The competetive 40k off the rails thread in the tournament section is going on and on. I did not want to derail it so I started this thread.

There are complaints that competetive 40k is unbalanced in various ways. I would certainly agree.

My question is, what miniature game is really balanced, and in what ways?

I have been playing a long time, and most games have major balance issues. For example, many factions cannot make competetive lists, many units are useless, etc.

Chess is a game that some would consider balanced, but of course it is not. Its own meta can also result in boring games, where people are playing to draw. Playing to win puts you at a much greater risk to loosing.

I am also curious why balance is such a major issue in wargames. In actual historicals wars, balance was never a thing.

 spaceelf wrote:

I am also curious why balance is such a major issue in wargames. In actual historicals wars, balance was never a thing.

I take it you mean historical games rather than wars Cause surely the reasoning for why real battles are not balanced is pretty self evident.

I think historical games get a pass because they actually do aim to balance themselves pretty well; however they aim for historical accuracy rather than even matching. This can actually result in imbalances between armies, however they are tolerated because the greater goal of the system is to mimic reality rather than provide an even mechanical game. Historical games can also use a huge range of historical battles as the backdrop to games. So, again, you're not playing to win you're playing to win within the realm of re-creating the real-world imbalanced battle on the tabletop before you.


It's a bit like comparing campaign and skirmish mode in an RTS game. The Campaign is akin to many historical games - it's imbalanced, but we tolerated it because it comes with a script. The multiplayer is where the game is purely about the win and where competition is the core element and thus its akin to many other wargames that try to present an even mechanical chance to win for both sides.





It's a big issue mostly because when there are big mechanical swings within the game it can mean that someone puts hundreds of pounds of models otno a table that represents many hours of building and painting and they cannot win. Or the win is exceptionally harder for them and there is nothing mechanically they can do with their army to improve that chance. Whilst winning isn't everything in games, continual losses DO have an impact. Winning is also nice, we like it, we enjoy it so its something many aspire to achieving. When the game itself its weighted against you it can feel like a huge blow. In addition because wargame models are not just bought premade and prepainted; people want "their" army to have a mechanical chance to win because, well, they aren't just going to dump it for another one*


*There are people who do this, of course, but they tend to be the minority.

Balance is an issue, because *gamers* (not necessarily hobbyists) want an even, or at least close-to-even, contest where both parties have a near-even chance of winning.

As a *gamer*, I can accept a single build per faction being “the best” but I would want that “best” build to be competitive in a tournament. A tournament has a financial cost to enter, and has financial prizing based on performance. If my 1500 point army is hypothetically powered as a 1400 point army, and my opponent’s 1500 point army is hypothetically powered as a 1700 point army, I’ve payed an equal stake to enter the tournament, so I’m upset that I’m unable to have an equal opportunity to win.

That said, I am personally a garage-gamer. I play for bragging rights with my friends. I don’t find much about the current state of 40k to scratch our competitive itches, so we’ve put the main 40k game to the side for now. The game isn’t *terribly* balanced for our purposes, we’ve honestly just found too much hinging on who goes first, despite trying many “house rules” to try and alleviate the issue, and different terrain setups. The game is just “too killy” to recover from being put on the back foot, in our experience. (My gaming group)

 Overread wrote:
When the game itself its weighted against you it can feel like a huge blow. In addition because wargame models are not just bought premade and prepainted; people want "their" army to have a mechanical chance to win because, well, they aren't just going to dump it for another one*

Probably best sums up my answer to the question as well. As said, winning is not everything, but it is understandable that people want their cool new models that they lovingly painted to have at least a fair shot at it.

I want to know after i dropped $800 on an army and painted it that im not going to lose by virtue of liking the wrong models.

That being said i love kings of war and conquest. I also have no issues in battletech.

They are not by any means total balanced but i have NEVER gotten my face rubbed into the table because i chose the wrong army. I always feel in those games that I have a chance to pull something off.

The same is not true for 40k or aos, arguably the worst balanced games on the market today. A lot of games I have played (either for or against me) or have watched played in 40k and AOS the outcome was already basically known before turn 1 even began. That is not a good game.

I come from a tournament background. I used to travel to the GW Grand Tournaments, and was a top 10 placer several times in both 40k or AOS, so I know my problem isn't simply "git gud". I used to have to constantly change my army out to at least stay viable. You have to do this to some extent in any game, but not to the degree you do in GW games (Lord of the Rings withstanding, I have no tournament experience in that game so I cannot comment)

Balance is important because, win or lose (and either is fine) I want to feel like it was mostly my good/bad decisions or ability to capitalise on my opponents errors that drives the result, not that the conclusion was inevitable at the moment the game was incepted. I don't want my "best" list to have little chance against other factions irrespective of what I do.

Internal balance is important because I want to be able to use the models I've bought to game with, without actively handicapping myself to do so. I can live with certain things being better in some circumstances, but never-takes are arguably worse than auto-takes.

As for games that offer better balance, it isn't utterly ridiculous to say "all of them." There's a curve, and some games get closer to parity than others, but on evidence most games get closer than 40K.

It should also be noted taht often as not issues with Warhammer rules are not just imbalance problems, but also linked to three aspects:

1) GW is hazy in how they write some rules out and hazier still when those rules interact with others (at times). Esp when two codex/battletomes interact and both change a core rule at the same time. This can result in issues where the debate is how the rules are supposed to work before you even get to balance

2) GW rarely updates everything at once. This can result in an army being trash for ages because they are running on old rules. Now with 8th edition and AoS 2.0 GW has started releasing rules a LOT faster so that more armies are brought up to speed. But its clear that its a continually ongoing process of updates which can break something that once worked.

3) GW appears to have rules writers who are more casual in attitude toward rules than is ideal. You can tell this by how they talk in interviews; how the rules are worded and how for a long while, GW pulled out of even supporting competitive events. There are changes happening here, but again its a slow process, esp since you've sitll got most of the same people in the same positions. IT might be something that remains until we get a change of staff to allow for stricter/tighter writing and structuring.

4) GW doesn't like releasing info early. Even when they do beta testing (barring Sisters of Battle) they've often only sent out pre-written lists to testers to use rather than all the rules. This method of testing helps keep the content of the book secret, but at the same time means that beta testers can't work at spotting broken combinations or confusing combinations. Such things that can often arise once a book is then published.


GW has improved a lot, but there is still, in many peoples views, room to improve further.




That said don't believe everything online. I've seen arguments where people have used maths and examples and argued for hours with one side claiming a specific set of units/army is overpowered whilst the other is almost arguing the exact opposite. Both sound believable and have their own twist on evidence ot display. So sometimes in the balance arguments there's more personal issues and such going on than there is cold hard fact. It doesn't help that most onilne chats don't have any way to measure a players performance - so you can have rank newbies arguing against those who only play in theory against highly experienced and skilled players against people who are pretty rubbish, but have been playing for decades.

comparing the balance of 40k with the balance of chess with the argument how chess is not balanced, how can 40k be, is strange at best.

if 40k would ever come to a 49/51 balance like chess, this would be a huge step forward.

and you cannot lose in chess because you picked the wrong colour, you lose because your opponent played better.

40k has the problem that the better player still lose with the wrong list/army, which is intended as GW does not want better players always to win.


Comparing games I played, Kings of War, Deadzone, Dystopian Wars, X-Wing, Flames of War, Bolt Action and Infinity are all better balanced than current 40k.

Balance is becoming an issue if there are too many units with the same role on the battlefield. With 3 infantry anti-tank units using the same slot in force organisation, one will always be better than the unless they are the same

another point is, if for one army those units using the same FOC slot while in a different army, they are on 3 different slots

such thinks in 40k were done because off the fluff and not for game reasons, leading to factions with all good units using the same slot while others had only 1 good unit per slot.

I noticed that no one has suggested any games that fit the "balanced" description here. Well one person mentioned battletech.

I too am curious about "well balanced" games and rules. I do own the battletech starter box and I'm glad to hear its balanced if I ever find an opponent.

I used to play X-wing during first edition and found that it was a relatively balanced game as long as you avoided the two or three broken builds that were dominating the meta. the increase in bombs and regen abilities with each release slowly turned the game down "only rebel lists are viable" in the meta. Once 2.0 dropped though I fell out of the game, so I have no idea how balanced it is now.

I think some imbalance is good as most people enjoy the discovery of strong strategies and units, I think perfect balance would imply that all strategies and units are the same power level so the only choice would be stylistic.

Also you get people like me who enjoy using the un-optimal strategies/ units as, although you don't win as much, when you do win it feels really naughty!

Players want to win because they win, not because the game wins for them.

As a game the mechanics get in the way of the competition between 2 players while facilitating the criteria by which they compete.

Balanced games allow both players to have some agency over who wins and who doesn't and unbalanced games shift that agency over to pregame selections of units or such small key choices that are so overwhelming that the other player looses any capability to compete.


40k is unbalanced because the game mostly plays itself after list building.

Apocalypse is a much more balanced game with massively more player agency.

 Kroem wrote:
I think some imbalance is good as most people enjoy the discovery of strong strategies and units, I think perfect balance would imply that all strategies and units are the same power level so the only choice would be stylistic.

Also you get people like me who enjoy using the un-optimal strategies/ units as, although you don't win as much, when you do win it feels really naughty!

It's a fallacy to think that a balanced game would mean ANY choices of army building would be balanced.

When most talk of balance they mean that each army as a whole can compete with each other army on equal footing. This still assumes that he player builds a working list. A player playing Tyranids who puts only termagaunts on the table is not taking a balanced list and, would thus expect to have a higher degree of variation in game win/loss potential than one taking a more balanced Tyranid force.

So a balanced game still has importance on list building (just as much as an inbalanced one honestly). The list is still important; finding those working combos is still key; however

1) It's likely that you don't get such huge swings in power between a good and a great list. So instead of an "I win" button on the table, you instead increase your chances.

2) The game is not made on the army list alone. The players still have to command those forces and use them correctly in order to win the actual game.


Better internal balance works better for all - esp for GW because it means that there are fewer to no "dud" models in the range. When the swings of power are reduced it means that players can buy more what they want. It means they can put down that "weaker" model within the army and whilst it has an effect on the overall army performance, its not a night and day difference. It also means that there's more potential to develop niches within the armies and broaden the tactical options. It highly increases army variety, can reduce the chance of a single meta list being theonly viable option.


Overall everyone wins except the people who believe that the only way to win is to take a steamroller list that "always wins unless it plays against itself".

 Kroem wrote:
I think some imbalance is good as most people enjoy the discovery of strong strategies and units,

Strategy is something that's enabled by balance, not created by imbalance. If all you have to do is deploy your gunline and cross your fingers for sixes, you don't need much strategy. If, however, your opponent is just as capable of countering you as you are them, that's when you have to stop relying on statistical oddities and actually play better.

I think perfect balance would imply that all strategies and units are the same power level so the only choice would be stylistic.

Let's not go down that rabbit hole. Firstly, most people accept that perfect balance is impossible, secondly most people want imperfect balance ie "my thing is faster, but your thing is tougher, so they offer comparable value in game, but for different reasons."

Also you get people like me who enjoy using the un-optimal strategies/ units as, although you don't win as much, when you do win it feels really naughty!

Or, you know, just have a game where an unorthodox strategy well executed is rewarded with victory, rather than because your opponent rolled an above average number of ones and you got away with something.

40k being IGOUGO also hamstrings any balance attempts as a half decent alpha strike will usually leafblow enough that whoever goes second is at a sizeable disadvantage (admittedly true of a lot of games)

also 40k has a bajillion moving parts which makes adding new things or even taking things away even more tricky, as a previous poster mentioned X-Wing started fairly balanced but every expansion added things and despite frequent errata 1st edition was a bloated mess after about 5 years, and whilst each edition of 40k has about the same lifespan there is still the weight of prior editions to contend with

 kodos wrote:
comparing the balance of 40k with the balance of chess with the argument how chess is not balanced, how can 40k be, is strange at best.

if 40k would ever come to a 49/51 balance like chess, this would be a huge step forward.

and you cannot lose in chess because you picked the wrong colour, you lose because your opponent played better.

Technically not true.

White has a 60/40 win rate against black (actually, I think it's 58/42) actually. Which means that yes, you can lose in chess because you picked the wrong colour. Especially here where white wins 3 games against your 2, for no other reason than it goes first.

To the OP, I've never played a wargame that had 'excellent' balance. Warmachine/hordes was pretty good, for the most part, but had some absolute howlers (mk2 Haley 2 and 3, cryx etc) that could skew the game into negative play experience territory quite easily. Infinity is a pretty good game too. For the most part, these are limited systems. There is only so much that designers can do, and only so much weight the games can hold.

for chess this depends on the statistics and data used.

online games, tournament games and vs computer games have a different outcome

BUT for tournaments it is common that players never get the same colour twice in a row and/or played both equal often

compared with 40k it is not about wich army you chose but if you get first turn or not


another reason why "chess is not balanced why should 40k be" is a bad comparison

in chess it does not matter which colour you chose as both have the same army list, and the "first turn" problem is handled by giving each player equal often the first turn.

40k has a problem with random effects as those on the one hand should reduce things like the first turn problem, while on the other hand it makes playing the game worthless if you have no control on what you are doing.

for a complex tabletop, the one who deploys first should always have the first turn

Recently tried out BA. It's quite the difference.

X-Wing is also quite good.

There are some very interesting replies. I will reiterate Balmong7's comment that there are few examples of balanced games in the responses. (Battletech has mech and vehicle creation rules. I will leave the balance to your imagination.)

People mentioned wanting an equal chance of winning. I agree that it would be good in many senses. However, there do not seem to be many such games. So should we be satisfied with a game in which we get to make decisions and try to optimise our choices towards SOME end, even if that end is not necessarily 'winning'?

Battletech has about 1,001 ways to play. If you are playing a battle tech event they will typically be restricting what mechs you can use and disallow customization.

I have never in 30 years played a battletech game in those circumstances where I felt that I lost the game before turn 1 ever began.

Same as the other games I mentioned above.

However this is a fairly regular occurrence in 40k or AOS.

There will *never* be an equal chance of winning and almost nobody is really pushing for that.

What almsot everyone I know pushes for is that the game not be over before turn 1 begins by just looking at the army rosters.

The saddest part is that LotR is an excellent system that rewards in game choices far more than the flagship games and has very good balance. So they are capable...

 spaceelf wrote:
There are some very interesting replies. I will reiterate Balmong7's comment that there are few examples of balanced games in the responses. (Battletech has mech and vehicle creation rules. I will leave the balance to your imagination.)

People mentioned wanting an equal chance of winning. I agree that it would be good in many senses. However, there do not seem to be many such games. So should we be satisfied with a game in which we get to make decisions and try to optimise our choices towards SOME end, even if that end is not necessarily 'winning'?

If you haven't seen examples of balanced games mentioned, you're not paying attention. In fact, your post shows you have in fact seen people mention them, you just disagree.

Which is why it's best not to go into too much depth, about other games. Balance is a moving target and what will appear balanced among a group of like minded players will fold like wet tissue in a different more results orientated environment. Hence if people start offering up examples of what they consider balanced then the discussion will start lurching around from argument to arugment about that one thing in that game that was totally broken that time.

Might I suggest, if people are going to discuss games by name, and to respect the general idea behind the thread, can anyone offer up examples of a worse balanced game than 40K? It's likely a shorter list and an easier thing to arrive at a consensus on.

I also don't think having an equal chance of winning should ever be the case excepting some very extreme and specific matchups. The better player should always be the one winning if they play well, but not because they've taken advantage of statistical imbalances and uncaught rules interactions and loopholes.


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 Eldarain wrote:
The saddest part is that LotR is an excellent system that rewards in game choices far more than the flagship games and has very good balance. So they are capable...

Hasn't the author team for LOTR long gone from the studio? If so, I think we're capable, but probably not any longer. (Also not while Jervis is studio head.)

That is true but the fact they haven't broken the game with their additions to the game is worth mentioning (as GW commonly falls on their face at that particular juncture)

 Eldarain wrote:
The saddest part is that LotR is an excellent system that rewards in game choices far more than the flagship games and has very good balance. So they are capable...

And look what sells more.

I think we also have to just accept what the player base really wants and what draws those players in the first place to these games.

I haven’t played many different tabletop war games. I’ve played a lot of board games, pen and paper rpg’s, card games, computer games... but I don’t have a wide variety of wargames to compare to as specific examples.

I’ve recently been playing Space Hulk Tactics on XBox. There’s a mission creator option, that lets you build your own missions that the Terminators and/or Genestealers need to accomplish.

Having played both campaigns (40 hours, or so?) I’ve had a fair bit of success creating missions that seem challenging for the Terminators while still winnable by the Stealers. In my opinion, Space Hulk is a balanced game... if the mission is built that way. It’s easy to make the game too easy for either faction. But a fun challenge to make a mission that ratchets up the challenge as the mission progresses.

Which is to say, that with a bit of experience in a game, you can gain a heuristic feel for the balance. What’s working and what’s not. 40k doesn’t have that, and in 40k I can’t just design new missions or parameters to make different factions balance against each other. I mean, I *could*, but why bother when there are other games that are just better “out of the box”. Blood Bowl isn’t super balanced, particularly as team values spread out through a season. But my investment in a given faction is minor (compared to a 40k army) and plays a satisfying game in an hour or so. Even then, I have plenty of ways I’d tweak the game until it was basically a new game.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

also 40k has a bajillion moving parts...

I think this sums up why 40K cannot be balanced and perhaps should not be.

If most of the miniature buyers don't actually play, then the miniatures rules would serve better capturing the imagination rather than doing its points worth on the battlefield.

Balance is hard to achieve, especially if one tries to accommodate different play styles with verisimilitude.
Total Warhammer seems to be doing a good job of it, but it is a PC game and goes through tons of unit updates a year.

Kings of War is very balanced, but it had to keep the options (and interactions) to a minimum in order to get there. I enjoy it, but it would never be my favourite.

Balance is important in a game because otherwise if feels unfair. With dice games however even the most balanced game can feel unbalanced if you are rolling badly.

 auticus wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
The saddest part is that LotR is an excellent system that rewards in game choices far more than the flagship games and has very good balance. So they are capable...

And look what sells more.

I think we also have to just accept what the player base really wants and what draws those players in the first place to these games.

Well until AoS started its 2.0 revolution Lord of the Rings was outselling it. In fact Fantasy was selling so badly it was near dead during the time that Lord of the Rings was at its height. Of course Lord of the Rings had GW and the movies pushing it for sales. Today GW still markets and sells both but you can't deny that 40K and AoS both get more of a lions share than Lord of the Rings. In addition lets not forget that both the core games have a good couple of decades more of established fanbase behind them (even if AoS gets a bit chopping with the shift from old world). So there's that to contend with as well.



I think the issue is more that GW has two fantasy lines that sort of compete with each other; so whichever gets the lions share of marketing and model releases is going to jump above the other. AoS also tends to get a lto more of the big showy models, whilst Lord of the Rings is slightly more tame in that regard; which reflects the games lore and background.

 auticus wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
The saddest part is that LotR is an excellent system that rewards in game choices far more than the flagship games and has very good balance. So they are capable...

And look what sells more.

Not like that the LotR community broke away after GW doubled the prices for plastic models while it outsold Warhammer Fantasy at that time

Perfect balance in a wargame is likely unattainable, but that does not mean we should not try for good balance. When people say they want 40K to be balanced, they mean that they want the balance to be better than it currently is.

Arguing from the position that perfect balance is impossible is essentially a straw man based on at best misunderstanding the point people are making and at worst misrepresenting it.

If we could move past that in these discussions it would be helpful in finding meaning, understanding and common ground.

Chess seems pretty balanced although the rules haven't been updated in a bit.

And it doesn't seem to have concerns about using 3rd party minis.

Perfect balance is a unicorn. There is no such thing, and if it did gamers would actually hate it.

"Balance" can be a hard thing to define, checkers and chess have a true balance but some argument can be made on who goes first or second determines differing strategies.
Non-random game wins are determined by experience of the player completely.

Introducing randomization starts increasing the odds of a newer player having a string of good luck and may win.

The experienced player figures out how to account for or mitigate the randomization in the hopes of their better strategy to prevail.

There shall always be a problem when you have specialized units (artillery/cavalry/infantry) where large amounts of a given type can be exceedingly advantageous only in certain circumstances (rock/paper/scissors).

Saying all that, I find X-wing has been good for "balance" for a game with a fair bit of variety but they keep finding the odd combinations are exceedingly powerful which then get some point adjustment or FAQ.

Any game where the manufacturer sells the rules and the miniatures, there will be massive conflict in balance. Less so if it's a historical game where there are competing miniature manufacturers. When sales are directly tied to game performance/"new hotness", you end up with crap.

PS: This excludes a number of small game manufacturers, but big companies (GW, FFG, etc.)...it's a recipe for disaster.

I think any real discussion on the subject of balance deserves a mention of David Sirlin's work. I greatly wish it wasn't written in a way that mostly serves to encourage people who would abuse it and drive away the people who could learn the most from it, but the information itself is very useful. Check it out if you haven't, just try to focus on the message over the messenger.

As for balance, I think its important to recognize that a lot of the appeal of games (of any kind) is in realizing fantasy and expressing imagination. We take great joy in choosing our avatars, which is why we increasingly see games that focus on heroes or champions or warcasters or masters or whatever they decide to call it. To a degree though that expands to the whole army and its ability to bring some aspect of imagination to life.

The break, then, comes from the fact that for all the fantasy in the avatars, the games themselves come down to hard coded rules and often raw math. Imbalance imposes reality on our imagination and forces us to choose between our desire to win and the characters we envisioned.

I think one of the big things that makes this worse is that a lot of people don't truly appreciate what having a live opponent means. Life is rarely made up of the kind of zero sum games that head to head competition brings to bear, so a lot of people don't really appreciate their opponent's own desires to win. Getting to the point where you really accept that if you want to really win, you have to put in as much as your opponent sounds obvious, but is rather hard to really appreciate.

Probably could double this writing about the idea of what balance actually looks like and why people struggle to accept it, but I'm already well past the TLR so I'll save it for later.

 Da Boss wrote:
Perfect balance in a wargame is likely unattainable, but that does not mean we should not try for good balance. When people say they want 40K to be balanced, they mean that they want the balance to be better than it currently is.

Arguing from the position that perfect balance is impossible is essentially a straw man based on at best misunderstanding the point people are making and at worst misrepresenting it.

If we could move past that in these discussions it would be helpful in finding meaning, understanding and common ground.

But that poses the question - How good should 'good balance' be? How good is 'good enough', in other words? What percentage of balance/imbalance would you accept? And could it ever be 'good enough' to get a pass from those who seem to see it as their duty to tear down, tear apart and criticise? If 'perfect balance' is impossible, as you say (and I don't disagree)How much 'imbalance' are you willing to accept? How much is actually 'ok'? How many loopholes, and errors and mistakes are you willing to accept, and how bad? What 'price' of balancing factors (e.g. Homogenisation, small scale, formats that risk splintering the community, limited rosters/options, all-but-eliminated player choice in list-building etc are you willing to accept, also factoring in, and acknowledging this is a business, and business needs should also be considered (meaning, you need new releases, and bigger rosters etc). Or are we looking at a situation, where despite people claiming to want 'good enough' balance, or 'better balance', the difference between what they'd accept as 'good enough' or 'better balance' and the impossibility of 'perfect balance' is so small/narrow, that it is essentially the same thing.

And this poses a further question. There are mechanics in place elsewhere that have arguably contributed to what the community often ascribes as 'better' balance in other games. Unfortunately, every such thing comes with a price. And every mechanics has its own dectractors. For example:
Warmachines 'kill the caster' and scenario - alternative victory conditions. 'But why should the game end just because you've killed one specific dude'. (Also: think of how the metagamers will twist the game if all they have to do is kill your hq and they win)
Warmachines 'multiple list' tournament system, and sideboards. Try telling 40k players for a 1500pt tourney, they have to have not just one. But two 2000 point armies...
infinity: in 40k scale, its guardsmen, and veteran guardsmen with lasguns, autoguns and the ocasional heavy stubber, and armed with carapace armour or flak armour. Plus they have old school rending. Great game. But the scale is tiny, compared to 40k. Try tell people that 90% of the game is now illegal for games and anything bigger than a crisis suit might as well be burned. Christ they're still talking about squats, twenty years on.

Let's also be clear - both of these games are regarded as 'good enough' when it comes to balance. But even then, both have their howlers and loopholes to exploit.

Deadnight wrote:

But that poses the question - How good should 'good balance' be? How good is 'good enough', in other words? What percentage of balance/imbalance would you accept? And could it ever be 'good enough' to get a pass from those who seem to see it as their duty to tear down, tear apart and criticise? If 'perfect balance' is impossible, as you say (and I don't disagree)How much 'imbalance' are you willing to accept? How much is actually 'ok'? How many loopholes, and errors and mistakes are you willing to accept, and how bad? What 'price' of balancing factors (e.g. Homogenisation, small scale, formats that risk splintering the community, limited rosters/options, all-but-eliminated player choice in list-building etc are you willing to accept, also factoring in, and acknowledging this is a business, and business needs should also be considered (meaning, you need new releases, and bigger rosters etc).

Part of the reason good is never good enough is simply that everything has its fans; and if you're a fan of something, its really no fun to be punished for liking it. I think a lot of players often make this harder on themselves than they need to by not being happy unless they can spam that one bad thing or getting so fixed on it they forget about all the other cool things that them to the game/faction/etc, but regardless, the existence of a cool, but bad model will draw an angsty crowd that will dominate the conversation. There's also just a good crowd of people who believe in points to the level that they believe in blind equality that really aren't ever going to be happy.

Of the Sirlin articles I mentioned above, I think one of the best ones is the idea of competitive diversity. That balance at the cost of choice isn't always and improvement. A game with 5 perfectly balanced options isn't necessarily better than a game with 100 options with only a tenth being competitive. Trying to improve the 90% is an admirable goal, but it never really happens. To me, what's important is prioritizing what needs to be competitive. You want to make sure most of your players have a route to compete without abandoning at least the top level organization of your options. If your game has factions, EVERY faction needs to have at least one competitive build. From there, making as many of the sub factions or avatar characters competitive is the next most important bit. Sometimes you need to prioritize that. If you're making a Star Wars game, make sure Vader is proper terrifying. From there, I guess individual unit choices matter, but this is likely whack-a-mole so it becomes more about making sure the stuff that's really cool that you want to represent your game is good enough to be on tables drawing people in.

Deadnight wrote:
For example:
Warmachines 'kill the caster' and scenario - alternative victory conditions. 'But why should the game end just because you've killed one specific dude'. (Also: think of how the metagamers will twist the game if all they have to do is kill your hq and they win)
Warmachines 'multiple list' tournament system, and sideboards. Try telling 40k players for a 1500pt tourney, they have to have not just one. But two 2000 point armies...
infinity: in 40k scale, its guardsmen, and veteran guardsmen with lasguns, autoguns and the ocasional heavy stubber, and armed with carapace armour or flak armour. Plus they have old school rending. Great game. But the scale is tiny, compared to 40k. Try tell people that 90% of the game is now illegal for games and anything bigger than a crisis suit might as well be burned. Christ they're still talking about squats, twenty years on.

Bad examples
Infinity is a Skirmish Games, and I never heard anyone complaining that he is not allowed to take Land Raiders in Kill Team, or that Imperial Knights as a faction don't exist in Kill Team

Warmachines Scenarios are comparable, you can win the Game by Scenario points or with Kill Points, except that not everything gives you a KP. And of course this could work if Papa Smurf had the rule that the enemy wins as soon as he got killed, he would not have been in so many lists in the first place

And people have asked for Sideboards in 40k for a while now, specially since auto-lose/win against specific lists is a real thing.

Scale of the game has nothing to do with Balance at all. Just because there is Kill Team is smaller does not mean it is better balanced than 40k, the same for Apocalypse being larger.

Kings of War is balanced the same way as is Vanguard, although one is a mass battle game and the other one a Skirmish.

Deadnight wrote:

But that poses the question - How good should 'good balance' be? How good is 'good enough', in other words? What percentage of balance/imbalance would you accept? And could it ever be 'good enough' to get a pass from those who seem to see it as their duty to tear down, tear apart and criticise? If 'perfect balance' is impossible, as you say (and I don't disagree)How much 'imbalance' are you willing to accept? How much is actually 'ok'? How many loopholes, and errors and mistakes are you willing to accept, and how bad?

I would never accept mistakes, loopholes and errors. Those have nothing to do with balance but are there because of lazy/bad writing or design. Something that can happen with free rules or small companies, but not with a Premium priced product like 40k

And balance need to be good enough that victory is decided on the table, not during list building or by choosing a faction, and internal balance need to be good enough that all units in a Codex are a real option, otherwise there is no reason to have them at all.

 kodos wrote:

Bad examples
Infinity is a Skirmish Games, and I never heard anyone complaining that he is not allowed to take Land Raiders in Kill Team, or that Imperial Knights as a faction don't exist in Kill Team

Not my point. Part of the reason for infinitys good balance is that its scale is so small. It's a D20 game, but essentially a dozen (or less!) humies per side, with (a) relatively limited variation in stats, and (b) a big swing towards lethality over durability (heck. Power armour is statistically about as good as 40k flak armour). It's easier to account for things. The point was not that people complain that they can't take land raiders, but a one of the tools you good use to help balance the game, is to lower the scale. Ergo, get rid of everything bigger than a humie. Or failing that, make a new unit type - anything smaller than a Titan gets a 'chaff' stat. Now obviously, were you to choose this as a mechanisms to help balance your game, expect a lot of resistance...

 kodos wrote:

And people have asked for Sideboards in 40k for a while now, specially since auto-lose/win against specific lists is a real thing.

Some people have asked. I've seen the threads. And then they got torn apart by the usual internet anger. I think it's a generally good idea for the most part, personally. It worked reasonably well in WMH. But are you willing to (quite literally!) pay the price, or force others to do the same? Again, you will face an awful lot of resistance.

 kodos wrote:

Scale of the game has nothing to do with Balance at all. Just because there is Kill Team is smaller does not mean it is better balanced than 40k, the same for Apocalypse being larger.

I think I might have used the wrong word. Scale does have a role to play, but I think we also need to consider 'scope'.

Scale has a big role to play. Firstly, It's easier to balance a game of ten options than it is to balance a game of a thousand. Building a game around a defined variation, or 'scale' or 'scope' of game, (e.g. Skirmish, platoon level, army level etc) and defined unit types helps you focus appropriately in terms of mechanics etc thst suit the game. You can build mechanics that work for the game. upping the scale of the game to account for everything from thugs with chains to city stomping robots causes problems- it's a lot harder to build appropriate rules and to have a system that works across the board for everything, whereas it's easier to have more focused and more effective rules for games with a narrower scope

I'm probably explaining this poorly Kodis. I'll think about how to word it better - it's been a long day.

 kodos wrote:

Kings of War is balanced the same way as is Vanguard, although one is a mass battle game and the other one a Skirmish.

Indeed, kings of war gets a decent reprutation, but from some of the things I've heard, aren't most of the units fairly.. 'homogenous' and isn't the game itself relatively simplistic? I've not played it myself, I only ask... but homogenised units isn't another option to use. Not many people like it however...

 kodos wrote:

I would never accept mistakes, loopholes and errors. Those have nothing to do with balance but are there because of lazy/bad writing or design. Something that can happen with free rules or small companies, but not with a Premium priced product like 40k

Or just unforeseen consequences.

 kodos wrote:

And balance need to be good enough that victory is decided on the table, not during list building or by choosing a faction, and internal balance need to be good enough that all units in a Codex are a real option, otherwise there is no reason to have them at all.

So how good is 'good enough'?

How do you account for victory on the table as opposed to list building when, for example, I take a tank company and you take a company of anti tank guns that is in essence, a 'silver bullet'? Do you limit choices? Do you try to remove 'hard counters'? How does this work with the rock/paper/scissors nature of tanks, anti-tank guns and further aspects of the game, like infantry, aircraft etc that simultaneously need to fit, not only I need the context of tank/anti-tank, but against each other?

And what price will you pay in terms of design 'sacrifices' to ensure all units are a real option? Do you reduce the scale/scope of the game? Homogenise the choices?

Bear in mind, I am not trying to catch you out kodos. I don't necessarily disagree with you and This is not a trick question. And thank you for responding.

and isn't the game itself relatively simplistic?

Kings of war's rules are a few factors of complexity above GW games.

For myself, and I’ve expressed this before, a well balanced war game should have two *well planned* armies have a 60/40 win ratio.

As a goal, I would say 2-3 archetypes should be viable in a faction. With about 20 factions in 40k, that would be around 50 archetypes to balance. So trying to get 50 archetypes to get a 60/40 split would be damned tough. 2500 combinations, including mirror matches. I don’t expect anyone to be able actually do that.

I’d say 40k has grown beyond the ability to balance within its own constraints. It is also why I feel that being within 10% of “true value” should be the objective for pricing units... and why I find the granularity of single point upgrades to be laughably inaccurate, and more likely to lead to inaccurate points vs “true value”.

I know I'm going to catch flak for this, so I'm cinching up my IBA, snapping on my K Pot, and bracing for the barrage.


The closest I've seen approaching balanced games in miniatures wargaming would be WFB 6th Ed. with the Ravening Hordes army lists, and 40K 3rd Ed. with the middle of the book "black" codices. Those lists were internally and externally balanced because of the changes to both systems necessitating it, and both of those games are about as balanced as you're going to get as far as GW stuff goes.

It's the main reason I went back to those games once I realized how badly the rules of both systems had gotten.




I don't play any other games, really, as I have too much invested to shift as of right now. I'd have liked to have tried Star Trek: Attack Wing, but it appears that ship has sailed.

I think the discussion of "scope" is really important.
The original scope of Warhammer 40k was skirmish level. Then it became squad level, then combined arms, and gradually the scope increased.

Now we have a game where gigantic miniatures and fliers, better suited to an entirely different game scope interact with squads of mooks where the precise positioning of each mook is important.

This is crazy. "Normal" 40K including stuff like Riptides, Wraithknights, Knight Titans and Stompas is crazy. The scope of the game cannot accommodate them without severe warping of the entire game system. It was a huge mistake to put them in the "regular" game, rather than keeping them for special scenarios designed to make them fun to play against without distorting the fun "combined arms" level play that the game was designed for.

Apocalypse seems to manage this better, having been designed from the ground up to focus on the appropriate scope. I still think games like that are better played with smaller scale miniatures for aesthetic reasons (the 6'x4' average miniature battlefield looks comical to me with these huge units stomping around them, and it highlights the artificiality of the game too much) but the feedback from people playing it is that it allows the fantasy of using these gigantic (and undoubtably, cool) miniatures together with their normal armies in a satisfying way.

40K is trying to be all things to all people. It can't really be balanced while doing that, not to even mention the bloat in the number of factions these days.

40k using Troop sized rules to play Company sized games and wants to be playable from 300 to 3000 points.

Usually a game has a sweet spot were the rules work best, the further away you are the worse is the balance

Bolt Action works with 1000 points and would be unbalanced at 2000.

KoW starts working at 1500 points

Deadzone, FireFight, Warpath tries to scale the rules with Deadzone being the Troop based game, FireFight being platoon based (500-1500/2000 points) and Warpath the company based game (2000+)

Now one can still blame the players for using the wrong size of 40k and that one should use Apo rules for 2k points

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Bad examples
Infinity is a Skirmish Games, and I never heard anyone complaining that he is not allowed to take Land Raiders in Kill Team, or that Imperial Knights as a faction don't exist in Kill Team

Not my point. Part of the reason for infinitys good balance is that its scale is so small. It's a D20 game, but essentially a dozen (or less!) humies per side, with (a) relatively limited variation in stats, and (b) a big swing towards lethality over durability (heck. Power armour is statistically about as good as 40k flak armour). It's easier to account for things. The point was not that people complain that they can't take land raiders, but a one of the tools you good use to help balance the game, is to lower the scale. Ergo, get rid of everything bigger than a humie. Or failing that, make a new unit type - anything smaller than a Titan gets a 'chaff' stat. Now obviously, were you to choose this as a mechanisms to help balance your game, expect a lot of resistance...

There is even a more limited variation of stats in 40k and the durability is not really a thing
and it is not that simple
Of course you can remove everything but Space Marines from 40k and just play 500 point, the game is scaled down every factions has the same base and 40k should be balanced.

But it is not, Ultramarines, Iron Hands, Thousand Sons, Space Wolves, Black Legion are all using the same base with no real difference, just like all the Infinity factions, and still there is no balance between them

Infinity is not better balanced because there are just a dozen humans per side with no variation in stats and all carrying the same weapons. It is better written and tested and has seen improvements/development with each new edition instead of being a complete new game that starts from scratch

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

And people have asked for Sideboards in 40k for a while now, specially since auto-lose/win against specific lists is a real thing.

Some people have asked. I've seen the threads. And then they got torn apart by the usual internet anger. I think it's a generally good idea for the most part, personally. It worked reasonably well in WMH. But are you willing to (quite literally!) pay the price, or force others to do the same? Again, you will face an awful lot of resistance.

Some people have asked here, I had this discussion each time I helped organising a tournament or event

And I don't think you get what really happens out there, when I started, tournaments were at 1250/1500 points, and people have asked to increase it from the beginning.
It was more the opposite, that we faced heavy resistance for not forcing people to buy more. As soon as it was 1750 the first people asked for 2000 points or even more. Investing money to get a better chance for winning a 20 people event is a thing.

If we would change it to 1250 points, but 2 lists that each must be played at least once, the resistance will be much less than using a non-official Errata or WD-rules

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Scale of the game has nothing to do with Balance at all. Just because there is Kill Team is smaller does not mean it is better balanced than 40k, the same for Apocalypse being larger.

I think I might have used the wrong word. Scale does have a role to play, but I think we also need to consider 'scope'.

Scale has a big role to play. Firstly, It's easier to balance a game of ten options than it is to balance a game of a thousand. Building a game around a defined variation, or 'scale' or 'scope' of game, (e.g. Skirmish, platoon level, army level etc) and defined unit types helps you focus appropriately in terms of mechanics etc thst suit the game. You can build mechanics that work for the game. upping the scale of the game to account for everything from thugs with chains to city stomping robots causes problems- it's a lot harder to build appropriate rules and to have a system that works across the board for everything, whereas it's easier to have more focused and more effective rules for games with a narrower scope

I'm probably explaining this poorly Kodis. I'll think about how to word it better - it's been a long day.

This is the complexity of the game, and yes the more complex a game is and the more options there are, the harder to balance it is.

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Kings of War is balanced the same way as is Vanguard, although one is a mass battle game and the other one a Skirmish.

Indeed, kings of war gets a decent reprutation, but from some of the things I've heard, aren't most of the units fairly.. 'homogenous' and isn't the game itself relatively simplistic? I've not played it myself, I only ask... but homogenised units isn't another option to use. Not many people like it however...

Problem with KoW is that people look at the stats, say there is no big difference so the game must be more simple than others with more different stats

I mean having toughness 5 or 6 (maximum) has a bigger impact in KoW than the difference of toughness 8 or 10 (maximum). The "more" homogenised armies in KoW play much more different than any 40k army in 8th edition.

and the game by itself is more complex than AoS or 8th 40k.

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

I would never accept mistakes, loopholes and errors. Those have nothing to do with balance but are there because of lazy/bad writing or design. Something that can happen with free rules or small companies, but not with a Premium priced product like 40k

Or just unforeseen consequences.

Not with that price tag

Deadnight wrote:

 kodos wrote:

And balance need to be good enough that victory is decided on the table, not during list building or by choosing a faction, and internal balance need to be good enough that all units in a Codex are a real option, otherwise there is no reason to have them at all.

So how good is 'good enough'?

How do you account for victory on the table as opposed to list building when, for example, I take a tank company and you take a company of anti tank guns that is in essence, a 'silver bullet'? Do you limit choices? Do you try to remove 'hard counters'? How does this work with the rock/paper/scissors nature of tanks, anti-tank guns and further aspects of the game, like infantry, aircraft etc that simultaneously need to fit, not only I need the context of tank/anti-tank, but against each other?

And what price will you pay in terms of design 'sacrifices' to ensure all units are a real option? Do you reduce the scale/scope of the game? Homogenise the choices?

Bear in mind, I am not trying to catch you out kodos. I don't necessarily disagree with you and This is not a trick question. And thank you for responding.

It seems that most of us can agree that 40k is broken AF. It can reach the level that a person is essentially tabled on the top of turn 1. In this instance noone is really playing a game as in playing as a child does, and having fun. This of course raises the obvious point of why we are playing the game that way, or playing it at all.

This being said, balance is still a tricky issue. As many have said, balance is essentially unobtainable. I have also suggested that even if it was, the resulting game may be very boring.

So where should we try to fall of the balance spectrum? Should we consider it at all and just focus on fun? Maybe people have different forms of fun. Some people like to find broken stuff, and others like to push miniatures around.

 Elbows wrote:
Any game where the manufacturer sells the rules and the miniatures, there will be massive conflict in balance. Less so if it's a historical game where there are competing miniature manufacturers. When sales are directly tied to game performance/"new hotness", you end up with crap.

PS: This excludes a number of small game manufacturers, but big companies (GW, FFG, etc.)...it's a recipe for disaster.

And sometimes both. Battlefront (Flames of War), for example, has been taking pages from the GW playbook since they provide both models and rules for their game. No current model = no rules as an example, despite this being World War 2 where other models are readily available. And, just like with GW, you have the usual defenders with "They're a business and need to do this to get you to buy their product" as an excuse for doing that (despite, you know, other businesses not having to do that) or saying it's fine to take pages from GW by citing GW's success (which is in spite of their practices, not because of them).

The problem with Warhammer is that it's too bloated to balance, even if GW was capable of doing it (which they repeatedly show they aren't). or if they wanted to (which they show they don't) There are too many convoluted permutations to even begin to balance it. There are, of course, more complex games like Warmahordes, but Warmahordes didn't have dozens of factions, they had a smaller amount and the complexity was in abilities and interactions, which are things you can actually test together. GW goes the other side and makes a lot of variety, but most of it isn't well thought out at all and made irrelevant by other choices, or just are no good at the role they are intended to be.

I think at this point they are too far gone. They would likely have to gut the range and revamp the rules and avoid having dozens of factions and rules spread all over. Which, even if they would be willing to eat the potential lost sales, would cause a riot in the community which has frequently shown that they don't really care how bloated the game gets as long as "kewl models" and the min/maxing combo approach can work.

In the GW sphere, Adeptus Titanicus is absolutely one of their best in many regards, especially balance-wise. There are nastier lists, sure, but disregarding the one single blot (recent Acastuses, nerf pending) there are no ultimate combos, no unanswerable threats and the game is truly won and lost on the field. Even pretty much all the weapons and options are useable in their own niches (yes, even Avenger gatlings. I've felled Reavers with them ).

This is greatly helped by several factors:

1) The scope of the game is limited. It's a skirmish game where both sides often have maybe half a dozen miniatures each.
2) Stuff is durable. If the games aren't unreasonably large, it is very hard to immediately off any proper titans. This also produces interesting decisions later, when the stuff starts to enter the death spiral on turns 2-3.
3) Actions alternate. To get anything resembling a huge alpha strike on your opponent, they must have reacted wrong to begin with.
4) Decisions matter. Autopiloting is a death penalty and the game rewards good positioning that forces your opponent to split their actions suboptimally. Bonuses have opportunity costs, resources are managed and not everything can always be had.
5) It's great at representing the fluff behind it. AT has managed to show titans feeling like titans, has weapons that serve functional purposes (strip shields, punch through armour, aimable finishers...) and gives a nice amount of crunch to managing injured locations and reactor heat without going overboard into intrusively taxing administration.
6) Everything has a role. There are no "like unit X but better" choices, as all engines serve somewhat different roles in the grand scheme of things and offer a large variety of actual strategies to think about when constructing your force.
7) Amount of dice and skill. It's a dice game with operational friction in commands, you can flub your repairs and burn and so on, but in general every roll of dice is a meaningful event that matters and does further or hinder your plans. There's also a lot less of them around. Disoriented playing with a hard list WILL lose to a focused effort of a less on-paper powerful list.
8) It's very reminiscent of BFG in its rules, which is always only a good thing

Best of all, it's still in its infancy and all sorts of cool interactions are found. Some of the best fun I've had with GW games in a long time.

I mean you could ban LOW's back to appocalypse.
Remove entry barrier rules.
And use KT rules for smaller skirmishes.

In a way a flowing design.
Would it be flawless? No, but it would be an attempt atleast to fix some issues.

 Just Tony wrote:
I know I'm going to catch flak for this, so I'm cinching up my IBA, snapping on my K Pot, and bracing for the barrage.


The closest I've seen approaching balanced games in miniatures wargaming would be WFB 6th Ed. with the Ravening Hordes army lists, and 40K 3rd Ed. with the middle of the book "black" codices. Those lists were internally and externally balanced because of the changes to both systems necessitating it, and both of those games are about as balanced as you're going to get as far as GW stuff goes.

It's the main reason I went back to those games once I realized how badly the rules of both systems had gotten.
.

I have played a lot of games, and this is accurate.

The more chrome and hooks they need to add, the more unwieldy the whole thing gets.

To answer why even though aos and 40k are broken AF, legions of players defend it and play it anyway is largely because there are legions of players.

You know your investment is safe. You know you can get games. Everything else is secondary.

Great games with great rules mean nothing if no one wants to play it because they already dropped a grand on a 40k army.

There has also been an explosion of people trying to cash in with their pay to subscribe twitch streams or blogs or patreons which requires a large fan base, of which gw is perfect for maximizing internet glory and patreon accounts.

If Joe’s Game Dev created aos or 40k, no one would give it a second thought.

That, I think, is the key part. GW gets a pass because it's GW, and for some reason that excuses it. If some indy company had come out with AOS or 40k, the game would be ridiculed for how piss poor the balance is, and rightly so. Yet because GW is so massive, it's ignored and people don't care nearly as much as they should. You even find people defending the lack of professional proofreading from GW books when for any other publisher would be the expected norm.

It boggles my mind sometimes the level of "Oh it's not a big deal" you see online in response to all of these things that should by all rights be more important.

IDK. For all we like to say otherwise, minis games really get their start on the artistry of the minis themselves. If the models are great, the gameplay becomes the next focus and people push it into competition. From there, a game gets tested and often companies will take this moment to really refine and polish their rules, which tends to lead to a lot of the Mk2E explosion in popularity. In many ways, 8th has followed this style to great success and is rather quickly growing into a bit of a bloated 3rd edition of itself. That said, if it was a game from nothing, I think the artistry of the models might be enough to get it off the ground. I'm just not sure it wouldn't have faltered the way a lot of kickstarter games have long term without the established playerbase.

Wayniac wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Any game where the manufacturer sells the rules and the miniatures, there will be massive conflict in balance. Less so if it's a historical game where there are competing miniature manufacturers. When sales are directly tied to game performance/"new hotness", you end up with crap.

PS: This excludes a number of small game manufacturers, but big companies (GW, FFG, etc.)...it's a recipe for disaster.

And sometimes both. Battlefront (Flames of War), for example, has been taking pages from the GW playbook since they provide both models and rules for their game. No current model = no rules as an example, despite this being World War 2 where other models are readily available. And, just like with GW, you have the usual defenders with "They're a business and need to do this to get you to buy their product" as an excuse for doing that (despite, you know, other businesses not having to do that) or saying it's fine to take pages from GW by citing GW's success (which is in spite of their practices, not because of them).

The problem with Warhammer is that it's too bloated to balance, even if GW was capable of doing it (which they repeatedly show they aren't). or if they wanted to (which they show they don't) There are too many convoluted permutations to even begin to balance it. There are, of course, more complex games like Warmahordes, but Warmahordes didn't have dozens of factions, they had a smaller amount and the complexity was in abilities and interactions, which are things you can actually test together. GW goes the other side and makes a lot of variety, but most of it isn't well thought out at all and made irrelevant by other choices, or just are no good at the role they are intended to be.

I think at this point they are too far gone. They would likely have to gut the range and revamp the rules and avoid having dozens of factions and rules spread all over. Which, even if they would be willing to eat the potential lost sales, would cause a riot in the community which has frequently shown that they don't really care how bloated the game gets as long as "kewl models" and the min/maxing combo approach can work.

40k has "dozens" of factions in name only.

Marines are much more similar than different.
Guard
Sisters
Chaos marines and demons
Nids
GSC (basically Nids crossed with guard anyway)
Eldar and Dark Eldar could be the same codex with different army lists
Harlies were better implemented as special units in other Eldar codices, imo
Tau
Orks
Necrons
Mechanicus

The smaller factions are unnecessary and outright detrimental to the game. Inquisition and DW are much more suited to skirmish-level games, Custodes could become imperium's special units alaf Harlies, etc.


Bury and forget IGOUGO and move on to AA. Consolidate armies and units. Properly utilize USRs, and reduce the bloat and non-USRs to the bare minimum to make unique marine units distinct, give those chapters their own army lists and so forth, and the game will already be much better balanced. What the game really needs is a more complex core that is actually capable of facilitating inter- and intra- faction diversity alongside agency and balance. This means moving away from "bespoke" rules that tweak the math, to SRs, unit types and so forth that allow armies/units to take special actions, among other things.

We already had this

And it was not better as faction rules were written independent from the core, making more of their own thing then care about the basic rules

So the current style of the game fits GW's attitude of writing rules much better


And how many factions are there is a difficult question, as comparing WM/H with 40k, if each Marine book is considered its own faction, you need to count each Warcaster and/or Theme list im Warmachine too.

either way, both end up with a similar amount of factions that needed to be balanced against each other

and Mercenary in WM/H are equal to the soup problem in 40k

 auticus wrote:
To answer why even though aos and 40k are broken AF, legions of players defend it and play it anyway is largely because there are legions of players.

You know your investment is safe. You know you can get games. Everything else is secondary.

Great games with great rules mean nothing if no one wants to play it because they already dropped a grand on a 40k army.

There has also been an explosion of people trying to cash in with their pay to subscribe twitch streams or blogs or patreons which requires a large fan base, of which gw is perfect for maximizing internet glory and patreon accounts.

If Joe’s Game Dev created aos or 40k, no one would give it a second thought.

You essentially describe Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Blastaar wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Any game where the manufacturer sells the rules and the miniatures, there will be massive conflict in balance. Less so if it's a historical game where there are competing miniature manufacturers. When sales are directly tied to game performance/"new hotness", you end up with crap.

PS: This excludes a number of small game manufacturers, but big companies (GW, FFG, etc.)...it's a recipe for disaster.

And sometimes both. Battlefront (Flames of War), for example, has been taking pages from the GW playbook since they provide both models and rules for their game. No current model = no rules as an example, despite this being World War 2 where other models are readily available. And, just like with GW, you have the usual defenders with "They're a business and need to do this to get you to buy their product" as an excuse for doing that (despite, you know, other businesses not having to do that) or saying it's fine to take pages from GW by citing GW's success (which is in spite of their practices, not because of them).

The problem with Warhammer is that it's too bloated to balance, even if GW was capable of doing it (which they repeatedly show they aren't). or if they wanted to (which they show they don't) There are too many convoluted permutations to even begin to balance it. There are, of course, more complex games like Warmahordes, but Warmahordes didn't have dozens of factions, they had a smaller amount and the complexity was in abilities and interactions, which are things you can actually test together. GW goes the other side and makes a lot of variety, but most of it isn't well thought out at all and made irrelevant by other choices, or just are no good at the role they are intended to be.

I think at this point they are too far gone. They would likely have to gut the range and revamp the rules and avoid having dozens of factions and rules spread all over. Which, even if they would be willing to eat the potential lost sales, would cause a riot in the community which has frequently shown that they don't really care how bloated the game gets as long as "kewl models" and the min/maxing combo approach can work.

40k has "dozens" of factions in name only.

Marines are much more similar than different.
Guard
Sisters
Chaos marines and demons
Nids
GSC (basically Nids crossed with guard anyway)
Eldar and Dark Eldar could be the same codex with different army lists
Harlies were better implemented as special units in other Eldar codices, imo
Tau
Orks
Necrons
Mechanicus

The smaller factions are unnecessary and outright detrimental to the game. Inquisition and DW are much more suited to skirmish-level games, Custodes could become imperium's special units alaf Harlies, etc.


Bury and forget IGOUGO and move on to AA. Consolidate armies and units. Properly utilize USRs, and reduce the bloat and non-USRs to the bare minimum to make unique marine units distinct, give those chapters their own army lists and so forth, and the game will already be much better balanced. What the game really needs is a more complex core that is actually capable of facilitating inter- and intra- faction diversity alongside agency and balance. This means moving away from "bespoke" rules that tweak the math, to SRs, unit types and so forth that allow armies/units to take special actions, among other things.

Oh I absolutely agree, but GW treating so many things as different and independent is just adding to the bloat. I would love USRs again, in some fashion. I find it odd that most games move AWAY from having a dozen variations of the same rule (despite the reason why you do that making perfect sense) while GW doubled down on it with 8th. AA I think would be neat, I actually really like the Bolt Action system (not sure if it's used in Gates of Antares) with order dice, but simple alternating would work well too.

There's a lot they could do, but won't. Either because they feel they don't need to, since the playerbase obviously doesn't care and gives them record profits in spite of the rules, or because they aren't capable of doing it and would just mess it up over the years like they did before.


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Ghorgul wrote:

 auticus wrote:
To answer why even though aos and 40k are broken AF, legions of players defend it and play it anyway is largely because there are legions of players.

You know your investment is safe. You know you can get games. Everything else is secondary.

Great games with great rules mean nothing if no one wants to play it because they already dropped a grand on a 40k army.

There has also been an explosion of people trying to cash in with their pay to subscribe twitch streams or blogs or patreons which requires a large fan base, of which gw is perfect for maximizing internet glory and patreon accounts.

If Joe’s Game Dev created aos or 40k, no one would give it a second thought.

You essentially describe Sunk Cost Fallacy.

He does, and it's pretty accurate too. People play 40k because everyone around them play 40k, so you know you can get a game of it. Not so much if you play something esoteric; you may not get anyone who cares, or one or two people which often isn't enough to justify the investment, and that's if you can get the local store to let you play it there if they don't sell the game, and if you aren't met with hostility from the community for even daring to suggest another game to "push an agenda".

Many game designers start their journey of discovering by trying to build a better 40K.

See you in the Wargame Design forum soon!

It is a sunken cost for sure. Having tried to build up a community of something other than 40k or aos, it is the single biggest pain point that you have to overcome.

Right now we have our Conquest group at 9 people, we just lost a handful of interested players to the new AOS box set coming out.

Because those people weigh the cost of getting a new conquest army vs getting a new AOS box set, and the number of people playing AOS is greater so its the safer investment.

Even though all were highly interested in Conquest the game because the rules are very good.

 greatbigtree wrote:
For myself, and I’ve expressed this before, a well balanced war game should have two *well planned* armies have a 60/40 win ratio.
As a goal, I would say 2-3 archetypes should be viable in a faction. With about 20 factions in 40k, that would be around 50 archetypes to balance. So trying to get 50 archetypes to get a 60/40 split would be damned tough. 2500 combinations, including mirror matches. I don’t expect anyone to be able actually do that.
I’d say 40k has grown beyond the ability to balance within its own constraints. It is also why I feel that being within 10% of “true value” should be the objective for pricing units... and why I find the granularity of single point upgrades to be laughably inaccurate, and more likely to lead to inaccurate points vs “true value”.

You have reminded me something to do with scale, not just on points value but the currency we use to play the game: D6.

The granularity of the D6 seems to be awfully small since each one point bonus or decrement is in 16.7% intervals that has to represent every form of buff or handicap in the game.
It is due to this "scale" and the need to differentiate all these models that the developers seem to get "cramped" trying to fit all the various attributes from 1-6.

How Gulliman, Imperial Knight, Baneblade and a Gargant can share the same 6 point scale as a Getchin, Conscript, Cultist and Nurglings I have no idea.

It would definitely reduce the need for so many custom rules being used to differentiate units now.

Moving up to D20s would let the stats do most of the work.

 Talizvar wrote:


The granularity of the D6 seems to be awfully small since each one point bonus or decrement is in 16.7% intervals that has to represent every form of buff or handicap in the game.
It is due to this "scale" and the need to differentiate all these models that the developers seem to get "cramped" trying to fit all the various attributes from 1-6.

It's actually worse than that if you take a look at which stats on the curve are really useable. Doubly true if you want to consider modifiers, which need some space to modify:

7+ invalidates the roll and isn't really usable without reliable modifiers. 1+ is essentially the same problem.
6+ is hugely problematic, as the difference between it and 5+ is half/double depending on which way you look at it and total going to 7+. This makes it incredibly hard to both use the stat and allow modifiers, as they massively impact the results there. 2+ is in a similar boat.
So really, the only truly safe values to modify are only 3+ and 4+. Everything else results in really messy interactions.


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 Eldarain wrote:
It would definitely reduce the need for so many custom rules being used to differentiate units now.

Moving up to D20s would let the stats do most of the work.

D20's have their own issues, but I have to say I'm impressed with what Apocalypse has done with its hybrid D6/D12 system.

I define "balance" as follows: there should be a good reason to use every option in the game. I shouldn't have to tell people "Don't play (army X), they suck", or "Don't play (army Y), they suck" the way I do these days with Grey Knights, Tactical Marines, and other things GW has chosen to leave by the wayside.

I don't care about tournament results. "Perfect balance" is a cartoonish strawman about how if you can't achieve perfection it isn't worth bothering. I do care about players, whether they're me or other people, not getting hamstrung in random pick-up games because they liked the wrong models, to the point where most games are a foregone conclusion and I might as well not bother deploying models because the game was won in the list-building phase.

If I look at other miniatures games I've played, Warmachine, Infinity, Bolt Action/K47, X-wing, it would be ludicrous to suggest that any of them were "perfectly balanced", the tournament rankings have shown dominance for one list over another, but at the same time none of them have factions or models that you should never use because you're just going to lose. That is the ideal of "balance" tabletop games should strive for. People shouldn't be punished for liking the models or lore of something that the designers don't like writing rules for.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I define "balance" as follows: there should be a good reason to use every option in the game.

This is actually where I feel a lot of companies and games and players lose sight of what is required to get the kind of balance they want. Points are a great tool, but they don't actually provide what you're talking about here. When two models occupy the same design space, even if the "better one" correctly "costs more" they don't both have a good reason to be used. One is more efficient for some reason; and probably not a reason that's immediately obvious. It might be an incentive of the game engine, it might be a factor of the meta that one is better countered than the other. Half the time, its nothing to do with the units themselves but just that the points saved on one determine whether something else "fits" in the list correctly.

What really matters is that everything does a unique job. That's one of the big driving forces behind the subfaction push in recent years (see Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux, etc) and a lot of what GW is trying to do with its own version of the concept. Break down these things that have grown to the point where there's not really any design space left and make room to design them with clear, focused, interlocking mechanics.

Back on the OT, here are some games I can argue are balanced:


- Hordes/Warmachine. While not every unit or tactic is top tier, each faction is balanced against one another.

This means that every faction is commonly represented in the top tournaments, and the winner is commonly enough something that players thought was not so good.

Privateer Press regularly has open betas for new factions and units, and annually evaluates and updates existing units.

The downside of this is that players need to print their own stat cards a little too regularly, and the game sometimes seems like it is eternally in beta testing and never finished.


- I'd like to make a quick case for Blood Bowl's approach to balance.

Blood Bowl is mostly balanced very well, but some of the teams are clear underdogs. Rather than try to insist that Halflings are just as good as High Elves, the game (and community) embrace the idea that some teams are significantly harder to play.

This leads to a situation where the toughest teams are regularly chosen by top tier players looking for a challenge, and tournaments will give an award for the best performing "Stunty Team."


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 Talizvar wrote:

Non-random game wins are determined by experience of the player completely.
.

We like to think that, but the better player doesn't always win the game. That's why Chess Championhips feature a series of games (kind of like Baseball).

Of course, the better player will usually win, and that's more true of games without random elements.

 spaceelf wrote:
My question is, what miniature game is really balanced, and in what ways?

The first thing to do in a discussion about this is figure out what "balance" means.
If it means perfectly fair, then no games are balanced, not even chess (white has a slight advantage going first).
If you consider balance as a spectrum, it allows an actual conversation. Some games are more balanced than others.
When I say a game is balanced I mean that stuff you do outside the game (mostly choosing your faction and writing a list) has a small impact on the outcome. The game is decided after it starts.

I am also curious why balance is such a major issue in wargames. In actual historicals wars, balance was never a thing.

The game part of wargame is the operative part here. It's meant to be fun for both players, it's a hobby and meant to be enjoyed.
War is about killing people, it's fething awful and horrific to take part in. Not really comparable in terms of intend and design.

There are two reasons for making a game balanced:
It's more fun. Losing a game that you couldn't win is not fun. I've played more than a few games of Warhammer (either) where I could not win, I simply should have brought a better list or chosen a different army.
I've also brought my usual army and found that it was far more powerful than my opponent's (7th ed daemons vs CSM), winning without trying is not fun either.
Having to have separate lists for competition and casual play sucks too and the casual lists never match up (even if you actually want them to).

Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?

Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?

Semi balanced games magically draw them in, i feel.

 DarkBlack wrote:

When I say a game is balanced I mean that stuff you do outside the game (mostly choosing your faction and writing a list) has a small impact on the outcome. The game is decided after it starts.

I actually think I disagree with you here.


With games, I feel that there are choices that are meant to be strategic/tactical and choices that are meant to not be strategic/tactical. In a balanced game, the player who makes the better tactical and strategic choices should win.



In a tabletop miniatures game, choosing what faction to play is not supposed to be a strategic choice- fans generally feel that all of them should be viable, and we complain if we feel like there are right and wrong factions to play.

Likewise, terrain is not meant to be a strategic choice. You're supposed to set up the terrain in such a way that will make for a fun game and not give either force a significant advantage over the other. Players who try to min-max the terrain setup for their force are usually considered kind of douchy.

On the other hand, crafting your force is ABSOLUTELY a strategic choice. Players are meant to spend quite a lot of time min-maxing and coordinating their forces.


Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).

With some other games, there is a greater emphasis on making decisions on the fly and reacting to the situation at hand rather than executing your plan (I find that Blood Bowl and Warmachine both do this quite well).


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Not Online!!! wrote:

Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?

Semi balanced games magically draw them in, i feel.

To be fair, not everyone who is accused of being a donkey cave deserves it.

I mean, sometimes a player is actually good at the game, and that's why they won. The donkey cave is the guy who insists that the ethical thing to do is to "play for fun" by not attempting to fulfill the victory conditions within the parameters laid down by the rules set.

I mean, no one in basketball bitched about how Michale Jordon should have let them win more often.


But in GW's main games, there is a long standing tradition of players regulating game balance by bitching at one another about how certain lists are "wrong" to play. This takes the onus of game balance off of the game designer's shoulders and puts it onto the players. Honestly, this ruins some of the fun for me- it kind of sucks if you win a game but players insist that the way you played was akin to cheating.

A game designer I follow on Twitter mentioned how he'd prefer to play an interesting than a perfectly balanced game. These aren't necessarily linked; a perfectly balanced but interesting game doesn't seem logically impossible, but I can see how player engagement might be a better metric than balance.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).

Problem is that list building in GW games isn't about smartly crafting a coherent force, it's about spamming units that are underpriced for what they do. GW games aren't nuanced enough for battlefield roles to matter.

In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.

Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.

You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

the_scotsman wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.

You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

None of that really matters in AoS/40k because all scenarios are literally about standing on points (= not being killed) and preventing your opponent from standing on points (=killing).

odinsgrandson wrote:
With games, I feel that there are choices that are meant to be strategic/tactical and choices that are meant to not be strategic/tactical. In a balanced game, the player who makes the better tactical and strategic choices should win.

I like this definition, well put.

In a tabletop miniatures game, choosing what faction to play is not supposed to be a strategic choice- fans generally feel that all of them should be viable, and we complain if we feel like there are right and wrong factions to play.

Likewise, terrain is not meant to be a strategic choice. You're supposed to set up the terrain in such a way that will make for a fun game and not give either force a significant advantage over the other. Players who try to min-max the terrain setup for their force are usually considered kind of douchy.

On the other hand, crafting your force is ABSOLUTELY a strategic choice. Players are meant to spend quite a lot of time min-maxing and coordinating their forces.

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.

It's a matter of how much. Some lists will always be better than others due to how the list work together and the scenarios the game offers. KoW tries to advantage balanced lists over skew lists, by having list building before determining scenario and a variety of said scenarios.
Units also become more or less valuable depending on what is already in a list. Redundancy becomes a waste of points if overdone, missing combat roles are more valuable than a role that's already filled. A player can also waste points on units that can't be brought to bear or artefacts that have no use (like a shooting attack on a combat hero that never actually gets to shoot).

Tactics and strategy are a thing because there are always better and worse ways to use resources. Ask a financial adviser.

How much though?
I think that list building should not decide the game. Assuming one player doesn't bring a stupid list, both players should have a reasonable chance of winning the game when it star

To be fair, not everyone who is accused of being a donkey cave deserves it.

Those would not be the people I was referring to then.

I mean, sometimes a player is actually good at the game, and that's why they won. The donkey cave is the guy who insists that the ethical thing to do is to "play for fun" by not attempting to fulfill the victory conditions within the parameters laid down by the rules set.

I mean, no one in basketball bitched about how Michale Jordon should have let them win more often.


But in GW's main games, there is a long standing tradition of players regulating game balance by bitching at one another about how certain lists are "wrong" to play. This takes the onus of game balance off of the game designer's shoulders and puts it onto the players. Honestly, this ruins some of the fun for me- it kind of sucks if you win a game but players insist that the way you played was akin to cheating.

Basket ball is not intended to be a hobby. Sports are meant to test which athlete or team is superior, it's the prime example of winning before the game.
The thing about GW games is that the balance is so poor that bringing a competitive list against someone who just want to put something cool on the table makes a horrifically one sided game that isn't fun.
The onus of balance is put onto the players because the game designers have failed so miserably.

Some players always blame a loss on something other than themselves though, they are also donkey-caves, but not the kind I was referring to.

lord_blackfang wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).

Problem is that list building in GW games isn't about smartly crafting a coherent force, it's about spamming units that are underpriced for what they do. GW games aren't nuanced enough for battlefield roles to matter.

This is well said.

the_scotsman wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.

You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

Which definition are your referring to? It seems obvious to me that Nurglitch criticizing 40k, specifically saying that it is not like Infinity in that other factors don't affect the outcome. The "other stuff" in Warhammer boils down to those two things, while things like "ability to take objectives" is an important consideration in other games.

Our local group had some pretty hideous experiences with accidental brokenness with GW's games. We had this escalation league going and one of the most narrative based players who picks their stuff based on what miniatures he likes accidentally assembled an army that no one else had any chance against. The league utterly collapsed. Everyone had been slowly adding to their forces and to have any chance we all would have to start over in what we were including and painting.

Some of us ending up switching to the free rules from OnePageRules.com like Grimdark Future and it was shocking that a single guy doing a labour of love got balance better than this huge company.

We had similar at our club. One chap assembled a list based on the new Necron releases purely because he liked the models. He was a good player and always tough to beat, but nobody could have accused him of bringing anything overtly broken, and his list was clearly a product of enthusiasm not gaming the system.

Then 6th happened and all those Necron skimmers got turned into Necron flyers and the passion project overnight turned into the Necron Flying Bakery. Poor chap switched factions after that as he felt bad cleaning everyone's clocks.

 spaceelf wrote:

People mentioned wanting an equal chance of winning. I agree that it would be good in many senses. However, there do not seem to be many such games. So should we be satisfied with a game in which we get to make decisions and try to optimise our choices towards SOME end, even if that end is not necessarily 'winning'?

What I'm reading here is less "an equal chance of winning" and more "not losing before the game actually begins". . . . Its been a fair bit since I've thrown dice with friends, but, even though all of us are capable of great lists/strategies and hyper-meta-gaming things, we found that tiresome and that it sucked a lot of fun out. In many ways, it was because we'd deploy and say, "well gak, unless the dice are REALLY favorable to me, I don't see how I'll win this". Or, we'd have a group game and say "well, if Jim and Jerry are on the same team, they will automatically win due to the factions they are bringing, so lets split them up", which again, goes to show that, at least with GW games, there is a severe lack of balance going on both internally and externally, and I think that as long as they can sell models, not much will be done to change that.


A now long defunct game that I always found entertaining, had pretty good models, and seemed on the surface to have decent balance (I only played a half dozen games or so, and only bought a handful of models so had to play mostly proxies), was Helldorado. Due to its rules setup, we typically didn't see much in the way of alpha strikes, and much of the first 1-1.5 turns/game rounds was spent maneuvering. There was internal balance between factions (ie, a heavily armored model was tough, hit pretty hard, but also had a mid-high cost, and had a low initiative compared to other melee options in the same faction), and while each faction sort of specialized in a theme/feeling, they werent automatically neutralized by another faction. . . There were soft counters for most situations.

GW hasn't been known for rules balance for years and years. There is only the Meta-Chase, and the Great Rules Bloat that every game quickly turns into.

One page Fantasy is a less detailed (in some ways wonderfully so) but more balanced way to push 40K models around the table, whether it's Army- or Skirmish-scale you are interested in. I also love the Fantasy battles Skirmish rules, too. They push games that I can teach anyone (not just those who are going to go whole-hog into the game), which is not in any way how I would describe either 40k or AoS as they stand right now. Especially 40K, which is falling back into old habits that 8th was supposed to be a new start away from.

Codex+Chapter Supplement+Campaign Supplement does seem like its hitting a tipping point in bloat and nonsense. I'll be curious to see how the next year goes.

I'd have to say that I find both Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy pretty damn well balanced, with a pretty healthy development as well.

I don't think I much care about balance in games, but I think that stems from not really enjoying competitive style games from the get-go. Even less so the 40K styled "build an army to a points value" game...of which there are many, perhaps too many.

For me, it's more about the story that develops during the game. Balance has little to do with that. I've always enjoyed historical wargames which provide a historical event/battle. You fight it out on the table top and compare your performance to what actually happened. Did you fare better or worse? Were you able to pull of the historical upset that occurred? Did you flip history on its head. These games almost never feature balanced armies...quite the opposite. The objective might be "hold this road junction as long as you can...bonus points if you can stall the tanks from reaching it", etc.

Here's an example of the simple ASL (Advanced Squad Leader) style of scenarios, which come in a pack (this one appears to be a fan-made one, but they're all the same style/layout):



They give you the boards to use, their orientation, the orders of battle for each side, and an objective. They offer a small "BALANCE" section if you want to minimize the difficulty. Then they have a lovely little Aftermath section which is always fun to read after the fact. You may have done something COMPLETELY different and won, or lost. Or you might read it and realize you had a similar plan to what unfolded, etc.

Now, have the scenarios been tested to be a suitable game? Sure. But a scenario might be very much designed so that 90% of the time the defender does not succeed. It's a matter of how "well" they failed, lol. If I trusted GW's competence to make a non-sales-gimmick related game, I'd be all over a series of fake historical 40K engagements - similar to some of the older Imperial Armour books. I'd much rather play a scenario with a set army list and see how I fared in the end.

Part of the appeal of any wargame to me is the "simulation" aspect, as silly as that may seem in a futuristic 40K setting. A simulation would never have two equally balanced armies meeting on common ground both with the same goal of standing in certain spots on a grassy field to "win". I'm always far more intrigued by the lopsided contests, the surprise actions, the "against all odds" engagements - after all those are the ones that make the history books. Some of the historical games will give you additional components or limitations. For instance, some of the ASL scenarios might tell you to place a tank on hex "Y", and it's immobilized, or certain vehicles are out of their main gun ammunition, etc. I'd love to see this kind of scenario/fake-history be brought to a game like 40K, but I just don't see how that generates sales for GW. That is obviously their prime motivation.

In short, give me a cool, thematic lopsided game any day of the week. You can keep the build-and-battle tournament style games.

Infinity is more balanced than most games, but it requires you to know what you're doing with your units and make smart decisions- and the dice can betray you, no matter what- even if a big beast TAG is up against a wimp with a pistol, things can go horribly wrong.

For some people, "balance" means that there's an array of choices to offset weaknesses, to minimize another faction's strong points, etc.

For a lot of people, "balance" means "performs the same but with different words and requires me to do no thinking".

the_scotsman wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.

You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

I think it is a problem in many wargames that killing the other guy first tends to be the dominant strategy. Even when it's purely a matter of holding objectives you need to kill the other guy's stuff so it can't hold objectives, and make sure your stuff holding objectives isn't killed. I'm not saying that's bad, or trying to be reductionist. That's just what stuff in Warhammer 40,000 can do, complications included. Certainly there's plenty of times in games where you need to run for the objectives instead of finding an optimal target and killing it, and it would be cool to have more of those, but in those situations you're not so much taking a risk as not just throwing the game for the excuse to kill a few models. I don't know how to tweak Warhammer to engineer more of that in the game than anyone else.

But consider, if you will, how some of the stuff you mentioned is suddenly going to become so much more important if you play a game where you can't kill enemy models. It's not just a matter of all those points wasted on valuating weapons, armour, and abilities models won't be able to use, but about how the goals and decisions constituting the game are played out. Warhammer and Infinity and such are very different from work placement or area control games, despite having some similarities, and a big difference seems to be the logistics of defeating an opponent's capabilities as much as competing with those capabilities.

Well.... yes.... wargames are about combat. Scenarios are generally a way to force engagement. Its worth noting that plenty of euros result in you killing your opponents resources. It's actually very common in worker placement games to take a spot to deny someone something they need to take something from you.

One of the dangers extreme pursuits of balance can create is a tendency to confuse being in a winning position with an unbalanced game state. It's very easy to try so hard to make sure both players have a chance to the bitter end that you make everything but the bitter end irrelevant.

There's a few games out there that play with being unable to kill models. Either via respawn mechanics or just relying more on the ability to reposition opposing models. The funny thing is they don't often feel that different once you're really in game. Once the opposing player has acted in a way that removes your current win route, it feels largely the same as if the piece had "died".

Balanced games are not about being a 50/50 knife edge of balance. When people talk about balance they generally are saying that they don't want the game to be over before the opening die roll. If you feel you at least have a sporting chance of good play enforcing an outcome, that is generally good enough. Good play coming AFTER the lists are deployed, not during the excel spreadsheet phase in your home prepping for the game.

GW games are often decided before you even throw the first die based on how important list building is.

The more balanced the game, the more viable every unit within a faction is on the table.

The less balanced the game, the more obvious the must-haves are and the never-takes.

AOS and 40k are the poster children for horrible balance because the lists tend to write themselves.

Many people don't care about that kind of thing.

For me, showing up to a game and knowing i'm going to lose before I even had a chance to deploy is not a fun use of my time because I happen to like the models that are garbage and my opponent understands middle school math enough to know how to min/max.

Historical battles and war in general is not about sporting chance to your enemy. Its about killing them. Games are not real war. Games are there to be enjoyed. No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior. No one would want to play a board game where the little dog piece gave you a huge advantage over your opponents. Because those things aren't generally seen as fun or sporting.

That forces me to field a certain force based off of min/max math, and not only that but to constantly buy and paint new models every 6-8 months as new FAQs and books are released to keep the game interesting.

That is the opposite of fun for me.

Nurglitch wrote:

I think it is a problem in many wargames that killing the other guy first tends to be the dominant strategy. Even when it's purely a matter of holding objectives you need to kill the other guy's stuff so it can't hold objectives, and make sure your stuff holding objectives isn't killed. I'm not saying that's bad, or trying to be reductionist. That's just what stuff in Warhammer 40,000 can do, complications included. Certainly there's plenty of times in games where you need to run for the objectives instead of finding an optimal target and killing it, and it would be cool to have more of those, but in those situations you're not so much taking a risk as not just throwing the game for the excuse to kill a few models. I don't know how to tweak Warhammer to engineer more of that in the game than anyone else.

But consider, if you will, how some of the stuff you mentioned is suddenly going to become so much more important if you play a game where you can't kill enemy models. It's not just a matter of all those points wasted on valuating weapons, armour, and abilities models won't be able to use, but about how the goals and decisions constituting the game are played out. Warhammer and Infinity and such are very different from work placement or area control games, despite having some similarities, and a big difference seems to be the logistics of defeating an opponent's capabilities as much as competing with those capabilities.

I think one of the core rules that leads to the "kill everything first, hold objectives second" mindset is that, at least in GW games, if your opponent has 0 models on the table, they automatically lose the game. I don't know if its changed, but when I tried out Malifaux 1e, I quickly noticed a line saying to the effect of "even if you table your opponent, that does not guarantee victory" . . . ie, you NEED to accomplish your objectives before your opponent, tabling them has little effect on winning (unless that is an objective you draw)

 auticus wrote:
No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior.

White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.

If Chess would be like a GW game, White would have first turn, but Black would be allowed to have up to 4 additional Queens all tournament players would take while the Fluff-Players would just take 1 or 2

Maybe? Years ago something I loved about the 2nd edition Tyranids was not only the awesome Scream-Killer model, but also the way they tried to represent the impact of a Tyranid attack on the opposing side's logistics. Which makes me think that Warhammer 40k is really well set up to take advantage of some light logistics in designing armies now that we have choices from super-elites down to sub-PDF grade conscripts. Where my favourite part of 40k is the combat phase, it seems like a great way of both balancing out the inherent lethality/toughness matrix in Warhammer and making the experience interesting. Something like the old 'Mission' cards for each detachment, where the harder a unit is, the harder its mission is.

Aside from balancing out whether one army can fight another to a nigh-standstill, it would be interesting to see if scenarios could be designed where stuff ranging from Knights to Grots could do something interesting.

In terms of interesting, there's a fantastic wargame/ttrpg out there called "Pulp Alley" which is an equivalent to Kill Team and Necromunda. Part of setting up a game is having these little plot-points floating around like hybrid objective/game-pieces that do a great job of shaping the action in the game. It also has this really neat initiative system where the player with the initiative gets to choose which model activates next, regardless of which player controls it. They can lose the initiative by losing a close-combat, or failing a roll with a plot-point.

Another thought I had came from the notion of engagements in Epic Armageddon. In Epic Armageddon you have detachments like players have units in Warhammer 40,000. These detachments can 'engage', which is to say make a single move within 5cm of one or more enemy detachments, and then you resolve attacks from all units the attacking and defending detachments within 15cm of a target. Stuff in base-to-base gets to use its Close Combat (CC) value, and stuff up to 15 cm away gets to use its Firefight (FF); skimmers get to use their FF even if in base-to-base. The neat thing was that not only did the attacking and defending unit get to attack, but all detachments with a unit within 15cm of an attacking or defending attachment. It lead to tiny SM detachments mopping up larger Ork and AM detachments through careful, staggered engagements that let them maximize the number of units attacking in each engagement.

My thought was that it would be something for players to be able to declare engagements in Warhammer 40k, combining shooting and close combat, and a move. Kind of like wrapping a charge into picking a unit to fight in the Close Combat phase. So a player might pick a Knight and have it engage two squads of SM and a tank, just like a Titan might engage two detachments of SM and a super-heavy in E:A. The player declaring the engagement then moves their unit, and piles in, the defenders pile-in, everyone attacks, shooting and combat (fancy Aeldari attack-first rules go first...dastards), everyone accrues blast markers, and the side with more blast markers 'loses' and either gets pushed back a distance or loses models/wounds/etc.

Sqorgar wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior.

White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.

Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

White doesn't get anything black doesn't. It's advantage is entirely one of tempo and board state. Most people that complain about balance do so when faced with pretty standard decision making because they see something their opponent can do and don't think of a way to counter it. The chess comparison is someone moving their Bishop to threaten a Rook and their opponent complaining because they have no way to take the Bishop with the Rook in response. These are the kind of issues that in a symmetrical game have obvious solutions because you can just do what your opponent did, but in games greater asymmetry lead to players not trusting the game and, due to standard hubris, cannot accept their own faults. One of the reasons I usually start a game with tournament lists is simply because when I lose with them I have no one to blame but myself. Once I'm convinced I'm just bad at the game, I can have a lot more fun losing with other options too.

 DarkBlack wrote:
Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

Some other games do have that mindset, particularly customizable card games. Magic the Gathering is probably worse than 40k is. Some video games have that attitude. Fortnite and Overwatch can definitely be like that.

Honestly, I'm not sure where it comes from, but looking at the games that feature the worst of this kind of attitude, it definitely seems like tournaments and competitive play are a contributing factor.

That being said, lots of people play Fortnite who aren't really competitive, and yet that mindset seeps into their game experience. My daughter has basically no chance of being competitive at Fortnite, but she picks it up from the Fortnite streamers, so she calls everybody try-hards and says "lol. just build". She tries to do build battles, but is way out of her league and often ends up losing easy kills by trying to play in this manner.

So maybe it isn't whether the games themselves are competitive. Maybe it is whether the game's most respected players are. Maybe we need to praise less the tournament winners and more the people who build cool tables and scenarios for their friends. We should reward winning less than sportsmanship, and stop seeing tournament winners as the only people who truly understand how to play the game. In my opinion, the best miniature gamers are the ones who are willing to intentionally lose to create a better game experience.

And we should stop giving a crap about "balance", because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, but the balance you think you want isn't the game experience you actually want. Perfect balance is a uptopic ideal - it is good in theory, but you can't achieve it... and if you could, the resulting experience would be extremely unpleasant. It is worth taking a moment to realize that the best experiences of 40k are the ones where winning doesn't matter.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

Some other games do have that mindset, particularly customizable card games. Magic the Gathering is probably worse than 40k is. Some video games have that attitude. Fortnite and Overwatch can definitely be like that.

Honestly, I'm not sure where it comes from, but looking at the games that feature the worst of this kind of attitude, it definitely seems like tournaments and competitive play are a contributing factor.

That being said, lots of people play Fortnite who aren't really competitive, and yet that mindset seeps into their game experience. My daughter has basically no chance of being competitive at Fortnite, but she picks it up from the Fortnite streamers, so she calls everybody try-hards and says "lol. just build". She tries to do build battles, but is way out of her league and often ends up losing easy kills by trying to play in this manner.

So maybe it isn't whether the games themselves are competitive. Maybe it is whether the game's most respected players are. Maybe we need to praise less the tournament winners and more the people who build cool tables and scenarios for their friends. We should reward winning less than sportsmanship, and stop seeing tournament winners as the only people who truly understand how to play the game. In my opinion, the best miniature gamers are the ones who are willing to intentionally lose to create a better game experience.

And we should stop giving a crap about "balance", because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, but the balance you think you want isn't the game experience you actually want. Perfect balance is a uptopic ideal - it is good in theory, but you can't achieve it... and if you could, the resulting experience would be extremely unpleasant. It is worth taking a moment to realize that the best experiences of 40k are the ones where winning doesn't matter.

I meant other wargames. I'm curious, how many non-GW wargames have you played?
In card games, like Magic, deck building is a large part of the game. It's part of the design, so it's not comparable in terms of this discussion.
I'm not familiar enough with online gaming to discuss it. I recall Uncle Atom did a video about it though. Designed to achieve something different too though, so this discussion is not really applicable there either.

Have you read the thread?
No one asks for perfect balance, the consensus seems to be that perfect balance is impossible, but "good enough" balance is desirable. Why would perfect balance be extremely unpleasant though?

I would argue that the game and how it is designed has an impact on the players who are attracted to the game and how the community acts. If a game is poorly balanced then it attracts the kind of players who would abuse that. Once the cheese starts (even if unintentional) even normally good players get tired of losing and getting their own cheese gets more tempting and the community gets into the mindset you describe more and more.

 DarkBlack wrote:
I meant other wargames. I'm curious, how many non-GW wargames have you played?

Most of the contemporary ones. Most recently, Frostgrave and Infinity.

In card games, like Magic, deck building is a large part of the game. It's part of the design, so it's not comparable in terms of this discussion.

I disagree. How is army building not basically the same thing as deck building? How do these games not suffer in the same way from the imbalances introduced by player choice?

No one asks for perfect balance, the consensus seems to be that perfect balance is impossible, but "good enough" balance is desirable. Why would perfect balance be extremely unpleasant though?

I'm saying, don't even bother with "good enough", or at least that "good enough" is far broader than what you are probably thinking. When it comes down to it, the players are responsible for creating the game experiences they want, and it is not the game's responsibility to cater exclusively to that. Instead, it is better that a game does not even attempt balance, but instead gives a big sandbox full of toys, from which the players can find the experiences they want.

For instance, Necromunda (and Frostgrave) do not even attempt to be balanced games. There's scenarios where you are at a distinct disadvantage, where you might start with a fraction of your units, and be significantly behind in power compared to your opponent - and yet, the games can still be fun. You won't win a scenario, but you can fight to minimize your losses, or to kill an enemy's champion, or just to gain some exp to upgrade your characters. Your memorable moments aren't whether you win, but where you accidentally dropped a grenade and blew yourself up.

But then, I started my tenure here on Dakka, arguing that Age of Sigmar, lacking points was awesome (and I think AoS is a much, much less interesting or varied game with them). People here were incensed, and really rather rude (to put it gently), at the proposition that the players be a partner in the game's balance, rather than a slave to it.

As for why perfect balance would suck - in order to achieve it, you'd have to drain all the originality and variety out of the game. It is only achievable when both sides are identical and all luck has been removed, and even then, somebody has to go first. Both Chess and Go are completely abstract games where each player has identical opportunities, but going first can still make a difference regardless of how well you play. But if balance was really important to you, you'd be playing Chess or Go. Since you are playing with space marines, I have to assume that the pew pew trumps balance. When you get right down to the core of it, I mean.

I would argue that the game and how it is designed has an impact on the players who are attracted to the game and how the community acts.

Honestly, I'd suggest it is more based on how popular it is. It doesn't get much bigger than Magic or 40k. A small community can police itself, but once the community gets too large, you start getting cliques and the power gamers tend to start rising to the top of the social hierarchy. It may simply be a case of strangers being able to rank strangers easier through some sort of achievement system - the same way we use SAT scores to rank high schoolers, when their homeroom teachers may rank them more accurately due to personal familiarity.

Maybe it is all just a fear of keeping That Guy reigned in, which is itself a sort of "Stranger Danger" anxiety. We don't know whom we will play again, so we fear them. They have the power to ruin a game, or an entire day playing games, or even entire games. But when we know That Guy personally, we either just don't play them or carefully choose the circumstances in which we engage. But strangers... who knows what lurks in the hearts of 40k players?

 DarkBlack wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior.

White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.

Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

Semi balanced games magically draw them in, i feel.

I reiterate my point.
When the listbuilding is more deciding then the play, you get what is normally called Wallet warriors, which are btw often also sore losers.
But that is anecdotal.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

I think it is a problem in many wargames that killing the other guy first tends to be the dominant strategy. Even when it's purely a matter of holding objectives you need to kill the other guy's stuff so it can't hold objectives, and make sure your stuff holding objectives isn't killed. I'm not saying that's bad, or trying to be reductionist. That's just what stuff in Warhammer 40,000 can do, complications included. Certainly there's plenty of times in games where you need to run for the objectives instead of finding an optimal target and killing it, and it would be cool to have more of those, but in those situations you're not so much taking a risk as not just throwing the game for the excuse to kill a few models. I don't know how to tweak Warhammer to engineer more of that in the game than anyone else.

But consider, if you will, how some of the stuff you mentioned is suddenly going to become so much more important if you play a game where you can't kill enemy models. It's not just a matter of all those points wasted on valuating weapons, armour, and abilities models won't be able to use, but about how the goals and decisions constituting the game are played out. Warhammer and Infinity and such are very different from work placement or area control games, despite having some similarities, and a big difference seems to be the logistics of defeating an opponent's capabilities as much as competing with those capabilities.

I think one of the core rules that leads to the "kill everything first, hold objectives second" mindset is that, at least in GW games, if your opponent has 0 models on the table, they automatically lose the game. I don't know if its changed, but when I tried out Malifaux 1e, I quickly noticed a line saying to the effect of "even if you table your opponent, that does not guarantee victory" . . . ie, you NEED to accomplish your objectives before your opponent, tabling them has little effect on winning (unless that is an objective you draw)

I don't know how I missed this, but it's a really good point: there's a big problem with the game-end conditions matching the victory conditions. There's the Endless War missions from CA 2018 with the 'Acceptable Casualties' rule that negates the perverse incentives of Sudden Death (game ends with the loser wiped out), but that kind of doubles-down so that people can still run up the score if they table someone on the first turn of a tournament game. Me, I've always loved rules that let me recycle casualties back onto the board as it seems to represent hordes better than cluttering the board at the beginning of the game and hoping you have enough models to survive the game. In particular it works really well for stuff like Tyranids where they kind of break the lower end of the points-scale. Take two armies for example, with the same number of models, and give one half the range of the other, and the ability to recycle models onto the board and suddenly it's more interesting how the players solve the imbalance. You also have a horde army and an elite army with the same number of models so it doesn't break the bank to play the former rather than the latter...

Decoupling the end-game and scoring conditions seems like a really good idea. I'm not sure how scoring works in Malifaux, but I should look it up.

 DarkBlack wrote:

Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

Another point on this I left out of the earlier paragraph.

Part of the problem with 40k is simply that GW lost the trust of its playerbase and allowed it to take the reigns. Whenever I've seen a game get dominated by houserules, comp or other attempts to "fix" the game; the lack of developer authority creates a sort of paranoia that is really hard to repair. Players quickly stop taking responsibilities for their own failures and immediately start looking to change the game instead. Conversely, the community stops celebrating success and instead turns it into something of a witch hunt to route out the latest "problem" that needs to be changed. The longer this goes on, the less the game the developers are developing matches up with what the community is playing. It gets harder and harder to fix things as player feedback doesn't really line up with the game in its true form. GW did a fairly decent job of taking the wheel with 8th and the regular errata has helped keep the playerbase from fracturing too much, but there's still some serious divides in terms of scenario play.

Nurglitch wrote:

I don't know how I missed this, but it's a really good point: there's a big problem with the game-end conditions matching the victory conditions. There's the Endless War missions from CA 2018 with the 'Acceptable Casualties' rule that negates the perverse incentives of Sudden Death (game ends with the loser wiped out), but that kind of doubles-down so that people can still run up the score if they table someone on the first turn of a tournament game. Me, I've always loved rules that let me recycle casualties back onto the board as it seems to represent hordes better than cluttering the board at the beginning of the game and hoping you have enough models to survive the game. In particular it works really well for stuff like Tyranids where they kind of break the lower end of the points-scale. Take two armies for example, with the same number of models, and give one half the range of the other, and the ability to recycle models onto the board and suddenly it's more interesting how the players solve the imbalance. You also have a horde army and an elite army with the same number of models so it doesn't break the bank to play the former rather than the latter...

Decoupling the end-game and scoring conditions seems like a really good idea. I'm not sure how scoring works in Malifaux, but I should look it up.

Malifaux's entirely a scheme and strategy based scoring system. You get points for things like "Place scheme markers on three corners of the table" or "Walk a specific model up to another specific model and interact". The game sort of rests on the fact that both players have the same strategy (where half their points come from), but the other half of their points come from two secretly chosen schemes (out of a randomly generated pool of five that both players choose from).

The game does still sometimes end up in a situation where you can win by killing everyone else indiscriminately. But most of the time, you at least have to go through the effort of killing the right models in the right places. (One of the schemes that I expect to come back into rotation is the one where you scored VP if you provoked the other player into killing your designated "Frame for murder" model.)
--
I think Warmachine/Hordes is a better example of the limiting effect of an automatic victory condition is, though.

There were lots of times where discussions of Steamroller scenarios would degenerate into "Give up on the scenario and go for assassination" or "The scenario requires too many improbable things to happen, ignore it and go for assassinate."

On the one hand, usually it's not easy to get an assassination victory, and it gives the player a choice. On the other hand, there's a definite bar on what you can do in scenarios. If there were records concerning scenario victory vs. assassination victory at tournaments for the different years of Steamroller, that'd probably be really interesting to show where the complexity cap rests.

Okay, so here's a weird thought. It's funny how these things come to you when you're thinking of something else, but another seemingly unrelated issue in 40k is spamming units. I think it would be interesting to see a kind of Highlander style of army construction where you can have one of each battlefield role on the table per detachment, and only once that unit is wiped out can you bring another unit in as reinforcements.

So if you decide to have an army made up of Leman Russ tank squadrons, then you get one squadron at a time, and every time the last tank in that squadron is destroyed you roll the next one onto the battlefield from your table edge.

A big part of the issue, besides "balance" being subjective, is that Warhammer more than any other game has this weird situation where you can be rewarded or penalized based on picking models/factions you like, exactly what all of the rulebooks say to do when discussing choosing an army.

Without even getting into the actual min/maxers who will scrutinize every unit to determine which 10% is "the best" and then summarily ignore the other 90%, with Warhammer (and I'm sure other games have this issue just I've never seen any as bad as GW's games) you have the risk of someone inadvertently picking something that's incredibly underpowered or way overpowered, because external balance is so haphazard. Let me illustrate with an example; it may not hold true anymore but I'm going to use it anyways as it's the first thing that popped into my mind:

Michael and Dwight decide to start playing 40k. They look at the various armies and Michael decides that he really likes mecha and futuristic looking armies, so he chooses Tau. Dwight finds the Orks hilarious after reading how they operate and picks up Orks. Now in this hypothetical edition of 40k (which may or may not be 8th) Tau are really good, Orks are fairly weak (as we're talking about new players here, we ignore the probable single viable tournament build because a new player isn't going to know that or likely rush out to buy a tournament list). Already, we see a problem. Our two players have picked armies which they like the look of, which is exactly the way GW claims you should choose an army (we all know this is BS, but GW still pushes it), yet the two armies are on polar opposites of the spectrum and one player is going to be much better off than his friend, for no real reason other than the GW studio decided to make the Tau rules better than the Ork rules.

But now it gets worse. What if they enjoy unis which are very strong or very weak? Not only is Dwight punished for picking Orks, a weaker faction because of reasons, but what if he likes certain units which are weak (I'm not familiar with Orks to really know what's good or bad, so I won't name specific units)? Now he's being punished twice because the system fails to have balance internally as well as externally. Now, on the other hand, Michael is rewarded simply because it just so happens that he likes anime mecha and Tau scratch that itch, without any other factors playing in other than for whatever reason, GW made Tau stronger and Orks weaker, and will likely beat poor Dwight frequently even without optimizing his army.

THAT is the problem. That's why we say that GW has such poor balance. I can't think of any other game, now or in the past, where there is such an extreme imbalance in the design that you are immediately punished for liking a particular army that just so happens to be on the weak side or rewarded just because you were attracted to the army that's strong at the moment. Sure, lots of games aren't perfectly balanced and nobody really wants that, but in every other game I think of the factions are at least externally balanced to the point where simply picking one doesn't give you an advantage. In Warmahordes, for example, sure Cryx was super good in Mk2 but you didn't get a huge advantage ONLY because you chose Cryx instead of Khador. Liking Trollbloods didn't automatically put you at a disadvantage because you didn't like Legion.

The only games I can think of that has these problems to these extremes are GW's games. Instead what should happen is there should be enough care given to external balance that, all else being equal, every faction has an equal chance of beating any other faction. There should be enough internal balance that there's a meaningful choice between units such that there isn't any good reason to take, say, Assault Marines because Vanguard cost the same and do more or that there's never a reason to take a particular weapon because plasma is just so good, and choosing to not take plasma is punishing you because you're ignoring an obvoiusly better weapon.

That's really not unique to GW games though. That happens all the time. I mean in MK2, if you liked Man O War and your buddy liked Banes... you were gonna have a bad time. Probably as bad as any of the worst 40k matchups honestly. It's a problem in every system that stems from the fact that its pretty rare to get more than say... 10 viable archetypes in any competitive meta. As your game grows, the problem seems worse, because 8 seemed pretty good when you had a dozen options. 10 is even better, but feels a lot worse now that there's 50 or more archetypes to choose from.

 LunarSol wrote:
That's really not unique to GW games though. That happens all the time. I mean in MK2, if you liked Man O War and your buddy liked Banes... you were gonna have a bad time. Probably as bad as any of the worst 40k matchups honestly. It's a problem in every system that stems from the fact that its pretty rare to get more than say... 10 viable archetypes in any competitive meta. As your game grows, the problem seems worse, because 8 seemed pretty good when you had a dozen options. 10 is even better, but feels a lot worse now that there's 50 or more archetypes to choose from.

But there were ways to make MoW/Banes viable, with the right support and even win tournaments as a dark horse. Not so much with 40k, which is part of the issue. The worst balance is in Warhammer; other games have it but also have ways to work around it. With the right solos and caster, even MoW could be decent. Not great, but perfectly fine for games and even local Steamrollers depending.

 solkan wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

I don't know how I missed this, but it's a really good point: there's a big problem with the game-end conditions matching the victory conditions. There's the Endless War missions from CA 2018 with the 'Acceptable Casualties' rule that negates the perverse incentives of Sudden Death (game ends with the loser wiped out), but that kind of doubles-down so that people can still run up the score if they table someone on the first turn of a tournament game. Me, I've always loved rules that let me recycle casualties back onto the board as it seems to represent hordes better than cluttering the board at the beginning of the game and hoping you have enough models to survive the game. In particular it works really well for stuff like Tyranids where they kind of break the lower end of the points-scale. Take two armies for example, with the same number of models, and give one half the range of the other, and the ability to recycle models onto the board and suddenly it's more interesting how the players solve the imbalance. You also have a horde army and an elite army with the same number of models so it doesn't break the bank to play the former rather than the latter...

Decoupling the end-game and scoring conditions seems like a really good idea. I'm not sure how scoring works in Malifaux, but I should look it up.

Malifaux's entirely a scheme and strategy based scoring system. You get points for things like "Place scheme markers on three corners of the table" or "Walk a specific model up to another specific model and interact". The game sort of rests on the fact that both players have the same strategy (where half their points come from), but the other half of their points come from two secretly chosen schemes (out of a randomly generated pool of five that both players choose from).

The game does still sometimes end up in a situation where you can win by killing everyone else indiscriminately. But most of the time, you at least have to go through the effort of killing the right models in the right places. (One of the schemes that I expect to come back into rotation is the one where you scored VP if you provoked the other player into killing your designated "Frame for murder" model.)
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I think Warmachine/Hordes is a better example of the limiting effect of an automatic victory condition is, though.

There were lots of times where discussions of Steamroller scenarios would degenerate into "Give up on the scenario and go for assassination" or "The scenario requires too many improbable things to happen, ignore it and go for assassinate."

On the one hand, usually it's not easy to get an assassination victory, and it gives the player a choice. On the other hand, there's a definite bar on what you can do in scenarios. If there were records concerning scenario victory vs. assassination victory at tournaments for the different years of Steamroller, that'd probably be really interesting to show where the complexity cap rests.

I've found the biggest hurdle 40k has in developing a really engaging scenario is just how weird positioning is treated in the game. Models are actually, for the most part, very slow and not particularly capable of moving around the map, but if you're melee oriented, the act of getting into melee moves things extremely fast. Melee itself is also kind of a weird mechanic, where the game has a very tower defense style of "kill them before they get here and you win, but if they make it you lose". Part of that just comes from the very binary nature of shooting and engagement and how heavily armies specialize in one over the other. It just makes it extremely difficult to design scenarios that cater to everyone.




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Wayniac wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
That's really not unique to GW games though. That happens all the time. I mean in MK2, if you liked Man O War and your buddy liked Banes... you were gonna have a bad time. Probably as bad as any of the worst 40k matchups honestly. It's a problem in every system that stems from the fact that its pretty rare to get more than say... 10 viable archetypes in any competitive meta. As your game grows, the problem seems worse, because 8 seemed pretty good when you had a dozen options. 10 is even better, but feels a lot worse now that there's 50 or more archetypes to choose from.

But there were ways to make MoW/Banes viable, with the right support and even win tournaments as a dark horse. Not so much with 40k, which is part of the issue. The worst balance is in Warhammer; other games have it but also have ways to work around it. With the right solos and caster, even MoW could be decent. Not great, but perfectly fine for games and even local Steamrollers depending.

Seems like you're reaching. MoW never won a thing. Locally? Sure, but local metas have plenty of Ork champions. Honestly, 8th edition has on the whole, had some of the better examples of diverse faction success of any game I play. It's not my favorite game to play competitively, but I don't find the competitive hoops any worse to jump through than any other game I play. Mostly I just feel like its just got a larger community of players unwilling to make the jumps compared to other systems.

Not every option for every game should be made for balance.

Some stuff has to be in there for fun. Filling out a world or background or whatever.

White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.

Ehhhh.... I don't think so in regards to 53% win ratio meaning everyone is flocking to white.

Because when i talk about bad balance i am *specifically* talking about the gdubs and their 40k and aos ruleset. In which case we aren't talking about factions with a 53% win rate being unbalanced.

I'm not even close to saying thats true.

I'm talking about the big cheese that gets over 70% win ratio by virtue of it showing up on the table. Thats the bad balance I'm talking about. (whose numbers are confirmed by the honest wargamer's stats that are published periodically showing about as close to actual stats as we have to go off of beyond our own anecdotal local experiences)

White winning 53 or 54% or whatever games in chess is such a small tiny little advantage that I don't know of many people that see that as insurmountable odds that would ruin the experience.

I do however have a problem with showing up to a casual game and my opponent dropping 3 keepers down on the table.

Because lolz.

There is no point playing that game. That in the chess analogy would be my opponent replacing four or five of his pieces with queens before the game begins.

That is not a good game. Nor do I feel having to socially engineer my playerbase to plead with them to not powergame so that anything other than powerlists can have a good game.

Because I play a ton of other games and don't have that problem anywhere else.

50/50 balance is not a thing that I am striving for nor do I think its possible. 70/30 or thereabouts balance however is flat out flaming garbage and needs reigned in.

When I was heading up Azyr Comp for AOS our primary goal was to not let things get beyond a 60/40 spread. We achieved that, even getting it down to a 57/43 before it got canned when GW adopted SCGT comp for its official points.

As already mentioned no real battle was every truly balanced as no military commander wants a fair fight. but in the realms of tabletop both players want a good time and a chance to win.

If you have played as many different systems as I have you really notice the difference in mechanics and how they effect the game.

40K is the 400# gorilla in the room since everybody is used to its I go/you go system. as mentioned above it has also taken on some aspects of deck building ALA magic thanks to CP farming/stratagems with 8th edition.

Lets walk through just a few of them

classic battletech-
a game that dates back to the late 80s and really hasn't changed that much with rules or combinations of rules to cover just about anything you can imagine which is why you only need 4 1/285 scale minis to play the game.
it has a battlevalue system, some people prefer tonnage as an alternative, but when to comes to game balance it means absolutely nothing. it is there for structure for events. as the true balancer is critical hits.

It doesn't matter what tech level you have, what exotic weapons you use, how awesome your pilot is or how many BV points you spent to get all that. if I get a lucky head shot that does 10 damage with a crit on the cockpit or anything that does 12 damage+ your dead. or I get s floating crit that takes out engines, or gyros or cooks off ammo the outcome is generally the same. the system relies on alternating movement where you try to maximize outgoing attacks while minimizing the incoming. but shooting and melee attacks are all simultaneous, so even if you die you still get to take your final action.


Infinity
when it comes to building a force it is probably one of the most balanced games out there.
all the gear and weapons across all factions have the same stats by type no matter what they look like or who is using them. the big difference is in the fact that you have a points cost system, unit availability system, and a support weapons system.
The real big one to prevent power gaming is the support weapons system especially combined with points cost. the number of actions you get a turn is based on how many units in your squad (max 10) are alive and awake. so if you spend all points on the best dudes your army isn't getting anything done because it has so few actions.

remembering that all weapons are the same the unit you choose and its weapons are adjusted by how useful that unit will be with said weapon. in a standard 300 point game you get 1 support point for every 50 of gameplay so in this case 6. for a basic average trooper with a special weapon your going to pay a few more points like 16 and a support point cost of say .5, but then you take that same gun and give it to a specialist or heavy trooper then the cost pushes over 30 points and the support points jump to 1.5 or even 2.

That's not even taking into account gameplay which includes a full reaction mechanic so both players are always playing and not just making armor saves, a 2 part action mechanic, a critical hit mechanic and the fact it uses a d20 system with not only shooting and close combat skills but also tests of technical skill and strength.

DUST 1947
This is a game that combines a lot of what makes infinity a good system while streamlining it a bit like 40K. it uses an alternating activation system and fresh initiative rolls at the start of each turn as well as a limited range chance and full reactive actions.

it tempers this with representing how hard something is to hurt by assigning more or less dice used in attacks based on the armor class of the unit targeted, combined with the fact it uses symbols on D6s (3 types -army/bullseye/shield 2 per dice each)with a success generally being on-army symbol- only 2 sides of the dice (or 33%).

Making it still a fast fun game but a much friendlier and less alpha strike prone game like 8th edition 40K has become.

At the other end of the spectrum you have warmahordes which is effectively steampunk/monster chess, the adage is everything is broken so everything is fair.


So in the end when you say balance the real question is what you really mean by the term.
people go on without end about 40K because it was never intended to be a truly balanced game based on points structure as it exists on it's lore, which is so vast it makes the various armies overblown with special gear/weapons/rules. allowing tournament minded players to find ways to push the rules beyond the designers intent.

for me balance goes back to my opening comment-is it fun for both players and do they both have a reasonable chance to win within the games mechanics. that to me is balance.

for me balance goes back to my opening comment-is it fun for both players and do they both have a reasonable chance to win within the games mechanics. that to me is balance.

Nicely said!

I'm curious why no one else has brought up 30k. Now, I understand some folks prefer the rules for the 40k system over the rules for 30k, but the main difference in 30k is you have marines fighting marines- less variation which promotes more balance. Yes, there are a few units that should be thrown out, or have their rules modified, but I have to say, I have played far more 30k games that came down to the last turn than 40k.

Honestly 40k could be balanced in a tournament setting- give everyone the same battleforce. Let them play with the same models. However, no one would pay to enter a tournament like that.

30K is great with a few exceptions it is fixed 7th edition minus the game breaking formations (now replaced with stratagems for 8th ed ) and the inclusion of compulsory units actually being good.

the only 2 things I don't like about it is the retention of the WHFB magic system phase with the dice pool. 5th was far more intuitive and easy to follow.

the other is the combination damage chart and health points on vehicles. pick one or the other 2 systems for damage is abusive.

Again, I would argue, easy to follow and balanced are two different things. Are there rules that could be stream lined in 30k - most certainly, although I never felt the 2 damage systems (armor and wounds) was abusive. Maybe it was harder to remember, but playing with that system for 20 years, made it pretty second nature. Any system with less options is going to be easier to balance than one with hundreds of different combinations. In 30k both armies are mostly choosing from the same pool of units and then there is the fact that some of the units are duds and few people choose them which limits the army pool even more. Its not uncommon for opponents to be using many of the same units in their armies, with them painted a different color.

Personally I find a game is balanced when the focus is less on what I do/did outside of the game, but rather what I do/did in the game.

Placement, positioning, target selection, and the like should allow even a poor list put together on the fly to have a chance to win over a list that was finely tuned. Player experience and good tactics should trump gamey things like Command Points, Strategems, and the like.

GW are trying to make an environment where a complete novice can win over someone who has been playing for years, this is done by removing 'fiddely' things like arcs, and limitations on moving and firing, and adding boons that opponents can't effect or cancel. While this does allow more people to play, it does set the learning very low. When I first started gaming way back in '89, I used to lose a lot as I was new to the hobby, so didn't have a grasp of basic strategy. Losing a lot allowed me to learn and see what I was doing wrong and from that I had a firmer grasp of strategic play.

The weird thing is that when I propose things like preset or mirror lists for games people suddenly get squirrely. People don't really seem to want balance as much as they want asymmetry.

Nurglitch wrote:
The weird thing is that when I propose things like preset or mirror lists for games people suddenly get squirrely. People don't really seem to want balance as much as they want asymmetry.

Gaming has an element of self expression to it. There's a reason people latch on to specific fighting game characters, and why the concept of GI Joe like Avatar characters has taken over everything from DotA to Magic. There's a huge appeal in choosing the way you represent yourself in a fantasy world, even when represented by an entire army. That's a big part of the reason you get the backlash from imbalance. People put themselves into the game via there choices and really don't like it when they find out that they are, by proxy, systematically bad. On the flip side, there's a huge desire to tinker and optimize and explore the system. It drives players to the next game and to talk about the game between games. It's also somewhat inevitable. No matter how good something is, there's always optimization where there are choices.

I think one of the healthiest realizations you can have with balance is recognizing that its a scale. Nothing is ever so balanced that you can put no thought into it and be "competitive". I think its important to accept imbalance to a degree, but with the above, the recognize where to prioritize it. Take Warmachine: currently the game has Factions as the primary umbrella with Themes and warcasters breaking the units in factions up into smaller groups. To that end, its really important that every faction has a way to be competitive and only then is it critical to see every theme be competitive. The more you can get the better, but that kind of focus helps appreciate the balance you have. Sure someone LOVES Man O War Bombardiers, but if the MoW theme isn't competitive or if Khador as a whole isn't competitive, then worrying that Bombardiers aren't as good as Shocktroopers kind of misses the point. Likewise, when you've got 2-4 versions of various casters at this point, its worth remembering that maybe its okay if Sorscha2 isnt' that great when there's 2 versions that are just fine.