost some staff around that time, the app was an integral part of the process and it clearly wasn't "done" as much as they expected it would be. The wildly different stats in the Leviathan booklets suggests a lot was in major flux right up to release day.

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

 

Likewise for Votann. It was obvious that the rules were somewhere in the middle of the drafting process after someone else took the first draft and deleted all the scary bugbears from 9th edition. Like a kid showing up to the science fair with 9 pieces of macaroni taped to a board labeled "Solar System," nobody was fooled about what happened. There was no balancing process that took place, just an unfinished job.

 

Those are the sorts of rules where people are OK with getting drastic changes.

 

There was some weird takes I saw with LoV at 10th launch (on other platforms like YouTube comments mind you) with some people saying "that's what they get for being so strong when they came out!", the whole paying for the sins of their past trope. Such a silly take, "they" are people who want to play space dwarves, not the people who wrote the rules when LoV came out. "They" just wanted their faction to be fun and playable, not punished for something they didn't do.

 

DG honestly felt like they had disgustingly resilient and at the last minute GW was like nope and just took it away and didn't adjust any point cost or compensate their durability. They had to add a whole other mechanic to the detachment bonus and drop the points of everything to make it playable. It was super obvious from the faction focus that they were going to suck.

 

I'm wondering why GW quit publishing the win rate percentages they gathered. It's obviously not a perfect system that can't account for everything like match ups, but it did show trends pretty well I felt. 

[Valkyrion]

There's not enough time to allow anything to balanced, so from a purely gaming point of view (i.e, forget the shareholders and profits for a moment), either the three year cycle needs extending, OR all codexes need releasing together (within a window of say, 6 months), OR the number of factions needs to be reduced. 

In the first case, more time is more time for playtesting and ironing out the kinks.

In the second case, everyone suffers and benefits together and leaves everyone knowing where they stand for a full two years of a three year edition.

In the last case, fewer factions equals more time for playtesting in a shorter time frame and less units and rules to try and balance.

 

One of those things would make the game better, two would be fantastic. The first two, ideally.

 

On to the business side of things and GW are obviously doing something right. No amount of grumbling on here or elsewhere is going to stop GW being a hobby powerhouse, and I think they've properly nailed the short attention span aspect of modern life and monetised it superbly, either by luck or by judgement, and only a true curmudgeon would claim it is luck. 

 

So, we just have to put up with it, change our hobby lifestyle or stop doing it.  I've changed my hobby lifestyle because I didn't like the direction 9th edition took. I tried 10th and it wasn't for me, so now me and mine play a version of 30k that we've simplified a bit. If I wanted to play 10th edition (or AoS or Heresy) in a public setting then I'd have to keep up to date with the rules, that's just how it is, and no amount of tilting at windmills is going to change it now. 

 

[phandaal]

10 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

On to the business side of things and GW are obviously doing something right. No amount of grumbling on here or elsewhere is going to stop GW being a hobby powerhouse, and I think they've properly nailed the short attention span aspect of modern life and monetised it superbly, either by luck or by judgement, and only a true curmudgeon would claim it is luck. 

 

Honestly, this is one reason I do not stress as much about the rules nowadays. I just use different rules to play games with my 40k models. GW is going to look at their sales figures to decide what is working, and the game rules seem to have very minimal drag on their growth trajectory, if any at all, so why would they change?

 

Beyond commenting on it here, I am already checked out. Or rather, checked in somewhere that is not 10th edition 40k.

[brother_b]

I am super tired of the edition grind quite honestly. I came back for eighth and here we are at 10th and the game is totally different in my opinion. Sure similarity abound, but I thought ninth even though it was clunky was a complete and OK fairly balanced game.

 

I also agree that things were rushed, I felt that way looking at the admech index and release.

 

I look forward to playing with the new rules, though, and especially with admech. First time I’ve been excited for them this edition.