40k Balance Dataslate First Reactions! | Warhammer 40,000 State of Play
Join Spider and Chef as they discuss these big balance changes and the impact they will have on the game!
00:00 Intro
01:36 Flyers – If you want more, Aeronautica has you covered
03:02 Astra Militarum – Orders for everyone!
04:21 Chaos Space Marines – Death to, well, everything
05:44 Chaos and Imperial Knights – That’s MY objective
07:38 Necrons – More Cores than an orchard
09:44 Orks – Go Karts belong on a race track, not the battlefield
12:28 Adeptus Mechanicus and Drukhari – You get a points increase, and you get a points increase!
14:03 The Rest of the Meta – This is fine
15:57 Wrap Up
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“Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” Sort of sums up my feeling towards GW’s ability and commitment to a balanced game of 40k. I think we saw them commit during 8th, and then they decided to flip on the money press again. 9th edition has from a balance and fun perspective been a total trainwreck for me as far as the rules go. The models are great but the game is just not very attractive at all to me as a gamer, from the spamming of supplements, lack of books, overnerfs and constant power… Read more »
I don’t think the change to the CSM is that good to be honest. I mean, yes, it’s good that it actually has more use, but and I appreciate this just makes me sound like a negative nancy, you can’t make much use of it if you’re dead. +1 Wound would actually be a relatively simple fix, even if it isn’t rolled out to everything appropriately and some units miss out. It would, at the least, take some of the edge off and would make at least (some) CSM units more attractive. The optimist in me hopes that given the… Read more »
Core for Necrons seemed a small change on the surface but it opens up so many options.
Great video guys. I agree with everything you guys said. Also, no sympathy for spammers. If you have been playing 40k for any significant time, you should know that rules changes are always coming (now sooner rather than later).
I’m not a competitive tournament player myself, but I can see how these changes are definitely for the better of the game. I am afraid sisters could be next in line to be hit with nerfs and that I’d find a shame as I simply don’t get to play as much as I’d like and by the time I can finally try new units, things have changed already. But that’s the GW life, haha. What I am curious about is how you guys reflect on the playtesting of 9th edition. I’ve seen and heard on plenty of criticism on 9th,… Read more »
Happy with the rule changes myself. Playing chaos knights will now be a bit more interesting. Still can’t figure out how a towering titanic robot suit doesn’t have a 2 save. Or how an entire army of vehicles doesn’t have any vehicle upgrades but I love playing them.
I get it spamming buggies was unhealthy for the game and I’m happy it’s changed but would it have killed them to address the other rules? I can’t use any of my kustom jobs if the unit size is larger than 1 so its either I run the 3 buggies with no upgrades or I just get 1 buggy with an upgrade. If they didn’t want buggy spam they should’ve just changed the unit size to 1. Now I get to wait 3 months and hope they FAQ the kustom jobs or let us split the unit. This was a… Read more »
If the upcoming codex for the Tau is not good, I will burn everything I have to the ground and call it a day 😥
I mean they couldn’t think of onething to fix!!
Seems fair enough for the Mechs and dark pointy ears, so glad the Knights got there presence at last better playing with or against.
Great video, as always. Cheers for summing it up so quickly
Surprised you guys had a chance to put this video together so quickly.
I was pretty gutted that Craftworlds didn’t get anything. I hope it’s a sign they’re coming sooner rather than later, because they need… a change. I reckon 2/3 of the current codex could be shifted to Legends and no one would notice.
It is nice to see this balancing, as well as a quarterly commitment to the game and overall state of play. Time will tell. Appreciate you guys sharing some of your thoughts at first glance. Looking forward to seeing some games with these changes in effect. Maybe Necrons vs Drukhari?
Oof – my Remora Stealth Drones bit a bullet in the aircraft sweep! Will definitely have to swap those cheeky nuggets out, now.
Being a Craftworld junkie, I was somewhat bitter last night about not having received any changes. But like y’all mentioned about the CSM, I don’t think there’s anything that could really be done to boost them up in a quick balance update to a single rule. Maybe a change to Battle Focus could work, but nothing really obvious and meaningful comes to mind. I’ll just have to hope we get Asuryani as a new year’s present, I guess!
This was definitely a big win for the game! some points increases on drukhari? Adapt and overcome its as simple as that. The points increase has resulted in me dropping some reavers but overall my list is still fun and semi competitive without being meta chasing. Almost every points increase spider said at the start re drukhari have been implemented and it’s obvious why. We still have a codex in which almost every unit is playable which still makes it one of if not the best codexes
I see your IG, tossing some dumbbells around. I can tell, man, you look good!
I see your IG, tossin some dumbbells around. I can tell, man, you look good!
I loved my Scion list. Elite BASIC humans fighting the horrors of the galaxy with air support. I hate that I lost fliers. I agree balancing them is tough but now what? All my fliers go in the closet I guess…
I really hope Spider does a Scion game soon after this.
Did you notice the difference in wording for flyers on the community article itself and the balance dataslate pdf?
The article on the communities site says “As such, there’s now a cap on the number of Aircraft units you can field in a matched play army”, whilst the dataslate says models
I’m assuming the dataslate is correct and not the article, or do you think that leaves the door open for say guard to take multiple units of 2 Valkyrie’s for example?
The biggest thing for me is these coming quarterly. With the (glacial) pace of updates so far, those meta armies have been purchased by increasingly large numbers of players. I wonder whether updates changing the meta every 3 months will mean even where meta armies emerge, they are less prevalent simply because people don’t have time to build/paint them before the new hotness appears. Overall, very happy with all of these changes. Disappointed my Ad Mech have been hit, but they were too strong, and I did feel like I had an extra unit when playing them which seems to… Read more »
Heck yeah orders for platoons!
I’ve had my knight “army” on the back burner for a while now. Really I just loved the FW models so I bought’em all. I’ll be excited to give them a try. The changes to Necrons are HUGE. So much more variety is now available besides warrior spam or warrior spam but with transports. Hopefully GW tweaks the plane rules a bit. Specifically an exception for transport aircraft like Valkyries, Nightshrouds, etc. Otherwise it does put a few armies into a weird place. The issues wasn’t with the transport aircraft anyway. P.S. any chance you guys will do a battle… Read more »
Lawrence. Have you been losing weight? You look thinner in your face and neck. Your head is still gigantic, but your face and neck look thinner 😉
Cannot wait to see how my Necrons do at the Austin Open in 2 weekends time.
One thing you guys didn’t address, that I see as a negative for ork players, you now have to pick between taking a squadron OR being able to take kustom jobs. The new rule should really have been “When mustering an Orks army, it cannot include more than 1 of each of the following units: Boomdakka Snazzwagons; Kustom Boosta-blastas; Megatrakk Scrapjets; Rukkatrukk Squigbuggies; Shokkjump Dragstas. A single model in each of these units may be upgraded with a kustom job” No other army suffers from losing wargesr options by taking a larger than MSU squad. It wouldn’t have been game… Read more »
An entirely fair summation guys!! I don’t play Knights of either flavour, or Imp Guard, but I love what they’ve done with them. Flyers/Aircraft make total sense. It’s the Orks – as an ork player, obvs I’m in a lot of Ork groups, and the bitching about that one change is phenomenal! Seriously people, if you’re playing to the meta, change with the meta!! If not, it doesn’t affect you!! So many Meks out there bemoaning the changes, saying GW have penalised them by banning their buggies (doesn’t even make sense?!) and not respecting all the money they’ve spent etc… Read more »
I got mr illuminor szeras just the day before this update was released, mostly because the model looks fun to paint. Now he suddenly looks pretty good in the game too 🙂
I really like the change to Knights, I’ve been building up a knights army and was just hoping for the new codex, but this is a great interim fix!
A unit of 20 Noise Marines with Chainswords (who needs sonic weapons) and Combat Elixirs is 102 attacks for DTTFE to proc from. Give them a Slaanesh Icon, Prescience, Lord rerolls… Honor the Prince to guarantee a charge from reserves. My word, it’s a different kind of noise but it’s hella noisy.
Love the changes and glad that GW are being more responsive to the meta. If they are going to do this quarterly they need to take the plunge and get codices on the app as the books are going to go out of date within 6 months of being published.
Deamons need an update next 🤞🤞 nurgle is feeling restless…
Forget the content, I’m here for smouldering-look thumbnail Lawrence 😏
Is it only me? or Mr. Lawrence looks like got some suntan in Gibraltar ?
Thanks vor giving your thoughts so quickly! It‘s nice to see that GW is getting even more responsive plus data sheets and army rules are on the table. What I don‘t get yet: the format! If the points won‘t be a regular part of those uptdates, why isn‘t the rest of the changes just added to the existing FAQs? This pdf will have grown to the size of a codex supplement within the next 18 month and will then be one of at least two additional sources we will have to check for up to date rules (Even if we… Read more »
The spider not in black is almost as disconcerting as gw making changes….
More cores than an Orchard!!!
Yes boi, YES!!!
I’ll bring that #NecronMeta back in 2022!
Happy with the CSM update, it was daft having a main rule that only worked against some opponents. If rumours are accurate the 9th codex shouldn’t be too far away and this provides a small improvement until then.
The hot take I was waiting for! Big fan of the changes – I’ll take what I can get for CSM. The autohits and vs everyone makes the rule far less feelsbad. Obviously not enough to make the army “good”, but I’m enjoying seeing what I can get out of the army as is, and this won’t fundamentally change the way they play. I will say I think WE come out of this better than most CSM, as do termi/melee-heavy EC builds!
Most of all, excited for quarterly balancing!
In BIGGER news! They fixed the LED dice. Also, thank you for the video breakdown.
Absolutely love this from GW. If they keep this up hopefully it will stop some of the (needless) negativity and salt around this hobby. Now I’m gonna start making weird Necron lists 😅
I hope we will see matches from you with the factions that were affected by the nerfs. Just to see how these changes affect gameplay. @Stig , you’ve been on enough vacation. There is work waiting for you 🤣
I am really happy with this rebalancing, even more so for the promise they made that it will be a quarterly endeavour. This is what is absolutely needed to keep the game healty and engaging, and it’s an awesome move GW made. I love also that they FINALLY started to implement rules changes and not only points: they broke the ice when they took CORE away from the Ballistari, but till now I wasn’t sure they will keep doing it. About the changes, I think that Drukhari were still not hit enough and probably the orks too, while I feel… Read more »
Katie must be excited. Tyranids are one of the big winners of this with their recent rulesupdate and the top armies being toned down a bit.
A shame that it now means you can only use Kustom Jobs on buggies if you only take one… 3 models rather than 1 unit would definitely have been better.
Thanks for the video. Even thou I watched all SN No retreat games and Spider was making a lot of small cameos in various games. I really missed seeing the Spider on TT 🙂
A little disappointed that my scions have been caught in the crossfire by the flyer nerf but they already get weird rules so hopefully they get an exception in the 9th guard codex.
As an Ork player who owns 1 squigbuggy, I’m a bit disappointed they’ve done it as one unit, not 3 models. Because it negates the option of a kustom job (nitro squigs) unless you only bring one… (previously you could run 2 + 1)
Thanks for the insight fellas! Got a game in with my Chaos Knights last night with the new rules. It was gloooooooorious having obsec on armigers.
I am a bit concerned about the points reductions for drukhari.. Some good units that were just a bit overlooked due to other stuff being insane have had points drops. List I lost to at the Cov GT is not actually down about 55pts! It was still utterly brutal and had so many waves of stuff.
Everything else good.
Great work guys, thank you.