Games Workshop's Stealth Balance Policy?
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2024
- Let's talk about the units in 40K that seem fated to remain 'not great' for tournament play so far this edition...
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0:00 Intro
0:36 Balance Passes and Communicating
3:10 These Units Will Be Niche?
5:45 Examples in 10th So Far
9:43 Why Does it Happen?
12:37 Some Thoughts
16:40 Outro 
Игры
i wish the solution was "find a way to make them work", like limiting how many you can take. instead of just "make them bad, so no one plays them and we dont have to deal with balancing it"
Or drop them from the roster altogether rather than lure unsuspecting newcomers into buying stuff that will perform way below what they expect it to.
@@Trazynn
GW: "No. We like money far too much to do something that reasonable."
I mean yeah, in a perfect world, every unit would be balanced and have a reason to take it, but that's not an option you can just pick because it requires the most work, effort, and money. So when it comes to the extremes of "let it be overpowered" or "let it be useless", I'd rather 40K meta not be decided by planes and Titanic models and bunkers.
GW doesn't have the thinkers for that.
there are definitely ways to balance it. But GW isnt really in the business of making good rules. Just off the top of my head they could make indirect fire which is mostly artillery flavored anyway forced to split shots so that. So you would get the same dmg output as before but when split over say a minimmum of 3 enemy units, that have to be within 6 or 9 inches of eachother. All of a sudden it works flavorwise while still really not being very impressive. Since in competetive play single target dmg is what counts
"Slightly draconian" is the most Auspex phrase ever
" Fair few" is a contender.
Ironic sense gw just banned dracothains in aos 😢
Warhammer lore and miniatures are beautiful like the planet Arrakis in Dune.
But the GW corporation abuses the IP like Harkonnen monsters.
And yet they expect us to pay for rules when they constantly toss datasheets, factions, and detachments into the shadow realm to be forgotten for years.
You'll never take my Stormwolf, GW. I love that stupid flying brick too much.
Laser Fridge for life!
With the 10th edition previews I was hoping it would get the Assault Ramp rule since the model clearly has one. Nope!
My local SW player calls it “the shoe”
@@namewastaken360 It has a weird version of it allowing advance + charge if the unit disembarks pre-move of the flyer.
The obvious conclusion for flyers / forts is that they don’t want to discontinue them but kind of regret their place in 40K. They also haven’t released super heavies, forts or flyers in a long time. The exceptions are weird though. Why release a new Aegis Defence Line in 9th if you don’t want people to use it?
Non-Knight superheavies to be fair.
Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a transition of leadership behind the scenes, and the forts were already too far into development to just cancel.
They want you buy them and they have wow factor. However the mass market are new players and squads. So they are the focus business wise.
Many players only hobby and never play. Flyers and fortifications are great fun to build and paint. And are beautiful in a diorama. But they don’t want them actually good in the game.
Rumors are that the Guard codex got pushed back, and back, and back, over difficulties in making it work at all. If this were to be true, it's entirely possible that the Aegis had been designed, moulded, and printed _before_ this kind of policy change.
GW should put a limit of aircraft and bunker unit per army. For exemple 1 aircraft for 1000 point, 2 for 2000. And with that in place they could make them better in game
too simple solution for gw, they dont like being grounded, they are CLEVER MINDS OF THE GENERATION
They literally did that in 9th and it worked pretty alright
I think this is quite elegant. Either an army wide limitation, or maybe just saying any unit with an aircraft keyword may not have duplicates.
There’s some super nice looking models out there that would be lovely to see on the 10th tabletop
There is 4 Ork planes and there all ass so we should get use them if we want fluffy army
They did that for ninth. And for reasons not just that ninth collapsed and they had to rush out tenth
The irony is that unit spam was a problem that was fixed in the original Rogue Trader army lists. Back then, each unit would have its own quota, so you might be allowed 0-2 Land Raiders, for example, or even certain units that were compulsory, like 1-6 Imperial Guard squads. Don't want people taking 3 Stormravens? Put '0-2 Stormravens' on the datasheet, done. This might need updating due to the variety of units, so you might need something similar to the old Battlefield Role system to avoid things like Russ spam, but it's really not all that complicated.
For individual unit types- Artillery should have a minimum range when firing indirectly, at least for the big weapons. If a Basilisk can't shoot something within 24" of it it starts to make it a lot easier to deal with. You could also make it so Artillery units don't count when measuring Deep Strike type rules, so it's easier to use units with that ability to get rid of them, which also encourages other units to sit back and 'babysit' them.
Flyers likewise shouldn't deny Deep Strike since they're not actually on the ground. Non-Hover flyers should probably go back to the old 'attack run' style rules where they move onto the board, shoot (or drop off a unit), and then move off the board next turn to make another run, which feels far more like how air support actually works and stops them dominating the game.
Fortifications should probably go back to specific game types where they belong. They make sense in a scenario where both players know in advance who's attacking and who's defending, they make very little sense in most typical 40k missions.
No stop ur using too much of your brain. Just nerf the points and shrug.
Thats still work that they dont want to do, 10th is a lazy edition, thats it, theirs nothing else to say about it.
what stops you from using fast units or deep strikes to get rid of indirect fire units? why isnt this possible in 10th but in every other edition?
I wonder if their terrible marketing and sales departments would care about any of these things and whether the "game design" choices are actually coming from the game designers or the people who bring us ever-increasing prices and "simpler" rules? It feels like they have an idea of how to flog the most cash out of folks and everything else follows from that.
@@kingfoxxbox Yeah. Once it's printed on dead trees in the codex, you can't make changes EXCEPT points. And the codex system is perfect so can't change.
Really fun to be a Deathwatch player whose most iconic kit is the Corvus Blackstar, which has a 1 shot lascannon and 2 missiles, and wjose only role is to be a transport that can fit a Kill Team inside, facing this problem
Sounds like the old 0-1 limit should be applied again. It was a unit limit for rare or super elite units or war machines.
I have three words to fix some of the off-kilter balance in this game: Force. Organisation. Chart.
This again? I don't want forced troop choice again?
It didn't help in 9th. The abusive lists fit into org charts, and "fun" lists didn't
You know, maybe someone in game design department could use some scenario/detachment for that units, like extraction mission, deep insertion mission, aerial combat zone, or even siege battle with tons of battery unit
Thanks tried in 7
Maybe a fix to indirect fire units would be to require that the target be visible to at least one of your other units, representing a kind of artillery spotting action.
I'd say it could be balanced by doing something close to that but a little different: an extra disadvantage to shooting completely out of sight units, which is negated if one of your units can see the target. So just an additional -1 BS sort of thing that maybe doesn't interact with other rules so you can't necessarily get rid of it unless you have some unit spotting them. You would still keep the indirect negative as well (which can already be negated in armies that focus on artillery, like guard, through things such as Scout Sentinels). It makes it a bit more fluffy as well, and allows guard armies to be fluffy without forcing every single one into being a mechanized army.
I saw someone else comment that indirect should have a minimum range so can't shoot within 6,12,18,24 inches. Make them true artillery
@@chikumori5530 This was my first thought. Make it so that if nothing can see your target you can only hit on unmodified rolls of 5+ or 6+. Or, if you want to get more extreme, make it so that indirect fire can only ever hit on a roll of 4+
@@EmperorSigismund This would be great. Manticores hitting on a 2+ against something the guard can't even see is pretty dumb tbh.
I'd maybe also argue that if another unit from the army can't see the target, maybe the artillery doesn't get its blast rule? Representing speculative shots against an unseen target as opposed to a spotted and confirmed target being hit with a focused barrage? It would certainly stop some silly stuff like say, a basilisk et al being used to lay down unstoppable hell on a bunch of snivelling grots hiding behind three buildings and the rest of the Orks in front of them.
Indirect fire shouldn’t be good at killing but great at applying debuffs to the target. Like slowing movement or taking penalties to hit or something.
Like the way suppression works in other games.
There's a very simple solution to units that they don't want abused - cost them normally but give those units a keyword (like rare resource or something). You can only take one unit with that keyword in any army. One flyer or one giant model or whatever, and then you can't take anything else with that keyword. It lets people play with their toys without relying on cheap tactics
Kinda a bummer, I'd honestly be interested if you made a flyer tier list of where most things fall in the "decent in casual" to "Not even worth taking" for all the factions.
Dakkajets are pretty fun.
Storm Raven is still playable.
I think they want to eventually phase out all flyers and fortifications into legends
Ask the survivors of 8th eldar plane spam why fliers won't ever be buffed
ha too soon :)
Or 6th and 7th ed Heldrake spam. Absolutely horrendous.
(Curls up in ball with Hemlock spam ptsd)
@@peeledapples4176tbf
Helldrakes were only spammed because chaos marines didn't really have any other options back then on a competitive level
Or 9th ork plane spam
Never forget: Triple Hammerfall Bunker bro, the absolute mad lad!
He was my hero.
So sad that heldrakes suck cause its a very cool model
I think that it should just permanently be in Hover mode rule wise
Bring back scatter dice and the blast template for indirect that’ll make em more fun and random enough that they don’t have to be costed in to oblivion
I used to like scatter for indirect. I'm guessing some people spoiled it for everyone, at some point...?
Caused too much argument. But let's see how it goes in the old world
@@henrymng I've heard that as well, but for casual games, who cares. I think GW's forgotten that this game isn't about playing it to win money or whatever prizes GT's give, but about having fun. An Earthshaker round scattering onto a nearby unit of Guardsmen is inherently funny and reasonable.
The annoying thing is that Artillery and Flying units are my favorite and what got me here, but since I’m new I’m hesitant to buy any of them because of constant nerfs and changes makes me weary on if they are a good investment
Also if artillery shouldn’t be good, why would guards detachment benefit pretty much only artillery
If they go too strong, the problem is the spam... Then 1 Aircraft Max in Competition. Problem solved. We, casual gamer, could use them.
I think they should be average Points 215pts Harpy is way too much.
Also, in my house rules I decided to make them 20" move when arrived from reserved and restored the -1 to hit as they are fast.
Thank for the video.
The balance policy is based on buffing stock that's collecting dust and the video game live service model of balancing around what the sweats are using.
Combined, it frees people from their money at around twice the rate it used to when armies actually had their own flavour and could do well.
I feel like I'm playing in an open beta for a major game that never actually quite gets there.
The choice in what you pick and how well it can do has become an illusion from this point on. You are free to lose if you would like though. The power creep has never been this bad in the almost 30 years i have been into 40k.
The stratagems are just lazy blanket special rules. There used to be more unique and fun rules baked into armies. The whole FAQ thing i believe is intentional to keep people buying more.
10th also has a more overt balance rule - "Screw AdMech players, in particular."
Staring at my stormraven I just bought still in the box to play as a dark angels player and thinkin….. so this is where my villain story begins
Warsurge will keep you of the path of darkness, my brother. My dreadclaws are used there.
Tbh the Heldrake is good, it is a very specific counterpiece. The moment your enemy has something with FLY, it will just delete it. 20 move advance&charge from slaanesh has the potential to oneshot Angron T1, and he does not even get to roll a save. It is points inefficient normally, but the moment it finds it counter target it is HYPER efficient.
"Anything bigger than knight sized units will never be good", I disagree : as a chaos knights player I'd say that knight-sized models IN GENERAL are never good xD.
You would like warsurge. Knights do really well in that game.
As a dedicated Baneblade player, it sure sucks when I get hit by nerfs caused by Knights being oppressive (goodbye overwatch). Not like anyone uses Baneblades.
Back in my day (3rd/4th ed) . . . In addition to having a strict force org, we couldn’t use special characters unless our opponents agree to them.
Nowadays primarchs and god-tier characters must be super busy because they are in every battle across the galaxy!!
The Lion has only recently returned and has already fought against himself.
@@chrisbingleyThe Lion is super relatable as a result.
Why is Lord Solar so darn busy, hard to run an army across a whole sector when you're constantly leading assaults
Not to mention they had a minimum battle size before they could even be chosen so they could not influence low point games.
@@cylarith3542 I remember when the Armageddon codex had the Emperor’s Champion rules written in such a way that all Space Marine chapters could field one. And a White Dwarf battle Report even featured a Space Wolf army with a Space Wolf Emperor’s Champion!
Sales. The balance buffs are based on what's selling vs what's in the inventory vs what's going to legends vs what they need to sell
How do you explain the new Ork Stompa box then?
Meanwhile Deathwing Knights were about to sell out but then they nerfed them.
What annoys me is that there's nothing wrong with units used as skimmers - they just don't need to be so expensive. Fast vehicles are already a thing, as are hover vehicles, as well as Titanic units.
I mean, _would_ they cut Titanic units next?
The interesting thing is that they also nerfed fortifications and artillery in Horus Heresy 2.0. Flyers too, but not to such an astonishing degree as in 40k
200 point basilisks...
@@whitewall2253 all blast weapons are a joke now. I suspect this is due to some rules writer disembarking his deathstar out of Spartan, failing a 3" charge and getting blasted with one Medusa/Demolisher shot
Tbf, Medusa/Demolishers were stupid lethal before
I like that they've toned it down
Problem is the binary AP system of HH means there isn't really any middle ground between "wipes a squad in one shot" and "tickle tickle tickle"
*tbh, the Scorpius is so lethal now lol it's rules can legit represent a Medusa very well
As a proud owner of a Corvus Blackstar I would gladly see it buffed so I can use it for some months before we get annhilated/merged with who knows what/shafted in various other colorful manners!
Anyway I still hope in a positive change for my army. Maybe something more lore oriented.
I saw the Heldrake in the thumbnail and had to watch straight away 😂. My boy the Heldrake isnt looking good though 😢
Shame because it is such a cool model.
I think it has a place against stuff like Tau and Drukhari (or any other list with lots of baked in flying units) but the TSons variant is super bad.
@@funnyman6974 Problem is, with points being the way they are right now, you're looking at almost 2 venomcrawlers for the price of 1 heldrake.
I’ll never forgive GW for FINALLY letting my 3 Hammerfalls have a fluffy and fun (albeit too expensive) datasheet then before I could finish painting them ruining it and tossing me the finger.
One thing to note about this list - all of them in some way interfere with or get around terrain rules. Really big models tend to just walk over it, fortifications become part of it, flyers to some degree ignore it as do indirect fire.
Hence why they're so nerfed - people rely on terrain for their game plan and stuff that gets around it can have a real "feels bad" aspect.
That said, they might want to limit "ignores cover" even more if they're going to do this.
11:16 and Guard will continue to do so because our infantry sucks and can't punch up... our detachment rule exclusively works for our arty and only help other things if our opponents choose to waddle into our sight line after we opt not to move. Which if your opponent has a pulse they won't do. Guard is now going to just start a list with 1-2 manticores and 3 basilisks and some carriages with less poinrs to spend on fun things.
I think the best case for fliers is to treat them like titanic units and have them move 16" without being able to advance. Give them all stealth or something to represent their speed and treat them as fast tanks.
i feel like flyers should have higher to hit targets. like 4+ to 6+ range but have heavy hitting or a lot of small attacks. that way they can still do good sometimes but won't be overwhelmingly good.
I think that the reason we're seeing this is because GW has started to embrace competitive play as the standard for how the game should work. This is a huge problem. I was a Press Gang Volunteer for Privateer Press for 10 years and I can tell you from experience that focusing on Competitive Play usually comes at the expense of casual players who make up the vast majority of the hobby.
By the end of 2017, new players coming into a game store to play Warmachine were being turned away by veteran players who considered any game that wasn't a tournament style game against a seasoned tournament veteran to be a complete waste of time.
GW seems to be enamored with the idea that competitive play should be the standard, and the problem with that is that Competitive Players will spam the most efficient choices. They will not waste time using rules that are "fluffy" and they won't field units that aren't efficient because the models look cool.
Because of that we see these moves to smash anything that's spammed in lists. You can see it everywhere. Crisis Suits in Tau have been drastically changed to prohibit spamming Cyclonic Ion Blasters even though that mean Tau players were buying extra Commander kits to get them (though there are a lot of 3D prints out there, I'm sure).
I have played 40k since it debuted. For decades GW did not understand the desire to run this game as a tournament game. They were very slow to embrace even hosting tournaments rather than just game events. And what has it cost us? Well, it has trickled down into the points values and it's watered down the mechanics of the game where key components like Leadership are now fairly meaningless. It's no coincidence that units that impact Leadership aren't that great.
Thanks for the videos, though. I always look forward to seeing what you've got to say.
The Stormraven Gunship being nerfed, so it costs the same as a landraider redeemer, really annoys me. It was just okay.
Desolation marines could have just had their indirect severely nerfed like ignores cover and heavy removed. I would have liked their direct fire remaining relevant.
I just wish fortifications were strictly cool terrain pieces, no points, no rules, just some really cool terrain to play over. Basically how I've used them thus far, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. It's nice to see faction specific terrain and those fit the bill. I just don't think they need any extra rules to be that way.
Kid me enjoyed making arbitrary scenarios. All infantry vs. a titan, assault a fortified position, etc. We played quite a few games that didn't follow the traditional rules.
I think that they could keep titans, fortifications, etc., at a reasonable point cost but underplayed competitively by adjusting the rules such that they're bad at getting/defending any points.
I've been in the hobby for 26 years. I'm a painter mostly as I rarely get to actually play 40k. But putting together an effective army is a big part of my motivation for selecting a unit to buy, assemble/convert/kitbash and paint. But it feels really bad when the balance dataslates come for my new unit EVERY TIME. It's like any actually good units aren't safe at all. The constant 'updates' have fatigued me over the last few years and I've jumped ship as far as gaming goes. Battletech has charmed me and it's so refreshing that it never, ever changes because it doesn't need to.
That was how 7th edition worked. There was no balance changes, and it was a disaster.
Is about style of play:
A lot of video games have invisible champions that are stompers for new players. They might be good at the top level but they have a bad feel about them.
GW pinpointed the category of units that have issues:
Indirect Fire
Flyers
Titanic - they were changed
And then they have unsuported units and they decided to not suport them
Buildings
Dont forget FW units, they are nerfed so that they are not good then forgotten.
Unless it's aeldari forgeworld units which i think they all have their own niche
Tfw you play Custodes and you have like twice as many forge world kits as plastic ones... and they're still shit. Except my Orion Dropship, that thing is a treasure.
I came to this video to learn about how they are going to change the stealth rule, and I was 4 mins in before I realized you meant like a secret balance policy.
This has been my theory for a while now. I don't know if its actually intended and being practiced or mapped out, but if GW cycles strengths of models they can theoretically make every single model meta at some point in time and incentivize consumers to purchase every single model for an army over a long enough period.
I remember when heldrakes were mando 2 per if you were running a competitive CSM list.
The easy fix for flyers is to give everyone access to an anti air piece. Something with like a 3 strength but anti-fly +2 gun. Then an arms race starts and the eventual outcome is that no one brings a spam list for either.
I've always said that the scale of Warhammer 40k games (at least as far as 2k points and under is concerned) is not set up to facilitate titans/fliers/fortifications. These kinds of assets being deployed in such small-scale skirmishes (yes, even at 2k points) just doesn't make an awful lot of sense. Fliers in particular are egregious - one or two strafing runs per game might be fair, but the ability for them to just orbit a tiny battlefield is bizarre. I'm more than happy for these models to remain on the shelf, or to see play only in Apocalypse-style games.
I agree. Fortifications, stompas and aeroplanes have never made the game better, but very often made it worse.
I feel like it is one of those things of not having apocalypse. Flyers, bunkers, super heavies, titans and I think knights could only allowed in apocalypse and then when we moved from editions the apocalypse rules weren’t re written but the models became standard. I think the first flyer for regular games was the Grey Knights flyer at the mid to end of 5th.
This is the problem, things like knights, superheavies and fliers were never designed with the base version of 40k in mind, they fundamentally become hard to even make useable rules when they are forced to be crammed in a 2k game on a shrinking board with significant scale creep in both model size snd base size, to say nothing of all the terrain necessary for these new editions. They desperately need to redo the apocalypse rules and force knights, superheavies and flyers to that system. And the same kinda goes for custodes, they should only really be a kill team faction as it's to hard to balance them for standard 40k.
the stormraven which yes the model came out with the grey knights in 5th but its rules first appeared in the 5th edition blood angels codex (this was back when GW did rules but no model) so lots of people converted land raiders with valkyrie wings to do it for BA (given at that time only BA and GK could use it till they gave it to generic marines in 7th)
@@pokemastercube oh yeah ur right I forgot it was Blood Angels first. My group didn’t have a BA player but a GK player. That BA codex was fire though
There was a time where you had a limit of three heavies, three elites, and three fast attacks, as well as mandatory HQ and two troops. It was a good time
I object. You make some armies day hard
@@henrymng That's tough
Not for me. Too much restriction and forced to buy units I didn't want to use
@@ondururagittandeska2004 especially troops
@@henrymng Yeah then also turning the Phobus troops and scouts I wanted for RG thematic list where then made into "elite"
House rules in casual plays. Flyers on board in turn 1! simple and fun ;)
Honestly my solution for flyers would be real simple:
A) All flyers have Hover and are permanently in Hover mode with say, a 16-20" move. There's zero reason a 40k flyer shouldn't be able to hover, given the tech level of the setting. If vectored thrust is a thing in reality just a century after flight started to be a thing, by 38,000 years in the future, even with the technological decay of the Imperium, it shouldn't be anything beyond their ability. It also just makes sense to have for stuff like making landings more space efficient if nothing else.
B) Flyers may Deep Strike (to represent them arriving on scene)
Tune points from there and treat them as deep striking, fast flying skimmers with low durabilty.
There's no reason to have fixed flight paths, forced late arrival or any of that. Just treat them as tanks that are fast but flimsy and can deep strike.
So you would be able to melee them?
@@PepsiMagt Yeah. Balance-wise it's better to let the oddity exist than try to apply realism. 40k is very Hollywood (and particularly silly Hollywood at that) in terms of it's portrayal of conflict most of the time anyway. You can shoot down jets with flamethrowers and handguns as-is for example. So why not let people melee them too?
Basically to me, given the choice between 'aircraft being basically completely sidelined' and 'aircraft getting punched' (which honestly feels oddly appropriate for a lot of 40k factions tbh), I'd rather have it be the latter.
We'll just assume Close Air Support in 40k means *real* close... like hovering 10ft off the ground close. It's not real-life logical, but it is very 40k-logical tbh.
Just my thought anyway.
@@mistformsquirrel i think that would be a good solution. It would solve most of aircrafts balance problem, and essentially turn them into light tanks with jump packs.
This is a good video.
All three of these things have different issues and GW seems unwilling to spend time on addressing them.
1. Fliers - Fliers create unfun game states and massively reward the player going first. They extrapolate the "go-first" issue by effectively ignoring terrain and always being able to shoot what they want to shoot. Airplains also brutally punish combat-based armies without the fly keyword, because these armies can't interact with airplanes at all.
So in order for planes to be fair, they need to either a) do poor damage or b) be too expensive to use.
Neither of these options seems very appealing, so I hope GW can figure out a way to use fliers in the next edition.
2. Indirect Fire - Just as fliers, indirect fire has the problem of being a way to deal non-interactive damage without exposure. And for some reason, GW keep addressing the symptoms instead of the disease: The indirect penalty is a joke. All units firing indirect have a -1 to hit modifier (which is easily circumvented by external buffs like rerolls or even in-built Heavy keywords) and grant the target the benefit of cover (which is completely redundant to write on the datasheet, because you will NEVER encounter a scenario in which a unit can't be seen without receiver cover anyway.
If I had anything to say about it, all Indirect fire should hit on unmodified 6s like Overwatch. This way, you actually use indirect fire as a last resort or supporting tool instead of a main damage dealer. If you want your powerful manticore to do lots of damage, you have to drive up. This concept worked perfectly fine from 3rd to 7th and I don't understand why there is so much resistance against it (firing indirect in old 40k was awful, because you always deviated your templates).
3. Fortifications - This is mostly a hobby problem, because buildings are kind of boring. Even when fortifications are strong, it feels wrong to purchase them as part of your available points worth of army. They also cause huge issues with terrain layouts and it's just better not to deal with it. I think Fortifications should return to being purely cosmetic collectors items, with special rules in Narrative games like Crusade.
fliyers, titans and fortificatiosn seem liek something that would mostly do well relegated to specific scenarious in whihc they don't even interfere with the standard list.
some more or less than others.
Saddest side effect of this is that most lists look similar with it being a choice of subfaction and characters to give it different styles, rather than dramatic unit choices. A big example is the recent teleporting necron list should have buffed flyers rather than making infantry act like flyers.
Scaling points should be the way for all units. Make it +50 points for each subsequent copy and then could then make core intercessors etc 10 pts for 5 and you would see iconic core units appear just because they are so cheap to run "1 unit"
Feels like GW want to phase out fliers and fortifications this edition and legends them in 11th.
Well, at least my Doom Croissants look cool. That said, while I never did go through 8th edition Eldar flyer spam, I've heard enough stories to recognize they cause problems.
Honestly, they could just make aircraft and fortifications restricted to Onslaught and non-tournament games. Then folks can enjoy their models in a beers game without worrying about flyer spam ruining the meta. But given the lack of effort GW seems to put in its rules writing, they'll just sit on the shelf for a while. Oh well
I'd be great if Apocalypse rules returned and flyers were locked to that gamemode, then made decent there. There was something similar in 3rd and 4th where the Imperial Armor books added Flyers, and while nothing really prevented them from being used in the main game, pretty much everyone just relegated them to big points/Apoc. game, where they belonged.
a rule which could be worth of a test run:
copy of a unit costs 10% more and a second copy 20%
for example
1st datasheet for 100pts
2nd one is 110pts
3rd costs 120 pts
battleline units are exempted (which, maybe, would encourage people to actually run battlelines)
high cost high value units are less likely to be spammed
When the Helldrake released in 6th, there was literally no Anti-Aircraft in the game unless you had access to Aircraft and brought it. I'm convinced GW freaked out after how badly they screwed up the Aircraft release initially that they eventually decided just to Shadow Ban them over time.
Maybe they could try some kind of force organisation chart to stop stupid skew lists rather than nerfing anything fun. I know, a crazy idea, what kind of game could be popular utilising such a chart?!
Looking at old boxes like urban conquest -it seems like there should still be a place for narrative themed play using more of these units...would it be too much work to have a competitive points list and a general/crusade points list?
I’d say it’s telling that there are, after 2 whole editions, no Primaris flyers.
I wonder if it's something as simple as GW realize flyers, titans and the like are simply bad for the game and are slowly trying to correct the mistake of adding them?
I think you are correct
honestly i never know if an model is "not good" in general or just "not good" for tournaments. I don't do tournaments, so I'm still unsure on if the custodes codex is playable or if it's suffering for everyone :(
Auspex is very specifically focussed on the optimized tournament style play. Its something you can get more data for versus casual games, which are much less defined.
Custodes are a stat check army. If you can beat them then you can beat the bigger boys.
However in saying that, when you realise that at their baseline infantry they are T6, 3W, 2+ save and a 4+ invuln, you understand how hard of a faction they can be to play against. Plus with their D2 ranged profile on their guardian spears, their Custodian Guard won't have an issue just blasting elites who might have the gear to kill them.
I was thinking of paring down my guard units a bit of ones I don't use anymore or saw a niche use. Talked to my local game store about consigning them to be told flatout they won't sell this edition.
I haven’t played a heldrake since I was able to ally one into my Necron crescent spam list 😂. Poor fliers
You sould talk to Eire Hobbies in Ireland about getting a partnership, never hurts to have more links!
I swear i have no stake in this...
I’ll still get at least one or two crimson hunter because I really like the models don’t care that much if aircrafts are mehhhhh
Another stealth balance policy I would say is buffing the units they want to sell and nerfing the units they want to cut from production.
Indirect fire could be fixed by using the Tau army rule. Every indirect fire unit requires another unit to spot for it (and every spotter unit can only spot for one indirect fire unit unless it has a unique ability to let it spot twice). Then it is possible to hide from indirect fire by hiding from spotter units, so there is interactive gameplay.
Flyers could be fixed by making them have separate datasheets for hover mode and fly mode (since GW seems to love making multiple datasheets these days, instead of having wargear costs). Hover mode is just a normal vehicle with 0-OC and balanced as such. Fly mode is forced to fly off the board edge every turn so is only active in 2 turns of the game, meaning it could have decent bombing run abilities and not be overpowered.
Fortifications could be fixed by letting them deepstrike (dropped from space or materialised from the warp) and increasing their toughness and wounds, but keeping them as expensive immobile pieces. Then they could at least be somewhere useful (obviously not allowed to be directly on an objective).
And all non-hover flyers and fortifications should not interact with any rules for preventing deepstrike within 9".
The sisters of battle “battle sanctum” fortification won a tournament so they DELETED it from the game and stopped selling it outright
Small suggestion: can you position the text to not overlap with closed captions?
I always saw the heldrake as a glider rsther than a true flyer in game rules.
aircraft in such a small scale game was a bad idea to begin with.
more models are more sales pushed them to pull apocalypse units into 40k.
not all was bad, baneblade is a good kit, good model and pretty iconic.
all flyers were rapidly constructed to get a cash grab for every army,
similar to big monsters for every fantasy army back than.
fortifications are even worse, noone wanted them ever.
its hard to remove flyers entirely. they are really neat for apocalypse games,
but without a seperate ruleset we kinda need flyer rules in the main game.
so we removed flyers without removing them.
Ok boomer
So with artillery and flyers I can only think it's because GW believes they're just way too hard to counterplay against if you don't bring your own units to go against them.
...which is absolutely something that I think GW is overthinking.
The simplest fix, I think, is to just hand out keywords to more units. Like, this very edition, they gave the Indirect Fire keyword to the Sister's Exorcist and GK's Purgation Squad when they previously didn't have it in 9e. So clearly they have zero issue giving weapon keywords to units that previously didn't have them. So by that same token, just give other units the Indirect Fire and Anti-Fly keywords for counterplay. Which also gives other tactical options for units and armies that previously had a deficit of those kind of units and weapons!
We are on like 6 straight points balances with the Stompa still at 800. It should either be 600 or go up to 50W
My whole Deathwatch army is in that spot.
I'm just glad they finally realized how shit Sacresancts are and corrected their points cost nearly a year into the edition.
Still unplayable as they fail both at being a tanky defensive unit and a blender offensive unit, but at least it doesn't feel as bad running 2 squads of them in my 1k lists.
Recently picked up a crimson hunter for cheap, so I'm glad that didn't get slapped with a nerf. It's a weirdly good 160pt investment.
DAMMIT, no spelling mistakes!
Look closer, there are a few
I'd give up all my arty units for AM to have a balanced way for air cav Scions/Kasrkin allowed and work well. The Valkyrie is second only to the Russ as an iconic and Relatable unit in Guard forces. Also the Taurox is absolutely the other end of the spectrum, needs taking out the back and putting out of it's misery! 😮
Why couldn't they make them good but put a special cap on fliers or something? The models are so fun and I have a Chaos guy all built that I haven't even bothered to paint, and a Necron death croissant that I even magnetized. The fortifications and things are so bad that I think a lot of us just use them as xenos terrain since there's almost nothing in that category. That's how I'm using my starstelai.
Make indirect a weapon keyword and have a 1 CP strat to shoot indirect fire. Boom problem solved. You can pay to get one artillery piece per turn shooting out of LoS with -1 to hit and cover. The rest shoot normally. Suddenly they're not needing to cost 200 points for a damn mortar.
I frigging love fliers. Can't seem to stop acquiring them..
I feel like I'd make it so indirect was unreliable to hit but did good damage if it does hit. Fliers would be very good at taking out one or two units and being hard to hit but fairly flimsy if hit. maybe that would make anti flier rules better. and Titanic stuff should always be kind of a balance between points and being a durable killing machine basically it's a gamble. Also indirect fire would be quite good against them.
I think so long as they have counters that every army has access to you can make them good/fun but not auto include. armies should feel different. not just oh slightly different flavors of skirmishing. castling, blitzing, king of the hill should all be viable.
For indirect, I think it would bw nice if they'd only it on 6s (or not at all) unless they had a spotter unit that could mark their target.
This is why i hate when people say 10th edition balance is good. Its only good if you ignore the vast majority of models that are either to weak or underwhelming to use, or that GW has just decided to nerf so you don't use them. Its not good balance when they just ignore the stuff they don't want to deal with
Rephrase: It is good if you are a competitive player and are not in love with WH40k as a hobby, with the lore, and with the entire 40k universe. In other words... the balance is great for competitions, where people can change out armies easily because they only need to worry about Tier 1 and 2 units and not all the "esoteric" units that make up 1/3 of the army. Of course those "esoteric" units are the favorites of hobbyists everywhere who are faction-specialists and who got into 40k because of those specific units.
The only difference between indirect fire and move-shoot-move is accuracy. Otherwise they are equally un-interactive
You can not ovewatch the second move because it is in the shooting phase only the first move
Either: you can hide from move-shoot-move, or they are close enough for you to charge them next turn
It is almost as if abandoning restrictions on army building was a terrible idea . . .
Nah. I can finally create some cool themed army lists for matched play that I couldn't previously. Like my "Slumbering Necron Tomb Defense Force" (i.e. Canoptek units + automated defences). If I needed at least 2 troops choices as dictated by a FOC like in previous edition, it would mess up half the themes of my armies.
Also, some units have been notoriously bad across several edition (e.g. Necron Obelisk) even when there were FOCs in place, so that argument doesn't really fly.
@@lowscore1972 It is possible to enable certain themed lists by having variations to any standard force organisation for specific archetypes - for example, all deathwing lists for dark angels. By not having a force organisation GW mess up the whole game. 40k's game system has a few inherent problem areas - two of the most common are alpha strike and skew lists. If you don't have measures to limit skew lists then those lists will often push out more regular ones, and that necessitates some form of force organisation. There is always going to be a trade off between the flexibility of anything goes list building and a healthy state of play - personally I would prioritise a healthy game, and if people want the freedom to play any nonsense then they can do so in narrative games.
Wow. This is the epitome of dodging a problem they don't want to deal with:
Design team: "Sir, we can't get the flyers' or fortifications' rules right so they're playable. What do we do?"
GW exec: "Nothing. Keep the rules as is and increase the points until no one plays them"
DT: "How did that fix the problem, sir?"
Exec: "it solves our problem of having to deal with it. Any questions?"
DT: "Yes sir. Many."
Good job GW. Maybe that's why Admech and DW are crap rules-wise. They don't know what do to and are trying to make them so crap no one plays them, then they can say "See?! No one plays these armies! We have to contract them to save costs..."🤦♂️
Honestly as cool as some plane models are, anyone who suffered at the hands of the eldar flying spam will tell you its a good idea to keep planes bad.
I still think the Noctilith Crown is low-key kinda usable. You give it Mark of Nurgle, place it in a strategic position, and laugh as everything from Legionaries to Land Raiders wholly within 9" have a 4++. It's incredibly niche but sounds annoying AF to deal with. Plus it can Dark Pact which may or may not be worthwhile but still funny to me.
The lack of support for large flyers could be a precursor to sunsetting these models in the next edition - if they are bad for play people are less likely to buy them, therefore maybe fewer people upset when they're no longer legal.
Points value nerfs are fine as long as the points nerf actually allows you to field something better. Knocking 10 points off 5 units that only fields you 50 extra points is moot if the cheapest thing in the list (for example something like custodies) is like 200 points.
"Well, the rest of the Imperial Guard army struggles, but at least I have my Basilisks. Good old Basilisks! At least I have a chance with a couple of these guys, and they're much too iconic for GW to... to ever...
(Sigh)
I feel like these could have better solutions
For Aircraft it's buffing the anti-air capabilities of anti-air units. They would form a natural counter but bringing them would be sort of a gamble since they wouldn't be good against anything, save for, maybe, light infantry.
Fortifications actually counter themselves. While it is true that playing against a wall is not so much fun, forts cannot really hold objectives or go around LOS terrain. So at best a fort list would draw since nobody would have anything on the objectives and nobody would do that. So it's just pointless to nerf fortifications since they cannot ever be spammable.
Indirect Fire is a thing GW brought on themselves with the eradication of Scatter. Artillery no longer has that big RNG factor which makes it either useless when inaccurate or OP when accurate. Maybe if they went back a little to their roots and made all indirect fire share some sort of RNG hit system, then this would not be a problem.
Big Titanic Units are imbalanced almost by design, but I feel like them costing an impractical amount is right. However if I had to "fix" the issue of big titanic units, it would be making it so they cannot target above x number of enemy units. If they got a bajillion guns, it's useless if they can't use them to target a million infantry units.
"Be happy you still are able to play your faction and you didn't get rolled into a side joke of another factions index!" says the harlequin player.
As an aeldari player, thank you for your sacrifice. Skyweavers are awesome in craftworld lists.
As a Deathwatch player, I’m sure we’ll be joining you soon
@@billgrey385 sounds like an actual possibility :(
I am 100% for this design philosophy, it's legit good game design. Makes me wonder about the sales metrics though.
I think the big issue is 8th to 10th are kinda weak on units being a good counter to niche stuff rather than generally good or bad.
They could let flyers be good but anti air units be strong against flyers. 😂
Meaning if you took an all flyers army and your opponent had some anti air defences you’d be in bad shape. 😅 but most of the stat lines push towards being generally good at taking out everything at the moment.
Im wondering if they are considering phasing out fliers soon.
Or create a new generation of flyers that is less about hit and run but more slow and transport oriented.
Units that are being phased out will always get absurdly strong rule to clear out stock so no worry in that department.
Example being: old sternguard - forgeworld stuff
Probably not as they tend to sell well
I've been wondering if we're going to see phasing out and addition of "air /artillery strike" type strats to replace flyers and biggest guns.
Sisters never got a flier, so it wouldn't affect my army any.
But sororitas never got a flier, so that change would mean they never will. Which is unfortunate, as a flying church would be hilariously silly.
My thoughts was it's for an accessibility reason. (outside of fortifications)
People can buy little pieces and build a fair army, that they can play against their friends. If big ticket items are meta then the game becomes pay to win off the bat. That's why in my head cannon we never see these huge models get included in the bulk purchase boxes..
* Looks at Orks get a Stompa in the new box *
Well.. that torpedoed my head cannon reasoning for it..
But think it might have something to do with it, instead of 1 model basically being the majority of someones points and pretty much is a auto-win in a friends group. It's not going to be liked really. Cool as a 'let's see if we can take it down' game.. but that's only fun a couple times.
I built and painted a Catachan Air Cav army during 9th edition, never got to play it before the limited flyers. Back then you could take 3 squadrons, which would have been 9. I had 4 Valkyries to fly 3 infantry squads and 1 to fly Straken and a command squad around. I was just going to have some little fun, but right after I finished painting, about to go take it to a game, they said... "no only 2 flyers" and I was sad. I had already ordered my Marauder Destroyer and Bomber at that point...
Worse is I switched to an artillery heavy guard Tallarn Regiment army, it had a manticore and 6 basilisks, since you used to be able to take squads of 3... right after I finished painting they dropped the new codex. Never got to play with it either.
2 full guard armies painted, that I never got to play with.
Feel your pain. Spent 9th painting up 120 cadian guardsmen, 150 conscripts and 30 vets... guess i can still use those cadians at least...
@@jeffmooney8638 bummer 😔