Hello everyone! It’s Dan here with an OpEd – once again putting my fingers on a keyboard after a long hiatus. I’ve not written anything relating to 40k in some time, although I have remained active in the hobby and have accumulated more knowledge and experience after attending tournaments up and down the country.
I bring you this opinion piece hot on the heels of a controversial and divisive set of rule amendments to the game that we know and love.
Warhammer 40k 8th edition is barely a year old, yet we’ve seen some significant revision in regards to the basic rules and composition of armies. The question is – Have GW fixed the game? Did they go as far as they had to in order to achieve their vision? I’m going to assume that you’re aware of the changes brought about by the BIG FAQ, and will jump right into discussing them
Let’s start with the most rage inducing of the changes. The new limitations imposed on reserve alpha strike units.
“Did this hurt some armies?” Absolutely!
“Did it nerf some armies out the game?” Unfortunately…
“Was it the right thing to do?” Totally!
Depending on what army you play and the units you’ve invested in this would be a difficult change to view objectively. Whilst we can all agree that a unit or two teleporting straight into the enemy lines and causing mayhem is both fun and cinematic, it was ultimately not conducive to a good gaming experience in the long run. Some gamers will point out that they didn’t focus their entire lists on this tactic, and their limited alpha strike elements have been damaged significantly, but when GW sets out to amend rules their must consider the most egregious use of the tools at a player’s disposal.
The Alpha Strike was basically utilised to decide games on the very first turn – Either it was successful in crippling a player’s army, or it failed – in which case the defending player would counter attack and destroy all the units that arrived in their deployment zone. No matter the outcome, one player was always left unable to compete for the rest of the game because their assets were so diminished.
I’ve faced such armies many times, and despite becoming quite skilled at deploying my units in a way to mitigate the initial damage from such a force, it often left me trapped in a corner, doomed to a slow loss due to falling behind on the mission objectives.
We must not allow a system to exist that decides the outcome of a game in a single turn, before a player has even moved a single model. I’m disappointed that the BETA rule made use of Power Levels, as it would be a lot simpler and elegant to state players must deploy more than half of their total points on the board. I expect this will be amended in future. Checking power levels is a nightmare as adding a single Marine to a squad can have a large impact and it’s difficult for players to check their lists.
Blood Angels and Daemons have been hurt by this change, there’s no hiding from that fact. The Vampire Marines, at least, have access to a full complement of Codex units like tanks and flyers, not to mention Forgeworld support, so at least there’s scope to adjust the army. Unfortunately Grey Knights – the force most crippled by these changes – doesn’t have this luxury. It’s up to GW to fix Grey Knights as their problems are far reaching. They are in serious need of attention and we can only hope that Games Workshop will address them sooner rather than later.
Moving swiftly on, let’s discuss the datasheet limitation!
Less spam? Yes please! This change was very well received by the community, even though there are some players that have been hurt after investing in multiples of certain units.
Spamming efficient unit choices served to increase their effectiveness whilst creating a boring game to play. Facing a flock of Hive Tyrants, a gaggle of Fire Raptors, or a horde of Plague Crawlers was, after all is said and done, pretty one dimensional. Also, it’s no fun. Spam was a great source of ire for a lot of players, both in a competitive and casual setting. We should all be excited that GW is so pro-active in pushing for armies on the tabletop to actually resemble the lore.
In my not-so-humble opinion I don’t feel that GW took this change as far as they should have. We need to apply the 0-3 limitation to dedicated transports as well. Razorbacks with Guilliman and Alaitoc Wave Serpents could potentially be an issue and I would have hoped to see Games Workshop nip it in the bud.
Battle Brothers was a great change and led to the elimination of the soup detachment. I’ll concede that there are sufficient “Lore” reasons to allow soup detachments (Remember Gathering Storm? It was a story about a Crusade made up of Black Templar Space Marines and some Imperial Guard who were led across the galaxy by St. Celestine and Belisarius Cawl!) but unfortunately lore was the last thing on people’s minds when they were putting these armies together. It was simply another efficiency to explore that allowed additional, tax free detachments to fill out armies. Imperium, Chaos and those damn, dirty Elves (I mean Eldar!) benefited the most. Allies still exist, but this will go a long way towards curbing some of the more Esoteric armies out there.
Now, not all is rosy in FAQ land. Games Workshop didn’t fix everything, and I’m disappointed that some obvious issues with the game weren’t addressed.
First of all, why isn’t there a hard limit on hit modifiers? It should be restricted to a -1, or failing that, a standard rule that states any roll of a natural 6 to hit is always successful. It’s painful to see Orks so easily removed from the shooting game, or an army like Astra Militarum deprived of their greatest asset. These changes are needed. Armies like Eldar are abusing these rules to negate certain opposition entirely. A typical Astra Militarum player would be unable to engage an army where multiple units are stacking negative modifiers. I’m surprised this hasn’t been raised more often.
Secondly, can we please fix terrain? Not being able to interact with units is what killed 7th Edition. Remember those invisible, invincible Death Stars? I member… *shudders*
It doesn’t sit well with me that some random guys are completely able to bypass assaults from Monsters and Vehicles by hiding in ruins. It’s frankly offensive that a Carnifex can’t smash the wall down. Also, has anyone read Dark Imperium? The book ends with a battle between Roboute Guilliman and a Greater Daemon that takes place in the ruins of a Cathedral, and has Big Blue Bob literally jumping up pillars and somersaulting off the walls whilst duelling with the monster.
We need a new rule stating that if a Monster or Vehicle makes contact with a ruin, and is within X number of inches from the models inside, it counts as having made a successful charge. It doesn’t need to be complicated; it can be simple and elegant. The current rules are not reflective of the lore, and will leave players feeling salty as more and more situations revolving models in ruins arise throughout our time with the game at home and at tournaments.
Finally, I’m not overly impressed with the point adjustments in the latest FAQ. The 90 point hike to the Fire Raptor was excessive, especially when considering the new 0-3 limitation. A more elegant rule would have been to make it a Relic of the armoury, requiring the purchase of another flyer to unlock. It’s current point cost is now too prohibitive, and the beautiful model will no longer be seen on the tabletop.
By the same token, increasing Guilliman even further was not necessary at this stage. A few months ago prior to most armies receiving a codex it would have been more prudent, but he hasn’t been dominating the game in some time.
On the other end of the scale I’ll say that Dark Reapers could have been hiked further, but they are certainly a bit fairer now.
I’ll end this by saying that GW still have more work to do. We’re already seeing significant codex imbalance, with the likes of Grey Knights, and more worryingly, Space Marines having fallen behind. Various rules don’t quite work and are causing grief for players when they arise and some things need to be addressed as soon as possible.
Despite these negatives, it’s fantastic to be gaming in an age where Games Workshop, a previously monolithic and aloof corporation, are making real efforts to engage the community and to make the game as fair and balanced as possible.
In the meantime, when things go wrong we can just blame Reece and Frankie! #Tauspiracy
Stay Classy, Wargamers!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
I believe part of the problem with introducing such drastic rule changes later in the edition means there was no opportunity for codex designers to adapt earlier codexes for the changes to make them playable. You can imagine how much better this rule would be if Blood Angels or Daemons had a special stratagem allowing for a single unit to deep strike in turn 1 anywhere on the board.
As an alternative, our group did try using the suggestion from an earlier article from Frontline gaming that restricted only the player who had the first turn. Well I wasn’t on board with this originally, I found that it works really well. It allows both players to have at least 1 move before an alpha strike but doesn’t punish the 2nd player with 2 rounds of being shot at before getting to deep strike. It also adds a whole additional facet to the decision to go first or second.
I’m actually surprised they didn’t do it this way. That seems the most balanced way to me. It would make me consider depending on the army, terrain, and scenario whether or not I wanted to go first. Requiring decisions to be made is good.
Totally agree. Limiting the deepstrike for the person who go first would do a lot for balancing the alpha strike of the person going first. It would mean that each player have a turn of movement and shooting before the opponent reserve come in. To me it seems almost impossible to balance deepstrike when one player have more turn to use before the unit come in. Either it will be too strong (for the first player, before beta) or too weak (for the second, with beta rules).
For the other points:
1. The datasheet limit should simply be changed to a point % limit. For example, I’d say no more than 25% – or a minimum size unit for smaller game- can be taken of one datasheet. This would limit spamming big unit (ex: triple riptide) impossible without limiting small units (kroot hound, krootox, marksman). Also, it would scale perfectly with the size of the game (ex: 1500 can be kind of awkward with the beta limitation).
1b. For multi datasheet units (Tau commanders, Spare marine captain, …), I’d replace the T’au commander style limitation by a rule that simply say that for the datasheet limitation, all those count as one datasheet. Thus, it keep flexibility (ex: allowing T’au to use a fortification without loosing a commander) and does not introduce another complex limitation.
1c. Limiting a transport to 3 would not work for some army (some already have problems with HQ) but limiting them to 25% should be acceptable for all army except those that spam semi-transport (Razorback, Wave Serpent, …).
2. Terrain and cover need a lot of work. Terrain should impact movement. Intervening models/terrain should give cover to infantry. Big unit should be able to hit on the second level of terrain (maybe a rule: if the model body is at least as tall as the other base, it can charge/hit).
3. -1 to hit chapter tactics should be changed to either not be stackable with others spell/buffs and/or have the range increased.
Having 1st turn also enables the casting of buffs (psychic powers mostly, but also stuff like declaring advances to gain the jink rule for ravenwing units, etc.) which will help the player deal with his opponent’s turn 1 charges.
I’m strongly on board with only limiting the first player turn on the deep strike issue. I’ll adjust regardless, but I feel like there were just so many more options for list style before this change. My observations so far:
1) Gunlines are on the rise. Don’t pretend they are not.
2) The handful of armies that still have ambush ability are kicking tail, and are now firmly in the sights of the nerf bat. Gawd I hope that doesn’t happen, because fluffy rules that are useful make this game so much more fun. I honestly hesitate to write more about this topic, in fear of being squeezed, but for the good of the game;
A) I mainly play CSM. Alpha legion is now even better than it was because it has very little competition. I had many very strong lists using other legions before, and even preferred not to use the very popular Alpha Legion, but now it’s not even close. Even if I go second, I can simply force my opponent to shoot at what I want them to, or die quickly.
B) Nids with a sprinkle of GSC is just gross. There are plenty of options with the bugs, but this one just pulled into the lead.
3) Rather than create more diverse lists, this change seemed to squeeze many armies into just a couple builds. As posted above, these are just two that I’m very familiar with. I didn’t think it was all that hard to mitigate the alpha strike thing in the first place before this FAQ. All this first turn nerf did was limit diversity. My last tournament, I went second every round, and won every match for the gold. Sure, you take a good punch, but a nicely set up counter punch can knock a fool out.
4) Love the spam restrictions. Just needs a little further definition.
5) The hiding in the ruins mechanic is just plain stupid as hell. Gotta be fixed.
My two cents anyway. Thank you FLG for helping us improve this great game we all love!
I think I agree with all of that, except on the issue of transports. One per infantry unit seems fair enough to me. Wave Serpents could, for example, be balanced by increasing their cost.
If we’re going to talk about “not going far enough” with the FAQ, we should address the elephant in the room: Daemon Prince spam. Yes, you can only take 3 of each datacard, but there are 3 very similar Datacards out there – Daemon Prince of Chaos, Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, and Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
There are tournament armies running around with 6-7 Winged Daemon Princes without violating the Rule of 3 as it is currently formulated. GW should take note of it and update the rule to deal with this issue.
Lol not really. people could spam DP’s before and no one was winning tournaments with it, it’s not good and you will lose. The 0-3 limitation didn’t make a bad spam list a good spam list.
Yeah, that was my thought, too. It was not being done before so why worry about it, now? I mean, it’s a good list but I don’t think it is cause for alarm.
Spamming DPs is a solid path to a 2-1 RTT…. with that one loss being ugly.
It is actually worst there are 4 different daemon princes.
Codex: Chaos Marine – Daemon Prince
Codex: Chaos Daemons – Daemon Prince of Chaos
Codex: Death Guard – Daemon Prince of Nurgle
Codex: Thousand Sons – Daemon Prince of Tzeetch
even better, CSM have “daemon prince” and “daemon prince with wings”.
It’s the same datasheet though, even if it has different point values listed, just as the chaos Lord and the jump Lord, so not an issue.
I have one big problem with the new FAQ, and that’s that people can take more than 3 of various units that are clearly the same thing but still have separate datacards – for instance, I’ve seen lists with 3 BA Captains on Bikes and 3 BA Captains w/ jump packs. Similarly, a friend was discussing how IG players can still spam Mortars by taking 3 IG mortar squads and 3 FW Elysian mortar squads.
Noah similarly points out that Demon Princes have a bunch of different datasheets, allowing you to spam them despite the intent of the rule. I’m not sure how GW should go about fixing this but it does seem like the intent of the rule has not been implemented successfully.
I’d frankly like to see all the “-1 to hit” Chapter/Forge World/Craftworld tactics outright removed from the game, as they seem seriously unbalanced compared to other options.
Finally, SM/CSM Chapter Tactics not applying to vehicles seems a bit silly at this point. A Predator is supposed to be *better* than a Leman Russ in the lore and is not even remotely close at present. Chapter Tactics alone wouldn’t fix that, but it’d at least help.
I think the beta rules make having the first turn even more important, as you’re heavily punished if you hide your important units in reserve to weather the storm.
Also, unlike most other ajustments before it not only affects extreme army builds of the kind you’ll never see outside of tournaments, it affects probably hundreds of individual units that absolutely need their point cost adjusted accordingly (which will probably never happen)
I agree with pretty much all of this. The GW changes were great for the most part, with a few exceptions such as the excesssive fire raptor price hike.
1. units in ruins being unchargeable by monsters and imperial knights is a bit ridiculous when the larger model could knock the building over.
2. chapter tactics equivalents effectively only infantry and dreads for marines, while eldar and guard get their equivalent on everything seems clearly unfair to the armies that are limited by this.
3. rule of 3 was great, but they need to close the loop holes. There are too many similar dataslates, that are effectively the same unit for a different faction. Also vehicle squadrons need to be factored in. Right now you can take 9 hell hounds, followed by 9 more forgeworld hellhounds.
4. transports should probably be included in this, although I don’t see spam being very common. Three wave serpents is common, but I really don’t want to play against 4+.
5.I know they did a lot of point readjustments, but there are still tons of units that are overcosted and competitively useless. Forgeworld especially needs a lot of point rebalancing.
Part of that problem is just sloppy FW rules upkeep unfortunately.
Who is spera, and why have I become them.
> Razorbacks with Guilliman and Alaitoc Wave Serpents could potentially be an issue and I would have hoped to see Games Workshop nip it in the bud.
They won’t be, trust me. Wave Serpents don’t do enough damage and Razorbacks aren’t tough enough or able to escape from assaults.
Also, with regards to penalties (and especially stacked penalties), “automatic misses” (i.e. needing a 7+ to hit) are pretty meaningless; it rarely comes up in the game, and when it does the unit attacking was typically doing so little damage even when hitting on 6s that it makes no real difference. The problems with the Ork codex are a lot more fundamental than being unable to win a long-range shooting war with Craftworlds, so it isn’t really worth rewriting the rules to solve that non-issue. (Penalties to hit are themselves an issue with the game, but more because of the way they affect particular armies and how they are distributed in relation to other abilities. However, the only realistic solution there is changing the already-printed faction bonuses, which seems somewhat unlikely at this point.)
I agree that being able to DeepStrike on the bottom of Turn/Round 1 is worth a go, & then whether to go first or second is actually a decision point in the game, compared to the no-brainer it is now usually.
Also using common sense rules for Knights/vehicles/monsters being able to reach infantry in ruins, or failing that try to bring the ruins down on them, AKA drawing melee ‘reach’ from the model/hull, instead of the base. Fighting over a barricade gives an extra inch of reach, so how is that any worse??
>then whether to go first or second is actually a decision point in the game, compared to the no-brainer it is now usually.
Going first and second are both valid decisions, depending on the matchup and armies; if you write a list that simply loses every time it goes second, your problem is that you have a bad list, not that going second is inherently disadvantageous. In fact, the second player tends to win slightly more often in ITC games (like 55/45 or something like that?) because it gives you an advantage in scoring points, despite the disadvantage in firepower.
Not everyone plays ITC remember (as much as I wish it was more popular in the UK).
At LGT for example, going first is advantageous in 4 of the 5 missions
With the book missions it’s more arguable how much of an advantage going first is- you’re pretty much assured First Blood, obviously, but since almost all of the “basic” missions are about scoring objectives, that means the second player has a major advantage if they can get to the end of the game (and if you aren’t making it to turn 5 without being blasted away, you probably are losing regardless of the mission.) Kill points are obviously an exception to that, but that’s only one mission in six, so I think there is still a good argument that there is a significant advantage to being second player, though I don’t have specific numbers to back that up.
NOVA and Renegade missions are a whole other kettle of fish, of course, but there are players better than I that can speak to the ways those missions bias the game.
I have yet to play a game in 8th that reaches the “end”. Usually either me or my oponent is tabeld around turn 4 (or gave up a turn earlier because it was predictable and we were running out of time anyways…)
Bobby G isn’t gonna mind a ~4% increase in cost. Eldar Warlocks and Spiritseers, on the other hand, got piledrived with a point hike. I’m beginning to think GW doesn’t like psykers very much.
Speaking of Eldar, it should be abundantly clear by now that -1 to be hit traits are unbalanced. Every army with one has it be the overwhelmingly popular option (unless the opportunity cost is real steep, like giving up Mars for AdMech). Hell, the Tau codex neglected to give the stealth Sept (Dal’yth) that same bonus because it’d be obviously broken when stacking with XV22s and XV95s, but no such consideration went towards Rangers and fliers and such. -1 to be hit traits are incredibly punishing towards a few armies, are significantly stronger than almost every alternative, and are overall unfun to play against.
Unpopular opinion:
In order to buff melee units to now face the now prominent gun line – have ONLY melee weapons cleave their wounds. If a lascannon hits a squad – boom one model dead with 1-6 wounds; but, if an axe or a big scything talon hits a unit – instead of the wounds only going to one model have it spread to the unit as a whole. It buffs melee to an extent – and if you want fluff reasons you can say that in the swirl of melee combat wounds spill over.
“the now prominent gun line”
Can we wait for at least significant tournament to happen before we declare gunlines to be the end-all be-all that will conquer everything and destroy all opposition and they cannot be stopped and they will drink our tears of blood and sorrow?
Because, I get it, you’re angry that you can’t have your whole army assault on turn 1 now and that’s _not fair_, but maybe we should actually wait and see how the meta reshapes rather than making the same assumption that has always been made forever (i.e. “This game is all about static shooting armies! IG are unbeatable!”)
Bearing in mind that most of the changes discussed are BETA rules … then it’s our change to play-test and then suggest changes.
I like the SOUP (within detachments) change …. but we only have 2000 points so why not just have one Codex/Chapter in competitive play. It should be a challenge for players … not just take units from another Codex to cover your deficiencies.
TERRAIN … lets have one system for terrain. The swinging battle from “Dark Imperium” would be impossible to recreate in 40k. BUT we can have ledges big enough for combat. We can have one rule about the ground floor of buildings. We can have one rule about pillars not being able to hid an entire squad. And yes, many of these nonsense rules are tournament specific … absolutely nothing to do with GW.
They could also change strenght toughness scaling. Dont understand why toughness ends at 8. Like we are retarded and couldnt count to 10 or more.
Toughness could scale up to 16 to heavy tanks and lords of war. Wounding on 6 only could be a defensive stat finaly. Also they could differentiate more flyers, transports and pure tanks. When stormraven, razorback and predator have same 7 toughness. Pure tanks should have way over 8 toughness.
And also template weapons could need some help. When u need to roll first 2D6 then roll for hit, wound, and armor save. They are now random garbage. Anyone with brain takes the fixed shot weapons.
There are already models in the game with toughness values higher than 8.
I would be on board for any journey towards more sophisticated terrain rules but why – yet again – only look at non-interaction when it affects assault. LOS blocking terrain is fully non-interactive for shooting armies yet nobody says a word against it, the FAQ clarifies an edge case where assault armies can have an equivalent inability to interact and the internet rages. Why?
I agree that both cases are too binary and can give up some odd results. The idea that an Imperial Knight cannot swat infantry on a ruin with its chainsword is about as silly as the idea that the same Imperial Knight would not just shoot through those flimsy walls with its melta weaponry to kill the dudes on the other side.
Before we go too overboard with new terrain rules has anyone tried running a tournament with the existing Cities of Death rules from the rulebook?
Oh well. Personally I´m STILL awaiting an edition where power armour feels like power armour and not overpriced cardboard that dies to a breeze and eldar arent brokenly OP for some sick happens-every-effing-edition reason!
As it is now I see little fluff in the game. Eldar arent fragile fast glasscannons, hell, their transports alone are tougher then landraiders and half the things gets +3 saves for some insane reason, guard infantry outkill everything point-for-points and SM are fragile sissy little girls with slightly stronger flashlights for weapons and cardboard tanks that shoot water pistols that sound “cool”.
Maybe this is what we get when tournamenters help decide unit statlines and power trumps fluff, a game balanced for the top 3-4 codexes.
Try loosening the tin foil hat for just a second. It is good for the brain
Try answering the points instead of running away with a one liner.
They say its good for the brain.
If dedicated transports get locked at 0-3, Harlequins are going to be a terrible army. It just doesn’t work for them at all. It also doesn’t work very well for Dark Eldar.
Razorback spam really isn’t that good IMO. And Wave Serpent spam, while durable, has a very bad points:offense ratio for the Eldar player. WS spam lists are middle table competitors.
That being said, if Razorbacks cost a few more points and the Alatioc trait -1 to hit trait went to 18″ instead of 12″, I wouldn’t complain.
Lastly, what someone said about FW units being a loophole to get around the 0-3 restriction, it’s painfully true.
Move Wave Serpents to Heavy Support, done.
That’s actually a great idea!
Either that or fast attack.
An 18 ranged -1 to hit trait that is still allowed to stack and applies to the whole army and not “just” infantry, walkers and bikes is a bad idea.
To hit stacking needs to go and traits need to be applied “fairly” to the same unit types across armies.