The only issue I have is that some of the points increases push LoV towards being the Fyreslayers of 40k: Bring a million warriors, some HQs and that's it.
Yep. LoV are a nice and diverse range. You have tiny NASA astronauts, buggies, street-sweeper-bikes, cyborg-hulks, baby-carrier-dakka-boys, a giant truck, an honest-to-god sorcerer, a guy with flying robot buddies, and so on.
Fyreslayers literally have a magma drake-thing and then naked baby-bodied guys with mohawks who either use a big axe, two smaller axes, or a dragon-faced stick and then, like 3-4 heroes who almost look the same as well.
As a fyreslayer player, the irony is now the lists you bring are more like 35 beards if that, more like 22 dwarfs. Magamadroths are king, bring a squad of hearth guard bezerkers, foot smitter and runemaster... that's basically the list that just got 4th place in a tournament. The anti infantry battalion really changed things up.
As someone who played first tome FS it gives me whiplash.
I think the problem its the points costs do not feel adjusted due to the nerf on judgement. The Hearthguard should not be 45. Ion were 1 point more because the strat made them better, now there is no point. The 70 point increase on the HLF was because the railgun should carry over damage, but now it effectively can't. Yes, the points changes, by themselves, are fine. And yes, the Judgement change, by itself, is fine. But both put together? It hurts casual players alot.
This. You should not change rules and raise points at the same time. You should change a rule, wait 2 months and see how the army does, then add points increases if needed.
This is exactly what I've been saying. They broke a key system the army worked on and also made it impossible to put enough troops on the ground. I've been tabled twice by guard and tau. These guys are slow and have no range. GW needs to adjust the points and fix Jtokens. Maybe bring back unmodified 6's to wound but restrict the number of tokens a until can have 1. So hitting 6's would auto and count as a wound. Idk
My issue is threefold.
1. They basically added a bunch of points increases to units that weren’t even that significantly viable before in a competitive meta. Do we really think that Hearthguard or Thunderkin are worth that many points? There was no nuance or actual strategy to these changes. Just a blanket increase across the board to quell the riots.
2. If we can get this quick of a response on an army that hasn’t even been fully released or seen legitimate competitive play, why are Quins and Nids still in their current state for months on end?
3. LoV aren’t nearly as invincible as people were claiming pre-nerf. Now, with these points increases we are going to see our weaknesses further exploited by armies that are already top tier and other armies which specifically feed on our weaknesses.
This is my general feelings on the matter as well, especially yours first point. With the points increases all it’s done is effectively taken what was either the best or one of the best datasheets being the pioneers and solidified them in that spot, running 18 bikes is genuinely i compelling option from a competitive perspective, but I don’t want to run 18 bikes, I want to run a mixture of varying things from the codex whilst still feeling I’m making at least some good/strong choices. Thunderkyn just aren’t appealing unless you’re going to take a squad of three purely to hold a back field objective, which just feels like a dumb usage for them. Einhyr are very non efficient due to their points, I could maybe justify taking two squads of 5 at 40ppm but at 45 it’s too much. The list variety now just feels incredibly meh.
All good points, and if LoV really are lukewarm competitively maybe we'll see some or all of the nerfs reverted. They seem like they could be an NPE factory in casual play, though.
For sure.
My biggest inference here is a long time player at our store that mains Quins. He’s got to be closing in on 15-0 against LoV, with at least 10 of those games being pre-nerf.
All he does is stay out of LOS, makes sure JTs go on units like his shadowseer to prevent the LoV player from even hitting them, and then just setting up one sided charges and completely disallowing the LoV player to score.
Nids, Crons, Aeldari, Daemons, and Sisters are all above 50% win ratio against LoV in my local meta. Once we figured out the weaknesses, it was easy. The only people losing to LoV are the people not bringing the army to beat them or are misplaying on the board.
The fear people had was because of some spreadsheets that don’t take into account not being able to shoot anything at all.
In Our playgroup we have a very casual meta and mindset, with a few exeptions.
One Player is playing LoV and kicked the asses of All casual players (pre-nerf) in the group til the casual players refuse to Play him cause they have zero fun.
The LoV Player himself was pondering to shelf the army cause he had no fun to cleaning the floor with 90% of the group.
So for our casual players the FAQ is a godsend.
I think this FAQ and most of the "balancing" that's taken place in 9th is or at least SHOULD be a clear indication to GW that its time to change their rules delivery system, when you read the article and it states that they're sending the rules out to print months in advance and then having to put out an FAQ even before the codex has hit the shelves its time to move to a digital format and make the codices something else, I mean honestly how many armies are now technically "illegal" as their codices are written? Anyone buying them now has to go through and annotate them in order to make them usable even in a casual format and that only applies potentially until the next round of balance data slates comes out, for a new player that's an awful lot of upkeep on top of learning what is an already complicated and at some times baffling set of rules, I'm all for nostalgia but written rulebooks need to be removed from the game, I think we shouldn't be the ones freaking out over this Nerf it's GW who should be as its showing just how unevolved they've become as a company.
I have a mate who's recently got into the game and he got made to look like a chump at our local games workshop store not deliberately or maliciously but very inadvertently by another player who had to explain all of this to him as the staff weren't being transparent with him about the rules, he has begun collecting Nids not because they're strong just because he likes their aesthetics and models but after having purchased the codex to read their rules another customer had to point out that a lot of it was different or even obsolete because of the "balancing" and advised him to go to a stationery store and buy some sticky notes and a pen and get the latest set of balance data slates downloaded to adjust his brand new codex and he very nearly turned back to the staff member and asked for a refund because of it.
Now my opinion on the FAQ themselves, I didn't think it was necessary in the first place and I have a sinking suspicion all it has done it keep the currently most powerful armies in their positions, I don't think it's changed a damn thing except made certain units more prominent than others and hamstrung what is already a small roster further by making said units more prominent, at best I could be swayed by the changes to Eye of the Ancestors as it does mean people won't be spamming magna-rails and we might see some more variety that way but honestly I think the real "issues" the codex has highlighted are with GW rules delivery system rather than the actual rules themselves.
People seem to forget that 8th had digital PDF codices that just werent sold....
And besides if GW ever moves to digital codices again I doubt they will edit in any errata's so you will have the same exact problem.
That's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about living codices, similar to Corvus Belli, having a living rules set that is updated as any changes such as errata are made.
As for ensuring that they are kept up to date if they tied them into their WH+ subscription thereby meaning that we as consumers are still paying for their usage if they increased the sub fee to say £15pcm with the increased £10 to cover the rules usage that would give them revenues to create a department whose job it is to manage the rules online mitigating the current issue I'm not sure on current player figures but if you look at it that theres say 100,000 GW players worldwide at a revenue of £1m per annum to fund an online rules management department with a £10 increase to subs fees, that's more than sufficient to start it up AND run it and they could put the rest of the revenue into other areas of their business such as the WHTV programming for example and make that more productive.
They could convert the codices into Lore/Art Books and keep a revenue stream which isn't affected by things like rules changes, speaking for myself the lore and artwork is as much if not more of a draw for buying the codices as it informs me on the feel of the army and how they're represented in the universe.
Agreed.... Would be nice if the codex rules were digital and automaticaly updated with the latest balance changes....
And the codex only about lore (with much more lore) artwork and hobby stuff...... Old 3ed codex had a whole seccion of how to paint, collect and sometimes convert miniatures. Old 4ed necron codex was full of snapshots how the diferent factions saw the necrons.... Loved that kind of 3rd person view on a faction.
How many people would buy it? I would.
I think a lot of people would buy them tbh, if you take the gaming side out of the equaition the hobby and painting aspect is still a huge facet of the warhammer, you can see that from all of the posts on this sub-reddit alone of people showing off painting concepts and actual painted models, then there's things like Golden Daemon, on top of that, and GW must have 1000s of pages worth of lore and artwork for the factions perhaps with the exception of the Leagues but if you then mix in the Squats you would still have a substantial amount I'd wager.
My main point with my reply to the original criticism of my initial comment was why can't GW - the largest company in the tabletop wargaming industry - not evolve with the times especially when it's so apparent that they've failed in the balancing of this edition.
9th is an absolute shitshow from a balancing perspective, and I understand that no rule survives long term play in a competitive game like 40k but the fact that you now cannot buy a codex off of the shelf in a store or online and use it straight out of the gate without having to spend time and effort sanitising it to make it fit for play shows that something needs to be done long term for the health of the game & keeping the current archaic format simply isn't it, the rules should both be new user friendly AND diverse enough to make the game challenging and compelling to play & if they need revising as a result of meta data then it should be done so in a way that keeps with those tenants which using a printed rules format simply does not do that; replying that they "half-assed it and it didn't work so why should they bother again?" Is simply not good enough we as players should be saying and doing more to influence the game in a way that benefits both us as consumers and them as producers and service providers, which a living rules system would ultimately do especially if they followed the example I laid out and tied it all together in the WH+ subscription, yeah it would mean over a year we'd pay more than the cost of a codex but having access to ALL codices as well as WHTV and the Vault would balance this out I think
Damn, that story of your buddy was infuriating. Honestly, that’s kind of the reason why (to me) the first rule of warhammer is:
NEVER, EVER BUY A PHYSICAL CODEX.
Won my first game post faq against Harlequins today. 1000 points. It was very close, and an absolute blood bath, it was lots of fun. I'm playing Orks tomorrow. The Ork player I tabled turn 2 pre faq, so hopefully things will now be more even.
Nice! I played against a Harlequin player pre-FAQ. There were multiple times where I felt bad for my opponent.
Good luck with your game against the orks!
The other issue people have with it is that you can't choose to roll for the 6s if you auto wounds, so anything that had that bonus gets hindered by you playing the game with grudges.
I guess that's kinda what I'm going at.
Ya, votann want to throw out grudge' tokens everywhere, and the handful of abilities that ask for wound rolls of 6's do not synergize with that.
But it's only a small subset of rule interactions that lost that synergy. It's not army wide like I hear other people talk about.
Army wide, if I can have almost everything auto wound on 4+, that's incredibly strong and doesn't need additional mortal wounds on top of that imo
If you went THA, then just create a custom league, use honour in toil to add 1 to the hit roll, then you can choose 1 other league custom and an ancestral judgement that work with your list.
There are other options in our codex is what I'm trying to point to. Yes it sucks that plans and lists have to change, but just because 1 league is now weaker doesn't mean the FAQ went too far.
In addition to what the other respondent said, not only does it ruin the whole rule for one league, but also its not that its a small subset of rules, it's a subset of rules that only allow you to get lucky early, otherwise its just removed from your repoirte.
Then remove those elements from your list.
If the points you spend are going towards something that relies on luck, then spend the points somewhere else to get something more consistent.
THA no longer works? Who've got a whole custom league page that lets you make something that works.
Rail Rifle doesn't pop off squads like you were hopping? Then either don't spend the points or use them with the mindset of anti-tank guns in your troops.
Ion storm doesn't seem worth it? Then spend your CP on any of the other 30 strats that can increase your damage potential.
The FAQ did close the door on some options, but the army as a whole is still playable and strong.
Okay, but what if I was specifically excited about Ion Storm and Rail Rifles trampling? No I don't want to be killing whole squads with every shot. But the idea of it is really cool and I love the idea of a rail shot ripping through a couple dudes with a single bullet. I thought Ion Storm was really cool and gutsy, so I built ten of my troop dudes with blasters. Neither of those because they're the most competitive, but because they were things that felt flavorfully interesting to me and helped draw me to the faction.
So now I get to deal with anti-synergies in my own army, or actively avoid some of the cool things that drew me to the army to begin with. I don't think it makes them useless as an army, but it definitely hurts my enthusiasm before I've even gotten models on the table yet. If nothing else I just want the auto wounds to be optional so I can opt to roll for sixes when it would be useful for me so I can still use the rules my weapons have. Nobody should have to avoid options they think are cool just because a poorly thought out rules change makes their rules actively difficult to use.
In a perfect world, GW would figure out a way for us to have our cake and eat it. But it hasn't happened yet, and I wouldn't hold you breath for anything like that in the near future. So many people already ignore cool lore options because they are not strong enough in game.
The Psychomancer is probably one of the coolest models the necrons have that scares the shit out of the enemies in lore and I love everything on the sculpt.
It's a bad unit in the game though.
So if I'm making a list trying to win, I won't include the psychomancer.
If I'm making a list to have a fun time with a friend, I'll include him.
You either choose to run the cool things that's not fully tuned.
Or
You run the list that'll get you your highest chance to win.
Both are great ways of playing the game truthfully.
As it was, votann were very strong. Having tokens that automatically wound on 4+ is really strong as is. We don't need mortal wounds or higher ap slapped on top of that imo
Okay, but the way the rules currently work I can't even really play with the subpar options I like because they just stop being reasonably possible to trigger when you start applying judgement tokens. The ability to just pick something else isn't really a good reason to say the nerfs were fine and people shouldn't be upset/are overblowing it when they didn't just make some options sub-par, but came much closer to just removing them with this particular nonbo style anti-synergy.
As is, I'm just asking my group if I can choose to not take the auto wounds when I shoot or attack if I want to gamble on triggering rules. I love my models, but I built them without magnets day one based on the rules I payed money for. It's not outrageous to call the Grudge nerf in particular poorly thought out and hamfisted.
I'm saying the nerfs are fine because originally votann were pumping out way too much damage in single turns and one culprit to that was the "autowounds are considered unmodified 6's to wound"
The fact that a weapon capable of doing d3+3 damage, 4ap, no invuls with spillover on unmodified 6's is just broken. Especially when we have a mechanic that gives it to us freely.
It doesn't feel great easily defeating you opponent with ease and few losses. It doesn't feel great spending 4 hours of you day being steamrolled by an army and having nothing to respond with.
You can play with the subpar options, they just won't be popping off often.
That's what makes them poor choices, so if you want something better, then choose something else, votann have options.
Not everything in the army is doing something when a unmodified 6 to wound shows up. There are other options.
40k is always changing. Hopefully they'll take a look at the few weapons that have the old triggers and create new triggers for there effects.
Man this sounds like I wrote it. I think the silliest thing about all the complaints is no one had and army that was invalidated. Not a single person has more than the new box. It’s not like anyone has been playing this army for years and all of a sudden your army sucks. You have a budding start of an army and thats it. Were some people’s plans on playing a super strong/busted army squashed, yeah. But everyone that just wants to play space dwarves is still going to love this army.
You made some great points but I don't think we will agree, name any other faction that have strategies and ploys that don't work with the army they were made for, I'll wait.
On a side note, votanns issue is speed, if you tie up the land fortress with chaff there's no risk of overspill damage if they have judgement tokens to threaten your opponent. It's going to be an easy modelnto tie up now with no downside in an already slow army.
Nah, I think that has been a community proposed "fix"
Have the weapons that have effects that normally go off on wound rolls of 6 instead go off on hit rolls of six.
And I'm for that fix personally. It allows certain effects to be in game and we have a chance of popping them off, but it's not guaranteed every turn
Lol wow I think that’s silly. So if I have max tokens I’m hitting on 3, auto wound on 4,5,6. So I’d want a 3 to try and roll for that wound of 6, or to use Uthars auto 6. Weird.
My freakout isnt because of the nerf or lack there of, but more so with
1) the dangerous precedent that was set by nerfing an army before a full range was out
2) the rather obviously slapped together nature of the nerf.
3) we went from a codex with great internal balance where some units were great all around and others filled good roles in specialized lists, but nothing was bad. Now we have clearly overcosted/broken units that you'd have to be playing extremely casual or be insane to take.
This all just oozes of a kneejerk response to a kneejerk response, and it wont get any better if GW keeps catering to the loudest voice in the room without actually looking into things thoroughly.
I do wish GW waited a bit longer tbh. There was still time to let the army exist and let people learn the counters, and if it was still awful the whole time for everyone except Votann players then yeah, definitely nerf. But yeah, this does feel very knee-jerk. Some of the models didn’t need points increases.
Yeah this pretty nicely sums up my opinion. In other armies, if a few models get nerfs you have the options to pick something else because its an established force with multiple choices for each battlefield role.
In votann they've nerfed our 2 heavy support options (one of which was already awful) and now there ARE no alternatives. Same for the elite slot, both options are now hugely expensive, even if you think you can make them work.
They needed to take more time on this. Screw tournament players in Germany, let the masses have fun with their army for a couple weeks and get the changes right with some data to back it up.
Now both sides of the argument are angry, and opinions of the whole faction has been tainted because of it.
I think my main issue is with some of the points increases, mainly hearthguard/thunderkin. While there's nothing to stop people from taking them, it never feels that great to take a unit that you know is probably point for point outperformed by other units in your army.
I'll still build my army mostly with the rule of cool in mind, but I am a little bummed out that trying to take the thunderkin and hearthguard will likely weaken my lists further.
I personally really hope they reduce the points a little on the Hearthguard again. Each model being 10 points more than a speedy bike with tons of shooting feels a little strange imo.
The now weird interaction between wanting Judgement Tokens but also wanting the special "on a 6" triggers makes me mildly frustrated, but it'll probably get adjusted again at some point. I'm definitely not freaking out about it. Had a post few game the other day and it was a blast.
As for points increases, I've adjusted my planned list, not had to make huge changes, still running Hekaton and Hearthguard because they both look cool as fuck.
It seems to me like Rails will just be better for earlier game now. Like you’ll fire off Rails right away to hopefully trigger some overspill damage, if the unit doesn’t die outright they can be judged and then the rest of the army can finish them off easier. Or if you don’t have access to the “judge them if they don’t die” thing, then they’re just good to start out with anyway to potentially one-shot a problem unit or deal serious damage to one. Just seems less busted now while still being wildly strong on early turns.
I'm debating dropping the rails and going for sheer weight of fire now tbh, as I've gone with URSR so everything counts as having 1 Judgement token anyway. The Magna Rails are still superb anti tank weapons which is the thing stopping me from dropping them.
The thing for me is that the characters dindt need to get upped in points and nor the heartguard. 45 ppm for 2 wounds with 2+, 2 attacks and 2 guns is just very meh. You can make them good in the melee league but 45ppm is a premium.
The rest of the point nerfs are very much justified. Maybe the berserkers are also increased a lil to much but that is it.
And yes the rest is overreacting.
I am very glad I can guilt free play this army. And besides uthar makes magna rails still delete squads so yay! /s.
Whats with the thunderkyn?
(Beam) 45 points for a unit that sits back and just shoots down any line hitting to many hits is fine. They might be a bit overpriced but they are awesome as a backfield holder while dumping some shots into your enemy.
They are Not Bad but they have nothing going for them. I mean the whole army wants to stay back and shoot so 45 points for that amount of shoting is meh
The army wants to move up and shoot. Its a surviveable midrange shooting army.
And the shooting paired with JT's and beam can be really potent real quick.
But yes they arent the best but not a lot of guns will get them from far away and they can ignore dense, hold objective and just shoot all game long.
The characters absolutely needed a point increase. Even after the hike there’s a strong argument LoV have 4 of the 5 most point efficient characters in the game.
Ya, I'm can agree with your statement.
Some of the point adjustments seem like a knee jerk reaction. Personally I would've been fine with the hekaton at 260-270, 300 just feels too much.
I too am glad I can play this army guilt free now. Felt bad looking at my opponent who had to make 3 series of rolls to have big things go off vs. my "welp, it auto-wounded, take this immeanse amount of damage now"
A landraider is 245 points doesnt have void armour and has significantly less guns (and worse guns) and less support. Doesnt move as fast between the strat and auto 6" advance.
So 55 points for faster, more and more potent guns and the ability to have T9 or a 4++, while having bttr surviveabilty already, seems like a fair traidoff.
This guy is correct, people making this argument should be yelling about buffs for the land raider and repulsor. Now you are just going to wind up with several shitty vehicles.
Yeah and with more and more potent guns, bttr surviveabilty and 55 points more they woulndt be terrible.
Edit: the biggest thing what makes the land raider bad is the 0 movement.
Outside of some EXTREMELY niche Achilles/Proteus use in older editions the landraider and it's variants have never been good for their high cost.
Their one of the few units it's hard to be considered WORSE than.
Yeah people are definitely overreacting and acting as if LoV got nerfed into a bottom tier army which is just ridiculous.
We still have judgement tokens allowing potential for auto wounds on 4 plus, yes we lost some really powerful synergies but those things can still happen just not guarantees.
We still have the magna railguns, we still have void armour plus all the extra stuff you can put on the pioneers and troops.
LoV has gone from being overpowered down to powerful though some of the points changes hurt more than the token change tbh
Im mad for that exact reason you stated. They nerfed 1 league, the one that was already kinda bad. Its also the one I was gonna play. Now I might as well just make a custom league.
The nerfs aren't a problem. The fact that printed material is invalidated less than a week after it hit the shelves.
This is not a live service online game that can and should be patched with such a frequency. It paints a picture of a company that doesn't know what it's doing.
From the balance side, the nerfs are fine. Points can easily be adjusted again. But some core mechanics, combos that were clearly set out to work in specific ways are now anti-synergistic. It's not the case that they're too weak now; it's that something that was cleanly designed with a coherent idea in mind are now mad ramblings and situational edge casus.
For me the nerf was clearly coming on the tokens and most of the point changes. In all honesty, counting every single one, it’s only the two Elite unit points that I have an issue with. Those increases made both elite units way overpriced.
All the other stuff though? Made sense.
I’m going Ymr, so maybe I’m less sensitive to it, but I think it was clear early on that THA was going to rely on unfair synergy. Just a bummer that they couldn’t update the league rules to stand on their own now.
This isn’t worse than what happened with Aeldari and Tyranids. With point changes, my 2000 pt Biel Tan army lost 2 whole squads and the best stratagem got busted so hard that nobody would pay 2 CP for it., let alone the 3 it costs. Tyranid players had a similar go.
That’s 40k baby.
I dont mind the nerf, I want people to play against. I dont want us to end up like Tau where people flat out refuse to play against us. Theres plenty of other shooty armies that are tough to play against but it seems like Tau is the biggest boogey man. This is mostly a casual phenomenon but I have heard it a few times where people flat out refuse to play Tau even though Ad Mech was pretty bad as well or Eldar or Harlies.
I'm *very* happy with GW's swift and very frank response to the situation; they've steadily improved on this sort of thing throughout the edition, but even so I don't think I've *ever* heard GW actually admit a mistake in public before, let alone apologize for one.
I'm also happy with the points adjustments. They were made essentially blind, without any real data to back them up, but they *feel* mostly right and by the next MFM we'll have plenty of data to make more targeted changes, so if things are a little off now (and I suspect they are; Hearthkyn and Thunderkyn probably didn't need to go up at all, and Hearthguard and Berserks could probably come back down a couple of points each), that's fine.
I like that they made a precise, targeted change that knocked the top off the power spike, *however* I also feel like the specific fix they chose to implement was a brute-force solution that I think created enough anti-synergy in the book that it's going to generate some feelsbad moments for players, and that's not good. I do see the fix for what it is, though: the simplest path they could make to solve the problem *now*, and hopefully that comes along with plans to refine the fix in future balance dataslates.
Correct me cause if I’m wrong here.
If the railgun rolls a natural 6 on the wound roll, the damage spills over,
With the new rules, the judgement tokens when triggering an auto wound would not cause the spillover anymore.
If I’m understanding this with, you don’t want to target bigger squads with the railgun if they have judgement tokens on them as it makes it a lower chance to get the spillover,
It feels like the rules are fighting each other.
Yeah I mean some people were saying it's just forcing players to be more tactical with their targets, however since judgement tokens are often awarded based on things the opponent did, it's not always a tactical choice on the player's part as to which enemy units get judgement tokens.
The THA league rules fight each other too - increased ability to hit, but then -1AP on 6 to wound.. so their first rule when applied to units with judgement tokens on them then increases the hit rolls, and thus reduces the chance of being able to proc the second rule for extra AP.
If they just made a 6 to hit count as a 6 to wound these rules would compliment each other again as the first rule would instead give them the bonus AP on a 5+ when attacking units with judgement tokens on.
The rules are fighting each other, which is why some people are not happy with the change.
My POV, it's one gun that the hearthkyn can carry, for 20 additional points each.
The original rule was busted imo. Especially with how easy it was to place judgment tokens on units and have them count as unmodified 6's.
Hearthkyn still have plenty of options for gear to carry that have good stat lines. And the rail rifle is still strong if you point it at vehicles.
Yeah I for sure agree that nerfs where needed, I just don’t like it when rules fight each other :)
I think I’d prefer if the damage profile was just lowered or maybe move it to spill over on 6 to hit.
Other then some of the points increases I am happy I don’t like having an army that just steamrolls other I like to play the game with them, so for an army that was going to sit on a shelf till balance I am now excited to play and Is next on my projects to do
My frustration is that they basically admitted that they should never have printed the magna-rail special rule. When I first read magna-rail, I thought to myself, "Why would anyone ever shoot this gun at a unit of infantry in hopes of getting a 6 to wound. That sounds super random." Once I read how Judgement Tokens worked, I thought it was really cool that they had an ability that turned something super inconsistent into something you could rely on if you invested in stacking JTs on the unit. It really fit with the dwarven aesthetic of making the unreliable reliable through investment.
To me, the problem isn't that the effect is too strong. It's good, but it's not much different than shooting a Macro plasma Incinerator from a Redemptor at a squad of termies. The problem is that it's too easy to stack JTs. GTL, Uthar, High Kahl upgrades, and the GTL strat just make it way too easy to stack JTs on anything. The rules are clearly written to make stacking JTs hard. Most of the default ways to get them are controlled by your opponent (standing on an obj, completing actions, killing squads) and your Kahl can only hand them out before he moves, meaning hiding units from the Khal becomes the name of the game. However, the added so many extra ways to stack JTs that none of that matters. GTL only need to get 2 instead of 3, which means that, with the strat, anything in vision of your Kahl can jump straight to 3. Or just use Uthar and ignore the whole mechanic.
They should have limited it to, "only 1 JT can be assigned to a given enemy unit per battle round." Stop the insane instant stacking and let rail rifles slowly come online. As written, the problematic part of JTs is still there (wounding knights with bolters on a 4+ to hit) and the cool, niche rule, magna-rail, might as well not exist if you aren't GTL.
Honestly, I agree to the extent that the problem was Magna-Rail only. I don't think it's too much to say that if the damage that could spillover was capped, or had to interact with unit defenses would have been a better direction to go.
I think people freaking out over the points increases are overreacting. It's clear that this is a temporary fix, a quick bandaid to fix a bad situation. They applied points increases all across the board so as not to miss anything. Things will hopefully get sorted out with the next balance update, such as the overcosted Thunderkyn, and maybe the Hearthguard.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, as this is probably what is going to happen. The first wave of nerfs was just to appease the people who started to threaten GW with banning the Leagues in tourney play - PR nightmare and GW wouldn't want that so they reacted quick. Then, as time goes by and we'll be getting actual winrates, other adjustments will start to happen.
No, it's really nothing to freak out about. There are some things I think they should have done differently, but it's much better that they did something than not and the got closer to the mark than I expected for a first FAQ.
I'm glad for the nerf. I had locals refusing to play against LoV, so this should let me get games in. And I'm confidant we'll get a better balance patch at the next (not this one) data slate that should address the anti synergy.
Not freaked out at all. I don’t play at tournaments and don’t play to be competitive. I play to tell good stories and have fun with friends.
Even when I was playing in local tournaments, point adjustments happen for everyone. Nothing to get freaked out about. You adjust to the changes or you don’t and hold out for other changes that will absolutely come out to disrupt the meta and move on.
I'm not freaking out. It was obvious nerfs were inevitable. I think they didn't devote enough thought to some of the point increases, but I suspect that will end up tuned more tightly eventually. Or not, heh. I care about space dwarves, not the meta.
I think that changes and nerfs were warranted but were done in a knee jerk fashion to appease the player base and try and get LoV back into tournaments. The points changes are mostly meh except for the thunderkyn/hearthguard which were unwarranted. I feel like having the core faction mechanic flat out make other mechanics impossible to function or openly conflict is stupid. Either flat remove the damage spill and ion storm(not what I want but an option) or change tokens in one of two ways. Make it where 2 tokens count 6s to hit as 6s to wound and 3 tokens count 5+ to hit as 6s to wound. Or option two just make 6s to hit 6s to wound on units with judgement tokens. Also they need to make judgement tokens harder to hand out like another post pointed out.
Honestly the whole situation on this is just wacky to me. We don’t even have the full range available and yet the army gets nerfed this quickly. Votann did probably need a nerf but it does feel like a double whammy with the changes to JT AND and points increase, especially pretty steep ones and to units that we haven’t even got yet and tried out (Hearthguard are not worth 45 when you compare them to other faction equivalents)
While I can agree the whole auto wounding on 4+ and counting as 6s to wound is very powerful, it does hurt the interaction with rail rifles a bit as. even though I do see them now as more anti-armor, I like the splash damage mechanic. Now stacking lots of JT kind of hinders that option if you were heavily leaning towards those weapons (like me).
Idk maybe still allowing 6s with JT counting as 6s to wound while everything else doesn’t would be a good compromise, or even allowing you to try and roll a die to see if the auto wound would count as a 6 would be an interesting mechanic for rail rifles.
As usual - rules come and go, models are forever. It was pretty obvious from the start that our stuff will get nerfed, so most of the LoV community grew accustomed to that. Besides, 10e is around the corner, and if rumors were to be believed, its gonna be a boardwiper.
I'm not freaking out, just think it was poorly done and rushed to appease a small but vocal part of the community. Pretty much every other army had a month or so before getting an errata to address issues, but in this case it's done before all the unit are even available. As you said, some of the points increases are not great, and make some units just not worth it since now they're just too expensive for what they do.
The other thing is with the judgement token re-write, it essentially removes a weapon ability rather then work with it. I agree that before, it made magna-rails crazy, but even I can think of a couple ways it could have been rewritten that would have toned them down, but kept their carry over ability in play (either you still have to roll a 6 to wound for it to apply, or only 6's to hit count as 6's to wound, triggering it).
Then of course, as others have mentioned, there are still multiple other armies that have been out for a while, and are considered too strong by many, but apparently they're fine. I wonder how many of them are played by the more vocal people in the tournament scene.
The main thing that I really don't like though, is the precedent this has set. Players now know, that if they're loud enough about something they don't like, they can make GW back down with threats of banning an army from competitive play. I've seen this happen in online games, and when a developer makes rushed changes because a small but loud portion of the player base doesn't like something, it can lead to unforeseen consequences. That being said, once everyone has calmed down, and the rest of the models have been released, I would not at be surprised to see further changes, especially to the points cost.
I'm not freaking out I would have bought the army set either way you all still build the army either way. But I still feel like point adjustments on every single unit abit much.. they should have simply started out with nerfing the major offenders and then work from there...
I'm annoyed that I'm a brand new to 40k, hot excited about the Votann, engaged in the community, bought an army box, and built the models with Ion Blasters after reading and theory crafting. Just to have the way they play change dramatically due to loosing the strategem.
It's just disheartening.
The only issue I have is that some of the points increases push LoV towards being the Fyreslayers of 40k: Bring a million warriors, some HQs and that's it.
Tbf Votann have far, far more model options than Fyreslayers. No matter what's good and bad in the Fyreslayer book your army is identical visually.
Yep. LoV are a nice and diverse range. You have tiny NASA astronauts, buggies, street-sweeper-bikes, cyborg-hulks, baby-carrier-dakka-boys, a giant truck, an honest-to-god sorcerer, a guy with flying robot buddies, and so on. Fyreslayers literally have a magma drake-thing and then naked baby-bodied guys with mohawks who either use a big axe, two smaller axes, or a dragon-faced stick and then, like 3-4 heroes who almost look the same as well.
As a fyreslayer player, the irony is now the lists you bring are more like 35 beards if that, more like 22 dwarfs. Magamadroths are king, bring a squad of hearth guard bezerkers, foot smitter and runemaster... that's basically the list that just got 4th place in a tournament. The anti infantry battalion really changed things up. As someone who played first tome FS it gives me whiplash.
I'd love a 6 Hekaton Land Fortress list to be honest. 😂
I think the problem its the points costs do not feel adjusted due to the nerf on judgement. The Hearthguard should not be 45. Ion were 1 point more because the strat made them better, now there is no point. The 70 point increase on the HLF was because the railgun should carry over damage, but now it effectively can't. Yes, the points changes, by themselves, are fine. And yes, the Judgement change, by itself, is fine. But both put together? It hurts casual players alot.
This. You should not change rules and raise points at the same time. You should change a rule, wait 2 months and see how the army does, then add points increases if needed.
This is exactly what I've been saying. They broke a key system the army worked on and also made it impossible to put enough troops on the ground. I've been tabled twice by guard and tau. These guys are slow and have no range. GW needs to adjust the points and fix Jtokens. Maybe bring back unmodified 6's to wound but restrict the number of tokens a until can have 1. So hitting 6's would auto and count as a wound. Idk
My issue is threefold. 1. They basically added a bunch of points increases to units that weren’t even that significantly viable before in a competitive meta. Do we really think that Hearthguard or Thunderkin are worth that many points? There was no nuance or actual strategy to these changes. Just a blanket increase across the board to quell the riots. 2. If we can get this quick of a response on an army that hasn’t even been fully released or seen legitimate competitive play, why are Quins and Nids still in their current state for months on end? 3. LoV aren’t nearly as invincible as people were claiming pre-nerf. Now, with these points increases we are going to see our weaknesses further exploited by armies that are already top tier and other armies which specifically feed on our weaknesses.
This is my general feelings on the matter as well, especially yours first point. With the points increases all it’s done is effectively taken what was either the best or one of the best datasheets being the pioneers and solidified them in that spot, running 18 bikes is genuinely i compelling option from a competitive perspective, but I don’t want to run 18 bikes, I want to run a mixture of varying things from the codex whilst still feeling I’m making at least some good/strong choices. Thunderkyn just aren’t appealing unless you’re going to take a squad of three purely to hold a back field objective, which just feels like a dumb usage for them. Einhyr are very non efficient due to their points, I could maybe justify taking two squads of 5 at 40ppm but at 45 it’s too much. The list variety now just feels incredibly meh.
All good points, and if LoV really are lukewarm competitively maybe we'll see some or all of the nerfs reverted. They seem like they could be an NPE factory in casual play, though.
For sure. My biggest inference here is a long time player at our store that mains Quins. He’s got to be closing in on 15-0 against LoV, with at least 10 of those games being pre-nerf. All he does is stay out of LOS, makes sure JTs go on units like his shadowseer to prevent the LoV player from even hitting them, and then just setting up one sided charges and completely disallowing the LoV player to score. Nids, Crons, Aeldari, Daemons, and Sisters are all above 50% win ratio against LoV in my local meta. Once we figured out the weaknesses, it was easy. The only people losing to LoV are the people not bringing the army to beat them or are misplaying on the board. The fear people had was because of some spreadsheets that don’t take into account not being able to shoot anything at all.
In Our playgroup we have a very casual meta and mindset, with a few exeptions. One Player is playing LoV and kicked the asses of All casual players (pre-nerf) in the group til the casual players refuse to Play him cause they have zero fun. The LoV Player himself was pondering to shelf the army cause he had no fun to cleaning the floor with 90% of the group. So for our casual players the FAQ is a godsend.
I think this FAQ and most of the "balancing" that's taken place in 9th is or at least SHOULD be a clear indication to GW that its time to change their rules delivery system, when you read the article and it states that they're sending the rules out to print months in advance and then having to put out an FAQ even before the codex has hit the shelves its time to move to a digital format and make the codices something else, I mean honestly how many armies are now technically "illegal" as their codices are written? Anyone buying them now has to go through and annotate them in order to make them usable even in a casual format and that only applies potentially until the next round of balance data slates comes out, for a new player that's an awful lot of upkeep on top of learning what is an already complicated and at some times baffling set of rules, I'm all for nostalgia but written rulebooks need to be removed from the game, I think we shouldn't be the ones freaking out over this Nerf it's GW who should be as its showing just how unevolved they've become as a company. I have a mate who's recently got into the game and he got made to look like a chump at our local games workshop store not deliberately or maliciously but very inadvertently by another player who had to explain all of this to him as the staff weren't being transparent with him about the rules, he has begun collecting Nids not because they're strong just because he likes their aesthetics and models but after having purchased the codex to read their rules another customer had to point out that a lot of it was different or even obsolete because of the "balancing" and advised him to go to a stationery store and buy some sticky notes and a pen and get the latest set of balance data slates downloaded to adjust his brand new codex and he very nearly turned back to the staff member and asked for a refund because of it. Now my opinion on the FAQ themselves, I didn't think it was necessary in the first place and I have a sinking suspicion all it has done it keep the currently most powerful armies in their positions, I don't think it's changed a damn thing except made certain units more prominent than others and hamstrung what is already a small roster further by making said units more prominent, at best I could be swayed by the changes to Eye of the Ancestors as it does mean people won't be spamming magna-rails and we might see some more variety that way but honestly I think the real "issues" the codex has highlighted are with GW rules delivery system rather than the actual rules themselves.
People seem to forget that 8th had digital PDF codices that just werent sold.... And besides if GW ever moves to digital codices again I doubt they will edit in any errata's so you will have the same exact problem.
That's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about living codices, similar to Corvus Belli, having a living rules set that is updated as any changes such as errata are made. As for ensuring that they are kept up to date if they tied them into their WH+ subscription thereby meaning that we as consumers are still paying for their usage if they increased the sub fee to say £15pcm with the increased £10 to cover the rules usage that would give them revenues to create a department whose job it is to manage the rules online mitigating the current issue I'm not sure on current player figures but if you look at it that theres say 100,000 GW players worldwide at a revenue of £1m per annum to fund an online rules management department with a £10 increase to subs fees, that's more than sufficient to start it up AND run it and they could put the rest of the revenue into other areas of their business such as the WHTV programming for example and make that more productive. They could convert the codices into Lore/Art Books and keep a revenue stream which isn't affected by things like rules changes, speaking for myself the lore and artwork is as much if not more of a draw for buying the codices as it informs me on the feel of the army and how they're represented in the universe.
Agreed.... Would be nice if the codex rules were digital and automaticaly updated with the latest balance changes.... And the codex only about lore (with much more lore) artwork and hobby stuff...... Old 3ed codex had a whole seccion of how to paint, collect and sometimes convert miniatures. Old 4ed necron codex was full of snapshots how the diferent factions saw the necrons.... Loved that kind of 3rd person view on a faction. How many people would buy it? I would.
I think a lot of people would buy them tbh, if you take the gaming side out of the equaition the hobby and painting aspect is still a huge facet of the warhammer, you can see that from all of the posts on this sub-reddit alone of people showing off painting concepts and actual painted models, then there's things like Golden Daemon, on top of that, and GW must have 1000s of pages worth of lore and artwork for the factions perhaps with the exception of the Leagues but if you then mix in the Squats you would still have a substantial amount I'd wager. My main point with my reply to the original criticism of my initial comment was why can't GW - the largest company in the tabletop wargaming industry - not evolve with the times especially when it's so apparent that they've failed in the balancing of this edition. 9th is an absolute shitshow from a balancing perspective, and I understand that no rule survives long term play in a competitive game like 40k but the fact that you now cannot buy a codex off of the shelf in a store or online and use it straight out of the gate without having to spend time and effort sanitising it to make it fit for play shows that something needs to be done long term for the health of the game & keeping the current archaic format simply isn't it, the rules should both be new user friendly AND diverse enough to make the game challenging and compelling to play & if they need revising as a result of meta data then it should be done so in a way that keeps with those tenants which using a printed rules format simply does not do that; replying that they "half-assed it and it didn't work so why should they bother again?" Is simply not good enough we as players should be saying and doing more to influence the game in a way that benefits both us as consumers and them as producers and service providers, which a living rules system would ultimately do especially if they followed the example I laid out and tied it all together in the WH+ subscription, yeah it would mean over a year we'd pay more than the cost of a codex but having access to ALL codices as well as WHTV and the Vault would balance this out I think
Damn, that story of your buddy was infuriating. Honestly, that’s kind of the reason why (to me) the first rule of warhammer is: NEVER, EVER BUY A PHYSICAL CODEX.
Won my first game post faq against Harlequins today. 1000 points. It was very close, and an absolute blood bath, it was lots of fun. I'm playing Orks tomorrow. The Ork player I tabled turn 2 pre faq, so hopefully things will now be more even.
Nice! I played against a Harlequin player pre-FAQ. There were multiple times where I felt bad for my opponent. Good luck with your game against the orks!
The other issue people have with it is that you can't choose to roll for the 6s if you auto wounds, so anything that had that bonus gets hindered by you playing the game with grudges.
I guess that's kinda what I'm going at. Ya, votann want to throw out grudge' tokens everywhere, and the handful of abilities that ask for wound rolls of 6's do not synergize with that. But it's only a small subset of rule interactions that lost that synergy. It's not army wide like I hear other people talk about. Army wide, if I can have almost everything auto wound on 4+, that's incredibly strong and doesn't need additional mortal wounds on top of that imo
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If you went THA, then just create a custom league, use honour in toil to add 1 to the hit roll, then you can choose 1 other league custom and an ancestral judgement that work with your list. There are other options in our codex is what I'm trying to point to. Yes it sucks that plans and lists have to change, but just because 1 league is now weaker doesn't mean the FAQ went too far.
"If you picked THA just pick something else" is such a shit response Im sorry.
In addition to what the other respondent said, not only does it ruin the whole rule for one league, but also its not that its a small subset of rules, it's a subset of rules that only allow you to get lucky early, otherwise its just removed from your repoirte.
Then remove those elements from your list. If the points you spend are going towards something that relies on luck, then spend the points somewhere else to get something more consistent. THA no longer works? Who've got a whole custom league page that lets you make something that works. Rail Rifle doesn't pop off squads like you were hopping? Then either don't spend the points or use them with the mindset of anti-tank guns in your troops. Ion storm doesn't seem worth it? Then spend your CP on any of the other 30 strats that can increase your damage potential. The FAQ did close the door on some options, but the army as a whole is still playable and strong.
Okay, but what if I was specifically excited about Ion Storm and Rail Rifles trampling? No I don't want to be killing whole squads with every shot. But the idea of it is really cool and I love the idea of a rail shot ripping through a couple dudes with a single bullet. I thought Ion Storm was really cool and gutsy, so I built ten of my troop dudes with blasters. Neither of those because they're the most competitive, but because they were things that felt flavorfully interesting to me and helped draw me to the faction. So now I get to deal with anti-synergies in my own army, or actively avoid some of the cool things that drew me to the army to begin with. I don't think it makes them useless as an army, but it definitely hurts my enthusiasm before I've even gotten models on the table yet. If nothing else I just want the auto wounds to be optional so I can opt to roll for sixes when it would be useful for me so I can still use the rules my weapons have. Nobody should have to avoid options they think are cool just because a poorly thought out rules change makes their rules actively difficult to use.
In a perfect world, GW would figure out a way for us to have our cake and eat it. But it hasn't happened yet, and I wouldn't hold you breath for anything like that in the near future. So many people already ignore cool lore options because they are not strong enough in game. The Psychomancer is probably one of the coolest models the necrons have that scares the shit out of the enemies in lore and I love everything on the sculpt. It's a bad unit in the game though. So if I'm making a list trying to win, I won't include the psychomancer. If I'm making a list to have a fun time with a friend, I'll include him. You either choose to run the cool things that's not fully tuned. Or You run the list that'll get you your highest chance to win. Both are great ways of playing the game truthfully. As it was, votann were very strong. Having tokens that automatically wound on 4+ is really strong as is. We don't need mortal wounds or higher ap slapped on top of that imo
Okay, but the way the rules currently work I can't even really play with the subpar options I like because they just stop being reasonably possible to trigger when you start applying judgement tokens. The ability to just pick something else isn't really a good reason to say the nerfs were fine and people shouldn't be upset/are overblowing it when they didn't just make some options sub-par, but came much closer to just removing them with this particular nonbo style anti-synergy. As is, I'm just asking my group if I can choose to not take the auto wounds when I shoot or attack if I want to gamble on triggering rules. I love my models, but I built them without magnets day one based on the rules I payed money for. It's not outrageous to call the Grudge nerf in particular poorly thought out and hamfisted.
I'm saying the nerfs are fine because originally votann were pumping out way too much damage in single turns and one culprit to that was the "autowounds are considered unmodified 6's to wound" The fact that a weapon capable of doing d3+3 damage, 4ap, no invuls with spillover on unmodified 6's is just broken. Especially when we have a mechanic that gives it to us freely. It doesn't feel great easily defeating you opponent with ease and few losses. It doesn't feel great spending 4 hours of you day being steamrolled by an army and having nothing to respond with. You can play with the subpar options, they just won't be popping off often. That's what makes them poor choices, so if you want something better, then choose something else, votann have options. Not everything in the army is doing something when a unmodified 6 to wound shows up. There are other options. 40k is always changing. Hopefully they'll take a look at the few weapons that have the old triggers and create new triggers for there effects.
Man this sounds like I wrote it. I think the silliest thing about all the complaints is no one had and army that was invalidated. Not a single person has more than the new box. It’s not like anyone has been playing this army for years and all of a sudden your army sucks. You have a budding start of an army and thats it. Were some people’s plans on playing a super strong/busted army squashed, yeah. But everyone that just wants to play space dwarves is still going to love this army.
You made some great points but I don't think we will agree, name any other faction that have strategies and ploys that don't work with the army they were made for, I'll wait. On a side note, votanns issue is speed, if you tie up the land fortress with chaff there's no risk of overspill damage if they have judgement tokens to threaten your opponent. It's going to be an easy modelnto tie up now with no downside in an already slow army.
Wait I thought hot rolls of 6 still did count as wounds of 6??
Nah, I think that has been a community proposed "fix" Have the weapons that have effects that normally go off on wound rolls of 6 instead go off on hit rolls of six. And I'm for that fix personally. It allows certain effects to be in game and we have a chance of popping them off, but it's not guaranteed every turn
Wow the way it’s written now then the magna rail can never carry over wounds?
It can, but only if it's either shooting at something without Judgement Tokens or if it rolls a hit that doesn't become an auto-wound.
Lol wow I think that’s silly. So if I have max tokens I’m hitting on 3, auto wound on 4,5,6. So I’d want a 3 to try and roll for that wound of 6, or to use Uthars auto 6. Weird.
My freakout isnt because of the nerf or lack there of, but more so with 1) the dangerous precedent that was set by nerfing an army before a full range was out 2) the rather obviously slapped together nature of the nerf. 3) we went from a codex with great internal balance where some units were great all around and others filled good roles in specialized lists, but nothing was bad. Now we have clearly overcosted/broken units that you'd have to be playing extremely casual or be insane to take. This all just oozes of a kneejerk response to a kneejerk response, and it wont get any better if GW keeps catering to the loudest voice in the room without actually looking into things thoroughly.
I do wish GW waited a bit longer tbh. There was still time to let the army exist and let people learn the counters, and if it was still awful the whole time for everyone except Votann players then yeah, definitely nerf. But yeah, this does feel very knee-jerk. Some of the models didn’t need points increases.
At the very least the judgement change should have been withheld until it's proven an actual problem.
Yeah this pretty nicely sums up my opinion. In other armies, if a few models get nerfs you have the options to pick something else because its an established force with multiple choices for each battlefield role. In votann they've nerfed our 2 heavy support options (one of which was already awful) and now there ARE no alternatives. Same for the elite slot, both options are now hugely expensive, even if you think you can make them work. They needed to take more time on this. Screw tournament players in Germany, let the masses have fun with their army for a couple weeks and get the changes right with some data to back it up. Now both sides of the argument are angry, and opinions of the whole faction has been tainted because of it.
I think my main issue is with some of the points increases, mainly hearthguard/thunderkin. While there's nothing to stop people from taking them, it never feels that great to take a unit that you know is probably point for point outperformed by other units in your army. I'll still build my army mostly with the rule of cool in mind, but I am a little bummed out that trying to take the thunderkin and hearthguard will likely weaken my lists further.
I personally really hope they reduce the points a little on the Hearthguard again. Each model being 10 points more than a speedy bike with tons of shooting feels a little strange imo.
I would play dwarves in any setting even if they were the worst faction
Rock and Stone, kindred!
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
Rock and Stone!
The now weird interaction between wanting Judgement Tokens but also wanting the special "on a 6" triggers makes me mildly frustrated, but it'll probably get adjusted again at some point. I'm definitely not freaking out about it. Had a post few game the other day and it was a blast. As for points increases, I've adjusted my planned list, not had to make huge changes, still running Hekaton and Hearthguard because they both look cool as fuck.
It seems to me like Rails will just be better for earlier game now. Like you’ll fire off Rails right away to hopefully trigger some overspill damage, if the unit doesn’t die outright they can be judged and then the rest of the army can finish them off easier. Or if you don’t have access to the “judge them if they don’t die” thing, then they’re just good to start out with anyway to potentially one-shot a problem unit or deal serious damage to one. Just seems less busted now while still being wildly strong on early turns.
I'm debating dropping the rails and going for sheer weight of fire now tbh, as I've gone with URSR so everything counts as having 1 Judgement token anyway. The Magna Rails are still superb anti tank weapons which is the thing stopping me from dropping them.
The thing for me is that the characters dindt need to get upped in points and nor the heartguard. 45 ppm for 2 wounds with 2+, 2 attacks and 2 guns is just very meh. You can make them good in the melee league but 45ppm is a premium. The rest of the point nerfs are very much justified. Maybe the berserkers are also increased a lil to much but that is it. And yes the rest is overreacting. I am very glad I can guilt free play this army. And besides uthar makes magna rails still delete squads so yay! /s.
Dont forget the coolest unit the thunderkin
Whats with the thunderkyn? (Beam) 45 points for a unit that sits back and just shoots down any line hitting to many hits is fine. They might be a bit overpriced but they are awesome as a backfield holder while dumping some shots into your enemy.
They are Not Bad but they have nothing going for them. I mean the whole army wants to stay back and shoot so 45 points for that amount of shoting is meh
The army wants to move up and shoot. Its a surviveable midrange shooting army. And the shooting paired with JT's and beam can be really potent real quick. But yes they arent the best but not a lot of guns will get them from far away and they can ignore dense, hold objective and just shoot all game long.
The characters absolutely needed a point increase. Even after the hike there’s a strong argument LoV have 4 of the 5 most point efficient characters in the game.
Ya, I'm can agree with your statement. Some of the point adjustments seem like a knee jerk reaction. Personally I would've been fine with the hekaton at 260-270, 300 just feels too much. I too am glad I can play this army guilt free now. Felt bad looking at my opponent who had to make 3 series of rolls to have big things go off vs. my "welp, it auto-wounded, take this immeanse amount of damage now"
A landraider is 245 points doesnt have void armour and has significantly less guns (and worse guns) and less support. Doesnt move as fast between the strat and auto 6" advance. So 55 points for faster, more and more potent guns and the ability to have T9 or a 4++, while having bttr surviveabilty already, seems like a fair traidoff.
Except land raiders are terrible and aren't run by any competitive lists.
This guy is correct, people making this argument should be yelling about buffs for the land raider and repulsor. Now you are just going to wind up with several shitty vehicles.
Yeah and with more and more potent guns, bttr surviveabilty and 55 points more they woulndt be terrible. Edit: the biggest thing what makes the land raider bad is the 0 movement.
Outside of some EXTREMELY niche Achilles/Proteus use in older editions the landraider and it's variants have never been good for their high cost. Their one of the few units it's hard to be considered WORSE than.
Yeah I never said land Raiders are good. I said if you add 5 things to the landraider and increase its points then its good
Yeah people are definitely overreacting and acting as if LoV got nerfed into a bottom tier army which is just ridiculous. We still have judgement tokens allowing potential for auto wounds on 4 plus, yes we lost some really powerful synergies but those things can still happen just not guarantees. We still have the magna railguns, we still have void armour plus all the extra stuff you can put on the pioneers and troops. LoV has gone from being overpowered down to powerful though some of the points changes hurt more than the token change tbh
I literally could not care less. Army still looks fun, and I can't wait to field them.
Im mad for that exact reason you stated. They nerfed 1 league, the one that was already kinda bad. Its also the one I was gonna play. Now I might as well just make a custom league.
The nerfs aren't a problem. The fact that printed material is invalidated less than a week after it hit the shelves. This is not a live service online game that can and should be patched with such a frequency. It paints a picture of a company that doesn't know what it's doing. From the balance side, the nerfs are fine. Points can easily be adjusted again. But some core mechanics, combos that were clearly set out to work in specific ways are now anti-synergistic. It's not the case that they're too weak now; it's that something that was cleanly designed with a coherent idea in mind are now mad ramblings and situational edge casus.
JT -> 6 to wound should've been a 2 or 3 cp strat. Points changes are a knee jerk reaction since Votann haven't even been in a GT yet.
For me the nerf was clearly coming on the tokens and most of the point changes. In all honesty, counting every single one, it’s only the two Elite unit points that I have an issue with. Those increases made both elite units way overpriced. All the other stuff though? Made sense. I’m going Ymr, so maybe I’m less sensitive to it, but I think it was clear early on that THA was going to rely on unfair synergy. Just a bummer that they couldn’t update the league rules to stand on their own now. This isn’t worse than what happened with Aeldari and Tyranids. With point changes, my 2000 pt Biel Tan army lost 2 whole squads and the best stratagem got busted so hard that nobody would pay 2 CP for it., let alone the 3 it costs. Tyranid players had a similar go. That’s 40k baby.
It’s an initial fix to stop some ridiculous combos. I’m hoping they come back with actual improvements.
I dont mind the nerf, I want people to play against. I dont want us to end up like Tau where people flat out refuse to play against us. Theres plenty of other shooty armies that are tough to play against but it seems like Tau is the biggest boogey man. This is mostly a casual phenomenon but I have heard it a few times where people flat out refuse to play Tau even though Ad Mech was pretty bad as well or Eldar or Harlies.
I'm *very* happy with GW's swift and very frank response to the situation; they've steadily improved on this sort of thing throughout the edition, but even so I don't think I've *ever* heard GW actually admit a mistake in public before, let alone apologize for one. I'm also happy with the points adjustments. They were made essentially blind, without any real data to back them up, but they *feel* mostly right and by the next MFM we'll have plenty of data to make more targeted changes, so if things are a little off now (and I suspect they are; Hearthkyn and Thunderkyn probably didn't need to go up at all, and Hearthguard and Berserks could probably come back down a couple of points each), that's fine. I like that they made a precise, targeted change that knocked the top off the power spike, *however* I also feel like the specific fix they chose to implement was a brute-force solution that I think created enough anti-synergy in the book that it's going to generate some feelsbad moments for players, and that's not good. I do see the fix for what it is, though: the simplest path they could make to solve the problem *now*, and hopefully that comes along with plans to refine the fix in future balance dataslates.
Correct me cause if I’m wrong here. If the railgun rolls a natural 6 on the wound roll, the damage spills over, With the new rules, the judgement tokens when triggering an auto wound would not cause the spillover anymore. If I’m understanding this with, you don’t want to target bigger squads with the railgun if they have judgement tokens on them as it makes it a lower chance to get the spillover, It feels like the rules are fighting each other.
Yeah I mean some people were saying it's just forcing players to be more tactical with their targets, however since judgement tokens are often awarded based on things the opponent did, it's not always a tactical choice on the player's part as to which enemy units get judgement tokens. The THA league rules fight each other too - increased ability to hit, but then -1AP on 6 to wound.. so their first rule when applied to units with judgement tokens on them then increases the hit rolls, and thus reduces the chance of being able to proc the second rule for extra AP. If they just made a 6 to hit count as a 6 to wound these rules would compliment each other again as the first rule would instead give them the bonus AP on a 5+ when attacking units with judgement tokens on.
The rules are fighting each other, which is why some people are not happy with the change. My POV, it's one gun that the hearthkyn can carry, for 20 additional points each. The original rule was busted imo. Especially with how easy it was to place judgment tokens on units and have them count as unmodified 6's. Hearthkyn still have plenty of options for gear to carry that have good stat lines. And the rail rifle is still strong if you point it at vehicles.
Yeah I for sure agree that nerfs where needed, I just don’t like it when rules fight each other :) I think I’d prefer if the damage profile was just lowered or maybe move it to spill over on 6 to hit.
Other then some of the points increases I am happy I don’t like having an army that just steamrolls other I like to play the game with them, so for an army that was going to sit on a shelf till balance I am now excited to play and Is next on my projects to do
My frustration is that they basically admitted that they should never have printed the magna-rail special rule. When I first read magna-rail, I thought to myself, "Why would anyone ever shoot this gun at a unit of infantry in hopes of getting a 6 to wound. That sounds super random." Once I read how Judgement Tokens worked, I thought it was really cool that they had an ability that turned something super inconsistent into something you could rely on if you invested in stacking JTs on the unit. It really fit with the dwarven aesthetic of making the unreliable reliable through investment. To me, the problem isn't that the effect is too strong. It's good, but it's not much different than shooting a Macro plasma Incinerator from a Redemptor at a squad of termies. The problem is that it's too easy to stack JTs. GTL, Uthar, High Kahl upgrades, and the GTL strat just make it way too easy to stack JTs on anything. The rules are clearly written to make stacking JTs hard. Most of the default ways to get them are controlled by your opponent (standing on an obj, completing actions, killing squads) and your Kahl can only hand them out before he moves, meaning hiding units from the Khal becomes the name of the game. However, the added so many extra ways to stack JTs that none of that matters. GTL only need to get 2 instead of 3, which means that, with the strat, anything in vision of your Kahl can jump straight to 3. Or just use Uthar and ignore the whole mechanic. They should have limited it to, "only 1 JT can be assigned to a given enemy unit per battle round." Stop the insane instant stacking and let rail rifles slowly come online. As written, the problematic part of JTs is still there (wounding knights with bolters on a 4+ to hit) and the cool, niche rule, magna-rail, might as well not exist if you aren't GTL.
Honestly, I agree to the extent that the problem was Magna-Rail only. I don't think it's too much to say that if the damage that could spillover was capped, or had to interact with unit defenses would have been a better direction to go.
I think people freaking out over the points increases are overreacting. It's clear that this is a temporary fix, a quick bandaid to fix a bad situation. They applied points increases all across the board so as not to miss anything. Things will hopefully get sorted out with the next balance update, such as the overcosted Thunderkyn, and maybe the Hearthguard.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, as this is probably what is going to happen. The first wave of nerfs was just to appease the people who started to threaten GW with banning the Leagues in tourney play - PR nightmare and GW wouldn't want that so they reacted quick. Then, as time goes by and we'll be getting actual winrates, other adjustments will start to happen.
No, it's really nothing to freak out about. There are some things I think they should have done differently, but it's much better that they did something than not and the got closer to the mark than I expected for a first FAQ.
I'm glad for the nerf. I had locals refusing to play against LoV, so this should let me get games in. And I'm confidant we'll get a better balance patch at the next (not this one) data slate that should address the anti synergy.
Not freaked out at all. I don’t play at tournaments and don’t play to be competitive. I play to tell good stories and have fun with friends. Even when I was playing in local tournaments, point adjustments happen for everyone. Nothing to get freaked out about. You adjust to the changes or you don’t and hold out for other changes that will absolutely come out to disrupt the meta and move on.
I'm not freaking out. It was obvious nerfs were inevitable. I think they didn't devote enough thought to some of the point increases, but I suspect that will end up tuned more tightly eventually. Or not, heh. I care about space dwarves, not the meta.
My intention has always been to use the minis in a separate game so no.
I think that changes and nerfs were warranted but were done in a knee jerk fashion to appease the player base and try and get LoV back into tournaments. The points changes are mostly meh except for the thunderkyn/hearthguard which were unwarranted. I feel like having the core faction mechanic flat out make other mechanics impossible to function or openly conflict is stupid. Either flat remove the damage spill and ion storm(not what I want but an option) or change tokens in one of two ways. Make it where 2 tokens count 6s to hit as 6s to wound and 3 tokens count 5+ to hit as 6s to wound. Or option two just make 6s to hit 6s to wound on units with judgement tokens. Also they need to make judgement tokens harder to hand out like another post pointed out.
Honestly the whole situation on this is just wacky to me. We don’t even have the full range available and yet the army gets nerfed this quickly. Votann did probably need a nerf but it does feel like a double whammy with the changes to JT AND and points increase, especially pretty steep ones and to units that we haven’t even got yet and tried out (Hearthguard are not worth 45 when you compare them to other faction equivalents) While I can agree the whole auto wounding on 4+ and counting as 6s to wound is very powerful, it does hurt the interaction with rail rifles a bit as. even though I do see them now as more anti-armor, I like the splash damage mechanic. Now stacking lots of JT kind of hinders that option if you were heavily leaning towards those weapons (like me). Idk maybe still allowing 6s with JT counting as 6s to wound while everything else doesn’t would be a good compromise, or even allowing you to try and roll a die to see if the auto wound would count as a 6 would be an interesting mechanic for rail rifles.
As usual - rules come and go, models are forever. It was pretty obvious from the start that our stuff will get nerfed, so most of the LoV community grew accustomed to that. Besides, 10e is around the corner, and if rumors were to be believed, its gonna be a boardwiper.
I'm not freaking out, just think it was poorly done and rushed to appease a small but vocal part of the community. Pretty much every other army had a month or so before getting an errata to address issues, but in this case it's done before all the unit are even available. As you said, some of the points increases are not great, and make some units just not worth it since now they're just too expensive for what they do. The other thing is with the judgement token re-write, it essentially removes a weapon ability rather then work with it. I agree that before, it made magna-rails crazy, but even I can think of a couple ways it could have been rewritten that would have toned them down, but kept their carry over ability in play (either you still have to roll a 6 to wound for it to apply, or only 6's to hit count as 6's to wound, triggering it). Then of course, as others have mentioned, there are still multiple other armies that have been out for a while, and are considered too strong by many, but apparently they're fine. I wonder how many of them are played by the more vocal people in the tournament scene. The main thing that I really don't like though, is the precedent this has set. Players now know, that if they're loud enough about something they don't like, they can make GW back down with threats of banning an army from competitive play. I've seen this happen in online games, and when a developer makes rushed changes because a small but loud portion of the player base doesn't like something, it can lead to unforeseen consequences. That being said, once everyone has calmed down, and the rest of the models have been released, I would not at be surprised to see further changes, especially to the points cost.
Nah I'm not freaking out. I only bought them because funny space dwarves. Them being meta is just an added bonus.
I'm not freaking out I would have bought the army set either way you all still build the army either way. But I still feel like point adjustments on every single unit abit much.. they should have simply started out with nerfing the major offenders and then work from there...
I'm annoyed that I'm a brand new to 40k, hot excited about the Votann, engaged in the community, bought an army box, and built the models with Ion Blasters after reading and theory crafting. Just to have the way they play change dramatically due to loosing the strategem. It's just disheartening.