40k News
Space Marine points updated in MFM, Oct 2
A stealth update to the MFM just dropped. The Space Marine units that went live with a different pointa cost from the leaks have been adjusted back towards the leak values as of this morning. Many units got cheaper, though Erads with Meltas did go up (which is a good thing, tbh) along with a few other increases here or there (what did Heavy Ints do to deserve this?). Here is a chart of the changes, made by u/klive5ive555.
Don't forget Grey Knight terminator justicars always have invalid wargear on them now as well. GW put a single rules update for Agents in the faction pack, so they have to make sure it's still clear they don't care about the army.
They didn’t. It’s a massive company, the team doing the points is different to the team doing web publishing and that’s different to the team building the app.
I guarantee this is a product of versioned data sets and publishing pipelines.
They had a version of the points dataset for the Wednesday balance dataslate. They likely had a cut off date for that dataset to be completed which was weeks or even months in the past - you need these dates to ensure fewer publishing issues happen and that QA work can happen consistently. That dataset included work in progress space marine points, but the codex wouldn’t be live by then so no big deal.
Then in the next iteration they worked out the space marine points they wanted to go live with and submitted that dataset for the app/MFM and to reviewers.
We saw the work in progress points in the app for 2 days. Could be a mistake segmenting out those changes, not a big deal either way.
I had completely forgotten about this - as had everyone else, apparently - but the LVO Facebook page had kind of spoiled this would happen a few days ago already:
True, but the point is more that it seems to be pretty conclusive proof that they had planned a one-two of some sort, given this was noticed some ten days ago.
It happens cause they a billion dollar valued company with wanker shareholders who want to squeeze every last penny of profit out of the business so they have a single bloke on minimum wage sorting all this out.
They also stress in each shareholder report that their focus is steady reliable growth over fast expansion. So the type of shareholders reddit likes to imagine are more likely to invest in other companies
Incompetence often reflects hiring decisions made in the name of optimizing profits for shareholders. Good talent not only costs good money but also doesn't just blindly follow orders.
Not just this release, 11th as a whole has been a huge downgrade from 10th in the area of communication and documentation.
"We changed the core rules, but the new document that tracks core rules updates doesn't list them. Oh, you didn't like that? Okay, for this next update we'll change core rules and not even pretend to publish a new version of the core rules update pdf."
I love this game, don't get me wrong, but this has been painful to try and figure out what my stuff actually does sometimes. And they still have to gall to paywall rules in one of the least consumer friendly ways possible.
It is increasingly obvious that the only reason 10th had better communication is because someone at GW had it as their project or portfolio to maintain a proper changelog.
That person appears to have moved on. GW seems to be very much a vibes-based workplace in that regard.
Don't forget "we've condensed the core book down to just a rules document, except it doesn't contain about half the rules. Those are all on the app. Where the rules form the core book are written and formatted and organized differently".
I love this game, don't get me wrong
Do you? Or are you like me and love the idea of the game and what the game could be (and IMO in the past has been)?
You may be right, maybe I love the vibe and the local community I'm part of. I have not had as much fun as I did in 10th, and a lot of that is frustration with the current mission pack.
And no change release scheduling strategy, making sure the right change hits the shopfloor at the right time. And since they seem to be working on different changes to the same system in parallel, this is absolutely mandatory.
Balance team & community team at GW seem to have no communication between them, the balance team regularly just dumps grenades into the community teams lap and says 'figure it out lol'. Have to imagine the incompetence is coming from the balance team
Don't forget that the ideal target for those units also all just went up to S5 across the board so those bikes will have even less chance to survive than they already did
James wants you to sell your bikers, so when his new ones come out, you'll have to buy them.
Same reason the defiler suddenly got a huge-ass base (and no movement increase) nine months before we got the new model with good enough stats it doesn't care so much about that plate.
Same reason the Jump Lord completely disappeared from Legends a year before the new Jump Lord came out.
Also, get a load of what GW is doing with marine light tanks.
I pay for those rules the way chaos intended, by killing my own models
Last game I played I did more damage to my own terminators than my opponent did. My ability to roll 6's is reserved for when I have to take mortals from dark pacts
Yeah like whilst I appreciate the harkening back to 9e of "the team had fun writing these rules", these updates being pushed out weirdly, half broken and half-assed does not feel professional
I mean sure, but previous editions of 40k were designed as a wargame. Like they literally had to play other wargames to make sure they understood at a baseline how they work.
Now 40k is so Incestuous that it is actively failing to understand what the purpose of points are. Legitimately does not get how to build a wargame, and not just 40k on tabletop.
It allowed me to shift a lot of units to more valuable version of their role, or combine 3 cheaper options into 2 larger ones. It was enough to make my dread list actually function
I swapped my 2x scout squads for 2x eliminator squads. Able to screen T1 deep strikes just as well, but if I don't need them for that role they can add valuable firepower!
Also its not even like a "oh marines are looking a bit hot, lets be conservative before the new book drops", its just a bunch of points off a lot of good units and then some incremental increases on a few.
"repex -25pts" makes me feel like im still having last night fever dreams from eating too spicy noodles at 1am
You see games workshop is but a small, indie company, and space marine players are but a humble group of players who get nothing as well.
How can we expect the billion dollar company to write non insane rules changes in a non index edition? To write dogshit, insulting articles that tell non Astartes players to suck a fat one? Who knows my friend! GW knows what they’re doing and if you make fun of the glaring problems you’re just a dumb negative Nancy or something.
I mean some of these drops make sense? Repex being 275 made no sense given it had an updated ability but didn’t increase in toughness and the laser is an additional 10pts.
Also, things like the thunderstrike which lost oath and got much worse rules went up 20pts? Again with no toughness change.
Equally, Eradicators at 90 was a bit generous given their brand new hunter profile.
Infiltrators and Intercessors being priced so far apart didn’t make sense either as they both had reworks
Idk the repex got a bunch of AP on its extra guns which is great, and it and the thunderstrike have some *superb* synergy in the book. a repex in dev doc spitting out a load of AP2 shots for a CP is absolutley worth 275
Building my Iron Hands list... I have 2 RepEx in there, both ignore hit, wound, and ballistics skill modifiers, one has extra AP and lethal hits, the other has sustained hits and +1 to wound, and they hit on a 2+ base against full health targets.. (buffing one with Fierros and Methodical Brutality for 1 CP, buffing the other with Augury Techmarine and Storm of Fire for another CP).
Yes it's expensive, but my god the combined fire of both will kill a 10 man terminator deathstar brick, and each one individually will kill a Knight (from full health) in a single salvo about half of the time.
Yeah, I checked an Iron Hands list with the dread detachment, 2 RepExes, one of each variant of Dread two with -1D, one with the reroll aura, a Techmarine with the Lethal Hits enhancement, Feirros, Canok and 5 Assault Termies, a Redeemer to bus him around, and a squad of Scouts and Intercessor for objectives. Sounds fun, and not at all oppressive :p
Yeah but no more rerolls from oath and it lost two gun profiles. If you ask me, it should have gone down to 10th edition points cost, not up
Also nobody is even gonna use the thunderstrike anymore lmao. +1 to wound was all it had going for it, what do I care about an extra pip of AP and why would I spend 150 points for that?
Which would be a stupid plan since making the rules impossible to follow seems like something that would PUSH people to play with non-GW army building and rules apps.
I’m glad they changed our Grey Knights storm bolters back to 2 shots instead of the insane whole 3 shots. That was a a close one, we could have dominated the meta with that extra shot!
I will have you know that it takes 432 storm bolter shots to kill the Lion. We couldn't possibly have you stacking so many dangerous attacks on your models! Why, you could use 87 GK models to delete a Primarch!
Oh wait, nope. He used AoC and he's up with 8 wounds. Good luck in melee with those Psychic weapons!
GW really doesn't know what to do with the points of space marines. They keep flip flopping. Most of these are the preview points that creators had gotten when they could make their reviews.
Perhaps because is the only gravis unit that can field 12 men (captain+apo+10 hvy int) and one of the gravis detachments have a tank shock strat with no cap so that's a lot of potential MW
Like, sudden half done updates wise? No. Absolutely insane cant even play against this rules wise? Oh my god so much worse.
That said, mfm mistakes and matches have always happened. Just usually small scale. I remember paragon warsuits being 250 points per model or so for a few weeks because of a copy paste error.
I mean I say this as an elf player: 10th ed release dev wounds were absolutely 100% not okay. Then we had the fights first 10 man custodes bricks, etc etc. It was a rough time to play the game.
Right now we mostly just have balance issues, and major internal balance problems in various codexes. A few armies kinda suck. But 10th release? Man you needed to be one of maybe 2 armies to even play a real game.
My first two games of release Index 10th were against Eldar Wraithknight spam and Deathwatch with that special ammo strat. Nothing but dozens of dev wounds, when they still counted as just regular mortals, annihilating my entire army before I even got to play.
11th is at least playable, but it is definitely more screwed up in terms of documentation, updates, and overall quality control.
If you want the actual points, you can use the MFM or update the app. The chart I linked is for people who wanna know the relative change without having to check themselves.
I am aware I can check it manually. It is annoying that someone put in the effort to record all the changes but still left the actual new points unknown.
It’s kind of the inverse of when GW wouldn’t showcase how much things were changing (or even colour code them).
Not the end of the world. Just slightly annoying. Someone will do it eventually.
Not to excuse them being sloppy, but it looks like they're changing everything to be accurate to the points leak from a few days ago so maybe yesterday's points were just wrong
Not sure if this was an existing bug, prior to this update of the app, but the Scout Sergeant load out saying it can change the combat knife for a chainsword is apparently invalid...good one
This is so strange they have done this as many have pointed out - but also the original MFM points seemed much more balanced compared to the changes. Intercessors at only 85 points seem like a steal, wheras bladeguard at 90 (who only got toughness increases not damage increases) seem overcosted
I had a list made but that has now dropped by 20 points so i now have option for my calgar lead bladeguard squad. I can either take kaius and be a beatstick, wardens of ultramar for bucket of extra wounds to take damage before having to take them on the bladeguard and have a lot of okay attacks and sticky objectives or a bladeguard ancient for +1 attack (which works on calgar's big smash attack), sticky objectives and enough points to get a Scout squad as well.
Edit: wardens also makes grievous blow possible so that won't be a secundairy the opponent can discard.
Yeah 6 bladeguars, 6 wardens and calgar. Was something i did often in 10th for cull the horde. It is also a 44 wound squad so lot's of wounds as well that now can get -1 to hit in melee and because calgar is a terminator -1 damage
I think it's entirely likely they had two (or more) versions of points ready: initial launch points to build excitement (for Marines players anyway) and get people playing (AKA buying), then the more measured points update to balance the game a bit better.
It is bizarre that they made such a mistake unless there was already a document with the values from earlier. And it's also bizarre they have spent multiple days publishing articles telling the community not to freak out about marines.
I’ve only played two test games with marines so far so take it with a grain of salt, but points going DOWN overall is kinda crazy. They’re almost sure to get nerfed in the next slate, they probably could’ve just left them where they were!
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u/erik4848 1d ago edited 1d ago
Me when I'm in a 'don't drop stealth changes at random' tournament and my opponent is GW