Anyone else finding these secondary objectives are just very poorly thought out? Sure they give you the chance to score how you wish - but they are designed in such a way that certain armies are at a huge disadvantage by default.
As an example, armies that have squishy units combined with tanks and monsters (Drukhari, Tyranids and Guard come to mind) - you can easily take 2 secondaries to score points for killing the squishy units (eg, Kabalites, Gaunts, Infantry) and to kill vehicles (Venom, Sentinels, Carnifex).
Armies that are more elite-based on the other hand have a huge advantage in this respect. Custodes for example offer very little opportunities for these objectives .
Obviously the primaries are where the real points are, but with armies like Space Marines getting their historic buffs to shots, attacks, doctrines etc - they can quickly make short of those same armies as mentioned earlier so that even if they make it to the objective - they don’t get to stay on it.
Unless the new Codexes do something to change this, then I can’t see how those armies would be able to overcome such an obvious disadvantage from a gameplay mechanic. Assuming that wasn’t the plan to get us all buying space marines......
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Half the secondaries need a huge rework right now and frankly they're preventing mediocre/bad armies from being decent much more than their outdated codices
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.
Nonsense. That does not describe things at all.
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KurtAngle2 wrote: Half the secondaries need a huge rework right now and frankly they're preventing mediocre/bad armies from being decent much more than their outdated codices
Yeah. A huge chunk of secondary objectives are so bad they might as well not be there except for the most specific of circumstances.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.
Let's say a new army is about $1000 U.S. An edition roughly lasts 3 years. So it's about $30 a month to keep up with the Joneses as you say. I grant you it ain't nothin', but I also know good number of people that spend more on coffee in a month than that. Hardly a thing that requires one to be born in the Rockafeller family to afford. Just some budgeting and patience.
And that's all based on the false assumption that what you say is true. Which it ain't. However, don't let me stop you. If you start now, you can have that competitive hoard army ready to go for 10th for less than $40 a month easy if you start now.
Yes. Basically all the secondary objectives that involve killing your opponent's models need to be under the same category. Certain armies are put at a horrible disadvantage by the fact that there is a secondary to kill a lot of models, one to kill lots of characters, one to kill lots of vehicles/monsters, and one to kill lots of psykers. It's so easy to max secondary points against Imperial Guard or Tyranid players who aren't taking crazy skew lists because of this.
I agree with all the comments about secondaries needing a rewrite. There is little equality between them. I however am not with you on the elite vs horde thing. Horde armies dominate the board control ones (which would basically include the majority of primaries), Elite dominate the "Kill" ones. I play both types of armies, and tend to be able to equal these out.
All secondaries need to be reworked because there are too many auto-take ones you build your army to accomplish, rather than take because of the mission, board terrain, or opponent. This takes away some of my favorite parts of the game, generalship (already too limited by GW's inability to balance at all.)
Here's my (not unique) take.
1: Secondaries requiring actions are auto's for armies that can take cheap (say less 30 point or less) units, drop them in hidden, and complete. For all other armies who can't waste a unit standing around...useless. For proof of this, read the brilliant table work in this excellent series of battle reports by RandomHeretic. Particularly, the use of ripper swarms.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/793594.page
2: See above for all the psycher ones.
For my next two points, I consider extreme outlier armies outside my thoughts (mostly the super elites who have an entire army of 3++. That durability overwrites tactics. That's the point of them.)
3: The board control ones are gained in the build stage, not on the table (see 1 above for how easy that is for certain armies). It is very hard to stop 3/4 table quarters against a horde army. Elite armies A: do not have as many units to put in each quarter and B: MSU can be focused down by picking the table quarter with the fewest/weakest and drop your opponent to holding two. I am not claiming this is simple, just doable.
It is very hard to stop "get in the enemy deployment zone" against ANY army in this edition. Tougher/survivable helps though. To me these wash between the two types, and are almost an auto-take, as mentioned above.
4: The kill "x" models of one type or the other are easier for Elite armies to avoid. However, those elite armies often give up the same points in the kill characters area. Look closely at the kill infantry one: gaining a point for 1/10th is not great. Even horde armies rarely have 150 models. The kill more in a turn equals out. Elite can kill horde armies who aren't tough, but MSU means they can give up units dead as well. For me, another wash.
Just my two cents because I like these discussions. And no, I do not think 40k is a deep tactical game...which is sad.
They're just bad. I've been banging the drum on this one for months, and it's interesting to see people slowly coming around.
And the race-specific secondaries are even worse - even more inconsistent, even more clearly "this is a winner" or "this is a loser," and even more likely to create imbalance since not everybody can take them.
At the very least, I would be shocked if the faction-specific ones aren't pretty quickly banned from competitive events.
The ITC 2020 secondaries pack was significantly better than what GW came up with. The initial claim was that the GW version was going to be harder, so scoring 15 would be rare...but instead what we got was just super inconsistent choices, and worse, ones that favor certain army types of others (cough elite multi-wound infantry cough).
yukishiro1 wrote: They're just bad. I've been banging the drum on this one for months, and it's interesting to see people slowly coming around.
And the race-specific secondaries are even worse - even more inconsistent, even more clearly "this is a winner" or "this is a loser," and even more likely to create imbalance since not everybody can take them.
At the very least, I would be shocked if the faction-specific ones aren't pretty quickly banned from competitive events.
The ITC 2020 secondaries pack was significantly better than what GW came up with. The initial claim was that the GW version was going to be harder, so scoring 15 would be rare...but instead what we got was just super inconsistent choices, and worse, ones that favor certain army types of others (cough elite multi-wound infantry cough).
One could make the argument that elite multi-wound infantry are supposed to be the star of the show, however.
What actions is he doing with ripper swarms? Because deploy scramblers, the main "deep strike and do an action" secondary, can only be done by infantry. Rippers are swarm units.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.
This buy/sell/buy/sell/constantly cry about it cycle is the approach of - at best - the short sighted. At worst the stupid.
The recipe for non-rich people having multiple forces is simple: You get a job/go to work. You pay your bills. With your hobby $ you build an army (one that you LIKE). Then you expand upon it for a bit. Then at some point you you stop expanding the 1st army & start building a 2nd (ideally one that you like that plays completely different). You keep playing the 1st while you build up the 2nd. At some point you have 2 armies & the option to switch between as rules shift or when bored. You expand the 2nd army for a bit. Then you start putting that $ into a 3rd army, or other game systems, etc.....
Storage space MIGHT be a constraint on how many armies you can build.
Oh, and somewhere in there? You get better jobs
The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.
What's good about the secondary's is that it helps inform list building. It's set to punish some aspects where you might want to stack some kind of advantage.
However, there's a goodly amount of missteps...which is fine in a new system...but I've found this system to be exceedingly good for most players.
Sure, some armies have Gimmi's for their opponent...but you can also punish those. For instance I had a Knight oppoent recently that had 3 Knights, two armiggers, and an assassin. Titan Slayer was a risk because he only had the three knights so if he delayed me and kept away with one I can't score max.
One of the biggest mistakes was not using ITC's rule for only allowing one "kill" or "thing" to count; as stated above by somemone that if you kill a Psycher Character it CAN count for Assassinate and Abhor the Witch. Which is a dumb thing to have.
As to some other complaints...Elite armies give up board control Secondary's very easily. So sure, the direct, KILL THIS things don't usually apply but you're giving up Engage/Domination/Linebreaker to your opponent since you can't control space. Furthermore you also hamstring yourself on some choices (a lot really) for action-based secondaries. So while you dont GIVE up some you might not be able to COMPLETE many in a given situation.
In short: the system needs a few tweeks; but makes the game infinitely better.
The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.
There are a few that you do by virtue of just playing the game, which I think is problematic. Oath of Moment (name maybe wrong - I don't own the SM codex) is a no-brainer.
Overall I think they make for really interesting games and are a net positive to the game.
Oath of Moment is probably the most obnoxious faction-specific SecOb so far. You basically score VP for being a Space Marine.
With that being said, as a Guard player, I find the "killy" SecObs, especially Asassinate and Bring It Down, to be biased against us, but things kinda even out by having an easier time with the board control and Perform Action SecObs than elite armies. Altough course, Marines just had to have a Stragem that allows them to perform an action and still shoot.
But it kind of a does. How does GW fix stuff? If it is too good, then the changes are either non impactful, like the supposed nerfs to Inari and eldar were for most of the 8th ed, or they do a real fix and the army because bottom tier of bottom tiers.
it goes for armies, it goes for units. It is the same type of design has. Lets take scouts for example. They were spamed because other unit options were bad. GW fix to this was make scouts elite, so no one will ever take them.
Who runs centurions now, where are the armies that take 9 eliminators or snipers at all. Where are the tau shield drom spams. Or even in case of my GK. for all of 8th, mechanicaly falchions were better in all situations then every other GK melee army. GW instead of giving the different weapons new rules, just rises the point costs of falchions makes it is stupid to take them for 4pts. That is not fixing stuff, that is just making people buy more stuff and having a rotating meta to which you either never keep up, or have to spend thousands, if you want to have a good time at any given time. To me that is exactly the way MtG works.
Stuff like legends and phasing out stuff is also TCG thing.
As objectives goes, it would be nice if psyker ones were actualy worth trying to do and not turning off your character for 3+ out of 5 turns in a game, because the balance to those in the form of AtW is a bit too good, in comperation to what one gets in return.
The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.
.
interrogation and the other psyker objectives could only work, if all other objectives weren't done automatic. If to claim points for killing a unit or sitting on objectives you would have to take a test, which would have a good chance to fail or be stopped, then it would be equal.
Being Drukhari I always got hit by killing my transports and killing my frail infantry. I'm learning to play with those Secondaries maxed against me just because of the war.
Yes, but that is just 2 out of 3 secondaries being auto take. The game becomes something way different when your opponent knows they can max out all 3 secondaries, as long as they get turn 1. It really changes the game. Specialy if your point costs and rules aren't ment for given rule set.
GW has had 4 iterations of CA to refine the primary objectives, which are now the definition of perfection.
On the contrary, this is the first time that they apply secondary objectives to the game. You can see that they started from the ITC ones, but those were quite bad to begin with, and didn't translate one to one to the new system, so changes were clearly made.
The next CA will surely refine them, and I'm quite sure that the next GT will have a "No faction specific secondaries" as a rule.
Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.
Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.
We just stopped using the secondary objectives entirely, with the exception of the mission specific secondary that everyone automatically has. In fact, we made the points for the 'primary' objective locations gradually ramp up as well, so the mission specific secondary has a bigger impact on the score. Works better.
That sounds like an interesting and fun way to play.
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Umbros wrote: Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.
Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.
I would like to point out that this type of logic in 8th ment that someone people had to wait 3 years for the community to have to agree that army X is kind of a bad or in a bad state. And considering not many people play retroactive editions, the 100% clarity if something is really bad after an edition, is for me a bit too late.
Umbros wrote: Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.
Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.
As long as it comes with a cost, doing actions while shooting is perfectly fine.
Mezmorki wrote: We just stopped using the secondary objectives entirely, with the exception of the mission specific secondary that everyone automatically has. In fact, we made the points for the 'primary' objective locations gradually ramp up as well, so the mission specific secondary has a bigger impact on the score. Works better.
That sounds like a good way cut down on the first turn advantage. I think it might also be a good idea to extend the "no reinforcement units set up within range of objectives" rule from Four Pillars to other missions, particularly since we now have two factions that can deep strike turn 1.
The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.
What's good about the secondary's is that it helps inform list building. It's set to punish some aspects where you might want to stack some kind of advantage.
However, there's a goodly amount of missteps...which is fine in a new system...but I've found this system to be exceedingly good for most players.
Sure, some armies have Gimmi's for their opponent...but you can also punish those. For instance I had a Knight oppoent recently that had 3 Knights, two armiggers, and an assassin. Titan Slayer was a risk because he only had the three knights so if he delayed me and kept away with one I can't score max.
One of the biggest mistakes was not using ITC's rule for only allowing one "kill" or "thing" to count; as stated above by somemone that if you kill a Psycher Character it CAN count for Assassinate and Abhor the Witch. Which is a dumb thing to have.
As to some other complaints...Elite armies give up board control Secondary's very easily. So sure, the direct, KILL THIS things don't usually apply but you're giving up Engage/Domination/Linebreaker to your opponent since you can't control space. Furthermore you also hamstring yourself on some choices (a lot really) for action-based secondaries. So while you dont GIVE up some you might not be able to COMPLETE many in a given situation.
In short: the system needs a few tweeks; but makes the game infinitely better.
Good post!
I am really enjoying the Secondaries. I've played in three tournaments, and the Secondaries make both list-building and game play more interesting. Its true that some lists "cough up Secondaries" more easily than others, but those lists are often skew, or have the ability to take advantage of alot of the Action-based Secondaries. As more Codexes roll out I hope to see everyone get Stratagems where you can shoot and perform an Action.
I am conflicted on Abhor the Witch. It certainly discourages players from taking a single Psyker. It also makes playing against a Triple Keeper list manageable.
We'll see what (and when) the CA21 Mission Pack brings. I certainly hope that Secondaries stay an integral part of the game.
The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.
I found the marine/custodies player!
Really though - much like Yukoshiro, I had some issues with the secondaries early on (and also with the fairly obvious first turn advantage) and we see the issues playing out. A big part of the problem is that if you play an army like marines or custodies, they’re great. Makes sense that you would see no issues. If you play Tsons, Tau, or GSC it feels like whomever designed the secondaries had a personal grudge against you! Abhor the witch and assassinate in combination with how Look Out Sir now works, makes Tsons really difficult to use without giving up at least 16 almost every time, and there are far too many examples of codexes that can easily be built to give up hardly any secondaries while other books just have to live with the fact that yeah - your stuff was pretty much targeted here and there’s nothing you can do about it. Hopefully you go first?
As far as the codexes go - no. I don’t see them helping this. We know now that “perform an action while shooting” is going to be the new rule everyone gets in order to ignore the “actions” rule, but we aren’t going to get anything to fix the issues that exist here.
In particular, there needs to be at least one secondary that targets elite infantry lists. I don’t see it happening, but that alone would go a long way towards smoothing some things out.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
Except even on horde/elite there's variance.sure you can go custodians for your elite.then they get nerfed and it's heavy intercessor spam. Then switch to tyranid warriors etc.
Unless you buy everythng gw always finds way to forcefeed new sales.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
The 'anti-horde' secondary is really quite bad, even against a dedicated horde opponent. You need to kill a hundred fifty models to max it out. Most pure horde ork lists are only like 130-ish atm.
Were armies with Psyker units and with lots of small vehicles really that overpowering in 8th that GW decided to murderize them in 9th's mission structure? or is it more likely that the killer Character+Psyker combo objective was just not particularly well thought out?
Were armies with Psyker units and with lots of small vehicles really that overpowering in 8th that GW decided to murderize them in 9th's mission structure? or is it more likely that the killer Character+Psyker combo objective was just not particularly well thought out?
I think the small vehicle thing is GW over-reacting to things like Razorback spam while also not at all understanding what actually made that list dangerous (because it WASN’T the Razorbacks), but the psychic thing? I don’t think they thought that through at all. Looking at the rules for a lot of this, you would think Tsons were the absolute most devastating army of all time in 8th because 9th has hit them with a nerf bat so hard they are just a stone’s throw away from being unplayable (unless you build for total cheese aka Lannigan and his “Tsons” list with almost no Tsons), but they aren’t the only army hurting in this regard. Even with the play testing, so much about this edition just isn’t working. It’s almost the ultimate “haves and have nots” edition so far. Hopefully the missions get a proper overhaul at the next chapter approved. I don’t actually think it would take much to fix them, but they do need fixing.
I don't think there's any way you can argue they didn't intentionally not make a kill secondary for elite multi-wound infantry/bikers because they wanted to promote that archetype. It is such a glaring omission, and there is no way they didn't realize what they were doing, because it exists in ITC, and it is 100% obvious that the system took ITC as its base. When you combine it with the fact that most of the Indomitus releases were elite infantry and/or bikers , it can't be a coincidence. People tend to overstate the degree to which GW deliberately shuffles the pack to get people buying different models, but in this case it's absolutely fair to say they put their thumb on the scale to favor the new releases.
Stuff like Abhor strikes me as more incompetence than evil plan, though. I doubt they actually thought psykers needed a big nerf. They just decided it would be "cool" to have psychic secondaries, and then someone was like "but what about non-psychic races?" and then they threw it in without really thinking about it.
Were armies with Psyker units and with lots of small vehicles really that overpowering in 8th that GW decided to murderize them in 9th's mission structure? or is it more likely that the killer Character+Psyker combo objective was just not particularly well thought out?
It is more like GW "forgot" that they have two armies where the majority of units are psykers. And the whole psychic objective things was writen down by one of those narrative folks, that like to do some forging and who write the odd books for some armies in AoS.
There's definitely some issues with secondaries. Honestly my only real complaint is that some armies can easily build to deny them, while others cannot function without giving up major secondaries. It's like GW learned nothing from the lessons ITC learned, when the testing group is a bunch of ITC regulars. It just punishes certain armies for no reason. IG for example isn't terrible as far as units go, we weren't doing that bad tail end of 8th, even if you ignore Vigilus. But when we came to 8th, we give up tons of secondaries but really struggle to score against the most common armies out there. The opponent can kill 200 pts of characters and max points on my army but I can kill a single character worth 200pts in the enemy army and only get 3.
I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to do math. Killpoints have been terrible ever since implemented. Kill secondaries need to be calculated on value lost, not units. It makes no sense that an IG company commander worth 35pts gives up the same points Ghazgkull does at 300pts. You wouldnt look at a battle in the books and say "it's ok guys, our chapter master died but we killed two guard platoon commanders and a tech priest engineer, we definitely came out ahead!"
"But math is hard, I can't possibly add up the points of all the units I've lost!"
You're joking right? Almost everyone carries a calculator in their pocket called a phone and even if you didn't, it takes 30 seconds to pull up your list, and scribble some napkin math in the margins. Kill secondaries need to be calculated on the points worth of unit destroyed, or else were going to continue to punish non elite armies that are already disadvantaged due to how 9th works.
Unless the entire of 9th was written in that small window between the Castellan nerf and Marines 2.0, I'm not really sure how it can be seen as a "reaction to hordes."
As is usually the case with GW, I think some designers had a plan, and others had "this sounds cool do it lol". So the relative power of objectives - in terms of ease of maxing them out - are all over the place.
This is unfortunately something that is almost certainly going to get worse as every faction acquires 3 extra secondary objectives. Some of which are good, some of which are so awful they will never see the light of day.
I guess CA may pick up the skewed ones - but I'm not sure I'd trust GW to cope with this ever evolving mess.
Well the reaction to GW fixing of marines, and the horde problem was a radical points drop and influx of rules for 2.0 marines, which kind of a changed marines from an elite army, or an army that should have been kind of a elite, in to a swarm of infantry.
What did the marines list run back in the end of 8th, 60 or so, intercessors and other units. With 2 wounds each that is a bit like playing with 120 wounds worth of models.
Tyel wrote: Unless the entire of 9th was written in that small window between the Castellan nerf and Marines 2.0, I'm not really sure how it can be seen as a "reaction to hordes."
As is usually the case with GW, I think some designers had a plan, and others had "this sounds cool do it lol". So the relative power of objectives - in terms of ease of maxing them out - are all over the place.
This is unfortunately something that is almost certainly going to get worse as every faction acquires 3 extra secondary objectives. Some of which are good, some of which are so awful they will never see the light of day.
I guess CA may pick up the skewed ones - but I'm not sure I'd trust GW to cope with this ever evolving mess.
Honestly from my perspective - those secondaries were written with Marines in mind.
Racerguy180 wrote: Anything more than mission specific objectives is a stupid mechanic.
Secondaries need to be removed from the game like a tumor, else they grow and grow.
Disagree. I've really enjoyed the Secondaries, whether its tourney play or Matched Play. They give you different paths to victory, adding more variety to the gaming experience. They allow you to salvage something from a game you are otherwise getting smoked on. They can also add an narrative aspect. A few weeks ago I took an Inquisitor with an Astra Militarum force. Facing Harlies I knew I was in for an uphill struggle, so I took Psychic Ritual for a Secondary - the Inquisitor was trying to seal a portal to the Slaneesh (and unintentionally working at cross-purposes to the Harlies). It made the game more fun for me and added a narrative twist.
Mezmorki wrote:We just stopped using the secondary objectives entirely, with the exception of the mission specific secondary that everyone automatically has. In fact, we made the points for the 'primary' objective locations gradually ramp up as well, so the mission specific secondary has a bigger impact on the score. Works better.
Kind of punishing for some armies that already can't really win; like Knights and the like. I guess it's an interesting game mode but takes a lot of the overall play away in that you can't alter your game against opponents by choosing different secondaries. Makes it more like early 8th Edition which isn't terible but still not a fan.
Tycho wrote:
The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.
I found the marine/custodies player!
Really though - much like Yukoshiro, I had some issues with the secondaries early on (and also with the fairly obvious first turn advantage) and we see the issues playing out. A big part of the problem is that if you play an army like marines or custodies, they’re great. Makes sense that you would see no issues. If you play Tsons, Tau, or GSC it feels like whomever designed the secondaries had a personal grudge against you! Abhor the witch and assassinate in combination with how Look Out Sir now works, makes Tsons really difficult to use without giving up at least 16 almost every time, and there are far too many examples of codexes that can easily be built to give up hardly any secondaries while other books just have to live with the fact that yeah - your stuff was pretty much targeted here and there’s nothing you can do about it. Hopefully you go first?
As far as the codexes go - no. I don’t see them helping this. We know now that “perform an action while shooting” is going to be the new rule everyone gets in order to ignore the “actions” rule, but we aren’t going to get anything to fix the issues that exist here.
In particular, there needs to be at least one secondary that targets elite infantry lists. I don’t see it happening, but that alone would go a long way towards smoothing some things out.
Ork player actually.
MSU Deffskullz; thus I "give up" a ton of stuff easily. Hasn't been a problem for me ever.
Elite armies have tons of drawbacks. They give up board control which, in general, loses them the game automatically. For an extreme example; Knights should never be able to win. They can't hold objectives so any army that is built to play objectives will always beat knights. Yet if you're elite and have just enough to squeak by then Knights will stomp you everytime since every loss keeps you from holding the board by a much large degree than a larger MSU army...which you say is hindered heavily under the new system.
That said; I already agreed the Secondary Objectives could use some refinement. A "gang busters" option would be great: For every unit of 2+ wound models killed you score 2-3 points...for example. This would "punish" marine players for spamming Combat Squad units and give them more incentive to take larger marine squads. Maybe add the requiremnt of 3+ armor save as well so that some other armies' don't get hurt by it...though not sure that's necessary at all.
The biggest change has to be hard-locking the secondary types more; or (and probably the better option) leaving them alone and adding the rule: "You may never apply destroyed units and/or models to two different objectives." Like ITC had. This would stop Grind and Bring-Down from stacking for instance. As well as assassinating psychers in a Grey Knight or Tsons army.
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Karol wrote: Well the reaction to GW fixing of marines, and the horde problem was a radical points drop and influx of rules for 2.0 marines, which kind of a changed marines from an elite army, or an army that should have been kind of a elite, in to a swarm of infantry.
What did the marines list run back in the end of 8th, 60 or so, intercessors and other units. With 2 wounds each that is a bit like playing with 120 wounds worth of models.
Who did that (60 Intercessors)? I mean I did...but I'm a weirdo and run bonkers stuff...The biggest Investment i've seen is 30 in those goofy Iron Hands tank bomb lists. Even in 8th points that was over half your points.
Karol wrote: Well the reaction to GW fixing of marines, and the horde problem was a radical points drop and influx of rules for 2.0 marines, which kind of a changed marines from an elite army, or an army that should have been kind of a elite, in to a swarm of infantry.
What did the marines list run back in the end of 8th, 60 or so, intercessors and other units. With 2 wounds each that is a bit like playing with 120 wounds worth of models.
Who did that (60 Intercessors)? I mean I did...but I'm a weirdo and run bonkers stuff...The biggest Investment i've seen is 30 in those goofy Iron Hands tank bomb lists. Even in 8th points that was over half your points.
I ran an all infantry list for my only ITC game, but that mostly because I knew I would have to park a long ways from the FLGS and didn't want to have to carry two cases.
Spoiler:
It wasn't anywhere close to 60 dudes though. The spoiler has most of my army while I Infiltrated 2 5 man squads of Infiltrators and place two 6 man squads of Reivers in Deep Strike. It looks like I had something like 15 or 20 Intercessors from the photo. What I can remember about that game, from more than a year ago, was it didn't go well for me. I was playing an armored/artillery guard list that tore me a new one.
IDK, I've said in other threads that playing Guard feels like I am playing a different game from an opponent and not for the better this edition. Because of difficulties with secondary's I've been pigeon holed into playing increasingly more infantry to the near point where that is all I take beyond the Valk/ Scion drop and some Bullgryns. Even then it feels like hard mode and I'm not sure how you could fix it even with a new Codex.
Karol wrote: Well the reaction to GW fixing of marines, and the horde problem was a radical points drop and influx of rules for 2.0 marines, which kind of a changed marines from an elite army, or an army that should have been kind of a elite, in to a swarm of infantry.
What did the marines list run back in the end of 8th, 60 or so, intercessors and other units. With 2 wounds each that is a bit like playing with 120 wounds worth of models.
Who did that (60 Intercessors)? I mean I did...but I'm a weirdo and run bonkers stuff...The biggest Investment i've seen is 30 in those goofy Iron Hands tank bomb lists. Even in 8th points that was over half your points.
I ran an all infantry list for my only ITC game, but that mostly because I knew I would have to park a long ways from the FLGS and didn't want to have to carry two cases.
Spoiler:
It wasn't anywhere close to 60 dudes though. The spoiler has most of my army while I Infiltrated 2 5 man squads of Infiltrators and place two 6 man squads of Reivers in Deep Strike. It looks like I had something like 15 or 20 Intercessors from the photo. What I can remember about that game, from more than a year ago, was it didn't go well for me. I was playing an armored/artillery guard list that tore me a new one.
Haha...nice.
I went out of my way to make all infantry. Like I said; Triple Battalion in 8th for those Juicy CP (which I promptly spent all of before the game). This afforded me 86 Marines IIRC. 6 were characters. The torrent of bolter-fire was absurd. I only lost one game, my first, in an ITC mockup against Morty before I had had any experience with it. I have yet to field it in 9th. I drop some models but am bolstered with Heavy Intercessors and Blade Guard Vets...but still rock nothing but Power Armor: 45 2w models (4 With Storm Shields), 15 3w (10 T5 and 5 SSs), and 5 Characters.
I give up Assassinate with 5 characters. I actually have enough MSU style to give up Grind them Down to a fair few opponents. I've no (like all marine armies) ability to play Banners or much other action things. I do have more than most to hold objectives and to go for Domination or Engage (though I'll never max it). I'd probably be better taking Linebreaker and rush for turn 2 Charges into their deployment.
Power Armor armies have, contrary to most whingers on this thread, have tons of issues scoring in 9th. There's some outliers in build and chapter to boost you with lots of speed; but that also can hinder you so it's not a strict advantage. If you go TOO far too fast in power armor you're liable to slingshot other armies farther into your field and it won't be a good day for you. I've done this to quite a few people and they thing they're doing well until I capitalize on their little tactic that was ill concieved.
Again. 9th Scoring is great. Has some issues that will be ironed out. I'm just glad ITC jumped on GW's balls for this so we're not using their crap scoring anymore.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....
If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.
if you're selling an army that's on the out you're proably getting pennies on the dollar dude. how much do you think a 2000 point grey knight army was going for in 7th or 8th edition? (just for example)
Who did that (60 Intercessors)? I mean I did...but I'm a weirdo and run bonkers stuff...The biggest Investment i've seen is 30 in those goofy Iron Hands tank bomb lists. Even in 8th points that was over half your points.
they were popular here, both the IF and IH lists spamed the heck of interecessors, combined with dreadnoughts. The RG lists played localy were running a ton of infantry too, although in their case the on consisted of large units of teleporting centurions poping up at opponents door turn 1.
Was not a fun time for people that tried to matched that with same cost models with half the wounds, Or same number of wounds, but much lower stats and rules base.
@Bitharne, the problem is not that your list gives up secondaries, but that most marine lists, and I'd wager all competitive ones, give up almost no secondaries. You can take a pretty goofy army and do well with it. Meanwhile with my guard I need to run the absolute try hardest list I can to break even with you and I'll still give you max secondaries.
The problem is you are not given any disadvantages in secondaries for how you build your army, but I am. Yeah you've got 5 characters, but those are marines. One of those guys is easily worth 2-3 of mine in points, both in their abilities and fighting ability. Yet when I kill your character, it's worth no more than mine. That's the issue here. A wet behind the ears guard platoon commander at 25pts has no business giving up as much VP as a Chapter Master, I don't care what anyone says.
What's even more insulting, my Tank Commanders cost the same as your marine characters, yet they give up a guaranteed 7pts depending on secondaries. And tank commanders are key units in my codex that I have to take if I want Russe's to work. I'm being punished for taking a unit I'm supposed to have. And unlike a librarian that can give up 8pts, you know you'll max the objectives that make a tank commander 7 points. If you take the combo to squeeze 8 out of a librarian you're not maxing it because most space marine lists are never going to have 3 pyskers
I really enjoyed the Maelstrom scoring cards. You could use them in all sorts of ways, from random to planned decks, to choosing specific types of objectives.
Power Armor armies have, contrary to most whingers on this thread, have tons of issues scoring in 9th. There's some outliers in build and chapter to boost you with lots of speed; but that also can hinder you so it's not a strict advantage. If you go TOO far too fast in power armor you're liable to slingshot other armies farther into your field and it won't be a good day for you. I've done this to quite a few people and they thing they're doing well until I capitalize on their little tactic that was ill concieved.
What? No. Loyalist Power Armor armies score fairly easily. Hell, even CSM can score somewhat well on primaries.
You don't even have to take my word for it - just look at loyalist win rates. lol
Plus, not all Power Armor armies are equal. Tsons again are a good example here. Who cares if you have Tzangors for banner raising when you have somewhat squishy characters that are A. necessary for your army to function, B. difficult to protect, and C. will give up not just ONE, but TWO secondaries each time they die. Since they're all Psykers, a good player is going to take both Abhor the Witch AND Assassinate.
Marines are in a crazy good spot this edition. I don't understand what you're talking about with "going too far too fast" w/power armor? What games are you playing that this becomes a thing? 90% of the action happens at mid field where marines excel. Tough enough to kepp the secondaries they take, shooty enough to kill you off of the ones they can't get to, and they give up almost no secondaries what-so-ever, so you can't really make up ground in that way. It's even worse now that they have a codex with the "shoot while performing an action" strat. They def. got toned down a good bit and I'm happy they didn't get nerfed into oblivion, but I'm not sure where you're coming from with these points.
Who did that (60 Intercessors)? I mean I did...but I'm a weirdo and run bonkers stuff...The biggest Investment i've seen is 30 in those goofy Iron Hands tank bomb lists. Even in 8th points that was over half your points.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.
I assure you, sir, that no armies made of piles of gold, jewels, fine art and artifacts were ruling 8th edition, despite the dragons they had as HS or FA.
Now, horde armies may have been an issue, but hoards weren't.
MrMoustaffa wrote: @Bitharne, the problem is not that your list gives up secondaries, but that most marine lists, and I'd wager all competitive ones, give up almost no secondaries. You can take a pretty goofy army and do well with it. Meanwhile with my guard I need to run the absolute try hardest list I can to break even with you and I'll still give you max secondaries.
The problem is you are not given any disadvantages in secondaries for how you build your army, but I am. Yeah you've got 5 characters, but those are marines. One of those guys is easily worth 2-3 of mine in points, both in their abilities and fighting ability. Yet when I kill your character, it's worth no more than mine. That's the issue here. A wet behind the ears guard platoon commander at 25pts has no business giving up as much VP as a Chapter Master, I don't care what anyone says.
What's even more insulting, my Tank Commanders cost the same as your marine characters, yet they give up a guaranteed 7pts depending on secondaries. And tank commanders are key units in my codex that I have to take if I want Russe's to work. I'm being punished for taking a unit I'm supposed to have. And unlike a librarian that can give up 8pts, you know you'll max the objectives that make a tank commander 7 points. If you take the combo to squeeze 8 out of a librarian you're not maxing it because most space marine lists are never going to have 3 pyskers
How do you get a TC to be worth 7? Character Killing and Vehicle Killing are exclusive secondaries. The entire reason Abhor+Assassinate is such a problem is that Abhor is (stupidly) in the "Warpcraft" category which means you can take it at the same time as you take Assassinate.
Abhor+Assassinate is such a problem is that Abhor is (stupidly) in the "Warpcraft" category which means you can take it at the same time as you take Assassinate.
Exactly, and it's not the only example of that. There are a few that stack like this that shouldn't. At the very least, Assassinate should say something like "Cannot be taken with Abhor the Witch". Cleaning up some of the over-lap would really help a lot of the issues. We would still need to address the fact that elite armies are still essentially "secondary immune", but at least some of the other armies wouldn't be getting penalized simply for existing.
Vehicles are particularly interesting because when the first 9th info was starting to come out basically everyone was calling this edition a Vehicle-heavy edition. Shooting into combat? Moving and firing without penalty? Guaranteed numbers of shots vs horde units? Sounds good, right?
But then the actual realities of playing and scoring in-game are very unhelpful to Vehicles and monsters and the like.* Which, honestly, feels like intended design. With the Core keyword stuff too I absolutely think making units like that a lot better at killing stuff and giving them more functionality while reigning in their ability to play the mission well and also giving up kill points was 100% intended. However there still exist two problems with that:
1) Vehicles are still far too easy to kill because average lethality in the game is still far too high (which is primarily a Marine issue and their prevalence skews the numbers here).
2) And related to that; most vehicles and monsters are massively overpriced, especially for how fragile they can be. And this overpricing is likely related to the above changes that 9th edition made. They almost all suffer a giant extra points tax for changed core rules that are not good enough to justify the expense.
While removing Bring it Down might encourage more vehicle use, at the end of the day why bring a giant target along that can easily get one-shot for little effort by units that cost less?
*This is similar to how people exclaimed that Close Combat was dead pre-release. Then you played one or two games of 9th and you realised this is the most combat-encouraged edition of the game since early 3rd Edition.
Bitharne wrote: Elite armies have tons of drawbacks. They give up board control which, in general, loses them the game automatically. For an extreme example; Knights should never be able to win. They can't hold objectives so any army that is built to play objectives will always beat knights. Yet if you're elite and have just enough to squeak by then Knights will stomp you everytime since every loss keeps you from holding the board by a much large degree than a larger MSU army...which you say is hindered heavily under the new system.
This hasn't been my experience.
For starters, board control isn't critical to primaries when there are only three midfield objectives on the board. You probably won't be able to claim board-control-focused secondaries, but if there's one thing obsec elite troops are good at, it's hunkering down on an objective and just not shifting.
Taking three sizable units of, say, Plague Marines isn't 'just enough to squeak by'; it's better objective-holding than nine squads of Guardsmen. They just don't go anywhere, you can't assault them off of an objective, and anyone with the numbers to beat them on obsec lacks the durability to outlast them. In short, it's not the number of models or number of units that matters, it's durability for the points (particularly in melee) and force concentration, both of which generally favor elites in 9th.
Struggling against Knights has very little to do with the army archetype and a lot more to do with the fact that expensive, tough, multi-wound, high-save infantry are exactly what strong, multi-damage, high-AP Knights eat for lunch.
Some marines dreads love the new vehicle rules. unloading with your weapons in melee, greater resiliance thanks to rules stacking and an always on -1D, big enough stats to not just killed with regular weapons on avarge.
Who at the start of 8th would have thought that primaris dreads are going to be considered good, specialy the plasma version.
Bosskelot wrote: But then the actual realities of playing and scoring in-game are very unhelpful to Vehicles and monsters and the like.*
Leaving durability and scoring aside, the #1 thing that has killed vehicles and monsters for me in 9th has been that this is a terrain-focused edition in which vehicles and monsters cannot interact with terrain at all. Your board is supposed to have a significant amount of LOS-blocking ruins/woods/jungle and your vehicles simply can't enter it. With how big 40K vehicles and monsters are relative to the board, it's frustrating enough to set up the board such that they can fit between terrain features, let alone such that they can actually move around the board and do anything useful.
Designing your list to avoid "giving up" Secondaries is a valid strategy, but at the end of the day if you need five big vehicles or monsters to make your list work then so be it. I find you also need to think about how your list is going to score Secondaries that are not based on killing. You might face an opponent who does not give up many by design, or you might be in a 1000 or 1500 point game where there might not be many vehicles/monsters etc. There is no scaling for the Secondaries, so if your opponent in a 1000 point game has thought through during list design how to score Engage on All Fronts each turn and Deploy Scramblers and you've only thought about killing then you might find yourself far behind on Secondaries. I like that.
Designing your list to avoid "giving up" Secondaries is a valid strategy, but at the end of the day if you need five big vehicles or monsters to make your list work then so be it. I find you also need to think about how your list is going to score Secondaries that are not based on killing. You might face an opponent who does not give up many by design, or you might be in a 1000 or 1500 point game where there might not be many vehicles/monsters etc. There is no scaling for the Secondaries, so if your opponent in a 1000 point game has thought through during list design how to score Engage on All Fronts each turn and Deploy Scramblers and you've only thought about killing then you might find yourself far behind on Secondaries. I like that.
The problem though, is that some armies (like Tsons for example) almost auto-give certain secondaries pretty easily and there's nothing the player can really do about it. Great - I'll use my big Rubric blob to Raise Banners. So ... that's 1 point. Meanwhile, every time one of my sorcerers bites it, that's 8 points ...
With the exception of a few of the mission specific secondaries, a lot of the non-killing secondaries really don't stack up well, so if your army gives up some of the killing secondaries, it almost doesn't matter what you pick for your secondaries as you're simply going to be behind on them regardless.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of the armies that don't really give up secondaries also tend to be ideally suited for the easier non-killing secondaries like Engage and it just snowballs.
This hasn't been my experience.
For starters, board control isn't critical to primaries when there are only three midfield objectives on the board. You probably won't be able to claim board-control-focused secondaries, but if there's one thing obsec elite troops are good at, it's hunkering down on an objective and just not shifting.
Taking three sizable units of, say, Plague Marines isn't 'just enough to squeak by'; it's better objective-holding than nine squads of Guardsmen. They just don't go anywhere, you can't assault them off of an objective, and anyone with the numbers to beat them on obsec lacks the durability to outlast them. In short, it's not the number of models or number of units that matters, it's durability for the points (particularly in melee) and force concentration, both of which generally favor elites in 9th.
Struggling against Knights has very little to do with the army archetype and a lot more to do with the fact that expensive, tough, multi-wound, high-save infantry are exactly what strong, multi-damage, high-AP Knights eat for lunch.
It really hasn't been anyone's experience. A lot of Bitharne's posts feel less like posts based on experience and having followed "the scene" for a bit and more like someone who's done a ton of theory hammer and drawn the wrong conclusions.
It really hasn't been anyone's experience. A lot of Bitharne's posts feel less like posts based on experience and having followed "the scene" for a bit and more like someone who's done a ton of theory hammer and drawn the wrong conclusions.
Yeah, anyone who has played 9th or just 40k recently in general will know that an "Elite" army like Marines do absolutely not give up board control in any real sense.
The only elite army you can say does is something like Custodes or Knights and even Custodes can still play the Primary game very well which is itself a major form of board control.
Honestly, with the nerfs to coherency and how ridiculously cheap Space Marines can get effective small units for, their board control is *better* than a lot of horde armies.
Things have changed pretty dramatically from back in 8th where 10 guardsmen could string out across 28 inches of board space.
I get the impression Bitharne is still trying to play an Iron Hands 8th edition list or something like that and that's what is driving these astoundingly wrong statements.
1) Vehicles are still far too easy to kill because average lethality in the game is still far too high (which is primarily a Marine issue and their prevalence skews the numbers here).
This isn't just a marines problem tbh, everything is hyper-deadly now. Especially units that got caught up in the multi-melta change. A unit of Rets demolishes a tank nearly as efficiently as a unit of eradicators.
The problem is the race to the bottom we experienced all throughout 8th is happening again in 9th - everything is so fething deadly that there's no point in fielding anything that's not a glorified warm body or one of the hyper-efficient killer units. Watching an army build EVERYTHING into absurd levels of crazy durability and then seeing it get tabled turn 4 instead of turn 3 is incredibly disheartening and makes it seem like there just isn't an easy solution at this point, it's all just hosed. too many numbers in too many books are too high and stack with too many layers of abilities.
The problem is the race to the bottom we experienced all throughout 8th is happening again in 9th - everything is so fething deadly that there's no point in fielding anything that's not a glorified warm body or one of the hyper-efficient killer units. Watching an army build EVERYTHING into absurd levels of crazy durability and then seeing it get tabled turn 4 instead of turn 3 is incredibly disheartening and makes it seem like there just isn't an easy solution at this point, it's all just hosed. too many numbers in too many books are too high and stack with too many layers of abilities.
It's funny - I think you were in the thread a few months back (right after they started announcing that marines were getting more wounds) where I made the joke that another rules writer in a completely different part of the rules dungeon was going to see that and think "I better raise the damage value on some of these weapons to compensate!" .... and ... here we are. That's EXACTLY what happened ...
As far as how this affects the secondaries - I like the idea of balancing the kill secondaries better. Killing a basic IG officer, vs a sorcerer w/a 4++ and -1 to hit really shouldn't both net the same amount of points. That's a pretty fair statement. At the same time, you shouldn't be able to score two different secondaries at the same time off of killing that one sorcerer. I also think that, killing being so easy in this edition, the kill secondaries should be worth fewer points in general, and things like deploy scramblers and raise the banners should probably be worth a little more. Really - any secondary where you have opportunity cost involved should be worth more than a secondary where it's basically "I shoot my anti-tank weapon at a tank" ...
I agree, but it's what happens when you have a 5-turn game based primarily on scoring fixed-placement objectives with limited space. You need to be able to delete anything in the game in a round of combat or shooting, or else the game just becomes about sitting on objectives with more bodies than your opponent until the game ends.
They've kind-of packed themselves into a corner on this one. The same thing happens in AOS, for example - even worse, actually, since in AOS terrain is pretty much irrelevant, so you frequently see armies effectively tabled by the end of T2.
I agree, but it's what happens when you have a 5-turn game based primarily on scoring fixed-placement objectives with limited space. You need to be able to delete anything in the game in a round of combat or shooting, or else the game just becomes about sitting on objectives with more bodies than your opponent until the game ends.
True, but that's exactly what the secondaries are supposed to help offset imo.
Another way to deal with it besides lethality might be to require a clearer numerical advantage to hold objectives, and therefore generate more ties. It seems dubious both conceptually and from a gameplay point of view to have 9 guardsmen "holding" an objective against 8 cultists, or vice versa.
Like consider if you changed the holding rules to: (1) to hold an objective, you need to have double or more the amount of models as your opponent; (2) ob-sec counts double; and (3) you can never control an objective if your opponent has 5 or more models on it (with ob-sec counting double again), no matter how many you have. Probably put scoring back to the end of each player's turn, too, so that you can get control by having a good round of combat to clear them out, even if they'll come back next turn and do the same to you potentially.
I think that would produce a game where you could tone down the lethality, because the early game would be dominated by a lot of inconclusive scrums where neither player gets a clear advantage. So the strategy would then come down to how you commit your forces to each objective, because the winner is going to be the one who commits correctly and wears down the opponent enough over the course of the game to get control of enough objectives before the end of the game to win. Horde armies can deny points by just piling bodies on, but they aren't going to get any points by doing that either as long as the opponent also pushes bodies on, so the fact that you can't delete a whole army in 1-2 turns of shooting doesn't actually mean they win the game by default.
I have played in three local tournaments since 9th dropped (although we just went into a Provincial lockdown so its back to paint mode.) I am not seeing many tablings and I can't think of any during Turn 1 or 2. We did have a 1000 point event where you could get crippled since you don't have very much. I have certainly used Kill-based Secondaries to get ahead, but I have also used Action/board presences ones as well. You need to be flexible.
With the kill-based Secondaries, they seemed designed to reign-in lists that use more than three of a character, large vehicle or monster. I get that not all characters are created equal, but you take them in your list for a reason. Those cheap AM characters are giving you Orders; those various Ork characters are giving you various buffs. Psychic-based lists do suffer under Abhor the Witch, but I have seen Psychic Ritual successfully executed by players who commit to it. The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.
As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.
I have played in three local tournaments since 9th dropped (although we just went into a Provincial lockdown so its back to paint mode.) I am not seeing many tablings and I can't think of any during Turn 1 or 2. We did have a 1000 point event where you could get crippled since you don't have very much. I have certainly used Kill-based Secondaries to get ahead, but I have also used Action/board presences ones as well. You need to be flexible.
Right. The problem with responses like this is that they essentially amount to "get guud", "uSe bEtTUR taktiks", etc etc, while ignoring the fact that the secondaries, as they currently exist, are causing a swath of armies to essentially come into every single game behind on points from the jump because there's almost nothing they can do to prevent giving up max secondaries. Meanwhile, a lot of those same armies will struggle to achieve the higher scoring secondaries (which, again, tend to be the killing ones), and you end up having to take something that's not going to net you the amount of points you'll need because it's really all your army can manage. Meanwhile, other armies can pretty much deny nearly all the significant secondaries while also scoring max against you. It shouldn't be this way, and saying "You need to be flexible" is ignoring a good bit of the problems imo.
Also - on the tablings - in our area we've seen a fair bit. Not as many as you would have seen in 8th, but still a good bit. What's even more common though, is a game that continues to the end even though it was already effectively over after 3.
With the kill-based Secondaries, they seemed designed to reign-in lists that use more than three of a character, large vehicle or monster. I get that not all characters are created equal, but you take them in your list for a reason. Those cheap AM characters are giving you Orders; those various Ork characters are giving you various buffs. Psychic-based lists do suffer under Abhor the Witch, but I have seen Psychic Ritual successfully executed by players who commit to it. The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.
You can't possibly tell me you think that cheap Ork character (most of whom do very little of value) should be counted the same as a Space Marine Captain. This is where things like Assassinate fall down. There needs to be a sliding scale to account for the fact that basic Ork Warboss ≠ Space Marine Captain, and you should definitely not be able to double up on anything (as in the example of dropping an exalted sorcerer and getting points for abhor and assassinate). Let's also not forget that they nerfed Smite pretty hard for the Tsons so I don't think saying "it's because mortal wounds" is really valid.
As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.
Keep the utterly flawed secondaries that nerf multiple entire codexes just because you're salty about a single list type? What happened to "you have to be flexible"?
The truth of the matter is tabling's happen quite frequently when armies are forced to actually interact. It depends on dice rolls for sure but pretty much no army can take 3-4 rounds of sustained damage.
If one army has a good turn 1 in damage and the other doesn't return a lot - that game will likely be a table. Even if both armies are rolling reasonably average if there is consistent contact there is going to be little to know modles left at the end of turn 4-5.
My last 3 games with crons
Tabled a melee cron army - something like 75- 60
Won a game by 2 points where I only had 3 units left (5 tomb blades a cyptec and a triarch stalker)
Tabled an Imperial Gaurd army (was a majority mech list).
Kill secondaries make no sense in a game this brutal. The secondaries don't make me make any choices ether. I can pretty much execute my battle plan and not even think about the secondaries and then magically I max them out...
I'm still putting thoughts together for a "ProHammer-ized" version of 9th , and this thread has given me lots to think about in terms of the overall balance and pacing of the game.
IMHO, the victory system used in a game (any game) is one of the most important things to get right because it dictates everything else (at least when you're viewing things through a competitive lens). The victory conditions and scoring criteria need to support and incentivize the kind of gameplay that is desired.
I think, in many ways, 40k is struggling to find it's purpose and the kind of gameplay it wants to emphasize. Right now, given the importance of secondary objectives and the lethality overall, the game feels more about list building and countering your opponent before anyone has even placed a model on the table.
Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.
FWIW, I think one could start with just the primary objective plus require the scenario/mission specific secondary to be used. Beyond that, maybe you could have a bonus secondary to choose. This bonus would be based on performing some feat intrinsic to your army, rather than being contingent on some element in your opponent's list.
In 40K, the principal strategic fulcrum is routinely between whether or not you optimize destroying your opponent versus pursuing a strategic objective. That's the crux of the gameplay, and that should be reinforced and better balanced.
The companion to all of the above, is that in order for the the strategic choice you make to be "tactically interesting" in its execution, the system must provide multiple choices and means of accomplishing whatever strategic moves you design. Right now, the game is too one-dimensional in this regard - mostly because it's too lethal. It's hard to take risks, either big or small, when failure is outright destruction. Units not being durable enough means that there is no back and forth to movement or board position. The whole game becomes whether your strategy is "alpha-strike" to cripple the enemy right away, or "rush the objective" and get an insurmountable lead in points early on.
Anyway, I think the gameplay can be improved both both ends - that is from the victory conditions on one hand, and the detailed nuances of tactics and attack resolution on the other. The game needs to be less lethal, players need to have more tools and choices at their disposal, and the victory system better designed.
ProHammer (in my biased opinion) provides a blue print for how to get there. I don't think many of the ideas are fundamentally incompatible with 9th edition - but it does mean 9th edition will need to be more complex in some areas, and will likely take a bit longer to play. That's a fine trade-off IMHO.
TangoTwoBravo wrote: The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.
As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.
Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.
Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.
The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.
Mezmorki wrote: I'm still putting thoughts together for a "ProHammer-ized" version of 9th , and this thread has given me lots to think about in terms of the overall balance and pacing of the game.
IMHO, the victory system used in a game (any game) is one of the most important things to get right because it dictates everything else (at least when you're viewing things through a competitive lens). The victory conditions and scoring criteria need to support and incentivize the kind of gameplay that is desired.
I think, in many ways, 40k is struggling to find it's purpose and the kind of gameplay it wants to emphasize. Right now, given the importance of secondary objectives and the lethality overall, the game feels more about list building and countering your opponent before anyone has even placed a model on the table.
Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.
FWIW, I think one could start with just the primary objective plus require the scenario/mission specific secondary to be used. Beyond that, maybe you could have a bonus secondary to choose. This bonus would be based on performing some feat intrinsic to your army, rather than being contingent on some element in your opponent's list.
In 40K, the principal strategic fulcrum is routinely between whether or not you optimize destroying your opponent versus pursuing a strategic objective. That's the crux of the gameplay, and that should be reinforced and better balanced.
The companion to all of the above, is that in order for the the strategic choice you make to be "tactically interesting" in its execution, the system must provide multiple choices and means of accomplishing whatever strategic moves you design. Right now, the game is too one-dimensional in this regard - mostly because it's too lethal. It's hard to take risks, either big or small, when failure is outright destruction. Units not being durable enough means that there is no back and forth to movement or board position. The whole game becomes whether your strategy is "alpha-strike" to cripple the enemy right away, or "rush the objective" and get an insurmountable lead in points early on.
Anyway, I think the gameplay can be improved both both ends - that is from the victory conditions on one hand, and the detailed nuances of tactics and attack resolution on the other. The game needs to be less lethal, players need to have more tools and choices at their disposal, and the victory system better designed.
ProHammer (in my biased opinion) provides a blue print for how to get there. I don't think many of the ideas are fundamentally incompatible with 9th edition - but it does mean 9th edition will need to be more complex in some areas, and will likely take a bit longer to play. That's a fine trade-off IMHO.
I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.
Also just a quality of life thing too...The command phase should just be changed to something called the abilies phase and occur at the end of the movement phase.
I am not telling you to get good. I am saying that I like that we need to be flexible in how we achieve victory through the Secondaries. Its OK if you don't like that, although I would find that to be an odd point of view. Do you only want one path to victory? If you don't care, why are you apparently upset about how Secondaries work?
Some armies are indeed struggling right now. The Secondaries can certainly work against Astra Militarum, but they have other things working against them. A gunline is not a path to victory. We'll see what their Codex brings. I don't think that the Tau struggles are due to the Kill Secondaries. I've said that I expect the Psychic Secondaries to get a rework. I'm not sure how that makes me salty?
I think for the first run of the Secondaries, GW did okay, but it's very clear that they need to be fixed up in the GT/CA 2021 pack.
The most serious issues IMO:
-Lack of Elite kill secondary. One of the main reasons armies like Space Marines can do so well right now, is there is often not a good choice of secondary selection against them. This needs to be fixed.
-Pyschic/Anti-psyker secondaries. These should just go away in my opinion. Getting an automatic 15 VP just because you are playing against Thousand Sons or Grey Knights is just bad design. The kill one is also much better than the psychic action one, further exacerbating this issue.
- Stacking secondaries. This can probably be fixed by tuning up and balancing the secondaries, but in cases where you can do stuff like stack assassinate and abhor the witch creates a pretty poor situation for some armies that can't really build their army well without running into these. Thousand Sons and Daemons hate this one quite a bit.
Those are my major grievances, but they also need to tune the ones that are currently available as well.
Again, I don't think this was a terrible first turn, besides the glaring omission of an anti-elite one, but I do expect better changes for the next mission pack.
EDIT: I should add that I'm not a big fan of codex secondaries. These should be removed in the GT2021 Matched play missions.
I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.
Agree with a lot of this. It's like I said earlier - you have one secondary that requires you to fight your way onto an objective, hold that objective, do NOTHING while on said objective and you get ... a point.... Meanwhile, in that same game - "Huuuurr Duuuurrr - I shot my anti tank gun at a tank - 5 points for me!"
I don't actually mind "killing" style secondaries, but in general, anything that requires a choice, anything that carries opportunity cost, should be pointed much higher than a thing you were going to do anyway.
I am not telling you to get good. I am saying that I like that we need to be flexible in how we achieve victory through the Secondaries. Its OK if you don't like that, although I would find that to be an odd point of view. Do you only want one path to victory? If you don't care, why are you apparently upset about how Secondaries work?
What you seem to be missing (or ignoring?) is the fact that there are too many armies who simply cannot win via secondaries. Not only that, but because of the inherent structure, will almost certainly auto-lose BECAUSE of the secondaries, and there's not a lot of play around that for a good chunk of those armies. Tau, Drukahri, CSM (to an admittedly lesser extent), GSC, Astra Militarum, Tsons, etc etc,. They are all severely penalized by the current cropping and the heck of it is - a new codex won't fix that.
Unless of course, Tsons get a codex with a wierd rule that says "Your sorcerers can only be counted for a single secondary each time they are killed", or Astra Militarum get something that says "Your opponent must drop two tanks to get credit for one kill on Bring it Down" etc etc. That's pretty silly too though, so I don't really see it happening. The issue is the current set of secondaries is practically tailor made for one grouping of armies, and becomes borderline exlusionary to the rest.
Some armies are indeed struggling right now. The Secondaries can certainly work against Astra Militarum, but they have other things working against them. A gunline is not a path to victory. We'll see what their Codex brings. I don't think that the Tau struggles are due to the Kill Secondaries. I've said that I expect the Psychic Secondaries to get a rework. I'm not sure how that makes me salty?
A gunline is not a path to victory?
How about the problem is that Astra Militarum is not a path to victory? They practically bleed secondary points. Badly. And not only is there nothing they can do about it - it's not going to change with their codex. Everything they bring is almost directly targeted by one or more of the secondaries. They practically give up max points simply by existing and that should not ever be. "Wait and see" doesn't work here either. Do we expect their tanks will magically become that much harder to kill and still be affordable? Will they suddenly become a more elite style army that doesn't hemorrhage points? No.
The only way to fix most of this is to address the inherent imbalance in the secondaries themselves. Also - the "salty" part was in reference to your comment about "Triple Keeper" lists. You're perfectly happy to nuke entire codexes via a poor grouping of secondaries just to reign in one list you apparently don't like. It's crazy people think like that. Just fix what's wrong with that list. Don't hammer everyone else ...
I think this is a great analysis. I disagree with your conclusion though - mainly because the game is not going to get less lethal - that would require 10th edition. With what we have we need new victory conditions which actually encourage interesting choices. Removal of all kill based/ opponent army comp based objectives should be flat out removed and replaced with feats on the table top. Bonus points for achieving hard to accomplish tasks...like reserving a few units until turn 3 or taking control of 3 contested objectives in a turn. Also - something needs to be done about when objectives are scored to conteract first turn advatnage. All socring should be done at the end of each battle round...not at the beginning of each player turn.
Also just a quality of life thing too...The command phase should just be changed to something called the abilies phase and occur at the end of the movement phase.
Thanks!
I'm working on a ProHammer-ized version of 9th edition in earnest. So at some point, if one is willing to use a homebrew ruleset (that is compatible and uses the current codexes mind you) they might be able to play with a ruleset that addresses the lethality question. I'm tinkering around with the wound chart and how saving throws work - which is the fussiest part. Other rules, like going back to limited split firing, shooting declaration, etc. eare easy changes to implement yet do a lot to tone things down.
As far as objectives, I've tested a game where the primary objective scores points equal to the current game turn as follows:
Turn 1: no primary objective scoring
Turn 2: 2 points per criteria met (10 max potential)
Turn 3: 3 points per criteria met (15 max potential)
Turn 4: 4 points per criteria met (20 max potential)
Turn 5: 5 points per criteria met (25 max potential)
Overall, there are 70 points up for grabs, instead of 100, and these more limited points are weighted towards the later turns.
Additionally, the mission specific secondary was always in effect for both players. The points for this secondary was NOT adjusted by turn nor capped at only 15 points over the course of the game. This means the secondary objectives take on a bit more importance relatively speaking. But IMHO that's a good thing as they are the thing that is most unique about each mission, and designing a balanced list that can do those secondary objectives, regardless of which one gets rolled, is important.
TangoTwoBravo wrote: The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.
As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.
Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.
Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.
The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.
You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.
You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite.
[beginsarcasm]Yeah - but those dudes with tripkeeps deserve it though right? Feth the fallout and the fact that there are like 5 codexes that may as well not even exist in this edition ... lol/jk[endsarcasm]
Joking aside Tangtwo makes a good point here. What SHOULD secondaries be designed to do?
If we want to try to use them to balance the game itself, what we currently have is pretty wildly incorrect. If we want to use them to try and balance the primaries, we probably just need the mission specific secondary and can ignore all the others ...
From a game design standpoint, what's the optimal use case for secondaries?
TangoTwoBravo wrote: The "giving away" of Secondaries should be judged against the dishing out of Mortal Wounds.
As long as we have Triple-Keeper lists running around we need the Secondaries to reign them in. Collateral damage I suppose. I figure that CA21 will make some changes to the Psychic ones. We might even see a shuffling of the Primaries.
Highlighted this bit because it shows a particularly mistaken trap people go down. Secondaries should not be used to balance armies. That's a terrible idea. If mortal wound spam is overpowered (it isn't, but let's indulge the assumption here for the sake of argument), the solution is to nerf mortal wound spam, not to add a secondary that punishes you for taking psykers. If triple keeper is overpowered, nerf that directly, don't create a secondary to punish it. Doing the latter "solves" the problem in the same way that hitting someone on the head with a hammer "solves" their back pain. In the end, you just end up with an even worse situation as you've introduced another variable to disrupt balance, and moreover one that hits way more than it needs to hit. Triple keeper may be able to survive even in an assassinate/abhor world because it's so powerful, but what about all the other variations on character psykers that aren't overpowered? You've just ground them into the ground for no reason, when you could have just balanced the problem unit directly.
Now secondaries that punish skew are fine in principle...but only if they actually punish skew. And the current ones don't. A balanced guard list is more punished by the kill secondaries than an extremely skew SM list that takes nothing but elite multi-wound infantry.
The secondaries just aren't fit for purpose right now. They don't do what they're supposed to, and they do all sorts of bad things they shouldn't.
You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.
Triple Keeper isn't really a skew list. Daemons tend to take multiple Greater Daemons because they fulfil multiple roles in the army.
You say its a trap to use Secondaries to balance armies but you agree that its OK to use Secondaries to punish skew? The point of punishing skew is balance - its not for spite. I regret turning this into a discussion of Triple Keepers, but that is a skew list.
Punishing skew isn't punishing armies, it's punishing particular choices within an army. And again, these secondaries don't actually punish skew. They punish arbitrary stuff. Take a whole army of 3+wound elite infantry? You give up nothing. Take a balanced, diverse Thousand Sons army? You give up 24 points on kill secondaries minimum, just for the faction you selected.
I'm not sure Triple Keeper even is a skew list - but let's accept that at face value. The point is that the secondaries don't punish just that - they also punish someone who takes a typical Tsons army with 3 psyker characters too. Is taking 3 psyker characters in a Tsons list skew? Of course it isn't.
The kill secondaries right now are just garbage. They punish arbitrary things, not skew.
And actually, the reason you punish skew is not so much for balance per se in the sense of "this thing is overpowered, this thing is underpowered," it's to encourage people to take TAC lists so that match-ups aren't predetermined by looking at the armies each side brought. There are lots of possible skew lists that aren't overpowered in the abstract that will never-the-less totally destroy some other skew lists because it's a bad matchup - and that will get destroyed themselves if they come up against a hard counter. The game isn't fun that way, so it makes sense from a design perspective to try to encourage people not to bring the sorts of lists that are likely to be hard countered. With the complete removal of force org charts and in 9th even the need to take balanced battalions, secondaries become a logical place to encourage TAC lists - but again, the current secondaries don't do that. They just punish arbitrary stuff that has little or nothing to do with promoting TAC lists.
-Lack of Elite kill secondary. One of the main reasons armies like Space Marines can do so well right now, is there is often not a good choice of secondary selection against them. This needs to be fixed.
I don't see, at least from a GK perspective how this would change anything. There are no non elite GK armies. Specialy now when GK don't have the +1W other marines have, but are costed as if they had them. Abhore the Witch is stupid, but at least an army with a farseer or librarian can't use. If AtW is gone, but there is an anti marine secondary, then it only gets worse. People will take the same secondaries vs GK, and just replace AtW with the superior anti marine one.
Unless of course, Tsons get a codex with a wierd rule that says "Your sorcerers can only be counted for a single secondary each time they are killed", or Astra Militarum get something that says "Your opponent must drop two tanks to get credit for one kill on Bring it Down" etc etc. That's pretty silly too though, so I don't really see it happening. The issue is the current set of secondaries is practically tailor made for one grouping of armies, and becomes borderline exlusionary to the rest.
Not sure about the 1ksons one. But what if IG stuff come in section. You would buy units as squads, and they would move and shot as squads. But for org chart or orders they would work in sections. 3x10 section and a Lt. Higher ranks officers could give order to bigger sections. So they would also give up 1 kill secondary only after the 31 models were dead. It could be balanced with both order limits, point costs of units going up the larger the section is, so sometimes it wouldn't be worth running 6 lemman Russes and a Cmd, because the ones after the 3ed would start costing double.
I think the kill secondaries should probably go.
Or just be massively nerfed. 1 tank, 1 point. 1 character 1 point. 1 psyker 1 point etc.
Really I think the point of secondaries - if they are to exist at all - is to give players a dilemma. Achieving them should force players to deviate from an optimised order of operations.
The problem with the kill secondaries is that they don't do this. Destroying your opponent's army is part of playing 40k. So you are essentially just getting points for playing. There is no trade off with say "kill tanks" or "kill characters" because if your opponent has a load of tanks or characters, you are almost certainly going to kill them. If you can't, its probably because you've been tabled and have probably lost that game regardless.
By comparison even something like Engage on All Fronts, while often a guaranteed 8-9+ points for certain armies, is reasonably hard to max out, and imposes questions on both the player and their opponent throughout the game. If you lose all your fast units - or you need them to hold/deny a primary objective - you are making a trade off.
The other way of looking at things is that everyone should have a gimme 15 point kill objective, that you would expect both players to max out in all but the most one-sided games. I think this was arguably the case in ITC. But beyond fairness... what's the point?
The only point I see to kill secondaries is to punish skew. But I'm also not sure that really even fits into GW's new "no force org charts! do whatever you want! freedom!" approach to list design. If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.
One thing I think would be really interesting is a system where you have only two secondaries, and you pick one, but *your opponent picks the other*. So that is how you encourage TAC lists, because if you go skew, your opponent will just pick something your list can't do hardly at all, and you get few or zero points from that secondary. You could have maybe 5-6 different options, with no kill secondaries, obviously - think more like engage on all fronts, or deploy scramblers, or slay the warlord, line breaker, etc etc.
It would instantly inject a bit of that "hard choices" thing that secondaries should actually be about.
BTW, said cheap IG characters are mostly not that good. The only one that is an immediate auto take being that of a the generic Company Commander, a needed component to make the army function at all.
yukishiro1 wrote: The only point I see to kill secondaries is to punish skew. But I'm also not sure that really even fits into GW's new "no force org charts! do whatever you want! freedom!" approach to list design. If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.
One thing I think would be really interesting is a system where you have only two secondaries, and you pick one, but *your opponent picks the other*. So that is how you encourage TAC lists, because if you go skew, your opponent will just pick something your list can't do hardly at all, and you get few or zero points from that secondary. You could have maybe 5-6 different options, with no kill secondaries, obviously - think more like engage on all fronts, or deploy scramblers, or slay the warlord, line breaker, etc etc.
It would instantly inject a bit of that "hard choices" thing that secondaries should actually be about.
That's an interesting idea. It would require some finessing because some secondaries will not be possible at all and that feels wrong.
Perhaps each player chooses 4 options and their opponent chooses which 3 their opponent will use?
Well you would radically change the secondaries in that case, to make sure that every one is possible for every army. They would be all things any army can theoretically do, but your ability to realistically do so would depend on how balanced your army was.
It'd definitely require a lot cleverer system than the current one, so it may not be realistic.
If the game's going to let you take 12 tanks, should it really be punishing you for it with secondaries? Maybe it shouldn't.
That's at least partially what it comes down to for me. Not to mention the fact that some armies (like Astra Militarum) are actually MEANT to bring 12 tanks. Some armies HAVE to bring multiple spell casting characters. Those armies shouldn't be punished simply for existing. Whatever they should be, secondaries should absolutely NOT be something that's "great for a few, good enough for some, and utterly destructive to everyone else".
The problem with kill secondaries is the problem that has always existed with kill points: A 50-point deffcopta is one VEHICLE keyword model. So is a Warlord Titan.
A 20pt platoon commander is one CHARACTER keyword model. So is Magnus.
incidentally this is the exact same problem every edition has had with restrictive force org charts: A single "Troop Choice" can be 50pts or 350pts.
The only way to implement something like this fairly - to really achieve the goal of what all these rules want to achieve - would be to require a certain number of points rather than a certain number of models to be destroyed. Or, when it comes to force organization, to require a certain points value of Troops, HQs, whatever.
They used to do that, didn't they? At least in WHFB. I remember stuff like "up to 50% in heroes, at least 25% in troops, etc etc."
That's how army comp worked in 2nd ed., but I don't think it would fix the issue here.
I do think though, that there might be something to the suggestion of c hanging the "kill" secondaries to a percentage scale based on the cost of the thing you're killing. That might go a ways towards evening out the fact that a Guard commander and Magnus are not in any way the same, but that they will both net 5 points for assassinate.
That said though, I do wonder what this starts to look like if it were just the main objectives and the mission specific secondary. Will have to suggest to the group that we try that once we're able to garage hammer again.
4th edition handled the scaling for victory points for unit kills and mission objectives really well IMHO.
For those that don't recall, it worked like this:
Victory points were tied to the size of the game. Players earned a unit's point value in VP's if it was completely destroyed or 50% of it's value if at least half the models were killed (or if a vehicle if it was immobilized and/or had all weapons destroyed)
So that was one way of earning points for kills.
Next up, the mission specific objectives were tied to the point value of the game. For example, one mission gives you 50% of the point value of the game in VP s for holding the opposing table quarter, and 25% for each adjacent quarter (no points for holding your own quarter). If a mission had D6 objective markers, each marker would be worth an equal portion of the game's point value in points.
It did have other issues, but it was a good example of properly scaling the victory points of objectives around the size of the game and the relative point value of the units. It makes you think about what your priorities are for offense and defense, since units are worth their actual relative point value.
That said though, I do wonder what this starts to look like if it were just the main objectives and the mission specific secondary. Will have to suggest to the group that we try that once we're able to garage hammer again.
Umbros wrote: I do think it is worth playing around with making the mission secondary mandatory.
It's worth trying it for sure. I've played a few games this way and it's great.
Honestly, I'd love to see it pushed even more. The "primary objective" markers should ACTUALLY be the secondary objectives. The "Primary" objective should be the thing that is unique and distinct about the mission (i.e. controlling the power stations, moving the relic, capturing enemy territory, etc.) and should be the primary means of getting points.
Objectives also work better when they fundamentally require players to make a trade-off between scoring points versus doing the usual attack. Many of the mission specific secondary's do something like this.
Also worth pointing out are the missions in the crusade pack. These are structured often with an attacker and defender side - and I think these could have a place in matched play, where players perhaps bid CP's at the start of the game for the right to choose who is the attacker or defender.
What does a kill secondary actually accomplish anyways? Other than reward you for what you were going to do anyways? That is my issue with them?
Also - why do some objectives offer more points and some less? The pregame minutia of trying to figure out the max points you can achieve in a game by picking secondaries is pretty lame...your opponents armies basically determines your objectives. Pretty backwards to how objectives should be. Objectives should be determined by the mission not your opponents army..
Xenomancers wrote: What does a kill secondary actually accomplish anyways? Other than reward you for what you were going to do anyways? That is my issue with them?
Also - why do some objectives offer more points and some less? The pregame minutia of trying to figure out the max points you can achieve in a game by picking secondaries is pretty lame...your opponents armies basically determines your objectives. Pretty backwards to how objectives should be. Objectives should be determined by the mission not your opponents army..
Well, the Primary Objective is driven by the mission. The Secondaries can be driven by your opponent's list, but sometimes that doesn't work. I find the Secondaries are a great part of 9th edition, but I get that some of you don't. I found most of GW's earlier mission sets rather lame in comparison.
Killing secondaries are there for a reason, they balance skew lists.
Notice that I didn't say "Punish", because they are not meant to punish since some factions simply are meant to skew, like IG.
It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Those secondaries exist to offset this disadvantage, so in principle it is a good thing that we have them.
Obviously they need some tweaks, for many of the reasons already highlighted in this thread.
This also should make it clear why there is no anti elite secondary. Elite infantries were never considered a skew, since that profile is vulnerable to both light fire and AT fire. Problem is that now we have the gravis profile, which starts to being quite protected against small arms. A full gravis/termi/wolf list is a skew and should get a corresponding secondary (1 point for every 3W 3+ or better model destroyed).
Spoletta wrote: Killing secondaries are there for a reason, they balance skew lists.
Notice that I didn't say "Punish", because they are not meant to punish since some factions simply are meant to skew, like IG.
It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Those secondaries exist to offset this disadvantage, so in principle it is a good thing that we have them.
Obviously they need some tweaks, for many of the reasons already highlighted in this thread.
This also should make it clear why there is no anti elite secondary. Elite infantries were never considered a skew, since that profile is vulnerable to both light fire and AT fire. Problem is that now we have the gravis profile, which starts to being quite protected against small arms. A full gravis/termi/wolf list is a skew and should get a corresponding secondary (1 point for every 3W 3+ or better model destroyed).
I just don't think this logic holds up.
Or at least it assumes all lists are skews unless they consist of:
Just 2-3 characters, at most 1 psyker.
Some troops (but not that many).
Some elite infantry.
At most 2-3 vehicles.
Now a Marine list does tend to look like this. But loads of non-MEQ factions don't - and really, without a lot of special pleading, can't (hence why "bring back the classic force organisation chart" feels like a non-starter).
If a Guard player brings 10+ vehicles, then okay its an armour skew. If he brings say 5, that's potentially what, 40% of his points? Not that much of a skew really. For 5 characters we could be talking sub 10%. Is that a "character skew" somehow? I'm not sure I can build a vaguely sensible Dark Eldar army that isn't almost certain to give up 15 points on Bring It Down. Am I skewing because I don't want to cover the table with foot slogging Kabalites/Wyches/Wracks? GSC find themselves in a similar boat of being "balanced" for bringing characters they were clearly *meant to take*.
The character and psyker ones are meaningless in my opinion. The fact that the opponent has an high number of characters doesn't impact you in any way.
Bring it down instead is necessary, but as stated previously, it needs some tweaks to make sure that a 50 point vehicle doesn't give the opponent 2 points.
Spoletta wrote: It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Given the "To Wound" chart in 8th and 9th, "useless" is over-stating things. Inefficient, sure, but you can use either type of weapon against the wrong sort of target to some effect, if not an ideal result.
Bitharne wrote: For instance I had a Knight oppoent recently that had 3 Knights, two armiggers, and an assassin. Titan Slayer was a risk because he only had the three knights so if he delayed me and kept away with one I can't score max.
That's not a risk, almost no secondary can be reliably maxed in a given game. Deploy scramblers is taken for being a very reliable ten points. Titan Slayer gives up ten points base very reliably to most armies and also has a best case scenario of a full 15.
You shouldn't be, it's one of the most lopsided secondaries in the game.
Punishing Keeper lists isn't worth making Thousand Sons and Grey Knights give up 15 points for free for the crime of showing up. If Keeper lists need to be nerfed then Games Workshop can nerf them.
Spoletta wrote: Killing secondaries are there for a reason, they balance skew lists.
Notice that I didn't say "Punish", because they are not meant to punish since some factions simply are meant to skew, like IG.
It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Those secondaries exist to offset this disadvantage, so in principle it is a good thing that we have them.
Obviously they need some tweaks, for many of the reasons already highlighted in this thread.
This also should make it clear why there is no anti elite secondary. Elite infantries were never considered a skew, since that profile is vulnerable to both light fire and AT fire. Problem is that now we have the gravis profile, which starts to being quite protected against small arms. A full gravis/termi/wolf list is a skew and should get a corresponding secondary (1 point for every 3W 3+ or better model destroyed).
Elite infantry are not that vulnerable to "light fire". MEQ and better defensive profiles have little to fear from lasguns and bolters. If you want to kill marines you need AP, and at least S4: plasma, disintegrators, auto cannons, etc.
Spoletta wrote: Killing secondaries are there for a reason, they balance skew lists.
Notice that I didn't say "Punish", because they are not meant to punish since some factions simply are meant to skew, like IG.
It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Those secondaries exist to offset this disadvantage, so in principle it is a good thing that we have them.
Obviously they need some tweaks, for many of the reasons already highlighted in this thread.
This also should make it clear why there is no anti elite secondary. Elite infantries were never considered a skew, since that profile is vulnerable to both light fire and AT fire. Problem is that now we have the gravis profile, which starts to being quite protected against small arms. A full gravis/termi/wolf list is a skew and should get a corresponding secondary (1 point for every 3W 3+ or better model destroyed).
Elite infantry are not that vulnerable to "light fire". MEQ and better defensive profiles have little to fear from lasguns and bolters. If you want to kill marines you need AP, and at least S4: plasma, disintegrators, auto cannons, etc.
MEQ profiles have always gone down to lasgun weapons.
Remember that before the era of "SM are OP!!!!" there was the era of "Guardmen outshoot my marines!!!".
Spoletta wrote: Killing secondaries are there for a reason, they balance skew lists.
Notice that I didn't say "Punish", because they are not meant to punish since some factions simply are meant to skew, like IG.
It doesn't change the fact though, that when you meet a skew list, a part of your army becomes useless. All your anti tank is useless against an horde list, and all your anti infantry is useless against a parking lot.
Those secondaries exist to offset this disadvantage, so in principle it is a good thing that we have them.
Obviously they need some tweaks, for many of the reasons already highlighted in this thread.
This also should make it clear why there is no anti elite secondary. Elite infantries were never considered a skew, since that profile is vulnerable to both light fire and AT fire. Problem is that now we have the gravis profile, which starts to being quite protected against small arms. A full gravis/termi/wolf list is a skew and should get a corresponding secondary (1 point for every 3W 3+ or better model destroyed).
Elite infantry are not that vulnerable to "light fire". MEQ and better defensive profiles have little to fear from lasguns and bolters. If you want to kill marines you need AP, and at least S4: plasma, disintegrators, auto cannons, etc.
MEQ profiles have always gone down to lasgun weapons.
Remember that before the era of "SM are OP!!!!" there was the era of "Guardmen outshoot my marines!!!".
It takes 36 BS4 lasgun shots to kill one T4 3+ 2W marine or two T4 3+ 1W CSM outside of cover on average. In cover it takes twice that to get the same results. Against things like gravis, Custodes, or terminators it's worse. If we're going to have kill secondaries, then there should be one for elite infantry and biker type units. I'd prefer no kill secondaries at all, as they just put more emphasis on winning at list building, and we already have enough of that.
I feel Guardsmen were OP. (The argument usually went "they are too good" "no, they are just human fence posts" "You mean a fence post with better shooting than most things in the game?" "no pls maths burns no".)
But things change.
In ye olde world, a 40 point squad expected to kill 1 13 point 1 wound marine if they were all in rapid fire range. 13/40=32.5% return.
Today that squad is now 50 points, and expects to do a single wound. As Tacticals are 18 points for 2, that's 9/50=18% return. (Call it 20% versus Intercessors if you want to avoid special pleading).
32.5->20% is a significant drop. Its a similar story for all the basic 1 damage troops (Kabalites, fire warriors etc).
Now you might say 18%/20% isn't nothing - and sure, you throw enough guns into marines and they do drop. But this is the same for just about everything. I mean you could say "its cos they suck" - but Guardsmen are about as efficient shooting the new Gladiator tanks as they are at shooting basic marines. They are worse shooting say Rhinos - but thats because rhinos have cheap wounds.
Now that might be desired. You can argue for fluff and game reasons Marines should shrug off small arms. Hence the stats. But if so, they are surely just as much a skew as someone bringing a mech wall, or nine carnifexes or something.
I don't mind secondary objectives even though I preferred the old style missions (especially the tactical objective cards). I find most fairly pointless and I that there are a handful that I take nearly every game because they are more doable than the rest. I do find that it is the secondaries which I lose most games from. My opponents always seem to do better than I where we are normally much closer on primary objectives. I also tend to find that the mission specific secondaries are generally not worth it.
Tyel wrote: I feel Guardsmen were OP. (The argument usually went "they are too good" "no, they are just human fence posts" "You mean a fence post with better shooting than most things in the game?" "no pls maths burns no".)
But things change.
In ye olde world, a 40 point squad expected to kill 1 13 point 1 wound marine if they were all in rapid fire range. 13/40=32.5% return.
Today that squad is now 50 points, and expects to do a single wound. As Tacticals are 18 points for 2, that's 9/50=18% return. (Call it 20% versus Intercessors if you want to avoid special pleading).
32.5->20% is a significant drop. Its a similar story for all the basic 1 damage troops (Kabalites, fire warriors etc).
Now you might say 18%/20% isn't nothing - and sure, you throw enough guns into marines and they do drop. But this is the same for just about everything. I mean you could say "its cos they suck" - but Guardsmen are about as efficient shooting the new Gladiator tanks as they are at shooting basic marines. They are worse shooting say Rhinos - but thats because rhinos have cheap wounds.
Now that might be desired. You can argue for fluff and game reasons Marines should shrug off small arms. Hence the stats. But if so, they are surely just as much a skew as someone bringing a mech wall, or nine carnifexes or something.
I was talking about MEQ, not PEQ. Yeah, I know that now things got confusing since many MEQ profiles changed to PEQ profile, but the MEQ profile is still 1W T4 3+.
Re: Abhor
Considering that both factions I play (Necrons and Kroot) have virtually no chance at affecting any psykers (zero way to use the psychic phase) and I've spent the last edition just having to stand there, watch, and remove models, this secondary is really important.
I know I'm a bit biased, but it's important to point out, especially in an edition where Necrons are the big Xenos threat, thus, getting lots of new players.
But again, that's the total wrong way to do game balance. If there's a problem with psykers (there isn't, but let's indulge the assumption), the solution is to address the problem, not just handicap them with a secondary.
Blndmage wrote: Re: Abhor
Considering that both factions I play (Necrons and Kroot) have virtually no chance at affecting any psykers (zero way to use the psychic phase) and I've spent the last edition just having to stand there, watch, and remove models, this secondary is really important.
I know I'm a bit biased, but it's important to point out, especially in an edition where Necrons are the big Xenos threat, thus, getting lots of new players.
Really important for what? Dogstomping Grey Knights and Thousand Sons players with no counterplay?
Having a considerably better army doesn't give you enough of an advantage, you need to be able to trivialize the match-up entirely?
Seems to me the problem with Abor the Witch isn't that it exist. The problem is that it isn't in Purge the Enemy. That would prevent both doubling it up with Assassinate and getting triple kill secondaries by using Abor the Witch along with a No Mercy, No Respite and a Purge the Enemy secondaries.
Heck, it would probably be a good thing if Warpcraft as a category was removed and all those secondaries were distributed into the other 4 categories.
Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.
How fething dare you <Insert IG Player> for picking one basic unit out the three troop choices you have that allow your army to function properly. How fething dare you skew.
alextroy wrote: Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.
I think the issue with this is that we're approaching there being an entire pre-match minigame that exists only to determine the victory conditions for the actual game.
It would be like the players having to play a full game of Yugioh in order to determine deployment zones.
alextroy wrote: Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.
I think the issue with this is that we're approaching there being an entire pre-match minigame that exists only to determine the victory conditions for the actual game.
It would be like the players having to play a full game of Yugioh in order to determine deployment zones.
Mezmorki wrote: Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.
My issue with this is that it's never going to happen.
For one there will always be a meta. Even in a game where rock has its best match-up versus scissors with a 60% win-rate and still wins 40% against paper and the same holds for all other match-ups. No list is ever purely rock or purely scissors and eventually combos that tilt either the wins in good matches or even up the disadvantage in losing matches will be discovered and that will set a meta. Metas are always exclusionary to some styles of play so any given list may not work even in such a balanced system.
The other issue is that an anti-horde skew list might run into an armored list that it can only wound on 6's. Regardless of how that game plays out and who wins, it'll be a match that doesn't exactly showcase the game in a great light. The thing is, that's realistic. We know what happens when light infantry meets tanks, bunkers, or fortified positions and it doesn't go well for the light infantry, there's a reason why there has always been an interest in airdropped and amphibious armor and yet that same armor is rarely good enough to be worth fielding.
In short, the game where both players have a choice in listing building can never escape being dominated by list choices.
Xenomancers wrote: What does a kill secondary actually accomplish anyways? Other than reward you for what you were going to do anyways? That is my issue with them?
Also - why do some objectives offer more points and some less? The pregame minutia of trying to figure out the max points you can achieve in a game by picking secondaries is pretty lame...your opponents armies basically determines your objectives. Pretty backwards to how objectives should be. Objectives should be determined by the mission not your opponents army..
That's nonsense. Your pregame planning should always be heavily influenced by the enemy's forces. No sane commander is going to instruct his soldiers to focus on something that either doesn't exist in the enemy's force or which the enemy can easily make impossible by employing skill in their own actions.
I can certainly agree that all the kill secondaries should be grouped into one category - including Abhor - to prevent getting rewarded twice for one achievement. That seems sensible.
Not sure what to do with Warpcraft after that, though potentially bundling those objectives with some of the other "taking actions" objectives in one category reduces the potential advantage some factions may have regarding access to Warpcraft objectives.
That's nonsense. Your pregame planning should always be heavily influenced by the enemy's forces. No sane commander is going to instruct his soldiers to focus on something that either doesn't exist in the enemy's force or which the enemy can easily make impossible by employing skill in their own actions.
You mean like operation Market Garden, because from what I understand, the british don't claim Montgomery to have been insane. Or stuff like rolling wave tactics the Soviets used durning 1920 or WWII. In 1943 the 1st divions of the Polish Communist Army was send without air support , by order of the soviet high command to attack a german forces around Lenino, without an artilery barrage or support from Soviet units in the same area. What followed was 50% loses in 2 days, and territory gains that were soon lost, because the units that went 17km deep in to german lines were in danger of being cut off. Durning WWI it was very common for ally forces to send in ANZAC or colony units to be bleed, sometimes just so the germans would use up ammo or to make breachs in mine fields. Durning fights around Galipoli the ally forces were attacking up steap hills, through mine fields and razorwire suffering gigantic loses and achiving nothing. Americans and French durning fights in Korea and Vietnam were doing mighty stupid things, sending troops not knowing what is around them, and losing a ton of them too.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another way to deal with it besides lethality might be to require a clearer numerical advantage to hold objectives, and therefore generate more ties. It seems dubious both conceptually and from a gameplay point of view to have 9 guardsmen "holding" an objective against 8 cultists, or vice versa.
Like consider if you changed the holding rules to: (1) to hold an objective, you need to have double or more the amount of models as your opponent; (2) ob-sec counts double; and (3) you can never control an objective if your opponent has 5 or more models on it (with ob-sec counting double again), no matter how many you have. Probably put scoring back to the end of each player's turn, too, so that you can get control by having a good round of combat to clear them out, even if they'll come back next turn and do the same to you potentially.
I think that would produce a game where you could tone down the lethality, because the early game would be dominated by a lot of inconclusive scrums where neither player gets a clear advantage. So the strategy would then come down to how you commit your forces to each objective, because the winner is going to be the one who commits correctly and wears down the opponent enough over the course of the game to get control of enough objectives before the end of the game to win. Horde armies can deny points by just piling bodies on, but they aren't going to get any points by doing that either as long as the opponent also pushes bodies on, so the fact that you can't delete a whole army in 1-2 turns of shooting doesn't actually mean they win the game by default.
Warmachine handled this with the idea of contesting zones. Instead of having to do some calculus to figure out who has the point you only control it if your opponent has no models in the zone at all, and then the zones were bigger to make that harder to do. 40k could easily borrow that idea. I think you're absolutely right that the current rules for controlling an objective are bad, but I don't know that making them even more complicated is the right way to go.
There's a narrative aspect to "I control this objective if I have models on it and you don't" as well, in the real world an objective is an objective in the first place because there's something important there. Material or personnel that needs recovered, infrastructure that needs sabotaged, maybe it's just a good defensive position to put down suppressive fire so other elements of your task force can do what they need to do. You're generally not asking soldiers in the field to stand on a spot without a reason, and whatever that reason is they're not going to be focused on it if there are enemy soldiers near by. Edit: Although as has been pointed out sometimes that reason is "die horribly because we can replace you more easily than they can replace ammo".
That's nonsense. Your pregame planning should always be heavily influenced by the enemy's forces. No sane commander is going to instruct his soldiers to focus on something that either doesn't exist in the enemy's force or which the enemy can easily make impossible by employing skill in their own actions.
You mean like operation Market Garden, because from what I understand, the british don't claim Montgomery to have been insane. Or stuff like rolling wave tactics the Soviets used durning 1920 or WWII. In 1943 the 1st divions of the Polish Communist Army was send without air support , by order of the soviet high command to attack a german forces around Lenino, without an artilery barrage or support from Soviet units in the same area. What followed was 50% loses in 2 days, and territory gains that were soon lost, because the units that went 17km deep in to german lines were in danger of being cut off. Durning WWI it was very common for ally forces to send in ANZAC or colony units to be bleed, sometimes just so the germans would use up ammo or to make breachs in mine fields. Durning fights around Galipoli the ally forces were attacking up steap hills, through mine fields and razorwire suffering gigantic loses and achiving nothing. Americans and French durning fights in Korea and Vietnam were doing mighty stupid things, sending troops not knowing what is around them, and losing a ton of them too.
Every example here was either a failure or an act of desperation. No commander would choose these as their primary options and neither should those of us who play 40k.
But that is litteraly what their did. China high command durning the vietnam war, advised the northern vietnam HQ to make them bleed vietcong troops and they did that. And they won't. Zhukov did the same and he won against the germans. When Kajdu fought the western alliance durning the battle of legnica he let the rus auxiliaries be slaughtered, and the mongols clearly won that battle, including killing the Henry the Bearded, killing the Teutonic knights kompturs present and a bunch of nobles and dukes. Israel Army often did the same to ethiopian descent soldiers, sending them in to place where they didn't want to send their regular units.
Armies, on the regular basis, drop troops in places when they get destroyed without having any real plans how to hold and control specific places. Practicaly every army, bar maybe persians and chinese, waged war in afganistan that way. No plan, no real objectives, years of slaughter, still claiming tactical victory.
Karol wrote: But that is litteraly what their did. China high command durning the vietnam war, advised the northern vietnam HQ to make them bleed vietcong troops and they did that. And they won't. Zhukov did the same and he won against the germans. When Kajdu fought the western alliance durning the battle of legnica he let the rus auxiliaries be slaughtered, and the mongols clearly won that battle, including killing the Henry the Bearded, killing the Teutonic knights kompturs present and a bunch of nobles and dukes. Israel Army often did the same to ethiopian descent soldiers, sending them in to place where they didn't want to send their regular units.
Armies, on the regular basis, drop troops in places when they get destroyed without having any real plans how to hold and control specific places. Practicaly every army, bar maybe persians and chinese, waged war in afganistan that way. No plan, no real objectives, years of slaughter, still claiming tactical victory.
Karol your understanding of warfare is as poor as your grasp on 40k. If you follow these examples of 'success' in your games it's little wonder you win as rarely as you claim.
I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
I also prefer "secondaries" to be more random, including pre-game or within the game (e.g. using a deck of cards, say).
Allowing people to bake achieving/denying secondaries into the list-building both drains the game of variety and removes tactical depth from the game as players don't need to "think on the fly" in-game and occasionally play their army against its strengths to achieve victory, instead of front-loading the game (even more) to the list-building phase.
Karol your understanding of warfare is as poor as your grasp on 40k. If you follow these examples of 'success' in your games it's little wonder you win as rarely as you claim.
Wait so your claim is that those forces I have listed were somehow not victorious? Because it is big claim to say that Zhukov did no win WWII or that north vietnam didn't win the vietnam war.
Plus IMO your claim that for the tactic to be considered valid in use, the force had to be both victorious and winning was a strech, because a ton of armies did it and lost , or were losing did it an won. And this is before stuff like goverments and high commands letting something happen just, so they can have a causus belli or seem to be the one being attacked.
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
This just sounds like garbage game design.
(shrugs) I've played plenty of games {GW & otherwise} over the years where it's worked just fine.
And it certainly mirrors plenty of real world situations past/present/future.
I think introducing some element of randomness or at least not complete player control into the secondaries would be good. I think GW were edging towards a good system with the Maelstrom cards from the end of 8th edition where the deck was a heavily curated collection rather than being entirely random. Something that forces a bit more in-game thought and decision-making is what 40k needs. I like the idea of having your opponent choose 1-2 of the categories you need to select from but I think that would also need some tweaking to make it work.
That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
I think there's a middle ground between the often ridiculous randomness of the Open War cards and the too-controlled set-up we have now. That seems to be what people are arguing for. It's a tough thing to get right because it requires a lot of testing and adjustments but I think games with less controllable win conditions and more in-game decisions that matter often play better. At the moment 40k feels a lot like you're playing the same game over and over because the Primary rarely changes and the Secondaries are often the same for any given army too.
I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.
I think it basically all comes down to the fact that the current system, far from forcing you to build a balanced list, in fact encourages the opposite - building very specifically, because you have complete control over what your objectives are (aside from the mission-specific secondary, which tends to either be utter garbage or an auto-pick, and which you don't have to pick anyway).
That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.
Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.
1. The mission secondary always applies to both players.
2. The player may pick one secondary for themselves.
3. The player selects either 3 or 6 other secondaries and rolls a d3 or d6 to determine which one they get.
I think that with such a system there should also be a core stratagem that allows a player to pick a second secondary for 2CP and pick all 3 for 3CP, or something like that.
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
This just sounds like garbage game design.
Randomness isn't inherently bad game design. Honestly, I've gotten a little tired over the years of people insisting that it's bad design if they're not allowed to choose their exact forces, their exact objectives, and the exact scenario and board layout, so that they can run min-max netlists with no unexpected challenges. Not saying that's what you're asking for, but randomness that forces you to consider all possibilities isn't a bad thing.
Bad design (if perfect tournament balance is your goal, rather than unpredictability/realism a la AK47 Republic) would be not providing any recourse if the objective is impossible to achieve, locking the player out of any VP, and further rewarding armies that minimize giving up secondaries. You could instead have the player re-roll until they get an achievable objective, award an automatic flat number of VP, or weight the other objectives higher to compensate.
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Quite the opposite. Most people look to matched-play for a (broadly) competitive, tactically challenging/stimulating game-play experience, which is increasingly eroded through the introduction of the less-cerebral / tactically challenging, "de-randomised" and "controlled" ITC-inspired secondaries, seize-removal, etc. all of which give the game a far less "competitive", more mass-market friendly rock-paper-scissors vibe.
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
This just sounds like garbage game design.
Like how it currently works isn't garbage????
yukishiro1 wrote:Or just have secondary objectives that aren't keyword locked...
this would work
Sunny Side Up wrote:
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Quite the opposite. Most people look to matched-play for a (broadly) competitive, tactically challenging/stimulating game-play experience, which is increasingly eroded through the introduction of the less-cerebral / tactically challenging, "de-randomised" and "controlled" ITC-inspired secondaries, seize-removal, etc. all of which give the game a far less "competitive", more mass-market friendly rock-paper-scissors vibe.
Open war deck is literally the best thing they've done in 40k.
But currently, players have faaaaarrrrrr too much control over the game. All of the aspects of the battle besides the lists should be 100% randomly drawn. The battlefield should be the 3rd belligerent in any skirmish.
The more "randomness" and potentially different needs the missions demand of the player, the more players will need to create a flexible and less skewed list. If you dont know what the objectives will be, you need to bring a last that can potentially handle all of them.
The problem right now is that the primary objectives are all basically variations of holding control points. The secondaries can all be chosen directly by the player for maximum point potential. There is basically no forced variation in the mission structure at all and players can thus perfectly account for optimizing their points at the army post stage. The game then because a game of who has the better optimized list (which has always been an issue but is getting worse)
Mezmorki wrote: The more "randomness" and potentially different needs the missions demand of the player, the more players will need to create a flexible and less skewed list. If you dont know what the objectives will be, you need to bring a last that can potentially handle all of them.
The problem right now is that the primary objectives are all basically variations of holding control points. The secondaries can all be chosen directly by the player for maximum point potential. There is basically no forced variation in the mission structure at all and players can thus perfectly account for optimizing their points at the army post stage. The game then because a game of who has the better optimized list (which has always been an issue but is getting worse)
Thanks to ITC donkey-caves, look at where is gotten us.
I was toying around with a design for a bunch of missions with attacker and defender setups (ie asymmetric objectives) and then having a system where players would bid command points for the right to choose whether they want to be the attacker or defender.
Approaches like the above allow for more mission variability while proving a self-balancing mechanism
Regarding secondaries, the more I think about it the more I think they should just go away.
I could see a return to something like 4th edition, where you have very different and diverse primary objectives which are worth VP's up to the total point value of the game. Then you are awarded straight points for what you kill completely. It always created a nice balance between attacking and working towards the objectives. I think the one thing I'd add into it would be some progressive scoring for the main objective so that players are encouraged to not turtle as much in the back line until the final l turns.
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Quite the opposite. Most people look to matched-play for a (broadly) competitive, tactically challenging/stimulating game-play experience, which is increasingly eroded through the introduction of the less-cerebral / tactically challenging, "de-randomised" and "controlled" ITC-inspired secondaries, seize-removal, etc. all of which give the game a far less "competitive", more mass-market friendly rock-paper-scissors vibe.
This is a bass-ackwards analysis of "competitive" games. Competitive gaming reduces variables to a minimum to increase the skill level needed to win a game. All this preplanning around secondaries is what competitive gamers do. They reduce the variables to maximize the chance of winning.
That is not to say that competitive gaming is the best way to game. Games are often more fun when the variables are high enough to keep players in the game rather than allowing someone to run away with the score. However, most competitive games are not designed that way. You don't get a handicap in football if your team has X more points scored than the opponent. You don't cap the number of points a baseball team can score to ensure a fun and exciting game for all involved.
Yeah, but 40k isn't a competitive game, its a vehicle for selling plastic miniatures. As long as selling plastic is the #1 driving factor, it never will be one.
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Quite the opposite. Most people look to matched-play for a (broadly) competitive, tactically challenging/stimulating game-play experience, which is increasingly eroded through the introduction of the less-cerebral / tactically challenging, "de-randomised" and "controlled" ITC-inspired secondaries, seize-removal, etc. all of which give the game a far less "competitive", more mass-market friendly rock-paper-scissors vibe.
This is a bass-ackwards analysis of "competitive" games. Competitive gaming reduces variables to a minimum to increase the skill level needed to win a game. All this preplanning around secondaries is what competitive gamers do. They reduce the variables to maximize the chance of winning.
Not necessarily. It's what competitive 40k gamers think you need to make a competitive game. That's fundamentally an issue with 40k, though. In-game decisions are so marginalised by the rules themselves there's really not many meaningful choices to make once your army hits the table. It is entirely possible to introduce randomness and still have a competitive game. The fact so many 40k gamers don't realise this speaks more to the quality of 40k as a competitive game than it does to the nature of mechanics with a certain amount of randomness.
I think sunny side up put "competitive" in quotes for a reason - which is that it is intended to provide a fairer and balanced setting for players to "casually" compete on a somewhat equal footing. The problem is that the serious WAAC min-max competitive types end up driving it past the point of being "casually competitive" and into this strange space where if you are running a "casually competitive" list you're going to get stomped frequently.
The result of minimizing uncertainty and variables is that it makes the game more deterministic. The problem is that since the factions or army lists aren't remotely balanced, the less randomness you have the more difficulty it is for the weaker list to ever defeat a stronger list. Imagine chess if one side had the usual setup and the other side had all queens instead of pawns. Practically no amount of player skill could overcome that.
This lower randomness (call it a more controlled environment) pushes more of the "strategy" onto list building and pre-game decisions. If there was a greater range of mission objectives and/or you couldn't directly decide the objectives to optimize your points potential, it would in incentivize more TAC type lists. If everyone is running more TAC type lists (less skew) then the sides are a little more symmetric in function and, paradoxically, more likely be skill dependent - assuming the goal is testing people's skill on the battlefield instead of testing their list building min-maxing abilities.
I also think the lack of a standard FOC really hurts the game both casually and competitively. It's too much to try and balance around. Titans and lords of war shouldn't be showing up in a typical match play (sorry! That's my opinion).
^^^That's a much more eloquent and comprehensive summary of what I was getting at!
The key takeaway, I think, is that 40k lacks the balance to be truly competitive while also having rules that exacerbate that lack of balance by not providing enough meaningful in-game decisions to act as skill differentiators on the board rather than at the list-building stage.
Themed objectives that reward fluffy play instead of of basic concept stuff thatbyoud do regardless of playing the game. Unless I am to wait for 10th edition to come out, "the next most bestest and greatest that ever was edition in the whole world" TM, I might as well start every game by forcibly shooting my shins off.
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
This just sounds like garbage game design.
Randomness isn't inherently bad game design. Honestly, I've gotten a little tired over the years of people insisting that it's bad design if they're not allowed to choose their exact forces, their exact objectives, and the exact scenario and board layout, so that they can run min-max netlists with no unexpected challenges. Not saying that's what you're asking for, but randomness that forces you to consider all possibilities isn't a bad thing.
Bad design (if perfect tournament balance is your goal, rather than unpredictability/realism a la AK47 Republic) would be not providing any recourse if the objective is impossible to achieve, locking the player out of any VP, and further rewarding armies that minimize giving up secondaries. You could instead have the player re-roll until they get an achievable objective, award an automatic flat number of VP, or weight the other objectives higher to compensate.
Rihgu wrote: That brings us back to the (war)game vs war(game) design conversation. GW provides Open War format (they've made Open War cards for 9th, right?) for people who want that randomness of war, and Matched Play for people looking for more controlled game-aspects.
Quite the opposite. Most people look to matched-play for a (broadly) competitive, tactically challenging/stimulating game-play experience, which is increasingly eroded through the introduction of the less-cerebral / tactically challenging, "de-randomised" and "controlled" ITC-inspired secondaries, seize-removal, etc. all of which give the game a far less "competitive", more mass-market friendly rock-paper-scissors vibe.
This is a bass-ackwards analysis of "competitive" games. Competitive gaming reduces variables to a minimum to increase the skill level needed to win a game. All this preplanning around secondaries is what competitive gamers do. They reduce the variables to maximize the chance of winning.
Not necessarily. It's what competitive 40k gamers think you need to make a competitive game. That's fundamentally an issue with 40k, though. In-game decisions are so marginalised by the rules themselves there's really not many meaningful choices to make once your army hits the table. It is entirely possible to introduce randomness and still have a competitive game. The fact so many 40k gamers don't realise this speaks more to the quality of 40k as a competitive game than it does to the nature of mechanics with a certain amount of randomness.
Competitive can mean two things. Either a competition between to opponents to test skill (aka sport) or a activity that intended to be fun for both players leading to an exciting conclusion (game). Randomness is the bane of the first and can be a good tool for the second.
So are you looking for sport or game 40K? Most competitive types seem to be in favor of more sport than game. They hate more randomness than absolutely necessary. Random victory conditions are not competitive because you cannot strategize them. That's why so many people hated Maelstrom Objectives. They were too random to allow for strategy. Sometimes you won or lost not by what you did on the table, but by the cards you or your opponent drew.
Maelstrom is a bad example of randomness supporting competitiveness IMHO - because it's affecting players disproportionately. One player can draw cards that just happen to align well with their specific board situation, while the opposite happens for the other player and it's gg.
Having variable objectives up front before deployment, and which both players are equally beholding to, is a much much different situation.
I think what some of us are arguing for this is:
More variability in the base types of missions that intrinsically come with a few ways to score points (eg primary objective plus mission specific secondaries), and ditch the secondary objectives entirely. More base mission variety should, ideally, incentivize brining more balanced non-skew lists, which would, in theory, reduce the power differentials between potential match ups and this make the game a bit more about table play and tactics rather than pre-game objective shenanigans.
I think the issue is you can create competitiveness through list building, but then have a game where the game as it is actually played (once lists are selected) be a series of straight-forward actions that are similar every game because everything's been theorycrafted to the ideal situation.
Or, if you had less predictability at the list-building stage as to what you needed to accomplish, that could create a greater level of skill and competitiveness involved in actually playing the game - because you'd have to adapt to changed circumstances and make choices on the fly, i.e. exercise your skill in real-time, not primarily before the match. It'd also make it harder to do well by just taking the netlist someone else has theorycrafted, as it'd tilt the balance of competitive success away from list-building and towards what you do once you get into the game.
(It might also actually lead to more skill involved in list-building too, because you'd have to build more balanced lists that can be more flexible in-game as required, rather than just theorycrafting the best combination of units and secondaries to maximize your chances of victory executing essentially the same battle plan every time).
Mezmorki wrote: Maelstrom is a bad example of randomness supporting competitiveness IMHO - because it's affecting players disproportionately. One player can draw cards that just happen to align well with their specific board situation, while the opposite happens for the other player and it's gg.
Having variable objectives up front before deployment, and which both players are equally beholding to, is a much much different situation.
I think what some of us are arguing for this is:
More variability in the base types of missions that intrinsically come with a few ways to score points (eg primary objective plus mission specific secondaries), and ditch the secondary objectives entirely. More base mission variety should, ideally, incentivize brining more balanced non-skew lists, which would, in theory, reduce the power differentials between potential match ups and this make the game a bit more about table play and tactics rather than pre-game objective shenanigans.
Maelstrom but with a shared deck for both players, and no faction-specific objectives would be perfect IMO, you could even add a pregame "objective banning phase". You would have to build your army with the objective deck in mind but it wouldnt be as dumbed down as "i'll pick recon and load up on fast units"
In ProHammer we have a deck of cards for the deployment map, the primary objective (ie the mission specific secondary), and a deck for the arrangement of control points.
Three of each are drawn, and players alternate banning one draw until there is just one left. Works pretty well!
I think the issue is you can create competitiveness through list building, but then have a game where the game as it is actually played (once lists are selected) be a series of straight-forward actions that are similar every game because everything's been theorycrafted to the ideal situation.
Or, if you had less predictability at the list-building stage as to what you needed to accomplish, that could create a greater level of skill and competitiveness involved in actually playing the game - because you'd have to adapt to changed circumstances and make choices on the fly, i.e. exercise your skill in real-time, not primarily before the match. It'd also make it harder to do well by just taking the netlist someone else has theorycrafted, as it'd tilt the balance of competitive success away from list-building and towards what you do once you get into the game.
(It might also actually lead to more skill involved in list-building too, because you'd have to build more balanced lists that can be more flexible in-game as required, rather than just theorycrafting the best combination of units and secondaries to maximize your chances of victory executing essentially the same battle plan every time).
If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.
ccs wrote: I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).
This just sounds like garbage game design.
It works in Infinity; there are 20 classified objectives and you might have to complete any of them on any given mission. You get to draw 2 and pick one for each choice, however. And 1 of them per mission can be completed by "securing the HVT" (controlling a civilian placed onto the battlefield in deployment).
alextroy wrote: If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.
Yes, exactly.
Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.
alextroy wrote: If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.
Yes, exactly.
Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.
alextroy wrote: If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.
Yes, exactly.
Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.
How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.
alextroy wrote: If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.
Yes, exactly.
Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.
How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.
Well it still would curb the most Skew excesses which are Meta relevant. F.e. Knights would automatically due to their skew nature fall out of competition rather hard, which whilest unfortunate for the owners of knights is STILL an improvement due to lowering AT which would make formerly tough but out-dealt vehicles an intersting choice again.
However, it is still imo a bandaid, as in the fact that you require the missions to be anti skew via an uncertainity element rather then the core mechanics actually enforcing an anti-skew list building. The later is sadly an unfortunate fact that the core rules don't help this, at all. Hence why the go to lever is the mission goals.
The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.
There are a few that you do by virtue of just playing the game, which I think is problematic. Oath of Moment (name maybe wrong - I don't own the SM codex) is a no-brainer.
Overall I think they make for really interesting games and are a net positive to the game.
I pull Psychic Ritual off every game with my nids, because ATM the trend is to not have many psychers. I agree with you though that against a few armies (TS, harlequins, tyranids, CSM, GK) it is impossible to pull off. But I don't see any army aside from nids wanting this secondary, because nids have neurothropes:
- 3++
- 5 wounds
- thougness 4
- reroll 1s so the ritual statistically cannot fail
- costs under 100 points
You can also use swamorld to pull that neuro back to safety in the shooting phase, but I don't even need to use that (the dimachaerons get prioritised so bad as THE threat to bring down).
Now lets see for the other armies out there:
- Astra militarum don't want one of their squishy psychers 6' from the center of the board for 3 turns.
- Perhaps an inquisitor in terminator armour or something can't be allied into imperial armies but i doubt it is worth the CP investment.
- SM psychers don't really fit that much, if they do (Tigerius) you need them for other stuff
- Same goes for grey knights
- harlequin psychers could do it but they are a bit squishy i think. I'd need the imput form a Harly player here.
- Demons I don't know, perhaps they can do it ?
- Craftworld eldar psychers won't last in the center of the board either.
- ork weirdboys even less so
So aside from nids i don't see it. but for nids, I can testify from personal experience, it is very doable with a neurothrope.
Anyone else finding these secondary objectives are just very poorly thought out? Sure they give you the chance to score how you wish - but they are designed in such a way that certain armies are at a huge disadvantage by default.
As an example, armies that have squishy units combined with tanks and monsters (Drukhari, Tyranids and Guard come to mind) - you can easily take 2 secondaries to score points for killing the squishy units (eg, Kabalites, Gaunts, Infantry) and to kill vehicles (Venom, Sentinels, Carnifex).
Armies that are more elite-based on the other hand have a huge advantage in this respect. Custodes for example offer very little opportunities for these objectives .
Obviously the primaries are where the real points are, but with armies like Space Marines getting their historic buffs to shots, attacks, doctrines etc - they can quickly make short of those same armies as mentioned earlier so that even if they make it to the objective - they don’t get to stay on it.
Unless the new Codexes do something to change this, then I can’t see how those armies would be able to overcome such an obvious disadvantage from a gameplay mechanic. Assuming that wasn’t the plan to get us all buying space marines......
Speaking for tyranids the general consensus is that secondaries are very easy for us. Bring 2 lictors, 2 ripper swarms and you are scoring a lot of points for around 130 points. Alternatively some bring mawlocks and some bring Pyrovores. What ever you desire you bring. Perhaps the other armies have problems but Nids, nah. They are doing fine in secondaries. Primaries are more difficult because the codex is currently not the best of the best, but it is servisable.
A good thing if the secondaries are bad we might get new once in 2021. Remember they are not part of the core rules but rather in grand tournaments 2020. :-)
The problem with Ritual is it has to be the same psyker that takes the action each time. Combined with being within 6" of the centre that means very few characters will survive long enough to do it and after a certain point the window of opportunity to complete the ritual closes completely.
The other major problem is if you take a psyker it's likely to accomplish a given task. Harlequins, for example, usually have 2 psykers but they can't afford to have one of them do nothing but attempt the Ritual since they're needed to buff the army. The same goes for things like Librarians. Do you want your character doing nothing for most of the game, instead of what you actually paid for them to do? In that case you'd be much better off taking a cheap Techmarine or Apothecary and doing one of the other action-based secondaries that are much less dangerous and more reliable.
If my units count as psykers for abhore the witch, then they should very much be able to do ritual too. Otherwise it becomes a version of LoW being shot from behind terrain, because they are the wound threshold, and not being able to fire back at anything else then another knight or similar thing.
Karol wrote: If my units count as psykers for abhore the witch, then they should very much be able to do ritual too. Otherwise it becomes a version of LoW being shot from behind terrain, because they are the wound threshold, and not being able to fire back at anything else then another knight or similar thing.
You're missing the point. The problem isn't that you can't do Psychic Ritual, it's that you shouldn't. It's just a bad secondary. That problem is then exacerbated by the fact there's a secondary in the same category that's an absolute no-brainer for anyone facing a psyker-heavy army to take if they can. As with may elements of GW games, the problem is with the imbalance between the two things.
Well I don't have my hopes for the should changing, because it is an area of wishing. Something I seem to be bad ad judging. Can't on the other hand is a simple thing to fix. If you something is something, then it should be treated as it in all situations. The split makes no sense. Either they are psykers and count for both ritual and AtW, or they do not count as psykers for either one. The argument how ritual objectives should be changed, I leave to people smarter then me.
alextroy wrote: Seems to me the problem with Abor the Witch isn't that it exist. The problem is that it isn't in Purge the Enemy. That would prevent both doubling it up with Assassinate and getting triple kill secondaries by using Abor the Witch along with a No Mercy, No Respite and a Purge the Enemy secondaries.
Heck, it would probably be a good thing if Warpcraft as a category was removed and all those secondaries were distributed into the other 4 categories.
Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.
I think you are on to something there. Perhaps there is no need to brin the categories down to 4, but I really like your idea of the opponent disarding you of one of the 4 sec objectives. It is not too disruptive (we keep playing with 3 sec objectives). It needs more thinking done on it but I would try it (if I did not play with a very comp crowd who will never want any rulechange aside from a TO or GW making it)
Mezmorki wrote: Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.
How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.
I guess the test would be the whether or not the change to the mission structure and secondaries does any of the following:
(1) make it so that certain armies aren't handing points to their opponents (ie kill secondaries hurting many armies)
(2) make it so that competitive lists more resemble a TAC list
(3) narrow the variance between win % of different armies and list types
I don't honesty know if just changing the secondaries and missions is enough. I do wonder about whether using a standard FOC would help. It seems that a lot of competitive lists go to great lengths to minimize how many troop choices need to be taken - and that's a problem in and of itself.
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.
That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.
Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.
I must say I don't think these two ideas work (at all):
- having the opponent choose one of the secondaries will result in your opponent giving you an impossible mission (or nearly impossible) so it comes down to the same thing as only having 2 sec objectives total
- mission-specific secondary mandatory: same issue, you are stuck with something tied to the mission structure, so if you list can't do it then too bad for you.
Imho all the secondaries should be available only in the core book (or GT pack if you play tournaments), and only there.
Faction-specific secondaries don't bother me too much and could offer some flavour, but they should all be in the same publication and balanced periodically and accordingly.
I feel having random objectives just makes the result of games more random. Which could be desirable - but I don't see it myself.
I mean we had modified maelstrom in 8th - and obviously it did have an effect on the meta. You can compare lists in ITC to lists in ETC to see it. It encouraged armies that had greater speed, sustainability and therefore board control - as against castling in a corner before nuking the enemy in a turn or two (while trying to avoid being nuked yourself).
But at the same time, even with the limitations so you don't get *totally* screwed - you can still be significantly screwed, if someone draws their cards in a better order, while yours are all out of sequence.
Really the Primary already serves to make board control more important than its been in many editions (maybe ever). I don't think you need a random secondary to do it too.
What we want to avoid is the current situation where someone looks at an opponents list and says "unless I'm tabled turn 2 I'm getting 35+ points, probably 40+ if things go well" versus "maybe I can scrape together 25 points if everything goes well." Which is the lament today.
Tyel wrote: I feel having random objectives just makes the result of games more random. Which could be desirable - but I don't see it myself.
I mean we had modified maelstrom in 8th - and obviously it did have an effect on the meta. You can compare lists in ITC to lists in ETC to see it. It encouraged armies that had greater speed, sustainability and therefore board control - as against castling in a corner before nuking the enemy in a turn or two (while trying to avoid being nuked yourself).
But at the same time, even with the limitations so you don't get *totally* screwed - you can still be significantly screwed, if someone draws their cards in a better order, while yours are all out of sequence.
Really the Primary already serves to make board control more important than its been in many editions (maybe ever). I don't think you need a random secondary to do it too.
What we want to avoid is the current situation where someone looks at an opponents list and says "unless I'm tabled turn 2 I'm getting 35+ points, probably 40+ if things go well" versus "maybe I can scrape together 25 points if everything goes well." Which is the lament today.
The maelstrom we had at the end of 8th was perfect IMO, the odds of you getting shafted was very low because you got to pick which secondaries you wanted from a hand you could manipulate (mulligan, replace cards) which reduced the feel bad moments a lot. Adding onto that the fact that you could remove most of the secondaries that were hard for your army to get was also a nice touch.
The thing is that Maelstrom sucked if you were bringing skew lists because you could just get secondaries that you can't easily achieve with your list. Maelstrom inherently asks players to run TAC lists.
This isnt only feelings or my opinion, its a fact that this type of missions helps fight skew. Infinity works similarly, where objectives are drawn from a deck that is the same for every player and this forces lists to have multiple elements (hacker, specialist, remotes, etc) and punishes people that go all-in on a single unit type.
The fundamental problem is one of on-the-table decision vs. pregame decisions making the choice.
The goal should be to emphasize on-the-table decisions (such as maneuver) rather than pre-battle decisions (such as unit composition / objective choice).
Randomness is a way to FORCE choice, because it takes things like unit composition or objective choice away from the player. If another solution could be found to de-emphasize pregame decisions in favor of ingame decisions, then use that instead. Randomness isn't really relevant to the discussion save as a possible means to achieve the desired end.
It's worth noting that this can be seen in Tabletop Titans videos, even. Competitive play exists not in making hard choices (those don't come up super often), but rather in identifying the clearly best route to execute.
There usually is a clearly best route. The issue in identifying it lies in the fact that 40k's rules cause all sorts of unintuitive weirdness and it is behind that smokescreen where the discussion lies.
An example lies with the employment of Fiends. If you fight an enemy squad with, say, Daemonettes and Fiends, you can tie up the squad with the Daemonettes to keep them from moving into base-2-base with the fiend. If the fiend stays .75" away from the closest model and more than 1" from other enemy models, only that model can ever hit it, even if the entire rest of the unit is within .5" of said model.
That is the best way to employ fiends. It simply is. Players may not be able to identify all the elements of the rules working together, so the skill comes in parsing the complex interactions of fiddly, tiny rules, but there's clearly ONE BEST OPTION and a whole slew of sub-par options. That's not choice, that's obfuscation.
Thanks to ITC donkey-caves, look at where is gotten us.
Yes. Leaving out of course, the fact that GW deliberately left out the part of the system that would have made all this work (but that targets the sacred cash cow), and also added things ITC doesn't use at all, but yes. Let's call them names.
Seems to me the problem with Abor the Witch isn't that it exist. The problem is that it isn't in Purge the Enemy. That would prevent both doubling it up with Assassinate and getting triple kill secondaries by using Abor the Witch along with a No Mercy, No Respite and a Purge the Enemy secondaries.
Heck, it would probably be a good thing if Warpcraft as a category was removed and all those secondaries were distributed into the other 4 categories.
Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.
So you have part of the problem accurately called out, but there's even more to it. It's bad because an army like Tsons literally can't not take a psyker character. All of the HQs are psyker characters so they are fethed by simply existing. Add to that the fact that these secondaries require absolutely no opportunity cost. You were going to try and kill these characters anyway so in exchange for doing something you were already going to do, you get 8 points. Then compare that to Psychic ritual where you have to take a psyker, put him in harm's way (actually increasing his chance of giving up 8 points because you make it easier for the opponent to kill him), and you have to have him essentially not contribute to the fight at all for three turns. How is that balanced?
How do I only get 1 point for raise the banners (an act which requires my unit to get to an objective, hold the objective, and then literally give up doing anything for a turn), but I can get 2 or 3 points for firing an anti-tank gun at a .... tank ....? If this system makes sense to you, seek help ...
We have Spolleta claiming the kill secondaries are about controlling "skew" but that doesn't really work either unless we think GW considers a normal TSons list with three psykers (because they literally only have Psyker HQs) as "skew", or an IG list with 3 or 4 tanks as "Skew". On top of that, we would have to believe that GW thinks Ahriman is worth the same as a 20 point Astra Militarum character because they both net "5" for "assassinate". This makes zero sense.
On top of that, I think the 9th Ed rules have generally done a decent job of fixing at least some of that. Think about Bring It Down or Titan Slayer - they're meant for those players who bring an all Knight army. Yet, "all Knight armies" are pretty weak this edition without piling this on. Psyker heavy armies like Grey Knights and Tsons have been nerfed by both the Force Org changes and the Smite nerf. Was it also necessary to penalize their armies simply for existing?
I like the idea of secondaries in the game, but I think they need rebalanced. All of them should come with some level of decision making/opportunity cost (i.e. - "I get points for shooting my anit-tank gun at a tank" should not be a thing), none of them should "double up" like Abhor/Assassinate, and they should not specifically target a faction just because that faction exists.
I read nostalgia about Maelstrom cards... I honestly thought we all hated these (Worst thing is I acyually bought those crappy things for orks and nids...)
Well I for one am so happy they are gone, I can't even describe it. They were fine for casual games (then again for casual games one might as well set up a thematic home made mission and have more fun) but they were unwieldy AF and such a pain to play along with.
I want to say that for all their shortcomings, since 4th edition, the current mission system is by far the best system 40k has ever had. They give armies like Nids or Orks, with a totally out of date codex, a good chance to win against the new shiny books. You don't have to roll a single dice, it is fast you just choose them, you can base a strategy on accomplishing them (instead of only tabling), and never in 40K history was that even remotely a thing. And please if the very TS players could just... be less vocal... We get it, you can't currently win, so just wait for your codex to be redone. Your turn will come soon.
Tycho wrote: On top of that, I think the 9th Ed rules have generally done a decent job of fixing at least some of that. Think about Bring It Down or Titan Slayer - they're meant for those players who bring an all Knight army.
My experience so far has been that, in practice, I can take a balanced Tyranid list up against all-Knights and we're just going to max out Bring It Down against one another. The hard cap on the kill secondaries prevents them from really punishing skew, and their value being tied to model count rather than points value disproportionately punishes cheaper models for a given type.
Like you said they're supposed to control skew but really don't, so at the moment I don't see much value in player-selected secondaries. It benefits the skew player (by letting them choose objectives relevant to their list) much more than it allows a non-skew player to counter them.
I'd much rather, as others have said, see a variety of mission types and objectives, putting skew lists that lack the flexibility to handle them at a disadvantage.
And please if the very TS players could just... be less vocal... We get it, you can't currently win, so just wait for your codex to be redone. Your turn will come soon.
"If the half dozen armies that are needlessly targeted by these, and will continue to be needlessly targeted by these (because the problems won't be fixed with a new codex) could just stop wanting to participate equally in the game because it's working fine for my army ...."
That's probably the biggest issue with the current kill secondaries. A new codex won't fix the fact that IG must bring a bunch of somewhat squishy tanks because that's how their army functions, Tsons/Grey Knights must bring Psyker Characters because that's how they function - if the issue were one that could be fixed with a new 'dex it would be different. People would just "wait and see", but this problem is endemic to the nature of the armies it targets, and will be a problem until the secondaries themselves are addressed.
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.
That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.
Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.
I must say I don't think these two ideas work (at all):
- having the opponent choose one of the secondaries will result in your opponent giving you an impossible mission (or nearly impossible) so it comes down to the same thing as only having 2 sec objectives total
- mission-specific secondary mandatory: same issue, you are stuck with something tied to the mission structure, so if you list can't do it then too bad for you.
I don't think you really read what I wrote. See the parenthical - "(obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked)." The secondaries would obviously have to be reworked so that they aren't flat-out impossible. I went into this in more detail in previous posts.
However, the broader point - that your opponent could choose objectives that are difficult for your list to do if you choose a very specialized list - is the whole point. The purpose of such a system is to encourage people not to bring hyper-specialized lists that only have to do one thing in every mission and against every opponent because they always have the same win conditions. "If your list can't do it, too bad for you" is a feature, not a bug - the purpose is to make people not bring those sorts of inflexible lists.
There are broadly two problems with the current secondaries:
1. They arbitrarily punish some factions over others. (And no, "don't complain that your faction can't win because it's totally hosed by this arbitrary punishment, just wait and see for your codex and quit complaining in the meantime!" is not an argument for why this isn't a problem).
2. They encourage super-specialization in list-building, because you have complete freedom over your own win conditions. This is the opposite of what a good secondary system should do. Secondary objectives should be things that create hard, tactical choices between pursuing the plan you'd otherwise pursue and deviating from that plan to succeed at the secondary, not something to just tick off in the list-building phase and then execute the same plan on every game.
I'm not saying "opponent chooses" is the only way to accomplish what the system should accomplish, but what we've got now does precisely the opposite of what it's supposed to.
Not Online!!! wrote: Well it still would curb the most Skew excesses which are Meta relevant.
F.e. Knights would automatically due to their skew nature fall out of competition rather hard, which whilest unfortunate for the owners of knights is STILL an improvement due to lowering AT which would make formerly tough but out-dealt vehicles an intersting choice again.
However, it is still imo a bandaid, as in the fact that you require the missions to be anti skew via an uncertainity element rather then the core mechanics actually enforcing an anti-skew list building. The later is sadly an unfortunate fact that the core rules don't help this, at all. Hence why the go to lever is the mission goals.
Doesn't that sound like the current state of 9th edition? Knights are bad, we've seen multiple flavors of list take top four positions in the only tournaments running, there aren't any skew armor or horde lists taking up a large percentage of tournament entries. If we're already here why make drastic changes in the name of achieving exactly this?
addnid wrote: I read nostalgia about Maelstrom cards... I honestly thought we all hated these (Worst thing is I acyually bought those crappy things for orks and nids...)
Well I for one am so happy they are gone, I can't even describe it. They were fine for casual games (then again for casual games one might as well set up a thematic home made mission and have more fun) but they were unwieldy AF and such a pain to play along with.
Well I didn't You're right homebrew missions were better - but they still are of course and the best way to play any tabletop. Maelstrom was/ is nice when you are bored of eternal war (which I basically was in every edition after the first 3 test games ). For a large part of 7th Maelstrom was also the only way for half the armies to have a chance to win at all, aside from more narrative missions of course.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The fundamental problem is one of on-the-table decision vs. pregame decisions making the choice.
The goal should be to emphasize on-the-table decisions (such as maneuver) rather than pre-battle decisions (such as unit composition / objective choice).
Randomness is a way to FORCE choice, because it takes things like unit composition or objective choice away from the player. If another solution could be found to de-emphasize pregame decisions in favor of ingame decisions, then use that instead. Randomness isn't really relevant to the discussion save as a possible means to achieve the desired end.
It's worth noting that this can be seen in Tabletop Titans videos, even. Competitive play exists not in making hard choices (those don't come up super often), but rather in identifying the clearly best route to execute.
There usually is a clearly best route. The issue in identifying it lies in the fact that 40k's rules cause all sorts of unintuitive weirdness and it is behind that smokescreen where the discussion lies.
An example lies with the employment of Fiends. If you fight an enemy squad with, say, Daemonettes and Fiends, you can tie up the squad with the Daemonettes to keep them from moving into base-2-base with the fiend. If the fiend stays .75" away from the closest model and more than 1" from other enemy models, only that model can ever hit it, even if the entire rest of the unit is within .5" of said model.
That is the best way to employ fiends. It simply is. Players may not be able to identify all the elements of the rules working together, so the skill comes in parsing the complex interactions of fiddly, tiny rules, but there's clearly ONE BEST OPTION and a whole slew of sub-par options. That's not choice, that's obfuscation.
This is the same for any system you could replace it with. Arguing that there should be more than one OPTIMAL way to play is as stupid as arguing that we really ought to pave roads differently in order to allow for tire options that aren't simply round.
Think of it this way, there are objectively optimal ways to play games as complex as Chess and Go. These are well enough understood that we can teach them to a computer and that computer is able to beat the best players in the world. This fact doesn't make those games any less interesting as they are complex enough that humans can't easily solve them without the aid of machines.
TLDR; Every finite system that works within any kind of logical fabric must by definition be solvable.
He's not saying that, he's saying that the secondary system ought to promote choices on the table, not at the list-building stage, and instead, it does the opposite.
Anything can be solved in theory, but it's a lot easier to solve something at the list-building stage in a system where the objectives are effectively the same on the table in every game, rather than on-the-fly on the table in a system where the objectives vary from game to game in a more dynamic way.
Yes. The other big area of the game where table-play matters is when it comes to the board setup and terrain. Again, this is a pre-game randomizing element that affects both players and which adds a level of complexity. It breaks down the shape of the game and lessens the impact that "optimal" strategies might have.
Again, imagine chess if instead of playing on the same 8x8 board, the board shape and arrangement was randomly generated each time. Sometimes gaps, sometimes chokepoint, some times a grid or hexagon or irregular shapes. In theory there is a perfect solution to each random setup, but no player is ever going to find it out within the span of a single game. Thus, they have to rely on heuristics (i.e. skill) in forecasting what type of moves would work well given certain circumstances, but they can't be completely sure.
40K, in its ideal state in my mind, gives you highly variability in missions/objectives that both players have to account for, you have terrain that matters significantly to the table-level decisions (9th is better than 8th, but it has a ways to go IMHO), and force organization creates a little more homogeneity in list design, so that armies are structurally more similar to each other and there is less room for extremely over- or under-powered lists.
When all that happens, I think the gameplay is more interesting.
I am arguing that I should see the table, the layout, and my opponents models before I am able to optimize. In that way, I am playing the game.
Right now, I can optimize sitting at my computer. I can develop a plan for my army list, a list of secondaries to take, a mechanism to execute each mission, and can do so for each of the possible opposing codexes in the game based on what I know of them.
In the former, actually interacting with the game is the important part. In the latter, executing a preplanned subroutine like a mechanical system is the important part.
In other words, I want a game so complicated that you need a digital system to solve, rather than one so shallow you can solve with a purely mechanical system. If we're being pedantic.
I think a problem with the game is that models are so fast and nimble and the game not caring about outflanking. Even with a lot of terrain quite a few unit types are just too fast due to them mostly ignoring it, JP infantry and fliers the worst offenders, which make the table setup not matter as much for lots of armies. Only vehicles are really punished and for the rest of the units terrain mostly matters in that it blocks line of sight.
The table set up should matter more then it does and encourage various types of units to play around it. But it doesnt. All it does is slow vehicles and stop long range shooting. If 2 melee armies face each other the terrain could most of the time be removed to make movement easier. The actually physical act of moving the models I mean. Especially if they have jump packs or other rules that ignore the difficult ground penalties.
The bonuses and penalties should be higher and affect certain kinds of units more and others less. Like if difficult terrain were more common and harsher penalties for heavy infantry footslogging were introduced then going all out on normal foot marines wouldnt be a good idea. You would probably want some bikes or fast vehicles to go around it without it taking multiple turns. Or JP/fly to move above. And you could make it so a unit with fly cant use it if entering or leaving, still fly over with no penalty, certain terrain without risk. Using JP in a ruin or forest could reintroduce dangerous terrain and kill the model on a 1 etc.
The 23% smaller tables and possibility of all fly armies, BA or Eldar, or infantry with move bonuses kinda removes what should be one of the biggest variables in the game. How you interact with the terrain to gain an advantage.
Balancing the secondaries wont help too much if the core game isnt good enough. List building, terrain or core rules need to change as well.
yukishiro1 wrote: He's not saying that, he's saying that the secondary system ought to promote choices on the table, not at the list-building stage, and instead, it does the opposite.
Anything can be solved in theory, but it's a lot easier to solve something at the list-building stage in a system where the objectives are effectively the same on the table in every game, rather than on-the-fly on the table in a system where the objectives vary from game to game in a more dynamic way.
Chess uses the same pieces and the same board each game, the players of chess use literal books of known openings, and we don't consider that to be an issue. If Chess can work while being static in setup and solved by computers why must 40k rely on tricks and randomness to create choice on the table?
Also, why are we able to see the best 40k players win games consistently, sometimes even with subpar lists, if play at the table doesn't matter? Conversely, why don't we see unknown players bringing netlists taking high places at these big tournaments?
I am arguing that I should see the table, the layout, and my opponents models before I am able to optimize. In that way, I am playing the game.
Right now, I can optimize sitting at my computer. I can develop a plan for my army list, a list of secondaries to take, a mechanism to execute each mission, and can do so for each of the possible opposing codexes in the game based on what I know of them.
In the former, actually interacting with the game is the important part. In the latter, executing a preplanned subroutine like a mechanical system is the important part.
In other words, I want a game so complicated that you need a digital system to solve, rather than one so shallow you can solve with a purely mechanical system. If we're being pedantic.
You seem to want a game that nobody would ever want to play because the level of complexity would be so high as to be impractical to play at a table with actual plastic men. There are plenty of PC games that can go into this level of depth, perhaps try one of them.
Klickor wrote: I think a problem with the game is that models are so fast and nimble and the game not caring about outflanking. Even with a lot of terrain quite a few unit types are just too fast due to them mostly ignoring it, JP infantry and fliers the worst offenders, which make the table setup not matter as much for lots of armies. Only vehicles are really punished and for the rest of the units terrain mostly matters in that it blocks line of sight.
The table set up should matter more then it does and encourage various types of units to play around it. But it doesnt. All it does is slow vehicles and stop long range shooting. If 2 melee armies face each other the terrain could most of the time be removed to make movement easier. The actually physical act of moving the models I mean. Especially if they have jump packs or other rules that ignore the difficult ground penalties.
The bonuses and penalties should be higher and affect certain kinds of units more and others less. Like if difficult terrain were more common and harsher penalties for heavy infantry footslogging were introduced then going all out on normal foot marines wouldnt be a good idea. You would probably want some bikes or fast vehicles to go around it without it taking multiple turns. Or JP/fly to move above. And you could make it so a unit with fly cant use it if entering or leaving, still fly over with no penalty, certain terrain without risk. Using JP in a ruin or forest could reintroduce dangerous terrain and kill the model on a 1 etc.
The 23% smaller tables and possibility of all fly armies, BA or Eldar, or infantry with move bonuses kinda removes what should be one of the biggest variables in the game. How you interact with the terrain to gain an advantage.
Balancing the secondaries wont help too much if the core game isnt good enough. List building, terrain or core rules need to change as well.
I read all of this, and I'm like... I need to just keep playing 5th edition (ProHammer), as it does exactly this.
I can't help but think that an awful lot of people got lured into 8th edition, and now 9th, on the promise that the streamlined ruleset would make the game smoother. What this has, apparently, managed to do was make the game just as or more convoluted and clunky as before (there are probably more things to know now - it's just all locked in the codex books), while simultaneously gutting the game of all of the things affecting table-level play that SHOULD be driving the gameplay. Movement, use of terrain, careful positioning, pacing, judging distances, managing risk/reward, order of activations, etc. All that got cut out of of the rules or scaled back in the great streamlining - and we're left with something else entirely.
Canadian 5th, as I recall you've said in the past that you prefer a game where listbuilding is a key element, and that you like the idea of some units being deliberately undercosted or overcosted because learning which units are optimal and which are traps is fun for you.
Suffice to say that I don't think you're going to see eye-to-eye with people who want to reduce the importance of listbuilding and increase the importance of tactical (non-list-driven) decisions.
Canadian 5th wrote: You seem to want a game that nobody would ever want to play because the level of complexity would be so high as to be impractical to play at a table with actual plastic men.
Nah, Infinity makes it work fine. Emergent complexity from simple systems makes it much, much harder to solve than 40K while still being playable.
Canadian 5th wrote: You seem to want a game that nobody would ever want to play because the level of complexity would be so high as to be impractical to play at a table with actual plastic men. There are plenty of PC games that can go into this level of depth, perhaps try one of them.
there are also a couple tabletop games that are like this. I doubt you could solve any given Team Yankee game with a mechanical computer, even if you could with a digital one. Or Force-on-Force. You asserting that it is far too complicated to play simply because you can't win the game in advance doesn't actually make it too complicated to play.
Even GW's own Lord of the Rings system has a fairly simple rule-set with great depth. It achieves this by not being complicated in rules but rather complex in depth (rules interactions).
I'm reminded of a question at the 2018 NOVA Convention Lord of the Rings preview that made me laugh. I'm paraphrasing, but: 40k player: "When are you going to change the scenarios that require large-scale maneuver and long range shooting so that armies which are all infantry have a chance to win?" GWLOTR Designer: "Those missions exist to encourage players not to take armies of all infantry. Next question."
It was basically "why isn't there an obvious army I can build that's best at all the missions?" or, in other words, "Why don't you design the game so that I can just hyper optimize my army?" asked as if that was an expected thing.
I haven't read the last 7 pages, so apologies in advance, but this is literally why I stopped playing this year. Custodes are so completely boned by the new system, that unless I turn 2 kill his warlord and also a few tanks, I am behind the rest of the game. This edition is now catered to massed S8+ dakka. It's like no one learned anything from why the Castellan was so bad for the game back in 8th.
Even GW's own Lord of the Rings system has a fairly simple rule-set with great depth. It achieves this by not being complex.
I'm reminded of a question at the 2018 NOVA Convention Lord of the Rings preview that made me laugh. I'm paraphrasing, but:
40k player: "When are you going to change the scenarios that require large-scale maneuver and long range shooting so that armies which are all infantry have a chance to win?"
GWLOTR Designer: "Those missions exist to encourage players not to take armies of all infantry. Next question."
It was basically "why isn't there an obvious army I can build that's best at all the missions?" or, in other words, "Why don't you design the game so that I can just hyper optimize my army?" asked as if that was an expected thing.
That's awesome.
I just bought big Battle for Pelanor fields starter box for xmas. My family paints mini's on occasion and liked the look of what was in the box, and I got the shiny rulebook out of the deal. Pretty impressed with the read though. Reminds me a lot of the system used in Epic as well.
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.
That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.
Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.
I must say I don't think these two ideas work (at all):
- having the opponent choose one of the secondaries will result in your opponent giving you an impossible mission (or nearly impossible) so it comes down to the same thing as only having 2 sec objectives total
- mission-specific secondary mandatory: same issue, you are stuck with something tied to the mission structure, so if you list can't do it then too bad for you.
But are these bad things?
Regarding the first, maybe you should be more conservative in your secondary selection.
For #2 maybe you should have a more balanced list.
Or we can just ditch them all together.
In my experience, every.single.ITC player I've played against is someone I have zero interest in playing a second time and i hope the feeling is mutual. So I'm waiting for someone to come along and show me I'm wrong.....still waiting.
As long as there aren't secondaries that are literally unachievable for some armies (eg objectives that require psykers), I am all for mandatory mission-specific secondaries.
Having balanced armies able to complete missions while skew lists have to rely on killing is a great way to even out those matchups. It can still be optimized, but the optimization is more tactical and less spreadsheet-driven. I found the way 9th Ed missions shook up list optimization to be a refreshing change in 9th; having more varieties of mission (rather than all flavors of progressively scored take-and-hold) and a variety of mission secondaries would be a step in the right direction.
catbarf wrote: Canadian 5th, as I recall you've said in the past that you prefer a game where listbuilding is a key element, and that you like the idea of some units being deliberately undercosted or overcosted because learning which units are optimal and which are traps is fun for you.
That's not exactly my position. My position is that list building should matter because if it doesn't you might as well give people a couple of prebuilt army templates and play games that way. I also want as much choice as possible in list building, yes even trap choices, because it can be enjoyable to play a suboptimal list either for a campaign or as a handicap against a weaker player.
Nah, Infinity makes it work fine. Emergent complexity from simple systems makes it much, much harder to solve than 40K while still being playable.
Does Infinity not have any list building styles that tend to be weaker than others? Are there skilled players and unskilled players and do those skilled players tend to take specific types of actions that work better than others? If either of these are true the game is as solvable as 40k.
I think you're arguing against a straw-man here. Nobody is saying either (1) list-building shouldn't matter at all, or (2) skill once you get to the table doesn't matter currently.
Instead, people are saying that right now the balance feels too titled towards solving the game at the list-building stage, because there is not enough variation within the game to shake up list-based solutions to the game, and that the secondaries are contributing to this problem rather than helping solve it, which feels like the opposite of what they ought to do.
I don't think a game which is complex enough in terms of objectives that vary from game to game that there isn't an obvious play for almost every situation that you can theorize before the game and that applies to every game is a game too complex for people to want to play. In fact, we can demonstrate this isn't the case, because the vast majority of 40k players who play play the game don't approach it that way anyway. They're casual players more or less flying by the seat of their pants. And they like it.
It really wouldn't take too much to shake up 40k scoring enough that it would be unrealistic to have pre-planned out every scenario, or to shake up list design enough to get people taking more flexible lists that can tackle a wider range of possible objectives, rather than hyper-specialized ones specifically tailored to completing the same secondary objectives in the same way every single game.
Instead, people are saying that right now the balance feels too titled towards solving the game at the list-building stage, because there is not enough variation within the game to shake up list-based solutions to the game, and that the secondaries are contributing to this problem rather than helping solve it, which feels like the opposite of what they ought to do.
Honestly, is that not the eternal struggle of most 40k players - How do we get to a game that doesn't lean quite so heavily on the list? lol
EDIT:
I think a problem with the game is that models are so fast and nimble and the game not caring about outflanking.
I missed this earlier -
It's not so much about the speed of the models - it's the table size. The game suddenly got way better when we moved to the "old" table sizes at anything above 1000 points. It fixed a lot of the problems we had. I say this all the time but so many say "9th is great because movement matters now" and the truth is, it doesn't. At all. Not even a little bit. When you can get to almost everything all the time like you can in 9th, it's a lot LESS about maneuvering and a lot more about timing. On a larger table where a mistake in the movement phase might leave you permanently out of position, movement matters. In a game where it's almost impossible to not be able to get where you need to go, it doesn't. It becomes about timing. Which would be fine in a different system, but it's not a great paradigm for IGOUGO ...
To everyone who thinks they can win at list building stage (because bla bla bla i can choose my secondaries under the current system), please think about what you are implying. You are implying that you can go to a tournament with a netlist and actually win, just like any other player.
But that is not true. You will make mistakes, your plan will be destroyed by the first opponent you will face who will be much better than you at this game.
Since 9th started I have ruined many secondary missions, and used them as bait to induce bad decisions. For example I had an opponent just last game go for my swarmlord to get 8 points (abhor the witch and bring it down), so I could keep my dimachaeron alive. He forgot the dima kills 4 wound targets in one go, so he should have gone for the kill on the dima, regardless of points (it was his third turn, more points was not yet the priority). This sole surviving dimachaeron proceeded to obliterate the alarus who had just killed swarmy, costing him the game. He should not have focused so soon on secondaries, but on giving his very expensive, very lethal alarus the best chance of surviving the turn after they arrived.
Agreed you can’t do much about scramblers (your opponent will score that whatever you do), and some other secondariies. But most of them, you can really do something to make your opponent struggle to get more than 5 points.
But up you need to really think. And not approach the game thinking “I don’t like the current system, f it let’s just play anyway”, then get smashed by a better player than you, and blame it on the system or whatever.
I do agree on the need for an “elite kill” secondary though like gang busters (if I recall correctly) was.
You don’t have to like the system, but don’t say the game is winnable at list building stage, unless you actually have won tournaments (even just a local thing) with the “perfect” lists you built. From experience players who complain a lot about any given edition, often loose most of their games regardless of the edition, even when they only play with their friends. The same people keep winning at top level. Richard Siegler doesn’t win at the list building stage, does he ?
yukishiro1 wrote: He's not saying that, he's saying that the secondary system ought to promote choices on the table, not at the list-building stage, and instead, it does the opposite.
Anything can be solved in theory, but it's a lot easier to solve something at the list-building stage in a system where the objectives are effectively the same on the table in every game, rather than on-the-fly on the table in a system where the objectives vary from game to game in a more dynamic way.
Chess uses the same pieces and the same board each game, the players of chess use literal books of known openings, and we don't consider that to be an issue. If Chess can work while being static in setup and solved by computers why must 40k rely on tricks and randomness to create choice on the table?
Are you serious? Chess is BALANCED. A white pawn and a black pawn are IDENTICAL. One does not get heaps of extra rules and cost half as much as the other. Chess lists cannot forgo pawns and take rooks or knights in their place. That comparison is just silly.
I'm not sure 40k is especially solved at the list building stage right now. Mainly because quite a few factions seemingly have competitive lists. Possibly because going first I think remains the biggest improvement to your victory chances* - and anyone with any list should go first about half the time.
*Except possibly versus Harlequins.
The Primary Objective mean the game isn't just about killing. Movement and board control are essential. I feel as a result 40k today is a far less a "solved game" if you like, than top end ITC in 8th was - where what you played and how you played tended to refined down to the overpowered nub. We see far more lists placing in tournaments than was the case in Pax-Castellan or Marines 2.0 (sorry 8th Eldar - always the bridesmaid, never the name of a meta era.)
Certain factions suck. We can all name them - Tau. Guard. Thousand Sons. There's a lot of crap in the Tyranid Codex etc etc. Secondaries certainly contribute to these issues - but I also think a lot of plane old "you pay too much for what you get" does too. I feel like GW could release CA21 and improve a range of these issues without completely re-inventing the wheel.
I know it sounds weird given 40k is a dice game where luck is intrinsic to everything you do - but I dislike losing games because you drew your cards in the wrong order. That's why I ditched MTG and Hearthstone. Which is I wouldn't want even the improved Maelstrom missions to make a return - or actually, cos I know some loved it, I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't want it to become the standard for competitive play.
addnid wrote: To everyone who thinks they can win at list building stage (because bla bla bla i can choose my secondaries under the current system), please think about what you are implying. You are implying that you can go to a tournament with a netlist and actually win, just like any other player.
...
The same people keep winning at top level. Richard Siegler doesn’t win at the list building stage, does he ?
You're arguing against a straw man too. See my above post. Literally nobody here is saying that player skill at the table is irrelevant and just taking the best net-list will guarantee you wins. They're saying that the current secondary objectives reward specialized list-building too much and, far from varying up the game, in fact encourage people to hyper-specialize and then play the same game every time.
Bringing up Siegler actively refutes the point you're trying to make, though. Siegler dropped his normal faction at the last minute to win the last LVO by taking the most win-at-the-list-building-stage list that ever existed in 8th edition. Ask the man yourself, he'll happily tell you that he did that to win, and that he did win LVO because he took that list. Now many other people also took that list, and they didn't win. It's not that taking a "solved" list will guarantee you a win. But Siegler absolutely could not have won on the table if he didn't also win in the list-building stage with the list he took. He knew that, which is why he did it.
I think its fair to say the 2020 LVO was "Solved" when 5 lists were Marines of two variants and 1 was essentially Marines plus 3 undercosted Ad Mech Disintegrators.
Although really Siegler could have lost in the semi-final if one of Nayden's Spears hadn't bounced, and then an Intercessor Sergeant with either a Thunder Hammer or a Power Fist (I can't quite remember) hadn't proceeded to kill 3 or 4 in return.
Unit1126PLL wrote: there are also a couple tabletop games that are like this. I doubt you could solve any given Team Yankee game with a mechanical computer, even if you could with a digital one. Or Force-on-Force. You asserting that it is far too complicated to play simply because you can't win the game in advance doesn't actually make it too complicated to play.
You can technically solve those with the right deck of Magic cards and enough time. The thing is that nobody cares enough to devote time to these extremely niche games so they won't be solved even to the degree 40k has been.
40k, in much the same way as MtG and Hearthstone, is a victim of being a big fish in a small and extremely nerdy pond. People obsess over it and find out the nasties combos before LGS Timmy has even painted up the models from the latest box. This will happen as long as it's the biggest game in town and no changes will fix that.
I'm reminded of a question at the 2018 NOVA Convention Lord of the Rings preview that made me laugh. I'm paraphrasing, but:
40k player: "When are you going to change the scenarios that require large-scale maneuver and long range shooting so that armies which are all infantry have a chance to win?"
GWLOTR Designer: "Those missions exist to encourage players not to take armies of all infantry. Next question."
Just imagine if GW came out and said, "Yeah, we want Knights to be crap. They're cool models so we made rles for them but we really don't want to see them being too good because it doesn't fit our vision for the game." Can you picture the wailing and gnashing of teeth on this forum over that?
It was basically "why isn't there an obvious army I can build that's best at all the missions?" or, in other words, "Why don't you design the game so that I can just hyper optimize my army?" asked as if that was an expected thing.
I don't know, the question seemed like it was an honest ask about making all infantry lists viable in certain scenarios. It seems like it ought to be a valid list type given the scale of the game.
yukishiro1 wrote: I think you're arguing against a straw-man here. Nobody is saying either (1) list-building shouldn't matter at all, or (2) skill once you get to the table doesn't matter currently.
Instead, people are saying that right now the balance feels too titled towards solving the game at the list-building stage, because there is not enough variation within the game to shake up list-based solutions to the game, and that the secondaries are contributing to this problem rather than helping solve it, which feels like the opposite of what they ought to do.
Does anybody have any data to back this up? I can show tournament data and winning lists and point out the high number of different lists and styles of lists that have done well in 9th edition thus far. Orks alone have placed in the top 4 with Buggies, Ghazzy + Skarboyz, and SAG Mekz with Stormboyz and Meganobs in Trukks, how's that for list diversity?
Yes, there are armies languishing in a nearly unplayable state Tau, Eldar, and 1k Suns and others that have it rough but can generally succeed with the help of allies like Chaos SM, Grey Knights, DE, Guard, and Chaos Knights. That's too many weak armies but even among those good with allies lists, we've seen pure DE place top 4 at major tournaments.
It really wouldn't take too much to shake up 40k scoring enough that it would be unrealistic to have pre-planned out every scenario, or to shake up list design enough to get people taking more flexible lists that can tackle a wider range of possible objectives, rather than hyper-specialized ones specifically tailored to completing the same secondary objectives in the same way every single game.
What about the list below makes it tailored and not a 'TRUE TAC LIST' like people here seem to want?
Spoiler:
Patrol: deathskulls
HQ
Warboss w power klaw + kustom shoota=83pts
Relic: killa klaw.
Warlord: kunnin but brutal. Upgrade:.
Da biggest boss. -1cp
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Troops
10x gretchin =50pts
Fast Attack
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
Dedicated Transport
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
Vanguard: deathskulls
HQ
Big Mek w SAG=120pts
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Elites
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 kommandos including boss Nob (1x tankbusta bomb) =45pts
Is anybody honestly going to say that this doesn't seem like a proper fluffy Ork list or is it total powergamer skew because it doesn't run enough Boyz or some gak like that?
addnid wrote: To everyone who thinks they can win at list building stage (because bla bla bla i can choose my secondaries under the current system), please think about what you are implying. You are implying that you can go to a tournament with a netlist and actually win, just like any other player.
But that is not true. You will make mistakes, your plan will be destroyed by the first opponent you will face who will be much better than you at this game.
But what are we comparing this to? If I get an army with a strong set of rules and an army like lets say tau. I will of course do better with the good list, and in case of the bad lists, even if I have an in depth knowladge of tau it ain't going to help me as much, specialy vs other players playing armies better then tau, as having a list with a solid rule set. Yes if by some miracle of pairings you end up facing the tournaments winner in round 4, you are going to get destroyed, unless something happens to the dice or there are some placing games being made. But I don't think people claim, that just because a tau players knows a tau list better then a marine list, he played just a few games with or even just and army he played against, playing the tau list is going to somehow give him a better gaming expiriance.
And this gets even worse at an outside of tournament level, where a solid rules base carries a lot harder then in tournaments. Specialy against non optimised list played by people that don't play 6 times a week.
Is anybody honestly going to say that this doesn't seem like a proper fluffy Ork list or is it total powergamer skew because it doesn't run enough Boyz or some gak like that?
There is this slight problem of army rules not being equal. Nothing a harlequin player can build is unfluffy, specialy considering the number of option the army has a whole. But the end result of building a fluffy harli or custodes list is way different from trying to build a fluffy tau list. And the worse of it is that the tau player, if he tries to build an optimised list, is going to be called WAAC, which I assume is used a negative term, even when his army is weaker then the really good armies.
Canadian 5th wrote: My position is that list building should matter because if it doesn't you might as well give people a couple of prebuilt army templates and play games that way.
You're discussing this with several people who, from what I've gathered, view listbuilding more as a means to shape their playstyle and offer freedom in collection, and then expect the real, relevant, game-winning choices to be made on the tabletop. Hence my comment about not seeing eye to eye, because if your perspective on listbuilding is that it only matters if it gives you a benefit for doing it 'right', you are approaching the game with a completely different mindset from many others here.
Personally, I think listbuilding should matter only in that it determines what strategy is optimal for your force, not giving one player an advantage before the game even begins. A game where any two 2,000pt armies can be expected to actually be roughly equal in power (if played correctly) is my ideal. 40K isn't there.
Canadian 5th wrote: I also want as much choice as possible in list building, yes even trap choices, because it can be enjoyable to play a suboptimal list either for a campaign or as a handicap against a weaker player.
That is by far the weirdest justification I have heard for deliberate imbalance. You can always just use a points handicap. No need to make a particular unit suck for everyone.
Canadian 5th wrote: Does Infinity not have any list building styles that tend to be weaker than others? Are there skilled players and unskilled players and do those skilled players tend to take specific types of actions that work better than others?
Infinity has you build your list after the mission is known, so it doesn't have 'tournament lists' the way 40K does. And in my experience, there isn't nearly the sort of conformity in lists that I see in 40K. Your list determines what options you have on the table, not whether you start with a massive advantage or disadvantage. It's very hard to write a 'bad list', and it's much, much harder to netlist.
catbarf wrote: You're discussing this with several people who, from what I've gathered, view listbuilding more as a means to shape their playstyle and offer freedom in collection, and then expect the real, relevant, game-winning choices to be made on the tabletop. Hence my comment about not seeing eye to eye, because if your perspective on listbuilding is that it only matters if it gives you a benefit for doing it 'right', you are approaching the game with a completely different mindset from many others here.
Personally, I think listbuilding should matter only in that it determines what strategy is optimal for your force, not giving one player an advantage before the game even begins. A game where any two 2,000pt armies can be expected to actually be roughly equal in power (if played correctly) is my ideal. 40K isn't there.
Yes, because a list of light infantry themed around WWI trench warfare and packing nothing heavier than mortars and heavy bolters should have a 50/50 matchup against a mechanized force that hides their troops in transports and brings a lot of T8 heavy hitters... Those two lists might be equal in power against a theoretical TAC list but the actual power of either list will depend heavily on the meta and what the lists they face bring to the table.
In a game with as broad a list of forces as 40k and nothing like real history to bar certain lists from facing other lists, it's impossible to make list building cease to be a significant factor in the outcome of a game.
That is by far the weirdest justification I have heard for deliberate imbalance. You can always just use a points handicap. No need to make a particular unit suck for everyone.
Please show me how you'd differentiate conscripts/penal legions from normal guardsmen without making one of the options a trap choice. Would the game benefit from removing one of those two units and forcing players to make their themed lists play with counts as units? I don't think it would.
Infinity has you build your list after the mission is known, so it doesn't have 'tournament lists' the way 40K does. And in my experience, there isn't nearly the sort of conformity in lists that I see in 40K. Your list determines what options you have on the table, not whether you start with a massive advantage or disadvantage. It's very hard to write a 'bad list', and it's much, much harder to netlist.
In any game where the outcome of an attack is determined by logically consistent rules, there will be good choices and bad choices. Plus, as I understand it the scope of Infinity starts and ends at human-sized models with nothing heavier than a suit of power armor at the top end of the scale. That makes it much easier to balance than a game that wants to include everything from goblins the size of large dogs to walking tanks the size of an office building.
There is this slight problem of army rules not being equal. Nothing a harlequin player can build is unfluffy, specialy considering the number of option the army has a whole. But the end result of building a fluffy harli or custodes list is way different from trying to build a fluffy tau list. And the worse of it is that the tau player, if he tries to build an optimised list, is going to be called WAAC, which I assume is used a negative term, even when his army is weaker then the really good armies.
Yet people on Dakka are saying that Orks need buffs and are only winning because they skew against the anti-marine meta... They're not trash tier like a few especially bad off books but even saying that DE have made top placings in 9th. When a book that has the negative perception of the DE codex can take a place at top tables that has to say something about the balance of 9th edition and the level to which player skill matters.
Not sure if sarcastic or not but would that also include cutting every vehicle, including walkers, and cutting down model counts to around 10 per side?
catbarf wrote: Canadian 5th, as I recall you've said in the past that you prefer a game where listbuilding is a key element, and that you like the idea of some units being deliberately undercosted or overcosted because learning which units are optimal and which are traps is fun for you.
That's not exactly my position. My position is that list building should matter because if it doesn't you might as well give people a couple of prebuilt army templates and play games that way. I also want as much choice as possible in list building, yes even trap choices, because it can be enjoyable to play a suboptimal list either for a campaign or as a handicap against a weaker player.
I don't think anybody is arguing that list building should not matter at all. The argument is mostly of scale - ie: should it be 10% of the input for victory? 40%? 80%? To many, it feels it skews to far too high a percentage of victory chance goes to list building, to the detriment of on the board strategy and missions. I haven't played much 9th so I cannot really say what the slider is, but I'm just trying to explain the reasonings people are mentioning on list building.
Canadian 5th wrote:
catbarf wrote: You're discussing this with several people who, from what I've gathered, view listbuilding more as a means to shape their playstyle and offer freedom in collection, and then expect the real, relevant, game-winning choices to be made on the tabletop. Hence my comment about not seeing eye to eye, because if your perspective on listbuilding is that it only matters if it gives you a benefit for doing it 'right', you are approaching the game with a completely different mindset from many others here.
Personally, I think listbuilding should matter only in that it determines what strategy is optimal for your force, not giving one player an advantage before the game even begins. A game where any two 2,000pt armies can be expected to actually be roughly equal in power (if played correctly) is my ideal. 40K isn't there.
Yes, because a list of light infantry themed around WWI trench warfare and packing nothing heavier than mortars and heavy bolters should have a 50/50 matchup against a mechanized force that hides their troops in transports and brings a lot of T8 heavy hitters... Those two lists might be equal in power against a theoretical TAC list but the actual power of either list will depend heavily on the meta and what the lists they face bring to the table.
In a game with as broad a list of forces as 40k and nothing like real history to bar certain lists from facing other lists, it's impossible to make list building cease to be a significant factor in the outcome of a game.
Like I said above, few are arguing that list building should have zero impact on winning, the argument is more that you should be able to build a list that doesn't put you at an automatic disadvantage due to trap choices.
In your example, depending on the mission I could easily see the win rate swing one way or another - in a heavily cluttered urban area where the big vehicles cannot really put their power to bear the mechanized list could be at a disadvantage for taking hold of objectives and taking out an entrenched force, meanwhile in a low terrain map with little cover, the mech list could just pick off the infantry list at its leisure and stroll up to objectives to hold them.
Ie: people are arguing that terrain, mission objectives, and your strategy vs your opponent's strategy should count for more than list building.
Canadian 5th wrote: Yes, because a list of light infantry themed around WWI trench warfare and packing nothing heavier than mortars and heavy bolters should have a 50/50 matchup against a mechanized force that hides their troops in transports and brings a lot of T8 heavy hitters... Those two lists might be equal in power against a theoretical TAC list but the actual power of either list will depend heavily on the meta and what the lists they face bring to the table.
In a game with as broad a list of forces as 40k and nothing like real history to bar certain lists from facing other lists, it's impossible to make list building cease to be a significant factor in the outcome of a game.
If your scenario design renders those vehicles (and infantry within them) unable to score, while the light infantry with their pioneers and stosstruppen can forward-deploy onto mission-critical objectives, you just might be able to eke a fun and possibly even balanced game out of light infantry desperately using what little they have to stall the advance of armored forces for as long as possible.
Of course that's a total non-starter if mechanized man can decide that his force's objective is to turn the enemy into red mist. Hence the point of this discussion tangent. Player-chosen objectives afford too much power over scenario conditions; turning potentially asymmetrical matchups into one-sided stomps.
Canadian 5th wrote: Please show me how you'd differentiate conscripts/penal legions from normal guardsmen without making one of the options a trap choice. Would the game benefit from removing one of those two units and forcing players to make their themed lists play with counts as units? I don't think it would.
Well, if I get in my time machine and pop back to... 4th, if I recall correctly, both Infantry and Conscripts were worth taking. Conscripts were cheaper and came in large units but had no access to heavy weapons and fled easily, while Infantry were more expensive but better combatants taken in smaller units. Conscripts were your 'send in the next wave' meatshield. Infantry were your actual combatants. It was completely viable to build an army out of entirely one or the other.
I struggle to understand why this is your go-to gotcha- it sounds like you're trying to say that it's impossible to balance Guardsmen and Conscripts against one another, so the logical choice is to make Conscripts suck so that they can deliberately be a trap unit or handicap, and that's absurd. There is always a points level that will make any choice equally viable to its peers, whether or not GW can find it.
Canadian 5th wrote: Plus, as I understand it the scope of Infinity starts and ends at human-sized models with nothing heavier than a suit of power armor at the top end of the scale. That makes it much easier to balance than a game that wants to include everything from goblins the size of large dogs to walking tanks the size of an office building.
The scope of 40K's mechanics amount to shooting, punching, and the occasional magic power. Infinity has shooting, punching, functional stealth, functional evasion, hacking, overwatch, and a host of other mechanics for which 40K clumsily doles out invulnerable saves or mortal wounds. Size discrepancy is certainly a problem for 40K's balance but it's not the be-all and end-all of design complexity; if you are trying to make the case that Infinity has a narrower scope and is consequently easier to balance, you are very far off the mark.
kurhanik wrote: I don't think anybody is arguing that list building should not matter at all. The argument is mostly of scale - ie: should it be 10% of the input for victory? 40%? 80%? To many, it feels it skews to far too high a percentage of victory chance goes to list building, to the detriment of on the board strategy and missions. I haven't played much 9th so I cannot really say what the slider is, but I'm just trying to explain the reasonings people are mentioning on list building.
Nobody has actually shown that list building actually has an outsized impact. If both players bring lists designed for the same style of play, for example, WAAC tournament lists, are the lists doing much heavy lifting at all? There's obviously a level where this breaks and one list is so much better than another list that the list does basically win the game before anything is even on the table, but in that case, do the secondary objectives even matter?
Like I said above, few are arguing that list building should have zero impact on winning, the argument is more that you should be able to build a list that doesn't put you at an automatic disadvantage due to trap choices.
In your example, depending on the mission I could easily see the win rate swing one way or another - in a heavily cluttered urban area where the big vehicles cannot really put their power to bear the mechanized list could be at a disadvantage for taking hold of objectives and taking out an entrenched force, meanwhile in a low terrain map with little cover, the mech list could just pick off the infantry list at its leisure and stroll up to objectives to hold them.
Ie: people are arguing that terrain, mission objectives, and your strategy vs your opponent's strategy should count for more than list building.
You can already do that. Just don't use the trap options and build optimized lists and play against others doing the same.
Your urban example doesn't work in 9th either, objectives will always create open spaces and it would be incredibly bad form to make a board with streets so narrow vehicles can't use them. Given that vehicle facing no longer matters the vehicles would have an easy time poking some part of their hull around a corner and laying waste to the enemy.
It really wouldn't take too much to shake up 40k scoring enough that it would be unrealistic to have pre-planned out every scenario, or to shake up list design enough to get people taking more flexible lists that can tackle a wider range of possible objectives, rather than hyper-specialized ones specifically tailored to completing the same secondary objectives in the same way every single game.
What about the list below makes it tailored and not a 'TRUE TAC LIST' like people here seem to want?
Spoiler:
Patrol: deathskulls
HQ
Warboss w power klaw + kustom shoota=83pts
Relic: killa klaw.
Warlord: kunnin but brutal. Upgrade:.
Da biggest boss. -1cp
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Troops
10x gretchin =50pts
Fast Attack
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
Dedicated Transport
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
Vanguard: deathskulls
HQ
Big Mek w SAG=120pts
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Elites
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 kommandos including boss Nob (1x tankbusta bomb) =45pts
Is anybody honestly going to say that this doesn't seem like a proper fluffy Ork list or is it total powergamer skew because it doesn't run enough Boyz or some gak like that?
I think you're misreading what I wrote. The question isn't whether that list is "proper fluffy" or not, the question is whether the list essentially plays the same game every game. That's the problem with the secondaries. By giving the player complete control over them, it means that secondaries encourage list tailoring and then playing as identical a game as possible every time, instead of encouraging you to take more balanced choices that can confront a wider variety of obstacles, which you would have to do if you didn't know in the list-building stage that you were guaranteed the objectives you want.
I'm sure you can find a rare example or two of a tactically flexible TAC list that does well in 9th. But if so, it's in spite of the secondary system, not because of it. That's the point. The secondary objectives ought to (in my opinion, of course) push you towards taking a balanced, flexible list, not push you towards a list tailored to within an inch of its life to do the same thing every game.
catbarf wrote: If your scenario design renders those vehicles (and infantry within them) unable to score, while the light infantry with their pioneers and stosstruppen can forward-deploy onto mission-critical objectives, you just might be able to eke a fun and possibly even balanced game out of light infantry desperately using what little they have to stall the advance of armored forces for as long as possible.
Of course that's a total non-starter if mechanized man can decide that his force's objective is to turn the enemy into red mist. Hence the point of this discussion tangent. Player-chosen objectives afford too much power over scenario conditions that could otherwise better promote balanced lists and more interesting games.
So how does this work in a matched play setting where the players might not have done much if any, pregame planning aside from points level and general strength of lists? Is there some feature where an all infantry list can force a scenario where troops in transports can't score or are you relying on the mechanized player to agree to a scenario that nerfs their list to have a balanced game? How much agreement between players and pregame planning does your system require to balance two lists skewed in opposite directions?
Basically, the idea could be fun, but I'm going to need details on how you'd put it into practice and ensure that it's not a system that can be easily gamed.
Well, if I get in my time machine and pop back to... 4th, if I recall correctly, both Infantry and Conscripts were worth taking. Conscripts were cheaper and came in large units but had no access to heavy weapons and fled easily, while Infantry were more expensive but better combatants taken in smaller units. Conscripts were your 'send in the next wave' meatshield. Infantry were your actual combatants. It was completely viable to build an army out of entirely one or the other.
I'm going to need to see battle reports because I don't recall this being the case. Even if this was the case, were they ever taken in the same list because if we want list building to stop mattering we need every single option on the menu to work equally well with every single other option it could be in a list with.
There is always a points level that will make any choice equally viable to its peers, whether or not GW can find it.
This is 100% false. We've already seen that there is a points cost where simply standing on the board and forcing the enemy to shoot at you becomes not just viable but optimal. Given the low costs of both regular guard infantry and conscripts and the currently limited effectiveness of both conscripts and guardsmen, there isn't room to change costs much for either unit. If you lower the cost of guardsmen by even a point you invalidate conscripts and if you match that by also lowering costs for conscripts you've then invalidated guardsmen as conscripts are now efficient just as bodies on the board. It's difficult to see a world where the two are ever balanced, especially if list building is supposed to not matter, and they're supposed to be fine having distinct roles within a single list.
The scope of 40K's mechanics amount to shooting, punching, and the occasional magic power. Infinity has shooting, punching, functional stealth, functional evasion, hacking, overwatch, and a host of other mechanics for which 40K clumsily doles out invulnerable saves or mortal wounds. Size discrepancy is certainly a problem for 40K's balance but it's not the be-all and end-all of design complexity; if you are trying to make the case that Infinity has a narrower scope and is consequently easier to balance, you are very far off the mark.
A narrower scope combined with a confined scale IS inherently easier to balance, this is so obvious that I'm shocked you'd even make such a statement.
Example:
Game A has a scope such that it doesn't make sense for the smallest and weakest units to be able to harm even the medium units available in list building let alone the largest units present. It also lacks any hard list building rules that require any given list to take weapons capable of harming any given class of unit. Conversely, the list that brings the fewest models to a given game size might only bring 3 models to a standard-sized game while the list that takes the most models is able to bring over 200 models. For lore reasons, it would break immersion and be seen as harmful by a large fraction of Game A's player base to change this balance overly much so this issue of scale has been present in every edition of the game thus far.
Game B has a scope such that it makes sense for anything to hurt anything else. The smallest list takes 4 models, the largest brings 12.
Which game will be easier to balance without removing options at either end of its scale and while keeping each unit distinct and viable even if it shares a list with the next nearest model in terms of cost and battlefield role?
It really wouldn't take too much to shake up 40k scoring enough that it would be unrealistic to have pre-planned out every scenario, or to shake up list design enough to get people taking more flexible lists that can tackle a wider range of possible objectives, rather than hyper-specialized ones specifically tailored to completing the same secondary objectives in the same way every single game.
What about the list below makes it tailored and not a 'TRUE TAC LIST' like people here seem to want?
Spoiler:
Patrol: deathskulls
HQ
Warboss w power klaw + kustom shoota=83pts
Relic: killa klaw.
Warlord: kunnin but brutal. Upgrade:.
Da biggest boss. -1cp
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Troops
10x gretchin =50pts
Fast Attack
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
5x Stormboys including boss nob w 2 choppas =60pts
Dedicated Transport
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
trukk =65pts
Vanguard: deathskulls
HQ
Big Mek w SAG=120pts
Big Mek w SAG =120pts
Elites
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 meganobz, 5x double kill saws=200pts
5 kommandos including boss Nob (1x tankbusta bomb) =45pts
Is anybody honestly going to say that this doesn't seem like a proper fluffy Ork list or is it total powergamer skew because it doesn't run enough Boyz or some gak like that?
I think you're misreading what I wrote. The question isn't whether that list is "proper fluffy" or not, the question is whether the list essentially plays the same game every game. That's the problem with the secondaries. By giving the player complete control over them, it means that secondaries encourage list tailoring and then playing as identical a game as possible every time, instead of encouraging you to take more balanced choices that can confront a wider variety of obstacles, which you would have to do if you didn't know in the list-building stage that you were guaranteed the objectives you want.
I'm sure you can find a rare example or two of a tactically flexible TAC list that does well in 9th. But if so, it's in spite of the secondary system, not because of it. That's the point. The secondary objectives ought to (in my opinion, of course) push you towards taking a balanced, flexible list, not push you towards a list tailored to within an inch of its life to do the same thing every game.
If everything is so tailored it should be blinding obvious which secondaries any given list took even without seeing their opponents, so without looking it, up tell me the secondary objectives that Ork list took.
If I had to guess, probably engage/scrambers/while we stand as the default, with the usual possibilities for tailoring that comes with the engage/scramblers combo.
But I don't think me being able to spot secondaries or not really illustrates anything. Maybe someone comes up with a really interesting way to play a list that I wouldn't have spotted; that doesn't change the point that they've constructed a list to make that plan work with those secondaries in mind, it just means I wasn't smart enough to immediately spot it.
More broadly, it doesn't refute the point that the secondaries as currently implemented are promoting less flexible, more specialized lists than you'd have in a system where either random chance, the mission, or your opponent had more impact on choosing what your scoring criteria were.
yukishiro1 wrote: If I had to guess, probably engage/scrambers/while we stand as the default, with the usual possibilities for tailoring that comes with the engage/scramblers combo.
But I don't think me being able to spot secondaries or not really illustrates anything. Maybe someone comes up with a really interesting way to play a list that I wouldn't have spotted; that doesn't change the point that they've constructed a list to make that plan work with those secondaries in mind, it just means I wasn't smart enough to immediately spot it.
More broadly, it doesn't refute the point that the secondaries as currently implemented are promoting less flexible, more specialized lists than you'd have in a system where either random chance, the mission, or your opponent had more impact on choosing what your scoring criteria were.
Nor does your assertation that these secondaries overly restrict list building and flexibility make it so. If that Ork list had to play a Maelstrom mission from the end of 8th would it be terrible at any of them?
Canadian 5th wrote: So how does this work in a matched play setting where the players might not have done much if any, pregame planning aside from points level and general strength of lists?
If we're talking random mission assignment, the fact that such a scenario could occur ought to deter taking a hyperspecialized list. Top competitive players looking to go 6-0 aren't going to risk drawing a mission that they have no chance to win. My point was simply that even bad matchups can be mitigated by factors other than listbuilding.
I'm completely fine with an army built to have a variety of capabilities having a better chance of succeeding at the mission than one min-maxed into a skew build. That's the good sort of listbuilding, where it's about capability rather than optimizing raw power, and still requires good play on the battlefield to execute.
Canadian 5th wrote: This is 100% false. We've already seen that there is a points cost where simply standing on the board and forcing the enemy to shoot at you becomes not just viable but optimal. Given the low costs of both regular guard infantry and conscripts and the currently limited effectiveness of both conscripts and guardsmen, there isn't room to change costs much for either unit. If you lower the cost of guardsmen by even a point you invalidate conscripts and if you match that by also lowering costs for conscripts you've then invalidated guardsmen as conscripts are now efficient just as bodies on the board. It's difficult to see a world where the two are ever balanced, especially if list building is supposed to not matter, and they're supposed to be fine having distinct roles within a single list.
Then use half points, if whole ones lack the granularity. Or adjust points upwards to provide the same end effect. Use decimals. We're talking hypotheticals here. 'Balance is impossible because I am wedded to the exact current values of all the points costs' is a poor argument.
Also, the premise that Guard players would universally ditch all their Infantry in favor of Conscripts if they were 4pts instead of 5pts is incredibly suspect to begin with. Infantry put out decent firepower with Orders, Conscripts don't. Infantry can take heavy weapons and screen them with ablative wounds, Conscripts can't. Infantry are tenacious under the new morale system, Conscripts sure aren't. If you're only taking Infantry for their ability to meatshield and sit on objectives, you're not using them to their fullest at all.
Also, I'd like to point out that Conscripts were only used in lieu of Guardsmen in early 8th, when they could combo with Commissars to become effectively immune to morale, were even cheaper relative to Guardsmen, and could receive Orders just as well. Without those benefits, they're significantly worse than Guardsmen, and saving a point isn't worth it.
Canadian 5th wrote: A narrower scope combined with a confined scale IS inherently easier to balance, this is so obvious that I'm shocked you'd even make such a statement.
You've completely missed the point.
The premise that Infinity has a narrower scope because it doesn't have as wide a variance in model size is wrong and overly simplistic. The game has a whole host of additional mechanics that 40K doesn't that dramatically widen its design scope. Those mechanics present their own asymmetrical interactions and balance concerns. There is a lot that matters to how difficult a game is to balance, and disparities in statline range are just one of them. It does not have a narrower scope, because there is more to design scope than just size disparity.
Using a more confined scale constrains design scope and makes a game easier to balance.
Using a variety of complex mechanics for interacting with the game space and the other player widens design scope and makes a game harder to balance. The fact that Infinity is as well-balanced as it is is a legitimate achievement in design.
Have you actually played Infinity, or is this whole argument you looking at box art and making up reasons for why Infinity doesn't count as an example of a better-balanced game?
On the subject of this mythical balance, I have a couple of questions.
1) How are current winning lists skewed and is the way they are skewed any worse for balance than your hypothetical be prepared for anything mission structure?
2) How do you intend to make it so that units as diverse as a Vindicare are equally useful to an Invictor Tactical Warsuit which is also equal to a unit of Scouts which are equal to a Runtherd?
3) How do you stop a meta from forming out of the data generated by tournament results? Players will look at what works and what doesn't and even getting to play a random 6 of 36 missions each tournament is only going to slow that down.
4a) If everything is supposed to be viable how do you account for skew lists?
4b)Are they being intentionally punished - which would mean that some styles of play are unbalanced and your system itself is therefore unbalanced - or are they supposed to be exactly equal assuming they get an equal mix of good bad and neutral missions?
4c)To this end does your matchmaker curate both the games and missions to ensure this balance or do you allow it to be random and accept that tournaments will be won by the players who play the most missions that suit them while dodging the ones that don't suit them?
5) How does any of this stop something as obviously good as an Eradicator for being taken as the anti-tank portion of a TAC list?
You've completely missed the point.
The premise that Infinity has a narrower scope because it doesn't have as wide a variance in model size is wrong and overly simplistic. The game has a whole host of additional mechanics that 40K doesn't that dramatically widen its design scope. Those mechanics present their own asymmetrical interactions and balance concerns. There is a lot that matters to how difficult a game is to balance, and disparities in statline range are just one of them. It does not have a narrower scope, because there is more to design scope than just size disparity.
Using a more confined scale constrains design scope and makes a game easier to balance.
Using a variety of complex mechanics for interacting with the game space and the other player widens design scope and makes a game harder to balance. The fact that Infinity is as well-balanced as it is is a legitimate achievement in design.
None of this means that Infinity doesn't have some models/gear options/synergies that are objectively better than the rest or moves, or series of moves, that are objectively better than others in a bunch of broadly similar scenarios. Can a skilled player build a list by randomizing their units and gear and still have a fair match against an equally skilled player who built a list with synergies in mind? If they can't then Infinity doesn't have the same balance you seem to want 40k to have.
[M]aking up reasons for why Infinity doesn't count as an example of a better-balanced game?
Where did I ever say that Infinity isn't a better-balanced game than 40k? In fact, I'm going to ask that you quote me on that one or retract that statement.
None of this means that Infinity doesn't have some models/gear options/synergies that are objectively better than the rest or moves, or series of moves, that are objectively better than others in a bunch of broadly similar scenarios. Can a skilled player build a list by randomizing their units and gear and still have a fair match against an equally skilled player who built a list with synergies in mind? If they can't then Infinity doesn't have the same balance you seem to want 40k to have.
thats the thing, Corvus belli uses mathematical equations to determine the pts cost of their units, so no matter what you pick in your army, as long as you know how to use it (the strength and weaknesses of the unit), you have a decent chance at winning the game.
Obviously if you randomize the list and get only cheerleaders and no specialists you'd get fethed on the mission, but thats the thing, when a human is building a list, there are a couple type of units you usually need, at the very least one specialist and one remote. Then you can add Hackers, Docs, Engineers, Forward deployers, camo users, etc. But thats basic knowledge that CB conveys to the players in the core rules. You SHOULD pick a specialist because theyre the ones that can do the mission, and tabling your opponent isn't a real strategy in infinity, unlike 40k.
Infinity's mission system combined with its reaction based gameplay means that 90%+ of the outcome of the game depends on player skill, not on unit composition.
[M]aking up reasons for why Infinity doesn't count as an example of a better-balanced game?
Where did I ever say that Infinity isn't a better-balanced game than 40k? In fact, I'm going to ask that you quote me on that one or retract that statement.
Then what is your argument? We're on a post saying that 40k's mission doesnt really work properly. We compare it to Infinity's to say that its much better and your answer is that Infinity's is also solveable.
Well yeah, it probably is, but its much harder to solve since there are much more variables in play. And even then, the mission system is objectively better, the fact that it might be solveable changes nothing to that.
Like I said above, few are arguing that list building should have zero impact on winning, the argument is more that you should be able to build a list that doesn't put you at an automatic disadvantage due to trap choices.
In your example, depending on the mission I could easily see the win rate swing one way or another - in a heavily cluttered urban area where the big vehicles cannot really put their power to bear the mechanized list could be at a disadvantage for taking hold of objectives and taking out an entrenched force, meanwhile in a low terrain map with little cover, the mech list could just pick off the infantry list at its leisure and stroll up to objectives to hold them.
Ie: people are arguing that terrain, mission objectives, and your strategy vs your opponent's strategy should count for more than list building.
You can already do that. Just don't use the trap options and build optimized lists and play against others doing the same.
Your urban example doesn't work in 9th either, objectives will always create open spaces and it would be incredibly bad form to make a board with streets so narrow vehicles can't use them. Given that vehicle facing no longer matters the vehicles would have an easy time poking some part of their hull around a corner and laying waste to the enemy.
There really shouldn't BE trap options. Some options might be sub-optimal against your opponent's list, or not be the best for specific mission structures, but all units should be baseline viable and fulfill a niche.
My example with the urban warfare wasn't that the vehicles could not move through at all, but that they would be less efficient - maybe moving single file or having to spread out to cover firing arcs due to line of sight blockage and cover for the infantry horde. It could be an interesting setup really - the armored unit is storming the city to occupy it, while the defenders are throwing their last ditch speedbump to slow down/stall the advance. Sure the tanks could theoretically trudge on through, but supply vehicles and logistics units need to be able to safely traverse the city, so they need to route the defenders, or at least push them out of X Y and Z buildings along the main road and occupy those with their own infantry units. Build the mission around the tanks with their limited infantry support trying to flush the opposing infantry company out while the opposing force's goal is to basically hold on till the end of the match and try to split the tanks and encircle them. End of the game depending on the situation on the field and the objectives held, the area is either secured, or the tankers are forced to withdraw as opposing reinforcements have arrived, or they have run too low on munitions to continue the fight, etc.
On the subject of this mythical balance, I have a couple of questions.
1) How are current winning lists skewed and is the way they are skewed any worse for balance than your hypothetical be prepared for anything mission structure?
2) How do you intend to make it so that units as diverse as a Vindicare are equally useful to an Invictor Tactical Warsuit which is also equal to a unit of Scouts which are equal to a Runtherd?
3) How do you stop a meta from forming out of the data generated by tournament results? Players will look at what works and what doesn't and even getting to play a random 6 of 36 missions each tournament is only going to slow that down.
4a) If everything is supposed to be viable how do you account for skew lists?
4b)Are they being intentionally punished - which would mean that some styles of play are unbalanced and your system itself is therefore unbalanced - or are they supposed to be exactly equal assuming they get an equal mix of good bad and neutral missions?
4c)To this end does your matchmaker curate both the games and missions to ensure this balance or do you allow it to be random and accept that tournaments will be won by the players who play the most missions that suit them while dodging the ones that don't suit them?
5) How does any of this stop something as obviously good as an Eradicator for being taken as the anti-tank portion of a TAC list?
I don't have answers for everything here, but think of a tier list of units - D, C, B, A, S. The ideal would be for all units to tend roughly to B tier for their point value. If items end up B- or B+ that is perfectly acceptable, as it is just small imbalances, and the occasional C+ or A- is fine. The problem is when some units are clearly D tier and others are clearly S tier.
So in your example of Vindicare vs Invictor vs Scouts vs Runtherd, the answer is that they SHOULD NOT be equal in all regards - they all SHOULD have niches that they can fill however. A Vindicare Assassin should be balanced around taking out key enemies - either sniping out characters or special/heavy weapons and so on. Meanwhile Scouts are more about board control and Runtherds are buff units that increase the effectiveness of certain units in the army. They shouldn't all excel at the same thing.
For example - lets just say in theory a unit is "S" tier in a certain ability - that should come at costs - both in terms of points and in terms of malluses to other abilities. You can make a unit check off every item on the board and be amazing, but it had better pay out the teeth for it or else it will distort the meta in a big way. However, if a unit say has S tier mid ranged firepower, but its mobility is more of a D (low movement, no deployment options beyond hopping in a transport), and little in terms of "bonus perks" (no orders, or no chapter tactics, or not Core going by newest design scheme), you could get a somewhat interesting unit with the correct support. The unit has to trudge along to get in position, or pay a bit extra for a transport to move it at any speed, and it can be countered by higher mobility to get out of its sweet spot.
As for balancing skew lists and the like, you can do that via missions. If the mission requires X Y and Z, and you only bring units that can do Z, you are at a disadvantage, but can still pull off a win by preventing your foe from pulling off X and Y while holding down Z yourself. On the flip side, the more TAC list that can pull of X, Y, and Z will probably have to give up on Z unless they can outplay the skew list in a big way, but has more opportunities to bring about their own objectives while playing defensively against the skew list's attempts at preventing it.
Perfect balance does not exist, the ideal is instead to make it "balanced enough" so that both parties can have fun. As I said above, the ideal would be to have everything OVERALL balanced around B tier - they excel in their area of expertise but have cons to go with them, or a generalist unit might be B straight across the board, etc. Unit L is great in situation X, but is only average in Y and struggles in Z, but with support from Unit K and M, you can cover all of your bases somewhat effectively, if that makes sense.
Lists should matter. In fact, if you read into my LOTR example, the guy is literally saying "Your list is bad, improve your list."
But what he is also saying is "your list is bad because it lacks maneuver and fires on the tabletop" not "your list is bad because it doesn't seem to be engineered to win on points with minimal gameplay". With a side of "LOTR will never be that way as it's deliberately designed to disincentivize over-engineered lists".
the former means you can make a mistake. You can have the most balanced, appropriate list for the mission ever and still lose to being outmaneuvered. The latter means you don't really have to interact with the game at all and you can just score the same way you did in the game before and will in the game after. I mean heck, watch Tabletop Titans. They meme the way the players play the game the same in every single engagement. The Adrian Special is the same collection of secondaries every time, because he just brings his list and executes on it. The skill comes into the fiddly rule interpretations and clever exploitation of the way the rules are written (Things like combo'ing movement, psychic, and a stratagem to get two bike units with a 3++ instead of just 1, clever moves during pile-ins to catch units off-guard and keep other guys in auras, etc).
For your example RE:40k tournaments. The reason players can't netlist their way to victory is because skill matters more and more as lists become more and more symmetrical. In a world where every list is largely identical (in terms of how engineered it is to win pre-game, not in terms of actual content), then player skill starts to matter.
But that is a bad world. You shouldn't want to live in a world that's "Engineer your list or lose, and then if you engineer your list your skill matters". You should want to live in a world where its "L2P or lose" with less impact of list engineering.
Right now, if you bring a bad list, you lose automatically, no matter your skill. Therefore, List Building > Skill in terms of which helps you win the game. I'm advocating a system in which Skill > List Building, where the worst player with the best list EVAR cannot (or will rarely) beat the best player with the worst (but still sensible) list.
VladimirHerzog wrote: thats the thing, Corvus belli uses mathematical equations to determine the pts cost of their units, so no matter what you pick in your army, as long as you know how to use it (the strength and weaknesses of the unit), you have a decent chance at winning the game.
Obviously if you randomize the list and get only cheerleaders and no specialists you'd get fethed on the mission, but thats the thing, when a human is building a list, there are a couple type of units you usually need, at the very least one specialist and one remote. Then you can add Hackers, Docs, Engineers, Forward deployers, camo users, etc. But thats basic knowledge that CB conveys to the players in the core rules. You SHOULD pick a specialist because theyre the ones that can do the mission, and tabling your opponent isn't a real strategy in infinity, unlike 40k.
Infinity's mission system combined with its reaction based gameplay means that 90%+ of the outcome of the game depends on player skill, not on unit composition.
This isn't true though. You just pointed out that there are two units, specialists and remotes, that are basically essential to playing the game. If one player had a force with them and one had a force without them would the gap between the two of them be more or less than 10%? How are these essential units any different than the 'must take' units in 40k?
Then what is your argument? We're on a post saying that 40k's mission doesnt really work properly.
Except that nobody has proven that this is actually the case... People claim they want infinitely flexible lists that are designed around doing everything well but fail to point out what they think current lists would actually fail at. I think the argument is that because a couple of books that haven't been updated yet are bad and that one of those bad books is punished due to having pskyers that somehow winning lists can't take psykers but that argument doesn't hold water.
We can see examples of chaos lists that feature psykers taking top places at tournaments. The list below took 2nd at Queensland Masters back in December:
Company Veterans [3pl, 44pts] x2 Astartes Chainsword, x1 Storm Shield
-HQ-
Chief Librarian Mephiston [8pl, 155pts] Psychic Powers: Veil of Time, Null Zone, Psychic Fortress, (WL) WL Trait: Speed of the Primarch
Chapter Master [8pl, 150pts] Astartes Chainsword, Jump Pack, Chapter Command: Chapter Master, -1CP Hero of the Chapter, WL Trait: Rites of War, Relic: Teeth of Terra
So it seems like there's some flexability in list building and that even factions dakka has written off as unplayable can literally win WAAC style tournaments. So what exactly do people want that can't be fixed by updating the few factions that are currently bad?
We compare it to Infinity's to say that its much better and your answer is that Infinity's is also solveable.
Well yeah, it probably is, but its much harder to solve since there are much more variables in play. And even then, the mission system is objectively better, the fact that it might be solveable changes nothing to that.
I've yet to see either the statement that Infinity is more balanced or that Infinity is less solvable proven. I've seen people assert this to be the case, but nobody has provided tournament listings, battle reports, or any other examples that support this point. I think you tried but all you did was prove that list building plays a large role in Infinity because you lose if you don't fill two specific roles.
Only thing results from australian tournaments tought me is that the game has to be play very different from the rest of the world, at least from what we saw winning there in 8th ed. They were the only place in the world where GK were dominating large events for 2 years back to back.
skew against the anti-marine meta... They're not trash tier like a few especially bad off books but even saying that DE have made top placings in 9th. When a book that has the negative perception of the DE codex can take a place at top tables that has to say something about the balance of 9th edition and the level to which player skill matters.
Well that is true, harlis, demons and CWE soups are winning a lot, but it is somehow that marines with their 50% win rates that are the real unbalancers of 9th ed. Still I think there is a difference between something like orks or DE. Which are either forced in to prebuild list or forced to run lists and play the way people do not want to play like tyranids. And something like tau. Tau are just bad, no amount list building , core and tau game play knowladge is going to help a tau player when he faces off a good 9th army, specialy if they go second. under 30% win rates do not pop out of nothing.
I feel infinity is more balanced because almost every faction can do anything - and the game is balanced around unit archetypes rather than GW throwing a dart and calling it good.
So a PanO guy with an HMG and a range of rules will be +/- a few points with another faction's guy with an HMG and a similar but different set of rules. They'll only be much cheaper if they are much worse. Unless its in N4, the PanO guy doesn't suddenly get an extra attack and a super special rule on turn 3 because PanO need help.
You don't get say an Eradicator being 40 points, while a two blaster Crisis Suit at 70 for the lols.
Which means the meta is more complicated than "find the undercosted stuff".
The issue with 40k is that you have that phase and then you move on. As a rule, good players don't run bad units. Does that eliminate a lot of units from seeing the table? Yes, but that's a different issue to claiming 40k is boring because the missions are always the same. 9th seemingly has a far larger roster than more recent editions of 40k - probably because the move first advantage and primary objectives skews things more than anything else.
The 40k rules team should look at some of the lotr missions. They are very varied in both deployment and primary objectives.
You have some missions you deploy mostly like 40k with 24" between the 2 forces. Others that divide the table in 2 halfs and you get to deploy anywhere inside your own half as long as it is at least 1" away from the enemy. So you could have both armies deploy 1,01" inches away from each other. One mission forces the respective army leaders deploy within 3" of the centre. Then you have missions with "Maelstrom deployment" that randomly gives you any table edge to deploy each warband(your force is made up of 1-5 warbands usually) from. You have might(bit like CP) and some hero abilities that can help in mitigate the random factor but its expensive. But it is worth it if it can prevent one of your smaller warbands randomly deploy between 2 of your enemies warbands and get instantly destroyed.
Then the missions can be everything from holding objectives to flee off the opponents table edge or count the kills your leader makes. Some that involve different special rules, like nightfight or hidden objectives. Usually there is also a few secondaries that are mostly the same for most missions. Hurt/kill the enemy leader and reduce the
Usually different end game triggers too. Some end when one army is below 25%, others if a player manage to complete the primary objective while a few randomly ends on a dice roll of 1 or 2 after each turn as soon as one player drops below 50%.
Some missions favors fewer warbands, and also fewer models, while others make you want as many as possible. Some favor that you have your best fighter as the leader while others dont. In some speed is very important but others it isnt etc. You really want expensive banners in some too even if your army could play without them and some skew armies cant even take them and will lose out on that secondary.
Promotes a TAC approach since a skew list is just unable to score some secondaries and almost have an auto loss in certain missions. A monster list with 1-5 models cant possibly prevent a 50+ model list from winning the escape from the opponents table edge scenario for example. 2 4pts Goblins out of a horde of possibly 80+ just need to survive the trip over the table to win against 700pts Smaug in that scenario. Smaug cant kill more than 2 or 3 a turn if the goblins spread out and the goblins only need 10 turns at most to move that far. Even lists with just 20-30 models should almost be guaranteed to win that mission against any monster/hero skew list.
40k have between the 2 most different missions more similarity to each other than almost any 2 of the Lotr missions. Alternating deployment ~24" away from each other. Focus on holding more objectives while having 1 kill secondary(varies on opponent what you kill), one action(scramble or raise the flags mostly depending on your own list) and then a board control one like Engage on all Fronts. 2 of the secondaries you choose most of the time, sometimes all 33 depending on mission specific one, goes into the same primary focus as the primary objective. Hold table space. The missions and secondaries dont really change much. Even if you deploy in a quarter or on the diagonal or if there are 5 objectives instead of 4 or 6 the plan is 99% the same in all missions. Your win % might differ slightly but not what you try to achieve.
kurhanik wrote: There really shouldn't BE trap options. Some options might be sub-optimal against your opponent's list, or not be the best for specific mission structures, but all units should be baseline viable and fulfill a niche.
A trap option isn't a unit that's just always bad in any list, it's an option that seems good but that actually isn't.
Take a strong unit like Eradicators, for example, they seem so strong that any weapon they can take must be good but that isn't the case. There exists an optimal loadout for them that maximizes their chances to kill what they expect to face without wasting points, taking any other option is falling into a trap.
A trap option might also be taking a unit that is otherwise strong but that doesn't synergize with your list. An example of this might be taking Ghazghkull in an all vehicle list because you believe that kind of target saturation isn't currently accounted for. This is a trap because it doesn't use the models in a way that works in the current meta and fails to take advantage of the buffs Ghazzy gives to Goff Skarboyz.
You cannot make it so that these types of list building traps are unavoidable without completely removing choice from the game.
My example with the urban warfare wasn't that the vehicles could not move through at all, but that they would be less efficient - maybe moving single file or having to spread out to cover firing arcs due to line of sight blockage and cover for the infantry horde. It could be an interesting setup really - the armored unit is storming the city to occupy it, while the defenders are throwing their last ditch speedbump to slow down/stall the advance. Sure the tanks could theoretically trudge on through, but supply vehicles and logistics units need to be able to safely traverse the city, so they need to route the defenders, or at least push them out of X Y and Z buildings along the main road and occupy those with their own infantry units. Build the mission around the tanks with their limited infantry support trying to flush the opposing infantry company out while the opposing force's goal is to basically hold on till the end of the match and try to split the tanks and encircle them. End of the game depending on the situation on the field and the objectives held, the area is either secured, or the tankers are forced to withdraw as opposing reinforcements have arrived, or they have run too low on munitions to continue the fight, etc.
Try running the setup in 9th and tell me how it works. I'm willing to bet that the vehicle lists takes it at a walk even on a terrain dense board favorable to infantry.
Also, how does your very custom sounding scenario translate to matched play with random opponents? How are these two players supposed to know that exactly this scenario is balanced for their forces? What if it turns out this scenario is actually still unbalanced either being too difficult for the vehicle force or not enough of a handicap to give the all infantry force a fighting chance? What if the mechanized player finds a unit that works especially well in this exact mission and thus can have an armored skew that defeats the mission designed to combat skew?
I don't have answers for everything here, but think of a tier list of units - D, C, B, A, S. The ideal would be for all units to tend roughly to B tier for their point value. If items end up B- or B+ that is perfectly acceptable, as it is just small imbalances, and the occasional C+ or A- is fine. The problem is when some units are clearly D tier and others are clearly S tier.
Define these letter grades. Is a D tier unit a unit that can't ever show up in a top-level competitive list, or one that is just unlikely to do so?
So in your example of Vindicare vs Invictor vs Scouts vs Runtherd, the answer is that they SHOULD NOT be equal in all regards - they all SHOULD have niches that they can fill however. A Vindicare Assassin should be balanced around taking out key enemies - either sniping out characters or special/heavy weapons and so on. Meanwhile Scouts are more about board control and Runtherds are buff units that increase the effectiveness of certain units in the army. They shouldn't all excel at the same thing.
How do you ensure that the areas they excel at are all equal then? If one player's list revolves around Runtherds isn't that always countered by the Vindicare player snipping those important buffing units? What if the Invictor takes the opposite path and kills the grots and leaves the Runtherd with nothing to buff? How do you propose we balance those scenarios?
For example - lets just say in theory a unit is "S" tier in a certain ability - that should come at costs - both in terms of points and in terms of malluses to other abilities. You can make a unit check off every item on the board and be amazing, but it had better pay out the teeth for it or else it will distort the meta in a big way. However, if a unit say has S tier mid ranged firepower, but its mobility is more of a D (low movement, no deployment options beyond hopping in a transport), and little in terms of "bonus perks" (no orders, or no chapter tactics, or not Core going by newest design scheme), you could get a somewhat interesting unit with the correct support. The unit has to trudge along to get in position, or pay a bit extra for a transport to move it at any speed, and it can be countered by higher mobility to get out of its sweet spot.
Show me an example of this unit and I'll show you a unit that is either a meta staple or one which never features in top lists. A unit that is this skewed in killing power is never a balanced unit in 40k.
As for balancing skew lists and the like, you can do that via missions. If the mission requires X Y and Z, and you only bring units that can do Z, you are at a disadvantage, but can still pull off a win by preventing your foe from pulling off X and Y while holding down Z yourself. On the flip side, the more TAC list that can pull of X, Y, and Z will probably have to give up on Z unless they can outplay the skew list in a big way, but has more opportunities to bring about their own objectives while playing defensively against the skew list's attempts at preventing it.
Doesn't aiming to balance skew lists hurt the idea that players should be able to play any list they like, match up against any other list, and play any mission at random and still have a roughly equal chance at either player winning the game? In order for this to work, every single mission needs to be anti-skew and this anti-skew needs to account for every type of skew the meta can come up with. This means, for 40k, you need to balance around hordes, character spam, transport spam, mortal wound spam, deep strike/outflank spam, first turn charges, castles, monstrous creature spam, gant carpet + monstrous creatures, and probably a few other types of lists I've missed. How do you propose that every single mission and table setup work with any of these skews randomly matching against any other skew?
Perfect balance does not exist, the ideal is instead to make it "balanced enough" so that both parties can have fun. As I said above, the ideal would be to have everything OVERALL balanced around B tier - they excel in their area of expertise but have cons to go with them, or a generalist unit might be B straight across the board, etc. Unit L is great in situation X, but is only average in Y and struggles in Z, but with support from Unit K and M, you can cover all of your bases somewhat effectively, if that makes sense.
Define B tier. Define balanced enough. Tell me with a straight face that more players will find this more fun than 9th edition.
Your ideas are so vaguely defined that they're obviously pie in the sky with no idea how you'd actually make them happen in 40k.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Lists should matter. In fact, if you read into my LOTR example, the guy is literally saying "Your list is bad, improve your list."
But what he is also saying is "your list is bad because it lacks maneuver and fires on the tabletop" not "your list is bad because it doesn't seem to be engineered to win on points with minimal gameplay". With a side of "LOTR will never be that way as it's deliberately designed to disincentivize over-engineered lists".
the former means you can make a mistake. You can have the most balanced, appropriate list for the mission ever and still lose to being outmaneuvered. The latter means you don't really have to interact with the game at all and you can just score the same way you did in the game before and will in the game after. I mean heck, watch Tabletop Titans. They meme the way the players play the game the same in every single engagement. The Adrian Special is the same collection of secondaries every time, because he just brings his list and executes on it. The skill comes into the fiddly rule interpretations and clever exploitation of the way the rules are written (Things like combo'ing movement, psychic, and a stratagem to get two bike units with a 3++ instead of just 1, clever moves during pile-ins to catch units off-guard and keep other guys in auras, etc).
For your example RE:40k tournaments. The reason players can't netlist their way to victory is because skill matters more and more as lists become more and more symmetrical. In a world where every list is largely identical (in terms of how engineered it is to win pre-game, not in terms of actual content), then player skill starts to matter.
But that is a bad world. You shouldn't want to live in a world that's "Engineer your list or lose, and then if you engineer your list your skill matters". You should want to live in a world where its "L2P or lose" with less impact of list engineering.
Right now, if you bring a bad list, you lose automatically, no matter your skill. Therefore, List Building > Skill in terms of which helps you win the game. I'm advocating a system in which Skill > List Building, where the worst player with the best list EVAR cannot (or will rarely) beat the best player with the worst (but still sensible) list.
Why don't you consider list building a skill? Also, why is list building good sometimes like in LotR but bad other times like in 40k?
Karol wrote: Only thing results from australian tournaments tought me is that the game has to be play very different from the rest of the world, at least from what we saw winning there in 8th ed. They were the only place in the world where GK were dominating large events for 2 years back to back.
It's almost like what's good and what's bad is completely meta dependant and that you need to adapt to the meta you play in... What a fething shock that is!
Well that is true, harlis, demons and CWE soups are winning a lot, but it is somehow that marines with their 50% win rates that are the real unbalancers of 9th ed. Still I think there is a difference between something like orks or DE. Which are either forced in to prebuild list or forced to run lists and play the way people do not want to play like tyranids. And something like tau. Tau are just bad, no amount list building , core and tau game play knowladge is going to help a tau player when he faces off a good 9th army, specialy if they go second. under 30% win rates do not pop out of nothing.
Tau and non-souped Knights are both in a spot where the design team needs to think long and hard about how these factions are supposed to play 9th edition missions, but they're also the only factions in this position. 1k Suns are likely going to be fine with just a new codex that offers them some unique secondaries and a power bump on some key units, the same goes for Guard, DE, and the other subpar factions.
Tyel wrote: I feel infinity is more balanced because almost every faction can do anything - and the game is balanced around unit archetypes rather than GW throwing a dart and calling it good.
So a PanO guy with an HMG and a range of rules will be +/- a few points with another faction's guy with an HMG and a similar but different set of rules. They'll only be much cheaper if they are much worse. Unless its in N4, the PanO guy doesn't suddenly get an extra attack and a super special rule on turn 3 because PanO need help.
You don't get say an Eradicator being 40 points, while a two blaster Crisis Suit at 70 for the lols.
Which means the meta is more complicated than "find the undercosted stuff".
The issue with 40k is that you have that phase and then you move on. As a rule, good players don't run bad units. Does that eliminate a lot of units from seeing the table? Yes, but that's a different issue to claiming 40k is boring because the missions are always the same. 9th seemingly has a far larger roster than more recent editions of 40k - probably because the move first advantage and primary objectives skews things more than anything else.
Would you feel comfortable playing a game of infinity against a player of equal skill without bringing specialists or remotes to the table? If not, doesn't that make these units more essential than any type of unit in 40k?
Klickor wrote: The 40k rules team should look at some of the lotr missions. They are very varied in both deployment and primary objectives.
You have some missions you deploy mostly like 40k with 24" between the 2 forces. Others that divide the table in 2 halfs and you get to deploy anywhere inside your own half as long as it is at least 1" away from the enemy. So you could have both armies deploy 1,01" inches away from each other. One mission forces the respective army leaders deploy within 3" of the centre. Then you have missions with "Maelstrom deployment" that randomly gives you any table edge to deploy each warband(your force is made up of 1-5 warbands usually) from. You have might(bit like CP) and some hero abilities that can help in mitigate the random factor but its expensive. But it is worth it if it can prevent one of your smaller warbands randomly deploy between 2 of your enemies warbands and get instantly destroyed.
Then the missions can be everything from holding objectives to flee off the opponents table edge or count the kills your leader makes. Some that involve different special rules, like nightfight or hidden objectives. Usually there is also a few secondaries that are mostly the same for most missions. Hurt/kill the enemy leader and reduce the
Usually different end game triggers too. Some end when one army is below 25%, others if a player manage to complete the primary objective while a few randomly ends on a dice roll of 1 or 2 after each turn as soon as one player drops below 50%.
Some missions favors fewer warbands, and also fewer models, while others make you want as many as possible. Some favor that you have your best fighter as the leader while others dont. In some speed is very important but others it isnt etc. You really want expensive banners in some too even if your army could play without them and some skew armies cant even take them and will lose out on that secondary.
Promotes a TAC approach since a skew list is just unable to score some secondaries and almost have an auto loss in certain missions. A monster list with 1-5 models cant possibly prevent a 50+ model list from winning the escape from the opponents table edge scenario for example. 2 4pts Goblins out of a horde of possibly 80+ just need to survive the trip over the table to win against 700pts Smaug in that scenario. Smaug cant kill more than 2 or 3 a turn if the goblins spread out and the goblins only need 10 turns at most to move that far. Even lists with just 20-30 models should almost be guaranteed to win that mission against any monster/hero skew list.
40k have between the 2 most different missions more similarity to each other than almost any 2 of the Lotr missions. Alternating deployment ~24" away from each other. Focus on holding more objectives while having 1 kill secondary(varies on opponent what you kill), one action(scramble or raise the flags mostly depending on your own list) and then a board control one like Engage on all Fronts. 2 of the secondaries you choose most of the time, sometimes all 33 depending on mission specific one, goes into the same primary focus as the primary objective. Hold table space. The missions and secondaries dont really change much. Even if you deploy in a quarter or on the diagonal or if there are 5 objectives instead of 4 or 6 the plan is 99% the same in all missions. Your win % might differ slightly but not what you try to achieve.
This sounds like it just automatically screws you if you happen to roll up the wrong mission.
It sounds like monster lists and horde lists alike are nearly unplayable and that LotR is balanced around a small range of lists that the designers intended the game to be built around. How is this any better than 40k where some lists are also unviable?
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Looking at just these responses it doesn't seem like any of you want the same things from a 'fixed' version of 40k.
Everything should have a niche, except for whatever I define as skew, we should have the missions punish those.
Yeah, I want balanced interesting gameplay just like infinity where you have to take these two types of units every game or lose.
Yeah, I think that's cool but what if we just build custom scenarios for every possible combination of lists that could face each other and balance our game that way.
This is why 40k can't ever be balanced, none of the people calling for balance have a clue what that would look like and let alone a plan to actually make it happen. This is all just pie-in-the-sky whining with zero substance to back it up.
It's almost like what's good and what's bad is completely meta dependant and that you need to adapt to the meta you play in... What a fething shock that is!
Well it is a shock when only on place in the world one person manage to make your army work. And people all around the world who run similar or identical list could not, and at the same time your army isn't dripping in unit options, so it is not like you just didn't check the other things. Also sometimes, like lets say in case of the tau, they are bed everywhere, even in Australia. And it is even more odd when there is an army with just as limited unit option, for which GW could write good rules. So it is clearly not a case of too few unit options translating in to an always bad army.
You cannot make it so that these types of list building traps are unavoidable without completely removing choice from the game.
Having even one pre build army set up that works, beats out spending ton of money on an army you find out does not work in your meta no matter what you do.
VladimirHerzog wrote: thats the thing, Corvus belli uses mathematical equations to determine the pts cost of their units, so no matter what you pick in your army, as long as you know how to use it (the strength and weaknesses of the unit), you have a decent chance at winning the game.
Obviously if you randomize the list and get only cheerleaders and no specialists you'd get fethed on the mission, but thats the thing, when a human is building a list, there are a couple type of units you usually need, at the very least one specialist and one remote. Then you can add Hackers, Docs, Engineers, Forward deployers, camo users, etc. But thats basic knowledge that CB conveys to the players in the core rules. You SHOULD pick a specialist because theyre the ones that can do the mission, and tabling your opponent isn't a real strategy in infinity, unlike 40k.
Infinity's mission system combined with its reaction based gameplay means that 90%+ of the outcome of the game depends on player skill, not on unit composition.
This isn't true though. You just pointed out that there are two units, specialists and remotes, that are basically essential to playing the game. If one player had a force with them and one had a force without them would the gap between the two of them be more or less than 10%? How are these essential units any different than the 'must take' units in 40k?
no force don't have access to specialists and remote tho. Theyre the same thing as "Infantry, Characters and vehicles/monsters". Every army has them.
These essential units arent a single one, when i say "specialist" it can be a doctor, engineer, forward observers or hackers, of which every army has multiple options.
Its not like saying "I need to pick Eradicators because they can kill more than their value each turn", its more like saying "I need an HQ, of which i have multiple different options i can pick to fit my playstyle".
Why don't you consider list building a skill? Also, why is list building good sometimes like in LotR but bad other times like in 40k?
Listbuilding is a skill the same way using Excel is a skill. It can be done at home, alone, in your pajamas. Why bother playing a wargame, any wargame, if the only skill you want to test is done completely by yourself? You could even write two lists so your first list has an opponent, and then mathhammer them together.
A wargame is a game of maneuver, fires, effects, and battlefield strategy. A miniatures wargame shifts the emphasis from strategy to tactics, since you're dealing with a microcosm of a single engagement. It is played against a thinking, breathing foe, who tries to use those same tools to defeat you. It is not a game of "figure out how to fit all the tools you need into this box" with tools being units that achieve objectives and the box being the points limit.
Listbuilding is good always. It's important. But it should not be more important than skill on the table. Which is what I've been saying the whole time. LOTR achieves this, by making missions that dick with overengineered wombo-combo lists (and, paradoxically, therefore making list building more important because you can very badly dick yourself over if you approach it with a 40k mindset of winning the game without playing when building your list).
Even horde lists have some good heroes and arent totally screwed on the missions. Just maxing the numbers with cheapest heroes + cheapest warriors isnt a good idea though. Like you could take 100+ goblins but even with 60-80 you would still have a huge numbers advantage since at higher points 30-50 models is standard.
The only pure Monster factions are Fangorn(Ents), Misty Mountain(Eagles) and Smaug(which costs 560$ and should be treated the same as a FW Titan). They arent really fun lists since they are very one dimensional but they can all ally with other forces to make them more wellrounded. So you can play with your monsters but if you want to go all in on them you can but then expect to suffer from it. Play a more balanced lists with a few monsters and you wont have any trouble at all. Monsters are great but they need support.
Extreme skew lists being bad is good and not a detriment. You still have some lists like Rohan or Rivendell all cavalry lists. All bow(usually 33% bow limit) Rangers of Ithilien lists and some pure hero lists like the Ringwraiths, Fellowship and Thorin's Company. They aren't as extreme as pure monsters though and are unlike monster lists intended to be viable. They do have some severe drawbacks though and will have an uphill fight in some missions but overall they are competitive. You could easily ally in some other units from other factions if you wanted to shore up some of the weaknesses. There isnt a single army that can't have allies.
VladimirHerzog wrote: no force don't have access to specialists and remote tho. Theyre the same thing as "Infantry, Characters and vehicles/monsters". Every army has them.
These essential units arent a single one, when i say "specialist" it can be a doctor, engineer, forward observers or hackers, of which every army has multiple options.
Its not like saying "I need to pick Eradicators because they can kill more than their value each turn", its more like saying "I need an HQ, of which i have multiple different options i can pick to fit my playstyle".
If 40k list building allowed it I bet you could probably build a list without including anything that counts as a character; in the past, we've seen 40k lists win without infantry; there are many lists that can be rather good in 40k that don't bother with vehicles/monsters.
Does this mean that 40k actually has more list building freedom than Infinity?
It's almost like what's good and what's bad is completely meta dependant and that you need to adapt to the meta you play in... What a fething shock that is!
Well it is a shock when only on place in the world one person manage to make your army work. And people all around the world who run similar or identical list could not, and at the same time your army isn't dripping in unit options, so it is not like you just didn't check the other things. Also sometimes, like lets say in case of the tau, they are bed everywhere, even in Australia. And it is even more odd when there is an army with just as limited unit option, for which GW could write good rules. So it is clearly not a case of too few unit options translating in to an always bad army.
I'd be willing to be that a better player than you would have made your faction work in your meta.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Listbuilding is a skill the same way using Excel is a skill. It can be done at home, alone, in your pajamas. Why bother playing a wargame, any wargame, if the only skill you want to test is done completely by yourself? You could even write two lists so your first list has an opponent, and then mathhammer them together.
Did you just finish saying that, 'skill matters more and more as lists become more and more symmetrical.' So it seems that among players where there is a match in list building skill that playing skill then becomes the tie-breaking factor when looking at their chances of success. This just means that list building is the most basic skill that every 40k player needs to master because it unlocks gameplay in which skill at gameplay becomes meaningful.
Canadian 5th wrote: This isn't true though. You just pointed out that there are two units, specialists and remotes, that are basically essential to playing the game. If one player had a force with them and one had a force without them would the gap between the two of them be more or less than 10%? How are these essential units any different than the 'must take' units in 40k?
The difference is that the relationship between specialists and supporting units is one of synergy. Not 'take these together and get +1 on your rolls', but emergent synergy that arises from the core rules of the game. Whereas 'must take' units in 40K tend to consist of ones that are undercosted for their power, or combo through explicitly defined rules interactions.
One game encourages you to bring a variety of units to accomplish the mission. You can determine what to bring just by generally browsing their capabilities and ensuring you bring the capabilities that fit your game plan.
The other game encourages you to bring the most powerful units for their points. You determine what to bring with a calculator, and making sure you avoid the ones that the math says are terrible.
There is a significant difference between these two, and trying to reduce it to 'listbuilding matters in both cases so they're the same' is a total false equivalency. I'm assuming at this point that you don't see the difference because you've never actually played the game; but in that case I question why you feel at all qualified to comment.
Canadian 5th wrote: You cannot make it so that these types of list building traps are unavoidable without completely removing choice from the game.
For someone who keeps demanding hard quantifiable evidence that another game's balance is better, you sure keep throwing out these wild and ridiculous assertions without any sort of evidence.
They certainly didn't teach 'balancing options is impossible, either make stuff deliberately suck as a trap or completely remove all choice' in the classes I took. You have some very weird ideas about game design that don't match up with anything I've read or experienced in-industry.
Klickor wrote: Even horde lists have some good heroes and arent totally screwed on the missions. Just maxing the numbers with cheapest heroes + cheapest warriors isnt a good idea though. Like you could take 100+ goblins but even with 60-80 you would still have a huge numbers advantage since at higher points 30-50 models is standard.
The only pure Monster factions are Fangorn(Ents), Misty Mountain(Eagles) and Smaug(which costs 560$ and should be treated the same as a FW Titan). They arent really fun lists since they are very one dimensional but they can all ally with other forces to make them more wellrounded. So you can play with your monsters but if you want to go all in on them you can but then expect to suffer from it. Play a more balanced lists with a few monsters and you wont have any trouble at all. Monsters are great but they need support.
Extreme skew lists being bad is good and not a detriment. You still have some lists like Rohan or Rivendell all cavalry lists. All bow(usually 33% bow limit) Rangers of Ithilien lists and some pure hero lists like the Ringwraiths, Fellowship and Thorin's Company. They aren't as extreme as pure monsters though and are unlike monster lists intended to be viable. They do have some severe drawbacks though and will have an uphill fight in some missions but overall they are competitive. You could easily ally in some other units from other factions if you wanted to shore up some of the weaknesses. There isnt a single army that can't have allies.
I could make the exact same argument about three 40k factions.
The only bad factions are Tau and Knights (Which cost $$$ and should be treated like Smaug). They arent really fun lists since they are very one-dimensional... Why is this okay in LotR but not okay in 40k?
VladimirHerzog wrote: no force don't have access to specialists and remote tho. Theyre the same thing as "Infantry, Characters and vehicles/monsters". Every army has them.
These essential units arent a single one, when i say "specialist" it can be a doctor, engineer, forward observers or hackers, of which every army has multiple options.
Its not like saying "I need to pick Eradicators because they can kill more than their value each turn", its more like saying "I need an HQ, of which i have multiple different options i can pick to fit my playstyle".
If 40k list building allowed it I bet you could probably build a list without including anything that counts as a character; in the past, we've seen 40k lists win without infantry; there are many lists that can be rather good in 40k that don't bother with vehicles/monsters.
Does this mean that 40k actually has more list building freedom than Infinity?
No, because infinity has no restriction, you can chose to not bring specialists but you'd be penalised on the mission, in 40k, you cannot bring a list with no character.
I honestly don't get why you seem so hellbent on the idea that infinity is inferior to 40k on the listbuilding/mission aspect. It took me a single game of infinity to see many flaws with 40k. That doesn't mean that 40k isnt enjoyable, its just not for the same crowd.
Imo40k works best at a casual level since the game is fairly simple and the strength of your unit do a lot of carrying. If i bring aggressors against a grots army, i should probably win this game most of the time. Infinity doesn't have that, most of the outcome depends on player skill. I've managed to go toe to toe against one of the stronger armies while playing my Pano army built from a starter set.
I could make the exact same argument about three 40k factions.
The only bad factions are Tau and Knights (Which cost $$$ and should be treated like Smaug). They arent really fun lists since they are very one-dimensional... Why is this okay in LotR but not okay in 40k?
Pretty sure Smaug isnt a knight, hes a warlord titan (i don't play LotR).
Tau are one dimensional but still function with mostly the same concepts as other armies (infantry + monsters/vehicles) they're bad now because theyre the army that suffers most from the new missions and are in dire need of a new codex.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Listbuilding is a skill the same way using Excel is a skill. It can be done at home, alone, in your pajamas. Why bother playing a wargame, any wargame, if the only skill you want to test is done completely by yourself? You could even write two lists so your first list has an opponent, and then mathhammer them together.
Did you just finish saying that, 'skill matters more and more as lists become more and more symmetrical.' So it seems that among players where there is a match in list building skill that playing skill then becomes the tie-breaking factor when looking at their chances of success. This just means that list building is the most basic skill that every 40k player needs to master because it unlocks gameplay in which skill at gameplay becomes meaningful.
Which means that List Building Skill is more important than Tabletop Tactics Skill. That's what I've been saying this whole time. If you are learning 40k, you should learn to build your list first because that has more impact than actually learning to play the game. This is a bad state of affairs.
Canadian 5th wrote:
Klickor wrote: Even horde lists have some good heroes and arent totally screwed on the missions. Just maxing the numbers with cheapest heroes + cheapest warriors isnt a good idea though. Like you could take 100+ goblins but even with 60-80 you would still have a huge numbers advantage since at higher points 30-50 models is standard.
The only pure Monster factions are Fangorn(Ents), Misty Mountain(Eagles) and Smaug(which costs 560$ and should be treated the same as a FW Titan). They arent really fun lists since they are very one dimensional but they can all ally with other forces to make them more wellrounded. So you can play with your monsters but if you want to go all in on them you can but then expect to suffer from it. Play a more balanced lists with a few monsters and you wont have any trouble at all. Monsters are great but they need support.
Extreme skew lists being bad is good and not a detriment. You still have some lists like Rohan or Rivendell all cavalry lists. All bow(usually 33% bow limit) Rangers of Ithilien lists and some pure hero lists like the Ringwraiths, Fellowship and Thorin's Company. They aren't as extreme as pure monsters though and are unlike monster lists intended to be viable. They do have some severe drawbacks though and will have an uphill fight in some missions but overall they are competitive. You could easily ally in some other units from other factions if you wanted to shore up some of the weaknesses. There isnt a single army that can't have allies.
I could make the exact same argument about three 40k factions.
The only bad factions are Tau and Knights (Which cost $$$ and should be treated like Smaug). They arent really fun lists since they are very one-dimensional... Why is this okay in LotR but not okay in 40k?
It's not okay in LOTR, and the community has banned Smaug in every event I can think of, expressing their displeasure at GW for releasing that model in the state it's in. He is more akin to a Warlord Titan than a Knight. One dimensional lists in LOTR exist, but play against the scenario AND the opponent, while a less one-dimensional list only has to play against the opponent. Skilled players can still win with bad lists against regular players with good lists, though. Which is the point. To repeat myself.
catbarf wrote: ITT person who has never played a game feels qualified to tell everyone who has that their perceptions of how it compares to 40Kmust be wrong.
catbarf wrote: The difference is that the relationship between specialists and supporting units is one of synergy. Not 'take these together and get +1 on your rolls', but emergent synergy that arises from the core rules of the game. Whereas 'must take' units in 40K tend to consist of ones that are undercosted for their power, or combo through explicitly defined rules interactions.
How are the rules in 40k not emergent synergy when they are in Infinity? They're both entirely obvious ways to play the game that a skilled player will use to beat less-skilled players. Is the extra layer of obfuscation involved with Infinity something that makes its gameplay better?
One game encourages you to bring a variety of units to accomplish the mission. You can determine what to bring just by generally browsing their capabilities and ensuring you bring the capabilities that fit your game plan.
The other game encourages you to bring the most powerful units for their points. You determine what to bring with a calculator, and making sure you avoid the ones that the math says are terrible.
Which calculator was used to say that SAG Mekz and Trukkz were going to carry an Ork list to a top-two tournament placement? The ones most of Dakka is using seem to claim that these units are bad.
In fact, explain how lists in 40k work at all. If the game is so simple you can always determine the best lists via math how does the meta keep changing between tournaments even when there haven't been major rules changes to shake up which lists 'should' be optimal?
For someone who keeps demanding hard quantifiable evidence that another game's balance is better, you sure keep throwing out these wild and ridiculous assertions without any sort of evidence.
They certainly didn't teach 'balancing options is impossible, either make stuff deliberately suck as a trap or completely remove all choice' in the classes I took. You have some very weird ideas about game design that don't match up with anything I've read or experienced in-industry.
Then they taught you poorly. With the exception of purely narrative-focused games where the goal is to cooperatively create a story, there will always be trap choices in any game the involves logical systems. The goal of game balance can be to minimize the gaps between top choices and bottom choices while obfuscating them behind things like fluff and archetypes. Even this isn't the only way to balance a game though, TCGs such as Magic the Gathering, approach balance in a way that attempts to include cards for a variety of formats within the same packs. This means that while many cards aren't top tier options in any format enough go on to be good in some format to drive sales and promote diversity in lists at organized play events.
Nor did I ever say that you should deliberately make traps. My statement about desiring trap options be left in 40k's rules was an attempt to head off at the pass any ideas about balancing 40k by removing options from the player. My further statements about trap options are addressing the fact that any game which seeks to have list building as a factor by which a player can express their skill must logically include options which, when included in the same list, are less optimal than another set of options which the player could have taken. The degree to which these options are obvious are going to be dependant on the player's list building skill and the meta in which their list is designed to compete.
As a game designer, you must agree with me that a game designed around combining units A and B with a selection of units C, D, and E will inevitably have some combinations which, over a large enough sample, appear to perform better than others. If this is true does that not make underperforming options traps which a less skilled player may fall into?
VladimirHerzog wrote: No, because infinity has no restriction, you can chose to not bring specialists but you'd be penalised on the mission, in 40k, you cannot bring a list with no character.
Technically this is true, though in the past there were lists like Guard Tank platoons that didn't take anything that would typically be thought of as a character. Also, why didn't you address the other units that you can avoid bringing in 40k? Are you dodging that issue?
I honestly don't get why you seem so hellbent on the idea that infinity is inferior to 40k on the listbuilding/mission aspect.
Where did I ever say that? I'm merely pointing out that Infinity has its own restrictions on what is and isn't good and that it doesn't allow for the same kind of flexibility that some people want in 40k list building.
Pretty sure Smaug isnt a knight, hes a warlord titan (i don't play LotR).
Tau are one dimensional but still function with mostly the same concepts as other armies (infantry + monsters/vehicles) they're bad now because theyre the army that suffers most from the new missions and are in dire need of a new codex.
We've been given examples of armies that aren't playable - to a competitive level - in LotR without allies and that game is held up as an example of a game that is better than 40k. Yet, 40k is decried as being terribly balanced if any of its factions are bad without allies... I'm just trying to square this circle.
Klickor wrote: Even horde lists have some good heroes and arent totally screwed on the missions. Just maxing the numbers with cheapest heroes + cheapest warriors isnt a good idea though. Like you could take 100+ goblins but even with 60-80 you would still have a huge numbers advantage since at higher points 30-50 models is standard.
The only pure Monster factions are Fangorn(Ents), Misty Mountain(Eagles) and Smaug(which costs 560$ and should be treated the same as a FW Titan). They arent really fun lists since they are very one dimensional but they can all ally with other forces to make them more wellrounded. So you can play with your monsters but if you want to go all in on them you can but then expect to suffer from it. Play a more balanced lists with a few monsters and you wont have any trouble at all. Monsters are great but they need support.
Extreme skew lists being bad is good and not a detriment. You still have some lists like Rohan or Rivendell all cavalry lists. All bow(usually 33% bow limit) Rangers of Ithilien lists and some pure hero lists like the Ringwraiths, Fellowship and Thorin's Company. They aren't as extreme as pure monsters though and are unlike monster lists intended to be viable. They do have some severe drawbacks though and will have an uphill fight in some missions but overall they are competitive. You could easily ally in some other units from other factions if you wanted to shore up some of the weaknesses. There isnt a single army that can't have allies.
I could make the exact same argument about three 40k factions.
The only bad factions are Tau and Knights (Which cost $$$ and should be treated like Smaug). They arent really fun lists since they are very one-dimensional... Why is this okay in LotR but not okay in 40k?
The biggest problem in 40k is that lots of armies arent really balanced upon roles they could perform on the battlefield. Like if they hold up the enemy or if they could perform a certain action other units cant. It is mostly about how killy/durable units are for their point cost or how well they support for their points if they are characters. Get to the objective in 1 or 2 turns, kill as much as possible without dying. 40k lists are mostly balanced just around those few factors. So if a diverse and well rounded list is good or not is mostly just due to the individual units point costs.
In lotr you need more things than just effective units. Cavalry does something infantry cant. Same with monsters. And wizards or warmachines. Shooting is rather weak but you still want some in most lists anyway just to help with countering some units. Different heroes unlock different heroic actions that you might need depending on the rest of the list. Just spamming the most efficient heroes + most efficient statline isnt gonna work.
With marines for example you dont really get anything by having vehicles in your lists. If more than 4 you give up extra secondaries and they dont really do anything that your infantry cant do as well If Eradicators, helblasters and devastators are cheaper why would you take predators or executioners? In lotr you would still want some cavalry even if they were a bit overpriced for their killing ability just to counter charge other cavalry(cavalry negate charge bonuses from other cavalry) or rush to objectives in certain scenarios just so the opponent dont win by running of the board with the artifact before you get there. Same with monsters or wizards. They all do things that arent just based on how efficient they are because the game have many different win conditions and scenarios you need to be prepared for. There is always a good reason to include them but they also cost points so you cant have all of them You would be hard pressed to find points for enough troops, cavalry, combat heroes, versatile heroes, warmachines, monsters, wizards and archers in the same list.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Which means that List Building Skill is more important than Tabletop Tactics Skill. That's what I've been saying this whole time. If you are learning 40k, you should learn to build your list first because that has more impact than actually learning to play the game. This is a bad state of affairs.
No, it just means that list building is a gatekeeper skill, one which can be bypassed by looking at tournament results and participating in the community before you spend money on models.
It's not okay in LOTR, and the community has banned Smaug in every event I can think of, expressing their displeasure at GW for releasing that model in the state it's in. He is more akin to a Warlord Titan than a Knight. One dimensional lists in LOTR exist, but play against the scenario AND the opponent, while a less one-dimensional list only has to play against the opponent. Skilled players can still win with bad lists against regular players with good lists, though. Which is the point. To repeat myself.
So LotR has list building traps, requires list building as a skill, and can result in one-sided matches if the wrong armies match up to play the wrong mission... That sounds a lot like 40k to me.
Klickor wrote: The biggest problem in 40k is that lots of armies arent really balanced upon roles they could perform on the battlefield. Like if they hold up the enemy or if they could perform a certain action other units cant. It is mostly about how killy/durable units are for their point cost or how well they support for their points if they are characters.
So if this is true why are units like Kommandos and Trukks being used in winning Ork lists? They don't kill much, aren't especially durable, and provide no support abilities.
In lotr you need more things than just effective units. Cavalry does something infantry cant.
In 40k you need more things than just effective units. Jump pack models do something infantry cant.
Different heroes unlock different heroic actions that you might need depending on the rest of the list.
Different units unlock different stratagems that you might need depending on the rest of the list.
Lotr having some factions that on their own isnt competitive isnt really a problem. Some of them only have 1(Smaug) or 2(Eagles) units and are mostly there for either being allies, scenario play and fun casual games.
The game have 43 factions. Of those about half are full factions that are balanced to stand on their own and can. Half of those that are left are small but can be played as they are and the other half are mostly designed to be used as allies and not on their own. Then you have a whole bunch of Legendary Legions that add extra constraints to list building but give bonuses to make certain forces more viable to stand on their own or to promote certain combined armies that we see in the movies/books.
Unlike 40k no one expects pure Eagles or Ents to be good in tournaments and thus they can design a better game without having to remove the missions pure Ents just cant win. But in 40k Knights for example are expected to stand alone and be playable which makes it a hassle to design. Its an extreme skew list but they are expected to be playable pure so they cant be too hard to kill or a TAC list wont have a chance killing them
and the game cant have advanced scenarios since Knights wont be able to win those that require non knight units. 40k would probably be a better game if GW just said from the start that they dont expect a knight force with more than 50% of their points in knights be viable at all. That would remove a lot of constraints they have on them.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No, because infinity has no restriction, you can chose to not bring specialists but you'd be penalised on the mission, in 40k, you cannot bring a list with no character.
Technically this is true, though in the past there were lists like Guard Tank platoons that didn't take anything that would typically be thought of as a character. Also, why didn't you address the other units that you can avoid bringing in 40k? Are you dodging that issue?
really dude?.....
The current edition of 40k doesn't let you bring a list with no characters, thats the only restriction there is (all other force orgs can be bypassed).
In infinity you have no minimum requirement, meaning you can chose to not bring certain units.
40k has a maximum of 3 copies of a datasheet.
Infinity has variable maximum copies of datasheets (presented on the datasheet).
So yes, infinity gives you more true freedom. But in reality, you will want to bring some sort of specialist and that is something that is very clearly explained to newer players. And these "mandatory" units are super varied and can each be played differently.
I honestly don't get why you seem so hellbent on the idea that infinity is inferior to 40k on the listbuilding/mission aspect.
Where did I ever say that? I'm merely pointing out that Infinity has its own restrictions on what is and isn't good and that it doesn't allow for the same kind of flexibility that some people want in 40k list building.
You're saying it right here.
Infinity has more flexibility and balance at the listbuilding level, not even close. Play the game and you'll see for yourself.
I would 100% pick Infinity's listbuilding over 40k's.
Pretty sure Smaug isnt a knight, hes a warlord titan (i don't play LotR).
Tau are one dimensional but still function with mostly the same concepts as other armies (infantry + monsters/vehicles) they're bad now because theyre the army that suffers most from the new missions and are in dire need of a new codex.
We've been given examples of armies that aren't playable - to a competitive level - in LotR without allies and that game is held up as an example of a game that is better than 40k. Yet, 40k is decried as being terribly balanced if any of its factions are bad without allies... I'm just trying to square this circle.
Yeah but theyre not saying LotR is 100% perfect, theyre saying that overall its better than 40k (in mission design/listbuilding)
In lotr you need more things than just effective units. Cavalry does something infantry cant.
In 40k you need more things than just effective units. Jump pack models do something infantry cant.
Different heroes unlock different heroic actions that you might need depending on the rest of the list.
Different units unlock different stratagems that you might need depending on the rest of the list.
Hmm...
Heroic Actions in lotr do way more than most stratagems do in 40k. They can change the whole turn order and isnt just a slight boost.
Jump infantry doesnt do much normal infantry cant do. For most purposes JP infantry are just slightly faster infantry. I as a BA player knows that very well. If I instead got auto 6" advance and charge instead on foot infantry there wouldnt be much of a difference. I dont take JP infantry because they do something no other unit could do. Depending on point costs I could just take something else that is fast and hit hard that dont have a JP. Their efficiency is what is most important They are just more effective. Cavalry in lotr can knock down models, counter other cavalry and are one of the few things with a higher speed that helps with flanking and some scenarios. There arent replacement for them in most factions but there are in Space marines. Bikes, landspeeders, transports, deepstrikes/infiltrate etc exists there.
None of this means that Infinity doesn't have some models/gear options/synergies that are objectively better than the rest or moves, or series of moves, that are objectively better than others in a bunch of broadly similar scenarios. Can a skilled player build a list by randomizing their units and gear and still have a fair match against an equally skilled player who built a list with synergies in mind? If they can't then Infinity doesn't have the same balance you seem to want 40k to have.
Actually, yeah, there's a random list generator tool and people do win games with it against other players.
Yeah but theyre not saying LotR is 100% perfect, theyre saying that overall its better than 40k (in mission design/listbuilding)
Exactly this. And it is a game that Games Workshop made 2 decades ago and have only slightly tweaked along the way. I just started playing it a few months ago and the players at my club was surprised on how good and robust the system really is. I dabbled a little in some battle company campaigns close to a decade ago but never really took the plunge until recently. The game is so much better and more balanced that it is surprising how bad 40k is.
At least one of the lotr designers is apparently a very good and competitive player that plays at the top tables at tournaments. So Lotr works both in competitive play and casual play with a ton of scenarios. GW can make good games if they want to. They should try to look at the games they have that their players actually like the rules and think they are mostly good as it is and see what they are doing right there. They have decades of rules and experience to take advantage of. At some point they should be able to consolidate that.
It's almost like what's good and what's bad is completely meta dependant and that you need to adapt to the meta you play in... What a fething shock that is!
Well it is a shock when only on place in the world one person manage to make your army work. And people all around the world who run similar or identical list could not, and at the same time your army isn't dripping in unit options, so it is not like you just didn't check the other things. Also sometimes, like lets say in case of the tau, they are bed everywhere, even in Australia. And it is even more odd when there is an army with just as limited unit option, for which GW could write good rules. So it is clearly not a case of too few unit options translating in to an always bad army.
I'd be willing to be that a better player than you would have made your faction work in your meta.
While that might be, you also need to factor in Karol's exact inventory of models, not just what options his Codex contains.
Given what he owns, other than flukes of the dice, no amount of skill will greatly change the poor results he's been experiencing.
VladimirHerzog wrote: really dude?.....
The current edition of 40k doesn't let you bring a list with no characters, thats the only restriction there is (all other force orgs can be bypassed).
In infinity you have no minimum requirement, meaning you can chose to not bring certain units.
40k has a maximum of 3 copies of a datasheet.
Infinity has variable maximum copies of datasheets (presented on the datasheet).
So yes, infinity gives you more true freedom. But in reality, you will want to bring some sort of specialist and that is something that is very clearly explained to newer players. And these "mandatory" units are super varied and can each be played differently.
So would you be willing to enter an Infinity tournament without any of these' mandatory' units? If you did would you expect to do well?
You're saying it right here.
Infinity has more flexibility and balance at the listbuilding level, not even close. Play the game and you'll see for yourself.
I would 100% pick Infinity's listbuilding over 40k's.
What I'm saying is that Infinity has it's own list building peculiarities. There are units that are designed to work together and that, for most players, the infinite choices, are actually limited by some choices that 90% of players will take.
Yeah but theyre not saying LotR is 100% perfect, theyre saying that overall its better than 40k (in mission design/listbuilding)
That's both 100% opinion-based and doesn't seem like it's even objectively true.
Klickor wrote: Heroic Actions in lotr do way more than most stratagems do in 40k. They can change the whole turn order and isnt just a slight boost.
Jump infantry doesnt do much normal infantry cant do. For most purposes JP infantry are just slightly faster infantry. I as a BA player knows that very well. If I instead got auto 6" advance and charge instead on foot infantry there wouldnt be much of a difference. I dont take JP infantry because they do something no other unit could do. Depending on point costs I could just take something else that is fast and hit hard that dont have a JP. Their efficiency is what is most important They are just more effective. Cavalry in lotr can knock down models, counter other cavalry and are one of the few things with a higher speed that helps with flanking and some scenarios. There arent replacement for them in most factions but there are in Space marines. Bikes, landspeeders, transports, deepstrikes/infiltrate etc exists there.
Jump Infantry can ignore terrain and usually come with the ability to deep strike without paying CP. Are those things normal infantry can do in 40k?
Also, are you arguing that to balance 40k we need MORE special rules and unique abilities?
Hecaton wrote: Actually, yeah, there's a random list generator tool and people do win games with it against other players.
Would you take a random list to a tournament where other players are running lists they built by hand? Going further, would you let an opponent build your list for you before each round of a tournament and still expect to win?
My argument isn't that Infinity isn't better than 40k, I haven't played it and thus can't say either way, my point is that it does have some choices which are better than others and thus has more and less competitive options. Thus it is just as easy to simulate as something like 40k would be assuming anybody wanted to make the wargaming version of Deep Blue.
ccs wrote: While that might be, you also need to factor in Karol's exact inventory of models, not just what options his Codex contains.
Given what he owns, other than flukes of the dice, no amount of skill will greatly change the poor results he's been experiencing.
Why should I factor in what he purchased? Nobody forced him to buy what he bought nor did anybody force him to keep it rather than flipping it and getting new models to shape his army differently.
Karol had, and still has, other options that he doesn't bother taking them and instead complains on the internet is his issue, not mine.
The difference is, as far as I can tell, that in 40k, "mandatory" units are a singular datasheet. Eradicators are bonkers good, no matter what else, for instance.
In Infinity, you need a Specialist, but there's a bunch of different types of Specialists, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and playstyle.
It's sorta like saying "To be a good army in 40k, you need some HQs." Every army has multiple HQs that do different things, excepting Knights, I guess.
Now, I've not played Infinity, so anyone who has, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the gist of what I've gathered.
VladimirHerzog wrote: really dude?.....
The current edition of 40k doesn't let you bring a list with no characters, thats the only restriction there is (all other force orgs can be bypassed).
In infinity you have no minimum requirement, meaning you can chose to not bring certain units.
40k has a maximum of 3 copies of a datasheet.
Infinity has variable maximum copies of datasheets (presented on the datasheet).
So yes, infinity gives you more true freedom. But in reality, you will want to bring some sort of specialist and that is something that is very clearly explained to newer players. And these "mandatory" units are super varied and can each be played differently.
So would you be willing to enter an Infinity tournament without any of these' mandatory' units? If you did would you expect to do well?
No, i made it clear that i could but i wouldn't. You're just purposefully missing the point now.
You're saying it right here.
Infinity has more flexibility and balance at the listbuilding level, not even close. Play the game and you'll see for yourself.
I would 100% pick Infinity's listbuilding over 40k's.
What I'm saying is that Infinity has it's own list building peculiarities. There are units that are designed to work together and that, for most players, the infinite choices, are actually limited by some choices that 90% of players will take.
Thats not at all how Infinity works.... you saying that shows that you don't play the game at all. Netdecking isnt a thing in Infinity, there is no clear definite "best list".
Infinity lets you pick the strategy you want and build a list around it, instead of picking wombo combo units + factions like in 40k.
Yeah but theyre not saying LotR is 100% perfect, theyre saying that overall its better than 40k (in mission design/listbuilding)
That's both 100% opinion-based and doesn't seem like it's even objectively true.
... yeah, thats what i said. Everything said here is opinion based...
JNAProductions wrote: The difference is, as far as I can tell, that in 40k, "mandatory" units are a singular datasheet. Eradicators are bonkers good, no matter what else, for instance.
In Infinity, you need a Specialist, but there's a bunch of different types of Specialists, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and playstyle.
It's sorta like saying "To be a good army in 40k, you need some HQs." Every army has multiple HQs that do different things, excepting Knights, I guess.
Now, I've not played Infinity, so anyone who has, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the gist of what I've gathered.
Close, at least back when I played. Different missions would be easier to accomplish with specific types of specialists, so from the start you're usually looking at how you can fit a Hacker, an Engineer, a Doctor, and a Forward Observer in your list to get all your possible bases covered. From there, your list might have multiple options for those types of specialists, or they may not, and they may have cheap options or they may have expensive options.
I always hated how from the beginning I had to use what I considered too many points on units that aren't even good at what they're supposed to do (as PanO Military Orders I had 2 Doctor choices and 1 Engineer choice, and they either bad Willpower which was the stat used for accomplishing missions or were an expensive heavy infantry unit)
Unit1126PLL wrote: Which means that List Building Skill is more important than Tabletop Tactics Skill. That's what I've been saying this whole time. If you are learning 40k, you should learn to build your list first because that has more impact than actually learning to play the game. This is a bad state of affairs.
No, it just means that list building is a gatekeeper skill, one which can be bypassed by looking at tournament results and participating in the community before you spend money on models.
Why is this a good and desirable quality in a wargame? I read what you wrote and it makes me wince, because gatekeeping is bad and having to research tournament results before even getting into the game for a new player is also bad.
It's not okay in LOTR, and the community has banned Smaug in every event I can think of, expressing their displeasure at GW for releasing that model in the state it's in. He is more akin to a Warlord Titan than a Knight. One dimensional lists in LOTR exist, but play against the scenario AND the opponent, while a less one-dimensional list only has to play against the opponent. Skilled players can still win with bad lists against regular players with good lists, though. Which is the point. To repeat myself.
So LotR has list building traps, requires list building as a skill, and can result in one-sided matches if the wrong armies match up to play the wrong mission... That sounds a lot like 40k to me.
LOTR is not perfect but it is a damn sight better than 40k.
JNAProductions wrote: The difference is, as far as I can tell, that in 40k, "mandatory" units are a singular datasheet. Eradicators are bonkers good, no matter what else, for instance.
So tell me, how do Orks win without these Eradicators that are 'mandatory'?
In Infinity, you need a Specialist, but there's a bunch of different types of Specialists, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and playstyle.
How is that different from the current state of 40k where you need units to buff, units to hold objectives, units to kill, and units to infiltrate? I think the issue isn't with 40k but with a group of people hyperfocused on 40k and thinking that the grass in literally every other miniatures game is greener.
JNAProductions wrote: The difference is, as far as I can tell, that in 40k, "mandatory" units are a singular datasheet. Eradicators are bonkers good, no matter what else, for instance.
In Infinity, you need a Specialist, but there's a bunch of different types of Specialists, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and playstyle.
It's sorta like saying "To be a good army in 40k, you need some HQs." Every army has multiple HQs that do different things, excepting Knights, I guess.
Now, I've not played Infinity, so anyone who has, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the gist of what I've gathered.
Thats exactly how it is.
A Monstrucker (Engineer) plays super differently from a simple Machinist (Engineer) and depending on what your overall strategy is , you might want to pick one or the other yet they are both Engineers.
Hackers are even more varied, in my army, about half the datasheet can be hackers, and there are 8 different types of hacking tools, all with various effects.
JNAProductions wrote: The difference is, as far as I can tell, that in 40k, "mandatory" units are a singular datasheet. Eradicators are bonkers good, no matter what else, for instance.
So tell me, how do Orks win without these Eradicators that are 'mandatory'?
strawmen gonna strawmen.
We're talking about mandatory units on an army-per-army basis.
In Infinity, you need a Specialist, but there's a bunch of different types of Specialists, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and playstyle.
How is that different from the current state of 40k where you need units to buff, units to hold objectives, units to kill, and units to infiltrate? I think the issue isn't with 40k but with a group of people hyperfocused on 40k and thinking that the grass in literally every other miniatures game is greener.
Honest question, have you played infinity?
In 40k, you don't just need "units to buff, units to hold objectives, units to kill, and units to infiltrate", you need precise datasheets as you pointed out yourself with the prevalence of trap units in 40k.
There is a difference between needing a role and needing a specific unit.
VladimirHerzog wrote: No, i made it clear that i could but i wouldn't. You're just purposefully missing the point now.
So there are trap options - in this case combinations of units rather than single units as in 40k - in Infinity that would lower your chances of winning. Thanks for admitting it.
Thats not at all how Infinity works.... you saying that shows that you don't play the game at all. Netdecking isnt a thing in Infinity, there is no clear definite "best list".
Infinity lets you pick the strategy you want and build a list around it, instead of picking wombo combo units + factions like in 40k.
Where did I mention any netdecking of lists? My 90% comment was about the way players approach list building in Infinity. There is clearly a right and a wrong way to build lists and my guess is that 90% of players will build lists the suggested way.
This means that there aren't actually infinite lists in practice as many list combinations simply won't work or won't be enjoyable to play.
... yeah, thats what i said. Everything said here is opinion based...
I'm not looking for opinions. I'm looking for objective proof that 40k's secondary objectives are 'Ill -conceived' when compared to the systems used in other games. If you're unable to provide proof for your claims I'm done conversing with you.
Genuinely curious here. I have not played it, but have seen it played and have a passing familiarity. A lot of people bring it up in different situations as examples of what should be happening in 40k, but when I look at it, I see what appears to be a squad level skirmish game. This is fairly far off from what 40k has become over the years. Do you feel there is still enough cross over that comparisons work? If it's that good I may have to give it a try. lol
No one is saying Listbuilding shouldn't be important. They're saying Listbuilding shouldn't be the primary determinator of victory.
You're claiming that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory, but the only arguments you are presenting claim that listbuilding should matter at all.
Your counterarguments are targeting straw men, and your arguments aren't supported by the words you use.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Why is this a good and desirable quality in a wargame? I read what you wrote and it makes me wince, because gatekeeping is bad and having to research tournament results before even getting into the game for a new player is also bad.
Name a single game where your list is player-generated that doesn't require some foreknowledge of the game to help avoid making poor purchases. Even in Infinity, it's going to be possible to buy an incorrect set of models if you go in with literally zero knowledge of the game, the difference between that and 40k is merely one of degrees.
LOTR is not perfect but it is a damn sight better than 40k.
Prove it. Are the tournament results for LotR more balanced than 40k, does it have greater diversity among top tier lists, by which objective measures is it a better game?
Genuinely curious here. I have not played it, but have seen it played and have a passing familiarity. A lot of people bring it up in different situations as examples of what should be happening in 40k, but when I look at it, I see what appears to be a squad level skirmish game. This is fairly far off from what 40k has become over the years. Do you feel there is still enough cross over that comparisons work? If it's that good I may have to give it a try. lol
I will concede that its much closer to Killteam in terms of scope. I still think the design approach could apply to 40k and would make it better.
Infinity is much more tactical than 40k at every level. It feels a lot more like playing a strategy game.
I'm pretty sure it will never become bigger than 40k because of many factors (Inertia of the WH name, metal minis, lack of publicity, bigger learning curve, etc.) but it's still a really enjoyable game IMO.
Now, keep in mind that i havn't played it since the virus and i havnt looked at the newest edition that came out.
Oh, and since the game is based on a reaction system, both players are always actively playing instead of mindlessly rolling saves during the opponents turn.
Canadian 5th wrote: So there are trap options - in this case combinations of units rather than single units as in 40k - in Infinity that would lower your chances of winning. Thanks for admitting it.
An army that is built to synergize being better than one composed of totally random elements is not the same as some units, on their own, being intrinsically and arbitrarily good or bad.
The latter is what you have first praised as a good element of design, then said is unavoidable in any game. The former hasn't been disputed by anybody, and isn't what any reasonable person is talking about when they describe a 'trap option'.
VladimirHerzog wrote: strawmen gonna strawmen.
We're talking about mandatory units on an army-per-army basis.
So which units are mandatory for Orks to win? I keep using them because I know of three distinct lists they've used to place well in tournaments since the start of 9th.
Honest question, have you played infinity?
I've already answered that question. Read my posts and you'll see it.
In 40k, you don't just need "units to buff, units to hold objectives, units to kill, and units to infiltrate", you need precise datasheets as you pointed out yourself with the prevalence of trap units in 40k.
There is a difference between needing a role and needing a specific unit.
If it's that easy why don't you give me a list of winning and losing units in 40k so I can prove you're full of gak.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Why is this a good and desirable quality in a wargame? I read what you wrote and it makes me wince, because gatekeeping is bad and having to research tournament results before even getting into the game for a new player is also bad.
Name a single game where your list is player-generated that doesn't require some foreknowledge of the game to help avoid making poor purchases.
Why? That's not what you claimed. Foreknowledge of the game is different than tournament results. You said you have to look up tournament results to get into 40k, not just know that there's an assault phase. Your goalposts are moving again.
Canadian 5th wrote: Even in Infinity, it's going to be possible to buy an incorrect set of models if you go in with literally zero knowledge of the game, the difference between that and 40k is merely one of degrees.
Exactly. That's what we've been saying this whole time. It's a matter of degrees. Adjust the degrees up too high, and listbuilding becomes too dominant; too low, and listbuilding becomes irrelevant. 40k is too high right now. I'm glad you're beginning to understand.
LOTR is not perfect but it is a damn sight better than 40k.
Prove it. Are the tournament results for LotR more balanced than 40k, does it have greater diversity among top tier lists, by which objective measures is it a better game?
No, I won't prove it. You made the first claim and have yet to prove it, so why should you hold me to a higher standard than you hold yourself?
Unit1126PLL wrote: No one is saying Listbuilding shouldn't be important. They're saying Listbuilding shouldn't be the primary determinator of victory.
The primacy of list building in any given game is always a matter of meta and player skill such that for any given game there is a level of player skill where list building is the primary factor in that player winning or losing games. The degree to which this is true for a given game will always vary to some degree.
You're claiming that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory, but the only arguments you are presenting claim that listbuilding should matter at all.
No, I'm not. Please quote me as ever having said that. My arguments are that all games are determined to some degree by list building and that the scope of 40k requires a greater degree listbuilding - or a nearly mathematically impossible level of balancing - than other games with smaller model counts and/or smaller differences in scale between models.
VladimirHerzog wrote: strawmen gonna strawmen.
We're talking about mandatory units on an army-per-army basis.
So which units are mandatory for Orks to win? I keep using them because I know of three distinct lists they've used to place well in tournaments since the start of 9th.
I don't know, i don't play orks.
Honest question, have you played infinity?
I've already answered that question. Read my posts and you'll see it.
then you should play it to hopefully understand what we mean when we say that infinity is much more in-game skill based than listbuilding-skill based
In 40k, you don't just need "units to buff, units to hold objectives, units to kill, and units to infiltrate", you need precise datasheets as you pointed out yourself with the prevalence of trap units in 40k.
There is a difference between needing a role and needing a specific unit.
If it's that easy why don't you give me a list of winning and losing units in 40k so I can prove you're full of gak.
If i play my nightlords without a Discolord + Sorcerer (warptime) i'm basically throwing the game. If i don't also bring havocs i'm also throwing the game.
If i don't play DT raiders with Ossefactor wracks with my drukhari i'm basically throwing the game.
If i don't play 3 keepers of secrets in my Daemons, i'm basically throwing the game.
catbarf wrote: An army that is built to synergize being better than one composed of totally random elements is not the same as some units, on their own, being intrinsically and arbitrarily good or bad.
The latter is what you have first praised as a good element of design, then said is unavoidable in any game. The former hasn't been disputed by anybody, and isn't what any reasonable person is talking about when they describe a 'trap option'.
This is an incredibly dishonest argument.
I'd argue that there aren't arbitrarily good or bad units in 40k either and that the codex as a whole matters more than any single unit in said codex. As an experiment let's give Tau access to Eradicators and allow them to benefit from the same level of buffing from Tau characters as they would from SM characters. Are Tau now a good faction? If not how many good units does it take to make them good?
Unit1126PLL wrote: No one is saying Listbuilding shouldn't be important. They're saying Listbuilding shouldn't be the primary determinator of victory.
The primacy of list building in any given game is always a matter of meta and player skill such that for any given game there is a level of player skill where list building is the primary factor in that player winning or losing games. The degree to which this is true for a given game will always vary to some degree.
And in 40k, the degree is too high for the game to be fun.
You're claiming that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory, but the only arguments you are presenting claim that listbuilding should matter at all.
No, I'm not. Please quote me as ever having said that. My arguments are that all games are determined to some degree by list building and that the scope of 40k requires a greater degree listbuilding - or a nearly mathematically impossible level of balancing - than other games with smaller model counts and/or smaller differences in scale between models.
You forgot the part where you are arguing that 40kshould be that way. Everything you say here is true, and I wholly agree. What I disagree with is the missing premise you've conveniently omitted:
that this fact about 40k - "it requires a greater degree of listbuilding" - is desirable or a good thing.
That's the part you haven't proven to me.
And that value judgement is what I mean when I say "you've claimed that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory".
Unit1126PLL wrote: Why? That's not what you claimed. Foreknowledge of the game is different than tournament results. You said you have to look up tournament results to get into 40k, not just know that there's an assault phase. Your goalposts are moving again.
You're reading a lot into things what I actually said is, "[L]ist building is a gatekeeper skill, one which can be bypassed by looking at tournament results and participating in the community before you spend money on models." Nowhere did I say that you had to do anything, I merely said that you could bypass a large part of list building as a skill by engaging with the community before making an investment into the game. This is a true statement and one which will be true of literally any game that requires more than one play. Even for Infinity, you'd still want to meet the players at your FLGS before buying anything just in case you find out you wouldn't want to play with that group of players.
Exactly. That's what we've been saying this whole time. It's a matter of degrees. Adjust the degrees up too high, and listbuilding becomes too dominant; too low, and listbuilding becomes irrelevant. 40k is too high right now. I'm glad you're beginning to understand.
Is it though? I've yet to see any evidence of that.
No, I won't prove it. You made the first claim and have yet to prove it, so why should you hold me to a higher standard than you hold yourself?
Mezmorki wrote: Personally, I'd like to change this state of affairs, at least within my own group. My vision for 40K is one where the tactics you employ on the battlefield matter far more than the list you bring. This likely means, among other things, restricting the force organization charts a bit more (i.e. everyone use a single battalion detachment) and re-thinking entirely the secondary victory system.
My issue with this is that it's never going to happen.
For one there will always be a meta. Even in a game where rock has its best match-up versus scissors with a 60% win-rate and still wins 40% against paper and the same holds for all other match-ups. No list is ever purely rock or purely scissors and eventually combos that tilt either the wins in good matches or even up the disadvantage in losing matches will be discovered and that will set a meta. Metas are always exclusionary to some styles of play so any given list may not work even in such a balanced system.
The other issue is that an anti-horde skew list might run into an armored list that it can only wound on 6's. Regardless of how that game plays out and who wins, it'll be a match that doesn't exactly showcase the game in a great light. The thing is, that's realistic. We know what happens when light infantry meets tanks, bunkers, or fortified positions and it doesn't go well for the light infantry, there's a reason why there has always been an interest in airdropped and amphibious armor and yet that same armor is rarely good enough to be worth fielding.
In short, the game where both players have a choice in listing building can never escape being dominated by list choices.
Xenomancers wrote: What does a kill secondary actually accomplish anyways? Other than reward you for what you were going to do anyways? That is my issue with them?
Also - why do some objectives offer more points and some less? The pregame minutia of trying to figure out the max points you can achieve in a game by picking secondaries is pretty lame...your opponents armies basically determines your objectives. Pretty backwards to how objectives should be. Objectives should be determined by the mission not your opponents army..
That's nonsense. Your pregame planning should always be heavily influenced by the enemy's forces. No sane commander is going to instruct his soldiers to focus on something that either doesn't exist in the enemy's force or which the enemy can easily make impossible by employing skill in their own actions.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And in 40k, the degree is too high for the game to be fun.
If that's the case why isn't this reflected in the game's popularity or GW's profitability? If 40k is as awful and unplayable as people on this forum claim why is it that only a tiny tiny minority of us seem to notice?
You forgot the part where you are arguing that 40kshould be that way. Everything you say here is true, and I wholly agree. What I disagree with is the missing premise you've conveniently omitted:
that this fact about 40k - "it requires a greater degree of listbuilding" - is desirable or a good thing.
That's the part you haven't proven to me.
And that value judgement is what I mean when I say "you've claimed that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory".
I don't recall ever having said that list building should be the biggest component in any game. I've stated that it is in 40k and that there is a degree to which it should be in all games that offer player choice. I've made arguments that due to its scope 40k is likely never going to be as balanced as games with tighter focuses and thus will continue to be dominated by list building. I've argued that even the best games that have been suggested here still have situations in which list building will dominate skill at the table.
You're reading the rest into what I've been typing.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And in 40k, the degree is too high for the game to be fun.
If that's the case why isn't this reflected in the game's popularity or GW's profitability? If 40k is as awful and unplayable as people on this forum claim why is it that only a tiny tiny minority of us seem to notice?
You forgot the part where you are arguing that 40kshould be that way. Everything you say here is true, and I wholly agree. What I disagree with is the missing premise you've conveniently omitted:
that this fact about 40k - "it requires a greater degree of listbuilding" - is desirable or a good thing.
That's the part you haven't proven to me.
And that value judgement is what I mean when I say "you've claimed that listbuilding should be the primary determinator of victory".
I don't recall ever having said that list building should be the biggest component in any game. I've stated that it is in 40k and that there is a degree to which it should be in all games that offer player choice. I've made arguments that due to its scope 40k is likely never going to be as balanced as games with tighter focuses and thus will continue to be dominated by list building. I've argued that even the best games that have been suggested here still have situations in which list building will dominate skill at the table.
You're reading the rest into what I've been typing.
I see the problem, you've missed the whole "40k is a designed game" thing.
The claim is that 40k should be designed such that listbuilding should matter less.
Scope and scale are part of game design.
Therefore, claiming that "scope and scale prevent the game from being designed such that listbuilding should matter less" is, by Premise 1 and 2, saying that "game design prevents the game from being designed such that listbuilding should matter less."
This is not only a tautology, but also utterly irrelevant and trivial, because changing the game design is the entire point.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Then why are you fighting so hard against people that want listbuilding to matter less in 40k?
What's written in that post doesn't have anything to do with that desire.
"Listbuilding should matter less" is not addressed by, concerned with, or even really that relevant to "Listbuilding always matters."
What I want is for people to demonstrate a system by which 40k can change in this direction without destroying the things that 40k has had since its inception.
Merely having a desire for something is useless unless one actually takes tangible steps to change what they have issues with for the better. With the exception of Mezmorki very few players actually take this step and progress beyond whining about how the game should be. Even Mezmorki's system is highly unlikely to have changed 40k such that list building isn't the most important factor in who wins a game.
Thus I challenge all who have opposed me to present a system by which 40k can be balanced such that list building is not the largest determiner of skill, which keeps intact the scope and scale of the game as it presently exists, and which remains popular enough to maintain the current level of interest in 40k.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And in 40k, the degree is too high for the game to be fun.
If that's the case why isn't this reflected in the game's popularity or GW's profitability? If 40k is as awful and unplayable as people on this forum claim why is it that only a tiny tiny minority of us seem to notice?
40k isnt bad, its fun most of the time, and people have too many $$ invested into it to all drop it when were its in a slump.
40k also is riding hard on its IP momentum. Being THE wargame that everyone knows about and that LGSs have in stock (and the warhammer stored themselves) makes it hard for the game to go anywhere but up.
Again, i enjoy 40k, that doesn't prevent me from passing judgment on certain aspects of it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Then why are you fighting so hard against people that want listbuilding to matter less in 40k?
What's written in that post doesn't have anything to do with that desire.
"Listbuilding should matter less" is not addressed by, concerned with, or even really that relevant to "Listbuilding always matters."
What I want is for people to demonstrate a system by which 40k can change in this direction without destroying the things that 40k has had since its inception.
Merely having a desire for something is useless unless one actually takes tangible steps to change what they have issues with for the better. With the exception of Mezmorki very few players actually take this step and progress beyond whining about how the game should be. Even Mezmorki's system is highly unlikely to have changed 40k such that list building isn't the most important factor in who wins a game.
Thus I challenge all who have opposed me to present a system by which 40k can be balanced such that list building is not the largest determiner of skill, which keeps intact the scope and scale of the game as it presently exists, and which remains popular enough to maintain the current level of interest in 40k.
If you pay people to be game designers, they will design games. If you don't pay them to be game designers, they won't design games.
Inability or unwillingness to do the 40k designer's jobs for them does not make someone's criticism of those designers and the jobs they do invalid.
Your challenge proves nothing, is not required for either argument to be sound or valid, and is a stupid waste of time.
Canadian 5th wrote: I'd argue that there aren't arbitrarily good or bad units in 40k either
You were arguing that either Conscripts or Infantry need to be objectively inferior to the other and that actually balancing them is impossible.
That means one needs to be good and the other needs to be bad. That's a trap choice. That's what you've been saying is good and/or necessary.
That is what we are talking about. Stop derailing it by shifting goalposts to 'maybe they're balanced how they are because of the codex they're in'. We're talking about trap choices, ie things that are objectively bad but not readily apparent as such.
In the case of a game that requires other players it is. How many laments of 'I can't find anybody to play with for [insert game here]' have we seen on this forum over the years?
I see the problem, you've missed the whole "40k is a designed game" thing.
The claim is that 40k should be designed such that listbuilding should matter less.
Scope and scale are part of game design.
Therefore, claiming that "scope and scale prevent the game from being designed such that listbuilding should matter less" is, by Premise 1 and 2, saying that "game design prevents the game from being designed such that listbuilding should matter less."
This is not only a tautology, but also utterly irrelevant and trivial, because changing the game design is the entire point.
Please present me with a system by which a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter in their armory can ever beat a list that maximizes its use of effective armor? Unless you can solve this issue 40k cannot be balanced as you wish it to be.
Thus I challenge all who have opposed me to present a system by which 40k can be balanced such that list building is not the largest determiner of skill, which keeps intact the scope and scale of the game as it presently exists, and which remains popular enough to maintain the current level of interest in 40k.
random missions drawn from a pack before the game, with no faction-specific secondaries.
Poof, TAC become the norm since you need to be able to play multiple varied missions. Player skill then shifts more towards the in-game skill than the excel skill.
Oh, and thats assuming the mission pack is balanced in itself.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And in 40k, the degree is too high for the game to be fun.
If that's the case why isn't this reflected in the game's popularity or GW's profitability? If 40k is as awful and unplayable as people on this forum claim why is it that only a tiny tiny minority of us seem to notice?
40k isnt bad, its fun most of the time, and people have too many $$ invested into it to all drop it when were its in a slump.
40k also is riding hard on its IP momentum. Being THE wargame that everyone knows about and that LGSs have in stock (and the warhammer stored themselves) makes it hard for the game to go anywhere but up.
Again, i enjoy 40k, that doesn't prevent me from passing judgment on certain aspects of it.
I'm the same way, except that I enjoy the idea of the game and the debate around it more than I do the game itself.
Canadian 5th wrote: Please present me with a system by which a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter in their armory can ever beat a list that maximizes its use of effective armor? Unless you can solve this issue 40k cannot be balanced as you wish it to be.
Trivial. Use army building or mission rules to discourage the case where someone brings a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter or conversely make the ability to kill the enemy less relevant to winning the mission. 40k already does this.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If you pay people to be game designers, they will design games. If you don't pay them to be game designers, they won't design games.
I don't care if 40k changes or stays the same so why would I do this?
Inability or unwillingness to do the 40k designer's jobs for them does not make someone's criticism of those designers and the jobs they do invalid.
Your challenge proves nothing, is not required for either argument to be sound or valid, and is a stupid waste of time.
Then you cannot prove that 40k can be both balanced and maintain its current scope and scale.
In the case of a game that requires other players it is. How many laments of 'I can't find anybody to play with for [insert game here]' have we seen on this forum over the years?
No, it isn't, because that's not how arguments work. Argumentum ad populum is a fallacy, and we're in the realm of theory and philosophy right now, not practicality.
Thus I challenge all who have opposed me to present a system by which 40k can be balanced such that list building is not the largest determiner of skill, which keeps intact the scope and scale of the game as it presently exists, and which remains popular enough to maintain the current level of interest in 40k.
random missions drawn from a pack before the game, with no faction-specific secondaries.
Poof, TAC become the norm since you need to be able to play multiple varied missions. Player skill then shifts more towards the in-game skill than the excel skill.
Oh, and thats assuming the mission pack is balanced in itself.
That actually kills more lists than it creates. No instead of allowing for people to experiment with skew lists you've essentially made it so that TAC lists are the only viable option and narrowed the scope of the game from where it presently exists.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If you pay people to be game designers, they will design games. If you don't pay them to be game designers, they won't design games.
I don't care if 40k changes or stays the same so why would I do this?
Thus I challenge all who have opposed me to present a system by which 40k can be balanced such that list building is not the largest determiner of skill, which keeps intact the scope and scale of the game as it presently exists, and which remains popular enough to maintain the current level of interest in 40k.
random missions drawn from a pack before the game, with no faction-specific secondaries.
Poof, TAC become the norm since you need to be able to play multiple varied missions. Player skill then shifts more towards the in-game skill than the excel skill.
Oh, and thats assuming the mission pack is balanced in itself.
That actually kills more lists than it creates. No instead of allowing for people to experiment with skew lists you've essentially made it so that TAC lists are the only viable option and narrowed the scope of the game from where it presently exists.
Congratulations you've just killed 40k.
so 40k == skew list in your mind?
We'll never agree on anything then, i think im done here.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Trivial. Use army building or mission rules to discourage the case where someone brings a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter or conversely make the ability to kill the enemy less relevant to winning the mission. 40k already does this.
Doesn't 9th edition already do this with secondaries that discourage vehicle heavy lists and missions that reward holding them with infantry bodies?
Unit1126PLL wrote: Trivial. Use army building or mission rules to discourage the case where someone brings a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter or conversely make the ability to kill the enemy less relevant to winning the mission. 40k already does this.
Doesn't 9th edition already do this with secondaries that discourage vehicle heavy lists and missions that reward holding them with infantry bodies?
Yes. That's why I said 40k already does this. (in literally the same post you quoted. In the quote. At the end.).
You must be, otherwise, you wouldn't be debating 40k which contains a certain scope and scale of models.
Let me ask you bluntly, can 40k be as you desire it to be without removing any currently extant model from the range and keeping model counts roughly the same as they are now?
We'll never agree on anything then, i think im done here.
No, but 40k must retain the ability for such matchups to occur else you've removed a lot of player choice from the list building and model collecting phase of the game.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Trivial. Use army building or mission rules to discourage the case where someone brings a force of Guardsmen with nothing heavier than a heavy bolter or conversely make the ability to kill the enemy less relevant to winning the mission. 40k already does this.
Doesn't 9th edition already do this with secondaries that discourage vehicle heavy lists and missions that reward holding them with infantry bodies?
Yes. That's why I said 40k already does this. (in literally the same post you quoted. In the quote. At the end.).
Then what are you arguing exactly? If 40k is already doing the thing you desire it to do what more do you want?
You must be, otherwise, you wouldn't be debating 40k which contains a certain scope and scale of models.
Let me ask you bluntly, can 40k be as you desire it to be without removing any currently extant model from the range and keeping model counts roughly the same as they are now?
Why would I want to do that? The amount of bloat in the current model ranges is much too large.
You have army lists for: - the FBI (inquisition) - the Army (Imperial Guard) - the Department of Homeland Security (Deathwatch) - the Catholic Church (Sisters of Battle) - the Marines (Marines) - electronic warfare specialists (Sisters of Silence)
What we have now is a game that allows for a firefight between the FBI leading a team of electronic warfare specialists against a company of M1 Abrams tanks supported by attack helicopters and artillery. And that's just within ONE of the game's THREE superfactions!
That's patently ridiculous so I see no reason to preserve it.
Canadian 5th wrote: Then what are you arguing exactly? If 40k is already doing the thing you desire it to do what more do you want?
Because there's more to "make listbuilding matter less" than answering a trivial example thrown out by someone who barely understands the argument they're trying to counter?
Canadian 5th wrote: No, but 40k must retain the ability for such matchups to occur else you've removed a lot of player choice from the list building and model collecting phase of the game.
VladimirHerzog only suggested random missions, as a way to incentivize (not require) lists that can handle a variety of missions. That doesn't eliminate 'the ability for such matchups to occur'. You can still take a skew list if you want. It just might not be superior to a TAC list, depending on the mission.
You're not actually complaining about diversity of lists possible. A game where TAC lists built to the missions can go toe-to-toe with hyperspecialized skew lists would be an improvement in that regard.
You're just complaining that skew lists wouldn't be optimal anymore.
catbarf wrote: You were arguing that either Conscripts or Infantry need to be objectively inferior to the other and that actually balancing them is impossible.
That means one needs to be good and the other needs to be bad. That's a trap choice. That's what you've been saying is good and/or necessary.
That is what we are talking about. Stop derailing it by shifting goalposts to 'maybe they're balanced how they are because of the codex they're in'. We're talking about trap choices, ie things that are objectively bad but not readily apparent as such.
Mathematically one of those two options will always be better for a given list than the other. This cannot be avoided due to the nature of both math and logic. This does mean that objectively one will be better than the other but it doesn't mean that the other is unplayable. What it means is that the weaker option will be a trap, a drain on list efficiency, that it takes a skilled list builder to avoid.
You dont really need to increase the amount of rules to make different unit types matter. 40k is really shallow and yet very complex. You could reduce the overall amount of special rules by 50% and use half of that amount of text to make more engaging core rules.
In lotr you have maybe 5 times the core rules of 40k but except some new heroes all the army rules fit in 2 books. One for LotR and one for the Hobbit(Rivendell, most of the white council and the eagles are the same as in the other book) and half the books is scenarios and pictures and not even rules. On the other hand most army wide special rules are only a sentence or two long and the rest are mostly made up of keywords from the core rules.
What makes Cavalry or Monsters special are the few pages in the core book that handles them. Quite a few more interesting and tactical things that matters than 40k unit types. Most monsters or cavalry by themselves only have a keyword or two besides their unit type. Core rules that matters and not special rules that are different for every army.
In 40k what separates unit types are mostly if they are infantry and can go through terrain or not and what weapons they can shoot with into combat. You cant really do much to separate unit types since unit and terrain interactions are so few and streamlined. It is better than 8th but not by much. Earlier editions had more of a reason of taking certain unit typess. Before you could run/advance infantry almost had to take transports to make up for their lack of speed. If they wanted to shoot they mostly had to stay still or only fire pistols/short range. Made them much slower than vehicles or bikes. Marines on foot went from max 6" move a turn to a potential of 13"+ inches on a smaller table.
Lotr have fewer units than 40k since they lack the bloat so the game is very balanced. I don't think there are any trap units like in 40k that are just bad. You can of course build bad lists but unless you try to make it bad and instead take a bit of everything you will have quite the balanced army by design. Taking only support heroes, like 10 orc shamans, or stacking pointless unit upgrades, mass banners or warhorns, will ofc make a worthless list but you have to work pretty hard to do that.
40k need more detailed core rules and more varied mission types. You cant balance it just with secondaries if the first 2 is lacking.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Why would I want to do that? The amount of bloat in the current model ranges is much too large.
You have army lists for:
- the FBI (inquisition)
- the Army (Imperial Guard)
- the Department of Homeland Security (Deathwatch)
- the Catholic Church (Sisters of Battle)
- the Marines (Marines)
- electronic warfare specialists (Sisters of Silence)
What we have now is a game that allows for a firefight between the FBI leading a team of electronic warfare specialists against a company of M1 Abrams tanks supported by attack helicopters and artillery. And that's just within ONE of the game's THREE superfactions!
That's patently ridiculous so I see no reason to preserve it.
If you made your changes how many existing armies would become unplayable in your version of the game? What effect do you think this would have on the health of the game?
catbarf wrote: You were arguing that either Conscripts or Infantry need to be objectively inferior to the other and that actually balancing them is impossible.
That means one needs to be good and the other needs to be bad. That's a trap choice. That's what you've been saying is good and/or necessary.
That is what we are talking about. Stop derailing it by shifting goalposts to 'maybe they're balanced how they are because of the codex they're in'. We're talking about trap choices, ie things that are objectively bad but not readily apparent as such.
Mathematically one of those two options will always be better for a given list than the other. This cannot be avoided due to the nature of both math and logic. This does mean that objectively one will be better than the other but it doesn't mean that the other is unplayable. What it means is that the weaker option will be a trap, a drain on list efficiency, that it takes a skilled list builder to avoid.
Do you dispute this?
Yes, because the value of a unit could depend more on what the tabletop requirements are rather than the contents of the rest of the list. Say that, in general, Conscripts are worse than guardsmen, but there's a good chance in a mission pack of getting a mission where, say, only units that started the game as 30 models can hold objectives?
Unit1126PLL wrote: Why would I want to do that? The amount of bloat in the current model ranges is much too large.
You have army lists for: - the FBI (inquisition) - the Army (Imperial Guard) - the Department of Homeland Security (Deathwatch) - the Catholic Church (Sisters of Battle) - the Marines (Marines) - electronic warfare specialists (Sisters of Silence)
What we have now is a game that allows for a firefight between the FBI leading a team of electronic warfare specialists against a company of M1 Abrams tanks supported by attack helicopters and artillery. And that's just within ONE of the game's THREE superfactions!
That's patently ridiculous so I see no reason to preserve it.
If you made your changes how many existing armies would become unplayable in your version of the game? What effect do you think this would have on the health of the game?
I'm not proposing making any changes, so I can't answer either of those questions. The specific nature of the required changes is up to the game designers - they could scope it so that M1 Abrams tank companies supported by attack helicopters never fight the FBI leading EW specialists. Or they could add EW missions where the tank company better include some EW specialists of its own and the FBI/EW teams actually have a major advantage.
Or you could make one of a whole host of changes limited only by your innovation and imagination to improve the game. Unfortunately, I am not paid by you or anyone else enough to do this task on my own.
catbarf wrote: VladimirHerzog only suggested random missions, as a way to incentivize (not require) lists that can handle a variety of missions. That doesn't eliminate 'the ability for such matchups to occur'. You can still take a skew list if you want. It just might not be superior to a TAC list, depending on the mission.
You're not actually complaining about diversity of lists possible. A game where TAC lists built to the missions can go toe-to-toe with hyperspecialized skew lists would be an improvement in that regard.
You're just complaining that skew lists wouldn't be optimal anymore.
Skew lists, at least many forms of them, aren't currently optimal either.
Hi all,
Anyone else finding these secondary objectives are just very poorly thought out? Sure they give you the chance to score how you wish - but they are designed in such a way that certain armies are at a huge disadvantage by default.
As an example, armies that have squishy units combined with tanks and monsters (Drukhari, Tyranids and Guard come to mind) - you can easily take 2 secondaries to score points for killing the squishy units (eg, Kabalites, Gaunts, Infantry) and to kill vehicles (Venom, Sentinels, Carnifex).
Armies that are more elite-based on the other hand have a huge advantage in this respect. Custodes for example offer very little opportunities for these objectives .
Obviously the primaries are where the real points are, but with armies like Space Marines getting their historic buffs to shots, attacks, doctrines etc - they can quickly make short of those same armies as mentioned earlier so that even if they make it to the objective - they don’t get to stay on it.
Unless the new Codexes do something to change this, then I can’t see how those armies would be able to overcome such an obvious disadvantage from a gameplay mechanic. Assuming that wasn’t the plan to get us all buying space marines......
The OP was complaining, primarily, about a lack of balance and a lack of list diversity. Hence why I assume that any change would address both of these issues at once and not seek to force a TAC style of list on everybody.
Also, you do realize that a skew list can be a TAC list, right? Do I need to provide examples of such skew lists or shall I assume you can recall past metas clearly?
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yes, because the value of a unit could depend more on what the tabletop requirements are rather than the contents of the rest of the list. Say that, in general, Conscripts are worse than guardsmen, but there's a good chance in a mission pack of getting a mission where, say, only units that started the game as 30 models can hold objectives?
Voila, a reason to take conscripts.
How are Custodians, Space Marines, Eldar, Sisters, Knights, Necrons, Dark Elder, and others I'm surely missing meant to play that mission?
I'm not proposing making any changes, so I can't answer either of those questions. The specific nature of the required changes is up to the game designers - they could scope it so that M1 Abrams tank companies supported by attack helicopters never fight the FBI leading EW specialists. Or they could add EW missions where the tank company better include some EW specialists of its own and the FBI/EW teams actually have a major advantage.
Or you could make one of a whole host of changes limited only by your innovation and imagination to improve the game. Unfortunately, I am not paid by you or anyone else enough to do this task on my own.
Your two suggestions both hurt the game in terms of matched play and are complete nonstarters. Removed - don't be rude to the other posters please
You seem to be all over the place, and not really making a coherent argument.
My argument is that 40k, as it exists, is impossible to balance such that list building doesn't dominate gameplay, and more specifically the outcome of the gameplay, without drastically changing the scope and scale of the game. The logic for this involves the number of unique combinations of units that exist within each codex without factoring in wargear options or unique subfaction traits. I have previously demonstrated the math behind this first claim using Space Marines as the example codex in other threads and will provide it again if asked. The logic also involves the skew inherent to the game as we must factor in units such as Nurglings or Grots next to units like Titans and Knights and the game desires them to be able to face off against one another and have meaningful unit to unit and model to model interactions between the two extremes. Finally, my argument rests on not being to change either of these factors without alienating the existing player base of the game to such an extent that the game sees a sharp decline in popularity.
In brief, 40k is next to impossible to fix in the way most posters in this thread desire it to be without changing it to such an extent that it ceases to be 40k as it has existed for decades.
I am a big fan of the Age of Sigmar missions. All are very diverse, so you need to plan for them all with the one list., which encourages a diverse list. Playing Knife to the Heart, requires different tools than Places of Arcane power.
40k missions (now, and with the ITC before), are pretty much all the same mission, but with secondary's adding slightly different scoring mechanisms. The same type of army does well in all the missions.
I was more of a fan of the Chapter Approved Matched play missions in 8th, as they were diverse and all played very differently, so you needed to actually take different missions in account when list building.
catbarf wrote: You were arguing that either Conscripts or Infantry need to be objectively inferior to the other and that actually balancing them is impossible.
That means one needs to be good and the other needs to be bad. That's a trap choice. That's what you've been saying is good and/or necessary.
That is what we are talking about. Stop derailing it by shifting goalposts to 'maybe they're balanced how they are because of the codex they're in'. We're talking about trap choices, ie things that are objectively bad but not readily apparent as such.
Mathematically one of those two options will always be better for a given list than the other. This cannot be avoided due to the nature of both math and logic. This does mean that objectively one will be better than the other but it doesn't mean that the other is unplayable. What it means is that the weaker option will be a trap, a drain on list efficiency, that it takes a skilled list builder to avoid.
Do you dispute this?
I absolutely dispute that.
The idea that one of two choices must always beobjectively better than the other is absolutely laughable if you've played games with deeper decision-making, where different choices provide different capabilities rather than redundant, easily-compared ones. That's what we've been saying. Try to play Infinity with this spreadsheet mentality and you're going to lose.
It is entirely possible to design a game where two choices are equally viable because they're different and enable different tactics.
I'll be honest, you really sound like someone who hasn't played games besides 40K and has very limited experience in game design. You keep insisting that things that are common practice outside the GW sphere are outright impossible, and then try to argue that they don't count despite having no actual experience with the games in question.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yes, because the value of a unit could depend more on what the tabletop requirements are rather than the contents of the rest of the list. Say that, in general, Conscripts are worse than guardsmen, but there's a good chance in a mission pack of getting a mission where, say, only units that started the game as 30 models can hold objectives?
Voila, a reason to take conscripts.
How are Custodians, Space Marines, Eldar, Sisters, Knights, Necrons, Dark Elder, and others I'm surely missing meant to play that mission?
I'm not proposing making any changes, so I can't answer either of those questions. The specific nature of the required changes is up to the game designers - they could scope it so that M1 Abrams tank companies supported by attack helicopters never fight the FBI leading EW specialists. Or they could add EW missions where the tank company better include some EW specialists of its own and the FBI/EW teams actually have a major advantage.
Or you could make one of a whole host of changes limited only by your innovation and imagination to improve the game. Unfortunately, I am not paid by you or anyone else enough to do this task on my own.
Your two suggestions both hurt the game in terms of matched play and are complete nonstarters.
[Citation needed]
Canadian 5th wrote: You are playing the part of the screaming child demanding a change for which you will invest no effort beyond your incessant wailing.
Yep, this is exactly correct and not an unfair or disingenuous assertion at all. I definitely haven't been putting effort into anything I've said here and am in fact indistinguishable from a screaming child. You've found me out! (Also ad-hominem attacks are a fallacy, so that's what, your fifth? Sixth? I've lost count).
Canadian 5th wrote: In brief, 40k is next to impossible to fix in the way most posters in this thread desire it to be without changing it to such an extent that it ceases to be 40k as it has existed for decades.
40k hasn't been in the 8th/9th paradigm for "decades". 5th came out in 2008, so it hasn't even been in the 6th-8th edition paradigm for decades. In fact, it hasn't been a single decade since the release of 6th edition. Want to know what factions of the ones I listed existed in 5th edition 40k?
The Army (Imperial Guard) The Catholic Church (Sisters of Battle) The Marines (Marines)
catbarf wrote: You were arguing that either Conscripts or Infantry need to be objectively inferior to the other and that actually balancing them is impossible.
That means one needs to be good and the other needs to be bad. That's a trap choice. That's what you've been saying is good and/or necessary.
That is what we are talking about. Stop derailing it by shifting goalposts to 'maybe they're balanced how they are because of the codex they're in'. We're talking about trap choices, ie things that are objectively bad but not readily apparent as such.
Mathematically one of those two options will always be better for a given list than the other. This cannot be avoided due to the nature of both math and logic. This does mean that objectively one will be better than the other but it doesn't mean that the other is unplayable. What it means is that the weaker option will be a trap, a drain on list efficiency, that it takes a skilled list builder to avoid.
Do you dispute this?
there it is, THATS what we mean and are looking for.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yes, because the value of a unit could depend more on what the tabletop requirements are rather than the contents of the rest of the list. Say that, in general, Conscripts are worse than guardsmen, but there's a good chance in a mission pack of getting a mission where, say, only units that started the game as 30 models can hold objectives?
Voila, a reason to take conscripts.
How are Custodians, Space Marines, Eldar, Sisters, Knights, Necrons, Dark Elder, and others I'm surely missing meant to play that mission?
they gave you a quick example, not a definitive "its in the next mission pack as-is 100%". If you can't understand that from their comment then im sorry for you.
Just having a mission where firepower isnt necessary and bodies are would make conscripts better than guardsmen and doesnt prevent other armies from playing them.
The idea that one of two choices must always beobjectively better than the other is absolutely laughable if you've played games with deeper decision-making, where different choices provide different capabilities rather than redundant, easily-compared ones. That's what we've been saying. Try to play Infinity with this spreadsheet mentality and you're going to lose.
That's laughably and provably false. Yes, if I as a human player try to play Infinity with a spreadsheet mentality I'm going to lose just the same as if I took the same approach to playing Chess or Go. However, there are objectively correct options and with enough time and computational power, any game that relies on logic can be mathematically optimized. Your arguing at a different and more limited scale than I am, I'm arguing that at an absolute scale no game can ever be balanced, at a human scale people think dice are actually random...
The idea that one of two choices must always beobjectively better than the other is absolutely laughable if you've played games with deeper decision-making, where different choices provide different capabilities rather than redundant, easily-compared ones. That's what we've been saying. Try to play Infinity with this spreadsheet mentality and you're going to lose.
That's laughably and provably false. Yes, if I as a human player try to play Infinity with a spreadsheet mentality I'm going to lose just the same as if I took the same approach to playing Chess or Go. However, there are objectively correct options and with enough time and computational power, any game that relies on logic can be mathematically optimized. Your arguing at a different and more limited scale than I am, I'm arguing that at an absolute scale no game can ever be balanced, at a human scale people think dice are actually random...
For someone who makes a big deal about logic, you sure do employ a lot of unsupported assertions, fallacies, invalid and unsound arguments, and outright false claims (such as your 40k "decades" one).
The idea that one of two choices must always beobjectively better than the other is absolutely laughable if you've played games with deeper decision-making, where different choices provide different capabilities rather than redundant, easily-compared ones. That's what we've been saying. Try to play Infinity with this spreadsheet mentality and you're going to lose.
That's laughably and provably false. Yes, if I as a human player try to play Infinity with a spreadsheet mentality I'm going to lose just the same as if I took the same approach to playing Chess or Go. However, there are objectively correct options and with enough time and computational power, any game that relies on logic can be mathematically optimized. Your arguing at a different and more limited scale than I am, I'm arguing that at an absolute scale no game can ever be balanced, at a human scale people think dice are actually random...
Okay, sure. In a specific circumstance, for a specific set of missions, it's theoretically possible with a universal computer to determine that Unit A operates at 102% efficiency, while Unit B is only 100% and Unit C is 99%.
No one is asking for absolutely, 100% perfect balance, because yes, that's not possible. But I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for BETTER balance-considering the mess that 40k is now, they could do a LOT better.
). For a large part of 7th Maelstrom was also the only way for half the armies to have a chance to win at all, aside from more narrative missions of course.
