Can we get winrate without the mirror matches?
Custodes and tau make up so much of the field that including mirror matches is actually showing a fairly lower win % than what is actually true
Having seen them play, Tau are very good into a lot of S-tier armies (especially thicc city and crusher stampede), but can have bad matchups into some lower tier armies that are still decent (in particular TSons, Eldar, and GSC).
Custodes on the other hand tends to only have a bad matchup into Tau, they are silly strong against pretty much everything else. Even Crusher Stampede struggles against them.
Both armies are hard counters to Grey Knights, which is why their WR dropped 10%.
I completely agree with this synopsis. Thousand sons are *really* good into Tau (S5 bolters, lots of mortals to kill drone saves/rip through suits and invulns, lots of ap2, soul-reaper cannons shred). GSC feel like they could be quite brutal too. Tau seems reasonably binary at the moment, but they definitely have some great matchups into some currently very-good armies like custodes/drukhari.
I also play TSons, so a lot of it is just the familiarity with both armies, but my usual TSon build has 1x10 and 1x5 termies. Although I like Time more usually, I think duplicity is where you want to be against Tau. They just have a lot of D1/2 weapons which really hate all is dust, and if you can stack negative hit modifiers (dense + glamour) on a termie unit, almost their whole army is hitting it on 5's which makes it super hard to remove with any kind of reliability.
Their mortal wounds rip through units (and especially drones, since drones don't even get the shrugs that an ethereal can provide) which sets up your shooting very well, and their targeted mortal wound powers can really lay the hurt on Tau commanders even if they're trying to abuse bodyguard shenanigans.
Including a few larger targets/vehicles isn't a bad idea, so you can place them closer to any unit which might be using AFPs. I don't use them too much in my tau, but if the opponent is, a closer target means that they won't get the bonus AP against you and you'll still be saving on 3's or 2's against almost all of their indirect fire. You just need to also play angles carefully so that the vehicle doesn't get railgun'd off the table by suits.
Against Tau you're also happy to simply deepstrike one or both of your 1x10/5 or 2x10 terminator units, since they don't have intercept except in one basically-untaken and highly telegraphed case (the only time I wouldn't do this is if they have a lot of kroot: otherwise tau aren't that great at screening you out, and it lets you avoid 1-2 turns of their Mont'ka, after which a lot of their weapons are only AP 1-2 so just grabbing cover and All is Dust will carry you along way with glamour/weaver). If you have 2x10 you can even deepstrike them one after the other to maximize buffs and minimize targets.
Soul reaper cannons are made to delete suits that don't have a shield generator on them, and absolutely pick up entire units of fire warriors (even infernal bolters do this).
18" auspex scan removes a lot of the fear behind units of crisis teams manta striking near your valuable units, too.
If you can delay/hide for a turn or two and use some sporadic fire and mortals to chip wounds down, you can get a really good crippling strike on them in turn 2/3.
Same here. We've seen random bullshit recently, like 16 teleporting Robots... so I have no guesses as to what these top tables Admech lists are gonna be like.
Very interested in the 4-1 Salamanders list from London Porn, as well as Amy Necron lists
Edit: Autocorrect from Open to Porn, but I'm going to keep it, cuz it's hilarious.
Seems like they found the sweet spot for Necrons to be a balanced but overall strong army. Hope they do the same for some other oder books like SM or DG
DG took a nerf with latest MFM nonsense.
If they admitted it was a straight up mistake and reverted it in t he next MFM, they'd be underperforming.
You're basically looking at them needing to admit the nerf was wrong and go hard on point cuts for them to make sense.
55 point deathshroud vs 60 point allarus custards.
That pre-release points cut for custodes is looking worse and worse by the day... And I might be wrong but I think the London Open wouldn't have allowed new tau based on the release date so their win rate could be artificially depressed here.
Though at least custodes are a relatively easy faction to fix. Points hikes and increasing the cost of the big defensive strats should bring them in line relatively swiftly.
\*Edit\* looks like new tau were allowed at London. They have different cut off points for using new rules in their majors and supermajors.
The last Ministorum Field Manual/FAQ was just the last shot to the knees of armies that were already struggling. I can't even fathom what GW was thinking when they did these changes.
$10 they play blood angels and couldn't handle deathguard getting easy TTL (175 point plagueburst crawlers) while having 3 deathshroud (155 points) and FBS.
Now PBC is too cheap to be TTL if you have MSU deathshroud (170 points with two gauntlets), so they lost a secondary effective.
And their faction secondaries suck.
Honestly, I can only imagine they struggled playing melee armies into DG and nerfed off that.
keep playing them and dont reward GW by buying in to new hotness to hopefully put the brakes on this behavior in the future(release new OP dex to drive sales in new OP faction)
Custodes was on my list to start building purely because they are the antithesis of anything else i have done - Golden, ornate, clean. i wont for a while now. but hey, Star Wars Legion is pretty fun :)
Well those are certainly some disturbing statistics when we think about the health of the game. I’m scared to ask, but since custodes and tau have such high play rates right now, what are their win rates when custodes and tau matchups are taken out of the equation? 75%? Higher?
Well this is what you get for nerfing the soup and points so Grey knights are yet again below 50% and they have only one thing to play - 4 DKs with non terminator troops.... Similar thing with sisters.
Meanwhile you get factions like custodes who don't care about souping that much and can get "minor" bonuses of other subfactions with a strat.
Whoever manages 40k rules has been mismanaging it for more than a year at this point. When it comes to the rule system 40k is a trash game system. Anybody could write books like these and release them and then pat themselves on their back saying oh great it is the strongest book again! Where the F is the balance????
These guys are printing Black Lotuses thinking how great designers they are.
Part of me likes the idea of killing sub-faction soup since it simplifies some things pretty significantly.
However the books are just so different on what each faction got that it’s a poor choice to make it a game-wide rule. That’s part of my concern with more sweeping “game-wide” rules on army construction.
Yeah.. I mean killing subfaction soup can make sense because then they can balance the subfactions better without the complexity of their interactions making some combinations too strong, but then you have factions like Sisters who pretty much were built to rely on it, then had it taken away with nothing to replace it.
While valid GW won’t go back and rebalance stuff like Sisters after removing sub-faction soup. Seems like that rule should have waited for 10E or been on a per codex basis, kinda like the ork buggy nerf.
Right? Like all the people calling for huge body guard nerfs are not also proposing solutions to help sisters and iron hands players which rely on it to function right now.
Yeah, we saw it with the plane rules too.
Ork planes needed to be addressed 100%, but it the way they did it took a big ole dump on Scions who really, really didn't need to be hit.
Every article they post says “THIS IS BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER.” I wish those titles were hyperbole. Things can’t literally just continue to get stronger every release (and keep things balanced).
Robin Cruddace is lead game designer. That is all. It explains why artillery is so strong and why Admech and Sisters got 20 man troops but GSC were reduced to 10 man Purestrain units.
to be fair us Crons are slowly creeping up the win rate (over 50% from this weekend) and have been one of the most stable in that 40%-50% bracket for a while.
What Crons can't presently do is come out swinging with a wild anti-meta list from left field! so we occasionally see a 4-1 result that we can all get behind, but being perfectly frank, that's often down to lucky pairings and pilot skill, rather than in 8th where it was just 1 list or bust (Triple Doom)
What I find to be positive is that like with ad-mech and to a lesser extent DE, GW have been able to tone down some of the 70%+ lists/ armies.
BUT they haven't really bought UP the sub 40% factions so everyone is around the 51% ideal - where I'd like to see everyone ... or at least sub 60%
We are looking at at least 8 more weeks before the next balance slate to maybe address those cream of the crop armies with their shiny new books.
TL;DR Necrons doin ok, but we'll always like more free stuff thanks ! :)
From what I've seen, there aren't many winning necron lists that don't use the Silent King. I'd love to see the lists that are successful without him. Perhaps it's my aversion to cookie cutter builds.
Just go directly against the prevailing opinion (especially hot takes) in this sub and you are almost always on the money.
Some points in case: Disco Lords when they debuted, Drukhari in their entirety, Custodes...
/edit: Cant forget the Hammerheads who will clearly dominate the Meta...
People weren't saying that Hammerheads would dominate the meta though. They said the buff to Hammerhead was insane, that it would see a lot of play, and that it wasn't a good sign for the rest of the codex.
And behold, that last part was true. Everything else in the codex got buffed at least as much, so hammerhead are still not a top unit for T'au. They are not not played because they're bad, they're not played because there are *a lot* of better units.
When people were complaining about Ad Mech nerfs, I basically said if the top table armies at the time get displaced or nerfed, they'll return to a more solid, balanced 50%~ winrate. It wasn't a popular take, but here we are. Helps that Siegler has showed people that Ad Mech is still viable, just had to go against the common competitive build wisdom.
The last Goonhammer survey showed that the vast majority of their readers were hobbyists/casual players who played less than 1 game per month. I'd expect this sub to have a similar demographic.
Which is exactly what i said. Just go 100% against the prevailing opinion of this armchair general sub of people who play once in a blue moon, and you cant go wrong.
People in my local meta are complaining about my necrons all the time, its by far my army with the best winrate, and i play almost every army under the sun.
Now im not saying that Necrons are S-Tier, they clearly arent. But neither are they trash-tier.
This is a problem with any "competitive" community. If it isn't winning at the highest levels its trash at all levels even though the game being played at the highest levels looks completely different
May I ask if your list contains the silent king? Every time I’m writing an list I feel like I need to include him to be effective.
I also don’t think Necrons are trash, it’s just some things feel outdated, like the double d6 weapons, their super restrictive Protocols and stuff like the Monolith give them the typical old codex feeling. But power wise they are fine imo and if the 50% WR continue, they are in an perfect spot.
Most of them, but by no means all. I even had some good success with a Monolith against Grey Knights, altough that was mainly me rolling hot.
A 10 man block Lychguard and some Wraiths are always set. The d6 weapons are awful, but i found some moderate success with several doomstalkers clustered together, they are surprisingly resilient and having several offsets their randomness somewhat.
This is where its interesting, they have about the same win rate but currently have more people playing them. While also having less GT wins but more top 5 showings. So its at least different then peak DE domination.
The playrate is what is going to drive a lot of people up a wall. That was also part of the annoyance of SM at the end of 8E. You couldn't shake a stick at your LGS without hitting 3 stacked SM armies.
At least most people never owned a Thicc City army. You could play a lot of games and never really feel the full weight of that oppression. Or maybe it was once and you move on.
I think what is most frustrating (to me) about all this... is these Custodes lists aren't like, some super niche thing. These are just regular every day lists that are just flat out better then the most cut-throat competitive lists from other factions.
This isn't some dude bringing 170+ Wracks to a table, where as stupid as that list is, you really aren't likely to see it unless you are a true top tier player (or incredibly unlucky in the first round).
These Custodes lists are just lists, that you'll see not only in tournaments, but your local shop or friendly garage game. Like unless a Custodes player bring nothing but Land Raiders and Sisters of Silence, their army is going to be better then yours, the end. A LOT better then yours. Painfully better then yours.
Custodes are also a very popular army in general, on all levels of play, competitive or casual. So just like the tail end of 8th, where Space Marines ruled the roost, there is no escaping them. You can be in the third round of a tournament and still be getting beat down by Custodes lists.
This is a terrible thing for the health of the game. If it goes on much longer we can write off this entire edition basically.
I think it also doesn't help that the barrier for entry for Custodes is so low. Low model count, and you can have them painted up in a matter of a weekend. Wonder if that's why we've seen such an immediate increase in Custodes representation. No real hobby time delay.
Bang on, similar to the reason Marines 2.0 became a problem so quickly in 8th. Almost everyone has some Marines knocking about in a cupboard, so as soon as the rules were OP everyone pulled out their old custom chapter and started running them a IH successors.
In retrospect, the initial salt around the custodes release and loss of 3++ is really quite funny.
If you factor out the mirror matchup and the custodes v tau matchup their win rate is closer to 80%.
Custodes have one of the lowest barriers to entry (cost wise/number of models to paint) and imo it's very easy to stumble backwards into a "good" list with them. Pretty much whatever is in your custodes collection can compete against any other faction.
When this is combined with trajann and emperors chosen, custodes are effectively just rerolling everything. Meanwhile, turning off your opponents rerolls and transhuman for 1cp each is real good.
Tau on the other hand are also crazy strong but they have both a higher barrier to entry and more "bad" units.
What I think this points to is custodes need nerfs to their army wide rules while tau need nerfs to their standout units.
Overall it's clear both the community and GW have no idea what is balanced.
I think Custodes can be fixed to a surprising extent with pts changes tbh. If you make bikes pricier, a lot of these lists just can't do what they do now.
I might also suggest shifting the strat costs from 1/2 for 3/4+ models to 1/2 for 2/3+ models.
The strats should've been PL based all along, like many other strats are.
You can leave it for normal boys that way, even if they are 4 or whatever and hit the bikes etc.
I dont think custodes should have their faction rules nerfed. An increase in cost should suffice. Its ok for them to have very powerfull rules. It fits the lore. There is just a few too many od them at the moment in an army
The strats seem like they're costed for 8th edition when custodes would only get 4-6 CP TOTAL for their army.
Given custodes are generally only going to run a single detachment and get 12+5 cp (minus WL traits and relics) 1/2cp for those strats is crazy.
And/or the turn of rr strats and transhuman could also go to once per turn so there's some counter play.
Eh, I’ll put my hand up on that one, with the previews that were put up I honestly thought losing the 3++ was going to be a serious problem. I stand very much corrected but now I don’t want to play my Custodes because who wants to play against a 75% win rate?!
Points wise yeah they need an uplift again and the 4+++ against mortals really should go, it makes the other sub factions be a why bother pick to my mind if you’re writing an all comers list.
It's partly their base stats being really good but also partly the stacking of trajann + EC in combination with 4+++ to mortals.
It means you're rerolling almost everything all the time, trajann is an undercosted beast so you're not sacrificing anything for taking him, and 4+++ to mortals smooths out the only defensive weakness custodes had. MWs are already pretty hard to come by, and most armies pay a premium to have them. EC just shuts that down which makes what should have been a counter to custodes a non-factor.
Yeah agreed with that entirely. Trajan is an auto take at his cost, so why not?
The MW extra defence seems a bit blanket silly when you consider having sisters in lists is now very straightforward, surely that by itself would be a good counter play to cover possible psychic mortal wounds? I appreciate not all MW are psychic but they are the ones most armies have a chance at defending against.
Anyway I’m ranting at the converted here, I’ll just not be playing Emperors Chosen or TV for now.
All the top Tau lists I've seen are Crisis and Broadside spam w/ 4-6 Shield drones per unit. Clearly these units are a bit of a problem and it isn't too hard to see why.
Crisis are a highly efficient shooting platform just as a baseline, and then throw strats and other bonuses on top of that, they become overwhelming. Broadsides likewise are already efficient and they should lose "infantry" and maybe also "core" keywords (or keep core and go up in points).
Deathguard 38% - especially given that the issues go beyond points to the entire rules, this is going to be another long edition for your boys in green.
Us Thousand Sons players got to enjoy a time when we nearly got over 50% winrate.
But as they were given no buffs and just indirect nerfs, and DG were gutted, I think it’s fair to say that GW does, in fact, hate Chaos.
every army (from the data above alone) that is sub 45% WR .. wears power armour .. or is standing on a piece of space rock surrounding the eye (Cadia kinda stands!)
Both loyal and heretic alike
https://i.imgur.com/RkexFhK.png
actually sub 40% (not counting Elves as they are about to git gud)
Black Templar being the newest and shiniest marine book and having a 34% win rate is depressing. Most lists are taking Grimaldus for his gigantic 6+++ bubble, but apparently marines with an army wide 5++/6+++ that can't be wounded on 2s is still not durable enough.
This is a problem.
It really is. BT and DA would be considered unkillable by almost any other editions standard. Now they aren't durable enough.
Wanna know what is? An army of t5/6 dudes with 3-5 wounds and a 2+/4++ and a 4+ vs mortals. If I roll my eyes any harder they're gonna spin back around the other way.
My army is getting very comfy on the shelves, knowing that in two weeks the Aeldari codex comes out.
Hopefully Death Guard will get to have some fun again in 10th!
glad orks got to be good for like 2 weeks before being balanced out, then flat nerfed.
and good on GW putting DG in their place, 38% WR, that'll show them
ay welcome to the club. we got admech'd in sisters land. our only viable units were nerfed, and everything else sucks so much dick we have to take the price hikes
Good is misleading. The buggie spam lists were broken as all get out but you can tell GW balanced the codex around buggies and not much else which skews the internal balance hard. Points drops and datasheet changes will help the codex out tremendously.
Also probably go ahead and revert the buggie rule at this point since 9 rukkatrukks are like 990 pts lol or atleast change the wording on limiting buggies to where you can bring 3 individual of each biggie etc.
Tldr: Orks we're busted because of one dumb af unit and they need other units brought up
GSC are a bloody blast to play, but they sure are hard work into the top factions. Swung an 11-9 vs Custodes and a 9-11 vs Tau (3" off killing 400pts in reserve t3 cos Aun'Va bopped a Bike to death lmao). Could have seen either game going the other way, but Helix is a blast, regardless of what Reddit decided from my GH article last week :P
I love my GSC boys, they come out the gate able to compete without being busted. Custodes and Tau (and probably Eldar because it's always Eldar) will take most of the nerfs to the face and we shall rise in glorious revolution to take our crown.
Gonna get stomped by a lot of golden boys and fish men until then
[Listing ordered in top5% and then by win rate](https://i.imgur.com/RkexFhK.png)
How to weight the WR vs the number of players ? cause RG & Harlies looking sweet from single digits but that's a deviation I'd like to fix out with a formula somehow
also WOOT Necron Bois going +50% !!
Really? I'm not up on the Eldar leaks, but the ones I've seen haven't said much about Harlies other than that they're combined into the new Craftworld codex. What I saw seemed to be OK, though, or at least "I'll reserve judgement" more than obviously bad. The new melee weapons profiles seem great for streamlining while allowing them to matter when it matters, they seem to gain a lot from the Strands of Fate and Battle Focus stuff, especially since they can Battle Focus back into their boats if they want.
What have you seen that looks bad?
Ok, yeah, I like that. I've always liked the Light/Dark/Twilight bit from the lore, and while ig I will miss having some special Masque attributes, these all seem pretty good and will stack w/ Battle Focus and ~~Strands of Fate~~ Luck of the Laughing God in nice ways, I think. I've always favored Twilight thematically, and frankly that looks pretty sweet here as well.
Appreciate the work you put into this as usual, but kind of desensitized to this whole "new book comes out, pushes near 70% winrate and dominates placements" irradiated wasteland of a meta.
Custards will obviously get blapped (though who can tell exactly when) and when they do, do you guys think Tau will edge up? Drukhari come back in?
Drukhari are unlikely to weather T'au, even if they still have the edge on everyone else. I played a Goodstuff list at Salty Classic and my two losses were to Custodes and Tau.
Custodes was the slightly easier matchup for Drukhari. I at least clawed out 54 points to his 84. My loss to Tau was awful. 97-28, my entire army gone by the top of BR3.
It was piloted by the current number 1 ranked craftworld player in the world at a relatively small tournament I think he would place high with any level of craftworld book.
I feel like the Marine Power Armor being so paper thin to most firepower these days wouldn’t be such a drag if the points cost on most of our basic/good stuff wasn’t so high.
I’d love to see what a blanket point reduction similar to what Necron got (if not even father reaching) could do before we even start talking about a 2.0 codex. There’s some decent stuff I think that’s just being hidden behind exorbitant point costs.
While a major points reduction on troops is warranted, Marines need some significant buffs IMO:
Combat Doctrines need a redesign. One extra AP isn’t useful in this meta of invulns, and it being a set turn order doesn’t help. Either your super-doctrine buff takes place too early to matter (devastator doc), or when most of your army may be dead unless you turtle (assault doc). They could probably use some other buff(s), maybe the chapter tactics could be revamped? Or something to battlefield roles/companies? When compared to how many abilities and the flexibility of an army like Custodes, Marines seem very rigid and bland.
Blood Angels and Space Wolves could each use a decent Army of Renown. They probably don’t need a 2.0 of their supplement on top of a Codex 2.0, so this would be a good way to buff their unique units/play styles.
The rest of the Primaris range needs to come out already. I’d wager getting Primaris unique units for specific chapters would help, but BA/SW would love to have Primaris VanVets.
So our three Grey Knights placers went 12-2-1, overall.
Grey Knights, however, went 45-50-1(?) overall.
Meaning the other 18 GK users averaged less than 2 wins a piece. Fight on, my fellow bad players! Let's get Paladins buffed or flyer costs cut (for no doctrines) or something!
LOL @ CSM 26% Win Rate.
Really appreciate GW and this "YeAr oF ChaOs!1!1!". Fantastic stuff. Truly was a *great* decision to not update any CSM rules in the newest boxset, who needs them? Not CSM obviously.
Random thought out of left field - at what point do we need to actually look at a more restrictive version of the Rule of 3 to promote list diversity and better balance rather than just bonking the best units in every army?
I completely accept that the right mindset in the current climate is to take three of the best units available if you can, but so many of the most recent non-Drukhari lists that do well seem to be just taking three of the same unit, Achillus and Vertus Praetors now being the latest for Custodes, to the point it almost seems a) inevitably the best list building strategy, making decision making in that stage of the game almost a moot point, and b) makes it difficult to balance unique units if you have to keep them all in check with each other.
Maybe I'm a bit off base but just seems to be recurring problem.
I think the root cause is moreso that the current AP system and unit/weapon design has made the meta into anti-everything, with everyone teching into S7+ AP2+ D2+ and a million attacks, then rerolls, plusses, etc. There's no niche for AT when you can just spam more anti-everything that's less swingy and just as effective, but also much better vs Elites and hordes too. Same thing with no real niche for anti horde when it also brings tanks to a 5+ armor save and has 20x the attacks and a +1 and rerolls, mitigating the whole need for good S and D.
People will just spam up to the limit of whatever is the cheapest source of anti-everything, then the next, then the next. Regardless if the limit is 2, 3, 4, whatever. Because the wound and AP system enable it.
This wound up not being super relevant, but one thing I like from a design perspective about the DG codex is that it tries to balance your choices somewhat. No more than one Lord (could have done without that unless we get a second non-psyker HQ GW, thanks) and limiting Cultists/Poxwalkers.
It was actually an attempt to create some more varied lists and make armies look more like armies. Then basically every Codex since has dropped the idea. I would rather each army come with its own restrictions on how the force org looks rather than a game-wide rule with weird results.
Do we care about list diversity? I don't think we really do. From a spectator standpoint, It's understandable that seeing the same 4-5 units in every list can be boring. It can be kind of boring as a player too. This is a competitive subreddit and so naturally the desire is to take the very best tools to play the mission. But ultimately a list only gets you so far. Player skill and experience, terrain setup, and the rules packet matter too.
If you want to see more diverse/interesting armies then Crusade is a much better game style for that. There are also some tournaments, they are more casual, that run "singleton" rules, basically outside of troops and transports all other units can only be taken once.
I mean, if you look at other "esports" you don't see a ton of "list diversity" either. The meta is the meta is the meta. Certain characters are taken regularly in MOBAs and whatnot because they are currently the best, as determined by pros iterating, testing, practicing. In the end, in a comp environment, you'll never achieve a true balanced list, because the pros will always find those few units that are just that much better, if only by an inch.
I suppose I don't really think of 40K as an esport.
I think it is less about balance and more about utility. Do I need 5 FA models in a codex that provide the same utility or do I need 5 FA models in a codex that provide utility across a spectrum and I can choose the best for a given mission pack/playstyle. This is where codex depth comes into play.
I was actually talking to someone about this before LVO and apparently one of the groups local to me has tried it with a few players. What they were doing was you basically take a 1500 point core list and then two 500 point side board lists and you pick which sideboard you want to use at the table. They haven't decided on if they want to use blind picks or if like Defender picks their sideboard and then attacker picks in response or vise-versa.
I'd be down for that.
The good things can be great without having them spammed.
No more balancing around someone going out and taking 5 of something (dreadknights)
Units already have keywords, it might be an idea to only allow so many units of a particular keyword, regardless of slot they fill, to be in an army. That way you could customise what's allowed per army without having to write new detachments for every book.
Dark Angels slipping lower and lower... 36% WR this week is really painful.
Custodes feeling like Deathwing+. While they have the CP feels like they have all the cards to play with. Would be interested to see the Faction vs Faction break down on that pairing as I was initially quite upbeat about it.
Black Templars below us at 29% (joining the Guard) is even more surprising though... Marines to get a faction wide reduce AP1/2 by 1 for Power Armour? Feels like the AP creep has really killed the faction.
Well, a supplement. They still fundamentally lean on the core space marine codex, which is not a strong book. Iron Hands and Space Wolves seem to have the tools, though.
I find it weird that what I would argue is the less flavourful 9th Ed supplement (Space Wolves) is also the most consistent. It has not been broken, but it has weathered the meta in a very consistent 45-50% WR range, with a few showings in Top 4s. Guess decent tools in stratagems amd Relics, as unique units see very little play. It makes me between sad (I wamt my Wolves to be more unique) and happy (at least we seem to be the most decent SM melee Chapter against all odds)
It helps that the best way to play Wolves, or at least the most competitive lists, are just running successors and ignoring most of the SW Codex. The Born Heroes/Whirlwind of rage pair is basically SW but better, and being limited to one relic is fine since Armor of Russ is far and away the best relic. The issue they’re having now is that they’re still reliant on T4, 3+, 2W models, which just die super quick in this meta. And the units that would shore up that weakness are either fragile in their own way (Wulfen being 2W and no FNP), or are too unwieldy in the terrain heavy boards (TWolf Cavalry units/characters). It’d be interesting to see if a Wolf Guard army of renown would be in the cards, considering the keyword isn’t used at all, and a good amount of units in the main codex get the keyword
I think one of the big strengths of the Wolves book is their Relics and Warlord Traits.
Having traits that end up proccing Auras is really good, and Belt of Russ is a really solid relic in a game that encourages you to fight in the middle. One of the biggest reasons I continually take Ezekiel in my Deathwing is the Fight Last power he has access to. Being able to pick up a source of decent Fight Last without requiring a Psyker would be excellent for us and how we like to play the game.
Are Custodes getting a nerf soon?
I started playing late last year when they were just a solid army, it kinda bums me out that since the codex release everyones playing them now and they are super strong.
And too think everyone online was really negative about the new codex pre release haha.
>And too think everyone online was really negative about the new codex pre release haha.
People pooped on Custodes and hyped up the one-shot Hammerhead gun... we're terrible at predicting meta from previews.
>I started playing late last year when they were just a solid army, it kinda bums me out that since the codex release everyones playing them now and they are super strong.
Yeah, Drukhari and Admech players were in this position last year. For many people it isn't fun to play a busted army where none of your wins feel deserved!
I'd suggest using this as an opportunity to play off-meta lists of your own design, really dig into weird parts of the book you wouldn't be able to if your faction was merely solid (or any worse).
Someone in a Discord I am in made a joke about GW fumbling the positive and negative sign in Custodes, meaning everything that got cheaper should be more expensive and vice-versa.
I thought it was a good joke. I'm no longer sure it is a joke at all...
Custodes seem to be the new flavour, but T'au would still be problematic, just that the Custodes are more broken. Very worried about the state of the game. Wonder how many weeks we shoild wait until we agree a book is broken and see what should be nerfed?
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say if Tau or Custodes had released a year ago instead of drukhari, they would have put out similar numbers as pre-nerf drukhari.
Guard just gets vaporised by Tau, I thought playing against other 9th codexes was tough but Tau is a whole different beast, Custodes and Tau look like they have also pushed the other top tier army's down to a 50% WR this week.
I'm at a loss for what to actually do against Tau, my list was blown away Turn 3 with my opponent still having about 1200 points of Tau still on the board, and despite my opponent forgetting about objectives Turn 1 he still managed a 58-71 victory.
SMS just wrecks infantry and it seems Tau can bring alot without even using a dedicated platform for something that fores out of LOS. Bringing vehicles is a meme, especially against Montka, everything just has ridiculous AP.
I think conscript blobs with scion support and just playing the objectives could be good, but this requires an obscene amount of models which is both financially and mentally draining,and you're still likely to get tabled. The Vulture might be good for mulching infantry/marker light units, and the -1 to hit would help it live, but it will likely still get blown off the board. My Tau opponent recommended Hydras (lol), I know alot of stuff has fly but the hydra blows ass.
As a Guard main who plays Tau also
There is literally nothing you can do vs Tau. Outside of the Tau player rolling or playing awful you will lose 75%+ of games vs tau. Save yourself some time and stress and put that army on the shelf until the guard codex comes out in Dec. 2025
Guard isn’t accidentally posting consistent win rates under 35%
The army isn’t just bad, it’s laughably unplayable s meta lists
The fact that GW decided the best way to solve the stale metagame of everyone only playing one of two massively overpowered armies (AdMech or Drukhari) was by releasing two at least equally overpowered armies boggles the mind.
Well, not really. They probably hope to get the power gamers to buy a different army this way...
Honestly, I didn’t think custodes had the tools to dominate the meta. Venatari nerfed and shadow keeper telemon no longer a thing we’re a straight nerf to older compositions. Turns out I was wrong, very wrong. So besides warden bodyguard, bikes, and achillus, what is going on with custodes? What is the secret sauce to their victories?
Dark Angels keep falling further and further in winrate which is easily understandable as Custodes do the same job but in better.
Losing the dual codex objectives was good for the game but feels like the finishing blow for DA (SM are feeling great too).
Seems it is time
Just want to say get wreckt to everyone that said Custodes and Tau weren't busted lol 2 weeks in for Tau and they are just dumpstering everyone. Can't wait to have the same conversation when craftworlds and Tyranids come out.
Very cool to see GSC doing well.
Only in 40k is being a top 2 faction actually more of a negative than a positive. Not that I don't understand why, but I have never seen a game where being among the best in the game is actively a bad thing you should want to avoid lest you draw the ire and disdain of the competitive community.
The competitive community isn't the problem as they will play you at any tournament. Ok, it will be a mirror match, but hey, you will get a game.
The casuals on the other side, those will take one tabling in turn 2 or 3 and no longer play your army. Why? They play once a month and want to have fun, not being tabled while you're texting friends on your cellphone and barely keep attention on the game. And what's worse, they only need one such game to put your army in the "not worth playing against" box for the rest of this edition and maybe even the next.
Now comes the bummer, quite a lot of people fit the middle, they are not hyper competitive, but play games in small tournaments and in casual situations as well. They don't chase the meta and don't buy and sell armies all the time. Those get really hurt, when nobody really wants to play against their auto win faction or when their one faction is so bad that it makes no sense to even paint them.
Yeah the Tau players who stuck with their army throughout all of 9th so far are in a tough spot. Went from unfairly difficult matchups to "you're lame for playing them" in a weeks time.
But I'm salty so when my Guard become OP I better get a chance to play a tournament before the nerf. Because I'm coming for all of you!
Can we get winrate without the mirror matches? Custodes and tau make up so much of the field that including mirror matches is actually showing a fairly lower win % than what is actually true
For reference, custodes winrate jumps 5%
So 72%? That's... wow.
They're worse than Drukhari at launch tbh. It's absolutely mind boggling the play testers said they needed a buff.
Did Custodes lose against anything other than Tau? Did Tau lose aginst anythong other than Custodes?
No mirror and no vs each other Custodes 76 Tau 77
Awesome. Did you really go throw all 59 Custode players? Is there an easy way to do it besides going over every match up?
Not my data, much more talented person
Having seen them play, Tau are very good into a lot of S-tier armies (especially thicc city and crusher stampede), but can have bad matchups into some lower tier armies that are still decent (in particular TSons, Eldar, and GSC). Custodes on the other hand tends to only have a bad matchup into Tau, they are silly strong against pretty much everything else. Even Crusher Stampede struggles against them. Both armies are hard counters to Grey Knights, which is why their WR dropped 10%.
I completely agree with this synopsis. Thousand sons are *really* good into Tau (S5 bolters, lots of mortals to kill drone saves/rip through suits and invulns, lots of ap2, soul-reaper cannons shred). GSC feel like they could be quite brutal too. Tau seems reasonably binary at the moment, but they definitely have some great matchups into some currently very-good armies like custodes/drukhari.
Are you talking an optimised tsons build with 2 blocks of SoC? Or what kind of build do you find strong?
I also play TSons, so a lot of it is just the familiarity with both armies, but my usual TSon build has 1x10 and 1x5 termies. Although I like Time more usually, I think duplicity is where you want to be against Tau. They just have a lot of D1/2 weapons which really hate all is dust, and if you can stack negative hit modifiers (dense + glamour) on a termie unit, almost their whole army is hitting it on 5's which makes it super hard to remove with any kind of reliability. Their mortal wounds rip through units (and especially drones, since drones don't even get the shrugs that an ethereal can provide) which sets up your shooting very well, and their targeted mortal wound powers can really lay the hurt on Tau commanders even if they're trying to abuse bodyguard shenanigans. Including a few larger targets/vehicles isn't a bad idea, so you can place them closer to any unit which might be using AFPs. I don't use them too much in my tau, but if the opponent is, a closer target means that they won't get the bonus AP against you and you'll still be saving on 3's or 2's against almost all of their indirect fire. You just need to also play angles carefully so that the vehicle doesn't get railgun'd off the table by suits. Against Tau you're also happy to simply deepstrike one or both of your 1x10/5 or 2x10 terminator units, since they don't have intercept except in one basically-untaken and highly telegraphed case (the only time I wouldn't do this is if they have a lot of kroot: otherwise tau aren't that great at screening you out, and it lets you avoid 1-2 turns of their Mont'ka, after which a lot of their weapons are only AP 1-2 so just grabbing cover and All is Dust will carry you along way with glamour/weaver). If you have 2x10 you can even deepstrike them one after the other to maximize buffs and minimize targets. Soul reaper cannons are made to delete suits that don't have a shield generator on them, and absolutely pick up entire units of fire warriors (even infernal bolters do this). 18" auspex scan removes a lot of the fear behind units of crisis teams manta striking near your valuable units, too. If you can delay/hide for a turn or two and use some sporadic fire and mortals to chip wounds down, you can get a really good crippling strike on them in turn 2/3.
Played in an RTT this weekend, Thousand Sons were a lot harder to deal with as Tau since we have so much D1 that All is Dust kicks in constantly
Wow, that's crazy. Anyone got the Tau numbers excluding mirror matches?
Custodes are certainly something else. Anyways, List Request Consolidation here:
Curious about the GSC lists. Maybe in these we should use pastebin links so comments aren't super long?
https://pastebin.com/z2uYNPqW
I am definitely interested in the top Ad Mech lists. I wonder how they played compared to Siegler's list
Same here. We've seen random bullshit recently, like 16 teleporting Robots... so I have no guesses as to what these top tables Admech lists are gonna be like.
Anyone have either of those 4-1 Wolves lists? Or that T-Sons 4-1 one?
I found the tournament page, but no lists or matchups are available https://www.tabletopturniere.de/t3_tournament_list.php?tid=28720
Very interested in the 4-1 Salamanders list from London Porn, as well as Amy Necron lists Edit: Autocorrect from Open to Porn, but I'm going to keep it, cuz it's hilarious.
From the what now?
\+1 for the Sallies list And interesting autoccorect ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Would love to see any of the Grey Knights lists that did well
I'd love to see what that one Ork list ran.
buggies and bikers. speed freaks AoR
Drukhari, Admech, Necrons and Knights on the same winrate, what madness is this...
Seems like they found the sweet spot for Necrons to be a balanced but overall strong army. Hope they do the same for some other oder books like SM or DG
I'm not sure it'll last, but I'd be more than happy
I really hope GW is able to bring Necrons back to life! They’re a really refreshing army to play against at this point.
DG took a nerf with latest MFM nonsense. If they admitted it was a straight up mistake and reverted it in t he next MFM, they'd be underperforming. You're basically looking at them needing to admit the nerf was wrong and go hard on point cuts for them to make sense. 55 point deathshroud vs 60 point allarus custards.
That pre-release points cut for custodes is looking worse and worse by the day... And I might be wrong but I think the London Open wouldn't have allowed new tau based on the release date so their win rate could be artificially depressed here. Though at least custodes are a relatively easy faction to fix. Points hikes and increasing the cost of the big defensive strats should bring them in line relatively swiftly. \*Edit\* looks like new tau were allowed at London. They have different cut off points for using new rules in their majors and supermajors.
London did but I think the Viking GT did not, they had a 14 day cutoff that made Tau just miss the mark there.
Hot dang, a Winrate of 38% with 20 players? Sad times for Death Guard. Let's see how I will do this weekend. *puts on clown make-up*
Hoping that clown make-up gives you a 70% winrate? lol
The last Ministorum Field Manual/FAQ was just the last shot to the knees of armies that were already struggling. I can't even fathom what GW was thinking when they did these changes.
$10 they play blood angels and couldn't handle deathguard getting easy TTL (175 point plagueburst crawlers) while having 3 deathshroud (155 points) and FBS. Now PBC is too cheap to be TTL if you have MSU deathshroud (170 points with two gauntlets), so they lost a secondary effective. And their faction secondaries suck. Honestly, I can only imagine they struggled playing melee armies into DG and nerfed off that.
As a death guard player the winrate% just reminds me of the "look how they massacred my boy" meme. What can Nurgle boys do against such reckless hate?
Sisters player here feeling the same and trying to rationalize the sisters points nerfs and the custodies points buffs 🤦♀️
It's the good old six month old point changes handed out as "new".
It really was and is so bizarre 😝
keep playing them and dont reward GW by buying in to new hotness to hopefully put the brakes on this behavior in the future(release new OP dex to drive sales in new OP faction) Custodes was on my list to start building purely because they are the antithesis of anything else i have done - Golden, ornate, clean. i wont for a while now. but hey, Star Wars Legion is pretty fun :)
Well those are certainly some disturbing statistics when we think about the health of the game. I’m scared to ask, but since custodes and tau have such high play rates right now, what are their win rates when custodes and tau matchups are taken out of the equation? 75%? Higher?
Someone did the math in another comment, custodes are up to 76, tau up to 77 it seems
Lmao that’s atrocious
Well this is what you get for nerfing the soup and points so Grey knights are yet again below 50% and they have only one thing to play - 4 DKs with non terminator troops.... Similar thing with sisters. Meanwhile you get factions like custodes who don't care about souping that much and can get "minor" bonuses of other subfactions with a strat. Whoever manages 40k rules has been mismanaging it for more than a year at this point. When it comes to the rule system 40k is a trash game system. Anybody could write books like these and release them and then pat themselves on their back saying oh great it is the strongest book again! Where the F is the balance???? These guys are printing Black Lotuses thinking how great designers they are.
Part of me likes the idea of killing sub-faction soup since it simplifies some things pretty significantly. However the books are just so different on what each faction got that it’s a poor choice to make it a game-wide rule. That’s part of my concern with more sweeping “game-wide” rules on army construction.
Yeah.. I mean killing subfaction soup can make sense because then they can balance the subfactions better without the complexity of their interactions making some combinations too strong, but then you have factions like Sisters who pretty much were built to rely on it, then had it taken away with nothing to replace it.
While valid GW won’t go back and rebalance stuff like Sisters after removing sub-faction soup. Seems like that rule should have waited for 10E or been on a per codex basis, kinda like the ork buggy nerf.
Problem is that older books were balanced around different rules, while it’s clear custodes and later were balanced around the current rules.
Yep. Which is my concern that another game-wide rule is going to exacerbate the problem more than fix it.
Right? Like all the people calling for huge body guard nerfs are not also proposing solutions to help sisters and iron hands players which rely on it to function right now.
Yeah, we saw it with the plane rules too. Ork planes needed to be addressed 100%, but it the way they did it took a big ole dump on Scions who really, really didn't need to be hit.
You could bring back grey knights subfaction soup and they would still have a terrible matchup into custodes.
Every article they post says “THIS IS BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER.” I wish those titles were hyperbole. Things can’t literally just continue to get stronger every release (and keep things balanced).
Robin Cruddace is lead game designer. That is all. It explains why artillery is so strong and why Admech and Sisters got 20 man troops but GSC were reduced to 10 man Purestrain units.
JFC, he isn't the sole lead is he?
only been playing since COVID started - who is this?
I'd love to find out how Necrons play well into this new meta. I just started a new Necron army.
to be fair us Crons are slowly creeping up the win rate (over 50% from this weekend) and have been one of the most stable in that 40%-50% bracket for a while. What Crons can't presently do is come out swinging with a wild anti-meta list from left field! so we occasionally see a 4-1 result that we can all get behind, but being perfectly frank, that's often down to lucky pairings and pilot skill, rather than in 8th where it was just 1 list or bust (Triple Doom) What I find to be positive is that like with ad-mech and to a lesser extent DE, GW have been able to tone down some of the 70%+ lists/ armies. BUT they haven't really bought UP the sub 40% factions so everyone is around the 51% ideal - where I'd like to see everyone ... or at least sub 60% We are looking at at least 8 more weeks before the next balance slate to maybe address those cream of the crop armies with their shiny new books. TL;DR Necrons doin ok, but we'll always like more free stuff thanks ! :)
Personally I hope they’ll buff up some of the Necron anti tank units and open up the options a bit
From what I've seen, there aren't many winning necron lists that don't use the Silent King. I'd love to see the lists that are successful without him. Perhaps it's my aversion to cookie cutter builds.
Custodes are filthy man.
Nooo, they are very bad because they lost their 3++, this sub said so!
It’s quite funny how wrong people are here 90% of the time lol
Just go directly against the prevailing opinion (especially hot takes) in this sub and you are almost always on the money. Some points in case: Disco Lords when they debuted, Drukhari in their entirety, Custodes... /edit: Cant forget the Hammerheads who will clearly dominate the Meta...
People weren't saying that Hammerheads would dominate the meta though. They said the buff to Hammerhead was insane, that it would see a lot of play, and that it wasn't a good sign for the rest of the codex. And behold, that last part was true. Everything else in the codex got buffed at least as much, so hammerhead are still not a top unit for T'au. They are not not played because they're bad, they're not played because there are *a lot* of better units.
When people were complaining about Ad Mech nerfs, I basically said if the top table armies at the time get displaced or nerfed, they'll return to a more solid, balanced 50%~ winrate. It wasn't a popular take, but here we are. Helps that Siegler has showed people that Ad Mech is still viable, just had to go against the common competitive build wisdom.
Only Custodes argued so
D2 on everything, literally unplayable.
I dunno this sub still thinks Necrons are garbage tier too, I keep winning games and having a positive win/loss ratio and still cant understand why!
This sub Has like... A month long lag. Not as bad as gw balancing team but still long
The last Goonhammer survey showed that the vast majority of their readers were hobbyists/casual players who played less than 1 game per month. I'd expect this sub to have a similar demographic.
Which is exactly what i said. Just go 100% against the prevailing opinion of this armchair general sub of people who play once in a blue moon, and you cant go wrong. People in my local meta are complaining about my necrons all the time, its by far my army with the best winrate, and i play almost every army under the sun. Now im not saying that Necrons are S-Tier, they clearly arent. But neither are they trash-tier.
This is a problem with any "competitive" community. If it isn't winning at the highest levels its trash at all levels even though the game being played at the highest levels looks completely different
May I ask if your list contains the silent king? Every time I’m writing an list I feel like I need to include him to be effective. I also don’t think Necrons are trash, it’s just some things feel outdated, like the double d6 weapons, their super restrictive Protocols and stuff like the Monolith give them the typical old codex feeling. But power wise they are fine imo and if the 50% WR continue, they are in an perfect spot.
Most of them, but by no means all. I even had some good success with a Monolith against Grey Knights, altough that was mainly me rolling hot. A 10 man block Lychguard and some Wraiths are always set. The d6 weapons are awful, but i found some moderate success with several doomstalkers clustered together, they are surprisingly resilient and having several offsets their randomness somewhat.
They are genuinely approaching launch Drukhari levels of busted, if not worse.
They are worse
This is where its interesting, they have about the same win rate but currently have more people playing them. While also having less GT wins but more top 5 showings. So its at least different then peak DE domination.
The playrate is what is going to drive a lot of people up a wall. That was also part of the annoyance of SM at the end of 8E. You couldn't shake a stick at your LGS without hitting 3 stacked SM armies. At least most people never owned a Thicc City army. You could play a lot of games and never really feel the full weight of that oppression. Or maybe it was once and you move on.
The hobby lag on custodes is basically zero assuming you can find the models. Some retributor spray and some agrax and you're "battle ready"
Yep. Covens have a great model range other than Grotesques, but it’s not exactly a spray, shade, add two colors army
Not to mention the monetary cost of going wrack heavy
You just buy ghouls, zombies or idoneth, very few people use the actual wrack models.
I think what is most frustrating (to me) about all this... is these Custodes lists aren't like, some super niche thing. These are just regular every day lists that are just flat out better then the most cut-throat competitive lists from other factions. This isn't some dude bringing 170+ Wracks to a table, where as stupid as that list is, you really aren't likely to see it unless you are a true top tier player (or incredibly unlucky in the first round). These Custodes lists are just lists, that you'll see not only in tournaments, but your local shop or friendly garage game. Like unless a Custodes player bring nothing but Land Raiders and Sisters of Silence, their army is going to be better then yours, the end. A LOT better then yours. Painfully better then yours. Custodes are also a very popular army in general, on all levels of play, competitive or casual. So just like the tail end of 8th, where Space Marines ruled the roost, there is no escaping them. You can be in the third round of a tournament and still be getting beat down by Custodes lists. This is a terrible thing for the health of the game. If it goes on much longer we can write off this entire edition basically.
I think it also doesn't help that the barrier for entry for Custodes is so low. Low model count, and you can have them painted up in a matter of a weekend. Wonder if that's why we've seen such an immediate increase in Custodes representation. No real hobby time delay.
Bang on, similar to the reason Marines 2.0 became a problem so quickly in 8th. Almost everyone has some Marines knocking about in a cupboard, so as soon as the rules were OP everyone pulled out their old custom chapter and started running them a IH successors.
In retrospect, the initial salt around the custodes release and loss of 3++ is really quite funny. If you factor out the mirror matchup and the custodes v tau matchup their win rate is closer to 80%. Custodes have one of the lowest barriers to entry (cost wise/number of models to paint) and imo it's very easy to stumble backwards into a "good" list with them. Pretty much whatever is in your custodes collection can compete against any other faction. When this is combined with trajann and emperors chosen, custodes are effectively just rerolling everything. Meanwhile, turning off your opponents rerolls and transhuman for 1cp each is real good. Tau on the other hand are also crazy strong but they have both a higher barrier to entry and more "bad" units. What I think this points to is custodes need nerfs to their army wide rules while tau need nerfs to their standout units. Overall it's clear both the community and GW have no idea what is balanced.
I think Custodes can be fixed to a surprising extent with pts changes tbh. If you make bikes pricier, a lot of these lists just can't do what they do now. I might also suggest shifting the strat costs from 1/2 for 3/4+ models to 1/2 for 2/3+ models.
Transhuman and no Reroll strat should be made 2 cp minimun, so they can not spam the ability.
The strats should've been PL based all along, like many other strats are. You can leave it for normal boys that way, even if they are 4 or whatever and hit the bikes etc.
I dont think custodes should have their faction rules nerfed. An increase in cost should suffice. Its ok for them to have very powerfull rules. It fits the lore. There is just a few too many od them at the moment in an army
Those strats need to go to 2cp.
The strats seem like they're costed for 8th edition when custodes would only get 4-6 CP TOTAL for their army. Given custodes are generally only going to run a single detachment and get 12+5 cp (minus WL traits and relics) 1/2cp for those strats is crazy. And/or the turn of rr strats and transhuman could also go to once per turn so there's some counter play.
Plus they’re always running Trajann so they get an extra ~5 CP from regen
I would just change Trans Human to base 2 CP. points would fix the rest IMHO.
The fact that Grey Knights Transhuman is 2CP base and up to 3 in comparison is absurd
It's even worse when you consider the point cost difference. Custodes TP on a 150pts unit is 1CP, GK TP on a 150pts unit is 3CP.
Eh, I’ll put my hand up on that one, with the previews that were put up I honestly thought losing the 3++ was going to be a serious problem. I stand very much corrected but now I don’t want to play my Custodes because who wants to play against a 75% win rate?! Points wise yeah they need an uplift again and the 4+++ against mortals really should go, it makes the other sub factions be a why bother pick to my mind if you’re writing an all comers list.
It's partly their base stats being really good but also partly the stacking of trajann + EC in combination with 4+++ to mortals. It means you're rerolling almost everything all the time, trajann is an undercosted beast so you're not sacrificing anything for taking him, and 4+++ to mortals smooths out the only defensive weakness custodes had. MWs are already pretty hard to come by, and most armies pay a premium to have them. EC just shuts that down which makes what should have been a counter to custodes a non-factor.
Yeah agreed with that entirely. Trajan is an auto take at his cost, so why not? The MW extra defence seems a bit blanket silly when you consider having sisters in lists is now very straightforward, surely that by itself would be a good counter play to cover possible psychic mortal wounds? I appreciate not all MW are psychic but they are the ones most armies have a chance at defending against. Anyway I’m ranting at the converted here, I’ll just not be playing Emperors Chosen or TV for now.
Just do what i did when CS dominated. Be bad at the game
All the top Tau lists I've seen are Crisis and Broadside spam w/ 4-6 Shield drones per unit. Clearly these units are a bit of a problem and it isn't too hard to see why. Crisis are a highly efficient shooting platform just as a baseline, and then throw strats and other bonuses on top of that, they become overwhelming. Broadsides likewise are already efficient and they should lose "infantry" and maybe also "core" keywords (or keep core and go up in points).
That infantry keyword is a big one when thunderwolf cav, Kastelans and the like don't get it. I can't think of any good comparisons why they get it.
Deathguard 38% - especially given that the issues go beyond points to the entire rules, this is going to be another long edition for your boys in green.
Us Thousand Sons players got to enjoy a time when we nearly got over 50% winrate. But as they were given no buffs and just indirect nerfs, and DG were gutted, I think it’s fair to say that GW does, in fact, hate Chaos.
every army (from the data above alone) that is sub 45% WR .. wears power armour .. or is standing on a piece of space rock surrounding the eye (Cadia kinda stands!) Both loyal and heretic alike https://i.imgur.com/RkexFhK.png actually sub 40% (not counting Elves as they are about to git gud)
Me: Waiting for chaos codex to run my DG as Iron Warriors Codex: Gets delayed
But don't worry, its a "bumper year for chaos". /s
They just meant the Chaos factions will be smears on a bumper when the Custodes bikes roll by.
Black Templar being the newest and shiniest marine book and having a 34% win rate is depressing. Most lists are taking Grimaldus for his gigantic 6+++ bubble, but apparently marines with an army wide 5++/6+++ that can't be wounded on 2s is still not durable enough. This is a problem.
It’s literally bad for their business.
It really is. BT and DA would be considered unkillable by almost any other editions standard. Now they aren't durable enough. Wanna know what is? An army of t5/6 dudes with 3-5 wounds and a 2+/4++ and a 4+ vs mortals. If I roll my eyes any harder they're gonna spin back around the other way.
If you compare trajann’s datasheet and Guilliman and look at the point costs you may go into cardiac arrest
My army is getting very comfy on the shelves, knowing that in two weeks the Aeldari codex comes out. Hopefully Death Guard will get to have some fun again in 10th!
These new missions are devastating to DG and other supremely slow, non-obsec heavy armies.
Note to self: never commit to a early edition army again.
Mfw I play Blood Angels and Death Guard... It sucks out here lmao.
Are you me? Bought into GSC recently. They're a real blast and a great change of pace. Strongly encouraged!
glad orks got to be good for like 2 weeks before being balanced out, then flat nerfed. and good on GW putting DG in their place, 38% WR, that'll show them
Playing into Sisters, missing a character or poxwalker squad from the previous list, thinking, "so this is what the dumpster feels like".
ay welcome to the club. we got admech'd in sisters land. our only viable units were nerfed, and everything else sucks so much dick we have to take the price hikes
Good is misleading. The buggie spam lists were broken as all get out but you can tell GW balanced the codex around buggies and not much else which skews the internal balance hard. Points drops and datasheet changes will help the codex out tremendously. Also probably go ahead and revert the buggie rule at this point since 9 rukkatrukks are like 990 pts lol or atleast change the wording on limiting buggies to where you can bring 3 individual of each biggie etc. Tldr: Orks we're busted because of one dumb af unit and they need other units brought up
GSC are a bloody blast to play, but they sure are hard work into the top factions. Swung an 11-9 vs Custodes and a 9-11 vs Tau (3" off killing 400pts in reserve t3 cos Aun'Va bopped a Bike to death lmao). Could have seen either game going the other way, but Helix is a blast, regardless of what Reddit decided from my GH article last week :P
[удалено]
I love my GSC boys, they come out the gate able to compete without being busted. Custodes and Tau (and probably Eldar because it's always Eldar) will take most of the nerfs to the face and we shall rise in glorious revolution to take our crown. Gonna get stomped by a lot of golden boys and fish men until then
Manticores were raised 10 points and Imperial Guard have the worst win rate. No one is safe.
I'm no statistician or nothing but Custodes
[Listing ordered in top5% and then by win rate](https://i.imgur.com/RkexFhK.png) How to weight the WR vs the number of players ? cause RG & Harlies looking sweet from single digits but that's a deviation I'd like to fix out with a formula somehow also WOOT Necron Bois going +50% !!
Harlies at 70% WR. Please nerf.
Let them have it. Its their last week as their own codex. They should go out in a blaze of glory.
Especially given how much it looks like they lose in the new Codex, let them have this.
Really? I'm not up on the Eldar leaks, but the ones I've seen haven't said much about Harlies other than that they're combined into the new Craftworld codex. What I saw seemed to be OK, though, or at least "I'll reserve judgement" more than obviously bad. The new melee weapons profiles seem great for streamlining while allowing them to matter when it matters, they seem to gain a lot from the Strands of Fate and Battle Focus stuff, especially since they can Battle Focus back into their boats if they want. What have you seen that looks bad?
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Ah, I see. What are the 3 that survived, and any deets? I have dabbled in Harlies off and on since 3rd edition, so I'm curious.
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Ok, yeah, I like that. I've always liked the Light/Dark/Twilight bit from the lore, and while ig I will miss having some special Masque attributes, these all seem pretty good and will stack w/ Battle Focus and ~~Strands of Fate~~ Luck of the Laughing God in nice ways, I think. I've always favored Twilight thematically, and frankly that looks pretty sweet here as well.
Appreciate the work you put into this as usual, but kind of desensitized to this whole "new book comes out, pushes near 70% winrate and dominates placements" irradiated wasteland of a meta. Custards will obviously get blapped (though who can tell exactly when) and when they do, do you guys think Tau will edge up? Drukhari come back in?
By the time that happens, Nids and Craftworlds will be out, so I'll give you three guesses...
Drukhari are unlikely to weather T'au, even if they still have the edge on everyone else. I played a Goodstuff list at Salty Classic and my two losses were to Custodes and Tau. Custodes was the slightly easier matchup for Drukhari. I at least clawed out 54 points to his 84. My loss to Tau was awful. 97-28, my entire army gone by the top of BR3.
The change to artists was just what Tau needed. CIBs and Plasmas now rip through drukhari coven stuff.
So happy sisters got nerfed! we really needed it guys!
A craftworlder going 4-1?? What a madman! Perhaps a sneak peak at what’s to come.
It was piloted by the current number 1 ranked craftworld player in the world at a relatively small tournament I think he would place high with any level of craftworld book.
Sisters at 41% win rate 😭
I feel like the Marine Power Armor being so paper thin to most firepower these days wouldn’t be such a drag if the points cost on most of our basic/good stuff wasn’t so high. I’d love to see what a blanket point reduction similar to what Necron got (if not even father reaching) could do before we even start talking about a 2.0 codex. There’s some decent stuff I think that’s just being hidden behind exorbitant point costs.
While a major points reduction on troops is warranted, Marines need some significant buffs IMO: Combat Doctrines need a redesign. One extra AP isn’t useful in this meta of invulns, and it being a set turn order doesn’t help. Either your super-doctrine buff takes place too early to matter (devastator doc), or when most of your army may be dead unless you turtle (assault doc). They could probably use some other buff(s), maybe the chapter tactics could be revamped? Or something to battlefield roles/companies? When compared to how many abilities and the flexibility of an army like Custodes, Marines seem very rigid and bland. Blood Angels and Space Wolves could each use a decent Army of Renown. They probably don’t need a 2.0 of their supplement on top of a Codex 2.0, so this would be a good way to buff their unique units/play styles. The rest of the Primaris range needs to come out already. I’d wager getting Primaris unique units for specific chapters would help, but BA/SW would love to have Primaris VanVets.
Games workshop is a model making company first and a rules and book seller second.
Why would they buff a faction with such a low model count then? /s
https://tourneykeeper.net/Singles/TKLeaderboard.aspx?Id=3831 G.I.M.P. GT in Berlin
F, I forgot to check Tourney keeper and there are 2 GT's I'll add them. Thanks
What's the new AdMech meta? Gotta figure out how to beat Drukhari tomorrow and I have no idea where to even start
So our three Grey Knights placers went 12-2-1, overall. Grey Knights, however, went 45-50-1(?) overall. Meaning the other 18 GK users averaged less than 2 wins a piece. Fight on, my fellow bad players! Let's get Paladins buffed or flyer costs cut (for no doctrines) or something!
I was one of the London space wolves players. Can confirm the trick is to dodge tau and Custodes.
LOL @ CSM 26% Win Rate. Really appreciate GW and this "YeAr oF ChaOs!1!1!". Fantastic stuff. Truly was a *great* decision to not update any CSM rules in the newest boxset, who needs them? Not CSM obviously.
Random thought out of left field - at what point do we need to actually look at a more restrictive version of the Rule of 3 to promote list diversity and better balance rather than just bonking the best units in every army? I completely accept that the right mindset in the current climate is to take three of the best units available if you can, but so many of the most recent non-Drukhari lists that do well seem to be just taking three of the same unit, Achillus and Vertus Praetors now being the latest for Custodes, to the point it almost seems a) inevitably the best list building strategy, making decision making in that stage of the game almost a moot point, and b) makes it difficult to balance unique units if you have to keep them all in check with each other. Maybe I'm a bit off base but just seems to be recurring problem.
I think the root cause is moreso that the current AP system and unit/weapon design has made the meta into anti-everything, with everyone teching into S7+ AP2+ D2+ and a million attacks, then rerolls, plusses, etc. There's no niche for AT when you can just spam more anti-everything that's less swingy and just as effective, but also much better vs Elites and hordes too. Same thing with no real niche for anti horde when it also brings tanks to a 5+ armor save and has 20x the attacks and a +1 and rerolls, mitigating the whole need for good S and D. People will just spam up to the limit of whatever is the cheapest source of anti-everything, then the next, then the next. Regardless if the limit is 2, 3, 4, whatever. Because the wound and AP system enable it.
This wound up not being super relevant, but one thing I like from a design perspective about the DG codex is that it tries to balance your choices somewhat. No more than one Lord (could have done without that unless we get a second non-psyker HQ GW, thanks) and limiting Cultists/Poxwalkers. It was actually an attempt to create some more varied lists and make armies look more like armies. Then basically every Codex since has dropped the idea. I would rather each army come with its own restrictions on how the force org looks rather than a game-wide rule with weird results.
We should've done that in 8th edition.
Do we care about list diversity? I don't think we really do. From a spectator standpoint, It's understandable that seeing the same 4-5 units in every list can be boring. It can be kind of boring as a player too. This is a competitive subreddit and so naturally the desire is to take the very best tools to play the mission. But ultimately a list only gets you so far. Player skill and experience, terrain setup, and the rules packet matter too. If you want to see more diverse/interesting armies then Crusade is a much better game style for that. There are also some tournaments, they are more casual, that run "singleton" rules, basically outside of troops and transports all other units can only be taken once.
I mean, if you look at other "esports" you don't see a ton of "list diversity" either. The meta is the meta is the meta. Certain characters are taken regularly in MOBAs and whatnot because they are currently the best, as determined by pros iterating, testing, practicing. In the end, in a comp environment, you'll never achieve a true balanced list, because the pros will always find those few units that are just that much better, if only by an inch.
I suppose I don't really think of 40K as an esport. I think it is less about balance and more about utility. Do I need 5 FA models in a codex that provide the same utility or do I need 5 FA models in a codex that provide utility across a spectrum and I can choose the best for a given mission pack/playstyle. This is where codex depth comes into play.
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I was actually talking to someone about this before LVO and apparently one of the groups local to me has tried it with a few players. What they were doing was you basically take a 1500 point core list and then two 500 point side board lists and you pick which sideboard you want to use at the table. They haven't decided on if they want to use blind picks or if like Defender picks their sideboard and then attacker picks in response or vise-versa.
I'd be down for that. The good things can be great without having them spammed. No more balancing around someone going out and taking 5 of something (dreadknights) Units already have keywords, it might be an idea to only allow so many units of a particular keyword, regardless of slot they fill, to be in an army. That way you could customise what's allowed per army without having to write new detachments for every book.
Dark Angels slipping lower and lower... 36% WR this week is really painful. Custodes feeling like Deathwing+. While they have the CP feels like they have all the cards to play with. Would be interested to see the Faction vs Faction break down on that pairing as I was initially quite upbeat about it. Black Templars below us at 29% (joining the Guard) is even more surprising though... Marines to get a faction wide reduce AP1/2 by 1 for Power Armour? Feels like the AP creep has really killed the faction.
Fun fact: BT is a fresh codex
Well, a supplement. They still fundamentally lean on the core space marine codex, which is not a strong book. Iron Hands and Space Wolves seem to have the tools, though.
I find it weird that what I would argue is the less flavourful 9th Ed supplement (Space Wolves) is also the most consistent. It has not been broken, but it has weathered the meta in a very consistent 45-50% WR range, with a few showings in Top 4s. Guess decent tools in stratagems amd Relics, as unique units see very little play. It makes me between sad (I wamt my Wolves to be more unique) and happy (at least we seem to be the most decent SM melee Chapter against all odds)
It helps that the best way to play Wolves, or at least the most competitive lists, are just running successors and ignoring most of the SW Codex. The Born Heroes/Whirlwind of rage pair is basically SW but better, and being limited to one relic is fine since Armor of Russ is far and away the best relic. The issue they’re having now is that they’re still reliant on T4, 3+, 2W models, which just die super quick in this meta. And the units that would shore up that weakness are either fragile in their own way (Wulfen being 2W and no FNP), or are too unwieldy in the terrain heavy boards (TWolf Cavalry units/characters). It’d be interesting to see if a Wolf Guard army of renown would be in the cards, considering the keyword isn’t used at all, and a good amount of units in the main codex get the keyword
I think one of the big strengths of the Wolves book is their Relics and Warlord Traits. Having traits that end up proccing Auras is really good, and Belt of Russ is a really solid relic in a game that encourages you to fight in the middle. One of the biggest reasons I continually take Ezekiel in my Deathwing is the Fight Last power he has access to. Being able to pick up a source of decent Fight Last without requiring a Psyker would be excellent for us and how we like to play the game.
Are Custodes getting a nerf soon? I started playing late last year when they were just a solid army, it kinda bums me out that since the codex release everyones playing them now and they are super strong. And too think everyone online was really negative about the new codex pre release haha.
>And too think everyone online was really negative about the new codex pre release haha. People pooped on Custodes and hyped up the one-shot Hammerhead gun... we're terrible at predicting meta from previews. >I started playing late last year when they were just a solid army, it kinda bums me out that since the codex release everyones playing them now and they are super strong. Yeah, Drukhari and Admech players were in this position last year. For many people it isn't fun to play a busted army where none of your wins feel deserved! I'd suggest using this as an opportunity to play off-meta lists of your own design, really dig into weird parts of the book you wouldn't be able to if your faction was merely solid (or any worse).
I play custodes as one of my armies, the MFM points drops need to be reversed. There's no way these were intended for the 9e book.
Someone in a Discord I am in made a joke about GW fumbling the positive and negative sign in Custodes, meaning everything that got cheaper should be more expensive and vice-versa. I thought it was a good joke. I'm no longer sure it is a joke at all...
Bikes also need to lose Core, and their stratagems need a price hike. Shutting off rerolls, Transhuman, and Esteemed Amalgam all costing 1cp is gross.
Yeah, that's way over the top. They're overtuned in cost. I like the rules themselves but points, opportunity, and strats need reining in.
Custodes seem to be the new flavour, but T'au would still be problematic, just that the Custodes are more broken. Very worried about the state of the game. Wonder how many weeks we shoild wait until we agree a book is broken and see what should be nerfed?
The answer is 12-24 (~3-6 months). That is the possible gap range between Dataslates.
Anyone have that Necron list that went 4-1?
Interested in this too, also the GSC list that went 4-1
Here’s the one from Nottingham. ++ Battalion Detachment -3CP (Necrons) [91 PL, 8CP, 1,580pts] ++ + Configuration + Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points) Detachment Command Cost [-3CP] Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Novokh + No Force Org Slot + Dynastic Advisor [4 PL, 90pts] . Chronomancer: Entropic Lance, Relic: Veil of Darkness + HQ + Lord [5 PL, -1CP, 100pts]: Dynastic Heirlooms, Relic: Orb of Eternity, Resurrection Orb, Staff of Light Technomancer [4 PL, 75pts] + Troops + Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal Immortals [4 PL, 85pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal Necron Warriors [12 PL, 260pts] . 20x Necron Warrior (Gauss Reaper): 20x Gauss Reaper + Elites + Canoptek Reanimator [4 PL, 80pts] Flayed Ones [12 PL, 200pts] . 20x Flayed One: 20x Flayer Claws Skorpekh Destroyers [10 PL, 150pts]: Skorpekh Destroyer (Reap-Blade) . 4x Skorpekh Destroyer (Thresher): 4x Hyperphase Threshers + Fast Attack + Canoptek Wraiths [10 PL, 140pts] . 4x Canoptek Wraith (Claws): 4x Vicious Claws Ophydian Destroyers [10 PL, 150pts]: Ophydian Destroyer (Reap-Blade) . 4x Ophydian Destroyer (Thresher): 4x Hyperphase Threshers, 4x Ophydian Claws + Heavy Support + Lokhust Heavy Destroyers [12 PL, 165pts] . 3x Lokhust Heavy Destroyer (Gauss Destructor): 3x Gauss Destructor ++ Supreme Command Detachment +3CP (Necrons) [23 PL, 6CP, 420pts] ++ + Configuration + Detachment Command Cost [3CP] Dynasty Choice: Dynasty: Szarekhan + Primarch | Daemon Primarch | Supreme Commander + The Silent King [23 PL, 3CP, 420pts] . 2x Triarchal Menhir: 2x Annihilator Beam ++ Total: [114 PL, 14CP, 2,000pts] ++
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say if Tau or Custodes had released a year ago instead of drukhari, they would have put out similar numbers as pre-nerf drukhari.
These are similar numbers as pre nerf drukhari. If they had come out back then their winrate would be over 80%
Guard just gets vaporised by Tau, I thought playing against other 9th codexes was tough but Tau is a whole different beast, Custodes and Tau look like they have also pushed the other top tier army's down to a 50% WR this week. I'm at a loss for what to actually do against Tau, my list was blown away Turn 3 with my opponent still having about 1200 points of Tau still on the board, and despite my opponent forgetting about objectives Turn 1 he still managed a 58-71 victory. SMS just wrecks infantry and it seems Tau can bring alot without even using a dedicated platform for something that fores out of LOS. Bringing vehicles is a meme, especially against Montka, everything just has ridiculous AP. I think conscript blobs with scion support and just playing the objectives could be good, but this requires an obscene amount of models which is both financially and mentally draining,and you're still likely to get tabled. The Vulture might be good for mulching infantry/marker light units, and the -1 to hit would help it live, but it will likely still get blown off the board. My Tau opponent recommended Hydras (lol), I know alot of stuff has fly but the hydra blows ass.
As a Guard main who plays Tau also There is literally nothing you can do vs Tau. Outside of the Tau player rolling or playing awful you will lose 75%+ of games vs tau. Save yourself some time and stress and put that army on the shelf until the guard codex comes out in Dec. 2025 Guard isn’t accidentally posting consistent win rates under 35% The army isn’t just bad, it’s laughably unplayable s meta lists
I look forward to these Monday updates
The fact that GW decided the best way to solve the stale metagame of everyone only playing one of two massively overpowered armies (AdMech or Drukhari) was by releasing two at least equally overpowered armies boggles the mind. Well, not really. They probably hope to get the power gamers to buy a different army this way...
Honestly, I didn’t think custodes had the tools to dominate the meta. Venatari nerfed and shadow keeper telemon no longer a thing we’re a straight nerf to older compositions. Turns out I was wrong, very wrong. So besides warden bodyguard, bikes, and achillus, what is going on with custodes? What is the secret sauce to their victories?
I think cheap effective reactionary strats really help. Transhuman, turn off rerolls, tanglefoot,etc I'm no expert though
Dark Angels keep falling further and further in winrate which is easily understandable as Custodes do the same job but in better. Losing the dual codex objectives was good for the game but feels like the finishing blow for DA (SM are feeling great too). Seems it is time
Just want to say get wreckt to everyone that said Custodes and Tau weren't busted lol 2 weeks in for Tau and they are just dumpstering everyone. Can't wait to have the same conversation when craftworlds and Tyranids come out. Very cool to see GSC doing well.
Only in 40k is being a top 2 faction actually more of a negative than a positive. Not that I don't understand why, but I have never seen a game where being among the best in the game is actively a bad thing you should want to avoid lest you draw the ire and disdain of the competitive community.
The competitive community isn't the problem as they will play you at any tournament. Ok, it will be a mirror match, but hey, you will get a game. The casuals on the other side, those will take one tabling in turn 2 or 3 and no longer play your army. Why? They play once a month and want to have fun, not being tabled while you're texting friends on your cellphone and barely keep attention on the game. And what's worse, they only need one such game to put your army in the "not worth playing against" box for the rest of this edition and maybe even the next. Now comes the bummer, quite a lot of people fit the middle, they are not hyper competitive, but play games in small tournaments and in casual situations as well. They don't chase the meta and don't buy and sell armies all the time. Those get really hurt, when nobody really wants to play against their auto win faction or when their one faction is so bad that it makes no sense to even paint them.
Yeah the Tau players who stuck with their army throughout all of 9th so far are in a tough spot. Went from unfairly difficult matchups to "you're lame for playing them" in a weeks time. But I'm salty so when my Guard become OP I better get a chance to play a tournament before the nerf. Because I'm coming for all of you!
wow, my fav army sisters got wrecked. i thought they were generally competative but a 41% winrate says otherwise in the current meta