The Angry Initiative

Introduction

This is an initiative to improve internal and external balancing of codexes and improve fluff - rule transition.

Every Angry Codex should be able to make the game more fun on its own. While ideally two angry codexes will face each other, an angry codex should be able to play against both a normal codex and an angry codex.

The most important rule is that angry codexes should be fun to play with, which is obvious, but just as important, it must be fun to play against.

The angry codexes should provoke thoughtful list building. Further, angry codices should allow you to take any unit without feeling you are shooting yourself in the foot or bringing a gun to a friendly game of warhammer.

Disclaimer

Games Workshop in no way endorses any of the Angry Codices. No infringement is intended with this work, nor any other of the Angry Codices. The intent of the angry codices is NOT to make GW go out of business, but rather to improve the quality of the hobby, which leads to a happier and larger player base.

Why GW´s business model is bad and how I think they could make it better

The Old Direction

Currently GW is running what I like to call a revolving door business model, where only ever a handful of units in each army is worthwhile, and only a couple of armies are competitive. This shifts around ever so often, so the armies and units which were weak, left out in the cold, become stronger, get into the warmth, making people buy the new hot stuff. Sometimes people are left out in the cold for too long, and nobody likes being out in the cold for too long, which can lead to people leaving the hobby. And sometimes armies are left for too long in the warmth, which just gets sweaty and nasty, causing yet more leavers.

GW tells its player base that the game is meant to be played for fun with friends, and expect the player base to find out how to make their games enjoyable. Well this is the Angry Pirates iniative at making the game more fun and hopefully makes the fun and competitive aspects of the hobby able to mesh a little better.

A New Direction

What I suggest instead is a rock, paper, scissor system for each unit, each unit counters certain other units while they get countered by other units, this is already true, to a certain degree. The Angry codices attempt to put this system into place. This is done firstly by nerfing the strongest units, which trade equally with their counters and hammer everything else, and secondly by buffing the weakest units, which trade equally with the units they are supposed to counter and get hammered by everything else. Thirdly all events of automatic counters, that is armies that counter a specific unit type without specifically building their army for it, are changed so that is no longer the case. Finally, all armies receive counters for all unit types; no unit should be safe for counters. This shuts down any opportunity for a unit to be untouchable and out of this world overpowered. The rock, paper, scissor system is a safe net making sure the game cannot go sour for any players, even if a unit is overpowered.

In the end this has a couple of consequences:

1. For the player: No player ever has to get beaten up by the same 3 wraith knights every game. If your opponent brings duplicates of the same unit, then your opponent should be vulnerable to a counter list.

1. For GW: People will have to flesh out their collections more if they want to be able to counter their enemies units, if an opponent is countering your wraith knights you will have to go out and buy something else to bring.

2. For the player: If you don´t like a certain model you will not feel forced into buying it, example: the grey knights nemesis dreadknight, even though it has garnered massive hate online you still see at least one in every grey knight army. Grey knight players feel forced to take this unit because of the huge internal imbalance between their units and the lack of proper counters to the dread knight. If all armies were able to counter it then grey knights players would have feel less forced into taking this unbalanced unit.

2. For GW: When models are bought on the basis of unbalanced rules it is much harder to know what models the community do and don´t like, the dread knight would probably have sold poorly, were it not for the unbalanced rules. While this would be initially bad for sales, it would also allow GW to gather data on exactly what models the community like.

Editing

Feel free to edit wordings to improve readability. Before adding anything to an angry codex, first write in the discussion page of the page in question and say what you want to change. If no one responds within 1 week, feel free to change it. If someone objects you should civilly discuss and prove why your idea is good and how it fits with fluff/is more balanced etc. etc. AngryPirate does not follow these rules, mainly because he is mostly editing stuff he himself wrote. If you don´t agree with an edit AngryPirate has made you can PM him or write in the talk page.

Current Angry Codexes:

Codex - Necrons Angry Robot Edition

Everything is Fearless, Necron Warriors cost 8 pts/model, no transports anymore, only teleportation and walking. C´tan are customizable to an insane degree. Number of units fill the role which the fluff describes them doing, like the Annihilation Barge which is now anti infantry. Brought back pariahs.

Codex - Chaos Space Marines Angry Anarchist Edition

Made formations and detachments to represent some of the different chaos warbands. All psychic diciplines redone and buffed. A number of cost changes, mostly decreases. All marks, except nurgle, have gotten buffs.

Codex - Daemons Angry Demon Edition

Fewer charts more awesome. Nurgle has armour saves. Khorne has blood tithe. Tzeentch has shooting, less psykers. Slaanesh is fast, very fast. All one mark armies are now far better. Each god has 3 greater daemons. Heralds are unit upgrades. Nurgle vs Tzeentch and Khorne vs Slaanesh dislike eachother a LOT.

Codex - Dark Eldar Angry Emo Edition

Less armour 14 hate, less monster hate. Vehicles now give AOE buffs to units allowing you to field a mix of infantry and vehicles. Mostly buffs but some things have been changed to a decree where it is hard to determine whether or not it´s a nerf or a buff.

Codex - Grey Knights Angry Witcher Edition

Less ap 3, less force weapons. The army is less elite, while not the explicit intent it had to be done because the army had too much anti marine, too little anti horde. Number of point decreases and a couple of point increases. Major nerf to Dreadknights.

Codex - Craftworld Eldar Angry Munchkin Edition

Minor changes to distortion weapons + some point increases.

Codex - Tyranids Angry Alien Edition

Couple of buffs + some point decreases. The little troops got major point decreases. Check out http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Codex_-_Tyranids:_/tg/_edition it makes a big deal out of stat biomorphs. Nice dex, but it fails in a couple of ways. What I have done is just a minor fix, while the /tg/ edition is a rework like the robocrons.

Codex - Orks Angry Greenskin Edition

Note that I am not an Ork player and have limited experience watching them and playing against them. Tips from Ork playas would be greatly appreciated as I can only really work through mathhammer, and I only start working on things which I never see anyone take, see everyone take or is just glaringly unbalanced.

Test games

Angry Crons vs Daemons of Chaos (not angry)

• Major loss vs Daemons. Many a tactical blunder were made. Changed the monolith to be better against a wider variety of enemies.

Angry CSM vs Angry DE

It´s not alway easy to find opponents who want to play against, and with, fandexes, perhabs I haven´t been looking hard enough? Anyways I got a game in with the angry anarchist CSM vs the angry emo DE. He brought two venoms w. 5 wyches each, a largish unit of mandrakes, 6 incubi + archon in raider + a couple of ravagers with the edge cannons, which has no been renamed twillight annihilators, 7 hellions and a large number of khymera with some beastmasters. I brought an iron warriors detachment with a heldrake w. baleflamer, level 3 nurgle sorcerer, warpsmith, 9 chosen with their new 2+ armour save upgrades w. 2 powerfists and 5 pairs of lightning claws in a rhino, 10 possessed in a rhino, helbrute, 2*10 chaos cultists with shotguns, 7 havocs with 4 of the new missile launchers with all 3 ammo types and ending the list with 2 defilers. Note that I haven´t played chaos in forever, but I didn´t really feel very punished for my unit choices.

First off the heldrake was fairly strong but it definately didn´t feel like it was doing too much, I feel the new point cost seems fair. The defilers seem extremely strong with their ability to shoot at mutliple targets + their Strength D close combat attacks, but it wasn´t that much over the top, possibly because of my misplays. Talking of misplays, my 2+ armour save chosen ended up being annihilated by his rending khymera, why did I give them this again..? Sigh. And his incubi, i got all of them back with a formation but they failed to do anything the entire game because they didn´t really have a good matchup against any of his stuff and I was afraid of them being slaughtered once more by his incubi. Speaking of things that got brutally murdered, the 10 possessed were shot down before even rolling on their empowered vessels of chaos table, this was primarily due to poor rolling on my part. The helbrute performed fine, but it didn´t even use its new daemon forge, it did make a daemon save or two though, it seems alright now. Shotgun cultists performed fairly well, I think they need to be tested as spam list with the iron warriors detachment which may be a little too strong. During the game I managed to get 2 extra units of cultists, the 9 chosen and my chaos sorcerer back from the dead, it didn´t really feel overpowered, the powercreep is real.

As for the DE, the main guns felt like they automatically got their bonus, which was not entirely the intention on my part, they now need an unsaved wound instead of just a wound. Nothing much to say for the rest of the army, the changes pretty much worked, the mandrakes seemed a little too strong with the constant 2+ cover save from raiders being enough of a buff their strength upgrade and toughness upgrade have both been removed.

Angry Daemons vs Angry CSM

1850 points. I had Lord of Insensate Rage (greater daemon of khorne w. S D), 8+8 Bloodletters, 3+4+4 Skullcrushers, 3+3 Screamers each with Herald of Tzeentch on disk, 7 Fleshhounds, Daemon Prince of Khorne, Soulgrinder of Khorne, Skull Cannon. Against Warpsmith in cultists, Slaanesh Sorcerer in terminators, 10 Cultists with shotguns, 5-10 CS Marines in rhino, 6-10 Thousand Sons in rhino, 7 chosen w. 4 pairs of lightning claws in land raider, 4 Termies w. 1 chain fist and 3 pairs of lightning claws in land raider, Defiler, Maulerfiend, Vindicator they were organised in an Iron Warriors detachment, which he never rolled for.

Lord of Insensate Rage started on the board. He flew straight ahead turn one and then landed turn two. He managed to kill the chosen as well as the thousand sons.

Bloodletters deepstruck in to the side of the battlefield, which meant they hardly took any damage from ranged attacks, therefore they performed very well. I determined after the battle that they were too gimmicky in the fact that they were too offensive compared to their defensive value.

One of the screamer units were reduced to one, even with that it managed to destroy one land raider before getting caught in the explosion it caused. The other unit managed to destroy his other land raider. They were definately way too strong, their attacks have been reduced from 3 to 2. I will keep careful watch over them, they seem strong, but their Initiative of 1 + their relative weakness to shooting means they are really only super good against vehicles. As far as psychic powers went, during the entirety of the game I threw 3 doombolts, 2 of them against the same land raider, which did nothing, then changed its armour value to... 14. The final one destroyed his defiler.

The flesh hounds got into a fight with his generic CSMs, they were losing before they got assisted by one of the bloodletter units.

The soul grinder got destroyed by a mixture of shooting and the terminator with a chain fist. Nothing really to say here. I think it´s toughness demands its new point value.

Skull cannon got shot to pieces and never managed to do anything.

Daemon Prince got hacked to pieces by chosen. I´m definitely glad that I paid 100 and not 160 points for it, it seemed fair enough.

As stated previously my opponent could have gotten a couple of extra units with his formation which he forgot to roll for. Nothing in his army really seemed unbalanced, stubborn across the board is a really nice change. No chaos warriors fled, which is more or less how it should be.

New las-cannons seem fine. No big change against this particular army, it was slightly less powerful against Screamers, which I don´t think he ever used them against. Against the Soul Grinder it is a tad better, definitely not game breaking in any way.

I had forgotten to change the point cost of the terminator weapon upgrades. Speaking of terminators I have wanted to give them Toughness 5 for a while, well, now it´s done. It sets terminator armour apart from artificer armour, or flesh armour in this instance, besides from the Deep Strike and 5+ Invulnerable save.

It ended in a victory for the Angry Daemons just before I got to my turn 6 (I went last). He had a Vindicator and two rhinos left. I had 1+6 Bloodletters, 2 blood doggies, Lord of Insensate Rage (1 wound), 2 Skullcrushers (one of them had lost 2 wounds). I would have probably tabled him had I done my turn as my units were converged around his remaining vehicles. Really close and fun game overall.

Angry Robocrons vs angry Emo DEldar

I had 20 warriors w. ark, 20 warriors w. ark, 20 warriors w. night scythe, 20 warriors, 8 immortals w. gauss, 2 x 5 deathmarks, overlord in barge w. nemesor... But no warscythe, C´tan Shard with restless tail, 2 x 3 tomb blades with particle blasters.

I played with reanimation protocols on 4+ instead of 5+. You could say I cheated, or that I tested whether or not it would be op...

He had 5 trueborn w. 1/2 blasters and raider, succubus w. ap 2 weapon in said trueborn, 5 bloodbrides w. venom, 2 x 10 kabalite warriors w. raider each, 2 x 5 wracks w. venom each, void bomber w. void pulses (old dark scythe), 2 x ravager w. 3 twillight annihilators (ap 1 krak rockets), 6 reavers w. 1 or 2 blasters.

Bloodbrides failed their 6" charge and got shot to pieces. 20 of my warriors were stuck on one side of the board because of a refused flank, my plane teleported them to the action turn 3. 5 deathmarks were stuck with the 20 warriors to the side because I wanted to instantly capture 2 free objectives and couldn´t be bothered to wait for my warriors to do the job. C´tan Shart got shot to pieces, I should have placed him in cover, but I didn´t he felt okay for his points. tomb blades were shot before they did anything noticeable. All of my infantry were at more than 75% strength when my opponent surrendered at the start of my turn 4. Ghost arks were shot dead. His flyer flew away turn 2 as it killed my general with a strength D bomb, my plane flew in turn 2 and shot a bit then teleported some troops close to the enemy turn 3, one unit of wracks were killed turn 4 after deep striking a little too close to a lot of warriors. His trueborn managed to down a number of warriors and immortals, who then promptly got right back up. His venoms did surprisingly little, mainly because of lucky rolling on my part. His void bomber downed an impressive number of warriors, who then shrugged it off with reanimation.

How many of my reanimation rolls were 4s I do not remember but I think it had a fairly large impact on the game. All units seemed to have something to do, I definitely felt that all my units were worth taking. The only reason I want to change my army around is because I feel like I should include a monolith or two, just because. I took all the warriors to really push the bucket to check if they were OP, I can tell they definitely shouldn´t have 4+ reanimation, but their huge weakness (no cover saves) still makes up for their manifold strengths.