A few weeks ago we ran the first round of changes intended to help balance the game by looking at Warlords and their special rules. This achieved the desired effect of making some previously unpopular Warlords (hi there, Yarrick) viable, but we’ll be returning to the Warlords again at some point as some of them (like Fury of the Craftworld) are too effective and need further balancing.
Bodyguards
But before that we wanted to look at which bodyguards needed boosting or toning down, so we compared several sets of data including whether a card had more or fewer ‘stat points’ when compared to other cards of the same cost.
This gave us a shortlist of offenders that most need to be adjusted, so as of next week (Tuesday unless anything changes) these cards will change points:
T’au
Shas’vre Tassar, Vior’la Sept XV95 Ghostkeel Battlesuit
Cost increased from 26 to 30 points.
Shas’vre Ob’Lotai 9-0, Farsight Enclaves XV88 Broadside Battlesuit
Cost increased from 28 to 32 points.
Longstrike, Master Gunship Pilot
Cost increased from 56 to 61 points.
Khagguk Glekh, Krootox Rider
Cost increased from 12 to 30 points.
Aeldari
Deliquescence, Drukhari Talos Pain Engine
Cost increased from 38 to 48 points.
Uthrielle, Craftworld Saim-Hann Wraithlord
Cost increased from 47 to 58 points.
Tyranids
Specimen: LV-111-AP-Θ, Hive Fleet Leviathan Tyrant Guard
Cost increased from 15 to 21 points.
Old One Eye, Hive Fleet Behemoth Legendary Carnifex
Cost increased from 45 to 57 points.
Hisser, Genestealer Cults Aberrant
Cost increased from 12 to 28 points.
Specimen: LV-400-HF-Θ, Hive Fleet Leviathan Exocrine
Cost decreased from 64 to 49 points.
Specimen: LV-714-FM-δ, Hive Fleet Leviathan Hive Crone
Cost decreased from 49 to 35 points.
Specimen: LV-209-WT-Φ, Hive Fleet Leviathan Carnifex
Cost decreased from 79 to 65 points.
Space Marines
Captain Karludo, Iron Ravens Captain
Cost increased from 26 to 30 points.
Arjac Rockfist, The Anvil of Fenris
Cost increased from 35 to 46 points.
Brother Venix, Salamanders Ironclad Dreadnought
Cost increased from 59 to 60 points.
Hammer of Titan, Nemesis Dreadknight
Cost increased from 54 to 69 points.
Brother Garros, Ultramarines Invictor Tactical Warsuit
Cost decreased from 59 to 57 points.
Sven Ironfist, Space Wolves Redemptor Dreadnought
Cost decreased from 87 to 74 points.
Adrax Agatone, Salamanders Captain
Cost decreased from 35 to 27 points.
Kayvaan Shrike, Raven Guard Chapter Master
Cost decreased from 28 to 23 points.
Servants of the Emperor
Sevora Devout, Death Cult Assassin
Cost decreased from 12 to 7 points.
Sister Aliesha, Adepta Sororitas Battle Sister
Cost decreased from 7 to 3 points.
Prisoner #01159004151, Penitent Engine
Cost decreased from 55 to 44 points.
Chaos
Khan’zhar the Red, Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster
Cost decreased from 100 to 90 points.
Subject Deceased, Poxwalker of Nurgle
Cost decreased from 4 to 3 points.
Aku Syn, Chaos Rogue Psyker
Cost decreased from 7 to 3 points.
Returning
We haven’t tried to address every single bodyguard in one go as that would be an overwhelming number of changes, so will be returning to balancing bodyguards in the future, after the changes have had a chance to settle down and we’ve done another pass on balancing the Warlords. Next time we’ll start looking at the cost / value ratio of the cards in each faction, which will show up over or under performing cards within that faction.
Value
I wanted to end today’s post by talking about why we need these changes at all. I don’t mean ‘why are we balancing the game’ because hopefully that’s obvious – we want as many cards as possible to be viable choices when you’re building a deck.
I’m referring to why these cards got into the game with unbalanced stats in the first place, because we’re well aware no-one likes it when their favourite card is suddenly rebalanced (particularly when we need to rebalance a card that we’ve sold, like Longstrike). The fact that some cards have the wrong points cost is entirely my fault, but in my defense it’s a complicated problem to solve!
A card’s cost has to take into account:
- Its points / Power costs in tabletop Warhammer 40,000 including an ‘average’ amount of wargear.
- Its relative stats compared to all other cards in the game with the same points cost.
- Its ‘value’ to that faction. This is something that Games Workshop talks about with 40K points, where some units cost more or less depending on which army they’re in and how valuable they are to that army.
- And finally, what the battle software, Dreamcrusher, thinks they should be worth after it spends a while making every card fight every other to see how efficient they are.
The point is, it’s difficult to ensure all cards are perfectly balanced, particularly in an always evolving metagame. We’ve recently changed the way we calculate points cost to hopefully tone down these issues, but it’s perhaps inevitable that some cards will slip into the game in an over or underpowered state.
Do let us know what you think of these changes and if there are any cards that you think are in need of adjustment.
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Thanks,
Stu
This was a very interesting article. Thank you for taking the time to not only tell us what you do, but why you make the decisions you make to balance and re balance the game. This is probably my favorite article you have written.
Question…
Brother Garros is currently 59 points, yet you say he is being re-balanced from 70 to 57 points. Did you make a copy and paste error 🙂 ?
Thanks for the comments, I’ll bear this level of detail in mind for future blog posts.
And yep, we made an error with some of the card point costs in the post when we first put it up! Hopefully fixed now (though your browser may have cached the old version).
Shrike is still at 28 points in my game. Is that normal?
Yes, he was missed out in the last round of point changes. We’re looking at the next points update now, but it may focus on Warlords over bodyguards this time. Watch this space, basically!
Hi!
About warlords. Look at Abadon. His trait work on cards on the deck only. However it said that cards in your arm must gain extra damage points too.
Isnt it a big up in price for kroot rider? (12 >30).
We’re working on a behind the scenes update to the battle systems which will allow us to fix several small issues with traits and Warlord special rules, so hopefully not too long before that’s solved.
Yeah, the Kroot Rider’s points increase is a big one and we discussed whether to make it in one big jump or several smaller ones. Either way a mistake was made when he was added to the game so he just had way too high stats for his initial cost. It’s unfortunate, but as we’re approaching 300 cards I’m kind of happy that we don’t have many cards which need that level of adjustment.
If your changing bloodthirster price it has to be moved to 88. Come on
You are entirely correct and I can’t believe we didn’t spot that. I’ll pass your feedback on to the team and you should consider yourself promoted to Champion of Khorne with immediate effect.
Overall balancing of the game is a good thing. The fact some cards are changing so much shows of how bad the balance was for some cards. I think picking on the Tau undervalues shields which are common in other decks.
I am glad the paid engine is changing – no so much the wraith lord as it was few of the utility cards eldar have. Glad Rockfist and Hammer of Titan are being sorted out. Agatone and Shrike will become usable which is good as they are the best looking cards.
I think the change to Old One Eye is bad. I did not use him in the last Campaign because he is simply to slow at doing damage against higher damage opponents. He becomes even more unusable in my opinion.
A lot of the problems these changes will bring is not in matchmaking but in Campaigns. Campaigns have unlimited points so the opponents will still be supper powerful. However we not have less power to fight them unless you are already one of the players with high level cards. In which case the extra points are still worth paying.
Overall I think this will just make it harder for the lower to mid players to compete. I think you need to concentrate more on separation the players with level 10+ commons, level 7+ rares, level 6+ epics and level 5+ Legendary cards.
Thanks for the feedback.
Re. the shield trait – once the current work on the battle system is done we’ll be able to add these more easily, and as we have 20 traits planned that will lower and dilute the number of cards using the shield trait right now.
Re. your comments on separating players in Campaigns – we have talked about this before but decided to focus on other work first. I’ll pass your feedback on to our live-ops team in case they want to revisit this now.
You da Maine, Stu.
There were some unexpected changes in the list. The shooty ‘Nids opening up another path for the faction and Big Sven cost reduction I get – he was prohibitively expensive in an army that doesn’t feature loads of 4-point fillers… but Garros?
It would be great to know the ‘Why?’ for some of the reductions and some of the big price bumps like Hipster.
It’s probably way too much to put on the blog so I’ll just play in the meantime.
Yeah, it’s difficult for me to dig into that level of granular information in a blog post because you can’t just present the data behind the changes, you need to explain what all of it means, how we came to the final numbers, etc. However, a few people have made this sort of request, so I’ll talk to our ‘math head’ designers and see if they’d be up for writing a detailed blog post to accompany the next round of point changes. Thanks for the suggestion.
I have been playing (& enjoying) Warhammer Combat cards on my tablet for about 3 months. I have two questions.
1). I would eventually like to own every card, and certainly know that some have been purchasable in the past. Do these cards came back up for resale every once in a while or have I missed out forever? Is it possible to be able to go to a website, to purchase a download code to obtain these “premium/retailed” cards?
2). I would love to link my phone account to my account on my iPad, but it appears there is no way to do so. I have used the same email address but my phone account (which was created second) seems to be a fresh account. Have I done something wrong? or is there no way to link devices to play a single account?
Thanks for the questions.
1 – Yes, cards that are offered as Mission prizes or for sale will come round into general circulation. This has been a little slow for a while but our intention is that these cards will go into the general card pool (and be offered as Campaign prizes, etc.) one month after they’re offered in a limited way. However, if you’re talking about the limited edition Inquisitor Eisenhorn card, there are no plans to add this to the card pool, you can only get him at real world events we attend (such as this year’s Warhammer Fest) or through code giveaways we occasionally run. Those giveaways will be announced here or on our Facebook page, so keep an eye out for them!
2 – We have cloud saving on Android devices and are fixing an issue that’s preventing it from working on iOS devices. In the meantime please contact our customer support team (using the help option in the game’s options menu or this link: https://support.flaregames.com/hc/requests/new) and they’ll be able to get your old profile back. Hopefully we’ll have iOS cloud saving working for everyone soon, so thanks for your patience in the meantime.
Increasing points cost instead changing stats for balance is overly disruptive and will anger many players. Furthermore there’s already many who believe overall card cost are too high and should be decreased further to allow for fields of more big units.
Yes I am not happy that i paid 30 buck for longstrike and now you change his points cost I would love a refund or some compensation
Hi Stuart, thanks for message. Since you intend to change a card which I have bought, how can I get a refund for all of the three packages of this particular card? I think it is fine that you evolve and aim to make it better but not altering for the worse a product which has been paid for. Because of this development I would like to ask for refund of all of the purchases I have made. Looking forward to your response.
Kind regards
a player of your game
Hi there, thanks for getting in touch.
Pretty much all games that are even vaguely competitive or have an evolving metagame need to balance and adjust their elements (cards in our case), and while we understand it can upset players we still need to do so to ensure the long term health of the game.
It’s particularly tricky when a card has been sold in a separate pack and we discussed whether we should make the change at all (basically weighing up how much people who bought the card might be upset versus the impact on all players on having an accidentally overpowered card in the game). In the end we decided that as the change required to bring Longstrike into line was relatively small we’d go ahead with it.
As someone who purchased the card I’m sorry this change upsets you but hopefully the above and the blog post explains why we needed to do it. As a result we have no plans to offer compensation to players who purchased Longstrike (as opposed to if we’d had to remove the card from the game or something extreme like that).
If you’d like to request a refund on your Longstrike purchase then you need to do so through the platform holder of your device (Apple or Google) as they carry out all purchases and simply inform us that they’ve happened so the game awards the purchased item. You should have a receipt for your purchase or be able to see it in your ‘store profile’ – either of those will have a link to request a refund.
Once again thanks for getting in touch and I hope this clarifies things.
Or.. after doing a major rebalance on a paid card, you could send the players a matched amount of plasma they spent to get the card. Yes, they got plasma with the original purchase but that’s not why we buy the bundles. It’s a simple gesture that would go a long way to the people that supported you guys vs free to play players
Many thanks for this update. I am looking foward on what the balancing team will do to ahriman as his trait is worse than pre-buff yarrick.
Its great to see some love to shooty nids, and khansar the red. Not so sure about the penitent engine she already seemed the best card for the cannoness but I guess that changes on the late game.
Just wanna add a small thing; I understand that the points in the tabletop are important but this game is very different from its original source. Seeing something being implemented “cause it was like that in the tabletop” feels like you guys arent taking your job seriously (which is not the case, this game reeks of effort).
Anyway hope to see the only “fast” card in the game with <50 initiative being fixed/changed (custodes jetbike)
Ps: is the special rule of the aeldari shooty warlord bugged? Its descripion has been misleading ever since i started playing in august
Thanks for the comments. How our cards tie into tabletop Warhammer 40,000 is always an interesting balancing act because you’re right, our game plays very differently to that. What I meant was that as a game based on someone else’s universe we want to ensure our versions of 40K miniatures at least vaguely match the tabletop version. Most of our players have at least some understanding of the relative ‘power’ of a Space Marine versus a Hive Tyrant, so we want their in-game stats and costs to roughly reflect that.
A data update should be rolling out this week with the points changes and hopefully a fix to the Custodes jetbike’s speed bug (and a couple of other small issues with other cards). We’re aware of issues with some of the Warlord special rules and are working to fix them and / or adjust their text. Apologies for the bugs and thanks for your patience.
Hi Stuart,
Good that there are balance tweeks coming and most of them are ok I think (we’ll always agree to disagree on some 😉
However one change that I have a VERY hard time accepting is Longstrike.
I’ve bought the card and spent quite a lot of money on it.
I’ve bought other cards too (you guys need to get some money in to pay your bills too!) but the main difference here is that no plasma was included for Longstrike.
This is a major issue for me.
As this card has been the only “you buy only the card” card any and all changes are very sensitive and provocative.
Should you have the usual deal where you buy the card and also get plasma this would be no issue but here its a big difference.
So I’m wondering how you’ll compensate me and the players that have spent a lot of money on this card?
My suggestion is that you give all that have bought the card plasma according to the value spent (like any other bought card) and hence equalize this card to all the others (and not lose any money on refunds).
Hope you solve this nicely for all!
Otherwise continue the good work and please (pretty please!) introduce PvP with ladder and tournaments for more engaging and diverse playing!
Hi there, thanks for getting in touch.
Pretty much all games that are even vaguely competitive or have an evolving metagame need to balance and adjust their elements (cards in our case), and while we understand it can upset players we still need to do so to ensure the long term health of the game.
It’s particularly tricky when a card has been sold in a separate pack and we discussed whether we should make the change at all (basically weighing up how much people who bought the card might be upset versus the impact on all players on having an accidentally overpowered card in the game). In the end we decided that as the change required to bring Longstrike into line was relatively small we’d go ahead with it.
As someone who purchased the card I’m sorry this change upsets you but hopefully the above and the blog post explains why we needed to do it. As a result we have no plans to offer compensation to players who purchased Longstrike (as opposed to if we’d had to remove the card from the game or something extreme like that).
If you’d like to request a refund on your Longstrike purchase then you need to do so through the platform holder of your device (Apple or Google) as they carry out all purchases and simply inform us that they’ve happened so the game awards the purchased item. You should have a receipt for your purchase or be able to see it in your ‘store profile’ – either of those will have a link to request a refund.
Once again thanks for getting in touch and I hope this clarifies things.
Are you going to make that greater demon of tzeentch more expensive? For a 89 psychic mainstable in every ariman deck he seems way to cheap.
We’re planning to focus on the Warlords and their special rules in our next round of balancing, then bodyguards after that. However, I’ll flag the Lord of Change with our stats guys to check out!
Was Shrike’s price reduction axed? It seems he was never reduced from 28 -> 23 points as this article suggests.
Good point. Shrike’s reduction was unfortunately missed, so apologies for that. We’ll be looking at the next round of point balances soon, so I’ll make sure Shrike is included in that!