Suppose for a moment that every codex entry and every upgrade were actually playable/usable, and spamming the most OP stuff from your codex were no longer a good way to win the game, because OP stuff simply ceased to exist.

Suppose that every codex entry had a time and a place, and your best bet at winning was using a strategic blend of different things.

Spoken differently: suppose the game were balanced in such a way that an army composed of tactical marines (without grav), devastator marines (without grav), assault marines, rhinos, predators, vindicators, landraiders, terminators, etc...were actually capable of winning competitive games, even without a ton of free stuff and snowflake special rules.

If you kept using your current army, how do you think that your current army lists would fare competitively?

Edit:

Alternative phrasing of the OP question:

"My question is very simple:

Suppose that the game were actually balanced. What do I mean by "balanced"? That you couldn't point to a unit or option in your codex, or a set of units or options in your codex, and say: "Clearly, THIS is the one to use." What if every unit and every option in every single codex were actually playable and actually had a viable in-game use?

What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

Would you, you personally, with the army lists that YOU currently use....would you win more games? Lose more games? Or win about the same number of games?"

Tradito, mind posting what you think a good list is?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Tradito, mind posting what you think a good list is?

"Good" is a relative term. My OP presupposes in advance that the current "good" lists would no longer be the exclusive good lists (or even good lists at all) if the game were actually balanced.

Dodged like a pro.

I dunno....I guess I'd win half of my games?

To put it another way...the game would come down to skill. If I played against a better player, I'd lose unless I had a run of luck.

Well, why tactical marines without grav? Other options should be equally viable, but that doesn't mean grav should NOT have a place.

And why no Sternguard? Or Drop Pods?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Well, why tactical marines without grav?

Grav doesn't belong in the game in its current form. In a game where previous weapons have been surgical scalpels, grav is a fething mallet.

And why no Sternguard? Or Drop Pods?

Those things should clearly have a place too. But drop pods vs. rhinos should be an actual choice, not an obvious no brainer.

You know, I think part of the reason why you tend not be listened to a ton, Tradito, is that most of us here think you aren't actually very good at 40k. I remember you posted a TAC list a while back that was just truly awful.

You obviously have some very strong opinions about 40k, but you don't seem to fully understand the game well enough to figure out if your opinions are valid.

I won't go on record saying the game is balanced-because it's not. Nids versus Eldar is a joke, most of the time, as is, say, Guard versus Marines, but the game at its core is not broken. And, because of that, you can, with some work, make good matchups.

I guess my main point is, when this inevitably devolves, actually listen to other people, and try to learn, rather than just having an opinion and never changing it.

 Traditio wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Well, why tactical marines without grav?

Grav doesn't belong in the game in its current form. In a game where previous weapons have been surgical scalpels, grav is a fething mallet.

Doesn't mean grav should be removed from the game, it just needs to be balanced

Or, hell, Grav could jsut be pointed appropriately. It can be the best at everything, but if a Grav-Cannon is 50 points, it really PAYS for being the best.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You know, I think part of the reason why you tend not be listened to a ton, Tradito, is that most of us here think you aren't actually very good at 40k. I remember you posted a TAC list a while back that was just truly awful.

You obviously have some very strong opinions about 40k, but you don't seem to fully understand the game well enough to figure out if your opinions are valid.

I won't go on record saying the game is balanced-because it's not. Nids versus Eldar is a joke, most of the time, as is, say, Guard versus Marines, but the game at its core is not broken. And, because of that, you can, with some work, make good matchups.

I guess my main point is, when this inevitably devolves, actually listen to other people, and try to learn, rather than just having an opinion and never changing it.

JNAProductions:

I posted a thread topic.

If you want to talk about something other than that thread topic, then feel free to discuss it elsewhere.

However, none of what you just said is, indeed, the thread topic, with the exception of this point:

"Nids versus Eldar is a joke, most of the time, as is, say, Guard versus Marines, but the game at its core is not broken. And, because of that, you can, with some work, make good matchups."

Those matchups do not exist. There is no such thing as "The Tyrranids codex versus the Eldar Codex." There is no such thing as "The Imperial Guard Codex versus Codex: Space Marines. All of it."

What does exist is this flyrant spam list versus that aspect host. What does exist is this sternhammer list with a 1st company task force of assault terminators versus that leeman russ spam list.

If you take all codex entries and options in the game, and not just a select few, no, the game isn't balanced. At all.

Of course, grav ISN'T the best at everything, it's just relaly damn good at killing MEQ and TEQ.

 Melissia wrote:
Of course, grav ISN'T the best at everything, it's just relaly damn good at killing MEQ and TEQ.

Grav cannons + bolters can slaughter the vast majority of lists.

A white scars battle company with Khan, rhinos and grav cannons can beat pretty much anything.

Grav cannons can slaughter landraiders.

What kind of bull gak is that?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Or, hell, Grav could jsut be pointed appropriately. It can be the best at everything, but if a Grav-Cannon is 50 points, it really PAYS for being the best.

Grav needs to wound as it was designed to wound in terms of fluff. Swarms are wounded on 6, regular infantry on 5+, Bulky on 4+, Very Bulky on 3+, and anything bigger on 2+. Then only strip a HP on a 6 for penetration rolls without the silly immobilization clause.

Done.

This prompt is far too vague. The game is simply too far from being balanced for us to form projections about what it would be like if balanced.

 Melissia wrote:
Of course, grav ISN'T the best at everything, it's just relaly damn good at killing MEQ and TEQ.

And vehicles, thanks to its immobilizations. (Only super-heavies really resist it.) And SEQs? (Scout-equivalents.) And the stuff that's reasonably resistant to it (5+ armor saves) dies to bolter fire. Only Daemons are really resistant to Grav, having an invuln and no armour.

It's hard to say it's not the best.

They won't slaughter a legion of Orks before the Orks get stuck in combat, nor will they slaughter a hefty platoon of guardsmen before they can erase the marine squad in question, to give just two examples. I never said grav wasn't really damn good, but it's not OH MY FUGGING GAWD RUN FOR DA FUGGIN' HEELS RUHN FER YOHR LAAAIIIIIVES! material, either, which you're pretending it is. It's not an "I win" button. Hell, the strongest army in the game doesn't even have grav weapons, if I'm not mistaken (pretty sure Eldar doesn't anyway).

I'd probably do better since my unit selection is based on a combination of what models I like then one of everything as a secondary objective.

OP, your question is a rather strange logic exercise.
I know that if the game was truly balanced playing normally should yield a 50% win.
I suppose also since most outcomes are determined by dice if it was balanced, most decisions will still yield a 50% win rate.
If I am a tactical genius compared to my opponents, my wins may shift to the relative skill I have.
If balanced it should not matter what army I have, it would fair relatively the same as my other armies (with an equal win ratio relative to my "genius")..

I must ask, what is the real question you are looking to have answered?
Should it be: Chaos and Orks would be better, and Eldar and Tau worse?

 Talizvar wrote:
OP, your question is a rather strange logic exercise.
I know that if the game was truly balanced playing normally should yield a 50% win.

I'm going to have to agree with Peregrine on this:

I don't think that a truly balanced game would or should necessarily yield a 50% win for every list vs. every other list. I don't think that cultists should be able to win against landraiders, at least, not in terms of killing capacities.

If you have an internally imbalanced list, your win rate should suffer.

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

I'd probably win the exact same number of games. My issue isn't typically my list, it's typically the fact that I suck as a tactician that makes me lose games

 Traditio wrote:
I don't think that a truly balanced game would or should necessarily yield a 50% win. I don't think that cultists should be able to win against landraiders, at least, not in terms of killing capacities.
If you have an internally imbalanced list, your win rate should suffer.
Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Which goes into some of the more "rock-paper-scissors" aspects of the game.
Playing units to their relative strengths (rather than good for everything models with cheap points values).
Which then leads to games like chess (which is less "balanced" and more "equal").
Where the relative skill of the player completely determines the win-rate.

Talizvar wrote:Which goes into some of the more "rock-paper-scissors" aspects of the game.
Playing units to their relative strengths (rather than good for everything models with cheap points values).
Which then leads to games like chess (which is less "balanced" and more "equal").
Where the relative skill of the player completely determines the win-rate.

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

 Traditio wrote:

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

I would get more wins with my 2++ rerollable sceamer star + 6 soul grinders list because the betters armies wouldn't better then my army

 Traditio wrote:

Talizvar wrote:Which goes into some of the more "rock-paper-scissors" aspects of the game.
Playing units to their relative strengths (rather than good for everything models with cheap points values).
Which then leads to games like chess (which is less "balanced" and more "equal").
Where the relative skill of the player completely determines the win-rate.

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

Probably about the same, because they would go from being good vs. Orks and bad vs. Eldar to good vs Rock and bad vs Paper.

I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

My 40k army is Armoured Battlegroup. This means that I already play the rock/paper/scissors meta that Traditio is suggesting. My tanks will wreck an army that is underprepared to fight tanks, and will lose to an army that overloaded on antitank weapons. Rarely do I find armies bring enough antitank to defeat my tanks unless they know they are coming, (I make no secret about it), in which case every single enemy squad has a meltagun, combi-melta, multi-melta, and meltabombs in a melta pod with melta spaceships and melta tanks.

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

I play daemon summoning, but since my opponents are eldar, marines, and tau armies my match up got easier, not harder

In the game of rock paper scissors Necrons, Tau, Eldar, Space marines and chaos demons are a kick to the groin followed by a slap in the face followed by laughter that someone wanted to play a balanced game. Sorry that was much funnier in my head...

Also Daemons are number 3 right now, so most of the list you are fighting are weaker than yours.

I play mostly Mech Guard, so my situation is similar to 1126's. Either they have enough AT to deal with my armor wall or they don't

Something tells me no Special Snowflake means no TWC and no Wulfen. Space Wolves go back to being just Space Marines with Counter Attack and a 6th grade assignment attempt at Viking culture.
That being the case my interest would probably drift away from 40k.

 Grimgold wrote:
In the game of rock paper scissors Necrons, Tau, Eldar, Space marines and chaos demons are a kick to the groin followed by a slap in the face followed by laughter that someone wanted to play a balanced game. Sorry that was much funnier in my head...

Also Daemons are number 3 right now, so most of the list you are fighting are weaker than yours.

Most of the lists i play against are the number 1 and number 2 factions, not only that but my list while powerful isn't 100% WAAC powergaming as i like to throw in funny but not the most efficient units in my faction (like an Exalted Flamer death star and Soul Grinder spam).

So yes I would get more wins

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

I would get more wins with my 2++ rerollable sceamer star + 6 soul grinders list because the betters armies wouldn't better then my army

Usually, anything "star" means that you exploit combinations to get an unfair advantage. And if you're running 6 of something other than a mandatory selection, it's because it's one of the better options in your codex.

So...yeah. The competitiveness of your army would fall if the game were actually balanced, yeah?

 Traditio wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

I would get more wins with my 2++ rerollable sceamer star + 6 soul grinders list because the betters armies wouldn't better then my army

Usually, anything "star" means that you exploit combinations to get an unfair advantage. And if you're running 6 of something other than a mandatory selection, it's because it's one of the better options in your codex.

So...yeah. The competitiveness of your army would fall if the game were actually balanced, yeah?

Actually, you could run 6 of something because you want to reflect a fluffy force.
For example, a Leman Russ tank company will likely include 6 or more Leman Russ tanks, because 6 tanks is only two squadrons, and in the fluff for Imperial Tank Companies, they consist of a Command Tank and 3 full-strength Squadrons when their TO&E is filled.

So no, taking 6 of something doesn't automatically make it one of the better options in your codex.

An Air Defense Company might take 6 Hydras. Are Hydras one of the better options in the Imperial Guard codex?

Ignore this posting.

 Traditio wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Pretty much.

How do you think that your current lists would fare if the game were balanced in that way?

I would get more wins with my 2++ rerollable sceamer star + 6 soul grinders list because the betters armies wouldn't better then my army

Usually, anything "star" means that you exploit combinations to get an unfair advantage. And if you're running 6 of something other than a mandatory selection, it's because it's one of the better options in your codex.

So...yeah. The competitiveness of your army would fall if the game were actually balanced, yeah?

I would agree

Granted I don't have that problem myself. I generally run a good mixture of units though I do spam them but that has more to do with target overload rather then because they are good.

The last game I played I ran a double CAD.

Warboss on Bike with PK and DLS
Painboy on Bike

11 Boyz with Nob/PK in Trukk
11 Boyz with Nob/PK in Trukk

6 Warbikers with Nob/PK
3 Warbikers with Nob/PK

SECOND CAD

Warboss with Eavy armor, Da Finkin Cap and PK
Painboy

18 Boyz with Nob/PK
18 Boyz with Nob/PK

9 Stormboy with Nob/PK
9 Stormboy with Nob/PK
9 Stormboy with Nob/PK

Battlewagon With Ram, 4x Rokkitz
Battlewagon With Ram, 4x Rokkitz

It was a fun game and if the game was balanced I would still run that list. And I doubt anyones going to say I am running Cheesey Orks when im using Stormboyz

The Orks have a versatile army, and if they were point-efficient a TAC Ork list would be frightening. If we make the assumption that the Orks get balanced with point reductions, there would be a lot of them on the field.

Would such an army actually be "balanced?" Grav-less marines might say "no". Against Tau, foot-orks would still trip over themselves getting to the front, so they wouldn't be much better. But if boyz were 4 and battlewaggons 75, heaven help the Tau.

jup my orks would be really scary if they where as point efficient as they used to be in 5th.

My Inq army might just be an outright cheese fest due to all the obscure rules and untits

I play an odd ork walker list that resists most firepower since its all AV 13/13/12 and to get to the rear arc they are normally close enough to assault. It fairs well now and would do better if things were more balanced. Of course I never would have dreamed it up if that were the case. It was made to mess with some eldar players heads since all the S6 shooting in the world wont down 3 gorkanauts, 2 morkanauts, and buzzgobs stompa.

 cranect wrote:
I play an odd ork walker list that resists most firepower since its all AV 13/13/12 and to get to the rear arc they are normally close enough to assault. It fairs well now and would do better if things were more balanced. Of course I never would have dreamed it up if that were the case. It was made to mess with some eldar players heads since all the S6 shooting in the world wont down 3 gorkanauts, 2 morkanauts, and buzzgobs stompa.

LMAO, that is such a terrible list against any other faction

I love it though, it completely removes most of your opponents army from the game

SemperMortis wrote:

 cranect wrote:
I play an odd ork walker list that resists most firepower since its all AV 13/13/12 and to get to the rear arc they are normally close enough to assault. It fairs well now and would do better if things were more balanced. Of course I never would have dreamed it up if that were the case. It was made to mess with some eldar players heads since all the S6 shooting in the world wont down 3 gorkanauts, 2 morkanauts, and buzzgobs stompa.

LMAO, that is such a terrible list against any other faction

I love it though, it completely removes most of your opponents army from the game

Yes, because a list that removes most of your army from the game is totally fun to play against.

#Sarcasm

If the game were as balanced as you seem to be implying with your poll question, Traditio, it wouldn't matter what I bring, so whether or not I run my current army list is a moot point. You seem to be implying that any army list should fare equally well against any other army list. If it were that way, the game would be very bland. Seems to me you want a bland game where the dice do most of the work. Might I recommend you take up Yahtzee or something, since you seem to dislike so much about 40k?

Wanting a game to be balanced is not in and of itself a bad thing, but the kind of balance you seem to want would negate any strategy of list building. I agree that 40k has issues, some of them quite glaring, but what you would propose would take most of the flavor out of it. Sure it'd be more balanced, but where's the fun if you can just take a random assortment of models and win with it instead of actually having to think out what units you should take and what you will do with them? Not to mention that the level of balance you want is probably impossible to achieve.

Seriously, though, if you don't want force composition to matter to winning, you should really take up chess, checkers, Chinese checkers, maybe Stratego, or something of that nature. 40k just ain't your scene.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
If the game were as balanced as you seem to be implying with your poll question, Traditio, it wouldn't matter what I bring, so whether or not I run my current army list is a moot point.

Nowhere in the OP or in this thread did I make that claim.

You seem to be implying that any army list should fare equally well against any other army list.

Nope. Didn't make that claim.

If it were that way, the game would be very bland. Seems to me you want a bland game where the dice do most of the work. Might I recommend you take up Yahtzee or something, since you seem to dislike so much about 40k?

Because if you can't auto-win with your list-build, then it's automatically just a matter of luck, apparently? Because apparently, actual in-game decisions don't and shouldn't matter.

Go figure.

And note how you utterly failed to answer the OP. Congrats on that.

Yeah actually I can see the merit of this poll. The question is "do you think your army is OP?" But veiled; I imagine the premise is that people who play OP armies don't believe their armies are OP, so if their armies were nerfed (or other armies buffed) they would suddenly start losing more games.

Or something.

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

This guy gets it.

This is difficult to answer because the terms for what balance is are not set. Ask 20 people how to best balance 40k and you will get 20 different answers. Having said that, I'll do my best to answer. I voted for "pretty much the same" largely because my gaming group is older and we communicate before games. No one likes lopsided games so we all do are best to accommodate that. Whether it's bring our A-game for someone to practice their tournament list, or having a toned down list because we are in a casual mood. We like our games even and the results not predetermined, re-balancing the game wouldn't change this.

 Traditio wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

This guy gets it.

The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

CrownAxe wrote:The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

That's not necessarily true. If your army list is internally unbalanced, then you'd actually be at a disadvantage if the game were actually balanced.

And even so:

Are you that much better than your regular opponents? What about random other people who aren't you regular opponents?

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

This guy gets it.

The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

^^
This. So much this. Although luck would also be a factor (more perhaps than in current 40k).

A better question would be "If the game was more balanced what models would you run? Instead of having to run the powerful units." If the game was completely balanced (impossible) winning would come down to who went first or who rolled dice better.

Plus if the only reason you play is to win games then this hobby has a very narrow scope for you to enjoy it.

ZergSmasher wrote:This. So much this. Although luck would also be a factor (more perhaps than in current 40k).

Did Age of Sigmar have that effect on fantasy?

 Traditio wrote:

CrownAxe wrote:The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

That's not necessarily true. If your army list is internally unbalanced, then you'd actually be at a disadvantage if the game were actually balanced.

And even so:

Are you that much better than your regular opponents? What about random other people who aren't you regular opponents?

Since my regular opponents are some of the top players in 40k, yes i'm pretty sure i'll do fine against random people

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

This guy gets it.

The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

How about this, You can be grey knights and I'll run a gladius with skyhammer, surely your superior skill would mulch me right? Seriously, it's like arguing that all of your racing wins are skill when you have a F1 car and your opponents have to drive a prius. yes, yes, skill matters, but at high levels of skill, list matters more, which is what ITC consistently shows.

 TheWizard wrote:
A better question would be "If the game was more balanced what models would you run? Instead of having to run the powerful units." If the game was completely balanced (impossible) winning would come down to who went first.

Plus if the only reason you play is to win games then this hobby has a very narrow scope for you to enjoy it.

I think you just won the thread, especially with the last sentence.

Part of why my answer disappointed the OP was because I didn't understand the question properly (to be honest I still don't think I do ). Maybe I'm just tired or something. Nearly all of the alternative questions put forth by other posters have made a lot more sense and would have worked better as the poll question.

 Grimgold wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

This guy gets it.

The army you are playing isn't the only factor in determining a winner. If I'm a better player then my opponent, i should still win my games against that opponent even if the the lists were suddenly balanced against each other

How about this, You can be grey knights and I'll run a gladius with skyhammer, surely your superior skill would mulch me right? Seriously, it's like arguing that all of your racing wins are skill when you have a F1 car and your opponents have to drive a prius. yes, yes, skill matters, but at high levels of skill, list matters more, which is what ITC consistently shows.

Except the hypothetical question we are discussing is assuming that 40k is a balanced game so GK vs Gladius+Skyhammer would be a fair match and then it would primarily come down to player skill which is what I'm talking about. Please pay attention to the conversation before butting in.

 Traditio wrote:

ZergSmasher wrote:This. So much this. Although luck would also be a factor (more perhaps than in current 40k).

Did Age of Sigmar have that effect on fantasy?

You can't really compare AoS to WHFB. They are two different games that happen to use some of the same models. And yes, I suspect from what I've read about the AoS rules, luck is perhaps even more of a factor in AoS than WHFB. Don't quote me on that; I haven't read many batreps of AoS to confirm it. I might be wrong.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 TheWizard wrote:
A better question would be "If the game was more balanced what models would you run? Instead of having to run the powerful units." If the game was completely balanced (impossible) winning would come down to who went first.

Plus if the only reason you play is to win games then this hobby has a very narrow scope for you to enjoy it.

I think you just won the thread, especially with the last sentence.

Part of why my answer disappointed the OP was because I didn't understand the question properly (to be honest I still don't think I do ). Maybe I'm just tired or something. Nearly all of the alternative questions put forth by other posters have made a lot more sense and would have worked better as the poll question.

My question is very simple:

Suppose that the game were actually balanced. What do I mean by "balanced"? That you couldn't point to a unit or option in your codex, or a set of units or options in your codex, and say: "Clearly, THIS is the one to use." What if every unit and every option in every single codex were actually playable and actually had a viable in-game use?

What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

Would you, you personally, with the army lists that YOU currently use....would you win more games? Lose more games? Or win about the same number of games?

 Traditio wrote:
My question is very simple:

Suppose that the game were actually balanced. What do I mean by "balanced"? That you couldn't point to a unit or option in your codex, or a set of units or options in your codex, and say: "Clearly, THIS is the one to use." What if every unit and every option in every single codex were actually playable and actually had a viable in-game use?

What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

Would you, you personally, with the army lists that YOU currently use....would you win more games? Lose more games? Or win about the same number of games?

Much better!
And I'd have to say now that I understand it (too bad I already voted), that I *might* win fewer games, although I win few enough as it is. I've never been a spammy player, but I do love my Ravenwing and often take 60-70% bikes in my DA lists. Even my Tau lists don't spam a lot of the OP units (I only own one each of Riptide, Ghostkeel and Stormsurge), so really it probably wouldn't change much. Same story with my KhorneKin.

CrownAxe wrote:Since my regular opponents are some of the top players in 40k, yes i'm pretty sure i'll do fine against random people

Either you exclusively play at grand tournaments, or else, someone has a very high opinion of himself and his gaming group.

I'm saying your list is a huge factor in the number of games you win, depending on the skill of your opponents it could be the deciding factor.

Your list is OP, the question is would you win less if it were balanced, so it's basically asking if your list was nerfed to ork levels would you win less, and literally the only intellectually honest answer is yes. I just don't get you skill is the only factor people, not only do you have to ignore huge piles of data to the contrary, you have to assume you are several st devs out of the normal range to support your win loss ratio.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given what a well known phenomenon Illusory superiority is.

If the game was perfectly balanced, I wouldn't have quit playing at the drop of 6th edition. So definitely more games.

 Fafnir wrote:
If the game was perfectly balanced, I wouldn't have quit playing at the drop of 6th edition. So definitely more games.

What army did you play before you stopped playing? What motivated you in particular to stop playing?

I'd probably win about the same number of games, maybe a few more. But both the wins and losses would be more competitive and interactive, not just inevitable consequences of whose balance exploits are better.

 Grimgold wrote:
I'm saying your list is a huge factor in the number of games you win, depending on the skill of your opponents it could be the deciding factor.

Your list is OP, the question is would you win less if it were balanced, so it's basically asking if your list was nerfed to ork levels would you win less, and literally the only intellectually honest answer is yes. I just don't get you skill is the only factor people, not only do you have to ignore huge piles of data to the contrary, you have to assume you are several st devs out of the normal range to support your win loss ratio.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given what a well known phenomenon Illusory superiority is.

And somehow, only 1 person (you) voted that he or she would win fewer games.

Amazing, isn't it?

 Traditio wrote:
And somehow, only 1 person (you) voted that he or she would win fewer games.

Amazing, isn't it?

You're neglecting the "who are you playing" factor. You can play only the best lists in a completely unbalanced game and still have only a 50/50 win rate if you're only playing against equally powerful lists (for example, at tournaments and practicing for tournaments). If the game is suddenly balanced you'd still win at the same 50/50 rate because your opponents all have the same power level changes to their own lists. The only people who would experience a significant drop in win rate are the ones who spend a lot of games clubbing baby seals by playing optimized competitive lists against weak opponents.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
And somehow, only 1 person (you) voted that he or she would win fewer games.

Amazing, isn't it?

You're neglecting the "who are you playing" factor. You can play only the best lists in a completely unbalanced game and still have only a 50/50 win rate if you're only playing against equally powerful lists (for example, at tournaments and practicing for tournaments). If the game is suddenly balanced you'd still win at the same 50/50 rate because your opponents all have the same power level changes to their own lists. The only people who would experience a significant drop in win rate are the ones who spend a lot of games clubbing baby seals by playing optimized competitive lists against weak opponents.

I'm not sure that I agree with this in all cases. In a balanced game, a necron decurion or a space marine battle company, even without all of the special rules or OP wargear, should regularly stomp a flyrant spam list. Why? Because necron decurions and SM battle companies are internally balanced, but flyrant lists aren't. Ditto for warp spider spam.

 Traditio wrote:
I'm not sure that I agree with this in all cases. In a balanced game, a necron decurion or a space marine battle company, even without all of the special rules or OP wargear, should regularly stomp a flyrant spam list. Why? Because necron decurions and SM battle companies are internally balanced, but flyrant lists aren't. Ditto for warp spider spam.

Why are you assuming that "balance" and "spam" are mutually exclusive concepts?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And, in any case, you missed the point. It's not about specific lists, it's about why even competitive players might report "no change". If I play nothing but decurion necrons against battle companies, with both armies exploiting every overpowered balance mistake, I might only have a 50/50 win rate. Then in a balanced game I still have a 50/50 win rate. And in your hypothetical "punish spam" version of the game I might actually win more games, because the FMC spam guy I play against now loses all of his games until he builds a new army. So the fact that few people have reported that they would win fewer games doesn't mean they're lying about the strength of their lists, it could simply mean that they're playing against people with similarly powerful lists.

 Traditio wrote:

CrownAxe wrote:Since my regular opponents are some of the top players in 40k, yes i'm pretty sure i'll do fine against random people

Either you exclusively play at grand tournaments, or else, someone has a very high opinion of himself and his gaming group.

You know the top tournament players can play games of 40k outside of GTs right?

 Grimgold wrote:
I'm saying your list is a huge factor in the number of games you win, depending on the skill of your opponents it could be the deciding factor.

Your list is OP, the question is would you win less if it were balanced, so it's basically asking if your list was nerfed to ork levels would you win less, and literally the only intellectually honest answer is yes. I just don't get you skill is the only factor people, not only do you have to ignore huge piles of data to the contrary, you have to assume you are several st devs out of the normal range to support your win loss ratio.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given what a well known phenomenon Illusory superiority is.

Are you dense? The hypothetical situation is "If 40k were balanced". In this situation we assume all armies have a fair chance of beating each other.

Your "huge piles of data to the contrary" doesn't matter because WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING ACTUAL 40K. Since we are assuming that 40k is balanced then that would mean that the armies we play are balanced and would have an equal chance of beating each other as a result. Thus we remove army building as a factor of winning a game

That only leaves luck and skill as factors in winning a game. But since this is hypothetical we have to assume that luck averages out to be equal for both players so is also removed as a factor.

Which leaves only SKILL. In the HYPOTHETICAL QUESITON OF IF 40K IS BALANCED the only factor that can contribute to victory outcome is skill.

Peregrine wrote:Why are you assuming that "balance" and "spam" are mutually exclusive concepts?

I'm not. I'm saying that flyrant spam or warpspider spam in particular are internally imbalanced. If the game were balanced, then flyrant spam would have a determinate set of strengths and exploitable weaknesses, and, since that kind of spam list doesn't have complementary units to compensate for those exploitable weaknesses, then any internally balanced army (read, any army that actually uses several different FOC slots) should be able to stomp it into the ground.

And, in any case, you missed the point. It's not about specific lists, it's about why even competitive players might report "no change". If I play nothing but decurion necrons against battle companies, with both armies exploiting every overpowered balance mistake, I might only have a 50/50 win rate. Then in a balanced game I still have a 50/50 win rate. And in your hypothetical "punish spam" version of the game I might actually win more games, because the FMC spam guy I play against now loses all of his games until he builds a new army. So the fact that few people have reported that they would win fewer games doesn't mean they're lying about the strength of their lists, it could simply mean that they're playing against people with similarly powerful lists.

That is a possibility.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Peregrine, addendum:

Basically, and I know that this is oversimplified, but it makes the point:

If you only have cavalry, and I have cavalry, archers and pikemen...

...let's just say that I know how I'm deploying. Every. Single. Time.

 Traditio wrote:

"Good" is a relative term. My OP presupposes in advance that the current "good" lists would no longer be the exclusive good lists (or even good lists at all) if the game were actually balanced.

How can it no longer be good if the game is balanced and everything's good. You ain't fielding good nothing, right?

 Traditio wrote:
I'm not. I'm saying that flyrant spam or warpspider spam in particular are internally imbalanced. If the game were balanced, then flyrant spam would have a determinate set of strengths and exploitable weaknesses, and, since that kind of spam list doesn't have complementary units to compensate for those exploitable weaknesses, then any internally balanced army (read, any army that actually uses several different FOC slots) should be able to stomp it into the ground.

That's not how balance works. Balance means that all options are equally viable, not that TAC lists are the best or that armies should have a certain amount of diversity in unit choices. For example, in a balanced game a flyrant spam army might lose badly to certain lists that exploit its weaknesses, but win enough against other lists to get a 50/50 win rate. In fact, there would be a lack of balance if it didn't win enough to get a 50/50 win rate, since the flyrant spam army would be severely underpowered.

What you're actually describing here is the use of deliberate imbalance to favor a particular kind of army (TAC lists with diverse unit choices) that you personally prefer. There's an argument that this is a good game design choice to make, but that question is entirely separate from improving balance.

If you only have cavalry, and I have cavalry, archers and pikemen...

...let's just say that I know how I'm deploying. Every. Single. Time.

Great. If you play footslogging tactical squads with no grav guns and I have MC-spam Tau I know how I'm deploying. Every. Single. Time. The fact that you know how to win when you have a decisive advantage in list strength does not have anything to do with this topic.

 Traditio wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
If the game was perfectly balanced, I wouldn't have quit playing at the drop of 6th edition. So definitely more games.

What army did you play before you stopped playing? What motivated you in particular to stop playing?

Daemonhunters (later Grey Knights), and then later a bit of Orkz and IG, with a small truescale marine project on the side.

6th edition's shoddy ruleset (random =/= fun), combined with growing army power creep and fluff expansions on the level of bad fan fiction helped to push me away. The push towards bigger and bigger centrepiece models also made it harder to competitively field and build armies around the models I did like, and ruined the sense of intimacy with each individual model on the tabletop (I dislike seeing most of my models as glorified wound counters). Grey Knights requiring Purifier spam and Dreadknights to play at top levels really turned me off from my first and favourite army, as PAGK shouldn't be a thing and the Dreadknight is a hideous abomination that goes against everything that made the Grey Knights interesting on a conceptual level. Paladin and Terminator strike forces were right up my alley, but left crippled and weak by poor mobility and extremely limited target saturation, making them very poor choices against an experienced opponent.

I loved allies from the old Inquisitional codex (really, everything about the old 3e Inquisition codecies except for how they performed on the tabletop come 5th was great), and while I like the concept of allies in 40k in general, it's poorly executed and encourages simply more models and exploitative combinations (see: balance) on the table over creating diverse forces with unique playstyles. This goes doubly with the consideration of the overwhelming amount of Imperial armies in comparison to everything else, and allied support to go with it.

The biggest thing that really killed the game for me was the increasing reliance on random elements, which removed more and more agency from my hands as the player. Ultimately, I felt like I was less and less involved with my wins and my losses with each successive game come 6th edition, and I have no interest in playing a game where I'm barely a participant. Also, the rules are ridiculously convoluted in spite of this lack of real player involvement, which makes absolutely no sense.

Now, my recent return hasn't come in the wake of any of these issues being fixed. It all continues to persist, in some cases having gotten worse. More to do with an itch to paint and an interest in a now more widely popular Killteam (which goes right back to that sense of intimacy I mentioned earlier).

For now, I can only hope that the new edition coming will learn (unlikely as it may be) from AoS, its failures and its successes, and shake things up in a big and constructive way. I wouldn't be averse to a 3e/AoS style reboot, but they'd have to get it right. The current system has grown far too rotten and bloated to continue to exist as a foundation. They need to have a clear vision for what they want to develop towards, and the polish to convey that vision in an easily digestible manner. If they want allied forces and formations, the game needs to be balanced with that in mind. Armies absolutely must be developed with their peers in mind. And not in the sense of one-upsmanship, but rather coexistence and actual competition. They need to reduce the ineffectual decisions and excessive dice rolling, and replace them with a smaller concentration of choices that matter.

Moreover, the constant push to release more and more factions and subfactions and faction expansions is pushing the method of delivery itself far too thin. If they insist on having so many forces to keep track of, this delivery system has to change. Lugging around three to six (!) $50 hardcover books for each army isn't just ridiculously prohibitively expensive, it's cumbersome and slows things down to a ridiculous degree, and makes knowing the enemy nigh on impossible (not to mention the potential for cheating!). Go digital, go free. The rules exist to sell models by GW's own admission, so stop using them as a paywall, and turn them into the marketing you say you want them to be. If I can see what my opponent's army can do, and I can see them actually having fun using it, as opposed to being mercilessly crushed by my own thanks to its horrible inadequacies, I'm more inclined to develop my own interest in their faction. There's no need for codex creep to push models, it's cannibalistic towards the long-term fanbase, and unnecessary to the new players who'll just buy Space Marines anyway.

I'd probably just get the most insane mishmash of models that are not supposed to clash well together and still win 50% of my games cause everything's balanced. Something like an unbound army of grots, ratlings and nurglings and go to town on all those superheavies and superfriends.

 Traditio wrote:
Suppose for a moment that every codex entry and every upgrade were actually playable/usable, and spamming the most OP stuff from your codex were no longer a good way to win the game, because OP stuff simply ceased to exist.

Suppose that every codex entry had a time and a place, and your best bet at winning was using a strategic blend of different things.

Spoken differently: suppose the game were balanced in such a way that an army composed of tactical marines (without grav), devastator marines (without grav), assault marines, rhinos, predators, vindicators, landraiders, terminators, etc...were actually capable of winning competitive games, even without a ton of free stuff and snowflake special rules.

If you kept using your current army, how do you think that your current army lists would fare competitively?

Edit:

Alternative phrasing of the OP question:

"My question is very simple:

Suppose that the game were actually balanced. What do I mean by "balanced"? That you couldn't point to a unit or option in your codex, or a set of units or options in your codex, and say: "Clearly, THIS is the one to use." What if every unit and every option in every single codex were actually playable and actually had a viable in-game use?

What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

Would you, you personally, with the army lists that YOU currently use....would you win more games? Lose more games? Or win about the same number of games?"

In the situation you are describing lists become irrelevant, in this situation what you bring is meaningless, I personally would start using bottlecaps instead of minis. Players who are better than you would still win players who are worse than you would still lose and close matches would be determined entirely by dice. The tournament meta becomes spamming the cheapest unit in $ and bragging about how cost effective your army is.

"Balance" (however you define it) is only one part of the equation. Skill counts. Luck counts. Terrain counts. Mood and fatigue count. Mistakes count. Army selection and suitability counts: an antitank gun is not going to be as effective against massed infantry: doesn't mean it's unbalanced. You get my drift....

Two examples. My grots wiped out his terminators. But that's not the whole picture. The whole picture is that it took all the shooting of 2 grot squads to take down the last terminator, after they'd been bombed, zapped, and dakka'd by 4 mobz. But the grots still got the last kill. In my mind, that's balanced. Terminators are SUPPOSED to be hard to kill, but, shoot them enough, and they'll go down. Of course, the risk is that the rest of the army gets off scot free that round... you calculate the risk, and apply your tactics.

Second example: My ork list will table my Eldar opponent. Every. Single. Time. I have 5 flyers. He has no anti air. We played that game once (with 3 flyers) at his request to see what air was like. It was no fun. We won't play that combination again. The only was he could have won would have been to roll 6s for every snap shot, and he simply didn't have enough dakka for that.

Happy gaming!

The main idea of 'balance' is that each army should have the basic tools necessary to beat whatever any other army might throw at them. Now, that doesn't mean that some armies will respond in the same way to each kind of threat, nor does it mean that each army will have the same amount of ease/difficulty responding to those threats. Only that any competently built list should, when played appropriately, have the tools to at least take any situation on. Moreover, that there should be more than a single given approach to list building for each codex, so that every unit gets a chance to shine at something (at the very least, each available troop choice should be something you can develop an army around thematically). One army might excel at something that another has comparatively poor responses to, but so long as a viable response actually exists, some disparity in matchups is acceptable and inevitable.

The problem with 40k's lack of balance comes from two primary places:

1. Some armies have options that are just straight up universally better than others. Really simple concept here. The power creep has gotten out of control, and a lot of armies just lack the power and efficiency to keep up with what the top dogs can throw their way. This problem needs to be addressed by confronting the constant brinksmanship that is pushed with nearly every new codex release.

2. The breadth of unit types and options has grown ever wider, and it simply has become too much. There are far too many niches that need to be adapted to and countered for all but the most degenerate of armies to handle. We have light infantry, heavy infantry, light vehicles, heavy vehicles, flyers, titans, monstrous creatures, beatstick characters, psykers, and a whole list of augments and unit types in between that all can require very different methods of disposal. With all that in mind, building a take-all-corners list can be a daunting task, especially for weaker armies that don't come with excessive brute force and clearly weren't designed with that consideration in the first place. 40k has to become smaller. Send flyers and titans back to Apocalypse, where they belong. Make psykers less oppressive, and more of an accent and nuance to an army, rather than a game dominating force of nature. The less roles we have to balance the game around, the easier it becomes to balance.

This poll is as vague as the last one you posted.

If all the armies were balanced then in theory everyone would win the same amount of games. That won't happen because playing a game is more than just balance, it's rolling for mission, deployment, rolling for reserves, failing charges, guessing what your opponents going to do, a million over decisions that will effect the game.

 Melissia wrote:
They won't slaughter a legion of Orks before the Orks get stuck in combat, nor will they slaughter a hefty platoon of guardsmen before they can erase the marine squad in question, to give just two examples. I never said grav wasn't really damn good, but it's not OH MY FUGGING GAWD RUN FOR DA FUGGIN' HEELS RUHN FER YOHR LAAAIIIIIVES! material, either, which you're pretending it is. It's not an "I win" button. Hell, the strongest army in the game doesn't even have grav weapons, if I'm not mistaken (pretty sure Eldar doesn't anyway).

Ehm... Marines and Eldar are actually pretty tied for the title of strongest contender, and Eldar have D-weapons in abundance (which something that should be balanced, I just don't feel clean anymore after fielding wraithguard).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

I play eldar, but that doesn't mean I min max. While not downright bad, the other choices are not gamebreakingly strong. Eldar have always been a mono-build army for winning purposes. If you don't do scat/warp/knight spam you really aren't OP. Strong and good, but nowhere close to OP.

 Rolsheen wrote:
This poll is as vague as the last one you posted.

If all the armies were balanced then in theory everyone would win the same amount of games. That won't happen because playing a game is more than just balance, it's rolling for mission, deployment, rolling for reserves, failing charges, guessing what your opponents going to do, a million over decisions that will effect the game.

Skill?

It's pretty significant. Can take the most broken internet wisdom list and still lose to a bunch of grots that outscored you.

I might offer an alternate route of thought in order to answer Traditio's original question that boils down to two points:

(1) If your army relies on the 'abuse' of game mechanics such as powerful (that are often also considered OP) Command Benefits of Formations, then a balanced 40K game system will at least noticeably reduce the effectiveness of your army as a general rule. Similarly, a severely underpowered army list will generally become better. I say this using the broadest strokes possible since being much more specific will mean little since we currently don't know what a balance 40k game system looks like.

(2) As for my current lists specifically (or any other people's current lists for that matter), it is nearly impossible to say since, as aforementioned, we have no idea what a balanced 40k game system looks like.

I'm not claiming that there's a causal relationship...but it is nonetheless worth noting:

Has anyone noticed that the percentages, so far, between "I should be winning more games if this stupid game were balanced" and "I'd win about the same number of games (sure you would, buddy, keep on believing that)" is basically the same as the percentage between people who are and are not basically satisfied with the game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:In the situation you are describing lists become irrelevant, in this situation what you bring is meaningless, I personally would start using bottlecaps instead of minis. Players who are better than you would still win players who are worse than you would still lose and close matches would be determined entirely by dice. The tournament meta becomes spamming the cheapest unit in $ and bragging about how cost effective your army is.

IoW:

"I like pay-to-win. I have an expensive army and feel like I should have an advantage because I purchased the DLC."

 Traditio wrote:
IoW:

"I like pay-to-win. I have an expensive army and feel like I should have an advantage because I purchased the DLC."

No, that's not what they said at all. If all lists are equally likely to win (because perfect balance) and the only difference is how much the models cost then the only strategy in list-building is to put the cheapest possible combination of models on the table. This has nothing to do with the current state of the game, where it isn't at all "pay to win" and it's very easy to build an army that costs a lot of money but loses every game against more competitive lists.

This is a bizarre poll indeed. It's vague to the point of uselessness. Have another useless data point in your data set.

Assuming "perfect balance" (whatever that actually means) and a large enough sample of games that luck is not a factor there is only one correct answer:

My win rate would be determined by my skill (both at playing and list building since we're still allowing enough freedom to take bad armies in this perfectly balanced utopia) relative to my opponents' skill. Since the OP has no way of knowing the skill level of the respondents relative to their opponents you can't really draw any conclusions from the poll.

That's a massively subjective question, OP.

If the game is perfectly balanced, it all comes down to player skill, yes?

Let's look at X-Wing, a game often lauded for good balance (despite issues you have to pay to fix. Like the A-Wing and TIE Advanced...). An experienced player will usually beat an inexperienced player. But, the flaw here is that when I took it up as a Johnny Come-Lately in Wave 4, my opponents we so good at the game, I learned nothing from my losses. I honestly couldn't say what I did wrong, or what my opponent did right. They were just all over me. So it's a balanced game (for the most part....and if your opponent is a bit difficult, victory can also go to he with the deepest pockets), but that doesn't mean I walk into any game with so much as the glimmer of a chance of winning.

Another poll brought to us by the prophet of the last and only edition (5th).

His Bland Spam is morally superior to every other kind.

He is the Amish of 40k players.

The poll is meaningless unless you are Traditio in which case you twist the results to indicate that the majority of players do not want Grav, deamons SHV SHW giant stompy robots, Gladius, Bikes, Super Suits, Psykers in normal games of 40K.

Anyone not voting his way is either WAAC or trolling.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IllumiNini wrote:
I might offer an alternate route of thought in order to answer Traditio's original question that boils down to two points:

(1) If your army relies on the 'abuse' of game mechanics such as powerful (that are often also considered OP) Command Benefits of Formations, then a balanced 40K game system will at least noticeably reduce the effectiveness of your army as a general rule. Similarly, a severely underpowered army list will generally become better. I say this using the broadest strokes possible since being much more specific will mean little since we currently don't know what a balance 40k game system looks like.

(2) As for my current lists specifically (or any other people's current lists for that matter), it is nearly impossible to say since, as aforementioned, we have no idea what a balanced 40k game system looks like.

I would broadly agree. We have no idea what a balanced rule set looks like.

I'd for sure win more since both army I use are not very good in the current meta and I have a lot of variety of models I like to use eich generally put me at a disadvantage eince I'm not spamming that 1 unit that id good in my codex.

Defs would win more games. And also using cheesy units make people braindead with tactics. Why bother being tactical when you clearly know your deathstar is going to stomp a lower tier codex anyways.

IllumiNini sums it up pretty well, indeed. Armies that are -at the moment- considered 'mediocre' or 'bad' would become more viable, whilst the 'top' lists would become less effective.

Not sure what the point of the poll is, though.

 Traditio wrote:
I'm not claiming that there's a causal relationship...but it is nonetheless worth noting:

Has anyone noticed that the percentages, so far, between "I should be winning more games if this stupid game were balanced" and "I'd win about the same number of games (sure you would, buddy, keep on believing that)" is basically the same as the percentage between people who are and are not basically satisfied with the game?

What does this even mean? Are you trying to say that people who are satisfied with the game are the same as those who claim they'd win more/the same amount of games? Because there's absolutely no reason to think that that is the case.

It also depends entirely on the mission and it's objectives.

AoS has much better balance so far. Yes, it's imperfect, but the battle plans and how you win mean it's less about what you've taken than how you use it.

I voted that I'd win more games. Only because I think I've not won more that 3 or 4 in the last two years. Half of them have been close to tie games the other half lost by a third or more in points, the worse losses coming from the TAU. The closest games against Space Wolves, Raven Guard legion and White Scars.
One thing I focus on for building my lists is points allocation.
I try to get the most out of every unit for the least amount of points. Which isn't that hard to do with codex Orks.

I have a 50% win ratio with my CSM against Tau, Necrons and Space Wolves. However, in my gaming group we are talking about the game before playing, not comparing lists but restricting things. Decurion against pre-Traitor Legions CSM? Bad idea. Against Tau? No problem. And I'm pretty sure we would do the same afterwards. Would de cool if it wasn't necessary though, Lotr works without it. Shows that GW CAN balance a game.

I think the issue comes from 'blind gaming' - when you're either off to a new venue, or going to an organised event where there's no organiser's restrictions. That's when you risk coming up against 'no-fun' armies.

Which is fair enough really - we all have finite spare time, and of that only some can really be spent playing games (adulting is usually lots of dull). Few fancy games where it's clear they stand no chance (TFG, combined with a Wraithknight/Imperial Knight Allied Army Of Cheese for instance).

But I do as always encourage people to find or found clubs. Then you can get collaborative gaming going on - where games can be pre-arranged and restrictions/challenges agreed in advance to everyone's mutual enjoyment.

I had a fun game yesterday but realized balance is affected in my opinion for TWO reasons alone

Hands down the most important is AP VALUE of weapons

In my opinion Strength and Toughness values Work - but AP values do not !!! (or are inadequately balanced)

I will explain what happened in our game, between my friend who plays Dark Angels (I am playing KDK)

We both generally field fairly 'fluff' casual lists. But I am not a stranger to the concept of power gaming and meta, it just isn't what I go for and what models I have in my collection right now. I will talk a bit about super lists at the end of the post.

I understand that 'dice rolls' can throw games completely one way or another, and in part that is what happened - but a few of these points Do Not Require dice rolls and that is exactly how AP is affecting game balance.

Three incidents in the game stand out. One, he drop pods a squad of 10 marines behind my berserker squad. His special weapons all miss (fair) but he does get tons of rapid fire bolter hits. However, almost all of them were saved (3+ is pretty tough, it is hard for marines to kill marines, and these were lucky save rolls). I think the only berserker to fall was the champion with a power axe, maybe 1 more. Next turn my guys turn and fire their pistols and charge. Bolt pistols killed I think 3 marines to low saves (fair and good, bad luck with dice, seems accurate for power of the weapon). One of my plasma pistols killed itself. Rolling a ridiculous number of dice, I get somewhere near 20 hits, and with furious charge, about 15 wounds. However, he rolls great saves as well and only 1 or 2 marines die. So after this round of combat where his marines rapid fired into mine with little to no casualties, and my berserkers charged into his, there are almost no losses on both sides in the first round. After 3 more rounds of combat my squad has still failed to entirely wipe his, and with ATSKNF, they cannot be sweeping advanced. While this is a result of save rolls, over the course of many games I've found it to be a consistent pattern. The only time I wiped a squad with them was when they sweeping advanced necrons.


Second instance. He deep strikes a squad of terminators behind my CSM and cultist squad. Rapid fire with storm bolters and an assault cannon. Out of something like 20 hits, his wounds don't roll great and I think I have about 5 wounds (fair, I guess, but not compared to other armies elites). However, I save all but 2 of them, My squad turns and a flamer kills 2 terminators on rolled ones, charge and after 1 turn (2 rounds) manages to kill on a mix of massed numbers and powerfist/support from helbrute.

Point three. I fielded Bloodcrushers for the first time in this game. Of course, their AP3 is great against marines. 2 crushers got a charge on a squad of 4 bikes and an attack bike. Their Strength 6 (had furious charge boon, and base 5 str) AP3 WS5 attacks managed to wipe the entire squad. Return attacks and some extra gunfire killed this squad, but my other squad of 3 charged a separate squads of marines, including a psyker. It wiped the marines in One single turn and suffered something like a total of 1 wound.

Some of these were combinations of good and bad rolls but to me, AP values stood out as needing rebalance, and I've sort of noticed this facing super strong armies like decurion. They are able to field super tough units that are hard to kill without massed AP and have a lot of great strength, low AP weapons themselves.

Some things did go well, his commander and SM unit shredded a squad of cultists and possessed and his predator destroyed another helbrute, wiping out my left flank attack. Both of these interactions seemed to play about how they should.


To me, and I am still fairly new to the current rules, it seems some units are extremely powerful or hard counters to certain units and these units should be fielded en masse and other units are generally situational or left behind. What is the point in taking berserkers if they are so weak they struggle to kill marines and they move slowly. Please dont reply 'yes they can counter this and this especially when the enemy isn't fearless' I do know, but still they are vastly under performing.


The answer I think is that 40k needs to switch to AOS rules. Bring back the Original khornate chainaxe, but spread it around. A combination of Rend and Special rules like Gauss would fix AP. Plain and simple. Bolters dont have gauss so they get -1 rend whereas necron guns dont. This can also help tame some of the super OP, unbalanced units. I think some of the 'standard' units like bolters and storm bolters, standard cqc, need to kill things more quickly, and some high end things need to kill a bit less quickly.

Finally deployment. We were supposed to field one army, then another, but we both decided to field 'AoS' rules style where we do one unit at a time.

This is Extremely more enjoyable and makes the game Much better in my opinion. My opponent had a defeat that day because of dice rolls including some reserves who didn't make it in time (and blood crushers being a bit OP perhaps against his units), but our deployments were balanced. It was extremely tactical for us to put out one unit at a time, trying to think ahead about what friendlys we will group together and what threats we could face across the board. Fielding one army then another may be fair with who gets the first turn but in my opinion leaves it too open to simply hard countering deployment, and with movement ranges fairly low on most units, when it's time to play the game there is hardly any tactical relocation possible. Deploying one at a time allows tactics. I don't even want to get into the ethical debate of death stars if an opponent doesn't bring sufficient pie plate counter or heldrakes and things.

Firstly I'll say I voted roughly the same number of wins if the game was "balanced".

That being said I would add that it is actually quite hard to say as my list tends to change every week (and I play at least twice a week) based on what I've painted up in the previous week and also on what I feel would be fun.

From reading down the comments it seems that there's some disagreement about OP Codex's and how that impacts upon people win loss ratio.

Yes I play marines but saying that my codex includes very obviously OP formations doesn't mean that I use them. On the contrary, I own zero grav weapons, zero Centurions (because finding ancient suits more powerfull than TDA doesn't make sense in the lore), play assault marines instead of bikes (as I prefer their aesthetic), and don't really spam anything. One of the things I really love are Land Raiders and being one of the major overcosted and under powered units in the codex doesn't stop me playing them,

With what I aim to make being fluffy lists I still win probably 75% of my games and I'm currently on a 9 game win streak. All this in a meta where my opponents range from Chaos cultist spam to Deamons to Tau Riptide wing to multiple Eldar Aspect Host to Ork Walker lists to infantry heavy and armour heavy guard.

The way I look at it my games often come down to making the best tactical decisions with the units I have. I look at my opponents army and try and anticipate their strategy throughout the game and limit their options mainly through positioning with mutually supportive units laying traps and threatening heavy counter punches if the enemy tries to eliminate a threat I have created.

If Codex's became balanced (a notion that can mean drasically different things to different people) I would probably stand a better chance against scatbike spam and Skyhammer lists and so win more of those games and make closer contests of those against lower tier armies. Even so I have come to a position where I feel like i know all the units at my disposal and most importantly their abilities very intimately where as my meta is full of players building 3 or 4 armies at once and never really getting a long enough run with one to get any consistency and this, IMO, gives me huge advantage.

In the last 3/4 games I have played against what would be referred to as "cheese" lists I have actually won. I may not have had a lot left after being near wiped out by turn 5. If the codex balance was changed to create more of a level playing field though my marines would still struggle against the lists they currently can't handle (ie. the Kill Kan/Deff Dread swarm our resident Ork player is running).

I think too much emphasis is put on Codex power rather than list building in this context. Just because there is an obvious choice in what units to take based on power that doesn't mean that I will take that unit. I often don't. I prefer to build a TAC list to suit my meta to try and challenge myself without being auto win but givng myself the tools to do the job.

If it all came down to Codex/Formation power I wouldn't be unbeaten with my Sisters...

 Traditio wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

 cranect wrote:
I play an odd ork walker list that resists most firepower since its all AV 13/13/12 and to get to the rear arc they are normally close enough to assault. It fairs well now and would do better if things were more balanced. Of course I never would have dreamed it up if that were the case. It was made to mess with some eldar players heads since all the S6 shooting in the world wont down 3 gorkanauts, 2 morkanauts, and buzzgobs stompa.

LMAO, that is such a terrible list against any other faction

I love it though, it completely removes most of your opponents army from the game

Yes, because a list that removes most of your army from the game is totally fun to play against.

#Sarcasm

Taking units that are noted as being bad in a codex that is weak, but against an opponent who tries to list tailor, EG Bringing tons of scatter lasers against horde/light armor orks is hilarious.

IM sorry you don't see the joy in bringing an Ork list that utterly negates half if not more of an Eldar cheese list

To be clear, I don't believe there is a way to perfectly balance the game. Something in the ballpark, like horseshoes, accounting for qualitative easing is what I think we are talking about.

I play CSMs. My local meta mostly consists of people buying armies based on lists from NOVA, and with old-school nerds with math degrees who make most decisions based on probability.

That said, I win more games than I lose. Most of my lists are tailored to specific armies / opponents, and I know how to make even the worst overmatch a challenge.

Were the game balanced, I could probably get by with one or two army lists, instead of the 30+ I currently carry in a binder. I could probably leave a box or two of models at home instead of dragging them into the FLGS on a cart. I would certainly stop having to think about tactics a week in advance and maybe not be focused on schedules for my hobby time so much.

But I would definitely win more.

OTOH, near-perfect balance would reduce most models to nearly the same points costs, and most mechanics to simple probability. I doubt there would be a statistically relevant odds difference between playing a complete game and flipping a coin.

So other people would win more too. It might lead me to simply flipping coins.

I would win more, but probably just because I play tyranids... why are tyranids so bad ;-;

And as I said before, my issue with winning games has nothing to do with my lists. The people I play with already all take fairly casual lists, and so do I, so what it comes down to is my skill as a general and luck. If the game were perfectly balanced it would change very little for me one way or another

Pretty nebulous stuff - if the game were rebalanced and your skill and tactics on the board were a far better determinor than your list-building skills - I suspect I'd still lose a lot.

However, rebalacing armies would affect the armies I play as follows:

Tyranids - better off (I don't play with Flyrants, only recently bought one)
Tau - not much of a change (one Riptide owner)
Space Marine - not much of a change (no models with Grav)
CSM - my son would actually use his Beserkers
Necrons - not much of a change
Eldar - might as well squat them; can I get plastic aspects before they're retired, though?

I suspect I’d do a bit better.

I like to think I’m a fairly average player. My lists tend to be on the fluffly, jack-of-all-trades TAC side. Not entirely useless, I do things like drop pod sternguard, and fill some tac squads with grav. But I try to cover my bases with something from every slot in the old FOC, and form my lists around a core of tactical squads. I don’t rely on any “gimmick” builds, like getting free transports. While I do enjoy the extra doctrines the battle demi-co gets me, my list is not reliant on them to function. And I have a bad habit of forgetting the rules the 1st co TF gives me.

So in a more balanced environment, with the top end skew lists nerfed, I suspect I’d end up doing slightly better while playing the same lists I do now.

 Grimgold wrote:
I love honesty test, and I see I'm the only one who selected I might win less. Really? No one plays eldar, marines, tau or summoning demon hordes? I'm on a 20 game win streak, that would be much harder to accomplish with a codex that was simply middling (like say straight dark angels or orks). I'd like to think I'm a decent player, but having a codex north of the balance point is also very helpful. If all codices were equal I should have lost some on bad rolls alone, or had an opponent better able to capitalize on a mistake I made and pull a win out. This entire threads theme is "My codex is fine, you guys are the problem".

I don't play any of the above. I play Sisters, and previously before I sold my minis off to pay for college books, Orks and Guard as well. Guard are the most powerful of the three, and they're most certainly not considered top-tier.

A better question would be, if Eldar was the only playable race, would you win 50% of your games?

That's a perfect balance scenario. Everyone has access to the same exact things. It would be totally boring and stupid, but it'd be balanced.

I get the impression that most of you feel like you're at the top of the competitive heap. That's not a judgment or anything, just, that you feel very strongly about your own strategic ability. Since Eldar and Tau win most of the tournaments, why don't you guys build an army (it's not that expensive) from a net-list and go win every tournament? On that note, how many of you are tournament winners?

I don't usually play tournaments to begin with. Is this one of those "internet tough guy" things?

I selected the same amount because I typically try to match my army to my opponents. I'm probably wrong, but eh. It's how I feel.

 Melissia wrote:
I don't usually play tournaments to begin with. Is this one of those "internet tough guy" things?

Are you asking me? I'm one of two people who voted I'd win less. I just find it interesting a lot of people think they'd immediately improve in what they consider a balanced scenario. In other words, they believe they're losing because of balance, not because they're doing anything wrong.

And, people are talking about tournament meta, yet how many of us actually play in tournaments and experience that level? I can guarantee you if you took the winner of the las vegas tourny, copied his list and gave it to me, he'd easily handle me. Give him Tyranids and me his tournament winning list, and he'd beat me there, too.

 Traditio wrote:

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Flamer and missile launcher spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Flamer and missile launcher spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Why shouldn't it?

I mean, say what you want, but flamer and missile launcher spam wouldn't actually BE flamer and missile launcher spam. It would actually be:

Flamers, missile launchers and whatever standard arm you are using (whether lasguns, bolters, etc.). So we're talking at least three different weapons with three different tactical uses.

That's way more internally balanced than simply spamming the same thing over and over again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I don't usually play tournaments to begin with. Is this one of those "internet tough guy" things?

Are you asking me? I'm one of two people who voted I'd win less. I just find it interesting a lot of people think they'd immediately improve in what they consider a balanced scenario. In other words, they believe they're losing because of balance, not because they're doing anything wrong.

And, people are talking about tournament meta, yet how many of us actually play in tournaments and experience that level? I can guarantee you if you took the winner of the las vegas tourny, copied his list and gave it to me, he'd easily handle me. Give him Tyranids and me his tournament winning list, and he'd beat me there, too.

One of my opponents has poor target priority and regularly loses focus under pressure. Having one or more flyrants on the field is one of the few things that prevents me from stomping him every single game.

Another of my opponents just goes with whatever gimmick it is that's most effective in his codex.

And one of my opponents, that I don't play anymore, plays Eldar.

Yeah. I'd win more games.

Because missile launchers have been bad since 2nd ed. That part of the meta has never changed.

 Traditio wrote:
Why shouldn't it?

Because it's a spam strategy. Why should taking flamers and missile launchers instead of a mix of all weapon types be a viable option? It's very clear here that your issue isn't spam, it's spam of units/options that you personally don't like to see spammed.

That's way more internally balanced than simply spamming the same thing over and over again.

And again, no, it isn't. You're confusing balance with diversity and they are not the same. In fact, encouraging diversity and punishing spam requires the use of deliberate imbalance.

One of my opponents has poor target priority and regularly loses focus under pressure. Having one or more flyrants on the field is one of the few things that prevents me from stomping him every single game.

Another of my opponents just goes with whatever gimmick it is that's most effective in his codex.

And one of my opponents, that I don't play anymore, plays Eldar.

Yeah. I'd win more games.

And there it is, now you admit that you care just as much about winning as the people you accuse of being WAAC TFGs. You resent the fact that your opponent is able to bring a list that prevents you from stomping them every single game, and you want this to change.

So missile launcher and flamer spam should be a fine tactic but spamming flyrants shouldn't?

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Flamer and missile launcher spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Trads bland spamming is self defeating. Against a balanced TAC marine list I can imagine him being beaten more often than not.

Peregrine wrote:Because it's a spam strategy.

Taking multiples of anything is a spam strategy. I don't think that there's anything intrinsically wrong with spam.

Why should taking flamers and missile launchers instead of a mix of all weapon types be a viable option?

By "weapon types" are you referring to the actual weapons, or to their battlefield roles, or what?

There's too many weapon types if you mean the former.

And there it is, now you admit that you care just as much about winning as the people you accuse of being WAAC TFGs. You resent the fact that your opponent is able to bring a list that prevents you from stomping them every single game, and you want this to change.

I dislike the fact that the wins or losses are independent of actual player skill. I'm talking about a dude who will, with his flyrant, ignore my devastator squad in ruins and use the twin-linked devourers to shoot the tactical squad a few inches away. I'm talking about a dude who will use his flyrant to shoot deatwatch marines with stalker pattern bolters (who, statistically speaking, won't do much damage to the flyrant), not the librarian, who knows psychic shriek, a foot away. I'm talking about a dude who will land a flyrant within rapidfire distance of a unit of sternguard.

Yes, in a balanced game, if I consistently make good in-game decisions, and my opponent consistently makes bad in-game decisions, then I should win way more often than I lose.

 Traditio wrote:
Yes, in a balanced game, if I consistently make good in-game decisions, and my opponent consistently makes bad in-game decisions, then I should win way more often than I lose.

It's more a problem of lack of manipulation than balance; although the latter is still a major issue, 40k for the most part has devolved into bland pitched battles with very little strategy needed to increase your effectiveness. Most of the time you only need to worry about being in cover, and keeping your distance from Close Range/Melee units and the dice rolls do the work for you.

I'll blab on about it till it changes; the biggest problem 40k has is no real player skill outside of list construction, not balance.

 Traditio wrote:
I don't think that there's anything intrinsically wrong with spam.

In your own words:

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

and

What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

and

If the game were balanced, then flyrant spam would have a determinate set of strengths and exploitable weaknesses, and, since that kind of spam list doesn't have complementary units to compensate for those exploitable weaknesses, then any internally balanced army (read, any army that actually uses several different FOC slots) should be able to stomp it into the ground.

By "weapon types" are you referring to the actual weapons, or to their battlefield roles, or what?

There's too many weapon types if you mean the former.

Either or both. Why shouldn't a list that takes a mix of lascannons, plasma cannons, multimeltas, heavy bolters, and missile launchers be superior to one that spams missile launchers and "stomp it into the ground"?

I dislike the fact that the wins or losses are independent of actual player skill. I'm talking about a dude who will, with his flyrant, ignore my devastator squad in ruins and use the twin-linked devourers to shoot the tactical squad a few inches away. I'm talking about a dude who will use his flyrant to shoot deatwatch marines with stalker pattern bolters (who, statistically speaking, won't do much damage to the flyrant), not the librarian, who knows psychic shriek, a foot away. I'm talking about a dude who will land a flyrant within rapidfire distance of a unit of sternguard.

Yes, in a balanced game, if I consistently make good in-game decisions, and my opponent consistently makes bad in-game decisions, then I should win way more often than I lose.

Like I said, you don't care about having an interesting and competitive game, you're just resentful that you aren't "stomping them into the ground" as much as you feel entitled to do.

 Marmatag wrote:
Are you asking me? I'm one of two people who voted I'd win less.

And then called out everyone else saying "you're a bunch of losers for voting differently".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Why shouldn't it?

Because it's a spam strategy.

*looks at Orks and Guard*
What's wrong with that?

If the game was balanced, spam strategies would be very rock-paper-scissory. It'd become a binary "Did you bring enough to deal with the spam?" game.

Horde spam? Hope you brought enough flamers and templates, or you lose.

Tank spam? Hope you brought enough Anti-Vehicle, or you lose.

TEQ spam? AP2 or you lose.

With a TAC list having sufficient power to take on all those spam lists, probably by killing enough of them and then winning on objectives.

Now, that being said, I have a question-how would missile launcher and flamer spam handle a Land Raider? It seems to me that, in a decent TAC list, you'd have meltas.

 Melissia wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Why shouldn't it?

Because it's a spam strategy.

*looks at Orks and Guard*
What's wrong with that?

That's Peregrine's point. Traditio start's going off about how spam shouldn't be a thing that's viable ever, and then singles out Flyrants and Grav to make a point because those are the 2 things that has his wrath at the moment, but then when pointed out that he plays Tactical Marine spam using only Flamers and Missile Launchers he turns around and says 'So What'.

He's pointing out Traditio's hypocrisy for - what I can only assume at this point - his own entertainment, given that after so many threads and a lot of criticism Traditio still doesn't realise he's being a hypocrite or just flat out doesn't care.



Why is it ok for Marines to spam Tacticals, Flamers and Missiles and be able to win 50/50, but Flyrants and Grav spam should never be viable and always lose... even though this is a thread about all strategies being equally viable? The correct answer is of course Traditio's double standards and him actually meaning "What if everything I hate was nerfed to the ground so that my list was the only viable way to play".

Oh goodie, I guess everyone's only talking about this from a marine-centric point of view. What's the best way for a Green Tide army to avoid spam? The only answer is "don't". Are Green Tide armies, because they are inherently spammy, something a balanced game should avoid or punish?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Why shouldn't it?

Because it's a spam strategy.

*looks at Orks and Guard*
What's wrong with that?

That's Peregrine's point.

I guess I can see that. It's just irritating watching people complain about "spam" when so many armies are basically built around multiple identical or near-identical units, both in lore and in game.

For that matter, the very IDEA of a "Troops" slot and it having six slots in the standard detachment as opposed to 2 for HQ or 3 for everything else basically is GW saying to its players, "these are the units that are fluffy to spam".

Yup, spam shouldn't be punished, provided that spam isn't also spamming one kind of weapon across the list, which is highly unlikely anyway.

It'd be nice if spam was only allowed when it's from a fluff perspective, but I cannot think of any way to implement that properly.

 Melissia wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Are you asking me? I'm one of two people who voted I'd win less.

And then called out everyone else saying "you're a bunch of losers for voting differently".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Why shouldn't it?

Because it's a spam strategy.

*looks at Orks and Guard*
What's wrong with that?

I didn't say anything like that. Cheers.

That's certainly how your post came across.

 Melissia wrote:
*looks at Orks and Guard*
What's wrong with that?

Nothing is wrong with it, in my opinion. I'm simply pointing out Traditio's double standard where spamming things Traditio doesn't like (flyrants, riptides, etc) is WAAC TFG CHEESE but spamming the things Traditio wants to spam (missile launchers and tactical squads) is fine.

 Traditio wrote:
I'm not claiming that there's a causal relationship...but it is nonetheless worth noting:

Has anyone noticed that the percentages, so far, between "I should be winning more games if this stupid game were balanced" and "I'd win about the same number of games (sure you would, buddy, keep on believing that)" is basically the same as the percentage between people who are and are not basically satisfied with the game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:In the situation you are describing lists become irrelevant, in this situation what you bring is meaningless, I personally would start using bottlecaps instead of minis. Players who are better than you would still win players who are worse than you would still lose and close matches would be determined entirely by dice. The tournament meta becomes spamming the cheapest unit in $ and bragging about how cost effective your army is.

IoW:

"I like pay-to-win. I have an expensive army and feel like I should have an advantage because I purchased the DLC."

What? I'm saying that if the game was truly balanced people at the highest level of skill would find their games against each other are largely determined by dice. Therefore the competition would have to move from finding the most efficient list to finding the most cost efficient army to build. 'Dude I took top 32 at nova!" "Oh cool, what'd you run?" '185 bucks!' 'Aww man that's so broke dude!'

ERJAK wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
I'm not claiming that there's a causal relationship...but it is nonetheless worth noting:

Has anyone noticed that the percentages, so far, between "I should be winning more games if this stupid game were balanced" and "I'd win about the same number of games (sure you would, buddy, keep on believing that)" is basically the same as the percentage between people who are and are not basically satisfied with the game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:In the situation you are describing lists become irrelevant, in this situation what you bring is meaningless, I personally would start using bottlecaps instead of minis. Players who are better than you would still win players who are worse than you would still lose and close matches would be determined entirely by dice. The tournament meta becomes spamming the cheapest unit in $ and bragging about how cost effective your army is.

IoW:

"I like pay-to-win. I have an expensive army and feel like I should have an advantage because I purchased the DLC."

What? I'm saying that if the game was truly balanced people at the highest level of skill would find their games against each other are largely determined by dice. Therefore the competition would have to move from finding the most efficient list to finding the most cost efficient army to build. 'Dude I took top 32 at nova!" "Oh cool, what'd you run?" '185 bucks!' 'Aww man that's so broke dude!'

Once again, not really. Composition would still play a part, even in a well balanced game. The main thing being that models would not be homogenous, but rather all models within a given codex would have a function of value both internally and externally. Moreover, a better developed game would encourage skillful maneuvering and tactics. At the highest skill levels, players would be more able to focus on the armies that would interest them, rather than those that are the most blatantly effective.

You can't make every unit equally useful in all situations, but you can give each unit situations it can shine.

 Fafnir wrote:
Once again, not really. Composition would still play a part, even in a well balanced game. The main thing being that models would not be homogenous, but rather all models within a given codex would have a function of value both internally and externally. Moreover, a better developed game would encourage skillful maneuvering and tactics. At the highest skill levels, players would be more able to focus on the armies that would interest them, rather than those that are the most blatantly effective.

You can't make every unit equally useful in all situations, but you can give each unit situations it can shine.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Traditio: Take note - I'm pretty sure this combined with what I said earlier pretty much answers your original post question in the broadest sense.

Aaaand this thread has devolved into yet another dumpster fire where rational minds try to tell Traditio about his double standards and rampant illogic and he fails to listen or care...

On topic, none of my own lists spam the OP stuff. As I said earlier, my Tau collection only has one of each of the big nasties (Riptide, Stormsurge, Ghostkeel) and no FW stuff (although I'm seriously considering a Y'vahra), and my lists tend to use a little bit of everything. With Tau, the only thing I sort of spam is Marker Drones, but most Tau lists rely heavily on their Markerlights. Same basic idea holds true for my other armies (no spam).

It should be noted, though, that most if not all of the lists I take to a tournament, with any of my armies, would still roflstomp a CAD list that spams just tacticals with flamers and missile launchers, and that's without me spamming any of the crazy stuff.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Aaaand this thread has devolved into yet another dumpster fire where rational minds try to tell Traditio about his double standards and rampant illogic and he fails to listen or care...
On topic, none of my own lists spam the OP stuff.

What if he's trying to tell us that there shouldn't be an option of spamming OP stuff? Just stuff?

Its not like there is any OP stuff, its just that for some reason 99% of all options available in the game are crap. They should be removed from the game to stop confusing newbies.

 Traditio wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

Flyrant spam shouldn't be a good strategy. Grav spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Flamer and missile launcher spam shouldn't be a good strategy.

Why shouldn't it?

I mean, say what you want, but flamer and missile launcher spam wouldn't actually BE flamer and missile launcher spam. It would actually be:

Flamers, missile launchers and whatever standard arm you are using (whether lasguns, bolters, etc.). So we're talking at least three different weapons with three different tactical uses.

That's way more internally balanced than simply spamming the same thing over and over again.

No, you don't have three weapons with three different tactical uses. Flamers, missile launchers and bolters are all effective against the same target types. You. Have nothing that's effective against vehicles, flyers, mc"s, boosted cover saves or elite infantry.

At least bolters plus grav is effective against a range of target types.

Missile Launchers actually do have a different tactical use. They're good at light vehicle hunting, and okay at Monstrous Creature hunting.

Now, they crumple before 2+ armour saves, anything with decent cover, heavy vehicles... But he's got two tactical uses down.

You don't need to know that missile launchers have 3 types of missiles and flamers ignore cover when you can just spam grav.

Grav-gun and missile launcher even cost the same points, but one is anti-everything and the other is bad because it tries to be anti-everything. Perfect game balance.

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
You don't need to know that missile launchers have 3 types of missiles and flamers ignore cover when you can just spam grav.

Grav-gun and missile launcher even cost the same points, but one is anti-everything and the other is bad because it tries to be anti-everything. Perfect game balance.

Grav-Gun has an 18" range if you don't move, 9" if you do. Missile Launcher is 48". Missile Launcher is better against things like Tyranid Warriors, since it can double them out.

Now, the Grav-Cannon is basically superior in every situation within 24", because lacking doubling out doesn't matter so much when you have 5 shots, but a Grav-Gun is not objectively superior to a Missile Launcher.

Well if everything is balanced, I'd guess it'd be a coin flip, considering if someone is a better player than me, they win, and if I'm better than someone else they win.

Effectively, if everything was balanced, then its either which rock paper scissors unit counters your opponents, or which person is better.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Missile Launchers actually do have a different tactical use. They're good at light vehicle hunting, and okay at Monstrous Creature hunting.

No, they really aren't.

The only marine special/heavy weapon worse against light vehicles is the plasma cannon (which has a side use in threatening elite infantry) and the only thing worse against weak MCs is the heavy bolter (which is superior against AV10).

Except for the flamer, of course, which is only useful against the same things bolters are useful against.

Flamer plus missile launcher is the least versatile possible combination of weapon options.

Which is not to say that there is no use for either weapon but it is absolutely the least desirable combination to spam exclusively (which is trad's army).

Being able to kill 2x AV10-11 vehicles or 1xAV12-13 vehicles in a turn with 14 missile launchers (6x tac and 2x dev) is not an anti-vehicle strategy.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
You don't need to know that missile launchers have 3 types of missiles and flamers ignore cover when you can just spam grav.

3 types of missile? Why would you possibly pay for AA capability on a weapon that is terrible at killing vehicles and MCs?

And, yes, Flamers ignore cover but they only kill the same things that bolters kill making weight of fire far more useful against normal covers saves. They're useless against the units that are running around with cover saves that are very high, rerollable or both.

Those marginal use cases are utterly inferior to the genuine range of capability brought by almost all of the other options.

I think my lists would get a higher win rate. Not because "I play a balanced list and everyone else plays cheese" but because I abuse the same spamming tactic that people complain about to build big, stompy auto-lose lists for newbies to get an intro to 40k by killing Monstrous Creatures - I like this situation, means I can play well and still struggle.
Depending on how balance is achieved I'd have to have far less points on the field or play a tactically rubbish game.
Dropping back the points to give the newbie the edge means less stompie and the intro loses it's impact and the hell with stuffing every play to let the Newbie win, that's insulting as well as not fun for anyone.
I'd quit as the chew toy and take up a normal win/loss ratio.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Aaaand this thread has devolved into yet another dumpster fire where rational minds try to tell Traditio about his double standards and rampant illogic and he fails to listen or care...

And yet people (usually the same people) walk back into it every single time. It's like that daemon world with the time loop where warriors are endlessly reincarnated for an eternity of battle that can never be won or lost.

 Elemental wrote:

And yet people (usually the same people) walk back into it every single time. It's like that daemon world with the time loop where warriors are endlessly reincarnated for an eternity of battle that can never be won or lost.

...and than they realised. The Troll Lord is the planet itself!

I'd probably win less because none of my armies are comprised only of 10 man unupgraded Space Marine tactical squads - which would obviously be the only unit left in our new perfectly balanced game utopia.

For they are truly perfection, tainted by the existence of anything else. and Grav.

Initially I was like, "Hum, what does this guy mean?" Then I saw it was Traditio and stopped bothering.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Initially I was like, "Hum, what does this guy mean?" Then I saw it was Traditio and stopped bothering.

sorry that ur mate Kell died bruh, hope ur feeling alright creedy boi

 STG wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Initially I was like, "Hum, what does this guy mean?" Then I saw it was Traditio and stopped bothering.

sorry that ur mate Kell died bruh, hope ur feeling alright creedy boi

You don't deserve to mention his name. No one does. *quiet sobbing* Why GW why?

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

 STG wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Initially I was like, "Hum, what does this guy mean?" Then I saw it was Traditio and stopped bothering.

sorry that ur mate Kell died bruh, hope ur feeling alright creedy boi

You don't deserve to mention his name. No one does. *quiet sobbing* Why GW why?

Well at least you can walk the green green pastures of cadia and think about him. ... i hear catachan is nice?

 Traditio wrote:
What would happen if, suddenly, simply spamming the "best" things in your codex no longer gauranteed you an advantage, and actually HURT you in game because it means that your army is running with a severe internal imbalance?

It doesn't guarantee you an advantage 100% of the time, though. What I think you mean is - "what if all unit options were viable selections for a competitive army?", in which case I'd do what Erjak said - buy a few boxes of cheap-ass Genestealers and call it a day.

Wouldn't change my list at all
My Tau don't really spam anything and I normally generally run a relatively balanced list. I only start abusing my armies special abilities against space marine players because I can honestly say I hate playing against space marines.
Same for my CSM I don't really spam stuff.

I see this has been going for a while but I'll just chime in.

If it was balanced, woundent every persons list fair the same

Wait ainyte tradito are you trying to imply space marines who are supposed to be a jack of all trades army should beat say daemons in cc or tau in shooting or eldar or chaos in psychic?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I see this has been going for a while but I'll just chime in.

If it was balanced, woundent every persons list fair the same

Have an Exalt, good sir

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I see this has been going for a while but I'll just chime in.

If it was balanced, woundent every persons list fair the same

No, that's not how balance works.

The unholy dice rolls would still be cast from my hand so they'd still suck in a unique, horrid way. But it's nice to dream.

If each codex was balanced, within the framework of a given edition, then armies could still spam things, and win.

The tactics of a TAC list [which I love!] are to do your best to engage your rocks against their scissors, while avoiding their paper. Do the same with your Scissor units and Paper units. Solid.

But when the TAC list runs into an all Rock list... your rocks break even, your scissors get trashed and your Paper saves the day. It's still relatively balanced. So unit composition plays a role, but a well rounded list should break even against most other lists. True imbalance occurs when two "extreme" lists run into each other. Rock runs into Paper, or Scissors runs into Rock. So long as one player is using a mostly balanced list, the imbalance tends to be less severe.

The thing about a competitive meta, is that building a perfectly rounded list is nearly impossible for most codices. Taking a whack at a long-dead horse... IG have terrible mobility. So if I rock up against some paper [mobile armies] I'm basically doomed because I don't have the tools in my box to deal with the opponent. Guard have lots of Sledge Hammers, but you can only use them if you have room to swing, time to line up, and a stationary target. Otherwise... not good.

Right now, the core rules are not balanced to allow a variety of strategies to be viable. You can't win with a "mostly defensive" army. You need to be aggressive in movement, and that doesn't play to every army's strength.

Anyhow, if the game / codices were all balanced, within a 10% margin of error, you'd expect your army to win 60% to 40% of the time, assuming your opponents are of a similar level of skill. I'm on a pretty solid losing streak, but my opponent started playing slower armies so I decided to try my Guard out again with a pair of Knights allied... and I've actually won my last two games. So when my meta shifted [briefly, I'm sure] towards a slower moving game, my Guardsmen are suddenly the heroes they were in 6th edition again... with a couple big stompy robots out front to screen their advance.