Warhammer 40K: GW Takes Out the Nerfbat on Top Armies
Grotmas continues to give – GW has done some pruning and changing to the current Meta of 40k. Some top armies got the nerfbat!
If you’ve been paying attention to the competitive scene you know a few armies seem priced a bit low. The meta meanies of Adeptus Mechanicus, Aeldari, and Adeptus Soritas all got hit with some point changes. The Aeldari got hit with a small nerf as well but will talk about that as we go thru some of these Grotmas changes.
Thankfully the Balance Dataslate didn’t change a lot of the main game. Overall I think the game is working pretty well and the only real issues is some armies got pushed a bit too hard with the last points update. I feel like I say this all the time but if your army feels like there are too many units on the table after an update I wouldn’t invest in buying more things. All those players running out to match the WTC Champs Richard Sieglar’s army need to rethink trying to get all those Ruststalkers built.
Ad Mech, Sororitas, Aeldari – NERFED!
Let’s talk about the hits – Ad Mech, Sisters of Battle, and Aeldari get hit pretty hard on the points side of things. In fact all the strong units pretty much all got hit such as Cawl, and the Sicarian Ruststalkers. This can range from 10-20 points per unit and if you start adding it up when looking at some of the lists that usually means the old army is now 2200+ points. This should cut out a unit or two for all those armies which should hopefully tame them down a bit. I think that is the important thing when looking at all of this is that if an army felt like it had to much on the table that could do too much – it is most likely going to get touched in an update.
The Aeldari did see a nerf to their army rule. The Star Engines Battle Focus rule has changed from giving the vehicle an extra move to just letting the vehicles weapons have Assault when they advance. This removes some extra funky movement the army can do. On top of that change they also updated the Aspect Shrine Tokens to not work for attached characters. This is to hit Fuegan who would use the Fire Dragons token to get an auto 6 for his insane gun. The Fire and Fade stratagem now won’t allow the unit to embark into a vehicle as well which is another hit to the mean ole Fire Dragon doom unit.
Emperor’s Children, CSM, Chaos Daemons – Tweaked
A few other armies took some lessor hits as well with the Emperor’s Children Flying Daemon princes going up in points and the Slaughterbound from the World Eaters. Both of those units were over performing lately and while the EC change makes me sad the Slaughterbound update really amplified their ability to wreck things. Thankfully the rest of the WE line stayed the same.
On the same chaos bandwagon the Chaos Daemons saw some updates. The big nerf is that the Endless Gift enhancement now just gives the Great Unclean one a 5+ feel no pain. This gets rid of that giant jerk that sits in the middle for the Daemons armies. In the same vein of an update the Lord of Change and Kairos got damage updates to their weapons which feels like a good thing. They got some point increases too but those flying birds of doom will continue to doom things.
Chaos Space Marines saw Bile go up in points but the Forge Fiend went down to 170 points which is a pretty mean thing. I know the CSM book is still good and just suffers from all the other options available. I used to do so much damage with them and seeing those units drop makes me think it might be time to bring out the CSM stuff again.
Space Marines – Gonna Be a Problem
Oh the Victrix guard got touched on the point side and we’ll see if more gets done later. They look pretty nutty and will be around for a bit. The 6 man unit going up in points will help out a lot but I expect most armies to have 2 units with some character support. No word on if the old Calgar goes away or the old Cato rules get legend’d too.
Overall I think the changes were pretty light with the “mean” armies getting hit. Will see what rolls out at the top but I am glad for the changes and the consistent look GW is doing for the Competitive scene. I bet if an army shows up to be rough will see a much heavier hit the next update we see next year.
