Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Balance Dataslate Winners & Losers aka CRONS GOOD!
Goatboy here with 5 quick thoughts about the new 40K Balance Dataslate update brought to us by GW. There are winners and losers…
Overall it appears they are really punching up Crons and hitting Eldar and Nids right in their no no spot. The Nid update is pretty crazy as well as the Eldar one. Will see how it all shakes up but the overall thoughts from people in the know said not to worry too much about Nids in the future.
Cya Tyranids
First big one is that the whole rules set up of Tyranids with adaptable upgrades is now dead. You can only pick to swap out your armies rules at the time of mustering your army. This means you can only do it when you write your list and not when you get to the tabletop. This is huge as it was a big factor in how the Tyranids played and is something that made them unique. I get the feeling if a bit more testing with all the books at once could have helped balance this a bit – but it was very powerful. All the other armies have to live with their choices determining how good they are in a match up and having the ability to hot swap while other armies didn’t lead to very – feel good moments for their enemies.
I personally think most of this “hot-swappable” or “build-your-own” faction style things need to just be left for Crusade and not show up for anything matched play. Just my 2 and half cents due to inflation. On top of the Nid thing if your Warlord dies or not on the battlefield (and it has to be a Hive Tyrant if you have one in your army) then you lose Synaptic Imperative abilities that would be active for you army.
Aeldari Took a Punch
Next up is the Eldar kick to the tender area by making the custom Craftworld option Hail of Doom being a single choice for a Craftworld. This means you can’t say pick that and ignore cover. This is pretty big as that was the current combo of Hail plus ignore cover doing a lot of damage at events. It allowed your army to be exceedingly deadly in engagements. I was thinking the removal of the 2 Secondaries – To the Last and Stranglehold – would do more damage to them but this really hurts them too. On top of that they also hit Fire and Fade making it a once a game ability. I don’t know if that was needed with the whole drop in CP showing up.
Clowns Are Crying Softly
On the Aeldari side of things the Harlequins also took a hit by no longer having flat Rerolls given to them. They have to use Luck of the Laughing god ability to get any which means we won’t be seeing stacks of rerolls banking out some 4+ invulnerable saves. They also changed Light to only be hit on a 1-3 over 18″ away so this is helpful as well. Most likely this puts the army back in its place and not the silent boogie man everyone feared them to be.
Iron Within, Iron Without
Another fun thing – Chaos Space Marines got a change to Iron Warriors that took their new rule out that allowed them to take an AP off of AP -1 and -2. This rule made no sense with Armor of contempt just being better so they gave them some Salamander treatment. They now make it where you can’t reroll to wound against them which makes the army pretty spicy. You will get to read about it next week as I dig into the CSM book.
Xenos Winners
There were some winners from this beyond the quick CSM fix. Necrons and Orks got big boosts. Necrons got a ton of Core updates and a big change to Command Protocols ability that allows you to assign it and the unit keeps it the entire game. You can also select another one on top of the per turn option and that lasts all games. You pick which one each unit has and if it is your Dynasty’s special Protocol they get both. This seems pretty dang spicy.
On the Ork front their Waaagh got update to give +1 strength and attack when you call it. That seems pretty dang spicy plus all their point adjustments might mean some show up on the table top. It is also interesting that the Buggie change is now just saying you can’t have more than 3 models of each type – meaning you could pick 3 singleton units of the same buggy type instead of having to pick a unit of 3. This is pretty good as it allows you to not have a unit a player can throw a lot of damage into and watch it cascade to each of the models as one blows up.
The Game is Changed
Will this shake up the meta with all the other stuff? You bet your bottom dollar. I think the biggest loss in this update is that Daemons and GSC got nothing. GSC got one point update and Daemons got nothing else. Daemons make a bit of sense as they most likely have a new book but GSC not getting updated is a big shame. Oh – and why the heck do Astra Militarum tanks get Armor of Contempt now? Look for Leman Russes to be even more of a pain now.
Did your army come out on top or bottom with this update?
