Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: How to Fix the Power Armies In No Time
Goatboy here with quick and dirty fixes GW could do in 1 day to get 40K’s power armies back on the straight and narrow.
We had an FAQ this week it was lacking in some of the balance thoughts we all had. Now it did call out some things and fix a ton of stuff (Firing Decks for everyone!). But it still felt like we are going to be in for a long few months of asking Eldar players if they want to swap that dice to a 6 again. So much strategy in just wrecking your face with mortals right?
Anyway, let’s do a little bit of brainstorming on the ways I might balance the game a bit. Personally I feel with some very succinct targeted rules changes, updates to points, and actual army updates would easily shift the game into a much more stable and probably enjoyable format for those not wanting to play the top 2 armies of doom and destruction. The goal here to to stop the bleeding and leave the elaborate rules updates for future codexes.
Of course this isn’t attacking some of the bottom lists – but I will leave that for another article later this week. I promise it won’t be a Chaos army again this time and instead looking at something else. I got some thoughts but we can talk about that later this week.
Quick Fixing Aeldari
Ok let’s talk about first things I would change on that Eldar front. The big shift I would start with is a change to the Fate Dice system. I personally kind of hate the Fate Dice system as any method to “guarantee” a success creates a rather bad game experience. The whole point of the game is the chance to fail vs succeed and the drive to try to get that to happen. Removing that – especially with something as devastating as a pile of Mortal wounds – hurts how the game plays and how people interact.
So with that – let’s just cut the Fate dice down to 6 for 2000 point games and 4 for smaller games. This would limit some of the ability to shift the outcome of the game but still give them some chances to “push” fate down your throat. Then with that shift I would also make any of the Fate dice changes become modified successes – thus not activating Critical hits when shifting the dice to it. This would help curtail the “oops” I guess you take a pile of Mortal wounds we are currently dealing with and still leave the ability to always “succeed” etc.
I think with these two and moderate point shifts (FW stuff needs to go up as well as some of the other high damage options like Fire Prisms) we would then have an army that still works as intended just tones down the damage curve enough for the other armies to survive. Heck, it might also shift how the army plays into other stuff within the very deep index which could be interesting.
Quick Fixing GSC
From there, we go to the other big bad army on the block and one of the things that took the bigger hit in the FAQ – the Genestealer Cults. The whole one-use weapons coming back interaction is a weird one as I feel the FAQ is pretty locked in that it is an identical unit. But the question comes in is the unit identical at the time of army creation or at the time of death on the battlefield. That is where I am wondering what GW wants will leave that one alone.
I see really one true targeted change I would do to allow the army to “function” the same but at least feel fair and it would be shift away from the Auto Battleline coming back option. There are a few thoughts on this. I propose a simple blanket – every unit gets a chance to come back on a 4+ . If you want a teensy bit more complexity, allow Battleline units to come back on 3+, and other units on a 4+.
Personally I would probably just start with the simple idea that any roll of a 1 would always be a fail and go from there. It is probably better to say on a 3+ for Battleline but at least giving it a chance to fail is important to again – make it feel like a game of chance. I would do this shift and then look at shifting some points to ensure less Battleline units on the tabletop.
But how do you correctly cost a unit that could back to live 2-3 times in a game correctly? Do you double each of the costs of the unit? Do you just add 25% if you have a chance to let the unit not show up? Do you make sure all the one-use options are gone so while a unit may come back it is still just a crappy unit of Lasgun Jabronis?
Quick Fixing Adeptus Custodes
Next up we see the Cusdoes Golden gods of doom and I feel the real way to clean them up is just with a quick and dirty point adjustment, say 15% increase across the board. I could see some tweaks to their overall Battleline setups and then we need to look at their Imperial Agent backing that helps let them go all in on the Golden Wall and still have backfields protected a bit. This of course is the easier way to do this and something I am sure will see in the next points update in a few months.
Nixing Towering
Finally, I think the last thing to fix in all of this is to really look at Towering, discuss why we have it, and then – remove the rule from the game altogether. Knights are already tough. Removing some of their ability to shoot you all across the field would let armies utilize terrain more and let Knight armies have to move around the table. I understand why the rule is there and I personally don’t want to have knights lose some of the offensive abilities. I just think we need to let all units interact with terrain the same way. It just makes it easier from a new player standpoint and gameplay standpoint.
So what do you think? Do you think these quick fixes would balance out the top a bit more and let some of the middle challenge those top armies?
Did I go far enough with my thoughts?
