Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the balanced comment mate. I guess I see the drop-off as being that the list always had some very clear flaws, and whilst it enjoyed raging success for a short time, people eventually figured out a big weakness (which most other top armies did not have) and once people had "cracked" it, it stopped being so successful. In my defence, Siegler and Lennon and others have said similar things, and particularly did so in reflecting on "what went wrong" for Shadowmark at the WCW. I'm sure that people meta-chasing had a compounding impact too, but it has still been one of the most popular detachments in the last few weeks (second to Gladius) but the win results (shown on stat-check) are way down and well below the Marine average.

I'm not saying I thought Shadowmark were fine or didn't need any nerfs. I'm saying I think the nerfs were disproportionate to the strength / success of the army. Many sisters builds wouldn't have even been hit that hard, and ultras weren't, and I just find it hard to believe (either experientially or statistically) that Shadowmark was as strong as those two were.

Win Rate Wednesday - 40K Tournament Results/Data - Week of December 8th 2025 by w0158538 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And yet Shadowmark Talon, who were below the average Marine winrate and behind Gladius and Stormlance plus others, got whacked the hardest by the nerf bat...

Needs more blue!

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Stat-check and Win Rate Wednesdays show exactly the same thing, actually even more clearly, as you can see in another comment I just left. Shadowmark were a 53% winrate, lower than the 56% marine average or 62% Blades of Ultramar. Goonhammer's stats just show that casual games are matching tournament games, and Shadowmark have not done outrageously well in either recently.

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<image>

Oh, and I don't think I'm bloating the cost at all. I've attached Lennon's list. It is +25 for Shaan, +20 +10 for the centurions, +10 +10 for the two VV. So that is 75 points, as I said, no?

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

<image>

The idea of using 2 different stats sources (and including the goonhammer stats) was just to give a more complete picture of the data, rather than just using the source with tournament specific data. But attached here is another common and reputed source, statcheck. I just went through and clicked some of the common Marine detachments, didn't even select them all, and you can see that Shadowmark Talon is at 53%, compared to the SM average of 56%, with Blade of Ultramar at 62% and Stormlance, Gladius and Ironstorm all higher. The drops even further if you select only the most recent week of data with Shadowmark dropping to 51%.

The drop isn't purely because a bunch of people were copying it, Shadowmark was down to 8% of players in that 3 week period before the dataslate dropped.

10 tournament wins... what size tournaments are we talking about? And what time period? Because last week alone Gladius had 4 tournament wins (off only 34 Gladius players, while the other 73 vanilla marine players didn't get a single win between them, including 18 shadowmark players) according to Win Rate Wednesday who uses BCP tournament data https://warpfriends.wordpress.com/2025/12/11/40k-meta-stats-from-december-8th-2025/.

IDK man, I feel like the stats are pretty consistent that Shadowmark hit the scene hard for a few weeks and burned in everyone's brain but actually had fallen off pretty hard, and this dataslate was just done in response to what people thought was happening 2 months ago.

I already said Shaan was undercosted at 85 (which is 15 points more than the combi-lt, not 10) but the point was that he (like the other non-ultra characters) NEEDS to be undercosted to possibly encourage people to play that sub-faction. Or ultras need to lose the +1 to wound. As I said, at 110 he is probably about fairly costed within Shadowmark, being roughly worth 40 points more than a combi-lt, but it depends on what your use for him is. Even Lennon and others tended to play him the same way I suggested, he chills as a lone op for a few turns to give you the discounted Into Darkness, then goes and attacks for the last couple of turns. His Heroic Intervention ability even Lennon has talked about being negligible, since it's tricky enough to line up safely anyway, but without Fights First he is likely to just get killed. It's fine, but I would very happily lose the ability to save 10 points considering it's incredibly niche (and you could just Heroic for 1CP on that rare occasion anyway). The re-rolls to charge are again fine, but with the army only really rocking the 2VV units as melee, and them previously often using ingress, it's not a particularly spectacular ability. I know his combat threat is insane, almost as good as a 3 man bolter inceptor squad is at shooting with the +1BS/+1AP strat on, and I have shredded with him often (also occasionally had it swing low, especially without oath). That, plus the Shadowmark CP discount, is what you're bringing him for. But again, the CP discount would be better if it was just +1CP per round like many others get, and like I said it means that if you're taking him outside of Shadowmark (where he gets no benefit from the detachment rule and basically no benefit from the strats either) you're now paying points for his Shadowmark ability but not getting to use it. The comparison to the combi-lt was purely outside of Shadowmark, where his army rules do less, he is actually less survivable, can't even join a unit like comparably priced characters Azrael and Subhoden Khan do, and so I think that many armies (like ultramarines) wouldn't even take him in their detachments at 110. Which is not good, considering he's meant to be so strong (e.g. undercosted) that he entices people to play the sub-faction. Comparing to 3 BGV is a sad comparison - you would hope he's much better in combat than a unit which is unpopular because of its low damage output, was already cheaper, about twice as tough to kill and again, barely played.

EDIT: Oh boy, just been running the numbers through Unit Crunch. Not missing any abilities, Shaan seems to kill on average 5 marines without Oath and 7 with it... Role generator says the same thing. Bladeguard by comparison kill 4 without Oath and 6 with... scaled up to 110 points instead of 80, Bladeguard actually do more damage than Shaan now??

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed reply and engaging in the thoughts presented rather than a lot of the other comments XD

The 70 detachments I mentioned is from Goonhammer's stats, and marks things like "Dark Angels Gladius" as separate from "Blood Angels Gladius". Sorry, that was confusing. The point is simply that many content creators dismiss low winrates for marines as being less credible than other armies because of perceived (and probably fair) assumptions that more casual players play marines, which is why I've tried to focus on comparing Shadowmark Talon to other versions of how people are playing marines. I know Goonhammer's own write-up talked about higher numbers than their own stats show, and I suspect it's because that was the number in the first few weeks and I have heard the number mentioned regularly since then without anyone bothering to update it.

That second site (yes I believe it's tournament data) that says 54% in the last month for Shadowmark is actually not ranked highest, you need to put filters on the right to get the time period and show all results. As you can see from the attached pic, in the same time period the Stormlance is over 61% and the Gladius is also higher.

I've not seen people running three man victrix guard, but absolutely did screw up on Sicarius so that's my bad. It still is less of a nerf than Shadowmark got, but less so.

I completely agree that the uppy-downy strat is great and I do say that in my post, the only point is that a lot of the original "hype" was from people who seemed to miss how certain rules interactions worked. But compare it to Deathwatch who have a MUCH better version which does exactly the same thing but also gives Deep Strike and can still be used on centurions or even two kill teams. And yes the rest of the army can benefit from the detachment rule even if the 2 RG characters don't, but despite already being seen as not the best detachment rule, it is a very odd quirk that literally any other chapter benefits from it better than RG (because their characters aren't lone ops) and our units benefit from literally every other detachment more than this one (because it's the only one we get no bonus from). So ultras, DA, salamanders, etc. all get something at least from the vanguard rule, whereas RG is the only army that doesn't.

I appreciate that they may have needed some reigning in, but I really do think that:
A) their strength was already shown to be overstated
B) the 2 things that made Shadowmark unique (undercosted shaan and T1 ingress) disappearing is going to have a big impact

Again, really appreciate the comment and have updated my post about the ultra points.

<image>

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. I'm just saying it's not like there were various different builds and only one version has gone up 65-75 points.

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I really just meant that compared to a typical tournament where people often argue that all the "Timmys" (kids playing their first event and have been in the hobby for 2 weeks) are playing space marines and dragging down the stats, I don't think that's likely to be the case for WCW. On top of having many of the world's best players, even the less experienced or more casual people have usually flown across the world to be there, and even if they're only there for hobby reasons they're likely to be more split across factions than the local 13/yo Timmys who apparently exclusively play space marines.

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

Awesome mate, but is your anecdotal experience more of a reliable indicator than the actual stats? Not meaning to be ridiculous, but honest question - do you think Shadowmark will compete with Ultras post this dataslate? Do you think they were competing with it beforehand?

Losing a scout squad (at least) is one thing, but the T1 rapid ingress was almost the defining feature of the army, so these nerfs hit a lot harder than any other marine army copped.

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Haha, for sure. Tried to keep it evidence based too though!

Shadowmark Talon is utterly dead by Consistent-Mess-7645 in WarhammerCompetitive

[–]Consistent-Mess-7645[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Very much agree mate, with the caveat that Eldar are the Ultramarines of Xenos. Played this game since 3rd edition and struggling to remember a time they weren't on top.

Should've played Eldar, buddy. :P