40k 9th Editon

An interesting look into the points changes by way of Brad Chester.  He says in his recent test games, he ran a 2000 point list consisting of a Harlequin battalion and a Drukhari spearhead.  His battalion was a Shadowseer, TM, DJ, Solitaire, 2 x 6 Troupe (don't know if he gave them any upgrades), 1 x 12 Troupe (five with Caresses), 2 x 6 Skyweavers with Glaives.  Spearhead was Urien, Haemonculous, 3 x 2 Talos with Haywire.  

He said most armies will be playing with about 200 less points than they are now, although some will armies will be hit harder with points increases (Nayden suggested Marines, specifically Assault Centurions lists, and Chester kind of smiled).  

Also, as many have already realized with the terrain rules, artillery that doesn't require LOS will be even more important in 9th so expect to pay a premium for it in terms of points (although he is still taking 3 x Nightspinners in his CWE lists and thinks they're still worth it after their points increase).  He expects to see a lot more tanks in the  meta and said Haywire-heavy Aeldari lists will be "like cheating" against a lot of armies in 9th.

Any hint on when the DE faction review will get issued? There cant be many factions left at this point.

We still dont know how the FLY/VEHICLE interaction will work. I still hold out hope that we will be able to fall back and still shoot as per VEHICLE rules.

I do see Taloi blobs getting real good. Strike from the Shadows (+2 cover save) in a forest (-1 to hit) will not be fun for the enemy to shift.

Also, that new mission which works like the current ITC Recon (table quarters) will be great with our Venom Spam. Point cost depending, of course.

Chester already let spill that Fly does NOT allow any monster, vehicle, infantry, etc., to fall back and shoot.  Only units/armies with specific rules or stratagems such as Harlequins, Ultramarines, Ad Mech with their new PA rules (warlord trait or canticle?), Cruel Deception for Aeldari, will be able to fall back and then act as normal.  

Yes, Chester said Talos are going to be great in 9th even with the points increases.  He said melee in general will be more valuable even though the piecemeal drip of new rules has made many people think shooting will be even better than it is now.

sekac wrote:

HERO wrote:

sekac wrote:

HERO wrote:

Lol, really for Harlequins? The second they spoiled that hit mods were capped Harlequins became irrelevant as an army. The army was literally designed to stack hit mods as their primary defense mechanism and paid the price for it.

Every, single, update, I've seen so far has spit in the face of the entire Eldar race. The ONLY benefit I've seen so far is that you can now move and shoot with Heavy on vehicles, so my Wave Serpents and Nightwings love it. Otherwise, there's not a single update here that benefits us. Don't even say terrain rules because those of us playing ITC have already been doing this forever.

Prove me wrong, I dare you.

I dunno, I feel like Craftworlders are overall winners. The nerf to Fly impacts them but not as much as harlies or DE, but they've gained a lot too. Wave serpents are one of many, many craftworld vehicles or MCs with heavy weapons. Crimson Hunter Exarchs, for instance just went from very good to bonkers good.

A friend of mine had been running CW Eldar with Doomweavers and CH Exarchs, and a Ynnari detachment with 2 Wraithseers, and 3 Wraithlords. Alaitoc is worthless, but that just means everything has FNP 6+ now. Otherwise, every unit in his list but rangers got better.

Exarchs were good since w got PA. They were good without PA. They've always been good. Anything that's been good is almost certain to get a points hike. If you're non-Imperial, expect to see heavy points changes.

Ynnari detachment? Well, that's going to change. Free loss on CP there for sure.

So aside from the moving and shooting example with Heavies, which is something EVERYONE got, what did we gain exactly? I see it as watering down Eldar's (and by Eldar, I mean all Eldar) uniqueness.

You asked for a contrary opinion, I provided it.

Your tone is pretty condescending for arguments that boil down to "we'll probably get a price hike" and "buffs that we get don't count if other factions also benefit from them".

But yeah, I can't think of a single thing the Eldar faction is getting that nobody else is getting and definitely won't get a price hike. So I guess you're right.

Your contrary point was exactly what I said, so it was neither your point or contrary. You missed the mark by quite a bit.

And yes, we'll see points hikes like everyone else. Even a Cultist saw a 50% jump.

It's all good though, I'll be here in a couple of weeks to say I told you so. The way GW does balance these days is if you're not Imperials, you get points shafted. How else do you explain the last 2 years of Knights and Marines? Through nearly 2 CAs as well.

I'm not holding my breath and neither should you.

Take this one with a grain of salt, as I don't know what the primary source of this rumor is:

Apparently in the new morale system, if you fail a morale check, you roll a die for every model in the unit. 1's are casualties from models fleeing. If the unit is below 50% strength, then you apply -1 to all rolls.

Edit: actual morale preview is up in the IG faction focus. It is mostly as described above. However, failed morale test results in one fleeing model automatically - then you roll for the rest.

krayd wrote:

Take this one with a grain of salt, as I don't know what the primary source of this rumor is:

Apparently in the new morale system, if you fail a morale check, you roll a die for every model in the unit. 1's are casualties from models fleeing. If the unit is below 50% strength, then you apply -1 to all rolls.

You are close.

1. Roll morale as we do now.

2. If you succeed stop (roll of 1 always succeeds). If you fail remove 1 model from the unit.

3. roll 1 die for every remaining model in the unit. On a result of a 1 remove that model. (-1 to this roll if the unit is below 50% strength.)

It was on Warhammer Daily and in AM faction focus.

So Commissars still useless and I could field a nids list with 200 bugs that are completely fearless

nice

HERO wrote:

Your contrary point was exactly what I said, so it was neither your point or contrary. You missed the mark by quite a bit.

And yes, we'll see points hikes like everyone else. Even a Cultist saw a 50% jump.

It's all good though, I'll be here in a couple of weeks to say I told you so. The way GW does balance these days is if you're not Imperials, you get points shafted. How else do you explain the last 2 years of Knights and Marines? Through nearly 2 CAs as well.

No, my contrary point was that more that Wave Serpents and Nightserpents benefit. A large percentage of the CW book benefits. 2 does not equal more than 2. So no, not exactly the same.

Also, while I didn't get into the specific mechanics of how a list with 5 MCs with 2x flames got better, I mistakenly assumed you'd understand the implication.

So all of Eldar vehicles got better, and wraithlords and wraithseers got better. What got worse? Alaitoc. That's pretty much it.

I understand we'll have price hikes, but that's not what you said. What you said is you can count on getting extra price hikes for being non-Imperial. That is a completely different thing. You're playing the victim pre-emptively.

sekac wrote:

HERO wrote:

Your contrary point was exactly what I said, so it was neither your point or contrary. You missed the mark by quite a bit.

And yes, we'll see points hikes like everyone else. Even a Cultist saw a 50% jump.

It's all good though, I'll be here in a couple of weeks to say I told you so. The way GW does balance these days is if you're not Imperials, you get points shafted. How else do you explain the last 2 years of Knights and Marines? Through nearly 2 CAs as well.

No, my contrary point was that more that Wave Serpents and Nightserpents benefit. A large percentage of the CW book benefits. 2 does not equal more than 2. So no, not exactly the same.

Also, while I didn't get into the specific mechanics of how a list with 5 MCs with 2x flames got better, I mistakenly assumed you'd understand the implication.

So all of Eldar vehicles got better, and wraithlords and wraithseers got better. What got worse? Alaitoc. That's pretty much it.

I understand we'll have price hikes, but that's not what you said. What you said is you can count on getting extra price hikes for being non-Imperial. That is a completely different thing. You're playing the victim pre-emptively.

It's not completely different dipshit, please learn to connect the dots. If you take examples like WS and Nightwings as the only two units I said got better as some proclamation or commandment, you haven't been paying attention.

All Eldar vehicles did not get better. If anything, they mildly break even.
- We know they're going to see price hikes. So will everyone else, but the last couple of years have seen an ongoing trend of Imperial/SM love and nerfs to Xenos.
- There's a smaller board to play on so less kiting. This only really hurts us.
- Melee is improved, outflank/reserves is improved. This only really hurts us.
- Vehicles ignore heavy while shooting. This affects everyone, so we lose something as part of our faction identity.
- Flyers can no longer block effectively and do not count as board space. This is huge, as it was a great defensive tool to space your army and effectively kite. It means more to us because we don't like crap in our face.
- Obscured and hiding behind things benefits faster units. This is good for us, yup.
- Falling back means you can't shoot, even with Fly. This is now confirmed by multiple PTs. This one hurts us, because too many things have Fly and therefore, they felt like it was a good rule to apply for everyone.
- Hit mods capped. Again, this one hurts us. More so than others.

For MCs:
- They get to continue shooting in combat. This benefits a few units in the Eldar book and DE book and doesn't affect Harlequins at all. I mean really, who honestly cares. Even with 2 CAs and Wraith units going down, we still haven't seen these units excel in any tournament setting world-wide.

There is one caveat and that's being able to outflank now with reserves. That might change things up, but aside from Talos with Haywires from Prophets which have always been competitive, I don't see the bigger Eldar things from making an impact.

One thing's for damn sure: Just because melee got buffed doesn't suddenly make crap like Banshees, Striking Scorpions or Wyches good. Design wise, there's a lot of crap units in all the books that makes them combat ineffective in a tournament setting. So saying something got better doesn't have any real application. Now, if we're going to talk about a unit of 10 Troupe all geared up and ready to flank, then we're talking. Then again, will you dish out the CP for that? (to take splash + reserve a large amount of points)

I can probably do this for every unit in all 3 books and maybe I will, but we have 1 month before this crap drops and I'm not holding my breath. I'm wholly expecting to get shafted by GW's Imperial bias

Have we actually seen the RAW for modifier caps? Unless I've missed something, all we know is that there is going to be some sort of cap. We don't actually know how it works.

So I've been keeping neutral about 9e so far, because a lot of it requires more information than what we have - the simple truth of the matter is that all the little nickel and dime nerfs or buffs to various armies pale in comparison to the behemoth that is "the new point costs".

But I'm not sure what the logic of the new morale system is. Like even ignoring balance, what's the game design mindset behind this change?
They take a system that's already downright vestigial in how pointless it is and how easy it is to bypass, and they make it both less impactful and more cumbersome to play out.
Morale simply wasn't in need of a nerf, let alone as large of one as it got.
And it especially wasn't in need of being made more cumbersome - turning one single roll for an affected unit into potentially over a dozen rolls for any given affected unit doth not a faster game make.
I guess they didn't like how morale could be used to "finish off" units with just a couple of models left in them, so they made sure it would only really work on hordes. Except the few armies that the new morale rules might do better against like tyranids and orks still have systems in place to completely ignore it anyway. So even on a game balance level, who is this meant to affect?

What was the thought process here?

Agreed, morale was already in need of an overhaul, being the least-used part of the game. The very few times its been used in a game of mine is when my opponent runs unusually large units of marines, and even then they barely fail

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks the new morale system is completely pointless and idiotic
Also are we not supposed to be making things simpler and easier to understand wtf is this new dense cover rule BS where you need a PhD in English literature to even understand wtf it says..?

Guys, tell me why everyone is complaining about moving and shooting heavy is our unique feature? Disentigrators are assault weapons. Lances? Are you serious? I doubt that the worst choice for only 3 models in the codex does create a significant faction specific bonus.

SERAFF wrote:

Guys, tell me why everyone is complaining about moving and shooting heavy is our unique feature? Disentigrators are assault weapons. Lances? Are you serious? I doubt that the worst choice for only 3 models in the codex does create a significant faction specific bonus.

It's a relative nerf.

In 8th, our vehicles benefited from being able to move and fire their weapons without recieving a -1 to hit (because they were classed as assault weapons and thus didn't receive the heavy malus). This was actually relatively unusual - e.g., Crimson Hunters had to deal with the malus on all of their weapon options at least until Psychic Awakening gave their Exarchs the option to ignore it.

In 9th, heavy weapons on vehicles no longer matter. Nobody gets the malus. It's not directly nerfing us, but it's a change that other factions benefit from which we do not - so we become relatively weaker.

could we please try to keep this civil guys?

There's no reason for the name calling and angry posts back and forth. The fact that someone disagrees with you is not a reason to attack them.

(not targeted at you Burnage. yours is just the most recent post in the thread. not the one I'm specifically talking to)

HERO wrote:

It's not completely different dipshit, please learn to connect the dots. If you take examples like WS and Nightwings as the only two units I said got better as some proclamation or commandment, you haven't been paying attention.

All Eldar vehicles did not get better. If anything, they mildly break even.
- We know they're going to see price hikes. So will everyone else, but the last couple of years have seen an ongoing trend of Imperial/SM love and nerfs to Xenos.
- There's a smaller board to play on so less kiting. This only really hurts us.
- Melee is improved, outflank/reserves is improved. This only really hurts us.
- Vehicles ignore heavy while shooting. This affects everyone, so we lose something as part of our faction identity.
- Flyers can no longer block effectively and do not count as board space. This is huge, as it was a great defensive tool to space your army and effectively kite. It means more to us because we don't like crap in our face.
- Obscured and hiding behind things benefits faster units. This is good for us, yup.
- Falling back means you can't shoot, even with Fly. This is now confirmed by multiple PTs. This one hurts us, because too many things have Fly and therefore, they felt like it was a good rule to apply for everyone.
- Hit mods capped. Again, this one hurts us. More so than others.

For MCs:
- They get to continue shooting in combat. This benefits a few units in the Eldar book and DE book and doesn't affect Harlequins at all. I mean really, who honestly cares. Even with 2 CAs and Wraith units going down, we still haven't seen these units excel in any tournament setting world-wide.

There is one caveat and that's being able to outflank now with reserves. That might change things up, but aside from Talos with Haywires from Prophets which have always been competitive, I don't see the bigger Eldar things from making an impact.

One thing's for damn sure: Just because melee got buffed doesn't suddenly make crap like Banshees, Striking Scorpions or Wyches good. Design wise, there's a lot of crap units in all the books that makes them combat ineffective in a tournament setting. So saying something got better doesn't have any real application. Now, if we're going to talk about a unit of 10 Troupe all geared up and ready to flank, then we're talking. Then again, will you dish out the CP for that? (to take splash + reserve a large amount of points)

I can probably do this for every unit in all 3 books and maybe I will, but we have 1 month before this crap drops and I'm not holding my breath. I'm wholly expecting to get shafted by GW's Imperial bias

Listen man, YOU asked someone for a contrary opinion, I provided it.

I now know you really just wanted to berate GW, but since you can't do that, you figured you'd sucker someone else in and berate them instead. Congrats, you succeeded.

I'm truly, truly sorry I attempted to engage with you in good faith.

It is not a mistake I will be making again.

I concur with what others have said about the new morale. I would’ve thought it was impossible to make morale less relevant to the game than it already was, but by god, GW, has gone and proven me wrong again. Not only is it still mostly pointless, it now requires more dice rolling that will have little to no impact on the game.

My take on the morale change this: There are suggestions that some of the current -1 to LD modifiers will become +/-1 to Combat Attrition roll. So you can play on two aspects now, failing the morale test in the first place, and how many extra models flee.

There was a snippet in the stream about changes to Priests, which give a +1 to the Combat attrition roll, making it impossible to fail without other negative modifiers. However, the initial morale test can still be failed, with 1 model fleeing.
If this is applied to a lot of the "fearless" effects currently in the game, the result is that you can limit (or increase) the number of extra models lost to Combat Attrition, but you can still lose the first model to the morale test. So the morale test is still an important roll that elite units might still need to worry about.

At least I hope it's done this way, otherwise all the fearless stuff still makes it irrelevant

I do think that some change needed to be made to morale to account for squad strength/size. As it stands, there is not much incentive to take max-sized units over MSU.

lol did anyone catch the twich stream TAU just got free overwatch to all their units... not joking for the greater good now offers free overwatch to all the units that have it...
Remember we were discussing that eldar and TAU seem to be getting shafted with the new rules, well TAU just got a jail free card...
So yeah i was reading rumors from beta testers that eldar are going to have a really tough start this edition and didnt believe them but it looks like that possibility might not be too far off, i mean the signs are all there lol

krayd wrote:

I do think that some change needed to be made to morale to account for squad strength/size. As it stands, there is not much incentive to take max-sized units over MSU.

Don't forget that extra detachments cost you CP.

DevilDoll wrote:

lol did anyone catch the twich stream TAU just got free overwatch to all their units... not joking for the greater good now offers free overwatch to all the units that have it...
Remember we were discussing that eldar and TAU seem to be getting shafted with the new rules, well TAU just got a jail free card...
So yeah i was reading rumors from beta testers that eldar are going to have a really tough start this edition and didnt believe them but it looks like that possibility might not be too far off, i mean the signs are all there lol

But it is still a stratagem and can only be used once per turn, right?

No it's embedded in the ability description of the greater good rule I cannot attach the picture but it says "each time an enemy unit declares a charge against this unit, this unit can fire overwatch before the charge roll is made"

DevilDoll wrote:

No it's embedded in the ability description of the greater good rule I cannot attach the picture but it says "each time an enemy unit declares a charge against this unit, this unit can fire overwatch before the charge roll is made"

Well, if they are completely replacing 'For the Greater Good' with this, then it's not that bad. Sure, their units get free overwatch, but Tau would lose the ability to double/triple/quadruple up on overwatch via nearby units as well.

No you don't understand this is in addition to the usual crap that for the greater good does ^_^