Another few months have passed in the 40k hobby, and that means another Balance Dataslate from GW. We all know that when these get released not everyone is going to be happy. Sometimes players are unhappy because their army received a bit of a toning down, or sometimes they are unhappy because their army didn’t get the boost they felt was needed (Abberants NEED that Core keyword GW), but this Balance Dataslate has players disappointed for a different reason. The beautifully constructed graph included in the Warhammer Community page article shows a game where win percentages range from 39% for the poor AdMech, to the impressive 59% of the Tyranids. At a casual glance this would lead players to believe the game is in a much better place than the days of 80% win rate Harlequins, and while the game is definitely in a better place than it has been for most of 9th Edition, that doesn’t mean that the game is in a GOOD place. Players recognize that more could be done to balance the scales for various armies, and this Balance Dataslate did not do enough to tip those scales toward balance.
Tyranids- First we will cover what actually was changed. This will be quick. MagikarpUsedFly posted an excellent article covering the main change to Tyranids, so go check out his article for this welcome change.
Necrons- As for the other biggest change, that has to be the Silent King losing the Core keyword. I am a Necron player, and I will admit playing games where the Silent King was Core felt slightly too powerful. This stops all of the Silent Kings auras affecting himself, so no more re-rolling hits for Shooting or wounds while in combat. No more using certain Stratagems, like +1S, on the Silent King, no more (if you are playing the Szarekhan Dynasty) Veiling the Silent King across the table, and no more healing the Silent King with a Technomancer.
This is more of a slight inconvienince for the Necrons than a hit to their ability to win games. The Necron’s ability to go all ObSec to score a ton of points extremely quickly is still unchanged. The only way you beat a Necron army that is doing this is stop their scoring train from getting going early, and the sad fact is some armies just cannot accomplish this task. This change to the Silent King might actually make it even harder for those armies to stop the Necron scoring machine if Necron players just drop the Silent King altogether and take 400 more points of good ObSec bodies.
Space Marines- Enjoy your 79 point losses with those extra few points from Shock Tactics. GW says they expect this change to move the Space Marine win rate needle. It sure will; from 39% to 45%. Space Marines issue is not their ability to score points on the table. Their issue is that their units are hilariously costed for the durability that they provide in the current game. While the League of Votann are also highly costed models, with Armor of Contempt (not to mention no re-rolling wounds against the Votann), they also have the offensive output to absolutely table other armies before scoring is much of an issue. Space Marines just don’t enjoy this luxury as a faction.
Harlequins- Assault weapons from units that are embarked on a transport hit on 4s instead of 3s now.
Ynnari- 55% win rate?! Nerf Ynnari!
Adeptus Mechanicus- Ok, this is my hot take, having the original release version of AdMech back in the game is going to be hilariously bad. With the release of the Guard Codex upcoming (speaking of Guard now is the time to start building that army of charging cavalry!), the Leagues of Votann, and now AdMech back to their old selves, I believe there is going to be some army builds out there that just remove entire armies from the board in the course of one Shooting Phase. While both AdMech and Votann have subpar Secondary games, and this will be enough to ensure they will not light the world on fire in the tournament scene, these rules will cause all kinds of feels bad games at the middle and lower tables. Auto wounding on 4+ to hit just isn’t something that should exist.
Overall I would describe this Balance Dataslate as unimaginative. Don’t get me wrong, it is amazing GW has started reliably taking a look at the balance of their game every 3 months, but it is also alarming that the player base as a whole feels like these changes are not only needed, but that more aggressive changes are needed. This isn’t really an indication that GW is making the wrong decisions for their games balance in these Balance Dataslates, but it is an indication that the game itself has gone off the rails. There will be players who mention how badly balanced the game was back in 7th Edition, and they are absolutely right. The game was wild back then, but that was two Editions and years ago. I am not going to be impressed with a Games Workshop who puts out Balance Dataslates every 3 months to patch a seriously flawed game. I will be impressed with a Games Workshop who learns and grows from the difficult task of game development and releases a greatly improved 10th Edition that has a firmly balanced foundation.
The firmly balanced foundation using current codexes seems unlikely unfortunately.
And if it wildly changes things it will likely repeat the usual cycle of slow release army rules giving a widening gap over time.
Gotta release those hyper generic rules with stacks of counts as 😀
So, I have some things about the balance dataslate that I want to bring up. Both for and against the specific one released as well as the concept around them. There are a couple of things that make balancing 40k a nightmare that is difficult for a player that aligns themselves with any one of the competitive, casual, or hobby crowd to fully understand.
THE IDEA OF DATASLATES
For-
1. The idea of iterative releases of rules that actively respond to meta shifts and tournament statistics is a great one, and an extreme improvement from any of their past performances in this area. During 7th edition, the only amendments to the rules that could be expected were full codex or supplement releases. This caused numerous issues, not that the entire edition went basically unchanged from its inception, which resulted in the most infamously unbalanced and oppressive metagame 40k has ever seen. The reason tournaments were able to even maintain a meager amount of success was due to each event having their own FAQ/Errata, popularized by the LVO FAQ that most all events adopted. This, however, caused the TOs to be in direct control over how the rules would be played at their tournaments unilaterally, leading to situations in which the benefits of certain rules and units would actually make a unit worse (best example was Ravenwing Black Knights having a worse save when they got a 2+ jink save since the reroll would be on 4s instead of 2s, as compared to 3+ rerolling that don’t make the unit hit on 6s). GW being in control of the game at the very least means that the feedback to their changes forces them to evaluate them, like in here when they removed Core from the SK and toned down Leviathan, both largely due to popular outcry about the unfair nature of these two instances.
2. These changes are, by their nature, much more flexible in terms of when they are released and the permanence of the changes. Rules that are made by the dataslate can be removed or reworked much more quickly in the online format of the changes, as compared to the old “Wait for a new release” method they used to employ.
Against-
1. The system is very straightforward, since it’s based on tournament statistics and the lists involved. When games of 40k play out, many random events can result in one side or another to win that have nothing to do with list, faction, or matchups. Therefore, the competitive nature of the changes (since comp is the only crowd that cares about the dataslate, or any changes made to game for that matter) are often based around very linear fixes, which would be a great solution if 40k was actually a simple game. This dataslate is a perfect example: AdMech doing bad in tourneys? Remove the nerfs. Necrons winning too much? Remove the buffs. Tyranids winning too much? Nerf the most popular army variation. These changes make sense and are very impactful, but the issue is the magnitude. AdMech was nerfed hard for a very good reason in the context of the metagame at the time, which was mainly board control with limited firebases and weak offensive firepower. The other best army, Drukhari, was able to dominate the metagame just by having good guns on their Raiders to act as their firebase, so AdMech rocking in with the by far most damage-oriented codex at the time was a hard counter for that meta. The current meta has changed significantly in the wake of the AdMech codex release, since most armies take much more firepower or offense presence to be proactive and oppressive. The AdMech unnerfed is still a very powerful codex in terms of firepower, but the survivability of the armies in the metagame has increased and the faction is still very frail overall. HF Leviathan losing perma Transhuman warriors makes the large warrior blobs significantly less oppressive, and is a good change to keep the subfaction in check. Necrons got a slap on the wrist and a slightly less useful SK. The last change, though, is the entire problem with this system epitomized in one change. It technically is a points increase for a few Marine players, but doesn’t fix any core issues with their viability since it doesn’t take that into account.
2. While this is more about GW’s implementation of the system rather than the concept of it, the significant gaps in time between releases is not something that can go without mention. A fully digital medium allows for instantaneous changes to be applied, so a schedule for the dataslates is questionable. For a specific time period around the time the dataslate is released, GW could take in community feedback and make final adjustments to the content of the dataslate. Which is preferable to now, when Marine players have to wait for the probable last dataslate of 9th to have their army brought up to standard.
THIS DATASLATE
Overall-
1. The changes are great for the most part. Harlequins basically lost the ability to shoot Pistols from their advancing transports and take the assault weapon -1 to hit, which is a weird change. Tyranids got yanked from their throne and now have to fight for it. Necrons lost an abusable unit-keyword combination that never should’ve existed. AdMech is questionable, but people who want to play it now have it at full power. The only real miss is Marines, and it sucks, but 3/5 or 4/5 is a good proportion for a system that has been around for one edition, especially for a game as endlessly complex as 40k.
2. The timing didn’t blindside players. I can’t imagine Nid and Necron players thought that they were gonna leave the balance dataslate unchanged, so their nerfs coming after a couple big events that these two were majorly represented at allows the players to adjust their lists and strategies before their next large event.
3. However, one major point that I cannot argue is that it didn’t hit all the issues currently in the game. Yes, there are other armies that are oppressive and went untouched due to winrate not showing that they needed to be reigned in. From a competitive perspective, the dataslate looks like a balancing change that one would do when the meta is in a healthy and unproblematic state, not one of cutthroat competition where armies without answers to situations are falling behind the newer, more well-rounded codex releases. On a more neutral note, I would say that “fixing” all the issues in the metagame could easily cause a worse meta to arise, and it was what happened with the change from 6th to 7th. The two editions by and large play near identically, with the biggest change coming from the Psychic power changes, and only trivial other differences (challenge changes, super heavy units, etc.) The inception of the 7th psychic system marked one of the turning points where psykers and the art of abusing them became the hallmark of death star lists and eventually Taudar.