Disclaimer 1: I'm not trying to exonerate GW of all responsibility, There are issues, but it's not a one-way street.

Disclaimer 2: Alternative title for this topic would have been "Competitive 40K would require a whole different ruleset."

There's a lot of debate about 'balance' in 40K - mostly to do with pick up games - and it reminds me a lot about the never ending arguments about PVP (Player vs Player) in MMOs.

In any MMO which has optional PVP there will be two types of player in a pvp zone - the casual player, who has built his character according to personal preference and what they find fun, and the pvp player or powergamer/min-maxer, who has built his character to be absolutely optimised, either doing the number crunching himself or getting the current flavor of the month build from the internet. Is this sounding at all familiar?

If a casual/fluffy player enters a pvp zone and goes one on one against someone running an optimised/min-maxed uber build, then the casual is going to lose, almost always. Doesn't matter if they are more skilled as a player - the superior gear, stats, attack rotation of the min-maxer will usually be the deciding factor. In much the same way a fluff list is, more often than not, going to take a beating from an optimised tournament ready netlist.

There's very little that GW can do to prevent this. If other games are better balanced it's in no small part due to a couple of things - either the armies are more inherently equal to begin with (such as most historical wargames, or for that matter 30K with its marine vs marine set up), or they have a smaller playerbase, or both. A big game like 40K will have more WAAC players simply because it has more players overall. Fiercely competitive players in MMOs are almost always drawn to the big games and the high pop servers - and in tabletop gaming 40K is the big, high pop game.

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed. Everything. Is 40K as well balanced as a tournament game like Starcraft? Not in the slightest, but Starcraft has only 3 races. I daresay if GW squatted everyone except the Ultramarines, the Eldar and the Tyranids they could balance those 3 codexes better against each other.

GW isn't twisting anyone's arm to force them to spam Riptides, or Wave Serpents or deathstar units. Just because the rules don't say you can do something does not mean you either have to or should do it. Some of the responsibility has to lie with the players to actually agree about what makes an enjoyable game for all concerned, rather than waiting for GW to dictate from on high a set of draconian restrictions to force the game to be what any particular player wants it to be.

That's what I think anyway.

Maybe what I'll write here would be surprising given the fact that I'm probably seen as one of those raging GW apologetics on this forum, but.. I think you're wrong. At least with the current state of GW's games. See - a wargame system is supposed to be a well-balanced game that enforces, not just encourages fair play. What you're saying is more like 40k was a sandbox for people to play the way they want.. and 40k was not supposed to be a game like this. 40k from the dawn of time was meant, just like any other serious tabletop game, to be competitive and balanced.

What we're looking at now is people freely using available means to make cheesy lists because GW didn't think/playtest through the Codexes and allowed such stuff to happen, which is unacceptable, coming from a huge, serious company such as Games Workshop.

Of course players take a big part in it because there will always be those that try to exploit the gaps in the system for maximum benefit(and that's, kids, how netlists are born), but if the rules and Codexes were written properly, they would either not allow that at all or it would not be as drastic as it is now. It is not players' fault that GW gave them unbalanced books to work with, resulting in cheese. Especially when you mention competitive scene, which in my dictionary means tournament players. Tell me, why do people go to tournaments? Inside and outside the hobby. See - they go there to win. If we had a mixed sprinting championship, who do you think the countries would send to represent them - best runners or best rowers? It is not their fault that they're sending their best assets to win, and neither you should in case of tabletop wargaming. If one particular fictional race would have better predispositions for running, the country they come from would be still okay to use them, even if others didn't have runners like them, unless the tournament orgs disallow them in the rules. If the rules say they could field them, why not then? They're not bad guys for using superior sportsmen, neither is fielding Taudar.

Of course in our community it's less serious(most the times, at least), and we know that people deliberately running Taudar do it on purpose and can be called TFGs, but if GW didn't allow such overpowered mix, they would not happen. I know that there will always be people trying to exploit everything possible and will not stop even if they end up with in their hands, but a good rule set with army books balanced not within themselves but also regarding other books AND the big rulebook would never let their cheesy creations be that powerful. So, yeah, the way 40k looks right now is only GW's fault for not balancing the books together and making the game exploit-proof to a desirable degree. Unless they want to turn 40k into a sandbox game with only basic rules so people can play anything they want(7th?).. but with that it'd be impossible to play it competitively straight out of the box and it'd require players to also go an extra mile to make their own rules.

Ever occured to you that very few serious tabletop titles have the same issue on such scale?

Edit:
tl:dr - players should NEVER be responsible for the game's balance and as long as GW doesn't openly and officially admit that their game is not competitive and requires ETC-like comping, the playerbase expects them to make a balanced, well-designed ruleset. And if you think it's the variety of armies' fault, then why did GW dabble into stuff they couldn't control later in the first place? Incompetence is not an excuse.

Balance is with the game. Go play any other that actively manages it's game,.... You don't have the fissured player base GW has.

I travel for work a lot and have thus played Wargamers across the country. Warhammer 40k is the only game that requires a discussion on the tone of the game beyond "how many points."

The onus is on the company, more so when the cost of rules is three times that, or more,of the competition. Otherwise, you're just giving them a pass to pay a high price and then troubleshoot the game for them.

 Klerych wrote:
40k from the dawn of time was meant, just like any other serious tabletop game, to be competitive and balanced.

It's possible I have a different perspective on this, since my first edition of 40K was Rogue Trader. Back then the game was exactly a sandbox - army lists and point values would be the stuff of future WD articles. If later editions remained balanced to some extent it was at least partly because there were less things that could be put on the table.

I have no issue with tournament lists - it's simply that a lot of the complaints I see about balance involve people bringing tournament lists to 'friendly' or casual pick up games. I don't think that is something GW could control without drastic restrictions to what was allowed. Sure GW could reduce the exploits, but if they shut one down the netlists will just find another. If someone brings a powergamer list to a friendly game solely because there's nothing in the rules that says they can't then the problem lies with the player at least as much as with the game.

The problem, as I see it, is that having introduced superheavies, fortifications, flyers, D weapons and suchlike, there's no way to put that genie back into the bottle. The only way I could see them even begin to balance the sheer mass of different options available nowadays would be to release a core rules set/army lists that disallowed ALL of the expansion stuff - which they won't do. Not only would it be bad for sales of the new stuff, but for every player who embraced them stepping back from Epic 28mm there'd be another complaining about not being able to field their beloved baneblade, heldrake, wraith knight, whatever in a regular game.

Ever occured to you that very few serious tabletop titles have the same issue on such scale?

The more niche a title the less likely it is to attract the WAAC community that flocks to the big names. GW also has the unenviable - at this point I'd say impossible - task of attempting to balance a game that has had 25+ years of continual expansion, with many new units in that time being introduced because someone thought it would make a cool mini rather than any other reason. Give Warmachine/Hordes another 20 years of development and expanded army lists and see how balanced that will remain.

QQ n00b, if you want to win l2p.

I think one of the problem is many 'game' companies fix balance issues retrospectively (When the players have math hammered everything to death). It happens in MMO's, card games, DnD etc. New combinations emerge the designers didn't pick up on and after enough complaints they tone it down. Then the next big thing... this is something that never ends.

Issue is, people complain when good units are now average on codex releases, some people take it to the extreme. While some issues may be errata'd (veeery occasionally) if I was GW I'd let it persist rather than tell 100's of players who recently bought the £50 awesome unit that it's now just average.

Hate for the nerf bat is strong, and people would just accuse them of doing it for money anyway. Won't win if they do, won't win if they don't.

 ashcroft wrote:
Disclaimer 2: Alternative title for this topic would have been "Competitive 40K would require a whole different ruleset."

No, it wouldn't.

[quote[If a casual/fluffy player enters a pvp zone and goes one on one against someone running an optimised/min-maxed uber build, then the casual is going to lose, almost always. Doesn't matter if they are more skilled as a player - the superior gear, stats, attack rotation of the min-maxer will usually be the deciding factor. In much the same way a fluff list is, more often than not, going to take a beating from an optimised tournament ready netlist.

The problem is that nerds desperately want to win. They will exploit any loophole they can find, and unfortunately GW has provided ample opportunity over the years. Even when large ones are found, they are rarely closed off.

It is the onus of the players to rise above that. To recognize if they are just including stuff in their army list for the mechanics alone, and not for the fun of playing an enjoyable game, too.

Usually players have a personal filter to eliminate that, but some have this clinical detachment where they are only getting enjoyment out of the victory alone.

I can look at other games like firestorm armada and x-wing. They have units, different armies, core rules and unit costs and I don't see anywhere near the same type of complaining by people about what should or shouldn't be taken. I also don't see people saying you have to have a conversation about the type of game you are playing in order for it to be fun.

The same type of people that play those games also play 40k. That tells me that the 40k game system has problems.

Someone did GW can't overcome this because they have 25+ years of producing something that has fundamental flaws. I call BS on that. With every rulebook and codex release they have an opportunity to fix it. Why? Because when they release a codex they have an opportunity to hit delete on everything in it and try again.. Typically they don't. 20+ books in 2 years is a lot of opportunity. My fingers are crossed that 7th will be going in the right direction.

 ashcroft wrote:
The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed. Everything. Is 40K as well balanced as a tournament game like Starcraft? Not in the slightest, but Starcraft has only 3 races. I daresay if GW squatted everyone except the Ultramarines, the Eldar and the Tyranids they could balance those 3 codexes better against each other.

This is a complete cop out. Just because you can't figure out how to do it, doesn't mean it can't be done. Same goes for GW. This is not an issue of "this is impossible to do", it's an issue of "they don't put the time in to do it"***.

Using Malifaux as an example, they have just as many choices, if not more, than 40k does to create a force, and yet their game is incredibly well balanced. How can this be? They go through a very extensive beta phase that lasts for months, and is open to the public. Yes, joe public can go to their forums, see the what is being proposed, play test it himself, give feedback directly to the designers. And the game is absolutely better for it.

So I don't buy this whole "its impossible to balance 40k with so many choices, so we have to live with it". If you want to eat that crow, be my guest. I vote with my wallet.


***I would also accept that its not about them putting the time in to fix the game, but instead that a balanced game is simply not in the 40k vision of GW. Making a balanced game is simply not what they aim to do. Their goal is to put gorgeous models on the table and help players narrate a story. That's it.

But 25 years of history shows they are unwilling to do that. Everything they publish needs immediate eratta on the day of release.

X-Wing has it's share of 40K shenanigans on what to take to the table, but the difference is that players realise that double YT-1300 lists are an asshat way to win. 40K players will take super Riptide lists in casual games and proclaim that it's their "right" becuase GW wrote it that way and you just have to deal with it.

Sorry, but you're 100% absolutely wrong. Balance starts with the game, and here's why.

First, for a game with seventeen factions to be viable, balance has to exist. Otherwise, those factions that aren't as good simply won't get played. This is human nature. What's more, eventually the units that aren't as good won't get played much either.

It's a spiral effect, and it can be demonstrated with the cyclic nature of this game.

So, let's say that back in 2004, I thought that White Scars were cool, and I made a White Scars army. I lovingly converted all my models to be all Ghengised out, and built the army using the rules from Chapter Approved and the 3rd ed marine codex. And, they were a reasonable army, and won and lost about 50% of the time.

4th edition came out, and they lost the Chapter Approved benefits for being a fluffy White Scars army, but could still be played using the Chapter Trait system - but they weren't very good and lost more than they won.

Towards the end of 4th and through 5th, the 'tiers' of armies really started to differ from each other, and Marines on Bikes (not really "White Scars" anymore, but Marines w/ a Special Character) ebbed and flowed from good to bad, with a minor heyday as an all out-flanking reserve army in 5th. Still mostly fluffy, not dominating though.

And then... 6th happened, and bikes got awesome, and then the Marine codex happened, and White Scars became 'a thing' again, with crazy good special rules, Khan giving the whole army traits, grav guns on relentless platforms, and something stupid like 20 point bike marines (maybe 21, not sure off-hand, but way cheap). All of a sudden, this same army that I've been playing for ten years is winning something like 80% of its games, and absolutely dominating anything resembling a fluffy opponent list. The only thing its losing to is the equally stupid 6th ed stuff like riptides and seer councils.

What happened? Did I suddenly become TFG? Am I now responsible for the lack of balance in the game, because I'm playing the same fluffy army I've played for a decade?

No, what changed was the rules.

As far as "desperately waning to win". It's a GAME. A the end there are 3 main components: a winner, a loser and the journey to get there.

If you aren't playing to win then I have to wonder why you are playing a GAME. There are several things you have to do to win: pick a strategy, put together a list that can implement your strategy, execute it on the tabletop. GWs rules define the strategies available and units that can fulfill them. If a codex has poor internal balance then that codex will only have a few ( or one ) viable strategies available.

If you decide not to go with what's viable to win then you are saying that only the journey matters and should be completely ok with losing every single game.

However, the rules also shape what the journey may look like. When the core rules are confusing and scattered then starting a game with a new opponent requires a lot of negotiation. This can easily lead to hard feelings when you thought a rule worked one way but they think it works very differently and both of you hung part of your strategy on it. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what leads to rules lawyering. If neither player cares much about the rules then, again, I have to asky why you are playing a game instead of just setting some models up and making noises.

Ultimately, I can't understand people whining about those that look at the game and try to figure out how to win. It really just sounds like they are mad they aren't winning while being unwilling to take the time to work within the framework we are given.

So, if you don't like the current state of the game then perhaps you should join the rest of us that wants the game to be at least somewhat balanced ( see rigelds excellent explanation ) so that we can have a fairly level playing field where "upfront negotiation" just isn't necessary.

If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

And then... 6th happened, and bikes got awesome, and then the Marine codex happened, and White Scars became 'a thing' again, with crazy good special rules, Khan giving the whole army traits, grav guns on relentless platforms, and something stupid like 20 point bike marines (maybe 21, not sure off-hand, but way cheap). All of a sudden, this same army that I've been playing for ten years is winning something like 80% of its games, and absolutely dominating anything resembling a fluffy opponent list. The only thing its losing to is the equally stupid 6th ed stuff like riptides and seer councils.

What happened? Did I suddenly become TFG? Am I now responsible for the lack of balance in the game, because I'm playing the same fluffy army I've played for a decade?

No, what changed was the rules.

Welcome to the plight of every older gamer with armies from several edition back.

At the same time you want to not be TFG for still using White Scars, I want to be able to still use my sizeable 13th Company army without having to buy vehicles to make them generic Space Wolves and also having to shelve my Wolfen pack.

Long-time 40k gamers have seen GW be all over the freaking board when it comes to content.

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed.

I disagree. I think you could retain most of the options in the game, provided they were point costed correctly. A lot of what goes into making a unit OP or UP is the cost, OP units tend to be far more powerful than what you pay for them while UP units leave you scratching your head asking yourself what exactly is it you are paying a massive amount of points for.

There are a few options I would outright cut, things like borderline invulnerable deathstars using rerollable save shenanigans. However, I think the game would become richer, rather than poorer, by eliminating such abusive units.

Also, we need to recognize the distinction between the number of options that appear on paper vs. the number of options that are actually useful. Having an option such as Rough Riders in the AM/IG codex doesn't enrich the game because it never gets fielded and thus the entry might as well not be there at all. This is one of the major drawbacks of game imbalance, you have a huge number of options on paper, but only a small number of units and army configurations get fielded because everything else is garbage. Losing a handful of options would be a small price to pay if everything in every codex was useful and strong on the tabletop. Although you might lose a few options on paper, you actually wind up gaining options as every entry in your codex becomes usable. This is what people need to recognize: only the options that are useful are meaningful and that 40k should strive to maximize the number of useful options, rather than the number of codex entries. And this is achieved through proper game balance.

The title of this thread is backwards; it should read "Balance needs to start with the game, not with the players".

I hearken back to my days as a tournament level MTG player, and I can tell you that "balance" is pretty laughable in that game. People will go and say "oh but they ban cards to make things fair for everyone," and "oh you can get good decks for less than a good army in 40K!" Yeah, go ahead and try and buy a netdeck that is slaughtering the meta in standard and tell me how it is cheaper than 40K. The DCI addresses problem decks by banning certain cards that were warping the format to extreme degrees. This in turn led to other decks dominating. This in turn led to people crying out for the banning of a certain card that made those new decks broken. In the event that DCI bans those cards, you then find another deck archetype takes over and the process repeats itself.

As for 40K, I fear there is no way to truly balance it out. Redbeard hits it dead on. I am a Blood Angels player. My understanding is that these guys were cheese in 5th (didn't play 5th, got in at 6th so take that as you will,) but they are totally craptacular in 6th. I hear about how Tau was total gak before 6th edition, and now they are the powerhouse to beat in 6th. With 7th coming in, there is a possibility of a new army becoming awesome.

Point is, play because you like to play. Collect your army. Paint your dudes. Laugh at your buddy when his MSS totally biffs and Mephiston slaughters the Lord and he fails the EL roll. Cry when the next turn Mephiston gets warscythed to death when you roll like balls. We all play to win, winning is the point, but you can still have a lot of fun losing. It depends on your mindset.

Just because a list is really good right now, doesn't mean you should hate the guy playing it. I see that on these forums all of the time. Some people blindly hate on the guy who brings triptide/serpent spam and cry out "this guy ruins the game," and "sure of course he wins, he can afford it...jerk." Maybe 40K is what he wants to devote his extra cash to. Why is that so bad? Why is it so bad (as a particular nemesis of mine points out) to build a list to the max power it can be? So you lose to those lists. Get over it. Don't play that guy, or ask if he can tone it down a bit.

I've given up on balance. And you know what I discovered? Once I started playing to have fun, and BS with my opponent over nonsensical things, and made it a good time rather than and constant bitchfest about how broken the game is, I had a GREAT time with 40K. We all get mad when we get ROFLstomped, it's to be expected, but it is a game, and honestly in 25 years, hell TEN years from now, nobody will give a flipping gak about how great a player at 40K you were, or how broken your list was. They will remember the good times and the bad times gaming with that group of guys, and friendships made along the way. And that occasional time when your buddy "who in a fit of drunken stupor, did...WTF was he thinking and why exactly did he think that would work!?"

You are playing the wrong game if you want total balance. Go play chess.

There will never be perfect balance in this game, but there's a humongous number of things that are largely plainly obvious that GW is somehow oblivious to but everyone else manages to pick up on the first time they see it.

Stuff like Heldrakes, Wave Serpents, 5E IG Vendettas, 2++sv deathstar units, Mantle of the Laughing God, Divination, Riptides, Revenant Titans, etc.

As noted, bikes are another. Massive decrease in cost, big boost in utility (even for non white scars/ravenwing), and it's increasingly difficult to see why you wouldn't run a biker army over a tac marine army.

Players will do what the game allows them to do, there's a degree of responsibility on the player side not to be a git, but the vast majority of the responsibility lies with GW not seeing what everyone else picks up on in minutes.

Phanixis wrote:

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed.

I disagree. I think you could retain most of the options in the game, provided they were point costed correctly. A lot of what goes into making a unit OP or UP is the cost, OP units tend to be far more powerful than what you pay for them while UP units leave you scratching your head asking yourself what exactly is it you are paying a massive amount of points for.

There are a few options I would outright cut, things like borderline invulnerable deathstars using rerollable save shenanigans. However, I think the game would become richer, rather than poorer, by eliminating such abusive units.

Also, we need to recognize the distinction between the number of options that appear on paper vs. the number of options that are actually useful. Having an option such as Rough Riders in the AM/IG codex doesn't enrich the game because it never gets fielded and thus the entry might as well not be there at all. The is one of the major drawbacks of game imbalance, you have a huge number of options on paper, but only a small number of units and army configurations get fielded because everything else is garbage. Losing a handful of options would be a small price to pay if everything in every codex was useful and strong on the tabletop. Although you might lose a few options on paper, you actually wind up gaining options as every entry in your codex becomes usable. This is what people need to recognize: only the options that are useful are meaningful and that 40k should strive to maximize the number of useful options, rather than the number of codex entries. And this is achieved through proper game balance.

Pretty much this.

When a new core book comes out the right answer would be to deliver a set of errata for each book updating point costs based on the new reality. If a particular combo is found in the wild as honestly being OP/UP (not just someone's knee jerk reaction) then update the errata to change the unit cost. Yes, I'm aware this takes quite a bit of work. Of course, the first step to that would be to establish a standard way of defining unit points.

 Murdius Maximus wrote:
I hearken back to my days as a tournament level MTG player, and I can tell you that "balance" is pretty laughable in that game.

There's a big difference in how M:tG balance and 40k balance work.

In M;TG, you have multiple ways to play. A card that is awesome in constructed can be fairly mediocre in draft, and vice-versa. Their designers need to make cards that make these different formats interesting. Yes, a top netdeck will usually beat a casual deck - and that's expected because a netdeck is designed for that environment. Put that same netdeck in a game of three-headed dragon or multiplayer free-for-all and it's going to lose.

But, that's not even the primary reason that M:tG and 40k are different. The primary reason is that a game of M:tG takes maybe ten minutes, and that a competitive match of M:tG is a best 2-of-3 affair that involves sideboarding to eliminate poor matchups. You're able to design a deck with contingencies versus the different stronger strategies you expect to face.

40k, in contrast, takes two+ hours to play a decent sized game, and there's no opportunity to sideboard and replay the game, certainly not in any competitive event. The expectation that you play TAC lists means that any imbalance in the game sets up the potential for horribly one-sided games,and those games are a big waste of time. Losing can be fun, but feeling like you've no hope from turn one isn't pleasant, and sitting through two hours of watching that play out isn't how I'd choose to spend my free time.

You are playing the wrong game if you want total balance. Go play chess.

There's a significant difference between wanting total balance, and wanting a game that's balanced enough that its outcome is primarily determined by player actions, not mismatches and random die rolls. If you want to win based on who rolls the right die at the right time, go play Candyland.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The problem is that nerds desperately want to win. They will exploit any loophole they can find, and unfortunately GW has provided ample opportunity over the years. Even when large ones are found, they are rarely closed off.

It is the onus of the players to rise above that. To recognize if they are just including stuff in their army list for the mechanics alone, and not for the fun of playing an enjoyable game, too.

Usually players have a personal filter to eliminate that, but some have this clinical detachment where they are only getting enjoyment out of the victory alone.

It's not just nerds that want to win, everyone wants to win. That's why anything called a "game" is more fun when it's fair. You think every owner of every team in the NFL wouldn't want to win every year? Of course they would, but they've gotten together to create a system that creates parity and keeps the playing ground fair. Why? because fairness makes the games/seasons more interesting and it's better long term for the organization as a whole.

Hmm. Read that last sentence again.

ashcroft wrote:The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the player

Indeed.

Of course, there will be those witch doctors who make claims about the great asymmetric balance in the sky who one day shall come to earth and punish all unbelievers, but it's best to take any talk on the subject as just that - assertions of something that doesn't exist.

Also, I'd note that some players are already doing a pretty good job of making the game balanced, like tournament players. When two people show up to a game and are running basically the same version of that taudar list, then the game is pretty balanced, as you can take list strength out of the equation as the game becomes closer to a mirror match. Often tournaments will have symmetrical terrain pre-set as well.

Of course, when you control for other things, that just makes the game more determined by a handful of die rolls, but that's another topic.

Klerych wrote:Ever occured to you that very few serious tabletop titles have the same issue on such scale?

Very few serious tabletop games offer you even a small fraction of the freedom that GW's games do.

rigeld2 wrote:a unit worth 100 points in codex A should be comparable in value to a unit worth 100 points in codex B.

points don't balance.

Redbeard wrote:Otherwise, those factions that aren't as good simply won't get played. This is human nature.

The very fact that there are people still playing armies that aren't triptides or taudar proves you wrong.

What you're talking about is only human nature for a very small percentage of people. A vast majority of 40k players have in their nature the desire to play something despite the fact that it isn't good as the best.

WAAC behavior isn't built into the human genome. The desire to be successful drives most people into behavior different than what you're describing.

 slowthar wrote:
You think every owner of every team in the NFL wouldn't want to win every year? Of course they would, but they've gotten together to create a system that creates parity and keeps the playing ground fair. Why? because fairness makes the games/seasons more interesting and it's better long term for the organization as a whole.

Hmm. Read that last sentence again.

Yup, see NFL vs MLB. I stopped watching baseball a while ago, but when I could still stand it, it was fast evolving into a game of "which of the following 6 rich team will win the World Series"..every year, year after year, it was 1 of those 6 teams without fail. Yo didn't need to look at the roster at the beginning of the season, it would without fail be one of those 6 teams.

With NFL, teams are winning the Super Bowl that I didn't even know existed.

Sorry to burst everyones bubble but it isn't a problem with the game or the players. There is a lack of balance intentionally and those not here complaining realize it.

You can't have as many factions as this game has and not realize that each has their STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES.

These weaknesses are exploited by other army types, this is normal and necessary as every army being equal and the same, or balanced as you call it would absolutely destroy the game. There would be no varying tactics, no inherent strengths or weaknesses in any army and thus, the entire game would be played by those running the cheapest set to buy.

For example.

Tyranids from the start, from way way way back are a horde army, trying to play them any differently is simply moronic because they simply are not strong enough in small numbers for skirmishes. This isn't an imbalance in the game, its how this type of army is meant to be played. Strength in numbers, the more you have the better, the less you have the worst, common sense.

Now let's look at Space Marines, adaptable, no true master of any battlefield tactic, this is their inherent strength as they can adapt for any situation. their overall weakness is their inability to truly dominate any one style of war.

There has to be some give and take in a strategy game where one can choose their own army.

You want BALANCE. Go play Risk, otherwise keep the complaining to a minimum and realize there is no such thing as BALANCE in war. And this is exactly what we are playing, a WAR game.


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 jasper76 wrote:

 slowthar wrote:
You think every owner of every team in the NFL wouldn't want to win every year? Of course they would, but they've gotten together to create a system that creates parity and keeps the playing ground fair. Why? because fairness makes the games/seasons more interesting and it's better long term for the organization as a whole.

Hmm. Read that last sentence again.

Yup, see NFL vs MLB. I stopped watching baseball a while ago, but when I could still stand it, it was fast evolving into a game of "which of the following 6 rich team will win the World Series"..every year, year after year, it was 1 of those 6 teams without fail. Yo didn't need to look at the roster at the beginning of the season, it would without fail be one of those 6 teams.

With NFL, teams are winning the Super Bowl that I didn't even know existed.

With this example, you're not taking into account the amount of money that went into compiling the best team. Not everyone can have the best defense in the league or the best running back so inherently, some teams will be significantly better than others. But they don't whine about it, they go out there and they adapt. They find a way to win despite the weakness in their team.

 Ailaros wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Otherwise, those factions that aren't as good simply won't get played. This is human nature.

The very fact that there are people still playing armies that aren't triptides or taudar proves you wrong.

I'm sure there are some people who keep banging their heads against the wall. There are some people who deliberately cut themselves too. There's a marked difference between needing to play "the best" army, and wanting not to lose every game you play, and it's the latter that drives people away. I've seen people stop playing for an edition at a time because their army became obsolete. I've seen them repaint their type of marine, or shelve an army in favour of another. I'm sure there will always be some people who are willing to lose every game they play, but they're not the norm. Most people don't find that fun.

Zodiark wrote:


These weaknesses are exploited by other army types, this is normal and necessary as every army being equal and the same, or balanced as you call it would absolutely destroy the game. There would be no varying tactics, no inherent strengths or weaknesses in any army and thus, the entire game would be played by those running the cheapest set to buy.

For example.

Tyranids from the start, from way way way back are a horde army, trying to play them any differently is simply moronic because they simply are not strong enough in small numbers for skirmishes.

(1) rubbish. Balance is not the same as 'everything is identical'. Let's make that clear. You can have variety, and options in a balanced game. In fact, what you ascribe to 'no varying tactics' is a product of unbalanced games where various styles of play are unworkable.

(2) nidzilla is a thing. Horde isn't the only way of doing tyranids.

Zodiark wrote:
You want BALANCE. Go play Risk, otherwise keep the complaining to a minimum and realize there is no such thing as BALANCE in war. And this is exactly what we are playing, a WAR game.

I'm sorry for not relating to the rest of your post but after reading this quote I really, really have to say that it's the greatest heap of feces I've ever read regarding any tabletop system. I think that if we ever build a pile of bull as high as that, the Earth would probably hit the moon with it like a huge baseball bat.

Are you really telling us that we should not expect balance from a wargame because it's about war..? I mean.. are you telling us that if we want a balanced game we should go somewhere else? Seriously? I.. I think I need some chamomile tea and a break from humanity for the rest of the evening.

I pretty well agree with the OP. My gaming group has a number of "house rules" that we sort of make a gentleman's/gentlewoman's agreement to abide by. Examples are no spamming (as defined by the "I know it when I see it!" rule), no special character HQs, max one flier or 2 FMCs, and so on. The rule of thumb is to ask yourself "would I have fun playing against this list?" because, after all, we're all friends and the point is to hang out, play a game, have a good time, crack a couple of beers, and know that the winner was the better general on the field and not just better at math or had a bigger selection of models.

One guy plays his beloved Inquisition/Guard list despite never having won with it; he just loves the models and the fluff too much to care, and he has fun anyway.

It's nearly impossible to keep over a dozen different armies unique with their own strengths and weaknesses while also keeping them perfectly balanced against each other all the time. Some units/characters are almost useless against one army while being hopelessly overpowered against another; to some extent it's up to players' discretion to play a "fair" army and not, say bring only burna boyz and tankbustas and two min-size units of grotz to a game against nids.

What can I say, I like the challenge of trying to take on a superheavy with my footsloggin' boyz, or seeing if I can steel the football from a White Scars army. Yeah, most of the time I lose, but the times I do win I feel like a boss, and trying to come up with clever strategies to compensate for your weaknesses is a huge part of the appeal of the game to me.

Zodiark wrote:
You want BALANCE. Go play Risk, otherwise keep the complaining to a minimum and realize there is no such thing as BALANCE in war. And this is exactly what we are playing, a WAR game.

Risk is also a WAR game!

 Klerych wrote:

Zodiark wrote:
You want BALANCE. Go play Risk, otherwise keep the complaining to a minimum and realize there is no such thing as BALANCE in war. And this is exactly what we are playing, a WAR game.

I'm sorry for not relating to the rest of your post but after reading this quote I really, really have to say that it's the greatest heap of feces I've ever read regarding any tabletop system. I think that if we ever build a pile of bull as high as that, the Earth would probably hit the moon with it like a huge baseball bat.

Are you really telling us that we should not expect balance from a wargame because it's about war..? I mean.. are you telling us that if we want a balanced game we should go somewhere else? Seriously? I.. I think I need some chamomile tea and a break from humanity for the rest of the evening.

I understand what he's getting at, even if it's sort of poorly phrased. Risk is perfectly balanced, everybody gets the same armies, same units, same numbers at the start, etc. In 40k everybody has different armies, so it's always going to be a little unbalanced. I mean, you couldn't accurately represent a Sherman tank, a Panther tank, and a T-45 in a WWII game and still have it balanced perfectly like a game of Risk. The points system and FOC mostly compensates for this pretty effectively, but with the sheer number of different units and wargear items, inevitably there will be the odd combination that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I broadly agree with the OPs thesis that the only way to eliminate this completely would be overly and undesirably restrictive, and a little imbalance is the price we have to pay for the freedom we have to play the models/armies that we want.

That's true. But we don't have a little imbalance, we have great big, can't believe the designers didn't see this imbalances.

It's one thing to say that it's hard to balance a Panzer and a Sherman in a WWII game. It's another to say it's equally hard to balance a Chaos Predator, a SM Predator and a SW Predator...

Actually the Panzer IV and Sherman (especially the later editions of both tanks) weren't really that different in terms of capability, they just specialized in different kinds of tank warfare.

 Redbeard wrote:
That's true. But we don't have a little imbalance, we have great big, can't believe the designers didn't see this imbalances.

It's one thing to say that it's hard to balance a Panzer and a Sherman in a WWII game. It's another to say it's equally hard to balance a Chaos Predator, a SM Predator and a SW Predator...

That's a fair point. To a certain extent I suspect it has to do with the different ages of the codices meaning they're written with different versions of the rules (not to mention the other armies) in mind, and there may be some amount of "wow, Rune Priests are really unbalanced now. We'll have to fix that in the next SW codex."

Is the issue with the CSM, SM, and SW predators that they're too similar in dissimilar armies, or that they're too dissimilar (one more powerful than the others, for e.g.) for the same models/points cost?

 Ailaros wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:a unit worth 100 points in codex A should be comparable in value to a unit worth 100 points in codex B.

points don't balance.

It's almost like you took a single line out of context to respond to.
And you even agree with me - taken from your blog link:

Points only start to work as a balancer the more that things are controlled for. If you're talking about units within a single codex, and that have a limited number or limited combinations (you must take a certain unit to unlock others, etc.), then they start to work better. As it is, GW is going in the opposite direction, which is why points costs, even if they were accurate, are doing a progressively worse and worse job of acting as a balancer.

Currently, point costs don't work for comparison cross codex. They should.

office_waaagh wrote:

That's a fair point. To a certain extent I suspect it has to do with the different ages of the codices meaning they're written with different versions of the rules (not to mention the other armies) in mind, and there may be some amount of "wow, Rune Priests are really unbalanced now. We'll have to fix that in the next SW codex."

But good design wouldn't see an ever-increasing power level for new codexes. I mean, I understand that the business model they're using is based on selling as much of the new thing as possible as fast as possible, so as to recoup its cost as fast as possible, before moving on to the next thing, but this is a flawed approach that ends up creating a situation where at least 50% of their product line is not a good buy (gamewise) at any given time.

There shouldn't be a huge need to completely re-price every model with each release.

Is the issue with the CSM, SM, and SW predators that they're too similar in dissimilar armies, or that they're too dissimilar (one more powerful than the others, for e.g.) for the same models/points cost?

That's an interesting question, and speaks to the two contrasting goals of game design. One one hand, you have the idea that you want to differentiate different factions. But, you also want to balance them. The correct approach to this is to use availability as your tool for differentiation, and cost as your tool for balance.

There's really nothing wrong with a couple of similar factions having access to the same unit, as long as they pay the same price for it.

Where it goes wrong is when the developer decides that availability isn't a tool they want to use. We've seen this progress through GW development, where back in 3rd ed, it was not uncommon to see units that were 0-1 or 0-2, to now, where that's doesn't happen anymore. They chose to disregard that tool, in favour of (hopefully) selling more of each model kit. That might be good for short-term business, but when it leads to an unbalanced game, I can't see it being good for the long-term, as more and more players leave to play games that are more balanced (and fun). Availability can also help with balance; I doubt anyone would complain about a riptide if it were a 0-1 choice (reflecting it's supposed new, experimental status). It'd be a strong piece, but just one piece.

So, without availability, they turn to cost as a way to differentiate armies. Space Wolves like combat more than Ultramarines, so to reflect that, Space Wolves get an extra attack/model at no extra cost (in the form of a CCW). Well, all other things remaining constant, if one army has freebies that they don't pay for, and the other doesn't, you know up-front that this isn't a balanced game. The new SM codex now offers some freebies to each chapter, so the comparison with SW may be dated, but it's the concept that's important here, not the specifics. If I'm allowed to take 3 predators as a legal army list, and you're allowed to take 3 identical predators, then we should have a balanced game. But if your predators cost less than my predators, allowing you to take something else in addition to your predators, this isn't going to be a fair game. And to claim that it's because your chapter has a natural affinity for predators might sound like a good fluffy rational, but it doesn't change the fact that we're both playing legal armies, and you've got a decided advantage on the tabletop. This is why cost should never be used to differentiate factions - it's the wrong tool for the job, and inherently leads to an unbalanced game.

Interesting discussion. Thanks all for some thought provoking replies.

MadmanMSU wrote:
This is a complete cop out. Just because you can't figure out how to do it, doesn't mean it can't be done. Same goes for GW. This is not an issue of "this is impossible to do", it's an issue of "they don't put the time in to do it"***.

Could they make improvements? Definitely. Could they balance things to the extent that any reasonable fluffy list would stand a chance against a flavor of the month WAAC list? I doubt it. FAQ out one cheese build and the netlisters will invent three more.

***I would also accept that its not about them putting the time in to fix the game, but instead that a balanced game is simply not in the 40k vision of GW. Making a balanced game is simply not what they aim to do. Their goal is to put gorgeous models on the table and help players narrate a story. That's it.

I think this is true - the 'beer and pretzels' comment does seem to point that way. I think it's telling that at a time when computer games are busily chasing the next big thing of e-sports GW are definitely not trying to expand 40K into an 'official' tournament scene.

 Redbeard wrote:


But good design wouldn't see an ever-increasing power level for new codexes. I mean, I understand that the business model they're using is based on selling as much of the new thing as possible as fast as possible, so as to recoup its cost as fast as possible, before moving on to the next thing, but this is a flawed approach that ends up creating a situation where at least 50% of their product line is not a good buy (gamewise) at any given time.

There shouldn't be a huge need to completely re-price every model with each release.

I see what you're getting at, but on the other hand if they're releasing new models and updated rules they're going to have to rebalance things once in a while. If you've got a new unit that fills an intentional "gap" in an army, you need to compensate by creating a weakness elsewhere so that they don't become broken (at least, not in the long term). This has a cascading effect whereby the whole codex needs to be rebalanced.

I think a good example of putting the game ahead of selling models is the refusal to allow new units like fliers and centurions into SM variant lists based on older codices. SW can't take storm ravens or storm talons; although this means that those players won't be buying the models, the codex wasn't designed with fliers in mind and it would need to be rebalanced before they could be included. It seems to me that having a few of the armies outdated at any given time is the cost of having a game that evolves and adapts.

I sort of agree with you on the idea of using availability for differentiation and cost for balance. I think the issue is that the same unit doesn't necessarily work the same or have the same synergy with each army. SW get a free close combat attack and counter-attack to boot, but can't take heavy weapons in their tactical squads (whether this is a fair trade-off is debatable). A predator might be more powerful in one army than another simply because one army might have several options for a "mobile tank-killer" role while the other has only one, or one army has a unit that makes the predator more powerful when they're used together.

It's fairly common for heavy weapons to cost more for a dedicated heavy weapons squad than for a unit of troops, because the troops have to sacrifice their mobility to use the heavy weapon effectively while the dedicated heavy weapons unit can be placed in a static position. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine them massaging the points values a bit depending on the role a model might have within a given army (a static shooting unit would be worth less to a mobile Dark Eldar army than to a ponderous IG army, surely?) Maybe a storm raven would need to be worth more points in a SW army because it would have the ability to drop a venerable dreadnought into the middle of the battlefield, as an example of an identical model being worth more to one army than another.

This plays into the main fallacy about balance: that it is for competitive players.

Look, competitive players will play whatever is good. They'll get fast paintjobs, just enough to qualify for the standard of the tournament. They'll sell an army as soon as it's no longer top-tier, and move on with no regrets. Competitive tournament players do not care if the game is well balanced or not, they will use only the best units, regardless of how much better those units are.

It's casual players who suffer from an unbalanced game. The guy who goes into the store, and falls in love with Chaos Raptor models, and buys a few boxes, only to lose every game in which he fields them. That guy isn't a competitive player, he's a victim of poor game design. And, he's more likely to stop playing as well. You know how many times I've read this comment on here:

Poster 1: I bought these models, and am trying to make my army work, but I keep losing, can someone help.

Poster 2: Those models don't work very well, you should buy these other models instead.


Poster 1 isn't a "competitive player"....

A balanced game is more beneficial to the casual, fluffy player than to the hardcore tournament goer.

I don't understand why so many posters are treating game balance of any game with asymmetrical factions as some impossible, intractable problem. Blizzard has released not one, but two, versions of Starcraft each of which has three completely unique races each with their own distinct sets of units and each and have managed to precisely balance each an every unit correctly with respect to rest. This demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is entirely possible to balance multiple distinct factions in an asymmetrical wargame if one is only willing to spend the time and effort. No divine intervention is required, you just have to care about your product and your customers.

Additionally, those of us who would like to see balance improvements real aren't looking for anything approaching the precision of Starcraft. We just want everything roughly in the same ballpark. Take those outliers, such as your Heldrakes, Nightscythes, Riptides, Waveserpents on one side and your Rough Riders, Nephilim, Pyrovores, Razorsharks at the other extreme and adjust them at least to the point where the cease to become auto-includes and auto-rejects. If your average player can identify the under and over powered units in the game and propose fixes, than certainly the professionals at GW can bring them in line if only they spend the time.

I think Games Workshop is the fuel and we are the fire. As long as we eat the fuel, GW will keep giving it to us. So yea it if we stop eating the fuel then then they will either change what they give us or "starve" us.

Hence why I believe it starts with the players to fix the game rather than GW.

Not saying GW is free from blame, but players arent free from it either. 1 wont change without the other.

office_waaagh wrote:

I see what you're getting at, but on the other hand if they're releasing new models and updated rules they're going to have to rebalance things once in a while. If you've got a new unit that fills an intentional "gap" in an army, you need to compensate by creating a weakness elsewhere so that they don't become broken (at least, not in the long term). This has a cascading effect whereby the whole codex needs to be rebalanced.

Well, there's two flaws in this thinking. The first is that you can't create a weak unit in order to create a weakness in a faction, as the weak unit, unless made mandatory, simply won't be taken. And the other is that, with the allies system, I'm not even sure they can create intentional gaps anymore. What's the point of saying Space Wolves can't have a flyer, if they can ally with ultramarines, who bring the flyers?

.... It seems to me that having a few of the armies outdated at any given time is the cost of having a game that evolves and adapts.

Except that other companies seem to manage it. You can evolve the game by releasing some units for each faction, along with their rules, rather than redoing entire factions. It's not the model GW chose, but we've seen enough examples of how their decision making is flawed that this should not be a surprise.

I sort of agree with you on the idea of using availability for differentiation and cost for balance. I think the issue is that the same unit doesn't necessarily work the same or have the same synergy with each army. SW get a free close combat attack and counter-attack to boot, but can't take heavy weapons in their tactical squads (whether this is a fair trade-off is debatable). A predator might be more powerful in one army than another simply because one army might have several options for a "mobile tank-killer" role while the other has only one, or one army has a unit that makes the predator more powerful when they're used together.

But both of these are exactly what I'm saying. Space Wolves are different from Ultramarines -because- they can't take a heavy weapon. That's a perfect example of availability in action, creating differences between the factions. Now, take the SW unit and the Ultra unit, and assume that the Ultra player did not buy a heavy weapon (a completely legal choice he made). Why is the SW player getting his advantages for free? That's poor balance.

As for the predator, it's the same thing. The fact that one army has fewer options to choose from is an example of availability creating differences. But that doesn't mean that his predators should be overpriced as a result.

It's fairly common for heavy weapons to cost more for a dedicated heavy weapons squad than for a unit of troops, because the troops have to sacrifice their mobility to use the heavy weapon effectively while the dedicated heavy weapons unit can be placed in a static position. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine them massaging the points values a bit depending on the role a model might have within a given army (a static shooting unit would be worth less to a mobile Dark Eldar army than to a ponderous IG army, surely?)

Not the same thing. If it's legal for us to make essentially the same army, then we should pay the same points. Making a unit cost more based on implied extra efficiency of that unit is fine, and then it is up to the player to make it worth what he paid for it. But making it cost more (or less) than the same thing in another army is flawed design, and just leads to people not taking the overpriced ones.

Maybe a storm raven would need to be worth more points in a SW army because it would have the ability to drop a venerable dreadnought into the middle of the battlefield, as an example of an identical model being worth more to one army than another.

But SM's can drop ven dreads too. And if SW ven dreads are better than SM dreads, their price should reflect that, not the transport that may not even have a dread passenger. You start to see how this works?

One possibility that just occurred to me is that they may balance the points values with the idea that you'll know in advance what army you're going to be playing against. Pyrovores are basically useless in a "take all-comers" list, but against Orks or IG (or even dismounted Tau) I could see a unit of them covered by a venomthrope and hidden behind a carnifex being almost absurdly powerful.

Maybe this explains some of the otherwise nonsensical decision on points costs?

I think the comparison with Starcraft is flawed; Blizzard can issue minor changes and tweaks as they go as updates, while 40k needs a whole new edition (or at least an extensive errata) to do the same. Starcraft has only three factions, making a "rock-paper-scissors" balance easier to achieve. They can collect vast amounts of data in real time. So at the very least Blizzard has an easier time of it, at any rate.

Do GW make a balanced rule-set?

Do GW want to make a balanced rule-set?

Has GW ever provided a balanced rule-set (through design)?

No, No and No.

Time and again GW tell us they are not interested in balance and only in some kind of contrived version of narrative play.

Once you understand that GW really has no current interest in balancing, prototyping and or extensive playtesting you are left with a few options.

Play the game as GW intend - with your own narrative elements added.

Play the released rules as is with no narrative element or campaign etc.

Say thank you GW i'll go and modify this information you have provided me with so I can play my version of the game.

GW do not care what you figure out.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

office_waaagh wrote:
One possibility that just occurred to me is that they may balance the points values with the idea that you'll know in advance what army you're going to be playing against. Pyrovores are basically useless in a "take all-comers" list, but against Orks or IG (or even dismounted Tau) I could see a unit of them covered by a venomthrope and hidden behind a carnifex being almost absurdly powerful.

Maybe this explains some of the otherwise nonsensical decision on points costs?

I think the comparison with Starcraft is flawed; Blizzard can issue minor updates and tweaks as they go as updates, while 40k needs a whole new edition (or at least an extensive errata) to do the same. Starcraft has only three factions, making a "rock-paper-scissors" balance easier to achieve. They can collect vast amounts of data in real time. So at the very least Blizzard has an easier time of it, at any rate.

GW could have looked at the amount grammatical errors, typos and other errors that lie at the heart of rules disputes any time in the last 25 years and said -you know - maybe we should proof read this junk.

Instead of offering one of the core tennets of playing their games systems - roll a d6 for disputes - meaning the rules can change every game you play. AND numerous errata.

 Redbeard wrote:

Well, there's two flaws in this thinking. The first is that you can't create a weak unit in order to create a weakness in a faction, as the weak unit, unless made mandatory, simply won't be taken. And the other is that, with the allies system, I'm not even sure they can create intentional gaps anymore. What's the point of saying Space Wolves can't have a flyer, if they can ally with ultramarines, who bring the flyers?

I didn't necessarily mean "create a weak unit" when I said "create a weakness"; I was thinking more along the lines of tweaking something like taking one unit's deep strike away to compensate for a newly introduced unit being able to take a flyer as a dedicated transport for example (I don't mean that this specific example would necessarily be a good idea).

But yeah, you've got a point about the allies matrix sort of ruining things in that respect.

Except that other companies seem to manage it. You can evolve the game by releasing some units for each faction, along with their rules, rather than redoing entire factions. It's not the model GW chose, but we've seen enough examples of how their decision making is flawed that this should not be a surprise.

It's not necessarily flawed decision making, I don't think; they have a specific strategy that they're pursuing. It's not the strategy I'd have chosen, I'd make the rules available for free on the grounds that it would lower the barrier to entry for new players, but there you have it. Again, I think the problem is internally balancing all the units within a codex against the others as well as against the other armies.

But both of these are exactly what I'm saying. Space Wolves are different from Ultramarines -because- they can't take a heavy weapon. That's a perfect example of availability in action, creating differences between the factions. Now, take the SW unit and the Ultra unit, and assume that the Ultra player did not buy a heavy weapon (a completely legal choice he made). Why is the SW player getting his advantages for free? That's poor balance.

As for the predator, it's the same thing. The fact that one army has fewer options to choose from is an example of availability creating differences. But that doesn't mean that his predators should be overpriced as a result.

Well put. I don't mean to defend the SW codex necessarily; it just comes down to whether you think that tactical flexibility should have a points value associated with it. I don't, and I think grey hunters especially are undercosted, but I can see the argument for the other side.

If it's legal for us to make essentially the same army, then we should pay the same points. Making a unit cost more based on implied extra efficiency of that unit is fine, and then it is up to the player to make it worth what he paid for it. But making it cost more (or less) than the same thing in another army is flawed design, and just leads to people not taking the overpriced ones.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this. I don't have a problem with a unit's point value being determined by its effectiveness within the context of the codex from which it is chosen rather than its objective abilities. Although, as you rightly point out above, the allies matrix makes this type of balancing much less effective.

I think the comparison with Starcraft is flawed; Blizzard can issue minor changes and tweaks as they go as updates, while 40k needs a whole new edition (or at least an extensive errata) to do the same. Starcraft has only three factions, making a "rock-paper-scissors" balance easier to achieve. They can collect vast amounts of data in real time. So at the very least Blizzard has an easier time of it, at any rate.

The original Starcraft was largely balanced right out of the box. The continual patches are largely there to satisfy the ultra-competitive e-sports crowd and is supporting a level of balancing precision well beyond what I believe most players in 40k would demand. We are talking about not letting things like the heldrakes slip through the cracks, not about balancing the game for people who play it professionally. Given the far more lax standard, balancing the game without constant patching should be feasible provided it was actually attempted.

 ashcroft wrote:
Could they make improvements? Definitely. Could they balance things to the extent that any reasonable fluffy list would stand a chance against a flavor of the month WAAC list? I doubt it. FAQ out one cheese build and the netlisters will invent three more.
.

Why not?

40k is the only game that fragments and divides it's player base with the artificially different concepts like 'Waac' lists and 'fluffy' lists. It has the end result of someone like you taking the consequence of their poor design, thinking it's great and assuming that that is all it can ever be, and failing to see that gws methodology isn't true if the industry, nor is it a gold standard. In other games like warmachine or infinity, you just take lists. There is no Waac or fluff list - they're one and the same. There is no discrepancy between 'fluff' and 'power', your belief that they are somehow mutually exclusive is incorrect.

In any case, why couldn't a fluffy list operate on the same level as something else? Good design is all it takes, and dont confuse gws design philosophy with this - gw doesn't have a decent (or coherent) design philosophy -look to other manufacturers - see how they aimfor both balance and immersion and often succeed.

Rogue Trader. The game you are playing came from that game. If you need some perspextive on what kind of game you're plating, play some Rogue Trader. Want balance? Play Malifuax, or whatever else. Want a game with fun armies and aweet models and a rich universe? Play 40k. But stop bitching. We all know the game.

 purplkrush wrote:
Rogue Trader. The game you are playing came from that game. If you need some perspextive on what kind of game you're plating, play some Rogue Trader. Want balance? Play Malifuax, or whatever else. Want a game with fun armies and aweet models and a rich universe? Play 40k. But stop bitching. We all know the game.

That's somewhat stupid of you to say.. if GW encourages tournaments then they have the courage to call their products balanced unless they expect everyone to housecomp everything to make it playable.

Telling someone to stop expecting balance from a game focused on competitive play is mentally impaired at best, please - reconsider your stance in this matter.

What people state in most cases are valid points - not everyone wants to have to make house rules and discuss everything with the opponent every game - if the system was balanced enough like WarmaHordes everything they would have to discuss would be the points they're gonna be playing and that is the state of balance everyone seems to want. That or bring in MtG-like format comps to set apart tournament and casual play rules-wise.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Do GW make a balanced rule-set?

Play the game as GW intend - with your own narrative elements added.

Play the released rules as is with no narrative element or campaign etc.

Say thank you GW i'll go and modify this information you have provided me with so I can play my version of the game.

But how do you find opponent to play this your version of the game . Unless people are lower in the food chain then you , you won't be able to make them play the game your way. I see shop owners oppose FW , because they don't sell it . They are the ones that have tables , so they can enforce the rule. If someone wanted to do the same , he or she would have to own a FLGS .

Makumba wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Do GW make a balanced rule-set?

Play the game as GW intend - with your own narrative elements added.

Play the released rules as is with no narrative element or campaign etc.

Say thank you GW i'll go and modify this information you have provided me with so I can play my version of the game.

But how do you find opponent to play this your version of the game . Unless people are lower in the food chain then you , you won't be able to make them play the game your way. I see shop owners oppose FW , because they don't sell it . They are the ones that have tables , so they can enforce the rule. If someone wanted to do the same , he or she would have to own a FLGS .

There are always like minded players around. Thats why we have so many differing ways of playing. Thats why most of us find people to play with. I have never heard of a FLGs dictating how players play their game either. Just what models are allowed. Which is usually not connected to the games but more directed about sales.

And you find players by asking if they would like to try your version of the game. You dont ask the store owner what he wants you and your buddy to play (unless things are radically different in your country). Its so easy to find a game to play with enjoyment if you simply talk about it. Oh so easy. Given most people are reasonable.


I will admit though, if you play at a GW you are disadvantaged big time.

I rather sure that the way the game is played is dictated by the avarge salary . I understand that people in the UK or US have more money . We have less money , so we buy only the units that are good and build armies in a such a way that they can play the most opponents.

People talk about 10 riptides or 10 helldrakes lists and how unbound is bad , when I on the other hand know that no one here would buy 10 of those . Not because they are good or bad, but because spending so much money on an army that you may never get to play is not going to happen.

As not going to shops that have their own house rules goes. Where do you play then . Sure one can buy an army and only play at tournaments , but that is a lot of money spend on something one may use 7-9 time per year.


I don't play at a GW , there is only one in the whole country and they only let noobs that buy from them play there , and give them the boot as soon as they stop buying stuff.

Well to be honest your area seems very weird compared to anywhere I have played. Shops with rules on how to play? Seems odd.

Here nobody buys anything like that too. I have never met someone who purchased an army or units simply because it was good. Usually buying units that are good and only units that are good is wasteful because those units are always the ones that get worse over time.

But wouldnt it be better to work WITH the people you play with to buy units. I know its a bit late now, but even as a kid we planned our armies together as we went to avoid any issues. We could barely afford models so thats why we did it.

Good, GW stores are aweful haha.

I know exactly where you are coming from though, but with research, communication and planning you can slowly turn things around. But of course, as you who is currently in that situation knows, its much harder to do when you have already gone down that path.

I sympathize with you, however id call your situation a special one.

In the case of the grey knights guy, proxying could get him playing again. As he proxies he will learn what he needs to be part of the club. Of course that doesnt fully mend what has been done.

Phanixis wrote:

I think the comparison with Starcraft is flawed; Blizzard can issue minor changes and tweaks as they go as updates, while 40k needs a whole new edition (or at least an extensive errata) to do the same. Starcraft has only three factions, making a "rock-paper-scissors" balance easier to achieve. They can collect vast amounts of data in real time. So at the very least Blizzard has an easier time of it, at any rate.

The original Starcraft was largely balanced right out of the box. The continual patches are largely there to satisfy the ultra-competitive e-sports crowd and is supporting a level of balancing precision well beyond what I believe most players in 40k would demand. We are talking about not letting things like the heldrakes slip through the cracks, not about balancing the game for people who play it professionally. Given the far more lax standard, balancing the game without constant patching should be feasible provided it was actually attempted.

There's also no reason that GW can't patch the tabletop game as much as a company patches a video game now that internet access is basically universal. Anyone can check for the latest full update to the game, and a changelog can show you cleanly what's changed between each patch.

This wouldn't be that hard for GW to do.

40k Update v 6.14
"Since the update last month, several balance issues were brought to our attention and we reworded a section to make the rules cause less confusion"
*** Changelog ***
- Vendettas have been performing far better than we expected. They now cost 170 points (up from 130) and have transport capacity reduced to 6 (from 11).
- Rough Riders are underperforming to the extent players feel penalized if they take them. They now cost x (from y) and have the z special rule.
- Reworded so and so rule from xxx to yyy.

*** Full list of updates since game launch ***
blah
blah
blah

I also thoroughly disagree with the OPs premise, but others have already covered why.

office_waaagh wrote:

 Klerych wrote:

Zodiark wrote:
You want BALANCE. Go play Risk, otherwise keep the complaining to a minimum and realize there is no such thing as BALANCE in war. And this is exactly what we are playing, a WAR game.

I'm sorry for not relating to the rest of your post but after reading this quote I really, really have to say that it's the greatest heap of feces I've ever read regarding any tabletop system. I think that if we ever build a pile of bull as high as that, the Earth would probably hit the moon with it like a huge baseball bat.

Are you really telling us that we should not expect balance from a wargame because it's about war..? I mean.. are you telling us that if we want a balanced game we should go somewhere else? Seriously? I.. I think I need some chamomile tea and a break from humanity for the rest of the evening.

I understand what he's getting at, even if it's sort of poorly phrased. Risk is perfectly balanced, everybody gets the same armies, same units, same numbers at the start, etc. In 40k everybody has different armies, so it's always going to be a little unbalanced. I mean, you couldn't accurately represent a Sherman tank, a Panther tank, and a T-45 in a WWII game and still have it balanced perfectly like a game of Risk. The points system and FOC mostly compensates for this pretty effectively, but with the sheer number of different units and wargear items, inevitably there will be the odd combination that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I broadly agree with the OPs thesis that the only way to eliminate this completely would be overly and undesirably restrictive, and a little imbalance is the price we have to pay for the freedom we have to play the models/armies that we want.

You clarified better than I did lol, I get annoyed with people whining so much that I lose coherency sometimes.

 Klerych wrote:

 purplkrush wrote:
Rogue Trader. The game you are playing came from that game. If you need some perspextive on what kind of game you're plating, play some Rogue Trader. Want balance? Play Malifuax, or whatever else. Want a game with fun armies and aweet models and a rich universe? Play 40k. But stop bitching. We all know the game.

That's somewhat stupid of you to say.. if GW encourages tournaments then they have the courage to call their products balanced unless they expect everyone to housecomp everything to make it playable.

Telling someone to stop expecting balance from a game focused on competitive play is mentally impaired at best, please - reconsider your stance in this matter.

What people state in most cases are valid points - not everyone wants to have to make house rules and discuss everything with the opponent every game - if the system was balanced enough like WarmaHordes everything they would have to discuss would be the points they're gonna be playing and that is the state of balance everyone seems to want. That or bring in MtG-like format comps to set apart tournament and casual play rules-wise.

This seems to get to the heart of the issue; people are broadly falling into two camps. On the one hand there are the people that agree with the OP, and believe that the game should be fun, fluffy, and cool first and foremost, and as long as the codices are roughly balanced against each other they're happy. If the odd oversight leads to an exploit or a particular army becoming overpowered, you can just agree with your gaming buddies not to play that army list. This is considered a small price to pay for having the freedom to play the game as you like and use cool models. On the other hand there is a group of people that believes the game should be balanced perfectly out of the box, and that you should never have to worry about showing up for an open game night and looking at an all-deathstar list across the table and have to basically start packing up before you begin. That you do speaks to a deep flaw in the system of rules, points values, and codices.

I'm more sympathetic to the first view, mainly because the second seems like just complaining for its own sake to me. I understand that there is frustration over this issue, and quite justifiably so. Ultimately, however, the game we have is the game GW makes. If we don't like it, we can take our business elsewhere and they'll change their tune right quick or lose their fanbase, which choice they are free to make for themselves. The "gentleman's agreement" school of thought seems more constructive to me; take the game we have and sand down the rough edges among ourselves, and then get on with having fun.

Klerych has the right idea, I think, in that the best solution would be for them to create a system to separate tournaments from casual play. I think it can be generally agreed that the "unbound" armies from the upcoming edition will be hopeless in tournaments, and it will just be a competition of who can make the beardiest list. It may be wishful thinking, but if enough people email GW customer service asking after this it might get the designers to take notice.

office_waaagh, I wish I could type like you! My opinions would not sound so harsh haha.

But I agree with that very much. Well mostly.

 Klerych wrote:

This seems to get to the heart of the issue; people are broadly falling into two camps. On the one hand there are the people that agree with the OP, and believe that the game should be fun, fluffy, and cool first and foremost, and as long as the codices are roughly balanced against each other they're happy. If the odd oversight leads to an exploit or a particular army becoming overpowered, you can just agree with your gaming buddies not to play that army list. This is considered a small price to pay for having the freedom to play the game as you like and use cool models. On the other hand there is a group of people that believes the game should be balanced perfectly out of the box, and that you should never have to worry about showing up for an open game night and looking at an all-deathstar list across the table and have to basically start packing up before you begin. That you do speaks to a deep flaw in the system of rules, points values, and codices.

You mischaracterise the second camp. No one thinks you can balance a game perfectly. The argument is that it is balanced so horribly that with minimal effort it could be balanced so much better that it's ridiculous, with *no* sacrifice in fluff, fun or cool factor. In fact, it would substantially enhance the fun by stopping casual players from being penalised so harshly. A number example would be, you could go from an 80/20 win rate of Blood Angels to a 60/40 win rate. It's still not perfectly balanced, but it's close enough as to be fun to play at 60/40 whereas 80/20 is not.

Ultimately, however, the game we have is the game GW makes. If we don't like it, we can take our business elsewhere and they'll change their tune right quick or lose their fanbase, which choice they are free to make for themselves.

What a great idea - never offer constructive criticism or air complaints about something and result in nothing ever getting improved. I always use starcraft as an example because it's something I'm more familiar with. Blizzard of course goes off of their own statistics and tests, but also off of feedback from the community. When the community - from casuals to pro gamers offer feedback, Blizzard gets a much better impression of what needs tweaking, and how they should tweak it. Some things can be imbalanced at the casual level but balanced at the pro level for example, which would necessitate a different change than one unbalanced at both.

The "gentleman's agreement" school of thought seems more constructive to me; take the game we have and sand down the rough edges among ourselves, and then get on with having fun.

I'd much prefer a gentleman's agreement without the manual labour of sanding down the rough edges every game so you can get straight to the fun, that doesn't seem unreasonable as it's doable in virtually every other game.

Klerych has the right idea, I think, in that the best solution would be for them to create a system to separate tournaments from casual play.

That's ridiculous. There's absolutely no reason that a balanced ruleset will harm casual play - far from it, it will improve it even more than it will competitive play.

I think it can be generally agreed that the "unbound" armies from the upcoming edition will be hopeless in tournaments

That's just naive. If all you're expecting is 10 riptides or 10 heldrakes, you haven't looked at how poorly balanced codices are. Most suffer from extremely lopsided FoC slots. Chaos and necrons have amazing fast attack but shoddy elites. Most have good heavy support. You'll be seeing 5-10 fast attack choices made of several types of units such as chaos bikes, heldrakes and spawn, not just straight heldrakes.

Yonan, I'll forgo quoting your reply at length to save space. It wasn't my intention to make the "the game is unbalanced" camp appear unreasonable, and I apologize for the confusion if my wording did so. I'm just not sure that you can simply rebalance a dozen or more armies while still introducing new models and units quite so easily as you suggest. I certainly don't know how to do it, at any rate, and I solve statistics problems for a living. The number of degrees of freedom is daunting, to say the least.

You are correct, of course; if there are flaws we perceive in the system, we should raise them and seek to have them addressed. Indeed, I heartily encourage doing so with GW customer service.

We all play the same game, and we're never all going to agree on what we want. Some people are happy with the game the way it is, while others find it unbalanced and believe the game suffers for it. Neither group is wrong, in any objective sense. I have fun with the game in its current format, and I enjoy the flexibility. The people that say it's unbalanced are just as correct; they're not having fun, and they are rightly raising the issues that they believe are getting in the way.

I think that a separate set of rules for tournaments or less casual play is the best of both worlds. It retains the flexibility that some parts of the community enjoy while offering a more structured and objectively balanced system for those who prefer it. I don't think I'm being unreasonable, there are enough similar replies as well as the OP himself on the thread to suggest that at the very least I'm in a sizeable minority, if the split isn't closer to even. But by all means, I am open to alternate suggestions, and this is just my personal opinion.

To a certain extent, I'm just trying to be realistic. The design philosophy that informs GW's decisions is only within our influence to a very limited extent, and we don't all agree on whether it's the right one or not. Some people like the "rule of cool" style, while others would prefer a more objectively balanced game even if it meant a more limited wargear selection (for example). We should raise our issues and complaints; we are the customers, after all, and we have a reasonable expectation of getting something worth our significant investment. But at the end of the day, the game they make is the game we have, and I'd rather just get on with having fun. So far, for me, the rules haven't gotten in the way of that objective.

office_waaagh wrote:
I think that a separate set of rules for tournaments or less casual play is the best of both worlds. It retains the flexibility that some parts of the community enjoy while offering a more structured and objectively balanced system for those who prefer it. I don't think I'm being unreasonable, there are enough similar replies as well as the OP himself on the thread to suggest that at the very least I'm in a sizeable minority, if the split isn't closer to even. But by all means, I am open to alternate suggestions, and this is just my personal opinion.

This seems based on the false assertion that better balance reduces flexibility when it's actually the opposite. Better balance greatly improves the flexibility of the players by ensuring more units are viable and you can basically guarantee a good game regardless of what you or the other player want to take. You can have balanced asymmetrical gameplay without having identical units, this should be beyond question given the huge number of examples we have to prove it.

 ashcroft wrote:
Could they make improvements? Definitely. Could they balance things to the extent that any reasonable fluffy list would stand a chance against a flavor of the month WAAC list? I doubt it. FAQ out one cheese build and the netlisters will invent three more.

It's hilarious that you make it sound so impossible. The current market shows making a well designed ruleset with asymetrical forces that caters to people building from background and people building from a competitive standpoint and allowing them to play together without the competitive player gaining an innate advantage is possible. Smaller compaines do it better, which shows how much effort GW actually put into the design side of their game.

I'm sticking my $.02 in here and with luck it won't explode in my face. So here goes:

There are problems on both sides of the fence.

GW is responsible for a lot of things that are wrong with the game. Points costs that can't be compared from one book to another (example: CSM being priced so closely to Marines but being at least 3 rules shy of what the Marines get standard (not counting that ATSKNF is basically 3 rules at the moment)), upgrade costs that are standardized across multiple books despite being less effective from one to the other (example: Power Fists for instance between IG and Marines), and a host of other issues. And there is a chance they just don't know this or they're apathetic to how we see the game. Neither would totally surprise me but I have strong feelings that it's the first more than the latter.

That said, there is definitely something wrong with a player who will happily bring a Taudar list against someone who is just learning the game and barely has gotten his models together and has learned to start painting. We can't pretend that these people are GW's fault or that there really is a way for a game to prevent them from acting like massive bellends. Some people will behave like that regardless of what the rules say and will do everything they can within those rules (and in some cases they go beyond the rules too) to win. That is definitely a problem with the player, not the game.

Now, that quibble about players aside, should 40k be better? Damn right. It should play faster and easier, be more balanced from one unit to the next and have clearly and tightly defined rules. Frankly I feel they need to throw out the entire current structure of the game and start over because right now it's a mess. Granted it's a mess that I like a lot of the concepts of, but it's still a mess and I want to see it be better.

I think there are some problems with the game, and that is GW's fault.

Doesnt mean that the players cant try and fix it. Look at what they were doing with the tournament missions, or their own FAQs. Make modifications.

Also GW does not force you to buy and use any unit. That is the choice of the player. Do the rules make it more efficient to buy certain units? Sure, but I like to take slightly sub optimal units and play with them because it makes me a better player. Obviously there are some units that are just BAD but when you are a good player you can make use of most of the units in any given book.

 ClockworkZion wrote:


That said, there is definitely something wrong with a player who will happily bring a Taudar list against someone who is just learning the game and barely has gotten his models together and has learned to start painting.

.

I question that logic. How can someone start buying in to the game and not at least check what are the power builds in a game. It would be as if someone bought a car or a house without checking its specifics .

Makumba wrote:
I question that logic. How can someone start buying in to the game and not at least check what are the power builds in a game. It would be as if someone bought a car or a house without checking its specifics .

One is a huge investment, the other is a game. Very dodgy and unnecessary analogy.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
That said, there is definitely something wrong with a player who will happily bring a Taudar list against someone who is just learning the game and barely has gotten his models together and has learned to start painting.

A new player could just as easily choose competitive units without knowing anything about what's good or not and stomp the hell out of their friends who unknowingly chose bad units, completely unintentionally.

 Leth wrote:
Also GW does not force you to buy and use any unit. That is the choice of the player.

Once they've already bought the unit and *then* it changes, that's the choice of GW. Then the player can buy all new models, yay!! Until they get nerfed next edition.

Players fixing the game requires wide-spread support from the entire community. This isn't easy to achieve, especially in a community this divided.

Makumba wrote:
I question that logic. How can someone start buying in to the game and not at least check what are the power builds in a game.

Not everyone wants to play a power build. Many players in 40K are going to want to play with stuff they like - because they like the models and/or the fluff. They'll want to make their own force, following an idea they have for it in their head, rather than slavishly following some optimised netlist.

I probably come across as hostile to netlists/tournament armies. I'm not, and I don't do pick up games anyway so I've no personal axe to grind in the fluff list vs tourney list debate. I'm simply saying that we the players have to take some responsibility for the way the game is played within our local circles - whether it is fluff vs fluff or tourney vs tourney, or something in between.

Because anyone who is waiting for GW to balance the game and bridge the gulf between fluff and tourney is going to be waiting for a very very long time.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Players fixing the game requires wide-spread support from the entire community. This isn't easy to achieve, especially in a community this divided.

Not really. In your local group decide what you guys want to do. If you cant decide just ask before the game starts how you are going to play it. I always ask potential rules questions before I take an action rather than later.

If you go to a tournament what the TO decides goes, if you don't like what they decide then you don't attend quite simple.

If GW changes a rule for a unit they are still not forcing you to play or not play it, you are deciding if you want to take it or not. Nothing stopping you. If it is HONESTLY that big a deal to you just proxy it.


Also to perfectly balance everything would require limiting options and abilities. I will take unbalanced variety any day over fewer options and less interesting rules.

 -Loki- wrote:
The current market shows making a well designed ruleset with asymetrical forces that caters to people building from background and people building from a competitive standpoint and allowing them to play together without the competitive player gaining an innate advantage is possible. Smaller companies do it better, which shows how much effort GW actually put into the design side of their game.

Smaller games have less players, and that in itself fosters a different mindset. Like I've said, 40K is currently the big name in tabletop wargames and that means it will pull in a disproportionate number of WAAC players motivated not by love of the game but by the need to win. Rules lawyering and netlisting will follow. Were GW to 'fix' the game that element of the playerbase would immediately set about working out ways to break it again, in order to regain their advantage.

I don't exonerate GW of all responsibility for the current state of the game. Like many here I could come out with a long list of things I think they should do differently, of changes I think should be made. Regardless of that, the 40K community needs to recognise its own failings rather than blaming everything on GW. GW can/could fix the game. GW cannot fix the players.

 ashcroft wrote:
Disclaimer 1: I'm not trying to exonerate GW of all responsibility, There are issues, but it's not a one-way street.

Disclaimer 2: Alternative title for this topic would have been "Competitive 40K would require a whole different ruleset."

There's a lot of debate about 'balance' in 40K - mostly to do with pick up games - and it reminds me a lot about the never ending arguments about PVP (Player vs Player) in MMOs.

In any MMO which has optional PVP there will be two types of player in a pvp zone - the casual player, who has built his character according to personal preference and what they find fun, and the pvp player or powergamer/min-maxer, who has built his character to be absolutely optimised, either doing the number crunching himself or getting the current flavor of the month build from the internet. Is this sounding at all familiar?

If a casual/fluffy player enters a pvp zone and goes one on one against someone running an optimised/min-maxed uber build, then the casual is going to lose, almost always. Doesn't matter if they are more skilled as a player - the superior gear, stats, attack rotation of the min-maxer will usually be the deciding factor. In much the same way a fluff list is, more often than not, going to take a beating from an optimised tournament ready netlist.

There's very little that GW can do to prevent this. If other games are better balanced it's in no small part due to a couple of things - either the armies are more inherently equal to begin with (such as most historical wargames, or for that matter 30K with its marine vs marine set up), or they have a smaller playerbase, or both. A big game like 40K will have more WAAC players simply because it has more players overall. Fiercely competitive players in MMOs are almost always drawn to the big games and the high pop servers - and in tabletop gaming 40K is the big, high pop game.

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed. Everything. Is 40K as well balanced as a tournament game like Starcraft? Not in the slightest, but Starcraft has only 3 races. I daresay if GW squatted everyone except the Ultramarines, the Eldar and the Tyranids they could balance those 3 codexes better against each other.

GW isn't twisting anyone's arm to force them to spam Riptides, or Wave Serpents or deathstar units. Just because the rules don't say you can do something does not mean you either have to or should do it. Some of the responsibility has to lie with the players to actually agree about what makes an enjoyable game for all concerned, rather than waiting for GW to dictate from on high a set of draconian restrictions to force the game to be what any particular player wants it to be.

That's what I think anyway.

Last I checked the top MMOs like WOW at least try to balance for PvP. It's never perfect but it's a lot better than GWs sucky outdated rules.

GW is some of the worst game design that ive seen. they really dont give a ratsass.

I don't generally like the misconception some people seem to foster in regards of GW being unable to make a balanced game. It's like some people would believe that it could be impossible for a company with budget as vast as that of GW and possible amount of designers and developers they could put to the task.

Again - I don't want anyone to misunderstand me - all I am saying is that with enough quality effort both internal and external codex balance is possible to achieve - the core rules of 40k as of 6th are pretty okay in my opinion. The biggest mistake imho was letting different people make different Codexes to their liking resulting in terrible rifts between those more prone towards making OP stuff and those, who thought that external balance is a good idea. Attempts to make their own Codexes "the best ones around" resulted in terrible lack of balance and I have no idea why did GW allow that to happen - they should've created a team that'd work on all Codexes to balance them properly, both internally and externally. See, the Astra Militarum Codex is the closest to being externally balanced at this point, and it's the latest one in 40k. If they continue that road and work on removal of utter cheese, 40k might be getting closer and closer to becoming a balanced system.

When they're done balancing them externally, they could balance them internally and I -know- that units within the codex can be balanced well enough for every one of them to be at least playable. I'm not saying that Rough Riders should be equally good as any other choice in their bracket, but I wat them to get a buff that will not punish you with terrible handicap if you take them.. look at the Armoured Sentinels - they got buffed by reducing their point cost and if you field them now you can have some fun playing with them in your army - that's a case of good internal balancing. Now let's put enough effort into making every other codex entry balanced within the book and tah-dah! Mission accomplished. It just takes effort and playtesting.

Please, guys, don't justify laziness. GW is more than capable of fixing stuff. Let's encourage them to keep working harder and harder on making more balanced Codexes such as the IG one, because no rulebook hotfix will fix the armies themselves.

One is a huge investment, the other is a game. Very dodgy and unnecessary analogy.

So you want to tell me that any GW army is not a huge investment , specialy when yourt starting the game ?

Not everyone wants to play a power build. Many players in 40K are going to want to play with stuff they like - because they like the models and/or the fluff. They'll want to make their own force, following an idea they have for it in their head, rather than slavishly following some optimised netlist.

I played since middle of 5th and have seen this done twice , and since then we easily went through more then 50 new WFB and w40k players . The two that did end up playing with "what they want" were a player who had a FW army he played in UK and another one being our friend who was stupid enough to trust GW clerks . In one case it ended with the FW guy being unable to play anywhere and in the other our friend being a prime example why to not start with GW games. So in one case it had a guy with ton of cash in models he can't use and in the other fewer new players , because no one wants to put a lot of cash in to something as unbalanced.

I think the game is very unbalanced, but compare it to Marvels Avengers Assembles app on the phone and it begins to seem the Holland of level playing fields. That is until they bring in unbound of course.

Poly Ranger wrote:
I think the game is very unbalanced, but compare it to Marvels Avengers Assembles app on the phone and it begins to seem the Holland of level playing fields. That is until they bring in unbound of course.

Cute. So, you're comparing a game that requires a base purchase of $85 (rulebook) + $50 (codex) + $300 (smallish 1000 point army give or take) that's had 25+ years of gameplay data to a free app that's been around for a few months.

I guess you need to set the bar really low when making GW comparisons.

The difficulty in this or any game balance discussion stems from the fact this game is rather complex as games go.

CCG's and Video games have an exceedingly small amount of interactions you can do in comparison to tabletop games. Just think for a moment of the almost limitless variances of people and actions in tabletop games. Video games also dont have the personal attachment of individual units, you do not paint and model things so when patch 1.6 comes out it is irelevant if its adjusted slightly. Video games also have many times more runs played of it. I play 1-4 games of 40k a week, usually 1. A night of Starcraft may see you play many more, furthermore everything about the game is controlled and sculpted. Your no going to move things around just to have fun and get jumped by confusion.

Card games like Magic have only a handful of turn and only a handful of actions. You can only play 1-3 cards a turn typically (limited by drawing and available resources). Quite simply its a completely different animal than 40k which allows you to field dozens of units in altogether different combinations. Again think of the limitless ways you can screw up your turn in 40k, especially if your just enjoying it. Even battle reports by tourney players talk about how many mistakes they made, or seeing a mistake their opponent didnt capitalize on.

There are people who are simply bad tactically, people who never deploy properly, ect. What this does is allow them to fall into the echo chamber of 'X or Y' doesnt work. For instance there was an Eldar player at my local shop who couldnt fathom for anything how Warp Spiders are good. His games are static gunlines with his Eldar; games he routinely loses since he has no concept of aggression and simply reacts to every situation. With this you not only have to balance the rules, you have to balance the people too. You have to make them in the same mindset, let them in on the same suite of interactions.

40k simply has more stuff than even other miniature games. Every unit of consequence has a wide latitude of options. Warmahordes has a very easy time in a vacuum for balance since all the characters and main models have no options, simply take X. You cannot stress how easy it is relatively to balance if your chapter master is always a certain way. Those other options, no matter how aweful are taken by a person and seen as viable to someone, someone who may be one of the posters on a forum decrying something. Warmahordes is boring to me without this customization, its a great game, just not a great hobby like 40k

Look at the endgame tourney scene of 40k. Over half of the armies are currently involved in it, probably more with 7th. Include all the rules like dataslates and almost all armies are in the game. It may be a mess, but with allies your always guaranteed to see 6+ codexes at top tables. There are stronger codexes, however they can and always do seem to be beat when it comes down to it.

The game is a random pile, with far to many variable to be balanced. As soon as you have unit interactions there is absolutely no way to determine how much stuff costs. You can shave or add points for some things however this isnt the game were getting. Were getting a game with 20+ units all which have hundreds of different combinations when you compare unit amount, wargear and transport options. You will make a wall of mistakes in making your list, or you will white wash your woefully unprepared opponent.

Poly Ranger wrote:
That is until they bring in unbound of course.

Having recently read this in the 7e News thread...

 loki old fart wrote:
Copied from white dwarf

It’s worth pondering exactly what the line ‘whichever units from your collections that you
want’ means, however. Your collection may, of course, include all manner of units from all
manner of armies. So, yes, this means you can simply play a game of Warhammer 40,000
with an army as random and diverse as you want. You could have Space Marine Sternguard
Veterans, a Bloodthirster of Khorne, a Tyranid Exocrine, a Tau Riptide Battlesuit and a unit of
Eldar Guardians as your army.That’s a very silly and extreme example, and you certainly
won’t be very popular with your opponents,

...I can't decide if it strengthens my view, albeit in the most cynical way - i.e. "Balance needs to start AND end with the players because clearly GW doesn't give a feth."

Or alternately if it's utterly futile to ask players to take some responsibility for the games they play when GW themselves are taking none.

 ashcroft wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
That is until they bring in unbound of course.

Having recently read this in the 7e News thread...

 loki old fart wrote:
Copied from white dwarf

It’s worth pondering exactly what the line ‘whichever units from your collections that you
want’ means, however. Your collection may, of course, include all manner of units from all
manner of armies. So, yes, this means you can simply play a game of Warhammer 40,000
with an army as random and diverse as you want. You could have Space Marine Sternguard
Veterans, a Bloodthirster of Khorne, a Tyranid Exocrine, a Tau Riptide Battlesuit and a unit of
Eldar Guardians as your army.That’s a very silly and extreme example, and you certainly
won’t be very popular with your opponents,

...I can't decide if it strengthens my view, albeit in the most cynical way - i.e. "Balance needs to start AND end with the players because clearly GW doesn't give a feth."

Or alternately if it's utterly futile to ask players to take some responsibility for the games they play when GW themselves are taking none.

They are taking responsibility, they want you to play a game that allows you to interact with every model you own. They do not, nor have they ever, enodorsed a bleeding edge tournament simulator. There are other games that take the view you seem to want. Games Workshop has tried time and time again to tell you they do not want to police an airtight tournament game.

 lazarian wrote:
They are taking responsibility, they want you to play a game that allows you to interact with every model you own. They do not, nor have they ever, enodorsed a bleeding edge tournament simulator. There are other games that take the view you seem to want. Games Workshop has tried time and time again to tell you they do not want to police an airtight tournament game.

My reaction to Unbound has nothing to do with tabletop balance. I'm a fluff player, and seeing GW provide 'rules' for using forces that make an utter mockery of that fluff - far beyond even the worst excesses of the allies matrix - is not something I like to see.

Makumba wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:


That said, there is definitely something wrong with a player who will happily bring a Taudar list against someone who is just learning the game and barely has gotten his models together and has learned to start painting.

.

I question that logic. How can someone start buying in to the game and not at least check what are the power builds in a game. It would be as if someone bought a car or a house without checking its specifics .

I've seen it happen plenty. Not everyone lives on the internet, or thinks of digging into the internet to get ideas, or has the time and money to throw together a super strong lists for their first few games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yonan wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
That said, there is definitely something wrong with a player who will happily bring a Taudar list against someone who is just learning the game and barely has gotten his models together and has learned to start painting.

A new player could just as easily choose competitive units without knowing anything about what's good or not and stomp the hell out of their friends who unknowingly chose bad units, completely unintentionally.

And while this can happen, it's usually a lot more rare than the people who do so intentionally and frankly maliciously. We've all met TFGs, and that's what I was talking about, the TFGs of 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ashcroft wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
They are taking responsibility, they want you to play a game that allows you to interact with every model you own. They do not, nor have they ever, enodorsed a bleeding edge tournament simulator. There are other games that take the view you seem to want. Games Workshop has tried time and time again to tell you they do not want to police an airtight tournament game.

My reaction to Unbound has nothing to do with tabletop balance. I'm a fluff player, and seeing GW provide 'rules' for using forces that make an utter mockery of that fluff - far beyond even the worst excesses of the allies matrix - is not something I like to see.

Unbound isn't being sold as a "make up any gak you want" ruleset but instead a ruleset for making armies that match the ones in the books or the lore bits in the codexes. To accomplish what can't be done normally inside the FOC.

purplkrush wrote:Rogue Trader. The game you are playing came from that game. If you need some perspextive on what kind of game you're plating, play some Rogue Trader. Want balance? Play Malifuax, or whatever else. Want a game with fun armies and aweet models and a rich universe? Play 40k. But stop bitching. We all know the game.

amusing. Rogue trader was 25years ago. thats a long time, and lets be fair, things were a lot different back in the 80s. things change and evolve. regardless, fun armies, sweet models and rich universe is in a lot of other wargaming IPs as well - 40k doesnt have a monopoly on "good" fluff, just nostalgia.

Makumba wrote:
But how do you find opponent to play this your version of the game . Unless people are lower in the food chain then you , you won't be able to make them play the game your way. I see shop owners oppose FW , because they don't sell it . They are the ones that have tables , so they can enforce the rule. If someone wanted to do the same , he or she would have to own a FLGS .

you talk to people. I assume you have polish facebook groups and polish 40k forums etc? is it that hard to say "i am tired of owergaming 40k. I'd like to play a narrative fluffy game. is there anyone out there who plays this way, or knows people who play this way".

I demoed a few games of Infinity to two gents a few years ago. after afew months, we ended up leaving the club (it wasnt a friendly place) and playing at one of the guy's homes. we've expanded the group with one of my mates from work. every friday we play different wargames - some sci fi (infinity, soon dropzone commander) and historicals - fflames of war, dark age stuff etc. As a group, we're quite happy to "fudge" things, and not play certain rules a certain way if we dont like them.

really, it just depends on your group. they exist.

Makumba wrote:I rather sure that the way the game is played is dictated by the avarge salary . I understand that people in the UK or US have more money . We have less money , so we buy only the units that are good and build armies in a such a way that they can play the most opponents.

People talk about 10 riptides or 10 helldrakes lists and how unbound is bad , when I on the other hand know that no one here would buy 10 of those . Not because they are good or bad, but because spending so much money on an army that you may never get to play is not going to happen.

As not going to shops that have their own house rules goes. Where do you play then . Sure one can buy an army and only play at tournaments , but that is a lot of money spend on something one may use 7-9 time per year.

I don't play at a GW , there is only one in the whole country and they only let noobs that buy from them play there , and give them the boot as soon as they stop buying stuff.

Well, its a difference in perspective for a start. think less "we only buy the units that are good" and more "we only play units that we like and build our games around that". you dont need to play in shops - get a board together at someones house and play there. its what we do. My mate has a gaming room, and another is converting his garage into his gaming room with a table and stuff.

office_waaagh wrote:

This seems to get to the heart of the issue; people are broadly falling into two camps. On the one hand there are the people that agree with the OP, and believe that the game should be fun, fluffy, and cool first and foremost, and as long as the codices are roughly balanced against each other they're happy. If the odd oversight leads to an exploit or a particular army becoming overpowered, you can just agree with your gaming buddies not to play that army list. This is considered a small price to pay for having the freedom to play the game as you like and use cool models. On the other hand there is a group of people that believes the game should be balanced perfectly out of the box, and that you should never have to worry about showing up for an open game night and looking at an all-deathstar list across the table and have to basically start packing up before you begin. That you do speaks to a deep flaw in the system of rules, points values, and codices.
.

amusingly, you contradict yourself. you say the odd oversight is ok, because it can be ignored. you justify this by stating it gives you the "freedom to play the game as you like". quite simply, youre contradicting yourself, as your "freedom" is paid for with the restriction of self policing, restrictions and "gentlemens agreements".despite what you say, thats simply not freedom to play the game as you like. thats "terms and conditions".

office_waaagh wrote:
I'm more sympathetic to the first view, mainly because the second seems like just complaining for its own sake to me. I understand that there is frustration over this issue, and quite justifiably so. Ultimately, however, the game we have is the game GW makes. If we don't like it, we can take our business elsewhere and they'll change their tune right quick or lose their fanbase, which choice they are free to make for themselves. The "gentleman's agreement" school of thought seems more constructive to me; take the game we have and sand down the rough edges among ourselves, and then get on with having fun.
.

and when everyone wants something different? i like the "idea" of gentlemens agreements, but often find reality is a far different beast.

I'm all for house rules, and custom scenarios etc. but this only works in a small group of likeminded mates. it doesnt work for pick up games. it doesnt work for tournaments. having a well written, consise and balanced set of rules benefits everyone. taking our business elsewhere sadly is a valid response, especially when GW has shown no interest in listening to its customer base.

office_waaagh wrote:
Klerych has the right idea, I think, in that the best solution would be for them to create a system to separate tournaments from casual play. I think it can be generally agreed that the "unbound" armies from the upcoming edition will be hopeless in tournaments, and it will just be a competition of who can make the beardiest list. It may be wishful thinking, but if enough people email GW customer service asking after this it might get the designers to take notice.

they wont listen. they've not listened in the past. having separate ormats for tournaments games and casual games is a foolish idea. casual play benefits from a clear set of balanced rules as much as, if not more than tournament play.

office_waaagh wrote:Yonan, I'll forgo quoting your reply at length to save space. It wasn't my intention to make the "the game is unbalanced" camp appear unreasonable, and I apologize for the confusion if my wording did so. I'm just not sure that you can simply rebalance a dozen or more armies while still introducing new models and units quite so easily as you suggest. I certainly don't know how to do it, at any rate, and I solve statistics problems for a living. The number of degrees of freedom is daunting, to say the least.
.

Why not? look at what Privateer Press did when they released Mk2 warmachine and hordes. they put the rules up online for free, and invited the playerbase to take part in a free, open ended beta. send your results, thoughts and comments into PP. it allowed for a huge amount of playtesting to take place and they got great feedback from the community. we're talking about tens of thousands of games here that built up a picture of what worked, and what didnt. and PP were able to take that and consolidate it into Mk2. And certainly, its not perfect, but while they aimed for a head shot and missed, they did tear out the throat. its a far more balanced game and the time and effort put into this shows.

Regarding updating and rebalancing a dozen factions whilst still introducing new models and units - they do this too. at the start of mk2, they updated 6 warmachine factions, and 5 hordes factions along with 2 rulebooks in just over a year. thats a full update for their game. they also release new units and models with each expansion to their game.

it is possible. GW simply choose not to do it.

office_waaagh wrote:
I think that a separate set of rules for tournaments or less casual play is the best of both worlds. It retains the flexibility that some parts of the community enjoy while offering a more structured and objectively balanced system for those who prefer it. I don't think I'm being unreasonable, there are enough similar replies as well as the OP himself on the thread to suggest that at the very least I'm in a sizeable minority, if the split isn't closer to even. But by all means, I am open to alternate suggestions, and this is just my personal opinion.

To a certain extent, I'm just trying to be realistic. The design philosophy that informs GW's decisions is only within our influence to a very limited extent, and we don't all agree on whether it's the right one or not. Some people like the "rule of cool" style, while others would prefer a more objectively balanced game even if it meant a more limited wargear selection (for example). We should raise our issues and complaints; we are the customers, after all, and we have a reasonable expectation of getting something worth our significant investment. But at the end of the day, the game they make is the game we have, and I'd rather just get on with having fun. So far, for me, the rules haven't gotten in the way of that objective.

i disagree. casual and tournament games both benefit from the same design philosophy. Just dont use GWs design philosophy as your reference point.

i want flexibility and structured games. amusingly a balanced approach allows for both.

you might not be being unreasonable, but with the greeatest of respect, you're being a little bit naive- especially in seeking a dual approach.

PrinceRaven wrote:Players fixing the game requires wide-spread support from the entire community. This isn't easy to achieve, especially in a community this divided.

agreed.

ashcroft wrote:Smaller games have less players, and that in itself fosters a different mindset. Like I've said, 40K is currently the big name in tabletop wargames and that means it will pull in a disproportionate number of WAAC players motivated not by love of the game but by the need to win. Rules lawyering and netlisting will follow. Were GW to 'fix' the game that element of the playerbase would immediately set about working out ways to break it again, in order to regain their advantage.

I don't exonerate GW of all responsibility for the current state of the game. Like many here I could come out with a long list of things I think they should do differently, of changes I think should be made. Regardless of that, the 40K community needs to recognise its own failings rather than blaming everything on GW. GW can/could fix the game. GW cannot fix the players.

to be fair, other games are picking up steam. other games might have smaller player bases, but they're growing.

As well ashcroft, i'll point out that those WAAC players thrive on "grey areas" and loosely worded, vague rules. they have a field day in GWs games because they're so poorly defined, and have no overall direction (is it a skirmish game? or apocalypse?etc). with a tightly written set up rules, those WAAC players have no room to manoevre. I've seen in in warmachine games where all their tricks just failed. they simply couldnt "play their game" as warmachine's rules set didnt give them an inch for their shenanigans.

 lazarian wrote:
The difficulty in this or any game balance discussion stems from the fact this game is rather complex as games go.

its complex, but dont mistake complexity for depth. 40k is not a very deep game.

 lazarian wrote:

CCG's and Video games have an exceedingly small amount of interactions you can do in comparison to tabletop games. Just think for a moment of the almost limitless variances of people and actions in tabletop games. Video games also dont have the personal attachment of individual units, you do not paint and model things so when patch 1.6 comes out it is irelevant if its adjusted slightly. Video games also have many times more runs played of it. I play 1-4 games of 40k a week, usually 1. A night of Starcraft may see you play many more, furthermore everything about the game is controlled and sculpted. Your no going to move things around just to have fun and get jumped by confusion.

Card games like Magic have only a handful of turn and only a handful of actions. You can only play 1-3 cards a turn typically (limited by drawing and available resources). Quite simply its a completely different animal than 40k which allows you to field dozens of units in altogether different combinations. Again think of the limitless ways you can screw up your turn in 40k, especially if your just enjoying it. Even battle reports by tourney players talk about how many mistakes they made, or seeing a mistake their opponent didnt capitalize on.

rubbish. there are thousands of magic the gathering cards. there are a vast amount of ways they interact. saying you only play 1-3 cards a turn is short sighted - units in 40k move/shoot/assault, and have six turns. 40k is not that complex. an assault squad will not function any differently if it is beside a tactical squad than a devestator squad. put two different magic cards together and you have a totally different combo than two other cards. same with warmachine.

 lazarian wrote:

40k simply has more stuff than even other miniature games. Every unit of consequence has a wide latitude of options. Warmahordes has a very easy time in a vacuum for balance since all the characters and main models have no options, simply take X. You cannot stress how easy it is relatively to balance if your chapter master is always a certain way. Those other options, no matter how aweful are taken by a person and seen as viable to someone, someone who may be one of the posters on a forum decrying something. Warmahordes is boring to me without this customization, its a great game, just not a great hobby like 40k
.

40k might have more stuff, but a lot of it isnt worth taking. Not because it cant be balanced, but because GW chooses not to. they have great designers. its just the corporate culture within gw prevents them showing their brilliance. outside of gw, andy chamers, allesio et al have done really fine work. 40k essentially doesnt have choice, it has the illusion of choice.

warmachine might lose out in the lack of customisation, but in many ways it offers far more "valid" choices in game than 40k. a different caster with the same set of units will play radically different to other casters with the same units. warmachine has a huge amount of complexity. fine, you dont have the illusory option of swapping pikes for swords, or a dozen other less than ideal choices, but you have hundreds of warcasters, warlocks, spells and feats. everything stacks. there is a huge amount of complexity in this game. boring? your mileage varies bud. when i played 40k, third ed boiled down to rhino rush, or shoot the rhino rush. fourth was skimmerspam and 6man las/plas. fifth was armourhammer. sixth was flyers and gunlines.

 lazarian wrote:

Look at the endgame tourney scene of 40k. Over half of the armies are currently involved in it, probably more with 7th. Include all the rules like dataslates and almost all armies are in the game. It may be a mess, but with allies your always guaranteed to see 6+ codexes at top tables. There are stronger codexes, however they can and always do seem to be beat when it comes down to it.
.

what is the list variety though? often times its taudar with inquisitors. having six codices in play at the top tables isnt indicative of variety when of those six codices, only a handful of builds are present.

 lazarian wrote:

The game is a random pile, with far to many variable to be balanced. As soon as you have unit interactions there is absolutely no way to determine how much stuff costs. You can shave or add points for some things however this isnt the game were getting. Were getting a game with 20+ units all which have hundreds of different combinations when you compare unit amount, wargear and transport options. You will make a wall of mistakes in making your list, or you will white wash your woefully unprepared opponent.

why not? Quality control. playtesting. its as simple as that. GW simply chooses not to playtest. i had friends back home that were part of the playtesting crowd during fourth and fifth ed. one guy leaked the fifth ed stuff, and GW went ape, and closed down all external playtesting, preferring to do it in house. that said, even when they did playtest, they didnt listen. i remember my buddies telling me how back in the day, with the fourth ed SM codex (the assault cannon spam one) they indicated to GW how assault cannons were OTT. their suggestions were assault 4, or assault 3 rending. not both. what did GW do? they ignored them.

No, GW dont have a playtesting culture. they're not interested in it. Other companies? sure. Look at privateer press. free worldwide beta test of the then "new" mk2 rules set they were developing, with a forum and site built up to receive commends and playtesting information. It allowed them to develop, and balance the game, and catch out any number of loose ends. it did a lot of good for the game, and really built up a lot of good will amongst its playerbase (we felt as though we were a part of something, we were actively contributing). Imagine this scenario with GW. free worldwide beta test. catch all the bugs. It could do a lot of good, but they're simply not interested in either (a) playtesting, or (b) listening to their consumers.

gah! double post. apologies!

I'm a fluff player. I skipped 5th and when I came back into the game in 6th I wanted to try out a "Penitent style" army for my SOB. I had a bunch of Repentia and a few Penitent Engines, got the rule book, went to my local store and got curb stomped to a hilarious level. Yes, I expected to lose, I'm a noob.(sort of) But as I learned the game, I still got curb stomped because half my army turned out to be useless. Repentia and Penitent engines were hilariously awful.

This is imbalance. Do they need to be that awful? Absolutely not. If GW took a moment to look at the rules for those units they could "Hmm...these PE's aren't surviving long enough to get them into combat and no one uses them. (which means no one's buying them.) Maybe we can make them cheaper? Or maybe we can give them scouting or make them MC's." They could do almost anything to make them slightly more playable.(Thus making the game closer to balanced and also more fluffy.) In 5th Repentia sucked, but in 6th they got unnecessarily nerfed and had their FNP taken away. Why? Was this some brilliant game design? No, it just meant that unit wouldn't be played or bought. This limited my already few choices from a small codex.

All that is totally on GW's head.

Many say "you don't like the way GW makes the game, go play something else."

So I have.
As I'm building my Warmachine forces I'm amazed that there are no real "don't take that" units. Some units may be less optimal, but with the right list or warcaster, they work pretty good. I can have a fluffy AND competitive army at the same time. It's not impossible. Balance does not equal sameness. So stop saying that. Balance means that different units have different roles and you can shape your army for different roles depending on how you want to play.

No one should be punished for taking a whole army. "Oh, you play Blood Angels? Sorry, bro." That shouldn't happen. Having an entire army suck is inexcusable.

 MWHistorian wrote:
No one should be punished for taking a whole army. "Oh, you play Blood Angels? Sorry, bro." That shouldn't happen. Having an entire army suck is inexcusable.

Exactly. People can justify GW as much as they want, but nothing will ever justify whole armies being as bad as some in 40k as a whole. That should never take place and noone should ever be able to claim otherwise with a straight face. And it's not because GW cannot fix them, it's because they didn't even try hard enough.

A balanced game is better for all play. Try all the different skirmish games or find communities of them. They don't have this fight 40k communities do... Why? Because their games are balanced and fluffy players and tournaments players can happily coexist.

GW charges the most for rules, nearly quadruple the cost of other games and is the worst written.

Sorry, the onus is on the game company to make a good game. Players aren't the bad guys. The people shaming other players to keep the game company on a pedestal are the "bad guys," as they don't allow change to happen appropriately.

Funny how in the grand scheme of nearly 7 editions now, we still have this argument, but it doesn't exist in other games that are only on their second or third editions.

Deadnight wrote:

amusingly, you contradict yourself. you say the odd oversight is ok, because it can be ignored. you justify this by stating it gives you the "freedom to play the game as you like". quite simply, youre contradicting yourself, as your "freedom" is paid for with the restriction of self policing, restrictions and "gentlemens agreements".despite what you say, thats simply not freedom to play the game as you like. thats "terms and conditions".

I'm pleased to have amused you, Deadnight. I don't agree, of course, but there you have it, we're not going to agree on everything. I don't think it's a contradiction, I don't find agreeing to relatively mild limitations a terribly onerous task. But if you do, you're not wrong. I have fun with the rules and armies as they are, and that's what matters to me. If you're not having fun, then you're absolutely right to think that's a problem and try to address it.

and when everyone wants something different? i like the "idea" of gentlemens agreements, but often find reality is a far different beast.

I'm all for house rules, and custom scenarios etc. but this only works in a small group of likeminded mates. it doesnt work for pick up games. it doesnt work for tournaments. having a well written, consise and balanced set of rules benefits everyone. taking our business elsewhere sadly is a valid response, especially when GW has shown no interest in listening to its customer base.

I can only assume that GW wrote the rules with "a small group of likeminded mates" in mind, since this seems to be the context in which they work best. This is also the context in which I most often play the game, which probably explains why I like the rules as they are a lot more than a lot of other people seem to.

Regarding updating and rebalancing a dozen factions whilst still introducing new models and units - they do this too. at the start of mk2, they updated 6 warmachine factions, and 5 hordes factions along with 2 rulebooks in just over a year. thats a full update for their game. they also release new units and models with each expansion to their game.

it is possible. GW simply choose not to do it.

This may or may not be true (40k is a much larger game than any of the others, and complexity doesn't scale linearly with size). I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem, though, so I'm content to ignore it since it doesn't do me personally much mischief. The game isn't balanced, but it's near enough for my taste and I'm happy to resolve the outstanding issues between friends.

i disagree. casual and tournament games both benefit from the same design philosophy. Just dont use GWs design philosophy as your reference point.

i want flexibility and structured games. amusingly a balanced approach allows for both.

you might not be being unreasonable, but with the greeatest of respect, you're being a little bit naive- especially in seeking a dual approach.

Well, I don't think I'm being naive, but then I suppose naive people never do. I'm happy with the game as it is, for the most part, so maybe in suggesting a "dual approach" I'm trying to address problems that I don't really experience and am therefore not in the best position to try to fix.

I guess my question is this: even if we were to agree that GW is full of terrible, incompetent human beings that don't care about game balance, what do we do about it? Even if we could all agree on what exactly the problem is, how do we go about solving it? I've come up with a solution that works for me, and I'm basically happy with it, so I don't really have a problem. But many others obviously do, including your own good self. I'm just not sure what anybody plans to do about it. Nobody has come on and said "I agree, I have the same issue, and here's how I addressed it." There has been a lot of re-stating of the problem and a fair amount of imputing conjectured motives to the GW design staff (who are, conveniently, not around to explain themselves or their decisions), and plenty of griping in general, but we're short on workable solutions that we can implement to improve our own gaming experiences. This is why I say the "gentleman's agreement" school is more constructive, since at least that allows people to just get on with playing the game and having fun.

1) Its not a dramatically vast tactical game, but it is complex. It is the most complex commonly played miniature game. Well over a dozen factions with 20+ options each, each option also having upwards to 2 dozen micro options. This is a complex game and were not fixing it. GW gives it their best guess and as a whole it largely pans out. Every option has myriad interactions that make it impossible to balance. Farseers are crap when joined to X, but great when allied to Y for instance.

2) Your ignoring my point on the second point. There are limitless magic cards, almost all of them (95%+) are horrible so there isnt much balance there. With that said my point is more to how basic and simple Magics gameplay is. You only have so many actions in a round and these actions practically write themselves depending on your card draw. 40K has too many moving parts in comparison. Any discussion that reaches for card games or video games ignores the structure that seperates these games. In 40k even something as simple as moving a unit 6.2 inches instead of 6 has a profound impact. Every little facet is in the hands of human elements, few human varieties are needed or useful for many computer or card games.

3) The 'Illusion of Choice' doesnt really apply here. In my 20+ years of gaming ive seen virtually every unit played constantly. There are vast skill differences and goals from player to player. Those specific choices are used far more often than you think; especially since that variety allows you to tailor lists to different levels of opponents. I take pyovores with my Tyranids and Bloodletters with my Daemons regardless of internet wisdom if my opponent needs a fighting chance or wants a comical game. With all that said can you even point to an era that was ever balanced in 40k? Ive been playing since Rogue Trader and its always been painfully apparent not all armies are created equal. They have never been about competitive choices and they arent starting now. Warmahordes is more balanced but is 'soulless' to me due to lack of modeling opportunities, caster kills being boring and virtually no customization options for units. To me and to many others 40k is a 'hobby' precisely in part due to the chaotic whirlwind it encompasses, far more than a simple 'game'.

4) Tournament list variety is actually quite wide if you compare lists. Broad units are always taken but they are countered by other options. No two flying circus lists are identical. There are truly few auto includes and even then they wax and wane with various army books. How many Helldrakes are the backbone of a competetive Chaos army for instance? The answer is 1-3, always different list to list. Compare to Magic where only a handful of decks ever get played, or in video games where much less investment in any option leads most people to simply select the current strong option. Flavor of the month is a term used incessantly in computer PVP.

5) Quality control may not help much in the game they have decided upon. You can create lists incorporating 4-6 different armies. Battle Brothers singlehandedly have made heavyweights out of the most random of unit combinations. Yes they might put the work into it however time and again they are pleading with you to not treat their game as a serious tournament simulator. They have a vision and those wanting things from them they cannot have do a disservice to their person by wasting time trying to tease blood from a very obtuse stone. Being able to join so many units together make it an impossibility to balance points in all honesty. What good is a support unit if its attached to its best case scenario, the second best, or the fifth best on their battle brother army? Markerlights are worthless in a marine force yet cost identical. Farseers do less good attached to howling banshees so forth and so on. Balance could only be truly achieved by making specific army parings cost X points, a complexity far out of the real of having your preteen target market in selecting an army.


Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

office_waaagh wrote:

I'm pleased to have amused you, Deadnight. I don't agree, of course, but there you have it, we're not going to agree on everything. I don't think it's a contradiction, I don't find agreeing to relatively mild limitations a terribly onerous task. But if you do, you're not wrong. I have fun with the rules and armies as they are, and that's what matters to me. If you're not having fun, then you're absolutely right to think that's a problem and try to address it.
.

fair play. I've got no issues with someone who enjoys games - my only comment was you cant talk about "freedom" in the same breath as mentioning the requirement of "terms and conditions" required to play.

enjoy your game - by all means. just be honest about it.

office_waaagh wrote:

I can only assume that GW wrote the rules with "a small group of likeminded mates" in mind, since this seems to be the context in which they work best. This is also the context in which I most often play the game, which probably explains why I like the rules as they are a lot more than a lot of other people seem to.

Not being cheeky here but a cynic could read this as "we're fine, anyone who disagrees can go bugger off". Just because it works for you and a small group of folks doesnt mean its OK on a large scale - plenty of people have a lot of issues with it.I agree with you - thats how GW designed the game. however, one can argue there is a huge gulf between the game GW are trying to design, and the game people are trying to play.

office_waaagh wrote:

This may or may not be true (40k is a much larger game than any of the others, and complexity doesn't scale linearly with size). I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem, though, so I'm content to ignore it since it doesn't do me personally much mischief. The game isn't balanced, but it's near enough for my taste and I'm happy to resolve the outstanding issues between friends.
.

thats a cop out. "im happy to ignore your point with evidence attached because it doesnt fit my world view". fair play, but despite you ignoring my point and being content to "ignore a solution", bear in mind - privateer press did those things when they were preparing Mk2, and this is from a company a tenth the size of GW. the results have been a gaming population that has literally exploded since Mk2 hit the scene, all 40k has done since is stagnate and decline.

office_waaagh wrote:

Well, I don't think I'm being naive, but then I suppose naive people never do. I'm happy with the game as it is, for the most part, so maybe in suggesting a "dual approach" I'm trying to address problems that I don't really experience and am therefore not in the best position to try to fix.
.

you're happy with the game as is. plenty others arent. more and more are walking. the question is, and im not trying to be antagonistic when i ask this - if you dont experience the problems, and dont particularly care about them, then how can you argue your "dual approach" solution has merit?

office_waaagh wrote:

I guess my question is this: even if we were to agree that GW is full of terrible, incompetent human beings that don't care about game balance, what do we do about it? Even if we could all agree on what exactly the problem is, how do we go about solving it? I've come up with a solution that works for me, and I'm basically happy with it, so I don't really have a problem. But many others obviously do, including your own good self. I'm just not sure what anybody plans to do about it. Nobody has come on and said "I agree, I have the same issue, and here's how I addressed it." There has been a lot of re-stating of the problem and a fair amount of imputing conjectured motives to the GW design staff (who are, conveniently, not around to explain themselves or their decisions), and plenty of griping in general, but we're short on workable solutions that we can implement to improve our own gaming experiences. This is why I say the "gentleman's agreement" school is more constructive, since at least that allows people to just get on with playing the game and having fun.

they're not terrible or incompetent. thats hyperbole. GW has a very skilled set of designers. the problem is marketing tells them what to do. they have no design space and have no way of pushing forward creatively and building a better game. since theyve left, gw designers have done some great things - andy chambers, allesio etc. they've been elbows deep in some very solid games.

How do we go about solving the problem? amusingly, i agree with you 100% here in that a gentleman's agreement is a very workable solution. play in a small, like minded group, and house rule/self police. I play in such a group (but not with 40k), and we're happy to house rule, ignore rules and do what we like. and this is the right way of doing it, and its the right way but for all the wrong reasons. our way, and your way works for us, and for you. but it wont work for tims group. it wont work for dougs group. all it does is fragment the community and it ends up with everyone playing a different game. and that is a shame. houseruling works on a small scale, but the game at large suffers hugely. you lose the "common ground" that is so necessary for tournaments and pick up games. and it might not affect you, but it affects a lot of other people out there. a universal set of balanced rules is a good thing, all told. your group still works. mine still works. but i can leave a country, set up shop elsewhere and enjoy a game without needing to know the tedious local customs. as much as our homebrews are great fun, such a style of gaming sucks for pick up games and for tournaments games which require a common framework to be successful.

As to What do people do about it?
personally, i see three practical solutions.

(1) dont play 40k. i dont. i've moved on to warmachine/hordes, infinity, flames of war etc. best gaming decision i've ever made. I enjoyed the mythos of 40k. but sadly, as a game it wasnt offering me what i wanted. fair play if it suits others, but i voted with my wallet.
(2) house rule 40k. get a small like minded group. house rule things. self police. and it can work. bear in mind, it will be incredibly hard to push this beyond your little group, and while it works on a micro scale, on a macro scale there are huge issues with this approach.
(3) deliberately choose to continue with 40k as is, and swallow your frustrations (if any).
(40 complain on the internet. which is a bit pointless. gw wont change the game, and they're uninterested in feedback. they've shown this too often in the past. as you say, talking is pointles, and while there is lots of griping, there are very few workable solutions. Personally i wish people were more "active" about their hobby and making it work for them. i might disagree with you in saying GW is all fine and dandy, but i completely respect how you've made it work for you. i just wish more people would do less talking and more "pro active steps". just bear in mind, like i said earlier this is the right solution, but it is right for all the wrong reasons - there is a bigger world out there and better solutions possible.

for what its worth though, keep rolling 6s!

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Unbound isn't being sold as a "make up any gak you want" ruleset but instead a ruleset for making armies that match the ones in the books or the lore bits in the codexes. To accomplish what can't be done normally inside the FOC.

Like that time Lysander and a bloodthirster teamed up with a hive tyrant and Shadowsun in that one novel?

Seriously, the examples provided in White Dwarf include five separate enemy factions throwing models on the table with each other. There ain't gak fluffy about that. It's a fluff massacre, if anything.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Unbound isn't being sold as a "make up any gak you want" ruleset but instead a ruleset for making armies that match the ones in the books or the lore bits in the codexes. To accomplish what can't be done normally inside the FOC.

When the WD talks bout running a Leman Russ, some demons, a Carnifex, etc (don't remember the entire idiotic example) I'm going to say you're wrong.
It's completely about make up whatever gak you want. Sure, you'll be able to copy the books, but the advertised goal is to use whatever you have,no mTter what codex it's from.

 lazarian wrote:

Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

No.
'Forging a narrative' and all that is great. If you want to play the game that way then go ahead. But you can't say that because you like playing the game that way then GW shouldn't playtest.
In the same vein just because the game designers at GW like playing that way doesn't mean they should tell the rest of us how to have fun.

I never heard any of this bull about it being a 'narrative' game when I got into the game, I was already heavily invested when 6th landed and this mentality appeared. And what's worse, even RPGs, the most 'narrative' games out there by there very definition, playtest so much better than GW.


Whether or not 40k is a 'narrative' game it is objectively wrong to say that playtesting is bad, all it is doing is creating a level of fairness in the game.

^ Exalted.

Granted, pretty much the only game I've played with worse balance than 40k was D&D 3.5

 Seaward wrote:
Seriously, the examples provided in White Dwarf include five separate enemy factions throwing models on the table with each other. There ain't gak fluffy about that. It's a fluff massacre, if anything.

It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

To put it another way: just because you CAN jump off a bridge into freeway traffic doesn't mean you SHOULD do it. That's what they were saying.

All of their actual examples of what the staff wanted to do were all mono-codex army builds. We haven't really seen any real examples of the staff making up some crazy gak armies to date.


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rigeld2 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Unbound isn't being sold as a "make up any gak you want" ruleset but instead a ruleset for making armies that match the ones in the books or the lore bits in the codexes. To accomplish what can't be done normally inside the FOC.

When the WD talks bout running a Leman Russ, some demons, a Carnifex, etc (don't remember the entire idiotic example) I'm going to say you're wrong.
It's completely about make up whatever gak you want. Sure, you'll be able to copy the books, but the advertised goal is to use whatever you have,no mTter what codex it's from.

I'm going to disagree as I don't think you really read what they wrote as I talked about with the "can" and "should" thing. Not to mention the examples of Unbound armies they've given that they've been planning having no cross-codex mixing.

Well, i have read this thread from beginning to here, and i have to say, there are some comments attempting to defend GW that are absolutely silly and nonsensical at best, and ignorant or negligent at worst.

1. i love the argument that WAAC and Fluffy are different. Game balance is balance. However they choose to balance (either through points exclusively, availability, extra requirements, so on and so forth) doesn't really matter. the ultimate goal is that with all things created equal, if both armies used their advantages and minimized their disadvantages, the win loss ration should come out to roughly 50/50 or something relatively close. Fluffy is a wonderful way of saying "its ok if i loose, I'm not cheesy like that guy" so it doesn't hurt your feelings when the army you have more money tied up in than your car gets ripped to shreds because you can't compete on game balance alone. i know, i have been there. on both sides.

2. Game balance only helps tournament players is another common piece of garbage i smell in these debates. Game balance helps all players. someone earlier said it best when they said that yeah, WAAC players will min/max their armies to get the best advantage out of their selections, but that doesn't mean that if i don't i should loose 85% of my games. a balance game system shouldn't care about WAAC and fluffy. good is good, balanced is balanced, and crap is crap. Again, i present to you Warmachine, Malifaux, Heavy Gear, hell, even Mechwarrior/Battletech is balanced better than this gak.

3. Well, in the fluff....I love these arguments as well. If you want fluff, read a book. if you want a narrative, put your army men on the table and role play with miniatures, make cool laser sounds while you are at it, i bet that ads to the experience. The sad reality is that fluff is a wonderful thing, and the fluff for 40k is insanely amazing, with incredibly rich stories and wonderful characters, but when i put a commissar on the table, i don't think of ciaphus caine. When i play a space marine captain, i don't think of Uriel Ventris. i think of models, and I'm not interested in how epic something plays out in my mind. i want to play a game and talk about the game afterwards. does that make me TFG, probably, but lets be real with each other, i don't know very many players at all that that talk about the fluff in their games, other than back story. Every player i know might mention tie bits, but it isn't ANYTHING that gets close to giving the "why we fight" speech or providing more atmosphere for the game. if you want that, you really should play the RPG. i think its more along the lines of a product that will give you that experience. Ill put it like this, i have yet to play a game where my opponent or myself set up our armies and began the game with "we are fighting over <somewhere planet 8 Epsilon> because you detected a distress signal and you captain decided..."

4. players should help balance the game. This is the funniest of all comments/arguments. This argument implies that if players don't have a solid rule base, or internal/external balance in the game that they should help to balance the game by making gentlemen's agreements and social contracts and such. That is the absolute worst argument i have ever heard in the defense of GW. It should never be left to gamers to balance the game. Gamers play the game. its our JOB to find the best combinations, the best strategies, the best use of resources and capabilities, the best units to give us the best opportunity to win. Its the GAME DESIGNERS JOB to make that difficult. If there is balance, players should find themselves asking difficult questions while creating their armies like "this has X gun, and its really good, but this unit has X special rule, and that really helps me against infantry. what to choose, what to choose..." In game systems where game balance is preset there shouldn't be one or two easy answers to questions like that. those questions should be difficult to answer because all of the options should provide value to the gamer. That is how game balance works. when all the units have value, players can customize their army in a balanced way to allow them to discover their play style without compromising the integrity of the game because i like to use bikes, or i like grav tanks, or i like big robotech shooty guys. In game systems without balance, that is completely dead. there are definitive builds that are clearly not just stronger, but STUPID stronger than their competition. Balance will never be a 100% thing, its impossible, but dang, when it doesn't happen, then FIX IT. support your product with FAQ's that limit/power level errata/re-cost units to make them balanced. of all the layers of GW fail, this one is by far the worse. When they release an FAQ that pretty much says "we don't know either, roll a D6" thats a wonderful hint that the game your investing thousands of dollars into (and it is thousands now with their newest pricing) is probably not a good game anymore.

5. ill attack this one and give my rant a rest - gentlemen's agreements and the social aspect of the game. I love this argument the most of all the arguments i hear most often to "explain away" GW's absolutely horrible attempt at releasing a game system for the last 2 years. In a game group, gentlemen's agreements won't last. sure, i know I'm going to get like 80 people reply saying how their gaming group has been together for 80 years, and they are the best, and everyone loves rainbows, and how they wear pink ribbons in their hair, and how they like to kiss all the boys....but the reality is this: very few gaming groups can handle this level of restriction to enforce fairness in game play. There are no local 40k players in my area anymore. 10 of them have converted over to Drop Zone Commander, Malifaux, AT88, and of course WarMachine. the people that still own their war hammer armies have put them on a shelf. No one plays. i have trouble finding a game when i want one, and i am normally one of the more chillaxed people in the gaming area. Why is this, well, its because of those gentlemen's agreements, so let me make this make a little sense from my perspective...

a gaming group forms and create a bunch of gentlemen's rules based on what is thought of as cheesy and agrees not to play it. one week, some player shows (player A) up to play a game and while he agreed to social contract of the game and abided by the rules, the army he played is found to be "cheesy". what does the group do? then say they won't play that particular group of models and/or combination of units again to make the game fair and balanced for all.

The next week, someone else (player b) shows up, and they bring something that they thought was fine, until their opponent get his $#17 stuffed in by them. what does his opponents do? do they declare it cheesy by committee?

then the breakdown happens. rules arguments and debates on "in game effectiveness" begin, and the situation begins to break down. player C decides to show up with something that violates the rules, because he doesn't want to loose like player A and player B's opponents did, and now its a 3 way argument as to what is "ok" and what isn't. on top of that, he doesn't think that what he is taking is broken at all, because after all, if i invested 800.00 in my knights formation army i wouldn't want it to be declared banned by committee, because after all, I INVESTED a $#17 TON OF CASH IN IT. i want to play the stuff i buy. thats why i buy it.

Make no mistake, this is a game. players play games to win. if you, mr fluffy beer and pretzel guy, didn't care about winning, then why bother playing? why roll any dice at all? why not just read a book, watch some TV, and go sing to "let it go" in the shower until your hearts content?

Because deep down, you move models on a table top because you WANT TO WIN. you play to WIN. you may not have the best army now for the job, but that isn't your fault, its the games fault. those black templars just aren't as cool as they were in 3rd edition. What are you supposed to do? if they didn't have all those cheesy units i would stand a chance. if only other people think like i do then we could form a group, and we would only play with lollipops and candy canes on our space marines and the world would be a better place for it....until the break down happens again.

Because you play a game to win. Winning is not a cuss word, and this GAK of a game is the ONLY game i have seen that almost WANTS to make players feel guilty about winning, or wanting to win. More to the point, if GW wants to increase the narrative qualities of their game, balance it and make the games closer in outcome. I don't remember any one every regaling me of stories about how their ultra TAUDAR army wiped someone off the table in 2 turns or 3. I remember people telling me epic stories about how the game came down to the wire and how the master crafted bonus on a lightning claw won the game.

EVERYTHING comes back to game balance and rules design.

I don't have a game group because of these simple truths to the game. The largest game group in my area, (within the first few months of 6th edition) broke up and shattered. Arguing over OP units and mechanics, as well as just generally poor rules and terrible writing means that the war hammer 40k group devolved in my area to a bunch of back-biting attack squigs, where the average game took 3+ hours because no one could agree on basic rules, let alone complex interactions.

simple point: Game balance is 100% the responsibility of GW. players have nothing to do with it other than break it from time to time, and its GW's responsibility to fix it when it does break. they have failed at both tasks miserably.

funny i write this as i am getting ready to ship out my ultramarines to go to someone in Tennessee. just 2 more armies to get rid of and this blight is over.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

Which is a cowardly position for them to take, a cop out where they abdicate any responsibility for the gak people are going to pull on the tabletop.

I remember the old days, when Fat Bloke or one of the other staffers would use the WD editorial to make some point about 'the spirit of the game' or why fluffy lists were good, or why it was about having fun rather than winning with a 'beardy' list. Well those days are long gone, and now the WD - the official mouthpiece of the entire GW hobby - is winking at behaviour that they even admit "won’t be very popular with your opponents."

40K is an entry level tabletop game, and attracts many newcomers to the hobby - many of whom are young and will follow the 'rules' like it was holy writ. GW has a responsibility to use that influence to encourage the best of behaviours, not to pander to and wink at the worst.

It even goes againt their own current (or is it now former?) creed. A newcomer, having soaked up the awesomeness of the background, studied his codex and carefully assembled his new Space Marine force, ready to get out there and battle in the name of the Emperor... finds himself faced with...

Space Marine Sternguard Veterans, a Bloodthirster of Khorne, a Tyranid Exocrine, a Tau Riptide Battlesuit and a unit of Eldar Guardians.

Yeah, try forging a fething narrative out of that.

then the breakdown happens. rules arguments and debates on "in game effectiveness" begin, and the situation begins to break down. player C decides to show up with something that violates the rules, because he doesn't want to loose like player A and player B's opponents did, and now its a 3 way argument as to what is "ok" and what isn't. on top of that, he doesn't think that what he is taking is broken at all, because after all, if i invested 800.00 in my knights formation army i wouldn't want it to be declared banned by committee, because after all, I INVESTED a $#17 TON OF CASH IN IT. i want to play the stuff i buy. thats why i buy it.

This is so true. It is as if you played here and described the evolution of gaming here.

remember the old days, when Fat Bloke or one of the other staffers would use the WD editorial to make some point about 'the spirit of the game' or why fluffy lists were good, or why it was about having fun rather than winning with a 'beardy' list.

how can it be more fun.At best you will lose all the time , at worse people will know what your army is and just won't play you , because fun is there for them to play against an army that will lose anyway . It would be a waste of time . Something like that happened to me. I started warmachine and so it happened that my faction didn't have key models sold out our store . So I was losing , but worse I could only make a 35pts game . after 4 months everyone that started with me moved to normal 50pts games and I was stuck at 35. My only option was to play against new people , which there were never many or I could technicly play against my boyfriend and lose everytime . The game started to be fun 7months later , when a random guy gifted me ~100pts of metal cygnar models , while we were away on a tournament in another city. Now I still don't have a stormwall , but I own enough models to make 3 good 50pts armies , and the game is fun. Before that it was not fun at all.

lazarian wrote:

1) Its not a dramatically vast tactical game, but it is complex. It is the most complex commonly played miniature game. Well over a dozen factions with 20+ options each, each option also having upwards to 2 dozen micro options. This is a complex game and were not fixing it. GW gives it their best guess and as a whole it largely pans out. Every option has myriad interactions that make it impossible to balance. Farseers are crap when joined to X, but great when allied to Y for instance.

i disgree. "interactions" is something that doesnt really happen in 40k. you give an example of a farseer with x or y. well, generally speaking, "buffing" units like farseers are far rarer in 40k than you give credit for. They're a lot less prevalent than in games like warmachine which is built around the concept of building combos, and stacking layers of buffs. 40k isnt similar. most units in 40k actually operate rather independently. your devestators dont care if your assault marines are 6" away or 12" away - the assault marines have no impact on how the devestators operate. what you have are variable equipment loadouts for the most part - definately not the same thing.

secondly - 20 factions? yeah, and fair enough. but how many of those are slight variations on a single theme - ie "Space Marines with different bling"? A lot of those armies have identical units, and "common" wargear - bolters, chainswords, powerfists, terminators etc. its not as vast as you claim.

thirdly why is it "impossible"? thats a cop out. its the purpose of playtesting - find the bugs and iron them out.

lazarian wrote:
2) Your ignoring my point on the second point. There are limitless magic cards, almost all of them (95%+) are horrible so there isnt much balance there. With that said my point is more to how basic and simple Magics gameplay is. You only have so many actions in a round and these actions practically write themselves depending on your card draw. 40K has too many moving parts in comparison. Any discussion that reaches for card games or video games ignores the structure that seperates these games. In 40k even something as simple as moving a unit 6.2 inches instead of 6 has a profound impact. Every little facet is in the hands of human elements, few human varieties are needed or useful for many computer or card games.

no i'm not. your claim was you only have so many actions in a round, and 40k offers more. I disagree. units pretty much move, shoot or assault. for a lot of things in the game, they have a very limited list of actions available to them. your ability to interact with the game through the game mechanics isnt as vast as you claim.

lazarian wrote:
3) The 'Illusion of Choice' doesnt really apply here. In my 20+ years of gaming ive seen virtually every unit played constantly. There are vast skill differences and goals from player to player. Those specific choices are used far more often than you think; especially since that variety allows you to tailor lists to different levels of opponents. I take pyovores with my Tyranids and Bloodletters with my Daemons regardless of internet wisdom if my opponent needs a fighting chance or wants a comical game. With all that said can you even point to an era that was ever balanced in 40k? Ive been playing since Rogue Trader and its always been painfully apparent not all armies are created equal. They have never been about competitive choices and they arent starting now. Warmahordes is more balanced but is 'soulless' to me due to lack of modeling opportunities, caster kills being boring and virtually no customization options for units. To me and to many others 40k is a 'hobby' precisely in part due to the chaotic whirlwind it encompasses, far more than a simple 'game'.

i disagree. YMMV, but when i played back in fourth, if someone said "Im a tau player", i didnt need to ask - straight up, i could guess about 75% of the contents of their army list. the "illusion of choice" is an accurate description however, as plenty options are simply not as good as other options. thats a problem. people get punished arbitrarily because they took unit x or codex y. it makes a lot of people bitter. playing down, or tailoring shouldnt have to be the modus operandi to give someone a "fighting chance".

I certainly cant and wont point to an era of perfect balance within 40k - its never been there.

regarding warmachine being soulless due to lack of modelling, i humbly request you google the "gun carriage to airship" conversion a guy did recently. trust me, there is plenty ace modelling and customisation going on within the game.

lazarian wrote:
5) Quality control may not help much in the game they have decided upon. You can create lists incorporating 4-6 different armies. Battle Brothers singlehandedly have made heavyweights out of the most random of unit combinations. Yes they might put the work into it however time and again they are pleading with you to not treat their game as a serious tournament simulator. They have a vision and those wanting things from them they cannot have do a disservice to their person by wasting time trying to tease blood from a very obtuse stone. Being able to join so many units together make it an impossibility to balance points in all honesty. What good is a support unit if its attached to its best case scenario, the second best, or the fifth best on their battle brother army? Markerlights are worthless in a marine force yet cost identical. Farseers do less good attached to howling banshees so forth and so on. Balance could only be truly achieved by making specific army parings cost X points, a complexity far out of the real of having your preteen target market in selecting an army.

rubbish. Quality control would help the game they've decided upon. thats its purpose. thats what quality control does in the real world. open it up to the community. let the broken combos be revealed with the new rules. time and again, they're asking us not to treat the game as a serious tournament simulator? Well, fine, but that misses the point - those same problems crop up in casual games as well. being cynical its a lazy cop out - they cant be bothered to write a proper set of rules, so they pass the mess on to their customers and leave them pick up the pieces. I've commented earlier that im all for house rules etc, but this only works with small groups. beyond this, it fragments the community, and those who pike pick up games and tournaments suffer as a result. personally, i dont see why this should be the case.

to be honest, amusingly i have quite a bit of sympathy for GW and the game they want to push. i respect the fact they have a "vision" they're trying to push. that said, i have no sympathy for the way they're doing it. i find it creates too many problems. "dont take the game too seriously"? Fine, then why am i being charged hundreds of pounds for the rules?

[quote=lazarian
Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

You, sir, are my new hero. That sums up my experiences better than I could have said.

 snooggums wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

I don't see Unbound as a means to push fixing the game on the players, I see it as opening more options like other games do. The issue really isn't taking away the FOC, it's a combination of poor balance with points and with a lack of restrictions on key aspects of armies (not limiting Riptides for instance to "1 per detachment" or "one per HQ in your army" or "one per Ethereal in your army"). Taking away FOC doesn't truly break the game anymore than what we have in 6th does, and mixing codexes into single lists isn't automatically result in broken armies (I can actually think of some interesting ideas achieved by mixing armies to represent, say different things in a Mechanicus army. You can truly do a good representation of a lot of little spin off things with Unbound that don't fit into any particular codex. You can also get silly and run an army of Bullgryns with Ogryns supporting them.).

Now, I'm not saying GW's approach of saying "it's legal, just don't be a dick about it" is right, but it certainly isn't endorsing things like people were claiming. I'm not saying people have to support GW, but taking things out of context and then BSing about what that thing is actually saying to make a point wins no brownie points with me. If someone wants to lay the smack down on GW verbally fine, but there is no reason we need to resort to misleading statements or hyperbole to do it. A good argument stands on it's own without such things and that's really all I'm asking for when people verbally beat down GW (or anything, me included): a good argument that supports their position, not a half-assed one that takes short cuts.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 snooggums wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

I don't see Unbound as a means to push fixing the game on the players, I see it as opening more options like other games do. The issue really isn't taking away the FOC, it's a combination of poor balance with points and with a lack of restrictions on key aspects of armies (not limiting Riptides for instance to "1 per detachment" or "one per HQ in your army" or "one per Ethereal in your army"). Taking away FOC doesn't truly break the game anymore than what we have in 6th does, and mixing codexes into single lists isn't automatically result in broken armies (I can actually think of some interesting ideas achieved by mixing armies to represent, say different things in a Mechanicus army. You can truly do a good representation of a lot of little spin off things with Unbound that don't fit into any particular codex. You can also get silly and run an army of Bullgryns with Ogryns supporting them.).

Now, I'm not saying GW's approach of saying "it's legal, just don't be a dick about it" is right, but it certainly isn't endorsing things like people were claiming. I'm not saying people have to support GW, but taking things out of context and then BSing about what that thing is actually saying to make a point wins no brownie points with me. If someone wants to lay the smack down on GW verbally fine, but there is no reason we need to resort to misleading statements or hyperbole to do it. A good argument stands on it's own without such things and that's really all I'm asking for when people verbally beat down GW (or anything, me included): a good argument that supports their position, not a half-assed one that takes short cuts.

The pushing of balance to the players existed before Unbound by intentionally avoiding attempts to balance the game, just like rolling off when there is a disagreement because they can't be bothered to write clear rules that they still sell at a fairly high cost.

I can agree with that.

All arguments of balance aside, GW gas absolutely no clue about how to make good game design.

There is no reason that new codexes should be updated with content that is so overpowered that the other, older codexes for other armies that exist alongside them should be immediately downgraded toa weaker status until they themselves are re-released.

Having to tell a new player who likes Space Wolves that they will have to grin and bear fielding a sub-par army until they get a codex rewrite is the absolute dumbest, brain-hemmoraging inducing pile of horse crap possible for a game.

Codexes or army books should never have to be updated as often as they are on 40K. It seems like GW is obsessed with constantly tweaking or changing the abilities or each army entry in codexes just because they have nothing better to do.

But that's also true of the different editions. Each edition should be polishing the flaws of the last one. In an ideal world -that is, if they had a selection of well-designed and writted codexes in one addition, and the next edition changes something like 6th did with vehicles having hull points- than in theory it should be fast and easy to update a new printing of each codex by just rewording that section of the vehicle stats, maybe with slight modification of the points values if the new types of stats make them more or less effective.

But basic troop units should never have to be tweaked much, if at all, over the course of 5 straight editions.

But that's what you get when a game design team is replaced by a marketing team for a game like this.

Over the years the stats and rules for 40K has just become a shell game to keep people buying new stuff, which from a sales perspective is great but is the worst thing possible for game stability.

I don't think GW has a marketting team to push things, but arguing that it's the sales team or the upper management that's got their fingers in the pie is all semantics. Regardless it's clear that there is a major issue that someone is responsible for this mess, and I have a feeling it's someone pushing the design team to change things to push products.

There is a clear issue with that thinking that we need to be pushed to purchase things by making them good, when we'd continue buying EVERYTHING is it was ALL good. When a game has no real "bad" options there is no reason to change things to improve sales.

Of course it's just my conjecture because I don't work for the dev team and I don't know GW's internal politics but one thing is for sure: something is clearly wrong and needs to be addressed or it's only going to get worse.

This seems like one of those "just kidding" threads. I mean obviously you can't think that the designers of a game shouldn't have to think on balance... right? 40K is swiftly becoming the silliest game to play.

It takes forever to learn, there are silly combinations and the game is seemingly becoming LESS balanced which is crazy. GW doesn't care about balance because they rely on us to foolishly continue pouring money into the hobby. Don't fall into the trap of hating a player who builds broken legal lists... Hate the game that allows / encourages it.

Anyone who doesn't see the fluff-rape as anything other than a shady attempt at squeezing more cash out of its customers is just fooling themselves. If GW wanted Unbound to still have any meaning relating to the background they could have easily maintained the restrictions along allied factions at the very least, even while still breaking the FOC. For them to say you 'might not be popular' running a list made entirely legal BY THEM is the biggest pile of horse droppings one can imagine. I grow so sick of the thought police trying to spin what GW 'really intends' for their game, and it's up to the players to 'play nice'.

No, it is to bolster their short term profit. Period.

 Matt1785 wrote:
This seems like one of those "just kidding" threads. I mean obviously you can't think that the designers of a game shouldn't have to think on balance... right? 40K is swiftly becoming the silliest game to play.

It takes forever to learn, there are silly combinations and the game is seemingly becoming LESS balanced which is crazy. GW doesn't care about balance because they rely on us to foolishly continue pouring money into the hobby. Don't fall into the trap of hating a player who builds broken legal lists... Hate the game that allows / encourages it.

Even if the designers do think of balance they're beholden to the management who are beholden to stockholders.

And that's the problem. When management makes short term decisions to please stockholders the products pretty much always suffer. Good products are ultimately rewarded by the customers and will please the management and stockholders but when they lose sight of that (or just don't understand that) the customers ultimately suffer.

While fans aren't always the ones a company should be trying to market towards and draw in, much less pander to, that doesn't mean that ignoring the fans is good either. Fans are the thing that keep franchises alive, when they're low and bring new blood in. Completely shunning the fans is just as bad for a franchise as bending over backwards to their every whim and desire.

 lazarian wrote:

Spoiler:

Deadnight wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The difficulty in this or any game balance discussion stems from the fact this game is rather complex as games go.

its complex, but dont mistake complexity for depth. 40k is not a very deep game.

 lazarian wrote:

CCG's and Video games have an exceedingly small amount of interactions you can do in comparison to tabletop games. Just think for a moment of the almost limitless variances of people and actions in tabletop games. Video games also dont have the personal attachment of individual units, you do not paint and model things so when patch 1.6 comes out it is irelevant if its adjusted slightly. Video games also have many times more runs played of it. I play 1-4 games of 40k a week, usually 1. A night of Starcraft may see you play many more, furthermore everything about the game is controlled and sculpted. Your no going to move things around just to have fun and get jumped by confusion.

Card games like Magic have only a handful of turn and only a handful of actions. You can only play 1-3 cards a turn typically (limited by drawing and available resources). Quite simply its a completely different animal than 40k which allows you to field dozens of units in altogether different combinations. Again think of the limitless ways you can screw up your turn in 40k, especially if your just enjoying it. Even battle reports by tourney players talk about how many mistakes they made, or seeing a mistake their opponent didnt capitalize on.

rubbish. there are thousands of magic the gathering cards. there are a vast amount of ways they interact. saying you only play 1-3 cards a turn is short sighted - units in 40k move/shoot/assault, and have six turns. 40k is not that complex. an assault squad will not function any differently if it is beside a tactical squad than a devestator squad. put two different magic cards together and you have a totally different combo than two other cards. same with warmachine.

 lazarian wrote:

40k simply has more stuff than even other miniature games. Every unit of consequence has a wide latitude of options. Warmahordes has a very easy time in a vacuum for balance since all the characters and main models have no options, simply take X. You cannot stress how easy it is relatively to balance if your chapter master is always a certain way. Those other options, no matter how aweful are taken by a person and seen as viable to someone, someone who may be one of the posters on a forum decrying something. Warmahordes is boring to me without this customization, its a great game, just not a great hobby like 40k
.

40k might have more stuff, but a lot of it isnt worth taking. Not because it cant be balanced, but because GW chooses not to. they have great designers. its just the corporate culture within gw prevents them showing their brilliance. outside of gw, andy chamers, allesio et al have done really fine work. 40k essentially doesnt have choice, it has the illusion of choice.

warmachine might lose out in the lack of customisation, but in many ways it offers far more "valid" choices in game than 40k. a different caster with the same set of units will play radically different to other casters with the same units. warmachine has a huge amount of complexity. fine, you dont have the illusory option of swapping pikes for swords, or a dozen other less than ideal choices, but you have hundreds of warcasters, warlocks, spells and feats. everything stacks. there is a huge amount of complexity in this game. boring? your mileage varies bud. when i played 40k, third ed boiled down to rhino rush, or shoot the rhino rush. fourth was skimmerspam and 6man las/plas. fifth was armourhammer. sixth was flyers and gunlines.

 lazarian wrote:

Look at the endgame tourney scene of 40k. Over half of the armies are currently involved in it, probably more with 7th. Include all the rules like dataslates and almost all armies are in the game. It may be a mess, but with allies your always guaranteed to see 6+ codexes at top tables. There are stronger codexes, however they can and always do seem to be beat when it comes down to it.
.

what is the list variety though? often times its taudar with inquisitors. having six codices in play at the top tables isnt indicative of variety when of those six codices, only a handful of builds are present.

 lazarian wrote:

The game is a random pile, with far to many variable to be balanced. As soon as you have unit interactions there is absolutely no way to determine how much stuff costs. You can shave or add points for some things however this isnt the game were getting. Were getting a game with 20+ units all which have hundreds of different combinations when you compare unit amount, wargear and transport options. You will make a wall of mistakes in making your list, or you will white wash your woefully unprepared opponent.

why not? Quality control. playtesting. its as simple as that. GW simply chooses not to playtest. i had friends back home that were part of the playtesting crowd during fourth and fifth ed. one guy leaked the fifth ed stuff, and GW went ape, and closed down all external playtesting, preferring to do it in house. that said, even when they did playtest, they didnt listen. i remember my buddies telling me how back in the day, with the fourth ed SM codex (the assault cannon spam one) they indicated to GW how assault cannons were OTT. their suggestions were assault 4, or assault 3 rending. not both. what did GW do? they ignored them.

No, GW dont have a playtesting culture. they're not interested in it. Other companies? sure. Look at privateer press. free worldwide beta test of the then "new" mk2 rules set they were developing, with a forum and site built up to receive commends and playtesting information. It allowed them to develop, and balance the game, and catch out any number of loose ends. it did a lot of good for the game, and really built up a lot of good will amongst its playerbase (we felt as though we were a part of something, we were actively contributing). Imagine this scenario with GW. free worldwide beta test. catch all the bugs. It could do a lot of good, but they're simply not interested in either (a) playtesting, or (b) listening to their consumers.

1) Its not a dramatically vast tactical game, but it is complex. It is the most complex commonly played miniature game. Well over a dozen factions with 20+ options each, each option also having upwards to 2 dozen micro options. This is a complex game and were not fixing it. GW gives it their best guess and as a whole it largely pans out. Every option has myriad interactions that make it impossible to balance. Farseers are crap when joined to X, but great when allied to Y for instance.

2) Your ignoring my point on the second point. There are limitless magic cards, almost all of them (95%+) are horrible so there isnt much balance there. With that said my point is more to how basic and simple Magics gameplay is. You only have so many actions in a round and these actions practically write themselves depending on your card draw. 40K has too many moving parts in comparison. Any discussion that reaches for card games or video games ignores the structure that seperates these games. In 40k even something as simple as moving a unit 6.2 inches instead of 6 has a profound impact. Every little facet is in the hands of human elements, few human varieties are needed or useful for many computer or card games.

3) The 'Illusion of Choice' doesnt really apply here. In my 20+ years of gaming ive seen virtually every unit played constantly. There are vast skill differences and goals from player to player. Those specific choices are used far more often than you think; especially since that variety allows you to tailor lists to different levels of opponents. I take pyovores with my Tyranids and Bloodletters with my Daemons regardless of internet wisdom if my opponent needs a fighting chance or wants a comical game. With all that said can you even point to an era that was ever balanced in 40k? Ive been playing since Rogue Trader and its always been painfully apparent not all armies are created equal. They have never been about competitive choices and they arent starting now. Warmahordes is more balanced but is 'soulless' to me due to lack of modeling opportunities, caster kills being boring and virtually no customization options for units. To me and to many others 40k is a 'hobby' precisely in part due to the chaotic whirlwind it encompasses, far more than a simple 'game'.

4) Tournament list variety is actually quite wide if you compare lists. Broad units are always taken but they are countered by other options. No two flying circus lists are identical. There are truly few auto includes and even then they wax and wane with various army books. How many Helldrakes are the backbone of a competetive Chaos army for instance? The answer is 1-3, always different list to list. Compare to Magic where only a handful of decks ever get played, or in video games where much less investment in any option leads most people to simply select the current strong option. Flavor of the month is a term used incessantly in computer PVP.

5) Quality control may not help much in the game they have decided upon. You can create lists incorporating 4-6 different armies. Battle Brothers singlehandedly have made heavyweights out of the most random of unit combinations. Yes they might put the work into it however time and again they are pleading with you to not treat their game as a serious tournament simulator. They have a vision and those wanting things from them they cannot have do a disservice to their person by wasting time trying to tease blood from a very obtuse stone. Being able to join so many units together make it an impossibility to balance points in all honesty. What good is a support unit if its attached to its best case scenario, the second best, or the fifth best on their battle brother army? Markerlights are worthless in a marine force yet cost identical. Farseers do less good attached to howling banshees so forth and so on. Balance could only be truly achieved by making specific army parings cost X points, a complexity far out of the real of having your preteen target market in selecting an army.


Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

1. Games Workshop doesn't give anything a best guess. thats just stupid. its a multi-million dollar company making rules for how to use one of their two main stay product lines. I promise, its anything but a "best guess". what it more likely than not is, is negligence created from an ever increasing push to increase their bottom line and get investors off their @$$. the decisions GW are making in terms of game balance are not being made to better the game, they are being made to show everyone a new shiny that is super powerful and awesome, and so you have to have it, and the 50.00 book with them, and the data slates, and while your at it, do you need some of the paint from our new paint line, where we have changed what you previously had so there isn't true parity anymore? your going to run out of devlan mud at some point right, why not switch over to agrax earth shade now...

2. quit attempting to compare digital entertainment or card games to a miniatures game. they are not the same thing by a mile. in that thought, you are also comparing a collectible system to a non collectible system. the whole point of having a collectible system is that you have a "rare" card that is better than a common. you know that going in. its not a secret and its not hid behind the thought of "well, make it fluffy, and play a fluffy deck with all of these commons and uncommons and you won't win but the games will be fun, and in the spirit of green mana and the cards that you would use make sense in the story line". Additionally, a tenth of an inch doesn't really make much difference in a game where moving 6.2 inches just means your that much closer to getting blasted to pieces from someone playing a deathstar that you hopelessly cannot fight.

3. I love it when people talk about playing during rogue trader. its great. because i did too. my first GW book was a Warhammer 40,000 compendium with the ultramarines on the cover where one of them had "color me cobalt' on his shoulder pad. I played then, and to compare that game to the game that is out now is complete and utter nonsense. The game wasn't really a game then, it was a loose set of rules that REQUIRED mediation with all kinds of weird and different stuff you could take in your army of imperial marines. that was the rogue trader days. it was barely organized into a game at that point, and was in its infancy in an environment where no one knew what a miniatures game should be and what it was. i can also tell you that in 2nd edition, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, there has never been balance in this game. you say everything got used in rogue trader, i remember buying 3 land raiders in a box for 15.00 and letting them all sit there because you dared NOT use a transport, they were death traps. i remember elder pirates and harlequins, and goff rockers and daemon possessed weird boys, squats and all sorts of other stuff that never saw play because they were stupid or didn't work, or there rules didn't even exist for them before the model came out. please tell me about the balance in the game from so many years ago, because i played then too, and i don't see it at all. we can walk forward to 2nd edition, as my friends liked to call it "hero hammer" with warp jump generator - vortex grenade wielding tech marines who heroically sacrifice themselves to take out the biggest, baddest thing in the opponents army. or the crystalline targeting matrix and star engines, allowing the falcon to break EVERY RULE for vehicle movement and shooting, or the first introduction of neurons, with 5 unit choices, who did one thing, kill anything with an armor value amazingly well. 3rd edition was probably the closest thing to balanced, but lets not forget about the wonder sweeping advancing raptors with a chaos lord leading them, all of who worshipped slaneesh, that could ride a table to the edge with anyone...the list goes on and on. and you know what, it just keeps going. this game hit its heyday in balance in that 3.5 edition (3rd edition rules with the newly released close combat rules update really made it 4th edition) and that is when it peaked. rogue trader tournaments were a thing...people were excited to play, and many of the codices had lots of good choices as to the units they wanted to play and how they played them. 5th went back to true LOS and things started to go down hill from there again, and the modifications to the vehicle rules just made sure that the game devolved into who had the best transports for the cost that you could shoot out of. 6th edition was broken as hell from the beginning, and shows no signs of recovering at all, and it won't, and 7th edition just looks like its advertising "buy what you want, and play it. army selection be damned".

4. i don't know what variety your talking about . there are like two or three really good lists that make up the top tables of any major tournament unless the TO takes it upon himself to ban/restrict stuff. sure, there are six armies represented between the two players, but tis the same lists, and that doesn't make it healthy at all.

5. i do not buy into the "its too hard to balance with all of the wonderful options". thats pure gak. balancing would cause an immediate reduction in sales and thus it wouldn't happen. if you want to see balance in the game, it can happen, but it will temporarily slow down sales for GW and thus they won't. its just too easy to make a data slate that sells for 5 or 7 bucks online, and then have the rules so you can include all of these different units you normally wouldn't have in your army, and then get the sales from that. its short term gain at the expense of the long term product evolution and fan base.

companies like privateer press, "soulless" as they may be, understand that they don't have to be cheaper, they don't have to be better looking, hell, they don't even have to offer the range of customization that anyone else does. they know that to get players buying their products, they need to produce a great game with rules that can stand up to a lot of scrutiny. rules that can be played competitively, and rules that alleviate the most amount of frustration or complication from the player base.

the end result is a game that is amazingly deep, and complex, with relatively simple rules for a miniatures game. I am happy to see Warmachine on such a huge explosion. it seems the more gak GW releases the more Warmachine gets bigger and bigger. Fine by me, i like going to huge tournaments 6 or 7 times a year and playing the game often in an environment where its balanced, and i don't have to worry about whether or not my opponent is going to take an army designed to rip my head from my neck...i can just assume he will, and i will do the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
it should also be noted that balanced games increase sales. Balanced games play well, and because they are balanced, people do play units, and buy units that give them advantages or add to their amy because its NOT a complete wast of money. As i look through War Room right now, i have yet to see any units for either my Khador B3 list, P or E Sorscha lists, my Circle Kromak, Krueger (P&E), EMorvanna, or Morshar lists that wouldn't fit in somewhere. Those units may not work with EVERY caster, but they will work with one or two of them, and that is game balance.

Privateer Press is like a curse word to GW enthusiasts i have noticed...i guess i just answered the question i had as to why.

If we look beyond the small insular bubble of the 'GW hobby (tm)'.

All the good game companies are quite clear on the type of game they are selling and the focus of their rules.

Rules for narrative game play do not use point values , and tend to use scenario driven lists or historical type OOBs.

Rules that use point values and force organisation charts are there to show new players what results in enjoyable random pick up games.

So any rule set that is using point values and any form of restriction in force composition should result in enjoyable random pick up games.
This is what most players assume.

They simply assume to get a quick enjoyable random pick up game they should just have to use the PV and F.O.C restrictions set out by the rules.
Any other type of narrative driven game is JUST DOWN TO PLAYER AGREEMENT.

So if players are engaging in a narrative scenario, the level of balance is completely decided by the players.Along with everything else before the game starts.
This takes quite a bit of time, but can be loads of fun.(In my experience.)

So if players are limited to random pick up games in clubs /stores.They need game developers to play test enough to arrive at restrictions that allow enjoyable pick up games without hours of negotiation and agreement before they start to play.

if the game 'developers' can not be bothered to play test the system enough to arrive at well defined rules that deliver enjoyable random pick up games.
They should not assign PV to any thing, and be honest about the lack of compatibility with pick up games with the players.

Rather than blaming the players for not playing the game the 'right way'.Or implying the players should do the developers job for them.

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

This alone pretty much sums up the whole argument... well done. 40k has become paper, rock, scissors, spock, lizard. Somedays you get a good draw on which army you face, and others you don't. Regardless though, the games will always seem a tad imbalanced. Think about how many games you've played that have literally come down to the last bottom half of the round, not many in my experience which tells you that its not always a balanced game.

Think the game would be better with a lot more 'lists' wot work from, with restrictions that vary, think FoW force charts - I run Grenadiers, there are dozens of lists to select from with them, all with different options and restrictions, some have cheap flak guns, some only have pricey ones, some can have tigers, some have no armour at all

Balance is bad because somehow making a Riptide less OP and and Penitent Engine somewhat useful will make the game boring.

Put a Blood Angel army against a Tau and see how fun unblance is for either player. (Well, some people think its fun to steamroll their opponent.)

Well, seeing as it took a group of dedicated fans to improve Epic: Armageddon to a state that is far better than what GW ever produced it as............

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

 Galorian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

I know right? When i woke up I found that a bad roll changed me from a paleontologist to an astrologer.

I guess the rerolls on my conman checks is nice but I miss all the blessings to my respectability score.

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

I know right? When i woke up I found that a bad roll changed me from a paleontologist to an astrologer.

I guess the rerolls on my conman checks is nice but I miss all the blessings to my respectability score.

You think that's bad? Try waking up to a final exam in wave function theory and rolling up "Trivia expert"...

 ashcroft wrote:
Disclaimer 1: I'm not trying to exonerate GW of all responsibility, There are issues, but it's not a one-way street.

Disclaimer 2: Alternative title for this topic would have been "Competitive 40K would require a whole different ruleset."

There's a lot of debate about 'balance' in 40K - mostly to do with pick up games - and it reminds me a lot about the never ending arguments about PVP (Player vs Player) in MMOs.

In any MMO which has optional PVP there will be two types of player in a pvp zone - the casual player, who has built his character according to personal preference and what they find fun, and the pvp player or powergamer/min-maxer, who has built his character to be absolutely optimised, either doing the number crunching himself or getting the current flavor of the month build from the internet. Is this sounding at all familiar?

If a casual/fluffy player enters a pvp zone and goes one on one against someone running an optimised/min-maxed uber build, then the casual is going to lose, almost always. Doesn't matter if they are more skilled as a player - the superior gear, stats, attack rotation of the min-maxer will usually be the deciding factor. In much the same way a fluff list is, more often than not, going to take a beating from an optimised tournament ready netlist.

There's very little that GW can do to prevent this. If other games are better balanced it's in no small part due to a couple of things - either the armies are more inherently equal to begin with (such as most historical wargames, or for that matter 30K with its marine vs marine set up), or they have a smaller playerbase, or both. A big game like 40K will have more WAAC players simply because it has more players overall. Fiercely competitive players in MMOs are almost always drawn to the big games and the high pop servers - and in tabletop gaming 40K is the big, high pop game.

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed. Everything. Is 40K as well balanced as a tournament game like Starcraft? Not in the slightest, but Starcraft has only 3 races. I daresay if GW squatted everyone except the Ultramarines, the Eldar and the Tyranids they could balance those 3 codexes better against each other.

GW isn't twisting anyone's arm to force them to spam Riptides, or Wave Serpents or deathstar units. Just because the rules don't say you can do something does not mean you either have to or should do it. Some of the responsibility has to lie with the players to actually agree about what makes an enjoyable game for all concerned, rather than waiting for GW to dictate from on high a set of draconian restrictions to force the game to be what any particular player wants it to be.

That's what I think anyway.

Blizzard spent roughly a decade activly ballancing Starcraft trough playtesting and player feedback, the amount of factions are largely irrelevant compared to "forge a narrative" make rules up with barely any internal playtesting nor proof reading, being performed ""ballancing""

.Clear rules that everyone understands is not to much to ask for neither is asking for what you put on the table is worth their actual points or atleast serve a purpouse.

And then theres TFG that just invalidated your arguments, the rules "proper" rules are needed so you can have enjoyable games with strangers with minimum fuzz, because not all of them is going to be nice persons...

Personally I despise comp play, but it does have one quality to it, it shows whats broken and whats not broken, its such a waste GW ignores this potential just at their doorstep.

Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Clear rules that everyone understands is not to much to ask for neither is asking for what you put on the table is worth their actual points or at least serve a purpose.

I agree, up to a point, but there are a lot of variables involved in assessing how many points a unit is worth. Many (most?) of the current killer builds are based on combining units that outwith those combos would not be so powerful... so do you cost them according to their individual worth, or how they work when put together in certain very specific combinations? Additionally a CC unit is worth less in an open battlefield opposite a gunline than it is in a crowded battlefield with a lot of LoS blocking terrain.

And then theres TFG that just invalidated your arguments, the rules "proper" rules are needed so you can have enjoyable games with strangers with minimum fuzz, because not all of them is going to be nice persons...

I think this point actually makes my argument. GW can't fix the community, and the rules set will never be so airtight that TFG will not be able to find loopholes to use to his advantage.

Could GW do more? Certainly, though I think it's increasingly apparent that they are distancing themselves ever further from the idea of 40K as a tournament ready rules set.

Tournaments aside - and in a way they are not the main problem since the organisers can set limits in advance, and everyone involved will know (to a point) what to expect - one of the problems is that GW's vision (such as it is) is of a game played between friends, who can be expected to talk out points of contention amiably, whereas for many players the game is mostly played between strangers, in pick up games where such a consensus is often not going to exist.

Not only is it possible for a ruleset to be unabusable, its actually not that hard to do. GW just don't want to put in the effort. All you have to do is take the time to do 3 things.

1. Write the rules from the point of veiw of someone who will very strictly adhere to them, not a guy playing with his mate's using the rules as a guide line. That will never be enough on its own so you move to step 2.

2. Take the rules you now have and give them to the people who know how to abuse them. Those people who get labled as 'tfgs' for bringing something too strong, they should be asked to show those too strong combos before the rules go into circulation so that they can be tweaked and fixed. Then hand them the new rules and repeat untill they are satisfied there is nothing abusable left. That again won't catch everything so finally we move to step 3.

3. FAQs. Once the rules are released keep an eye on them. Interact with the community. If people are complaining that a loophole has gotten through steps one and two simply FAQ/errata it out of the game. Then continue doing that for the life of the rulebook.

Its not a quick process, but its also not actually all that hard either. Nothing needs to be perfect, just good enough that there is no clear 'best' unit within a codex to spam or combo that is more powerful than it should be because the game designers didn't realize it could be done.

If GW wants to charge laughably more for their rules than their competition I expect at least that much.

 ashcroft wrote:

And then theres TFG that just invalidated your arguments, the rules "proper" rules are needed so you can have enjoyable games with strangers with minimum fuzz, because not all of them is going to be nice persons...

I think this point actually makes my argument. GW can't fix the community, and the rules set will never be so airtight that TFG will not be able to find loopholes to use to his advantage.

They can reduce the loopholes from 80/20 to 60/40 win ratio to minimise the impact of TFG. When new loopholes are found, they can balance them a month later - not 2-6 years later.

Do you really think it was IG players to blame for spamming vendettas when they were good? Or was it GWs fault for not patching them to 170 point 6 model capacity once the problem became clear, rather than waiting for a new codex? If that resulted in IG being uncompetitive, they could have buffed the other fast attack slot units to bring them up to parity. That's how balance works. A frequent series on minor changes to bring the game closer to balanced all the time.

yeah , but if they did that , it would mean that their hobby isn't perfect . And from what they say it is .

Makumba wrote:
yeah , but if they did that , it would mean that their hobby isn't perfect . And from what they say it is .

Not to mention the fact all that readproofing and playtesting (aka doing their goddamn job) will totally get in the way of their furiously forging a narrative during work hours.

 Galorian wrote:

Makumba wrote:
yeah , but if they did that , it would mean that their hobby isn't perfect . And from what they say it is .

Not to mention the fact all that readproofing and playtesting (aka doing their goddamn job) will totally get in the way of their furiously forging a narrative during work hours.

I want to know what kind of narrative forged involves Eldrad not knowing what he's good at every time he shows up to a battle, the Swarmlord being a wuss in assault for his cost, no girls being allowed into the Imperial knights club, and rough riders existing in the same game as the screamer star.

Forging the narrative between your wallets and their pockets, of course.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Forging the narrative between your wallets and their pockets, of course.

That's quite the smutty narrative.

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

Makumba wrote:
yeah , but if they did that , it would mean that their hobby isn't perfect . And from what they say it is .

Not to mention the fact all that readproofing and playtesting (aka doing their goddamn job) will totally get in the way of their furiously forging a narrative during work hours.

I want to know what kind of narrative forged involves Eldrad not knowing what he's good at every time he shows up to a battle, the Swarmlord being a wuss in assault for his cost, no girls being allowed into the Imperial knights club, and rough riders existing in the same game as the screamer star.

The kind of narrative that gets furiously forged between their hand of choice and their favorite game piece before ending up published in bold font all over a wad of tissue paper.

 Galorian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

Makumba wrote:
yeah , but if they did that , it would mean that their hobby isn't perfect . And from what they say it is .

Not to mention the fact all that readproofing and playtesting (aka doing their goddamn job) will totally get in the way of their furiously forging a narrative during work hours.

I want to know what kind of narrative forged involves Eldrad not knowing what he's good at every time he shows up to a battle, the Swarmlord being a wuss in assault for his cost, no girls being allowed into the Imperial knights club, and rough riders existing in the same game as the screamer star.

The kind of narrative that gets furiously forged between their hand of choice and their favorite game piece before ending up published in bold font all over a wad of tissue paper.

Let's not forget the Necrons despite being perhaps the best army to have IWND in bulk only having any from forgeworld while the Iron Hands can have Wolverine tanks and characters for free, Old One Eye forgetting he can adapt whenever any other Tyranid HQ choice is on the field, Cult chaos marines forgetting nearly all of their special abilities the moment they get on a bike, put on terminator armor, become a lord, or take up sorcery, GW not being able to agree on what electricity based weapons can do, Serpent shields which are described as ground traveling shockwaves fired as a measure of last resort being a d6+1 shooting attack with 60 inches of range spammed by everyone and their mom that can target fliers just fine, Howling Banshees getting bogged down by some rocks (apparently Jain Zar's teachings don't include parkour classes), and Abaddon's armor somehow mystically transforming from a Cataphractii terminator suit into much later patterned armor because reasons.

Let's not forget weapons that can pierce reality (warp talon claws) or a spear that can cause the collective intelligence of a thousand galaxy's worth of biomass rendered into Tyranid form agony and has the power of exploding suns (Yriel's spear) being unable to pierce Meganob armor. Or the Necrons somehow never inventing axes or maces. Or the supposedly armored up Lychguards not having better saves than Immortals.

GW has created a product that is neither fluffy nor balanced.

Amazing.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The problem is that nerds desperately want to win. They will exploit any loophole they can find, and unfortunately GW has provided ample opportunity over the years. Even when large ones are found, they are rarely closed off.

No we want to win on our own merit. If I win because I have a cheesier list than my opponent then my list wins, not me. Ditto if I loose to a cheesy op list then I feel hollow because I lost to someothing from before the game was even played rather than battling wits with my opponent.

That said there's nothing stopping us taking Tau+Farsight with OVER9000 riptides but if we all do it it sucks. If we don't all do it then we can't compete.

I'm chiming in late and I'm sure someone has already said similar

Most Players have voiced thier opinion for a more fair and balanced game on many forums. Most also admitt that no game would be 100% balanced, that said, most agree it could be closer than it current state. So, how could it ever be a two way street when GW refuses input and does not care what alot of players think?

I still like the game and still desire to play it. Do I like the way they run thier buisness and make rules that don't work for all armies or make some army builds OP? No
I'm stuck like most, I roll my eyes at yet another set of crap coming out the doors of GW.

The only product I will buy from them this year will be a mini rule book if it will ever exist. Rumor i heard is there will never be a new mini rulebok. so we'll see.

my collection from years ago is huge so I got plenty to paint.

OP is right guys we need to balance this ourselves and not try to ruin the game for others so everyone can enjoy it.

As such I will tone down my list to only take 18 annihilation barges for my 7th edition 2000pt army.

Punisher wrote:
OP is right guys we need to balance this ourselves and not try to ruin the game for others so everyone can enjoy it.

As such I will tone down my list to only take 18 annihilation barges for my 7th edition 2000pt army.

Better yet, save $500 bucks, and just don't play Unbound.

Yeah, you can play Battle Forged and go with 9 of them.

 jasper76 wrote:

Punisher wrote:
OP is right guys we need to balance this ourselves and not try to ruin the game for others so everyone can enjoy it.

As such I will tone down my list to only take 18 annihilation barges for my 7th edition 2000pt army.

Better yet, save $500 bucks, and just don't play Unbound.

But only playing unbound lets me stop chaos demons choir lists . I can't get enough power dice per turn to stop them , not to mention casting my own powers.

rigeld2 wrote:
Yeah, you can play Battle Forged and go with 9 of them.

In any case, whether you go with 18 or 9, don't expect too many games with strangers.

 jasper76 wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
Yeah, you can play Battle Forged and go with 9 of them.

In any case, whether you go with 18 or 9, don't expect too many games with strangers.

But...but...everyone loves unbound! And...umm....Narrative!

 MWHistorian wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
Yeah, you can play Battle Forged and go with 9 of them.

In any case, whether you go with 18 or 9, don't expect too many games with strangers.

But...but...everyone loves unbound! And...umm....Narrative!

I'm sure people like the idea of playing with an unbound army, but when presented with the option of playing against a guy with a "normal" army, or a guy with 18 Annihilation Barges, well, I know what seems like a funner game to me anyways.

My personal take on the issue is that seeing as GW will not balance their game fully, it is up to the players to show some common sportsmanship. The overwhelming majority I encounter are perfectly capable of this, but not all.

I do believe there is some merit to saying that the core problem is more than just the game. There's plenty of cheesy possibilities in Bolt Action or X-Wing, they're not nearly as broken as Screamerstars or the like, but they exist, and I've never seen them played. Ever.

Meanwhile, were I to travel from my FLGS which only has two out of the ~20 40k players with TFG tendencies, and to the sole GW in my province, I'd stand an even chance of getting a) A kid with an army of tactical marines, b) a triptide list with 60 sniper kroot and 3 skyrays, c) A Necron army converted to look like Cylons, using just blocks of warriors and the combat version of the croissont.

The OP's point about the most popular game attracting more of the people with a competitive mindset isn't wrong, and thinking GW will actually improve their ruleset substantially is laughable to the extreme. Honestly, if you want a competitive game, Warmahordes is right there, it's designed around the principle of competitive powergaming and seems to function reasonably well in that framework. It holds no appeal to me whatsoever, as I find the very mentality unpleasent, but expecting GW to offer a competitive game with 25 years of past experience is laughable.

They sort-of tried with 5th, and good lord was that a boring edition. No flavour, no themed armies, just MSU in Transports all day, every day.

It's not the 9 annihilation barge army that is going to be hard to decline. It's going to be there 4 or 5 annihilation barge army, and by that I mean players will be seeking to exploit the maximum amount of cheese out of lists without simultaneously appearing cheesy.

It'll be these shades of grey people will move in to, where the apparent toolishness of an army is not immediately apparently but the list is tricked out to the absolute max.

~an idle speculation~

It's crossed my mind, and I don't mean to be offensive by saying this, that Unbound was created for children and moms.

It has to be the case that some mom has gone to a store, bought her kid this cool new tank to play with, but junior can't play, because he doesn't have an HQ or any troops. And mom just wasted her money, because she spent 80 bucks on a toy tank, she's can't afford to spend any more, and junior is hardly any closer to being able to play the game. Enough complaints like that...Unbound.

While that's possible, it's also stupid to build your game around your customers being fething morons, considering that buying the tank off the shelf is no guarantee that junior even owns the damned rulebook.

Here's a tip, GW: Stop crafting the game around 12 year olds.

 Psienesis wrote:
While that's possible, it's also stupid to build your game around your customers being fething morons, considering that buying the tank off the shelf is no guarantee that junior even owns the damned rulebook.

Here's a tip, GW: Stop crafting the game around 12 year olds.

This quote is just amazing adding it to my sig. There just seems to be so much truth to it, but I love 40k so much that even though this is the case I still play...

 Psienesis wrote:
While that's possible, it's also stupid to build your game around your customers being fething morons, considering that buying the tank off the shelf is no guarantee that junior even owns the damned rulebook.

People pre-ordered 7th edition. Believing their customers are morons may have some merit.

Here's a tip, GW: Stop crafting the game around 12 year olds.

That's exactly who they've always said their market is, who they market to, who they market for.

I know, but that doesn't mean they have to keep doing it. Though I would really challenge the "always" bit. Things were... much grimmer... twenty-some years ago in the publications, definitely targeted to a much older audience.

Honestly, I totally disagree. Its in the nature of competitive gamers to try and find the best combinations and synergies within a ruleset. If the ruleset is too open to exploitation then it is a bad ruleset, plain and simple. Im not saying it cant still be fun but IMO games are for competition and if the game isnt balanced its not the fault of the gamer... just my 2 cents

Mono-Tzeentch lists can now summon nearly 2000pts worth (or more) of stuff during the course of a game. And it's all fluffy!

Balance. Begins with the game.

Balance can't be dependent on the players, it HAS to start with the game. Without balanced rules you have to rely on a gentleman's agreement to have an enjoyable game and while that's not a bad idea, you'll always run into that one douchebag who doesn't care and abuses the rules.

Balanced games remove that person in a lot of ways.

Jervis Jhonson has been head of the GW rules department since fifth. We have a lot of information on Jervis Jhonson. For him a balanced game isn't a fun game. His ideas on game design revolve around random charts, Game Masters, and forging narratives. Jervis Jhonson doesn't want to play or thinks you should want to play a balanced game. His rules reflect his style of game design.

Jervis Jhonson makes a logical flaw with his aproach, you can still play the games he likes to play with a competent rule set. How many times have people, playing a casual game, mismatched units for fun? Ran champion vs champion battles? Tweeked rules for a different kind of game? All the time!!! Jervis doesn't have to focre us to play these types of games, we will do it on our own.

Jervis Jhonsons job is to give us a competent, tested, set of core rules to play with. We can, from there, tweek rules if we want to for these more thematic games. We can forge our own narratives. Jervis has only proven that he is incapable of producing a clear, defined, competent set of core rules. He needs to go before he finally tanks the GW games entirely.

dresnar1 wrote:
Jervis Jhonson has been head of the GW rules department since fifth. We have a lot of information on Jervis Jhonson. For him a balanced game isn't a fun game. His ideas on game design revolve around random charts, Game Masters, and forging narratives. Jervis Jhonson doesn't want to play or thinks you should want to play a balanced game. His rules reflect his style of game design.

Jervis Jhonson makes a logical flaw with his aproach, you can still play the games he likes to play with a competent rule set. How many times have people, playing a casual game, mismatched units for fun? Ran champion vs champion battles? Tweeked rules for a different kind of game? All the time!!! Jervis doesn't have to focre us to play these types of games, we will do it on our own.

Jervis Jhonsons job is to give us a competent, tested, set of core rules to play with. We can, from there, tweek rules if we want to for these more thematic games. We can forge our own narratives. Jervis has only proven that he is incapable of producing a clear, defined, competent set of core rules. He needs to go before he finally tanks the GW games entirely.

Quoted for truth and exalted.

dresnar1 wrote:
Jervis Jhonson has been head of the GW rules department since fifth. We have a lot of information on Jervis Jhonson. For him a balanced game isn't a fun game. His ideas on game design revolve around random charts, Game Masters, and forging narratives. Jervis Jhonson doesn't want to play or thinks you should want to play a balanced game. His rules reflect his style of game design.

What's really hard to believe is that someone so incredibly stupid is still employed, especially given how much his salary must be with that kind of seniority. The obvious conclusion is that he's sleeping with the CEO and major shareholders, or has some really good blackmail material on them.

 Peregrine wrote:

dresnar1 wrote:
Jervis Jhonson has been head of the GW rules department since fifth. We have a lot of information on Jervis Jhonson. For him a balanced game isn't a fun game. His ideas on game design revolve around random charts, Game Masters, and forging narratives. Jervis Jhonson doesn't want to play or thinks you should want to play a balanced game. His rules reflect his style of game design.

What's really hard to believe is that someone so incredibly stupid is still employed, especially given how much his salary must be with that kind of seniority. The obvious conclusion is that he's sleeping with the CEO and major shareholders, or has some really good blackmail material on them.

That actually is a really good point, why does Jervis still have a job? GW has been doing a lot of budget cuts, what with turning to one man stores, reducing redundant inventory, and shutting down the bunkers, why haven't they fired Jervis? They've shown that they have no problem firing long term employees, and if 40k has been in the decline since Jervis took over it would make sense to try to replace him. That being said do we have any proof that the blame for the major problems of 40k lie at his feet?

Edit - Posting only an image is considered spam here at Dakka, in violation of rule #3. Thank you - MT11

 Jaceevoke wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

dresnar1 wrote:
Jervis Jhonson has been head of the GW rules department since fifth. We have a lot of information on Jervis Jhonson. For him a balanced game isn't a fun game. His ideas on game design revolve around random charts, Game Masters, and forging narratives. Jervis Jhonson doesn't want to play or thinks you should want to play a balanced game. His rules reflect his style of game design.

What's really hard to believe is that someone so incredibly stupid is still employed, especially given how much his salary must be with that kind of seniority. The obvious conclusion is that he's sleeping with the CEO and major shareholders, or has some really good blackmail material on them.

That actually is a really good point, why does Jervis still have a job? GW has been doing a lot of budget cuts, what with turning to one man stores, reducing redundant inventory, and shutting down the bunkers, why haven't they fired Jervis? They've shown that they have no problem firing long term employees, and if 40k has been in the decline since Jervis took over it would make sense to try to replace him. That being said do we have any proof that the blame for the major problems of 40k lie at his feet?

I'm guessing that they think the players trust him or somesuch.

Let's keep in mind this is GW and they don't believe in the Internet.

xxvaderxx wrote:

My apologies, did not mean to come off as a troll. If you could tell me what it was about my post that led you to think that it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 Jaceevoke wrote:
That being said do we have any proof that the blame for the major problems of 40k lie at his feet?

Being in charge of something means being accountable for its success or failure. It's possible that he's just a lazy idiot who sits around doing nothing all day while the people he's supposedly in charge of ruin the game, but in that case he should certainly be fired. It's more likely that, even if not all of the things in question are his own work, he approves of them entirely. And therefore he is an incompetent idiot who should be fired.

 Jaceevoke wrote:

xxvaderxx wrote:

My apologies, did not mean to come off as a troll. If you could tell me what it was about my post that led you to think that it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Not you srry, directed at the OP.