Warhammer 40K: Can We Talk About The Latest Metawatch
After stewing on the data for a bit let’s talk shop about the health of the meta in Warhammer 40,000.
Earlier this week Games Workshop dropped the data of the win rates for Warhammer 40,000: 10th Edition in their Metawatch. At the top of the pile there wasn’t a whole lot of surprise. But the bottom of the barrel was a little surprising.
Starting With The Top
I don’t want to spend too much time on the high end. I think most folks know that Aeldari are a problem and the Genestealer Cults have the tools to perform very well in 10th Edition. Imperial Knights are still using the new Towering rules to their advantage and the Custodes aren’t soooo far out of line at the top that they need a ton of tweaks. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some points increases for all of these armies. But clearly the Aeldari and GSC might need a harder look at some of their core abilities and why they work (perhaps) too well in 10th.
I highly recommend you watch the Metawatch video this week. It’s got a lot of really good insight on the thought process and how the game designers really are thinking about a lot of the same issues we’ve seen discussions about game balance pop up. It’s not as simple as just “remove” the top and go — that’s got consequences down the line and you’ll end up with basically the same issues but with a different perpetrator.
One thing to note is that I’m not sure if this dataset is just the raw numbers of if GW normalizes for the mirror matches. Because when you have anyone over a 50% win rate, those mirror match-ups are going to pull the average down. Anyhow, let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum…
The Bottom Of The Barrel Is…Crowded
This is the issue that really concerns me about 40k right now. There are 11 armies in the “Goldilocks Zone” of win rate — that’s the 45-55% spot. There’s also 11 that are below the 45% win rate cut off. That’s not good. And five of those armies are at 40% or lower. Now, I know that the edition is new and players are still figuring things out but this isn’t good. The game did change but did it change drastically enough that the top is SO high up there and the bottom of the batch is almost as broad as the middle? Apparently!
Oh I’m sorry are we breaking your game?
It might be too late to go back and change the core rules for 10th. And frankly, it’s still entirely too early to do that anyhow. What’s worrying is that we’re two months in and we still haven’t gotten a new codex. We know it’s Tyranids and we know it’s on the way. But geez…what’s the timeline on updates here? I get that GW just launched the new edition and maybe they are trying to take a step back and let the dust settle a bit. I’m hoping they have some good plans in place to quickly jump in and correct corse.
I don’t know if rapid fire codexes will fix the problem or just create more of a “haves vs the have-nots” situation either. I think there’s probably a lot of other factors that are contributing to the disparity in the game and why we have such a huge portion of the games armies struggling in 10th.
Again, I think one huge factor here is the core game has changed. While the basics are the same it’s the other things like the missions and objectives that have really shifted the meta. An army that might have been great at holding objectives last edition might not be fast enough to score the new ones. Maybe the Leviathan Missions are a tad too difficult for the bottom of the barrel to accomplish.
With the new mission deployments leaning much heavier on games played “long ways” players are having to figure out how to get across the board and its clearly having an impact. Ironically, the board length is punishing those static gunline armies almost as much as the close combat armies. The 40k boards are meant to be played with a fair amount of cover and standing still means you can’t get line of sight or take those hard to reach objectives. Conversely, if you’re an army that relies heavily on pressing the melee attack, getting across the length of the board has gotten a lot harder to do safely.
Don’t Hate The Player…
I think it’s a good time to look at the win rate data and the game holistically. Yes, there are some armies at the top that have really strong army rules. But it’s telling that there might be some core game elements that are causing SO MANY armies to be at the bottom. When your bottom is the same size as the “middle” (aka the armies in the Goldilocks Zone) you’ve got bigger issues than just the army rules and point balance. There’s some part of the core game that these armies aren’t able to compete in and that might be a bigger culprit than you think.
What do you think? Are the top armies just so oppressive they caused almost 1/2 the armies in the game to be under 45% win rates? Or do you think there’s something wrong with the core rules/missions that causing this disparity?
