Warhammer 40K: Balance Dataslate Arrives
Games Workshop has released the Balance Dataslate for Warhammer 40,000 and it’s not a huge shock to see which armies are getting changes.
Two weeks ago we got a look at the Metawatch for 40k and that gave us a pretty good idea where things were sitting. Today, we’ve got a new Balance Dataslate along with some slight updates to the current win rates of the armies.
“The Balance Dataslate has been a feature of the Design Studio’s ongoing support for Warhammer 40,000 for almost a year. It has allowed us to influence balance with new abilities for units and factions, amended characteristic profiles, and new or removed keywords. Our changes are informed by data – so here is the latest round of win rate information from Matched Play that has helped shape the latest Balance Dataslate.”
Warhammer 40,000 Balance Dataslate – October 2022 – Download Here
Current Win Rates
Balance Update Summary
Games Workshop goes into more details as to why these changes happened but above you can see the summary of the changes. For the most part these changes do make sense. We’ll have to wait and see if they corral the outliers and bring them more inline with the rest of the armies.
As a side note, the Necrons did get a change even though they were sitting within the expected win rate range. Their change was really more of a cleaning-up of an “unwanted rules interaction” — basically they didn’t think that Overlords should be able to give orders to the Silent King for some reason.
And speaking of Robots…the Adeptus Mechanicus got another important change: All previous Balance Dataslate updates have been removed. That’s right Ad Mech players the gloves that were placed on you by previous Dataslates have been removed. Good luck re-breaking your army!
Another change that I’m curious about is the update to the Adeptus Astartes (Space Marine) secondary Shock Tactics. It’s now a 4 VP boon if they manage to take and hold an objective that was previously held by their opponents. GW’s right in that Secondary Objectives can be the key to winning games. Will this one change be enough to help the Space Marines score more wins? It’s not going to hurt!
As for the Tyranids and Harlequins they are both getting some (warranted) nerfs. Will their respective changes be enough to curb their win rates? I think the idea for the Tyranids is to push players away from Hive Fleet Leviathan and to try other relics besides the Reaper of Obliterax. I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen now…but it could help make other options look a bit more appealing. And Harlequin players will have to play a tad more conservative with their Starweavers.
If you’re curious about the rest of the changes you can download the Balance Dataslate and read them all. The meta should shift — the question is by how much?
What do you think of these changes? Do you think they are good enough to correct these outliers?
