Ranking EVERY Codex in 40K - A Farewell to 9th Edition

foreign [Music] podcast episode 67 I'm your host Brad this is my co-host Eric how's it going we have a more laid back episode today we are going to be sending off 9th Edition yeah we did a clickbait episode last time and uh we figured let's even go deeper into clickbait I guess we kind of are but this is more for us than anybody else this week really made you rethink the uh intent on this episode I know it I feel scummy now it's been a pretty good week but it's been a very long and stressful week so I just want to lay back and do some more fun content that doesn't take you know six hours plus of show notes after work we're going to be doing a tier list but we're going to at least do a fun one yeah we are so without any further Ado let's sell out so throughout 9th Edition every faction eventually got a codex yes technically some of them were very late to the party and some of them were demons then four and one we'll talk about it but every single codex lies somewhere on the scale of great to codex demons you have your good you've got your chaos demons you've got your stuff in between we're going to rank them all today and instead of doing our normal ranking we decided to try an experimental content type that we may hate we're gonna do it as a tier list a little bit backstory on that it's later than nine o'clock on a work night that we're just starting this recording because it's already going so so well yeah so technical difficulties on our and aside your feedback on this episode is valued also if Brad sounds good thank the editors if he doesn't it's not their fault because I don't sound good right now technical difficulties that should be solved for next episode we'll get there without any further Ado let's get our beverages that YouTube won't let me talk about this early in the episode in hand and let's talk about the many codices of ninth Edition in no real particular order which means we're gonna start with guard oh you want to just throw shade immediately all right so when we're ranking these we're not doing this as a power Spectrum thing we're not going off of how many 5 0s they got or anything like that right we're doing this from a how well designed was the book internal balance happiness of people who play it was it miserable to play against Power may come into it a little bit but it's secondary it's not the primary thing but there is going to be some bias to power either because it's too op or it is the opposite and we may sprinkle in some extra qualifiers as we rank these with guard specifically I know what Eric's going to bring up immediately but uh go for it with guard what's your unique complaint so I guess part of my thing with guard is the expectation of when they were going to actually have a codex and actually be playable essentially um they might get an entire like five months of having a codex it's tough because that shouldn't really matter but it does it matters a lot in my opinion you played your entire Edition on your last codex yeah which didn't work well like it just didn't and every time it was like oh you'll just wait until you get your codex just wait until you're you get your codex it's gonna be okay you'll get your codex and it's like when and to be honest if we're not throwing that into it guard is like somewhere in the middle of like a b or c t or codex totally normal acceptable nothing really to write home about one or two busted combos that got nerfed as is tradition and then a pretty okay codex with some problems in it I think it did a good job of being guard it gave you the option to play how you wanted to play kind of thing but I'm honestly going to throw it all the way down to D tier for the exact same reason you want it there because I know your feelings on this subject and it is absurd that this codex took years to come out yeah and I guess like if 10th was another year out maybe it'd be okay but and part of it is just because it felt like there was always an expectation of like oh the next codex is going to be guard obviously we've been waiting for it and it just kept happening the real insult is actually voton because somebody has to be the last codex obviously yeah but you would expect it to be a new action not one of the factions that still has needed updates for five years apparently not so I mean I'm with you I think I think the Codex itself design how it plays and played against it's all fine it's perfectly reasonable it might even be like a middle of the road B tier codex yeah I'm thinking like B or C somewhere in there but like I'm just dropping into deter and anger yeah I'm with you and I feel like if guard isn't one of the first things that gets like a focus intent it's just gonna be the extra little bit of disappointment well we know the first year of releases and they're not in it so they'll be somewhere in 10th but it won't be in year one oh guard where was guard when was guard uh so who do you want to do second Eric uh next up let's hit one that uh is close to home for you let's do thousands on Thousand sons in my opinion is a very very good codex this Edition I would agree I don't know if it's quite a tier because it does have the concerns that many people will bring up of it is a very small range and because of the Caps system cabal points I was gonna ask you end up with the even less choices than that I think overall thousand suns plays as you would expect thousand suns to play it does its job pretty well but the cabal point system wonderful system other than non-psychers don't cause cabal points and cabal points are so important to how your army functions that it essentially makes those data sheets non-existent unless they're truly busted right and that internal balance kind of thing doesn't feel right I honestly internal balance is probably the thing that held this codex back yeah as a thousand Sons player I'm biased and would much prefer we have a larger range than we have but there are armies with less units in them than we've got I'll say B tier happily it could have been a tier with some minor reworks maybe that's where we'll be in an addition or whatever I wouldn't look forward to 10. my thoughts on the current psych stuff intent is not the most optimistic until we see thousand suns we haven't even seen the preview article when we record this so who knows but I think B makes sense it's a solid codex should we do the elephant in the room if we did mine uh sure I think you are not nearly as good as thousand suns this Edition these codices came out together and of the two when you open them and look at them thousand suns is the one that feels better to play it feels more fleshed out thousand suns feels more like thousand suns than gray Knights feels like gray nights and the core units that people love the most are treated better better honestly I think the gray Knight codex is solidly B if paladins were like a focused thing that you could really do and they're not and they're not I kind of knew wherever we threw thousand suns great nights is the tier below yeah because when you compare them they are so comparable and you see all of the problems in the granite codex as you look at the Thousand Suns yeah I mean it's still C totally fine codex it's just it had issues we talked about them on early episodes of the podcast far from perfect there's a lot of us Granite players that wish it was better not as a power level but as you could play the units that you got into the army to play it sounds like moving the goal post I feel like you could have gone up an entire letter grade of like where you are in the ranking If instead of improving internal balance you just flip-flopped it on its head so the bad units were good and the good units were bad yeah honestly it would have like if strike Marines were terrible and you had to spam Terminators very few gray night players would care Terminators are why you play that Army yeah and it would probably be worse in the metal in general I mean there's probably some parts of the meta that it would have worked out but in general like the strike Marines are just more maneuverable and you get more options with secondaries and all that stuff so like it probably would have been a worse power if the Terminators were the focus but it would have felt better I would have liked the Codex better you're absolutely right and uh yeah it's a c sorry but moving on let's think Let's do let's do something chaosy let's do death guard oh uh D for death guard I can't put them on par with gray Knights I can't even put them like they're not as good as the gray Knight codex with the faults the great I codex has yeah the Codex is a mess it's just kind of a mess honestly I'm with you on that one I feel bad putting them above guard like I put Garden d as an anger thing but like then I look at Garden death guard and I'm like I'd so much rather play the IG book oh yeah if you force me to like build a list and play this Army guard is actually like a good codex it's down in D just because GW hates players that play guard but uh death guard is just a weird codex okay so death guard this Edition is what death guard players were threatening for necrons in 10th edition and I fear them being correct death guard was the little brother Army of 8th Edition the one that was not Space Marines right the one you give your little brother when you buy the box set yeah makes absolute sense now gotcha and necrons was that for ninth Edition and in ninth Edition guard got one of the very first codes sees and it did not improve over their 8th Edition one and they were bad for pretty much the whole Edition other than like three weeks when it came out and necrons has the exact same slot for their codex death guard players are like yes join us in your hatred but at the same time like it's not even like death guard is wrong for death guard like it still feels like like yeah you've you're doing death guard things in this codex you are but you still have to play the game this is kind of where like some of the pop like power isn't really a focus here but it still does matter design is though death guard spent half the addition with unplayable plague Marines yeah which is a huge problem death guard has had issues with all types of playing the game it comes down to like early on mortarion was pretty good pox Walker blobs were pretty much mandatory which was unfortunate but whatever you had good vehicles that were kind of carrying you with the indirect fire before that Nerf and that's true yeah the indirect fire was a big part of why Otto's vehicles did stuff death card had a load of issues over the Edition the real Saving Grace why they're not like bottom tier trash is later in the addition no they didn't get much better but at least like plague Marines with free options allowed for you to play the fun version of that unit right like it made playing the fun thing good which is one of like the key design goals is make the best thing the fun thing yeah you were able to do the thing that you wanted to do right that's good and even if you're losing you're still like hey I got to do fun things I got to play the models that I think are cool so and that's why like it's definitely not the bottomless trash cheer no but like there's other small things that are knocks against them too in an addition where everyone was solidifying how sub-factions work right yes which is like the thing that ninth Edition did that was a great upgrade over eighth and that 10 seems to be going even further into yeah is giving people longevity of their army through sub-factions by being able to change out some rules and alter how you play the game with your army so that you can play it for several years and not have an issue right death guard some factions were non-existent I mean they do like almost nothing the plague companies they were what a warlord trait A Relic did they even have a strat I think it was a strat was the last one I can't remember it's so it doesn't matter yeah they were very like technically they're separate but like who cares to make it worse typhus was sub-faction locked as the intro Starter Set character you had to buy if you were to like getting into it yeah and like ah there there's so many little problems with this codex and it's just no and I feel like it could have been helped with some of the souping especially with arc's Bowman but that didn't really happen all right we've done enough chaos and Imperium let's get some xenos and play here who do you have for xenos ah zinos let's do Photon we talked about it a little bit okay where do you put Photon because I'm really I'm up in the air because of what happened I don't think it deserves like a dumpstering to be honest okay here's my thoughts and then I'll tell you what I think overall the Codex is not really a full codex just because it's not a full Army yeah it's the first edition of the army coming in you get your soft first edition of your codex half your range doesn't exist yet everyone can see that you're like like you know just technically an army yeah because it those reasons like I'm Not Gonna Knock too hard against it but like you're not getting in you're definitely not getting an S tier and you're not getting an a tier honestly either you were locked out of the top two tiers just from the Fiasco of the giant rules Nerf as the Codex launched which I I still applaud that occurring I believe the right choice was made they didn't pussyfoot around it they got the job done and I don't even hate that like the way it happened happened kind of thing there was good intent and good design intent on putting that together it just wasn't fully thought through and then they went oh this is terrible idea let's undo that and then they fixed it very quickly but again like that is a problem I think it's a c okay put it with gray Knights here and see yeah just because there is a lot of potential with the grudge it is pretty decent internal balance where I have seen people play every part of that Army I know it's a limited right range but so is thousand sons and when's the last time you watched someone play zangor competitively Vortex Beast or Magnus yeah and like the actual the leagues they're sub-faction stuff they're great I really like them they're interesting and I like that so I feel bad honestly about giving them a c i feel like they could have been a but it there were a couple things marring it and like maybe it's a b but I just feel like there's just enough kind of hate towards it that like it's probably just a c yeah I'd argue it should be a b but if we put it there people will complain because they hated what happened yeah and I think that that's like you know what okay fine I think that's fair as a general consensus people were annoyed with it enough that giving it a bee is tough for a debut codex with half a range I'm gonna say props for how well it did and again aside from how very broken it was yeah the first few minutes and I I mean I do look forward to seeing how they further flesh out that mechanic and I hope they don't just give up on it because I think it's cool the new version of Grudge is interesting I want to see the call when we get the indexes because I want to see how Grudge interacts with the rest of the army like that what matters so I know like stat line-wise they seem to be reconfiguring a couple armies and it looks like votan is going to be less Elite in 10th edition at least with the very few things we've seen so far I'm interested to see how it goes okay we've got a few Space Marines let's hit one of those let's just do Space Marines draw Space Marines okay I think they're like the prime example of a b2c tier book they're right at the cusp between the two I agree I'll give them a b but I might move them down so my thoughts is for a first book of the Edition that didn't get a 2.0 release which I'm glad about because I hate that they held up okay they did need a lot of Buffs over the Edition because again they were more balanced against the necron Codex and 8th Edition armies I think it was one of those like the eighth edition balance compared to it was just not what ninth was trying to do with every other codex well ignoring necrons but uh I agree like the core design of the Space Marine codex held up throughout ninth it wasn't the best they continued to iterate on some of these Styles and all of that but I think it was perfectly reasonable I'm going to argue them down to Sea for one thing the supplements from 8th Edition that you see at the bottom of the screen that we're ignoring we're ignoring those they made me realize that this book is actually worse on a technical level than I remembered I had forgotten until this moment that super doctrines aren't in this codex which Space Marines have had access to all Edition they're in these supplements from last Edition it's so awkward yeah and I get why I would say that the parts of space brains I think of as having held up so well that did not need as many fixes to them to keep them relevant all ended up being supplement armies where you get your extra 20 data sheets full of rules you get your extra rules written there and those were just written better to boot for the most part so yeah Space Marines is probably only seats here to be honest there were too many problems with that codex long term they had a different Vision Early Edition than what happened after drukkari admix sisters era onward I would disagree I think the vision kinda stayed the same it just had to accept the new Power Balance and really focus on how core works yeah well space Rings broke that in half right away only necrons got the core that was advertised yes in the equivalent of what's going on with 10th right now when they did that for 9th Edition and they showed off core and they were like you're not gonna get to buff your vehicles anymore it's so much more fair necron's only has five core units Space Marines has 116. yeah and if they had continued with this is how core is going to be then Space Marines would have been the outlier and it would have been like okay what the hell happened but they didn't continue that they've basically rolled it back completely yeah we got dracary and admac right after of we've given up on core Space Marines actually kind of followed how core work tonight even though it shouldn't have but yeah okay C's probably fine and I don't know are we gonna do each of the supplements okay let's do them real quick ready they don't deserve their own time but we'll give it to them okay Blacktown pliers C tier you're totally irrelevant I don't like you at all wow that's my review of people who play Black Templars get [ __ ] Dark Angels you went from obnoxious to play against to even more obnoxious to play against but from an internal balance standpoint I can't think of too many faults I think you're a totally fine codex just like thousand suns I just am annoyed with you which is not actually supposed to knock against you so there you go yeah I can accept that fine blood angels could honestly be a but I'm moving them down to B solely because they're Crusade special rules are all negative oh yeah I forgot about that until it was one of we were doing that and it was like why is everything a downside why is it all bad I wrote the blood angels Crusade rules they were like they had read Devastation and balner like Jesus Christ this sucks yeah everything sucks about being a blood Angel yeah like clearly you're doomed you're doomed and you should feel bad but uh yeah blood angels could have been a tier I'm just being snarky about it they were honestly really solidly written for blood angels sanguinary guard were good for the vast majority of the addition until they had to Nerf them and I mean that's kind of the thing you want to play I'd say the only thing that was very awful for blood angels in a middle section there of the Edition was because of how doctrines worked you wanted to play blood angels and play them Unga Bunga charge up and kill them yeah loyalist world leaders really right essentially that's what you want when you're playing a melee Space Marine Army yeah but because of how doctrines and everything worked it was more correct to competitively play them very cagey until like turn three and then you just go all out yeah and you would try to like bait into counter charges early game and you playing more finesse and it did not play like you imagine blood angels should play yeah so it probably only deserves the B Death Watch see I can't care yeah I was gonna say I can't think of anything good did you even get a picture for the Death Watch supplement maybe not you did not okay there's no picture for it luckily that means uh GW doesn't care about him either Raven guard also had black armor it's fine Eric did get all of these codex pictures off the GW website so that means it wasn't listed when he looked for codices so that is not a codex in the codec section on gw's website okay well ravenguard is Death Watch and I'm putting you in the middle of C so that you're forgotten just like GW forgot your codex yeah Space Wolves probably be they're one of the more fun versions of Space Marines throughout the Edition they had very fun Crusade stuff when I'm not role playing thousand Sons hatred towards Space Wolves they are pretty fun Early Edition they kind of fell off throughout the Edition but they weren't terrible I think they're kind of doing a lot better now but part of it is due to like being able to stack Combi melters and whatever I think Space Wolves did a good job of being unique you could tell like oh that's a Space Wolves Army even if you didn't really pay attention to what's going on I feel like we're extra biased towards saying that though because of our Local Space Wolves player I guess who has the best most obvious r Army of any of ours like he is by far the best painter out of us so and it does help but you know what we're the ones making it so guess what that's our bias our local player of Space Wolves is really good at painting and makes good models so ha it's fun to play against we have spent entirely too long talking about Space Marines though let's move on I want to do anything else okay let's get away from dudes in power armor let's go to tyranids tyranids was busted we all know but from a design standpoint ignoring the bustedness the Codex had pretty damn good internal balance You could argue because when everything is broken it doesn't matter yeah it really does have good internal balance even when they were nerfing stuff it was like okay they'll just play this other stuff the only reason they were playing that is because it was the obvious thing at the moment right it was two percent better than the other thing now that you've nerfed this one they'll just play the one that's two percent worse right it doesn't actually matter it's all still and not only that everything about it felt like tearing it you were still playing tyranids it wasn't like oh they nerfed the core section and now I'm playing this weird slant list your sub factions get gave you good variety you could play like Monster Mash in Levy you could play harmegon spam if you change sub factions though yeah you could just play differently with your sub factions there was no real issue there I think the Codex is just a flat out a I won't say It's s but damn is it good if it wasn't as obviously busted and Powerful it would be nice there were so many needed Nerfs the balance between eight and everything else just didn't really exist and there was the white dwarf issue which I know angers you don't even are you trying to argue it down to a b Brad I'm happy to put him in a I agree yeah I do want to say the way balance was handled for like when Drew Cari was busted and admek was busted and tyranids were busted where they tried to piecemeal slowly Nerf them down yeah was the correct way to handle that objectively it didn't feel right at the time if you were playing against them though that's something that people often don't like hearing you get obliterated by a broken codex and you want them over nerfed so you never see them again because you're angry yeah the correct thing is to look at it and try to get them to the 50 win rate point and not over Nerf them to 30 like what eventually ended up happening to admac yeah I mean GW has done those like double Nerfs essentially where it's like they're hitting you and then they're kicking you while I'll say that yeah needing like literally six rounds of Nerfs to tyranids Is Not Great the fact that they did it that way instead of just obliterating the Codex in a Fell Swoop of the pen I feel more comfortable giving my money to a company that understands how to correct Miss balance like that I do also think that that allowed the Codex to be played in different ways you know like if they had just done sweeping just massive Nerfs then you would have been like okay how do I win instead of how do I play the army and then you would be in the like necron oh I'm just gonna take the obstacle and I'm gonna be an annoying little [ __ ] so I'm good with an A on that all right let's talk world leaders for a second oh God I don't think they deserve lower than a c if I'm being honest really okay no hmm I mean they might be a c but I think they could be a d as well it's somewhere in there for me I could be argued down to a d for like the missing models and sheer half-assery of making them an army what they have is fine but the fact that they're missing so much and like it's not a an issue like votan is missing a bunch but that's like it's a fully new thing there was no real expectation of it so it's fine there was no reason to take away so much from world leaders and give them nothing in return exactly yeah I guess I had to compartmentalized that outside of the Codex itself but it is all part of the same transition into being an army with this codex and the Codex is fine what remains of the Codex is fine which is the key to this so yeah you might be right on D just due to the mistreatment of just ruining the range of the army maybe you're right in that at Sea just because what exists is solid I'd say in a vacuum if they had just appeared this Edition yes it'd honestly be a b it would be a b or a c something like that probably a b there's nothing really terribly wrong with the Codex longevity issues from not really having sub factions it's got that like split up thing in the Codex yeah I personally despise how warlord traits and stuff was handled I think that that's your own personal feel I think that was fine and that's why I think it would be a b in a vacuum like that the problem problem is there's expectation for moral leaders you had stuff and then it was taken away I'll put it down in D with the asterisks of angron still cool oh hell yeah there were some Shining Moments in this but there was a lot of problems with the actual launch where is the combat Patrol GW how many months did they wait for the combat Patrol that came out like two weeks ago I honestly forgot about it as like you brought that up and I was just like oh yeah that was a thing right the 9th Edition combat Patrol out in time for 10th edition good job so yeah there is a big asterisk on that one what's there is good but oh let's talk sisters okay sisters it's a codex with problems it's a codex with some good stuff to it it does have some very good aspects of it that I enjoy I honestly kind of want to just throw it in seats here with gray nights because I feel almost identically about the two armies there is good things in here there was some internal balance issues there was some general disappointment because you went from your 8th Edition codex making you like Top Dogs of the addition to your 9th Edition codex feeling like a partial downgrade honestly when it launched still managing to be like a winning win rate when it came out but then you you got screwed over by the sub-faction changes of not being able to split your two sub factions in one Army if that didn't happen I think we would have raided sisters quite a bit higher like as printed I think the balance and feel of sisters was right but that sweeping change of how you can't split into the two sections and it didn't help that came out at like the exact same time as them getting the supplement that made bloody Rose just the automatic Choice yeah bloody Rose was like the defend why not to take this I still think overall the codex has a lot of good in it but it feels just like Ray knights with you can just start pointing to issue after issue where players who wanted to play sisters a certain way just couldn't yeah and certain things felt awful or you had to get a little gaming with it but fundamentally it was there and there's glimmers of Brilliance you could have totally good days playing the Codex just like with gray Knights it's just it tended to burn itself out faster than some other armies yeah okay I see that's fair that's fair uh let's do chaos Knights let's do Imperial and Chaos Knights at the same time they are not in the same position I will give Imperial Knights an honest a okay so let's talk about Imperial Knights for a moment and how they compare to chaos Knights I think Noble households did a stellar job bondsmen forced you to want to play a balanced list yeah even like competitively you still got pretty gaming with how you played it yeah you still wanted to play a mix of questorus with armagers which fantastic job chaos nice lacked any reason to play anything but armatures and then just soup in avidan because he was better than just playing a questorus frame yeah I enjoyed the fact that there were options in souping with the Knights especially further on in the Edition yeah that works for both of them to be honest but I feel like it makes more impact to me positively for Imperial Knights whereas like chaos Knights feels like they're doing it dirty I think if it wasn't for a single issue I would say Imperial Knights is a chaos Knights is B and it's just the bondsman was better at making you want to play a well-rounded not gaming list then it made you more happy long term it made you happy to play some of the big nights and still do some stuff competitively these two books hit like a 50 win rate from their addition to the Edition all the way through the end I do feel like there is a slight issue with most people that play nice they're going to be annoyed by a three-up save look Knight players will bring up points all day long about little things like that but it doesn't really matter from a game design standpoint I can make arguments in both directions for why you need to whatever it's not worth it right now so chaos Knights gets taken down two entire tiers one because of all the other issues the other tier is entirely because of our army rule we had a whole episode about why this Army rule was a terrible design Choice yes I don't think that episode ever made it to YouTube for the video audience but it exists so it's I don't know dude that feels a bit low dread tests and everything involving them again because part of this isn't for those who play it it's those who play against it yeah that's fair which is a key point on here that we put on here specifically because of things like Dread tests yeah [ __ ] [ __ ] honestly to go to like a magic thing it's like Venture into the dungeon where you have this big complex table except you're handing it to your opponent and saying I'm going to choose something and you have to remember this here's a flow chart I'm going to make choices and I'm going to push this on to you because everything is about affecting you in various ways that you'll have to check halfway through trying to declare attacks and stuff I'm with you it deserves the spot it's at because I hate that like it's one thing to have like oh my Army is complicated and annoying but I'll let you know what results are happening and if you're interested I can explain it for the many complaints about the admac Codex yes all of its awful complexity and 20 minute command phases you could turn your brain off and go get a beer the opponent doesn't have to care just let me know what happens and if I have questions I'll ask like oh how did that happen and you can explain like this this and this okay cool dread is like hey here's all those things remember that did you take a dread test no it's not my codex did you pay one for that did you pay one for that yeah of course I did so yeah that's my main reason chaos Knights isn't like just below Imperial Knights and is a fair way below it yeah I was trying to argue that it was pretty close but now you've reminded me of all of the annoyances I had to remind you because I did not play my chaos Knights much of this Edition specifically because I know how [ __ ] miserable they get yeah it's just annoying to play against so [ __ ] that dude okay let's move on to something uh different let's move into Orcs okay I have a high opinion of the Orcs codex even with the things that occurred this Edition like everyone's got their problems over the Edition I think it's a great codex the only flaw that I know you and I don't care about this too much is a classic version of playing oryx is playing boy spam yep it is something long time fans are a big fan of it's a pretty common thing and it's the oldest wing of the army you're a fan of junkyard or Works which is somewhat new for the things Beyond like Max but like for all of the race cars and stuff yeah the boys were like Orcs history yeah and anything like snake bite related like anything to do with squigs and all that is all new this Edition and that's the only thing that really made me go man Orcs is cool so like my interest in oryx was like the stuff that's actually doing good the stuff that's on the focus at the moment so like yeah I can see the one flaw being the whole loss of boy spam that said you can do it with arcs of omen it's a lot better currently than it was for the Edition yeah like throughout the Edition boy spam wasn't really a thing that you could like you could kinda sort of force it in a weird way but it you had to sacrifice so much that like it it just didn't work but arc's Feldman opened up a lot honestly arcs of woman like was fantastic for Orcs it really was it has been the high point of the Edition not because oryx became so much more powerful it just opened up all the doors and you're like I get to do whatever I want to do and have fun doing it yeah I'd say Orcs is something that actually increased in quality over the addition ignoring the you know they come out and three minutes later all the things that are breaking their codex had been breaking other ones and GW finally put their foot down yeah it's like hey our New Codex oh [ __ ] it was one of those like they definitely got their kneecaps broken a few times and partially the work codex fault but also partially other codexes being a problem as well and then just like okay just we'll blanket deal with that indirect fire aircraft buggy spam but even with those eventually we got to a point of like yeah it seems fine the sub factions are fine there's plenty of different ways to play Orcs I would say minor flaw Goths is almost always right if you're playing any sort of melee which is a big part of Orcs in 9th Edition yeah it's kind of weird when it's like I want to play really thematic snake bites list what's the best sub faction to play at goffs yeah it is I think part of it is because the wah and like even with the fix tawa they don't feel right I would say like if I was to point to anything in the Codex that seems wrong that doesn't feel like GW did Orcs right is the wa it's supposed to be this like oh my God kind of thing and it's just like ah okay I feel like with the fix it's okay it is better with the fix it it feels like it's doing something instead of just being like yeah funny it could use a REV too I'm interested in 10th edition for it by the time everyone sees this I'm sure it'll randomly come out but I still think it's an a codex that's where I wanna put it as well I think if it didn't have one or two flaws that it has like there's a couple too many to put a nest here but it is solidly eight here with light tier and I think it's like very close to abandoned ass like just a few of those small things the fact that like DACA and assault were two separate things and then speedwa interacted awkwardly with them that is an annoyance behind find all man like it's not a huge deal it's just why'd you do it GW yeah you can point out like little minor flaws but like the Codex overall there's so much fun in there yeah I love it I think it did a fantastic job so eighth year all right let's uh We've alluded to him like six times let's just do admit can be done with it fine I think admek doesn't deserve to be in D tier no it doesn't it's got a major flaw let's put it right with chaos Knights same major flaw tangential major flaw chaos Knights screwed with your opponent by making them deal with your rule yeah admex rules not that hard admex problem is it screwed with your opponent by making him wait 20 minutes for you to go okay now officer number 187 is going to use his three different abilities he has in the command phase I have to flip over this random card I've gotta roll some dice to see if I can just reuse cards at random for whatever I want because my Army rule is made up by like just stupidity it's tough because like at a certain point I enjoy figuring out complex things like that like these complex interactions are interesting to me I love complexity but I have played ad Mech once I feel like a lot of the problems with admac is the complexity is also gated through Randomness so you can't actually like plan things out to a certain point and be like okay yeah there's a lot of complex stuff happening here but it's my turn now this this and this are happening this is what's going on there's no like oh I wonder what I need to figure out yeah Randomness is the wrong word it's that it's it's complexity through tons of tiny little insignificant layers yeah I don't know of a good way to like sum that up but I agree with you on this like it's a bunch of small things that all added up into an annoyance it's a codex that was early edition when you had 12 command points and could spend whatever you wanted pre-game and on turn one and two yeah it was incredibly busted and good and especially compared to everything else that was going on at the time they completely unnerfed the Codex but we live in a new world where you don't have Infinite Command points pregame and you earn command points over the course of the game so you can't Alpha strike early as easily especially not if you're trying to you know build up characters pregame which is how admit got their huge complex command phases and that's a big problem for the Frailty that is admac currently I think most of admex problems in both directions from an early edition obnoxious and late edition garbage most of their problems came from how they interacted with the CP system if command points hadn't been like emergency patched halfway through the Edition several armies would have been better off for it yeah but admac in particular got the worst of it I think there was actual thought behind the balance oh yeah I don't mean to say that it was a random choice to change CP entirely I mean that like the actual admac codex gave you all of these options and went this is balanced around the fact that you only have so much to put into it essentially and when they took that so much and sliced it in half it was like okay well clearly it's going to be a problem because they were balanced around more than that and you know whether that balance was correct or not whatever I feel like it's an awkward codex because like there are so many good and strong things but there are like there are very few but horrendous faults I think one of my larger annoyances and this is kind of external from it but it's missing a major part of what admac should be the mechanic is portion yeah sorry but like it was various Qatari based but honestly looking at 10th edition it's essentially skitari the faction at this point fine okay I guess that's what we're doing now but like I feel like that like I said it's kind of external like maybe that's just that's just what admac is now it's katari you wanted a tech army and you end up getting guard but they wear red yeah and it's more complicated good job that's tough because I like the complex nature of it I feel like ad Mech is like the perfect example of like I don't enjoy we know what side I'm on of the complexity in games I don't enjoy the argument of like oh our player base are [ __ ] idiots they need the rules crunched down to a single page no one wants to learn a game anymore they're all on Tick Tock in three minutes attention span we want AOS just shove everything towards the center of the board when it was launched yeah old AOS yeah I'm not a fan of that admek feels like the ultimate straw man to point to for that faction of like this codex was a sin against nature it's complexity tenfolded you had to ask your opponent because like you couldn't just look at their data sheets no you couldn't look at what Buffs they had on them it was like oh that unit over there has a two up save and three up and vulnerable save even though on their data sheet it says they have a four up save a six up in vulnerable save or like a five up save or whatever the hell they naturally had because I used this one turn buff on them but I extended it to a two turn buff and then I used this other buff that makes me recycle it so that I can and and it's like it's like looking at a legacy combo deck in Magic when everyone else is trying to play standard yeah I mean it's tough because like I don't hate that there's a codex that's more complex than the others I don't hate it either but at least beyond the same magnitude tier I don't hate if a codex is complicated I hate if a codex is complicated and annoys your opponent with its complications very much the constantly asking your opponent like hey can I do this can I do that I'm gonna do this man this is annoying I'm just gonna go to beer you figure it out I'm gonna take 20 minutes buffing this stuff up and you're going to zone out during that 20 minutes and not pay attention because who could yeah and then you're going to have issues because you go to shoot at my guy and you're mad that suddenly he has a two up and vulnerable save for the next three turns because Lucius is fun I do think that you comparing it to chaos Knights is correct but I still feel like chaos Knights is more egregious in this problem yes Ed Mac has other things as well which also keeps it down there just because of like historically how it played it went from being very strong to unplayable essentially so we'll hopefully have better all right let's talk about Eldar of the remaining books as the one I care least about I think it's a fine book I don't know it just it's fine it sits right here at the bottom of B tier to me it's a book that sure exists it feels like if Space Marines was written later in the Edition it's not a perfect book it's got problems it's got a lot of problems that I could honestly look at Space Marines and go yeah Space Marines had that problem too but to a greater extent That Was Then patched and stuff like that I feel like this codex did a lot of the same problems and didn't really even learn that much it was balanced more for 9th Edition codices though that's true yes I agree which is why I say it's Space Marines but later in the Edition like okay harlequins is in this book I have trouble putting it in a b just because of like the fact that it's not one thing why is GW trying to like unbirth an army yeah it's a fun Army too like people enjoy that stuff harlequins to me is the less toxic version of AD Mech it's the I want to play a complicated weird Army that breaks all the rules but I'm not going to annoy you with a 20 minute yeah command phase that you then zone out and all my [ __ ] has 100 different boss on it it's just I'm breaking this rule why because it says right here I can break this rule oh it's right there wow it says you can break that rule cool yeah right and that's great I love that I mean balance that they had a side with the uh all of that nonsense but yeah I don't know man like the Codex is good it does feel solidly like if I was to point to a codex and be like what is nine this kind of shows what ninth was it's weird because if you say one is nine to me I have a different answer but yes it's a valid answer to that question because I mean it kind of encapsulates a lot of the good but it also shows a bunch of the problems that I have with not only this but also like the Space Marines and your general opinions on the choose your own sub faction Adventure yes yeah that's a key part of eldari too so you know it's just one of those like I think a b is fair I'm hoping that they do better in separating these things and uh actually focusing on the different aspects of it but I don't know if I have hope on that too much so at least it wasn't as bad as demons though it's nowhere near as bad as demons oh my god let's just pivot into the one we all knew where it was going demons is at e we have a whole episode about this this is the worst codex of this Edition it was not usurped in any way it has so many problems it's just fundamentally fails in my opinion at what a codex should do for players that play that faction zinch was broken no ziege player was happy about how it was broken it was like literally like the death guard Player is taking 18 flamers good job that's [ __ ] stupid that's not this codex being a fun codex to play that is there was a broken data sheet and souping allowed you to abuse that and nurgle doesn't exist sorry you just didn't put rules to nurgle flanesh had iffy amounts of flavor nurgle was flavorless corn was fine corn is honestly you could probably find some corn players who are pretty okay with the demon book pretty okay as I think about as good as you're gonna get and that's in and of its itself a problem of like four in one stop it and the chaos storm warp storm table thing is awful God it's so I hate the fact that I look at that and I go there is potential there's there is interesting potential to that system and that idea and that rule set but you just didn't do it at all the 10th edition for you for the demon bass rules is better than the 9th Edition one yeah it's an upgrade baby other people are worried about Nerfs and I'm like oh man the index is going to be an upgrade over my codex yeah and it'll be more interesting too the only problem is it's very clearly the base Detachment is more for everybody but zinch and as a zinc player it's like I guess I'll whip out my blood letters and play chord for the first part of the Edition when I want to play Demons but whatever that's fair for now at least it's an index I don't have the expectations I had for this book no and there's so much interesting potential with chaos demons and not a single bit of it was shown in this codex and even corn it's just fine because you know you can still run your blood letters up the board but it's not an interesting way of doing things even for corn it's just a failure it's complete and utter failure what do we have left though let's talk about Gene Steeler Cults for a moment who's that exactly as much as Eric forgets them and that's the joke they had a solid codex through this Edition I won't say it's like amazing it had issues it is a bit small in what it has options yeah it's on the small end like with thousand suns or gray Knights on that size of an army it's solidly like b2a tier depending on how you look at it and what you're wanting to get out of it I can safely put it to beat here I would say beats here I can't say the Cults amazed me they're fine like they're good they do a solid option there's at least choices yeah and now competitively yeah there's a build your own cult that is better than everything else by a margin especially because of free options right now and some other stuff all compiling together but there's Arguments for taking different Creeds which is good honestly it's a solid codex it does the parts that it needs to do but there's also nothing that's like at least to me there's nothing that is above and beyond just a core codex you know what I mean like it doesn't wow you in any way exactly I think it's hard to do that because it gets the identity they wanted for it across which is a hard identity it's a finesse aggressive Army yeah that is tough it is a hundred percent that Army for a competitive spiky person where like the difference between being good and bad at this Army is 40 win rate difference yeah it's very much an experience and knowledge if you are new to this game and you play Gene Steeler Cults you're going to have a bad time yeah but you're not going to annoy your opponent doing it like admac would that is true you're just gonna be out of position all the time and getting fracked that's kind of like the thing is like that's not a fault against the Codex that is a design to make a player base happy yeah you're not trying to sell this to literally everyone the person who enjoys corn is not going to enjoy Jean sealer Cults because you gotta think pretty hard about what you're doing yeah okay I agree with you I think that that's a fair assumption and uh the design intent they did a good job of it all right we've only got one Imperium Army left so I guess let's save them for a minute let's do towel all right how I could almost put Tau to a it's really hard tau is basically impossible to perfectly balance for everybody to enjoy it just because they've shoehorned themselves into this is a shooting Army and only a shooting Army it is a one-phase army I don't hate that that's cool it's an interesting you've done something you very unique that none of the other armies are doing I love that but fundamentally balancing that internally of the Codex and especially externally with all the rest of them is not impossible just because you either overtune the data sheets or you create some type of counter play to your opponents closing in to melee to a point that basically invalidates that interesting aspect of the army so I feel like this Tau codex is the best Tau codecs that we can do until they figure out how to change it from being a one-tone army it is very one-dimensional and that it is a problem but that's a problem with the Army itself like it's not the codex's problem the Codex does what is trying to do there perfectly I'm going to argue it up to an a I liked this codex like I like Tau in general my wife plays towel and she has a really nice collection building up of towel but yeah I have a soft spot for them and honestly I liked this codex for the most part there were some issues with it there's issues with basically every codex this Edition the farsight had some weird where it felt like it was kind of fighting itself but that was kind of the point right like yeah I'm okay with that that doesn't bother me I'm okay with you take a sub faction you get banned from one model type but you get to do other stuff like yeah it's more interesting to do that than to do the tyranids just here's your broken rules pick a set yeah I give this more credit when you do SUB factions that are as different as farsight feels and I think I was initially annoyed with it because I didn't know the reason behind it sure I was just like well that just seems like somebody just threw some rules in there and tried to feed but like there is actual reasoning behind it and there's intent and I do think that that saves that decent amount speaking of liking a codex should we talk about the first s of this list sure I think it's chaos based Marines chaos Space Marines is my second favorite codex of this Edition currently chaos Bay screens just got punished yeah the version of balance that I do not like they got a a little over nerfed because they were doing just too well at the wrong time and GW didn't want that happening for another final six months of the Edition to be fair I do blame creations of bile yeah that was part of it EC was not blameless it happened when it happened as well it was a week or two before they were sending out the next fix yeah there was more to blame than that but ignoring those little things I think the Codex hit so many things right it's what the space spring codex wanted to be the sub factions in CSM feels so good and are probably the best advertisement for the 10th edition sub faction idea they do feel good where demons looks like it tried to do the same thing no I didn't it looks like it tried but like this is your like d student trying that and this is like your 4.0 yeah honor student trying it CSM just it knocks it out of the park with so many design things here like I don't have many issues with this codex like yes it had slightly better rules than it should have had when it launched there was one or two sneaky ones the fight on death thing that was a problem in harlequins this was made right afterwards before they realized how busted it was and gave it to creations of bile and people just moved from harlequins to creations of bile when they nerfed it yeah I'm trying to think of like there are small little things here and there but I mean the design of the Codex hit a lot of points that you would expect and did them well I like the legions feel different and even playing against them other than the obviously yeah the creation's a bile thing like that was a problem EC had some issues word bears were really strong right away too again it was a strong codex through and through but it was never like wow this is dumb yeah you never felt like with tyranids or early on with drukari ad Mech where it was like thanks for the game I'm glad we got together and spent our time doing this at least with admac I was like oh at least I got drunk that was fun but uh no like chaos experience just plays well you play against it and it's still fun internally balanced it has options like you get to choose what you wanted to do I agree I think it is an S tier which is shocking like chaos got an S tier what happened to the chaos tax man I guess demons let's go to what is not my favorite codex of the Edition necrons sit right there just above demons as a threat I think it's hilarious because like if you didn't get the fix I think it would have been an e which fix we had so many required they rewrote our entire faction rule that fix the fix that lets you have a faction rule because as the Codex was printed I think it's an e it's a garbage codex you don't have a faction rule because of how it's set up it just doesn't work core was trying to be something that every other codex said no so that was just wrong when the first two codices was necrons and space brains who are sitting here comfortably in seat here we thought Space Marines was busted and it was obvious Space Marine bias it turns out necrons was just trash even with all of the fixes and stuff like that it's not like it's like they eventually got to a well-tuned designed machine does everything like no it's just kind of like duct taped together it took a grenade and they like just stapled it back together and did a Weekend at Bernie's yeah very fitting for necrons of having to reanimate the corpse yeah there's a more new updated things than there is original to a certain point and which is good because like eventually you got rules I do wonder if necrons hadn't taken off as such a popular faction oh you've never gotten those changes back you would have just been garbage you would have been eat here the entire [ __ ] edition if it would have been like death card and eighth where it's just like welcome to being the first codex idiot the only thing you would have had going for you was obstacle the entire Edition you can go back to very early episodes of me complaining about that and saying how the Codex is far worse than people think it is because it's held up by a single sub faction and that sub-faction being there was hiding so many other horrendous design problems from being talked about because it was like ah they you can still win games just stand on the objectives exactly it was always this like oh yeah but you can still win and it's like no [ __ ] you that's not how you anybody wants to play this game every time blank data sheets could do the same thing as long as they had that yeah and like yeah it's kind of fun to do something like that once or twice but if that's your only option for the faction to have any chance of winning now so like the Codex is garbage but you did eventually get enough changes that it's playable alright are you ready to talk about the one that sours me our final Imperium one sure I have to give custodies an A okay I was like how is this souring you I despise certain aspects of this codex it has a few very specific problems that are glaring flaws to me that angered me the minute I read the Codex and we called on our custody sub faction video which we released that Original Episode the week custodies came out as a book and I called it immediately how this book was going to shake out from an internal balance standpoint with the sub-factions because Emperor's chosen should not have been written it's just the obvious catch-all you gave them a stratagem that just lets you change subfaction to whoever you need what's the point of writing the rest I mean the point is that it gives options for you to choose the other ones so but that one flaw aside this codex was good that is the flaw and that is why it's not asked here yeah there was some balance stuff yes yes but it's totally fine like tyranids had way more wrong very much on the edge like I could see people saying it's asked here honestly it could well be I think part of it is you're jaded because of decorons and like comparing it no hey necrons I don't compare it to custodies but uh that's not a fair fight it's not at all so I think it might be an S I'll make it the third s you're right it is probably S I just hate it yes it is such a small problem to have where one sub-faction has too good of a stratagem that sounds like such a minute point when you say it objectively like that compared to other things that we've forgiven in some of these other courtesies right but at the same time like I'm with you like I do hate that I despise this one single point but it's basically the only Point other than like the normal like if you balance things here and there and whatever but like I will say this is not against this codex custodians is an army as points knocked off for being half forged world yes the unfortunate problem of being a horse heresy Army that became 40K happier data sheets are in a Forge World Book hopefully that gets fixed but it's still like the Codex I think is an S tier it's well done it does feel like you're playing custodies when you play it you can't really be that angry playing against it it plays like an elite Army it's one of the two ends of the spectrum that I like where custodies I get to full force fire everything and see if I can take out some custodies right it's like a challenge can you break a custodial unit apart yeah it really is like can you break down this wall and on the other end of things it's like the fun of like give me a mob of orc boys or guard or anything else like just give me chat for days I want to see how many I can destroy in one turn yeah right just the sheer numbers very much on the opposite ends of the spectrum give me 80 neophytes to kill in gene stealer calls yeah but I like it there are some things but I I do think it's a nest here all right the finalist here what I consider to be the absolute best codex of ninth Edition is drukari I was going to have us originally do an entire episode dissecting the best codex of 9th Edition drukkari but that required a lot of work so we're doing this instead because it's been a long week yeah feels like 10th edition is coming up a lot sooner than either of us really expected time goes fast the the problem is we have those things called day jobs there yeah and they're miserable yeah that really does suck the life out of life but yukari man it had some problems it had issues they all did that's why I moved custodies up to us here I was like I cannot in good conscious [ __ ] about hey you had a sub faction with way too good of a strategy those dark technomancers existed yeah yeah in your [ __ ] boats what if our transports were so good we don't even need to transport transport people I just want empty transports yeah is that legal it is brilliant in fact there's no cap on how many I can take I'm so glad I didn't fully model those and took them off the boat and made of separate but uh the Codex shows off so much potential of how the ninth Edition codexes were put together it shows off so much potential of how multi-prong armies can be done well yeah to make them all feel like advertisements for their sub portion of the faction yeah like with Orcs you got two out of three have a good advertisement form right now boys need a fix but you know golf pressure lists tend to be really heavy on things on squiggasaurs and stuff right and then we all know what happened with the speed freak stuff this Edition so Drew carry is just the like the witches are really good at their job cable lights are really good at their job God damn I love covens and dark titanometers was not okay but I'm okay with that fact the thing is is like they're all distinct but they still work together as drewcari yes when you play all three of them in a list you can have all of them doing their jobs to get together which is not true of some of the other codexes that do have multiple prongs to the Army you can only run one prong yeah per Army list and have it get full power whereas your car gets them all drakari was essentially immune to what they did to destroy the sisters take your shooting stuff and your shooting sub-faction take your fighty stuff in your fighty sub faction things that affected thousand suns with how we would you know soup in to get an extra spell on a certain character stuff like that drukari got to ignore all that because it was like my witches are in this Obsession my cousins are in this Obsession cab lights are in this Obsession and it doesn't matter because they never overlap so it doesn't break any rules yeah it just kind of like works which is great dracari just feels the most liked rukari does in lore where you have a bunch of elves on boats they get out of boats they slice [ __ ] up in combat their boats are devastating with the super cannons that are obnoxious yeah they are if you touch an elf it dies yeah and it's not like it's perfect no no codex this Edition was perfect power balances that had to be done on it but even then it didn't feel that bad to play against even when I was annoyed well okay dark technomancer was [ __ ] [ __ ] it was but also I loved it other than that even the boat thing was like this is kind of stupid right but whatever playing against Jakari has always been like oh that's kind of neat after the first wave of like true Nerfs where it was like okay dark technomancers faq'd stop that and here's your first wave of Point Nerf so that you're not so oppressive with your vehicles yeah you're kind of balanced into the rest of everybody else after that it was like you still have a 65 to 70 win rate but like you're not obnoxious to play against you're just too strong yeah if you're playing against like you're like okay I'm obviously the underdog here but I don't hate this you're not miserable like when you play against ad Mech who had the exact same win rate at the same time you were like oh cool drukari we get to play a game you're better than me but at least we're playing the game ad Mech you're going to play the game I'm gonna go get a beer yeah it was a well-designed codex yeah and core was applied in I think my favorite amount which is probably slightly too much but also [ __ ] you it at least brought the idea back to what it was like maybe supposed to be it had enough excuse for why everything had core yes it was like Hey the tanks don't have core and then you would say but why do your Talus and Kronos have core and I go I don't know redemptor Dreadnought player why do they yeah core was obviously it failed the idea that they were trying to do with necrons just failed and it failed when Space Marines was there and they didn't have that nerfed in the rest of 9th Edition but yeah out of everything drekari shows core as what it could have been the best yeah was there a better Army for core there probably was I just don't know which one I feel like all the Space Marine tangential ones fail in the same ways which to be honest rukhari snuck through with the exact same thing on like Dallas and Chrono should they have been caught probably not but at the same time you'd have to take it off every Dreadnought in the game right and half of the random Elite heavy units that just randomly have it because he's also a Space Marine how was a Space Marine not core I don't understand this concept yeah and I think that that is like the Chronos and tales are the outliers maybe the court of the archon but even that like whatever no one cared drakari shows what core could have been interestingly either way Jakari just nailed it out of the park it was fun all Edition I feel like on this show we talk about me more as a thousand sun player yeah because I think during the later parts of the Edition I was happy as playing thousand suns because I love hero Hammer yeah and the Codex was enough that I could just keep playing hero hammer and enjoy myself right but like from a sheer game standpoint not on air like just us playing games on a Saturday I have more games as drukari this Edition than anything else yeah that is funny thinking of that it's just weird because like you do you played great nights almost exclusively mostly Edition yep but like thousand Sons is not the faction I played most of this Edition it's probably tied with necrons it probably is more than necrons at this point yeah it has more than that grounds you did necrons and then we're like nah [ __ ] off about halfway through the Edition I locked the necrons up and just stopped yeah you basically just stopped but yeah it's kind of weird to think that like I don't talk about how much I loved this Edition on air yeah it did a great job man I I hope it doesn't fail next Edition [Laughter] we'll find out we'll find out indeed yeah maybe we'll Rectify my lack of talking about drukari next episode I would say overall though Fair balance on where we're laying out all the codexes couple dumpsters but generally not bad there's less dumpsters than there should like I put IG down there there's no reason yeah the astral militarum codex deserves to be a detail it's a fine codex we're just mad about the fact that it took five years to make yeah a bit salty on that one but like a couple of the sea tiers could move down to replace it to be honest depending on how the people who play it feel I feel like the B and C's here there's a bunch of them that are mixed together that you could up down kind of thing all right well I guess that finalizes our rankings for the episode hopefully you guys enjoyed this it was a bit more laid back for us so that we could relax this week give us your feedback if you hated this content and you don't ever want us to do it again or if you loved this and you want to see us do this for some other stuff feedback is required this week guys yeah honestly this is kind of a more experimental one and you know it's one of those that even if everybody loves it it's not like we're gonna do tier lists every episode that's just not gonna happen but uh yeah it would be nice to hear what what you guys think and before we get out of here you could help us out by making sure on YouTube to do all the pleasantries if you have time make sure you're subscribed if you like us check out our other content if you randomly clicked on this because you got click baited by a tier list on YouTube and know that I feel a slight bit of Shame for you but that's okay and if you want to do it yourself there should be a link in the show notes to the tier list here take a look at it see what happens all right but that does it for us this week let's get out of here sounds good [Music] thank you

Channel: Poorhammer

Views: 123,964

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Id: pA_mqny2O_w

Length: 70min 46sec (4246 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023