Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: New Balance Dataslate Winners and Losers
Goatboy here and we finally got a new 40k Balance Dataslate this week. Here’s what you need to care about.
Friday I will talk about the new Necron Army of Renown but today it is all about the dataslate update we got. Or the Dataslate tiny appetizer we got is more like it. I am happy we got something and the overall updates were good I just felt like it wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger for a more balanced 40k. We’ll talk about it more as I go into it at the end but let’s go over the changes.
Ad Mech
This isn’t in any particular order as I feel the biggest change is the Ad Mech getting all the dataslate updates wiped clean. This is a pretty interesting thing as it had things in there we once thought were too good but now it might not be nearly as much of a problem as before. I think Ad Mech is one of those armies that “player” skill rolling with them defines how good or bad they are. They are also heavily influenced by the lack of scoring options they have to allow them to catch up to the other problems in the current meta. We’ll see if we have some wave of Ad Mech that comes down to ruin or day. But I get the feeling the ship for that army has sailed a bit as no one really wants to try and get all those things together.
The two things that were wiped away is that Solar Blessing (Lucius) Dogma now stacks with light cover again when getting hit by damage 1 attacks. Also, Enriched Rounds again auto wound on a 4+. We will see how much the Auto Wound stuff will hurt as we know that sort of rule is tricky but will have to see. The stacking cover option is something everyone else uses right now to. So it will make them tougher. But they’ll still most likely will fall to those pesky Sisters of Battle or Necrons that can just wrack up their score by not giving a crap.
Tyranids
The next one is probably the one will see affect games the most in the nerfing of two Tyranid things. First the Synaptic Control trait no longer works for non-monster units. This saves us from a wave of 27+ Warrior armies that have been showing up as of late. It pushes the army into some of the other Hive Fleets which will help a bit with diversity. I feel for those who bought a ton of warriors to watch their wave of slightly smaller brain monsters get worse. The next nerf is on the Reaper of Obliterax which caps its mortal wound output to 3 wounds per phase – which is a good thing. It will help tone it down a bit but the army is still really rough and I think it should have gone a bit farther – especially on Harpies and some of the other mortal wound nonsense.
Harlequins
Harlies got hit next with a simple change to making the Light Saedath passengers not count as stationary when riding in a Star Weaver. This is a simple one and probably keeps some of the jump on you and wreck your army down. But I don’t think it will hit the army too much. Warrior Spam is now less of a thing so while the army can’t do as much – it can still do things to win the game by scoring points like it was their job.
Necrons
Necrons got a pretty big hit with Character Vehicles losing the CORE keyword. This removes the reanimation nonsense we have seen in some events and some of the ability to score Ancient Machineries. This is a good change and most likely they needed to look at some other stuff just not having core. Like Scarabs and other things. I think this change is good and while I wanted more it still is helpful to balance the game a bit more.
Space Marines
The final one is on the Space Marine front with a change to their secondary Shock Tactics which allows the scoring of it for 4 VP. It seems to just help the Marine armies that were already doing alright. While cool it isn’t enough to really jump-start them it feels like. The army needs a real rework from the top down and a better idea of what they need to be in the game. As the big beginner army they just need some work to make them feel and play like the fluff.
The Meta Verdict
Overall I am thankful for the changes but really wanted more. Sadly the majority of the issues right now is really in how the armies score with their secondaries. I was really hoping we would move back the ability to take more than one faction-based Secondary. As well as some tweaks to some of the “too” easy ones we have some armies dominating with. Sisters are going to be a nightmare to play against when rolling into a strong player. The Sororitas’ plan to score points doesn’t really care about what you do. This is still the same for Necrons and Harlies as their options are just better than all the ones other armies have.
I will be playing these new rules next week when I head over to Kansas City for the GW GT there. I plan in piloting my Creations of Bile army with a ton of Possessed and other fat CSM options to try and dominate the board. Or at least just have a good time after the last few weeks of kids, work, and more kids stuff.
Happy gaming!
