It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about the competitive landscape of 40K – there’s myriad reasons for that, ranging from people doing the basic stats of tournaments well and the more advanced stats behind tournaments being hard as hell to how I didn’t like the tone those posts were starting to take, which can be summarized as a series of “Matched Play is why we can’t have nice things”.
But the new…let’s call it 9.1 Balance Patch…seems like a good opportunity for some discussion.
The Problem
At the moment, the 9th Edition Competitive Scene is…just not very healthy. Since the end of 8th, things have been largely dominated by a few armies having long (for this period of 40K – 5th ed players, don’t @ me) runs of dominance. Most recently, both the Drukhari (even once the most egregiously tortured readings of their rules was FAQ’d) and AdMech. A few other armies (including my beloved Sisters) hang around as also-rans, capable of making a run at the top tables and maybe slipping through with the right draws for opponents.
Recently, that has been shaken up a little bit by a different kind of AdMech army (featuring a bunch of flyers) and a particular breed of Ork list (involving a bunch of Flyers and Buggies). Neither one of which, by all accounts, is particularly fun to play against.
So Games Workshop has stepped in and is attempting to fix things, in a way that feels more active than past FAQ attempts.
The Points Changes
Points changes are the easiest “dial” for GW to turn when talking about balance, and the one they’ve been most likely to reach for in recent years. And there are a plethora of those in this errata. Both the AdMech and Drukhari got large-scale points changes, targeting the overperforming units (and discounting some units that have been notably absent from the table, especially Drukhari Coven units). Skitarii, Serberys Raiders, Ironstriders and Archaeopter’s generally get considerably more expensive, as do Succubus characters (by a lot), Wyches, Incubi, Trueborn and Dark Lances on Raiders.
These all make sense. They’re fine. They add a bit of drag on the most efficient lists in the game. But I’d also say they’re as expected.
But it’s outside the points changes that things get interesting.
Dataslate Buffs
A tool that GW has been notably hesitant to reach for is actually changing unit rules to make them work better. But sometimes it’s necessary – sometimes a unit simply doesn’t work as expected, and there isn’t a reasonable points value where it starts to be cheap enough that it does work. What’s surprising about this patch is the sheer amount of dataslate-scale changes that have been made – and how many of them don’t even have a fig left of “Yeah, that rule was ambiguous…” for an FAQ. There are a lot. And by and large, I think they’re good for the game.
Pity the Poor Necrons
There’s a new player in our group who keeps talking about how he’s looking forward to “getting 9th edition rules” – and we keep having to remind him that his army (Ultramarines) has 9th edition rules. It’s just in his mind, “Modern 9th Edition Rules” are defined by runaway power curve armies like the Drukhari or AdMech, or to a lesser extent Sisters, Grey Knights, etc. I have tried to reassure him by saying that if there’s any army likely to get a mid-edition revision, or a particularly good boost from a narrative supplement, it would be the boys from Macragge.
The Necrons…are unlikely to get the same treatment, especially now that the narrative focus has moved on from the Pariah Nexus. At best, ala the other books, it would be a single faction within the Necrons, which may or may not be competitively compelling. And as what is now a fairly early 9th edition codex, it’s somewhat lackluster.
This patch fixes some of that, by handing out the all important <Core> keyword to a huge number of units, including Flayed Ones, Triarch Praetorians, the Destroyer variety pack, Canoptek Wraiths, etc.
This unlocks a huge number of new combos, massively strengthens the buffs Necron characters can throw around, gives them new wargear and unlocks stratagems…it’s really quite sweeping for something that feels subtle. Will this be enough to fix the mediocrity plaguing the Necron codex? Time will tell as the meta shifts along with this, but I think it’s breathed a lot of new life into the army.
Slightly Angrier Chaos Marines
Chaos Space Marines get an extra hit on hit rolls of 6+, and now it counts against everyone, not just <Imperial> units. That’s a good buff, in my opinion. “Only sometimes against certain factions” rules should be mostly for flavor and not particularly central to a army’s build (ala the Dark Angels v. Space Wolves stuff). Otherwise, they get too easy to forget, become too dependent on drawing the right combinations of opponents, etc.
It’s a good change – but I do remain surprised that they didn’t give out the highly anticipated 2nd wound. I assume because that would likely have also triggered a points change, and that was a step too far.
More Viable Knights
That mad laughter you hear in the background is Colin Ward, recent guest on Lost to the Nails, reveling in the newfound power of his “Oops! All Armigers!” list.
Knight (and Chaos Knight) units count at 5 models, 10 if they’re Titanic when considering objective control, and Armigers and War Dogs get Objective Secured. Knight-heavy armies may still struggle with Action-heavy missions, where they’re potentially turning off a not inconsiderable amount of firepower, but a list featuring (or mostly made up of) Armigers is now going to be really tough to shift off objectives, which is a major change from “I basically can’t hold objectives at all”.
I don’t think this will usher in an era of Knight House dominance – there are still too many top tier armies with the tools to handle Knights pretty natively, but I do think there are some strong plays here, and that Knights might emerge as a 7th ed. Tau-style “You must be this tall to ride” army, that while not performing at the top tables serves as a sort of ceiling on armies that aren’t built to handle them.
Imperial Armor
Tanks got better. 2+ Armor Saves, which will be important for actually giving them saves vs. the near ubiquitous anti-tank firepower that’s available now, and will definitely sting against armies that are trying to make large numbers of AP -1 or AP -2 shots work out. Directing a lot of “Well, you never know…” shots towards a Leman Russ now seems more like an exercise in frustration than a really viable plan.
Now if only my brother was planning on fielding any of them at the LVO Narrative.
Getting Orders from Tank Commanders, and Orders bouncing to units within 6″ are also really interesting changes. In total, I don’t think these are enough to really change the equation for Guard armies, but they’re decent stop-gap measures, and they’ll let players start to get used to mechanics that are likely to show up in the updated Codex.
The Awkward Changes
There were also two data sheet – or more accurately army composition – level nerfs, both of which are, to be honest, a little awkward.
The first hit the Orks specifically – each of their buddies and truck units are restricted to only one unit. This closes one of the obvious loopholes in the “Rule of 3”, which is squadroned vehicles that turns it into the “Rule of 9”, and forces some of the optimal choices to be taken in one unit of three instead of three units of one, which is a massive loss of tactical flexibility, survivability, and options.
I’ve been playing this game long enough to remember 0-1 Rare choices, and by all accounts the lists that were getting hit by this were agonizingly unfun to play against. It is however sort of an awkward fix, especially in the extremely flexible and permissible post-8th army composition paradigm. But it is targeted at a specific list, and I do think leaves the Orks with plenty of options – like the Liquifier-heavy Drukhari list that dominated the meta very briefly, there’s still a strong Codex sitting underneath that was just getting drowned out by something clearly off-the-charts optimal.
Speaking of targeted changes…let’s talk for a bit about the exact opposite.
When mustering your army for a matched play game, it cannot include more than 1 Aircraft model if you are playing a Combat Patrol or Incursion sized game, more than 2 Aircraft models if you are playing a Strike Force sized game, or more than 3 Aircraft models if you are playing an Onslaught sized game.
I am disclosing my bias here: I love flyers, and regularly field three Crimson Hunters in my Craftworld army, because they are one of the most beautiful models in 40K, fit my theme, and are just pretty on a tabletop. And my aspirational, Someday When I Have Time army is a Guard air cavalry army.
But even without that, I don’t like this change for a couple reasons:
#1: It’s Not Targeted. It’s the opposite of targeted – it’s a universal rule. Today, some poor Tempestus Scions player got their army nerfed pretty damned hard. Armies that didn’t need nerfing (*waves to Eldar and Tau*) potentially took hits. Flyers have been almost completely absent from not just the top tables but from the game entirely for the vast majority of 9th edition. They appeared in two armies that, to be frank, weren’t particularly well balanced books to begin with, and prone to optimal unit spam.
#2: It Compounds The Aircraft Keyword Error. Note it just says “Aircraft”. Not “Expensive Things That Fly”. It still leaves GW vulnerable to Tyranid flying monsters and Winged Demon Princes, both of which have just as much of a checkered competitive balance past as anything with wings and an engine.
#3: The Reasoning is Bad. The Warhammer Community article says this “Warhammer 40,000 is certainly not intended to be a game controlled by duelling planes, so the rules team has made a change to ensure that aircraft have more of a support role rather than acting as a spearhead.”
I really hate this reasoning – because nothing about the competitive scene is a coherent vision of Warhammer 40,000 as it’s “intended”. Games Workshop continues to have this very awkward relationship with flyers, where they want them to be somehow limited, and then they try to blend that justification into competitive balancing when a bunch of flyers show up, as if “Someone brought three flyers” is uniquely different than “Someone brought three Bane Blades” or “Three squads of Zephyrim” or whatever else.
There’s also a number of flyers in the game – the Necron transport flyers, Valkyries, Stormravens, Corvus Blackstars, Stormfangs all come to mind, that are supposed to be spearhead units.
Read the unit description for a Night Scythe: “Many Necron invasions begin with Night Scythes flitting through a world’s void defences. Potent aerial fighters in their own right, Night Scythes also employ invasion beams to generate captive wormholes through which invading infantry can march direct from distant Necron tomb worlds to begin their conquests anew.”
What about that isn’t a spearhead unit?
#4: It Doesn’t Address the Why. What about Ork Jet and AdMech Archaeopter units made them so powerful? Why them, and not the myriad Space Marine flyers, or Necron flyers? They nerfed flyers because good flyers were out performing, without ever really touching on why that might be.
#5: It Doesn’t Address the Why, Part 2. I think one of the major reasons that good flyers are suddenly quite powerful is that the terrain paradigm of 9th Edition has, to be frank, collapsed into “Are you, or are you not, out of LOS?” Flyers, with their ability to ignore screening units and extremely high mobility, are an excellent way to get around that, and leave you nowhere to hide. Now, they also have to be good enough, and cheap enough, for that to matter. But this change doesn’t address that aspect at all.
The Notably Absent
Who didn’t get a boost? Genestealer Cults, who will hopefully have a Codex soon enough that it won’t matter. Craftworld Eldar and Tau, who are currently sitting toward the bottom of the meta got absolutely nothing. If I had to speculate, these changes were mostly for armies who either have their codexes out, and as such this patch is the only way to fix them, or who are close enough on GW’s development horizon that the fundamental changes are already locked in, and so this is just a “Preview of Things To Come”.
But for the moment? My Craftworlders remain on the shelf.
Overall?
My overall impression of this particular patch is, fairly positive. The flyer change notwithstanding, I think most of the fixes were targeted than previous FAQs have sometimes been, and if this is a preview of quarterly things to come, I think a strong signal that GW is interested in addressing the somewhat stagnant state of the competitive game. Out of all the armies, I think the AdMech probably got hit the worst, as I think they have a shallower list of options to build from than the Drukhari, and the combination of points increases and the flyer nerf is definitely characteristic of the classic GW “Double-Tap” nerfing style.
And I think most Sisters players are breathing a quiet sigh of relief.
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