Warhammer 40,000: Adeptus Titanicus Imperial Armour

I'm slowly starting to feel a little better.  While recovering, I've been putting little bits of time into some brainless parts of my various 40K projects, and I'm hoping now I can get some more serious work done.  But for this blog today, we're doing Titans!

Who doesn't love big stompy robots?  And 40K has some of the biggest and stompiest!  Titans, unfortunately, are usually relegated to casual games and often then only the largest scale ones.  Even the smallest Titan takes over half your army to field in points, leaving only a few units to actually play the game with.  And for all their grandeur, the 40K Strength/Toughness system does mean that they will eventually get shot down.  Now at least, the vast majority of weapons will be wounding your Titans on 5s and 6s while still allowing your Titans a decent save against them.

Without further ado, let's see what the surviving Legios of the 41st Millennium can field.

DATASHEETS

Warhound Titan - 1100 pts

Costing over half of a Strike Force army, the scout titan of the Legios comes with 40 T13 Wounds, a 2+ Sv, a 5+ Invuln against ranged attacks, and two massive guns.

You might be wondering why such a massive piece of tech only gets an Invuln against ranged attacks.  This is to represent both the main means of protection Titans have and their primary weakness in the lore.  Titans are protected by a bubble of warp distorted space called a void shield.  Void shields are fantastic at deflecting and destroying incoming projectiles and energy attacks, but they can be traversed by properly protected infantry and vehicles.  They also take a tremendous amount of energy to power and can be overloaded.  In past editions, void shields provided better protection but could collapse just as they do in the lore.  For 10th edition, GW has decided to just represent this with a plain 5+ Invuln.

For our guns, we have the inferno gun: a 24" flamer that hits at S7, AP -2, and Dmg3.  Averaging 10.5 hits, this thing will scoop even tough 5 man units and has a decent chance to pull 10 man units off the table too.

For slightly larger units, we have the vulcan mega-bolter.  While not as good against elite infantry, even Space Marines will have to fear the shear number of shots it puts out.  Anything not wearing power armour is going to take massive damage, obliterating many 10 man units.

For monsters and vehicles, we have the plasma blastgun.  At an average of 10 shots and the BLAST ability, this thing is a serious threat to Infantry too.  But even on its basic profile, it hits at S9, AP-3, and Dmg4.  That number of shots means that even wounding on 5s, this thing can melt most vehicles.

Finally we have the turbo-laser destructor: D3+3 shots at S20, AP-3, and Dmg2D6.  While outclassed by many anti-vehicle weapons in the game, that will still reliable reduce even the toughest vehicles in the game to scrap.

Let's not forget that as a Titan it has Towering and so it can strike nearly anything on the table with everything but the inferno gun.

The Warhound also comes with two abilities.  The first is the second price you pay for fielding a Titan that we saw in the Faction Focus.  If you want to use a Stratagem on a Warhound, you'll have to pay twice the CP for it.  This effectively means you're likely not using any strats on it.  The second is flank speed, which allows it an automatic +8" on an Advance, making it a pretty fast piece of tech.  However, you're likely going to just put two plasma blastguns on it, stand it where ever you can fit it in your deployment zone, and use every turn to blast away with it.

Now here's the part where you're expecting me to tell you that despite all of that, it's just now worth it.  Except . . .

Here's the thing, most opponents will have enough fire power to bring this thing down.  Especially with other Towering and Titanic units being so potent right now, every army has to have an answer to something like this.  But this thing has twice the wounds of many of those rival units.  More than likely, it will survive the first round of firepower, after which it will remove two threats from the board.  That makes it more likely to survive the next round and allow it to scoop up two more threats.  There will definitely be games in which this thing earns its points back before your opponent manages to bring it down, if they even do.

The main problem is that this is over half your army.  It will be sitting in your deployment zone, scoring your backfield objective, and that's it.  You likely won't have a lot of units to play Tactical Missions, so you'll be relying on Fixed for Secondary scoring.  And you'll have to hope the units you're blasting off the board are enough to make sure you're winning on Primary.

There is legitimately a world in which you can play competitively with a Warhound Titan, but you're definitely going to have to work for it.

Reaver Titan - 2200 pts

The only Titan I've faced across the table in an actual game of 40K, many moons ago in the days of 2nd Edition, Reavers are definitely scary.  Reavers go up to T14 and have 60 Wounds to the Warhound's 40.  They come stock with an apocalypse launcher and can pick two other guns to fire with.  We'll start with that apocalypse launcher.

Like the Basilisk, this gun has the range to hit your friends army on the other side of the LGS.  It's an INDIRECT FIRE weapon, but that doesn't really matter.  Unless you're on a board specifically designed to allow units to hide from Towering, you're going to be direct firing this.  Still, it allows a little proof against terrain.  With 3D6 BLAST shots at S7, AP-1, Dmg2, it's a serious threat to all light infantry.

For heavier armour, you've got the gatling blaster.  Firing 12 shots with SUSTAINED HITS 1 at S8, AP-2, and Dmg3, even Terminators are going to need to worry about this thing.

The laser blaster is next with 8 shots at S20, AP-3, and DmgD6+2.  This is probably the go to weapon for the Reaver, as this will allow you to deal with most armoured threats, including enemy Titans, but still has enough shots to deal with Infantry.

Next is the melta cannon: D6+2 BLAST shots at S13, AP-4, Dmg6, or Dmg10 at 24".  Honestly this is just such an odd duck.  While the high AP is nice, you're going to want to stand back in your deployment zone and blast across the board, so you're never really going to get much use of the MELTA rule.

Then there's the volcano cannon, which you might have seen on some other kits.  It can still hit the next table over with 120" range, D3+1 BLAST shots at S24, AP-5, Dmg14.  Honestly, if you're in a game where you can bring a Reaver, you probably want at least one of these.

Finally, you can give a Reaver a power fist, striking with 6 S20 attacks at AP-4, Dmg14, or sweeping with 12 S12 attacks at AP-3, Dmg6.  You're not going to do this though.  Not only are the guns better, but this hits on 4s.  Even if it hit on 3s, I still wouldn't take this.  Those big stompy feet will punish anything that tries to tie this up in melee, and the Reaver can Fall Back and Shoot and Charge.

Unfortunately my calculous for the Reaver doesn't work out as well as the Warhounds.  Basically, this is a Warhound that has a better chance of lasting through the game.  But you're going to be removing, at most, a third unit off the table each turn.  And honestly, that's not going to happen very often.  You may still want to bring this in truly massive games where you know there will be other Titans.  But unless that's the case, this just isn't worth the cost of two Warhounds.  And even if there are enemy Titans, we have another challenger to consider on the next datasheet or so.

Warbringer Nemesis Titan - 2600 pts

For only 400 pts more than the Reaver, the Warbringer has 20 more wounds and can bring all the same weapons, other than the apocalypse launcher and the power fist.  But instead of the apocalypse launcher, the Warbringer brings 2 anvillus defence batteries, 3 ardex-defensor maulers, and either a quake cannon or volcano cannon.  Let's start with the small guns.

Both the anvillus and ardex-defensor are statted for anti-infantry, though the anvillus can also do pretty well against light flyers.  You get a total of 34 shots between them, but crucially it's 5 different guns so you can split their fire as you need.  This gives the Warbringer some automatic ability to deal with infantry, allowing you to focus the rest of its weapons on removing armour.

And I just got a massive sense of deja vu there . . .  Did they preview this bad boy earlier?  Oh well!  On to the big gun!

For the Warbringers carapace weapon you can take either the quake cannon or an upgraded volcano cannon.  The volcano cannon is the same as the one you can get for its arms, but strangely doesn't have HEAVY and gets 2 more shots.  Honestly, this makes it only moderately better than the arm cannons, which will normally be hitting on 2s.

The quake cannon is more general purpose, firing D6+6 BLAST shots at S16, AP-4, Dmg4.  This makes it good against nearly all targets, though you'll miss the higher damage against enemy Titans.  It also has INDIRECT, though again, you have Towering.  Finally, it has an absolutely silly range!  480"  That's 40 feet!  Most local game stores won't have a room that big!

But wait!  There's more!

It has the rule Titanic Fire Support!  This lets you pick some lucky unit that survived this things Shooting and grant your army improved AP on Critical Wounds.  It's honestly not much, but it will still help.  And if your army has a lot of ANTI-X . . .

This thing is so much better than a Reaver.  And in any game where you'd field a Reaver, it will just purely outclass it.  If you're playing a massive game where you know your opponents will have Titans, this is what you bring.  Otherwise, you're probably still better with a pair of Warhounds.

Warlord Titan - 3500 pts

Finally we arrive at the big boy, the mightiest unit you can field on the table.

At least until we get an official model for the Warmaster.

And then maybe one day the Imperator.

But for now, this is the largest single model in the game.  Also, it's ironically the one you're most likely to have?  Although this thing costs as much as some used cars, if you're going to save up for a Titan, you might as well save up for this one.  Also, the NOVA Open Charity raffles have given one of these away at least once a year for a bit now.  I think they're technically giving two away this year, though as a diorama.

But that's 3500 pts!  That's more than even an Onslaught game of 40K!  Can this thing possibly justify itself?

So in case you didn't check out the reveal, let's start with that wound count.  The Warlord skips over T15, and goes straight to T16 and 100 Wounds.  Plasma will only be wounding this on 6s.  Nothing but a dedicated anti-tank gun will wound it on better than 5s.  Even at 3500 pts, an army is going to struggle to bring it down.

And this thing brings some truly frightening fire-power!

You start with two of either the apocalypse launcher or the laser blaster.  Interestingly enough, the laser blaster on the Warlord is completely inferior to the Reavers.  But still, you get two of them.  The apocalypse launcher is all upgrade though, firing 20 attacks at S8, AP-2, D2.  So you're scooping two 10 mans a turn.

The Warlord then gets a pair of those ardex-defensor maulers the Warbringer has.  So there's even more anti-infantry you can use to deal with smaller threats.  It then gets two ardex-defensor lascannons.  These are just normal, single shot lascannons that can poke at a bigger target each round.  Now, let's get to those arms.

The Warlord can take an arioch power claw.  You're probably not going to, but this is an all around better option than the Reaver's power fist.  First, it doesn't cost you a gun, firing 20 attacks with SUSTAINED HITS 1 at S6, AP-1, and Dmg2.  Again, you can kill a lot of infantry with that.  And should something be stupid enough to get close, it sweeps with 12 attacks at S12, AP-3, Dmg8, or strikes at S20, AP-4, and Dmg24!  There's not much in the game that can survive that.

Still, you've got big guns you can put on this thing, and that's probably what you're going to do.

The macro gatling blaster puts out an eye watering 30 shots with SUSTAINED HITS 1 at S9, AP-2, Dmg3.  This will take out nearly any infantry unit and most vehicles too.

Next is the mori quake cannon: 3D6 shots with BLAST at S16, AP-4, Dmg 6.  Another decent all purpose weapon that won't kill huge blobs of infantry but will wreck most other things on the table.

Then we've got the sunfury.  This one is another all rounder, firing 2D6+6 shots with BLAST at AP-3.  Its standard shot hits at S10 and Dmg5, while supercharging it goes to S12, Dmg8.  Any of these guns would be extremely useful on the table.

But let's face it, if you've got a Warlord there's a good chance your opponent is bringing something big.  So you know you're going to take at least one belicosa.  This absolute beast fires D3+3 shots at a whopping S32, AP-5, and Dmg18!!!  An invuln and some extremely lucky die rolls is your only chance to survive this.

So despite being a massive 3500 pts, if you're play games with Titans a Warlord is actually your best pick.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

So while I was writing this up, Exile Con started.  I stopped working on this to relax and enjoy the live stream.  But my head started plucking away at the numbers.  And, well, when my head starts doing that . . .

So between presentations and during ones I was a bit less interested in, I pulled out my damage calculator, looked up the units that have been dominating top tables at the big events recently, and plugged the numbers.  Then I saw how good they were at taking down these bad boys.  I then tested the Titans against each other.  I had to fudge some things, like Unparalleled Foresight and Lay Low the Tyrant.  I've still got a more sophisticated method for doing these calculations coming.  But for now, these numbers should be close enough.

And honestly, I was really surprised!

GW said they had come up with new methods for determining pts that should provide more balance, and for Titans they actually seem to be working!

Each Titan saw an increase in efficiency and survivability roughly in line with their points cost.  So a Reaver is actually roughly equal to two Warhounds, Warbringers are just that little bit better than Reavers, and Warlords do make up their massive points cost.  They're still not as good as the best units in the game, but they're honestly not bad either.

You've got some real threat to deal with if you try to bring one though.  Aeldari and Custodes in particular just laugh these things off the board.  Necrons and Tau are also a really serious threat, especially Doomsday Arks and Broadsides respectively.  For Knights, it really depends on their loadout.  Beast Snaggas were the real surprise for me.  They've actually prompted a future blog in which I look at my worst calls so far.  They're almost as good point for point at taking these down as Eldar units are!  

And then, of course, there's Shalaxi.

But overall, I was really pleased with the theoretical performance of the Titans.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Titans unfortunately don't have a place in competitive play.  Competitive games of 40K are nearly always fought at 2000 points, so Warhounds are your only option.  The games use dense boards with ample cover, and many events have begun making sure some of that cover provides resources against Towering.  You'll be struggling to fit your Warhound's massive frame in your deployment zone, and you won't have the units to score the objectives you need to win.  And if all that wasn't enough, there are other units out there right now that are way better at dealing damage then the massive guns a Titan brings.

But if competitive play isn't your thing, there's no reason not to enjoy some casual games where these big boys come out to play.  They're honestly not bad units, just not the best ones.  And if you and your opponent have agreed to setup a game where they can be fielded, you can make sure the terrain allows you to actually deploy and move them.  Any such game that includes an epic duel between two God Engines is sure to be memorable.

Let's Talk About Lethality

Games Workshop has come into this new edition with the stated intention that 10th Edition will be less lethal than 9th Edition.  To be fair, this is not hard.  Basically every Codex that came out after Death Guard had units that could absolutely annihilate the toughest unit in the codex before it.  From the sprinkling of AP received by Space Marines and Necrons, books started coming out filled with AP-3 and AP-4 weaponry.  While Necrons started the Ignore Invuln trend with the Night Bringer, we thought weapons like that would be restricted to demigod entities.  But soon it seemed every codex had at least something that could remove enemy Invulns.  Then the Ignore Ignore Wounds rules started showing up, not only negating FNPs, but also Phase Caps and eventually Damage Reduction.

Now the Battlefields of the 41st Millennium are supposed to be hellish places.  But this level of lethality had a direct impact on the game.  Vehicles all but disappeared from the board.  If it couldn't hide behind obscuring terrain or benefit from cover, it usually stayed home.  The game became very focused on tough, minimum sized, elite infantry units and fast, glass cannon, damage dealers to take them out.  On the one hand, this made the game focused on movement, positioning, firing lines, and board control, and I really enjoyed it.  But the fun, flavorful, and impressive battle lines of previous editions were gone.

GW'S ANSWER

As I said in the rules roundup, GW has decided to approach this problem from two fronts: revising Strength and Toughness, and lowering AP.

GW has increased the Toughness of every Monster and Vehicle across the board.  In general, starting with Toughness 7, they've changed each incremental step of Toughness to three steps.

So roughly:

• T7 -> T9-11
• T8 -> T12-14
• T9 -> T15-16

The weapons most impacted by this by far have been the mighty plasma guns and meltaguns.  In 9th these were your go-to general purpose weapon, easily capable of killing elite infantry or tanks.  Now, while they still have good AP, they'll find themselves struggling to wound the Monsters and Vehicles they hunted before.

By contrast, other weapons have gone up in Strength to compensate for this and designate them as Vehicle and Monster killers, in some cases far surpassing the pattern established for Toughness.  In 9th Edition, the strongest weapon profile belongs to the Belicosa Volcano Cannon.  At S20, even in 10th edition this Warlord Titan weapon with make a joke of nearly any model.  But GW has already introduced tank weaponry with higher Strength, peaking with the Valiant's Thundercoil Harpoon and the Stormsurge's Pulse Blast Cannon, both weapons featuring a Strength of 24.  Recently they unveiled the new Belicosa, at a whopping Strength 32.

By contrast, the AP reduction has been much more consistent.  With a few exceptions, nearly every weapon previewed has gone down a pip of AP.  Combined with sensible cover rules, armor saves will be much more useable.  The heaviest armour of the 41st Millennium looks like it will actually stand up to the threats it was designed for.

Additionally, a lot of the things that get around saves are gone.  Psychic powers are no longer raining down mortals.  No profile, including some that had it before, has been shown that ignores FNP, and the only ignore invuln is a once per game ability on the Vindicare Assassin.  So your defensives stats are more useful on the whole.

So that's that then!  Vehicles and Monsters are tougher, high strength weaponry exists but it's confined to the big boys, and armor counts for more.  Lethality fixed!

So why are people worried?

WEAPON SPECIAL RULES

In 8th Edition, weapons were defined by a single type rule.  Every weapon was Assault, Grenade, Heavy, Melee, Pistol, or Rapid Fire.  Then if a weapon needed further explanation, there was a section in the profile dedicated to special rules.  This made it easy to know a guns capabilities from a glance, but it also lead to some weird design requirements.  Starting with the 9th Edition Ork codexes, the design team felt they needed to introduce a new weapon type in order to make Ork weapons function the way they wanted.  Then finally in Votann, they felt forced to introduce HunTR, a type that defined a weapon as just being a gun.

In 10th Edition, weapons are simply melee or ranged by default.  Then one or more universal special rules can be tacked onto them.  The overwhelming majority of weapons are defined by these rules alone.  However, with these rules now in existence, GW has decided they can use them to make some of the basic weapons more interesting.  Over the course of the faction focuses, fans have noted that some rules that greatly increase the effectiveness of a weapon seem to keep popping up.

Of primary concern, given GWs stated intentions and approach, are LETHAL HITS and DEVASTATING WOUNDS.

LETHAL HITS makes any Critical Hit automatically Wound the target.  So far, we haven't seen too many rules that expand what counts as a Critical Hit, leaving this rule to trigger on an unmodified 6 in the vast majority of cases.  But that potential means Tough targets can be taken down by saturation fire.  Simply outfit your army with LETHAL HITS, then throw enough dice at something and it will die regardless of its Toughness.

DEVASTATING WOUNDS has a similar problem, but in this case the situation gets magnified.  On a Critical Wound, the target takes a mortal wound and the attack sequence ends.  The big deal here is that mortal wounds get around both armour and invuln saves.  Armies with access to DEVASTATING WOUNDS could potentially rain mortals the way Psyker armies and Tyranids did in 9th.  But here things get worse, as the ANTI rule expands the Critical Wound range for specific targets.  When the two are combined, the chosen target can reliably have both its Toughness and Save bypassed.

Combine either of these rules with sources of re-rolls, and some players are concerned that the game will be right back where it started.

RE-ROLLS AND OTHER FACTION RULES

Starting with the reveal of Faction Rules for 10th Edition, there were concerns of access to both these rules and re-rolls.  While GW had said they wanted to reduce the amount of re-rolls, the Space Marine Army Rule, Oath of Moment, gives every Space Marine model full re-rolls to Hit and Wound against a chosen target.  And with Guilliman on the field, they get to pick a second target if they can eliminate the first.

In the same article, the Tyranid Detachment Rule, Hyper-Adaptations, has the ability to give every Tyranid model LETHAL HITS against Monsters and Vehicles.  This means that a force made primarily of the new, tougher vehicles, could potentially be picked apart by an army designed for dice saturation.

And since then, more Faction Focuses have come out that can provide these powerful rules to an army.  Many are starting to claim these Universal Special Rules are less special and more universal.

So is 10th Edition doomed to be another game of keeping your army hidden and trying to get the all important first strike?

MY ANALYSIS

I decided I wanted to do more than just ponder.  I wanted to base my thoughts on as hard data as I could find.  So I combed through the Warhammer Community articles to find every rule and profile I could get my hands on.  I grouped the rules into three categories: offensive power, defensive power, and mixed or less obvious rules.

I then performed statistical tested a handful of weapons revealed from every faction, comparing them against their 9th Edition counterparts.  Wherever possible I chose weapons with one or more special rules on them, though there were a few I picked because I was curious about them in particular.  When performing these tests, I gave each unit access to their Army and Faction Rules and their own special rules, but nothing else.  Prior to the Kansas City Open, we didn't have anywhere close to as full a picture on what was available in 10th over 9th.  And in 9th, it's very easy to stack power.  So I wanted to go for something more baseline instead of just letting the 9th Edition armies pile on as many rules as they wanted.

So what did I find?

THE DATA

Let's start with what this analysis and data doesn't show.  This analysis does not show definitively whether 10th Edition is more or less killy than 9th Edition.  The only way to know that is when we finally have our hands on the full rules and get some games in.  I'm even working on a project that will give pretty sophisticated demonstrations of unit capabilities.

What we're looking at is whether the revealed rules depict a game that is more or less lethal than 9th Edition.  In other words, "Is there any reason to believe that 10th Edition will be as bad or worse than 9th Edition?"

Let's start with the rules themselves.  All told I found 242 beneficial special rules for Armies, Factions, Units, and Stratagems.  Among them:

• 105 or ~43% are purely focused on making a unit more lethal
• 55 or ~23% only provide a defensive benefit to a unit
• 41 or ~17% give access to re-rolls or a means to bypass Save or Wound rolls

When you consider that GW has almost certainly been trying to show off things that will get players excited to play their favorite Faction, this doesn't feel like a lot to me.  Less than half the rules are focused purely on lethality.  Less than 20% are rules we're really concerned about.  And since we don't know what the point tax on them will be, we have no means to decide how accessible they'll be.

By contrast nearly every army in 9th Edition has an HQ with a re-roll aura.

As for the weapons themselves, I found a total of 331 weapon profiles, not including generic close combat weapons (as well as things like armoured tracks and xenos claws and teeth.)  Of them:

• 113 or ~34% have no special rules or only detrimental rules (HAZARDOUS, PSYCHIC, ONE SHOT)
• 25 or ~7.6% just have a rule that makes them more useful (ASSAULT, PISTOL)
• 192 or ~58% have one or more rules that make the weapon more effective
• 51 or ~15% have LETHAL HITS or DEVASTATING WOUNDS

Again, considering that GW is trying to get us excited in these previews, this doesn't seem very impressive.  But this is still pretty subjective.  What do the statistical studies show?

STATISTACL TESTS

Over all, I've found it hard to find specific patterns for sure other than "there's a lot of red on the spreadsheet."  The game seems less lethal, on the whole with maybe Infantry having more to worry about, and Vehicles having less to worry about.  Lets go faction by faction.  Each set was tested against Cadians, Intercessors, Blightlords, Rhinos, Landraiders, and Monoliths.

Adeptus Sororitas

Tested Weapons: ministorum flamer, Exorcist conflagration rockets, and Exorcist missile launcher

Other than some ability to spike damage using 9th edition rules, Sisters look over all more effective against infantry and less effective against vehicles.

Adeptus Custodes

Tested Weapons: Executioner greatblade, Guardian spear, and Castellan axe

All weapons were unchanged or less effective, save against Blightlords.  The loss of Disgustingly Resilient allows Custodes to be much more effective now.

Adeptus Mechanicus

Tested Weapons: radium carbine, arc rifle, and solar atomiser

Other than spike damage, the carbine is slightly more effective now against hard targets.  Conversely, the solar atomiser is slightly more effective now against light targets.  In all other ways AdMech have lost damage.

Aeldari

Tested Weapons: witchblade, singing spear, bright lance, focused lance.

The singing spear shows decent improvements against hard targets.  In all other cases the weaponry is either similar or has dropped in effectiveness.

Chaos Daemons

Tested Weapons: bileblade, Witstealer, The Blade of Shadows on the strike

Witstealer has also benefited from the loss of -1 to Damage.  Otherwise, these weapons are less effective.

Chaos Knights

Tested Weapons: hellstorm autocannon, Despoiler battle cannon, Desecrator laser destructor, volkite combustor, warpstrike strike

Again, losing -1 to Damage hurts Death Guard.  The Despoiler's battle cannon absolutely shreds light targets now, while the Desecrator is all around more powerful.  Everything else took a nerf.

Chaos Space Marines

Tested Weapons: Fleshmetal guns warp hail and salvo and Drach'nyen

Other than good performance against Guard, everything got nerfed.

Death Guard

Tested weapons: combi-weapon, bubotic blade, reaper autocannon, Plagueburst mortar

Death Guard is all around more effective against Infantry now.  The reaper is also mostly better now.  Vehicles are now slightly, to much more tough against Death Guard weaponry.

Drukhari

Tested weapons: twin splinter rifle, splinter cannon, twin Drukhari haywire blaster, Lelith's blade

Providing they're Empowered, Drukhari are much more deadly now.  One of the more buffed factions.

Imperial Agents

Tested weapons: Exitus rifle and Castigation

Now that Headshot is no longer a dice game, the Vindicare is all around more powerful.  Only the Monolith shrugs that shot off at all well.  Castigation is strictly worse as a weapon than a power.

Imperial Guard

Tested weapons: lasgun, plasma gun, demolisher cannon, volcano cannon

The change to toughness really shows on the plasma gun, being more effective against infantry but far less effective against vehicles.  The Demolisher cannon is significantly improved though, while the volcano cannon and humble lasgun have taken a nerf.

Imperial Knights

Tested weapons: Questoris heavy stubber, Chainbreaker las-impulsor on low intensity, thermal spear, thundercoil harpoon

One of the more erratic datasets.  On the whole, the heavy stubber is more effective, while the low intensity las-impulsor is suitably strong against infantry and week against vehicles.  Other than some outliers for Death Guard and the Rhino, the thermal spear and the thundercoil are nerfed.

Genestealer Cults

Tested weapons: webber, seismic cannon, mining laser, Patriarch's claws

This dataset initially looks erratic, but that's only because the webber can now do damage to vehicles where it couldn't before.  It's otherwise mostly nerfed.  The seismic cannon is almost purely better, but the mining laser and Patriarch aren't fairing as well.

Grey Knights

Tested weapons: purifying flame, Nemesis force weapon, greatsword on strike, and daemon greathammer

It's almost all red.  The Grey Knights appear to have taken a nerf for now.

Leagues of Votann

Tested weapons: ion blaster, twin ion beamer, SP heavy conversion beamer, and heavy magna-rail cannon

Leagues felt like they took the biggest nerf of any faction focus.  But while they're also mostly in the red, the two beam weapons are more effective against Infantry now.

Necrons

Tested weapons: gauss flayer, deathray, particle whip, and doomsday cannon

Even with the new LETHAL HITS the guass flayer is still all around less effective.  The larger weaponry seems to have done far better, though the Land Raider and Monolith still shrug some of it off.

Orks

Tested weapons: Makari's stabba, choppa, 'Eadbanger

These weapons are still mostly best against light targets, though 'Eadbanger can at least hurt vehicles now.

Space Marines

Tested weapons: bolt rifles, multi-melta, Godhammer lascannon, heavy laser destroyer

Marines suffered from early codex syndrome and now they've been heavily buffed.  It's nearly all good news for them.

Space Marine Chapters

Tested weapons: master-crafted power weapon, frag cannon, Blood Reaver, Fealty on the strike

The non-compliant Chapters still get the huge buff from Oath of Moment, while The Lion seems to have traded some of his offense for defense.

T'au Empire

Tested weapons: EMP grenade, twin pulse carbine, rail rifle, railgun

It's mostly bad news, though the EMP can actually hurt vehicles now.  The railgun has been buffed though.

Thousand Sons

Tested weapons: Doombolt, warpsmite, Psychic Stalk

And here we see how the changes to Psychic Powers have affected their most dependent faction.  It's also mostly bad news, though Psychic Stalk can now hit vehicles.

Tyranids

Tested weapons: fleshborers, Genestealer claws and talons, Screamer-killer talons, rupture cannon

Even with the new adaptive trait, it's not good news for my 'Nids.  Genestealers really enjoy that WS 2+ though.

World Eaters

Tested weapons: Berzerker chainblade, Khornate eviscerator, daemongore cannon, Samni'arius and Spinegrinder on the strike

Again, it's bad news.  Though the daemongore appears to have taken a bit of a buff against lighter targets.

FINAL CONCLUSIONS

This is not an incremental step in the rules like 9th was.  This is a big enough change that GW saw fit to bring us back to Indexes.  And honestly, I feel like the data points to that.  There are definitely places where things feel considerably less lethal, just as GW intended.  But I'm also seeing places where GW has decide to give some love to things that might have been suffering.

In some cases, I think the design team has taken a step back and rethought what some weapons and units represent.  In others, they've really leaned into it.  The result is a hodgepodge of data that doesn't show a clear narrative, as should be expected from cherry picked rules and units that were revealed with the purpose of generating hype.

I began this project relatively early on as I started hearing concerns and even had a few of my own.  As I write this, the Kansas City Open is ongoing.  I have to admit, I wasn't expecting things to come this fast and furious.  My initial plan to present some form of evidence either for or against a lethality narrative has been superseded by live gameplay.  Soon enough we'll start to see if GW has succeeded in making the game less killy and more interactive like they wanted.

If anyone wants, I'll post my compilations and calculations as a Google doc.  I'm sure I made mistakes somewhere, despite my efforts, especially when fudging single re-rolls or 2 Damage and variable damage weapons against the Death Guard's 3 wounds.  But even then, I think most would agree the data doesn't tell much of a story one way or another.

And if things keep going well, someday I'll have the tool I'm planning available.  And then much better analysis can be done with a full set of data.