Friday, May 12, 2023

40K Friday - Lots of Faction Previews

 


Well we've had a couple of weeks of faction notes for 10th edition 40K and one thing that holds true with these kinds of things is that every faction looks at them and starts to talk about nerfs, negative changes, and how GW hates them. Every. Single. Time. 

Link is here - scroll down if you're interested.

I still remember last edition how people were complaining on the Dark City about how the new Dark Eldar codex was terrible and GW obviously hated them a few weeks after it released even as they were winning their first tournaments with what was widely considered to be a drastically overpowered codex. 

Space marine players were fairly even-keeled about it this time but so far I've seen Necron players assuming the worst about Resurrection Protocols, Chaos Marine players griping about Dark Pact hurting their units, Guard players complaining about the Battle Cannon's AP reduction, Votann complaining about almost all of the changes to their army -despite going to Toughness 5 - and just a notable level of saltiness after each reveal. 

I just don't feel this way. Sure, there are a lot of changes to these forces but it IS a new edition. That's what that means! Especially in a "full reset" edition like this! The general character of an army rarely changes outside of the first couple of editions where they appear - that's where the Votann are now so I am not shocked they are getting some adjustments, really more than most of the other armies we have seen. Without full context of the rules it's generally a bad idea to see changes as all negative but that doesn't stop people.  


The only times I have really gotten annoyed with these kinds of changes are:

  1. 3rd edition gave space marine tactical squads both weapons if they took "more than 5" instead of needing the full 10. This gave rise to the 6-man las/plas squad as a standard. Then for 4th edition they changed it back and my Crimson Fists had to be rejiggered after I had built them around this concept.
  2. Various edition including 9th have messed with ork morale in some really bad ways. They hit a solid, playable standard with the Late 4th/but mostly 5th edition codex Mob Rule where leadership effectively was equal to the number of orks in the squad with mobs of up to 30 boyz. It was thematic as orks were basically unbreakable until most of them were gone at which time they got fairly easy to shatter. This last edition broke it once again to where most ork players were finding ways to use smaller mobz and much of the flavor was lost. Hopefully the new game will fix it.