While I know these changes are definitely not welcome and hurt us as a whole, I would also remind everyone that there is another Balance Dataslate coming next month and based on how every other army's points shake out, we could still be in a similar position in a relative sense (hopefully just dropping to a mid-high B tier instead of low-mid A).
I was not aware of another balance dataslate. For the love of the emperor why is another one coming in just a month and where was this mentioned?
Yea it was in the WarCom article detailing the new secondary/mission/sub-faction soup changes. It was at the bottom so pretty easily missed, I will quote the exact line where it appears below and link the article.
As far as "why is another one coming in just a month," I agree that it is a bit soon after CA 2022 to be releasing another balance patch to the game. However, I also suspect (and I believe Tabletop Tactics even jokingly brought this up at the end of their Chapter Approved review) that this CA 2022 was, in addition to a business ploy of course, some kind of massive gamble/test by GW to hit subfactions hard and shake up the game in some way (not the right way of course), and so if this gamble looks to be causing more harm than good in a month's time (saleswise most likely) another balance dataslate next month gives them a chance to tone it down. Perhaps there will be a CP tax to bring multiple subfactions similar to current ally soup instead of the outright ban in matched play, maybe major vehicle changes get implemented helping all vehicles (including all of our tanks that just went down by 10 points) feel stronger or more effective, maybe certain weapon stats get adjusted again, maybe weapons points values get slightly adjusted too (Exorcist Missile Launcher going down to like 15 points max please!), etc. A balance patch so soon after CA (that would luckily be free of course) makes sense only because they want to see where the game is at when the dust settles (and their model sales of course) and then use the balance dataslate to make whatever adjustments they feel are necessary to help the game (which really means help them sell the models they thought CA would do but probably did not).
This is complete speculation on my end of course, but if nothing else at least a balance dataslate next month gives them the chance to possibly correct things that went "too far" in CA. I also respect the fact that they mention the Dataslate is "less far-reaching" than CA, which means any changes we see in it would probably be targeted (so maybe at least we see some Sisters vehicle changes or maybe even a 5++ on Warsuits who knows!) Maybe it does nothing, but the chance that something could happen next month makes this not feel as bad to me as it does for a large part of the playerbase. Again, the Emperor will provide!
https://www.warhamme...exciting-games/
"Chapter Approved 2022 is available for pre-order this weekend. The next Balance Dataslate, which is important but less far-reaching due to the changes in Chapter Approved, will follow in early February, continuing to flesh out the season".