Autumn 2024 Balance Update

[Dark Legionnare]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Why can't they?  Who would be upset about that? Are people so beholden to a corporation that they've fully abandoned independent thought?

 

I have had one buddy get an EXTREME amount of mileage out of the "Leave the multibillion dollar company alone!" meme picture. (If you Google it, it's the first result) So, sadly, probably quite a few are willingly so, aye.

[HeadlessCross]

7 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I didn’t quite mean that - you’d still have specialist units restricted to their respective chapters, but you’d have a section with all the generic units and sections for each main chapter with all their special units. That’s how it works with the HH Liber books.

 

Technically though you could do that now. You can paint your guys however you like and use the Blood Angels list. You just can’t mix BA and Space Wolves, for example.

But why do only Blood Angels have a monopoly on nutty Marines?

[ZeroWolf]

45 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

But why do only Blood Angels have a monopoly on nutty Marines?

Technically any marine army can use them as long as they play with BA rules. I can run my UM as murder curse infected using those rules. I would think Carcharodons using blood angel rules as a base is more than acceptable.

[Rhavien]

50 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

But why do only Blood Angels have a monopoly on nutty Marines?

They don't, but they call them death company. I don't get behind your problem. Do you want an entry in the SM codex that's called nutty Marines? Are you jealous on those particular rules that come with DC and don't find anything in another codex that suits your demand? What would you miss if you just straight play BA rules with your carcharadons? 

[Scribe]

4 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Why can't they?  Who would be upset about that? Are people so beholden to a corporation that they've fully abandoned independent thought?

 

 

Is this a serious question lol

[Emperor Ming]

4 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Why can't they?  Who would be upset about that? Are people so beholden to a corporation that they've fully abandoned independent thought?

 

All Hail our corporate overloads! 

 

[Indy Techwisp]

6 minutes ago, Rhavien said:

They don't, but they call them death company. I don't get behind your problem. Do you want an entry in the SM codex that's called nutty Marines? Are you jealous on those particular rules that come with DC and don't find anything in another codex that suits your demand? What would you miss if you just straight play BA rules with your carcharadons? 

I think they're leading off the whole "One Massive Loyalist Marine Book" and "One Massive Chaos Marine Book" thing and how it would both expand list building options and decrease faction identity.

Most factions have to share one big book, so you have the opportunity to mix-and-max stuff together that has no lore reason to be anywhere near each other.
Were Orks to be treated the same as Loyalist Space Marines are you wouldn't have Beast Snagga Boyz in the Core Orks Codex, rather they'd be in the Snakebites Supplement, same as Kommandos would be in the Blood Axes Supplement.
Were T'au treated like Loyalist Space Marines, Kroot (and probably the other Auxiliaries) would be in their own faction Supplement.

 

If Loyalist Space Marines were treated like any non-Marine faction, you would be able to run Death Company Marines, Deathwing Knights, Crusader Squads, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army list.

[Scribe]

3 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

If Loyalist Space Marines were treated like any non-Marine faction, you would be able to run Death Company Marines, Deathwing Knights, Crusader Squads, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army list.

 

[DemonGSides]

22 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Is this a serious question lol

The way some people act around there wrt how they play with their toys in their own homes has me questioning quite a few assumptions. 

[Scribe]

30 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

The way some people act around there wrt how they play with their toys in their own homes has me questioning quite a few assumptions. 

 

I think this ignores, or perhaps you are just unaware of the prevailing behavior of the 40K gamer community since at least 3rd.

 

What is 'official' carries massive weight, because that defines the 'real' ruleset that is played for tournaments and pickup games.

 

The folks who would engage with narrative gaming, are certainly already bending, ignoring, or breaking rules as is, so it doesnt matter.

[DemonGSides]

54 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I think this ignores, or perhaps you are just unaware of the prevailing behavior of the 40K gamer community since at least 3rd.

 

What is 'official' carries massive weight, because that defines the 'real' ruleset that is played for tournaments and pickup games.

 

The folks who would engage with narrative gaming, are certainly already bending, ignoring, or breaking rules as is, so it doesnt matter.

 

I just don't think anyone's trying to take lore accurate carcharadons to a tournament setting, so the entire argument feels fabricated to generate outrage.

 

It also begs the question of what "official" means but that's literally my point: it's a board game and GW isn't the cops. They can't stop you from having fun. People are just really geared up to get in their own way.   After all, Legends are literally stated to be okay in pick up games, but people who claim to not play 10th will gladly come out of the woodwork to tell everyone here how impossible it is to find people to play them with.

Edited October 17 by DemonGSides

[ThePenitentOne]

1 hour ago, Indy Techwisp said:

I think they're leading off the whole "One Massive Loyalist Marine Book" and "One Massive Chaos Marine Book" thing and how it would both expand list building options and decrease faction identity.

Most factions have to share one big book, so you have the opportunity to mix-and-max stuff together that has no lore reason to be anywhere near each other.
Were Orks to be treated the same as Loyalist Space Marines are you wouldn't have Beast Snagga Boyz in the Core Orks Codex, rather they'd be in the Snakebites Supplement, same as Kommandos would be in the Blood Axes Supplement.
Were T'au treated like Loyalist Space Marines, Kroot (and probably the other Auxiliaries) would be in their own faction Supplement.

 

If Loyalist Space Marines were treated like any non-Marine faction, you would be able to run Death Company Marines, Deathwing Knights, Crusader Squads, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army list.

 

While truthy,  I don't think this is true exactly. I see where you are coming from, but I think this point of view misses the fact that snowflake marines tend to have more bespoke stuff than non-marine factions have for their subfactions.

 

Were Orks to be treated like Marines, yes you wouldn't have Beast Snaggas in the core book as you say... But you'd also have 5-7 additional Snakebite only snowflake units and 3-4 snakebite only detachments so that the Snakebite dex was a dex in it's own right, just as Goffs would would have their 6-8 bespoke Goff only units and 3-4 bespoke detachments to make it an actual army in its own right. Oh, and each would also have its own bespoke Crusade content. And maybe Gorkamorka would return to balance out the fact that Space Marines also get Horus Heresy and LI.

 

And if Space Marines were treated like non Marine factions, yes, you might be able to include DC Marines, DW Knights, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army... But DC Marines might be the only unit in your entire dex that represents BA, Guilliman might be the only unit in the entire dex that represents UM and so on. And neither HH nor LI would exist.

 

Look at Sisters: yes, we have Junith who IS OoOML and Celestine who WAS OoOML pre-apotheosis; we have Morvenn who WAS Argent Shroud prior to promotion, and we now have Aveline who IS Sacred Rose... But those are the only sub-faction bespoke units in the entire dex. If marines were treated like them, you wouldn't be fielding the army you describe (full of Bespoke units combined into one force), it would be more likely that most of those subfaction bespoke units just didn't exist at all. And last I checked, there wasn't an Age of Apostasy game sucking up resources best used to balance all other factions with SM.

[Crimson Longinus]

2 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

And if Space Marines were treated like non Marine factions, yes, you might be able to include DC Marines, DW Knights, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army... But DC Marines might be the only unit in your entire dex that represents BA, Guilliman might be the only unit in the entire dex that represents UM and so on. And neither HH nor LI would exist.

 

Look at Sisters: yes, we have Junith who IS OoOML and Celestine who WAS OoOML pre-apotheosis; we have Morvenn who WAS Argent Shroud prior to promotion, and we now have Aveline who IS Sacred Rose... But those are the only sub-faction bespoke units in the entire dex. If marines were treated like them, you wouldn't be fielding the army you describe (full of Bespoke units combined into one force), it would be more likely that most of those subfaction bespoke units just didn't exist at all. And last I checked, there wasn't an Age of Apostasy game sucking up resources best used to balance all other factions with SM.

 

Sounds good to me.

[Blindhamster]

1 hour ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

Sounds good to me.

 

You'll find that folks that have been big fans of the divergent chapters for a long time wont agree, unsurprisingly. The thing is, marines are more popular, they sell better, so its safer and easier to do supplements for those. It also lets them double dip the cash cows that are space marine players

 

Incidentally though, back in 3rd they did try supplements for a number of other factions, there was catachans for imperial guard and a craftworld eldar supplement specifically.

 

They've also tried it in later editions to varied degrees, 6th edition did a Iyanden book for eldar and  crimson slaughter and black legion books for chaos

 

in 7th they tried a ghazghull ork book, cadian guard book, black legion again for chaos, a traitor legion book aimed at cult marines and a homonculus book for dark eldar, they also had supplements for warzones and stuff that added more nuanced rules to some factions too (there was a tau one at least iirc).

 

Thing is, the only thing thats actually been relatively consistent since 2nd ed, is the marine supplements, or distinct codexes. They totally could strip those away. I even think they considered it more seriously at one point with the design for many newer marine units stepping into those design spaces traditionally associated with the divergent chapters, but looks like the recognised they'd lose too much money if they were to drop them.

 

I honestly think there's a decent argument for a HH style approach for marines and chaos marines where you have a book for each and then a second book for each with a set number of pages for each of the major legions... but they haven't gone that way yet.

[Crimson Longinus]

7 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

 

You'll find that folks that have been big fans of the divergent chapters for a long time wont agree, unsurprisingly. The thing is, marines are more popular, they sell better, so its safer and easier to do supplements for those. It also lets them double dip the cash cows that are space marine players

 

Incidentally though, back in 3rd they did try supplements for a number of other factions, there was catachans for imperial guard and a craftworld eldar supplement specifically.

 

They've also tried it in later editions to varied degrees, 6th edition did a Iyanden book for eldar and  crimson slaughter and black legion books for chaos

 

in 7th they tried a ghazghull ork book, cadian guard book, black legion again for chaos, a traitor legion book aimed at cult marines and a homonculus book for dark eldar, they also had supplements for warzones and stuff that added more nuanced rules to some factions too (there was a tau one at least iirc).

 

Thing is, the only thing thats actually been relatively consistent since 2nd ed, is the marine supplements, or distinct codexes. They totally could strip those away. I even think they considered it more seriously at one point with the design for many newer marine units stepping into those design spaces traditionally associated with the divergent chapters, but looks like the recognised they'd lose too much money if they were to drop them.

 

I honestly think there's a decent argument for a HH style approach for marines and chaos marines where you have a book for each and then a second book for each with a set number of pages for each of the major legions... but they haven't gone that way yet.

 

Right, and the other factions didn't need the supplements and they no longer exist. And marines could work that way too. The divergence is reason why we have this balancing mess. Some units always are too cheap with some chapter's bonus rules or too expensive without them. Just make one big book with a lot of options, and then people can use whatever they feel best represents their chapter. The rest if fluff and paint.

[AutumnEffect]

13 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

If Loyalist Space Marines were treated like any non-Marine faction, you would be able to run Death Company Marines, Deathwing Knights, Crusader Squads, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army list.

 

And it would be Rad.

 

On a more serious note, the rules currently in the Space Marines codex prevent you from including units from different Chapters in the same army. I see no reason why this would not also the be the case in a Big Book of Space Marines*.

Edited October 18 by AutumnEffect

[chapter master 454]

Marines just suffer from having too many units really, in all directions...which is kind of hard to keep in line. The issue lay in the fact that the truth is all divergent chapters that exist (Blood Angels, Black Templars, Dark Angels and Space Wolves) are all just Codex: Space Marine but with EVEN MORE options and choices with no real downside as to taking them. The only thing you lose are special characters and that is it...no unit is locked out to you from the base book by going divergent. This comically means if you wanted full memes, you can have 105 terminators all in the same list, not counting characters because Dark Angels can take both Deathwing Terminators and Normal Terminators. Kind of silly really (not competitive but shows an issue).

 

This massive range of option means it can be challenging to balance HOWEVER...that would be the case if it weren't for the fact that somehow space marines now have basically NOTHING left.

At the start of it all, we had 3 valid detachments all doing work. Heck, 4 were doing work in fact. Stormlance for Space Wolves, Ironstorm with Dark Angels (and I believe there were Ultramarine variants and Black Templars), Vanguard with Ultramarines and Gladius with a number of others.

But now? All 4 have been put in the dumpster with fervant hatred by GW for some reason.

Would even argue that it wasn't like there wasn't variety ether, just back then only codex space marines was running around with Tyranids, followed by the comedy acts that were mechanicus and custodes...no wonder people were only playing variants of space marines. back then there was nothing else to cook with!

 

Space Marines have had a hard time being good. Why Dark Angels caught any smoke is beyond me considering their win rate wasn't out of their range. Their statement about "internal balance" is rubbish because if that was the case, you could easily see the internal balance issue is the fact that people are slam-firing triple takes of that unit plus one other purely because the other special options are trash. The Ravenwing stuff is cool but...dear emperor their melee is just comically bad and their ranged options are just...just look up black knights for Dark Angels...it's just a joke at how behind anything they are in worth (spoiler: Their plasma isn't twin-linked for some reason and melee is damage 1...with 3 attacks).

Anemic is what I would call a lot of units running around that are supposed to be elite. Even base marine Bladeguard need a looking at, considering ICC get 5 attacks with sustained hits 2...I wouldn't think 5 attack bladeguard wouldn't be a bad buff, then maybe consider just giving their whole stance mechanic a little boost.

 

Ultimately, we had top lists but because they were top lists GW decides to punish success.

STILL waiting on imperial knights getting bondsman back to make mixing armigers and big knights again GW. For goodness sake, if the guy winning a tournament with knights with nothing but 12 armigers isn't a hint...(their warlord was the rogue trader Imperial Agent + a subductor squad btw, which is why they caught flak I believe).

[Lord_Ikka]

Any decision on the SM faction rules (even independent of the non-codex chapters) effects a large portion of the playerbase, given how many people have an SM army just lying around. It seems to be the toughest faction to ever get some sort of balance, and at least for the last three editions (aside from some specific times like Iron Hands-meta), SM are toned down in a gameplay sense- the base codex marines rarely rise above the middle of the pack in terms of competitive play and generally are in the bottom fourth of all factions. The non-codex chapters tend to be better in gameplay terms, because their unique units are easier to balance in comparison to the whole SM codex, which has to account for not only the codex detachment/army rule/chapter tactic (whatever edition's specific wording), but also the special detachments of the non-codex chapters. So base marine units and abilities are generally weaker than you would think because of that.

 

In business terms it makes sense- you don't want an army that most players have access to be the best out there, as it would crater the sales of other armies. It would also lead to a really stagnant meta with only SM armies placing at tournaments, which we did see in 8th with the Iron Hand domination of tournaments for almost half a year. When 50% of all tournament lists are a single faction, you have a bad game balance that needs to be shifted.

 

9th/10th edition have been fairly varied in those terms- while there have been plenty of factions that will post up great win rates and lots of tournament success, there haven't been the week-after-week, month-after-month domination of tournaments by a single faction or list. Every week we are seeing multiple factions taking top tables and having good runs where they could have won. The current balance will shift, probably knocking down both SoB and SW into mid-tier lists for a while, while Necron Hypercrypt and Drukhari might have a good run at the top. 

[tychobi]

I'm glad GW is trying to improve the game. Seems like the update may have missed the mark for some. Over all it feels like a move in the right direction given the data I've seen? 

[Orange Knight]

17 minutes ago, tychobi said:

I'm glad GW is trying to improve the game. Seems like the update may have missed the mark for some. Over all it feels like a move in the right direction given the data I've seen? 

 

They are trying to improve it, but the confines of their chosen direction are not faithful to what made 40k so fun and inspiring to begin with.

[HeadlessCross]

On 10/17/2024 at 6:41 PM, DemonGSides said:

 

I just don't think anyone's trying to take lore accurate carcharadons to a tournament setting, so the entire argument feels fabricated to generate outrage.

 

And who are you to decide what a lore accurate Carcharodons army is?

 

On 10/17/2024 at 7:40 PM, ThePenitentOne said:

And if Space Marines were treated like non Marine factions, yes, you might be able to include DC Marines, DW Knights, Wulfen and Guilliman all in the same army... But DC Marines might be the only unit in your entire dex that represents BA, Guilliman might be the only unit in the entire dex that represents UM and so on. And neither HH nor LI would exist.

 

And this is a problem why?

 

Look at Deathwing Knights themselves for a moment. What design space are they actually using besides Hammernators to begin with?

 

On 10/18/2024 at 7:40 AM, Orange Knight said:

 

They are trying to improve it, but the confines of their chosen direction are not faithful to what made 40k so fun and inspiring to begin with.

Which is the fault of multiple factors

[DemonGSides]

10 hours ago, tychobi said:

I'm glad GW is trying to improve the game. Seems like the update may have missed the mark for some. Over all it feels like a move in the right direction given the data I've seen? 

 

Has been and has continued. The game is healthy. People are just mad their chosen factions are being reigned in. No one likes losing power, it's understandable.

 

Certain players will come into every one of these data slate threads and complain about how this is the update that kills their faction. Then their faction goes on to be the strongest for a few monthsand catches another nerf, and then they come into this thread to complain all over again about how this is the nerf that kills the faction; seeing the trend?  It's a pretty funny song and dance once you see it played out a few times.

 

Meanwhile, the non-competitively minded of us are just having fun rolling dice. I don't think SM are that weak in the casual game. Most people here aren't even playing casually let alone competitively, if you believe their posts about 10th.  So I find a lot of the complaints to be funny as opposed to indicative of the factual around 10th; this board leans against the current GW gaming paradigm, so I expect the general vibe around here to be negative, regardless of what choices GW makes wrt balancing. 

17 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

And who are you to decide what a lore accurate Carcharodons army is?

 

I never tried lmao but I'm happy to take on the mantle if you think I'd do a good job. Perhaps interacting with other posters in good faith would help you out. 

[MARK0SIAN]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

And who are you to decide what a lore accurate Carcharodons army is?

But that’s the point of the current system. Anyone can decide for themselves what a lore accurate Carcharadons force (or any other chapter) looks like and can simply select the set of space marine rules that best match what’s in their head. You have total freedom. You just can’t mix a Blood Angels specific unit with a Dark Angels one in the same force.

Edited October 18 by MARK0SIAN

[tychobi]

9 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

 

They are trying to improve it, but the confines of their chosen direction are not faithful to what made 40k so fun and inspiring to begin with.

Agreed. It's possible the direction of profit at the expense of customer satisfaction is inevitable in a shareholder environment. I figure the folks with the game tender job are doing what they can with the levers available to them. 

[ThePenitentOne]

10 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

And this is a problem why?

 

Look at Deathwing Knights themselves for a moment. What design space are they actually using besides Hammernators to begin with?

 

I don't see how this comment is connected to the part of my post that you quoted. My point (a response to someone else's point, BTW), was that if marines were treated like other factions they would have far fewer bespoke subfaction models, contrary to the post I was responding to, which asserted that if marines were treated like other factions they'd have the ability to cram all of the tons of bespoke units they currently possess into a single list.

 

My point had nothing to do with whether or not Marine subfaction bespoke units are unique enough to be bespoke. The point is that other factions don't get many subfaction bespoke units, and if Marines were treated like other factions, they too would would share this condition.