40K Op-Ed: What the FAQ Needs to Deliver
The 40K FAQ has a tough job. There’s a handful of serious issues with the Grimdark scene it needs to tame in one fell swoop.
As we all wait here for the March – now April FAQ to drop, it’s a good time to look over the current state of the game to see what the GW Design team has to tackle for the good of the game. It’s going to be a careful balancing act.
Tame Soup
I think 10 months into 8th we can all agree that the Imperium, Chaos and Eldar keywords that unlock soup lists are overperforming a bit. If the game was ONLY those three mega-factions it might be ok, but there are bunch of stand alone codexes who just can’t compete with the “big three”. Even if it causes short-term pain for some individual units and current power lists, Soup must be tamed.
Tame Spam
You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it and Goatboy lives it :). Spam is the real amplifier of the “dark”meta – as it lets any small unbalanced unit to instantly be copy-pasted into a murder machine list until it’s inevitable nerfing. Let’s just count shall we:
- Stormraven Spam
- Assassin Spam
- Malefic Lord Spam
- Conscript Spam
- Dark Reaper Spam
- Tau Commander Spam
- Poxwalker Spam
- Flyrant Spam
It’s ONLY been 10 months! If the FAQ can limit spam, it automatically limits the damage individual units can do to the meta.
Tame Detachments
If we only had the first page of the detachments in the big book, all would be well. But let’s be honest there are some silly abusive detachments. Sure they are in there for fluffy players who love narrative games and use power level – like that one time I saw bigfoot and a yeti playing 40k. Yeah – these just get abused by WAACs and reinforce the SPAM issue.
Increase Army Diversity
I have a feeling that the majority of players buy a handful of codexes for their favorite armies and build up forces around them. It’s much rarer to see the “competitive ringer” who is building the latest Rube Goldberg list out of the best combos from every army he can shoehorn into it. The game shouldn’t punish but should reward those players who really like any single codex and stick with it. It would also increase the use of many of the rarer armies instead of the meta’s gravity pulling everyone into a handful of copycat monster lists.
~It’s a lot to ask, but I have a feeling GW is on it – after witnessing what happened at LVO and Adepticon. I have my fingers crossed!
