Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Are You Nerf-Happy or Nerf-Sad About Leagues of Votann?
Goatboy here and the winter of Space Dwarf doom has been vanquished. But was it a good nerf, or a bad nerf?
Last week GW did an emergency update to a codex/army that isn’t fully released yet. This is a BIG DEAL and the first time GW has done this sort of thing. I feel like it was needed but maybe wasn’t nearly as mean as it could have been. I of course also think there are currently three other armies that need this sort of attention too – but I’ve talked about that a ton already so let’s just concentrate on the dwarves.
What Was the Problem?
First of all the initial rules peek at the Leagues of Votann rules were pretty nutty. In fact it was probably one of the most damaging armies out there when they got you in their sights. Everything they did worked to amplify their damage with either tons of Mortal wounds, splash laser burns, and just sheer brutality. Everything in the book felt pushed and hearing this was playtested with some of the other “dreaded” books out there from a year back makes a lot more sense. In a chainsaw fight it is the guy with a laser cannon that wins.
Of course in a lot of ways the balance of this book – in just how they played to win the game – was that they couldn’t hit 100 mission points easily. I don’t think that is much balance as the actual trick of it is to make them effective but fun to play against. This armies did not seem to do either very well. Sure rolling dice and saying you take X amount of damage without a save is fun for those psychopaths that love to ignore your rules in the game. It just meant this book was going to bully a lot of armies out of the middle and maybe reach the top a few times. That is if a Sisters or Necrons player slipped and the Tyranids player wasn’t aggressive enough.
Meet the New Post-FAQ Votann
Between the point hikes and the change in how they proc’d auto wounds it feels like the army is seriously capped at the kneecaps. Does this mean they won’t be good? Well probably not quite as good. But they can still force thru a lot of damage – it is just a lot of how you would build the army will change. The points are really rough too as a lot of things felt like they were too high – especially as compared to some of the good stuff now. It makes me think will see a lot more point hikes coming in the future Designing the game to be smaller on the tabl top might be a good way for GW to help keep it balanced a bit more.
With the changes to Judgement Tokens usage I think they should have thrown the whole auto-wound thing out the window and just went to a whole different rule. Something tells me maybe procing extra hits might have been the better option. As you get Judged the more hits become available to the Votann player. You get exploding hits and start to really push the ability to do damage with just more hits – not causing more death on just a 6. It also means the proc with a 6 rule still becomes relevant as well as pushing to get more Judgement tokens on things. It probably means adjusting the amount of shots things get – but the points hike seems to do just that by letting less on the table.
The Votann Nerf Makes Them “Fit” 40K More
Would it be powerful? Yes but removing the dice balancing of dice rolling out of a mechanic was always a bad idea (auto wounding) and now you replace it just with more hits. It also means toughness still matters, negatives to wound still matter, and anything else that effects that roll. It does mean a lot more hits but more hits feels better then just saying you take X damage after rolling your hit roll.
The updated rules also mean the Leagues of Votann still fits into what is considered ok for the game. There are a ton of exploding 6 abilities and while having an army wide one might see powerful (Chaos Space Marines get different versions on diff turns) it is locked into having Judgement Tokens on you. Heck you could just make it where they have to burn Judgement tokens to get it – setting up an extra CP like thing that makes the player have to think if it is worth it for the unit etc.
The Verdict
Am I happy it got nerfed before it even came out? Sure, as it was gonna be a rough season and it also saves me from having to paint some for a few clients. Does it suck it hits a new army with cool models? Sure, but at least this was done before everyone ran around trying to build the most min-maxed broken list.
~The Ancestors Are Watching!
