Warhammer 40K: Eldar Are Out of Control
The Aeldari are oppressing Warhammer 40K’s new meta. Something must be done.
Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition is still pretty new. It’s already given us a lot to talk about, with some initial issues popping up. Even as a relatively new edition, it’s already got a pretty well-established meta with a number of major events taking place. One thing that is super clear is that a handful of armies, in particular Eldar are taking over and causing major issues. Lets take a look at why.
Eldar Take An Early Lead
Eldar really came out of the gate in 10th Edition swinging. I’m saying Eldar here because despite there being other things in the Index, it’s really the classic Eldar army that is being represented here. It was clear to anyone with eyes that they were looking really strong at the start of the edition. However, it took a bit for it to sink in just how strong they were. Their ability to manipulate lots of dice with Strands of Fate was an over-the-top rule. But it wasn’t that alone. The army just has some crazy good units and rocks a lot of Devastating Wound weapons. Coupling this with fate dice was simply overpowering design-wise. The Aeldari quickly started to take over in the meta.
Double Nerfs
In less than two months, Eldar have already seen two rounds of nerfs. The first came before the game was even really out, changing the unit sizes of some units. A more substantial nerf came later with point increases and a much-needed change that limited Strands of Fate. A lot of people hoped that this would tone them done. It did not.
Eldar Keep Winning
So did the dual nerfs work? Well no. The first round of nerfs, to unit sizes, came out before we had any real numbers on how well Eldar players were doing. With it, they were still looking at around a 70% win rate at events. Well, what about the 2nd bigger nerf? Again, this didn’t really hurt them. According to some find folks who track these stats Eldar are still rocking a nice 69%-71% win rate if you don’t include mirror matches. It seems that nerf took them down about one or two percentage points. For comparison Death Gaurd and Drukhari are both looking at a 31% rate. Less than half of Eldar. That is just not very balanced.
It’s Bad When A Handful Of Armies Dominate The Game
The nerf did let a couple of other armies come up in the rankings. GSC, another really strong faction are pretty close to Eldar in terms of win rate clocking in at 69% this last weekend. Imperial Knights and Custodes have also taken a solid place winning some big events – even if their win rate is only in the mid 50%s! Looking at the history of 40K 10th Edition so far, a short history to be fair, that’s about it. These four armies are heavily dominating the meta with Eldar and GSC being far ahead of even their two main contenders. Simply put, this isn’t good for the game.
The game is showing major major signs of imbalance right now. Some armies have a win rate that is more than twice that of other armies. This isn’t a case of a few points where most armies hover around 50%. This is a case of a couple armies being around 70% and several being in the 30%s and 40%. It’s effectively saying don’t bother playing half the armies in the game right now. Even worse a lot of these armies aren’t going to see major changes, i.e. getting new books, for quite some time. Sure maybe Marines or Nids will get super-powered and take the top spot, but that’s not actually better. What’s needed are some major nerfs to the game’s power armies. So far the ones we’ve gotten just haven’t done the trick.
More on that front soon.
Let us know what you think about the state of the meta, down in the comments!
