Warhammer 40K: New March Dataslate & Points Reaction – Look Who Got Nerfed!
Goatboy here and wow is that an interesting Warhammer 40K Balance Dataslate update. GW was swinging the nerfbat really hard this time.
While it isn’t as huge as previous Dataslate adjustments, this update does a lot of fixing on some of the current “bad” guys in the meta right now. I don’t think it went as far as we wanted it on one particular army but will talk a bit about it in the end. GW gave us a nice gift of doing a Dataslate update, Points update, Daemon Index, and a few detachments to help reset the Meta before a slew of major events. I will talk about the Detachments later this week so today is a look over the Dataslate and points. Overall I am pretty happy with these changes as they nicely tweak some things that gave a kind of fell bad feeling when throwing down against them on the table top. It again points to if you found something abusable in the game think twice about investing as much into it as those models might not be viable in a few weeks time.
Legion of Excess Detachment – NERFED!
Big hits are nerfs to a few of the problem armies right now. The current Slaanesh Daemon detachment – Legion of Excess – was a pretty brutal list to face on the tabletop. They have a bunch of wins lately and are a very oppressive army to try and deal with. They are fast, get there, and wreck you quickly. There are three prongs to this nerf and each are pretty back breaking. The first was changes to the Datasheets for units in the army with removal of Feel No Pain on Keeper of Secrets and removal of the Chariot options in Slaanesh. Then there were nerfs to the Army rule by removing full rerolls and changing it to reroll 1’s to hit and 1’s to wound. Finally they shifted some of the Stratagems to remove some of the “wound” shifting abilities in Thieves of Pain and making it a lot less oppressive. All of this should tone down the army and I expect to really push it out of events as a powerful choice.
Bridgehead Detachment – NERFED
The next nerf was to Bridgehead detachment from Astra Militarum with two specific hits to the army. Their army rules changed in the Dataslate to only get a +1 to the hit roll when they come down from reserves or get out of a transport. Their Firing Hot Stratagem changed from 1 CP to 2 CP and needs the unit to be within 12” to use it. They also had their points increased and saw a lot of armies have to find ways to remove a 100+ points from their current build. This all will shift the army from being so oppressive when they come down and fill your full of plasma.
“Bloodless Angels” – NERFED
The next nerf to a well used army is the “Bloodless Angels” we have seen showing up. These are Marine builds that use the Liberator Assault Group detachment for Blood Angels and make sure to not pick any units with the Blood Angels keyword. This currently activates the upgraded Oath ability and the Dataslate shuts that door down completely. This is pretty big and helps shore up that little loophole. On top of that they shifted some of the rules for some of the units to help cut some of the weird stuff. The Phobos Armored Lt can no longer come from Deepstrike and move “d6” inches towards the enemy to get a closer charge. Uriel also has a shift that he can no longer give any Adeptus Astartes Infantry unit deep strike and instead only gives it to Phobos, Gravis, or Tacticus units instead of the Centurion Devastator units it was giving it to in the past.
Taktikal Brigade – NERFED
Finally Taktikal Brigade got an update as well. They changed the ability to take two Taktikal rules and just made it where you only can take one per unit. They also shifted the Ld test to happening all the time and a failure just gives you a mortal wound. It dampens the effects of this detachment but when you see the new Ork one you will question why even take this old fashioned one when More Dakka! Is just Mo’ Betta.
“I’m so happy I could just DIE!”
Ynarri Shenaigans Remain
The one thing they didn’t talk about is the whole Ynarri and Lethal Intent issues. It seems the Ynarri can move pretty far and while they hit Aeldari in the point section I wonder when they will limit some of the Intent’s rules of moving more than 6”. Will see as they continue to gather data and hit them with another change at some point. That would be the final army to really look at but will see.
Faction Odds & Ends
The Adeptus Sororitas had a nice change to their Faith Dice pool in they now get a Faith Roll for each unit that dies. This lets you got a little bit MSU to try and gain as many dice as you can. The Custodes got hits in all the big Dreadnought bodies to help keep their Solar detachment a bit down as they feel like a bit of Gate Keeper right now. Both Knight armies got a nice drop in their Tyrant and Castellan/Valiant variants which is interesting as it might show up as a nice “backfield” bully. Leagues of Votann also saw their index detachment rule now becomes the Army main rule giving Judgement counters to 2 units.
Overall it is a nice update with a few targeted tweaks, a lot of nice shifts in the points, and a hopeful look to the future as everything balances out. It is really nice to see events won by all sorts of things which is awesome. Heck you saw that Daemon Princes went down in a lot of armies so I am so ready for whatever comes out for the bad guys in the future.
Happy gaming, and roll more 6s!
