It’s Q4 2024 and that means it’s time for a major shakeup to the meta with the Q4 balance update for Warhammer 40k! This time around we’re dataslate-free, instead looking at a series of points update for every faction in the game, plus some errata and FAQ items. In this article we’re looking at the changes to the game’s Chaos factions – who won, who lost, and how these changes impact each army.
Thanks, as always, to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the balance update.
Chaos Daemons
Although not one of the game’s top factions, Chaos Daemons have enjoyed some solid play options since their point drops early in the year and the mission updates in Pariah Nexus over the summer. They’re currently around the middle of the pack, but possessed of a large number of useful tools for being anywhere on the board at any time. Or you can just jam Khorne Daemons down your opponent’s throat.
Points Changes
- Shalaxi -25 to 425
- Beasts of Nurgle -5 to 65
- Rendmasters + 15 to 165
Rules Changes
There wasn’t any new errata for Daemons, but we did see some important clarifications – the biggest is that your allied Daemons absolutely don’t get the benefit of Shadow of Chaos. This was always pretty clear, and if you were insisting that actually yes, your Daemons got Shadow of Chaos even when brought as allies well, you’re a bad person and you should feel bad.
Impact
Status: Slight Winners
Chaos Daemons are a faction who can win in this update by standing still, but they gain a few small point drops on top of that. The faction could still use another push or two for better internal balance – there are too many units which don’t see play – but this is a win for them overall.
Thoughts
Mike Pestilens: I always say that it’s a good time to be playing Daemons, and that continues to be true. Daemons came out largely untouched from this MFM. That is completely fine.
Shalaxi going down to 425 is a nice gesture. Players that dropped her when she went to 450 will at the very least consider adding her back to their lists. She remains very pricey, but Shalaxi is still our unparalleled queen of murder and claims souls for Slaanesh better than anything else in our army.
Beasts of Nurgle getting a slight drop is a tiny boost to scoring, both for Daemons and people taking them as allies. I would have preferred for Beasts to stay at 70 points (or even go up) for people taking them as allies, but that’s a level of granularity that hasn’t been applied to Daemons yet. Rendmasters got a fair bump because they could lead to genuinely obscene damage output when you stacked 2 or 3. I would have preferred them to go up 5 or 10 points rather than 15 because this is a real hit to mono-Khorne lists, but ultimately we can’t be mad at this.
There are a few small misses that stand out to me. Daemonettes, Pink Horrors, Bloodletters, most Slaanesh Chariot variants, a lot of small Characters, and Horticulus Slimux really could have used a slight decrease. Daemons will remain mostly a monster mash army for the time being.
Daemons are slight winners from the shifting meta, too. Thousand Sons finally getting a real hit is a big win for Daemons, because that could be a miserable matchup. On the other hand, Daemons hate seeing Orks make a comeback because that is an extremely hard counter to Daemons.
TheChirurgeon: The Great Unclean One not getting a points hike is a hate crime.
Mike P: I don’t hate it.
TheChirurgeon: I can tell you something Chaos Daemons players won’t love – and that’s the change to Secret Missions. They’re one of the best armies in the game at scoring secret missions and primary VP on round 5, and losing the ability to just make up 35 points on Primary on the game’s final turn is a pretty big blow.
Chaos Knights
Chaos Knights were in a very rough spot coming into this update. The faction has been saddled with bad army rules and mediocre detachment rules all edition, and while that was fine early on when TITANIC units were insanely good and War Dogs were cheap, ongoing nerfs and points hikes designed to stymie armies bringing them as allies have taken their toll on the faction, and so coming into this update they needed some help.
Points Changes
- Abominant down 20 points to 365
- Knight Desecrator down 15 points to 410
- Knight Despoiler down 15 points to 415
- Brigand down 5 to 165
- Huntsman down 5 to 145
- Stalker down 5 to 145
Rules Changes
None to speak of.
Impact
Status: Winner
This is all good news for Chaos Knights, who particularly benefit from a drop to the War Dogs. That said, this is an army of expensive models and so 5-to-20 point drops don’t necessarily move the needle. Beasts of Nurgle going down also helps here.
Thoughts
Norman: Chaos Knights get some strict buffs across the board. The most eyebrow raising is definitely the Abominant dipping to 365, making it the cheapest any knight of that chassis has ever been. That said it’s still a dog water unit and will likely not see lists until it’s cheap enough to spam. For the record, this isn’t where it should be – the datasheet needs a full rewrite. This is kind of the issue for the faction as a whole. Yes the Despoiler is something you can maybe consider now and yes the Desecrator isn’t that bad, but with the lack of support those platforms get you’re better off just running dogs. This is doubly true with the drops to Brigands and Stalkers.
Part of the issue here is that gaining 15-30 points in a list doesn’t really do anything for chaos knights considering their cheapest units are 140-160 points (and you already took six of one of those) and to upgrade something past that range requires at least 125 more points. The daemon ally battleline restriction constricts a lot of list design as well, since you’re reliant on them to be your cheap bodies and you have to pay extra tax to take the units you actually want to take. The other part of the issue is that frankly, the rules for Chaos Knights are just bad. They have very little going on so you have to default to the most efficient datasheets, and these will always be dogs until the bigs hit the 350ish range across the board. Again though, this is not a healthy place for them to be. That’s too cheap for the types of bodies you’re putting on the table so you’re kind of caught in a hard place trying to balance them.
Until the next slate expect to see:
Stalker
5x Karnivores or Brigands
6x Brigands or Karnivores
2-3 Nurglings
A Beast of Nurgle
Competitively I expect to see the needle trend back towards 50% for the army, probably resting around 48% or 49% and their over representation (which is the worst in the game right now) move from .35 to about .5. CK will always be a bottom table bully due to their design, but winning events with the tech available is quite a bit harder.
Mike P: You know what? I sort of like where Chaos Knights are! I genuinely don’t hate an Abominant at 365. The datasheet has fallen a long way from its flavorful 9th Edition version, but it can do a little bit of damage and has some useful rules. If you’re dead set on running an Abominant, you won’t be that disappointed by what you get for 365. Descrators and Despoilers might have also just crossed the line into usefulness. And Brigands getting a slight decrease helps you better fit some allied pieces into your list.
Something like this feels totally fine:
Abominant with Aura of Terror
Descrator with Lord of Dread
2x Brigands
5x Karnivores
2×3 Nurglings
Beasts of Nurgle
TheChirurgeon: Drops to Brigands and other War Dogs is really good for every other faction, and now Death Guard and Thousand Sons players will be looking at both much more closely again.
Chaos Space Marines
Chaos Space Marines are in a weird position – as we talked about in our Hammer of Math article on Monday, they’re a faction with a low win rate but a large number of event wins, propped up by some very successful top players and lists running specific detachments and unit combinations. This speaks to the army just having terrible internal balance, something points updates can help with.
Points Changes
- Abaddon the Despoiler -15 to 280
- Accursed Cultists (16 models) +15 to 195
- Chaos Predator Annihilator -10 to 130
- Chaos Terminator Squad -5/10 to 180/360
- Dark Commune +15 to 80
- Havocs -10 to 125
- Legionaries (10 models) -10 to 170
- Lord Discordant on Helstalker -15 to 175
- Obliterators -10 to 160
- Possessed -5/10 to 120/240
- Raptors (10 models) -10 to 170
- Sorcerer in Terminator Armour -10 to 80
- Vashtorr the Arkifane -15 to 175
- Warp Talons (5 models) -10 to 125
Rules Changes
A couple of small changes were made via Errata:
- The Falsehood Enhancement now requires a unit of two or more models to use, excluding attached units.
- Vashtorr can now benefit from the three Stratagems in the Soulforged Warpack Detachment which don’t reference Invoking a Contract – Predatory Pursuit, Feeding Frenzy, and Unstoppable Rampage. This means very little in practice, but it’s a nice thought.
- Cypher’s Agent of Discord ability can’t stack with other auras that increase CP costs of Stratagems, which was basically just Kairos Fateweaver.
- Chaos Lords in Terminator Armour gained the CHAOS LORD keyword.
- Chaos Predator Destructors now hit on a 4+ with their armoured tracks (instead of 6+).
- The Soul Link Enhancement saw half a dozen clarifications/FAQ items to reinforce the idea that printing it was a mistake.
Impact
Status: Winner
Chaos Space Marines benefit from a large number of point drops here, which significantly improve the faction’s internal balance, though we’d be lying if we didn’t say we were baffled by many of these changes. Making units of ten Legionaries and Raptors cheaper but not five is odd enough, but making five-model units of Warp Talons cheaper is likewise baffling. And the drop on the Lord Discordant just isn’t anywhere near enough to justify fielding him. That said, there are only two increases – Accursed and the Dark Commune – and I think we all saw those coming.
Thoughts
TheChirurgeon: This is a big blow to Chaos Cult lists, which saw 90 points in increases with basically no drops to the units they were taking. That’s perfectly workable for those players however, and I imagine they’ll figure out a solution for the new meta that’s mostly gotten softer around them to compensate. Accursed Cultists were starting to become must-includes in CSM armies so it’s not a shock they ate a nerf.
Moving on to the good stuff, there’s a lot to like here – Abaddon coming down is pretty great news, and he’s an amazing force multiplier, particularly in Pactbound lists that want to fish for 5+ critical hits. Terminators and Terminator Sorcerers also coming down is decent news, and that brick being substantially cheaper opens things up again for Terminators to make a comeback.
Obliterators coming down is also helpful, and we’ve seen them make a comeback recently in Liam VSL’s list running Veterans of the Long War, where it turns out you can mitigate their downsides by dropping them in range for indirect fire and then using the Target of Hatred to re-roll hits and shore up their accuracy. Possessed seeing a drop is interesting, but it’s not enough of a drop to take them over Chosen or Legionaries. Havocs seeing a small drop is also neat as they’re a unit which was already seeing consideration in Renegade Raiders lists.
On that note, the points hike to Rubrics hurts Chaos Space Marines a bit, but drops to Beasts of Nurgle and War Dogs is good on the whole. Rubrics are still plenty cheap enough to take in Renegade Raiders and it honestly might be worth looking at a unit of ten now that you can save points doing so.
If you wanted to make the case that Chaos Space Marines get more out of nerfs to other factions well, I’d have a hard time refuting that. These drops are decent but not amazing and they’re certainly not going to transform a faction which struggles with internal balance and some wildly uneven datasheets.
Death Guard
The Death Guard were big winners one year ago, when updates to the contagion rules really helped them shore up their worst gaps. Since then they’ve been reigned in a few times, losing their ability to lob multiple grenades and eating point costs on characters as some units have come back down. This time around they’re on the lower half of the competitive spectrum, and as such looking at slight buffs.
Points Changes
- Biologus Putrifier -10 to 50
- Deathshroud Terminators -10/-20 to 120/240
- Mortarion -25 to 300
Rules Changes
There’s only one big errata item in Death Guard and it’s one we all knew they missed months ago: Typhus’ Eater Plague can no longer ignore Lone Operative. This always seemed like a hilarious oversight, and that loophole is now closed. Typhus is still great, though.
Impact
Status: Slight Winner
These are all point drops, even if they’re minor, and the faction also benefits from drops to Beasts of Nurgle and War Dogs.
Thoughts
TheChirurgeon: It’s not a lot, but it’s not bad either. Even with a 4” movement characteristic, Deathshroud at 110/220 is really cheap, to the point where I’m suddenly considering running 3×6 of them. The Putrifier going down also makes sense, as raising his cost while simultaneously nerfing his ability to double toss grenades was always baffling. These combine with the War Dog drops to give many lists back 30 to 50 points, which is enough for another unit of Nurglings or an additional character – not much, but there’s also likely some small upgrading they can do in the margins instead to improve things.
The most interesting drop here is Mortarion – he’d basically dropped out of lists after his ability to ignore modifiers stopped helping Plagueburst Crawlers dump out accurate Indirect Fire. At 300 he’s a lot more attractive, though it’s hard to justify him – his output just isn’t that great, and as a force multiplier he doesn’t bring enough to the table to justify taking him over 2-3 other units. Re-rolling 1s to wound just isn’t quite enough and there aren’t enough damage/stat modifiers to worry about otherwise.
Thousand Sons
The Thousand Sons were absolutely one of, if not the game’s top faction heading into this update and as a result it’s no surprise they were hit with some substantial nerfs. The army just has too much utility and power across almost all of its units, and as a result, they were hit with the harshest nerfs of any faction.
Points Changes
- Ahriman/Ahriman on Disc +10 points to 140/150
- Exalted Sorcerer/Exalted on Disc +10 points to 110/115
- Infernal Master +15 to 105
- Magnus the Red +25 to 465
- Mutalith Vortex Beast +15 to 160
- Rubric Marines (5) +5 to 110
- Rubric Marines (10) -10 to 200
- Thousand Sons Forgefiend +10 to 145
- Thousand Sons Sorcerer +10 to 105
- Tzaangor Enlightened +5 to 50
Rules Changes
There were no errata to the Thousand Sons but there were a couple of new clarifications. The first was a confirmation that yes, you can use the Umbralefic Crystal to deep strike in the first battle round, giving full clarity to something that has long been viable but would occasionally be met with a raised eyebrow. The other is a timing clarification in line with the adjustments to the rules commentary – mainly that you cannot use the Temporal Surge Ritual after using the Warp Sight Stratagem, as “in your Shooting phase” abilities can’t be used before “At the start of your Shooting phase” abilities. This closes the final loophole on Thousand Sons being able to use Warp Sight before dropping back out of visibility with your spotter unit.
Impact
Status: Big Loser
TheChirurgeon: There are a ton of point hits here which hit pretty much every unit seeing regular play in the army. The net result is that top lists lost as much as a hundred points, costing them a full unit or more. Even my supposedly future-proofed Scarabs list needs to reconfigure and will lose a unit of Tzaangors – most lists probably lose at least a character and the days of triple Mutalith may be behind us. Even at 465, Magnus remains a must-take in the army so the question is where Thousand Sons players can trim away additional points.
The interesting part of this is the change to Rubrics – dropping the cost for a unit of ten is an interesting move which does make you want to consider a single ten-model with an Exalted Sorcerer – though that model going up in price makes this pretty much a wash. The increase in Rubrics also inadvertently hurts Chaos Space Marines, as Rubrics were one of the best units to take in Renegade Raiders as well as some of the other detachments, but simply increasing the character costs wasn’t going to be enough and you can argue that it wasn’t healthy to have Rubrics showing up as the best unit in CSM lists.
Thoughts
This one’s no shock; while there were certainly some armies in the running with Thousand Sons – Sisters and Space Wolves primarily – they were the clear top dog coming into this update and they’re eating a big nerf as a result. This will definitely hurt the faction and drag them down from that upper echelon – and it’s likely to lose some top players – but I think it’s far from ruinous in terms of impact. Some lists can eat these changes by dropping a character and while that hurts, this could have been a lot worse. That said, this is still a tough pill to swallow if you play the faction, and recent successful lists like TJ Lannigan’s from BFS got hit with almost 150 points of extra cost and are almost certainly DOA. Paring down 1-2 additional units really hurts a faction that was already pretty elite, and the big challenge facing most players is just going to be “how do I get enough bodies on the table to handle this?” while simultaneously needing to find more cabal points – losing a character means losing 2 cabal points from your total, cutting down on the tricks you can pull, especially on round 2-3 after you lose a unit. This is a hard enough nerf to drag Thousand Sons back toward the middle of the pack, but not likely enough to banish them to the shadow realm.
Worth looking at are the untouched units – Spawn, Cultists, Scarabs, Terminator Sorcerers, and Rhinos. These are still plenty workable, and a terminator-heavy list, while representing a different play style, might be worth looking at. The points drop on Brigands also helps out here, as Thousand Sons lists bringing War Dogs have also seen success. Overall the Thousand Sons took a real hit, but it’s one that brings them down to earth – we’ve certainly seen worse.
World Eaters
The World Eaters are one of the strangest armies in the game when it comes to balancing: They have fewer datasheets than any other faction, particularly when you consider how many of those are actually viable, and so it’s very easy for point changes/drops to be either completely meaningless or fully devastating. Thai time around the faction saw point increases, and they’re pretty rough.
Points Changes
- Master of Executions +10 to 110
- Angron +20 to 435
- Chaos Spawn +5 to 70
Rules Changes
- Slight clarification/improvement to how the Helbrute’s Frenzy ability works
- Blood Surge abilities now only work once per turn
Impact
Status: Slight Loser
Thoughts
Mike P: I’m filled with Khorne’s rage at these tiny nerfs. I was running a World Eaters list which was exactly 2000 points recently. It was so satisfying. Every World Eaters player knows what I’m talking about. We don’t have many units, and it’s hard to fit the puzzle pieces together in list building without leaving leftover points at the end. Now I’m 30 points over, so I’m going to have to drop or downgrade a unit and end up with an awkward 20-30 points leftover again.
This is a… truly bizarre set of small nerfs to a faction that didn’t need them. They’re not enough to really change the power level of the faction, but enough to annoy World Eaters players for no reason. I already preferred Kharn to an MOE on a big Berzerker brick, so the MOE going up slightly just solidifies that choice. The Spawn increase also makes sense, simply to align WE Chaos Spawn at 70 points with all of the other Chaos Spawn in the game. It didn’t make sense that WE had both the best and the cheapest Chaos Spawn. You’re also still running Angron. This is unless you’re someone who didn’t want to run Angron just to run a “non-Gron” list out of principle, in which case, congrats! You’re saving a few more points by making the exact choice you were already making.
Helbrutes get a little more interesting with their Frenzy ability being confirmed to work as “just do your damage however and as often as you want”. They’re still borderline at 130, but they can be an interesting tech piece in the right list.
Final Thoughts
This is more or less what we expected to see on the Chaos side of things – with massive nerfs to Thousand Sons and Accursed Cultists with buffs to Chaos Knights and Death Guard. World Eaters are the biggest surprise here, catching nerfs we weren’t expecting, and to units they more or less can’t afford to play without. Outside of those however, we think these adjustments are pretty fair, and while we’d have liked to see Death Guard and Chaos Knights do a bit more, they’re good adjustments until we get Codexes for these factions next year.
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