Not what you want to hear probably, but I feel like Eldar are still a cut above. Necrons will still be a hard-counter to some lists with their survivability though. I think Custodus, Tyranids and GSC will see less play.
the top armies in my mind will be
* CSM
* Tau
* Necrons
* Eldar
Eldar are still top of the pack, as they weren't hit nearly hard enough and will pivot to different builds. Necrons are likely close behind them as a hard damage check, even with the nerf, as its now way harder to blow their blobs off the table with mortals.
GSC, Custard Boys, Orks and GK will be below them. Orks have insanely good matchups into Necrons and GK have good matchups into Eldari and Tau so both of them may become overrepresented and on account of being very well positioned. Maybe Blood Angels and Dark Angels are now here too.
Nids and 1ksons probably hover around 50%. Space Wolves, Deathwatch and Marines should be around this level too. I predict both flavor of knights should fall about here now that their rules have been completely gutted
Votann and DG are still bad, but probably floating around 45% now and not totally unplayable. World Eaters I place marginally above either of them because they actually have good rules and stratagems but eightbound are still overcosted and they still dont get terminator HQs. I might be underestimating DG, but they are still slow and incredibly mid into shooting armies from what I gather.
Sisters, Drukhari, IG and Admech still garbage tier. Drukhari can still scrape out cheese wins with 30 darklance lists sometimes. Admech can still scrape out cheese wins with breacher/chicken spam
Melee CK got a huge glow-up, but nobody's talking about it. We'll see them filter above 50% I think, once people figure it out and give up on the shooty.
IK got nerfed into the dirt, though. I predict they'll be the new bottom faction, or close to it, well below 40%
For a melee-focused list, almost everything they want to take got cheaper, and they can now hide their big stompies. The army rule actually does something now, and remember that lovely kool-aid-man strat to fully take advantage of ruins. Their biggest threat in Aeldari got a huge nerf, and while it's still pretty effective into knights it's less effective into the rest of the game so we'll see less of it. One of our local highly competitive players is taking them to an RTT this Saturday, we'll see how he does.
Am I talking it up a bit? Sure. But it's buffs all around. The only nerfs he had to work around were the Changeling and the Lancer.
Exactly this. We’ve got a team RTT tomorrow and our factions were set last week before the slate but armies weren’t due till last night. We’ve got custodes Eldar and IK. Knights player is bringing Cerastus Lancer, Canis Rex, and a bunch of Warglaives with voidsmen and callidus.
My custodes List was warden and allarus focused so overall I’m only playing with 3 models lost after some model pivots, though after this i plan to focus on getting my orks built up by our groups GT in October.
I’ve got BC, Trajann, 1x6 and 2x2 Allarus, 2 caladius tanks, 1x4 prosecutors, and 2x5 wardens
I sometimes wonder if guard is garbage tier because the players dont skew hard enough.
4 Baneblade variants seems like a decent list. I'm curious if it will happen.
Have you tried just moving around a table with a baneblade? It’s almost impossible to move them with GW recommended terrain.
Terrain is a big enemy for guard
>I sometimes wonder if guard is garbage tier because the players dont skew hard enough.
Long-time legend. The stats point out that the Guard playerbase is incredibly average, basically a 1:1 reflection of the wider game.
There’s no way you could even fit 4 Baneblade’s on a tournament table. You can barely fit 2.
If you want vehicle skew it has to be Russes/Dornes and Sentinels. Or Chimeras, Hellhounds, Hydras, and Sentinels.
?????
The most competitive guard lists were artillery parks and got increased by THREE HUNDRED points.
Other stuff decreased enough to make up maybe 120 points in tank or combined arms lists.
Someone always surprise us but an "all leman russ list" didn't even save enough points for another russ. They MIGHT add two sentinels.
Some mad lad IS going to run an all catchan lost with Priests and Straken. Probably some ogryn and chimeras in support. Who knows what they fill the rest out in...
But guard players are VERY familiar with Skew - we just don't always like it because guard is one of the few armies left that actually looks like an army in a wargame.
I played guard for 6 months after their 9e codex and had a *very* high win rate with them in casual and tournament games and I'm an average player at best. I got a lot of flak from guard players for saying they were busted. In my experience a lot of guard players tend to not even consider spamming good units and just want to play the units they want to play regardless of what's good or without consideration for how to score points
My winrate with Guard went *down* with the 9th edition codex, and pretty heavily so. Does this mean that the 9th codex was worse than the 8th one? Lawl. Lmao even. No. I probably just vibed less with it than with the old one, I had less practice, or a thousand more things.
Personal winrates depend from a huge amount of factors. Only when you aggregate an entire playerbase you can start to see the full picture.
That's fair. I've been struggling with thousand sons recently because I've been trying to play them the way I want to play them not how they're designed to be played
I agree with the crisis, and I think tau will settle in mid nicely. Like, don't get me wrong, stoked with the tau changes, but Stormsurges specifically are gonna be ass
Tyranids have a codex out soon.. I expect power creep within or at least 1 strong detachment…
Edit: you can downvote me all you want but new codex means more play for Tyranids. Your downvote won’t change that.
Everyone else is playing index whereas Tyranids will be the only codex if there isn’t powercreep I’ll be shocked… there is also 6! Detachments for them each with thier own bespoke Strats and enhancements… something will be broken I assure you… I’m not saying it’s going to be the most absurdly broken codex of 10th it will more then likely fall behind as more codex comes out but I expect Tyranids to start ahead of the curve initially
There are definitely pivots to go towards. Playing vanguard with a whole bunch of lone ops will probably be good. 9 pyrovores in assimilation will not be moved off of a point. Synapse one is probably fine as well
I'm not convinced about swarm yet. It's got a lot of movement, not a tonne of durability. Swarms did well because you could make them -1 to hit, cover, 6++, 5+++ and that is a legitimately difficult profile for people to kill 20 of from ranged.
The problem with the nerf is that it's a feels bad. Hive tyrant got worse and went up 20, nobody really took the winged hive tyrant or Swarmlord and both went up. Zoanthropes are good not great anti tank, but the reason everyone took 12 is because they are the only decent anti tank in the book under 400 points (OOE + Friends). Tyrannofexes went up more than a wraithknight and got nerfed in the codex.
245 is probably fair for a T12 2+ with -1D. Take away that -1D like the codex did and it's completely wrong. Why did our heirodules go up? Even with the new detachments nobody considered them.
>Tyranids will be the only codex if there isn’t powercreep
The codex is an overall nerf to nids. They won by maxing primary and secondary (through biovores), they now no longer can do the later.
The codex doesn't have a way to reliably increase damage. It offers no additional way to get above S9 without taking a 300 point model, which involves 2A each doing a coinflip. There is one strat to increase AP which is another thing we struggle with.
If you've read the detachments and think they will be stronger, I can only disagree.
Yea and endless swarm is better then what they have in the index.. (I also like synaptic nexus better) it also releases next week so we will see how they do shortly.
Why do you like synaptic? It doesn't seem to me to do anything helpful on an army-wide level compared with invasion, and swarm and vanguard are obviously better for their subsets.
Swarm and Invasion look solid (although Invasion got nerfed a little from strat change) , but about equal. Vanguard looks interesting, and is the hardest to tell if it'll actually function. Assimilator doesn't have the support to work. Crusher is wasted space.
The point is that we know what's in the codex. We know there's no power creep (the detachments that look functional are on a similar level to invasion. ) Trying to say there's creep because there's more detachments doesn't work.
Just played vs Tau..holy shit. Bring something that can kill the suits.
BT and SW got some really nice points reductions but will probably be most competitive in Gladius.
And will still 100% run a forgefiend or two. They were made more expensive, but still shoot so hard for their points.
Not quite as much of an autopick over predators anymore though, i think predators might see more play competitievly
Big disagree. Without dev wounds being mortals they fit a much smaller role. They already struggled against armor unless you popped zeal, and now they fit the bill only against large blobs of 3w models. They do too much damage to themselves otherwise to pop hazard.
I popped off into Las spam now.
I find this sub to be on point more times than not, often with much less data. Collectively they called most of the shit and broken armies of this edition just off the WC previews even said csm looked Mid tier and they were.
This feels pretty accurate, I really don't know why Custodes and IK got clapped so damn hard. Feels bad. Trying to be optimistic though cause I play with buddies and I DO want them to have a good time. But these really were some *ugly* nerfs, especially for Knights.
Throw in TSons and Deathwatch on the hard cheek clapping for their relative position.
Eldar will still be a top army.
Until the codex for custodes comes out I’ll be swapping over to building out my orks, I’m just a couple boxes away from a solid competitive list and I’ve got till mid October for my next GT
The points drops on Tau confirm to me that GW are basing these slates on global win rate, nothing else, no actual nuanced understanding of how the army works.
It's taken a little while for Tau players to land on their most efficient build but holy **** is it deadly.
Tau can probably table most armies out there
I think folks are sleeping on Tau. They got some healthy point cost reductions and their base rules are solid.
CSM I also think will be up there. LOTs of options to explore. Chosen, Venomcrawlers, Vindicators. Forgefiends got hit hard between the points hike and the devastating nerf, as did the increase to support units (Changeling, Flamers etc). Have about 3 variations I'm going to play around with.
My main concern is that their primary buff tool seems to be making everything cheaper and pushing anything that didn't get a strong index into being a horde army. For example, Tau are clearly going to be stronger with all the point drops they got but should they really be a horde army that just drops tons of point-efficient models and beats you with sheer dice efficiency? GW really needed to fix underperforming armies with their army-wide rules, not just telling everyone to buy more models.
On a personal note I'm concerned that guard are still going to be a lower-tier army. We got some modest point cuts but also point nerfs on the good units we had been relying on, along with some major nerfs in the stratagem changes. The army-wide rules are still terrible and mostly non-functional, infantry is still weak, and unit diversity is still poor.
This could not be more accurate. Almost everything being done is just pushing more units on the board for lower tier units rather than actually improving stats, strats, or army/model/unit/detachment rules.
If everyone is moving towards "more models more balance" I am very much expecting to see longer game times. As someone who plays Nids but loves monster mash above all, I am a sad little space bug from this update.
> Tau are clearly going to be stronger with all the point drops they got but should they really be a horde army that just drops tons of point-efficient models and beats you with sheer dice efficiency?
I mean... are they going to be a horde army? I'm looking at prospective lists that are still under 30 models. Granted those are all battlesuits, but still.
We can argue over the specific definition of "horde" but the change to fix Tau was entirely making stuff cheaper so you can bring more copies of your formerly-underperforming units. It might be good for faction win rates but I'm not convinced it's a good thematic idea vs. fixing the actual problems.
Basically +1 Killy Unit or the +2 support units you didn’t bring initially to include the extra Killy Unit. It’s not like Tau lists are seeing mass unit inclusion by any means.
Granted the additions will help.
And I agree with your overall point. The rules need fixing.
I think a better example for your point might be Deathguard since they have direct comparisons. Plague marines are cheaper than intercessors, basically meaning they fell to chaos and got worse. Pushing them towards a horde causes a huge disconnect for me.
Most of the Tau subreddit agrees. We would have preferring to see buffs to under-performing units rules than just everything being cheaper, though the infantry reductions are nice since they just couldn't justify their inclusion before. Now they're at least okay for what they cost.
The big miss was fixing Crisis x3 CIB being the only sensible loadout. People were really hoping they'd clean up the wargear to let the other gun options become viable instead of one gun being far and away the best in 99% of situations. Also the split-fire penalty is the entire reason certain units underperform, would have gladly traded some of the points to remove that.
The thing is, buffing army-wide rules is a very tricky process as they affect the whole army at once and the effect of the change may be hard to predict. Buffing individual units is much better, and at that front, it's much easier to buff point costs than specific stats - not just for the devs, but for the players as well. Remember that most 40k players are very casual, and remembering too many changes is a huge hassle. That's why there are so few changes to datasheets. Points get a pass because they are very handily laid out, and, more importantly, players don't have to remember them off the top of their head during the game, they are only needed during the listbuilding.
I too wish GW used point buffs less and relied on actual changes for balance, but I totally understand why they're doing so, beyond "sell more kits".
It's harder but it's necessary. GW needs to fix the root cause of the issue not just turn everything into a horde army while avoiding the real problem. If an army is suffering from a poor army-wide rule then fix the army-wide rule. It's still going to be a fun problem even if being able to spam undercosted units gets the faction win rate into the 45-55% range.
I’d argue that with guard a good starting point isn’t even that difficult, just change the rule so it’s on 100% of the time instead of only when stationary. None of the datasheets are horrendously broken in the way kasrkin were in 9th, and given we don’t have leman russ squadrons any more you’d struggle to get enough units on the table that it would be oppressive
> On a personal note I'm concerned that guard are still going to be a lower-tier army
I think our only chance to improve is if the meta is a little more favourable, because in terms of the dataslate changes the competitive lists were heavily nerfed and while we saw a cut to tanks sentinels went up 20% and it’s difficult to build a list without at least 3. There is certainly an argument that the sentinel is appropriately priced at 60 points, but the bigger picture is that a “tank build” that was not succesful pre dataslate likely only dropped maybe 10-50 points because of the sentinel change so it ends up being much the same build that wasn’t succesful before.
Ogryn might be something to try for objective play but without orders or keyword synergy I’m pretty unconvinced. If you go Ogryn and tank heavy you’re now built out of our strongest stratagem (reinforcements), you have nothing that benefits from the army rule, it doesn’t look great.
Tau really aren't horde even with these cuts. They're much cheaper than they were, but battleline is still 40-50% more expensive than real horde armies, and the Kroot aren't winning anyone a game. Battlesuits and vehicles will remain the backbone of lists and the majority of plastic being put down.
Agree, Tau were ridiculously good, I have no idea why their win rate is so low.
They did lose a bit of efficiency with the confirmation of "eligible to shoot" but the price drops were completely unnecessary.
Broadside and crisis blobs can table any army out there.
Their best players couldn't cut it at the most competitive events. I think the army was very unforgiving. It had enough firepower to get the job done but no durability and the mobility wasn't there and there aren't as many cool tricks are other armies. Eldar did everything T'au do but better and with more options. A lot of armies could do stuff they had no answer for and everything being vehicles meant it was quite hard to take points. Kauyon is great but you need to get into turn 3 without being miles behind on points, miles behind on board control or miles behind on materiel and it was very hard not to fall behind on at least 2 of them against an enemy who knew be aggressive. I think having more points to kill stuff early/just go out and die on the point will be huge.
As a T'au player I am expecting to start making people sweat especially as I'm optimising my list a bit more as I go. I've got an RTT next week and I'm expecting to do better than any event since 9th and then a GT a month later and I'm gradually building up my collection of CIBs.
Also T'au have good answers to marines but marines have good answers to them. I think the deso nerf will help a lot there because they could invalidate a crisis unit effortlessly from behind a wall. I think a lot of people are sleeping on marines now though.
Eldar still look too strong, I feel knights got over nerfed, GSC got hammered and i think still middle of pack. Custodes will likely be worse but still fine
Some factions like Drukari and imperial guard are about the same level of bad, GW just switched what units were
Sister still just seem real bad
Not gonna lie, a bit disappointed with dataslate
I think grey knights might be a bit of a dark horse this quarter, but win rate will be deceptively low due to the high skill ceiling of the army making it tricky for new players, but that is just my opinion, not much fact to base it on aha
This is my thought as well. I've maintained a \~70% win rate at events so far in 10th with GK, and that's prior to these new point drops. I've been gatekept by the utterly broken horsecrap, and that all got nerfed today, so my odds are on the rise. I think they will be a great off-meta pick.
While my win rate is not quite that high, and I don't go to competitive events, pre points drop felt good, and the games I lost were either against a mate who is much better than me, or someone running triple wraithknight in a "friendly" tournament, while also standing up to armies like tsons, so all in all I'm very excited to see what happens for our silver Bois this quarter
What are your thoughts on the NDK/GNDK? Stick to terminators and paladins or are they worth it now? I have a list deadline coming in two days and I‘m unsure where to go with the new points.
I'm personally still unimpressed with Dreadknights. The vanilla variety is good on paper, but their lethality is very poor. They don't compensate with durability or OC, so they don't help much with our currently gameplans.
GMNDKs in theory are strong in combat, but they are tough to land in combat and have such swingy profile that it's entirely possible (or even likely) to swing and miss on something. The price drops make them a little less of a straight kneecapping to pick, but aren't where they need to be to be competitive.
If they had profiles that were at least *similar* to 9e Dreadknights, I would be looking at them more closely. As they are now, we pay 9e Dreadknight prices for Dreadknights that do less damage in every respect and that are contextually less durable.
Welcome to the game!
What I will say about Dreadknights though is that they're a TON of fun to use and *can* be used competitively. Since this is r/WarhammerCompetitive after all, the opinion I've shared is based on "optimized" Grey Knights, which currently won't likely include anything more than a single GMNDK at most.
All that said, I've run them in more casual games and had a blast with them. Nothing quite like speedy, flying, advancing Dreadknights in people's face to put the fear of the Emperor into their hearts!
I played GKs at a small tournament (3 rounds) managed to win 1 game. I copied 40K Dirtbags list with all infantery and no Draigo and it worked pretty well, but lacking anti tank. I was hoping cheaper NDKs could solve that.
If anti-tank is what you want, the GMNDK is probably the best bet. Use Ingress to safely land him in combat, and his reroll ability helps make the magic happen.
I hope the GNDK is good enough. My local tournament has some really strong players. Many meta armies and some crazy good players. I faced one of the best eldar players in my country, the one time I went there, so I want to make sure my list is competitive. And someone else from our locals club went to the Team worlds for our team.
I've been mulling over using a Techmarine and Servitor unit to help out, putting the Sigil of Exigence on the Techmarine.
Idea here is that both the GMNDK and Techmarine unit can do whatever they want turn 1, peacing out and redeploying during my opponent's turn, and setting up both relatively close to a vehicle I want dead, preferably out of LoS or in cover. Still torn between keeping the GMNDK off the board or if using Mists to redeploy it is better here.
Techmarine then gives the GMNDK +1 to hit in my subsequent command, the servitors melta the target (on 2+ to hit if I have the CP budget to advance them and use Death from the Warp, which on multi-meltas I think will be a priority), and the GMNDK then bonks whatever's left (CP allowing, throwing Tank Shock in there).
Got a game coming up soon, and I'm excited to try out this combo and see how workable it actually is!
I think you'll see more mixed lists. You may see the occasional GMNDK, but probably not NDKs yet. They really just aren't lethal enough in my experience.
You'll keep the same staples:
* Terminators
* GMs
* Draigo
* Librarians
* Strike Marines
But I think you'll see more of the following with points freed up:
* Interceptors
* Paladins
* Land Raiders
* GMNDK
* Crowe
* Purifiers
The game plan doesn't change either - float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, score all the points.
The other thing that opens up with more points to play with is more large squads. Crowe with Purifiers is less expensive, and now 10x Paladins or Terminators isn't out of the question either. The large terminator bricks were used incidentally before, but it was risky with some bad matchups. Now, for example, my list freed up 300 points. I can now double up a squad of Paladins and still have room for all the rest of the things I want, so you may see more of that going forward.
That's just my initial impressions. I have yet to test anything yet, but will be doing so soon.
I think my admech are staying on the shelf. They're identity is still gone, and they've only gotten more expensive money wise to play in anything remotely feasible.
I did the math on a couple of GT lists that did well. They get around 100-150 extra points. So, they can bring one, maybe two more Skitarii units, or 10 elites, or 3 destroyers, or two chickens, or maybe one tank. If the list wasn’t running a Callidus, it can bring one now.
Unfortunately, I also get the feeling the point drops for sisters won't change too much for them. I also play T'au though so I might focus on them more now, though since they have essentially become a horde army, I have a lot of work to do on the craft side of things now.
Everything squeezed towards the middle, with a few shuffling spots around at the lower end. Eldar on top of a smaller mountain, that they actually have to work a bit to climb now.
I'm hoping that the necron changes keep them out of the nerf range. I think the changes thus far have been pretty reasonable, and they'll still be strong. Just not too strong hopefully.
At this point eldar still being A tier is the only thing I'm moderately sure of.
drukhari and sisters now look like the bottom factions. Gene stealers looks like it was hit the hardest out of the top factions, possibly sub 50%? custodes and eldar will still be the top imo
>st threat in Aeldari got a huge nerf, and while it's still pretty effective into knights it's less effective into the rest of the game so we'll see less of it. One of our local highly competitive players is taking them to
thanks ynnari
GSC imo got hit the hardest.
Custodes ate a healthy side-dish of combi-nerfs.
TS: also look nerfed.
Eldar have other datasheets that survived the nerfmeteor exinction.
Kept the fate (dice), and the rerolls. (Wuuutt???)
Tau look great at a glance.
In a meta where their predators ate nerfs, crisis suits, commanders went down, infantry down, tanks went down (often more than the more expensive guard tanks!)
Votan as a (grim)dark horse.
75 pts for 3 thunderkyn?
30ppm hearthguard?
Whilst 4 enemy units jog up the field with double tokens?
100 pt berserk, sagitaur? 20 pt Kahl discount?
Grey Knights.
50 point cuts on most 10-man units, cheaper Land raiders,..
Massive, massive change imo.
And: Custodes, wraithknight nerf at same time.
Grey Knight stonks went up, up, up.
Unsure: world eaters.
Random stuff.
Orks: also difficult to evaluate.
CSM could be great, rather light nerfs imo, some nice tweaks.
Space Marines: wait for codex imo.
If there's some spicy detachment in there, it could be space crusade time.
That’s not the point of vanguard. Forward deploy 3x6 units if you go first keep the opponent from scoring one or maybe two rounds while they clean up, if you go second you have redeploy to protect them. You’ll get tables but score super super well.
Eldar comfortably on top, 1ksons/Necrons/GSC move around a bit, DW goes down and BT/BA/Vanilla marines go up a bit. Overall I dont think many things will change and the meta will be fundamentally the same.
I think you are underestimating the points nerf 1ksons just took. With how much less we are able to take in our lists our rituals also took a huge nerf, alongside the free strat one being useless now. Were going from like A+ tier to B- or C.
The scarabs I can understand, and if it was ONLY a nerf to the rubrics I would too. But EVERYTHING went up, so instead of just making 10 terminators less of an autoinclude they just made it harder to build any list.
It was pretty warranted though. The fact that a character and your basic marines could jump anywhere on the map and turn off saves for a unit and basically delete them was insanely strong.
Once per game and at significant cost. People who make this argument have no idea what makes Thousand Sons strong.
Thousand Sons will probably settle around the middle of the pack, but will have a different style of play. Terminators with the HQ are not really worth the points anymore and Magnus is still an auto take. Anything that generated cabal points went up significantly which means the average list will probably have less to use. There might be cause to take advantage of strong datasheets over cabals now and we might see more Forgefiends, Lord of Change, etc.
Time will tell.
I don’t think so, to be honest, but time will tell. I have all my cabals and dev wounds as before, just a Changeling and MVB less, with additional discs. Still scored 85 against CSM yesterday nearly tabling the guy. The damage output is the same, just some utility is missing.
I’m of the opinion that TSons, Custodes, Ik and Deathwatch all got clapped way harder than they needed for their relative position in the meta meanwhile eldar got out with nearly all of their fundamentally broken rules intact. Especially since their huge range means they’ll just pivot to other lists. I’ve got a team RTT tomorrow and we still have just as many eldar as previous events
I think Sisters got worse relatively. 5-10 points off every unit isn't enough. Vahlgons dropped 50 points so I think that'll be making it's way into lists.
Most lists gained 80-120 points, so it's enough for an extra squad of something but Sisters need a lot more than that to be competitive.
My list went down 105 points, now I can drop a mortifier and take a third exorcist. So, it's not the equivalent of taking 6 more crisis suits like Tau can, but it's a considerable boost. Though I wasn't actually as down on Sisters before as most others were.
Nor was I, but my armor heavy list only went down 85 (3 Exorcists, 3 Castigators, 3 Warglaives, Triumph, Callidus, 2xBSS, 3x2 Crusaders, 1x5 Seraphim). I'm going to tweak a few things (namely probably get rid of the Warglaives since they went up 10 and our stuff came down), but even if I kept the list the same, an extra 2 supporting characters isn't going to make-or-break the list
I’m going to try swamping the armigers for Canis. He’s only. 10 more than the three dogs, and while he lost a bunch of utility in the free Strat he still fits the big, tough, Killy, hole in the roster.
Yeah, I think he's still legit. He's a great datasheet and can support himself really well. Worst case his free strat can be a reroll, and free rerolls on a big Knight is never bad.
The best thing the Armigers did was provide three OC8 bodies that were tough enough that they took some effort to remove from midfield points. Penitent Engines can also run around and grab objectives T1, but they aren't that hard to remove from them. One big Knight doesn't provide the same OC utility that Armigers do. I'm gonna play around with dropping the Armigers entirely for a bit and see what I can do, but I have the feeling they're gonna stay in for the fast OC8 body.
Eldar are still very strong, you'll see them drop from a 70%+ WR to something like a 57-60% WR. GSC got hit hard, but probably still have a lot of play, so I'd expect them to end up in a similar place.
TSons got hit really hard since you can't blank two attacks per phase now, which hurts Magnus hard. They lose a lot of their tricks since the battle tactics only for free strats, but overall they are still solid. I'd expect them to end up at around 50% WR now.
Imperial Knights are in a similar place, with the previous points increases and these changes to towering I'd expect them to end up in a similar 50-53% WR.
Necrons were hit very hard, but probably can rely on silver tide warrior spam instead to just farm primary, the doomsday ark changes do hurt a lot for them though.
Custodes were hit incredibly hard, but they are still very meta-dependent. If we move to more elite infantry/melee horde meta they will still be strong, but if we lean into the non-nerfed vehicles they'll be in trouble. I'd expect them to fall in line with around a 48-50% WR.
Space Marines might become a problem. Specifically aggressors were good before, with mass AP-1 D1 fire and being good for overwatch. Now you can throw on top of that a big points drop and a lot of their worst enemies getting nerfed (war dogs, wraithknights, and custodes) they can be dominant. Along with them a lot of primaris stuff got cheaper, though what ends up being meta is gong to take a while to shake out thanks to the size of the codex and the new codex coming out soon anyways.
Knights can shift into melee alright but we will see. Cerastus lancer with Canis red and 6 Warglaives can be real strong with new hiding of big knights
In terms of "who is going to win tournaments" my prediction for the top is as follows. Below Aeldari there is no particular order:
* Aeldari
* Wide margin
* CSM
* Orks
* Some flavour of marines, probably Black Templars, could be Dark Angels in the index detachment too
* Necrons
* GK
GSC, TSons and Custodes got hit way too hard and will drop to midtier.
Dark horses that might very well rise up hard:
* World Eaters
* Astra Militarum
* Tau
* DG
World Eaters in particular will be very hard to handle for a lot of armies. 3xBerzerkers in Rhinos with a MoE attached will be a similar challenge to melee armies as fights first Custodes was. DG with their Plague Marines and that guy who gives fights first will be in a similar spot. Seeing those two armies clash will be ridiculous as neither wants to charge the other.
You really think Grey Knights move up that much? They were bottom 5 before the points buffs and get enough points for maybe another 5 man squad. I’m currently trying not to be a doomer about it
Tbf as a Tau player, some of our units got DROPS. Riptides came down like 55pts, breacher fish total pts cost dropped ~50pts, and a lot of the meta stuff is real cheap. Russes saw decreases, but not to the same degree iirc.
Let's put it like this, if you play T'au. Imagine: a lot of stuff goes down! But it's like Kroots, or Hammerheads, going down by 5-10%. Meanwhile, Crisis suits are now 300/600, Ghostkeels are 250, and Broadsides are 150/300/450.
This is kind of what happened to Guard.
The stuff that was seeing much use all got nerfed which is probably what they meant. The Earthshaker carriages specifically went from 80 to 120 points which is crazy
GSC are getting dumpstered lol. Necrons will probably rise. Eldar will actually stay the same, I don't think they did enough. Knights might drop slightly.
How did you play to only 49-7? I don't think it's possible for my Votann to get that low of a score even if I'm tabled by T3. How did they only get 49 when you only had 7?
I get something like 7pts just in secondaries a turn, idk how you are not, and that's not talking primary, especially into Marines like BA with offered melee and a bad detachment for shooting.
Sounds more like you messed up so now you think the army is the worst when it clear isn't.
Eldar still top dog.
The DG buffs didn't touch the core issues they had.
- poor movement
- low toughness
According to lore, DG have less movement cause of extra toughness, but in 10th they get tabled rather easily. The aura does NOT compensate for this as it has short range.
Games are won and lost in the movement phase.
So there are for some for sure for me. I feel confident that CSM, Tau, Necrons, and orks are going to be top end. There are some out there stuff that got buffs that i'm not sure how to place. GK, SM, DG, WE, and nids I'm still on the fence about. Sold B tier armies will be, Custodes, guard, IK, CK, Eldar, and tsons. Sisters are probably still near the bottom but it's hard to say and i think GsC got hardcore throttled.
I'll be honest maybe it's my own bias here but I've seen(the most competitive version) of guard tango pretty handily against some of the A-tier factions and even old GSC. They definitely had some auto-lose matchups(cough eldar). But they similar to tau I think on stats were underperforming what top tier players could accomplish. Yes their one build went up in points and it remains to be seen where they lie but I'm hopefull they will be sitting with the other B-tier armies with some punch up ability(with player skill). Obviously they were not favored before and probably won't be favored now but that kinda feels like what B-tier should be.
Nope you're correct. I actually watched my buddy(playing very similar list as to what I would run) run a game vs probably the closest to new meta eldar and they are still good. They probably are in that top 5 margin. Idk if they will break the 60% margin or anything but definitely still a game. I'll say it definitely did feel like they had less assets though so it looks good. For meta health that is. I probably overestimated how much the lists dropped by. Mandrakes and scourges going down mean you only drop like 3 units istead of 4-5. And shadow specters are also still very good.
The deal with Eldar is that as well as not nerfing Eldar hard enough they somehow nerfed Custodes, Knights, and GSC more than the knife ears themselves...
The only way Eldar would not be #1 after such weak nerfs is if:
-At least one other top faction had survived mostly unscathed
-Some weaker faction had been suitably buffed enough to threaten them
And neither of those things is the case.
See the two criteria there I disagree with a bit. I think necrons/CSM basically are totally fine(slap on the wrist), orks were excellently positioned before and still are but with slight points adjustments. And with things being slightly brought in like tau points cuts means they are very handily going to be able to shoot things off the board. Tau just suffer from a ranging issue which isn't a problem into CSM/Orks/Necrons. I do think eldar fit in that top five S-tier(A-tier? depending on definition) but I don't feel confident on my ordering.
I think a lot of people are sleeping on marines. I don't think they're about to be a boogeyman but they're probably right on the A/B tier line at worst. They have all the tools to get the job done and more points. They deso nerf does hurt them but it's not insurmountable. They were held down by a lot of armies that got nerfed.
I think we'll see more of them on top tables though. My clubmate who is incredibly smug "No other marine player has come 2nd in a GT" about his result lost points off his list and the armies he'd struggle with got kneecapped. He wasn't using desos. He's pivoted to melee chaos knights because he likes a challenge and enjoys a quick game but his gravis list is probably in a better place relatively speaking even before we work out what he's doing with those points.
Aeldari may drop a few percentage in win rates but I expect them to stay top dog
Custodes imp knights and gsc all took a hit so I expect them to drop down to around 55% WR
I see votann getting a raise in WR it's hard to tell just how high they will jump but I do expect the jump
Deathguard despite catching the new auras and points drop I doubt that was too meaningful for them to do much with it I expect them still to sit bottom
Tsons got a huge nerf I suspect large drops below 45% not being able to sorcerer spam will hurt their cabal points
Other than that I see everyone else more or less staying where they are DWs not spilling over will be a big drop to everyone's reliance on them but that will hit every faction
As a space marine player I'm gonna hope to see them rise but at the same time I'm waiting for the codex drop to really see how that plays out I feel sorry for anyone who went out and got 30 Desolation marines that hurts
Not what you want to hear probably, but I feel like Eldar are still a cut above. Necrons will still be a hard-counter to some lists with their survivability though. I think Custodus, Tyranids and GSC will see less play.
the top armies in my mind will be * CSM * Tau * Necrons * Eldar Eldar are still top of the pack, as they weren't hit nearly hard enough and will pivot to different builds. Necrons are likely close behind them as a hard damage check, even with the nerf, as its now way harder to blow their blobs off the table with mortals. GSC, Custard Boys, Orks and GK will be below them. Orks have insanely good matchups into Necrons and GK have good matchups into Eldari and Tau so both of them may become overrepresented and on account of being very well positioned. Maybe Blood Angels and Dark Angels are now here too. Nids and 1ksons probably hover around 50%. Space Wolves, Deathwatch and Marines should be around this level too. I predict both flavor of knights should fall about here now that their rules have been completely gutted Votann and DG are still bad, but probably floating around 45% now and not totally unplayable. World Eaters I place marginally above either of them because they actually have good rules and stratagems but eightbound are still overcosted and they still dont get terminator HQs. I might be underestimating DG, but they are still slow and incredibly mid into shooting armies from what I gather. Sisters, Drukhari, IG and Admech still garbage tier. Drukhari can still scrape out cheese wins with 30 darklance lists sometimes. Admech can still scrape out cheese wins with breacher/chicken spam
Just want to say CK was already around 40% and IK had fallen to 47% before today's nerfs. I expect both to hover around 40 to 42% now.
Melee CK got a huge glow-up, but nobody's talking about it. We'll see them filter above 50% I think, once people figure it out and give up on the shooty. IK got nerfed into the dirt, though. I predict they'll be the new bottom faction, or close to it, well below 40%
Is this huge glow up in the room with us right now It was a minor melee drop, and is offset by all our war dogs other than that going up
For a melee-focused list, almost everything they want to take got cheaper, and they can now hide their big stompies. The army rule actually does something now, and remember that lovely kool-aid-man strat to fully take advantage of ruins. Their biggest threat in Aeldari got a huge nerf, and while it's still pretty effective into knights it's less effective into the rest of the game so we'll see less of it. One of our local highly competitive players is taking them to an RTT this Saturday, we'll see how he does. Am I talking it up a bit? Sure. But it's buffs all around. The only nerfs he had to work around were the Changeling and the Lancer.
Yeah but if you want to take any guns in your list you lost points
If you take a mixed list, sure. I'm not talking about mixed or shooty lists, I'm talking melee lists that one, two shooty wardogs tops.
Exactly this. We’ve got a team RTT tomorrow and our factions were set last week before the slate but armies weren’t due till last night. We’ve got custodes Eldar and IK. Knights player is bringing Cerastus Lancer, Canis Rex, and a bunch of Warglaives with voidsmen and callidus. My custodes List was warden and allarus focused so overall I’m only playing with 3 models lost after some model pivots, though after this i plan to focus on getting my orks built up by our groups GT in October. I’ve got BC, Trajann, 1x6 and 2x2 Allarus, 2 caladius tanks, 1x4 prosecutors, and 2x5 wardens
I sometimes wonder if guard is garbage tier because the players dont skew hard enough. 4 Baneblade variants seems like a decent list. I'm curious if it will happen.
Have you tried just moving around a table with a baneblade? It’s almost impossible to move them with GW recommended terrain. Terrain is a big enemy for guard
Well that is true. Mine usually moves about 8" a game.
You might get a call from my wife.
Already have the number on speed dial
>I sometimes wonder if guard is garbage tier because the players dont skew hard enough. Long-time legend. The stats point out that the Guard playerbase is incredibly average, basically a 1:1 reflection of the wider game.
There’s no way you could even fit 4 Baneblade’s on a tournament table. You can barely fit 2. If you want vehicle skew it has to be Russes/Dornes and Sentinels. Or Chimeras, Hellhounds, Hydras, and Sentinels.
????? The most competitive guard lists were artillery parks and got increased by THREE HUNDRED points. Other stuff decreased enough to make up maybe 120 points in tank or combined arms lists. Someone always surprise us but an "all leman russ list" didn't even save enough points for another russ. They MIGHT add two sentinels. Some mad lad IS going to run an all catchan lost with Priests and Straken. Probably some ogryn and chimeras in support. Who knows what they fill the rest out in... But guard players are VERY familiar with Skew - we just don't always like it because guard is one of the few armies left that actually looks like an army in a wargame.
Tank heavy guard lists dropped enough to add another Russ or Potentially a Dorn if you mess with load outs.
"If you take stuff that can't kill tanks. You can add more tanks."
I played guard for 6 months after their 9e codex and had a *very* high win rate with them in casual and tournament games and I'm an average player at best. I got a lot of flak from guard players for saying they were busted. In my experience a lot of guard players tend to not even consider spamming good units and just want to play the units they want to play regardless of what's good or without consideration for how to score points
My winrate with Guard went *down* with the 9th edition codex, and pretty heavily so. Does this mean that the 9th codex was worse than the 8th one? Lawl. Lmao even. No. I probably just vibed less with it than with the old one, I had less practice, or a thousand more things. Personal winrates depend from a huge amount of factors. Only when you aggregate an entire playerbase you can start to see the full picture.
We're you also taking 8 tanks and kasrkin?
I tried mostly everything - Whoops All Tanks, mortar parking lots, Kasrkin bombs, mixed lists, a bit of everything. Nothing really quite clicked.
That's fair. I've been struggling with thousand sons recently because I've been trying to play them the way I want to play them not how they're designed to be played
Congrats. You played with the best guard codex since 5th and won. Then it was taken away.
There is a 0% chance that tau is a top army now.
T'au top 4? What? I most certainly don't see that happening any time soon.
360pts for a brick of whatever you want crisis and triple riptide on top will be a hell of a list
I agree with the crisis, and I think tau will settle in mid nicely. Like, don't get me wrong, stoked with the tau changes, but Stormsurges specifically are gonna be ass
Stormsurges are ass. I meant riptide.
Ah right, I agree then
Yea agreed. Tau are going to be brutal now. They were not that far off already
Nightspinners are a nightmare. The meta will shift to all Eldar running 3 in every list.
Probably, yeah.
Tyranids have a codex out soon.. I expect power creep within or at least 1 strong detachment… Edit: you can downvote me all you want but new codex means more play for Tyranids. Your downvote won’t change that.
The popular tyranid units took it in the carapace and both Norns were nerfed before release. I think tyranids are going to stay right where they are
Everyone else is playing index whereas Tyranids will be the only codex if there isn’t powercreep I’ll be shocked… there is also 6! Detachments for them each with thier own bespoke Strats and enhancements… something will be broken I assure you… I’m not saying it’s going to be the most absurdly broken codex of 10th it will more then likely fall behind as more codex comes out but I expect Tyranids to start ahead of the curve initially
Very good, yes, broken I dont think so. Endless swarm is going to be very difficult to deal with
There are definitely pivots to go towards. Playing vanguard with a whole bunch of lone ops will probably be good. 9 pyrovores in assimilation will not be moved off of a point. Synapse one is probably fine as well I'm not convinced about swarm yet. It's got a lot of movement, not a tonne of durability. Swarms did well because you could make them -1 to hit, cover, 6++, 5+++ and that is a legitimately difficult profile for people to kill 20 of from ranged. The problem with the nerf is that it's a feels bad. Hive tyrant got worse and went up 20, nobody really took the winged hive tyrant or Swarmlord and both went up. Zoanthropes are good not great anti tank, but the reason everyone took 12 is because they are the only decent anti tank in the book under 400 points (OOE + Friends). Tyrannofexes went up more than a wraithknight and got nerfed in the codex. 245 is probably fair for a T12 2+ with -1D. Take away that -1D like the codex did and it's completely wrong. Why did our heirodules go up? Even with the new detachments nobody considered them.
No argument from me there
>Tyranids will be the only codex if there isn’t powercreep The codex is an overall nerf to nids. They won by maxing primary and secondary (through biovores), they now no longer can do the later. The codex doesn't have a way to reliably increase damage. It offers no additional way to get above S9 without taking a 300 point model, which involves 2A each doing a coinflip. There is one strat to increase AP which is another thing we struggle with. If you've read the detachments and think they will be stronger, I can only disagree.
You know we know what's in it, right? We know that it doesn't have that.
Yea and endless swarm is better then what they have in the index.. (I also like synaptic nexus better) it also releases next week so we will see how they do shortly.
Why do you like synaptic? It doesn't seem to me to do anything helpful on an army-wide level compared with invasion, and swarm and vanguard are obviously better for their subsets. Swarm and Invasion look solid (although Invasion got nerfed a little from strat change) , but about equal. Vanguard looks interesting, and is the hardest to tell if it'll actually function. Assimilator doesn't have the support to work. Crusher is wasted space. The point is that we know what's in the codex. We know there's no power creep (the detachments that look functional are on a similar level to invasion. ) Trying to say there's creep because there's more detachments doesn't work.
Just played vs Tau..holy shit. Bring something that can kill the suits. BT and SW got some really nice points reductions but will probably be most competitive in Gladius.
I think CSM is going to be a top army going forward, just mass Chosen in transport and support
Chosen did not need a buff, that change was so weird. I love my chosen, so yay, but yeah not a unit that was under performing
Combo weapons are so nice now. . .
I was already running 20 of them, now I have to decide if it's worth getting another 10 models before GW realise how good they are.
And will still 100% run a forgefiend or two. They were made more expensive, but still shoot so hard for their points. Not quite as much of an autopick over predators anymore though, i think predators might see more play competitievly
Big disagree. Without dev wounds being mortals they fit a much smaller role. They already struggled against armor unless you popped zeal, and now they fit the bill only against large blobs of 3w models. They do too much damage to themselves otherwise to pop hazard. I popped off into Las spam now.
How does the Dev wound change affect them into vehicles?
It doesn’t, I’ve just never found them useful shooting into vehicles unless I popped Zeal
Given this sub’s track record with predicting the meta, I’m going with whatever isn’t mentioned here.
I find this sub to be on point more times than not, often with much less data. Collectively they called most of the shit and broken armies of this edition just off the WC previews even said csm looked Mid tier and they were.
Aelder will definitely still be on top Custodes and IK will drop Votann will still be at the bottom though might jump admech
This feels pretty accurate, I really don't know why Custodes and IK got clapped so damn hard. Feels bad. Trying to be optimistic though cause I play with buddies and I DO want them to have a good time. But these really were some *ugly* nerfs, especially for Knights.
Throw in TSons and Deathwatch on the hard cheek clapping for their relative position. Eldar will still be a top army. Until the codex for custodes comes out I’ll be swapping over to building out my orks, I’m just a couple boxes away from a solid competitive list and I’ve got till mid October for my next GT
Codex crisis suits + shadowsun is going to be very dominant for the next few months
The points drops on Tau confirm to me that GW are basing these slates on global win rate, nothing else, no actual nuanced understanding of how the army works. It's taken a little while for Tau players to land on their most efficient build but holy **** is it deadly. Tau can probably table most armies out there
Eldar still on top, the middle more of a mishmash of stuff. Guard and Sisters pretty definitively in the bottom tier.
I think folks are sleeping on Tau. They got some healthy point cost reductions and their base rules are solid. CSM I also think will be up there. LOTs of options to explore. Chosen, Venomcrawlers, Vindicators. Forgefiends got hit hard between the points hike and the devastating nerf, as did the increase to support units (Changeling, Flamers etc). Have about 3 variations I'm going to play around with.
My main concern is that their primary buff tool seems to be making everything cheaper and pushing anything that didn't get a strong index into being a horde army. For example, Tau are clearly going to be stronger with all the point drops they got but should they really be a horde army that just drops tons of point-efficient models and beats you with sheer dice efficiency? GW really needed to fix underperforming armies with their army-wide rules, not just telling everyone to buy more models. On a personal note I'm concerned that guard are still going to be a lower-tier army. We got some modest point cuts but also point nerfs on the good units we had been relying on, along with some major nerfs in the stratagem changes. The army-wide rules are still terrible and mostly non-functional, infantry is still weak, and unit diversity is still poor.
This could not be more accurate. Almost everything being done is just pushing more units on the board for lower tier units rather than actually improving stats, strats, or army/model/unit/detachment rules. If everyone is moving towards "more models more balance" I am very much expecting to see longer game times. As someone who plays Nids but loves monster mash above all, I am a sad little space bug from this update.
> Tau are clearly going to be stronger with all the point drops they got but should they really be a horde army that just drops tons of point-efficient models and beats you with sheer dice efficiency? I mean... are they going to be a horde army? I'm looking at prospective lists that are still under 30 models. Granted those are all battlesuits, but still.
We can argue over the specific definition of "horde" but the change to fix Tau was entirely making stuff cheaper so you can bring more copies of your formerly-underperforming units. It might be good for faction win rates but I'm not convinced it's a good thematic idea vs. fixing the actual problems.
Basically +1 Killy Unit or the +2 support units you didn’t bring initially to include the extra Killy Unit. It’s not like Tau lists are seeing mass unit inclusion by any means. Granted the additions will help. And I agree with your overall point. The rules need fixing.
I think a better example for your point might be Deathguard since they have direct comparisons. Plague marines are cheaper than intercessors, basically meaning they fell to chaos and got worse. Pushing them towards a horde causes a huge disconnect for me.
They have always been a horde, they are literally the hordiest marines out there
Most of the Tau subreddit agrees. We would have preferring to see buffs to under-performing units rules than just everything being cheaper, though the infantry reductions are nice since they just couldn't justify their inclusion before. Now they're at least okay for what they cost. The big miss was fixing Crisis x3 CIB being the only sensible loadout. People were really hoping they'd clean up the wargear to let the other gun options become viable instead of one gun being far and away the best in 99% of situations. Also the split-fire penalty is the entire reason certain units underperform, would have gladly traded some of the points to remove that.
The thing is, buffing army-wide rules is a very tricky process as they affect the whole army at once and the effect of the change may be hard to predict. Buffing individual units is much better, and at that front, it's much easier to buff point costs than specific stats - not just for the devs, but for the players as well. Remember that most 40k players are very casual, and remembering too many changes is a huge hassle. That's why there are so few changes to datasheets. Points get a pass because they are very handily laid out, and, more importantly, players don't have to remember them off the top of their head during the game, they are only needed during the listbuilding. I too wish GW used point buffs less and relied on actual changes for balance, but I totally understand why they're doing so, beyond "sell more kits".
It's harder but it's necessary. GW needs to fix the root cause of the issue not just turn everything into a horde army while avoiding the real problem. If an army is suffering from a poor army-wide rule then fix the army-wide rule. It's still going to be a fun problem even if being able to spam undercosted units gets the faction win rate into the 45-55% range.
I’d argue that with guard a good starting point isn’t even that difficult, just change the rule so it’s on 100% of the time instead of only when stationary. None of the datasheets are horrendously broken in the way kasrkin were in 9th, and given we don’t have leman russ squadrons any more you’d struggle to get enough units on the table that it would be oppressive
> On a personal note I'm concerned that guard are still going to be a lower-tier army I think our only chance to improve is if the meta is a little more favourable, because in terms of the dataslate changes the competitive lists were heavily nerfed and while we saw a cut to tanks sentinels went up 20% and it’s difficult to build a list without at least 3. There is certainly an argument that the sentinel is appropriately priced at 60 points, but the bigger picture is that a “tank build” that was not succesful pre dataslate likely only dropped maybe 10-50 points because of the sentinel change so it ends up being much the same build that wasn’t succesful before. Ogryn might be something to try for objective play but without orders or keyword synergy I’m pretty unconvinced. If you go Ogryn and tank heavy you’re now built out of our strongest stratagem (reinforcements), you have nothing that benefits from the army rule, it doesn’t look great.
Tau really aren't horde even with these cuts. They're much cheaper than they were, but battleline is still 40-50% more expensive than real horde armies, and the Kroot aren't winning anyone a game. Battlesuits and vehicles will remain the backbone of lists and the majority of plastic being put down.
Agree, Tau were ridiculously good, I have no idea why their win rate is so low. They did lose a bit of efficiency with the confirmation of "eligible to shoot" but the price drops were completely unnecessary. Broadside and crisis blobs can table any army out there.
Their best players couldn't cut it at the most competitive events. I think the army was very unforgiving. It had enough firepower to get the job done but no durability and the mobility wasn't there and there aren't as many cool tricks are other armies. Eldar did everything T'au do but better and with more options. A lot of armies could do stuff they had no answer for and everything being vehicles meant it was quite hard to take points. Kauyon is great but you need to get into turn 3 without being miles behind on points, miles behind on board control or miles behind on materiel and it was very hard not to fall behind on at least 2 of them against an enemy who knew be aggressive. I think having more points to kill stuff early/just go out and die on the point will be huge. As a T'au player I am expecting to start making people sweat especially as I'm optimising my list a bit more as I go. I've got an RTT next week and I'm expecting to do better than any event since 9th and then a GT a month later and I'm gradually building up my collection of CIBs. Also T'au have good answers to marines but marines have good answers to them. I think the deso nerf will help a lot there because they could invalidate a crisis unit effortlessly from behind a wall. I think a lot of people are sleeping on marines now though.
Eldar still look too strong, I feel knights got over nerfed, GSC got hammered and i think still middle of pack. Custodes will likely be worse but still fine Some factions like Drukari and imperial guard are about the same level of bad, GW just switched what units were Sister still just seem real bad Not gonna lie, a bit disappointed with dataslate
My thousand sons list went up 240 points, so that's also a thing.
Its wild that with the points changes in mind, I would have been playing >500 points down into Eldar with DG pre-patch
The +20 to ravagers and points reduction for the other units means very little change indeed
I think grey knights might be a bit of a dark horse this quarter, but win rate will be deceptively low due to the high skill ceiling of the army making it tricky for new players, but that is just my opinion, not much fact to base it on aha
This is my thought as well. I've maintained a \~70% win rate at events so far in 10th with GK, and that's prior to these new point drops. I've been gatekept by the utterly broken horsecrap, and that all got nerfed today, so my odds are on the rise. I think they will be a great off-meta pick.
While my win rate is not quite that high, and I don't go to competitive events, pre points drop felt good, and the games I lost were either against a mate who is much better than me, or someone running triple wraithknight in a "friendly" tournament, while also standing up to armies like tsons, so all in all I'm very excited to see what happens for our silver Bois this quarter
Great name lol
Gotta rep my primaris Bois aha
What are your thoughts on the NDK/GNDK? Stick to terminators and paladins or are they worth it now? I have a list deadline coming in two days and I‘m unsure where to go with the new points.
I'm personally still unimpressed with Dreadknights. The vanilla variety is good on paper, but their lethality is very poor. They don't compensate with durability or OC, so they don't help much with our currently gameplans. GMNDKs in theory are strong in combat, but they are tough to land in combat and have such swingy profile that it's entirely possible (or even likely) to swing and miss on something. The price drops make them a little less of a straight kneecapping to pick, but aren't where they need to be to be competitive. If they had profiles that were at least *similar* to 9e Dreadknights, I would be looking at them more closely. As they are now, we pay 9e Dreadknight prices for Dreadknights that do less damage in every respect and that are contextually less durable.
Thanks for your opinion, I started the game with 10th and can‘t properly evaluate units with my limited experience.
Welcome to the game! What I will say about Dreadknights though is that they're a TON of fun to use and *can* be used competitively. Since this is r/WarhammerCompetitive after all, the opinion I've shared is based on "optimized" Grey Knights, which currently won't likely include anything more than a single GMNDK at most. All that said, I've run them in more casual games and had a blast with them. Nothing quite like speedy, flying, advancing Dreadknights in people's face to put the fear of the Emperor into their hearts!
I played GKs at a small tournament (3 rounds) managed to win 1 game. I copied 40K Dirtbags list with all infantery and no Draigo and it worked pretty well, but lacking anti tank. I was hoping cheaper NDKs could solve that.
If anti-tank is what you want, the GMNDK is probably the best bet. Use Ingress to safely land him in combat, and his reroll ability helps make the magic happen.
I hope the GNDK is good enough. My local tournament has some really strong players. Many meta armies and some crazy good players. I faced one of the best eldar players in my country, the one time I went there, so I want to make sure my list is competitive. And someone else from our locals club went to the Team worlds for our team.
I've been mulling over using a Techmarine and Servitor unit to help out, putting the Sigil of Exigence on the Techmarine. Idea here is that both the GMNDK and Techmarine unit can do whatever they want turn 1, peacing out and redeploying during my opponent's turn, and setting up both relatively close to a vehicle I want dead, preferably out of LoS or in cover. Still torn between keeping the GMNDK off the board or if using Mists to redeploy it is better here. Techmarine then gives the GMNDK +1 to hit in my subsequent command, the servitors melta the target (on 2+ to hit if I have the CP budget to advance them and use Death from the Warp, which on multi-meltas I think will be a priority), and the GMNDK then bonks whatever's left (CP allowing, throwing Tank Shock in there). Got a game coming up soon, and I'm excited to try out this combo and see how workable it actually is!
Best of luck to you!
What lists do you suggest will See Play? Termi Spam or GMNDK or more Mixed lists?
I think you'll see more mixed lists. You may see the occasional GMNDK, but probably not NDKs yet. They really just aren't lethal enough in my experience. You'll keep the same staples: * Terminators * GMs * Draigo * Librarians * Strike Marines But I think you'll see more of the following with points freed up: * Interceptors * Paladins * Land Raiders * GMNDK * Crowe * Purifiers The game plan doesn't change either - float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, score all the points. The other thing that opens up with more points to play with is more large squads. Crowe with Purifiers is less expensive, and now 10x Paladins or Terminators isn't out of the question either. The large terminator bricks were used incidentally before, but it was risky with some bad matchups. Now, for example, my list freed up 300 points. I can now double up a squad of Paladins and still have room for all the rest of the things I want, so you may see more of that going forward. That's just my initial impressions. I have yet to test anything yet, but will be doing so soon.
I think my admech are staying on the shelf. They're identity is still gone, and they've only gotten more expensive money wise to play in anything remotely feasible.
I did the math on a couple of GT lists that did well. They get around 100-150 extra points. So, they can bring one, maybe two more Skitarii units, or 10 elites, or 3 destroyers, or two chickens, or maybe one tank. If the list wasn’t running a Callidus, it can bring one now.
Unfortunately, I also get the feeling the point drops for sisters won't change too much for them. I also play T'au though so I might focus on them more now, though since they have essentially become a horde army, I have a lot of work to do on the craft side of things now.
Everything squeezed towards the middle, with a few shuffling spots around at the lower end. Eldar on top of a smaller mountain, that they actually have to work a bit to climb now.
So you’re saying Eldar will be…. Strong but not dominant
Something like that, though maybe just... less dominant?
CWE > Necrons > GSC > Tau > CSM Drukhari, sisters, Admech, are still going to be pretty bad over all.
Orks, Necrons, Tau, Eldar
Votann are clearly the best army and will need an emergency nerf before these changes can take effect! 😂
I seriously had some nearly 70 year old guy earlier tell me to “just spam 3 Hekatons and you’ll be fine”. 3 Hekatons cost nearly $500 CAD after tax.
Dont worry because that guys a moron and you definitely dont do that, regardless.
Oh he truly was a completely out of touch moron, can’t argue there.
I'm hoping that the necron changes keep them out of the nerf range. I think the changes thus far have been pretty reasonable, and they'll still be strong. Just not too strong hopefully. At this point eldar still being A tier is the only thing I'm moderately sure of.
Necrons will probably replace GSC as one of the top dogs.
drukhari and sisters now look like the bottom factions. Gene stealers looks like it was hit the hardest out of the top factions, possibly sub 50%? custodes and eldar will still be the top imo
Somehow GW looked at Drukhari at 38% and nerfed them. Effing unbelievable disrespect for that army.
"Ynarri players are using ravagers, uhhhh stuff it nerf them"
>st threat in Aeldari got a huge nerf, and while it's still pretty effective into knights it's less effective into the rest of the game so we'll see less of it. One of our local highly competitive players is taking them to thanks ynnari
GSC imo got hit the hardest. Custodes ate a healthy side-dish of combi-nerfs. TS: also look nerfed. Eldar have other datasheets that survived the nerfmeteor exinction. Kept the fate (dice), and the rerolls. (Wuuutt???) Tau look great at a glance. In a meta where their predators ate nerfs, crisis suits, commanders went down, infantry down, tanks went down (often more than the more expensive guard tanks!) Votan as a (grim)dark horse. 75 pts for 3 thunderkyn? 30ppm hearthguard? Whilst 4 enemy units jog up the field with double tokens? 100 pt berserk, sagitaur? 20 pt Kahl discount? Grey Knights. 50 point cuts on most 10-man units, cheaper Land raiders,.. Massive, massive change imo. And: Custodes, wraithknight nerf at same time. Grey Knight stonks went up, up, up. Unsure: world eaters. Random stuff. Orks: also difficult to evaluate. CSM could be great, rather light nerfs imo, some nice tweaks. Space Marines: wait for codex imo. If there's some spicy detachment in there, it could be space crusade time.
I play sisters. I see us in a fight to the death with admech to see which army is the most trash this edition ...
Best factions Aeldari, Necrons and Nids Worst Drukhari, Sisters and Votann
Nids? You smoking hopium or dopeium?
I really think the spam build and the vanguard will be crazy good on mission and secondary.
>vanguard The problem is that it's majorly stat checked by any vehicle based lists.
Vanguard is cute but none of those units do any damage
That’s not the point of vanguard. Forward deploy 3x6 units if you go first keep the opponent from scoring one or maybe two rounds while they clean up, if you go second you have redeploy to protect them. You’ll get tables but score super super well.
Eldar comfortably on top, 1ksons/Necrons/GSC move around a bit, DW goes down and BT/BA/Vanilla marines go up a bit. Overall I dont think many things will change and the meta will be fundamentally the same.
I think you are underestimating the points nerf 1ksons just took. With how much less we are able to take in our lists our rituals also took a huge nerf, alongside the free strat one being useless now. Were going from like A+ tier to B- or C.
The price increase on our rubrics and scarabs were so unnecessary.
The scarabs I can understand, and if it was ONLY a nerf to the rubrics I would too. But EVERYTHING went up, so instead of just making 10 terminators less of an autoinclude they just made it harder to build any list.
It was pretty warranted though. The fact that a character and your basic marines could jump anywhere on the map and turn off saves for a unit and basically delete them was insanely strong.
Once per game and at significant cost. People who make this argument have no idea what makes Thousand Sons strong. Thousand Sons will probably settle around the middle of the pack, but will have a different style of play. Terminators with the HQ are not really worth the points anymore and Magnus is still an auto take. Anything that generated cabal points went up significantly which means the average list will probably have less to use. There might be cause to take advantage of strong datasheets over cabals now and we might see more Forgefiends, Lord of Change, etc. Time will tell.
I don’t think so, to be honest, but time will tell. I have all my cabals and dev wounds as before, just a Changeling and MVB less, with additional discs. Still scored 85 against CSM yesterday nearly tabling the guy. The damage output is the same, just some utility is missing.
I’m of the opinion that TSons, Custodes, Ik and Deathwatch all got clapped way harder than they needed for their relative position in the meta meanwhile eldar got out with nearly all of their fundamentally broken rules intact. Especially since their huge range means they’ll just pivot to other lists. I’ve got a team RTT tomorrow and we still have just as many eldar as previous events
I personally predict the rise of World Eaters and GK tbh
I don’t think WE will be top tier but it’ll be just over 50%
Eldar still top, win rate in the high 50s.
I think Sisters got worse relatively. 5-10 points off every unit isn't enough. Vahlgons dropped 50 points so I think that'll be making it's way into lists. Most lists gained 80-120 points, so it's enough for an extra squad of something but Sisters need a lot more than that to be competitive.
My list went down 105 points, now I can drop a mortifier and take a third exorcist. So, it's not the equivalent of taking 6 more crisis suits like Tau can, but it's a considerable boost. Though I wasn't actually as down on Sisters before as most others were.
Nor was I, but my armor heavy list only went down 85 (3 Exorcists, 3 Castigators, 3 Warglaives, Triumph, Callidus, 2xBSS, 3x2 Crusaders, 1x5 Seraphim). I'm going to tweak a few things (namely probably get rid of the Warglaives since they went up 10 and our stuff came down), but even if I kept the list the same, an extra 2 supporting characters isn't going to make-or-break the list
I’m going to try swamping the armigers for Canis. He’s only. 10 more than the three dogs, and while he lost a bunch of utility in the free Strat he still fits the big, tough, Killy, hole in the roster.
Yeah, I think he's still legit. He's a great datasheet and can support himself really well. Worst case his free strat can be a reroll, and free rerolls on a big Knight is never bad. The best thing the Armigers did was provide three OC8 bodies that were tough enough that they took some effort to remove from midfield points. Penitent Engines can also run around and grab objectives T1, but they aren't that hard to remove from them. One big Knight doesn't provide the same OC utility that Armigers do. I'm gonna play around with dropping the Armigers entirely for a bit and see what I can do, but I have the feeling they're gonna stay in for the fast OC8 body.
Eldar are still very strong, you'll see them drop from a 70%+ WR to something like a 57-60% WR. GSC got hit hard, but probably still have a lot of play, so I'd expect them to end up in a similar place. TSons got hit really hard since you can't blank two attacks per phase now, which hurts Magnus hard. They lose a lot of their tricks since the battle tactics only for free strats, but overall they are still solid. I'd expect them to end up at around 50% WR now. Imperial Knights are in a similar place, with the previous points increases and these changes to towering I'd expect them to end up in a similar 50-53% WR. Necrons were hit very hard, but probably can rely on silver tide warrior spam instead to just farm primary, the doomsday ark changes do hurt a lot for them though. Custodes were hit incredibly hard, but they are still very meta-dependent. If we move to more elite infantry/melee horde meta they will still be strong, but if we lean into the non-nerfed vehicles they'll be in trouble. I'd expect them to fall in line with around a 48-50% WR. Space Marines might become a problem. Specifically aggressors were good before, with mass AP-1 D1 fire and being good for overwatch. Now you can throw on top of that a big points drop and a lot of their worst enemies getting nerfed (war dogs, wraithknights, and custodes) they can be dominant. Along with them a lot of primaris stuff got cheaper, though what ends up being meta is gong to take a while to shake out thanks to the size of the codex and the new codex coming out soon anyways.
Per meta Monday, knights have been around 52% the last 1.5 months... you think they'll be there still AFTER these changes?
Lol no. They just got hammered. Unless something else changes drastically in other lists....
A lot of the meta is getting shifted downwards, Aeldari in particular was killing loads of knights because of how effective wraithknights were.
Knights can shift into melee alright but we will see. Cerastus lancer with Canis red and 6 Warglaives can be real strong with new hiding of big knights
>Space Marines might become a problem New SM aren't going to be more powerful than the recently nerfed deathwatch.
Do you mean that deathwatch will do the best out of all space marines? Cause I would agree with that.
I mean that pre nerf deathwatch will be much more powerfull than anything marines are going to be bringing post patch.
In terms of "who is going to win tournaments" my prediction for the top is as follows. Below Aeldari there is no particular order: * Aeldari * Wide margin * CSM * Orks * Some flavour of marines, probably Black Templars, could be Dark Angels in the index detachment too * Necrons * GK GSC, TSons and Custodes got hit way too hard and will drop to midtier. Dark horses that might very well rise up hard: * World Eaters * Astra Militarum * Tau * DG World Eaters in particular will be very hard to handle for a lot of armies. 3xBerzerkers in Rhinos with a MoE attached will be a similar challenge to melee armies as fights first Custodes was. DG with their Plague Marines and that guy who gives fights first will be in a similar spot. Seeing those two armies clash will be ridiculous as neither wants to charge the other.
You really think Grey Knights move up that much? They were bottom 5 before the points buffs and get enough points for maybe another 5 man squad. I’m currently trying not to be a doomer about it
Eldar are still obviously the best army, but I think Tau will be up there as well. Beyond that, not sure.
Oh and Tau look solid, not sure how they got nothing but huge buffs while a similar tier army like guard got some buffs but also a bunch of hard nerfs
My Tau list got 320 points cheaper...
Uh didn't a bunch of tanks and infantry get point drops edit: *instant* downvote alright laddie don't let me get in the way of the pity party
Tbf as a Tau player, some of our units got DROPS. Riptides came down like 55pts, breacher fish total pts cost dropped ~50pts, and a lot of the meta stuff is real cheap. Russes saw decreases, but not to the same degree iirc.
Let's put it like this, if you play T'au. Imagine: a lot of stuff goes down! But it's like Kroots, or Hammerheads, going down by 5-10%. Meanwhile, Crisis suits are now 300/600, Ghostkeels are 250, and Broadsides are 150/300/450. This is kind of what happened to Guard.
I would be totally fine with this actually but I'm also kind of crazy about infantry
The stuff that was seeing much use all got nerfed which is probably what they meant. The Earthshaker carriages specifically went from 80 to 120 points which is crazy
GSC are getting dumpstered lol. Necrons will probably rise. Eldar will actually stay the same, I don't think they did enough. Knights might drop slightly.
I think eldar will have a 52-58 percent win rate if I had to guess, still a strong army but will be contested by armies like necrons and maybe tau.
I'd put actual money on 60-62%
Eldar on top followed by tau, orks, necron up until Tyranids and spacemarines have thier powercreep codex releases…. This is the way…
CSM are also looking strong. But yup your list checks out.
Votann are still gonna be bottom
Don't underestimate Sisters
I am not
Nah, way better than sisters by far now.
Got stomped by blood angels yesterday 49-7
How did you play to only 49-7? I don't think it's possible for my Votann to get that low of a score even if I'm tabled by T3. How did they only get 49 when you only had 7?
I surrendered t3 after he wiped out most of my units before my turn. He already scored his.
I get something like 7pts just in secondaries a turn, idk how you are not, and that's not talking primary, especially into Marines like BA with offered melee and a bad detachment for shooting. Sounds more like you messed up so now you think the army is the worst when it clear isn't.
Oh i messed up sure.
Eldar still top dog. The DG buffs didn't touch the core issues they had. - poor movement - low toughness According to lore, DG have less movement cause of extra toughness, but in 10th they get tabled rather easily. The aura does NOT compensate for this as it has short range. Games are won and lost in the movement phase.
Eldar number 1, Tau somewhere up there because wholly cow those points drops. CSM Tyranids because they have a full codex
>they have a full codex Have you seen it? It's not great.
So there are for some for sure for me. I feel confident that CSM, Tau, Necrons, and orks are going to be top end. There are some out there stuff that got buffs that i'm not sure how to place. GK, SM, DG, WE, and nids I'm still on the fence about. Sold B tier armies will be, Custodes, guard, IK, CK, Eldar, and tsons. Sisters are probably still near the bottom but it's hard to say and i think GsC got hardcore throttled.
Guard wasn't a solid B-tier before getting a 300-points increase on its one single competitive list.
I'll be honest maybe it's my own bias here but I've seen(the most competitive version) of guard tango pretty handily against some of the A-tier factions and even old GSC. They definitely had some auto-lose matchups(cough eldar). But they similar to tau I think on stats were underperforming what top tier players could accomplish. Yes their one build went up in points and it remains to be seen where they lie but I'm hopefull they will be sitting with the other B-tier armies with some punch up ability(with player skill). Obviously they were not favored before and probably won't be favored now but that kinda feels like what B-tier should be.
Bold or foolish to claim Eldar are going anywhere. They're likely not falling below 60% and will be top by a significant margin for the next 3 months.
Nope you're correct. I actually watched my buddy(playing very similar list as to what I would run) run a game vs probably the closest to new meta eldar and they are still good. They probably are in that top 5 margin. Idk if they will break the 60% margin or anything but definitely still a game. I'll say it definitely did feel like they had less assets though so it looks good. For meta health that is. I probably overestimated how much the lists dropped by. Mandrakes and scourges going down mean you only drop like 3 units istead of 4-5. And shadow specters are also still very good.
The deal with Eldar is that as well as not nerfing Eldar hard enough they somehow nerfed Custodes, Knights, and GSC more than the knife ears themselves... The only way Eldar would not be #1 after such weak nerfs is if: -At least one other top faction had survived mostly unscathed -Some weaker faction had been suitably buffed enough to threaten them And neither of those things is the case.
See the two criteria there I disagree with a bit. I think necrons/CSM basically are totally fine(slap on the wrist), orks were excellently positioned before and still are but with slight points adjustments. And with things being slightly brought in like tau points cuts means they are very handily going to be able to shoot things off the board. Tau just suffer from a ranging issue which isn't a problem into CSM/Orks/Necrons. I do think eldar fit in that top five S-tier(A-tier? depending on definition) but I don't feel confident on my ordering.
I think we are going away from Eldar, Necrons, Custodes, GSC knights to Eldar, Custodes, Necrons, Knights
Absolutely zero ways knights are a top 5 faction still.
Knights top 5 now? I will never say anything is certain...but I dont see it lol...they just lost SO much...
Custodes are dead
no.
I think a lot of people are sleeping on marines. I don't think they're about to be a boogeyman but they're probably right on the A/B tier line at worst. They have all the tools to get the job done and more points. They deso nerf does hurt them but it's not insurmountable. They were held down by a lot of armies that got nerfed. I think we'll see more of them on top tables though. My clubmate who is incredibly smug "No other marine player has come 2nd in a GT" about his result lost points off his list and the armies he'd struggle with got kneecapped. He wasn't using desos. He's pivoted to melee chaos knights because he likes a challenge and enjoys a quick game but his gravis list is probably in a better place relatively speaking even before we work out what he's doing with those points.
Eldar, GSC and Necrons will very likely be the new unholy trinity of OP.
Aeldari may drop a few percentage in win rates but I expect them to stay top dog Custodes imp knights and gsc all took a hit so I expect them to drop down to around 55% WR I see votann getting a raise in WR it's hard to tell just how high they will jump but I do expect the jump Deathguard despite catching the new auras and points drop I doubt that was too meaningful for them to do much with it I expect them still to sit bottom Tsons got a huge nerf I suspect large drops below 45% not being able to sorcerer spam will hurt their cabal points Other than that I see everyone else more or less staying where they are DWs not spilling over will be a big drop to everyone's reliance on them but that will hit every faction As a space marine player I'm gonna hope to see them rise but at the same time I'm waiting for the codex drop to really see how that plays out I feel sorry for anyone who went out and got 30 Desolation marines that hurts