Final Balance update of 2024

[jaxom]

14 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

If you yearn for release 10th edition, you can play that.  I wouldn't suggest it, it was pretty rough.

I think that may be the crux of the matter. 8th edition Index 40k was playable and still is because it was a solid initial rules release across factions (okay maybe like 85%?). I think 10th is still haunted by how poor its initial rules were and we’re much more drastic ‘patches’ because of it. For me, these are both exciting and terrifying. I’m excited for Marines in a way I haven’t been in months, but terrified at all the unlearning and relearning involved. I had to look up the Heavy Bolt Rifle changes a lot because I kept conflating them with the new HBR rules Deathwatch get.

[DemonGSides]

55 minutes ago, jaxom said:

I think that may be the crux of the matter. 8th edition Index 40k was playable and still is because it was a solid initial rules release across factions (okay maybe like 85%?). I think 10th is still haunted by how poor its initial rules were and we’re much more drastic ‘patches’ because of it. For me, these are both exciting and terrifying. I’m excited for Marines in a way I haven’t been in months, but terrified at all the unlearning and relearning involved. I had to look up the Heavy Bolt Rifle changes a lot because I kept conflating them with the new HBR rules Deathwatch get.

 

Beginning 10th was playable; I would know, I played quite a bit lol  It was definitely rough, and I do agree 8th indexes were probably, overall, a lot more on the balance.

 

I think 10th is haunted by a bunch of ghouls who thrive on conflict and doomposting.  There's also a group of people who are looking for a different type of game but haven't figured out that 40k isn't that game, even though it was 15 years ago.  Otherwise I think 10th was rough for the first 3-4 months, and has been in a pretty good spot for most of this past year.

Edited December 13 by DemonGSides

[Rhavien]

2 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Beginning 10th was playable; I would know, I played quite a bit lol  It was definitely rough, and I do agree 8th indexes were probably, overall, a lot more on the balance.

 

I think 10th is haunted by a bunch of ghouls who thrive on conflict and doomposting.  There's also a group of people who are looking for a different type of game but haven't figured out that 40k isn't that game, even though it was 15 years ago.  Otherwise I think 10th was rough for the first 3-4 months, and has been in a pretty good spot for most of this past year.

This, but there also were aeldari 

[Dark Shepherd]

3 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

You realize your fix only applies to current Dark Angels, right? Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars players, even competitively, are content with their Index detachments (I know Blood Angels has a couple more but...let's be real).

Possibli

 

But Wolves needed a major fix to their index detachment and were top tier with TWC spam by accident (IMO) using the White Scars flavour detachment

[DemonGSides]

18 hours ago, Rhavien said:

This, but there also were aeldari 

Yeah I played exactly one game against them and have missed em since LOL

[FarFromSam]

Instead of "simplified not simple"  maybe try " mind twistingly hard to keep up with"  and  bloated too...

[Kharn13]

1 hour ago, FarFromSam said:

Instead of "simplified not simple"  maybe try " mind twistingly hard to keep up with"  and  bloated too...

As a non-competitive player that follows 40K like a sport, I personally like the complexity. Each to their own though.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

28 minutes ago, Kharn13 said:

As a non-competitive player that follows 40K like a sport, I personally like the complexity. Each to their own though.

There’s no complexity, it’s just them changing the rules all the time.

if they just wrote decent rules the first time around instead of rushing them to fit into a 3 year release cycle we’d be golden.

Edited December 15 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[DuskRaider]

On 12/13/2024 at 3:00 PM, DemonGSides said:

 

Beginning 10th was playable; I would know, I played quite a bit lol  It was definitely rough, and I do agree 8th indexes were probably, overall, a lot more on the balance.

 

I think 10th is haunted by a bunch of ghouls who thrive on conflict and doomposting.  There's also a group of people who are looking for a different type of game but haven't figured out that 40k isn't that game, even though it was 15 years ago.  Otherwise I think 10th was rough for the first 3-4 months, and has been in a pretty good spot for most of this past year.

Hello, it’s me, the ghoul. Boo. 
 

I do agree with you on this. A lot of us old heads want what was and the new version just isn’t it. That being said, I can say that the 8th edition codices, while backed by rules I’m not a fan of, were full of flavor and fluff and gave players the ability to field fun and fluffy themed armies and that ability simply doesn’t exist at this point in time. I just look at my two armies and see how far they’ve fallen compared to even 8th. I’m happy for folks who still enjoy it, though. 

[01RTB01]

On 12/13/2024 at 1:00 PM, DemonGSides said:

 

Beginning 10th was playable; I would know, I played quite a bit lol  It was definitely rough, and I do agree 8th indexes were probably, overall, a lot more on the balance.

 

I think 10th is haunted by a bunch of ghouls who thrive on conflict and doomposting.  There's also a group of people who are looking for a different type of game but haven't figured out that 40k isn't that game, even though it was 15 years ago.  Otherwise I think 10th was rough for the first 3-4 months, and has been in a pretty good spot for most of this past year.

8th for me was solid throughout. 9th suffered with tournamentification and hideous power leap. 

 

 

[Karhedron]

7 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

That being said, I can say that the 8th edition codices, while backed by rules I’m not a fan of, were full of flavor and fluff and gave players the ability to field fun and fluffy themed armies and that ability simply doesn’t exist at this point in time.

 

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is missing? The army construction rules in 10th seem pretty free-form and I have not encountered an architype I cannot build. Whether they are tournement-level competitive is a different question but there are good units and bad units in every edition.

 

6 hours ago, 01RTB01 said:

8th for me was solid throughout. 9th suffered with tournamentification and hideous power leap. 

 

I think the problems started at the back-end of 8th with the 2nd Marine codex. Layers of buffs and stratagems on top of each other. I play Imperial Knights and I worked out that it was possible to have 8 different layers of rules/buffs stacked on a single Armiger. I found the book keeping was getting in the way of enjoying the game. While not perfect, the 10th edition Detachment concept is much cleaner as you get all your buffs, stratagems and enhancements on 2 sides of A4 which I find much better!

[DuskRaider]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is missing? The army construction rules in 10th seem pretty free-form and I have not encountered an architype I cannot build. Whether they are tournement-level competitive is a different question but there are good units and bad units in every edition.

 

 

I think the problems started at the back-end of 8th with the 2nd Marine codex. Layers of buffs and stratagems on top of each other. I play Imperial Knights and I worked out that it was possible to have 8 different layers of rules/buffs stacked on a single Armiger. I found the book keeping was getting in the way of enjoying the game. While not perfect, the 10th edition Detachment concept is much cleaner as you get all your buffs, stratagems and enhancements on 2 sides of A4 which I find much better!

I think it’s more the feel of the armies and what I can do with them. Death Guard just don’t feel like Death Guard anymore. Chaos Knights, while a fairly new faction in itself, had so many unique abilities and options that just aren’t there anymore. If you see my old WIP thread it will show you that while I may not be a fan of the rules 8th and on, I still heavily invested in the game and genuinely had a lot of fun with it. 10th just brings me no joy and I can definitely say that over the years, I’ve watched my Death Guard just kind of lose their identity in the game. It’s been frustrating. 

[Dudley Nightshade]

6 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is missing? The army construction rules in 10th seem pretty free-form and I have not encountered an architype I cannot build. Whether they are tournement-level competitive is a different question but there are good units and bad units in every edition.

(Full disclosure: I have not played a game since, I think, late in 5th edition.)

 

Time for a spicy take! If people were able to be completely honest, most actually want restrictions. It's why there are rules for how the models interact on the tabletop in the first place. I believe, though, that people also, at some deep level, want restrictions on what they play, in addition to how. For me, I want to know how my faction behaves and organizes itself "in real life" and test that on the tabletop. It brings me closer to my faction. For a long time I played Deathwing. It used to be special because it was restricted. Now, basically any Marine faction can do it, with some maybe being better at it than others. It used to mean something, because only Dark Angels and successors could organize that way.

 

I thought that the concept of formations in 7th editions was brilliant. The execution ultimately ended up killing the edition, but the idea of formations was great. It was a way to understand how a "fluffy" army would be organized and to get rewarded for that. I loved the idea of understanding how a faction organized itself and attempting to replicate that on the table. Again, I wasn't able to actually play in 7th, so this was all theoretical for me.

 

For people who feel that 10th is missing something when it comes to army composition, even though the door has been thrown wide open, it might be a sense of flavour that was taken away. As Syndrome says in The Incredibles, "and when everyone's super, no one will be."

 

Edit: meant to quote @DuskRaider too:
 

Quote

I’ve watched my Death Guard just kind of lose their identity in the game. It’s been frustrating. 

 

Edited December 15 by Dudley Nightshade

[DemonGSides]

One of my main armies death guard and while I do agree there has been some flavor lost, we also haven't gotten a codex and this is more of an issue of Index. The army has also gotten a lot better to play; my first game with death guard 10th edition during the first week swore me off the army for a long time, but more recent games have been fun.  Mortarion should be cooler but they have been shown to be willing to massively change datasheets from the index to codex

 

I wish disgustingly resilient still was a FNP, but having dealt with FNP in other armies it's a pretty annoying mechanic and we are probably better without it. I wish our army rule was something cooler than sticky objectives.

[DuskRaider]

22 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

One of my main armies death guard and while I do agree there has been some flavor lost, we also haven't gotten a codex and this is more of an issue of Index. The army has also gotten a lot better to play; my first game with death guard 10th edition during the first week swore me off the army for a long time, but more recent games have been fun.  Mortarion should be cooler but they have been shown to be willing to massively change datasheets from the index to codex

 

I wish disgustingly resilient still was a FNP, but having dealt with FNP in other armies it's a pretty annoying mechanic and we are probably better without it. I wish our army rule was something cooler than sticky objectives.

I think part of the problem is playing since 3rd, my vision of a Death Guard army is very elite, small in number, and very hardy. That was a theme that has persisted with Plague Marines for decades now and even up into 8th. I feel as though that concept has been abandoned, and GW’s fix has been to make them cheaper instead of remedying the core issue at hand. Fielding a large quantity of lesser Plague Marines doesn’t solve the problem, that’s what Zombies and Cultists are for. 
 

As far as Chaos Knights, when they first released the rules made it where each Knight played as a distinct character in and of itself. That sounds like it would get confusing, but when you’re only placing like 5 models on the table it isn’t as bad as it seems. That’s also gone by the wayside IMO, and it feels as though GW is attempting to get back to the 5th edition MO of kinda streamlining the factions, but also somehow making the game more convoluted. 
 

I don’t know how to explain it. I just hope they make some serious changes when moving forward, I do miss playing and actually enjoying the experience.