June 2024 Balance Update! | Warhammer 40,000 State of Play
The new Balance Dataslate is here! Join Spider, Chef and Bard, as they break down the changes and what this means for both casual and competitive play! With a huge range of changes affecting the game, join Spider, Bard and Chef as they discuss what these updates mean for both competitive and casual games alike in the 41st Millennium!
00:00 Intro
01:31 Modifying Stratagem Cost
05:10 Using Duplicate Stratagems
05:58 Stratagems which preventing Shooting Attacks (ie getting “Lone Operative”)
07:01 Stratagems which add units to your army
07:40 The “Missing” Balance Dataslate Rules
08:55 Adepta Sororitas
09:02 Adeptus Custodes
12:25 Adeptus Mechanicus
22:39 Aeldari
23:04 Astra Militarum
24:42 Black Templars & Blood Angels
25:38 Chaos Knights & Imperial Knights
29:01 Chaos Space Marines
30:54 Chaos Daemons
32:50 Dark Angels
39:27 Death Guard
40:12 Deathwatch & Drukhai
40:33 Genestealer Cults & a full Team Rant!
44:58 Grey Knights
45:42 Leagues of Voting & Necrons
46:15 Orks
48:13 Space Marines
49:26 Space Wolves
51:24 T’au Empire & Chef Rant
54:29 Thousand Sons
56:17 Tyranids & World Eaters
58:41 Core Rules Updates and Erratas
1:00:01 The Most Important Rule Commentary Ever
1:01:04 Redeployment Abilities & Unit Coherency
1:01:42 Out of Phase Rules, Battle-shock & Persisting Effects
1:03:02 Moving Overhanging Models
1:05:04 Moving Units – Straight Lines and Pivots (ie The New Jank)
1:12:09 Firing Deck & Eligible Targets for Abilities
1:12:39 Mortal Wounds – Hazardous
1:13:33 Mortal Wounds – Devastating Wounds (remain calm!)
1:15:48 Indirect Fire
1:16:28 Extra Attacks & Characteristic Reductions
1:16:50 Deep Strike instead of Strategic Reserves & Attached Units/Leaders
1:17:48 Core Stratagem Changes
1:20:30 Ruins & Units that become Battleline
1:22:22 Final Thoughts
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All in all, the update is fine, some ups some downs some “just why”s, but until I get some games under my belt i cast no judgment,
My personal main grumble is that Necron Acanthrites are no more, not on the list, not on the store or on the app, they have been completely removed🥲
Thank you for the rundown. Been out of touch w/ 10e of late, so learning the latest helps immensely.
I do want to point out that the warlord/battleline thing does mean something to us Harlequins only die-hards, though I believe the rule was self-explanatory. A shame they didn’t include upping the OC of Troupes to 2 in these situations, though.
Looks exciting indeed! Sisters points are up so much that I doubt they’ll be a problem now. Perhaps the points are up even a bit much on some units, hehe. Great that also Tyranids got a nice buff, I play against them regularly and happy for my friend that his bugs got some love. Makes for much more fun and exciting games :).
My brain hurts after this. Think I’ll just enjoy the narrative and believe you guys when you say the rules are overall an improvement 🙂
Neurotyrant+Zoanthropes combo sounds like its going to be quite spicy, 6 2+ Lascannons 🙂
So does the Space Marines Captain’s “Rites of Battle” ability now apply again for all stratagems again? I do not see any restriction to Battle Tactics anymore.
Love your all’s content! This helped a lot in getting through some of the huge number of changes.
Wanted to ask about a rule change you mentioned though. Like you mentioned, the core rules state that redeploys are always after deployment and prior to first turn determination.
But Pariah Nexus now adds a clause under redeployment stating, “unless otherwise stated.” So does Pariah Nexus or Core Rules win for when redeploys occur?
kids spend there hole school day on there Phone they don’t know shapes lol
I have a rather odd question on the whole pivot thing.
Lets say, a Tantalus comes down from Deepstrike.
It comes with a rather ridiculous 60mm ROUND base.
Now, it comes down outside of 9″ sideways, then declares a charge, and, as part of its charge move, uses its free pivot to turn towards the target.
That might give it some 2-4 inches extra, didnt measure it exactly, but, is that nonsense actually possible???
Top tier breakdown, and top tier comedy on this breakdown. Sad that a lot of the rules clarifications amount to “come on”. It kinda sucks when high level tournament shenanigans impact regular play. When you’re having to specify what a round base is, or how far the furthest point of a tank has moved, things have gone awry. Really stoked to see the changes to Space Wolves and Dark Angels though. Much needed on both counts. I might actually play my Wolves with their own detachment now that they don’t have to jump through as many hoops. I was on… Read more »
Everything is great except for the Marine changes. They penalize Marine players because the divergent chapters can use our detachments. SM were already low 40s. It wouldn’t surprise me if they go sub 40 soon.
This episode is giving me strong Ross Geller PIVOT vibes!! What a dumb change!
I am coming back into the hobby after a gap of 25 years. I am also seventy four years old. Your prayers would be appreciated!
Fantastic work on this one gents, and very clear on what’s been changed.
What’s your take with Plauge marine units and having two characters join. When the unit is dead, do you keep allocating wounds to both characters?
On the whole index cards/ codex updates. I love the index cards, but i wont buy them as you still need the codex to run alongside. I have 5 armies and it gets rather expensive lol. The app is amazing however. If they released the cards with all the detachment rules i would get them instead of the codex.
Its a great update… they should do what you say and put PDFs linked to codex codes to get printable data card updates so you can update your card
it’s not hard!!
Genuinely might be the best quality update GW has ever done to the game, very happy with practically every change to the core rules and FAQs which removes a lot of quirks, edge cases and/or improves the more egregious elements incentivising unhealthy list building. Still needs work on distribution and presentation but from a game perspective, we’re out of beta.
Gotta say a bit miffed about the Meganobz price hike, I feel like that was again one of those cases where GW double/tripple upped on the nerf on them. Like… they saw the silly (and very much way to strong) Meganobz combo in Greentide with the 2+ Save 4+ FNP and reroll saves of 1 and went “Oh no! We fucked up!” and changed the Detachment rule, Meganobz FNP AND their Cost just because of that one Combo. Now basically all other Detachments have their Meganobz suffer because of the Sins of the Greentide combo. I think the only thing… Read more »
They should’ve just called them circular bases – ovals are also round and I will die on this hill
If I was doing the strats rules, I would make a big change, instead of costing CP I would make all of them free but can only
be used once per battle. It would stop strat spam and really make them a limited use ability.
I’m very happy about the Deathwing tweaks.
And the AdMech as well. I have felt sorry for them for too long.
to bards question… TWolf cav (4 wound models) can take plasma pistols. Failing a hazardous test would previously have killed one. not anymore!
Great rundown guys, I always really appreciate your insights and how easy you make it to follow it all
Yes, the Dark Angels are back! Also, the Black Knights Ancient can now tank 2 failed hazardous tests and then be brought back by the Apothecary, so overcharge all the time!
Wonder how that pivot will work with necron “baguettes” given that they have a base but that base can be attached to any of the ribs along its length
My head hurts from the amount of rule changes. Maybe to much? Most of them look a positive change, but between the codex/index faqs, core rules faq, rules commentary, BDS, and mfm to many documents?
AdMech have a new lease on life and Knights can go through walls.
My mind stopped paying attention after that. I could lose a leg and still be happy right now.
Praise the Omnissiah. Praise the Motive Force. Death to walls.
I loved the idea of index of cards, like amazing, i got some, loved them a week later they were out of date….So i went to the App, amazing i said i can see everything i am happy to pay a subscription for this….then they blocked everything, GDubs help me out here im not sure what you want me to buy! (Everything is the answer!) Guys, as always love your stuff dont ever change!
The Guard changes are harsh. Reinforcement has been the backbone of the vast majority of good Guard-lists so that hurts. The indirect change…they were already adding nerf after nerf, this might be the final nail I guess. Funny enough Manticore’s are looking better again, cause of the built in rerolls. At this point I’d love for GW to just go all the way and dial artillery damage statlines way down BUT give them substantial debuff ability. Hit-debuffs, movement-debuffs, battleshock tests, etc etc. Get creative, but make THAT the main output of an artillery piece. Turn arty into actual suppressing support… Read more »
The tank shock changes are probably better over all and do make more sense for most things. But I will miss my knight lancer sprinting in and lancing something. They dropped in points but they go from 20 dice to 12 dice, and also due to the other changes can no longer get tank shock in addition to something else. Not going to stop me running her because she’s one of my favourite models, just a little sad to take a hit to my favourite stratagem and unit.
Wait, so Chef slightly touched on this point but didn’t really complete his thought or I got confused on what he was saying, so for the pivot rule things with round flying bases: raiders, wave serpents, talons, starweavers don’t have to pay the 2″ pivot tax? I know its a round base but I know they had some clarifications for different rules about these because some times its from the hull and sometimes from the base and I get confused so I just wanna be sure
Sentinels are regiment and squadron no? 😍 also I buy all codexes, use the code for the app, and then sell the book on eBay for often the same price as or slightly cheaper than a brand new one.
Why they just don’t sell codes on their own I do not know
Some nice changes there. Glad they sorted Farsights ability to be useable in the retaliation cadre since that detachment is going to be one he makes a continuous appearnace in. Bit miffed the riptide hasnt recieved any changes. Least they could do is boost the strength of the ion gun or give it anti vehicle so it is actually usable against vehicles. Or even better, they could rememebr the fact it has shielded missle drones and give it a rule like what the ghostkeel has where it can sacrifice drone to reduce damage to 0. Right now yes they have… Read more »
This may be a better question for the Podcast but Lawrence made a good point about a D6 system limitations. What’s your take on switching to a D8 system to add more granularity?
I’ve played The Ninth Age and Warhammer Fantasy for a very long time competativly, both nationally (Sweden) and internationally, and we deal with pivots a lot. I’ve also organized several tournaments, and the number of times pivots are in any way an issue are rare. I might be called upon to judge the odd crucial pivot once or twice during a tournament, but thats about it. Everything being on square bases definitely helps, but I have faith 40K-players will sort it out fairly swiftly. As for the rest of the changes, I am very pleased indeed! Overall, the majority seem… Read more »
Mostly these changes are pretty good. Orks have been resolved I think, and sisters points make up for such a powerful codex hopefully. I have picked up on a couple annoying things though. The first is just how long it takes to read through all these updates and errata and some of them have been moved to the core rules now which is so confusing. Second thing is that they seem to be making a lot of abilities redundant or just making them not work fully anymore to balance them. The fact that captains all have a sentence in their… Read more »
Improvements to shooting armies while nerfing Indirect is pretty darn good given what the new deployments and recommended terrain looks like.
The Archon can join INCUBI (although not with Drazhar) now! Also, they should just put everything on square bases again and do a grid!
The core rules FAQ is quite long now. Feels like this is the point people start dropping the game when it becomes a burden having to read through pages of rule tweaks.
Ouch, Death Watch Watchmaster and bodyguard with a Callidus accompanying them is a +2 CP Cost bubble!
Yep. Can definitely see the movment/ pivot rule being abused. Shame really, as personally I don’t think they really needed to put that in.
Kind of unexpected attempt at solving the Space Wolves and interested to see it works in practice. Any efforts on that front are necessary, especially since it is going to take a while before we get the Wolves addendum, as for me the SW detachment rule is the worst currently in the game. Now don’t get me wrong, it is excellent in the fluff and there are weaker detachment rules, but actually playing with the SW detachment rule is kind of a bore as pulling it off requires such a chain of events which is also far too dependent on… Read more »
I agree, most of these changes with my Custodes and Dark Angel hats on are great… although they should have taken the opportunity to sharpen the Lion’s claws!!
Overall I’m happy with most of the changes, a bit sad the Baneblades lost the detachment rule but the rule is overall better
Good that changes are here. But we need desperately need a new pdf with the complete rules. Go and teach a new player the rules with a rule book + codex + cards and each of them having several online documents with potential changes…. come on. Its a nightmare. Solution for the problem: Use numbered paragraphs instead of page numbers. Its how laws are written for a reason. Format changes, additions and subtractions are easier to manage without breaking the referencing to page numbers. Each update should also come with a change log for those who just want a quick… Read more »
Good to know Deathwatch have cemented their grip on worst army in the game for another balance cycle.
Overall positive changes which are healthy for the game, but they also nerfed the stormraven again making my list too expensive so actually it’s all terrible and GW should feel bad for making me have to think about my list again lmao
Positive changes to Dark angels is most welcome. Drukhari still fine, maybe just tweak hellions to make them playable but very good dataslate imo
Surprised to see James so excited about the Guard changes. The born soldiers change is nice, but it’s absolutely killed off by the indirect nerfs (hitting on 4’s at best) with no lethal hits. Reinforcements then once a game is absolutely killer and means you can’t be as aggressive with your infantry and will presumably just push to continue in using Bulgryns.
I’m still digesting this dataslate, but it looks super promising so far. Credit where it’s due, I’m glad GW decided to make some big changes across the board and really shake things up, rather than their usual approach of doing a bunch of small changes and making a mountain out of a molehill. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on all of it!
Awesome you all are on top of it already! Ready for a shack up! Looking forward to some buffs to my dark angels and Tyranids!