warhammer 10th edition June Balance Dataslate and Field Manual

[Cenobite Terminator]

I miss the granularity and knew GW would use the reboot to go overboard.

[Schurge]

On 6/23/2024 at 12:10 PM, Redcomet said:

At what point? Around the same time managers hired from the outside of wargaming, told Priestley to axe all the bad selling minis from the range. Not knowing that those were the generals and heroes, which the game can’t be played without.

Managers not knowing anything about the product the company they work for, are selling.

The 3 year cycle is 100% a manager created problem, to get bigger bonuses 

 

Did that actually happen? Were characters discontinued for a period of time?

[brother_b]

On 6/24/2024 at 8:28 AM, DemonGSides said:

 

You're NEVER going to get "Casual stats"

I often wondered about this too. What does the VAST majority of game play look like? What are the stats for garage, game room, and game store? What are the clubs seeing?

 

Part of the “issue” with tournament vs casual was the fact tournament players identified the most efficient models and units and then went and bought multiples. They would overload the best where a casual player would likely build up a collection based on their favorite models, a theme, etc.

 

As for stats for casual games? We can get them, but it’s not the push. Tabletop Tactics has an app where you can pick an army and enter stats. It’s all player generated. It’s not fallible but it’s something. All it would take is an app like that, open for all players, to get a taste of “casual stats”.

 

Or maybe a game store or league organizer keeping stats. I guess it could work. We’d just need the repository of data.

 

It just likely wouldn’t be as good as the heavily controlled and verified data coming out of tournaments.

 

Very interesting to think about for sure.

[jaxom]

4 minutes ago, brother_b said:

Part of the “issue” with tournament vs casual was the fact tournament players identified the most efficient models and units and then went and bought multiples. They would overload the best where a casual player would likely build up a collection based on their favorite models, a theme, etc.

I’ve had this idea since the beginning of 8th edition, what I call the Demi-Company Challenge. Get as many marine players as one can to commit to a year of always using a Demi-Company as the basis for their list (can include more if the point s allow) and see how they do.

[Rogue]

6 hours ago, brother_b said:

I often wondered about this too. What does the VAST majority of game play look like? What are the stats for garage, game room, and game store? What are the clubs seeing?

 

Part of the “issue” with tournament vs casual was the fact tournament players identified the most efficient models and units and then went and bought multiples. They would overload the best where a casual player would likely build up a collection based on their favorite models, a theme, etc.

 

As for stats for casual games? We can get them, but it’s not the push. Tabletop Tactics has an app where you can pick an army and enter stats. It’s all player generated. It’s not fallible but it’s something. All it would take is an app like that, open for all players, to get a taste of “casual stats”.

 

Or maybe a game store or league organizer keeping stats. I guess it could work. We’d just need the repository of data.

 

It just likely wouldn’t be as good as the heavily controlled and verified data coming out of tournaments.

 

Very interesting to think about for sure.

 

But even then, I reckon there'd be a certain 'level' even in a universally accessible app, because your absolute beginner wouldn't have heard about it yet. (Unless GW parcelled it in with everything, maybe.)

 

Not only that, but I think you have to be a certain type of committed to see any value in entering game results or stats. (Like, when I start playing a phone game, and it asks me to rate it, I usually decline - I'm not yet committed enough to that game to bother providing feedback, even when it's right there in front of me.)

Edited June 25 by Rogue

[DemonGSides]

Plus, what would constitute casual?  It can't possibly be ALL GAMES not played at a tournament, since there's learning games, there's training games, there's Crusade, there's even levels of casual; are me and my buddies playing on a saturday morning?  Or are we playing Saturday evening, when there's more likely to be a few brewskis passed around or maybe other imbibables?  Those games are a whole different beast compared to Saturday morning games.

I agree it would be nice to know what us 'casuals' are feeling when it comes to the game, but I think it'd be super hard.  It's not something like a video game where they just automatically get the stats and can break it out based on whatever demographic intersections they want, but I also don't trust self reporting either lol.

[templargdt]

I can't tell you all how odd it feels to have this game stripped down to candy land level rules and it's still considered an unbalanced mess.  Its just astonishing. 

 

I loved the competitive scene when I was younger, but I think with perspective now it's just a mistake. So much of our trouble boils down to this.  If admech was just not great competitively but you loved the lore and models, no big deal.  Just show up on Saturday and roll dice.  But prizes and hurt feelings are on the line, and you spent money to participate. So it's a problem.

 

This isn't magic the gathering.  The medium itself just doesn't lend itself to competitive play. 

[siegfriedfr]

Funny, as a casual, to me the game is still bloated (rules are way too detailed and long-winded), and unpredictable (stratagems and special abilities on non-characters should just go, plus all the "special wounds“ types, the rerolls which should should not exist.. ). 

 

The game should play like OPR to be truely casual friendly.

[LostTemplar]

I agree. 

 

All these stratagems make the game a mess. I did like the command point for re-rolls amd that was about it. And units don't all need to have special abilities that keep on making the game more confusing.

 

For me, 8th, 9th and 10th editions have been rather disapointing. I dislike the 2d6 assault charge and I find that alternate activation for close combat is silly. I preferred initiative, or, in the lack of that, that all combat is resolved simultaneously, rather than the gamey system of activations currently on.

 

[Blindhamster]

I do miss initiative...

[ZeroWolf]

I'll concur to stratagems going the way of the dodo. When I play with my kids, I don't bother with them at all. Only time the command phase is used is for Necrons coming back to life.

 

Strangely, despite growing up with 3rd/4th, I don't miss initiative, and that's coming from a nid player which had a couple of units that benefited. I'm indifferent towards it.

 

Still would love to know what happened at the eleventh hour with 10th development that made it the way it was. What was the straw that broke the camels back and made them burn whatever they were working on before to create the starting indecies.

[Shield-Captain]

I do think stratagems should go away. They are needlessly complicated and easy to ignore and still have a fun game. I think they could stay as like 3/faction and each once per game, per turn. Or maybe you choose one at the beginning of the game and that’s the one you get. 
 

All re-rolls should be removed. They slow the game down too much. Especially the command re-roll though. 
 

Otherwise the game is okay. I do wish specific detachments had thematic unit restrictions but I know a lot of people don’t like those. 
 

My only other comment is that army objectives should be more asymmetrical. 

[jaxom]

30 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

Still would love to know what happened at the eleventh hour with 10th development that made it the way it was. What was the straw that broke the camels back and made them burn whatever they were working on before to create the starting indecies.

Wait, what?

Just now, Shield-Captain said:

My only other comment is that army objectives should be more asymmetrical. 

If they had stayed with detachment as organization charts then I could see secondary objectives (yours and your opponents) being tied to it.

[DemonGSides]

There's a long standing rumor, supported by looking at the inserts for Leviathan when it released where you can see a lot grittier stats for things like Combi weapons, that the game was very different before GW did something to make it the way it is currently.

 

I think most likely they changed positions on some of the granular stuff (Weapon profiles, unit sizes), and the rest of 10th was basically what we got. It's mostly just people wishing there was a better version of 10th, but I don't think it's ever gonna compare to the myth people have created in their heads.

 

The way the game works is mostly fine. It's the way armies interact with those rules that kinda suck. Strategems are fine in their current existence: back in 9th there were legitimately 40 strats that DG had access to and that was mind numbing. Seeing a lot of those strats on the datasheets and just having a small clutch of strats is fun and not too burdensome.

 

They could win a lot of good will by making war gear pointed and then remove minimum squad sizes and let us pay per body. I'd be able to stomach most of my other gripes with those two changes and I think a lot of other people could too. 

[Madao]

6 hours ago, siegfriedfr said:

The game should play like OPR to be truely casual friendly.

Just play OPR, it is better for casual games :) Rules are just a minor part of the hobby, that doesn't have to stick with GW mess.

As an AdMech player I welcome the changes to the codex, but massive changes to the basic rules drive me away from 10th

[ThaneOfTas]

9 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

The way the game works is mostly fine. It's the way armies interact with those rules that kinda suck. Strategems are fine in their current existence: back in 9th there were legitimately 40 strats that DG had access to and that was mind numbing. Seeing a lot of those strats on the datasheets and just having a small clutch of strats is fun and not too burdensome.

 

They could win a lot of good will by making war gear pointed and then remove minimum squad sizes and let us pay per body. I'd be able to stomach most of my other gripes with those two changes and I think a lot of other people could too. 

Agreed, on the whole there's a lot i like about the core rules of 10th, its the army construction that has mostly been driving me away, i could put up with my other issues if we got those back.

[Indy Techwisp]

We're still going?

 

Just how far do we need to go before we can consider this thread done with?

 

Actually, a point:

The T'au codex thread got locked at least twice for being off-topic for pretty much the same reason as we are now (and also for the Crisis Datasheet split) and yet despite this off-topic thread hitting pretty much the same beats repeatedly it's not been shut yet.

 

Yes, the rules aren't perfect.

Yes, some people have issues with the current state of the game and the constant erratas.

But we're pretty much a year into 10th now and as such we should probably not be expecting GW to reintroduce wargear points and points per model (wait 'till 11th so the Power Level guy has been moved off the main 40k rules team), add more detachments to existing armies (Deldar only got a new one because their Index detachment was literally unusable), throw all strategems in the trash (you realise this would pretty much kill the game, right?), throw out the entire tournament angle of the game (this would also kill the game by cutting off the revenue stream from Meta Chasers buying 3 of anything Meta monthly), remove the abilities from non-character units (we got this from AoS btw, so maybe look over there and guess if we'll keep them in 11th), or reboot the entire system from the ground up (which is exactly what 10th has done already) in a random Balance Dataslate midway though the edition.

 

Also, is the Balance Dataslate thread really the place to be discussing what constitutes a "Casual Player" or to be recommending entirely different wargames?

Edited June 27 by Indy Techwisp
Just adding a rant about the thread, basically.

[Dark Legionnare]

16 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

I do miss initiative...

Introducing younger blood (27 - 22 y/o) to Initiative in 30K and 7th (with all the bs formations, decurions, etc... ripped out) has been their favorite part of "oldhammer".

 

Made me smile with gleee at them loving the gratifying granularity of one of them realizing "Oh man, that succubus is not to be trifled with. I need to keep my power first captain away from her. That's so fluffy, I love it."

Edited June 27 by Dark Legionnare

[Captain Idaho]

=][= If you don't like the thread direction as off topic, raise a report. Complaining the topic is off topic is itself off topic, especially if it's because you just don't like the topic. =][=

[ThePenitentOne]

Captain, I hope you're getting kickbacks from the word "topic" - if so, you can take that last post to the bank!

 

To put it back on topic (and cash in on some of captain's "topic" payout), I'm on the team that thinks some of the sisters increases take the sense of victory out of the new Sisters dex, which looks pretty solid. I have yet to examine how the changes impact Drukhari and GSC, which are the other two armies I'm working on.

 

Of course, it will all change at least one more time (and probably two) before I have enough painted to play, so I ain't stressin either way.

[Redcomet]

Considering 40k armies changes at the same rate the UK changes prime minister, building for the minis and the hobby, and not for what is good today, still seems like the best way forward 

[DemonGSides]

Always has been.

 

Rule of cool will always outlast the rules in an edition. Always. 

[Night Hawke]

On 6/25/2024 at 8:42 AM, brother_b said:

I often wondered about this too. What does the VAST majority of game play look like? What are the stats for garage, game room, and game store? What are the clubs seeing?

 

Part of the “issue” with tournament vs casual was the fact tournament players identified the most efficient models and units and then went and bought multiples. They would overload the best where a casual player would likely build up a collection based on their favorite models, a theme, etc.

 

As for stats for casual games? We can get them, but it’s not the push. Tabletop Tactics has an app where you can pick an army and enter stats. It’s all player generated. It’s not fallible but it’s something. All it would take is an app like that, open for all players, to get a taste of “casual stats”.

 

Or maybe a game store or league organizer keeping stats. I guess it could work. We’d just need the repository of data.

 

It just likely wouldn’t be as good as the heavily controlled and verified data coming out of tournaments.

 

Very interesting to think about for sure.

 

Goonhammer has an app called Tabletop Battles. its a wildly popular app for tracking your games, it also collects the game data and presents it on their site. They attempt to separate the casual games from the tournament games by having different categories for them (Leviathan & Leviathan GT) however it does require self reporting. but its a pretty interesting data dive. this is a screenshot of the leviathan games between April 30th and June 20th.

 

its obviously not a fully reliable dataset and its not a full picture of casual play but it does show some very interesting trends between it and the pure competitive data from https://www.stat-check.com/the-meta . If GW would've built in a game tracking function into the app they could gather a ridiculous amount of data from the people that use it as well.
 

it might help them with proving out the truth of many assumptions they make in their evaluation and balance processes.

Edited June 27 by Night Hawke
added about the GW app

[Cenobite Terminator]

I still remember edition 3.5 which was rolled into 4th edition. It’s not like they haven’t done it before.

[Jolemai]

Moving to Amicus pending a potential thread split and cleanup.