Look back before you look forwards (edition changes)

[Sexiest_hero]

I agree with the OP!

[The bearded one]

OH hahaha

You make it easy.

Here's the State Trooper Line for you:

"Dwarves were brought into line with 8th edition/ This is what a halberdiers, sry dwarven warrior should cost compared to a skeleton / Greatweapon spam was stupid and I'm glad it was nerfed because people will still field nothing but halberdier/WP ...sry Longbeard hordes with greatweapons anyway etc etc"

Anyways. The option will probably go away. After all..all players have gw troops. Time for GW to sell dwarves....with spears probably

Making the basic core trooper of the dwarf army comparable to the cost of chaos warriors would start making sense if they also got characters that grant hatred and buffchariots. 12-13 points for the mainstay core choice? That's more expensive than the likes of graveguard and black orcs.

by the way, longbeards with great weapons (currently 13pts per model) are neglected in favour of hammerers, who are cheaper and stubborn.

[Balerion]

Making the basic core trooper of the dwarf army comparable to the cost of chaos warriors would start making sense if they also got characters that grant hatred and buffchariots. 12-13 points for the mainstay core choice? That's more expensive than the likes of graveguard and black orcs.

I haven't seen any convincing proof that units are priced according to the list-specific buffs they can receive. A lot of people brought up that idea in the recent Empire discussions, but it was never founded on anything concrete. Interestingly, the people buying into that idea seemed to be an equal mix of those claiming it made the Empire book solid and balanced, and those saying it made the book weak and unbalanced (which drains the credibility of the concept even further, imo).

I had a post in the closed Empire rumour thread breaking down the points costs of State Troops (which were the main unit used as an example for the idea of buff-based pricing) where I tried to show that they are priced perfectly fairly based simply on their statline and equipment. Which is, I hope, the way Dwarfs will be priced.

[The bearded one]

Which is, I hope, the way Dwarfs will be priced.

What way would the cost be in that view? Up, down, or the same?

Comparing dwarfs to statetroops would be an awkward exercise due to the great differences between T3 and T4, but there are units with comparable abilities in other 8th edition books, such as the mentioned graveguard and blacks orcs, who are both T4, armed with heavy armour, and able to bear great weapons. Certainly if dwarf warriors got to 12'ish points, either the pointcost or the abilities of many units have to reexamined. Does a 15pt chaos warrior make sense if a dwarf warrior is 12? Is the pointcost of most infantry in the game going to go up? Or is it simply Cruddace' armybook? Comparing units to 7th edition units does not hold water if the entire pricing policy is changing, but there is quite some divergence in pricing within the 8th edition books as well, giving a rather schizophrenic image. Surely the 7pt orc boy (7 with a shield, right? Or was it 6?) is quite superior to the 7pt swordsman? At least skeletons and statetroops are priced rather fairly in comparison to eachother.

[Malorian]

I haven't seen any convincing proof that units are priced according to the list-specific buffs they can receive. A lot of people brought up that idea in the recent Empire discussions, but it was never founded on anything concrete.

So what, you mean Crudace himself didn't come in and make it official?

Although no one outside of the development team can prove it, you would think as many factors as possible would go into the point cost of a unit (statline, weapon options, role in the army, synergies with items/characters/magic, and even what they want to sell more of).

Although this is wrong you must agree your approach could be equally wrong.

[Balerion]

So what, you mean Crudace himself didn't come in and make it official?

Although no one outside of the development team can prove it, you would think as many factors as possible would go into the point cost of a unit (statline, weapon options, role in the army, synergies with items/characters/magic, and even what they want to sell more of).

Although this is wrong you must agree your approach could be equally wrong.

It seems like an Occam's Razor situation to me. Factoring in buffs, magic lores, supporting units, etc. would mean that the designers are either getting into some insanely complex territory ("4 points for the statline... +1 point for access to the Lore of Beasts... -0.75 points for not having access to the Lore of Light... +2.5 points for having access to a 250 support unit in the rare section... -0.25 for not having any support choices in the special section, etc."), which is clearly giving them too much credit, or that they're just flubbing it ("these guys have good leaders so throw another point on every infantry model").

Until there is evidence to the contrary it's far more reasonable to assume that they're pricing things according to the intuitive standard for doing so, which is a straightforward assessment of their inbuilt value. Obviously this will sometimes relate to buff-related stuff, if it's pervasive enough. For example, part of a Zombie's inbuilt value is that it can be raised. But none of that inbuilt value derives from the fact that The Withering might be cast on their enemy because Vampires can access the Lore of Shadow.

[The bearded one]

To be fair, counting magic buffs in pointcosts would be odd, because you need to get the spells off, and you can be hexed by your opponent. What empire now has is a significant load of passive buffs, for a very low cost really. Put down a wagon or a warriorpriest, and it works. It simply does. To be honest, I think it's just due to cruddace's book and not really due to a long term designstrategy. Why would a swordsman be 7 points, while a goblin with light armour and shield is 3.5?

[Petey]

You're all free to your opinions. All I know is if I go back to my video on how 7th ed empire did in the 8th ed rules, and then compare to my new video on the 8th ed empire book, it seems clear that everything that got a vast improvement was corrected.

The same goes for orcs, tomb kings, and vampire counts. Not so much ogres, but then again they weren't overly effected by the 8th ed rule book.

If 8th ed threw something out of whack, it was fixed with the new army book.

You can disagree, but for my part I'm willing to bet that when the new Bret book comes out either the trebucket will decrease in str or the point cost will go up, not because the writer just decided to change it but rather that 8th ed changed it to something it wasn't intended to be.

Oh, on that part I agree. I would just call those mistakes and abuses. "Vast Improvement" is a generous term that to me implies something they wanted to fix. The things you're talking about are, in point of order, oversights and bugs that they need to repair because they moved to a different system. I don't think they wanted the templates to everything all the time. I don't think they wanted people to have easy access to additional dispel and casting dice (sorry DE and DoC).

Everyone calling these things nerfs just annoys me. It's not a nerf if it's broken in the first place. Nerfing is when something is made ineffective and not dangerous (just like the Nerf toys). All the rules we ve seen changing have been on the same standard and brought to an intended level, and that level isn't weak.

[Havock]

Making the basic core trooper of the dwarf army comparable to the cost of chaos warriors would start making sense if they also got characters that grant hatred and buffchariots. 12-13 points for the mainstay core choice? That's more expensive than the likes of graveguard and black orcs.

by the way, longbeards with great weapons (currently 13pts per model) are neglected in favour of hammerers, who are cheaper and stubborn.

Agreed, but consider that with high Leadership and good shooting support you can expect to pay a premium for such effective units (that or chaos warriors get a discount because they have relatively limited support). 13 points is a bit much. I personally would be in favour of bumping up dorf initiative. Nowhere in the fluff does it state that they are 'slow' in that regard and their, ehem, impaired mobility is already represented by their M3 and -1 charge etc.

[Balerion]

Why would a swordsman be 7 points, while a goblin with light armour and shield is 3.5?

+2 WS
+1 I
+1 Ld
Detachments vs. Animosity + Fear Elves

[Urgat]

Oh no! My dwarfs are doomed! :O

Lol, that made me laugh

[Grimdesign]

Everyone calling these things nerfs just annoys me. It's not a nerf if it's broken in the first place. Nerfing is when something is made ineffective and not dangerous (just like the Nerf toys). All the rules we ve seen changing have been on the same standard and brought to an intended level, and that level isn't weak.

The confusion lies within the community the term is presented in. The mmo community (the largest originators and users of the term) use it to mean exactly what you said it doesn't. It can be overpowered, unbalanced and unreasonable but "nerfing" it to balance it, is still nerfing it.

Other communities probably have their own variation of the term or use for the term.

[Malorian]

I was sad when I lost my spirit totem, but it makes sense with the new limited and random powerdice. So tot does it make sense that empire can't guarentee 12 dispel dice each turn. It's not a nerf, it's bringing things back into line.

I was sad when common orcs went up in cost and were inferior to savages, but it makes sense when you keep in mind they wanted to sell off their brand new savage orc boxes. This is a nerf.

[Haravikk]

Why do people seem to think that Dwarfs have become so much more powerful in 8th? Before 8th it was more difficult to run a combat oriented army, particularly with Great Weapons since the casualties meant you'd never get to attack, meanwhile gun lines were obscenely powerful. 8th nerfed the Dwarf gun line and made it easier for Dwarfs to get into combat without an Anvil of Doom. Personally I think the power level of Dwarfs right now is pretty good, their unit selection is just really boring and several war machines were crippled; looking forwards I'd expect Dwarf costs to remain about the same, with less, more expensive upgrades for war machines (since Grudge Throwers are currently a bit too powerful when upgraded).

I'd only see the Dwarf infantry costs going up if they get more options to bolster them, but even so a few would probably remain the same anyway as they're currently a little over-costed. Ironbreakers for example, and Slayers.


Anyway, Dwarfs are fine at the moment anyway, if GW are really determined to fix armies broken by 8th then Wood Elves should have been first on their list; they're barely usable, at least not without players significantly changing the composition of their armies or really having to work hard on the nastiest possible combos.

[The bearded one]

+2 WS
+1 I
+1 Ld

Cool, all the less important stats

[Aluinn]

OH hahaha

You make it easy.

Here's the State Trooper Line for you:

"Dwarves were brought into line with 8th edition/ This is what a halberdiers, sry dwarven warrior should cost compared to a skeleton / Greatweapon spam was stupid and I'm glad it was nerfed because people will still field nothing but halberdier/WP ...sry Longbeard hordes with greatweapons anyway etc etc"

Anyways. The option will probably go away. After all..all players have gw troops. Time for GW to sell dwarves....with spears probably

I can agree to some extent on Halberdiers, but since when has GW been removing options that people have models for in order to sell more models? If anything it seems like, in their recent history (say, the last five years), they've been going out of their way to ensure that people can use older models, including tacked-on or otherwise inexplicable rules and options that can really only be there to facilitate this. I can't remember the last time they outright "deleted" a unit without providing a very easy alternative usage for the models by turning them into counts-as-something-else. Heck, you can even use those ancient Wood Elf Eternal Guard models with shields (not that it's a good unit, but I'm not saying that's guaranteed).

Similarly I think people are just relying expectations and emotional sentiments towards GW to come to this conclusion that they deliberately make everything with a new model powerful and everything with old models weak in order to sell more. Let's look at the Empire release:

1. Luminark of Hysh/Celestial Hurricanum: The Hurricanum is probably pretty good, but the Luminark is really not, IMO, and there's still the matter of the Hurricanum being a big fat target without any sort of protection (and you can't assume that your war machines will destroy all enemy war machines before they have a say, especially if you're going what will probably become the most common route and just taking two cannons; even average luck will likely still afford anyone enough shooting to kill the thing).

2. General on Griffon: If GW were tailoring rules to sell this thing, they did it very wrong. The only way to make it even remotely good would have been to provide a riderless Griffon in Rare, and they did not do that. It got better but it's still a defenseless, T5 monster that has to be ridden by a Lord, and we all know how popular that sort of thing is with competitive players.

3. Demigryph Knights: Probably the best support for your argument, as they are indeed looking quite solid, but you have to do better than one new release of several to prove such a point. Also note that they are distinctly NOT as good as Mournfangs, suggesting that GW realized Mournfangs were a bit too strong and made appropriate adjustments--and that's far from what you and others allege their policy to be.

4. War Altar: Distinctly nerfed, as it is no longer Unbreakable, doesn't pass its Ward on to the Lector, and doesn't have the Lore of Light to pick spells from. Compensated for somewhat by the Hatred bubble, but I think anyone claiming this change makes up for what it lost is doing some wishful thinking because they want their conversion to still be amazing on the tabletop. It is worse, no doubt, and not nearly such a no-brainer choice in competition, though it's not bad, either.

5. Master Engineer: Nerfed almost into oblivion, but this is one new model amongst several available, so whatevs; none the less they spent resources producing it.

6. Warrior Priest: Debatable; automatic dispel dice was a huge thing to lose, but the prayers got a lot better and he went down in cost. Probably became more indispensable to the army, but who wasn't taking them before? Further, you don't have to buy this new model if you had Warrior Priests previously.

7. Captain: Still a BSB-only choice really, which means the new one, not being a BSB, probably wouldn't sell very well if people bought models based on rules.

8. Amber Wizard: Oh look, it's a wizard. No one will buy this when it's so easy to convert one, unless they just love the model for what it is, and Lore of Beasts isn't exactly the first choice that most people would make based on rules benefits when they have all the BRB Lores to choose from.

9. Witch Hunter: Brand new choice; mediocre rules. I'd use one if I were buying new Empire stuff, since if he doesn't do much, at least he is also extremely cheap, but he's hardly knocking anyone's socks off as far as I can tell. Especially odd is his lack of weapon options, not to mention what happens when you mathhammer firing a brace of pistols with Sniper versus the single pistol which he comes with stock (it appears to be an almost entirely useless upgrade due to the -1 for two shots resulting in double the shots ... and half the hits for each). Certainly not mandatory or even particularly powerful, but, again, cheap.

So all I can see here that really backs up this notion of GW using rules as a sales tool are the Demigryph cavalry and half of the Luminark/Hurricanum kit. Granted, these are expensive (money-wise), but then so is the Griffon, and that is ... not good. In truth I think this view is most flawed because the great majority of their customers are not people who play competitively, and thus most people don't give a Skaven's bum whether something has good rules; if they like the model they buy it (if they can), and if not, not. People who post on Warseer generally seem to, but most GW customers are not us. From GW's perspective I would guess they are far more concerned with continuously releasing new and visually impressive stuff in order to sell models than with what the rules for that stuff may be, and I think this is very well supported by the evidence if you look at everything rather than cherry-picking the relatively few examples of new kits that turned out to have especially great rules.

[Wesser]

I was merely teasing the bearded one.

The second most disappointing thing about the Empire is that it went from being an army that was relying on priest to an army thats...even more reliant on priests!. The upgraded detachment rules, the lowering of cost and the improvement of blessings have seen to that. From an aesthetical point of view I'd much rather use captains and witch hunters only, but they are just so much worse that I'd feel stupid to do it.

The most disappointing thing is however that crossbowmen/handgunners/pistoliers are so utterly overcosted. The common argument for raising Combat cores was that they would benefit more from the 3 altars and warrior priests. Our shooting troops does not benefit (probably to avoid players fielding too many gunlines), which seems an open gap in the rules as they have no synergy apart from stand/shoot as a detachment and just seems costed so badly they aint worth taking. Same with pistoliers. Their shooting will due to movement/long range/multiple shots hit 7's and they dont get +1 attack for having two weapons anymore. Fairly useless for their cost.

Engineer seems downright devious with Helblaster, but useless with every other machine and there seems to be no reason to use all his unique weapon options since he probably won't be using them now. His rules are probably the most poorly thought out set of rules I can remember.


I went from a book where everything was playable to a book with 4 choices that isnt. Also I think the Luminark/Hurricanum are a terribly clumsy way of shoving synergy into a list and their rules are downright stupid. This is of course my opinion... there may be people who loves those clunky, terribly looking gizmos. I'm just slightly annoyed that they pollute my book

[Malorian]

The second most disappointing thing about the Empire is that it went from being an army that was relying on priest to an army thats...even more reliant on priests!. The upgraded detachment rules, the lowering of cost and the improvement of blessings have seen to that. From an aesthetical point of view I'd much rather use captains and witch hunters only, but they are just so much worse that I'd feel stupid to do it.

The most disappointing thing is however that crossbowmen/handgunners/pistoliers are so utterly overcosted. The common argument for raising Combat cores was that they would benefit more from the 3 altars and warrior priests. Our shooting troops does not benefit (probably to avoid players fielding too many gunlines), which seems an open gap in the rules as they have no synergy apart from stand/shoot as a detachment and just seems costed so badly they aint worth taking. Same with pistoliers. Their shooting will due to movement/long range/multiple shots hit 7's and they dont get +1 attack for having two weapons anymore. Fairly useless for their cost.

Engineer seems downright devious with Helblaster, but useless with every other machine and there seems to be no reason to use all his unique weapon options since he probably won't be using them now. His rules are probably the most poorly thought out set of rules I can remember.

It's weird... it's almost like GW is trying to change Empire from a mainly shooty army with later game counters (stank and walter) to a mainly combat army that depends on their core and is only supported by shooting... Like they were in 7th...

[Wesser]

It's weird... it's almost like GW is trying to change Empire from a mainly shooty army with later game counters (stank and walter) to a mainly combat army that depends on their core and is only supported by shooting... Like they were in 7th...

Sarcasm should only be used when you know how Malorian.

The big problem with 8th edition apart from TLOS and Steadfast being unnegateable is that the Shooting phase is reduced to big templates and cannons or no shooting at all. With the mortar hard-nerfed that leaves..eh cannons. Maybe you think it superb if they kill the shooting phase entirely, but I personally don't think it cool that Empire is becoming as magic/combat-oriented as Chaos Warriors.

My tactics didnt rly change from 7th 8th. Soften the target with shooting. Let big blocks of Spearmen/swordsmen absorb the initial charge and follow up with greatswords, knights, halbs and flaggies in the flank.

It was awesome. The boost's to cannons and mortar in terms of accuracy didnt affect me much as I was a rather great range guesser, so my army lists rly changed very little from 7th to 8th.

I never used War Altars and only used the Tank like twice.


Now Malorian...now I basically cannot shoot anymore. Apparently The Empire is becoming an army of ravening berserkers rather than a disciplined, well equipped force.


8th is too much magic and too little shooting for my taste. Shooting was why I picked Empire. But guess I can go back to Brets.... They are the shooty army now

[The bearded one]

Same with pistoliers. Their shooting will due to movement/long range/multiple shots hit 7's and they dont get +1 attack for having two weapons anymore. Fairly useless for their cost.

Pistols are 'quick to fire', meaning no movement penalties. Pistoliers will generally perform at their best after moving up close and personal. For example use their vanguard move to go 12" forward, then march another 16" and get as close as they can to an enemy unit (outside of their arc of sight of course), and fire their pistols at short range. At that point they each fire 2 shots hitting at 5's (for multiple shots), and they are actually fairly equal points for shot compared to (the overpriced) handgunners: 9 points for a shot that hits on 5+