Goatboy’s 40K Thoughts: Winners, Losers & Meh – FAQ Edition!
Goatboy here again and guess what – we finally got the big ole FAQ we have been waiting for. While I am happy to have had it – did you think it should have been more meta changing?
Sure it changed things – but did it shift up the overall meta game for competitive 40k? Most likely the Chapter Approved will bring the second part of this change (points etc) that we are waiting for but until then – we get the following FAQ 2.0. But hey – lets look at the winners and losers from this new Update.
FAQ Winners
Eldar are stilling winning as they didn’t get much of a nerf. Sure the Shining Spears lost their powers – but then so do Slam Captains and flying jerks like Daemon Princes. I still expect a lot of good tournament players to bring the Pointy earred space monsters to any event. Ynarri is still good (free activations is very powerful) and they have decent answers to knights in Reapers and other high damage weapons. Ycarnne Avatar like guy not needing to start in Reserves is pretty good too – which means she can start on the table and bring her fearless bubble in. Rangers got hit hard as they can’t deep strike in turn one to reset up – but they are still going to be used to bubble wrap a bit. Heck I think Guardians are going to show up in nice blobs of units like some of the better Eldar players use. I think Eldar will have the second part of their nerf coming with point upgrades in Chapter Approved so this might go from super winner to hey not too bad. Will see in a month or two.
Chaos armies still seem decent even though the lose of jumping over things to get engage is damaging to them. They still have access to powerful spells, a plethora of unit choices, and effective screening units. I think the same sort of army stays relevant with Gors, Letters, and fearless cultists clogging up the board. You just don’t need to worry too much about covering all your holes now with your army and just can rely on making sure your bases don’t have gaps the bad deep striking guys can abuse. I wonder if will points upgrades for good guy knights but the same points for bad guy knights. If so I can expect some weird knights plus bubble wrap armies. Oh and Bash Bros got better – the 2CP cover save stratagem is huge for them. Moving these guys to a 2+ armor save turn 1 is huge. Mortars don’t matter that much anymore and its great for these big monsters. I think Chaos stays in the same place in the Metagame right now.
Imperial Knights are still winning as while they lost some of their CP Farm – they still have a ton of options available to me. They are extremely powerful units and with no more deep striking turn 1 nonsense you have a chance to get close, get damage in, and murder your opponent before turn 2 rears its ugly head. I think you will see other Allies mixed in with Knights to create powerful armies. I was messing with a Custodes bikers army mixed with some Knights and I think that will still be very powerful. I do think Chapter Approved will see Knights changed up a bit – but will see. Either way I think Knights are going to still show up and the whole Slam Captain/Knight/AM list might turn into Alex’s Knights/AM list.
Different Imperial Warlord traits got a big boost as you no longer have to take Grand Strategist. This is great as the only other Warlord traits you saw was the ones attached to someones Knights. I also expect to see other Relics taken instead of mandatory CP regaining from the Guard and Blood Angel side of things. Limiting it to 1 gained in a Battle Round is needed and I hope to see some updates to how many you get as well. I do wonder on the whole regen CP before the game begins so you can still regrow some things. But there isn’t a lot of lists that get to burn a Strat as they deploy on the table. I think Custodes winner of the Blood Games is the only one I can think of.
Basic Bubble Wraps are also big winners. You don’t need to cover up nearly as well as you used too – with just a single line of guys protecting you good stuff. Also the ease of protecting things in this new way is great as a new player can easily compete in the game. I don’t know if it will be as good as we play – but only needing a few units to effectively cover yourself from getting pants by an opponent is a good thing.
The Cover Stratagem is a huge winner too – as it really helps out armies abilities to go second, survive the firepower, and do some damage. The Space Wolf Rhino rush army seems pretty good with 2+ armor save Rhinos starting on the table. Heck my crazy Khorne Zerker Rhino rush army seems really powerful. Just being able to deploy in places and know you got cover for the first turn is a great thing. Lord the Custodes army I played full of Bikers would love to have a 1+ armor save versus Disintegrators etc. This is going to be a big thing and force players to rethink about always trying to push to go First.
Goatboy is a winner as he can still play a Plethora of Daemon Princes in any given army due to the update saying all the Chaos Books Daemon Princes are different. Oh my goodness am I so excited to be able to play 9 Daemon Princes again. I don’t know if you guys have seen how many Daemon Princes I make in a year. It is a lot. I might have a problem. Or is it you that has the problem. You’re not my dad! I CAN DO WHAT I WANT! NO I WILL NOT GET IN MY GOATBOY BOX! IT SMELLS!
Ok sorry about that – got in a fight with the inner Chaotic Child inside me. Let’s dance over to the loser side of things.
FAQ Losers
All the players that built Slam Captains and Wolf Lord Captains. The removal of fly ignoring everything during the assault phase is huge. It most likely hurts these units as they were highly abused – but it also hurts a ton of other lists as well. I expect the upcoming Ork book to bring a whole lot of Stormboyz to the battlefield – but the change might remove their usefulness. Daemon Princes also got hurt as they are no longer dancing over screens and jumping in to kill a few extra models. The Shining Spears also got a big nerf due to not getting to jump over guys and mixing into your lines. The Jump change is huge and while pretty back breaking for lists – it is probably something that needed to happen. There were too many abuses and I dreaded the upcoming year full of hidden Wolf Lords jumping out of AM lines of Catachans.
The CP Farm got a big hit as you can only gain 1 a CP turn. I know a lot of the armies will just shift to either a big turn 1 or 2 instead of the consistent turn after turn of heavy stratagem usage. This was the one change I didn’t expect and find interesting as it doesn’t fix the whole – use a pile of strats because you have access to a plethora of CP. Most of the abusable Stratagems got nerfed so this might end up being a moot point as the player blows all his points and doesn’t see more then 1 or 2 CP back for the game due to not having nearly as many rolls to try and gain that sweet single Command Point.
While I said Chaos is a winner still – the old Alpha Legion armies of Cultist death got hit pretty dang hard. Same with all the other infiltration armies. I think the 9 inch move is a correct one as those armies were not very good versus new players. I don’t know how many times I heard a buddy go – oops I won with Admech Infiltrating Electric Dancing Priests. I think removing that gotcha moment from games is a good thing and will be healthy overall. It is the same with the changes to charge ranges due to Fly getting kicked out of other Phases.
The FAQ Meh
There are some other small changes that I am glad they put in. Removing the Orgyn Bodyguard nonsense was a good thing. Also having those big tanks drop the whole – Take Cover Stratagem. I don’t know why they nerfed Daemons some more with removing the ability to get at 3+ inv save on a Unit. The army lost a ton already with Fly going away so I don’t understand why they got kicked in the teeth a bit more. I still can see some use out of the army but it will be hard for it to compete without being Mono Nurgle or using some friendly Renegade Knights.
The Genestealer Cult armies got a big old kick to their nether regions as well. The entire change to how Reserves work is rather brutal and I expect some games watched by the GW team at Nova caused this to happen to them (Sorry Nick). I know their army is going to have a major change coming to their book so all might not be lost for them. Still they seriously got nerfed with Mind Control getting hit on due to not being back to come out in front of whatever was big, stealing that big thing, and devastating the army around them.
Odds & Ends…
I will discuss more about the changes later on this week as I go into how big the Fly keyword change really is. The Tactical Reserves ability is also the other huge change – but I think Fly is going to shake things up a heck of a lot more. The cover stratagem for going Second is huge too and will be a huge part of people’s armies in the upcoming events. I expect going second is going to be very important which is probably a good thing. It also means you should prepare to be given the first turn a lot. I am sure I missed some things and comment away if I wrote this out wrong. I think the first list I will be messing with is a Custodes Knights army and then maybe some Bash Bros testing. I guess I should paint my real Mortarion – of course I need to paint a clients first.
~Until later on this week – Death to the False Emperah!!!
