Greetings, Citizens.
10th Edition Warhammer 40,000 is nearly upon us! For that reason, and because we are experiencing quite a healthy meta right now (the recent bloodthirster and deathwatch changes alone have had an awesome effect), this will be a smaller than usual balance pass, touching only a handful of Warlords and Bodyguards. There’s a lot of exciting stuff coming up very soon, and with the start of the Lion’s dedicated Battle Pass, your guesses are as good as ours as to what that might mean.
10th Edition rule shakeups will have implications for Combat Cards, and we’ll look to reflect this as much as possible, but in a considered manner. Whilst we could balance all cards in the game based on their latest datasheets alone, we take a more careful approach, prioritizing our own internal game balance and lore accuracy over mimicking the latest tabletop rules. That being said, some things will absolutely be adjusted in response to the new rules and lore, but that won’t happen overnight, as we look to make a few careful adjustments rather than a wholesale rebalance of the game.
Some of the highlights of this balance pass are related to older Warlords, and I’ll speak to each of them in turn rather than here in the foreword. The plan longer-term is to make every Warlord relevant, at every level of play. Whilst we are not in the position to immediately rework Special Rules right now, we can absolutely make other changes to make Warlords more competitive. Aside from these more veteran Warlords, the other focus of balance has been on specifically underpowered cards or cards that have not had much luck in finding a place in player’s decks, across all levels of play. With that being said, it’s time to get into the meat of things:
WARLORD RULE ADJUSTMENTS:
Ghosar
Infestation Swarm: Damage increase set to 3, up from 2.
Ghosar, as is often the theme with melee-based Warlords, is a popular Warlord. However, his win-rate is comparatively low, especially at higher levels of ranked play. What we’ve done here is given him a very strong power increase, but as you’ll see later we’ve also adjusted his points cost up to 39, making him a pretty big chunk of your deck. This restricts choices, and focuses his decks more down the path of many smaller cards, the Genestealer Cults’ way. Long live the four-armed Emperor.
CARD STAT ADJUSTMENTS:
T’au
Kor’vesa #404999 – Ke’Ishan Sept Remora Drone Stealth Fighter
-1 Points, +17 Wounds
Servants of the Emperor
Magos Dominus Ivasnophon – Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Priest Dominus
-3 Points, +12 Ranged
The Magos felt a little too much like a Corpse Lord, and vice versa. We’ve made the Magos cheaper, and upgraded his very high-tech and innovative guns to better reflect the character.
Prisoner #01159004151 – Penitent Engine
+2 Points, -5 Melee, -27 Wounds
Canoness Veridyan is close to dominating the meta when it comes to winning, and the Penitent Engine is a large reason why as a staple pick. Rather than adjusting the Canoness directly as we’ve done before, we’re targeting the Penitent Engine with the hopes of driving more diversity in ‘Ness decks. The Penitent Engine should absolutely remain a staple for SoE decks, but less of an over-tuned one.
Space Marines
Brother Venix – Salamanders Ironclad Dreadnought
-3 Points, +10 Ranged
Sergeant Kajurah Swiftwind – White Scars Intercessor
+7 Wounds, +8 Melee
Epistolary Ultorian – Dark Angels Terminator Librarian
+37 Wounds
2nd Stat Upgrade: Psychic -> Melee
Sammael – Grand Master of the Ravenwing
-4 Points, +5 Melee, +3 Ranged, +12 Wounds
Utorian Denash – Deathwatch Watch Master
+12 Melee, +13 Ranged
Chaos
Abaddon the Despoiler – Warmaster of Chaos
Primary Trait: Furious Charge -> Fear
Abaddon is a Warlord who has been incredibly fun to play, but can be easily taken advantage of due to a Warlord-centric rule. The recent changes to Ghaz has had a very positive effect, so we are taking this fear-based approach to other Warlords who it suits.
Dzarak the Wicked – Crimson Slaughter Terminator Sorcerer
+8 Ranged, +32 Wounds
Tyranids
Ghosar – Genestealer Patriarch
+5 Points
It’s important to note that this is not a nerf to Ghosar with the context of the tune-up of his Warlord Rule. In the end, Ghosar should feel more powerful than he did prior to this change, despite becoming more expensive.
Necrons
The Corpse Lord – Sautekh Dynasty Overlord
+37 Wounds, +15 Melee
For being a Necron Overlord, wielding Warscythe no less, The Corpse Lord has long held the short end of the stick when it came to personal stats. Whilst we could push this further to better represent the power of an Overlord, we wanted to keep his points cost low to allow Necron players to enjoy a wide deck.
Orks
Kog Da Rekka – Snakebite Clan Tankbusta Nob
-2 Melee, +6 Ranged
Eldar
Fury of the Craftworld – Avatar of Khaine
Secondary Trait: Furious Charge -> Fear
As with Abaddon, this change makes a lot of good gameplay sense for a Warlord that really enjoys spending a few turns on the field. Additionally, the Avatar of Khaine has now long enjoyed some seriously awesome damage reduction on the tabletop due to its molten form, and we want to represent that in Combat Cards through the Fear trait.
That’s it for this season as we look forward to 10th Edition and all of the exciting new cards and content coming along with it. Look forward to livestreams in the next few weeks that will go through all of the details, more on that later!
Enough talk,
To WAR!
ThisCaptain
Alot of those space marines biffs are highly unnessary they already outnumber any xenos race in range melee and psychic abilites suffice as well as out number the xenos 2:1 at least in legendaries. Your seeing overuse and many space marine cards and warlords cause they have stats on cards that need nerfs so xenos can live. Doing one or two tweaks on a few cards isnt gonna change much till xenos across the board get more epics and legends for versitility and/or bigger buffs across the board for xenos to use more then the same decks over and over everyone else has cause thata literally pretty much only things are usuable vs space marines and SotE who are 2nd behind SM in raw stats and higher valued cards
So in your own words, Flaregames, you are choosing to prioritize the game balance based on internal stats and lore accuracy rather than the latest tabletop rules. With this in mind, why are we choosing to make all the low cost space marine cards so overwhelmingly powerful and better than every other faction in the roster? How can you say that the game meta is satisfying in this state when nobody comes to close to beating Acheron for the many things he can pull off? Keep giving space Marines the best of everything. I’m sure that meta will never get old and tiresome for players. As long as it makes money who cares though right?
Hope you’ll add more free cards
Eldar ! Necrons ! And Chaos !
Sounds good, can’t wait.
More dark angels!
More astra millatarum
Magnus the red as a warlord
Lion need