*note for those who care, I’m using the new definition of soup
Hello all!
In light of all the discussion of soup I’ve decided to throw my viewpoint into the mix. In the past I’ve talked about GW is unlikely to attack soup in meaningfully way, but haven’t spoken much on my own thoughts on soup. As the title suggests, I’m more in favor of soup than the vast majority of posters here. In this post I will give my background, what I think some of pros of soup are, and address some common criticisms of soup, Without further adu let’s begin.
Here’s a quick recap of my 40k experience to give you an idea of where I’m coming from. I started in during 4th edition at a young age, so I didn’t have a great grasp of the game during that edition, 5th was when I really started invested heavily into the hobby, and was a pretty regular tournament attendant. At the midpoint of 6th I quite the game, and came back at the beginning of 8th. 8th IMO has been the best edition of 40k that I’ve played, but that’s neither here nor there. The reason I bring this up is because I plan to contrast 8th’s souping system to 5th, as I know that edition very well and it was the last edition without real allies.
So what do I believe the pros of soup are?
1) it can be fuffly. It felt weird in 5th when stuff like daemons of chaos where basically completely separate from CSM. Likewise there was the fact that Grey knights where pretty much always by themselves despite almost never being so in the fluff. I remember this being a discussion point on some online forums, and there where a few homebrew rules to allow certain factions to ally with eachother
2) It allows me to buy more models that I think are cool, and less units that I think are less so. Too many times during 5th I would see some interesting model for an army l didn’t play, but wouldn’t pick it up because I had no interest in collecting the rest of models I needed to start that army. Souping makes it lot easier for me to buy stuff I want, while avoided stuff I don’t want.
3) Soup allows more list diversity. Because certain factions with glaring weaknesses now have access to plug those weaknesses, they can be played in new interesting ways (or just played competitively at all). Recent tournament results support this, and I think this will continue to
be trend throughout 8th. I’ll discuss this topic more in adressing complaints, but I think this area where I am pretty against the grain.
Now on to common complaints I see against soup.
1) “Soup hurts factions that don’t have acesss to it, such as necrons.” While true, I believe this argument is heavily overblown. Sure GW has to be careful on how it balances Xenos with little to no allies, but I think it can be done. Case and point are tau and tyranids. While neither have been totally top tier yet, both have been pretty consistently showing strong results at tournaments, as shown at Solcal open. With Orks looking very strong now that they have a codex, I believe it’s very possible that factions with no allies can be quite good.
2) “souping can be very un-fluffy.” This one is also true, but then again tournament list have rarely every been truly fluffy. In 5th for example, everyone was ridding in metal boxes, which may happen occasionally, but I doubt every guard commander in the fluff utilizise chimaera brigades with zero Leman Russes. Or that grey knight armies are exclusively some elite terminators, Draigo, and 3 dreadnoughts duel/wielding auto-cannons.
3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.
4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
So that’s my defense of soup. I’m expecting quite a few of you to disagree (that’s fine) but I’d thought it out there anyway.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
This. Like any mechanic in game allies aren't inherently broken or the problem. It's more that GW doesn't run a tight ship and individual units are all over the place in how useful they are. I don't see anyone complaining about sisters of battle teaming up with admech to recreate a battle I read about in BL. People do complain that certain builds throw the game out of wack but if it wasn't that build it be another list that breaks the game down.
I have a problem with allies being mainly available to Imperial and Chaos players. As a Necron player, it feels super crappy to look at how few options I have compared to my opponents.
I also have a problem with taking allies and using a benefit gained from Faction A to buff Faction B. The Loyal 32 is the standard example. Take 32 cheap Guardsmen to gain 5CP. Use those 5CP to make different Faction units perform better. Again, really sucks for mainly Xenos Factions who don't have that option at all.
TL DR - Soup is delicious. Only allowing half the players to eat soup is bogus. Allowing the carrots in your soup to turn the potatoes into superheros is also bogus.
I dont have a problem with allies. I do have a problem with the whole "cp battery" thing. Things like Knights and Custodes have some really strong strats which should not be useable with cp provided by a guardsmen "cp-battery".
Faction-lock CPs and I'd be perfectly fine with the current ally system. Maybe even go so far and give a -1cp penalty per additional faction used.
I have a problem with allies being mainly available to Imperial and Chaos players. As a Necron player, it feels super crappy to look at how few options I have compared to my opponents.
I also have a problem with taking allies and using a benefit gained from Faction A to buff Faction B. The Loyal 32 is the standard example. Take 32 cheap Guardsmen to gain 5CP. Use those 5CP to make different Faction units perform better. Again, really sucks for mainly Xenos Factions who don't have that option at all.
TL DR - Soup is delicious. Only allowing half the players to eat soup is bogus. Allowing the carrots in your soup to turn the potatoes into superheros is also bogus.
Your complaints about soup are basically the only reason people use soup. So really - you are against soup.
Morkphoiz wrote: I dont have a problem with allies. I do have a problem with the whole "cp battery" thing. Things like Knights and Custodes have some really strong strats which should not be useable with cp provided by a guardsmen "cp-battery".
Faction-lock CPs and I'd be perfectly fine with the current ally system.
Faction lock soup CP and you make soup useless. Increase base CP for all armies but take away CP for allied detachment and you get a nice little workable give and take situation.
I have a problem with allies being mainly available to Imperial and Chaos players. As a Necron player, it feels super crappy to look at how few options I have compared to my opponents.
I also have a problem with taking allies and using a benefit gained from Faction A to buff Faction B. The Loyal 32 is the standard example. Take 32 cheap Guardsmen to gain 5CP. Use those 5CP to make different Faction units perform better. Again, really sucks for mainly Xenos Factions who don't have that option at all.
TL DR - Soup is delicious. Only allowing half the players to eat soup is bogus. Allowing the carrots in your soup to turn the potatoes into superheros is also bogus.
Your complaints about soup are basically the only reason people use soup. So really - you are against soup.
No, your understanding of my comments is incorrect. I like allies. I think they make for a fun, fluffy time. I don't like that only part of the player base is allowed to have allies. Should be an all or nothing thing. I like allies. I think they make for a fun, fluffy time. I don't think it makes sense that an Imperial Guard Company Commander and a handful of small squads should give an Imperial Knight additional strategic options (5CP worth, to be exact). People who use allies to min/max don't necessarily like allies. They like min/maxing.
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Arachnofiend wrote: Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
Arachnofiend wrote: Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
Allies, not soup.
The only keyword i'm aware of that can actually soup is ADEPTUS ASTARTES.
And saying "no allies" means squatting quite a few things. Let's start with assassins and knights. Sound good?
God, I would be so happy if assassins were gone forever. feth that faction.
Kinda curious here, is that sarcasm? Cause outside of being a fun fluffy choice it's not like assassins have ever been all that strong except maybe in 7th in some lists. His point stands though, without some ally mechanic a lot of what they have released over the years stops working. Hell it would mean the newest release from RT don't work.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
Morkphoiz wrote: I dont have a problem with allies. I do have a problem with the whole "cp battery" thing. Things like Knights and Custodes have some really strong strats which should not be useable with cp provided by a guardsmen "cp-battery".
Faction-lock CPs and I'd be perfectly fine with the current ally system.
Faction lock soup CP and you make soup useless. Increase base CP for all armies but take away CP for allied detachment and you get a nice little workable give and take situation.
I guess I just see soup as less of problem here than just battalions giving too much CP. Back when they changed battalions to give 5 CP I remember being one of the few people not thrilled by it. The reason is because troops are on average are far cheaper than any other units, meaning that’s it’s less points to get a battalion which grants 500% more command points than equivalent detachments.(spearhead, outriders, and vanguard). I’d have rather GW have raised the amount of CP those detachments give, so there’s more of opportunity cost of bringing a battalion. 4 CPs for battalions, 10 CPs for brigades and 2 CPs for vanguard, outrider, and spearhead seem much better to me. Also raising the points on certain cheap troops and HQs will help a lot.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
The simplest fix is to remove CP from list building and tie it to points. Allies should be taken cause you like those units, not to grab a bunch of cheap CP cause you took a dirt cheap battery option.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
Arachnofiend wrote: Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
Allies, not soup.
The only keyword i'm aware of that can actually soup is ADEPTUS ASTARTES.
And saying "no allies" means squatting quite a few things. Let's start with assassins and knights. Sound good?
God, I would be so happy if assassins were gone forever. feth that faction.
Kinda curious here, is that sarcasm? Cause outside of being a fun fluffy choice it's not like assassins have ever been all that strong except maybe in 7th in some lists. His point stands though, without some ally mechanic a lot of what they have released over the years stops working. Hell it would mean the newest release from RT don't work.
Assassins have never been truly overpowered, but that isn't my issue with them. My issue is that they are not and were never intended to be a faction unto themselves, and exist for the sole purpose of selling models to all Imperium players that just want a counterpick character. The Culexus isn't OP in a vacuum but because it exists the entire Imperium has a powerful tech choice against psyker armies while armies that can't run psykers at all are left with embarrassingly poor equivalents.
Daedalus81 wrote: Maybe you would feel differently if necrons were stronger?
I wouldn't. I mean, Tau are pretty much as strong as you can get while having the limited options of a mono-faction with a clear mechanical identity and they are only just competitive with the soup armies.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
Speculation. We don't know how they costed IKs. The medium ones are quite lackluster, I assure you. Even with many CPs.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
Speculation. We don't know how they costed IKs. The medium ones are quite lackluster, I assure you. Even with many CPs.
It would make the most sense that play testing does not include soup, because the potential range of combinations is so absurd as to be impossible to test in a reasonable amount of time. Additionally, we wouldn't necessarily want them to test everything with Loyal 32 in the mix, because any changes to that changes all the prior assumptions.
I guess I just see soup as less of problem here than just battalions giving too much CP. Back when they changed battalions to give 5 CP I remember being one of the few people not thrilled by it. The reason is because troops are on average are far cheaper than any other units, meaning that’s it’s less points to get a battalion which grants 500% more command points than equivalent detachments.(spearhead, outriders, and vanguard).
Yep. That was a stupid 'fix', it worsened the problem they tried to correct. Just up the base battleforged CP to 5 or 6 instead. If 200ish point IG detachment brings only three extra CPs, it is not such an autotake. Sure, still useful, but you might want to consider other option too at that point.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
Salt donkey wrote: *3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.
4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
And now the regeneration mechanics were nerfed to the ground it's not an issue.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
It's only a balance issue when GW can't give certain armies the ability to fight normally. Some, like Custodes, are forced to ally because they weren't given all the tools they need to succeed. Perhaps the upcoming IA will change that. Perhaps it won't. So unless you've actually got ideas to help these monofactions, Allies are a necessary crutch, rather than the original compliment they were supposed to be.
I think a solution to the IGCP battery would be to re-introduce Platoons.
It wouldn't inhibit our ability to field Guardmen as the Guard, but reduce the rate at which they generate CP [specifically, doubling the cost of a CP battalion, bring the cost/5 CP's roughly into line with the cost per 5 CP's that Astartes pay].
Really, I think the solution to many of the Guard problems would be to re-introduce features from previous editions.
Returning Command Squads to existence would also double the cost per order, decreasing the problematic buffed offensive efficiency of Guardsmen. There is precedent for a Character squad of mixed-wound models, and the heavy weapon option can be removed from the CCS and PCS to prevent a Character Lascannon from existing. It would further add almost 100 points to the cost of the CP battery.
This would, at least make a small commitment to Imperial Guard significantly less profitable [less soup], without breaking the Imperial Guard's ability to bring it's own units for their internal value to an Imperial Guard army.
Sure, something else, like Scouts or BSS or something would become the new CP battery, but I think similar philosophies can be expanded to reduce soup benefits without breaking units or nerfing them because they offer too much a benefit for other armies. An IG army will field 6+ or 12+ infantry squads without complaint, because we want Guardsmen for them being Guardsmen, so platooning up doesn't really annoy us [very much]. But small-commitment Guard detachments, like a CP battery, would be a less attractive option.
I think a key to balancing soup is to increase the effective cost of allied detachments and also decrease their benefit beyond the addition of the units offered.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
Salt donkey wrote: *3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.
4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.
I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that just about every placing list in amy 8E tournament has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.
Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing. Stuff can also combine synergistically in ways that are more powerful than particular elements might otherwise be in their original armies.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
Salt donkey wrote: *3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.
4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.
I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that every placing list has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.
Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing.
See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.
Salt donkey wrote: This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been.
This is completely wrong. Soup absolutely makes this problem worse by increasing the number of armies taking the overpowered thing. So yes, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're correct about guardsmen and company commanders being too cheap. Without soup there's a limit to how much you can exploit this. You can only take them in a pure IG army, which means accepting any weaknesses that come with playing pure IG. And the primary strength of company commanders is the ability to fill mandatory HQ slots for a minimum investment, something of essentially zero value in a pure IG army where you aren't required to take multiple detachments for each of your factions. Similarly, generating a ton of CP with cheap detachments isn't all that important because IG don't depend on high-CP stratagems and therefore don't need as much CP. But when soup exists every Imperial army can exploit those two units, and exploit them in ways that pure IG can't. Suddenly an army light IK gets a cheap CP battery to power stratagems that are supposed to be balanced by IK having limited CP generation, melee elite armies get cheap objective campers that also power their stratagems, etc. They're everywhere, because why wouldn't you take the overpowered thing when soup is allowed?
And the same thing happens with other units. Instead of having a bunch of Imperial factions, each probably having their own separate balance mistakes, you have a single Imperial army that consists of the 1-2 most overpowered units from each codex. List diversity is gone for the Imperial faction.
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Salt donkey wrote: See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.
Detachment count is rarely a limiting factor for a mono-faction army. Three detachments is more than enough to fit anything you could possibly take under 2000 points, the only reason you'd find it to be a limit is if you're trying to make a soup list and want to take more than three factions.
Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing.
See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament.
Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup
Lots of things could be done. However, for the points available, nothing was going to match that new capability, the detchament opportunity cost was trivial, board control obviously wasnt lacking. Just because there are opportunity costs doesn't mean that there arent clearly superior choices. DE don't have native psyker support and the army is built around not having it. Adding it in the basically the cost of a single unit or a couple relatively cheap units isn't trading anything near that value. There is a reason mono-codex lists aren't placing at events, and it's because the Soup tradeoffs dont force anyone to give up anything meaningful, the marginal utility of allied psyker support is dramatically higher than equivalent investment in other DE units.
Doom is a powerful ability, but within its original Craftworld Eldar context is dramatically less of an issue than it suddenly being available to DE as well. That's what Soup fails to account for.
just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.
Ultimately, within a Guard army, the loyal 32 aren't an issue, within their native environment they are fine, or at least less of an issue. If you increased the ppm cost of guardsmen to 6 or 7ppm you may fix the CP battery, but you'd cripple monolist guard armies in the process.
Disclaimer: I don't play in tournaments - the only area where soup is considered a problem, and arguably rightfully so.
There's zero argument that soup is not an advantage for those able to take it - full stop. No discussion needed. If you don't understand that, there's no point in even having a discussion. However...does that matter in narrative games, casual gaming, etc? No, because people don't play with that attitude nor those lists. So on that side of things, I see zero issue with it. It's fluffy and cool to be able to ally stuff (though I still disagree with the Eldar allying with Dark Eldar so freely - personal qualm). But we're not here discussing soup with regard to fluffy and narrative casual games are we?
Even the OP seems like an argument in defense of soup for fluffy and narrative reasons - which is not at all the way it's played in tournament settings, though occasionally players will hide behind that as a kind of excuse to justify it. So, I agree...soup is cool in fluffy and narrative games. However it is absolutely an unbalancing portion of the game in the competitive and tournament scene. I've been waiting to see more tournaments go mono-codex anyway...a simple solution to it (and one which would generate a much more interesting tournament!).
People have discussed potential solutions ad naseum in dozens of threads here on Dakka, so no point really pouring more fuel on that fire.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
While true, it was carefully managed for a couple of factions where it made sense, with very strict limitations for most of the last 20 years, and basically went away entirely in 5E once the DH and WH books got replaced.
There was never the ability to just take anything from anywhere in any quantity. If you wanted allies in previous editions, you could basically only take two troops and one of each other FoC role from the allied army (and they used up your existinf FoC slots for other stuff), and only paired with DH/WH armies.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
Being able to treat a dozen codex books, each with vastly different forces, gameplay concepts and design philosophies, as a single grab bag army book is a huge balance issue. The fact that no list places at almost any tournament without elements from other armies illustrates that perfectly.
Salt donkey wrote: *3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked.
4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
While i did write a long post, it stings a bit when you just repeat an argument I’ve already adressed without mentioning something new.
I didn't say anything about list diversity. If you're referring exclusively to point 4, the simple fact that just about every placing list in amy 8E tournament has elements of multiple armies is compelling prima facie evidence to challenge your assertion.
Ultimately, you dont have to sub out much to gain a whole lot of new ability. For reference, a DE list that placed well at a recent tournament only included an allied farseer. It's not giving up a huge number of points or any particular core DE ability to take that Farseer, the DE list isn't losing anything meaningful, but it is gaining several powerful psychic buffs that dramatically enhance the capabilities of the army in ways otherwise not possible resulting in a much more powerful army than could be fielded with a monolist. A lot of armies take a Guard CP battery for just a couple hundred points. They don't give up anything meaningful from the primary army, that core strength remains intact, but they gain a whole lot of extra bodies, scoring unite, board control, and CP in the process. The tradeoff on far too many instances means little or nothing. Stuff can also combine synergistically in ways that are more powerful than particular elements might otherwise be in their original armies.
That's literally because Doom as written is a broken power. If it were sticking to only Craftworld units gaining benefit it wouldn't be an issue.
I have yet to see a competitive person in person say "allies are a problem." This seems like an outcry coming more from the casual community than anything else.
It doesn't make what they're saying invalid. You can be casual and still want a good matched play ruleset. But let's not start attributing things to the competitive playerbase as a whole. Most people are happy with the current state of the game. Which is why you see huge numbers at tournaments.
Here is a list of the one-loss or better factions at SoCal:
Astra Militarum
Tyranids
Dark Eldar
Ynnari
Custodes
Chaos Daemons
Eldar
Chaos Space Marines
Tau
Imperial Knights
Harlequins
Thousand Sons
Death Guard
Renegade Knights
Orks
I removed duplicates. For instance, Nurgle Daemons and Chaos Daemons, i lumped together in Chaos Daemons.
That's really impressive from a balance perspective. Anyone with 1 loss could easily have been in the top 10, or ended up undefeated winning the whole thing. Basically 1 loss means you're doing damn good.
It's also worth noting that winning 4 games was good enough for top 50. Considering there was over 170 players, that's not bad. If you look at the top 50, pretty much every major faction is represented.
That's literally because Doom as written is a broken power. If it were sticking to only Craftworld units gaining benefit it wouldn't be an issue.
Oh please. It is a deniable power than hits one unit. It's only good on big targets that will soak a lot of firepower. Guilliman is a walking army-wide doom for 400 points.
Marmatag wrote: I have yet to see a competitive person in person say "allies are a problem."
Allies are a problem. In fact they're a significant reason why, despite loving competitive play, I compete in better games and don't play in 40k tournaments. But I'll note your "in person" requirement, which limits it to a self-selecting group of people who are happy with the current state of 40k and rejects everyone who is unhappy enough with it to stop playing. Of course when you impose that limit you're going to find that people are not complaining.
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Marmatag wrote: Here is a list of the one-loss or better factions at SoCal:
How are you defining "faction" here? Is that Custodes army a pure Custodes army, or a generic Imperial soup army that happened to pick "Custodes" as its title?
I love soup because it allows me to run three separate crappy armies as one super-fluffy, super-crappy army.
So, leave 'soup' exactly as it is except make CP only expendable by the Faction that generated them. [Expletive Deleted] it, I don't care. There's no justifiable logic behind a handful of Guardsmen making a bunch of Space Marines fight better.
More options is more power. That is without a doubt. Especially with the ability to cover for army weaknesses. This alone could be the strength of the Imperium as a whole, though. They can fill in the gaps of the other armies. The problem is that this makes it very difficult to balance pure armies in the Imperium to those that use allies to shore up their weak sides. Really, the ally system does need some changes if the game is going to continue to develop in a positive direction as far as balance goes. The command point battery thing is also really silly but I think everyone is unanimous on that one already.
You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.
Marmatag wrote: You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.
Like I said, you're only considering the self-selecting group of players who like 40k in its current state and rejecting any opinions from people who dislike it enough to stop playing. Of course you get a positive overall reaction when you do that.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
Tyel wrote: The point is that a unit's cost depends on the army its in.
A Castellan is a lot better with an Imperial Guard brigade for bags of CP, chaff and objective hugging than it is in a mono-Knights list.
What should its points cost be?
This is only because certain things offer too much CP for their cost. It should be a tough choice whether take more hard hitting knights or squishy CP providers. But The point cost of certain CP providers is so negligible, and they punch above their weight otherwise too, that this doesn't really work.
Crimson wrote: This is only because certain things offer too much CP for their cost. It should be a tough choice whether take more hard hitting knights or squishy CP providers. But The point cost of certain CP providers is so negligible, and they punch above their weight otherwise too, that this doesn't really work.
You're just proving the point. That cheap IGCP battery is composed of units that are not a problem in a pure IG army, and the level of point increase that would make them balanced as a CP battery for an IK army would make IG cease to exist as a playable faction. The proposed 5ppm cost would only mean spending +30 points on a CP battery, a negligible difference. Even 10ppm guardsmen would probably still be powerful when you're still only spending 300 points for a bare-minimum CP battery. But add that +6ppm to an entire IG army that depends on having lots of infantry squads and you've destroyed the faction.
The only way to balance every unit for all situations is to remove the ability to mix factions to cover your weaknesses. As long as soup exists there will always be situations where a unit is overpowered.
So then answer the question: what ppm cost would be appropriate for guardsmen? What makes them balanced both as the core troops choice of a pure IG army and as a CP battery for IK? What is the point cost where including the CP battery is a tough choice, but IG haven't been nerfed out of existence?
5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)
It's all points that add up.
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Peregrine wrote: So then answer the question: what ppm cost would be appropriate for guardsmen? What makes them balanced both as the core troops choice of a pure IG army and as a CP battery for IK? What is the point cost where including the CP battery is a tough choice, but IG haven't been nerfed out of existence?
Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.
Salt donkey wrote: This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been.
This is completely wrong. Soup absolutely makes this problem worse by increasing the number of armies taking the overpowered thing. So yes, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're correct about guardsmen and company commanders being too cheap. Without soup there's a limit to how much you can exploit this. You can only take them in a pure IG army, which means accepting any weaknesses that come with playing pure IG. And the primary strength of company commanders is the ability to fill mandatory HQ slots for a minimum investment, something of essentially zero value in a pure IG army where you aren't required to take multiple detachments for each of your factions. Similarly, generating a ton of CP with cheap detachments isn't all that important because IG don't depend on high-CP stratagems and therefore don't need as much CP. But when soup exists every Imperial army can exploit those two units, and exploit them in ways that pure IG can't. Suddenly an army light IK gets a cheap CP battery to power stratagems that are supposed to be balanced by IK having limited CP generation, melee elite armies get cheap objective campers that also power their stratagems, etc. They're everywhere, because why wouldn't you take the overpowered thing when soup is allowed?
And the same thing happens with other units. Instead of having a bunch of Imperial factions, each probably having their own separate balance mistakes, you have a single Imperial army that consists of the 1-2 most overpowered units from each codex. List diversity is gone for the Imperial faction.
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Salt donkey wrote: See that’s where I disagree with you. By taking the farseer detachment that DE list the opportunity to take another type of detachment. For example it could have taken a cheap wych battalion for more board control, or dropped some other stuff in his list to Make an entirely new type of
detchament. Clearly he went for the farseer for the reasons you mention, but there was opportunity cost to do so. In this instance I would say doom is more of a problem then soup just like how CP are generated for battalions and how cheap IG stuff is for the loyal 32.
Detachment count is rarely a limiting factor for a mono-faction army. Three detachments is more than enough to fit anything you could possibly take under 2000 points, the only reason you'd find it to be a limit is if you're trying to make a soup list and want to take more than three factions.
Ok I will concede that soup worsenings the impact that powerful unit combination have on the game. That being said I can assure you that cheap IG Battalions would be still be too good in a soupless world. The reason I know this is because my friend plays pure guard, and runs a very competitive lists that still make good use of its command points. Similarly, doom would be very powerful even if it was limited to just craftworld eldar. To finish this point problems units and abilities are bad for the game with or with our allies.
The second point i’d like make is the new problems would pop up if soup was removed. If certain armies (Tau, dark and craftworld elder, IG, tyranids.) can be competive without allies, what happens to meta game when all the soup factions are removed/heavily nerfed. As someone who played 5th edition, the answer is there will be less faction diversity.
To answer your second point, I was being up the 3 Detachment thing as something which limits soup, making it less problematic. For example dark eldar have the alliance of agony stratagem, a powerful strat which allies you to bring 2 extra warlord traits if you run a cabal, coven, and cult, You can’t really get full value from alliance if you run allies, so in this case 3 detachments cause there to be more of an opportunity Cost for running allies.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.
So now we're talking about a 15 point increase in the cost of a CP battery. Do you honestly think that this will make them any less of an auto-include? That we won't still see every IK player taking a CP battery?
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
If it was combined with returning detachment for their original CP levels and upping the battleforged CP, yeah, it might.
(Up guardsman cost by one point, commander cost by ten points, that's 50 point increase, and now you get three CPs instead of five.)
Marmatag wrote: You believing something is a problem doesn't mean that it is. If you aren't actively playing a game, are you qualified to evaluate it, in any capacity? The answer is no.
Like I said, you're only considering the self-selecting group of players who like 40k in its current state and rejecting any opinions from people who dislike it enough to stop playing. Of course you get a positive overall reaction when you do that.
I'm pretty sure it's a good idea to value informed opinions more than uninformed ones isn't it?. Lots of things have changed almost monthly with this game as new codexes roll out and FAQs hit.
It's a little like saying there is no climate change, because you're not actively measuring the temperatures.
I agree with Marmatag's general sentiment. It doesn't mean there aren't things that can't be fixed.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.
So now we're talking about a 15 point increase in the cost of a CP battery. Do you honestly think that this will make them any less of an auto-include? That we won't still see every IK player taking a CP battery?
Are you really saying that since they'll still be allied in that we shouldn't nerf a model that is worth more than 4 points?
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.
So now we're talking about a 15 point increase in the cost of a CP battery. Do you honestly think that this will make them any less of an auto-include? That we won't still see every IK player taking a CP battery?
Are you really saying that since they'll still be allied in that we shouldn't nerf a model that is worth more than 4 points?
I think is more "this is not going to stop bad thing to happen" unless either A) the nerf becomes crippling and AM by itself is compromised B) souping is forbidden
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Honestly I'm for half a point. 45 points for an Infantry squad seems alright but we all know GW won't price it that way.
So now we're talking about a 15 point increase in the cost of a CP battery. Do you honestly think that this will make them any less of an auto-include? That we won't still see every IK player taking a CP battery?
Are you really saying that since they'll still be allied in that we shouldn't nerf a model that is worth more than 4 points?
I think is more "this is not going to stop bad thing to happen" unless either
A) the nerf becomes crippling and AM by itself is compromised
B) souping is forbidden
Or C) you bring back platoons, requiring a platoon commander model (would be considered part of the troops slot so no longer an elites choice and subject to Ro3), with two troop squads minimum per platoon for a troops choice which makes a CP battery go from 180 points to 360 points without screwing over guard players but making it a much harder choice for Imperium lists. The extra 60 points spent on gakky PC's as a tax is roughly equivalent to a bump to 5ppm, so you don't need to even dick with the points costs.
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)
It would need to be a combination of things. Castellan needs another 30-50 pts increased, artemia hellhounds need another 20-30 increase (like seriously, how is it cheaper than a regular hellhound when it does MORE damage?) and mortars either nerfed or another 3-5 points increase. All of these are units/options that are overperforming for their cost.
The resulting addition of 100-150 points will force you to take less than best units for rest of your slots, which will make the standard IK/AM soup ever so slightly less competitive.
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
This is a loaded statement and not really true. You have a lot of players who like that the game has a ton of subfactions that are viable solely because of allies. The ally system isn't the problem, certain options are. Again, how many times has a top table had a list with an assassin, admech and greyknights in this edition. It's cool that I can make a list like that and tell a cool story fighting another army. The fact that each codex has internal balance is an issue.
1) it can be fuffly. It felt weird in 5th when stuff like daemons of chaos where basically completely separate from CSM. Likewise there was the fact that Grey knights where pretty much always by themselves despite almost never being so in the fluff. I remember this being a discussion point on some online forums, and there where a few homebrew rules to allow certain factions to ally with eachother
It can be fluffy for, say, a squad of Space Marines to bolster an Imperial Guard army. It is not fluffy to be able to cherry-pick the best units from multiple dexes. Different forces have different combat doctrines, command structures, and lines of supply. Thus, simply slapping a bunch of units from disparate fighting forces together does not actually make an effective combat force and is only done in dire situations. That can be a highly narrative scenario, so it has a place in narrative play, but should not be allowed in matched play.
Salt donkey wrote: 2) It allows me to buy more models that I think are cool, and less units that I think are less so. Too many times during 5th I would see some interesting model for an army l didn’t play, but wouldn’t pick it up because I had no interest in collecting the rest of models I needed to start that army. Souping makes it lot easier for me to buy stuff I want, while avoided stuff I don’t want.
Nothing was ever stopping you from buying models that were cool. As for being allowed to play with them without having to buy the models you were less enthused about, again the answer is narrative play.
Salt donkey wrote: 3) Soup allows more list diversity. Because certain factions with glaring weaknesses now have access to plug those weaknesses, they can be played in new interesting ways (or just played competitively at all). Recent tournament results support this, and I think this will continue to
No it doesn't. What soup does is encourage the cherry-picking of the best units. That is absolutely terrible for list diversity.
Now on to common complaints I see against soup.
1) “Soup hurts factions that don’t have acesss to it, such as necrons.” While true, I believe this argument is heavily overblown. Sure GW has to be careful on how it balances Xenos with little to no allies, but I think it can be done. Case and point are tau and tyranids. While neither have been totally top tier yet, both have been pretty consistently showing strong results at tournaments, as shown at Solcal open. With Orks looking very strong now that they have a codex, I believe it’s very possible that factions with no allies can be quite good.
That is something soup absolutely does. Mono-dex-factions cannot possibly be balanced vs the endless possibilities of soup without making them overpowered against a mono-dex list. That sets up a terrible situation in casual games, where players who happen to play a multi-dex-faction are obliged to soup in order to stand a reasonable chance against the OPed mono-dex-factions.
2) “souping can be very un-fluffy.” This one is also true, but then again tournament list have rarely every been truly fluffy. In 5th for example, everyone was ridding in metal boxes, which may happen occasionally, but I doubt every guard commander in the fluff utilizise chimaera brigades with zero Leman Russes. Or that grey knight armies are exclusively some elite terminators, Draigo, and 3 dreadnoughts duel/wielding auto-cannons
At least those lists were mono-faction, which is infinitely more fluffy than mushes of mis-matched units whose only commonality is that they create the most powerful list together. They also had the advantage of all the units in the lists sharing a consistent visual aesthetic, which soup singularly fails to do.
Salt donkey wrote: 3) “Souping disacourges list diversity”. As you have probably guessed Based on my pros I fully disagree with this one. Now I think there’s a small degree of truth in this in that if a unit, or units are far too good, soup will increase there is usage even more. This means you see stuff like the loyal 32 everywhere, but in my mind this has more to do with guardsman and company commanders being too cheap for what they bring you, rather than a problem with soup. Furthermore even Though the loyal 32 have been omnipresent the list that utilize them have not been. There are some which use knights, some which use more guard, some that use Custards, and even some that use different flavors of space marines. The evidence supports this as well as over the span of 8th (a year and 3 months) we’ve seen everything from deathguard, to all flavors of eldar, to even some space marine win large tournaments. In 5th we could go whole years where a single or a few codex’s would dominate the Meta. Part of that was lack of attempts by GW to shake up the meta yes, but also because if a single codex had fewer weaknesses and/or more OP units than the rest
If the field it would dominate for a while no questions asked
And yet in the soup environment, the list to beat has become Knights/Loyal 32/BA Smash Captains. One list being that dominant in the tournament scene does not speak towards healthy list diversity.
Salt donkey wrote: 4) I keep hearing that souping allies you to eliminate all your weaknesses, and while true to a degree, it also will reduce yout armies strengths. For example if I choose to run a tzaangor bomb in my death guard list, that means I’m losing some duribility in my list (as I won’t be able to as many durable deathguard units) in exchange for more hitting power. So yeah I’m helped cover a deathguard weakness by souping, but my list won’t automatically be better.
You are incorrect. The cost of, say, the Loyal 32 is negligible, and even without the CP generation, it's a valuable addition to any list comprised of more expensive, more elite models. It brings Obsec bodies, cheap screening, and board control. Alternately, an IG army can easily afford a couple of Smash-Captains to shore up their weakness in close combat without taking a significant dip in its firepower..
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
I've got Necrons, Orks, and Tau in addition to my Imperium stuff. Still think soup is better for the game in the long term.
Soup makes having to get 20+ factions roughly equal in power to one another down to seven. Which one of those is more likely to eventually achieve balance given a three times a year change cycle? Even as Marmatag pointed out, you extend the look at lists at the SoCal open to those with 5W/1L and all seven major factions had a road to victory. That's honestly a great place to be in for a game with this many races/units.
Getting every single chapter or craftworld balanced with every other is a pipe dream and I don't see how people can reasonably expect their precious Iron Hands or Hive Fleet Gorgon to be as good as the 5 options in their respective codices, much less when pitted against any of the major factions in the game. If you play some weird niche faction, you accept that you're not playing competitive and move on or you use the god damned keywords system and actually do well. Insisting on monofaction at this point is like trying to force everyone you play with in Starcraft to agree to "No rush 15."
There's only three books that are in a relative disadvantage due to lacking allies, Orks, Necrons, and Tau, and it can be easily overcome with a few buffs/new units. I fully expect to see Necron/Tau buffs in CA and we have no idea if the Orks book will be enough to bring them up to par yet, but everybody else is on roughly equal footing if you use the keyword system that defines this edition.
HoundsofDemos wrote: This is a loaded statement and not really true. You have a lot of players who like that the game has a ton of subfactions that are viable solely because of allies. The ally system isn't the problem, certain options are. Again, how many times has a top table had a list with an assassin, admech and greyknights in this edition. It's cool that I can make a list like that and tell a cool story fighting another army. The fact that each codex has internal balance is an issue.
I suppose you don't recall why character targeting rule was revised.
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
This is a loaded statement and not really true. You have a lot of players who like that the game has a ton of subfactions that are viable solely because of allies. The ally system isn't the problem, certain options are. Again, how many times has a top table had a list with an assassin, admech and greyknights in this edition. It's cool that I can make a list like that and tell a cool story fighting another army. The fact that each codex has internal balance is an issue.
I didn't say allies are a problem. Certain codexes could be designed for allied detachments, like Assassins, etc. The problem is "soup". It's not my fault that people start using that word to mean "1800 pts of one army allied with 200 pts of one other".
I've got Necrons, Orks, and Tau in addition to my Imperium stuff. Still think soup is better for the game in the long term.
That's great to hear, thanks for your completely unbiased opinion! Let me guess which one of those factions you are mainly playing in 8th though, right?
*checks your recent posts in Tactics category*
Over 100 posts in a row, every. single. one. in Imperium threads, split between 4 or 5 different IoM armies, I gave up scrolling after that.
Yeah you're exactly who we are to with he said "people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it".
HoundsofDemos wrote: This is a loaded statement and not really true. You have a lot of players who like that the game has a ton of subfactions that are viable solely because of allies. The ally system isn't the problem, certain options are. Again, how many times has a top table had a list with an assassin, admech and greyknights in this edition. It's cool that I can make a list like that and tell a cool story fighting another army. The fact that each codex has internal balance is an issue.
I suppose you don't recall why character targeting rule was revised.
And they fixed what was a problem as they should do to anything that in game is an issue. That also wasn't unique to any particular faction it was an issue with character targeting in general.
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
But isn't the opposite true? I mean. People that can't access allies, aren't they biased agaisnt it?
Personally, I would love for the range to be expanded and orks to be able to become mercs, and Necrons and Tau having access to some allied races or more expanded subfactions. Everything but more Imperium Factions.
And I'm of course biased because I have models for 5-6 armies (Assasins, SoB, SoS, Tempestus Scions, Imperial Knights, Adeptus Custodes) that I can't field as stand alone forces, and making them stand alone forces would cost me hundreds of dollars, but I can play thanks to the allies system as a cohesive force.
Personally I prefer for them to restrict soup (Only relics for you Warlord faction, not sharing CP between subfactions/factions, only the 3 generic ones), and make taking allies or not a tactical choice, not a obvious choice, than to just ban allies. Some people would say that something like that would kill allies. I disagree. Allies would become that, cohesive forces that can be played by themselves that work together (Like a SM batallion + IM batallion) instead of a mix of the All-Stars. So like playing two mini armies instead of a mixed IMPERIUM one.
Also, make psychic powers only affect the subfaction of the model thats casting them.
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
This is a loaded statement and not really true. You have a lot of players who like that the game has a ton of subfactions that are viable solely because of allies. The ally system isn't the problem, certain options are. Again, how many times has a top table had a list with an assassin, admech and greyknights in this edition. It's cool that I can make a list like that and tell a cool story fighting another army. The fact that each codex has internal balance is an issue.
I didn't say allies are a problem. Certain codexes could be designed for allied detachments, like Assassins, etc. The problem is "soup". It's not my fault that people start using that word to mean "1800 pts of one army allied with 200 pts of one other".
I've got Necrons, Orks, and Tau in addition to my Imperium stuff. Still think soup is better for the game in the long term.
That's great to hear, thanks for your completely unbiased opinion! Let me guess which one of those factions you are mainly playing in 8th though, right?
*checks your recent posts in Tactics category*
Over 100 posts in a row, every. single. one. in Imperium threads, split between 4 or 5 different IoM armies, I gave up scrolling after that.
Yeah you're exactly who we are to with he said "people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it".
Oh snap, you got me there internet detective, I do mostly play imperium. Yet this somehow makes me want hundreds of dollars of models I own to never be balanced against the other hundreds of dollars worth of models I own cause reasons?
The game is clearly designed around allies and every balance change reinforces that. Notice that mono book CP costs go up rather than restricting who you can take as allies? That's because GW is looking at the IMPERIUM keyword when they adjust. Because they've figured out 7 is way the hell easier to balance than 20 and it's starting to show in tournament results.
Arachnofiend wrote:Funny how it's the people who play factions that benefit from soup that always go up to bat for it.
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
Ah yes. The ye old ad hominem. Let’s play fun word game shall we? Here’s my new defense of soup.
:Funny how it's the people who play factions that DON’T benefit from soup that always go up to bat against it
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a GAK about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who doesn’t think soup is the greatest, is being biased:
Don’t corncern yourself if this comment seems familiar.
JimOnMars wrote: Soup is very fluffy...but really? a squad of grunts sitting in a trench makes the knight shoot better? That's just dumb.
A squad of grunts sitting in the trench should make the grunts shoot better.
Plus soup is a way around the RO3...take two 1000 point armies instead of a heavily limited 2000 point army. That's just dumb.
By that logic, mono-builds should have RO6...but they don't.
What army/ally combo can get 6 of a datasheet other than Demon princes (who only get around that because the demon princes have separately named data sheets)?
Oh snap, you got me there internet detective, I do mostly play imperium.
I mean, YOU'RE the one who tried to imply you're some even handed perspective here like you're playing all these races, in DIRECT RESPONSE to us saying that all the people defending this are playing their own soup armies. And look at your posts, you're exclusively playing Imperium this edition! Don't get sassy because you narrative was exposed lol
RogueApiary wrote: Yet this somehow makes me want hundreds of dollars of models I own to never be balanced against the other hundreds of dollars worth of models I own cause reasons?
Huh? This logic makes no sense. I mean, if you are power-gaming and trying to get an in-game advantage as was stated, for anything beyond the strongest army you own, the weaker it the better. You're only going to get matched against them too? That's exactly why you'd want that? :S
people don't give a gak about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who thinks Soup is good for anything other than selling more models, is being biased
But isn't the opposite true? I mean. People that can't access allies, aren't they biased agaisnt it?
Not if it's bad game design, and the people able to recognize this are the people who don't benefit it (people who don't play keyword armies), or who DO benefit from it and are able to apply a bit of objectivity here (myself and many others).
There's very few people who don't own a soup faction who think it's good, you're right, and why would they, they know exactly why it's bad? but there's also plenty of people who DO OWN one, who think it's bad. It seems to be pretty much be personal bias that leads people to defend it, as far as I can see, because I only ever see really weak arguments defending it, from people who I know would be able to absolutely destroy those same sort of statements if they were against it.
Ah yes. The ye old ad hominem. Let’s play fun word game shall we? Here’s my new defense of soup.
:Funny how it's the people who play factions that DON’T benefit from soup that always go up to bat against it
it's an insane coincidence and there's surely no correlation
people don't give a GAK about game design, they want easier wins. Simple as that. Anyone who doesn’t think soup is the greatest, is being biased:
Don’t corncern yourself if this comment seems familiar.
I play Tyranids and Chaos buddy, both Keywords with 3 or more factions available. Back to the drawing board for you, with this poorly thought out response.
Martel732 wrote: As always, miscosted units are the problem in both mono-faction AND allied armies. Allied armies have more statistical access to miscosted units. But if there were no miscosted units, this wouldn't matter.
There is the added impact that some units are costed fine UNTIL you add them to a Soup list. Knights are costed partly with the understanding that a Knight army isn't going to generate many command points. Give Knights access to plentiful command points and they get significantly better.
I play Chaos and occasionally take Khorne Daemons as allies. No mixed detachments, everybody is grouped according to their Codex.
Could GW have put all the datasheets for CSM and Daemons all in a single Codex? Sure.
But, at the end of the day, what difference does it make when all the datasheets appear in a single book? I would be taking the same army. If there was a rule that limited me to playing from a single Codex, I'd be fine with that too. I know how to run my armies, no one wins or loses more often when I play units from 2 Codexes.
The reason Orks, Tau and Necrons are weak (for now) is because Xenos armies don't sell as well as Imperium / Chaos. If people bought models for these factions, GW would expand the range and they would have more options with better rules. But the fact is Xenos armies (except Eldar) are not as popular so they don't get the same kind of support.
Blaming soup for Necron / Tau / Ork woes is silly. The only disadvantage comes with command points, and strategy is not what those factions are known for. Changing the situation would require more people buying more models, a lot more.
Strategy is not what Necron and T'au are known for? Did it ever occur that everybody plays imperium and such because they are more powerful due to soup? Bad argument is bad...
The reason Orks, Tau and Necrons are weak (for now) is because Xenos armies don't sell as well as Imperium / Chaos. If people bought models for these factions, GW would expand the range and they would have more options with better rules. But the fact is Xenos armies (except Eldar) are not as popular so they don't get the same kind of support.
So it's the customer's fault if a product is defective. We should take one for the team.
Wow.
Zothos wrote: Strategy is not what Necron and T'au are known for? Did it ever occur that everybody plays imperium and such because they are more powerful due to soup? Bad argument is bad...
Necrons are shambling metal space zombies with no autonomy. Tau need drones to tell them what to shoot. Each expresses their strategy better off the battlefield, they don't deserve CPs from a fluff perspective. So I'm good with that.
Imperium armies existed long before you had soup to blame. They're not powerful because they can mix units from several armies.
Perhaps the point you are missing is Imperium armies outsell Xenos armies by a mile. Of course GW is going to give them more options and better rules. They want people buying more of the popular stuff, it's the tyranny of the market at work.
If you really want Necrons to be better, buy more models and encourage a few thousand more people to buy more models. Otherwise, watch out for GW introducing 'Salad' in 9th edition, it will still be bad for non-Eldar Xenos players.
The reason Orks, Tau and Necrons are weak (for now) is because Xenos armies don't sell as well as Imperium / Chaos. If people bought models for these factions, GW would expand the range and they would have more options with better rules. But the fact is Xenos armies (except Eldar) are not as popular so they don't get the same kind of support.
So it's the customer's fault if a product is defective. We should take one for the team. Wow.
Defective?
Your army does not autowin every game and others are a little more competitive. So that means the game is broken.
Yeah, right. My other army is Grey Knights, I play them monocodex when I want a challenge. The game works just fine.
Oh snap, you got me there internet detective, I do mostly play imperium.
I mean, YOU'RE the one who tried to imply you're some even handed perspective here like you're playing all these races, in DIRECT RESPONSE to us saying that all the people defending this are playing their own soup armies. And look at your posts, you're exclusively playing Imperium this edition! Don't get sassy because you narrative was exposed lol
RogueApiary wrote: Yet this somehow makes me want hundreds of dollars of models I own to never be balanced against the other hundreds of dollars worth of models I own cause reasons?
Huh? This logic makes no sense. I mean, if you are power-gaming and trying to get an in-game advantage as was stated, for anything beyond the strongest army you own, the weaker it the better. You're only going to get matched against them too? That's exactly why you'd want that? :S
I was playing Index Deathwatch for a pretty good chunk of this edition under the expectation their codex would look like the GK one. But sure, I'm a power-gamer solely concerned with W/L. And I'd ideally like any of my armies to play on par with any of my other armies as each one represents a significant investment of money and hobby time. I just don't think soup is the problem. I've already put out my philosophy, there are 7 factions in this game and anyone playing an Imperium codex as a mono-codex is just putting on artificial restrictions on themselves. Eventually, they'll make enough changes where the 'true' mono codices (Necrons, Orks, Tau) can be fully on par with the soup factions either by strengthening them, weakening soup components, or giving them allies of their own. They've already started this by adjusting imperium book CP costs to take into account AM batteries. If CA boosts Necrons and Tau, and if the Orks' codex release is found to be good enough once people get some table time with it, I think we'll be in a pretty good spot.
JimOnMars wrote: Soup is very fluffy...but really? a squad of grunts sitting in a trench makes the knight shoot better? That's just dumb.
A squad of grunts sitting in the trench should make the grunts shoot better.
Plus soup is a way around the RO3...take two 1000 point armies instead of a heavily limited 2000 point army. That's just dumb.
By that logic, mono-builds should have RO6...but they don't.
What army/ally combo can get 6 of a datasheet other than Demon princes (who only get around that because the demon princes have separately named data sheets)?
Your army does not autowin every game and others are a little more competitive. So that means the game is broken.
Yeah, right. My other army is Grey Knights, I play them monocodex when I want a challenge. The game works just fine.
This is not what you implied above, I am sorry. You said "If people bought models for these factions..." Au contraire, if GW updated the models for these factions and wrote better rules, we would escape such vicious circle.
Arguing that's whats best for GW's pockets runs parallel to what's best for game design, is counter productive and unrealistic. At best you can argue that at the expense of game design, selling more miniatures through soup can improve the profitability of the game and the size of the scene.
Or, simply, put up a chart for bonus command points based upon the army-wide keyword. Imperium, chaos and pointy-ears get 0, middle-weight armies like drukari, IK and (possibly) orks get 4, weak factions like tau & necron get 8. GK is singled out at 12.
I play Tyranids and Chaos buddy, both Keywords with 3 or more factions available. Back to the drawing board for you, with this poorly thought out response.
Cool I played pure knights at the last tournament I went to, but that’s neither here nor there. My point was that your argument cuts both ways. You took it as matter of fact that soup defenders always play soup, but some soup players reject soup. Furthermore you claim that people who don’t play soup always reject soup. You claim these things without any hard evidence, and as far as antidotal evidence goes I know plenty of pure army players who have no problem with soup. As far as the debate itself goes you’ve haven’t attacked any of my stances.
Also do I really I have to say that a speaker’s position on a topic Is independent of the logic of their argument? Certainly if somebody is overcommitted to one side of issue their arguments can be become biased. For example, if someone where to use a logical fallacy such as ad hominem in their opening arguments while casually ignoring evidence the other side has brought, I could reasonably assume they are biased. This is because they can’t be troubled to come with a real point yet are totally sure of their position. A classic symptom of somebody who won’t change their mind no matter what logic is presented to them. On the other hand, if somebody’s argument includes things like evidence and logical statements, does it really matter if they might be biased? To put it bluntly attack my argument not me. (Not saying my argument is automatically foolproof, I’d just prefer it if you attacked it rather than me first.)
SHUPPET wrote: Arguing that's whats best for GW's pockets runs parallel to what's best for game design, is counter productive and unrealistic. At best you can argue that at the expense of game design, selling more miniatures through soup can improve the profitability of the game and the size of the scene.
That's a really interesting point.
40k is the most popular and widely played tabletop miniature game on Earth.
If, as you say, the profitability of the game / size of the scene is a function of quality of game design, doesn't that mean Games Workshop has finally designed the best possible game for people to play?
SHUPPET wrote: Arguing that's whats best for GW's pockets runs parallel to what's best for game design, is counter productive and unrealistic. At best you can argue that at the expense of game design, selling more miniatures through soup can improve the profitability of the game and the size of the scene.
That's a really interesting point.
40k is the most popular and widely played tabletop miniature game on Earth.
If, as you say, the profitability of the game / size of the scene is a function of quality of game design, doesn't that mean Games Workshop has finally designed the best possible game for people to play?
Sounds like a big endorsement for soup.
Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
Your army does not autowin every game and others are a little more competitive. So that means the game is broken.
Yeah, right. My other army is Grey Knights, I play them monocodex when I want a challenge. The game works just fine.
This is not what you implied above, I am sorry. You said "If people bought models for these factions..."
Au contraire, if GW updated the models for these factions and wrote better rules, we would escape such vicious circle.
You are correct, that is not what I wrote above.
What I wrote above was in response to a separate point, in a separate context. It makes no sense for me to repeat the same point in a different one.
There is nothing inconsistent in these two statements:
- Yes, Xenos armies would have better rules and more options if people bought more of their models. There are market forces at work and they do matter.
- Yes, most Xenos armies are weak (for now) in comparison to Imperium armies. That does not mean there's anything wrong with the game. It certainly does not imply anything about soup.
Chaos Space Marines were weak throughout 6th and 7th editions. Tau were off the charts most of 6th and still very powerful during 7th. In a game that goes through changes with each edition, things will change. That's why most people have multiple armies.
FWIW, Tau are not garbage tier in 8th edition. They are certainly a lot better than my Grey Knights. The fact I could take soup does not change the fact Grey Knights have it very rough in this edition. That doesn't mean the game is broken, it means the meta doesn't favor my army.
SHUPPET wrote: Arguing that's whats best for GW's pockets runs parallel to what's best for game design, is counter productive and unrealistic. At best you can argue that at the expense of game design, selling more miniatures through soup can improve the profitability of the game and the size of the scene.
That's a really interesting point.
40k is the most popular and widely played tabletop miniature game on Earth.
If, as you say, the profitability of the game / size of the scene is a function of quality of game design, doesn't that mean Games Workshop has finally designed the best possible game for people to play?
Sounds like a big endorsement for soup.
Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
So you are arguing bad game design sells better than good game design?
If that's true, why would anyone want to put work into making a good set of rules? I'm not sure I follow any of your points but would love to understand what you mean when you say 'good.'
If I am a company selling a miniature game, where I have to spend a lot of money on design, raw materials, manufacturing, sales, etc, good would mean 'something that sells enough so I make a profit.'
If I am a player of said game, I would define good as 'something worth spending money on.'
If the rules are not good, players would not spend money on the game. If the game was not good, that would mean it would have been discontinued a long time ago.
The game has not been discontinued and continues to sell a lot of miniatures. I believe that means the design is 'good' for players and Games Workshop alike.
But maybe you have some other way of using the word. Please share.
I’d also like add to the actual discussion. Some have stated that list diversity is worse with soup, the evidence says otherwise. The Solcal had staggering diversity, with IG being the only list to make 2 spot in the top 16. That was even wihin the realm of possibility during 5th: People bring up that soup allows you to ignore army weaknesses is a purely bad thing, but weaknesses can also hurt list diversity. This is because having a weakness in area which was powerful for the edition was basically a death sentence. For example tyranids in 5th had the weakeness of having no access to vehicles. This essentially meant tyranids where pretty much useless competitively the whole edition because 5th was all about metal boxes. On reverse having access to good transports meant your army was automatically strong. Not always the case (Deamons where good at the end of 5th) but the pattern usually held true. In the end this meant that some armies (tyranids, tau, orks past Nob biker phase,) were bad the whole edition.
I also don’t get this orks,necrons, and tau are bad because they have no allies” talk. Necrons are bad sure, but even with allies you would still only ever see destroyers and vaults. Orks just got a new codex, so we don’t know how good they are yet(but I’m leaning towards very good). Tau have been consistently good enough to reach higher tables at big events, so I don’t think you can say they’re in a bad spot. So if 1 allyless army is bad (for clear reasons other than just lacking allies), one is unknown, and one is good, then how is there a problem?
Yes, Xenos armies would have better rules and more options if people bought more of their models. There are market forces at work and they do matter.
Based off what? SM and BA are two of the highest seller, yet they are both some of the worst armies in the game. Why state something like this?
techsoldaten wrote: FWIW, Tau are not garbage tier in 8th edition. They are certainly a lot better than my Grey Knights. The fact I could take soup does not change the fact Grey Knights have it very rough in this edition. That doesn't mean the game is broken, it means the meta doesn't favor my army.
SHUPPET wrote: Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
So you are arguing bad game design sells better than good game design?
If that's true, why would anyone want to put work into making a good set of rules? I'm not sure I follow any of your points but would love to understand what you mean when you say 'good.'
If I am a company selling a miniature game, where I have to spend a lot of money on design, raw materials, manufacturing, sales, etc, good would mean 'something that sells enough so I make a profit.'
If I am a player of said game, I would define good as 'something worth spending money on.'
If the rules are not good, players would not spend money on the game. If the game was not good, that would mean it would have been discontinued a long time ago.
The game has not been discontinued and continues to sell a lot of miniatures. I believe that means the design is 'good' for players and Games Workshop alike.
But maybe you have some other way of using the word. Please share.
Holy crap. This is beyond fanboyism at this point. If we aren't allowed to criticise game balance because "pay to win sells more!", then why are you even weighing in on whether or not allies are better for game design or not? The topic has nothing to do with what lines GW's pockets most.
I didn't say anything about bad game design selling more, I just pointed out that good sales aren't necessarily a reflection of good game design.
Regardless your entire point works against you. Even with soup, 40k is selling better than ever in the most balanced edition ever.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
When they were limited to house rules no they didn't.
And question is are thev good to have? If you don't care about balancing or are willing to make special scenario to ensure balance sure. As standard though allies kill any pretension of balance. Simple as that.
Now if you don't carb about balance fine but don't complain about unbalance then
Yes, Xenos armies would have better rules and more options if people bought more of their models. There are market forces at work and they do matter.
Based off what? SM and BA are two of the highest seller, yet they are both some of the worst armies in the game. Why state something like this?
I disagree with the idea SM and BA are the worst armies in the game. They're more mid-tier, and both are a lot better allied with a Guard detachment.
The point is soup has nothing to do with the weakness of Xenos armies. Go ahead and complain about the rules, the cost, whatever. But soup and command points are not the reason they are losing.
techsoldaten wrote: FWIW, Tau are not garbage tier in 8th edition. They are certainly a lot better than my Grey Knights. The fact I could take soup does not change the fact Grey Knights have it very rough in this edition. That doesn't mean the game is broken, it means the meta doesn't favor my army.
who said Tau were garbage?
Perhaps I was confused, I thought you were arguing Xenos armies were disadvantaged because they can't take allies. I assumed this included Tau.
Regardless, that was a reminder some Xenos armies do pretty well without allies.
SHUPPET wrote: Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
Spoiler:
So you are arguing bad game design sells better than good game design?
If that's true, why would anyone want to put work into making a good set of rules? I'm not sure I follow any of your points but would love to understand what you mean when you say 'good.'
If I am a company selling a miniature game, where I have to spend a lot of money on design, raw materials, manufacturing, sales, etc, good would mean 'something that sells enough so I make a profit.'
If I am a player of said game, I would define good as 'something worth spending money on.'
If the rules are not good, players would not spend money on the game. If the game was not good, that would mean it would have been discontinued a long time ago.
The game has not been discontinued and continues to sell a lot of miniatures. I believe that means the design is 'good' for players and Games Workshop alike.
But maybe you have some other way of using the word. Please share.
Holy crap. This is beyond fanboyism at this point. If we aren't allowed to criticise game balance because "pay to win sells more!", then why are you even weighing in on whether or not allies are better for game design or not? The topic has nothing to do with what lines GW's pockets most.
I didn't say anything about bad game design selling more, I just pointed out that good sales aren't necessarily a reflection of good game design.
Regardless your entire point works against you. Even with soup, 40k is selling better than ever in the most balanced edition ever.
Perhaps it was not obvious that I'm disagreeing with the point where you said 'Arguing that's whats best for GW's pockets runs parallel to what's best for game design, is counter productive and unrealistic.'
Sales are a reflection of 'good' game design. If you don't think that's true for 40k, I'm asking you to provide a better definition of what good means, if you have one. I'm genuinely trying to understand what you mean by 'counter productive and unrealistic' here.
Good game design means different things to different people. Previous editions tried to model reality more accurately with the cover system, scatter dice, damage templates, etc. Some players would like to see better balance and for every unit to have a hard counter in every other army. Others talk about good game design in a way that translates to "it's only good if my army is winning."
A lot of companies who put a lot of work into their rulesets went out of business in the last 18 months. They may have executed beautifully on game design, but that didn't translate into commercial success. Accurately modelling reality, better balance, personal satisfaction with outcomes - none of that actually means much when the game can't continue, right? This isn't video games, this is tabletop miniatures games, which have a different economic model for consumers and producers. No one spends money on a tabletop miniature game that has no future.
So help me understand what you mean when you say "what's best for game design." If it's anything other than "rules that encourage sales," I'd like to understand why.
The best way to handle ally problem is to make it works like an AOS. Simply restrict it to % points of the army, or, even better, to one detachment. Increase amount CP from the start, like 6 instead of 3, ally detach to not gain you more CP, but you still can spend CP on them. Ally can't be your warlord or take any relic. Sounds like a workable plan.
If I was to choose, the ally would be removed to narrative only, but this will never happens.
Silver144 wrote: The best way to handle ally problem is to make it works like an AOS. Simply restrict it to % points of the army, or, even better, to one detachment. Increase amount CP from the start, like 6 instead of 3, ally detach to not gain you more CP, but you still can spend CP on them. Ally can't be your warlord or take any relic. Sounds like a workable plan.
If I was to choose, the ally would be removed to narrative only, but this will never happens.
All it does is limit the damage. Much like the rule of 3 GW introduced. Just bandaid but doesnt' fix the problem.
Silver144 wrote: The best way to handle ally problem is to make it works like an AOS. Simply restrict it to % points of the army, or, even better, to one detachment. Increase amount CP from the start, like 6 instead of 3, ally detach to not gain you more CP, but you still can spend CP on them. Ally can't be your warlord or take any relic. Sounds like a workable plan.
If I was to choose, the ally would be removed to narrative only, but this will never happens.
All it does is limit the damage. Much like the rule of 3 GW introduced. Just bandaid but doesnt' fix the problem.
You are totally right. But at least it will reduce the offence from trainwreck to simply annoyance. No more CP farm, no more 3 factions in one. Loyal 32 is just a screen, BAsmashdude is just s beatstick.
But again, I will be happy to see soups in narrative only. This is the place for fun and narrative stuff.
techsoldaten wrote: Blaming soup for Necron / Tau / Ork woes is silly. The only disadvantage comes with command points, and strategy is not what those factions are known for. Changing the situation would require more people buying more models, a lot more.
Wow! Maybe try to learn a damn thing about armies other than your own before you make claims like this. Literally Imotekh's (you know, the leader of the most important Necron faction) entire thing is being a brilliant strategist.
RogueApiary wrote: Soup makes having to get 20+ factions roughly equal in power to one another down to seven.
Only by no longer having 20+ factions. This is not an improvement.
Given that one is far more attainable than the other, I beg to disagree. I'd rather have seven eventually balanced than hope they somehow get 20 right. Keeping in mind the number of matchups that needs to be balanced goes up considerably with each added army.
20 armies is 190 matchups. 7 factions is 42. Guess which of those you're more likely to see balanced?
20+ factions just makes the game like League of Legends, where you have the illusion of choice but really only a fraction of the heroes are viable. If you killed soup today, I can all but guarantee you'd see nothing outside of 4-5 books in the top 16 of a major.
Meanwhile, I only count six books not at all represented in Socal open. That means every GW army in the game except GK, DG, Necrons, Orks, Admech, and Deathwatch had at least one unit in the top 16. If you expand to top 32 four of those show up and that pretty much just leaves Necrons out in the cold at 33rd place and Admech in the 70's (can't recall and there's probably one higher up but BCP access to Socal is out of the 3 day free pass).
What that means is that currently, most of the books in the game have a reasonable shot at taking a major.
Faction Imperium makes reduntant 75%-90% range, that's not good. And Imperium players are forced to buy minis from too many codexes, and with ever shifting meta the pull of choices is too big, and every time you are forced to buy new subfaction. Today it's IG, tomorrow the admech the new hotness. It's EA level of pay to win. No, thanks, can I just play space wolves in matched play pls and don't feel like I handicap myself?
For what it's worth, i play mono dex and i'm all good with souping, it's a good addition to the game.
Sure it is creating some problem, but nothing more than what have been created by stratagems in 8th, or relics and traits in previous editions. When you introduce a new mechanic that allows an higher degree of freedom in customization, you have to calibrate it, which is happening right now.
Even with souping, as has been said many times the game is at it's most balanced state since... i don't know i didn't play before 5th. Souping was introduced in 6th and caused disasters, then was changed in 7th and created even bigger disasters, then 8th introduced keywords, and now souping is a good tool to optimiza lists, but at least mono dex and soup lists are playing at the same game, just with a small advantage. In 7th a soup list could easily take on a list 2 times bigger.
RogueApiary wrote: What that means is that currently, most of the books in the game have a reasonable shot at taking a major.
Only if you define "reasonable shot at taking a major" as "reasonable shot at having at least one unit in the winning soup list".
And no, going down to seven factions is not an improvement because it means having 90% of the game's content be useless. Those codices still exist, the models still exist and people still buy them. You've just declared them to be no longer tournament-viable and told the people who own them to STFU and buy soup. And you've made balancing harder in the process, not easier. By faction count you have fewer armies, but now instead of relatively self-contained and consistently-designed single codices you have massive soup factions that can take anything from any codex in the faction. All of that content is still there, just divided up in a way that is much more prone to balance issues.
RogueApiary wrote: What that means is that currently, most of the books in the game have a reasonable shot at taking a major.
Only if you define "reasonable shot at taking a major" as "reasonable shot at having at least one unit in the winning soup list".
And no, going down to seven factions is not an improvement because it means having 90% of the game's content be useless. Those codices still exist, the models still exist and people still buy them. You've just declared them to be no longer tournament-viable and told the people who own them to STFU and buy soup. And you've made balancing harder in the process, not easier. By faction count you have fewer armies, but now instead of relatively self-contained and consistently-designed single codices you have massive soup factions that can take anything from any codex in the faction. All of that content is still there, just divided up in a way that is much more prone to balance issues.
I assume you want all 6 sub factions in each of those books to be balanced as well? I mean, since we're shooting for the impossible and unreasonable here we might as well go big
Tournament results beg to differ as far as balancing soup factions against each other. All but two of the seven major factions made top 16 and one of the two that didn't didnt have it's codex yet. That's pretty close to balanced.
There is literally no game on this planet, computer, board or otherwise that can balance 20 factions with unique mechanics and 100's of unique datasheets. Twilight Imperium does a decent job, but they keep a tight leash on the variables, and even then a good chunk of the faction roster is dumpster worthy.
Regardless, it's pretty obvious 'soup' is here to stay. GW's intent is clear given the direction of FAQ's and their declaration that soup was dead, implying they do not consider using the keyword system to be soup.
I understand your logic: GW makes army transaction between editions pretty bad and it is very common to see an army simply don't "fit" to the new edition. So the solution is to give it an option to take some power from better codex. But such things should be a tool, an option, but not the the only way to play game. Imperium shouldn't be default codex for all imperium players. Otherwise GW should remove all those dexes and just release Imperium codex. IG platoon guys and skitarii are the troops, space marine squad are elite, dune crawler heavy support, inqusitor HQ, etc. Until then there is no Imperium codex and I assume that if I can't play my space wolves codex like tau play their codex - it's a disbalance mistake and was not assumed by game designers. We pay the same price after all, why did they get full codex, and I only the "fraction" of it?
HoundsofDemos wrote: The simplest fix is to remove CP from list building and tie it to points. Allies should be taken cause you like those units, not to grab a bunch of cheap CP cause you took a dirt cheap battery option.
100% agree here. I think a good start would be 1CP for every 125pts. That would give 2000pts army 16CPs, which should be OK. Then you would need to nerf certain CP-regen abilities or completely remove those.
RogueApiary wrote: Tournament results beg to differ as far as balancing soup factions against each other. All but two of the seven major factions made top 16 and one of the two that didn't didnt have it's codex yet. That's pretty close to balanced.
Depends on your standard of faction balance.
Some of those books are essentially represented by one or two units - custodes biker captains, BA captains with packs and hammers, knight raven castellan(singular) with cawls wrath. It's a very low % of overall material.
RogueApiary wrote: I assume you want all 6 sub factions in each of those books to be balanced as well? I mean, since we're shooting for the impossible and unreasonable here we might as well go big
It would be nice, but it's less essential. I can still play Cadian models as Catachans if the Cadian rules are weak, it's not like reducing the IG codex to its two-unit CP batter contribution to the soup. And up until 8th those sub-factions didn't have rules at all and everything was fine.
Tournament results beg to differ as far as balancing soup factions against each other. All but two of the seven major factions made top 16 and one of the two that didn't didnt have it's codex yet. That's pretty close to balanced.
Again, only by removing most of the content in the game and reducing it to those seven flavors of soup. And one tournament's results is not proof of successful balancing. Nor is momentary success proof that the task is not more difficult.
There is literally no game on this planet, computer, board or otherwise that can balance 20 factions with unique mechanics and 100's of unique datasheets.
Then 40k is doomed. Making the game into soup vs. soup does not change the number of unique datasheets or faction mechanics, it just makes it easier to combine them in overpowered ways. Remember, soup doesn't actually take anything out of balance consideration. It just means that, after the overpowered things have been identified and exploited, more of your collection is sitting on the shelf gathering dust and you're buying 2-3 more factions to get your soup of the day.
Regardless, it's pretty obvious 'soup' is here to stay. GW's intent is clear given the direction of FAQ's and their declaration that soup was dead, implying they do not consider using the keyword system to be soup.
It is unfortunately true that it is here to stay in the rules as published by GW. The best solution is for third-party events (and who plays in GW"s official events anyway?) and people in random pickup games to impose a "single codex" rule. The fact that soup will still exist will then become a technicality and hardly anyone in the competitive game will use it.
RogueApiary wrote: I assume you want all 6 sub factions in each of those books to be balanced as well? I mean, since we're shooting for the impossible and unreasonable here we might as well go big
It would be nice, but it's less essential. I can still play Cadian models as Catachans if the Cadian rules are weak, it's not like reducing the IG codex to its two-unit CP batter contribution to the soup. And up until 8th those sub-factions didn't have rules at all and everything was fine.
Tournament results beg to differ as far as balancing soup factions against each other. All but two of the seven major factions made top 16 and one of the two that didn't didnt have it's codex yet. That's pretty close to balanced.
Again, only by removing most of the content in the game and reducing it to those seven flavors of soup. And one tournament's results is not proof of successful balancing. Nor is momentary success proof that the task is not more difficult.
There is literally no game on this planet, computer, board or otherwise that can balance 20 factions with unique mechanics and 100's of unique datasheets.
Then 40k is doomed. Making the game into soup vs. soup does not change the number of unique datasheets or faction mechanics, it just makes it easier to combine them in overpowered ways. Remember, soup doesn't actually take anything out of balance consideration. It just means that, after the overpowered things have been identified and exploited, more of your collection is sitting on the shelf gathering dust and you're buying 2-3 more factions to get your soup of the day.
Regardless, it's pretty obvious 'soup' is here to stay. GW's intent is clear given the direction of FAQ's and their declaration that soup was dead, implying they do not consider using the keyword system to be soup.
It is unfortunately true that it is here to stay in the rules as published by GW. The best solution is for third-party events (and who plays in GW"s official events anyway?) and people in random pickup games to impose a "single codex" rule. The fact that soup will still exist will then become a technicality and hardly anyone in the competitive game will use it.
Makes it easier to manage changes though as right now the focus could be on buffing the three mono factions or chipping away a little more at the mechanics that make the soups good. IE Warlord trait ie keyed to stratagems, so if you choose an IK WL, you lose BA and AM stratagems.
I'm a firm believer that points are not the only balance tool. Rof3 was necessary and an excellent design decision. Take mortars for example. They're cost efficient, but there's also not much upward room to nerf their points that wouldn't also make them useless. You price them at 35-40 and you can still take loads of them. You price them at 45 and you just effectively deleted the unit. But, you cut the number you can take and it becomes a much different situation. Now, what were once 15-18 mortars are capped at 9. It's no longer possible to leverage their low price to break past defenses by weight of dice. Run the numbers on 9 mortars vs. just about any infantry unit in cover and you'll see they should survive 2 or more turns on average, add a -1 to hit on top of it and it takes even longer for the mortars to chew through. Hive tyrants are the other example. Raising points on wings just means a few more gants get dropped, in the end, the Tyranid player is still going to run 5+ of them until the cost becomes so high taking one isn't worth it. Rule of three + a modest price hike still let the HT's put in work, but keep them from being oppressive by limiting how many you can bring.
There's the No Retreat tournament in Gibraltar that does single army, no duplicate detachments but unfortunately its not really a great measure for competitive balance since they screen the armies a bit. The armies all look fantastic though judging by the photos.
Soup isnt the problem i feel if they addressed grevious offenders more quickly, but mono-codex armies do need help.
Oddly enough orks looks really good, and i hope this sees some reworks of past moni codices that are reallg underperforming like necrons
Automatically Appended Next Post: Something that may be nice is providing a unique bonus for your army if all detachments come from the same codex...
Like marines could be all models in your army gain chapter tactics for their detachment. Soup woukdnt benefit, but it would fix a large hole in the army
I disagree with the idea SM and BA are the worst armies in the game. They're more mid-tier, and both are a lot better allied with a Guard detachment.
You just said, that the reason non-soup armies have weaker rules is because they don't sell enough. But I point out soup armies that are fan favorites with subpar rules, even worse than Xeno factions, and you claim it's fine because they can soup? Do you even read what you're saying? You realise you just completely contradicted yourself?
Sales are a reflection of 'good' game design. If you don't think that's true for 40k, I'm asking you to provide a better definition of what good means, if you have one. I'm genuinely trying to understand what you mean by 'counter productive and unrealistic' here.
Good design, almost exclusively when discussing competitive gaming, means fair and rewarding play, good balance, and viability for as many choices, and playstyles, as possible, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Bundling 10 factions into one and giving them all fluctuating power levels achieves the opposite of this.
Never when people talk about "game design" are they referring to profitability. That's called "profitability". Good game design does not equal profitability, nor vice versa. There is no correlation. Again, some of the most profitable games in the world are gakky, P2W games aimed at capturing "whales", the customers who will spend thousands, or more, for an in-game advantage over others. That is not good game design, it's just good sales. At the same time, some of the best reviewed games in the world sold a crapton, God of War, Witcher 3, Spiderman, etc being great examples. There is no correlation, trying to force one is counter-productive.
I agree that "soup" can be fluffy - in an apocalypse scale 10000 point game with multiple players on each side. I don't think there is anything fluffy about the loyal 32, some custodies/Blood Angels/whatever and a knight turning up. I don't think there is anything fluffy about the resurrection of SM Superfriends psychic stacking - or 3 (4?) factions of Eldar just showing up together in tiny numbers, or all the chaos factions. These are not armies from the fluff, they are just 200-600~ point splinters put together to optimise cross-faction benefits.
I don't get the claim that "look at SoCal, isn't it varied".
Not really. Almost half the top 16 are Eldar Soup. Now I guess you can say "isn't it great how Eldar/Dark Eldar/Harlequins and Ynnari (kinda) can be mixed together in different ways to create different armies". I guess - but that's not really the case. Its grab the top units from each roster and combine them as you see fit. There isn't much difference there at all. The same applies to "loyal 32/a full brigade, a Knight and... something else". I don't think this is variety.
Moreover the meta is still in the post-FAQ flux. I suspect even this faux-variety will wither as armies become optimised and it becomes clear "this" is the best Eldar/Imperial/Chaos soup.
8th is a lot better than 7th for casual players. The models released are also better than ever. All this explains why GW has been far more successful than they were a few years ago. This doesn't change the fact that soup is bad.
JimOnMars wrote: Does soup really sell more models than mono? You need 2000 points either way.
But is way easier to start a new faction with soup. If you mainly play Guard, but fancy some Ad Mech models, you don't need to buy full 2000 points wort to be able to use them. You can start by small allied detachment to your main army. And even though full 2000 point Ad Mech army would obviously be way more sales tahn 500 point ally detachment, the truth is way less people are willing to commit to that at one go. On the other hand many of those who start with a small ally force will eventually expand ti to a full army.
This is really the biggest selling point of soup for me. I am definitely a modeller first, but I still want to play the game too. Allies allow me to collect varied models and still form a somewhat functional army out of them.
JimOnMars wrote: Does soup really sell more models than mono? You need 2000 points either way.
But is way easier to start a new faction with soup. If you mainly play Guard, but fancy some Ad Mech models, you don't need to buy full 2000 points wort to be able to use them. You can start by small allied detachment to your main army. And even though full 2000 point Ad Mech army would obviously be way more sales tahn 500 point ally detachment, the truth is way less people are willing to commit to that at one go. On the other hand many of those who start with a small ally force will eventually expand ti to a full army.
This is really the biggest selling point of soup for me. I am definitely a modeller first, but I still want to play the game too. Allies allow me to collect varied models and still form a somewhat functional army out of them.
Narrative play, here you go No need to make matched play jack of all trades. If something fun and narrative, but hurts balance ---> narrative play.
BA and sm are both low tier, if not the bottom. To be mid tier, there must be approx 1/3 of the codices below them. Go ahead and tell me these codices, I'll wait.
BA have one viable cc model, and everything else is a dumpster fire.
Narrative play, here you go No need to make matched play jack of all trades. If something fun and narrative, but hurts balance ---> narrative play.
Nah. Matched has never meant to be some super tight hard core tournament rule set, it it the standard way to play the game. And allies are not a meaningful balance problem, despite some people having an irrational hatred for the concept.
Narrative play, here you go No need to make matched play jack of all trades. If something fun and narrative, but hurts balance ---> narrative play.
Nah. Matched has never meant to be some super tight hard core tournament rule set, it it the standard way to play the game. And allies are not a meaningful balance problem, despite some people having an irrational hatred for the concept.
Between super-duper-tight-starcraft-like-balance and gak for fun lives flavors of balance. One of them called "good enouth to make most codexes playable on their own". I guess that one should be named as matched play. And you want narrative fluffy game, but regect, well, actual "narrative play" because matched play somehow is the only one way to play the game. Sounds wierd to me.
Narrative play, here you go No need to make matched play jack of all trades. If something fun and narrative, but hurts balance ---> narrative play.
Nah. Matched has never meant to be some super tight hard core tournament rule set, it it the standard way to play the game. And allies are not a meaningful balance problem, despite some people having an irrational hatred for the concept.
Sure, it's not meant for hardcore competitive plays, but GW begs to differ on idea of balance as its core precept for matched plays:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/24/new-warhammer-40000-three-ways-to-play/ "...to help ensure a balanced game." The game is not balanced currently due to the CP system and how battle brother system allows its exploitation.
Allies as a concept is not a bad idea. It's the unintended effect that it has on the game that creates the issue.
Between super-duper-tight-starcraft-like-balance and gak for fun lives flavors of balance. One of them called "good enouth to make most codexes playable on their own". I guess that one should be named as matched play. And you want narrative fluffy game, but regect, well, actual "narrative play" because matched play somehow is the only one way to play the game. Sounds wierd to me.
Most codices are perfectly playable on their own outside the panicked Dakka hyperbole. Narrative is for when you want to emulate some specific scenarios, not for normal pickup games with forces that just happen to be composed of eclectic selection of models. I also said nothing about 'narrative and flyffy' (albeit my armies are always flyffy,) I was talking about collecting varied units due modelling preferences, that has nothing directly to do with narrative play.
Between super-duper-tight-starcraft-like-balance and gak for fun lives flavors of balance. One of them called "good enouth to make most codexes playable on their own". I guess that one should be named as matched play. And you want narrative fluffy game, but regect, well, actual "narrative play" because matched play somehow is the only one way to play the game. Sounds wierd to me.
Most codices are perfectly playable on their own outside the panicked Dakka hyperbole. Narrative is for when you want to emulate some specific scenarios, not for normal pickup games with forces that just happen to be composed of eclectic selection of models. I also said nothing about 'narrative and flyffy' (albeit my armies are always flyffy,) I was talking about collecting varied units due modelling preferences, that has nothing directly to do with narrative play.
Between super-duper-tight-starcraft-like-balance and gak for fun lives flavors of balance. One of them called "good enouth to make most codexes playable on their own". I guess that one should be named as matched play. And you want narrative fluffy game, but regect, well, actual "narrative play" because matched play somehow is the only one way to play the game. Sounds wierd to me.
Most codices are perfectly playable on their own outside the panicked Dakka hyperbole. Narrative is for when you want to emulate some specific scenarios, not for normal pickup games with forces that just happen to be composed of eclectic selection of models. I also said nothing about 'narrative and flyffy' (albeit my armies are always flyffy,) I was talking about collecting varied units due modelling preferences, that has nothing directly to do with narrative play.
I will disagree. Try to play tournament with BA or SW on their own and you will see how "perfectly playable" they when you will meet knight or eldar soup.
The idea I am trying to implement is that codex "imperium" and codex "eldar" should be narrative only for those who want to have fun and don't care about the balance. Ally should be removed or nerfed, so they have upsides, AND downsides, not just upsides
skchsan wrote: If allies are here to stay, then the codex should be balanced across factions, not by armies.
Just balance the units themselves.
Impossible to balance all units. DA librarial perfecrly fine, but when he is in combo with rune priest - we had broken -to hit combo. How will you bslance this? Nerf librarian? Then monoDA will be even worse.
Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
Those games are free to play and the ratio of paying to non-paying is quite wide. Typically a small subset of 1% of the user base pays obscene amounts of money - the whales if you will.
skchsan wrote: If allies are here to stay, then the codex should be balanced across factions, not by armies.
Just balance the units themselves.
Dude, do you like main Inari or something like that, because you sound ridiculous. All the problems w40k had was because people could cherry pick their melific lords with demons, their Inari, their cpt+custodes+knights+IG , while at the same time GW was going over their heads to kill any army, save eldar, from being valid as mono. They nerfed marines hard, they more or less killed BAs etc
Soup should be relageted to narrative/open play, and kept as far away from matched play as possible. The fact that souping exist, GW can always bring up some stupid argument to why they are not fixing stuff in forms of, well if you take 1500pts of not the army you want in your army, it will work better, so no changes for you this time around.
I will disagree. Try to play tournament with BA or SW on their own and you will see how "perfectly playable" they when you will meet knight or eldar soup.
Tournament is already not a standard game. Most armies are fine in casual play. But yeah, marines are weak, it is known. They're weaker than mono guard or mono eldar too. This is not a soup problem.
The idea I am trying to implement is that codex "imperium" and codex "eldar" should be narrative only for those who want to have fun and don't care about the balance. Ally should be removed or nerfed, so they have upsides, AND downsides, not just upsides
Taking allies have downsides. It costs points. Most auras and abilities of differnt allied factions do not work on each other, weakening the synergy of your army. If this doesn't always wotk in practice, it is because some units are just too good, and always worth taking regardless of this.
Impossible to balance all units. DA librarial perfecrly fine, but when he is in combo with rune priest - we had broken -to hit combo. How will you bslance this? Nerf librarian? Then monoDA will be even worse.
Is this some to hit penalty stacking thing? Again, not a soup problem, asyryani can do this on their own. There is an issue with how the penalties stack, fix that.
The way that should be balanced is easy. Librarians from different books should not be able to be taken in the same detachment. It's basically an exploit. Yeah - they all have adept astartes keyword but they really need a modification to this rule.
The intent of the change they made in chapter approved to prevent you from taking celestine with a detachment of gaurd is intended to stop nonsense like libbys from different books from being taken in the same detachment too. Space marines are just unique in 40k and have the same keywords accorss all of them.
Some of the most profitable games in the world are the worst designed. Especially when it comes to game balance. Pay-to-win mobile bs is a trillion dollar industry for example, you can work your way down from there. People will happily pay for an in-game advantage. Guarantee you Tau sold a gakload more in 6th or 7th than they have in 8th, does that mean that 6th ed Tau and Riptide Wings were the pinnacle of 40k game design for the race?
Those games are free to play and the ratio of paying to non-paying is quite wide. Typically a small subset of 1% of the user base pays obscene amounts of money - the whales if you will.
that's exactly my point? I literally said just that in a later post?
I will disagree. Try to play tournament with BA or SW on their own and you will see how "perfectly playable" they when you will meet knight or eldar soup.
Tournament is already not a standard game. Most armies are fine in casual play. But yeah, marines are weak, it is known. They're weaker than mono guard or mono eldar too. This is not a soup problem.
The idea I am trying to implement is that codex "imperium" and codex "eldar" should be narrative only for those who want to have fun and don't care about the balance. Ally should be removed or nerfed, so they have upsides, AND downsides, not just upsides
Taking allies have downsides. It costs points. Most auras and abilities of differnt allied factions do not work on each other, weakening the synergy of your army. If this doesn't always wotk in practice, it is because some units are just too good, and always worth taking regardless of this.
Impossible to balance all units. DA librarial perfecrly fine, but when he is in combo with rune priest - we had broken -to hit combo. How will you bslance this? Nerf librarian? Then monoDA will be even worse.
Is this some to hit penalty stacking thing? Again, not a soup problem, asyryani can do this on their own. There is an issue with how the penalties stack, fix that.
I think I get the point. We have different point of view. Both of us think, that there are two ways to play games. You think that there is "matched play" and "tournament", I think that there is "narrative play" and "matched play". You think that "matched play" should be for fun games and this "tournament" games are the one competitive. I think that matched play fit that role and we do not need new extra way to play, while for fun we have the "narrative play". That is the dead end of discussion.
a massive part of this playerbase is competitive players. Can we not have the one designed for balanced play to be balanced? jeez. I play narrative and competitive, but some people just want to gak on competitive because they don't care about it. If you want to play fluffy, go play one of the other ones designed for it
a massive part of this playerbase is competitive players. Can we not have the one designed for balanced play to be balanced? jeez. I play narrative and competitive, but some people just want to gak on competitive because they don't care about it. If you want to play fluffy, go play one of the other ones designed for it
Yep, but some thinks that there is also "tournament play" which is somehow not the matched play. Well, they have right for that opinion.
a massive part of this playerbase is competitive players. Can we not have the one designed for balanced play to be balanced? jeez. I play narrative and competitive, but some people just want to gak on competitive because they don't care about it. If you want to play fluffy, go play one of the other ones designed for it
Yep, but some thinks that there is also "tournament play" which is somehow not the matched play. Well, they have right for that opinion.
Thats the problem. Right now you get casual players who play with points, and then get into the balance discussions when they should be quiet. Then you get dumb answers like "Centurions are great in the game cause they are fun to paint!" when someone asks if Centurions are worth it.
If we can get an organized plays segment, then maybe we can clean out that kind of foolishness.
I think that the majority of players play semi-competitive, and play using points for pick-up games at local clubs or something. It's what I've seen the most anyways. Most people do build strong lists, but won't go overboard in trying to keep complete optimisation and sometimes just include models or units that they find fun to play with.
Darsath wrote: I think that the majority of players play semi-competitive, and play using points for pick-up games at local clubs or something. It's what I've seen the most anyways. Most people do build strong lists, but won't go overboard in trying to keep complete optimisation and sometimes just include models or units that they find fun to play with.
Sounds about right.
Even with 'narrative' games you are usually playing towards some objective, and if nothing else a well balanced game would mean you don't need to try and balance the mess yourself when setting up the game. And everything else is competitive in the sense of winning or losing even if it's not tournament style optimized lists.
Yep, but some thinks that there is also "tournament play" which is somehow not the matched play. Well, they have right for that opinion.
Well, there is. There are even extra rule suggestions for such play in the rulebook. Thing is, narrative is not fit for random pick up games. It is for when you and your friends have time to devise specific scenario and lists for that scenario. Matched is just the standard way to play the game.
Also, allies are really not a problem in themselves. There are some problematic interactions, and there are a great number of miscosted units. These are the things creating problems. Blanket bans or restrictions are bad tools. If you use some blanket soup nerfs to affect those top lists, you also hit the completely unproblematic ones. Is someone really thinking that allying Ad Mech and Black Templars is somehow broken and needs to be nerfed? And yes, addressing specific issues takes more effeort, sure, but it is the right way to do these things. It just feels to me that if Blood Angels and Saim-Hann were dominating the tournaments, half of Dakka's solution would be to ban red models from the matched play.
techsoldaten wrote: I disagree with the idea SM and BA are the worst armies in the game. They're more mid-tier, and both are a lot better allied with a Guard detachment.
You just said, that the reason non-soup armies have weaker rules is because they don't sell enough. But I point out soup armies that are fan favorites with subpar rules, even worse than Xeno factions, and you claim it's fine because they can soup? Do you even read what you're saying? You realise you just completely contradicted yourself?
Actually, what I did say is:
- Xenos armies are weaker because they don't sell enough models. Eldar are the exception.
- BA and SM armies are midtier, and they get better with soup.
There's nothing contradictory about those 2 statements. I'm not arguing that sales translates into better rules, I'm arguing sales translates into attention from the design staff.
I can't think of armies with more needs than Tau / Necrons / Orks. Each one needs new units, stats adjustments, downward points changes, improved Strategems, and better mechanics around their gimmics.
Unlike Blood Angels and Space Marines, these armies will not get better with soup. Let's say you could suddenly ally Necrons with Guard, you would still be handicapping yourself by taking Necrons. The lack of allies is not their problem, it's the armies themselves.
While it looks like Orks are getting their due, I don't believe GW is suddenly going to invest a lot of design time into historical non-sellers like Necrons and Tau. For that matter, it could be another 10 years before we see another new Ork model if lot of people don't buy those new buggies. Something would need to change for a Xenos renaissance to occur, like a sudden influx of new players buying them at levels comparable to Space Marines.
techsoldaten wrote: Sales are a reflection of 'good' game design. If you don't think that's true for 40k, I'm asking you to provide a better definition of what good means, if you have one. I'm genuinely trying to understand what you mean by 'counter productive and unrealistic' here.
Good design, almost exclusively when discussing competitive gaming, means fair and rewarding play, good balance, and viability for as many choices, and playstyles, as possible, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Bundling 10 factions into one and giving them all fluctuating power levels achieves the opposite of this.
Never when people talk about "game design" are they referring to profitability. That's called "profitability". Good game design does not equal profitability, nor vice versa. There is no correlation. Again, some of the most profitable games in the world are gakky, P2W games aimed at capturing "whales", the customers who will spend thousands, or more, for an in-game advantage over others. That is not good game design, it's just good sales. At the same time, some of the best reviewed games in the world sold a crapton, God of War, Witcher 3, Spiderman, etc being great examples. There is no correlation, trying to force one is counter-productive.
You're welcome to your opinion but the only thing video games with tabletop games have in common is the word 'game.'
Just the profit off the new Spider Man game is likely to be greater than Games Workshop's annual revenue, possibly by several factors. OTOH, the average tabletop game ends up being a financial loss for the creator, regardless of how 'good' the game is designed.
There are no platinum titles for the tabletop and there never will be. Different audiences, different channel economics, different goals & motivation for buyers / producers / distributors, different market size, different media ecosystem, etc. While you may personally see them as equal, that's not a reflection of how most people entertain themselves. Comparing 40k with P2W games is apples and oranges, there's nothing in common between the two.
To demonstrate the inadequacy of 'good' rulesets as a metric: There was an interview earlier this year with a games designer for Games Workshop. He said the studio is going to take another look at the early Codex releases for 8th edition, like Codex: Space Marines and Grey Knights, once all the Codexes are released.
Do you see that as a function of good game design or cash flow / revenue management? SM players (along with other factions) have gone about a year with some pretty rough rules. The company is having it's best year on record financially and, despite some revenue warnings, still looks to be doing incredibly well next year.
GW could have released a FAQ at any point, but what would that have changed? If people are buying the game and enjoying it, what does a 'good' ruleset matter? GW didn't decide to scrap 7th edition because they wanted to test new ideas, they scrapped 7th edition because sales were slowing down. This can be demonstrated with financial reports.
Your definition of 'good' uses relative terms that can't be quantified and references itself to boot. 'Fair' means one thing to the victor and one thing to the loser. You can't say 'good' is defined by 'good balance,' you can't use a word to define its own meaning. 'Rewarding' has personal meanings to each player that can't be universalized, there are plenty of people who play just because they like the look of the models. And 40k has always had flexibility in terms of unit selection, opinions may differ as to whether or not there's enough.
The term 'quality of game design' does not appear to matter much and successful game designers certainly do not give it more weight than profitability. If you want to achieve those qualities listed in your definition, buy more Xenos models. Every decision GW has made since AOS was released appears to be guided by revenue and profitability.
techsoldaten wrote: Comparing 40k with P2W games is apples and oranges, there's nothing in common between the two.
Sigh. I didn't compare them. I gave an example of how just because something can sell well, doesn't automatically mean it's well designed, as you are literally claiming. I'm sure that same statement is applicable to whatever medium you choose, not just Freemium mobile games. However, as another poster has said to you:
I find difficult to have a discussion if you keep changing the cards on the table.
It's difficult to even keep up with the loops you keep spinning, and your walls of text that aren't even acknowledging the statements being made, instead just ones you've invented. Your entire argument boils down to = if it sells well, it's designed well, which is utterly incorrect. Is there some logic as to why you think that applys to tabletops but nothing else?
SHUPPET wrote: Sigh. I didn't compare them. I gave an example of how just because something can sell well, doesn't automatically mean it's well designed, as you are literally claiming. I'm sure that same statement is applicable to whatever medium you choose, not just Freemium mobile games. However, as another poster has said to you:
I find difficult to have a discussion if you keep changing the cards on the table.
It's difficult to even keep up with the loops you keep spinning.
Correct. You took an example from a completely different genre, which is irrelevant to the conversation, and used it to make a point. To which I responded: apples to oranges.
It feels like I have an adequate understanding of the back and forth between us. It's probably unnecessary for you to continue explaining the conversation to me.
Perhaps you could consider making an actual point in response. Right now, this just feels condescending and patronizing.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I think a solution to the IGCP battery would be to re-introduce Platoons. It wouldn't inhibit our ability to field Guardmen as the Guard, but reduce the rate at which they generate CP [specifically, doubling the cost of a CP battalion, bring the cost/5 CP's roughly into line with the cost per 5 CP's that Astartes pay].
Really, I think the solution to many of the Guard problems would be to re-introduce features from previous editions.
NO.
We have been over this time and time and fething time again. Platoons won't "fix" anything. "Reintroducing features from previous editions" won't fix anything.
Guard are an army that needed a full rework before this edition, and it didn't happen. End of story. There's no real denying this as the concept wasn't ever going to translate over well.
You want Guard to legitimately be "fixed"? You want them removed as a "cheap army"? Then bring them up to par with Tau and Skitarii--the armies that they were supposed to be on par with, fluffwise.
Alternatively if we have to be stuck with this garbage, add in rules preventing a Guard character from being Warlord. Add in rules preventing them from sharing CPs. Make it so these leeches can't use Guard for anything but board control.
techsoldaten wrote: I can't think of armies with more needs than Tau / Necrons / Orks. Each one needs new units, stats adjustments, downward points changes, improved Strategems, and better mechanics around their gimmics.
Yeah... what?
Tau are just one off being Top Tier - and I suspect, if Soup were hard banned, would be there or there abouts.
I suspect Orks are going to be very reasonable. Not Guard/DE "take almost anything you like" but there are fairly clear builds which should have legs.
Necrons are in trouble. Yes they could do with new units, stat adjustments and stratagems - but really its just about points. Give them a blanket 20% points reduction across the board and I am pretty sure they would be competitive. GW could do that with a stroke of a pen next month.
As far as I can see, the two main advantages to soup are
1. Being able to min-max optimal unit combos across codices
2. Being able to take advantage of CP generation to benefit other armies
I think you could nerf soup as the be-all and end-all of competitive gameplay without making it unplayable by simply changing the CP system. Restricting CP generation to 'per-faction' would be a good first step, revamping the CP system to start with a given amount (depending on the points level) and then spending it to take detachments would be even better.
You would still have the ability to take combined armies and synergize units, but it would come at the cost of reduced CP availability- which I think is both fitting, and enough of a disadvantage that soup might not be the go-to for competitive play, without completely neutering it for casual players as well. It'd also kill the use of Guard as a CP battery, which IMO would be a very good change.
SHUPPET wrote: Sigh. I didn't compare them. I gave an example of how just because something can sell well, doesn't automatically mean it's well designed, as you are literally claiming. I'm sure that same statement is applicable to whatever medium you choose, not just Freemium mobile games. However, as another poster has said to you:
I find difficult to have a discussion if you keep changing the cards on the table.
It's difficult to even keep up with the loops you keep spinning.
Correct. You took an example from a completely different genre, which is irrelevant to the conversation, and used it to make a point. To which I responded: apples to oranges.
It feels like I have an adequate understanding of the back and forth between us. It's probably unnecessary for you to continue explaining the conversation to me.
Perhaps you could consider making an actual point in response. Right now, this just feels condescending and patronizing.
What? I asked you a question that completely deconstructs that entire response, and you completely ignored it. I did make an actual point. The question is why did you ignore it?
I'll ask again.
Why is sales a reflection of good design in tabletop wargaming, and tabletop wargaming alone? Why is this not the case for video games? What are you basing your assertion of? Can you verify this at all, or at least explain the logic you are trying to push here? Explain why you think people would willingly pay for an advantage in P2W video games, but nobody would dream of doing so for 40k. If you're going to say the example is invalid, you have to explain why, just saying "apples to oranges" isn't an explanation at all. There's zero reason why that isn't an excellent example of how people are more than willing to spend plenty of money on poorly designed games. Explain why people wouldn't do the same in 40k. Thanks.
techsoldaten wrote: I can't think of armies with more needs than Tau / Necrons / Orks. Each one needs new units, stats adjustments, downward points changes, improved Strategems, and better mechanics around their gimmics.
Yeah... what?
Tau are just one off being Top Tier - and I suspect, if Soup were hard banned, would be there or there abouts.
I suspect Orks are going to be very reasonable. Not Guard/DE "take almost anything you like" but there are fairly clear builds which should have legs.
Necrons are in trouble. Yes they could do with new units, stat adjustments and stratagems - but really its just about points. Give them a blanket 20% points reduction across the board and I am pretty sure they would be competitive. GW could do that with a stroke of a pen next month.
Eh... I don't know if Tau are all that. They were better before RO3, at least in the games I played against them.
My point was that these armies don't improve with soup. Either they would handicap an allied force or an allied force would handicap them.
Let's pretend you could ally Tau with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Likely not, they have good shooting already and the cost of infantry units would be taking away from points for drones. You would be better off with monolist Tau.
Let's pretend you could ally Necrons with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Probably, but then you still have the problems you have with Necrons. You would be better off just playing Guard.
OTOH, if Necron Warriors went down in cost by 33%, got an extra point of toughness and an additional point of AP, then you would have something interesting to put on the table. Let's say GW buffs other units in a similar fashion. At that point, why would you need Guard?
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Allies have basically always existed in some form. People just pretend it didn't to fit their own narrative.
Allies are fine, and quite frankly if anything prove how bad internal balance is with differing codices. That's a good thing.
When they were limited to house rules no they didn't.
And question is are thev good to have? If you don't care about balancing or are willing to make special scenario to ensure balance sure. As standard though allies kill any pretension of balance. Simple as that.
Now if you don't carb about balance fine but don't complain about unbalance then
It wasn't limited to house rules. 2nd edition had it, 3-4th had it in some form, and then we got it more lax with 6th. It was there outside maybe 5th when GK got a new codex and Sisters fell off the face of the earth.
Also the issue is always miscosted units. Do you honestly think banning allies is going to make GK a playable codex all the sudden, or is it the issue of unit pricing making them unplayable rather than an IG force being able to take Jetbike Captains? If you answer the former you're being absolutely dishonest.
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Marmatag wrote: I have yet to see a competitive person in person say "allies are a problem." This seems like an outcry coming more from the casual community than anything else.
It doesn't make what they're saying invalid. You can be casual and still want a good matched play ruleset. But let's not start attributing things to the competitive playerbase as a whole. Most people are happy with the current state of the game. Which is why you see huge numbers at tournaments.
Here is a list of the one-loss or better factions at SoCal:
Astra Militarum
Tyranids
Dark Eldar
Ynnari
Custodes
Chaos Daemons
Eldar
Chaos Space Marines
Tau
Imperial Knights
Harlequins
Thousand Sons
Death Guard
Renegade Knights
Orks
I removed duplicates. For instance, Nurgle Daemons and Chaos Daemons, i lumped together in Chaos Daemons.
That's really impressive from a balance perspective. Anyone with 1 loss could easily have been in the top 10, or ended up undefeated winning the whole thing. Basically 1 loss means you're doing damn good.
It's also worth noting that winning 4 games was good enough for top 50. Considering there was over 170 players, that's not bad. If you look at the top 50, pretty much every major faction is represented.
That's literally because Doom as written is a broken power. If it were sticking to only Craftworld units gaining benefit it wouldn't be an issue.
Oh please. It is a deniable power than hits one unit. It's only good on big targets that will soak a lot of firepower. Guilliman is a walking army-wide doom for 400 points.
Well if it really weren't an issue that single Farseer wouldn't have been brought in then, huh?
No, Doom is an issue and needs to be nerfed in some form.
"I've never seen a competitive player say allies are a problem"
They don't think it's a problem that mono factions can't compete with allied factions...Because they are all using allied factions.
Don't get me wrong - a few factions can compete mono. The majority can't
I mean - if "they" don't think that is a problem - I guess we really shouldn't listen to what they say. The majority of players want mono faction to be viable.
It really is as simple as giving mono factions some buffs - perhaps penalizing allies in the form of CP. Or perhaps - limiting the % of your army that can be allies. Plus - some interactions should not cross book lines. Like doom for example. Doom should not work with DE and harlequins. GSC spells should not work with tyranids. This is how unintended combos come about. Eliminate them.
techsoldaten wrote: My point was that these armies don't improve with soup. Either they would handicap an allied force or an allied force would handicap them.
Let's pretend you could ally Tau with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Likely not, they have good shooting already and the cost of infantry units would be taking away from points for drones. You would be better off with monolist Tau.
Let's pretend you could ally Necrons with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Probably, but then you still have the problems you have with Necrons. You would be better off just playing Guard.
OTOH, if Necron Warriors went down in cost by 33%, got an extra point of toughness and an additional point of AP, then you would have something interesting to put on the table. Let's say GW buffs other units in a similar fashion. At that point, why would you need Guard?
I suspect even if Necrons got buffed, there might still be a motive to take in IG (or other faction) psykers. The same for Tau too. I'd also speculate that guardsmen might be a better screen than fire warriors - although I rate fire warriors quite highly.
But yeah - right now Guard are probably better than Necrons to the point where any Necron unit is a downgrade (Destroyers might be worth looking at maybe).
But if Necrons were better than Guard you would have the same issue but just reversed. You are playing "soup", why bother with "faction"? Ad Mech are probably the best example of an Imperial Faction which might as well not exist even though Skitarri are reasonable enough.
SHUPPET wrote: Sigh. I didn't compare them. I gave an example of how just because something can sell well, doesn't automatically mean it's well designed, as you are literally claiming. I'm sure that same statement is applicable to whatever medium you choose, not just Freemium mobile games. However, as another poster has said to you:
I find difficult to have a discussion if you keep changing the cards on the table.
It's difficult to even keep up with the loops you keep spinning.
Correct. You took an example from a completely different genre, which is irrelevant to the conversation, and used it to make a point. To which I responded: apples to oranges.
It feels like I have an adequate understanding of the back and forth between us. It's probably unnecessary for you to continue explaining the conversation to me.
Perhaps you could consider making an actual point in response. Right now, this just feels condescending and patronizing.
What? I asked you a question that completely deconstructs that entire response, and you completely ignored it. I did make an actual point. The question is why did you ignore it?
I'll ask again.
Why is sales a reflection of good design in tabletop wargaming, and tabletop wargaming alone? Why is this not the case for video games? What are you basing your assertion of? Can you verify this at all, or at least explain the logic you are trying to push here? Explain why you think people would willingly pay for an advantage in P2W video games, but nobody would dream of doing so for 40k. If you're going to say the example is invalid, you have to explain why, just saying "apples to oranges" isn't an explanation at all. There's zero reason why that isn't an excellent example of how people are more than willing to spend plenty of money on poorly designed games. Explain why people wouldn't do the same in 40k. Thanks.
Sure. I believe my previous posts answered your first question, but I'm happy to reiterate.
As for the second question, this might require you accepting the idea that video games / mobile apps / etc are a completely separate market that invites no meaningful comparison. I'm not sure I could convince you of that and don't really want to waste my time trying to prove it. But ask yourself if a video game enthusiast who is used to paying $70 for a title is really going to spend thousands on a 40k army. For the majority of people, the answer is no. That means these are separate markets where buyers and sellers have entirely different motivations.
Back to the first question, "Why is sales a reflection of good design in tabletop wargaming, and tabletop wargaming alone?"
This is my argument. Any references I make to game design are purely related to tabletop games. (I'm going to forget the second half of the question, the part about 'tabletop gaming alone.' That has nothing to do with anything I said, I'm just not going to argue with you about video games. We're talking about soup in 40k and anything else is irrelevant and OT.)
- Financial success in manufacturing tabletop games is very rare. The vast majority of people / companies who have done it never see a profit. The vast majority of games that are ever made do not last.
- Most players don't play dead games. There is no point in designing a game no one will play except personal satisfaction. That's just selfishness.
- The companies that are successful at selling tabletop games are focused on profitability. Games Workshop is the best example, channel economics and sales channels have a huge influence over the company. Ask any FLGS owner who sells GW product.
- The companies that are not successful at selling tabletop games are focused on something besides profitability. Some of them had products with great rules, others with terrible rules. That factor - the quality of the rules - has very little to do with success in and of itself.
- So any definition of "good design in tabletop wargaming" that does not include "profitability" is off. TT game companies have to survive in a very competitive market and no one is going to enjoy a game if there's no one to play against.
- While GW appears to be the TT game leader, it does operate in a market. It's possible to compare their success with that of other companies. This is a measurement of the quality of game design.
- Therefore, 'good' game design is quantitative. It's a function of whether or not consumers see the game as something worth spending money on. It's also a function of whether or not the company sees value in continuing to produce the game.
Ultimately, any game goes away if people don't like it. If people do like it, the game continues to exist, unless the company can't find a way to make a profit. And that's really it when it comes to design, it's a question of whether or not the company is satisfying the needs / desires of players. Any definition of quality based on a game no one buys is just nostalgia.
What proves this to be true is the changes to the rules that happen between editions. Players get tired of the same thing game after game, their definition of 'good' changes. Previous editions of had ways of more accurately modelling reality with USRs, standardized movement, cover, scatter dice, templates, etc. Those went away because players favored a set of rules that are streamlined, work off data sheets, and soup.
By definition, that is good game design. It satisfies the desires of players profitably.
If you want an example of a game with high quality rules that no one plays, look at Warzone. Heartbreaker (the original manufacturer) was very competitive with GW for several years and had a great line of miniatures. Top flight talent with Kev Watts and Phil Lewis. I liked the rules a lot, they improved on just about everything in the current edition of 40k.
They just fell apart one day, a lot of that had to do with sales cycles. It was always boom or bust, they just hit a wall where it was no longer possible to operate the company.
When's the last time you found a pick up game of Warzone at your local FLGS? Quality in game design means a lot right up until the market punches you in the face.
techsoldaten wrote: My point was that these armies don't improve with soup. Either they would handicap an allied force or an allied force would handicap them.
Let's pretend you could ally Tau with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Likely not, they have good shooting already and the cost of infantry units would be taking away from points for drones. You would be better off with monolist Tau.
Let's pretend you could ally Necrons with Guard. Would they benefit from Guard spam and some heavy weapons teams? Probably, but then you still have the problems you have with Necrons. You would be better off just playing Guard.
OTOH, if Necron Warriors went down in cost by 33%, got an extra point of toughness and an additional point of AP, then you would have something interesting to put on the table. Let's say GW buffs other units in a similar fashion. At that point, why would you need Guard?
I suspect even if Necrons got buffed, there might still be a motive to take in IG (or other faction) psykers. The same for Tau too. I'd also speculate that guardsmen might be a better screen than fire warriors - although I rate fire warriors quite highly.
But yeah - right now Guard are probably better than Necrons to the point where any Necron unit is a downgrade (Destroyers might be worth looking at maybe).
But if Necrons were better than Guard you would have the same issue but just reversed. You are playing "soup", why bother with "faction"? Ad Mech are probably the best example of an Imperial Faction which might as well not exist even though Skitarri are reasonable enough.
I didn't want to go there... when you face Slamguinius and a bunch of Leman Russes, is it Blood Angels or Cadia? I think a lot of people's reservations about soup have to do with not knowing what to call the army.
Objectively, the fact 3 Xenos armies don't get soup doesn't have that much of an impact on the game. Even if you took it away from Imperials, Necrons / Tau / Orks still are what they are.
- Financial success in manufacturing tabletop games is very rare. The vast majority of people / companies who have done it never see a profit. The vast majority of games that are ever made do not last.
Evidence for this? A game could be successful but limited in its release. Even GW does this with Space Hulk. A small company could release a game, have a financial gain, but not the means to expand into the market. If the market is such a minefield, why people keep trying?
Also, concerning specifically GW, why we cannot admit there are degrees of profitability? Part of the customers are only attracted by the mere models and universe, disregarding the rules. That can be a factor. But other customers are attracted by the rule component and not writing good rules can be determining in chasing away those people. This could result in a loss of revenue (not total loss, but compared to a potential).
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: I think a solution to the IGCP battery would be to re-introduce Platoons.
It wouldn't inhibit our ability to field Guardmen as the Guard, but reduce the rate at which they generate CP [specifically, doubling the cost of a CP battalion, bring the cost/5 CP's roughly into line with the cost per 5 CP's that Astartes pay].
Kanluwen wrote: Alternatively if we have to be stuck with this garbage, add in rules preventing a Guard character from being Warlord. Add in rules preventing them from sharing CPs. Make it so these leeches can't use Guard for anything but board control.
IG are undercosted. The presence of a few even more in undercosted available to imperium lists does absolve ig of their criminally undercosted units. Like guardsmen.
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)
Martel732 wrote: IG are undercosted. The presence of a few even more in undercosted available to imperium lists does absolve ig of their criminally undercosted units. Like guardsmen.
Martel732 wrote: 5 or 6. I'd have to see play testing on both. IG is a faction where everything costs a pack of skittles, there by gaining a huge number of aggregate wounds. What could go wrong with letting ig field more wounds than many lists can deal out over six turns unhindered?
So you honestly think that a 30-60 point increase in the cost of the CP battery would make it a tough decision and not an auto-include?
(Correct answer: it would still be an auto-include.)
The characters need to go up in price, too.
If something is still auto include after a 60 point increase. It should be immediately hot-fixed to that price. lol. Not wait 1 1/2 years to make the change.
CA is coming. Guardsmen being 5 points in Kill Teams is probably a solid indicator of the change to come. At this point i don't see the reason to beat it up any more.
- Financial success in manufacturing tabletop games is very rare. The vast majority of people / companies who have done it never see a profit. The vast majority of games that are ever made do not last.
Evidence for this? A game could be successful but limited in its release. Even GW does this with Space Hulk.
A small company could release a game, have a financial gain, but not the means to expand into the market.
If the market is such a minefield, why people keep trying?
Anecdotal evidence based on experiences with other entrepreneurs including FLGS owners, game designers, distributors and retail goods marketers. Never met anyone who thinks you can make money introducing a new game, it's an uphill battle to get a single store to stock it. The only recent, visible success I can think of is Cards Against Humanity.
Yes, there are a lot of niche games out there and it's possible they made some kind of a profit. As in $1 or more than they spent to produce the game. I'm sure a few people found a way to live off this for a year or two.
But no, there are not a lot of companies like this and they are not growing past the small business stage to become public companies. I can say I'm not absolutely sure of my answer here and should probably do some actual research at some point.
As far as why people keep trying... my first company out of high school was a t-shirt business. We sold shirts at the beach. I made a lot of money one summer, but we could not get into retail so it dried up. Something I learned from that is the mix of inexperience and enthusiasm causes people to take risks doing things they love. It's easier when you are young or past the point of needing to care about money.
The motivation is not to dominate the market so much as do something neat, I think that's called a lifestyle business or a hobby. I say that because I don't see a lot of these companies taking off. Comparing that to what GW does doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Also, concerning specifically GW, why we cannot admit there are degrees of profitability? Part of the customers are only attracted by the mere models and universe, disregarding the rules. That can be a factor.
But other customers are attracted by the rule component and not writing good rules is a factor in a loss of revenue (not total loss, but compared to a potential).
The fact that some people buy models and some people play the game doesn't really matter, does it?
No one pays to play a game of 40k. They pay for books, models, paint, cards, dice, etc. Each of these items has a channel economics attached, there's a cost of goods and services, cost for distribution, cost of administration / sales / marketing, and margin that goes into decisions about what to manufacture. The company is no more or less profitable based on whether or not people are buying dice, they are profitable so long as the cost of dice do not exceed the revenue generated from them.
Sure, if everyone bought dice from GW, the annual revenue would go up. But I suspect dice sales are incidental to model sales, there's no company without that. Dice are probably more a function of marketing than actual line of business, it's swag they get you to pay for. Swag that comes with rounded corners, doesn't roll statistical averages, etc.
If they wanted Soup to be the thing for the game they should have branded it.
I think if GW had changed the billng of the game so it was a fight between Imperium, Eldar, Nids, Ruinous Powers,Orks and Tau...
And then insteed of codex, they should have put out detachment books. Detachment: Space Wolves, Detachment: Goffs, Detachment: Harlequins, Detachment: Flesh Tearers.
If something is still auto include after a 60 point increase. It should be immediately hot-fixed to that price. lol. Not wait 1 1/2 years to make the change.
They're making a strong showing. Not absolutely obliterating everything in their path.
Additionally the IG codex came out a year ago and immediately received some nerfs on conscripts. The March Big FAQ was pretty close and address the REALLY big problems like Fire Raptors and Dark Reapers. Then comes the Sep FAQ, in which they did not address points for anyone, because CA is less than 2 months away. So, GW has addressed problems in the space allowed and this December is when we should expect them to handle that situation.
If something is still auto include after a 60 point increase. It should be immediately hot-fixed to that price. lol. Not wait 1 1/2 years to make the change.
They're making a strong showing. Not absolutely obliterating everything in their path.
Additionally the IG codex came out a year ago and immediately received some nerfs on conscripts. The March Big FAQ was pretty close and address the REALLY big problems like Fire Raptors and Dark Reapers. Then comes the Sep FAQ, in which they did not address points for anyone, because CA is less than 2 months away. So, GW has addressed problems in the space allowed and this December is when we should expect them to handle that situation.
Fireraptor only became a problem because they made them cheaper than storm ravens in the first CA - which was an obviously idiotic move - they are strictly superior to storm ravens.
Another idiotic move - nerf conscripts to the same points as infantry...infantry are obviously superior to conscripts. Really...not a lot of intelligence coming out of any of these changes.
Yeah reapers needs to go up in points - fancy that...they were cheaper than every comparable bs3+ shooter with amazing special rules. Thought this game was play tested?
IG infantry squads are the most dominant unit in 40k right now. No other unit even comes close to the number of selections.
I have very little faith much with change after CA. 5 point IG might be on there. However - 95% of issues will go untouched and they will probably create more issues - kind of like every major rules update they have had so far in this 1 1/2 year period.
Reemule wrote: I think if GW had changed the billng of the game so it was a fight between Imperium, Eldar, Nids, Ruinous Powers,Orks and Tau...
That would be kind of ok if ...
1) There weren't fundamental game rule balance differences between books in the same faction (i.e. one book written to work with ~6 CPs and the second generating two dozen with ease)
2) The books weren't explicitly and excessively self contained (i.e. deathwatch not being ordo xenos, the rogue trader death cultist being incompatible with death cultists, etc)
3) The codex balance being so wonky that entire factions boil down to two or three good choices and a whole lot of filler
4) GW had used chapter approved to keep all books in the same broad faction on part between releases
5) And finally, if there weren't so many damned units. Particularly repeated and minor variants of the same unit, each with their own slightly different rules and restrictions depending on which source they were taken from.
If grand alliance was their goal they've not a half assed job of it.
I have very little faith much with change after CA. 5 point IG might be on there. However - 95% of issues will go untouched and they will probably create more issues - kind of like every major rules update they have had so far in this 1 1/2 year period.
Here's the funny thing...
The community is so focused on the big killers like the Castellan & Ynnari that few have an idea what the next worse unit will be.
I challenge anyone here to predict what that will be. Also, I invite you to predict what Ork unit will be problematic, if any.
I have very little faith much with change after CA. 5 point IG might be on there. However - 95% of issues will go untouched and they will probably create more issues - kind of like every major rules update they have had so far in this 1 1/2 year period.
Here's the funny thing...
The community is so focused on the big killers like the Castellan & Ynnari that few have an idea what the next worse unit will be.
I challenge anyone here to predict what that will be. Also, I invite you to predict what Ork unit will be problematic, if any.
And we'll all find out in the shakedown at LVO.
I'm sure that the Ork Codex will have a single over-performer. It's hard to tell what it'll be as I don't have access to the codex yet. There might be some news as to what Chapter Approved will contain at some point this month, which will help us decide more about the types of changes it will have. As it stands, all we're doing is speculating. Some people have little faith, some have lots. But we simply don't know yet, and can only guess based off of anecdotal extrapolations of Games Workshop's statements and activities.
I have very little faith much with change after CA. 5 point IG might be on there. However - 95% of issues will go untouched and they will probably create more issues - kind of like every major rules update they have had so far in this 1 1/2 year period.
Here's the funny thing...
The community is so focused on the big killers like the Castellan & Ynnari that few have an idea what the next worse unit will be.
I challenge anyone here to predict what that will be. Also, I invite you to predict what Ork unit will be problematic, if any.
And we'll all find out in the shakedown at LVO.
The little I've seen with orks I doubt any will be problematic. Much the same it will probably be shoota boys being the most powerful choice - probably with the advance and shoot army trait or FNP.
It's hard to predict the meta. Its not hard to figure out what units needs to be looked at though.
Its not hard to figure out what units needs to be looked at though.
It was easier back then. Less so now.
Knights stick out like a sore thumb, because you can't playtest them with allies. A Castellan at 625 is probably ok if it has no support other than being within a skew list. Knights might need smallish increases and a CP rework, which they already took steps towards on the latter.
Ynnari are also a more of a mechanics than a point issue.
Double hit mods are a mechanics issue.
Its not hard to figure out what units needs to be looked at though.
It was easier back then. Less so now.
Knights stick out like a sore thumb, because you can't playtest them with allies. A Castellan at 625 is probably ok if it has no support other than being within a skew list. Knights might need smallish increases and a CP rework, which they already took steps towards on the latter.
Ynnari are also a more of a mechanics than a point issue.
Double hit mods are a mechanics issue.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the Knights book was the lack of a Man-At-Arms unit and Sacristans.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the Knights book was the lack of a Man-At-Arms unit and Sacristans.
Those exist, they're just in different book. You can find them under the names 'Tech-Priest Enginseer' and 'Infantry Squad.' (Or alternatively 'Skitarii Rangers' or 'Skitarii Vanguard.') You're welcome.
The current competitive scene feels more like open play with points.
There's really nothing "matched" in matched play atm. I think this is the basis for most people opinion against soup currently.
Competitive play should be what the name suggests - a competition, of strategy and luck. It shouldn't be a game of 'who has the money to swap out their army at every turn of meta to bring the most OP combination of things.'
This game has so much potential to be so much greater. As it stands right now, the competitive scene is nothing more than a 'pay-to-win' game.
Daedalus81 wrote: I challenge anyone here to predict what that will be. Also, I invite you to predict what Ork unit will be problematic, if any.
And we'll all find out in the shakedown at LVO.
Its a bit early and I still don't have the codex (roll on tomorrow) but I suspect mass smasha guns/tractor kannons are going to be broken - if people can stomach shelling out over 500 quid retail for them.
Techsoldaten, I am genuinely unable to understand the point you are trying to make. Also you kinda moved the goalpost from profit to becoming public, in regard of the game companies.
Same with the payment and revenue. The point is just that a well rounded sets of models for each faction, and a tight ruleset are a better bet for attracting a diverse array of customers.
Its not hard to figure out what units needs to be looked at though.
It was easier back then. Less so now.
Knights stick out like a sore thumb, because you can't playtest them with allies. A Castellan at 625 is probably ok if it has no support other than being within a skew list. Knights might need smallish increases and a CP rework, which they already took steps towards on the latter.
Ynnari are also a more of a mechanics than a point issue.
Double hit mods are a mechanics issue.
My personal opinion is that the biggest issue with IK is their relics and warlord traits.
Cawls Wrath is too much for a relic upgrade (have it keep str 8 or have it keep 2 damage)
Ion Bulwark is OP as feth - (make it max of 4++ save)
(forget it's name) The fight at full power regardless of degrading stratagem should be nerfed to -1 to your degradation profile.
I don't see Ynnari as being a big problem. Spears need a 5-7 point increase and probably should not be able to use craftworld stratagems (once they get their own this wont be an issue)
-1 to hit army trait needs removed from the game entirely. Too powerful to get for free.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Techsoldaten, I am genuinely unable to understand the point you are trying to make. Also you kinda moved the goalpost from profit to becoming public, in regard of the game companies.
Same with the payment and revenue. The point is just that a well rounded sets of models for each faction, and a tight ruleset are a better bet for attracting a diverse array of customers.
Honestly, it feels like I am spitting in the wind. The exact same argument would apply to what you just said about well-rounded sets models and tight rulesets.
It doesn't matter if a game has those qualities so long as it's commercially successful. If it has those qualities and it's not commercially successful, it's not a game, it's just some selfish endeavor that will lose money.
Don't tell me a game is well designed just because you think those qualities apply. Someone is always going to have a different opinion and your opinion doesn't mean anything more than the next persons. In fact, people will say it's not well designed just because you think it is.
'Well designed' means nothing unless it emphasizes profit. And if you define profit as $1 more than it cost to build the game, it was never worth your time to begin with.
I think infinity has a "better" ruleset than 40k. Mainly because it does something about the I go you go system.
Unfortunately you almost need a PhD to understand the various interactions and there is a tendency to get butchered if you don't know what you are doing - so the takeup is relatively low.
But really I don't think this is an issue for balance in 40k. 40k is a successful game. I don't want the superior lists to be Soup. I want mono faction to be competitive.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Techsoldaten, I am genuinely unable to understand the point you are trying to make. Also you kinda moved the goalpost from profit to becoming public, in regard of the game companies.
Same with the payment and revenue. The point is just that a well rounded sets of models for each faction, and a tight ruleset are a better bet for attracting a diverse array of customers.
Honestly, it feels like I am spitting in the wind. The exact same argument would apply to what you just said about well-rounded sets models and tight rulesets.
It doesn't matter if a game has those qualities so long as it's commercially successful. If it has those qualities and it's not commercially successful, it's not a game, it's just some selfish endeavor that will lose money.
Don't tell me a game is well designed just because you think those qualities apply. Someone is always going to have a different opinion and your opinion doesn't mean anything more than the next persons. In fact, people will say it's not well designed just because you think it is.
'Well designed' means nothing unless it emphasizes profit. And if you define profit as $1 more than it cost to build the game, it was never worth your time to begin with.
I think you are conflating commercial success with "good" game design. Commercial success for a game isn't entirely dependent on how good the game was designed, especially for a game like 40k where there are people who buy the models used to play the game to paint but never play the game itself.
A game like Settler's of Catan is arguably a more well designed game than 40k, but it isn't anywhere near as successful commercially for a number of factors that don't have to do with it's design.
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X
Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
This is a valid observation in general, but I think at least in the case of GW games, none asks for perfect war simulations or subtle game design. Just a way to put in a viable way the toys on the table.
@techsoldaten: Shuppet gave up, I give up too. I suppose you win the discussion, from a certain point of view.
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X
Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
That is somewhat true considering that some of the most popular board games are those god awful Milton Bradly games. Ease of entry and mass market appeal has its benefits for profitability and yet we still have niche genre games being made for both the table top as well as on digital media (PC/Consoles). Games like Hearts of Iron and Total War are not exactly the most mass marketable games and yet they are well known and popular to those who enjoy those types of games. If we want to focus on mass market appeal, instant gratification, and ease of entry to maximize profits then those companies should of just made another Candy Crush type game because those seem to be far more profitable than grand strategy or battlefield strategy games. Not trying to set up strawmen or spew hyperbole but sometimes catering to a more niche audience is worthwhile in ways outside of trying to maximize profits.
So I think there is a slight correlation between rules balance and sales, but not enough to claim that becuese X system sells well, it’s rules must be “good.” That being said I still think 40k’s rules system is a good spot,
To me what defines a good rules system is one which is both fun and relatively balanced, which I believe 40k achieves at the moment. What’s interesting about these 2 aspects and there somewhat mutually exclusive. Fun typically happens in tactics game where units/ armies are able to do cool and powerful things, like firing a vortex missel and which destroys your opponents titan. Notice how that’s fun but not remotely balanced. Chess meanwhile is the standered bearer for most balanced game, where in game skill is by far the most important aspect in winning. Yet we’re all here discussing 40k, likely because it has lots of variety of cool models, and flexibility in what you can do.
To me it seems like a lot of people in this thread want their cake and to eat it to. There’s just no chance that 40k can ever be completely balanced in a way where every army can be completely balanced. Now it’s a worthy goal sure, but I fairly certain removing soup won’t achieve this, and will very likely make things worse. It will at least make things less fun (in my eyes) since options and pontential synergy will decrease with that move. As far as more units becoming viable, I hate to keep bringing it up but it that wasn’t really the case during 5th either. In any competitive (or semi competitive) game, people would just spam the cream of the crop that their codex offered (usually guys in metal boxes), while ignoreing 70% of their dex’s offerings. Why would that be any different now?
DrGiggles wrote: I think you are conflating commercial success with "good" game design. Commercial success for a game isn't entirely dependent on how good the game was designed, especially for a game like 40k where there are people who buy the models used to play the game to paint but never play the game itself.
A game like Settler's of Catan is arguably a more well designed game than 40k, but it isn't anywhere near as successful commercially for a number of factors that don't have to do with it's design.
Edit: Spelling.
Pretty sure I am keeping the terms straight. I am saying 'good game design' is a meaningless phrase and commercial success is the only useful way to discuss the quality of a tabletop game.
Of course, I mean this in a specific way. Sales are a combined measure of a consumer's willingness to spend money on a game and the producer's satisfaction with the margins. Without one or the other, the game goes away.
There are plenty of terrific games, packed with clever gimmicks and enchanting background materials, that vanish every year. No one cares about any of that stupid design when the remaining stock is being transported to the dump. Maybe rats, when the packaging can be used to build a nest. But every pile of garbage is a heap of rotting dreams and stale aspirations devoid of purpose. It's disgusting to think about all the hours wasted sweating over something destined to become just another of the world's environmental problems. These grandiose designers and their overly-optimistic assessments of their work are arguably responsible for pollution and global warming at a macro level. There really should be criminal penalties for emphasizing design over business fundamentals.
Settlers of Catan might not sell as many units at 40k each year, but it's still a quality game. Don't ask me what I think of the game design, you probably would not like my answer. The fact people enjoy playing it enough to spend money so that it keeps being produced is enough for me.
The other thing I am saying, which might take some scrolling to get back to, is that soup is really good for 40k. GW is having a record year after streamlining 40k. The company's financial performance is evidence that 8th edition has been a 'good' design choice. The fact other businesses were forced out of the market is testament to how good.
I realize some people like soup and others don't. That means absolutely nothing about whether or not the game is well-designed. At best, those opinions only matter insofar as they affect sales, and there is no data to suggest they are slumping. So designers made the right choices.
You're absolutely right that some people buy GW models to paint them and never play the game. I just don't see how that observation explains the success of the company in the past year, they sold a lot more models than they have in the past. Is it possible that streamlined rules influenced non-players, or that people have been buying extra models for their soup armies?
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
This is a valid observation in general, but I think at least in the case of GW games, none asks for perfect war simulations or subtle game design. Just a way to put in a viable way the toys on the table.
@techsoldaten: Shuppet gave up, I give up too. I suppose you win the discussion, from a certain point of view.
I'm sorry you feel that way, but I am genuinely interested in what you are trying to say about actual versus potential revenue.
Are you saying that GW has failed to maximize it's revenue due to flawed game design? Or are you trying to say, more generally, that a lack of design means some consumers will be turned off?
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
This is a valid observation in general, but I think at least in the case of GW games, none asks for perfect war simulations or subtle game design. Just a way to put in a viable way the toys on the table.
@techsoldaten: Shuppet gave up, I give up too. I suppose you win the discussion, from a certain point of view.
I asked "Explain why you think people would willingly pay for an advantage in P2W video games, but nobody would dream of doing so for 40k. If you're going to say the example is invalid, you have to explain why, just saying "apples to oranges" isn't an explanation at all."
and this was the the response: "Sure. I believe my previous posts answered your first question, but I'm happy to reiterate.
As for the second question, this might require you accepting the idea that video games / mobile apps / etc are a completely separate market that invites no meaningful comparison. I'm not sure I could convince you of that and don't really want to waste my time trying to prove it."
This basically sums up everything about this pointless argument. There is no logic, no rationalisation being given, yet he still acts as though he's answering the question, in direct response to a post saying "just saying it doesn't work isn't an answer". But he's unwilling to waste his time proving it, how convenient.
I do give up. No matter what side anyone falls on the soup debate, I think anyone can recognise how absurd this particular argument, and the way it is being delivered, is. Sales does not equal good game design. How many people even bought into 40k knowing a damn thing about whether or not the game design was great?
How many people even bought into 40k knowing a damn thing about whether or not the game design was great?
It ain't that back as long as your starting army is good or at least mid tier. Problems start when your army is bad. The gap between the mid tier and good armies is huge. The store owner I play at, let me play for free yestarday vs his son eldar army. All my dead units could be recycled next turn. We played 5 turns, he killed 4700pts of GK, and I killed 600pts of eldar. half of it was from his hemlock brain frying itself and then exploding on the flank of his army.
How many people even bought into 40k knowing a damn thing about whether or not the game design was great?
It ain't that back as long as your starting army is good or at least mid tier. Problems start when your army is bad. The gap between the mid tier and good armies is huge. The store owner I play at, let me play for free yestarday vs his son eldar army. All my dead units could be recycled next turn. We played 5 turns, he killed 4700pts of GK, and I killed 600pts of eldar. half of it was from his hemlock brain frying itself and then exploding on the flank of his army.
You see how bad greyknights are? Space marines are only a little bit better. It's actually arguable that greyknights were better than space marines before the beta deep strike nerf.
If you want to have fun with your greyknights. Ask your opponent if you can ignore the deep strike rules for your greyknights because the they are still pretty bad even when they can deep strike turn 1.
How many people even bought into 40k knowing a damn thing about whether or not the game design was great?
It ain't that back as long as your starting army is good or at least mid tier. Problems start when your army is bad. The gap between the mid tier and good armies is huge. The store owner I play at, let me play for free yestarday vs his son eldar army. All my dead units could be recycled next turn. We played 5 turns, he killed 4700pts of GK, and I killed 600pts of eldar. half of it was from his hemlock brain frying itself and then exploding on the flank of his army.
Although you quoted it, and posed your response as though it was answering the question, it seems like it didn't really do that at all, and you simply just warped it into an excuse to complain about GK for the millionth time. So let me ask again: Did you know much about how well written the ruleset is when you first started buying 40k? Did you feel it had a fair unbalanced ruleset, and did this help shape your decision to buy into the game? I know it had absolutely zero to do with mine, I just thought Marines were cool and thought playing an army that literally eats them is even cooler. Please no more story about how much GK suck, we get it.
Company has good models and bad rules: sells X
Company has good models and good rules: sells X+Y
it's not that simple. For example, if in order to make the rules better you make it more difficult for people to use the models they want to buy. That's what many people here want, but it's a bad idea from commercial perspective.
This is a valid observation in general, but I think at least in the case of GW games, none asks for perfect war simulations or subtle game design. Just a way to put in a viable way the toys on the table.
@techsoldaten: Shuppet gave up, I give up too. I suppose you win the discussion, from a certain point of view.
I asked "Explain why you think people would willingly pay for an advantage in P2W video games, but nobody would dream of doing so for 40k. If you're going to say the example is invalid, you have to explain why, just saying "apples to oranges" isn't an explanation at all."
and this was the the response:
"Sure. I believe my previous posts answered your first question, but I'm happy to reiterate.
As for the second question, this might require you accepting the idea that video games / mobile apps / etc are a completely separate market that invites no meaningful comparison. I'm not sure I could convince you of that and don't really want to waste my time trying to prove it."
This basically sums up everything about this pointless argument. There is no logic, no rationalisation being given, yet he still acts as though he's answering the question, in direct response to a post saying "just saying it doesn't work isn't an answer". But he's unwilling to waste his time proving it, how convenient.
I do give up. No matter what side anyone falls on the soup debate, I think anyone can recognise how absurd this particular argument, and the way it is being delivered, is. Sales does not equal good game design. How many people even bought into 40k knowing a damn thing about whether or not the game design was great?
The main reason people stick around for 40k is because people know people will be playing 40k for years. For whatever reason - it's kind of unexplained as to why. People just play this game no matter how bad the rules are. The models are nice. I suppose the universe is pretty cool BUT it really doesn't explain why the game does so well.
My theory - it does well because people believe it will stick around. Not sure how it got that record - but it has it. 40k will live on forever probably.
So let me ask again: Did you know much about how well written the ruleset is when you first started buying 40k?
I expected it to be like any other game I played before, although my expiriance was limited to ccg. I did expect a 4000$ army to beat the living hell out of aa 400$ one. Same with an optimised list going vs something made out of a starter set times X. I was told though that you can play what ever you want in w40k, and that all stuff is valid as long as it has legal rules. Some people told me that GK maybe harder to play with, but no one explained to me what hard in w40k terms means.
Did you feel it had a fair unbalanced ruleset, and did this help shape your decision to buy into the game?
I didn't knew the rules set, I couldn't afford a 700$ army and the store owner had a GK army for sale and told me it would be good for me. Everyone else at my school, that asked me to start playing, and at that moment everyone was playing w40k, was having a lot of fun. Seen a few games, played a few demos. Seemed easy enough. And yes I knew that demo games are flawed, same as MtG demo games with pre build decks. What I did not expect was that an army could cost 25% less then another, but be 200% worse
I know it had absolutely zero to do with mine, I just thought Marines were cool and thought playing an army that literally eats them is even cooler. Please no more story about how much GK suck, we get it.
What am I suppose to ask or talk about then? I don't have another army. Even If I had the cash to buy more models, I would be too scared or nerfs to buy anything. I just want GW to fix the army I already have models for, so that I can get at least as much as the other people at my school. I would even be down to getting 2-3months of fun playing like the BA player that quit after the deep strike FAQ. Also I can't really use example of other armies, as I never played them. Maybe necron or orcs are just as bad, although I doubt it as both seem to be placing higher then GK in tournaments, and could be used as an example of a difference between a good codex to build list like DE or IG, and something bad.
So let me ask again: Did you know much about how well written the ruleset is when you first started buying 40k?
I expected it to be like any other game I played before, although my expiriance was limited to ccg. I did expect a 4000$ army to beat the living hell out of aa 400$ one. Same with an optimised list going vs something made out of a starter set times X. I was told though that you can play what ever you want in w40k, and that all stuff is valid as long as it has legal rules. Some people told me that GK maybe harder to play with, but no one explained to me what hard in w40k terms means.
Did you feel it had a fair unbalanced ruleset, and did this help shape your decision to buy into the game?
I didn't knew the rules set, I couldn't afford a 700$ army and the store owner had a GK army for sale and told me it would be good for me. Everyone else at my school, that asked me to start playing, and at that moment everyone was playing w40k, was having a lot of fun. Seen a few games, played a few demos. Seemed easy enough. And yes I knew that demo games are flawed, same as MtG demo games with pre build decks. What I did not expect was that an army could cost 25% less then another, but be 200% worse
Thank you for the response, this was a great answer to the question, and is I think pretty common. My 40k purchase also had nothing to do with any perception that the ruleset was better, I assumed I had just as good a chance as getting good rules with it as I did anywhere else, and barely even considered it. It's difficult to motivate yourself to learn the rules of a game you aren't already sold on playing, especially considering the bloat that characterized 40k till now. Sounds like in your case, the game design actually even may have detracted from your purchase if you had known better.
I know it had absolutely zero to do with mine, I just thought Marines were cool and thought playing an army that literally eats them is even cooler. Please no more story about how much GK suck, we get it.
What am I suppose to ask or talk about then? I don't have another army. Even If I had the cash to buy more models, I would be too scared or nerfs to buy anything. I just want GW to fix the army I already have models for, so that I can get at least as much as the other people at my school. I would even be down to getting 2-3months of fun playing like the BA player that quit after the deep strike FAQ. Also I can't really use example of other armies, as I never played them. Maybe necron or orcs are just as bad, although I doubt it as both seem to be placing higher then GK in tournaments, and could be used as an example of a difference between a good codex to build list like DE or IG, and something bad.
What are you supposed to talk about? See above. You answered that question just fine the second try around. If you want to complain about GK go ahead, but don't quote a question about what motivated you to get into 40k and act as though "hey my GK lost to Eldar here's a story nobody asked for or cares about" is any sort of an answer to it.
To anyone who thinks soup isn't a problem, do something for me. Tell me the single aspect of this edition that causes more balance issues than soup. You can't, there isn't one. The vast majority of GTs in this edition have had the top 10-15 places dominated by soup. Typically 5-8 imperial soup lists and 3-5 ynnari soup lists in the top 15. Every. Single. Event. How is this good for the game? At least with allies, you were forced to pay some kind of tax for taking other factions. You had to have an HQ and troops, typically point sinks that you didn't want or need, to get access to the cool stuff that other factions have to offer. You were also limited to 2 factions, one primary and one allied. Now you can have 3 factions, and with the detachments the way they are, you pay no penalty for getting extra CP and covering your own weaknesses.
You can't balance point costs around soup lists, otherwise lots of units become unplayable in a mono-faction list. There's also the issue of having so many combos, it becomes literally impossible for the people writing the rules to actually playtest them. If soup ceased to exist, it would be much easier to adjust points because you would only have to factor in the other units in the same codex. It is literally impossible to accurately point thinks like IKs and custodes jetbikes in the context of soup lists.
So let me know if anyone has an answer to my riddle. Name something that causes more balance issues in the game right now than soup lists with CP batteries and 3 different factions.
Toofast wrote: To anyone who thinks soup isn't a problem, do something for me. Tell me the single aspect of this edition that causes more balance issues than soup. You can't, there isn't one. The vast majority of GTs in this edition have had the top 10-15 places dominated by soup. Typically 5-8 imperial soup lists and 3-5 ynnari soup lists in the top 15. Every. Single. Event. How is this good for the game? At least with allies, you were forced to pay some kind of tax for taking other factions. You had to have an HQ and troops, typically point sinks that you didn't want or need, to get access to the cool stuff that other factions have to offer. You were also limited to 2 factions, one primary and one allied. Now you can have 3 factions, and with the detachments the way they are, you pay no penalty for getting extra CP and covering your own weaknesses.
You can't balance point costs around soup lists, otherwise lots of units become unplayable in a mono-faction list. There's also the issue of having so many combos, it becomes literally impossible for the people writing the rules to actually playtest them. If soup ceased to exist, it would be much easier to adjust points because you would only have to factor in the other units in the same codex. It is literally impossible to accurately point thinks like IKs and custodes jetbikes in the context of soup lists.
So let me know if anyone has an answer to my riddle. Name something that causes more balance issues in the game right now than soup lists with CP batteries and 3 different factions.
The root of the problem is miscosted units. And yes, you absolutely can and must balance them both soup and monoplay in mind; that this is somehow impossible is a fallacy. Marines alone have access to more units that the whole Eldar grand alliance. If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
Toofast wrote: To anyone who thinks soup isn't a problem, do something for me. Tell me the single aspect of this edition that causes more balance issues than soup. You can't, there isn't one. The vast majority of GTs in this edition have had the top 10-15 places dominated by soup. Typically 5-8 imperial soup lists and 3-5 ynnari soup lists in the top 15. Every. Single. Event. How is this good for the game? At least with allies, you were forced to pay some kind of tax for taking other factions. You had to have an HQ and troops, typically point sinks that you didn't want or need, to get access to the cool stuff that other factions have to offer. You were also limited to 2 factions, one primary and one allied. Now you can have 3 factions, and with the detachments the way they are, you pay no penalty for getting extra CP and covering your own weaknesses.
You can't balance point costs around soup lists, otherwise lots of units become unplayable in a mono-faction list. There's also the issue of having so many combos, it becomes literally impossible for the people writing the rules to actually playtest them. If soup ceased to exist, it would be much easier to adjust points because you would only have to factor in the other units in the same codex. It is literally impossible to accurately point thinks like IKs and custodes jetbikes in the context of soup lists.
So let me know if anyone has an answer to my riddle. Name something that causes more balance issues in the game right now than soup lists with CP batteries and 3 different factions.
The root of the problem is miscosted units. And yes, you absolutely can and must balance them both soup and monoplay in mind; that this is somehow impossible is a fallacy.
How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take? That makes no sense. Assuming all units of all monofactions are the same level of power, either they are balanced as monofaction, that get made too strong with the addition of 9 other dexes available in soup, or they are underpowered monofactions that gets made balanced by the addition of 9 other dexes. You are lying to yourself if you think you can multiple the amount of selectable units in an army by like 10, every single one of them equally playable, and have it remain the same power level. That's not how this game works, to do so would require every faction have no identity of it's own and not a single unit complements another races weaknesses. And that makes no sense, even from SM chapters alone.
Crimson wrote: Marines alone have access to more units that the whole Eldar grand alliance. If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
When have SM ever had all their units balanced? And how is this at all similar? Your comparison would involve it being balanced if you were able to build an army out of 10% of the units in the dex, but also being equally balanced if you can select from the entire dex, all of which being the exact same power level. When was this ever the case? How would that make sense?
If the factions are balanced individually, those same factions are not balanced when blended into a single force. That's just logic.
DrGiggles wrote: I think you are conflating commercial success with "good" game design. Commercial success for a game isn't entirely dependent on how good the game was designed, especially for a game like 40k where there are people who buy the models used to play the game to paint but never play the game itself.
A game like Settler's of Catan is arguably a more well designed game than 40k, but it isn't anywhere near as successful commercially for a number of factors that don't have to do with it's design.
Edit: Spelling.
Pretty sure I am keeping the terms straight. I am saying 'good game design' is a meaningless phrase and commercial success is the only useful way to discuss the quality of a tabletop game.
Of course, I mean this in a specific way. Sales are a combined measure of a consumer's willingness to spend money on a game and the producer's satisfaction with the margins. Without one or the other, the game goes away.
There are plenty of terrific games, packed with clever gimmicks and enchanting background materials, that vanish every year. No one cares about any of that stupid design when the remaining stock is being transported to the dump. Maybe rats, when the packaging can be used to build a nest. But every pile of garbage is a heap of rotting dreams and stale aspirations devoid of purpose. It's disgusting to think about all the hours wasted sweating over something destined to become just another of the world's environmental problems. These grandiose designers and their overly-optimistic assessments of their work are arguably responsible for pollution and global warming at a macro level. There really should be criminal penalties for emphasizing design over business fundamentals.
Settlers of Catan might not sell as many units at 40k each year, but it's still a quality game. Don't ask me what I think of the game design, you probably would not like my answer. The fact people enjoy playing it enough to spend money so that it keeps being produced is enough for me.
The other thing I am saying, which might take some scrolling to get back to, is that soup is really good for 40k. GW is having a record year after streamlining 40k. The company's financial performance is evidence that 8th edition has been a 'good' design choice. The fact other businesses were forced out of the market is testament to how good.
I realize some people like soup and others don't. That means absolutely nothing about whether or not the game is well-designed. At best, those opinions only matter insofar as they affect sales, and there is no data to suggest they are slumping. So designers made the right choices.
You're absolutely right that some people buy GW models to paint them and never play the game. I just don't see how that observation explains the success of the company in the past year, they sold a lot more models than they have in the past. Is it possible that streamlined rules influenced non-players, or that people have been buying extra models for their soup armies?
Would love to hear thoughts.
1) Let me clarify, by good game design I mean that the game is relatively balanced (to the point that all choices are at least competitive in a niche case for the majority of factions) and that it is fun to play. I do not think that soup need to be removed from the game, but there needs to be some sort of trade off vs playing a mono faction since it allows people to shore up weaknesses that were intentionally designed into the factions to make them play differently. A game that is well designed will definitely help contribute to a game companies financial success, but with a business model as complex as GW's I don't think that it is a great way to determine the state of the game at a competitive level at least. I think we are just going to agree to disagree on what 'good design' is.
2) It isn't an explanation, just an observation that GW's revenue stream is multifaceted so it is difficult to see how much of that is due to their rules being 'good' causing people to buy models vs the new model releases spurring people to buy their products. It is entirely possible people are buying extra models for soup armies which is good for GW's revenue, but that doesn't mean that soup is necessarily healthy for overall game balance but that brings us back to point #1 so that is where I will leave that.
Toofast wrote: To anyone who thinks soup isn't a problem, do something for me. Tell me the single aspect of this edition that causes more balance issues than soup. You can't, there isn't one. The vast majority of GTs in this edition have had the top 10-15 places dominated by soup. Typically 5-8 imperial soup lists and 3-5 ynnari soup lists in the top 15. Every. Single. Event. How is this good for the game? At least with allies, you were forced to pay some kind of tax for taking other factions. You had to have an HQ and troops, typically point sinks that you didn't want or need, to get access to the cool stuff that other factions have to offer. You were also limited to 2 factions, one primary and one allied. Now you can have 3 factions, and with the detachments the way they are, you pay no penalty for getting extra CP and covering your own weaknesses.
You can't balance point costs around soup lists, otherwise lots of units become unplayable in a mono-faction list. There's also the issue of having so many combos, it becomes literally impossible for the people writing the rules to actually playtest them. If soup ceased to exist, it would be much easier to adjust points because you would only have to factor in the other units in the same codex. It is literally impossible to accurately point thinks like IKs and custodes jetbikes in the context of soup lists.
So let me know if anyone has an answer to my riddle. Name something that causes more balance issues in the game right now than soup lists with CP batteries and 3 different factions.
The root of the problem is miscosted units. And yes, you absolutely can and must balance them both soup and monoplay in mind; that this is somehow impossible is a fallacy. Marines alone have access to more units that the whole Eldar grand alliance. If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
Marine units was never balanced. Every edition you have like 1-2 autochoice, some good, some decent and 25...50% unplayable. The same problem is the soup, but in the much lesser extension.
SHUPPET wrote: How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take? That makes no sense. Assuming all units of all monofactions are the same level of power, either they are balanced as monofaction, that get made too strong with the addition of 9 other dexes available in soup, or they are underpowered monofactions that gets made balanced by the addition of 9 other dexes. You are lying to yourself if you think you can multiple the amount of selectable units in an army by like 10, every single one of them equally playable, and have it remain the same power level. That's not how this game works, to do so would require every faction have no identity of it's own and not a single unit complements another races weaknesses. And that makes no sense, even from SM chapters alone.
Perfectly possible. A unit is always stronger if taken within it's own faction than within another faction, due to not receiving auras powers and so on, other than not playing into the critical mass of the army, so any time you soup you are adding Underpowered elements to your army (in your scenario with everything being perfectly balanced on a mono dex level).
Souping is almost always a bad optimization choice, it is useful only in 4 cases:
1) You are souping into an OP model. Here the problem is not the soup, just the model.
2) You are souping to cover an hole in your army. This is fine, it costs you quite a bit of tax in underperforming models (since they are out of faction), and the model themselves will again be an UP version. It's a good choice to have.
3) Getting easy CPs. This is not a problem with soup, but with the CP system.
4) Because there are strong interactions between the main army and the lesser ingredients, like Doom. These are the real problems and have to go.
None of those problems is due to soup itself. If IG payed a bit more for HQs (even buffing them, it's fine), CPs were not shared and no powers like Doom existed, then Soups would be 100% fine, and even now they are not that bad, the distance between a good mono dex army and a soup army isn't that big.
SHUPPET wrote: How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take? That makes no sense. Assuming all units of all monofactions are the same level of power, either they are balanced as monofaction, that get made too strong with the addition of 9 other dexes available in soup, or they are underpowered monofactions that gets made balanced by the addition of 9 other dexes. You are lying to yourself if you think you can multiple the amount of selectable units in an army by like 10, every single one of them equally playable, and have it remain the same power level. That's not how this game works, to do so would require every faction have no identity of it's own and not a single unit complements another races weaknesses. And that makes no sense, even from SM chapters alone.
Perfectly possible. A unit is always stronger if taken within it's own faction than within another faction, due to not receiving auras powers and so on, other than not playing into the critical mass of the army, so any time you soup you are adding
That doesn't make a difference for so many armies, if anything the aura's are the small reward you get for NOT souping. On top of that, it unlocks stratagems, and when thats things like Vect etc, it's more than made up for already.
2) You are souping to cover an hole in your army. This is fine, it costs you quite a bit of tax in underperforming models (since they are out of faction), and the model themselves will again be an UP version. It's a good choice to have.
That does. Not. Matter. If you can cover your holes, even with a "weaker" version of a unit (and I use weaker VERY lightly, Harley Jetbikes, Castellans, etc are almost identical in power to how they look in a solo faction list), that's still an advantage, and MORE than valueable. That makes the faction STRONGER to have this option, and if the faction was already balanced and it's weaknesses were part of that balance, this gives it a VERY REAL COMPETITIVE EDGE.
4) Because there are strong interactions between the main army and the lesser ingredients, like Doom. These are the real problems and have to go.
So you're just going to remove every single strong interaction combo from the game? LOL. How.... how on earth can you possibly do this... this isn't even pipe dream levels of feasability. This is not even possible with current game design.
I said GOOD mono dex armies, and you talk about mono BA versus imperium soup... (and even there, it's just a CP shring problem) Nid vs nid + gsc is a good one though, and indeed there isn't a really big difference between the two, so thank you for proving my point i guess?
About the excessive interactions, i can count the existing ones on a single hand with fingers to spare.
Lastly, the option to cover a weakness of your army with a unit that does it but is not performing at full value while doing this, is a choice and choices are good for the game. Depending on the list it could be a good thing or a bad thn.
Spoletta wrote: Lastly, the option to cover a weakness of your army with a unit that does it but is not performing at full value while doing this, is a choice and choices are good for the game. Depending on the list it could be a good thing or a bad thing.
Except that isn't how it works with soup. You aren't covering your weakness with a lower-tier unit just for the sake of having something in that role, you're picking the best possible option for every role. The best shooting units, the best melee units, the best objective holders, the best CP generation, etc. And all of those units are working at full value while doing so. The loyal 32 are still a highly efficient screening unit, with all of the stats and abilities (including CP generation) they'd have in a pure IG army, when an IK player brings them to cover their lack of screening and CP. A squad of Custodes jetbikes are still the same fast melee threats they are in a pure Custodes army when you take them to cover an IG army's weakness in melee. Etc. The only choice is between playing a mono-faction list with strengths and weaknesses vs. playing a soup list that is best at everything.
Now, this could certainly change if you nerfed soup. For example, if every unit from a faction other than your warlord's codex cost 50% more points and lost all of its regiment/chapter/whatever rules then yes, you would be allying in a lower-tier unit and have a choice of whether it's really worth taking that partial-value option. But that isn't the game we have.
I said GOOD mono dex armies, and you talk about mono BA versus imperium soup... (and even there, it's just a CP shring problem) Nid vs nid + gsc is a good one though, and indeed there isn't a really big difference between the two, so thank you for proving my point i guess?
Wait so for your example to work, you have to ignore all the weak dexes, and only use the strongest solo dex out of each soup?
What's even the point of this comparison? If all dexes were equally balanced, there would no longer be a strongest dex to choose from and say "see GSC is a weak solo dex - tyranids doesn't get much from them joining up!". If GSC was equally as powerful as Tyranids it would be a whole host of strengthy units to pick from, and any choice from Nids vs any choice of Nids + GSC would be a lot more one-sided than it currently is.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The hoops that people are trying to jump through to make soup not the problem, you may as well just admit that soup is the problem, you just don't want it gone. You have to change up the entire game to make soup work. When you can just change soup to benefit the rest of the game, the problem is, in fact, the obvious one. Soup is great for narrative play, but in competitive, it makes it impossible to balance solo factions. There is no way that even a balanced army like Death Guard, EVER doesn't benefit from being able to take units that compliment its obvious weaknesses.
The problem is with the keyword mechanic, it's that simple. If soup is going to stay it needs to be drastically changed. There needs to be SERIOUS opportunity costs to taking those units, not just "well you get them and everything they bring to the table, and you've plugged the thing that your army does poorly by design, and you get more CP, but they don't benefit from any auras you already have!" which is just lolworthy. That's not a real penalty.
I said GOOD mono dex armies, and you talk about mono BA versus imperium soup... (and even there, it's just a CP shring problem) Nid vs nid + gsc is a good one though, and indeed there isn't a really big difference between the two, so thank you for proving my point i guess?
About the excessive interactions, i can count the existing ones on a single hand with fingers to spare.
Lastly, the option to cover a weakness of your army with a unit that does it but is not performing at full value while doing this, is a choice and choices are good for the game. Depending on the list it could be a good thing or a bad thn.
Soup is fine, fix the real problems.
Thousand Sons are a good army. Thousand Sons are much better if you put a bunch of Nurglings in front of their characters.
Cultists are a fine screen, but they're not as good as Nurglings, which means that for an army that relies heavily on screens and character protection having soup is always going to be better than not having soup.
That's an issue with Cultists not working in a Thousand Sons army, compared to CSM or Death Guard as they're getting no bonus. See, at least in Death Guard, you gotta choose between two relatively even choices (Poxwalkers and Cultists). In Thousand Sons, why wouldn't you use Tzaangors?
How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take?
Because you are always just taking a tiny subsection of units you could take. My Primaris Space Marine army does not benefit one bit from Devastators being available to the Space Marine faction, as my army doesn't have them. Do you understand that units cost points? Larger pool of available units doesn't mean you can take them all, you just take those you pay points for.
Marine units was never balanced. Every edition you have like 1-2 autochoice, some good, some decent and 25...50% unplayable. The same problem is the soup, but in the much lesser extension.
Right. Yet no one is suggesting that Space Marines should be banned from the matched play. Again, the real problem is that the point costs are fethed up, not that there is a large pool of units to choose from.
Toofast wrote: To anyone who thinks soup isn't a problem, do something for me. Tell me the single aspect of this edition that causes more balance issues than soup. You can't, there isn't one. The vast majority of GTs in this edition have had the top 10-15 places dominated by soup. Typically 5-8 imperial soup lists and 3-5 ynnari soup lists in the top 15. Every. Single. Event. How is this good for the game? At least with allies, you were forced to pay some kind of tax for taking other factions. You had to have an HQ and troops, typically point sinks that you didn't want or need, to get access to the cool stuff that other factions have to offer. You were also limited to 2 factions, one primary and one allied. Now you can have 3 factions, and with the detachments the way they are, you pay no penalty for getting extra CP and covering your own weaknesses.
You can't balance point costs around soup lists, otherwise lots of units become unplayable in a mono-faction list. There's also the issue of having so many combos, it becomes literally impossible for the people writing the rules to actually playtest them. If soup ceased to exist, it would be much easier to adjust points because you would only have to factor in the other units in the same codex. It is literally impossible to accurately point thinks like IKs and custodes jetbikes in the context of soup lists.
So let me know if anyone has an answer to my riddle. Name something that causes more balance issues in the game right now than soup lists with CP batteries and 3 different factions.
To answere you riddle I instantly came up with the basically broken moral system. It’s clear that GW intended cheap units like cultist and guardsmans to be held back by moral (good in theory), but because the system is so weak it didn’t work. This means by default cheap chaff units have an advantage over more elite infantry, and is a large part of why you see space marine complaint threads pop up all the time here. So in essence because the moral system is weak, GW has invalidated a good chunk of infrantry and made cheap bodies too good.
I keep seeing people bring up that soup is a common thing as a point against it, but why is that a bad thing? If list and unit diversity are still high (which the evidence supports) with soup, why is that a problem? That’s why I believe the moral system is an actual problem. It clearly impacts unit diversity, because at the moment there’s little reason to take tactical marines over say scouts, or any type of Chaos space marines over things like tzaangors or cultists.
Crimson wrote: Right. Yet no one is suggesting that Space Marines should be banned from the matched play. Again, the real problem is that the point costs are fethed up, not that there is a large pool of units to choose from.
As we keep saying - part of the reason points are problematic is because of soup.
A model's points value is not an isolated event. It depends on how it works within an army.
As has been said - Guard and a Castellan is better than mono Guard or mono Knights. The combination adds something - both explicitly through CP farming - but also through adding high resillience and firepower along with board control and chaff.
Crimson wrote: Right. Yet no one is suggesting that Space Marines should be banned from the matched play. Again, the real problem is that the point costs are fethed up, not that there is a large pool of units to choose from.
As we keep saying - part of the reason points are problematic is because of soup.
A model's points value is not an isolated event. It depends on how it works within an army.
As has been said - Guard and a Castellan is better than mono Guard or mono Knights. The combination adds something - both explicitly through CP farming - but also through adding high resillience and firepower along with board control and chaff.
What unit price do you change to reflect this?
You remove CP sharing and a couple of other interaction, then you don't need to change anything else.
A castellan is fine in an IG army if it has 0 CP to use.
Custodes are fine in an IG list if they have a total of 1 CP available.
Smashcaptains are fine if they have only 5 CP to work.
Case in point:
I can take a soup with a Chaplain, three Tactical Squads, and have them supported by Imperial Guard Veterans led by their Lord Commissar leader, as well as some Inquisitorial forces.
I can guarantee that that army would lose against a mono-Eldar force, or mono- Guard, or most mono- forces. However, it's not because they're mono, or because I souped. It's because I've taken poorly costed (low tier) units against presumably favourably costed units/armies.
Fix the points first, then we'll see if soup remains a problem.
I don't know why people remain hung up on the fact that "a unit is costed appropriately within it's codex, soup ruins this!" - surely a unit should be costed appropriately to how it functions both on it's own and as part of soup? So, a Knight Castellan, while vulnerable on it's own, should be costed as if it were screened - or potential screening units (Guardsmen, Conscripts) should be costed higher due to their potential as screens.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Spoletta wrote: You remove CP sharing and a couple of other interaction, then you don't need to change anything else.
A castellan is fine in an IG army if it has 0 CP to use.
Custodes are fine in an IG list if they have a total of 1 CP available.
Smashcaptains are fine if they have only 5 CP to work.
And so on!
Agreed. I refuse to share CP between my detachments due to this reason. I know the game doesn't force me to, but my games are better for it.
To give my last points of the thread I will Summarize what I’ve seen and why I remain unconvinced by the anti soup crowd
The biggest difference of thought between the pro and anti soup factions is the degree to which soup affects army power levels. Everyone believes that soup does increases the power of factions that have access to it, but the question is “by how much?” Anti-soupers believe that it is by a ton, so therefore soup needs to be addressed. To support this, they point out examples such as the loyal 32, Nurglings in chaos lists, farseers in dark eldar armies, etc ect. Additionally they love to point out the theory that souping allows to pick and the choose the best units from each and every codex, so therefore soup lists lack weaknesses and will almost always beat a non-soup list. To support this they use tournament results that showcase a lot of soup armies near the top. If anyone thinks I’ve misrepresented the anti-soup argument, please let me know as I don’t want to strawman here. Now onto the counter-points that the pro soup side has come up with.
1) While souping will often be the best option for the list, it also carries opportunity costs that make it much less powerful than the anti-soupers claim. Factors such as the 3 detachment limit, wreaking in-book synergy, and the watering down of an armies strengths in order to cover its weaknesses are all costs of soup. This means that soup isn’t nearly as powerful as the anti-soup crowd makes it out to be. Because soup is less powerful then what they claim, the problems that it causes are also exgerrated. There is plenty of evidence to support this as tau frequently do well in big tournaments and single faction armies have been able to quite well in the past (such as pure dark eldar winning capital city blood bath.
2)The anti-soup crowd also has /tendency to misattribute other problems in game to soup. Does anyone honestly expect factions like necrons to be much better off against pure craftworld eldar than they are against eldar soup? Will codex space marines suddenly become the bees news if imperium soup disappeared? Which brings me to my next point.
3) What happens after soup gets changed? Thoughout my life I’ve found that people have a very easy time picking apart flaws of the current system, but tend to faulter when building a better one (see communism ). That appears to be no different here. The anti-soup group seem to be pretty consistent in their issues with soup, but begin to differ heavily on how to things should be changed. I’ve seen people suggest removing allies entirely, using a system that is similar to age of sigmar, or change how command points are generated based on how many allies you bring. These are just a few of the suggestions brought forward, btw. I believe the big reason for the varied suggestions is that people can see pontential flaws in other posters suggestions (I know I sure can) and therefore want to come up with a better solution. The simple fact is that there will always be unforeseen problems with any new system, and that the answer to the currents systems issues is rarely “tear it all down!” I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a better system than the keyword one (although I do think that will be extremely difficult since I believe it’s flaws are heavily exgerated) but if you truly are interested in making 40k a better game (doubtful for some here) then you should be more focused on building a replacement for soup rather than just trying to prove that it should be replaced.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Techsoldaten, I am genuinely unable to understand the point you are trying to make. Also you kinda moved the goalpost from profit to becoming public, in regard of the game companies.
Same with the payment and revenue. The point is just that a well rounded sets of models for each faction, and a tight ruleset are a better bet for attracting a diverse array of customers.
Honestly, it feels like I am spitting in the wind. The exact same argument would apply to what you just said about well-rounded sets models and tight rulesets.
It doesn't matter if a game has those qualities so long as it's commercially successful. If it has those qualities and it's not commercially successful, it's not a game, it's just some selfish endeavor that will lose money.
Don't tell me a game is well designed just because you think those qualities apply. Someone is always going to have a different opinion and your opinion doesn't mean anything more than the next persons. In fact, people will say it's not well designed just because you think it is.
'Well designed' means nothing unless it emphasizes profit. And if you define profit as $1 more than it cost to build the game, it was never worth your time to begin with.
Does "Games Design" include access to start up cash, marketing skills and access to various production facilities? The latter being a key issue with many companies due to the limited number of places that can produce the kind of high level plastics people want before you even know if your game will take off. First question in almost all the miniature Kickstarter threads is "what material are you producing in".
Famously Betamax was a better recording system than VHS, but VHS won out because of a variety of other economic factors that had no bearing on the fidelity of the image or sound recording which can be objectively shown to be true.
Game design is an element of the product, but not the sum total of all of it. Or is Monopoly the best game engine to use to represent the 40K universe because Monopoly is one of the most successful?
I think restricting CP to the highest keyword that produces it is fine, though I'd also like to see Imperial, Chaos and Xenos level strats. Make taking units from outside your chain of command a proper tactical choice, given they've not got the support they usually have.
Still the ability to add chaff/elite to an army that usually lacks it, but think if some detachments are Warlord faction only, and some are eligible for allies you might be able to fix this.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: That's an issue with Cultists not working in a Thousand Sons army, compared to CSM or Death Guard as they're getting no bonus. See, at least in Death Guard, you gotta choose between two relatively even choices (Poxwalkers and Cultists). In Thousand Sons, why wouldn't you use Tzaangors?
I'm not comparing Cultists and Tzaangors, I'm comparing Cultists and Nurglings. You don't use Tzaangors as a cheap screen because they're paying for offensive stats the cultists don't have. Cultists are a pretty good cheap screen, very low points cost per wound. The problem is that, because you can take anything from Chaos, they're competing with the best possible screen unit in the entire game. Nurglings being gobs of wounds that can set up outside of your deployment zone and have Disgustingly Resilient isn't something you could possibly change Cultists to compete with. Nurglings being an insanely good screen isn't as much of a problem in the context of Nurgle Daemons, who care far less about having good screens than Thousand Sons do.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Case in point:
I can take a soup with a Chaplain, three Tactical Squads, and have them supported by Imperial Guard Veterans led by their Lord Commissar leader, as well as some Inquisitorial forces.
I can guarantee that that army would lose against a mono-Eldar force, or mono- Guard, or most mono- forces. However, it's not because they're mono, or because I souped. It's because I've taken poorly costed (low tier) units against presumably favourably costed units/armies.
Well yes, if you deliberately make a bad soup list you can lose against a well-built mono-faction list. I'm not sure why you think this is a compelling argument for anything.
or potential screening units (Guardsmen, Conscripts) should be costed higher due to their potential as screens.
And then you make them too expensive when not being used as screens in a soup, continuing the problem of soup being better than mono-faction.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Case in point:
I can take a soup with a Chaplain, three Tactical Squads, and have them supported by Imperial Guard Veterans led by their Lord Commissar leader, as well as some Inquisitorial forces.
I can guarantee that that army would lose against a mono-Eldar force, or mono- Guard, or most mono- forces. However, it's not because they're mono, or because I souped. It's because I've taken poorly costed (low tier) units against presumably favourably costed units/armies.
Well yes, if you deliberately make a bad soup list you can lose against a well-built mono-faction list. I'm not sure why you think this is a compelling argument for anything.
But if soup was this instant "I win" button that some people aren't far off implying, then surely it wouldn't be an issue.
Soup isn't instantly better than mono. Even a tame mono list can take out a tame soup list. The issue is that a competitive soup list beats a competitive mono list - because competitive is solely concerned with making the most powerful list. If you balance the units, then there's no incentive to use soup if you can make a competitive list with just a mono army.
or potential screening units (Guardsmen, Conscripts) should be costed higher due to their potential as screens.
And then you make them too expensive when not being used as screens in a soup, continuing the problem of soup being better than mono-faction.
But they can still screen for units in their own army. Guardsmen have units that need screening too, or are you suggesting that Guardsman screens ONLY exist in soup?
If we're going down this rabbit hole of "well what if I don't use them as screens, I shouldn't have to pay for them", what if I buy a flamer, and never get to fire it? How about a plasma gun? What if I buy a Rhino, and then I stick it in the corner of the table, and has no effect on the game?
You know as well as anyone that you don't pay for what a unit does in game. You pay for what it can do, and it's opportunity cost. Things get more expensive when they have a higher opportunity to do something. It's why a flamer (short ranged, low strength and AP) is cheaper than a lascannon (long range, high strength and AP) - because it has less opportunities in game.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Soup isn't instantly better than mono. Even a tame mono list can take out a tame soup list. The issue is that a competitive soup list beats a competitive mono list - because competitive is solely concerned with making the most powerful list. If you balance the units, then there's no incentive to use soup if you can make a competitive list with just a mono army.
It is not possible to balance a unit when its strength varies depending upon whether it is in a mono army or a soup army. If a guardsman is worth 6 in a 3 knight list, but 5 with pure IG, what number do you pick?
Units are costed based on factors that are dependant on the content and context that they can be used in. They kinda have to, as you can't math out the appropriate cost for a unit, weapon or model in a vacuum, as it simply doesn't translate well when put into an army. The issue arises that it becomes a lot more difficult, time consuming, and more importantly, costly, to design and cost a unit when the external factors working with said unit doubles. Balancing soup may be possible, and it is maybe even possible to balance both soup and mono armies for every codex. But even if that is (and it is kind of a big if), it would be exceptionally lengthy and costly to design, playtest and tune such changes.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Soup isn't instantly better than mono. Even a tame mono list can take out a tame soup list. The issue is that a competitive soup list beats a competitive mono list - because competitive is solely concerned with making the most powerful list. If you balance the units, then there's no incentive to use soup if you can make a competitive list with just a mono army.
It is not possible to balance a unit when its strength varies depending upon whether it is in a mono army or a soup army. If a guardsman is worth 6 in a 3 knight list, but 5 with pure IG, what number do you pick?
By the same logic, it's not possible to balance a flamer because you don't know if you're fighting Gretchin or Knights.
Although, seeing as how GW have elected to go historically (with things like flamers being cheaper than lascannons, because lascannons are more likely to be against a target that suits it more), the Guardsmen should be costed at 6.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Darsath wrote: Units are costed based on factors that are dependant on the content and context that they can be used in. They kinda have to, as you can't math out the appropriate cost for a unit, weapon or model in a vacuum, as it simply doesn't translate well when put into an army. The issue arises that it becomes a lot more difficult, time consuming, and more importantly, costly, to design and cost a unit when the external factors working with said unit doubles. Balancing soup may be possible, and it is maybe even possible to balance both soup and mono armies for every codex. But even if that is (and it is kind of a big if), it would be exceptionally lengthy and costly to design, playtest and tune such changes.
Seeing as this is the Internet, and people seeming to wishlist and ask for absolutely anything under the sun, I assumed that we were ignoring length and cost of playtesting and implementing a rebalanced 40k points system.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: That's an issue with Cultists not working in a Thousand Sons army, compared to CSM or Death Guard as they're getting no bonus. See, at least in Death Guard, you gotta choose between two relatively even choices (Poxwalkers and Cultists). In Thousand Sons, why wouldn't you use Tzaangors?
Using tzaangors misses the point of cheap screens. Nurglings have DR (usually), suffer less morale, infiltrate and are more useful for zoning out deployment.
So, no, tzaangors are not a replacement for that.
Cultists do just fine generally. They just aren't as amped up as nurglings.
Case in point:
I can take a soup with a Chaplain, three Tactical Squads, and have them supported by Imperial Guard Veterans led by their Lord Commissar leader, as well as some Inquisitorial forces.
I can guarantee that that army would lose against a mono-Eldar force, or mono- Guard, or most mono- forces. However, it's not because they're mono, or because I souped. It's because I've taken poorly costed (low tier) units against presumably favourably costed units/armies.
Fix the points first, then we'll see if soup remains a problem.
Yes, exactly! The real problem is miscosted units. The soup merely accentuates the problem as you can choose undercosted units from several codices. But the real problem is the undercosted units.
I don't know how to explain to you that the more synergy is available for a unit the more powerful it is
Nothing in a competitive game exists in a vacuum, you can't just look at what a unit does on its datasheet and be exactly certain of how strong it'll be in a list
Arachnofiend wrote: I don't know how to explain to you that the more synergy is available for a unit the more powerful it is
Nothing in a competitive game exists in a vacuum, you can't just look at what a unit does on its datasheet and be exactly certain of how strong it'll be in a list
Right, And generally allied units have less synergy, because they do not benefit many auras, psychic powers and other special rules of the parent army.
Arachnofiend wrote: I don't know how to explain to you that the more synergy is available for a unit the more powerful it is
Nothing in a competitive game exists in a vacuum, you can't just look at what a unit does on its datasheet and be exactly certain of how strong it'll be in a list
Right, And generally allied units have less synergy, because they do not benefit many auras, psychic powers and other special rules of the parent army.
Yeah, they still can. You can still take other units with Auras and Psychic Powers. Just less of them. Though some armies get less of that than others, to the point that it doesn't really matter if you do or not.
Arachnofiend wrote: I don't know how to explain to you that the more synergy is available for a unit the more powerful it is
Nothing in a competitive game exists in a vacuum, you can't just look at what a unit does on its datasheet and be exactly certain of how strong it'll be in a list
Right, And generally allied units have less synergy, because they do not benefit many auras, psychic powers and other special rules of the parent army.
I'm not talking about canned synergy. I'm talking about the Thousand Sons/Nurglings synergy, where combining the best characters in the game with the best screens in the game makes the army much better than it is (when it's already pretty good!).
I have very little faith much with change after CA. 5 point IG might be on there. However - 95% of issues will go untouched and they will probably create more issues - kind of like every major rules update they have had so far in this 1 1/2 year period.
Here's the funny thing...
The community is so focused on the big killers like the Castellan & Ynnari that few have an idea what the next worse unit will be.
I challenge anyone here to predict what that will be. Also, I invite you to predict what Ork unit will be problematic, if any.
And we'll all find out in the shakedown at LVO.
The little I've seen with orks I doubt any will be problematic. Much the same it will probably be shoota boys being the most powerful choice - probably with the advance and shoot army trait or FNP.
It's hard to predict the meta. Its not hard to figure out what units needs to be looked at though.
Smasha and Traktor are broken on Mek Guns, you'll see in the new few tournaments
I'm not talking about canned synergy. I'm talking about the Thousand Sons/Nurglings synergy, where combining the best characters in the game with the best screens in the game makes the army much better than it is (when it's already pretty good!).
If you can easily name them as best characters and best screens is the game , then both are undercosted!
I'm not talking about canned synergy. I'm talking about the Thousand Sons/Nurglings synergy, where combining the best characters in the game with the best screens in the game makes the army much better than it is (when it's already pretty good!).
If you can easily name them as best characters and best screens is the game , then both are undercosted!
Exactly. The units need a price increase if they're "the best character" and "best screen".
As a potential fix, perhaps some kind of allies tax could be paid? So you can still take allies, and still take your models, but maybe some are costed differently if taken in an allied army?
How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take?
Because you are always just taking a tiny subsection of units you could take. My Primaris Space Marine army does not benefit one bit from Devastators being available to the Space Marine faction, as my army doesn't have them. Do you understand that units cost points? Larger pool of available units doesn't mean you can take them all, you just take those you pay points for.
What? If Devs are as good as Primaris equivalent, you absolutely benefit from the choice of having both in the list building phase, and being able to select the optimal choice from either for what your current list needs is absolutely an advantage that will result in a stronger list being put on the table. And that's just for two units that are very similar - not having Devastator type units obviously isn't a real weakness of Primaris only lists. However, not having bodies for example, is a real weakness of Knight lists, if Knights were perfectly balanced on their own it's almost guaranteed they are going to get stronger the second you let them start allowing them to bring in balanced Guardsmen with auxiliary points to help control the map and completely offset the designated weakness for the bulk of your army. Being limited by points isn't just it at all, armies are also limited by what units they can pick from. It's how each army has its identity on the battlefield. The Genestealer is a good, strong unit on its own, but if you could only build your army out of nothing but Genestealers, the Tyranid dex would be pretty weak, and there is a reason nobody does that even though it's pretty much already an option. Additional options at the same power level will absolutely improve a dex, it's absurd to me that people are genuinely arguing otherwise, it feels like people have never actually played a real game of 40k before and are just looking at whether or not an individual unit is balanced without thinking about how that can affect the broader faction it's attached to.
Marine units was never balanced. Every edition you have like 1-2 autochoice, some good, some decent and 25...50% unplayable. The same problem is the soup, but in the much lesser extension.
Right. Yet no one is suggesting that Space Marines should be banned from the matched play. Again, the real problem is that the point costs are fethed up, not that there is a large pool of units to choose from.
What are you even talking about? Why would anyone have suggested SM be removed for match play? It's like you're not even reading his posts. You're putting forward this hypothetical situation where every single unit in the game is equally powerful, and as a result SM has double or triple the amount of playable units as other armies... "so why aren't people asking for SM to be changed"? Because the situation you describe has literally never happened? The post you just quoted even said that... If what you described was ever the case, SM would almost definitely be stronger than every other army, and if that was the case, people WOULD be asking for changes. I have no idea what you are trying to do with this line of thinking.
Case in point: I can take a soup with a Chaplain, three Tactical Squads, and have them supported by Imperial Guard Veterans led by their Lord Commissar leader, as well as some Inquisitorial forces.
I can guarantee that that army would lose against a mono-Eldar force, or mono- Guard, or most mono- forces. However, it's not because they're mono, or because I souped. It's because I've taken poorly costed (low tier) units against presumably favourably costed units/armies.
Fix the points first, then we'll see if soup remains a problem.
Yes, exactly! The real problem is miscosted units. The soup merely accentuates the problem as you can choose undercosted units from several codices. But the real problem is the undercosted units.
This is the problem. You guys aren't critically thinking here at all. This post exemplifies it the best. You want to use allies, so all you are looking for is arguments no matter how flimsy to support it.
When approaching your perspective from a logical manner, what you have to look for evidence and logic that dispels your perspective, not for evidence that supports it - and there's been so much sensible explanations given that you can't really answer, but someone gives some shaky example of why "soup must be fine because a combination of the garbage units from other dexes can't compete with the most OP stuff selected from a single soup ingredient!" (???) and you latch on to that as if it's brilliance given words, when it doesn't even really make sense if you think about it for more than 10 seconds.
How the hell can an army be balanced monofaction, but remain the exact same of power with 10 other factions of equally powerful units also become available to take?
Because you are always just taking a tiny subsection of units you could take. My Primaris Space Marine army does not benefit one bit from Devastators being available to the Space Marine faction, as my army doesn't have them. Do you understand that units cost points? Larger pool of available units doesn't mean you can take them all, you just take those you pay points for.
Marine units was never balanced. Every edition you have like 1-2 autochoice, some good, some decent and 25...50% unplayable. The same problem is the soup, but in the much lesser extension.
Right. Yet no one is suggesting that Space Marines should be banned from the matched play. Again, the real problem is that the point costs are fethed up, not that there is a large pool of units to choose from.
Correct - ultimately all the issues in 40k are due to improperly costed units.
I'm not talking about canned synergy. I'm talking about the Thousand Sons/Nurglings synergy, where combining the best characters in the game with the best screens in the game makes the army much better than it is (when it's already pretty good!).
If you can easily name them as best characters and best screens is the game , then both are undercosted!
Thousand Sons... having the best characters... is the entire goddamn point... The entire identity of the faction is a cabal of extremely powerful sorcerers and their various minions. At this point I can only assume that you're fully committed to throwing faction identity out the window just so you can preserve your precious Imperial soup.
Laurence from Table Top Tactics just won the London War-gaming Guild's, Fun and Fluffy 40k tournament with them.
Oh, I heard about that tournament. The list building rules are... bizarre, and seem specifically designed to push away anyone playing the game seriously. Every non-troop or dedicated transport is a 0-1 model, for example.
What? If Devs are as good as Primaris equivalent, you absolutely benefit from the choice of having both in the list building phase, and being able to select the optimal choice from either for what your current list needs is absolutely an advantage that will result in a stronger list being put on the table. And that's just for two units that are very similar - not having Devastator type units obviously isn't a real weakness of Primaris only lists. However, not having bodies for example, is a real weakness of Knight lists, if Knights were perfectly balanced on their own it's almost guaranteed they are going to get stronger the second you let them start allowing them to bring in balanced Guardsmen with auxiliary points to help control the map and completely offset the designated weakness for the bulk of your army. Being limited by points isn't just it at all, armies are also limited by what units they can pick from. It's how each army has its identity on the battlefield. The Genestealer is a good, strong unit on its own, but if you could only build your army out of nothing but Genestealers, the Tyranid dex would be pretty weak, and there is a reason nobody does that even though it's pretty much already an option. Additional options at the same power level will absolutely improve a dex, it's absurd to me that people are genuinely arguing otherwise, it feels like people have never actually played a real game of 40k before and are just looking at whether or not an individual unit is balanced without thinking about how that can affect the broader faction it's attached to.
But if my fluff is primaris only, then I don't take Devastators. Just like if my fluff is Imperial Knights only, then I don't take guardsmen. It is the same thing. Getting hung up on which physical books the datasheets are printed is silly. Factions have never had equal amount of choices. If all factions had exactly 30 units, and allying was an only way to overcome that, then you might have a case. But that's not how it works, factions have wildly different amount of units available to them, even in mono. So again soup haters are naming a feature that is present in the game even without the soup, as an issue with the soup. There certainly is some minimum amount of units faction needs to function, so your Genestealer example is flawed. But there are factions with very limited selection of units like the Harlequins.
What are you even talking about? Why would anyone have suggested SM be removed for match play? It's like you're not even reading his posts. You're putting forward this hypothetical situation where every single unit in the game is equally powerful, and as a result SM has double or triple the amount of playable units as other armies... "so why aren't people asking for SM to be changed"? Because the situation you describe has literally never happened? The post you just quoted even said that... If what you described was ever the case, SM would almost definitely be stronger than every other army, and if that was the case, people WOULD be asking for changes. I have no idea what you are trying to do with this line of thinking.
You are arguing that having access to crazy amount of units to choose from is an unfair advantage. Well, compared to any other faction, Space Marines have that. Why is that not a problem, but when Aeldari soup has access to same amount of units it suddenly is? And yeas, Eldar units on average are way better, but again, not a soup issue, it's a badly balanced units issue.
This is the problem. You guys aren't critically thinking here at all. This post exemplifies it the best. You want to use allies, so all you are looking for is arguments no matter how flimsy to support it.
When approaching your perspective from a logical manner, what you have to look for evidence and logic that dispels your perspective, not for evidence that supports it - and there's been so much sensible explanations given that you can't really answer, but someone gives some shaky example of why "soup must be fine because a combination of the garbage units from other dexes can't compete with the most OP stuff selected from a single soup ingredient!" (???) and you latch on to that as if it's brilliance given words, when it doesn't even really make sense if you think about it for more than 10 seconds.
You are not approaching the issue in logical manner. You completely fail to see the real issue. You see soup and stop thinking right there. It is is like I said, if Saim-Hann and Blood Angels were dominating tournaments half of Dakka would want to ban red models from matched play.
Thousand Sons... having the best characters... is the entire goddamn point... The entire identity of the faction is a cabal of extremely powerful sorcerers and their various minions. At this point I can only assume that you're fully committed to throwing faction identity out the window just so you can preserve your precious Imperial soup.
Points! Do you understand what they're for? If their characters are stronger, then they need to cost more points! If their characters are better for their points than anyone else's, then that is a literal description of a miscosted unit!
Laurence from Table Top Tactics just won the London War-gaming Guild's, Fun and Fluffy 40k tournament with them.
Oh, I heard about that tournament. The list building rules are... bizarre, and seem specifically designed to push away anyone playing the game seriously. Every non-troop or dedicated transport is a 0-1 model, for example.
Sounds like a good idea. Gets those lazy players out of the spam mindset and playing properly
Crimson wrote: You are arguing that having access to crazy amount of units to choose from is an unfair advantage. Well, compared to any other faction, Space Marines have that. Why is that not a problem, but when Aeldari soup has access to same amount of units it suddenly is? And yeas, Eldar units on average are way better, but again, not a soup issue, it's a badly balanced units issue.
Having a crazy amount of BALANCED UNITS to choose from, is going to be an advantage over someone who has 10% as many equally powerful units, as was your original hypothetical. NOBODY is saying that it's op to have 2 good units and a bunch of garbage in your dex. You've completely moved the goalposts to something else. The entire SM line has never once ever been balanced. Why are you pretending you don't understand what the discussion is here? You are the one who set the goals up yourself, this post here is what this quote chain leads back to:
Crimson wrote: If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
The question is answered, are you capable of backing down from a point thats been proven fallacious or will you give zero ground on anything ever?
Crimson wrote: You are not approaching the issue in logical manner. You completely fail to see the real issue. You see soup and stop thinking right there. It is is like I said, if Saim-Hann and Blood Angels were dominating tournaments half of Dakka would want to ban red models from matched play.
No, we don't. The rest of the game needs to be balanced at a unit per level. This is where we all agree, and also where YOU stop thinking, because you don't want soup to go. The fact is, even with a completely level field on a dex vs dex level, soup ALSO needs to be balanced, because as it stands even in a perfectly equivalent power level across dexes, mixing and matching more units even of equal power level, is a serious list building advantage for the larger factions. WHICH tools you have matters, not just how strong they are.
Crimson wrote: But if my fluff is primaris only, then I don't take Devastators. Just like if my fluff is Imperial Knights only, then I don't take guardsmen. It is the same thing. Getting hung up on which physical books the datasheets are printed is silly.
What? Getting hung up on balance is silly because you are building off your personal fluff? LOL. These arguments are getting more absurd every post
Crimson wrote: Points! Do you understand what they're for? If their characters are stronger, then they need to cost more points! If their characters are better for their points than anyone else's, then that is a literal description of a miscosted unit!
Yes, but this is army dependent.
If you have powerful characters (i.e. relatively cheap for their points) but you have to protect them with weaker chaff (re: more expensive for their points) - or another feature of the army - then it balances out.
The issue is when because of soup you can go "I want the best characters and the best screens at the same time".
Having a crazy amount of BALANCED UNITS to choose from, is going to be an advantage over someone who has 10% as many equally powerful units, as was your original hypothetical. NOBODY is saying that it's op to have 2 good units and a bunch of garbage in your dex. You've completely moved the goalposts to something else. The entire SM line has never once ever been balanced. Why are you pretending you don't understand what the discussion is here? You are the one who set the goals up yourself, this post here is what this quote chain leads back to:
Crimson wrote: If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
The question is answered, are you capable of backing down from a point thats been proven fallacious or will you give zero ground on anything ever?
That's my fething point. The exact same situation you complain about soup (some factions having way more options than others and the amount of options makes balancing difficult) already exists even without the soup!
No, we don't. The rest of the game needs to be balanced at a unit per level. This is where we all agree, and also where YOU stop thinking, because you don't want soup to go. The fact is, even with a completely level field on a dex vs dex level, soup ALSO needs to be balanced, because as it stands even in a perfectly equivalent power level across dexes, mixing and matching more units even of equal power level, is a serious list building advantage for the larger factions. WHICH tools you have matters, not just how strong they are.
But even the monofactions do not have the same amount of units to choose from, not even nearly! Even if there was no soup some factions would have almost twenty times the amount of units than others! Again, you're erroneously attributing a common feature of the game to the soup. Now if you suggest that armies with access to more units need to have worse units to counter that 'advantage' then that is just pure madness. Do we increase the point cost of tactical marine every time a FW releases a new Space Marine flyer?
What? Getting hung up on balance is silly because you are building off your personal fluff? LOL. These arguments are getting more absurd every post
Hungin up on balance is not silly, getting hung up on books and factions is. Every players chooses a small subsection of units available to them when building an army, based on their personal criteria. Mys choice of making a Primaris only Space Marine army is no different choice than someone's choice to make a Craftworld only of Kabalite only Aeldari army.
Yes, but this is army dependent.
If you have powerful characters (i.e. relatively cheap for their points) but you have to protect them with weaker chaff (re: more expensive for their points) - or another feature of the army - then it balances out.
No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.
Crimson wrote: No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.
If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.
Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.
Crimson wrote: No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.
If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.
Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.
Everything is not the same. For example a Nurgle unit may be above average defence whilst for example having below average offence and/or movement. But you absolutely should always pay the fair price for the abilities.
Crimson wrote: No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.
If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.
Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.
Everything is not the same. For example a Nurgle unit may be above average defence whilst for example having below average offence and/or movement. But you absolutely should always pay the fair price for the abilities.
I think this kind of shows the issue. Increase in unit toughness + increase in unit cost generally translates to the same unit toughness for points efficiency. It doesn't disprove Tyel's point.
It is possible for a Nurgle unit to have good defence for its points, but if it has that, the unit must have other attributes which are bad for their points.
As a simplified example, if a Nurgle Marine costs the same as a Khorne Marine, and both offence and defence are equally valuable, Nurgle Marine could have 'it's point budget' spent 70% defence and 30% offence whilst the Khorne marine has those other way around.
Crimson wrote: It is possible for a Nurgle unit to have good defence for its points, but if it has that, the unit must have other attributes which are bad for their points.
As a simplified example, if a Nurgle Marine costs the same as a Khorne Marine, and both offence and defence are equally valuable, Nurgle Marine could have 'it's point budget' spent 70% defence and 30% offence whilst the Khorne marine has those other way around.
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As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.
Having a crazy amount of BALANCED UNITS to choose from, is going to be an advantage over someone who has 10% as many equally powerful units, as was your original hypothetical. NOBODY is saying that it's op to have 2 good units and a bunch of garbage in your dex. You've completely moved the goalposts to something else. The entire SM line has never once ever been balanced. Why are you pretending you don't understand what the discussion is here? You are the one who set the goals up yourself, this post here is what this quote chain leads back to:
Crimson wrote: If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.
The question is answered, are you capable of backing down from a point thats been proven fallacious or will you give zero ground on anything ever?
That's my fething point. The exact same situation you complain about soup (some factions having way more options than others and the amount of options makes balancing difficult) already exists even without the soup!
What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact. As it currently stands however, it's not an issue, SM has feth all good units and the largest roster of junk.
You need to pick 1 and stick to it:
a.) this a hypothetical situation where every SM unit is at the same power level as each other and the rest of the game. In which case, yes this would be imbalanced, which is exactly my point.
b.) this is a question concerning the current and past power levels of the dex in reality, in which case the answer to your question is that they have never BEEN all balanced at a codex wide level, nor have the units from every other dex that they fought against, and as a result, an advantage purely from having triple as many playable and equally strong units as other armies has never occurred.
You're the one saying "every dex would be balanced and soup would not ruin that if every unit is equally balanced", which is just a no. Codex Sisters will inevitably be stronger when you let them take anything they might need to cover their gaps from codex Guard, Knights, PA dexes, whatever. There's no way around that.
I still think that soup can be nerfed to make it more like two or three independent forces working together instead of an ultra mix of the best of each house.
As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.
Dark Eldar do not have access to psychic support due their fluff, not for balance reasons. Harlequins used to be in DE codex in past editions, and they have psykers. If both Psykers and DE units are properly costed, and there is proper limitations on which psychic powers can affect allied units, there is no problem. DE shooting at least is criminally undercosted though, and it is an issue even in mono environment; being boosted by allied psykers mere accentuates the issue.
And again, units cost points. Sure, if Nurgle lacks mobility, you can use some of your points for mobile units from another faction. But now you have spend less points on your tough units, diluting your army's toughness. If units are properly costed this trade off should balance things. If it doesn't then that is a sign of miscosted units.
What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact.
I already saifd this is madness:
"Now if you suggest that armies with access to more units need to have worse units to counter that 'advantage' then that is just pure madness. Do we increase the point cost of tactical marine every time a FW releases a new Space Marine flyer?"
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Galas wrote: I still think that soup can be nerfed to make it more like two or three independent forces working together instead of an ultra mix of the best of each house.
Yes, this is fair. Compared to the previous editions where marine characters could join conscript blobs and deflect all incoming fire with their relic stormshield whilst providing numerous buffs to the unit, the eight edition is way toned down. Most of your powers and abilities only affect the units of the same subfaction. But it is certainly possible that there are still some cross-faction synergies that are too strong. Separating the CP pools is a common suggestion, though it is kinda kludgy. Also, it would probably require changing again how detachments provide CP, as otherwise anything less than battalion would be pretty much worthless, and that' would be shame.
I think a mix of "Each subfaction can only use his own CP+the 3 generic ones" + "Vanguard, Spearhead and the other I never remember detachments now give +2CP instead of +1" would be enough to fix the CP problems of Soup.
Then you add another "You can take relics only of your warlords faction" and that psychic powers only benefit the subfaction of the psyker that is casting them even if they affect an enemy unit (Like Doom or some of the Space Marines ones), and from there I can see Soup becoming less of an obvious choice.
"As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.
Dark Eldar do not have access to psychic support due their fluff, not for balance reasons. Harlequins used to be in DE codex in past editions, and they have psykers. If both Psykers and DE units are properly costed, and there is proper limitations on which psychic powers can affect allied units, there is no problem. DE shooting at least is criminally undercosted though, and it is an issue even in mono environment; being boosted by allied psykers mere accentuates the issue.
And again, units cost points. Sure, if Nurgle lacks mobility, you can use some of your points for mobile units from another faction. But now you have spend less points on your tough units, diluting your army's toughness. If units are properly costed this trade off should balance things. If it doesn't then that is a sign of miscosted units."
This ignores the primary point that I made of choice. These armies have the option to opt into mobility against certain matchups where mobility is a strong factor, while other's without soup do not have these options. Again, just an example, but it proves my point clearly enough. How does your proposal deal with this. As to showcase times when mobility would be a deciding factor, take short-range shooty armies. Say a Dark Angels force, with plasma guns, bolters/Stormbolters, flamers etc. Having the mobility to keep at a distance against these kind of weapons would be a strong factor. Or again, Wraithguard. Their weapons are also short ranged.
Galas wrote: I think a mix of "Each subfaction can only use his own CP+the 3 generic ones" + "Vanguard, Spearhead and the other I never remember detachments now give +2CP instead of +1" would be enough to fix the CP problems of Soup.
Then you add another "You can take relics only of your warlords faction" and that psychic powers only benefit the subfaction of the psyker that is casting them even if they affect an enemy unit (Like Doom or some of the Space Marines ones), and from there I can see Soup becoming less of an obvious choice.
Might be OK, if a tad unwieldy. Patrol would need to grant some CP too.Though the relic limitation is completely unnecessary, you already need to pay CPs for relics other than the warlord's faction, and if the CPs are way more restricted in this way, then doing so is actually kinda big deal.
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Darsath wrote: This ignores the primary point that I made of choice. These armies have the option to opt into mobility against certain matchups where mobility is a strong factor, while other's without soup do not have these options. Again, just an example, but it proves my point clearly enough. How does your proposal deal with this. As to showcase times when mobility would be a deciding factor, take short-range shooty armies. Say a Dark Angels force, with plasma guns, bolters/Stormbolters, flamers etc. Having the mobility to keep at a distance against these kind of weapons would be a strong factor. Or again, Wraithguard. Their weapons are also short ranged.
This is normal rock-paper-scissors thing that happen in this game, and it is fine if you don't list tailor. Perhaps the more mobile army is better against certain foes while tougher army is better against other foes. And assuming you don't know beforehand which foe you're facing that's fair.
What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact.
I already saifd this is madness:
"Now if you suggest that armies with access to more units need to have worse units to counter that 'advantage' then that is just pure madness. Do we increase the point cost of tactical marine every time a FW releases a new Space Marine flyer?"
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
I don't like list tailoring either. But this does showcase that some armies can have more favourable matchups than others. Assuming that list tailoring does not happen unfortunately doesn't dismiss the issue. Especially at higher ends like tournaments, where you can prepare your list against the most popular or successful lists out there, or that have performed well at past events. Some factions simply can't adapt to this, while others can. More options is more power.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
I don't like list tailoring either. But this does showcase that some armies can have more favourable matchups than others. Assuming that list tailoring does not happen unfortunately doesn't dismiss the issue. Especially at higher ends like tournaments, where you can prepare your list against the most popular or successful lists out there, or that have performed well at past events. Some factions simply can't adapt to this, while others can. More options is more power.
OK. This actually makes sense. I fully agree that a larger selection of units allow to build larger selection of viable combinations, effective against larger selection of foes. However, if the units are properly balance, you still can still only build one such combination at once. I really don't see this is an issue. For any one given game you only choose certain units from your collection. It really doesn't matter if your original pool was 'Imperium,' 'Craftworlds' or the more likely pool of 'the models I happen to have painted and laying around at the moment.' I mean if Space Marines would not suck, and it would be possible to make a fully effective assault marine based force or an effective tank and devastator gunline, why does it matter that both of those builds are from the same faction? They're composed mostly of different models anyway. How is that any different than one player having both Khorne and Tau armies and using Khorne against opponents who are vulnerable to melee and Tau against opponents who are vulnerable to shooting?
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.
We need to get away from a tac marine being 13 compared to a guardsmen at 4 points first. No amount of "strength of options" nonsense is going to present its self with glaring power gaps like this one or hundreds of others that exist in this game.
Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently. I assure you - if units are properly costed most the problems in this game disappear. You'd actaully see diversity in tournament play.
Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.
Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
How then you're suggesting balancing factions with larger selection of units with armies of smaller selection of units? Please explain what you actually mean.
The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.
If those other units are not undercosted, it can be balanced. You actually don't get those allied units for free, you know, you pay points for them.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.
Pretty sure Crimson is suggesting that "cheap CP rewards" aren't properly costed. Plus Sisters plus other units - which don't synergize with their core choices rules - (faith points and what not) will not offer any real power advantage. The power advantage of souping in units has been gone over. It is mostly grabbing undercosted units to do things your overcosted similar choices in your codex already do. Soup for unintended interaction should be removed obviously - doom should not work with DE units...after those issues are fixed - the advantage of soup is gone. It would more or less be balanced by the list designer. If you can make a better list with soup than you can with deliberate design synergies within your mono dex - then you just deserve to win. Nothing wrong with that.
The biggest issue the game currently has is likely the connection between Command Points and detachments. Even without this, I'm confident that Guardsmen are undercosted at 4 points per model, but this CP issue is certainly the biggest balance issue. I think the issue we're discussing atm is like the 3rd biggest balance issue. It's entirely possible that the command point issue is biggest contributor to the over-prevalence of allied forces in the top tables of events.
Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.
Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.
Absolutely agree soup should be nerfed.
CP system needs to be reworked to be fair to all types of armies. (You've all seen my suggested system - it encourages mono army by docing commpand points for allied detachments)
unintended interactions like Doom with DE/ harliquens need to be removed.
Improper pointed units need to be fixed.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
How then you're suggesting balancing factions with larger selection of units with armies of smaller selection of units? Please explain what you actually mean.
There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc, to power them up in other ways. SM's strength should be in it's versatility in units that was always the design philosophy. But that is a real strength, and you have to recognise that. Just because you can't take them all at once doesn't mean it offsets the fact that you will likely have a perfect tool in kit for every role you need in your army, where other armies will have holes and weak matches as a result. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.
Regardless I'm unsure how your argument is currently trying to prove what you claim at all. Even if it wasn't perfect, why would we default to a completely unbalanced game instead of something much better? :S it doesn't make sense.
Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.
Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.
Absolutely agree soup should be nerfed. CP system needs to be reworked to be fair to all types of armies. (You've all seen my suggested system - it encourages mono army by docing commpand points for allied detachments) unintended interactions like Doom with DE/ harliquens need to be removed. Improper pointed units need to be fixed.
We agree on that. Crimson is arguing soup needs to remain unchanged, and that it doesn't create imbalances. Which is absurdity. I understand the argument that someone may prefer to be able to run multiple armies, or that it's better for GW sales and thus boosts the community, or whatever. But to say it doesn't create an imbalance is just rejection of reality.
Crimson wrote: No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.
If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.
Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.
Disagree. They are tougher on a per model basis, but should pay for that toughness. Giving armies free properties based of the fluff is untenable, especially for gw. Nurgle should not be tougher on an army level. That's cheating, because they are getting unpaid for benefit.
Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would. This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.
Pretty sure Crimson is suggesting that "cheap CP rewards" aren't properly costed. Plus Sisters plus other units - which don't synergize with their core choices rules - (faith points and what not) will not offer any real power advantage. The power advantage of souping in units has been gone over. It is mostly grabbing undercosted units to do things your overcosted similar choices in your codex already do. Soup for unintended interaction should be removed obviously - doom should not work with DE units...after those issues are fixed - the advantage of soup is gone. It would more or less be balanced by the list designer. If you can make a better list with soup than you can with deliberate design synergies within your mono dex - then you just deserve to win. Nothing wrong with that.
The issue the above is with the way GW has traditionally written codex's. Some are designed to favour certain play styles or units.
Hence units that play to that design flavour will either have inbuilt imbalance or will have faction special rules that make them better than another factions unit at that job.
So it will always be better to take differences between codex's and exploit them when building a tournament list to make sure each portion of your army has the most favourable faction rules or such.
Take spacemarines for example
I probably want any long range shooting to be Raven guard for that -1 to hit. But I Don't want that for anything that is going to be getting close you want ultramarine for ground troops and something else for flying units as they already have fly(they gain nothing from fly-1).
As the special rules arn't costed their will always be ways to combine diffrent sub section of your army into detachments that give better bonuses to that section of your army over having a single faction for your entire list. Their isn't anyway you can balance that with points with turning 40k into mirrior codex's.
Simply put soup must have a downside to counteract this ability to optimise. The obvious way to dow that is via CP. But this whole soup is never an issue isn't true.
Undercosted units are a problem
Overcosted units are a problem
Unintended crossover interactions are a problem
Simbly being able to optimise your specialist without a downside is a problem
There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.
Right. So if a player playing the first army in tour example (one with large potential selection of units) builds a force consisting of glass cannons and speedy units, because that fits their theme and those are the models they want to use, they should be at disadvantage against the player who is playing the second army in your example? The first player should be punished because they could have taken some other units instead?
Yeah, I think I trust my understanding of game design over yours...
Regardless I'm unsure how your argument is currently trying to prove what you claim at all. Even if it wasn't perfect, why would we default to a completely unbalanced game instead of something much better? :S it doesn't make sense.
Game is not completely unbalanced, and you misidentify what is causing the balance issues.
We agree on that. Crimson is arguing soup needs to remain unchanged, and that it doesn't create imbalances. Which is absurdity. I understand the argument that someone may prefer to be able to run multiple armies, or that it's better for GW sales and thus boosts the community, or whatever. But to say it doesn't create an imbalance is just rejection of reality.
Soup doesn't create the balance issues in the way you think it does. You're misdiagnosing the problem thus your solutions will be faulty too. I think Galas had way better grasp of the actual problem areas and had solutions designed to specifically address those.
Salt donkey wrote: To give my last points of the thread I will Summarize what I’ve seen and why I remain unconvinced by the anti soup crowd
1) While souping will often be the best option for the list, it also carries opportunity costs that make it much less powerful than the anti-soupers claim. Factors such as the 3 detachment limit, wreaking in-book synergy, and the watering down of an armies strengths in order to cover its weaknesses are all costs of soup. This means that soup isn’t nearly as powerful as the anti-soup crowd makes it out to be. Because soup is less powerful then what they claim, the problems that it causes are also exgerrated. There is plenty of evidence to support this as tau frequently do well in big tournaments and single faction armies have been able to quite well in the past (such as pure dark eldar winning capital city blood bath.
You are seriously overstating the downside to taking Soup. The opportunity costs are almost nonexistent. It's possible, for instance, to take the loyal 32 in a Space Marine list for about the price of one unit. Not only is that opportunity cost minuscule, but the Loyal 32 grants 3 units that can do board control and take objectives, freeing up far more than their points cost in SM units from those tasks to do other things. So, if anything, that the reverse of an opportunity cost, it is an opportunity bonus. A BA Smash-Captain is about 130pts - less than the cost of a Leman Russ. One can get 3 of them for about the cost of 2 Russes, but each can kill a Knight Helverin in one turn, or two can take out one of the bigger Knights, in both cases for less points than the target they are smashing. They're also considerably faster and easier to hide than Russes, and the cost of three Smash Captains barely impacts the force an IG list can bring to the field. So your opportunity cost argument is facetious.
Salt donkey wrote: 2)The anti-soup crowd also has /tendency to misattribute other problems in game to soup. Does anyone honestly expect factions like necrons to be much better off against pure craftworld eldar than they are against eldar soup? Will codex space marines suddenly become the bees news if imperium soup disappeared? Which brings me to my next point.
No one is claiming that Soup is the only problem with 40K, only that is the biggest, most obvious one, and the one with some of the most obvious and easily implemented solutions. Re-pointing every unit in the system would be quite a bit of work. Toning down Soup could be easily accomplished in Chapter Approved or with one of the bi-annual FAQs.
Salt donkey wrote: 3) What happens after soup gets changed? Thoughout my life I’ve found that people have a very easy time picking apart flaws of the current system, but tend to faulter when building a better one (see communism ). That appears to be no different here. The anti-soup group seem to be pretty consistent in their issues with soup, but begin to differ heavily on how to things should be changed. I’ve seen people suggest removing allies entirely, using a system that is similar to age of sigmar, or change how command points are generated based on how many allies you bring. These are just a few of the suggestions brought forward, btw. I believe the big reason for the varied suggestions is that people can see pontential flaws in other posters suggestions (I know I sure can) and therefore want to come up with a better solution. The simple fact is that there will always be unforeseen problems with any new system, and that the answer to the currents systems issues is rarely “tear it all down!” I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a better system than the keyword one (although I do think that will be extremely difficult since I believe it’s flaws are heavily exgerated) but if you truly are interested in making 40k a better game (doubtful for some here) then you should be more focused on building a replacement for soup rather than just trying to prove that it should be replaced.
That is not an effective argument for not addressing the problems inherent with Soup. GW is being much more pro-active than they used to be. They could start with one or more small changes and adjust as they see the result. An obvious start would be to get rid of CP-sharing, which has been a pretty common and consistent suggestion, much as you assert otherwise. That would make a big difference right out of the gate. It wouldn't deal with all of the issues inherent with Soup, but it would be a good start. We can then go from there. It is not an all-or-nothing proposition, as you seem to be asserting here. With the way GW is operating, a staged approach is possible.
SHUPPET wrote: Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would.
This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.
It will never be perfect. But GW is taking steps addressing the unit costs, so it will be better. Banning soup because it cannot be perfectly balanced is absurd. Nothing in this game can be perfectly balanced; if solution was to ban everything with some balance issues, then there would be no game.
There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.
Right. So if a player playing the first army in tour example (one with large potential selection of units) builds a force consisting of glass cannons and speedy units, because that fits their theme and those are the models they want to use, they should be at disadvantage against the player who is playing the second army in your example? The first player should be punished because they could have taken some other units instead?
Wait so your dex gave you the tools to build to cover the weaknesses of a glass cannon list, but because you wanted to keep a "theme" you left literally every single one of them at home, and yet you want that dumber style of play to just as powerful as every well built list from other dexes for the sake of your fluff, and at the cost of propelling other people's sensibly well built list from your own dex into a state of overpoweredness as a result? Each faction has it's identity. If you want to play PURE GLASS CANNONS, play the army that is designed and balanced around that style of play. If you play the army who's strength is versatility of units, your strength is that your list can always find the ideal unit to patch up those holes. This is like complaining that you built an all-shooty Ork army, and expecting it to be as powerful as an all shooty Tau army. Each faction needs to do certain things well and certain things poorly, to have any sort of gameplay identity. I'm quite certain you don't understand game design as strong as you think you do pal.
SHUPPET wrote: Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would. This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.
It will never be perfect. But GW is taking steps addressing the unit costs, so it will be better. Banning soup because it cannot be perfectly balanced is absurd. Nothing in this game can be perfectly balanced; if solution was to ban everything with some balance issues, then there would be no game.
I didn't say ban soup, I said balance it.
You realise there's a middle ground between just completely removing allies from the game, and completely ignoring a major point of imbalance currently in the game, right? "It can't be perfectly balanced, so rather than attempt to improve that balance I say let it rock!" You realise how biased you sound right now? As I said earlier:
SHUPPET wrote: If soup is going to stay it needs to be drastically changed. There needs to be SERIOUS opportunity costs to taking those units, not just "well you get them and everything they bring to the table, and you've plugged the thing that your army does poorly by design, and you get more CP, but they don't benefit from any auras you already have!" which is just lolworthy. That's not a real penalty.
Wait so your dex gave you the tools to build to cover the weaknesses of a glass cannon list, but because you wanted to keep a "theme" you left literally every single one of them at home, and yet you want that dumber style of play to just as powerful as every well built list from other dexes for the sake of your fluff, and at the cost of propelling other people's sensibly well built list from your own dex into a state of overpoweredness as a result? Each faction has it's identity. If you want to play PURE GLASS CANNONS, play the army that is designed around that style of play. This is like complaining that you built an all-shooty Ork army, and expecting it to be as powerful as an all shooty Tau army. Each faction needs to do certain things well and certain things poorly, to have an identity. I'm quite certain you don't understand game design as strong as you think you do pal.
Restricting army to monobuild is bad design. Lets make a concrete example. In Space Marines you can make an assualty Black Templar crusade, should this be automatically inferior than a Khorne Daemon army, because in theory Marines could have taken Fireraptors and Sicaran Battletanks? Should Imperial Fists gunline be automatically inferior to Tau Gunline? Should only viable way to play marines to be a combined arms style drawing equally from all elements? How is this good design?
Wait so your dex gave you the tools to build to cover the weaknesses of a glass cannon list, but because you wanted to keep a "theme" you left literally every single one of them at home, and yet you want that dumber style of play to just as powerful as every well built list from other dexes for the sake of your fluff, and at the cost of propelling other people's sensibly well built list from your own dex into a state of overpoweredness as a result? Each faction has it's identity. If you want to play PURE GLASS CANNONS, play the army that is designed around that style of play. This is like complaining that you built an all-shooty Ork army, and expecting it to be as powerful as an all shooty Tau army. Each faction needs to do certain things well and certain things poorly, to have an identity. I'm quite certain you don't understand game design as strong as you think you do pal.
Restricting army to monobuild is bad design. Lets make a concrete example. In Space Marines you can make an assualty Black Templar crusade, should this be automatically inferior than a Khorne Daemon army, because in theory Marines could have taken Fireraptors and Sicaran Battletanks? Should Imperial Fists gunline be automatically inferior to Tau Gunline? Should only viable way to play marines to be a combined arms style drawing equally from all elements? How is this good design?
That's not restricting it to a mono build. In fact it does the definitive opposite. Can you slow down, read, and think about the meaning of the posts that you are replying to? You can run a heavily assaulty BT list, and unlike a similarly assaulty from a race like say Tyranids, who's iconic weakness in almost every edition has always been a lack of reliable heavy AT, you could take a squads or two of Lascannon Devs. You are not a weaker list, your strength is that your assault army does not have this massive exploitable hole, which is a concession that a different army may have to make. Versatility is a strength, and not having access to certain tools IS a weakness that holds back almost every army in the game in some way, and the ones that don't need to be balanced as such. Assuming there was perfect balance between all units, of course.
Yes. You are suggesting that an army which has access to wide variety of units should for some reason be punished for it, even though they cannot actually use all those units at once.
You think that Black Templar melee build should be inferior to Khorne Daemon melee build because Sicaran Battletanks exist.
This is basically the exact example you gave, just using the actual units in the game.
Crimson wrote: Yes. You are suggesting that an army which has access to wide variety of units should for some reason be punished for it, even though they cannot actually use all those units at once.
You think that Black Templar melee build should be inferior to Khorne Daemon melee build because Sicaran Battletanks exist.
This is basically the exact example you gave, just using the actual units in the game.
I just explained definitively how it wasn't any of those things at all, but okay.
I just explained definitively how it wasn't any of those things at all, but that's okay, I suspected you stopped actually reading a while ago.
I stopped reading when there was no more text. You edited in more later.
You can run a heavily assaulty BT list, and unlike a similarly assaulty from a race like say Tyranids, who's iconic weakness in almost every edition has always been a lack of reliable heavy AT, you could take a squads or two of Lascannon Devs. You are not a weaker list, your strength is that your assault army does not have this massive exploitable hole, which is a concession that a different army may have to make. Versatility is a strength, and not having access to certain tools IS a weakness that holds back almost every army in the game in some way, and the ones that don't need to be balanced as such. Assuming there was perfect balance between all units, of course.
So basically you're saying what I said you were saying. BT melee should be weaker, because they could take lascannons. How about it is not, except if you spend some point on those lascannons, thus having less points for melee, thus weakening it? That is how to properly balance a game. You pay for what you actually take, not for what you could have taken.
Laurence from Table Top Tactics just won the London War-gaming Guild's, Fun and Fluffy 40k tournament with them.
Oh, I heard about that tournament. The list building rules are... bizarre, and seem specifically designed to push away anyone playing the game seriously. Every non-troop or dedicated transport is a 0-1 model, for example.
Sounds great! The more GW and tournament organisers can do to push away "serious" gamers the better!
SHUPPET wrote: You can run a heavily assaulty BT list, and unlike a similarly assaulty from a race like say Tyranids, who's iconic weakness in almost every edition has always been a lack of reliable heavy AT, you could take a squads or two of Lascannon Devs. You are not a weaker list, your strength is that your assault army does not have this massive exploitable hole, which is a concession that a different army may have to make. Versatility is a strength, and not having access to certain tools IS a weakness that holds back almost every army in the game in some way, and the ones that don't need to be balanced as such. Assuming there was perfect balance between all units, of course.
So basically you're saying what I said you were saying. BT melee should be weaker, because they could take lascannons. How about it is not, except if you spend some point on those lascannons, thus having less points for melee, thus weakening it? That is how to properly balance a game. You pay for what you actually take, not for what you could have taken.
Because it's not that simple, and this is what you keep missing. That 2000 points of BT's without AT is simply a weaker list than 2000 points of BTs with AT support. If I have 1750 points of Broodlords and Genestealers in a list, and I have a choice, to spend that last 250 points on some more Genestealers, or some Hive Guard to sit in a ruin out of LoS and crack open vehicles for them, even though both lists now have 2000 points, one is a lot stronger than the other, and it doesn't take a genius to work out which. This is how list building works, and having a broader selection of good units to pick from/never having limitations to your toolkit is a real strength, and why even when rule of 3 wasn't a thing, the strongest list was never ever taking nothing but the strongest unit in a dex, and why even the most OP units needed to be supported in different ways by much weaker units, when your logic would state that the only smart thing would be to dedicated every single last point towards taking that underpriced unit. It astounds me that someone can actually play this game and not realise that the strength of units can go past itself on an individual level on paper in a vacuum, and the exact same model can be worth more or less depending on what the dex needs.
Because it's not that simple, and this is what you keep missing. That 2000 points of BT's without AT is simply a weaker list than 2000 points of BTs with AT support. If I have 1750 points of Broodlords and Genestealers in a list, and I have a choice, to spend that last 250 points on some more Genestealers, or some Hive Guard to sit in a ruin out of LoS and crack open vehicles for them, even though both lists now have 2000 points, one is a lot stronger than the other, and it doesn't take a genius to work out which. This is how list building works, and having a broader selection of good units to pick from/never having limitations to your toolkit is a real strength, and why even when rule of 3 wasn't a thing, the strongest list was never ever taking nothing but the strongest unit in a dex, and why even the most OP units needed to be supported in different ways by much weaker units, when your logic would state that the only smart thing would be to dedicated every single last point towards taking that underpriced unit. It astounds me that someone can actually play this game and not realise that the strength of units can go past itself on an individual level on paper in a vacuum, and the exact same model can be worth more or less depending on what the dex needs.
Of course all armies need to be able to deal with various sorts of foes, and usually they can. And of course proper melee list would still have to deal with heavy armour; even without lascannons. Marines have deep striking assault terminators and thunder hammer armed vanguard veterans that the hypothetical BT list could utilise. It is just happens those units suck, so it is better to take lascannons, but that is a failure at balancing. All armies in the game have several units with different roles in their disposal, and armies should be designed so that they have sufficient toolbox against all foes, at least in theory. Extreme rock paper scissors does not result a good play experience. If for example Tyranids were just inherently unable to deal with tanks (they aren't) then that would be bad design. But these soup complaints really are not about that. For example the common complaint is that Castellan allied with IG is too strong. But it is not that IG doesn't have unit of similar role in their disposal. They do, Shadowsword. It just happens that Castellan is more point optimal in that role and thus is taken instead. But again, that is a problem with unit balancing not with the allies existing in the first place.
Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.
You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.
What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.
How then you're suggesting balancing factions with larger selection of units with armies of smaller selection of units? Please explain what you actually mean.
There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc, to power them up in other ways. SM's strength should be in it's versatility in units that was always the design philosophy. But that is a real strength, and you have to recognise that. Just because you can't take them all at once doesn't mean it offsets the fact that you will likely have a perfect tool in kit for every role you need in your army, where other armies will have holes and weak matches as a result. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.
Regardless I'm unsure how your argument is currently trying to prove what you claim at all. Even if it wasn't perfect, why would we default to a completely unbalanced game instead of something much better? :S it doesn't make sense.
Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.
Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.
Absolutely agree soup should be nerfed.
CP system needs to be reworked to be fair to all types of armies. (You've all seen my suggested system - it encourages mono army by docing commpand points for allied detachments)
unintended interactions like Doom with DE/ harliquens need to be removed.
Improper pointed units need to be fixed.
We agree on that. Crimson is arguing soup needs to remain unchanged, and that it doesn't create imbalances. Which is absurdity. I understand the argument that someone may prefer to be able to run multiple armies, or that it's better for GW sales and thus boosts the community, or whatever. But to say it doesn't create an imbalance is just rejection of reality.
I feel like people who really don't want soup to be banned (they really enjoy playing with allies) are afraid of the slippery slope. Or really just afraid of GW overreacting about a problem. What I am saying and I think you agree - is that soup is much less of a problem when you make the changes in my last post. Yeah there might be some other unintended consequences of allied units being used together but just like in other games (LOL, starcraft) they make continuous balancing changes when issues like that arise. The game will never be in a perfect state of balance but it can continuously get better with each change.
It has been quite disappointing so far for me in the CA's and Erratas - so many missed opportunities to improve the game. Plus a lot of knee jerk reactions (like nerfing Nids out of the top teir, nerfing smite, ect) I can understand where crimson is coming from.
Exactly. There's this slippery slope fallacy being brought into play, that we "shouldn't balance soup because everyone should be able to take allies". These things aren't mutually exclusive. You and I are on the same page Xenomancers
I am of the same idea of xeno here, fix CP sharing, remove doom-like cross factions interactions (except the ones that are intended to be so, like the custodes banners), and fix the most obvious UP/OP models.
If you do that, soup is no longer a balance issue.
Yes there could be cases where it is optimal to soup into a model that covers a particular role, but that is not a problem. You are not dramatically increasing the effectiveness of a list, you are giving it a small bonus, That small bonus is within the realm of how much good list building should influence the result of a game (about 15-20% with the rest being luck/skill/matchup).
It is no different than knowing that a few shooting elements in your all assault army can synergize with it.
Laurence from Table Top Tactics just won the London War-gaming Guild's, Fun and Fluffy 40k tournament with them.
Oh, I heard about that tournament. The list building rules are... bizarre, and seem specifically designed to push away anyone playing the game seriously. Every non-troop or dedicated transport is a 0-1 model, for example.
Sounds great! The more GW and tournament organisers can do to push away "serious" gamers the better!
Man, what is it with casual gamers and hating people for the way they choose to have fun
Hollow wrote: Sounds great! The more GW and tournament organisers can do to push away "serious" gamers the better!
Man, what is it with casual gamers and hating people for the way they choose to have fun
It's a toxic attitude from toxic players, nothing else to it. My sig is inspired by it. It's incredible because even casual players have the time of their life at such events. It's just sour grapes in every community. And this is from someone who LOVES good narrative play.
Hollow wrote: Sounds great! The more GW and tournament organisers can do to push away "serious" gamers the better!
Man, what is it with casual gamers and hating people for the way they choose to have fun
It's a toxic attitude from toxic players, nothing else to it. My sig is inspired by it. It's incredible because even casual players have the time of their life at such events. It's just sour grapes in every community. And this is from someone who LOVES good narrative play.
IF, and that is in caps for a reason, IF GW would propperly balance, then we would not have half the problems we have now?
IF the game would be propperly balnced there would not be that much difference between tournament lists and regular lists, or atleast not a difference span the lenghth of the goddamn wall of china.
And frankly blaming tournament players for beeing competitive is stupid. In fact there are lessons to be learned there, especially in regards to gamemechanics and balancing, especially in terms of ISSUES of the game. Optimaly the difference would not be that far off list wise, skillwise there would be a huge gap, but there isn't. It is more like you don't pick certain lists, oh you lost.
If every unit was equally balanced, tournament players would still dominate as they understand better how to build a worthy list. I don't think balance is the issue on that one, just as Arachno said, people hating on others for having fun in a way that doesn't suit them.
SHUPPET wrote: If every unit was equally balanced, tournament players would still dominate as they understand better how to build a worthy list. I don't think balance is the issue on that one, just as Arachno said, people hating on others for having fun in a way that doesn't suit them. see
If you read propperly i pointed that allready out.
I also pointed out it is never bad to have a somewhat dedicated tournament scene for a game, since it shows flaws within the system, which also might go unnoticed.
However atm the difference between a tournament list and a fluffy list is insane, and should not be.
Edit:
And frankly blaming tournament players for beeing competitive is stupid. In fact there are lessons to be learned there, especially in regards to gamemechanics and balancing, especially in terms of ISSUES of the game. Optimaly the difference would not be that far off list wise, skillwise there would be a huge gap, but there isn't. It is more like you don't pick certain lists, oh you lost.
ATM there is no denying that lists are more deciding then individual skills.
SHUPPET wrote: If every unit was equally balanced, tournament players would still dominate as they understand better how to build a worthy list. I don't think balance is the issue on that one, just as Arachno said, people hating on others for having fun in a way that doesn't suit them. see
If you read propperly i pointed that allready out.
I've read and re-read your post, I still feel like you said the exact opposite
"IF the game would be propperly balnced there would not be that much difference between tournament lists and regular lists, or atleast not a difference span the lenghth of the goddamn wall of china. "
SHUPPET wrote: If every unit was equally balanced, tournament players would still dominate as they understand better how to build a worthy list. I don't think balance is the issue on that one, just as Arachno said, people hating on others for having fun in a way that doesn't suit them. see
If you read propperly i pointed that allready out.
I've read and re-read your post, I still feel like you said the exact opposite
"IF the game would be propperly balnced there would not be that much difference between tournament lists and regular lists, or atleast not a difference span the lenghth of the goddamn wall of china. "
It sure seems like it
ATM Lists are more deciding off your chances then skill in the game itself. (that and preferably you play a faction that can soup in to avoid weaknesses and or get's access to bonkers op models like certain knights or psykers)
Yes there would still be differences in lists between a tournament player and your 08/15 player, but the differences in said lists would not be as extreme like they are now.
I mean compare a regular 08/15 IW list with a tournament CSM soup list, that's basically two whole separete worlds . That discrepancy is not showing a good understanding of list building imo but rather how much the choices are unbalanced compared to each other even in the same overall faction, not to mention the codex internal balance.
That is what i am getting at, tournament lists are on a whole other level of power, they are not optimized lists of factions, it's like a complete different game, and that is were i see the issue.
And frankly the whole listbuilding to maximize first turn dmg output and or durability to survive insane killing power is not healthy for the game itself. Basically it boils the whole game down to who get's the first turn with a faction that can kill off enough enemy pts in one go. Hence the whole Imperial soup shenanigans with Knights or doom.
SHUPPET wrote: If every unit was equally balanced, tournament players would still dominate as they understand better how to build a worthy list. I don't think balance is the issue on that one, just as Arachno said, people hating on others for having fun in a way that doesn't suit them. see
If you read propperly i pointed that allready out.
I've read and re-read your post, I still feel like you said the exact opposite
"IF the game would be propperly balnced there would not be that much difference between tournament lists and regular lists, or atleast not a difference span the lenghth of the goddamn wall of china. "
It sure seems like it
ATM Lists are more deciding off your chances then skill in the game itself. (that and preferably you play a faction that can soup in to avoid weaknesses and or get's access to bonkers op models like certain knights or psykers)
Yes there would still be differences in lists between a tournament player and your 08/15 player, but the differences in said lists would not be as extreme like they are now. I mean compare a regular 08/15 IW list with a tournament CSM soup list, that's basically two whole separete worlds . That discrepancy is not showing a good understanding of list building imo but rather how much the choices are unbalanced compared to each other even in the same overall faction, not to mention the codex internal balance. That is what i am getting at, tournament lists are on a whole other level of power, they are not optimized lists of factions, it's like a complete different game, and that is were i see the issue. And frankly the whole listbuilding to maximize first turn dmg output and or durability to survive insane killing power is not healthy for the game itself. Basically it boils the whole game down to who get's the first turn with a faction that can kill off enough enemy pts in one go. Hence the whole Imperial soup shenanigans with Knights or doom.
You're right, but I'm just saying that tournament players are still going to squeeze significant advantage out of the list building stage. Taking any random combination of great units is not equivalent to taking a deliberate synergistic combination of units that also brings the right tools to deal with the maximum amount of things. This is the part Crimson doesn't understand either.
You're right, but I'm just saying that tournament players are still going to squeeze significant advantage out of the list building stage. Taking any random combination of great units is not equivalent to taking a deliberate synergistic combination of units that also brings the right tools to deal with the maximum amount of things.
That i agree on, and it should be that way, however atm it just boils down to this checklist i feel:
1. CP battery,(glorious 32 or any comparable cheapest possible combination) check
2. CP eaters and removal of big stuff (slamguinius,etc) Check
3. CP eater and main broken unit (castellan) Check
I don't think that should be the be all end all of list design, not to mention that it isn't particullary clever.
Then again 40k always had this spammable nature, for as far as i can remember, Daemonprinces with lashes, kyborgs, hellturkeys, riptides, eldar jetbikers,etc.
Frankly those were units which could have and should have been playtested before hand (oh wait i forgot the 8th start with malefics and brimstones, that was a shitshow.......)
Spoletta wrote: I am of the same idea of xeno here, fix CP sharing, remove doom-like cross factions interactions (except the ones that are intended to be so, like the custodes banners), and fix the most obvious UP/OP models.
If you do that, soup is no longer a balance issue.
Yes there could be cases where it is optimal to soup into a model that covers a particular role, but that is not a problem. You are not dramatically increasing the effectiveness of a list, you are giving it a small bonus, That small bonus is within the realm of how much good list building should influence the result of a game (about 15-20% with the rest being luck/skill/matchup).
It is no different than knowing that a few shooting elements in your all assault army can synergize with it.
Yep. Something like this would probably be fine. I don't really like the idea of separate CP pools, but if the massive disparities of the factions' ability to generate CP won't be fixed, then that is probably the only alternative.
Xenomancers wrote: Plus a lot of knee jerk reactions (like nerfing Nids out of the top teir, nerfing smite, ect)
....seriously? You don't think smite spam or mega-tyrants weren't a problem - at all? Even after tournaments clearly demonstrated it?
Tyrants obviously were undercosted.
The real issue with nids wasn't actually a nid problem though - It was an issue with how reserves worked. Being able to put 1800 points in reserve is just insanity. That army that was dominating with 7 tyrants and 3 malwocks in reserve would already be nerfed to the max by rule of 3 and reserve limits. Beta deep strike was a knee jerk reaction to that specific army - IMO. The game was better with turn 1 DSIMO. Smite is clearly an overreaction as you can still spam smite by spamming thousand suns...but not Tzeentch daemons for some reason.
Not really trying to argue these points - just that they were big time changes made by GW. No question they overdid it with each change. They could do the same thing here with allies.
Laurence from Table Top Tactics just won the London War-gaming Guild's, Fun and Fluffy 40k tournament with them.
Oh, I heard about that tournament. The list building rules are... bizarre, and seem specifically designed to push away anyone playing the game seriously. Every non-troop or dedicated transport is a 0-1 model, for example.
Sounds great! The more GW and tournament organisers can do to push away "serious" gamers the better!
Man, what is it with casual gamers and hating people for the way they choose to have fun
The answer is butthurt. Invisible 7th edition death-star hurt him really bad.
1. Fix CP to Point size, not Detachments.
2. Limit Stratagems to Warlord Specific.
3. Profit!!
Warlord specific stratagems will KILL allies. What good are units you can't use stratagems on?
Proof? I think they will be fine.
How can I prove it other than ask the question I just asked?
Why would I take units that can't use stratagems when I can take units that can use stratagems? Especially after the CP problem is fixed.
I don't think I've ever used a strat on my Farseer, he's just in the list to add psychic bonuses to my DE. If he couldn't have strats used it wouldn't change my list a jot. Now if I couldn't use strats on my Coven, becuase my Warlord is Kabal that would be an issue. Especially as at least one strat can only be used on Coven if warlord is Kabal, so that strat would be invalidated completely.
