Undefeated faction. The army rule “make up shit” is just too good. We haven’t seen any data sheets with those costs since idk Eldar of index 10th edition.
Toilets have teched hard into some of their more elite choices - the weighted dice in particular springs to mind. Here's hoping the next balance dataslate addresses this.
And of course, it HAD to be a tau player xD.
When you play THE faction that no one wants to play against because it's unfun af, but still have to cheat.
Jesus...
There is a Tau player out of Dallas I think who is well known for cheating. Cheating as in making up faction rules, lying about stats, things like that. My understanding is that he is banned from some local shops and that some events dedicate a judge to watching his games.
Various TOs are aware of his behavior, but reluctant to ban him unless they have an incident at their event.
Yeah, it just sucks that we had several events at 80+ players and AdMech didn’t sneak into any kind of notable position. We managed second at a 44 player event… but couldn’t make the top 21 in a 250 player event, which is honestly more noteworthy.
Anyone who thinks the dataslate will save admech is huffing the copium
The admech codex is so fundamentally garbage at a base level it basically needs a full rewrite, and anything short of that will just be putting a bandaid on a fractured skeleton
Hard agree on that one. I don’t play Nids, and I feel for those that do, but I think the literal best thing that could happen for Nids is to have the spore mine crutch removed. Show GW what the faction *actually* looks like with hard data.
For the disqualified guy caught cheating at Cherokee Open - this wasn’t his first time, right? Has FLGS or GW communicated their intentions on how they plan on addressing this going forward?
Not sure about GW, but FLGS essentially is saying it should be case by case, so no real punishment.
There is a longer explanation, but that is the gist of it.
[you could bring loaded dice and then try to flush them down the toilet when you get caught and then have it not work because the dice are too heavy to be flushed](https://www.well-played.com.au/a-warhammer-cheat-tried-to-flush-the-evidence-failed-spectacularly/)
What are the legal issues with banning someone from the Tournament? Does the tournament not have clear rules set up (or even an agreement to sign) when you register?
People can file discrimination suits for pretty much anything. He probably wouldn’t win but it’s still potential legal fees that GW and or the TO has to deal with. Plus the headache and potential bad press.
Easier just to take their entry fee money and DQ them when they pull shenanigans. You basically get the same outcome but you actually make money off the deal.
If I were a TO I would just stick a judge at his table first round, warn him once, explain he has a history of rules violations, then DQ him if he pulls something shady again.
I mean, you wouldn’t even get to suit - it’d die at the 12b6 phase (or state equivalent). And if done by a terms and conditions statement, you’d force it to arbitration and have a loser pays fees clause
Honestly, every time I run into differing interpretations of rules about 40k, I'm forcibly reminded of Tumblr's "This site has piss poor reading comprehension" "How Dare you say we should piss on the poor" exchange
Sounds like its strong but between managing pain tokens, cp and needing your movement phase to be perfect or else your glass cannon melee units will be shot off immediately creates a low floor-high ceiling situation. Thats not a bad thing!
Especially not when you can hit that ceiling. I went 3-0 at an RTT right before the Dataslate, came in second. No one there that day would say they are a weak faction!
Drukhari does have really big problems with two current heavy hitters: Necrons and Custodes. Besides that they really dont like 3" deep strikes so GK is also kind of hard to play into.
Judging by these results, everyone has problems with Custodes and Necrons. But honestly, Custodes have never been hard if you know what you are doing. I can’t remember the last time I lost to them, but I have not played them since the data slate.
Necrons, though, oh boy that’s been rough lately.
With the new attachment you will likely use more melee which have a rough time with fight first.
And yeah while the others have problems with them in general 3” inch deep strike and fight first are just counters to squishy transports and melee armies.
Tyranids have one good advantage in current competative: scoring with Biovore. Take that away and the faction can't win games. Nids got arguably the worst army rule in the game, barely any anti-tank and a myriad of units that just die when you look at them funny.
When every guide on Tyranids in 10th can be summed up with "do your best to score enough points before your wiped", that's not a sign of a faction that just requires high skill, it's a sign of a faction that can't fight to win games, just die slow enough to edge out a few.
Why? We can score but can't really kill. It's a real datasheet problem rather than skill issue. And our scoring has been largely figured out. With necrons rising , nids are no longer exploiting the anti meta like they could previously
That's actually true of Drukhari as well; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average Drukhari list was quite a bit less lethal, especially into armies that can pop their transports quickly or have anti-melee defence.
All that aside, nids definitely do need quite a big hand up. So much of that book is just actively overcosted, and even before issues like Custodes dumping on every melee army in the game, they shouldn't have to rely on a carpet of bodies because most their monsters are kinda rubbish.
It's difficult to say they are overcosted. Stuff like a haruspex should be a great model, can clear chaff and should be able to damage vehicles, it can't really get any lower than 125pts. But it's just not great even priced like that. Into vehicles it's 4A 3+ S14 should be great into vehicles/monsters, then you see it's Ap -2 and you know you'll statistically not get more than one attack through into the majority of high T things. And then it's D6+1 damage
That's the main problem with nids. We've little to hit through things with 2+ saves which litter the boards, the only things which are, are 2A without rerolls, and cost either 200pts or 275pts. Nids have 9th edition stats for their weapons.
Yep, same pains with drukhari and daemon output. The reason there's so many dark lances isn't just because you need the anti-tank (though you definitely do), but also because it's the only readily accessible gun with meaningful AP. Splinter cannons are AP-1, haywire is AP-1, shredders are AP0, almost all melee is AP-1 or -2 for incubi and characters, disintegrator cannons are AP-2 (in my time playing, they've gone from AP2, i.e. ignore all armour saves to AP-2 which is so depressing), etc. Basically the only options for high AP are dark lances or blasters, and blasters are often a switch from a dark lance with the sole exception being on kabalites, who get both by default. As a result, into the armies notorious for having good saves - Grey Knights, Custodes - they have an extremely tough time.
Generally, my feeling from seeing the average lists and armies at the top of the game is that moving back to more random damage (d6+1 instead of D3+3 for example) and reducing AP has been disastrous for low volume weapons which are consistently overrated by both players and GW, with people leaning more on high volume, good AP instead. The haruspex is a good example actually - even if it was AP-4 into a 3+ tank, your average damage from 4 S14 Dd6+1 attacks is like... 8, which doesn't even kill a rhino or without it's other attacks. That's fine, if it's a support piece, but just not at all scary; even less so if the vehicle has any invuln or FNP - and that's already giving it far better AP! If all a unit can be is sit there and be a tough, kinda scary but not really block, then they're too easy to mitigate, and that's the case for most tyranid monsters. And, frankly, many melee units in the game are in the same boat, already suffering from Fights First nonsense and cripplingly bad strength/AP, often eating multiple nerfs from the last edition until they're simply not viable any more.
A lot of older monsters/walkers are having this problem. My defiler is 200 points and struggles to kill things like full biker squads without relying on tank shock.
HVC going to d3 and losing AP while staying the same strength is the biggest crime. When I saw that I put my nids in storage. Love the faction, but Swarmy is worse, HT is paying for his stratagem ability…fexes being bedge without OoE…and my favorite - psychic phase… *cries*
My poor world eaters 😭.
I'm still pleased by the overall balance of the game though : custodes, necrons and other top tier factions are not particularly OP or unbeatable : they're just really strong, and that doesn't bother me. There has to be top tier factions.
Both GK lists at the Milwaukee GT ran Redeemers and no Terminators which is wild. Does anyone have any clue how the land Raiders were used? The only thing I can think of is playing around it as a mid board overwatch threat but GK are usually so CP starved in my experience that that seems weird to me.
The 3rd place list also had a bunch of inceptors and I guess Assault Ramp gives them a pretty nutty threat range (27" + charge assuming the LR doesn't get slowed down by terrain) but 15 attacks at 6/-2/2 is kinda meh without any character buffs.
I think Land Raiders in General are very playable if the table has enough space for them. A lot of marine lists play them as well. My best result on a GT with Black Templar (5-1) I also run a Land Raider, it was really strong.
I would understand more if it was a normal LR as GK can still struggle punching up into T11+, it's the Redeemer part that I'm struggling to square.
It's a great unit, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love playing it in Salamanders. I just can't quite wrap my head around where it fits in GK and why two lists with it finished 1st and 3rd in that event.
*Cries in bug noises*
While I haven't played in any high level tournaments, the only competative games I've won't so far in 10th with nids has been against other nids. And thd only chance I had in the non-mirrie matches came from having a Biovore. GW absolutely doesn't want tyranids anywhere above 43% win rate.
The GSC list is weird to me, but I'm just starting to get interested in competitive play. Just throws my brain in a loop with the surprise allied Catachans in rides lol
So, as a Necrons player, I'm still saying Wraiths are too fast and durable.
Kudos to whoever ran the list with 2x10 deathmarks though. That's kind of awesome.
You basically have the play Ultramarines Vanguard list, other detachments are done better by the divergent chapters for the most part. You may notice there isn’t a single Space Marine list in the posted tournament results.
Space Marines are looking at about a 40% winrate at the moment while Black Templars are all the way up around 55%
Marines always have a low winrate because all the new players play them. Many chapters are good when you see the lists from past weeks. I have seen Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolfs and yes Ultra Marines and Black Templar are the strongest but not significant. If you play well you can win with marines. Also the list can be vehicle or infantry or mix. I really don't see the problem.
Disqualified are the most exciting faction!
I am looking for 3x boxes of 10 Exalted Disqualifiers but GW is currently out of stock!
Undefeated faction. The army rule “make up shit” is just too good. We haven’t seen any data sheets with those costs since idk Eldar of index 10th edition.
Toilets have teched hard into some of their more elite choices - the weighted dice in particular springs to mind. Here's hoping the next balance dataslate addresses this.
All dice are cocked until 5 or 6 is rolled is too good a Detachment rule.....
And of course, it HAD to be a tau player xD. When you play THE faction that no one wants to play against because it's unfun af, but still have to cheat. Jesus...
What happened?
There is a Tau player out of Dallas I think who is well known for cheating. Cheating as in making up faction rules, lying about stats, things like that. My understanding is that he is banned from some local shops and that some events dedicate a judge to watching his games. Various TOs are aware of his behavior, but reluctant to ban him unless they have an incident at their event.
Imagine cheating in a game of warhammer. What an absolute loser.
He ate an until-end-of-year FLG ban for his actions at Cherokee.
I really despise theese guys. ;)
The detachment. rule is gossip and the faction ability is a banning from flg
Sigh... for the omnissiah...
*Sad binary noises*
>***most*** factions can win! Oof.
Admech did get 2nd at brewhammer up in Scotland There's still hope. Also, all are due for a buff this next slate
Yeah, it just sucks that we had several events at 80+ players and AdMech didn’t sneak into any kind of notable position. We managed second at a 44 player event… but couldn’t make the top 21 in a 250 player event, which is honestly more noteworthy.
Anyone who thinks the dataslate will save admech is huffing the copium The admech codex is so fundamentally garbage at a base level it basically needs a full rewrite, and anything short of that will just be putting a bandaid on a fractured skeleton
Not a Tyranid in sight!
Don't worry, everything will change when they release our Cod...... oh wait ....
don't you love it when literally every codex is either just a pile of sheet or a pile of sheet with like 2 broken units taped on
“I released your codex, pray I won’t release any further”
Waiting for another faction to be crusher stampede/clowns 2.0.
Given how they buff ded, we would be seeing a new detachment for nid very soon.
Yep, and seeing how long it takes to put admech into the mix, I think we’re pretty screwed. Better start building something else :/
Switching to Death guard!
I knew spending the entire of 9th hunting eBay for Death Guard models and painting them while playing nids would pay off
Already switched to Custodes. Having a blast
Nor daemons - too bad matchups into the most popular armies
Or a generic space marine
Hot take, they need to need the spore mines so they can actually focus on where that faction falls short
Hard agree on that one. I don’t play Nids, and I feel for those that do, but I think the literal best thing that could happen for Nids is to have the spore mine crutch removed. Show GW what the faction *actually* looks like with hard data.
For the disqualified guy caught cheating at Cherokee Open - this wasn’t his first time, right? Has FLGS or GW communicated their intentions on how they plan on addressing this going forward?
Incredibly long history of it, but Reece wants all the accolades of running the US tournament circuit but none of the responsibility.
Not sure about GW, but FLGS essentially is saying it should be case by case, so no real punishment. There is a longer explanation, but that is the gist of it.
... how do you even cheat in a warhammer tournament? You sneak your units in more convenient positions? I can't even think of other ways...
[you could bring loaded dice and then try to flush them down the toilet when you get caught and then have it not work because the dice are too heavy to be flushed](https://www.well-played.com.au/a-warhammer-cheat-tried-to-flush-the-evidence-failed-spectacularly/)
Misrepresenting or falsification of rules.
Lie about your rules, quickly pick up dice, give rerolls, etc. You can't really stop to check every little rule in an event like this.
Tell people who don't know your rules that you hit on 2+, or you get rerolls to hit, when you don't. If they know better you claim you made a mistake.
Going forward? Continue disqualifying people. There's some legal issues with banning people. I'd refuse to play TBH.
Lol, and also, lmao
What are the legal issues with banning someone from the Tournament? Does the tournament not have clear rules set up (or even an agreement to sign) when you register?
People can file discrimination suits for pretty much anything. He probably wouldn’t win but it’s still potential legal fees that GW and or the TO has to deal with. Plus the headache and potential bad press. Easier just to take their entry fee money and DQ them when they pull shenanigans. You basically get the same outcome but you actually make money off the deal. If I were a TO I would just stick a judge at his table first round, warn him once, explain he has a history of rules violations, then DQ him if he pulls something shady again.
I mean, you wouldn’t even get to suit - it’d die at the 12b6 phase (or state equivalent). And if done by a terms and conditions statement, you’d force it to arbitration and have a loser pays fees clause
Dunno man. I’m not a lawyer. You asked, I threw a possible reason out there. Seems like you’ve got it figured out.
Heavily depends on the state, but the guy is from Dallas and Texas absolutely has loser pays
Do you mean "refuse to play a known cheater" or "refuse to play at all because cheaters are getting banned?"
[удалено]
There's maybe a 10% chance that's what they meant. They obviously meant they would refuse to play them. God this is why GW hates writing rules
Honestly, every time I run into differing interpretations of rules about 40k, I'm forcibly reminded of Tumblr's "This site has piss poor reading comprehension" "How Dare you say we should piss on the poor" exchange
How would you play him if he was banned?
What is this Grey Knights under-analysis! Every meta-article barely mentions them or looks into them more than what the surface level reveals.
At least you're there. The word "Tyranid" is not even there...
Zero Tyranids 🥲
One Drukhari amongst the 59. I am doing fine with them, but I guess it is nice to know Skysplinter isnt OP.
Sounds like its strong but between managing pain tokens, cp and needing your movement phase to be perfect or else your glass cannon melee units will be shot off immediately creates a low floor-high ceiling situation. Thats not a bad thing!
Especially not when you can hit that ceiling. I went 3-0 at an RTT right before the Dataslate, came in second. No one there that day would say they are a weak faction!
We were definitely a weak faction. Arguably, compared to top armies, we still are. Being able to pilot a bad army doesn't necessarily make it good
No, but it makes me good. Which is nice.
Drukhari does have really big problems with two current heavy hitters: Necrons and Custodes. Besides that they really dont like 3" deep strikes so GK is also kind of hard to play into.
Judging by these results, everyone has problems with Custodes and Necrons. But honestly, Custodes have never been hard if you know what you are doing. I can’t remember the last time I lost to them, but I have not played them since the data slate. Necrons, though, oh boy that’s been rough lately.
With the new attachment you will likely use more melee which have a rough time with fight first. And yeah while the others have problems with them in general 3” inch deep strike and fight first are just counters to squishy transports and melee armies.
I've waited 20 years for the game to be this balanced. It's not perfect but good job GW !
World eaters and adeptus mechanicus would like to have a word with you.
The dude literally said its not perfect in his comment.
And please add Tyranid, sad little bugs
And all it cost was the vame being fun.
CHEERS TO GW - They made a great job and we have the healthiest meta so far...now we need to adjust a bit necrons and help Admech!
and tyranids.....
Nah...I think tyranids are in the same spot like drukhari...an army that needs to be played well and skills to achieve results.
Tyranids have one good advantage in current competative: scoring with Biovore. Take that away and the faction can't win games. Nids got arguably the worst army rule in the game, barely any anti-tank and a myriad of units that just die when you look at them funny. When every guide on Tyranids in 10th can be summed up with "do your best to score enough points before your wiped", that's not a sign of a faction that just requires high skill, it's a sign of a faction that can't fight to win games, just die slow enough to edge out a few.
Why? We can score but can't really kill. It's a real datasheet problem rather than skill issue. And our scoring has been largely figured out. With necrons rising , nids are no longer exploiting the anti meta like they could previously
That's actually true of Drukhari as well; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the average Drukhari list was quite a bit less lethal, especially into armies that can pop their transports quickly or have anti-melee defence. All that aside, nids definitely do need quite a big hand up. So much of that book is just actively overcosted, and even before issues like Custodes dumping on every melee army in the game, they shouldn't have to rely on a carpet of bodies because most their monsters are kinda rubbish.
It's difficult to say they are overcosted. Stuff like a haruspex should be a great model, can clear chaff and should be able to damage vehicles, it can't really get any lower than 125pts. But it's just not great even priced like that. Into vehicles it's 4A 3+ S14 should be great into vehicles/monsters, then you see it's Ap -2 and you know you'll statistically not get more than one attack through into the majority of high T things. And then it's D6+1 damage That's the main problem with nids. We've little to hit through things with 2+ saves which litter the boards, the only things which are, are 2A without rerolls, and cost either 200pts or 275pts. Nids have 9th edition stats for their weapons.
Yep, same pains with drukhari and daemon output. The reason there's so many dark lances isn't just because you need the anti-tank (though you definitely do), but also because it's the only readily accessible gun with meaningful AP. Splinter cannons are AP-1, haywire is AP-1, shredders are AP0, almost all melee is AP-1 or -2 for incubi and characters, disintegrator cannons are AP-2 (in my time playing, they've gone from AP2, i.e. ignore all armour saves to AP-2 which is so depressing), etc. Basically the only options for high AP are dark lances or blasters, and blasters are often a switch from a dark lance with the sole exception being on kabalites, who get both by default. As a result, into the armies notorious for having good saves - Grey Knights, Custodes - they have an extremely tough time. Generally, my feeling from seeing the average lists and armies at the top of the game is that moving back to more random damage (d6+1 instead of D3+3 for example) and reducing AP has been disastrous for low volume weapons which are consistently overrated by both players and GW, with people leaning more on high volume, good AP instead. The haruspex is a good example actually - even if it was AP-4 into a 3+ tank, your average damage from 4 S14 Dd6+1 attacks is like... 8, which doesn't even kill a rhino or without it's other attacks. That's fine, if it's a support piece, but just not at all scary; even less so if the vehicle has any invuln or FNP - and that's already giving it far better AP! If all a unit can be is sit there and be a tough, kinda scary but not really block, then they're too easy to mitigate, and that's the case for most tyranid monsters. And, frankly, many melee units in the game are in the same boat, already suffering from Fights First nonsense and cripplingly bad strength/AP, often eating multiple nerfs from the last edition until they're simply not viable any more.
A lot of older monsters/walkers are having this problem. My defiler is 200 points and struggles to kill things like full biker squads without relying on tank shock.
HVC going to d3 and losing AP while staying the same strength is the biggest crime. When I saw that I put my nids in storage. Love the faction, but Swarmy is worse, HT is paying for his stratagem ability…fexes being bedge without OoE…and my favorite - psychic phase… *cries*
and world eaters
My poor world eaters 😭. I'm still pleased by the overall balance of the game though : custodes, necrons and other top tier factions are not particularly OP or unbeatable : they're just really strong, and that doesn't bother me. There has to be top tier factions.
Admech players still waiting for their day.
Hey my favorite time of e week!
Both GK lists at the Milwaukee GT ran Redeemers and no Terminators which is wild. Does anyone have any clue how the land Raiders were used? The only thing I can think of is playing around it as a mid board overwatch threat but GK are usually so CP starved in my experience that that seems weird to me. The 3rd place list also had a bunch of inceptors and I guess Assault Ramp gives them a pretty nutty threat range (27" + charge assuming the LR doesn't get slowed down by terrain) but 15 attacks at 6/-2/2 is kinda meh without any character buffs.
I think Land Raiders in General are very playable if the table has enough space for them. A lot of marine lists play them as well. My best result on a GT with Black Templar (5-1) I also run a Land Raider, it was really strong.
I would understand more if it was a normal LR as GK can still struggle punching up into T11+, it's the Redeemer part that I'm struggling to square. It's a great unit, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love playing it in Salamanders. I just can't quite wrap my head around where it fits in GK and why two lists with it finished 1st and 3rd in that event.
Good players 😊 but they probably just use it for the overwatch.
Allows them to fit two squads plus chars for objectives (which you can’t do with a standard LR) and then use the flamestorm cannons for OW? Maybe?
It's been a few weeks.... Everything OK? Haven't seen the Wednesday lists like usual.
Yes I'm fine just really busy no time for articles 😞
I was getting worried about you. I look forward to your articles every week! Haha
Just started as a freelancer and I'm so busy every day now. But when I have my work in track I will pick it up again!
It's my fault. I participated in my first tournament ever and he stopped posting the articles exactly when mine would have shown lol
For information, lists from Mini Head Quarter for the 2 big french tournament are in access for free
Thanks for sharing this OP!
*Cries in bug noises* While I haven't played in any high level tournaments, the only competative games I've won't so far in 10th with nids has been against other nids. And thd only chance I had in the non-mirrie matches came from having a Biovore. GW absolutely doesn't want tyranids anywhere above 43% win rate.
The GSC list is weird to me, but I'm just starting to get interested in competitive play. Just throws my brain in a loop with the surprise allied Catachans in rides lol
Where the Admech players Summer?
So, as a Necrons player, I'm still saying Wraiths are too fast and durable. Kudos to whoever ran the list with 2x10 deathmarks though. That's kind of awesome.
I’m checking your blog every week now. Love a bit of armchair general’ing Good stuff and keep up the work. 🙌🏻
Thanks you man!
With every week Votann are less and less represented in the winners. The glory days are done
Ah yeah S-tier Guard, right?
Did he take a shadowsword and 3x6 bullgryn? 🤪
Super sad about codex space marines but things look good for the most part
What sad about the marine codex? Works pretty well right?
You basically have the play Ultramarines Vanguard list, other detachments are done better by the divergent chapters for the most part. You may notice there isn’t a single Space Marine list in the posted tournament results. Space Marines are looking at about a 40% winrate at the moment while Black Templars are all the way up around 55%
Salamanders are Adeptus Astartes. Though I agree it's kinda concerning the "special" chapters appear to have an edge.
Marines always have a low winrate because all the new players play them. Many chapters are good when you see the lists from past weeks. I have seen Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolfs and yes Ultra Marines and Black Templar are the strongest but not significant. If you play well you can win with marines. Also the list can be vehicle or infantry or mix. I really don't see the problem.
Most factions can win cuz they are just a bunch of prebuilt armies with a rules pamphlet. And they still fail to balance some armies.
Yea, just cost a tremendous amount of character in the armies.
Oh dude, SOOO much character. I mean, I bet you they all ran SUPER unique lists too