Some big changes on the way and extremely positive for the game! We had a lively Twitch discussion on this topic!
Big FAQ
Updated Rulebook FAQ
The Warhammer-Community site is currently down do to the volume of people trying to download the new FAQ as relayed on Facebook live by the GW team this morning, and here are the highlights! We will update this post as the FAQ becomes available.
- Smite has been altered to limit the ability to spam it but also to not hurt psychic armies so much like Grey Knights and Thousand Sons.
- Half of your army must start on the table in regards to number of units and power level.
- Reserves can only come in in your deployment zone turn 1 and may not enter the table outside of your deployment zone until turn 2 and beyond.
- 0-3 limit on units! Troops and Transports are exempt.
- No soup! You can’t use Aeldari, Imperium, Chaos or Tryanids as a keyword for your detachments.
- Battalions now give 5 cp.
- Brigades now give 12 CP.
- Character targeting rules no longer beta.
We will continue to update this but, wow, some great changes! What do you think?
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
I like the changes. One thing that really needs to be reiterated over and over again is that 8th edition is a brand new game. There’s no other edition to build off of like how the rest of the game used to function. So changes like this are going to happen and hopefully will be ironed out so that we are not hit with major changes every couple of months. I expect it will be largely polished by this time next year.
Overall the theme I am seeing here is to make it as balanced and as *fun* as possible. Not everyone will like the changes but that’s just how it goes. I’m actually happy that they are even updating the rules at all, let alone this quickly.
It really wasn’t that long ago that getting an FAQ like this was a dream. Now I can mark it on my calendar and expect to have it around that time.
Very good points.
This FAQ was a massive love letter to gunline armies.
The changes to terrain and charging, the deep strike rules, are all designed to cater to gunline.
You will never see an assault army at a top table ever again.
Haha, while I certainly understand why you are saying this you are also massively exaggerating the issue =)
It is not all that bad, trust me. Give it a little time, everyone will adapt. As a matter of fact, relatively speaking, things like Alpha Legion Cultists and Berzerkers are great as there are less competing units for their role.
Let me know when you see an assault army at a top table again. I’ll check back sometime next year.
Lol, hey, I am not attacking you or anything ECJ, just, when you cool down a bit and reread your post, I think you will see how chicken little they sound.
Every time we have changes this big, someone declares the sky is falling and it just isn’t true.
Give it some time, play a few games. The gamer in you will find ways to game the system and before you know it you will have adapted. You just have to give it time and look for ways to make the army you like to play work in this new environment. The only certain way for it to absolutely fail is to not try.
Reecius, now that they removed the Wobbly model syndrome FAQ version (able to count as being in base to base if you can make the charge) and replaced it with the cannot fit in ruins cannot charge. I am wondering how do we charge wave serpents? They hover above the ground 1 inch and their base is hidden. With these new rules you cannot charge the hull of a DE raider but atleast you can charge the base of one.
Obviously we don’t play it as they can’t be charged.
Important to note that points 2, 3, and 5 are beta rules, and 4 is a organized play suggestion, not a matched play rule change.
Beta rules, yes, but beta rules we will be adopting like all other beta rules have been adopted immediately =)
I personally don’t like the deep strike rule simply because I feel like it caters to some players who don’t strategically place their armies. A well deployed Army has the potential to completely negate a deep-striking army. Even in objective based games concentrated firepower will always win out when it comes to volume of dice
Not completely deny, you can always drop in your own lines (which I do pretty frequently, anyway). But, that was a possibility pre-FAQ. Many of the board control armies in the game already did it during deployment like Alpha Legion chaos cultists, etc. My Space Marines are really good at it with Scouts and the RG strat. Hell, even Orks could do it on turn 1 with advancing and using Da Jump if they simply went first.
If you find yourself facing an army like that, you had to be prepared to start more units on the table. Nothing has changed in that regard.
And of course, you could always plan to build in to your list the ability to clear out chaff on turn 1 to create landing zones for your turn 2 drops.
Can’t say I’m a fan of the changes to “Deep strike”, but we’ll see how it plays out.
Yeah me to. Seems to favor ranged shooting armies and negatively impact CC armies which are already doing it tough
The assault army was on life support prior to this FAQ, it’s utter garbage now. The entire FAQ was basically designed to cater to gunline armies, and you haven’t even mentioned the terrain rules which further hose assault armies.
You should seriously re-examine life choices if you’re building an assault army.
Why would anyone make a purely assault army anyway? That’s never been a good idea and it shouldn’t be.
Also you would have to be up against a pretty poor opponent to get off a T1 deep strike charge anyway.
Why should it be a good idea to have a purely shooty army but not a purely assault army? Shouldn’t the two be even?
If one pure is good, the other should be too. Either that, or neither of them should be good pure and a mix should be required, but that is currently not the case.
I still think “there’s a Nurgling over the wall so you can’t shoot the Daemon Prince standing in front of you” is a stupid ruling. On the other hand, bravo on the 0-3 limitation. I assume that’s for the entire army, not detachments. And will that lift the Commander restriction? Or do Farsight and Shadowsun still gimp you by taking up QFC slots?
0-3 is for armies, yes.
Worth noting the are inbuilt exceptions to some of these, like the deepstrike turn 1 ruling doesn’t effect GSC cult ambush.
Also that some of these are beta rules and event suggestions (like the 0-3), so not matched play canon as it were and they’re wanting feedback. (On the live chat they specially said don’t be afraid to tell us if you hate any of these and why, something we’re all well pracriced at :P)
All rules are suggestions for tournaments just like the detachment limit, the points limit, table size, etc.
And while every event can do what they choose, count on the 0-3 limit being the standard. We are adopting it as it NOVA, LGT, Adepticon, the ITC, etc.
Oh I get that, and I like the changes personally (deepstriking one I like in theory but don’t really play armies like that so can’t attest one way or the other), I just mean it’s worth noting that GW are highlighting the fact they are actively seeking feedback on these.
Any consideration for exemptions? That next FAQ is a far way away, and that is pretty restrictive for armies with limited HQs to fit into manditory slots.
Exemptions? Within hours of the rules dropping?
No, lol, we have to try these things out, otherwise what is the point?
We aren’t supposed to be play testing in a tournament environment, the point of it is to test at home on our own time. People don’t spend money to play in tournaments to test rules.
That requires a game that is set though, and unchanging which 40k is not nor probably ever will be.
And in the context of the tournament, things don’t change. It’s not as if from round to round things alter. The event is fixed but what comes after can change. As a matter of fact, the game WILL change, it is just a matter of when.
And that is good. We want there to be a constant stream of new units, factions, rules updates, etc. We do not want a static game.
I’m personally very happy with this. While I have a very Alpha Strike based Raven Guard list, I feel that while losing the deep striking is hard, keeping Strike From Shadows makes the army more unique and gives it more of a battlefield niche, which, for a Codex compliant force is nice as they otherwise lack variety.
RIP Blood Angels, we hardly knew ye.
They still function, just have to wait a turn or start on the table, etc.
Yes but is that ever going to work vs a competitive gunline army? With half of your power level stranded on the board getting hammered on turn 1 it can’t end well. Using Forlorn Fury/Upon Wings of Fire could be semi-decent but honestly I can’t see Blood Angels as a competitive army after this.
Remember, these rules apply to everyone. And, it is important to have armies actually start on the table or you end up with the Flyrant spam style lists where almost the entire army is off of the table.
BA will be fine, they just have to adjust and mix things up a bit.
For example, my Marine army has 9 units on the table every game, I almost always go second (by choice) and it’s no big deal. So long as you are using decent terrain (which you have to in this edition to have anything approaching a fun game) then you should be able to weather the storm and counter-punch.
Hey Reece. I’ve been thinking a lot about your mantra of “you must have decent terrain”. I agree it’s so important (and I would argue borderline-essential) for the game to work as intended. However so many events can’t, and will probably never be able to, afford enough terrain (see: Adepticon, ETC, Cally) that I think this has to be a problem that the community must address in a more significant way
I mean, what stops them from getting more terrain? If you are running an event you have a responsibility to provide all the tools for a fun and fair competition. And Adepticon has beautiful and plentiful terrain, my only critique there is that it could be a little taller in this edition but there is certainly plenty of it.
Even if you go second this rule means that you would have to wait until your second turn before you could drop right? Or am I misreading it? Not only does that mean that you would be taking two turns of fire from your opponent, but you also risk losing because of Boots on the Ground if you choose to deploy half of your army in deepstrike.
No you could strip drop them on your first turn. Its that your drop zone is limited to your deployment zone. This is fine, if you ds only to preserve Hard hitting units from being blown up in alpha strike without chance to retaliate. This will also make infiltrating units stronger.
I play a deep striking Marine army and I often don’t come in till later turns, anyway. This is a big change for sure, but the intent is to help allow the game to develop a bit for armies that don’t have infiltrators, etc. like AdMech, for example, who now get a little breathing room without having to take Scouts, etc.
If the terrain is the issue 40k tournaments need to get their act together. I mostly go to Infinity Tournaments and you tend to go to an event with 30 tables with whole damn cities built on them. It can’t be so hard to get some spray painted styrofoam rocks that are big enough to block line of sight.
I agree man, but some tournaments are so hard up or they simply don’t have the space to store it. I’m not saying it’s a legit excuse but I’ve already started hearing it from TOs over here
Time for some community organizing to get some terrain made =)
What tables were you at during Adepticon? All of mine were wide open fields with like maybe 6 pieces of terrain on the entire table…It was more or less an exercise in rolling dice..I think I could have saved some money and just played yahtzee at home with the family.
I wasn’t there this year but I am very familiar with their terrain. It covers a good amount of the table it just isn’t tall enough. Like, if there terrain were 6″ tall or what have you, it would be great, but it’s not.
You have to have very big terrain this edition that creates blocked line of fire in 3 dimensions.
Also, bear in mind that BA have tons of tools to get around the assault limitations via stratagems, etc. Really, folks just need to play some games to get a feel for it.
You still get 1-2 powerful hammer units to deepstrike with. (something you should have been limiting yourself to anyways). Blood Angels are going to be fine in this edition. Especially with soup armies getting reigned in.
I don’t see how soup armies are getting reigned in. You can still bring pure detachments within any major faction right? That’s how the majority of soup lists are doing it anyway.
As for your assessment on Blood Angels builds, I have to disagree. Even if you can use Forlorn Fury on a single DC unit in the games where you do go first there’s no way to give them character support. Any gaps in the opponent’s screen which could be exploited by a Slamguinius previously are now safe. This is a significant nerf for pure or almost pure Blood Angels armies which is why I’m saying that they won’t be competitive. Ask Mark Wright what he thinks of this change, considering how his LVO and recent lists are designed I’d reckon that he’s not pleased.
You can’t take a soup detachment any more, so there is no more soup…unless you think of soup as something else?
I always figured that soup referred to lists with the common keyword being Imperium, Aeldari or Chaos. Such as one Custodes detachment, one Astra Militarum detachment and one Admech detachment. Those lists cause balance issues given that a single Imperium codex has to be internally balanced without making Imperium soup too powerful.
Ah, no, that is just using allies. Soup was mixing faction keywords in a single detachment.
Actually soup, in our meta always referred to mixed factions within a single army. It allowed for abusive combos as mentioned elsewhere.
I think different factions within an army is a neat idea, but for competitive play, there needs to be more penalties for mixing as such, for example Ynnari detachment + Alaitoc + Drukhari, etc…
Obviously we all defined it slightly differently but the point to take away is that you can’t have soup in detachments any more.
Reecius: Sorry, I think we’re talking past each other a bit – the take away is absolutely that you can’t soup within detachments – but the argument at hand is that didn’t actually address the issue. I think it was very well intended but fell short.
It’s frustrating because it’s like watching a football team drive all the way across the field and then stop on the 1 yard line without scoring. In practical use, it was too prohibitive to use different factions within a detachment because you would lose the attribute bonus, so really not much has changed at all.
The abuse was in the insane synergy created by taking different detachments made entirely of one faction in the same army (sorry to be a broken record).
Not trying to be combative here, just trying to clearly define the argument. I think as a BETA FAQ this was a huge step in the right direction not only for the game but for GW as a company.
Sorry, I think we’re talking past each other a bit – the take away is absolutely that you can’t soup within detachments – but the argument at hand is that didn’t actually address the issue. I think it was very well intended but fell short.
It’s frustrating because it’s like watching a football team drive all the way across the field and then stop on the 1 yard line without scoring. In practical use, it was too prohibitive to use different factions within a detachment because you would lose the attribute bonus, so really not much has changed at all.
The abuse was in the insane synergy created by taking different detachments made entirely of one faction in the same army (sorry to be a broken record).
Not trying to be combative here, just trying to clearly define the argument. I think as a BETA FAQ this was a huge step in the right direction not only for the game but for GW as a company.
It was actually very common to take mixed faction detachments which is why the rule was put in place. It wasn’t meant to stop people from taking allies. That was never the point.
Glad you like the FAQ overall though and I agree that it is very good for the game as a whole.
Soup is both used to talk about detachments and allies as a whole. While it’s not a perfect fix the rule of 3 and this should help a bit.
At least if someone asks me how to make an Imperium list more competitive I can’t just suggest Celestine, a Company Commander, and three squads of scouts all in a Battalion.
Small victories I guess.
I think it depends on what you define as soup. To myself a soup list would be an army that drew from multiple sources whether in or out of detachments. These lists which typically draw upon a cheap source to generate command points are now even better.
Soup in this case is very much alive and tasty.
Yeah my area also called any army with units drawn from multiple factions a “soup” army, regardless of them being in different detachments. If even one of the armies has a codex, this seems like the preferential way to organize them anyway to get the extra army tactic ability.
I have to agree. This seriously hurts grey knights and blood angels in a pretty fundamental way
Mark Wright ran Primaris Intercessors and actually deployed a good chunk of his army on the board. You should take a look at the power levels of a unit of SGuard, and DC, and a few characters. It is very possible to run a Blood Angels detachment, and possibly other allies or Blood Angels to fill out the rest of your army.
You guys are simply over reacting to news that you haven’t even had a chance to play around with yet. Chill.
Unfortunately, using Mark Wright as an example is flawed. While he’s a nice guy and I have no way of knowing if it was his intent or not, but he misused the Strategems that made his list work the way it did pretty blatantly.
GW didn’t fix Alpha Strike, the neutered Assault.
@Adam
I actually know Mark and play with him at out LGS. You are correct that Mark is a nice guy and he’s a very good player. He also admits that he made a mistake as everyone does at some point of a game, however he talked to the guy that he played after the game and said he would just have used Wings to redeploy then used the 3D6 charge anyways so that wouldn’t have effected the game. The guy he played also agreed that it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
There is nothing in the matched play recommendations to suggest the intended amount of terrain.
By saying you need lots of terrain to make the game work implies there is a problem.
When GW makes the rules they should balance for both min and max terrain (difficult i know), or include terrain recommendations in their matched play table.
If they did that then you could more easily make it a tournament standard.
Since the website is still down, how will the soup rulings affect things like assassins since they do not have HQs and such? Do you have to take the hit in CP and do auxiliary detachments?
They mentioned that they will be including ways to field things like Assassins, Inquisitors, etc.
In the live cast they mentioned the soup rule has a specific list of exceptions (assassins, legion of the damned and sisters of silence were specifically mentioned)
“No soup! You can’t use Aeldari, Imperium, Chaos or Tryanids as a keyword for your detachments.”
You should have seen my reaction. I just my computer chair away from the table screaming YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES
Wait crap, it’s just detachent. NVM :p
Oh well. Derp derp derp.
Yeah, soup is gone.
Is it though? Nothing’s stopping you from taking one Custodes, one IG and one Sisters detachment, or one Nurgle, one CSM and one Thousand Sons. It’s just intra-detachment soup that’s dead, and that was always an edge case.
Yeah, that was what soup was. You are describing allies. Soup was mixing factions in a single detachment.
Sorry to burst your bubble, Reece, but I think you’ll find the vast majority of players consider “soup” to be any list with stuff from multiple codices.
OK, fine, haha. Then no soup detachments, or however you want to define it.
“This is my army of Cadians and Death Korp of Krieg, it-.”
‘OMG SOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!”
@abusepuppy
Why are you strawmanning as though this was a fluff issue? This is a competitive balance issue, how are GW supposed to balance Imperium soup lists and monofaction lists at the same time?
@abusepuppy: C’mon man, that was never the issue, and actig as if it was is disingenuous.
And yet some people seem to think that ANY army that combines more than one faction is “soup,” which is itself blatantly disingenuous. While there is certainly a range of opinions about what should or should not be allowed, the FAQ change places a major limitation on how you can combine codices in the game, and yet people are trying to play it off as though it does absolutely nothing at all.
Yeah, and the claims that no one was doing it? Lol? It was extremely common, especially in the competitive meta.
It is just a first step, punishing the more extreme soup. 1 thing at a time.
How does the change to data sheet limitations affect Tau drones bought through other data sheets i.e. Crisis suits? Can you only take 3 squads of drones ever?
You can only take individual data sheets 3 times. If you take 6 different data sheets that each have drones on them, you’ll have 6 (or more) drones without breaking the rule.
So….the answer to super strong alpha strike armies is to force you to put more on the table so you can be more effectively alpha struck! Am I missing something?
Well, it is more complex than just that. The game in competitive play largely came down to keeping things off of the table and the ability to screen outside of your deployment zone via things like Scouts, Nurglings, etc. Armies that lacked that ability were at a distinct disadvantage.
Again, I get the idea that as an assault heavy player you don’t want to stand there and get shot but as we’ve been saying since 8th ed came out, you HAVE to have good terrain this edition. If you don’t the game is not as fun or fair. With adequate terrain, this rule change allows the game to develop on turn 1 and for armies that lack advanced screens to get in position to defend from reserves, etc.
Give it some test runs before jumping to conclusions. It is a big change but in time I think people will see that what it ends up doing is allowing for a game that is more fair for more armies. You will have to alter your tactics and list to accommodate for sure, but it is not the end of the world for the assault army that played out of reserves.
See my previous comment. This will now be even more vital, yet so many tournaments can’t afford enough terrain
I think community needs solid tutorial how to setup solid table with good LoS limiting. Now more than ever.
Watch a BatRep from one of the televised tournaments or Warhammer Tv … they always refer to the terrain.
The amount of terrain at NOVA and the way it cut down lines of fire was jaw-dropping. Just a hill, wood and a set of ruins that came in the game box are no more.
I know that, but on fb group I constantly see pictures of tables more looking like desert than proper 8ed battlefield.
And peopple qq about being shoot like a duck if they didn’t get first turn.
This topic really deserves separate article, maybe few on may sites for folks to understand and apply.
I think I’ll write one.
Yeah, for sure, lol you HAVE to have lots of terrain for competitive games in 8th ed.
We’ve literally been saying this since day 1 of the edition. Since before day 1, actually, lol.
When I talk to people that get wildly different game results than we do (where things like gunlines are dominant, etc. as they are not here) I always ask what type of terrain they use first. If they don’t have good adequate terrain, they are dictating their meta before anyone rolls a die. With good terrain, all sorts of armies become competitive and the gunline goes down in power significantly.
Maybe they should consider making a minimum terrain rule in the actual rules. Else you get “Tim the shooty player wants less terrain, Joe the assault player wants more, their roll-off to decide effectively determines the game.”
Using just one (big) example. Flyrants can no longer start everything in reserve except spore mines. Meaning they are more prone to getting alpha struck, and at the same time have a harder time alpha striking.
I think it was an elegant and important change.
I am encouraged by all of this. The Pox Walker change is big – needing points held in reserve to go above starting size
Yup.
I am excited that players now get turn 1 to “unpack” and get ready for inbound deepstrikers.
That is the point of it. It is meant to allow the game to develop a turn before the really heavy fighting starts.
Or, alternatively, let’s me kill 45% of the 50% of your army you left on the board and be either so spread out that your deepstrikers have to settle for single isolated squads until I kill them at my leisure or I’m so screened up that they can barely make it to the table.
Either way I’m so far ahead on objective points by my turn three that you just don’t have enough time to catch up before the game ends. You’ll be playing to table.
If that’s the case, you played better than them.
Or you’re playing on planet bowling ball.
Or he has a bunch of indirect fire like biovores and hive guard that don’t give a damn about terrain and are freaking awesome at their job, and the opponent really needed a deep strike unit to get in and disrupt their firing to have a chance, but couldn’t because invincible GW screen.
Love these changes. I think they’re great.
I really like the turn one deep strike limitation as well, as it will cut back on the turn one gank factor that’s not enjoyable.
I’m a little wary about it making IG gunline too good again though. It’s a huge buff to that sort of list…. which raises the gank factor.
Not super stoked about some of these changes (the points/power level to DS’ers, no out of deployment DS Turn 1) but they’re probably better for the same overall. Pretty solid FAQ, I like the change to assassins in particular.
I thought the various changes were by and large great until they got to the deep strike nerfs, which I thought was such a bad change it almost wiped out all positivity from the FAQ by itself. Judging from the reactions on B&C, Dakkadakka, and Facebook, I think a lot of people had the same whiplash when they heard that.
On the Twitch stream, the dev explains how strong shooting alpha strike is, and their solution is….to make it so you can only deep strike into your own deployment zone first turn even though deep strike is one of the few answers to mass shooting (alpha strike or otherwise)? That doesn’t make sense.
This heavy-handed beta rule also ignores the fact that you can *already* mitigate enemy alpha deep striking with scouts/infiltrators/screens, but nothing you can do about shooting alpha striking (especially with many tables being limited to 4-5 medium- and small-sized building and some craters for terrain and the rest is open LOS). Not to mention that in many cases, deep striking also means you need to 1) also deep strike support characters and string them in range and 2) make the charge.
Other than GSC units and a few others with special options, I don’t know why anyone would bother running melee now. Shooting is already extremely strong in 8th and the ability to gamble on deep strike charges was one of the few things maintaining some sort of parity. Not to mention how difficult this makes it for ITC to score first blood / kill on first turn / kill more on first turn / etc. for armies with few or no effective long-range killing units, such as Daemons.
I was already top 5 ITC for Daemons for the season with just a few mediocre RTT results because so few people are playing them competitively. With this beta rule, I don’t know why even I would bother to keep trying to play Daemons under such lopsided circumstances when I could just switch to Astra Militarum or Tau without having to worry anymore about the one remaining thing that might have thrown my shooting armies for a loop.
It is still a beta rule, tell them you don’t like it.
If the beta rules post-Chapter Approved were anything to go by, we are stuck with this boondoggle for all ITC competitive play until the next official GW game update, which is presumably in December with the next CA. So best assumption is that right now we are stuck with this beta rule for ~8 months out of the 2018-2019 season.
Daemons are quite good, Nurgle particularly have been doing work. Nanavati had them as a core part of his army at top table at Adepticon and Josh Death whose been leading the ITC all season, also plays nurgle Daemons.
And the idea was that for armies that don’t have nurglings/scouts to have a chance to set up screens and board control prior to getting creamed. Armies that don’t have it as an option where at a big disadvantage.
Melee is not dead, lol, it is WAY too early to be making sweeping claims like that.
Try it out for a while. The pripose of beta rules is to put them out in the wild and get some feedback on them before making them a part of the rule-book. However, I think with time it will become evident that this isn’t the end of the world or anything. Just need to adapt.
And yeah, tournaments need lots of tall terrain. This is a great opportunity for communities to come together and help make some for collective benefit.
Reece – I appreciate the response, but you are just further demonstrating my original point. Not only could you only think of two prominent examples, but neither of those two examples even work.
Nick N. had zero Daemon Faction units/detachments in his Adepticon list. Josh Death’s usual list is more than 50% Death Guard, and the Daemons he does bring are basically just a few Nurglings, some Horrors to feed the Poxwalkers, and a Poxbringer to buff the Plagueburst Crawlers. Josh does have 1 of 4 of his events listed as Chaos Daemons, but that’s only because he incorrectly recorded himself as Chaos Daemons rather than as Chaos at Adepticon.
So like I said, there’s a reason only 3 people in the world are ahead of me in the Chaos Daemon rankings even though all I have recorded are 3 so-so records at RTTs: they were not seen as a competitive option even after the codex and even before this beta change.
If the best you can say is that on occasion a codex gets taken as minor allies, that’s already a bad sign. By gutting deep strike and pushing people even harder towards shooting armies, the main accomplishment is a short-sighted rule that pulls the plug on a faction that at least had deep strike as a life support option. And while Daemons are the ones most dramatically regulated to the storage closet by this change, it’s the same issue to a lesser extent for all melee armies except GSC. It’s a terrible idea and that’s why you’re seeing an extremely harsh reaction from a lot of people across a lot of platforms today.
I misspoke on Nick N. yeah, forgot he didn’t have Nurgle Daemons at Adepticon. But, Josh is using lots of Nurgle, actually, with Drones and such. They’re very strong.
But, that is irrelevant really. Our opinions of the strength or a codex or not is a discussion for another time.
And the rule is what it is. GW felt it was the right call, so it is time to adapt. You may not like it, which is fine, and you may want to vent, which is also fine, but at this stage we really just need to learn to make it work, give GW feedback and roll with it.
I don’t really know what feedback to give GW other than that at least 8 months of no one playing Chaos Daemons faction in competitive play, and the other melee armies also getting played even less than before, is not a good “balance” change and is a really a not-fun middle finger to anyone who wasn’t already previously pushed to “shoot-shoot-shoot” 8th edition.
At least now we know which way the meta will go, given that this removes the last lingering incentive to play with melee units and armies beyond the most hyper-mobile of units.
You are most assuredly overreacting but, that is somewhat understandable considering this is new information and you’re having an emotional reaction to it. In a few weeks I am sure you will feel differently as you move from reaction to finding ways to work within the new confines.
Daemon players feel bad, Reece. Perhaps instead of telling them they’re emotional and overreacting like sure talking to children when they’re giving you actually thought out, detailed posts, you could either ignore them or try and see their perspective, especially since you have personally seen the exact same results at events as any of us.
Sincerely, Tzeentch for years and now on a shelf.
Please feel free to mock me at your leisure.
No one is mocking anyone, lol. I am just saying, people who are claiming something is unplayable, or utterly broken or some other such overreaction is just that: an overreaction. If in a few months we all notice a real issue, we can take action. At this early stage we should be giving it a shot and adjusting, seeing how it plays in reality instead of making sweeping proclamations without any experience with it.
However, I completely agree this isn’t exactly the time or place. Thanks for your time.
Man, I feel like I’ve been having a lot of fun with Daemons and Daemon Engines so far(and doing fairly well). While this does limit running mass PBC’s, I definitely feel like there are work-arounds.
I’m super excited about this FAQ.
Totally agree. what can i do to protect against Guard artillery spam – nothing.
Overall, I like the changes. More command points is always a nice bonus!
Not too sure about the Smite changes. Even with the Beta rules, Smite spam was still strong and not fun to play. The only bonus was it was more difficult to get the D6 damage one after a couple. Now you have the potential to do it at any time.
It’s much better now, though.
Reece – that warlock nerf is looking absurd.
Who would ever bring a 55 point psycher that dies when he trips over a stone and only casts on WC 7? And each warlock in a conclave, which already wasn’t good, went from 30 to 45?
Warlocks are junk now, total garbage. They’ll never be seen again.
The psykers weren’t good?
You jest, right? They were the core units to many winning Eldar armies like Nick Nanavati’s LVO/ITC winning army…The Conclave is amazingly good, go back and read the article I wrote about using them a while back. Their strats are mega strong.
Also, just compare them to other psykers, they were under-priced comparatively speaking to equivalent units in other books. You may disagree of course (and remember, I didn’t write these rules, I am just trying to provide some context so don’t kill the messenger, lol) but obviously the game devs felt they were too cheap for what they had to offer.
And if you weren’t using them before then oh well, right? Nothing changed for you.
Nick’s LVO list had one Warlock. On foot. Just there to fill the necessary batallion slot cheaply.
I do not think holding up that list is evidence that Warlocks needed to be crushed.
With the changes to targeting characters and the 0-3 limit on warlocks, any “warlock spam” potential was already eliminated.
Now they’re bad for their points when taken in low numbers as well.
I do use warlocks sometimes because they’re fun, sort of quick and dirty.
They suck because they constantly fail their warp charge roll, costing me CPs if I need their power to work, and they cost me CPs when I re-roll them off their damn perils to keep them from blowing up my own army.
Now I have to pay 55 points minimum for that. It just makes no sense.
That is not why the warlock was there I would bet. It was there to trigger the strat. with the farseer and cast quicken on a six up.
Exactly.
@Reece, from what I’m looking at Nick Nanavati’s list had 0 conclaves and 1 warlock.
Spiritseers and Warlocks, yeah.
Anyway, lol, I’m not trying to split hairs here. All I am saying is that you guys are being very hyperbolic about Eldar psykers and that they were and are not “total garbage” or whatever, and were getting used successfully.
The Warlocks are incredibly powerful. Those little casters of the RoB powers are often the crux of a list. If you don’t realise how powerful spells like Quicken and Jinx are, you haven’t been playing long enough. Reece is right, warlocks, even taken in small numbers, are hugely influential
The spells are great sure. But they are totally overpriced now
If they would have 3 wounds and normal smite for those times when your quiken warlock is allready useless since you dont need more quickens. It would have been okey at least.
But 55p for the worst smite out there. 2w 3t model? Then primaris psiker should have been nerfed to 70p minimun lol
No one ever casts Smite with their Warlocks. Pretending that is a relevant factor in the equation is a complete red herring.
The reason Warlocks (and Spiritseers) were strong was because they came with an incredibly strong psychic discipline. Jinx, Protect, Conceal, Quicken, and Restrain were all powers that could make or break a game on their own. And while WC7 was certainly not easy to cast, it was hardly impossible, either.
Is 55pts too much? Maybe, maybe not. They’re no longer the cheapest psyker in the game, at least, but whether or not this will change how often Craftworlds take them remains to be seen.
(Oh and Primaris Psykers have a vastly worse discipline, worse statline, and worse invuln, so don’t go and pretend like the 10pt price difference doesn’t mean anything.)
Runes of battle are still amazing and still worth taking them for.
The mega-nerf to Warlocks is just plain bizarre. Uncalled for and vicious. They won’t see a table until 9th edition.
You guys do realize Warlocks/Conclaves/Spiritseers were core parts of most winning Eldar armies, right? Seems like there is a disconnect on this one…
That doesn’t justify 55 point warlocks.
The theme of the Eldar army according to the book is a system of synergistic buffs and such. But you can’t do that with 55 point (and up) warlocks that die to a stiff fart.
Reapers costing more, hellz yes that was needed. Farseers, okay. Spiritseers were undercosted. But that warlock bump was way over the top. These flimsy things can’t even get their powers off half the time and now they eat a lot of your points doing it. If they came with another wound or some way to avoid the clownish perils they take, maybe this would be reasonable………… but like this it’s just not.
And hey, you are welcome to hold whatever opinion of it you choose. Please remember: I did not decide the points for the units, haha. I understand you are venting but it’s not my call to make.
Reece are you saying you feel the Warlock at 55 points is fairly priced?
And furthermore, were there any changes in the FAQ that you felt were mistakes by GW?
I wasn’t trying to justify anything just explaining why they were increased in cost.
The 35 to 55 point warlock nerf is joke. They cant cast full smite, they have 2 wounds. The spiritseer has 4W and can cast full smite.
The spiritseer nerf was evident the 45 to 65 is fair.
Again, I did not personally change the points, lol. I am sorry you don’t like it but venting at me is pointless.
As I have been saying, the Warlock was a core component to many winning Eldar lists and was very good due to the nature of how strong their powers and strats were, but some of you here didn’t see that or didn’t agree, which is cool, I am just telling you the why. And honestly, their ability to Smite or not really isn’t what makes them so strong, but hey, to each their own.
Why are you surprised? Every Craftworlds army ran at least one, and usually multiple, casters from Runes of Battle. And those armies were winning major events.
Obviously no one wants to see their units increased in price, but pretending that it was “uncalled for” is pure self-delusion.
So long 5 cyberwolves. I hardly knew you
At least i can survive turn 1 now and don’t need vanilla scouts as a must have
Space wolves mostly shrug at this FAQ and carry on
Bjorn auto take is probably warrior born now
Yeah, you will a lot of this. Now you don’t have to have Nurglings or Scouts or whatever just to feel like you have a chance to hold things back.
Would the Tau homing beacon let you deep strike outside of your deployment zone turn one?
From a Tau perspective it pushes coldstars even further ahead of commanders and is a bit of a kick in the nuts for crisis suits.
On the other hand nerfs to soup armies is huge for Tau as they largely don’t have access to it.
I’d be surprised if any exemptions are allowed, besides the GSC ambush that’s written into the BETA rules.
No, as the Homing Beacon only overrides the limitations on the Manta Strike rule, not on the limitations on reserves themselves.
Tau benefit a lot from the weakening of the top-tier armies (especially Craftworlds, who are very problematic for them, and Tyranids, who are dangerously aggressive.)
Cheers for the clarification.
Gives my Ghostkeels and Stealth Suits some more time to play in the middle of the board.
The nerf to soup armies is irrelevant. No one was taking mixed detachments anymore anyway. Every soup list you’ve seen since LVO will be BETTER not worse.
Soup detachments were still very popular.
And the idea was not to hurt allies, but to stop the mixing of factions within a detachment, which was accomplished.
The only 3 data slate thing is sooooooo good. As in “I’m gonna start building up new armies again” good because I was pretty much in a holding pattern to see how things go. The “take everything all the time” approach didn’t work for me. I don’t know if it is a tick but if I collect an army I want to have pretty much all the options. And I very much liked it while having 3 Annihilation Barges was all I knew I could use so I knew I was done.
The no soup thing is kind of a shocker. I honestly had though they had intended the Imperium and Chaos to work like that. Do Chaos units still have other common keywords like Tzenntsh or something so Thousand Sons can still get their own god’s demons and such?
This is gonna hit some collections hard.
I’m honestly impressed at this. It seems to go hard again the “sell everything in unlimited numbers to everyone” policy they’ve ahd since 7th.
Chaos stuff has their god as a faction keyword so you could still do a Khorne detachment for example 🙂
Gotcha. I didn’t get that it is just for a single detachment at first so you can still mix demons and Chaosmarines anyway.
Why make it half PL and not use half points. We track points in matched play.
PL is significantly easier to work out on the fly and produces smaller numbers so much easier to work out what you can do.
Uhh I disagree why make me track anything new at all when points are a fine substitute. This is for Matched Play so points are what is going to be on your army list not PL. Now I have to add PL to my spreadsheet b/c battlescribe is crap and GW can’t get off its ass and make a decent matched play army builder.
There are mission that use PL so you probably should be doing that anyway. And PL is easier to work out, a unit being 5 for unit of 5 or 10 for more and working out if that’s half of 62 is a lot easier than figuring out if your units of 173 points can fit into half of 1996.
I agree the use of power level is daft. I think it’s supposed to be about 20 points per power level. 30 deviourer gaunts 240 points 30 fleshborer gaunts 180 points, both are 8 power levels. The other problem is that the power levels jump when you get to the next bracket bed on myself so with Termagants going from 10 to 11 jumps you from 3 to 6 power levels so people will have odd numbers in squads to max power levels for deep striking purposes. Keep power levels in open play where they belong.
Would have liked to see the Wraithknight get some love. I haven’t seen a single one at a tournament in months and none in a high level list. There’s just too much firepower out there.
*counts days until chapter approved II*
Yeah, remember Chapter Approved is for points fine tuning, the FAQs are only for high priority stuff (what GW deems to be high priority, of course, individuals may disagree).
I get that is intended to be the case, but… was Ghillieman really still a big priority? Were Commissars a huge issue? I feel like there were other units that were much more over/underpowered than either of those two.
I think the current design philosophy is that they don’t want super-heavies in standard size games, so they’re intentionally “erring on the high side” for their point cost.
In general I’m liking this FAQs. A lot. I think everything in them will help the game overall, though I do agree that melee deep strikers have been nerfed more than needed. Removing turn 1 deep strikes looks reasonable. However disallowing movement powers to be used afterwards is anwkard. The only really competitive list that was doing that was blood angels, and they already got nerfed a lot with this FAQ. Oh and maybe tzaangors, but those got hit hard by removing soups. I must admit I don’t see the purpose of that change in particular, but everything else looks great.
Other issue I would like to rise is that, while discussing the rule changes with the local community, someone brought up that nids strat Pathogenic Slime (+1 Damage for a monster during the shooting phase) needed a FAQ because it says it can be used in the shooting phase without further specification and the other day someone had used it after resolving the attacks, effectively doubling the damage he made after seeing he had got lucky… It is true that it doesn’t specifically say the stratagem must be used before targeting the enemy, but it looks to me too counter-intuitive to use this kind of modifier after your opponent rolls his saves… Is this right? If not, could you please tell me exactly where it says you can’t do that or explain it with arguments so that I can tell this guy he can’t do it? He’s the kind of WAAC player no one likes to play against and won’t be brought to reason if I can’t show something from the book…
As a Black Templar player these beta changes worry me because they seem to be done with the top armies in mind and in order to nerf certain combos or over-performing units and thats fine, the problem is since the external playtesters are only keeping these top armies in mind it means whatever nerfs hit them will hit me as well, it will trickle down to the bottom armies with no buffs to these new limits. For example the 3 units limit will mean I cant take more than 3 units of Vanguard Veterans, were they such a problem unit that they needed that? My codex doesnt have that many options for close combat and the codex itself does not support close combat at all, lets not pretend that it does. So now my choices of units are also becoming more limited than before.
Same with deployment, now I cant put all my eggs in the deep strike basket and make the most of my Chapter Tactic, now I will need to walk up the board and pray I dont get shot off before I make a charge which wont ever hurt as much as a Blood Angel or Khorne charge so the its much riskiers and less rewarding than the top armies or just better armies.
So it seems like this army will be, yet again and for a fourth consecutive edition, in the bottom of the barrel.
What makes you think playtesters only keep top lists in mind?
And where you taking more than 3 units of Vanguard Vets? I never see casual players spamming units in great than 3’s.
The challenge is to try and not see this only in how it impacts your specific army but how it impacts the game.
I really don’t see much in here that hurts BT.
Ok, so what other units should I bring in a close combat army? Vanguard Veterans are easily the only ones that are cheap-ish and bring good enough power weapons, Assault Squads and Reivers are fine for tying up cheap units but they will never have much kill potential, so now I have even less options in terms of good close combat units that can kill stuff since I can only bring 3 units of Vangaurd Veterans or 3 units of Terminators, I guess the real answer is not to rely on assault since thats not the name of the game but our CT makes us focus that way, hell all our characters are meant for combat.
As for the deployment nerf it just, again, limits my options in terms of what I can do with Black Templar CT, instead of using it to tie up things in turn 1 or get stuck in I simply have to move up the board which is, again, much riskier and less rewarding than other armies whereas before I could reliably tie up certain units early on for me to have a chance to get into combat later in the game.
To me this FAQ seems like just one big loss for an army that wasnt really good at close combat to begin with but I dont know maybe you have some sort of knowledge of how to play Black Templars or how GW wants BT to play but its obvious to me that deep striking en mass is gone out the window and whatever reliability our tactic gave us in that area is now meaningless since less unit will mean that they will be focus down easier than before.
I guess I should apologize for sounding too whiny but Im just tired of getting nerfed for the past 4 editions, I am tired of being crap and then getting nerfed.
As a fellow BT player I feel your pain but don’t forget that BT also like shooting things at close range. In my experience our crusader squads are one of our best assets. You can load them up with gear in minimal units and shove 2 in a rhino before dumping them in front to shoot before assaulting. Also we have strengths in using the scout forward screen to get or deny stratagem off which can hinder a lot of plans/builds. IE keep that warptime from going off. While a 4+ may not seem strong, but it is since they can’t defend against it.
Also company veterans are a way around your vanguard issue, only down side is that they cannot take jump packs so a transport is a must.
While I agree we are not as strong of an army and I miss having our own codex, I do believe we have some strengths to lean on.
I agree but the fact that our Tactic pushes towards assault means our shooting is weaker. My main problem this FAQ is a nerf to top tier armies that trickles down to the low tier armies who also get equally nerfed because GW/Playtesters only cared for the top tier armies, its just a loss for these types of armies, not Black Templars are hurt but also Grey Knights which is why I question that GW/Playtesters really care for the underperforming armies that are not in the tourney circle.
This just exacerbates the weakness that our Tactic forces upon our army as the codex itself does not really support close combat of which we must focus as its our tactic, otherwise we might as well not have a Chapter Tactic.
This just brings more problems to an already lacking army, I would love to see more options but instead I get less and worse options. Mostly Im just tired of having a crap army thats been crap for the past 8+ years.
You’re forgetting about the best assault unit in the codex, the humble company veteran. 16 points base with 2 attacks, sergeant has 3 attacks, only two veterans needed for an elite choice. Take three 2-man squads for an easy vanguard detachment, normal vet with plasma gun and chainsword, sergeant with power fist and storm bolter, run all six in a twin assault cannon predator. You have 9 power fist attacks, 9 chainsword attacks, 6 plasma gun shots with rapid fire, and 12 storm bolter shots for 177 points.
You don’t sounds whiny bro, you just sound like you are only looking at this in how it impacts you and not the game as a whole which is pretty common.
It also helps you. It limits crazy units from dropping down right in your face and blasting you, or assaulting you. it impacts everyone remember, not just your faction. That is what people always forget at first.
And again, deep strike turn 2. I find it is often better anyway. With the re-roll charges, BT will be way better at it than most armies who can no longer move again after coming in from reserves with say, warp time or what have you.
The problem is that it’s arbitrary. It has nothing to do with the power of the units being ‘spammed’ it’s not centered around balance, there’s nothing to it except making themselves feel better.
Why is it 3? Why is 3 the right number? Why not 4? Or 2? Or 1? There isn’t a real reason they just wanted to be seen as doing something so they picked the easiest possible option.
How is 3 the easiest possible number? Any number would have been arbitrary.
Three is the magic number for many strategum … look at predator Killshot etc
So what happens to Cypher or Fallen units that have the Imperial and Chaos keywords?
Cypher and Fallen have imperial and chaos keywords. How would this affect them?
Interesting no ones brought up the no movement after deepstrike. No warptime/SFD/Hive mind. So deepstriking assault units need to fight though bubble wrap, no turn one deepstrikes and then hit hard 9s unless you happen to have a 3d6 strat. Going to play test, but this feels like the we’re slipping back into gunlines.
Dropping SL down in a pod to move him for an auto charge was one of those things that made me go “OMG HOLY SHIT!!!!!!! LOL TIME TO REKT FACE!!!!11” when the Indexes dropped.. but in reality, it’s not that good. He’d usually hit a screen or a unit, kill it or kill most of it, then get shot to death the next turn.
No more Turn 1 charges from DS, however, is going to make gun lines even stronger IMO.
A little nugget everyone seems to be missing is Craftworlds/Drukhari units included in Ynnari detachments can take relics from those books now. That is huge as the Craftworlds codex has some incredibly powerful relics that you previously had to pay 1 CP to access. Win
No, a Ynnari detachment still forbids the free relics because to get the Ynnari detachment you still need a Yvraine, The Yncarne or The Visarch as your warlord which means you don’t get the free relic.
No, you don’t get the free relics. There is still the warlord requirement to get a free relic and to use the Ynnari you still need Yvraine, The Visarch or The Yncarne to be your warlord.
Have a read of the faq again. You will be pleasantly surprised
I stand corrected – I think I got over excited when I first read it
Overall I think the changes for the game are good. No more warp time after deep strike really hurts my 10 combiplas terminators though. Also guard is going to be top dog again calling it now
Yeah, my Termi-bomb died a sad death, too, lol. But honestly? The drop and pop mega dick punch combos on top of turn 1 were really not great for the play experience of most gamers.
I agree it wasn’t good for the game. But it feels like like gun lines are even more so the way to go, and I know csm gun line can’t stand toe to toe with other armies. Hopefully I’m just missing something and people will prove me wrong.
But wouldn’t have those combos been curtailed by the changes to deepstikes in your own deployment zones? I guess blowing nearly 800pts to have Swarmlord connect a glass cannon unit like stealers just shifts the game to hard? Y’all ready for leaf blower armies to return?
…but don’t they mainly exist as specific ways to COUNTER just how strong Shooting is in general?
And no, the answer is NOT “moah terrainz!” Plenty of folks play on Endor and armies still get wiped off the board T1.
OK, what do you want me to say, dude? Lol, I am trying to provide potential solutions, you can mock it by saying things like “moah terrainz” or whatever silly response you feel like posting, but that’s what I’ve got. I did not write these rules. However, they are the rules now so we need to adjust. You can be grumpy about it or look for ways to enjoy the new game.
Reecius, I really respect you for sure and you’re an awesome dude who knows his ish.
But why so defensive about all these changes? People have valid feedback and *every single time* you basically say “yeah, but…..” or “no that doesn’t suck!”
Yes, you’re spot on people are venting 100%, but for sure some of these changes are iffy.
Take for example Drukhari – Do you know how many HQ’s I can choose? Yeah, one. You know how many Battalions I can bring now? Yeah, one (unless I pay the tax for a Drazhar I’ll never use…..). I wanna run Red Grief – guess how many HQ’s I have? One. GW made some blanket changes and yes, we need to take some time and take it in/playtest but you’re – and I swear I’m not trying to be rude – but you’re sounding like a lapdog for GW.
Basically I bet even you have some parts you disagree with. You don’t need to defend GW from every single disagreement, just take it in, write and article and like us we’ll see where this goes.
That said ~80-90% of the changes I like. Even the Deepstrike stuff MIGHT be acceptable; but it’s completely true that this is buffing gunline armies. ESPECIALLY if you were to try and DS versus them as now half your army is away from the board (and these are normally your best units I might add).
So yeah, sorry to vent like everyone else but.. yeah. Keep up the good work man
I get it, I’m just trying to be helpful here. Sometimes I disagree with folks or try to show them that things aren’t so bad or what have you. I don’t actually feel defensive or anything, so I don’t mean to come across that way.
For the record dude, I don’t want to be lumped into the same category as that asshat. I’m still concerned about terrain, but my original comment was to suggest that most tournaments have serious practical and financial limitations to just increasing their terrain. Your suggestion of community support of this probably needs a bit more plugging
Lmao Reecius you brave soul. To wade into the comment section of anything having to do with a GW FAQ. Truely you are are a saint.
Anywho i really love all the changes. Even the ones i hate. The deep strike change has be abit down on my daemons army, but i can see there are other options. Plus when i look at my other list i know alot of time and effort of my list goes toward protecting against said Deep strikes. Which is pretty limiting when very few units can do be of any help against deep strikes.
I know, right? Lol, but it is good to try and help provide some context to these rulings to alleviate some of the freak outs.
It’s not voluntary. It’s part of his obligation as one of the 40k Illuminati. They let him destroy suit commander spam and this is his penance in exchange.
lololol
Clearly the truth is that you despise Frankie and his T’au so much you want to cripple him!
So now ruins are basically immune to charge? You can fill up a floor of ruins so that a base can’t fit with 2-3 models
Answered on stream – yes. GG khorne daemons/orks
This is probably the only ruling I am not a fan of. Some of those sector mechanicus pieces and ruins become pretty stalwart bastions against cc heavy armies.
Yeah, it doesn’t sit well. In a best case scenario, it’s just accidentally frustrating. In a worst case scenario, it’s actively abusive. I don’t see any situation under which this would improve someone’s game experience.
Agree, My Wrathes that in the Fluff and Rules can phase through all MATTER will never ever be able to get on to the Second or higher floors of buildings.
Since Terran is not official (as in it must be x by x to play) thank gods I don’t see this as a real rule to enforce as it is too broad. Just let the “Wobbly Model” rule stand and let only a few units get into combat but let it be possible.
Heavily agreed puppy. Whenever this rule comes up, someone is going to be angry. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of wiggle room such as “how much of my base needs to sit to fit? What if my model is top heavy and falls over even normally? What if their model’s arm is in the way? What if I just need to orientate the model so that the base is not perfectly parallel to the ground?”
It’s such a bad situation for sportsmanship also. Simply using that rule as written will have you viewed as a bad sport, and the other guy trying to get around it in any shape or form will have him viewed the same. Very shortsighted call on this one.
Not to mention things like Wave serpents which no part of the model is within an inch of the ground on the base provided in the box. So it cannot charge and other things cannot charge it. I guess I should be making my character bases like 12″ tall.
Mostly, I am a fan. Definitely like how they tweaked Smite from the beta. Killing Soup Detachments off is win, tho I wish they’d come up with a better way to handle the “leftover” Units, like adding an “Agents of the Imperium” Faction Keyword or something. The Rule of Three, I also mostly like, but it’s kind of a bummer not to be able to bring a backup fourth Predator for the Killshot Stratagem. Nothing that I really dislike, tho, just a few things I think could have been done better.
Reese,
I am a fan of the majority of the FAQ. It will be nice to see actual armies on the table. My only real complaint is the adverse impact of the rule of 3 on fluffy armies, specifically space marine bikes. For 5 editions we were able to run all bike armies with the being either troop choices or having unique force organization charts. Insert 8th edition and we still can with the introduction of the outrider detachment. However the rule of 3 takes my bike army (which everyone can agree is not overly competitive but a fun list) and tosses it out the window.
I could see this argument being made for other fluffy armies like Deathwing or Ravenwing.
In a perfect world, I would like to see the ability to take space marine bikes and make them troops in the same way that Chaos Space Marines can make noise marines and berserkers troops. Less ideal would be to have them be an exception to the rule of 3.
I have emailed GW about it, but who knows how that will go.
Thoughts?
Good point there, but if you play in say, narrative games it won’t be an issue. In tournament play the 0-3 is great but it can hamstring a Deathwing army or what have you.
I mean, in those specific instances you could go max unit sizes and then combat squad?
I think Bike armies could still be viable, but maybe you won’t be getting as many command points.
You could always take the maximum number of models in a unit and combat squad them. That gives you the potential for 6 Bike squads, but only using 3 Datasheets.
It might be harder for Space Marines to field an all-Bike army, but Ravenwing should be ok. You have Black Knight Bikers that eat up a lot of points, plus the speeder units.
Also, you can use the index Bike Command squads to add a further 3 Bike units (though at a really expensive cost!).
As well as Scout Bikes, Land Speeders, and other “support” units.
If you really are set on running a 2K army of pure bikes you might struggle a bit, but I think otherwise it’s fine.
Really glad to see GW taking some initiative and applying the 0-3 unit restriction and canning the soup BS. Those two rules alone solve sooooooooo many problems.
The restrictions to deep striking are also nice and will hopefully reduce the amount of the alpha striking that goes on (which let’s be honest isn’t any fun to play with or against).
FAQ is exciting! Changes look good and I love the idea letting t1 breathe and be less decisive. Mostly I just wanted to give you guys a positive comment but I am worried a bit about the ruins change.
Cant say I’m a fan of the ability to make something immune to charges. Still, a minor slight that can be easily fixed if it becomes a problem.
Hey Reece, will the beta rules become effective immediately for ITC rules?
I understand that TOs can decide on their own, but I want to know what you guys are planning.
Yeah, we always adopt new Beta rules right away.
Is there a reason for that?
Seems like a dangerous precedence…I mean, isn’t the whole point of being “Beta” that everyone gives them time to marinate?
If they are “so good” that the external playtesters/tournament scene adopt them right away…then why not just make them official?
But if there’s some doubt and GW needs to see how they work “in the wild” first…then why rush to write them in stone at the highly competitive level?
Also, to follow up to your response to my “moah terrainz” comment way up, I’m not trying to attack you or any of this, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.
i.e. right now on the FB page GW staff are actively telling people to IGNORE these Beta rules…yet the tournament scene has already gotten the tattoo on their foreheads.
Just trying to keep up.
There’s no danger of using these. We’ve used every beta rule when it has come out, and it has been positive.
And yeah, the entire point is to use these rules while they are in beta form to give feedback to GW before they go into the rule-book. Just like with the smite change that was altered and when it became official today the feedback we gave while using them went to good use.
There’s no avoiding it is what I am saying. We can play it now, get used to it, see what is strong and less strong about it and then fine tune it now while we can.
>Is there a reason for that?
Beta rules need to be tested to know whether they work or not. If the community refuses to use them, no real data can be gathered on the subject (either objective or subjective.)
Admittedly, there are situations in which I think it’s prudent not to adopt rules, i.e. when it’s absolutely clear that they will have a negative impact on the game. (I’m looking at you, 6E Escalation rules.) But in most cases, and especially in 8E, I don’t think that is the case.
Thanks Reece.
I’m generally not one for salt, but boy does the 0-3 leave kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
Probably because I was getting pretty damn excited to dust off an army that had been sitting in cases for the last 6-7 years, spent a bunch of money to get them up to speed how I wanted, and then to have that army invalidated 8 days after the codex drops because they decided to only give them a single HQ choice for each sub-army and now I can’t do anything CLOSE to what I wanted, thus incurring more cost to make them playable.
I just don’t see why THAT cherry needed to be on this cake. How many units, TRUELY, were getting spammed 4+? Now factor in the other changes this FAQ did. How many of those are still an issue? MAYBE Shield-Captains on bikes, if you think they’re actually a big problem which I don’t? But you know. RIP pure Kabal/Wych Cult/Haemy Cult.
Other than that it’s all pretty good though! 😀 Except a personal gripe of thinking they pushed Reapers a few points past true viability. 36ppm for T3 1W 3+? Hard pass. They hit hard, but it’s not THAT hard. But that’s just my opinion.
Still though, how many units do you *want* 4 of in even a pure subfaction list? I’d have thought by the time you’ve bought your 2 HQs, 3 Troops in obligatory transports, 3 Ravagers and 3 Razorwings you’re getting kinda tight on points to start bringing more of those same units.
Specifically? Archons. Archons are the ONLY HQ available to Kabals, and I was running a patrol and 2 battalions, very troop heavy. Archons aren’t anything to write home about, in fact I consider them almost a tax at that point but you NEED them to make the detachments. I now can only do either a patrol+one battalion or a brigade. The former leaves me hurting bad for CP compared to 90%+ of lists out there now, the later forces me to spend a ton of points on BS I don’t want and cut corners that I don’t want.
@Reece, yeah this guy has a point, the 0-3 thing doesn’t work that well for Dark Eldar players, ones that weren’t really spamming anything.
You also have Drahzar, Lilith and Urien to take 2 Battalions of any flavor of Drukhari. Although, due to their unique list rules, it can be more restrictive for them.
Huh? Lelith is Cursed Blade only, Urien is PoF only?
What if I wanna go Dark Creed or Red Grief?
What if I wanna go with my ORIGINAL choice of Kabals only as they’re my favorite faction in the entire game?
Yeah, Drukhari have the most restrictions for sure due to their unique nature. You have to use Drahzar to double down on a Battalion of the same faction. He’s actually really good imo, but yeah, it is a bit restrictive until such a time as new HQs were to come out.
@Reece – okay more or less fine with Lelith and Urien.
The problem Is Drazzy, as he’s pure assault while Kabal is shooty. You can toss in Incubi as free agents, but the beta rule handcuffs you into it which isn’t fun.
Again, I get it. Drukhari have some really cool and interesting rules but they also have some restrictions other armies don’t. It makes them a bit weird to work with but they also have an amazing, fun and strong dex. It’s trade-off.
Personally I prefer taking 1 of each sub-faction but I understand that not everyone does. Frankie typically goes 1 Kabal and 1 Wych Cult. If you want 2 Kabals, yeah, you have to take Drahzar which can be frustrating but a lot of armies similar situations with limited HQs, or expensive HQs (AdMech), or they have to take a specific one to get the army they want, etc. That specifically is not a unique situation.
Reece to my knowledge only Drazhar is takable in any detachment without giving up obsessions. So max 4 HQs for kabal lists.
Also did you guys see the nerf to move abilities for deepstrikers coming or was that new to you.
Could swear there have been tactica articles that specifically talked about doing it.
Yes, that is what I was saying. Wyches and Covens have a special character, Drahzar is a free agent. But yeah, Kabals have a cap of 4 HQ.
The change to movement was not new to me but obviously I couldn’t write about it before it was published or tell any of the staff writers that are not NDA’d about it, either. It is one of the challenges I have to work through running the blog.
I agree, they’re too expensive now to be that great, especially when you include the cost increase on their psychic support.
108 points for three T3 models with 3+ saves (plus exarch wound) is junk. They don’t hit hard enough to justify that.
Yup. I was hoping for more like a 2-4, probably 3 ppm increase. Especially with the partial neutering of the thing that made them ridiculous to begin with, that would have been ok. 7 points pretty ridiculous. Same thing that happened to Shadow Spectres though, pushed out of viability.
I used 18 of them and would HAPPILY admit to them being undercosted. THAT undercosted? Nope. They also filled a pretty specific niche in the army (They are solid against most things, yes.) that I’m not sure any other unit can REALLY fill that well if at all. So that sucks.
Dow futures for Harlequin Codex stock fell 8% on Wall Street today as word of increased gunline spam stoked fears of one-turn matches.
Most of the FAQ that I saw wasn’t bad or was good or interesting in some way.
But then they went and decided that you can no longer charge a unit in terrain if there isn’t enough room for your unit to be placed within 1″, no room for wobbly model syndrom (like in the previous edition), nothing.
Did the shooty armies really needed to be immune to assault by standing on 2″ tall crates and by filling top ruin floors? Melee centric factions will have a hard time to scramble enough firepower to blast a hole for chargers, especially when the enemy can just remove the models from the rear and keep the unchargeable frontline for as long as possible.
I also just saw this rule myself and have to amend my previous statement about being ok with almost all the changes. I really can’t believe that they thought assault was so harsh that you needed to be able to make units immune to it. Considering a lot of the terrain I see at events and in the shops around my entire state that will be SO easy to abuse.
Well, remember, that rule has the most room for interpretation by your TO.
Where is this actually written? Not seeing it in the big FAQ.
It is in the BRB FAQ. Almost all of the FAQs were updated, it wasn’t just the single “big” FAQ dropping.
The wobbly model thing got really silly at times. At certain points in the game almost half the models on the table were not actually where they physically were in some games and I found players getting awfully sketchy about pile-in moves etc when models did not physically have to fit anywhere at all. Amazing how they could always have made the absolute perfect move when they did not actually have to move anything correctly on the table to achieve it. Movement in combat is key to the combat phase in 8th and letting players just claim to have moved perfectly with models that were actually many inches away was – abusable.
I can certainly see an amount of semi-justified salt from players of assault armies about this but if anyone thought the “wobbly model is a license to do whatever you want” was the answer then I think they were part of the problem.
I agree that use of WMS for tracking charges, pile-ins and all combat-related stuff inside terrain was often a terrible mess.
But I also think that’s a result of the GW’s mishandled rules where they delivered a ruleset for close combat that works really great in 2D but falls apart in anything involving vertical component. And this isn’t a 2D game unless you have a really shitty terrain.
Pile-in restrictions in multi-floor terrain are a mess. The nearest enemy model might be above you or below you and the “move closer to the nearest enemy” restriction suddenly stops making sense. You can end up being completely blocked from movement, or you can’t go to the ladder leading to the enemy because it’s away from the nearest enemy model on a different floor.
They figured out that things like unit coherency need a special treatment for the vertical space (2″/6″). They could’ve come with something that would make their 2D combat rules flow a bit better when the height is involved…
Hey Reecius, I was wondering if you would share some general insights on the 3 limit rule for datasheets. I like everything else in the faq’s but this feels really restrictive to some themed armies that don’t really deserve it.
1) Dark Eldar Kabals can’t take a second battalion (unless you take Drazhar) since that would require 4 Archons. It is annoying that you are forced to take a named character just follow an army structure that any other faction can do without an issue.
2) Guard Infantry armies lose many options since they can only take 3 heavy weapon teams, veterans, ect. At the same time the Steel Legion veteran builds can’t be taken anymore.
3) If you happen to want to play a Questor Traitoris army then you can’t have more than 3 models since they all have the same dataslate.
This could simply require a mentality shift when not playing in an organized event, but I think calling the limits on themed lists “just a suggestion” isn’t really fair since a lot of groups (at least near me) prefer to use the suggested rules as a way to help with local balance. It is awkward if you walk into a new store looking for a pickup game then describe that you don’t want to play with the suggested list building limitations.
I really do appreciate all the thought that has gone into the faq’s and the insights you have been willing to give, but this seems like it was a sweeping change that did not take into account how a lot of people enjoy playing and scheduling games, even outside of the organized play scene.
Thanks a ton!
Hi Steve,
Yeah, there are always weird rules interactions that are fringe cases. Drukhari are an outlier due to the way they are structured but yeah, the only way at present to get 2 battalions for them is to take a special characters.
Some of the other lists will require some adjustments for sure but a lot of these types of lists are not super common in competitive play, they tend to lean more into narrative style play so the impact should be minimal. However, for those it does apply to it is a bummer for sure as they have to alter their lists.
Thanks for the response. After thinking about it for a while it seems like this is a good time for my local group to define our “standard” set of rules we can use when not at an event instead of just assuming everything should be included.
A lot of people I know generally just assume that rules for tournaments are balanced for all play outside of specific narrative cases, but I think the community team is trying to separate those play styles. Perhaps the Three Ways to Play should really be Four Ways to Play (Open, Narrative, Standard, Tournament)? I love that GW has been trying to create fun ways for all kinds of players so maybe splitting Matched is just a natural step?
Just some thoughts to chew on. Thanks again for taking the time to reply!
Note that models within a unit are not limited by the 0-3 datasheets- so you can only take three units of Heavy Weapons Teams, but every Infantry Squad in your army is free to take a heavy weapon in it if you please. Likewise, Tau can still add drones into any of their battlesuit units as normal, as those drones are part of the datasheet of the battlesuit.
With regards to Renegade Knights, remember that there are a ton of FW Knights you have access to (and should probably be using anyways.) I mean, you can only realistically fit 3-5 Knights into an army anyways, so…
How does the FAQ question on tactical reserves and the beta tactical reserves rule interact?? Does that question still apply to the way it is reworded or????
Mostly awesome changes, but this, unfortunately, marks the end of my pure Deathwing army. They kinda sucked already in 8th but not being able to field more than 3 units of Deathwing Terminators pretty much is game over now. The army isn’t even legal. 🙁 Not to mention the CP boost to brigades and battalions only further puts them behind the curve even if a legal army could be fielded, bummer but such is life.
Overall really good FAQ though.
I also play Deathwing and you can take from 2 different data sheets.
Plus you can take units of 10 and combat squad. Take Azreal,he helps a bit with cp. I’ve
Adjusted and feel fine about it. Won’t be winning ITC with it though.
Forgot about combat squading. Thats true I suppose, though its still a massive nerf to an army that was already effectively bottom of the meta.
Though, 4CP vs armies that get 15-20CP coupled with the deep strike nerf puts DW in a much worse position relatively speaking than they were in before.
Sad to see that Zhadnsnark Da Rippa technically didn’t get the new Warboss biker Waaaaghh! rule (which now affects bikers as well for warbosses on bikes). Other than that, I like the FAQ.
All in all, I’m quite pleased with the FAQ.
Changes are mostly fair and better for the game. I lament no love to Tzeentch, which appears to have moved from the actual psychic army that actually does psychic things into… I don’t know how to describe it. A bad gunline that can’t take more than 3 Exalted Flamers because they’re Singleton model units, and the army still has no exemption to smite rules, or even a baby smite.
Oh well. My other armies are better. All will be well.
“Q: How do the Flakk Missile and Hellfire Shells Stratagems interact with an Armorium Cherub? Are you able to ‘reload’ the weapon and fire again with the benefit of the Stratagem?
A: Yes.”
When I first read this I thought it means I can use the stratagem on a ML or H Bolter, then use the Cherub and make another shot with the benefit of the Stratagem. But the more I read it the more I think it means “If you’ve made a normal attack with the ML or H Bolter, you can use a Cherub Reload this weapon and use the Stratagem to make an attack as described in the stratagem. Was my first reading correct or my second reading?
I’ll ask GW as well, but well, I’m sure they’re even more swamped with requests for clarifications.
So I stated this above but it is actually really relevant to DE players and Eldar players, your vehicles with the hover rule cannot be charged by infantry because they are over an inch from a base. They can be charged other vehicles without a base however. Which makes absolutely no sense. Vehicles without bases are your best method to assault things that are not on the ground.
I like the changes overall, but the drukhari and necron faqs looks a bit rushed. I’m missing 2 things on them:
– The crucible of malediction stratagem is strange, as you can still crucibles from the index xenos 1, at 0 cost in points and command.
– Resurrection protocols, if I’m reading it correctly, interact in a weird manner with turn sequencing: I asume when the last model of a unit is slain, the unit counts as being destroyed, and the stratagem is used at the same time, so, if the character is slain in my opponent’s turn, he can sequence it so I need to pay reinforcement points to revive the character, while if it is slain in my turno, I can revive him for free.
It’s a bit sad the point canges only affected units at the top, while giving nothing to underpowered units (except comissars), but better this way than the opposite.
Can you still mix thousand sons and death guard in same detachment using Heretic Ast as the keyword?
Yeah, Faq only specifies “Chaos, Imperium, Aeldari, Ynnari and Tyranids”
Reece, you forgot one of the most significant changes – not being able to move after deep-strike!
I really like the changes, they address they balance of the game really well, and neuter the problematic spam armies.
I felt like gunlines were starting to disappear from top-level play, as there were just too many things that could assault them turn 1, and they often had nothing to shoot at turn 1 either. With the changes to reserves and moving after deep-strike, I feel like gunlines will come back a bit, but not dominate as there’s plenty of things that can still give them a hard time. In sum, it feels balanced.
First of all. It looked like having Geoff on was driving you insane but you should have him on as much as possible, he’s funny, smart, and challenges you which benefits you and the product in the long run.
Now I’ve got to say I don’t agree on blood angels, Forlorn fury loses its character support turn one, Wings of Sanguinius nerf hurts librarians, a lot of the firepower alternatives I’d want to use as a BA player such as shooty assault & command squads or inceptors are still limited by the deep striking nerf. One of the other stratagems upon wings of fire that could be used to reposition or score objectives turn one is limited by the ruling, I feel that like Genestealer cults it could have been handled better with an exception or two (such as allowing upon wings of fire turn one without restriction but without the ability to charge afterwards.)
Sure I get we have to adapt but the Codex was lackluster except for its ability to smack your opponent in the face ( I had the designers at the open day the week prior to the codex release telling me how BA was “the alpha strike army” and that was their identity,) we’ve gone from competitive to low/mid-tier and that was completely avoidable, we’ve just taken a backwards step towards being red marines again and that sucks.
Geoff and I always bust each others balls, lol, it’s just a part of our friendship. He is very funny.
I feel your pain brother, truly, but it is way too early to proclaim an army has gone up or down a tier or whatever in power. You have to play with it a few times first before jumping to any conclusions.
And again, please remember these were not our choices here at FLG or anything, we’re just trying to help clarify things and provide a platform to discuss things. I don’t think it will be half as bad as people are making out at this early stage.
Hey, It’s nothing personal, just your arena is the one we’re discussing it in and I feel you were downplaying a change that while I understand has some benefits for the game as a whole will be heavy-handed for a few factions that weren’t exactly running away with anything as it was.
I was thrilled when I saw the CP buff as I was determined to run a full Ba army with inceptors, intercessors and Hell blasters for a post-Baal Devastation Brotherhood feel, now I’m back to looking at Guard as allies.
A lot of the now GW tournaments (including those using the ITC packs) in the UK don’t allow duplicate detachment types, without double battalions I felt I was already being pushed towards a guard CP farming detachment.
My argument to the London Gt guys was that by ruling out that double battalion you limit the viability of mono faction elite armies and lower the diversity of competitive lists. GW has just solved and then recreated that problem in one FAQ.
I’m even more likely to take guard now as I need that backfield shooting as the original army’s main strength has been significantly weakened, Are most BA and GK lists now going to feature similar looking guard detachments, they could have added in some exceptions or anticipated the impact and balanced it out to avoid the inevitable homogenizing of lists; from a BA perspective that could take on the exception I mentioned above, returning shield of Sanguinius back to a 4+ or implementing the Death company FNP at 5+.
Again no animosity to you personally, the Internet often doesn’t do a good job at conveying one in a text-only format. I’ve already got my Warhammerfest ticket so I’m likely to politely make my point to whoever is available from the rules team at some point :’)
This. Excellently put my friend. Couldn’t agree more.
I had a webcart of abouy £400 of blood angels stuff ready to go, but because of the reasons you just articulated, I won’t be pulling the trigger
Now they just need one more rule to make “allying in” another codex a real choice.
Something like, “Alliance of Convenience – Detachments generate 0 Command Points if they only share the Chaos, Imperium, Aeldari, Ynnari, or Tyranid keyword with your Warlord.”
So they massively nerfed terminators, drop pods, blood angels and grey Knights. But they buffed Ynarri by giving them access to relics and warlord traits? I’m thoroughly confused. My grey knights are now paying a premium for an ability they cant use until turn 2, and that any competant player will spread out enought to stop. Then they still have have to make a 9″ charge? So I have to take 3 rounds of shooting potentially before I’m in combat? That’s insane. I legitimately don’t understand this.
Again, the challenge is to try and see it from the perspective of the game as a whole, not from the perspective of a single faction. Looking at it from one faction’s perspective, sometimes the changes can be confusing or seem illogical, but if you take a step back you can see the logic behind it. You may not agree with it, which is fine, but there is a rhyme and a reason to it.
Ynnari getting buffed is subjective, they took some hits as well. But, eh, not here to debate that really.
I’m trying to see it from that perspective but I just can’t. The Meta is already dominated by shooting, and they only nerfed assualt elements. An enemy gunline can now deploy all on ruins, and they are unchargable and they get far more turns to shoot at you. I don’t see how this is at all good for the game.
Is this just code for: “Flyrants were too good, sorry GK”
They don’t want people to play grey knights?
Of course they do. They gave GK a boost in the final version of the smite nerf.
I mean, I fully understand that the reserves change really impacts GK. Just please try to remember that when these decisions are being made, they are not made to negatively impact your faction but to try and provide a better play experience for the largest amount of people possible. It can be very hard not to think about how it impacts you or your list though, I totally get that.
I don’t see where these Ynnari buffs are coming from. You still need Yvraine, etc to be your warlord to include them and you still need your warlord to be a craftworld or drukhari model to qualify for the free relic. Stratagems can now be unlcoked with a Ynnari detachment, but this isn’t much of a buff since you could do that with another detachment anyway.
Drop pods received a buff and a nerf at the same time. On one hand they cannot enter the enemies deployment zone on turn 1, but on the other hand you cannot target the units that come out of them with auspex scan, etc.
Whilst I’m positive in regards to most changes…
Really GW, you nerfed my Ultras AGAIN!?
Fire Raptor point hike is steep but perhaps fair. I don’t think Guilliman needed another increase without discounting some other options to give players more food for thought.
TO be fair, the Fire Raptor was way undercosted.
So undercosted.
I sorta wish they’d stop listening to the lower tier players that are still saying Bobby G is too good.
I literally have never lost to him, and playing with him has been a toss up. Usually 1-2 or 2-1 in a 3 rounder.
He doesn’t buff durability at all. You just kill the stuff around him and he loses.
I always find it funny that when the chaos/xeno armies have something that’s obviously too good you just hear a lot of “you gotta learn to play around it,” but when loyalist marines have something that could be learned to play around, you don’t hear that sentence ever.
yeah not really feeling a lot of the FAQ.
who in their right mind thought having units be un-chargeable in the 2nd floor of a ruin was a good idea? how did this idea get out of playtesting? sure i can just shoot them. i guess i’ll have fun digging units out of cover over a couple of turns. sounds fun, sounds good for the game.
it was dumb enough when it was just MC’s that couldn’t, it’s doubly stupid now.
my initial reaction was just to never agree that anything on the table with more than 1 level is a ruin, but i bet that’s really not going to go over well.
deep striking close range units i guess are a thing of the past. want a lot of gunline armies? because this is how you get gunline armies.
got rid of soup detachments? awesome, don’t really think they were much of a problem since we started getting more codexes in play with OS and chapter/legion/whatever traits. the problem was with imperial armies taking cheap battalions/brigades and using CP recovery WL trait/relics. this approach is actually even better than it was now that brigades and battalions give more CP.
a few bright spots, like alternating infiltrator deployment, some good points adjustments (along with some derp ones). units with FLY now work like grapple reivers, that’s cool. too bad you won’t be able to actually assault up there because you won’t fit. the max of 3 of a unit in your army is eh. sure it kills flyrant spam and PBC spam. of course it replaces those options with..nothing, but, hey, you win some you loose some.
but mostly, it was dumb.
i could go on but i won’t. it’s a huge shift in how the game is played and i don’t think it’s for the best. it’s certainly not how i like to play.
So apparently gw did NOT think 14 hellhounds was “fun” after all 😛
Joke aside..
Mostly good changes and pointing towards a decent direction.
What I am puzzled by is the deepstrike rule.
Armies like blood angels that werent exactly overly powerful before are now nerfed while simple static gunlines like tau and ig that already are to powerful will get an extra turn of free shooting.
I dont get it. BA relies on character buffing and their one unit that can be “strategemmed” and that is far to easy to counter-screen.
My instinctive prediction to this is runaway tau and ig power after this one. Thy can now let rip completely unmolested by deepstrikers for a free turn.
The remaining first turn across the board nid and chaos charges are easily screened.
Opinions?
It’s worth pointing out that BA made top 8 at LVO and I think had a top 16 at Adepticon as well? In any case, they certainly were seeing a nontrivial amount of play.
Tau and IG gunlines… didn’t exist. (We’re not counting the Hellhound list as a “gunline”, right?) No one at tournaments had any real success with them, because sitting in your deployment zone and shooting was a complete joke when there were ten different armies that could assault you on turn 1 regardless. These changes may or may not cause them to see some play, but let’s not imagine that either of those armies were having any meaningful success prior to this.
Great reply, i dont understand why everybody still acts like Guard is tearing up the Meta. They were turning into a waht have you done for me lately kind of faction, and the answer was nothing.
Yeah I agree, these changes are going to make the game about un-fun static gunlines. I’m not sure why anyone would see that as food.
I agree turn one deep strike smack hammer wasn’t fun either though.
The fundamental problem has to do with shooting being just too strong this edition. Gank assaults were an un-fun solution to an un-fun problem…. but maybe better than nothing.
Maybe night fighting should be brought back or something.
This FAQ has good things but other things seem like real problems.
My Tyrannids can’t assault a space marine stnding on a tree stump? This sounds like comedy. How did this make it past playtesting?
simple answer…. playtest doesn’t exist 🙂
everyone seems to miss that in the brb faq they have also said you cannot move at all after arriving from reserves except to charge. They specifically said you can’t warp time to move. I feel like this was what has pushed the DS nerd overboard.
My knee-jerk on Rule of 3 is that it doesn’t scale well for horde armies. For mono Chaos Daemons it is an even rougher deal because of the low amount of selectable units.
I play Mono-Slaanesh Daemons because I hate myself. In total Slaanesh Daemons has 7 HQs, 1 Elite, 1 Troop, 3 Fast, 3 Heavies. Most of these units are noncompetitive even in casual play. Rule of 3 is going to force me to play sub-par units. Even my best units like Seekers aren’t that particularly “strong”.
I run an assault-heavy Khorne Daemonkin list (World Eaters + Khorne Daemons).
With the changes to how terrain interacts with charging units, I doubt my Bloodthirster or Daemon Prince will ever be able to charge any unit on the 2nd floor of any terrain, despite having the Fly keyword.
It seems pretty silly that my opponent can become completely immune to most of my army by just sticking his models on top of some crates.
“So they massively nerfed terminators, drop pods, blood angels and grey Knights.”
Exactly the units/armies that were in dire need of some hammer nerfs, lol
You forgot the poor poor deathwing already suffering from “terminators”, one of the worst units in 8th all in themselves.
Sarcasm over:
Seriously game designers/testers, as much as I love the majority and direction of the FAQs and the obvious effort that has been put into them some things simply need to be mentioned.
1: Go over the game/armies and apply exceptions to the FAQ rules. Just as 1ksons and GKs got the smite exception armies like deathwing NEED to be excempt from things like max 3 datasheets, they are already barely hanging on due to bad unit design/rules.
I promise, the way terminators are mishandled in 8th, deathwing wont be the next copypasted flyrantzilla in any tournament scene anytime soon if they are allowed to bypass a general rule or two like the 3-rule.
2: Exclusively playtest the bottom third codexes vs the top third codexes relative to point costs, abilities, statlines command points and strategems and freaking DO something already.
Making changes based on the “overall” good for the game (read: tournament scene) is all fine and dandy but the top armies and “their” meta often win at the expense of disgruntled bottom army players/collectors.
I said “their” meta since its just them, no deathwing or GK or imperial fists are contributing to the top tournament meta for a very simple reason.
That this game even has some deathwing or GK players left is a miracle when even codex SM WITH guilliman struggles to match the latest nid codex creep not to mention the poor black templars or nightlords that dont even get the primarch crutch.
Go over the very bottom units never used due to point inefficency or bad rules. What else can be better for added variety and fluctuating meta to the game?
3: If the reflexive answer to most peoples worries and complaints in this thread is “mooar terrainz” then for the love of god IMPLEMENT said terrain changes, preferably before 9th edition! Listen you yourselves, if the terrain fix is so simple and so obvious and such a go-to answer all the time then why hasnt it been chapter approved or FAQed in yet?
If working out a big nice FAQ like this is doable how hard can it be for some playtesters/designers to throw in a wee bit more terrain rules that by your own admission would fix oh so many problems for the already hampered melee/deepstrike armies?
Ponder a simple thing like cover save for a unit shooting “through” terrain. I wonder why a tank that sees half an arm in a footslogging squad across the table because a big ruin is in the way still can shoot unhindered at said foot slogging squad or why all 30 boys must be inside a crater to get a cover but if 29 are in and Bob the grot is outside then all are slaughtered.
Does a simple majority-inside rule really add so much to game time?
These changes would be quite simple, nerf gunlines a bit and not put such a heavy burden on tournament organizers to bring terrain by busloads.
4: Ambivalence in point or rule alterations in the FAQs. It is nice that a psychic power or two were upped in cost or a strategem limited or made more expensive but why stop there? I miss the game wide sweep with the balance brush to do similar things with a lot more broken things that are in dire need of a little change up or down.
-Warp time not made more expensive? Who did miss that?
-Genestealers taking over enemy units with the same impunity? Its a game winner, why is it still so easy to pull of
-Orbital bombardment not made cheaper?
-Command point ambivalence between armies? (take the dark eldar deny strategem strategem, at 3cps its a farse when its parent army is literarily swimming in CPs while the custodes next door get almost none and rely heavily on their ONE strategem combo, especially now with soups gone.
All those little things are irritating and chip away at the feel of “fairness” of the game and together they make quite a rash and all those little things are quite easily fixable.
Lastly, I dont agree entirely with that the overall, should I add, slightly myopic view that changes, especially balance changes, have to be seen and made only from the perspective of the general tournament play or meta while screwing the blood angel player who now has to give up a free turn to the already too good IG gunline or tau guns.
Outside a few big overlapping rules that “are meant” (but do?) to balance shooty-assaulty-deepstrikey-static playstyles to be as close to one another as possible, equally important and always pretty much bypassed are the various armies balance in it self. Making “crap” codexes compete with “OP” codexes is part of a solution in itself in that it gives more variety, and possible variables then any simple bring-moar-terrain could ever do, not to mention happier miniature collectors/players.
But as said, we need to give the FAQ time to unfold and data to be collected BUT..some logical things can be seen emerging from the fog already.
Otherwise good FAQ or at least, a good start for a better gaming environment. Keep it up!
Bloodletters are about to kill an HQ. HQ jumps on a barrel. Bloodletters go home.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/378301255363330048/435648759947591691/20180417_065026.jpg
Great.
Datasmiths are elites not HQs 😀
I’d say you can get within 1″ of the datasmith there and murderate him.
I use him as enginseer :p
And no they can’t. The “barrel” is 1”+ off the ground and the bloodletter cannot physically place his base on the barrel. Meaning charge = failed
Yeah, I was concerned about that ruling as well.
Units with larger bases such as Bloodthirsters, Jetbikes, and Daemon Princes are going to have a hard time charging anything that’s not on the ground.
Shooty units with or without the FLY keyword could really abuse this to prevent assault armies from ever touching them.
Turn 1 Da Jump, Necron Veil, etc dead?
They say remove from and place on the battlefield.
New rules say you can’t place on the battlefield outside your zone turn 1.
You can’t arrive from reserves outside your zone turn 1, which is arguably different.
Well if you read the Rulebook FAQ, it says that stuff that teleports with da jump and such is treated as “arriving from reserves”.
I mean, I hope I’m wrong here ofc.
i cant find that anywhere in the FAQ. Da jump only works on units which already is deployed on the game board. Reinforcments are not deployed on the game board during the deployment phase. Da jump is to me more like a psychic move when the game already has started. The unit could already have been shot at or the weirdboy killed by snipers. It’s not as certain as those who are in a teleportarium chamber or outflanking or whatever. Infiltrators is more effective in that case as your opponent cant stop it.
Reinforcements is pretty much anything they arrives on the battlefield midgame except disembarking from a vehicle. I did a part in the last necron article with the pertinent rules citations.
have to say i’m kinda disspointed. Alot of this we knew was coming (and needed) but it just feels SO knee-jerk at the same time. “Ow darkreapers are to strong? well here, have a 110% cost increase”
Also a little confused on the battle brothers thing. My initial reading was it stops the whole, celestine + librarian + HQ + Girllyman + Assassin detachments but people are saying “soup is dead”. Does it read so that for ex Ultramarines can’t even ally with BA anymore? Do you have to play mono-faction? Because Custodes + IG is still soup tho innit? Also the whole thing feels a little knee-jerk as well as what does it kill, Celestine? beyond that were people really giving up ‘chapter tactics equivalent’ to mix keywords?
Plus they reeeeeeeally wanted to make sure farm lists are stomped into the burned and salted earth, same with dark reapers “tide of traitors is to powerfull, are we going to make it a like 2/3+ for it to happen like saviour protocols, bump the CP cost? NOPE! once per game take that!” and they changed they’re initial rulling on how reinforcement points work so a unit can’t under any circumstances grow past it’s starting size now.
Same for the 0-3 datasheet “suggestion”. Everyone complains about “ow there’s to much spam this edition” but then turns around and praises the 6 characters on Thunderwolves list from LVO as brilliant fun fluffy deceptively strong etc etc. That’ll kill those kind of lists to ya know…
I dono, in one fell swoop they killed alot of stuff. Depending on how my tired brain eventually figures out Battle Brothers i gues it’s a nice buff to T’au, Orks and Necrons since troop tax reaaaally hurts factions without access to 5pt troops, on the other hand if thats the case and with the massive battalion buff are we going BACK to IG meta because of the efficiency? To much to digest, initial impression tho feels VERY heavy handed (on the other hand this is the first edition with such hands on, fast “patching”, being done so there’s that, GW just might be new at it, maybe a little LESS listening to the community might be a thing in the future)
A 110% price increase is a subtle change for GW. In the past, they would have doubled their price AND halved their shots.
The FAQ needs to be FAQed with questions like how is veil and gate of infinity treated relating to the new DS rule.
Like I said, the FAQ is more positive then negative by a long shot, except for the already piss poor bottom armies but who cares about them anyway right? Crtainly looks that way at least.
Time and data is needed to properly judge the FAQ ..BUT some things a-coming shine through the fog already.
That´s what you get for basing your changes on making the top 3-4 codexes tournament meta game get better balanced and screw what happens to the stragglers.
My honest opinion on this entire edition? 8th is better then what was before and I thank it for that. GW is finally showing a will to actively improve which is great..not last for their stock chart and earnings.
8th is a new breed and as such full of bugs, it is inevitable that we end up mired to our necks in eternal debugging and when early 8th codexes need a complete rewrite to compete with the newest then you know things are getting very wrong.
I dare say I am not alone in that I feel that I have more and more lost the “feel” of what the army I mainly use (SM) was/is supposed to be like.
When marines, bolters, terminators and 3+ saves feel more and more like a failed paper horde that pays far to much for non working power armour and non existent staying power with every new codex that comes out, rather then anything near an “elite” army of super soldiers with the “best” +1S flashlight in the game that everything gets saves from then you know its time for 9th edition.
If that big, expensive 350p Blood Angel deepstrike squad with a thousand years of collective battle experience someone spent good time, money and effort making look really good must desperately reach the tau line on a 1st turn charge or else will thus in return be promptly deleted in a half turn of shooting then you are no longer playing “marines”. The game is just not as fun any more.
If your three predator tanks and their awesome strategem (killshot) is not really working other then by sheer luck due to the ease that the power codexes have in erasing a predator on first turn then both strategem and game design need a careful lookover.
I think that when 9th comes taking into account everything that failed in 8th as a big learning curve and lesson then we are going to be in for some good gaming times AS LONG as the designers try and not ruin the game with excessive codex creep and heavy handed favoritism (hordes) again!
Me? I can hardly wait for the next ed and next batch of repaired codexes using all the lessons learned in 8th. To bad its going to take years and years to get there though but hey, by then maybe I´ll start with an “actually” playable deathwing army to have some fun with rather then nicely painted paperweights.
Im not that pleased with the new deepstrike rules. But I’ll try to adapt.
Id like to request for you guys at flg to record a batrep with nids vs astra gunline with wyverns and maybe a shadowsword and show the rest of us some ways how to tackle the post faq time as nidplayers.
I think the reserve limitation on turn 1 is actually good for the game.
Some lists will need adjustment, but overall it helps armies that don’t have access to disposable meat Shields or in games where it’s not possible to hide key units early.
Turn 2 can still be devastating, but it puts additional pressure on reserve focused armies in terms of what to deploy on the tabletop.
@Reecius I think this new FAQ is awesome, great job!
As a mono-god Tzeentch daemon player who enjoys going second, I’m loving the limitations. A lot of them are an indirect buff to summoning, which is much appreciated (summoning circumvents the limitation of 3 datasheets, soup, and reserve power level).
Was it intentional that the new deepstrike limitation for turn 1 affect summoning? I would assume the 12″ no move limitation on summoning would be enough so I was surprised there was no mention of summoning in that section (similar to infiltrators). I mean its not a huge issue as I normally don’t summon much turn 1. But it was pretty helpful in certain matchups for punishing midfield shooting armies when they push up too aggressively.
Cheers!
Just a question regarding the rule of 3…
if I’m playing AM, does it mean i can take 9 leman russes as heavies? Seeing as theyre available in units of 3?
Just checking , but with the rule of 3…if im taking an AM spearhead i can take 9 leman russ battle tanks….as i can take them in a unit of 3?
My biggest concern is that these changes will move the meta back to gunline where games are usually decided by who goes first. The quest for diversity is probably going to backfire.
I suspect GW will be scrambling in a couple months to fix the problems their fixes caused.
I don’t necessarily agree, but they are beta rules, the entire point is to test them and get feedback. If events want to use them that’s their choice, but I think we’re all missing the point of these a bit.
Hey Reecius thanks for being the stand in punching bag for GW! I am excited to play with these new rules and appreciate your positivity. I am curious of your interpretation on one particular FAQ, “Q: Some Characters have aura abilities, such as a Commissar’s Aura of Discipline or a Chaplain’s Spiritual Leader, that allow nearby friendly units to use the character’s Leadership characteristic instead of their own. There are also lots of abilities that modify Leadership characteristics. Could you explain how these rules interact and in what order I should apply the substitution and any modi cations?
A: You modify the Leadership characteristic first, then you use the character’s Leadership characteristic instead (this means that the modification will not affect the unit unless the character’s Leadership has also been modified).”
Now does that modifier include suffering casualties?? Does that mean Commisars are essentially providing fearless bubbles??
I guess that is a stupid question. ?
I feel their “fix” to soup really didn’t fix anything. Very few people were taking multiple factions in the SAME detachment (because often that meant you lost both faction’s special traits and stratagems), it was things like taking a Blood Angels Vanguard with an IG Battalion and a Custodes Supreme Command detachment together, and unless I’m mistaken that was left untouched.
Other than that, I feel the changes are really good and I am excited to play again while before I was pretty meh about bothering with 40k.
That isn’t true at all- look at any of the lists from, say, LVO- you had lots of armies bringing multiple codices within a single detachment. The Ynnari armies were doing it, the Imperial armies were doing it, and the Chaos armies were doing it- you even had Tyranids/GSC doing it. it was an extremely common practice to sidestep taking subpar choices by substituting superior picks from other books.
I mean they can still continue to tak Ahriman + 3x oblits, bashbros+lord of skulls, etc
There’s plenty of ways around this. And this didn’t change cherry picking much at all. You should be somewhat forced to pick subpar units to fill the roles your army is missing(this would create more diverse playstyles). Not just fill your weaknesses with other army’s strengths
My group uses “Soup” to refer to to any army that has more than one Faction in it anywhere.
I don’t think the new rules for limiting what goes in a Detachment is really going to make a huge difference.
IMHO, I think the “fix” is give mono-builds more rewards. That way, no one is punished for mixing and matching yet people who prefer mono-Faction builds have an in-game incentive to do so. Most Soups are because single Factions lack certain capabilities. So how about incentivizing Factions that lack a certain capability to come up with creative workarounds within their own book rather than “just add Imperial Knight” or “just add Ynnari” et al?
Obviously there were different definitions of what soup was which is fine. Let’s not get hung up on semantics too much.
But it actually makes a really big difference. When someone came to the table with a detachment of say, daemons, renegades, CSM and deathguard all in one detachment, it was really weird and confusing rules wise. This eliminates that and reduces the number of factions any one player can have on the table which makes things a lot more manageable.
And increasing the number of CP you get per core detachment was intended to help mon-faction armies as now they can offset the CP differential soup armies had due to being able to access cheap detachments in other armies.
rvd1ofakind – Regarding Da Jump. This was of similar concern to some GK players, but there’s a note in the Xenos 1 FAQ that probably clears this up:
Q: If, in a matched play game, I use the Swooping Hawk’s
Skyleap ability to remove the unit from the battlefield during the
third or subsequent battle round, does the Tactical Reserves rule
mean they count as destroyed?
A: No. The unit must already have arrived on the
battlefield before the end of the third battle round in
order to be able to use the Skyleap ability.
However, if the unit used its Children of Baharroth
ability to set up in the skies during deployment, and it
had not arrived by the end of third battle round, then it
would count as destroyed in a matched play game due
the Tactical Reserves rule.
Based on above, it’s fair to say Da Jump is fair to get in someone’s face in T1 or T4. The Orks have already arrived on the battle field – they need to be on the field already to use Da Jump, and that’s not the same as arriving via an ability like Teleport Strike or Children of Baharroth. Therefore, they should not subject to Tactical Reserves restrictions… So, addition to Orks by subtraction for DS armies!
When they jump they arrive as reinforcements, there are other FAQ and rules that clarify this, so it is a no go.
Well, the text for Da Jump as no “as reinforcements” mention anywhere… It only states that the unit is removed from the battlefield, and set up again no closer than 9″ from enemy units. So RAW, it doesn’t apply.
Q: If a unit uses a rule that removes them from the battlefield andbthen sets them up again, such as the Teleport Homer ability or the Gate of Infinity psychic power, does that unit count as having moved for the purposes of moving and firing Heavy weapons?
A: Yes. Treat such units as if they are arriving on the
battlefield as reinforcements.
BRB FAQ version 1.2 page 6
This is not new been in there since at least verion 1.1 maybe 1.0
That answer is to regarding how they count as having moved or not. It doesnt say that they are reinforcements. It only says treat them as reinforcments when it comes to having moved rulification.
After sleeping on it, the Beta rule for Deep Striking (that term will never go away) is bad AS IT IS CURRENTLY WRITTEN. I understand their idea with it and I think it’s an alright attempt to curb what has been unexpected (to GW, but not to everyone else).
If DS’ing is going to be limited to ONLY your DZ in T1, then I think the 9″ away from enemies restriction needs to be lessened to 6″ or even less, potentially to compensate. As this Beta rule is currently written it’s way too easy for armies to spread out and create 18″ no-landing-zones across an entire half of a board. Part of what made DS’ing in 7th effective was the Risk-Reward nature of it: you could scatter off the board or you could end up in perfect melta/flamer range of the ideal target for those units, no matter where they are on the board. I can understand the issue at hand is that DS’ing in 8th is currently too reliable. I don’t think anyone wants to bring back the hassle of scatter dice, but there has to be a give-and-take nature to adjusting something as fundamental to staying alive against the guns of 8th as coming in from reserves on an enemy’s flanks.
p.s. “The Law of Unintended Consequences” should be the name of the memoirs for GW Devs.
Well… You could go second and shoot em off, or carve out pockets… Or pull them away with tactics… Or let them sit on awkward spots doing nothing while you wait another turn then come in….
Yeah, that was my solution to dealing with it, too. You just have to create room prior to going in. Easier said than done of course, but it provides a way to get around it.
What’s amusing is the deep strike fix doesn’t fix one of the most egregious users of it, blood angels, since their stratagem that lets them be moved and re-appear more than 9″ away is a redeploy, not reserves.
“then I think the 9″ away from enemies restriction needs to be lessened to 6″ or even less, potentially to compensate”
That’s what I’ve been thinking. If you have to lose a turn of action, at least it shouldn’t be as hard to pull off charges.
The intent is most assuredly to make it difficult to charge from reserves. The point there is to offset the bonus to staying safe off of the table. With the 9″ charge, it is quite a gamble and makes you have to choose between starting on the table where you can potentially get around that long charge but can also be attacked, or going for the perfect defense of being off table.
Love the changes, makes me excited for warhammer again. i Despised the way to easy way too many armies could get turn 1 charges and my lack of scouts and nurglings in the armies i play limited how i could defend these moves when i went second. I love the 50 percent on the table rule also to limit incoming alpha strikes. I was heading more towards a quiting competative warhammer direction, thats completely been halted.
Good to hear =)
It’s awesome that the bubble wrap or die dynamic is going away. I didn’t like feeling like I had to do that to have a decent tournament experience.
Also it’s going to speed up games significantly if there’s less bulky wrap to manage.
I’m just wary of the tradeoff being costly, in a shift back to an un-dynamic gunline meta and first turn determining all the gunline vs gunline matches again.
I really don’t have an easy solution though.
I don’t think the gunline is going to dominate, honestly. They got a boost for sure, but still, mobility is going to be king, particularly in missions like the ITC missions. You have to move around to win.
But yeah, that was part of the logic with the idea: you don’t have to micromanage each model on turn 1 to perfectly defend from deep strikes.
“Bubblewrap or die” is just swapped for “get the first turn and the table with the good terrain or die”.
Hello AM gunlines, how fun to see you so soon again. You didn’t dominate the game for long enough.
/douchehat mode
“You can’t assault my Drukhari Raider because it’s hill is more than one inch from your Flyrant’s base.”
/end douchehat mode
My rhino can charge guys on the 2nd floor of a building, but my Bloodthirster can’t. ¯(ツ)/¯
The Douchefield, developed by the most troll-ish of Haemonculi confuses everyone around the raider and makes them think it is the second edition so they can’t charge antigrav units.
Hull, not hill. Lack of edit feature.
Edit: nevermind, hover rule.
I want to thank the FLG crew for wading into these comments and for give a place to vent the frustrations both for and against.
Does wings of fury get passed the turn one deep strike rule?
https://i.imgflip.com/28k4n2.jpg
Btw why was stacking not addressed in the faq?
Multiple -1 to hit still ok? Why?
“As this Beta rule is currently written it’s way too easy for armies to spread out and create 18″ no-landing-zones across an entire half of a board.”
Yeah I found this wonderful gem in a BnC thread:
”
Conversation with my 11 yr old:
Me: so new rule is no DS for my GK first turn. Dead by 3rd if can’t land.
Son: (immediately without missing a beat) So my necrons just spread out a bit a deny you all landing zones, lol! Then I just shoot you. Unless you mean they can’t ds if you go first but ok if you go second, then you’re toast! GK are losers dad.
Me: ?? he sees it right away. ”
Hehe, yeah, now the bottom tier army players just lost their one remaining strategy to use with their bottom tier toilet paper of a codex.
Poor bastards but oh well, there are always the elysians, iron hands and deathwing players left to keep them company. The tournament scene is apparently ALL about the top codexes that are seen it it.
How about you clear out a landing zone? Lol
Pick up a pure GK army and let us know how that goes.
Most pure armies in the game don’t work, sorry your codex only has five units in it but you’ve gotta either take allies or accept that you’re gonna lose a lot of matches.
And this makes me ask, should this ever happen? Shouldn’t game be balanced around pure armies? Is it ok vs races that can’t ally? Am I just biased by older editions to think that?
I would really like to see some form of penalty for running salad army(allies)/reward for taking pure army.
My Grey Knights do OK. Well, I take Celestine and Assassins usually. I guess that’s not pure. :\
Competitive 40K is a list building game, not all lists are going to be competitive, that’s just the nature of it, I wouldn’t turn up to a Magic Standard format tournament with any old deck and be annoyed that I lost all the time.
At casual level 8th does a much better job of making most things viable, and you could do pure GK and do fine. But at a competitive level meta means some things will just not work.
With GW releasing more and more mini factions it feels like the mono build isn’t even intended. And I’m not sure why it ever should have been. Very few pieces of imperial fluff are about mono armies.
I personally think all they’ve really done is widen the gap between top tier and mid tier armies and push people even harder towards soup-y gunlines but…w/e I guess.
That is what the beta test period is for – to see if all this does is revert to (probably AM) gunlines dominating.
I suspect the reality will be a little more nuanced, those -1 to hit armies really make you want to have a decent assault element which in turn drives a need for those same -1 hit armies to divert some of their resources into screening units that detract from what else they were doing etc.
It will take months for this to really work this out on the tables, lots of people think they can see how this is going to go but I really do think we should actually beta test in real competitive play rather than just theory-hammer in a vacuum.
Hey Reecius there has been a lot of arguments and such in my local area and I’m sure you guys will cover this more in a podcast but I’m gonna ask anyway. With the Tactical Reserves rule what exactly will still be allowed to deploy turn one out of my deployment? There has been a lot of Rules Interpretation and I figured I would come to an outside source, rather than jump into the mud slinging:). Specifically can blood angels use the wings of fire stratagem and put stuff up close turn one?
I am sure GW will be answering these questions soon, but if you look at the existing FAQs the answer to many of these questions has already been answered in the negative.
I like a lot of the changes but it really seems that major tourneys are now events to render the ‘fat’ out of the current meta. Fat, being the current cheese combos or undercosted units. The game is built to reward creative list building and finding interesting niches to gain tactical advantages. It’s even rewarded in tourneys for winning. However, immediately after a list wins people pick it apart and alter the game to break the list. It’s just a bizzare dynamic, especially with the differences in the tourneys. Like the 7 hive tyrant list guy said in an interview that in ITC with more blocking terrain the list wouldn’t do as well. yet it won a tourney and BAM! Tyrants get hit with a price increase. The pox blossom list was a very cool combo and very thematic. however, it did very well in tourneys and BAM! GW drops a 180 ruling on point costs for adding units to an existing unit, breaking the list.
It’s to the point now that I just hope the units I like and play with are NOT included in a tourney winning list. I would hate for my army to get nerfhammered just because some random dood somewhere won a game.
Eh, this has some degree of truth to it but is exaggerating it more than a little, too.
It’s not armies that do well that get scrutiny. For example, if you won a GT with a Space Marine demi-company, or some other very thematic list that didn’t rely on a rules loophole, it would likely only be seen as a positive.
however, 7 Flyrants is not, and the way the list played was not super fun in general as nearly the entire army started off of the table. The Poxwalker bomb wasn’t meant to give you nearly infinite extra models, etc. It also, in most cases, doesn’t result in a finished game due to the way it functions. And as always, YMMV regarding how to view these things of course, but those lists obviously were heading in directions the game devs didn’t want to see the game go.
So Reecius, I may have missed it, but ITC will allow UWoF strat and other similar like veil of darkness to be used T1?
Loving a lot of the ideas and rules that came out of the Big FAQ. Not sure why there is an uproar on the changes.
Loving a lot of the changes and clarifications that came out of the Big FAQ. Not sure why there’s an uproar over the changes.
Is summoning an exception to the deepstrike rule?
Since otherwise, I have no idea how a chaos daemon army reliably gets a turn 1 kill.
Yeah this is my big question. Summoning obviously isnt reserves but still could be describing as placing new units on the battlefield.
The reason I ask, is there has been some major disagreement online about whether “treat as if” means they are or aren’t reinforcements when using UWoF. I personally believe that regardless of starting point on the board, “treat as if” means you treat them the exact same as reinforcements starting off the board. Therefore, not usable T1 as a way to deepstrike T1. I’m curious as to ITC’s ruling.
Hi there,
Faqs seems promising…still i dont see the most expexted thing my group was looking for…minus to hit modifiers still stack! Why, o emperor!?
Also. Soup lists are still alive. I really hate when the army is build from the best units from several codices…cherry picking…bah!
I am very surprised that someone claims the deepstrike will make IG gunline too strong. When is the last time you have seen IG gunline in top places in tournaments? The minus to hit modifiers reliably kill any gunline with bs 4.
For IG…commissars change is nice, they will not make your army worse when you take them… Other things…still overpriced weapons for bs3 models…even when noone uses veterans or scions for some time…still overpriced chimera, still no way to fight the minus to hit modifiers. And now you can not have more than 3 hwt squads…why? They are bad and cheap, made to be taken in big numbers. Three squads are nothing and will disappear instantly.
All taken into account…a good update. Seems that GW really tries to adjust the game.
With the dark reaper and melee nerf, I predict -1 to hit heavy shooting armies to dominate unless a codex comes out that couters that or some exploit like the poxwalker farm is found.
And no, that doesn’t mean gunline. You can’t win the game without moving out. It just means that heavy melee armies like daemons are probably low tier now.
“I personally think all they’ve really done is widen the gap between top tier and mid tier armies and push people even harder towards soup-y gunlines but…w/e I guess.”
This, this this this and this again!
The situation is in its most basic form simply put a big “the rich get richer” moment.
“however, 7 Flyrants is not, and the way the list played was not super fun”
I dont know about that, remember, 14-hellhound-lists are super fun according to the tournament players themselves. hehe
But what made me the most impressed is that GW single handedly managed to achieve the impossible in making drop pods even more worthless 🙂
Even back at 35p a piece, who would want to take the things? Bring your overpriced cardboard tacticals even closer to eldar rapid fire shurikens?
8th was an extremely needed change. Thats it.
But sorry, nope, time to call it for what it is, 8th is a gigantic debug-edition, a much needed one but still, just a time to debug, analyse and do something sane, balanced and “fair” with a future 9th. When you think about it there really is no other way around it.
Some armies can at best barely be used in 8th against others with the insane codex creep. This is not what a fun, living game is supposed to be about and you all freaking KNOW it.
I eagerly await some intelligent game designers co-opped with some intelligent game balancers who are NOT simply cluesly pandering to a 4-codex tournament level play to in due time make a fantastic 9th edition based on the lessons from 8th. An edition where armies like deathwing can actually compete with dark eldar and tau on equal terms.
But Deathwing is a style of play NOT a Codex. You may have fun playing with it, but the entire “terminator” class has been superseded by better space marines .
And why should one-trick ponies be winning ? Where’s the support ? The fast-moving objective holding units? They are all in the DA Codex, just in different styles of play. One alone won’t do the job. Bits of all three using primaris might.
Are you saying that drop pods were not used in 6th/7th edition when they cost 35 points? Because that’s not the reality I think anybody experienced during that edition.
well, technically I think they got used a lot in 7th edition when they cost 0 points….. They were used, but a lot less when someone actually paid 35.
“I dont know about that, remember, 14-hellhound-lists are super fun according to the tournament players themselves”
Mega fun and if you think something is wrong with it that is very much your problem on how you see the game. Something in the comments of this site. If you want to know how that is different from 7 Flyrants, it is because it ain’t Imps who have a whole Codex made of 1 model.
There is a massive amount of drama happening on the inter webs over these changes right now, but after rewriting my army lists (Sisters, Steel Legion, Blood Angels, Deathwing, Custodes) I can’t help but feel they have been pushed in the “right” (fluffy?) direction without much sacrifice to their competitive nature. I am currently wondering if the refinements to my lists will actually benefit my army in the long run.
I think the change to “Deepstrike” will pace the games much more reasonably for armies that don’t take heavy advantage of it. I don’t think it will cause more games to go unfinished, as I CHOOSE to finish my tournament games.
Battalions at 5 CP and 0-3 units per army is starting to seem like a genius move!
OMG, change!! Regardless if they got the changes right or wrong, just the fact that they tried to adjust the bigger issues in the game is great. It is not like this is it, there will be another update which will come and take feedback into account and be adjusted again. I am estatic that every game I play will not be me trying to survive some alpha bomb.
Here in my game zone we have a problem with the raven guard or alpha legion stratagems. The troops deployed with Strike from the shadows or Forwar Operatives are considered reimforcement? Can they move normally in the first turn ?
when i must deploy them? Before iniciative roll,? after sieze the initiative?.
This deployment occurs ‘before’ a player’s first turn so is not currently subject to the rule which specifically states it only applies to units arriving “during a player’s first turn”. The would be able to move normally during their turn.
In addition, it would make very little sense to use the strategem if you had to setup these units within your own deployment zone since there is no option to wait for rounds 2 or 3.
““I dont know about that, remember, 14-hellhound-lists are super fun according to the tournament players themselves”
Mega fun and if you think something is wrong with it that is very much your problem on how you see the game”
Not my words, just mirrored puppy as a form of joke and besides, I´m sorry to say that but reality and GW seems not to agree with you with the latest 3-rule so why dont you take your complaints there and tell them how very wrong they are instead of me?
My gawd man, now I can drop my 6 full sternguard squad project in time before having started it and save a lot of time and effort.
“Are you saying that drop pods were not used in 6th/7th edition when they cost 35 points? Because that’s not the reality I think anybody experienced during that edition.”
Not at all. I used full pod armies myself. I´m saying what is actually occurring, that in 8th the drop pod is practically dead and now with this FAQ GW managed the almost impossible, make 8th drop pods even more garbage.
My “thematic” 8 drop pods are as of 8th collecting dust in two drawers.
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I have a question to all of you here!
Recall the famous quote geedub said at the release of 8th..
“We wish to encourage more thematic lists by rewarding people taking them over what we have seen in earlier editions.”
..how did that turn out you think?
—————-
..and you still respond by shooting the messenger.
Maybe pods need to get the 9´rule removed or allow for a wider number of varied units to be taken in them like dreads. As 8th made them they are useless except for the odd one pod in an extremely tailored and situational list and after the FAQ not even that. I believe in exceptions to generic rules for the armies/units that really need them. Stealers got an exception to the DS rule after all.
“But Deathwing is a style of play NOT a Codex. You may have fun playing with it, but the entire “terminator” class has been superseded by better space marines .”
Yep, sure is “fun” to play deathwing against nids and “aeldari”. If you are a masochistic glutton for punishemnt then yes. You seem to forget there were/are a lot of people that built DW armies and always wanted to have fun using them on the table. We are not talking about some obscure 40k sect here.
Better marines? Excuse me? Marines are far from good now, not even close to mid power point.
Normal marines are at best at the bottom third now, almost the entire codex is overpriced, power armor is a joke, they have z e r o staying power (that they pay for) and melee? = lol
Power armor needs to be made power armor again and the same goes for terminators. Maybe ignore the first -1 rend or the first damage to a minimum of 1 so that terminators dont turn into overpriced 3-4 crap that instant dies to the first D2 thing that points at them but hey, I dont know the exact solution, I´m not paid to think this stuff up.
Thing is all the main boards have BIG dedicated threads to the terminator problem for a reason!
Primaris marines?
An overpriced, inflexible, stationary army with seriously overpriced vehicles that arent even worth taking that have one build and one build only, sit and turtle in a terrain corner with plasmas and everything else possible tightly hugging two reroll auras until they are either tabled or loose vs the last 4 power creep codexes.
Like it or not but that IS how 95 out of 100 primaris games look like for you.
That seem like fun, powerful, competitive, intelligently designed?
I´m just calling a badly designed and out-creeped spade, a spade.
As for terminators being fun to play with..ha! Rending and multi D all over the table plus their overpriced shooty options and tragic damage output alone shows how detatched 8th is from reality.
There is no escape that the fact is..
8th has turned into a bugged quagmire with “formations” (deathwing) and codexes (GK) being utter trash In LESS then 12 months. Think about that for a while. I still remember all the berating I got a while ago when I was told how strooong GK terminators were. Now nobody even wants to mention them not to say the rest of the failed codex. Dont take my word for it and dont shoot the messenger, visit the big board sections detailing this and tell people how wrong they are when they are shelfing their armies in drowes.
Yes they won a non competitive tourney recently but that too is logically explained.
You will even find hillareous pointers on other big boards (nope, not by me) making fun of the dumb-naive overly positive nothing-wrong take on everything bad here at frontline, its actually really funny, especially now as it is SO obvious that its true.
As for my fellow GK hobbyists on 3 other boards, I really feel for them. The 50% power level-on-table at start rule alone kill the GK outright not to mention the rest of the used toilet paper they call a codex. How big power level is a big unit of paladins or even plasma interceptors..with hq aura?
Like I called it, these fixes are meant for the top 3-4 tournament strong codexes, the rest of the poor just get poorer.
Seems in a bizarre twist I was spot on when I criticized the logic behind the gk codex construction from early on, a blind fool could have seen what would happen down the line a few codexes later.
Like I said previously, when the game has turned into just desperately getting your, nicely painted 350 point blood angel melee unit with 2 expensive aura supports into melee on turn 1 or else they get annihilated in half a turn of shooting then its time to say fvck this, it got to ridiculous.
Or how about when the universal rule to just about everything becomes repeating “bring more terrain” while this “simple “solution has yet after 12 months not been implemented then something is clearly not working.
Besides, what terrain are we talking about? Gigantic blocks of LOS cover? Over painted rows of milk cartons?
A board 70% made up of jungle wont do anything since that tau mech can kill anything with impunity across the table through droves of terrain as long as it sees half an arm of a unit.
Now it just got an extra free turn to do so.
Ponder the “solution” of having a unit stand one storey up covering the floor = nothing can assault them that doesnt fly. Why not just add say 2 inches to charges up in fully covered storeys or some other minor drawback that doesnt gimp foot melee armies?
Oh well..
Was fun the way it lasted guys but seriously, unless you are a IG, nids, cron or “aeldari-faction” player (then you are having fun always being able to win easily or at least on pair with the rest power creep), time to gather the lessons from 8th and make a complete restart with 9th. I would personally shell out tons of money for a new edition with new balanced codexes but until that happens this company gets zero from me!
Hate me or not, I care not but dont shoot me, shoot the FACTS and the facts are that we have a system that managed to collapse in under 12 months into grave imbalance and perpetual, never ending gigantic loophole “fixes” that wont end because they stem from a flawed system and yes, I still think 9th will be freaking awesome after this 4-codex edition finally dies.
If GW presents a lesson well learned with 9th after 8th then my wallet is theirs.
You talk about IG and having a good time…you obviously completely lack any sense about the situation on competitive tournaments. IG is only a necklace for command points and bubblewrap. Only few units are actually competitive. And no mono IG made it to the top positions…and this faq doesnt make it better, because it did not change the minut to hit stacking crap…
My questions is, with the new way to charge up ruins where you only have to measure horizontal not vertical distance, does that apply to the turn the model deepstrikes? Like could it be a 2 inch charge or is it always at 9 inches the turn they deepstrike?