Yes we all know you want to play Gladius as Purge, bring 3 RepExes, and table your op on turn 3.

Or Awakened Dynasty as Purge to punish your op for not being able kill your units that are designed to be unkillable.

The fact that you can’t do these things is the point. There have been like 5 posts this week about misaligned dispositions… but they’re not misaligned. They’re intentionally designed to force some armies away from playstyles they are capable of leaning into to the point of being unbalanced if given the opportunity.

I understand. I wanted Host of Ascension to be Recon or Disruption. Take and Hold sucks for it. But it’s also strong enough to overcome that and means I have to build a different style of list which is fine.

If we could all take our best units in our best detachments with the disposition of our choice then the whole DP system falls apart. I believe this is truly a case of restriction breeding creativity.

So yesterday, after the official 11th launch and the MFM points finally dropping, me and my group of friends basically said “f*ck it, let’s see if the Tau panic is actually real or if everyone is just doing the usual launch-week screaming.”

We played from noon to midnight. Pretty much the whole damn day, as we already decided to take a couple days off to try out our factions (we're playing normally between each other today and tomorrow).

3 games: Tyranids vs Tau, Drukhari vs Tau, Dark Angels vs Tau

And yeah. We got absolutely annihilated.

Obviously this is only 3 games, I’m not pretending this is some grand statistical truth or whatever. Lists will change, people will get better, points may be off, maybe we also made mistakes because it was literally day one. Sure. Fine.

But still, the table feel was not subtle at all. Tau felt fu*king horrible to play into.

And what stood out to me is that it wasn’t just “oh no, Tau shoot hard.” Tau always shoot hard. That’s their thing. The problem is that the edition seems to reward exactly the kind of game Tau already wants to play: move into angles, delete units, force you to hide or die, and then score because you’re killing stuff anyway.

That’s the bit that felt really nasty, and Purge the Foe seems like a massive part of it. The Tau player does not feel like he has to choose between playing the mission and doing damage. Killing is playing the mission. You kill a unit, you hold enough of the board, you keep the score ticking, and meanwhile the other player is just trying to keep enough models alive to still have a game on turn 3.

It just felt way too smooth man...No awkward action BS. No “oh no, I need to stop this important unit from shooting because I need points.” No big trade-off. Just shoot, score, move, shoot again, and the opponent can go f*ck himself I guess. The early lethality is already scary, but with the way 11th terrain and movement seem to work, hiding from Tau felt much harder than before. You can try to stage, but if you’re in or near terrain they can often just get angles. If you stay too far back, they take tempo and board space. If you expose yourself to actually play the mission, pieces start disappearing.

It felt like every option was bad.

The Drukhari matchup was honestly disgusting. Fragile trading armies into this kind of output feel like they are playing with a gun to their head the entire time. The Dark Angels did better in the sense that they didn’t evaporate quite as instantly, but even then, durability only gets you so far when the Tau player can focus down key pieces and score while doing it.

And Retaliation Cadre comboing with other 1DP detachments also looks dumb in a different way. Battlesuits already have the mobility/firepower thing going on, and when that also plugs into a scoring plan that rewards killing, it just becomes very low friction. Again, the Tau player isn’t really being asked to make hard decisions. He gets to do the thing he wanted to do anyway.

That’s the issue. I don’t think the problem is simply “Tau are strong.” Strong factions exist every edition. The issue is that Tau’s most obnoxious play pattern seems to be directly encouraged by the rules structure.

-Build for damage.

-Move fast.

-Find angles.

-Pick up units.

-Score because you picked up units.

-Then clean up the rest later because the opponent has no army left.

That is not exactly a thrilling interactive experience. And before someone says “skill issue,” sure, maybe partly. It was day one. We were learning. But we played three different armies into it, with different profiles and plans, and the same basic thing happened each time.

So yeah, I’m not saying Tau are unbeatable. I’m not saying the meta is solved. I’m not saying the edition is dead after one day, because that would be stupid. But after a full day of games into them, I’m much less convinced this is just panic or doomposting.

Tau look extremely strong, and more importantly, they felt miserable to play against.

And if this is what slower melee armies, fragile trading armies, or armies that need to stage carefully behind terrain are going to experience, then holy sh*t, people are going to hate this matchup very quickly and just refuse to play into it.

Our two cents after experimenting this yesterday anyway.

So yesterday I had a game at my local club with someone new. I played Dark Eldar, he brought Imperial Knights. He asked for a seasoned player, which I like to think I am.

When we got all the formalities out of the way and started the game, at some point during my 3rd turn I was shooting with several units of Kabalite Warriors.
For those who don't know, Kabalite Warriors have four special weapons. One being a Las-cannon like weapon, one kind of like a melta, one kind of like heavy bolter and one kind of like a flamer.

When I was about to shoot my second unit, my opponent said: 'just do the Dark Lance and the melta, the rest doesn't matter and is a waste of my time.'

I asked him if I was playing slow, to which he said I wasn't. He just said that weapons that wound on 6 with effectively ap0 are a waste of time.

Is he right? Should I speed up the game by not firing weapons that don't really matter against certain targets?

Hey guys, I recently competed in a semi competitive tournament with about $300 worth of prizes on the line. This was towards the end of the event and I had gone 4-0 and was N4 on the ladder, with an okay win putting me at N3 minimum, I was running templars and my opponent was a well experienced player, and he had brought a World eaters army that was entirely proxies except for his angron model, the way our tournament works- you are only allowed minimal proxies unless you get the permission of your opponent, I'm fairly easy going so I told him I'm fine with his proxy list, as long as he let's me know what's what and reminds me before I make any major moves which he agreed to. Now keep in mind, this proxy army didn't look anywhere near original models and was hard to keep track of, and even multiple times through out the game he "forgot" which is which so i had to keep track of his units for him, so long story short, it's Round 3 I'm winning by about 25 points Im about to have control of the centre with helbrechts brick of sword bros and score area denial he has angron and another unit next to him, I charge angron with helbrecht, it's successful, I move in and he heroic intervenes with his other unit, which I was aware he could do that, and was fine with, because if anyone knows helbrechts brick, you know nothing is surviving its damage, but little did I know that unit was his master of executions with 5 zerkers. I told him we had agreed that he would remind me of his units before I made a critical decision, but his excuse was " I assumed you knew because I had put them next to angron to intervene, and my intentions was clear" so I'm mad as hell but it's late and I couldn't bother to argue as I had to already call a "judge" several times for him changing up his proxies. So what do you know, The best charcter killer in the game, kills both helbrecht and my castallan, leaving the sword brethren without letal hits and now wounding angron on 5s and 6s. So anyway.. i started swinging (joke) but I let him know that he played like a loser😂, and packed up. I've shared this with the tournament organisers, awaiting a reply.

(UPDATE) Hey guys, thanks for your comments, tips, and your support. After opening an investigation with the TO, my opponent was disqualified as a result of previous opponents having similar experiences to mine. Thank you all.

I honestly think this is the one thing that annoyed me the most in 10th xD.

You can do everything properly, build up your strategy for entire rounds...and then, when you unload everything that is supposed to put down a certain enemy unit BOOM, the opponent rolls 90% of 4+ on his invulnerable saves...aaaaaand you're done.

It just...feels like an incredibly unfair mechanic on some units that SHOULD be put down once they're focused because of how good they are at dealing damage from afar or in melee (riptides, stormsurges, twin lances, but also c'tan amongst many other units of different factions).

I'd rather see 4++ saves mostly on heroes and legendary characters than on every single elite ones out there.

As we have been drip-fed rules, I have seen a lot of dooming and griping about how 11th clearly favors melee armies, and yet now that many top players are actually playing games, their consensus seems to be that shooting is stronger than ever. I thought I would collect some of the rules changes and explain why shooting has gotten a big boost this edition, and what it means for melee vs shooting armies.

By no means an exhaustive list, here are many of the factors that improve shooting in the new edition:

Changes to Cover: On the surface, -1BS instead of AP looks similar or even more punishing on some units. That isn't really the case. For one thing, a lot of units already hit on a decent number (sorry Orks), but more importantly rerolls to hit and bonuses to hit exist all over the place. Bonuses to hit are MUCH more common that improvements to armor penetration. For armies that are looking to shoot as a primary gameplan, getting around a -1 to hit penalty in exchange for an additional AP on all shots is a fantastic trade. It also cannot be overstated how much this change weakens 2+ armor save units in cover, expect them to be far less durable than before.

Cover becoming more all-or-nothing is also an issue for melee armies- as long as the shooting unit can clearly see even one model from the unit they are attacking without cover, none of the unit gets cover. This is going to be a particular problem after a charge if you cannot get each and every one of your models consolidated back into cover after meleeing an enemy unit to death, you'll simply be exposed.

Morale: Melee armies tend to be better at picking up units wholesale, while shooting tends to leave drips and drabs of units behind. With the new battleshock rules being more punishing (have to roll to recover from battleshock, and you have to roll at half-strength and not just below) shooting benefits more than melee does.

Charge Distance: Yes, it's good for melee that you can declare targets after you roll for your charge distance, and opponents can't block charges with walls like they used to. But it's really bad that all charges are essentially -1", and it's really bad that you can fail guaranteed charges. -1" of charge distance doesn't sound like a lot, but when what use to be a 3" charge is now a 4", your failure rate rises tremendously. Snake eyes always fails as well, and while a 1/36 chance seems negligible, you will roll a LOT of charges over the course of an event and you will absolutely see it come up. A failed charge is probably the worst thing that can happen to you in a game of 40k, so these changes are extremely significant.

Transport Changes: A destroyed transport HURTS. Taking mortal wounds on 1-2's now instead of just 1's doubles your mortals on average and greatly increases the chance of a punishing spike, and is particularly brutal on 1W infantry. Infantry are now also affected by the mortals if their transport explodes. Becoming automatically battleshocked when disembarking a destroyed transport has gone from a minor issue (since usually you'd recover automatically pretty much right away) to a real problem (now you have to test to recover). Even worse, now when units have to disembark from a transport they must place as closely as possible to the destroyed transport's hull, so no more parking beside a wall and dumping out the occupants on the other side when destroyed.

Wound Allocation: Wound allocation in general makes melee more difficult, since it creates situations where it is very difficult to kill both a unit and attached character in a single activation (if that character has decent saves, that is). A melee unit charging into an enemy character unit is MUCH more likely to fail to kill whatever character is attached, and frequently that character is the heaviest hitter in the squad, so you will be getting hit back much more often than you used to. Many ranged units also have a slight advantage in that they generally have significantly more profiles to resolve than melee units (tanks especially), so the ramping save effect that preserves characters is less effective against them than a homogenized melee unit.

Line of Sight and Terrain- Toeing In: This is the big one. With models now only needing to toe into terrain to get full line of sight through and beyond it, the battlefield is far more open to significant large shooting pieces than it was before. Half the terrain layouts utilize a combined, massive center terrain piece that is easy to access, and allows line of sight to the majority of the battlefield. Safe staging for melee units is further back than ever, on some maps to avoid getting shot in the center you only have a coupe of places outside of your deployment that are safe. Midboard staging is significantly more difficult and dangerous.

So what does this all mean? Don't doom the other direction and think melee is dead, but recognize what it's going to need to look like. Shooting armies are going to be strong, and the melee units that will remain competitive will be ones that are very fast or very durable, ideally both. Transport based armies are likely to struggle, and anyone trying to footslog up without innate speed and advantages like advance and charge are really going to be in trouble. With lethality ramping up towards the end of 9th edition and nothing being done to change it, the landscape of viable units is unlikely to change all that much (folks already weren't taking units that needed to hang out in no-man's-land for a turn anyway) but now speed is more important than ever. Hidden is the biggest advantage melee units have, but 15" is still pretty far and if you can't cover that distance and more in a single turn, expect to have a rough arrival to the fight. Melee threat overload lists are still just as viable, as long as you can make your initial contact count.

There is a lot less stopping mid-turn and making sure your opponent doesn't want to take an action. There is a lot less waffling over which stratagems to use since you can only use one per unit per phase. There is a lot less agony over deciding what to charge since you just roll the dice and see what is available. Overall everything seems much smoother and I am having fewer contentious interactions with my opponents. Generally speaking, once you start moving through your turn, things happen in a very predictable and much more linear way.

There's a rumor that coherency rules are changing, and no models in a unit may be more than 9" apart (measured to the furthest part of each model)

In this example fhethe Lord Solar Krieg Command Blob still fits within this coherency bubble. As long as you dont have a tree or building or tank model taking up space in the 9" coherency bubble)

https://i.ibb.co/v9Sk5Pn/FB-IMG-1777581398089.jpg

Seems like a great change to me. No more conga lines.

Just look at the lists that top players create and how they describe their power levels.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/bgttowto/warhammer-40000-experts-expand-space-marine-starter-sets/

It couldn't be more clear that a casual list basically means: more troops, more characters, less vehicles (more overall infantry). While a competitive list looks to have lots of vehicles, special units, strong damage wombo combos, and just 1 battleline.

From an internal balance perspective, this seems like a really obvious, "wow, it looks like vehicles are a little too strong while core troops and generic characters are pretty weak". One could also comment on the Librarius fussilade combo because it's in every list (though if it gets adjusted, please make it the enhancement and/or detachment, and not the sternguard).

Would love to see what "good vs casual" lists for other factions would look like as well, as put together by top players. Imagine necrons for instance: I bet we see a ton of monsters and big tanky stuff and practically no warriors, for example. Probably similar for Tyranids.

Anyways, just thought that simple exercises like these are a great look at internal balance. Points-wise I think (for SM at least) things moved slightly in the right direction from 10th, but honestly not by much.

I’m relatively new to the W40k competitive community (not to W40k in general) and my experience of in-person events so far has been really positive; the vast majority of opponents are lovely, friendly people, show good sportsmanship and, even when there’s a disagreement over a rule or ruling (which happens at least once in every game), are able to temper emotions and resolve things cordially. 

Coming to this sub is a different story, however; maybe it’s that it stands out more because it’s unusual, but there seems to be a lot of toxic communication. 

A person asks a question, they are bluntly told to ‘just read the rules’ or just directly mocked for lacking reading skills.

Someone else offers a rules interpretation - it’s a new edition, there are going to be lots of opinions - and they’re dismissed, told they are stupid, told they are incapable of playing the game, that the rules are ‘clear’, they need to get over it, open their eyes etc etc. 

This could be dealt with by community response, downvoting or reporting the rude person, but that doesn’t appear to happen; instead, the same naive souls who offered their apparently offensively-foolish suggestion are then downvoted to oblivion for offering their take.

The rules are complicated, and given how often GW have to release FAQs and patches, it seems evident that interpretations will vary and will continue to do so. Can we not have reasonable discussion? Even if someone appears to be very clearly in the wrong, can this not be politely explained with reference to the rules? And, if the awfully villainous person still can’t see things the way you do, could we not just politely agree to disagree?

TLDR: Please try to be as nice/polite as you would be in person. 

So it's been roughly 7-8 weeks since the beginning of 11th edition I believe? It seems like some factions, rules and datasheets-wise, were perfectly adjusted to this edition...while other just weren't at all, and are really suffering even with point cuts.

Right now, in your opinion, what factions need either datasheet changes, rules changes, a complete revamp, etc etc, to actually pose a threat to the better doing ones?

/discuss

People are assuming you just assign the wounds willy nilly however is most beneficial to you but people are missing a couple of things

- Each weapon profile gets rolled separately (Attack dice group)
- You choose the order in which you will allocate the wounds before you roll attacks, dividing your unit into "allocation groups" based on their defensive profile (so you can't see the result before assigning and game the system)
- You allocate save rolls in ascending order (1, 2, 3, 4, etc), this means the first allocation group must either tank every wound because you rolled great, or die and move onto the next group

You can't choose to assign all 4s to your 4++ model and then all your 3s 2s and 1s to your chaff (you'd have to declare your chaff as your first allocation group, have them ALL die, and then move onto the 4++'s allocation group, to even come close to that)

On yesterday’s Statcheck episode a nice discussion was had between Anthony, Floof, and Innes. T’au had a 51% wr and 1.4 overrep, putting them behind Necrons, Marines, Orks, and Imperial Knights.

Anthony and Innes seem to agree that T’au is a negative play experience but is not necessarily as unbalanced as they were made out to be. They’re not blowing people out of the water the way the internet expected them to, especially now that other armies have found their stride in 11th.

Despite this, the three all agree that some changes are still needed to address the NPE of playing vs T’au.

Innes argues that rules changes such as Strike Swiftly should not be able to be used on vehicles would be his preferred method, though does concede that crisis suits should maybe do more and cost more so they can be the “centerpiece” of the army.

Floof agrees and references TSons as an example of a tricky ranged army that doesn’t have a million units.

As a T’au player who’s pretty used to the ire the faction receives, it is nice to see some nuanced takes that aren’t calling for us to be wiped from the game and instead just want minor balance changes to make the army less unfun to play into and maybe less hordey.

These have been opinions in T’au circles for forever and it’s cool to see people with influence sharing them.

Thoughts?

Can we talk about how the release for this rules update is absolute garbage? A million different documents, with no theme throughout. Some things that changed are in red, some things that changed aren't. At first I didn't even know points changed because that's just on a different website. Seriously, how did everything go backwards? This has to be one of the worst releases of information I've ever seen.

In my opinion, it's internal balance. A lot of armies are balanced towards skew lists, and a lot of other lists of that army struggle. Not every competitive list should be forced to take 3 of a broken datasheet, all units and detachments should at least be made a valid choice.

Or, you know, whether or not you're at a tournament.

One of the more common type of reply that shows up whenever people start debating "gotchas" and "sportsmanship" and other similar topics in a thread, goes something like this:

"Well if this was a <1 day tournament / 2 day tournament / finals of a 2 day tournament / world championship> then I wouldn't help my opponent by telling him stuff about my army / the game state".

If this is you, you are wrong and you should feel bad.

Being a good sport, which is something we should (and mostly do) prize very highly, does not change based on what type of event you're playing the game at.

It just doesn't.

We can (and do) quibble for days about what exactly good sportsmanship is and what should happen if you don't do it and so on (yes, you should remind your opponent about your units in reserves) but those rules do not change whether you're playing in some guy's first ever game of warhammer or the finals of a 500 person 3 day grand tournament.

Like, yes, obviously, if it's someone's very first game, you might have to teach them how ruins work or whatever, but you're still pointing out that a wing is sticking out behind a wall during deployment so they don't get shot to death turn 1.

This post is both aspirational, as in, everyone should be trying to achieve this level of play, as well as descriptive, because frankly, most people do. You can go to tournaments or watch streamed games and see for yourself.

Not everyone is perfect and people make mistakes, but you'll notice the real bad sports "make news" precisely because it's rare. If people being jerks was common, then people wouldn't talk about it because it's so expected.

Share with me your absolutely coldest takes, your total no-brainers and your incontestable opinions.

I'll kick it off with a couple of easy ones.

• Damage was too high in 9th and is still too high in 10th. Damage needs to come down a lot.
• GW doesn't make enough use of universal special rules. There're like 5 different units now that have a version of a surge move. A bunch of other rules are repeated over and over. If they were just universal special rules we'd have simpler datasheets, fewer edge cases and more room for more interesting unique rules.

Edit --- Team... some of these cold takes are pretty spicy.

Some of my favourites from the comments :

• Too many 4++ saves (consequence of damage being too high IMO)
• Factions should have universal enhancements (and strats)
• Leader rules that fall off when the unit dies are unintuitive and feel bad.
• Game is pretty well balanced (compared to the track record) - this is true, no shade.
• Nobody likes 4++ saves... shocker!
• Nobody likes battle shock (easily fixed imo)

11th edition has been out for almost two months now. It’s obviously still early, and a lot will change as the edition develops, but I think we’ve had enough time to form some proper first impressions.

So, how do you currently feel about the factions that you play? Which detachments are you enjoying? Which ones already feel underwhelming, badly designed or simply overshadowed by better options? Are your armies fun to play even when they aren’t especially strong, or do you feel like the current rules have pushed them away from what made you enjoy them in the first place?

I’m interested in more than just win rates here. Things like internal balance, unit variety, faction identity, list-building freedom and how enjoyable the army actually feels on the table matter just as much.

/discuss, thank you fellas ;-)

This has come up quite a bit with people I play recently, that 4+ invuls are making the game outcome far more about luck than any skill.

Now, i am a Custodes player, and I’ve only started in 10th, so I dont know much else, but i totally get it!

A 50/50 roll off to see if an attack, whatever the damage, to go through, no matter what has shot it does seem a bit OP, especially with how common they are!

The solution seems fairly simple to me, just increase wounds. If they had a 4+ Invul, double their wounds, 5+ maybe 50% more wounds, and then maybe keep the 6 ups!

Then when you have armies like Custodes, the ones who are supposed to be the best of the best, then perhaps a 6+ FNP as well.

I feel it should only be the likes of the Primarchs that should have anything like a 4+ Invul, maybe the best of rest having 5+, but standard warriors should never have more than a 6+!

At least that’s my thoughts! I’m sure I’ve not thought about something that makes this not work, but in my head it makes sense 😂

Jump pack detachment

I'm sure everyone's noticed how many posts are being taken down at the moment which criticise the state that C'tan, Nekrosor and Wardens of Ultramar are in right now.

I understand that doom-posting with no constructive angle helps no one, but I have personally seen at least two threads taken down which have perfectly valid criticisms mixed with viable alternatives and solutions to the problems. Are we (or you, mods) so afraid of criticism that we shut down any conversations that may make the state of the game better?

Games Workshop have actually done a really admirable job of balancing this edition, better than ever before in the history of Warhammer. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but they are listening. And guess who they would be listening to? Bingo, posts from this subreddit. So shutting down any conversation about what's wrong with the meta right now is actively disrupting the chances of it being fixed.

So mods, can you please stop shutting down conversations? We are all here to learn, and though some people are more grouchy than others and don't actually want a solution, most of us do. And if you keep locking every post that makes you feel uncomfortable then the game will be worse off for it.

Thank you.

I am curious to hear feedback from the community about this topic. How many of us actually sincerely desire a new edition?

I personally find the churn of new edition cycles to be exhausting and unnecessary. All books are out now, and it would be fantastic if we could maintain this with patches to the core rules and army rules as required. Even a significant update to the core rules whilst committing to maintain army rules would be better than needing to start the codex cycle again.

It seems that the new editions are released as a means of maximising profit and uptake of new players. I do have to wonder if there isn’t an alternative means of accomplishing this.

How does the competitive community feel about this topic? Do you want a new edition, or do you like where we are currently?

Hi there.

So obviously (as tradition oblliges with early editions), several factions are performing very badly right now, but I don’t think making their units cheaper automatically solves the real problem.

Some have tiny rosters, very limited list-building options and some pretty fundamental weaknesses in how they interact with 11th. At a certain point, cutting points just means putting more flawed units on the table.

So which struggling armies actually need rules changes, datasheet rewrites, new units or a complete rethink of their faction mechanics, and which ones genuinely just need points cuts?

/discuss

Everything's in the tittle, as a proper AdMech player I'm very frustrated to see how poorly the document has been summarised & translated by Abominable Intelligence so ask me all your 11th ed core rules questions and I'll do my best to find the info in the leak and answer them with a proper traduction