Warhammer 40K: Five Armies Done Dirty By 9th Edition
Let’s take a look at five armies that have taken a hit from 9th Edition’s changes.
With the new updated points making the rounds today, as well as a slew of FAQs, its fair to say that we have a pretty good idea of how 9th Edition is going to work. Indeed the only things missing at this time are the complete extra rules from the upcoming Chapter Approved and any new Codices coming out. With all that we know in mind let’s take a look at some of the armies that aren’t looking so hot in the new edition.
5. Drukhari 
At first glance it might seem like Drukhari got through the major rules without much harm. After all 9th is looking to be a great edition for MSU armies, which they do well, and their Raiding Force special rule actually works well now. The evil elves however took two major blows. The first was that fly no longer lets you fall back and shoot. Drukhari have a ton of flying units, and most of their heavy firepower is on them, so this stings. On top of that they are an army that loves giving the enemy minuses to hit, which just got capped. Both of these hurt Drukhari armies a fair bit. Worse for them, they got really hit hard by point increases. Warriors, Wyches and Wracks all got big points increases, leaving the faction with no cheap infantry options Warriors in particular went from an affordable 6 points to a fairly steep 9. A bunch of other points bumps will put the faction on the back foot going into 9th.
4. Tyranids 
Man this one really hurts since I just wrote a few weeks ago that I thought they might a solid army in 9th. However the it still stands that they take a hit from a number of the 9th changes. In particular some of the assault and blast rules hit them hard. I still think a big bug list might be viable, but given how much the 9th missions prioritize holding objectives I wonder if that build can make good of it. They also took a big hit today with the new points. While Nid’s got a pretty average bump across the board, this is an overall negative for them. The truth is they needed help in the points department, either getting some drops or lower than average bumps. They didn’t get that and this army that’s already not particularly competitive wasn’t done any favors.
3. Chaos 
We all know that GW loves to nerf Chaos lists whenever they get that chance so I’m proactively putting them here for whenever they get hit. Kidding aside, Chaos is getting a hit (and yes I know “Chaos” isn’t an army). The big thing is that Chaos soup, like Imperial soup, takes a big blow from the new CP rules. Chaos armies realllllly like to soup (yet they don’t get nearly the flak for it that Imperial armies do…) and that’s a lot less viable of an option now. Some Chaos armies will probably do well in mono lists – Thousand Sons and Death Guard were winners of the point change lottery, and Death Guard got some major buffs in War of the Spider. But I think Chaos as an overall faction, and a soup list is in trouble.
2. GSC
GSC was already kind of a mid-tier list in 8th, and they had a very lackluster Pyschic Awakening to boot. 9th core changes hit Genestealer Cults pretty hard as well. A lot of the weird movement and assault trickery they made use of got cut out of the game. Hits to horde units punished them as well. On top of all that the changes to CP and detachments meant that souping with either Nids or AM is less viable and its harder for them take all the support characters the army needs. If all that wasn’t enough, well they get hit bad by the points increases. Jackals, Aberrants and a bunch of other useful units got major bumps. It all adds up to some rough times in the underhives.
1. Imperial/Chaos Knights
I’ve lumped these two together since they suffer from the same major issues. The one difference between the two is found in points. Imperial Knights got off pretty good with point changes, and might have even seen some stuff go down. Chaos Knights on the other hand got hit harder. In particular they got big point increases for taking dual Avengers or Thermal cannons. Still Knights remain cheap enough that you can still field 4 of the big guys and an Armiger in your list.
Where they got hit was everywhere else. The missions for 9th place a big emphasis on holding objectives, something Knights are not good at. Others, including some secondaries, need you to take actions to complete. Knights can’t even do all the actions as some are limited to infantry. But even when they can take the actions it’s a huge cost, as you might well see 1/4th or 1/3rd of your army taken out of the fight to do it. The normal answer of course is to soup to get some cheap troops. You can still do this, but souping will now cost you CP rather than gaining you any, so it’s not as good an option. Moreover the across the table point bumps mean that its going to cost you more of your limited points to get a useful amount of non-knights in your army. There are some other small changes to, like units being able to see Knights but not be seen in return that hurt. Tied with all the other changes its not great news for the big beasts.
Lets us know what armies you think will suffer the most in 9th, down in the comments!
