Autumn 2024 Balance Update

[Indy Techwisp]

7 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

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.

 

Hi.

Person you were originally responding to here.

 

I chose the units I did in that post Specifically because IMO they are "The" iconic unit for representing their faction.

 

I did not intend it to be read as "you could use all the special Marines that currently exist in one army", rather "You would be able to use these iconic Marine types all at once."

[Dark Shepherd]

I think the big mistake they made for marine balancd was letting divergent chapters still use core codex detachments even after their own supplements came out

 

Id also love to see the likes of Salamanders, Fists, etc have their named characters be made dirt cheap so more peoplw would play those chapters/those players have a better time

[Crimson Longinus]

1 minute ago, Dark Shepherd said:

I think the big mistake they made for marine balancd was letting divergent chapters still use core codex detachments even after their own supplements came out

Maybe. It indeed is weird how they have wider selection of detachments. Granted, you can technically just play vanilla with vanilla units and still use divergent detachment, so in theory everyone has access to every detachment.

 

1 minute ago, Dark Shepherd said:

Id also love to see the likes of Salamanders, Fists, etc have their named characters be made dirt cheap so more peoplw would play those chapters/those players have a better time

I don't like the idea that you have to use special characters to be competitive. A lot of people play custom chapters or chapters that otherwise don't have special characters. And yeah, you could "counts as" but even then we're sideling the customisable standard characters over fixed special characters and I don't like that.

 

[Emperor Ming]

Interesting that they moved the Dataslate that is usually late jan, to this year, which is presumably end of December

 

I wonder if its so events in jan and feb can better prepare rather than it being last minute and they choose to ignore it

[AutumnEffect]

2 hours ago, Dark Shepherd said:

I think the big mistake they made for marine balancd was letting divergent chapters still use core codex detachments even after their own supplements came out

 

I find their choice to do this instead of just making them 'stand alone' Codices like the Thousand Sons, World Eaters and Death Guard to be extremely baffling.

 

Granted most of the transplanted units from the base Chaos Space Marine codex into the Legions are vehicles, but if they had just made the divergent chapters their own stand alone Codices then we wouldn't be in this weird situation where we have to balance stuff in one book based on stuff in another book.

Edited October 19 by AutumnEffect

[Orange Knight]

2 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

 

I find their choice to do this instead of just making them 'stand alone' Codices like the Thousand Sons, World Eaters and Death Guard to be extremely baffling.

 

Granted most of the transplanted units from the base Chaos Space Marine codex into the Legions are vehicles, but if they had just made the divergent chapters their own stand alone Codices then we wouldn't be in this weird situation where we have to balance stuff in one book based on stuff in another book.

 

And just like those Legions, the divergent Chapters should lose access to some units in exchange for their unique options.

[Karhedron]

25 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

And just like those Legions, the divergent Chapters should lose access to some units in exchange for their unique options.

 

Curiously enough, Space Wolves lose access to quite a few units but BAs and DAs do not. Then again, Wolves have more unique units, particularly their own unique Battleline units.

[AutumnEffect]

Quote

And just like those Legions, the divergent Chapters should lose access to some units in exchange for their unique options.

 

Indeed. One would hope.

Edited October 19 by AutumnEffect

[jaxom]

5 hours ago, Dark Shepherd said:

I think the big mistake they made for marine balancd was letting divergent chapters still use core codex detachments even after their own supplements came out

4 hours ago, Crimson Longinus said:

Maybe. It indeed is weird how they have wider selection of detachments. Granted, you can technically just play vanilla with vanilla units and still use divergent detachment, so in theory everyone has access to every detachment.

 

A Codex Chapter is a Codex Chapter and at the end of the day, there's not really enough differences to justify separate books for BA and DA. I do think they could have been folded into a single, code Codex: Space Marines. I agree with @Indy Techwisp that their unique units could have been renamed and some sort of "If you take X, then you cannot take Y and you cannot use Z detachment" added in.

 

2 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

I find their choice to do this instead of just making them 'stand alone' Codices like the Thousand Sons, World Eaters and Death Guard to be extremely baffling

 

The Cult Legions are 10,000 years of divergence from the baseline. I think they are truly different from a renegade warband, pantheistic warband, or Black Legion style warband and getting completely separate books is a good way to represent that.

 

10 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Curiously enough, Space Wolves lose access to quite a few units but BAs and DAs do not. Then again, Wolves have more unique units, particularly their own unique Battleline units.

 

As per my previous sentence, I think the Space Wolves (and maybe the Black Templars) really deserve their own book with completely bespoke units and detachments, and share nothing with the Space Marine Codex. They've always been presented as absolute rejecters of the Codex and fight only as Russ intended.

[Rogue]

Independent codices feels like a positive idea. As people have said, instead of giving the Wolves access to everything plus a bunch of extras, you could then tailor which units they have access to, and how effective those units are.

 

Does the Space Wolves special rule really boost assault marines? Then they're noticeably more expensive in the Wolf codex. In fact, given that you have Blood Claws already, you don't even need assault marines in the codex, and can give Blood Claws rules that balance them for use in a Space Wolves force.

 

It's unlikely to happen, because less options means less spend, and no need to buy two books. But it feels like a good idea.

[WrathOfTheLion]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

 

And just like those Legions, the divergent Chapters should lose access to some units in exchange for their unique options.

That used to be the case, and it was perfectly fine. Most of the changes there I think were just GW being a bit lazy.

 

Space Wolves still lose access to a decent few, which I do hope they maintain some of their more iconic units (wolf guard, grey hunters, bloodclaws).

[AutumnEffect]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

The Cult Legions are 10,000 years of divergence from the baseline. I think they are truly different from a renegade warband, pantheistic warband, or Black Legion style warband and getting completely separate books is a good way to represent that.

 

I understand your argument.

But to be honest, I don't think it matters. Lore should never drive the tabletop rules to that extent.

Though, considering the time dilation of the warp, I think a reasonable argument could be made that it's far less than 10,000 years of divergence from their time in the Legions. Or more. Or Fish. Maybe purple balloon?
What is time in the Eye of Terror?

[Dark Shepherd]

21 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

 

I understand your argument.

But to be honest, I don't think it matters. Lore should never drive the tabletop rules to that extent.

Though, considering the time dilation of the warp, I think a reasonable argument could be made that it's far less than 10,000 years of divergence from their time in the Legions. Or more. Or Fish. Maybe purple balloon?
What is time in the Eye of Terror?

Is fishtime like the wolftime but for Tau?

[Iron Father Ferrum]

9 minutes ago, Dark Shepherd said:

Is fishtime like the wolftime but for Tau?

 

Tau are goats, not fish.

 

All the points I got back from the HINT decrease I lost on the Biologis increase, so my current list didn't change at all. 

[HeadlessCross]

On 10/19/2024 at 8:42 AM, Orange Knight said:

 

And just like those Legions, the divergent Chapters should lose access to some units in exchange for their unique options.

That's silly because there's no reason they should lose access to units for the sake of losing access. It's absurd to think Blood Angels don't have Vindicators (just an example) because they have Death Company. 

[Indy Techwisp]

44 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

That's silly because there's no reason they should lose access to units for the sake of losing access. It's absurd to think Blood Angels don't have Vindicators (just an example) because they have Death Company. 

If the Cult Marines are anything to go by, the Vehicles would be transferred across to all the Divergent LSM

[HeadlessCross]

21 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

If the Cult Marines are anything to go by, the Vehicles would be transferred across to all the Divergent LSM

Not true, because Death Guard lost basic Daemon Engines, Obliterators, among of host of other things. 

 

And it could be anything that Blood Angels lose. Why would Blood Angels lose Infiltrators or Incursors because Death Company exists? 

[Indy Techwisp]

4 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

Not true, because Death Guard lost basic Daemon Engines, Obliterators, among of host of other things. 

 

And it could be anything that Blood Angels lose. Why would Blood Angels lose Infiltrators or Incursors because Death Company exists? 

 

I mean, all the Rhino Chassis vehicles were retained, which was my point.

 

A lot of the stuff that was "lost" by DG and TSons was added after they split off.

 

In terms of "Why should BA loose anything?", you could argue BA would loose any redundant stuff, but because of how the Codex Supplements work BA don't have any redundant stuff.

[Rogue]

2 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

That's silly because there's no reason they should lose access to units for the sake of losing access. It's absurd to think Blood Angels don't have Vindicators (just an example) because they have Death Company. 

 

Perhaps not the best example. We could instead suggest that Blood Angels won't get access to regular Predators because they have the Baal Predator. Or (and I'm vague on the lore here), they don't get Vanguard Veterans because they have the Sanguinary Guard (and even if that works in lore, it might still be a valid design choice).

 

In similar vein, Dark Angels might lose access to regular Terminator squads because they take Deathwing Terminators. Or Wolves lose access to Tactical, Devastator and Assault squads because of Grey Hunters, Long Fangs and Blood Claws. One in, one out - tilting things towards flavour without just being Ultramarines+

[Blindhamster]

3 minutes ago, Rogue said:

 

Or (and I'm vague on the lore here), they don't get Vanguard Veterans because they have the Sanguinary Guard (and even if that works in lore, it might still be a valid design choice).

 

Seeing as the concept of vanguard (veteran assault marines) started with Blood Angels... "oh hell no"

[chapter master 454]

I think a simple thing to do to help codex marines is just to have the base codex special characters just not have any sort of chapter locking going on. When you look at Divergents, they can field multiple special characters while in base codex if you take anyone from anything other than Ultramarines you are locked into 1 character (2 if you go Imperial Fists). In fact, chosing anything other than Ultramarines locks you out of at minimum 5 character options with 1 of those being the alledged commander of the Imperium currently, Gulliman.

 

I know it wrinkles some people's tabards to have these special characters getting reduced to functions but I ain't going to grind axes with people over having painted their army blue but wanting to run Azreal, people painting armies black and wanting to have Gulliman and Calgar get to leading them and so on. A paint job should NOT restrict what you can play, the restriction of what you can play should be on you.

 

Would be cool to see what armies you could make with such options as a lot of characters actually have unique functions that could be interesting to exploit without the need to lose access to invaldatingly better options. Lets be frank: you play base codex as ultramarines because they have the most characters AND their characters are the best in the base codex currently.

[AutumnEffect]

54 minutes ago, chapter master 454 said:

A paint job should NOT restrict what you can play, the restriction of what you can play should be on you.

 

This is also a uniquely Space Marine problem. I'm not aware of any other faction that has restrictions as tight as Space Marines on what you can or cannot include in your army, though I acknowledge they have a much larger pool to draw from.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Ironically; as a lifelong Dark Angel player, well, RT until 10th started, the most fun I had was waaaay back when our suppliment was so bad that we needed to use the C:SM to compete even in social games with my Green Marines. 

Unpopular opinion, but the game really is getting overdue for another (or an actual) streamlining of units. We all know who the main culprits are... 

 

[Zoatibix]

2 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

 

This is also a uniquely Space Marine problem. I'm not aware of any other faction that has restrictions as tight as Space Marines on what you can or cannot include in your army, though I acknowledge they have a much larger pool to draw from.

 

It isn’t just the total number of units.

 

The main factor is that Marines (Chaos or Loyalist) still have actual army rules whereas IIRC everyone else has had that removed.

 

There isn’t a Codex Ulthwé, or even an Ulthwé detachment for their characters to be in.  
 

Everyone else is left with e.g. ‘take detachment B if you want to run ‘Bloody Rose’

[Lord_Ikka]

=][= As is customary, this topic has now been locked on the Sunday night after the update has been posted (no longer News). If you want to discuss the impact of the update on specific factions, please use that faction's sub-forum. Any discussion about the game overall can be had in the Amicus Aedes forum. =][=

Edited October 21 by Lord_Ikka