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Post by trashcan01 on May 18, 2022 7:31:02 GMT
Not putting the fix in the printed Codex was just sloppy, something GW has also shown a propensity for. Exactly. Makes you wonder if they even playtest. I mean, as much as I want to imagine hordes of playtesters testing everything from T6 Hormagant to armywide 4++/5++ for one turn, I think it's just a bunch of guys who throw dice in the basement of some GW branch and leave comments on an shared online document. Imagine the setup you'd need to have to test everything interacting with everything. Now go back to GW. A company that primarily makes miniatures. They are not in the tabletop gaming business. They make models. Think about it for a minute. Everyone makes mistakes. Even a game and community like "Magic:The Gathering." Broken combos are present, cards tend to be banned and eventually rotate out of the main competitive format. Is all of this frustrating for the players? Embarrassing for the creators? Yup and yup. It's even more embarrassing that they don't bother to cherry pick fan ideas and implement them, or use a dedicated community to quickly identify and resolve issues. I'm all for consensual grumbling about things that could be better, and this is one of the reasons I am here, but all this frustration is starting to look like incubation period of masochism. My point is, don't get too worked up about the whole thing. It is obvious that we have veteran players in the forum and what I don't understand how they don't accept that WH40k is a faulty product, and it always will be. We were losing to Astra Militarum at one point during the 7th. Tied for the worst Codices for quite some time during the 8th. Enjoy the 9th, despite a few quirks here and there.
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Post by xtztxtxz on May 18, 2022 8:34:18 GMT
Exactly. Makes you wonder if they even playtest. I mean, as much as I want to imagine hordes of playtesters testing everything from T6 Hormagant to armywide 4++/5++ for one turn, I think it's just a bunch of guys who throw dice in the basement of some GW branch and leave comments on an shared online document. Imagine the setup you'd need to have to test everything interacting with everything. Now go back to GW. A company that primarily makes miniatures. They are not in the tabletop gaming business. They make models. Think about it for a minute. Everyone makes mistakes. Even a game and community like "Magic:The Gathering." Broken combos are present, cards tend to be banned and eventually rotate out of the main competitive format. Is all of this frustrating for the players? Embarrassing for the creators? Yup and yup. It's even more embarrassing that they don't bother to cherry pick fan ideas and implement them, or use a dedicated community to quickly identify and resolve issues. I'm all for consensual grumbling about things that could be better, and this is one of the reasons I am here, but all this frustration is starting to look like incubation period of masochism. My point is, don't get too worked up about the whole thing. It is obvious that we have veteran players in the forum and what I don't understand how they don't accept that WH40k is a faulty product, and it always will be. We were losing to Astra Militarum at one point during the 7th. Tied for the worst Codices for quite some time during the 8th. Enjoy the 9th, despite a few quirks here and there. Some of the external testers have discussed the process on various community podcasts, and basically there are several playtest groups around the world who receive work-in-progress PDF versions of new rules as they're being written. While everyone assumes playtesting is all about perfect competitive game balance, GW do value each faction having it's own identity just as much. Some folks testing the rules are picked because of tournament experience while others are picked because they're well known as experts on the game background and understand their favourite army inside and out. I remember one guy saying that it was just as important for them to get the 'feel' of a faction right during playtesting, and they'd frequently suggest ideas to helped make armies distinct from others. The two new Knight codexes are a great example of this, with rules to set them apart from each other despite having largely the same models. This requirement comes across fairly well in most 9E books, and does help somewhat with internal codex balance too. Some playtesters have also stated that sometimes major changes to factions (such as the new Ork Beastsnagga models added last year) are either delayed or omitted entirely from earlier playtest versions of the rules due to concern about leaks. Playtest documents have been the main source of accurate rumours in recent years and GW are cagey about info getting out too soon. It's also worth noting that a lot of this testing is done using a completely different version of 40K. Thanks to the limitations of GW's printed product cycle, material is often written and sent to print up to a year before we see it. A codex that was playtested in May 2021 would have very different results from one tested in May 2022. Imagine playing against un-nerfed AdMech & Drukhari, or marines without AOC, or WIP Harlequins. Test groups go through several rounds of codex revisions, and sometimes feedback does miss the strict print deadline, or GW makes last minute changes that don't see another round of testing and/or result in editing errors (like our discrepancies between rules & glossary). Until GW scale back this heavy reliance on printed books we're always going to have issues with 'lag' affecting game balance and the general quality of printed items. The move to online points was a great first step, now they need to do something similar for codexes or whatever comes next.
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Post by mattblowers on May 18, 2022 11:54:35 GMT
Imagine the setup you'd need to have to test everything interacting with everything. Now go back to GW. A company that primarily makes miniatures. They are not in the tabletop gaming business. They make models. Think about it for a minute. Imagine the setup you could have if you did $435,000,000 in sales last year. You could hire a team of crack players to do nothing but test. GWs stock has lost $100 per share year over year despite their having a record revenue and profit year. It's no coincidence that there stock started its meteoric climb after a change at the top and the release of 8th edition. The former head said they were a model company primarily. Turned out when they paid attention to the game it made them more money. "You better believe in gaming Miss Workshop, you're in one."
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Post by infornography on May 18, 2022 15:03:37 GMT
As someone who has been using the app since day one and been subscribed since they opened it up, my two cents are this. When it first came out it was "worth it" for the 8th ed codecies. Having nearly all the current codecies for $3 a month seemed a no brainer to me especially since I had skipped out on buying a few of the ones I have armies for. I quickly found that the list building portion of the app was buggy, gappy, and poorly designed, but I still used it occasionally to figure out what options I wanted to assemble models with as my ipad was handy near my crafting table. As the codecies got replaced one by one, I found less and less use in the app and eventually switched to using wahapedia which I found easier to use (especially when it came to referencing all related rules) and more accurate. Also the WH+ subscription has disappointed me as I was expecting MUCH more content for the price. I don't particularly care for any of it beyond the animations and those come in so slowly and are so short that an annual subscription for that content just seems silly. Once I get my assassin figure I will likely cancel and just re-up for one month every couple years to binge the content and cancel again. Free fan apps and websites are better referenced and maintained and more reliable than the official paid app. It makes me think that GW is missing the boat on this and they should focus on building the structure of the app, maybe input the first pass of info, then let the community maintain it. Have users able to submit modifications and go through an approval process. Hire a couple guys who just approve or decline modifications. Hell, make it so that if you submit modifications that are approved, you get the next month free. Crowdsource that maintenance and use your community of experts. The tool would get better so fast and with so many users truly invested in it the opinions would shift too. There would be people sitting in forums hoping somebody complains about a mistake so they can submit a fix and get their free month. The whole thing would have to be semi-open source but that honestly is not a bad thing. GW has demonstrated they lack the competence and/or manpower to maintain this tool on their own.
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Post by zimko on May 18, 2022 15:34:13 GMT
So back on topic.
I expect a points increase to Harpies, Pyrovores and maybe Warriors. I hope if there's an adjustment to Warriors that it targets specific weapon load outs instead of a flat increase to the base model. But I won't hold my breath on that.
Raveners might see a point increase but idk.
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Post by piersonsmuppet on May 18, 2022 16:28:41 GMT
If the DS gets a pt increase on Warriors (should be ~2 pts more than Devs imo), I don’t see why Raveners should escape a pts increase. They don’t even give up a weapon, just rr1’s to-hit (so they trade roughly 1 melee hit for 2 ranged hits).
Though GW baking weapons into unit costs has kind if blurred the ability to adjust weapon costs across units easily.
Harpies will probably see a 25 pt increase, similar to the Dima. Enough to tax lists running two and cause it to be a likely TTL target with a physiology. I hope that’s not the cast, but it depends on what GW sees as the problem. If just the Dermic Harpy is the issue, a 10 pt increase would probably be enough to reduce how often it is taken. I don’t think that GW will be so soft though.
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Post by garg on May 18, 2022 17:09:05 GMT
While they have not gone too hard on the nerfs in 9th so far, the fact there were so many Tyranids in the top 10 of gws own tournament could make them overreact. Reading the latest competitive innovations article at goonhammer we seem very strong though many are pre faq I believe. I like the list theorising and optimisation portion of the game but at the level we are at I get nervous that I will totally stomp the opposition.
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Post by bolk on May 18, 2022 19:21:26 GMT
While they have not gone too hard on the nerfs in 9th so far, the fact there were so many Tyranids in the top 10 of gws own tournament could make them overreact. Reading the latest competitive innovations article at goonhammer we seem very strong though many are pre faq I believe. I like the list theorising and optimisation portion of the game but at the level we are at I get nervous that I will totally stomp the opposition. One thing we should keep in mind though, veteran Nid players have a higher skill level than players in most other factions. Tyranids has been an underdog faction for several editions, save Flyrant spam and index era 8th. Those who have stuck with Nids through the entire time have had to maximise efficiency and the strategy of the game. So when given a strong book like we have now, we tend to "club some baby seals" without even meaning to. I'm far from the best player in my meta, but with a fluffy CS list I totally demolished a veteran DG player in my area for example.
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Post by infornography on May 18, 2022 19:40:28 GMT
While they have not gone too hard on the nerfs in 9th so far, the fact there were so many Tyranids in the top 10 of gws own tournament could make them overreact. Reading the latest competitive innovations article at goonhammer we seem very strong though many are pre faq I believe. I like the list theorising and optimisation portion of the game but at the level we are at I get nervous that I will totally stomp the opposition. One thing we should keep in mind though, veteran Nid players have a higher skill level than players in most other factions. Tyranids has been an underdog faction for several editions, save Flyrant spam and index era 8th. Those who have stuck with Nids through the entire time have had to maximise efficiency and the strategy of the game. So when given a strong book like we have now, we tend to "club some baby seals" without even meaning to. I'm far from the best player in my meta, but with a fluffy CS list I totally demolished a veteran DG player in my area for example. I am inclined to agree with this, but I suspect that a lot of it is confirmation bias combined with the fact that regulars on the The Tyranid Hive probably think about and read about their faction specific strategies and information more than most other warhammer players regardless of faction or veterancy. Just like a regular on the largest eldar forum would probably be far better with Eldar than your average other warhammer player. Anyone who is a member of an active dedicated community focused on their faction will likely be at a higher competitive level than average. That said, having been on some of the other warhammer forums over the years, I do feel like the analysis I get here is sharper than I get elsewhere, but I can hardly speak for all other factions's forums. :-)
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Post by xtztxtxz on May 18, 2022 19:45:54 GMT
While they have not gone too hard on the nerfs in 9th so far, the fact there were so many Tyranids in the top 10 of gws own tournament could make them overreact. Reading the latest competitive innovations article at goonhammer we seem very strong though many are pre faq I believe. I like the list theorising and optimisation portion of the game but at the level we are at I get nervous that I will totally stomp the opposition. The results in that article are terrifying. At least one of the tournaments described did run with the new FAQ, and Leviathan Nids still finished 1st with 5/10 top places. Not looking forward to new point values in July.
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Post by kazetanade on May 18, 2022 19:46:10 GMT
I would like to point out though that Crusher Stampede was near brain-dead effective in its delivery, tackling exactly the items we lacked in order to be a strong codex - giving reroll to hits, invuls, reduce damage, increased attacks, to a codex that was layered over with no less than 2 other sources of rules.
There is no "weak and fluffy" CS list. Thankfully, it is now illegal in competitive play, although apparently top players are migrating to and destroying other factions with Nids.
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Post by bolk on May 18, 2022 20:46:06 GMT
One thing we should keep in mind though, veteran Nid players have a higher skill level than players in most other factions. Tyranids has been an underdog faction for several editions, save Flyrant spam and index era 8th. Those who have stuck with Nids through the entire time have had to maximise efficiency and the strategy of the game. So when given a strong book like we have now, we tend to "club some baby seals" without even meaning to. I'm far from the best player in my meta, but with a fluffy CS list I totally demolished a veteran DG player in my area for example. I am inclined to agree with this, but I suspect that a lot of it is confirmation bias combined with the fact that regulars on the The Tyranid Hive probably think about and read about their faction specific strategies and information more than most other warhammer players regardless of faction or veterancy. Just like a regular on the largest eldar forum would probably be far better with Eldar than your average other warhammer player. Anyone who is a member of an active dedicated community focused on their faction will likely be at a higher competitive level than average. That said, having been on some of the other warhammer forums over the years, I do feel like the analysis I get here is sharper than I get elsewhere, but I can hardly speak for all other factions's forums. :-) True, there's no denying I spend most of my Tyranids brainstorming here on this forum😆 To be fair, I'm barely ever on any other warhammer forum either. But the in depth rules discussions we have here for not just the codex, but also the game and terrain rules make many here much better players as well I believe.
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Post by bolk on May 18, 2022 20:52:45 GMT
I would like to point out though that Crusher Stampede was near brain-dead effective in its delivery, tackling exactly the items we lacked in order to be a strong codex - giving reroll to hits, invuls, reduce damage, increased attacks, to a codex that was layered over with no less than 2 other sources of rules. There is no "weak and fluffy" CS list. Thankfully, it is now illegal in competitive play, although apparently top players are migrating to and destroying other factions with Nids. I agree, CS was insane. My point was that with even a fluffy for fun list (I made the list weak because of the CS rules) and first game in months due to a new Ripper in the family, I still made a mockery out of this guys DG.
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Post by dkng on May 19, 2022 9:02:47 GMT
New Ripper in the family? Spawn more Overlords XD
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Post by bolk on May 19, 2022 10:33:51 GMT
New Ripper in the family? Spawn more Overlords XD We have 3 cats, that's more than enough control xD
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