Autumn 2023 Balance Dataslate | Warhammer 40K State of Play
The Chef September 7, 202361
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Lawrence, Chef and Beard are here to take you through the significant changes that have just been dropped for 40K 10th edition by Games Workshop!
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The daemon lack of change does hurt, although I do draw some comfort that Fiends became more affordable. A unit of 6 costing I think 300 points never made sense given their ruleset so the change felt like being thrown a bone. It’s kinda funny, in 9th ed they made the troops far less of a tax unit, but they are again here in 10th. At least in 8th they could potentially be 20 man squads given their survivability (although they were tax units). I think the biggest problem though with Daemons is that GW has never really decided (and… Read more »
Really good breakdown. So helpful for someone who just doesn’t have the time to learn and play against lots of different armies. Probably been said by many but while I like the Deathguard changes, I have not enjoyed playing them as much since they lost the 5+++. I honestly am not to fussed how they perform, I just loved the thematic chance of a plague marine surviving a las cannon etc.
In point of fact, why doesn’t Sang guard have a 5 up feel no pain? they do wear artificer armor after all.
The change to Fire Overwatch for having to draw line of sight to the target is to stop indirect overwatch.
As a non-competitive Eldar player of 25 years, 10th, which had me so excited, has instead killed the game for me. There’s just no point putting up with the grief of playing my army.
Great review as always!! Thank you for covering it all, makes so much more sense when you guys go through it all, also very entertaining so it’s easier to remember. As for the Aeldari, I agree with Chef that they are likely going to be an issue moving forward still, not nearly as much as they have been with the fire prism, wraithknight and support weapon changes along with devastating wounds getting changed, but I’m also glad they’re going about it incrementally (although this change has hit rather hard against them). I don’t have much 40k experience but their rules… Read more »
Great summary and discussion, thanks mates!
I personally think my beloved Deathwatch got hit a bit hard. Changing strats is fine, in line with double tap of strats. Paying 360 points for a proteus killteam – a key unit- in summary with the other changes is a bit much.
In terms of points, i liked the rule for taucrisis in 9th, to scale up the cost for every tool you take more than once.
Thanks team and stay bosses 🦾
For Deathwatch, although I don’t disagree with the clarification that it can only be used with bolt weapons, the issue with the change is that frag-cannons are now terrible, the don’t shoot enough rounds and don’t have torrent. 8th edition frag-cannons were never game breaking and gave the DW some real good options for such a elite, pts expensive army.
Aeldari are still too strong. I agree with Chef, they did not go far enough, especially when you look at the nerfs Custodes and GC received. It will take a more skilled player to dominate with them, but they are still the strongest army. For Grey Knights they need to separate the Nemesis Daemon Hammer from the Nemesis weapon catch-all pool for their infantry. Make it how it was, you would see a squad with one or two nemesis daemon hammers. That may help them on the anti-tank front? GK really got hosed when they lost their nemesis daemon hammers!… Read more »
Aeldari are still too strong. I agree with Chef, they did not go far enough, especially when you look at the nerfs Custodes and GC received. For Grey Knights they need to separate the Nemesis Daemon Hammer from the Nemesis weapon catch-all pool for their infantry. Make it how it was, you would see a squad with one or two nemesis daemon hammers. That may help them on the anti-tank front? GK really got hosed when they lost their nemesis daemon hammers! Figure out a role for the Dark Angels Watchers. Maybe they grant one round of 4+ or 5+… Read more »
I think you guys overrate overwatch. The worse offenders on it were the double flamer knight, wraith knight and desolators against their oath target. Flamers in overwatch have always been good and are whatever. Increasing the cost of overwatch and then making it at the end would absolutely kill the strat. It would never be used nor would it ever be considered. The only half way thought out one was Lawrence’s but it’s still not great. You don’t see heroic intervention used for a couple reasons: One is the cost of the stratagem. Two CP is very steep and the… Read more »
I’m late to comment, and this is probably going to upset one or two people. But I remember when I said Votann were screwed as things stood – I hit that right on the bulls eye. Have they fixed it – nope, but hey go spend more money on stuff that’s actually crap, currently. Yeah, no. Personally, I think, the restriction of 1 Khal dishing out judgement should be dropped, the Grimnyr should have something better tha – here’s +1t to a t5 unit… maybe rerolls to hut (being a psyker,) or +1bs for his unit (only hearthkyn warrior’s,) and… Read more »
Weirdly towering can’t see over ruins but can see over woods…
I fully agree chef. Eldar are going to be on top and abuse everyone else for another six months.
As someone who has started an AdMec army I did chuckle at the point changes. That being said I really appreciate the points raised by beard and now more battle line will buff the army and I agree. I feel people react badly but once you get a few games in it’s never as bad as you first thought. Thanks for the content peeps!
Skullsquirm Blight (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the Ballistic Skill and Weapon Skill characteristics of weapons equipped by models in that enemy unit by 1. Use this with the Helbrutes Infused with the Blessings of Nurgle: Each time this model is selected to shoot or fight, after it has finished making its attacks, select one enemy unit that was hit by one or more of those attacks. Until the start of your next turn, that enemy unit is always considered to be within Contagion Range of this model. Now you got a… Read more »
Do Feel No Pains count as a save? Do Devastating wounds ignore them?
Interested in the spider’s take on grey knights. Points drop is nice but we still can’t hurt armour. They are such a fun army to play but I get to turn 4 at the moment and just get blasted off the table as ive run out of avoid tricks
Im a deathguard lover and I do love the changes, but I agree guys, why are blightlords permanently rubbish?!?!?!
Saw a comment somewhere that the LOS condition for Overwatch was to address things like Desolation squads or other ignore LOS units chunking out free shots from safety every turn.
Good video. I was looking forward to hearing opinions about Tyranids and the double whammy nerf to the Tyrannofex.. 45 pts increase was gnarly on top of loosing -1 Damage
I find most of the changes quite interesting and I’m curious to see how the game will play going forwards. My biggest dislike is that for the armies that have seen points drops is that they become too close to horde style armies. I would’ve preferred to get minor adjustments for internal balance for the weaker armies and increase the points of the overperformers even higher points increases. With more and more models on the board, the games take also longer and longer. And the killing power also increases again. I wouldn’t mind going back to 1700-1800 points as a… Read more »
My fun khorne daemon crusade lists are the same atleast cause its just max number of bloodcrushers i can fit into the points. I still dont think bloodletters are worth using at 140 points however
Pumping ravager points up by 21% was absolutely not the play for drukhari. My 2k list gained an extra 15 points all things said and done and is still gonna struggle into a lot of matchups. Incubi are still bad and lelith dropping more than drazhar is a crime
I personally have been having a blast with 10th. It’s a little crazy and some of the stuff out there is WILD. But overall my games have been good, gone longer than in 9th and I still feel I have a chance against most opponents.
I LOVE the fixed cost of models. I did not like the granularity with units and weapon costs. It was awful working out the value of a unit. Because you always took the most optimum thing anyway.
I’m not a competitive player, but I was surprised at the mild balancing of the Eldar. I think they thought a bit outside the box, and I like it. (Disclaimer: the following math is not math at all, just a rough estimate based on my armies models) My Eldar army got like a 10% increase in points. That’s not much. Then I looked at my Dark Angels and my army dropped like 10%. So the difference between Eldar and many faction in points could be up to 20%. Will this be enough? Doubtful for the ultra competitive scene. For us… Read more »
I think you guys might have forgotten to mention that for death guard the ability oy works if that unit has the target in contagion range.
So our main problem of fighting against ranged is still a problem.
I think the abilities are fun and will certainly help against melee armies. But I still think it’ll be easy to shoot us off the board
Regarding Leagues of Votann as you said they shouldn´t be a horde army. From the background perspective, maybe they should, as they are exactly clones.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the dataslate. A lot of the struggling factions got lifted, and most of the worst offenders have been knocked down a bit. I’m still concerned Eldar haven’t been hit nearly hard enough, but we’ll see what happens with the Core rules changes. As for my Custodes, I’m good with most of the changes, but I’m concerned about the Detachment rule. The rule is mostly useless now, and I worry a bit about our very expensive infantry being ripped to shreds by combi-weapons and what have you. But I don’t think they’re unplayable, and I actually… Read more »
It’s a HOT mess at the moment! Simplified not simple is utter Bull. It’s as much of a mess as 9th.
Just on Grey Knights, I think that Haloed in Soulfire changing type might actually be a buff rather than a nerf. Yeah you can’t use it for free anymore, but like you pointed out you could only use that once per game. But on the other hand, because it’s not a Battle Tactic it can’t be Vect’d anymore, which means it can never be increased to 3CP and guaranteed to only be used once.
I’m so happy with this change, I’ve felt guilty about taking my Custodians to any game in my group, now I feel like I can. Our detachment rule feels a bit rubbish now but it is what it is, I’ll take that for finally being able to take 5 wardens and put them with a character in my Land Raider, that will hopefully feel very cool. What do you guys think about the bikes? I don’t think the decrease is enough to see them used, and I really didn’t think the bike captain needed increasing at all, let alone that… Read more »
On the whole I think this was an amazing dataslate. Huge, huge fan of the Core changes, and I belive the adjustments to the factions are mostly good, too: some maybe should have received more help (Votann and AdMech) and some a harsher nerf (Necrons and Eldar), but everyone should be much closer than before. I am looking forward to play again!
With the exception of Aeldari most changes seem to be for the good of the game. As a Custodes player this hits really hard, just the combo of all of the nerfs will likely lower the win rate by 10%. At the end of the day it’s a dice game and if you don’t roll your 4+ invulnerable saves you loose your army very quickly and now the changes to dev wounds will hit them the hardest too!
Really interesting watch guys with some super valid points.
Long may the Aeldari reign!
Death guard change is SIGNIFICANT! Really great addition to contagion now. I can see helbrutes being maxed in every list from now with their ability to give contagion to whatever they shoot, pretty nuts.
Thanks for a great overview guys!
Chef, with all due respect, I don’t think you got the Aeldari points change right 🙂 Optimized cookie-cutter mono-Craftworlds list with a Wraithknight, Yncarne, a couple Fire Prisms, Nightspinner, Warp spiders and all that jazz went up whopping ~320 pts. That’s far more than just dropping one unit.
I dont think GW has quite noticed that this is the exact same direction they take as in 9th. Everything that is not good enough/ has not a good winrate gets cheaper and cheaper but the rules still are not good… Marines are an elite army not a horde army, but it almost feels like it. A Wulfen is the same points as a tactical marine, a riptide the same as a tactical squad.. this just feels wrong. Also no one can tell me why wraithknights have increased again. The only option i play is melee wraithknight, but thats were… Read more »
The AdMech points drops, as I see it, have the unintended detrimental effect of exasperating the pay wall for a new player to get into the faction, a faction already struggling with record low player count.
I’d love to see new players join the ranks of the Mechanicus, but it’s hard to bring them into the fold when the cost disparity to field an army is so high when compared to other factions.
As a space wolves player, I’m fairly happy with *significant* points reductions as a bit of a stop gap (LOL Grimnar and Arjac are just… the cost of termi captains now, Bjorns cheap enough to be an auto include, etc etc) but the nerf to Rites Of Battle hurts me so hard. Since our “advance and charge” stratagem requires that a saga be completed to get that perk, you had to spend 2 CP to advance and charge before like… the third turn. So you used Rites Of Battle so you could do it for 1, like everyone else. But… Read more »
I feel like the difference between changes to gsc and aeldari is off the charts… Aeldari got hit a bit with devastating wounds nerf, which makes sense. Phantasm is alright, but not as impactful. GSC? 50% reduction in their core mechanic, significant point increases on nerfed characters (cp reduction for core rules is huge!). Not saying it is not deserved, but it could be a tad too much. Or Eldar just way too little. Though to be fair i agree, currently the biggest balance issue is the point system. It is just upscaled power level system, which was never good.… Read more »
The change to overwatch is huge.
Don’t think torrent is an issue at all on overwatch in the competitive scene.
The Infernus marines or anything with torrent are barely used in my experience.
Towering units were literally deleting units for fun, with fate dice and dev wounds spill over on Wraith Knights and Imperial Knights with a load of sustained 1 shots or from anywhere on the board or Oath of moment targets being removed by desolation marines behind a ruin at the back of the board.
Please correct me if im wrong here. But doesn’t these changes out date the Tyranid codex and data cards before they are even released?
Those changes to Deathwatch went a little harder than needed, those poor SIA strats. Going to take some real thinking on how to rejig my list
I’m with Chef on the changes to AdMech, in that points drops are painful. The faction is already ridiculously expensive to collect and now it’s even worse…
Would love to see them move towards a semi-elite army so they could be balanced with good stats and my wallet doesn’t cry each time I need to buy more models to maintain a 2k list. AdMech should not be a horde faction.
As always, great content guys.
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The majority of the balance changes are pretty good – and seemingly well thought through, but I think Powel Level = Points is the worst flaw in the game as it stands.
Aww, I can’t download the video for my commute 😢 But that means it’s free on YT for everyone, so also 👍
I think with torrent weapons were fine until you got full units of them. I think to balance them the should have deadly demise d3 with a 3″ radius, possibly with hazardous.
With Eldar, nothing is really going to change until they rework the Army and Faction rules which I can’t see GW doing outside a codex.
@chef. Do you think the large point increase for thousand sons and the change to dev wounds now makes them harder to build now our main units have been pushed up?
What do you guys think of the points changes for Nids? I was excited to maybe fit in another unit with codex points. Now with dataslate, all my lists got more expensive or stayed the same. The new Norn models went up in points before they even released and the Emissary ironically got hurt a little with the changes to Devestating Wounds.