You know the drill by now – another quarter has passed in the 40K metagame, so it’s time for things to be shaken up by a new Balance Dataslate, arriving amidst a flurry of new books. It’s all change once more, but fear not – the Goonhammer team is here to help you through it.

This article provides an overview of the key takeaways, but if you’re just here to find out what’s new for your faction, you can check out the articles for each superfaction below:

• Space Marines
• Imperium
• Chaos
• Xenos

There are also three new Detachments released with this Dataslate:

• Chaos Space Marines – Cabal of Chaos
• Dark Angels – Wrath of the Rock
• Tyranids – Subterranean Assault

As always, thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Balance Dataslate and associated material.

Edit: Except the Raveners/Servitors datasheets and the FAQs and errata which were published later, which we’ll cover separately and update.

What’s Changed

• No Core Rules Changes.
• Three new Detachments:
  • Chaos Space Marines – Cabal of Chaos: A buff-heavy detachment themed around Sorcerers and Daemon Princes.
  • Dark Angels – Wrath of the Rock: Durability-focused boosts for elite Infantry and Mounted units.
  • Tyranids – Subterranean Assault: Deep Strike shenanigans galore with Mawlocs, Trygons and (we assume) Raveners.
• A few top strategies get hit hard – Ynnari receive the full exterminatus-level nerf treatment, running Calgar and Roboute Guilliman together is now disincentivised, and Emperor’s Children get their wings clipped.
• Big buffs to some armies that needed it (Adepta Sororitas) and some who maybe didn’t (Blood Angels).
• T’au get a rewrite of their army rule, simplifying and improving it.
• Rules Buffs for some underperforming detachments, including Champions of Faith and Kult of Speed.
• Datasheet re-writes for a few centrepiece units, notably Vashtorr, the Lord Discordant and the Lion.
• Many small, sensible points tweaks.
• Death Guard, World Eaters and Thousand Sons are untouched, presumably due to novelty.
• A new Base Size document is added, which for 99% of units is just a clarification, but hits Defilers and Soul Grinders hardest.

Impact

The Big Losers

• Aeldari: Ynnari are dead, and not in the way they enjoy. The rest of the faction takes splash damage.
• Emperor’s Children: Punished for the crime of having an over-tuned “solved” list out of the gate. The stock Coterie build was too good, but the way the army has been hit leaves that as the only good build, rather than lifting up other options. Noise Marines also get hit as the faction catches a stray from Renegade Raiders.
• Orks: A surprisingly brutal set of points changes on premium shooty options for the Boyz, and while there is some help elsewhere, it doesn’t do quite enough to compensate.
• Imperial Agents: Who have been abandoned to the balance winds.
• The Metagame: Time makes fools of us all, and this update being too soon after the Death Guard and Thousand Sons Codexes for them to get changes is going to make this a rocky quarter.

The Big Winners

• Death Guard: As above – they are the game’s best faction on the numbers, and completely untouched. One of their potential natural predators – Ynnari – get nerfed out of existence as well.
• Blood Angels: Get absolutely turbo-charged, far beyond anything they needed, and immediately cementing them as one of the most likely challengers for the top spot. The only question is how they’ll do into Death Guard.
• Chaos Space Marines: The Lord Discordant and Vashtorr upgrades are extremely good, providing two powerful new options for an already strong faction.
• Adepta Sororitas: Big points drops and a big buff to Champions of Faith should rocket the faction back into serious competition, and cuts on the Castigator and Immolator might tip over the line into being too much.
• Dark Angels: The improvements to the Lion are a huge deal, providing a powerful option for the Unforgiven.

Our Thoughts

Wings: Unfortunately, I think this is one of the weakest Dataslates we’ve seen in 10th Edition (though not without some positive highlights). Part of that is bad luck, as the timing of this Dataslate is an absolute nightmare, with fully six factions untouched because their books are either too recent or too imminent to get a balance pass. I would argue we have enough data that some emergency changes to Death Guard should have been added, as even just +20pts on Drones, +10pts on Deathshouds would have gone a long way, but the release schedule is so dense right now that if you have to push back by a week to do that, what else do you start clashing with? It sucks, but some of that is outside of the rules team’s control, and I do think every three months is the maximum reasonable cadence for changes, so sometimes we’re just going to have to grit our teeth on stuff dodging the balance hammer.

Unfortunately, even on some of the stuff that has had a review, a number of changes miss the mark. It feels like there’s been a bit too much attention paid to the very best builds in each faction without properly considering the impact on the next layer down. For Aeldari and Emperor’s Children, the best builds get obliterated, and there’s not really enough left to pick up the pieces – more compensatory buffs were needed. For Blood Angels, units that were extremely playable but marginally edged out in optimised builds are buffed more enthusiastically than garbage units in other factions, rocket-boosting them to the top. Sisters more obviously needed the help, but the studio should definitely have installed an alarm that goes off if someone tries to cut the cost on two good hulls in a faction simultaneously – maybe the Immolator needed it, but I refuse to believe the Castigator coming down at the same time is a good idea. Elsewhere, some of the big datasheet boosts are also very scary on paper, but I’m more willing to see risks taken on boosting underwhelming centrepiece units because it is fundamentally good for 40K as a whole if cool models are exciting to use, and boy howdy is the Lord Discordant exciting to use again.

It isn’t all doom and gloom even if you haven’t been handed the robot spider of your dreams. I do think it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that one of the key goals of Dataslates is met – if your favourite army or strategy is currently underwhelming, you are very likely to have more viable options after this. There are also some factions that have received very nuanced and well-targeted changes, and I’d call out Tyranids, Genestealer Cults, Astra Militarum and Drukhari as landing well for moderate changes, and the clear thought that’s gone into making sure T’au’s improved and streamlined army rule doesn’t immediately make them oppressive or unfun to play into.

Fundamentally, I am still going to have plenty of fun playing Warhammer for the next three months. The flip side of rules churn causing balance issues is that it also creates natural evolution and interest in the metagame, and we have a tonne of new stuff to play with, both from books and from cool new options added by this Dataslate. However, I think if we review in three months’ time, it’ll feel like the metagame was more profoundly shaped by the mis-steps and missed opportunities in this Dataslate than by the successes.

TheChirurgeon: As a Death Guard player, even I have to say that not making any adjustments to the faction is a big miss, and one we’re liable to regret pretty quickly. I don’t even think that Death Guard are necessarily “too good” in the sense that we may not see them hit 60% win rates (though that won’t shock me), but what they do is completely remove certain armies from the game – specifically, melee builds. World Eaters and Emperor’s Children just don’t have good matchups into the army and it’ll be interesting to see how Blood Angels fare after their buffs. I think Blight Launcher Drones needed to be around 120 (any more and players just switch to Predators), Deathshroud needed to come up 10, and a few other small tweaks needed to be made to make the army a little less points efficient.

As a Chaos Space Marines player, I’m happy to see the Lord Discordant make a comeback, and look forward to dusting mine off and painting two more. Now seems like a fun time to play Renegade Raiders, especially given how good Rubrics, Plague Marines, and Noise Marines are now in the list.

I tend to agree with Wings that this is a bit weak for a balance update. It also seems like an impossible challenge to balance things while 6 codexes are releasing. There are some good changes in here, and a few things I think needed to happen to help out armies, but I’m not sure the sum total of them create a better or healthier environment to play in.

Liam: The lack of Death Guard changes is definitely a miss. It’s a faction in that awful zone where it’s both strong and easy to play, so it carries players above their level – not to the extent of Index Aeldari, but still. That happening at the same time that Aeldari get the dreaded triple-tap of nerfs – detachment changes for Ynnari, rules changes for Ynnari datasheets, and general points increases on units that are played in other detachments too – sucks.

I think Wings is bang on in identifying that one of the issues here is hyper-focusing on the very best builds and not looking down the field a little. The Lion gets a triple change to his datasheet, and he probably looks in need of help if you look at Dark Angels lists and see very few top 4s and only one or two with him in. On the other hand, there’s plenty of 4-1 lists showing up with him in recent months that haven’t quite made it to the highest heights. Similarly with Blood Angels, the faction’s two big results recently used minimal or no unique units, but there are lots of 4-1 lists out there which include them, and placings at smaller events. That’s a fine place to be – maybe you want to give Sanguinary Guard and Death Company a slight discount to encourage them over just running 18 Bladeguard Veterans, but the key word there is “slight,” not the 100ish points that many existing builds now pick up.

The other, related issue is the apparently chronic need to pull all the levers at once. Like, fine, the Lord Discordant has been rubbish in 10th, nobody’s running one, he needs some help. Did you really need to make 5 separate changes at once? Could we maybe have tried like, two of them? Ynnari are too strong, so we effectively delete Lethal Intent; did we also need to nerf Yvraine’s datasheet and hammer points on both Ynnari and non-Ynnari units?

As a man with a tattoo of the Death Mask of Sanguinius I am thrilled that my golden boys are going to be jump packing around smashing heads for the next three months, so as far as I’m concerned the slate is a massive success. Everyone else will probably not enjoy it half so much.

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