Editing List of 40K Cheese (section)

== 9th Edition ==

9th Edition is a clusterfuck even worse than 8th, managing to piss off oldfags and newfags alike. GW cockgobblers will point to "tHe PaNdEMiC" as the reason for the shitty state of 9th, but it's really the fact that GW attempted to make ''every faction'' powerful in its own special way, while still conforming to some general "rules". Instead of reimplementing Universal Special Rules like they did in HH 2nd, all the codices just follow some general guidelines, like Chapter Master Equivalents needing to pick a specific unit for full rerolls, removing most 3++ invulns, removing fight twice, making all dice abilities "unmodified" so you couldn't stack bonuses to hit with cheese, etc. In ''general'', most of the early armies followed these rules, leading players to feel marginally hopeful in the first half of 9th. Still skewed towards Space Marines, but still generally ok.

Then they immediately fucked it up after the Tau. See, after getting a lot of the Imperium factions out of the way, they now had to fix the Xenos factions, which were underperforming in game, so underperforming saleswise. Fixing them would require an overhaul of their stats and weapons to be more in line with the new Primaris 2A 2W and marine Gunboats they now faced. The most obvious examples are the universal inflating of AP and the bumped up wounds of Tyranid Monsters. Needed, but interfered with the Supremacy of their Special Snowflakes, necessitating AOC to fix the mess they made in the first place. AoC feelsgood.jpg when you have it, but is completely annoying when you don't, or when you're an early codex that only got AP1 weapons. AoC proved to be so oppressive that the 2023 Q1 Balance dataslate removed that rule from the game.

They also had to play within the "hard rules" (Like you can only reduce/increase rolls by 1) and overcomplicated bullshit they put into the general 9E rules. So their solution? Ignore rules and precedent established in previous books, and make the newer books the ''exception'' to the rules. Chaos Knights can both reduce the hit roll ''and'' the B/WS giving them an effective -2; Tau railguns can ignore invulns; Tyranids can leapfrog psychic and perform both Psychic Actions and Spells; the stupid amount of variation of "fight first, fight last, they don't have the benefit of charging," wording that requires a fucking flowchart to make sense of; a bunch of units had "they cant be wounded on 1-3s or more than 3 times a phase," so obviously they needed to add characters and relics that ''ignored that rule''. The list goes on and on, but '''tl;dr''' the power creep in this edition is fucked, on top of the Core Rules you need the addendum and '''Rare Rules''' FAQs to bridge the gap between the 2020 state of the game and the current clusterfuck.

===Space Marines===
*Eradicators: New special sue marines who carry 24" melta rifles that can fire twice if they don't advance. They are infantry, so they can benefit from that keyword, and can get in the Primary Stu transports, and to add insult to injury are literally Fire Dragons but better, which rubs Eldar players the wrong way. Oh don't forget your captain and Lieutenant to buff your suicide shooty unit, just to make sure those hits come through.
**Salamanders: Your eradicators wound even knights and thunderhawks on at least 3's, reroll a single wound roll per unit shooting, and with a captain and lieutenant you're guaranteed to nuke just about everything in the game.

*Dark Angels: Especially with Ravenwing Chief Apothecaries, Talon Masters, 4-damage Plasma Incinerator Redemptor Dreadnoughts, and permanently transhuman Deathwing Terminators.

*Black Templars funnily enough had a very brief period where they could field Crusader Squads for cheaper than Tactical squads. However, as this went away with the supplement's release, this is a "middle" tier cheese at best.

*Armour of Contempt: Dear fucking god, this rule. Introduced with the quarterly balance dataslates, this rule makes ALL Space Marines (as well as the Sisters of Battle, CSM, and Imperial Guard <s>Leman Russes</s> VEHICLES) reduce the AP of any attack they suffer by 1 unless they're equipped with a Storm Shield. Now, while the Sisters and Guard tanks did need some extra protection, being respectively merely T3 1W models protected by only a 3+ save and fairly fragile without baked in Invuln saves, this was glaringly egregious on every flavor of Space Marine, especially now that they were T4 with minimum two wounds each. This made even mainstay anti-marine weapons like plasma guns worth less now that the once valuable AP-2 would only make them roll a 4+ save and made any number of AP-1 weapons pointless. Needless to say, that with the typically ubiquitous number of marine players out there, this will annoy you to no end.
**It wasn't until the Q1 2023 dataslate that the writers realized how much of a drag this rule became, as it was summarily scrubbed from existence. This means that the arms race to beat this utterly busted rule has drastically slowed down...with the exception of the Leagues, who have this built into their codex.
** The most frustrating part of this debacle is that spess mehreens legitimately did need a significant buff, being a peasant-tier army for almost all of 9th.  But fucking over every army that's built around AP-1 attacks because GW couldn't get the balance remotely right the first time was an incredibly fail way to go about it.

===Necrons===
*Scarab Swarms: Scarabs are pretty good on their own, but with spam and some buffs, get ready to have your last game with your opponent. Here's the recipe: Novokh +1 to charge and -1 AP, Blood Rites Stratagem for +1 Attack, Technomancer with Fail-Safe Overcharger Arkana for +1 Attack, and Spyders for Reanimation Protocols. Congratulations now one 9 unit of scarabs have 6 attacks, hitting on 4s, autowounding on 6s = 54 attacks on the charge. -1 AP.
*In a surprising move to many, a couple balance dataslates in 9th Edition issued the Core keyword to many units beyond basic troops and elites; including vehicles, canopteks, flayed ones, and even characters. What this means is that many units were now able to gain the benefit of an Overlord, Cryptek, or stratagems; including the Silent King himself! Soon, many tournament lists would run this centerpiece when it became apparent that using a Technomancer to bring back the Menhirs protecting the King made it nearly impossible to take off the board without dedication.

===Adeptus Mechanicus===
*Quite frankly, the Mechanicus was utterly broken for the first part of 9th. Despite a massive points nerf in November 2021, the army is still fairly competitive. While not quite at the levels of 7e's Taudar bullshit, the criminally undercosted Skitarii swarms were mind numbingly powerful. (skitarii rangers for example with protector imperative and the galvanic volley stratagem active can put out up to 80 shots of s6 ap1 d1 fire that hit on a 2+ at anything within 15 inches). Originally GW nerfed them by removing the core keyword on most units, but...
**GW, master of foresight and game design, has invalidated all of the Admech nerfs as of October 2022. Everyone has the core keyword again, and the stratagems are now back to what they are in the codex. However, their points increases are still in effect and their physical codex is still out of date. Are we going back to Dragoon spam? Only time will tell. They weren't overpowered after all, just ahead of the game it seems.

===Drukhari===
*Similarly to Admech above, Drukhari were seen as an overwhelmingly powerful army when their 9th codex came out. Immediately they saw nerfs in later FAQs to whittle them down to size. This included some points hikes, most notably to stop the endless Raider spam, as well to Wyches and all the standard HQ choices. Meanwhile, Ravagers and Talos were stripped of the {{W40kKeyword|CORE}} keyword to limit buff stacking on those heavy hitters.

*Succubus: Even without the following cheese, this commander was already one of the most cost-effective close combat HQs in the game, for only 60 points. However, when combined with rules provided by the Warzone Charadon Expansion (basically $60 Day 1 Drukhari DLC), things went completely off the rails. The Succubus could churn out a staggering average of 20 S4 Ap -1 attacks on a charge, with a max of 42, when equiped with Razor Flails and the new Competitive Edge Warlord trait. Edge allowed the Succubus to make another attack for each attack that failed to deal damage. Razor flails would double her attacks, an effect which would effectively be resolved twice. Eventually patched out by an FAQ a month or so after.

*Dark Technomancer + liquifier guns. DT allowed any ranged weapon to optionally buffed with a +1 to wound rolls and +1 D, in exchange for a "Gets Hot" mechanic where a role of 1 to hit would deal the bearer a mortal wound. The problem? Liqifier guns are flamers and so auto-hit their targets, totally negating the downside. Whoopsie. Thankfully an FAQ prevented liquifiers being buffed by DT in June 2021.

===Tyranids===
*The Tyranids' Army of Renown, Crusher Stampede, is one of the most powerful army of renown to date. It essentially gives an army wide 5++, with monsters getting a -1 to damage as well as their remaining wounds counting as the number of models on a objective, at the cost of bringing no units with fewer that 3 wounds or with the Swarm keyword (doesn't stop you from spawning gaunts or spore mines with Tervigons and spore mine launchers respectively), as well as bringing at least as many monster units as there are non-monster units in your army. While that alone is pretty powerful, the real cheese comes from the stratagem Breaking Through, which can cause mortal wounds on a charge, and if used correctly, can guarantee a grand total of SIX mortal wounds for the cost of just 1 CP, and that’s just one stratagem, there are plenty of other ways to cheese this AoR as well.
**With the release of the new Tyranids codex, this AoR has become completely outmoded by the will of GW editorial.
*We'll start with the Leviathan in the room, which is the fact that Hive Fleet Leviathan units all have transhuman. Synapse Units can't be wounded on 1-3s, and non-Synapse units can't be wounded on 1s and 2s. This means the Massive 18W+ Beasts now only having a flat 50% chance to be wounded, and that's on top of any invulns you may give them. You can also give a non-Synapse MONSTER the Synapse keyword, meaning those Exocrines or Carnifexes are going to have a great time fucking shit up. Of course, because all their Psykers are Synapse, that means Leviathan Maleceptors are unkillable monstrosities that can outpsyker Eldar and OutMW Thousand Sons. 
**This was nerfed in the October 2022 balance slate so that only SYNAPSE MONSTER units got the full transhit effect. No more Zoanthropes and Warriors having a 50/50 chance of escaping a volcano cannon shot.
*With the new codex, there have been a plethora of options for the Tyranids to dominate the battlefield, with the 2 biggest examples being Maleceptors and Harpies. The former is a psychic powerhouse that, when buffed with a Neurothrope’s synaptic imperative and ability to grant an additional die on the psychic test, it is possible for a Maleceptor to deal up to '''30 Mortal Wounds''' as a result of its own ability to deal 3 MWs on a high enough psychic test.
*As for the Harpy, it has received such a major glow up that bringing a single one will guarantee destruction. For 170 points, you have a flying monster with Heavy 6,S9,AP-3,D4 venom cannons along with -1 to hit and a potential extra 25 points for an Invuln Save of 4. Even though it isn’t tough at T7,W13,3+, but its guns and potential upgrades will allow it to shoot down anything if it is allowed to live.
*Take a Trygon Prime. Give it Adrenal Glands for +1 S. Heightened Senses gives you rerollable hits and Fight First, and you can either take the Searhive (All successful hits against Non-Vehicles autowound) or the Maw-Claws (Reroll all wounds, +1 A, and an additional attack per unit it destroys, to a max of +3 (+4 Total). That's either 13 autowounding rerolling hits, or 13-17 reroll everything. And it deepstrikes. It doesn't even have to be Leviathan, because Behemoth gives it 3D attacks.

===T'au===
*[[Fish of Fury]] returns: Just see the page, but short version: Utterly unstoppable transports that can practically travel across the board, drop off a shit load of fire Warriors, and end anything that they glance at with Rapid fire 2 S5 AP-3 Pulse rifles. [[Rape|God help it if there's a markerlight token.]]

*Rail weapons automatically deal mortal wounds. Which while being a welcome change from 8th's "6+ to wound causes mortal wounds", is way too strong. Invuln saves practically don't matter, which leads to the next point.
**Death Star Railguns: Fucking treat anything in the game like your bitch and ignore invuln saves. You know it's a problem when Death Guard, who in theory should not be able to be tabled, get tabled in large part due to Railguns.

===Chaos Space Marines===
*Chaos Space Marines are a very hit and miss army. On one hand, there are some gamebusted combos that make running certain units almost unlosable. On the other hand, this army lost so much customization from the jump to 9th that entire armies were invalidated just because their gear or unit wasn’t written in mind. This does not stop them from having particularly cheesy lists, especially when it became obvious that all people listing would run:

*[[Abaddon the Despoiler]]. What was once a laughing stock in the lore for his failure to be a threatening villain in this grimdark setting is now one of the most busted units with a plethora of rules and abilities that makes fighting him a living nightmare. Armed with all 4 marks of chaos, a 4++ Invuln, 3 wound limit per phase, 3 warlord traits and tons of army support for your squads; this motherfucker is almost impossible to take off the board safely. Combined with a Slaaneshi Master of Possession to heal him every d3 wounds and grant a 5+++ FNP, a Dark Apostle to grant him an illusory supplication and the stratagem Grandfather’s Blessing; he becomes more durable than Captain Smashfucker ever was.

*Chaos Terminators were found to have just as durable of a run when combined with the Black Rune of Damnation. An entire squad of 5-10 terminators becomes extremely durable with a permanent -1 to wound and whatever mark of chaos you give; Tzeentch’s allows for the first failed save to not deal damage, while Nurgle’s mark gives you Grandfather’s Blessing (CSM Transhuman Physiology) as a stratagem. You’re gonna need some very judgemental squats to keel them over…

===Leagues of Votann===
*The rebranded [[Squats]] proved to be so incredibly cheese filled they were the first army in the history of Warhammer 40,000 to be outright banned from numerous tournaments. Consider that despite all of the above, none of the other factions had widespread bans. This was such a widespread issue that [https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/09/29/leagues-of-votann-balance-update-a-word-from-james-workshop/ GW themselves had to put out a statement about the situation]. Listed below are the many and varied reasons why the army was considered so disgustingly broken.
**In their original incarnation, the faction's Judgement Tokens mechanic caused quite the uproar. Any time an opponent destroyed a Votann unit, successfully completed an action or simply stood next to an objective, they would gain one token (to a maximum of three). These tokens were essentially Tau Markerlights on steroids, allowing any unit that attacked a unit with a Token on it to automatically wound on a 6+, and each extra token added +1 to the roll (for a total of auto wounding on 4+). Not being satisfied with Auto Wounding anything in the game, these tokens also counted as rolling 6's for any attacks directed against a unit with any token on them! This combined well with...
***The Magna-Rail Rifle, one of the most complained about weapons in the Codex. A single shot, 24" inch range, Strength 9 gun with an impressive AP-4 and dealing D3+3 damage on a hit. Furthermore, the Heavy version is [[Rape|36" S14 AP-4 2d3+6 damage.]] If those stats sound insane, that wasn't all the gun could do. Much like the Tau Rail Rifle, invulnerable saves could not be taken against damage caused by this and on top of that, unmodified wound rolls of six allowed excess damage to spill over into other models in a unit! This extra damage was dealt as regular wounds, not as Mortal Wounds. This meant only units with a 2+ Armor save and AoC or a Storm Shield could ''maybe'' survive a shot from this (on a 5+ saving throw after factoring in AP reduction), and this was a gun their basic infantry could equip. In short, it's a super powered anti-everything gun with the potential to delete anything it shot at.
**The tokens were the only issue that GW felt warranted any sort of action, as seen by their aforementioned statement. With the errata, the Tokens' auto-wound ability no longer counted as unmodified 6s to wound, which considerably reduced the Magna-Rail Rifle's ability to flat-out delete all units. Is it still absolutely busted? Yes. The saddest part? Thanks to transhit physiology-esque rules becoming extremely commonplace, this was designed as a counter to all of that. Power creep in action, folks.

*Void Armour is what happens when you integrate the abovementioned Armour of Contempt into an army and warp it into something even worse. Not only does this reduce the AP of any attacks they suffer by 1, but it also prevents enemies from re-rolling to wound and damage rolls as well. Just like that, a lot of stratagems and buff auras have become meaningless against them. Being merely T4 1W with a 4+ save, this wouldn't be such a glaring issue, but when these guys can auto-wound you on 4+s and still use their re-rolls, you're probably going to be dreading what Tenth Edition will bring for the Space Marines...

===Chaos Daemons===
*To be absolutely fair, they needed the buffs, and because they were overshadowed by the Votann, there's not a lot of Chaos Daemon Lists going around right now, but they are there, and they are pretty good. They mostly revolve around Leadership Bombs and Summoning.
*First thing about Chaos Daemons is that they now have unmodifiable saves. Specifically not Invulns so they can never be stripped away, but also unmodifiable for whatever reason. The saves are different when dealing with ranged or melee attacks, and some of the Greater Daemons have unmodifiable 3+. 
*But that's not what makes them cheesy, what makes them cheesy is that you can summon Daemons within 9". Either because the enemy has a low enough LD (which is easy enough to lower with the right combination of units and abilities), OR because you have a LOCUS nearby. With the "Malicious Misdirection" Warp Storm Surge, you can drop reinforcements turn 1, too. They can also soup without breaking monofaction bonuses, but at the cost of Warp Storm, and only CSM with 25% Daemons.
*'''Flamers…''' By the God Emperor, the Flamers of Tzeentch have proven to be the strongest option in not just Chaos Daemons, but the entirety of Chaos as well! Starting off, each flamer sports a lovely d6+3 assault flamer with Strength 5, further boosted by an Exalted Flamer’s +1 S and a Herald’s +1 Wound spell and rerollable wound rolls of 1. Nothing more is needed, for almost every unit that isn’t toughness 6 is wounded on a 2+ with -2 AP, 1d flame spam that can only be stopped by Transhuman rules or a wound cap.
**Flamers are a big fuck you to anything and everything, so what did GW do to nerf them? [[DERP|Removed the Auto-Hitting Flamer rule from Flamers]]. They now hit on 3+, but they're still exactly the same number of points before, and still get 3+d6 shots. Not only that, but you can increase their BS to a 2+ on a lucky warp storm roll and now gain the benefit of a Lord of Change’s reroll aura. While your overwatch isn't as scary anymore, you still have a 5/6 chance to hit with 15+5D6 S6 AP-2 +1 Wound. 
*Most armies have a limitation on commanders, top ranking HQ’s, or overall powerhouses like a Daemon Prince. Codex Chaos Daemons lacks this restraint for any HQ; meaning any player with the points and funds to field greater daemons will have no trouble making a monster mash list. Running multiple Keepers of Secret in addition to Be’Lakor is not only surprisingly tanky, but combining that with the Warp Locus can lead to very devastating Alpha Strikes.

===[[Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Imperial Guard|Imperial Guard]]===
*After a long arduous journey of being the only army with 8th edition rules, our friendly neighborhood treadhead has finally been bestowed abuse-worthy cheese. With the roll of 2 dice, Primaris Psykers can easily give any unit a trans-hit effect, while Cadian units (which are now available for all regiments) can easily pop a stratagem that gives them the transhuman effect as well. What could possibly go wrong?
*'''Kasrkin.''' That’s how. Given that they’re the fresh hot ""new"" unit of the Guard, they were given a whole bunch of rules that [[Games Workshop|invalidated the Tempestus Scions that replaced them]]. 
**First off, they can have an additional regimental trait along with the ones you picked for your whole army. 
**Second, they have stratagems for dealing mortal wounds on every wound roll of 6 (Keep the [[Cadia|default Regiment]] and [[Leagues of Votann |every 6 to hit counts as UMWR of 6]]), increasing the AP on your lasguns, the aforementioned transhuman rule, and one that triggers their autowound on a 5 instead. 
**Most importantly, they can be given orders: Take Aim! Gives them '''2+ to hit''' ''and''  more AP, giving you a total of -4. With just 3 CP (more on this later) and fishing for [[what|5+s to hit]], your hotshots have the [[FATAL|penetrating]] power of a melta gun, while being tankier than half the tanks in the game thanks to flat 50% chances to fail in boh hitting and wounding
**Equip your command squad with the '''Finial of Nemrodesh 1st''' to ignore every hitroll modifier, and any rule to ignore wounds on an enemy unit. This will ensure even C’Tan shards and Abaddon cannot hide behind wound caps against your wall of guns.
**Using Ursula Creed to issue orders will give a +1 S to your lasguns and turn your basic flashlight into a S4 -2 (-4 with Hotshots) GEq killer that can go up against even MEqs and TEqs! [[FAIL|In a single edition, the basic guardsman squad has proven stronger, tougher, and more devastating than a superhuman tactical marine squad with boltguns]]
*All of the above implies you've gone basic bitch Cadia. One of the casualties of the 9th Codex is all the variation of the various regiments; you have slightly more relics than a Custom Sept or Dynasty, but nowhere near in total. Some Regiments have had their specialties locked to KEYWORD stratagems that are part of your chosen doctrine, but theoretically any army can use all the stratagems [[Fail|but limited only on specific KEYWORD specialists]].
**But remember the boys [[Cadia|who are so]] <s>special</s> '''[[Imperial Guard|badass]]''' that they can pick their own special snowflake traits? Yeah, it's the Kasrkin again. Not only are they targetable for all CADIAN strats, they're also often specifically worded to be able to do some Regiment/Tempestus specific traits, like UMWR6 are MWs (tempestus only before) and better AP. Whatever they cant do intrinsically can be given as the extra trait.
**Give the Kasrkin MECHANISED INFANTRY and they can pop out of transports after it moves; the keyword gives them access to the ARMOURED FIST strat for reroll all wound rolls. All that cheese above with AP and Wound Rolls gets even cheesier when you reroll all wounds. And you can pop them back inside the Transport just for fun. This also means you have wasted all your CP. But whatever they've fired on is gone.
*As a Guard Player, you have the Supreme Commander that gives you an extra CP, a trait for regaining CP on a 5+, another HQ that lets you CP reroll twice a phase, a psyker that farms CP, and a relic to make your opponent pay more CP. 
**Does any of this make up for the fact that you're penalized the most for taking more than 1 detachment? No. Is this funny and let's you fuck with the opponent? Yes.
*Leman Russ owners will be laughing all across the battlefield with the wide variety of tools given by the rules team that can make them a very threatening bunch of treads. To ensure your tanks never lose, give your army the regimental traits '''Armoured Superiority''' and '''Mechanised Infantry''' so all your vehicles count as multiple models while allowing infantry within Chimeras to disembark immediately. Having multiple tanks advance into the center with a primaris psyker in a transport, one can easily have a large unflinching tank with the same trans rules as any other unit and more! Armoured Tracks gives your units a better save against D1 damage, smoke launchers adds more troubles to the hit roll, and leaving Leontus around can ensure your tanks have a plethora of orders to choose from including ObSec to said tanks or a 5+++ FNP against Mortal Wounds.