Nope. It's not in their business model and will not be while GW is a publicly listed company that is obliged to prioritize profits/shareholder returns.
alextroy wrote:How balance is balanced?
Not being able to predict (with confidence at lesat) who will win a game based on the factions being played.
Preferably also not after seeing lists (unless one is particularly badly designed).
Nevelon wrote: 40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.
Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.
What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.
I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.
So you did the right thing. Competitive 40K (I'd say competitive wargaming in general) seems to attract a special kind of gamers that will find ways to break any game. I've yet to see a game where you don't find army reviews that explain to you which unit works and which doesn't. Sometimes there's more effort in balancing (compare 40K to Lotr, which is even from the same company so GW can do better balance) and then there's 40K where unfortunately GW decided they want to restart the game every 3 years so balance isn't that important, you just wait for your armies spotlight or do the balancing yourself like in most Wargames via missions and terrain.
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.
I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?
Tyranids are tough but manageable compared to SM, tau or eldar from 7th, actually they're wet noodles compared to that kind of power creep. And nerfs will come soon.
Nevelon wrote: 40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.
Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.
What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.
I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.
Competitive gaming requires spending hundreds if not thousands every year to chase the flavour of the month. If you're not willing to do that, competitive it's not for you, and there's nothing wrong in that. I know for sure it's not for me. And it's still a fraction of the whole games of 40k that are played.
No, I'd say the point is not to balance but to keep it interesting, to have things change and present new challenges for list building.
The actual playing of the game seems less important than the more common hobby of thinking about the game, planning and coming up with ideas, taking in new information.
Balance isn't important for that.
Also, when people say "balance" without the qualifier "perfect" can we all accept that they don't mean "perfect balance" and rather "reasonable balance"? Arguing against a straw man in these threads for the sake of it is boring.
Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.
I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?
It's certainly true you're unlikely to face some of the more extreme meta terrors in a random pick-up game, but the game is very, very far from balanced even if you ignore that sort of match-up. Even if you're not facing the latest tournament winning Tyranids, or skewed Eldar list, there's still an extremely high chance you're going to get steamrollered if you have the "wrong" army. If we're assuming the player with the broken Codex isn't taking their best stuff, we can't then assume the player with the terrible Codex is only taking the very best units, so the balance problem remains.
I haven't played against the mortal wound spam Nids, or any of the successful tournament lists for that matter, but the Codex is so vastly better than anything I can put out - across the board - the games still feel pointlessly one-sided. Tau are similar and Dark Eldar were the same on release. Too many games feel like they're over before you even start rolling dice to call 40k anywhere near balanced.
Does Blood Bowl count? I certainly think it's *better* balanced.
Yes, the game explicitly states that some factions are more powerful than others - but the greater impact of chaos and player skill compared to raw factional power gap relative to 40K seems to prevent games from being necessarily foregone conclusions.
Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.
I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?
It's certainly true you're unlikely to face some of the more extreme meta terrors in a random pick-up game, but the game is very, very far from balanced even if you ignore that sort of match-up. Even if you're not facing the latest tournament winning Tyranids, or skewed Eldar list, there's still an extremely high chance you're going to get steamrollered if you have the "wrong" army. If we're assuming the player with the broken Codex isn't taking their best stuff, we can't then assume the player with the terrible Codex is only taking the very best units, so the balance problem remains.
I haven't played against the mortal wound spam Nids, or any of the successful tournament lists for that matter, but the Codex is so vastly better than anything I can put out - across the board - the games still feel pointlessly one-sided. Tau are similar and Dark Eldar were the same on release. Too many games feel like they're over before you even start rolling dice to call 40k anywhere near balanced.
Point is, if you play vs people that share the same mentality things aren't that nasty.
Having the "wrong" army is a feature, not a problem. Players always wanted to field unusual armies just to surprise the opponent. It's something that has always been there since ages and as a positive thing. So there's that to consider. People love to bring skew (they called them thematic) lists which makes the game impossible, or extremely hard at the very least, to win for one of the factions, before even starting to roll the dice. Lists with a hundred tanks to deny enough anti tank from the opponent, lists with tons of psykers to dominate magic phase, lists with over a hundred of infantries to control the board and deny the opponent the chance to knock all the grunts from the objectives, etc...
The real problem of 40k isn't even power creep, which isn't higher than the old editions, it's the players' mentality. Today too many players are focussed on competitive gaming even if they only do pick up games without going to events. But in my opinion 40k never really worked in the context of random pick up game against the opponents unless we're talking about events and people who are willing to update their collections very frequently.
Unfortunately random pick up games is one of the most common ways to play 40k, hence the impression of a dumpster fire game. I believe there's no middle ground in 40k, only the extremes work: competitive play and casual between people with the same mentality. Always been like that, although in the past competitive gaming was much messier with the most broken lists that dominated for years.
It's a moving target. :p you should also ask to define what 'balance' looks like in the real world - get three gamers together and you'll get a dozen competing notions of what balance 'is'.
'I want better balance' will mean whatever is provided will always fall short and 'good enough' balance is always suspiciously vague but when pressed, there is often so little daylight between it the 'perfect balance' folks acknowledge as impossible that they might as well be the same thing. Also of note that the game will never be 'good enough' as is.
To answer the op: no, gw will not ever make a game thats balanced out of the box, or isnt proof against the excesses and exploitations of competitive-at-all-cost gamers. Nor will any other company that makes ttgs and relies on new editions and wave-based sales models. The model is 'sell change, not improvement, keep the game in flux and manufacture discontent to drive people to want the new stuff'. There are ways of balancing at our front end, for sure, but it takes a lot of work and a collaborative attitude with your peers. Worth it? To me? Sure. To others? Maybe not. Then again I'm enjoying my hobby time and not screaming murder at gw, so for me at least there is some merit here.
tneva82 wrote: Why would they? You think they want to lose profits?
Exactly this, especially given the rules lot don't seem to own a calculator between them and act mildly surprised when the near infinite monkeys of the internet with said adding machines poke dirty big holes in their half baked ideas
It's a moving target. :p you should also ask to define what 'balance' looks like in the real world - get three gamers together and you'll get a dozen competing notions of what balance 'is'.
'I want better balance' will mean whatever is provided will always fall short and 'good enough' balance is always suspiciously vague but when pressed, there is often so little daylight between it the 'perfect balance' folks acknowledge as impossible that they might as well be the same thing. Also of note that the game will never be 'good enough' as is.
To answer the op: no, gw will not ever make a game thats balanced out of the box, or isnt proof against the excesses and exploitations of competitive-at-all-cost gamers. Nor will any other company that makes ttgs and relies on new editions and wave-based sales models. The model is 'sell change, not improvement, keep the game in flux and manufacture discontent to drive people to want the new stuff'. There are ways of balancing at our front end, for sure, but it takes a lot of work and a collaborative attitude with your peers. Worth it? To me? Sure. To others? Maybe not. Then again I'm enjoying my hobby time and not screaming murder at gw, so for me at least there is some merit here.
Hmmm. From my own POV, I think I somewhat disagree with this. I don't think I've been unhappy with balance to that extent in every version of Warhammer that I've played.
40K2e/WFB5e was mental unbalanced but as a kid I didn't care, the unbalance was hilarious.
40K3e I thought was pretty well balanced for most of my time with it. It stood out to me after 2e. In fact this was when I started to appreciate the concept of balance.
WFB 6e was really balanced and I felt it was good through it's entire run. Sure, you could get bad match ups, but I always felt you could have a decent chance to deal with them.
40K4e was pretty similar to 3e, overall fairly balanced with some outlier lists.
WFB 7e was good at the start but became unbalanced at the end. It was still a fun game if you played the right list, but it definitely went off the rails and was the first time I thought about dropping a game due to balance.
40K5e was great at the start, and went a bit weird at the end was well. It was the last edition I played, because as it moved into 6e and 7e the balance got worse from my perspective.
WFB 8e was alright, but the lethality of the magic phase put me off after some bad experiences.
So I dunno I feel like it's about 50% of the time they were doing pretty well with balance, and only in the earlier more "RPG" like period and in the later period that I personally found the balance to be a problem.
So I dunno I feel like it's about 50% of the time they were doing pretty well with balance, and only in the earlier more "RPG" like period and in the later period that I personally found the balance to be a problem.
Hmm, boss -I things you're a wee but guilty of the 'Rose tinted glasses' phenomenon, or maybe you didn't play in the shark pit I cut my teef in (and youre lucky in that case!). I won't disagree on 6th/7th - they were horrendous eras.
But every edition broke hard with the powerbuilds of the day and every edition was quickly 'solved' with go-to builds, crutches, exploits etc. Third was 'rhino rush' or 'shoot the rhino rush', 4th was skimmer spam (f yoy had them) or 6-man las-plas and asscannon spam. 5th similarly devolved into specific go-to builds very quickly. And in all cases a handful of codices/builds dominated and all the rest never got a look in. That's not what 'balance' should look like.
Remember as well these were different games from different eras. The relative power discrepancies needs to be considered, not the absolutes. It might surprise you - Go back, play a 4th ed game with a broken codex of its era (eg iron warriors) against something on the lower end (eg tau) and I guarantee you that you will not have a fun game. Ot better yet - check archived forum posts from the noughties or teens eg portent (remember that one?) Or warseer to get a sense of what people at the time were actually.saying at the time.
I can't really comment on balance for wfb as I never played it, but as i recall, wasn't it dark elves and vampire counts broke sixth in half? Or was it seventh? And I'm pretty sure some codices again dominates at the expense of others.
It was designed to be thematic, then people started using it for tournament play.
By our very nature we are competitive, it is a war game where there has to be winners and losers. however, when that takes center stage above the setting, theme and enjoyment of actually playing the game we end up where the OP is at.
40K CAN be a very fun game, with the right mind set. with the wrong mind set however it is a GAK show.
That is the reason why so many players who are not interested in tournament style play have gone back to older editions of GW games like 2nd-5th 40K or 6th-8th WHFB or to games GW no longer supports like BFG. It allows us to still use our collections of minis we have spent so much time and money on in the 40K setting, or play some other game system not in GWs product line.
Remember as well these were different games from different eras. The relative power discrepancies needs to be considered, not the absolutes. It might surprise you - Go back, play a 4th ed game with a broken codex of its era (eg iron warriors) against something on the lower end (eg tau) and I guarantee you that you will not have a fun game.
Sorry not true at all.
our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.
our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.
'At all' covers an awful lot of ground I fear.
I will politely disagree with this bit aphyon from my personal experiences but agree with everything else you said. For what its worth I'm glad your experiences differed from mine - towards the end of fourth that csm codex has basically ruined the edition for a lot of us.
May I ask what lists were used in your games above? I remember an appalling match up from that era, especially the dual Nike lords, 3x3 obliterators, 3x5 tank hunting havoks with autocannons (24 bs4 pseudo-s8 attacks every turn did a lot to blunt our skimmers, in addition to everything else) and an indirect firing basilisk and 2 infiltrating csm squads for added oomph.
Point is, if you play vs people that share the same mentality things aren't that nasty.
Obviously that's true. My problem is with how much heavy lifting the second "that" is doing in your sentence. Things are not as bad if neither player brings a meta-style list, but that doesn't mean things are fine. The sheer power level difference between two Codices can too often be almost too much to overcome.
Having the "wrong" army is a feature, not a problem. Players always wanted to field unusual armies just to surprise the opponent. It's something that has always been there since ages and as a positive thing. So there's that to consider. People love to bring skew (they called them thematic) lists which makes the game impossible, or extremely hard at the very least, to win for one of the factions, before even starting to roll the dice. Lists with a hundred tanks to deny enough anti tank from the opponent, lists with tons of psykers to dominate magic phase, lists with over a hundred of infantries to control the board and deny the opponent the chance to knock all the grunts from the objectives, etc...
I'm not talking about skew lists, so I have no idea why this is relevant. When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.
The real problem of 40k isn't even power creep, which isn't higher than the old editions, it's the players' mentality.
There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.
For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.
Unless GW expiriances a big drop in the money they make, and I mean like something really big and substential. Something that could cost some people at the company their jobs and, or make the investors really unhappy, they have no entice to change anything. More players, fewer players. Doesn't matter if price hikes cover the difference and people buy out all the production GW can muster anyway.
As the balance goes, I have little idea and no personal expiriance how editions prior to 8th looked like. But comparing to 8th, the changes are a lot more often and the differenes in power between top armies and the rest are a lot bigger. A 2.0 marine drop right now, would just be considered a new codex, by people who aren't alergic to marines. Not sure if it is better or worse. Long dominations are good for people who play those top armies, and 8th did have soup, which 9th only has for eldar. On the other hand an army being fun to play for 2-5 months is longer then most people here take to collect one. It also has a much bigger impact on the non tournament players, who don't want to play the best army or the best build. In the past, at least some of the armies, were odd skews, so there was a chance that your opponent is not going to bring 80 poxwalkers and 40 pink horrors. Now the over power happens on units that make people play the faction, and the really good books were so over all over costed and buffed in rules, that a casual list isn't much less powerful then the real one. Which again makes it really hard for people with weaker armies or lists to not play some sort of tournament lists or its close version.
But non of those things impact the game in lower sells, in fact they probably buff them. So again there is little interest from GW to change their model.
No they dont have the rules making talents for it anymore for their core games, but they are clouse with some of the specialist games, so look AWAY from 40k/aos, and the grass is greener.
You don't need talent to make a balance games. Make 10 factions name their rules different, but have the same effects, change the names of stratagems but not the effects and remove or limit any form of units and armies with rules that ignore core mechanics and you have a balance game of mostly mirror matchs.
Slipspace wrote: When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.
There's no such thing as wrong armies. I believe it's a matter of wrong lists instead.
My armies orks and firstborn SW and played lots of times against drukhari and now tyranids and harlequins. Those armies are clearly better but I won several games against them without even playing tournament winning lists. With the exception of maybe a couple of armies, anyone can win against the top armies, even stomping them pretty hard. Just not against the top lists. Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face. And if I were a tournament player I'd either tailor against the top tiers or field a total anti meta list.
There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.
For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.
Yes, I do blame the players since I disagree with what's a lot of players think these days. I don't like 2000 points games as the standard format for example and would love 1500 points ones. Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended. I also blame the players who want to play competitively without putting the required effort and resources in it and complaining if they can't keep up, and I blame GW for encouraging competitive gaming so much.
When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff. The ork codex freaked out the community at some point but it was never OP in the first place, simply people needed to adapt and a very few things (that was very unlikely to see in casual games) needed their correction.
I think underworlds is pretty well balanced. Ar least as balanced any game with 30+ "factions" can be. With the right practice and a bit of luck, I think any warband can win any event.
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
I hope not. As I think balance can't be reached without losing a lot of things I like in the games GW makes. Fluff, options for models and units, variation in rules, things that really make armies different. With more balance the game would become too serious for me, I play for the beer & pretzels not for the tournament style. GW creates hype, creates money with different armies/units being 'good' in the game, which we would loose with balance.
No offense meant, not directed at OP specifically, but why are people playing a game they don't like. You can't say you like/love 40k then complain about imbalance, because that is what 40K makes the game it is. Offcourse you can give your opinion about the game you're playing, I don't agree with a general 'If you don't like it, don't play it' sentiment. But... since it's existence 40K is not balanced, so 'demanding' it should be gets kinda old.
I disagree that 40k has never been balanced. As someone playing 40k 4th edition RIGHT NOW, in the current era, with the Chaos 3.5 dex against my Imperial Guard 3.5 and with my Aeldari against the 4e Ork book, things are way better than playing Orks into Aeldari or IG into Chaos likely will be after their book drops.
Slipspace wrote: When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.
There's no such thing as wrong armies. I believe it's a matter of wrong lists instead.
My armies orks and firstborn SW and played lots of times against drukhari and now tyranids and harlequins. Those armies are clearly better but I won several games against them without even playing tournament winning lists. With the exception of maybe a couple of armies, anyone can win against the top armies, even stomping them pretty hard. Just not against the top lists. Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face. And if I were a tournament player I'd either tailor against the top tiers or field a total anti meta list.
There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.
For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.
Yes, I do blame the players since I disagree with what's a lot of players think these days. I don't like 2000 points games as the standard format for example and would love 1500 points ones. Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended. I also blame the players who want to play competitively without putting the required effort and resources in it and complaining if they can't keep up, and I blame GW for encouraging competitive gaming so much.
When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff. The ork codex freaked out the community at some point but it was never OP in the first place, simply people needed to adapt and a very few things (that was very unlikely to see in casual games) needed their correction.
I agree with this. And I think it's possible to blame the players (or let's say the competitive minded players) if they experience a bad situation over and over because other wargaming communities can handle imbalances pretty well without having entire forums dedicated to whining about imbalance. Take Oathmark for example, it's a pretty new Rank and File game with pretty loose army building and ally rules. Players found out that elves often seem overcosted, artillery is rather powerful as well as some monsters. What the community does is giving players hints how to work around these problems and stay away from breaking the game tournament style.
Meanwhile in 40K/ dakka the "tactics threads" tend to tell you which units are "unplayable" and the advise more often than not goes along the lines of "don't take that, instead get this and that". I think it would be much more helpful to give hints or scenarios which can improve bad codizes. Or actual tactics. I often find myself playing the game and realizing that what people write on Dakka doesn't translate at all to the actual 40K game (like: just shoot everything, movement is useless in 9th, Codex X is unplayable, the game plays itself yaddayadda).
We play wargames to throw some dice and show our painted models, rules are just a tool and it's part of the hobby to adjust them according to our needs, something that in my experience needs to be done in every wargame (I've played 40K, lotr, War of the ring, oathmark, ST Attack Wing, Stargrave and One page rules).
our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.
'At all' covers an awful lot of ground I fear.
I will politely disagree with this bit aphyon from my personal experiences but agree with everything else you said. For what its worth I'm glad your experiences differed from mine - towards the end of fourth that csm codex has basically ruined the edition for a lot of us.
May I ask what lists were used in your games above? I remember an appalling match up from that era, especially the dual Nike lords, 3x3 obliterators, 3x5 tank hunting havoks with autocannons (24 bs4 pseudo-s8 attacks every turn did a lot to blunt our skimmers, in addition to everything else) and an indirect firing basilisk and 2 infiltrating csm squads for added oomph.
Well my experience may be anecdotal but it does come from over 20 years of playing 40K very actively from 3rd edition up until 8th (when we went back to 5th although we did skip over 6th after testing it out the first month). When i say actively i mean we game every weekend for 12+ hours, we obviously play more than just 40K now but it used to be the main game aside from battletech for the first decade or so from 2002 onwards. Having said that we tend to favor flavor over raw power in our games. the armies should feel like they should be in the 40K universe.
i also note i agree the 4th ed CSM codex was garbage.
As for the list our IW player runs at 2k, it is the same one he has had basically since 3rd ed.
.warsmith
.X4 las/plas squads
.3X3 obliterators
.X3 las/heavy bolter predators fully upgraded with demonic and parasitic gifts
.X1 basilisk
When he fought the tau
i will try and remember the other list as it was not mine-
.commander ra'alai
,X2 full fire warrior teams in devilfish
.hazard suit
,X2 stealth suit squads
.a couple tetras
.X2 hammerheads
.broadside team of 3
Spoiler:
Other examples
3rd ed armored company VS 3.5 iron warriors
Spoiler:
3rd ed armored company VS 4th ed tau-
Spoiler:
7th ed mechanicus VS 4th ed tau-
Spoiler:
4th ed tau VS 5th ed dark eldar-
Spoiler:
3.5 chaos VS 4th ed tyranids-
Spoiler:
Massive (like 7K) game 3.5 chaos VS 5th ed DIY marines-
Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended.
They didn't have to. From what I have seen posted by other people 2000pts or 1999+1 is a format people have been playing for multiple editions. On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts. the loyalist knights won't work, maybe the chaos ones do, because they seem to support a warhound list. But stuff like custodes or GK just lack the super point efficient eldar or tyranid style unit to be playable.
And people don't have to refuse anything. They play on the boards that their stores have or their clubs have. And does have limited space there won't be any 8x8 boards to play. Not to mention the fact that such bigger tables promote armies with skimmers transports, flyers etc Armies which already ignore speed and table size already.
There's no such thing as wrong armies.
I would like you to go back in time, and tell a GK player or even in 9th a pre codex GK player that there are no bad armies. That his army can beat any army, it doesn't have to use a tournament build, as long as it doesn't face those top build played by evil people. Specialy as builds , and I guess people, can become evil over night, just with something like GW puting out a codex which turns intercessors from a luckluster and bad unit options to one of the 3 corner stones of marine lists under 2.0.
Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face.
What wierd point of view. 2000pts is a strange point game, but the way you describe how someone would have to prep for a playing the game, if your way of playing was the way the game is played, people would have to own multiple thousands of points in an army, and probably even multiple armies just in case even having 3-4k pts in an army doesn't let someone tailor. Plus how the tailoring somehow doesn't end up in everyone playing the top lists is beyond me. if someone wanted to "tailor" against the entire field as DE, harlis, pre DE harlis or tyranids right now, they just pick a tournament list or something very close to it.
It is a world when a new player would take years to start playing the game, get bogged down in painting and spend thousands of dollars, while the game resets. Probably never really playing the game, because they are so busy with other stuff and saving up to buy different tailor builds, that they would quit, before they even start playing the game. Meanwhile playing infinity or something else would cost the 300-400$ tops, maybe a 50$ more if they had to pot some money for infinity specific terrain.
When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff.
yeah that is why we saw those 60% win rates from GSC and 1ksons. And all those tournament players, specialy those that sell tutoring, have paint studios YT channels and want to be or want to stay being playtesters for GW totaly don't want to adapt. They are just too stupid to do it and want to play the armies their like too much. Although tournament players probably don't really like their armies, because as we all know they are bad people.
It is just the casual Imperial Fist player, who doesn't want to adapt to a 400-500pts under priced DE, Tyranid or Eldar army that is the problem, and why the game is being painted in a bad way by a fringe of the community. Because most of it is too busy painting those thousands of points and can't play games or read forums.
I would like you to go back in time, and tell a GK player or even in 9th a pre codex GK player that there are no bad armies. That his army can beat any army, it doesn't have to use a tournament build, as long as it doesn't face those top build played by evil people. Specialy as builds , and I guess people, can become evil over night, just with something like GW puting out a codex which turns intercessors from a luckluster and bad unit options to one of the 3 corner stones of marine lists under 2.0.
Karol
I know you are younger and comparatively new to the game compared to some of us, but yeah if you did go back in time and played GKs as the original game designers made them to be circa 3rd edition as part of the chamber militant of the ordo hereticus/inquisition they worked as intended. a specialized force intended to fight chaos aligned forces and demons backing up whatever other force the inquisitor requested for the task. meaning they were never really meant to be a stand alone force like the terrible 5th ed codex made them out to be (and continued on in the following editions). but rather a special part of a marine army or a guard army or a sisters army, or an inquisitorial strike force etc...
I know because i play GKs and i play them that way and they work great against chaos and demons. rather i add them to my marines or my admech.
We have a guy at our store that is building an inquisitorial force centered around storm troopers backed up by some GK units.
Karol wrote: On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts.
Every army is playable at 1500 points, even at 1000 points. They just need different builds and tactics than what they use to bring in larger games. Custodes, Grey Knights, Harlequins, etc... they can all do great in lower formats. Only knights might be an exception.
It is a world when a new player would take years to start playing the game, get bogged down in painting and spend thousands of dollars, while the game resets. Probably never really playing the game, because they are so busy with other stuff and saving up to buy different tailor builds, that they would quit, before they even start playing the game. Meanwhile playing infinity or something else would cost the 300-400$ tops, maybe a 50$ more if they had to pot some money for infinity specific terrain.
Yes, the game takes years to be played at competitive levels, and that's a good thing. That's why I blame those who want to be competitive without accepting that they'd have to re-work their collection constantly.
If you want "everything now" and a challenging experience skirmishes like Infinity would be a much better option indeed.
yeah that is why we saw those 60% win rates from GSC and 1ksons. And all those tournament players, specialy those that sell tutoring, have paint studios YT channels and want to be or want to stay being playtesters for GW totaly don't want to adapt. They are just too stupid to do it and want to play the armies their like too much. Although tournament players probably don't really like their armies, because as we all know they are bad people.
Some competitive players really don't like their armies, they play them only because they're the flavour of the month. And it's also a fact that some of them refuse to adapt, or are incapable of doing that. That's why months ago the community screamed against orks and not many players became band wagoners. They don't like that faction for multiple reasons (including the fact that it takes forever to be played at top levels), they don't want it to be top tier so they demand hard nerfs. Other armies are more appealing to them so even if they are OP they don't scream that loud.
It is just the casual Imperial Fist player, who doesn't want to adapt to a 400-500pts under priced DE, Tyranid or Eldar army that is the problem, and why the game is being painted in a bad way by a fringe of the community. Because most of it is too busy painting those thousands of points and can't play games or read forums.
Paint job is irrelevant ruleswise. That Imperial Fists player can use whatever chapter rules he wants to use. The only limitations are on named characters, but still no one prevents someone from playing blue Imperial Fists or yellow Salamanders if he wants to. Not even at events. There's no Imperial Fists player, there's a space marines one.
As I already said there are no wrong armies, but it might be wrong lists. Balance in 40k is not designed on random collection on models vs another random collection of models but on faction X vs faction Y, taking into account all the possible combinations those factions have. And I've always recommended NOT to play with the entire collection, but with a fraction of it so changes can be made in order to get more balanced games between friends.
Well my experience may be anecdotal but it does come from over 20 years of playing 40K very actively from 3rd edition up until 8th (when we went back to 5th although we did skip over 6th after testing it out the first month). When i say actively i mean we game every weekend for 12+ hours, we obviously play more than just 40K now but it used to be the main game aside from battletech for the first decade or so from 2002 onwards. Having said that we tend to favor flavor over raw power in our games. the armies should feel like they should be in the 40K universe.
i also note i agree the 4th ed CSM codex was garbage.
As for the list our IW player runs at 2k, it is the same one he has had basically since 3rd ed.
.warsmith
.X4 las/plas squads
.3X3 obliterators
.X3 las/heavy bolter predators fully upgraded with demonic and parasitic gifts
.X1 basilisk
Thank you for elaborating aphyon. I don't disagree with your approach on flavour rather than power. I think in the real world we'd probably get on great.
However, if I may (and please dont take this as an attack of any kind, its not meant as such)? Respectfully I've been playing as long as you. I played a lot back in third/fourth and with folks whose names ended up in the rulebooks special thanks section. I'm not saying this to crow, but to point out we are peers and my experiences in what looking back i can only describe as a competitive-at-all-cost dominated bear pit are not invalidated by yours.
I respect what you say but it does not disprove my position from earlier - maybe you didn't mean it but 'sorry not true at all' was an extremely condescending dismissal of my experiences back then and my point of the imbalances between the forces, especially when your friends iron warriors list is quite toned down in comparison and respectfully, has nothing on the beast that stomped its way through the tournament scene back then and which was the focus of my point.
I like how you play. I like those lists of yours. They're very reasonable. But they're not necessarily representative of where the game broke down so awfully back then, which is what my point was based on.
They're an example that the game can be built towards a more level playing field for sure (its absolutely true that the game didnt have to be played to that extreme), but sadly yours was far from the 40k fourth ed that a lot of people experienced.
Incidentally thanks for the pictures- your games look great. I'll need to up my game and do the same!
our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.
People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'
Nomeny wrote: People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'
It's the 'illusion of balance', but really its a system to exploit and manipulate.
Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended.
They didn't have to. From what I have seen posted by other people 2000pts or 1999+1 is a format people have been playing for multiple editions. On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts. the loyalist knights won't work, maybe the chaos ones do, because they seem to support a warhound list. But stuff like custodes or GK just lack the super point efficient eldar or tyranid style unit to be playable.
1500 was the official GW recommended size for 3rd - 7th, it was only really the US pushing 1999+1 or 2k. 8th saw GW meshing with US influences, hence the increase in size.
All armies work at 1.5k, they just don't work the same way, often it allows room for counters and deficiencies in lists to creep in.
Nomeny wrote:People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'
You're going to have to explain how being a fun game with options and tactics is at odds with being balanced, because that does not follow.
I've played a number of games that were interesting, engaging, let you feel like you did something, and that you were clever when you did it, while still being better balanced than 40K. Some of them were published by GW.
It seems like a straw man to suggest that balance means every game is a total coin flip irrespective of the decisions of the players, because I don't think that's what anyone else means by 'balance'. I can well envision a 40K that's driven more by decisions on the table and less by listbuilding matchups.
Nomeny wrote:People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'
You're going to have to explain how being a fun game with options and tactics is at odds with being balanced, because that does not follow.
I've played a number of games that were interesting, engaging, let you feel like you did something, and that you were clever when you did it, while still being better balanced than 40K. Some of them were published by GW.
It seems like a straw man to suggest that balance means every game is a total coin flip irrespective of the decisions of the players, because I don't think that's what anyone else means by 'balance'. I can well envision a 40K that's driven more by decisions on the table and less by listbuilding matchups.
yeah, a 50% winrate across the board doesn't mean the games become a coinflip, it means that what matters is player skill on the tabletop. If i win with an army that has a 50% winrate against another that has a 50% winrate, it means that as a general i executed the better strategy.
Best example why it wouldnt be a coinflip : if i decide to shoot all my bolters at tanks and put my lascannons into gretchins, i probably won't win that game against an opponent that does the inverse
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
my main gripe with Competitive 40k is that its soo fething boring. Every game is basically the same and listbuilding has too much of an impact.
"Ok so i play thousand sons, i get 15 from TTL on my termies and characters, if they bring a psyker i get 15 from WoM, then i can do engage because i'm playing duplicity with crystal"
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
That wasn't the question OP posed though.
Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.
(1) "Balanced" means different things if you're looking at it from a competitive versus a casual situation. And GW conflating the two with "matched play" being the default for so many causes some issues.
From a competitive standpoint, recognize that competitively-driven players are going to find the optimal "meta" builds across all the available factions and that this is inherently going to skew the perceived level of balance and win-rates. You can push and pull on points all day long, but you're just changing what's going to become the new meta. At a certain point, it might best to just ignore this context for practical balance purposes.
From a casual standpoint, I feel that "balance" is achieved when a player can show up to a game with a thoughtful list against an unknown opponent/list and have an "enjoyable" game and where their decisions on the table matter as much (ideally more, but who are we kidding) than the list they brought. I think this really hinges on having good internal balance in the codex so each unit has a compelling reason to be selected.
(2) Mission Design. I'll say it again - but I don't feel that the current matched play mission set, where all the missions are slight variations on a control point system, will support balanced casual play. Limited scope of missions makes certain types of lists better suited than others at the mission, and so you can't just take whatever units sound cool or fit your list's theme unless you want to handicap yourself relative to the mission objective. A more diverse set of mission design that makes it harder to optimize towards any specific one type would help break down the prevalence of meta lists in casual play and manage player expectations. Sure, a player could take a list tailored to certain missions (upping their potential win rate) but it would mean having a reduced change of winning in other types. Or you build a list that can do everything sort of well, losing so specialists in some missions but wining against others, and having tense close games against similar TAC lists.
Karol wrote: On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts.
Every army is playable at 1500 points, even at 1000 points. They just need different builds and tactics than what they use to bring in larger games. Custodes, Grey Knights, Harlequins, etc... they can all do great in lower formats. Only knights might be an exception.
I'd say that even Knights could tackle a 500pt game. It's only 3 Armigers/War Dogs or 1 medium-sized Knight for the madlads if we ignore detachment requirements at low point games. Some of the synergies that go with the combination of bigger and smaller knights aren't there, but it's enough to learn the rules/get a player by until they can field more points. But my experience has been that's the nature of 500pt games. They are usually pretty screwy no matter what faction is involved, and should only serve as a stepping stone to getting to at least 750-1000pts where the game begins to normalize.
I generally like having an ever shifting number of points allowed for my games. In the last month I have played 1000, 2000, 1300 and 1500pt games. I like switching it up as each amount changes my angle-of-attack toward the game. In fact, this weekend, I am playing a 1500pt game with 1200pts Chaos Knights and 300pts of CSM. With the CSM being placeholders until I get a couple more War Dogs built and painted.
While I much prefer full sized tables, I don't mind the occasional minimum-sized boards. I look at kinda like baseball/hockey. Some fields/rinks are bigger or smaller than others. And you adjust your play during the game to deal with this change. I appreciate external variables like that to force me to think on my feet (even if it is just a little) over planning out an army list engine and seeing how well it runs.
I generally think that 40k is pretty balanced at the moment. Or at least good enough for me. There are certainly lists that will completely wreck other lists, but I find with IRL players, just playing an army they like over what is optimal is fine. Doubly so if you change up points totals, board size and game type (Open War, Tempest, Matched). A lot of players' ability seems to come from 'reps' of their army list engine. Change up the external variables, and the lesser players relying on their list power to carry them often become revealed.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
That wasn't the question OP posed though.
Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.
Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.
(What do I mean by cutthroat?) These people ghost you as soon as they start losing.
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.
Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc
And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.
Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc
And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....
Thanks man. I didn't read it. Welcome to the ignore list.
Totally unnecessary.
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.
Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc
And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....
Thanks man. I didn't read it. Welcome to the ignore list.
Totally unnecessary.
You'll note that I did not call you a bad player.
Anyways, I'm glad you've had a crappy competitive experience.
The less people poisoning our hobby via the tourney scene the better.
Hope your casual experience goes better.
1. GW makes very poorly balanced games. Especially their large scale ones. Some skirmish level games are balanced decently well (underworld and warcry) but on the whole they're terrible at balance.
2. The previous fact doesn't not dismiss the self-evident truth that even if the game WAS perfectly balanced, no one in the community would BELIEVE it was perfectly balanced.
The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.
Yeah this way they can hype new editions as they purport to fix all the self inflicted wounds of the prior edition.
The big flaw in this theory is that GW has never once admitted to any flaws in any of their games. If anything negative is mentioned (and it is only very rarely) it's usually blamed on players misreading or misapplying the rules.
It's the playerbase who says the new edition will fix the 'self-inflicted wounds of the prior edition' specifically people like you who say it sarcastically, forget they were the ones who said it, attribute it to GW, and then have a warped memory of GW's marketing.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
That wasn't the question OP posed though.
Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.
Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?
...The defense is super easy: Chess is considered to be one of the greatest, if not the most perfect games ever designed. It has 2 factions that are identical mirrors of each other and one STILL has a 55% winrate over the other.
40k has 34 factions that are TRACKED by our statistics dashboard (and about 100 more subfactions besides), with infinitely more moving parts than Chess has and manages to have ELEVEN factions that are more equally balanced than White against Black in chess. 11 balanced factions vs ZERO in chess.
The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.
Yeah this way they can hype new editions as they purport to fix all the self inflicted wounds of the prior edition.
The big flaw in this theory is that GW has never once admitted to any flaws in any of their games. If anything negative is mentioned (and it is only very rarely) it's usually blamed on players misreading or misapplying the rules.
It's the playerbase who says the new edition will fix the 'self-inflicted wounds of the prior edition' specifically people like you who say it sarcastically, forget they were the ones who said it, attribute it to GW, and then have a warped memory of GW's marketing.
You don't remember "Most playtested version ever?"
Sure they let the playerbase hype it, but they help themselves a bit too.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
That wasn't the question OP posed though.
Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.
Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?
Sure, give me the precise and correct definition of balanced for this discussion.
Deadnight wrote: 'I want better balance' will mean whatever is provided will always fall short and 'good enough' balance is always suspiciously vague but when pressed, there is often so little daylight between it the 'perfect balance' folks acknowledge as impossible that they might as well be the same thing. Also of note that the game will never be 'good enough' as is.
Bull. People are generally pretty forthright about "45-55% win rate" when they talk about ideal balance.
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Nomeny wrote: A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip.
Only because your brain has been cooked by GW-style gameplay where there aren't important decisions to make on the table or a way to outwit your opponent.
In a lot of other games, "balance" means the player who plays better that day will win.
I watched the video. Very interesting.
If GW does indeed take this approach, I think it has merit, but they are still flopping at it.
For one, why aren't all codices released at the same time? This tells me they are making the rules up AS THEY GO, (which is either true or becomes self-fulfilling because, for many editions now, they have been injecting new sweeping rules before all of them are even out yet. WHAT. THE. F-CK?)
tneva82 wrote: Why would they? You think they want to lose profits?
Anecdotally, they lose more money from people leaving the game due to the awful state of the rules than they gain from the whales who buy every new meta army. The last time the rules were in this bad of a state, Warhammer dropped completely out of top 5 miniatures games and 40k lost the top spot for the first time ever. Warmahordes and Xwing were more popular than 40k/WFB for a couple years. GW got those people back with 8th index edition which was balanced and cheap to get into because every army didn't have their rules split into 3-5 different places. Those same people are leaving again due to the balance for the last 6-8 months.
The thing is that you can 'leave' the game without leaving the hobby. I collect GW models, I paint them, I like reading the novels. The game isn't really necessary.
The concept of 'perfect imbalance' doesn't mean that a balanced game inevitably comes down to a coin toss, with player skill rendered totally irrelevant. It means cultivating a rotating set of imbalances to force players to constantly play catch-up rather than settle into optimal strategies. Chess, the given example of a 'solved' game that 'perfect imbalance' is contrasted against, is very obviously not a game where the outcome is totally random.
But also, this idea of 'perfect imbalance' is not anywhere near as widely accepted as he makes it out to be. Portnoy has no relevant industry experience (or at least did as of when that video was published- it's been a while), and people in the comments rightly criticize his use of League of Legends as an example. He's also wrong in identifying imbalance as the cause of an evolving meta, because it's change that prevents 'solving' the game that matters. You can have a game that is constantly adding new content or changing existing content, that maintains a state of balance, while still providing the churn that prevents optimal strategies from metastasizing into a solved game.
In any case, I'm not sure how you watched the video and came to the conclusion that 'a perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip', because that's not even remotely implied. A perfectly balanced game and a perfectly solved game are two very different things; a solved game where both players employ optimal strategies (like chess plays or Starcraft build orders) may come down solely to random chance if both players play perfectly. A balanced game that is not solved, where players have to make decisions that express player skill, will not.
And the more balanced a game is, the harder it is to solve, as meta lists (ie solutions) only pop up whenever imbalance is significant. An imbalanced 40K gives us SM2.0 Iron Hands. A balanced 40K gives us a plethora of tournament-viable lists that prevent it from stagnating through sheer complexity of interactions, even without the drip-feed of new content.
Daedalus81 wrote: Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).
Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.
my main gripe with Competitive 40k is that its soo fething boring. Every game is basically the same and listbuilding has too much of an impact.
"Ok so i play thousand sons, i get 15 from TTL on my termies and characters, if they bring a psyker i get 15 from WoM, then i can do engage because i'm playing duplicity with crystal"
People tend to play the lists closest to what they think is powerful.
My recent test games have been with Magnus and Mutation -- screwing with mobility. My games play way differently than the prototypical 20 scarab stuff. I do find stuff like 4 knights or armies that have little diversity more boring to play with and against.
We'd have to spend a really long time discussing how to determine if something is balanced.
Someone who isn't very good might think the game is less balanced than it might be. For me I might consider it closed to balanced if there's simply a diverse set of armies at top tables and that there's diversity among lists. There shouldn't be any one or two armies dominating the rankings unless they're overrepresented.
Knights don't seem to have knocked the table over so a few taps with the CA in a couple weeks could put things in a "good enough" spot.
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VladimirHerzog wrote: i get 15 from TTL on my termies and characters, if they bring a psyker i get 15 from WoM, then i can do engage because i'm playing duplicity with crystal"
So it looks like TTL and Stranglehold are gone from the new mission set. If it's true I think it could be good since those were a little too binary.
So 3rd Ed. 40K with the rulebook army lists? Same with 6th Ed. WFB with Ravening Hordes.
chaos0xomega wrote:
Just_Breathe wrote: Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.
Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.
I'll have to say that it shocked me that it took 2 pages to get to "Git Gud"...
I wouldn't call it a "git gud" per se. The game in unbalanced and nids are broken, no question about it - but that doesn't mean that you can't arrive at the correct conclusion by way of incorrect data
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't call it a "git gud" per se. The game in unbalanced and nids are broken, no question about it - but that doesn't mean that you can't arrive at the correct conclusion by way of incorrect data
Do you think it is possible to have a game of 40k and when you ask "how could I have played better" the answer would be "bring a better army"?
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't call it a "git gud" per se. The game in unbalanced and nids are broken, no question about it - but that doesn't mean that you can't arrive at the correct conclusion by way of incorrect data
I could have gone into more detail.
But nobody wants to hear that sh-t.
I play A LOT of competitive games. I usually lost to Tyranids by t2, before they were nerfed, with mistakes to boot. This time I made zero mistakes, got good dice rolls, and still completely lost the Primary game by turn 3.
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't call it a "git gud" per se. The game in unbalanced and nids are broken, no question about it - but that doesn't mean that you can't arrive at the correct conclusion by way of incorrect data
Do you think it is possible to have a game of 40k and when you ask "how could I have played better" the answer would be "bring a better army"?
Oh absolutely. I got that answer on several occasions playing Militarum Tempestus into basically every army released in 9th through to Custodes. Thats why I'm maining Thousand Sons and Chaos Knights now lol
GW has made it their business model to break the game every few months with a new codex, so the power gamers will go out and at the very least buy the new codex.
johnpjones1775 wrote: GW has made it their business model to break the game every few months with a new codex, so the power gamers will go out and at the very least buy the new codex.
That's true in practice, but I doubt that's their intent.
To imply otherwise would mean that GW are malicious, and I don't think they are capable of such a thing. That would require too much forethought.
I wonder why they suddenly forgot how to make good fur or hair. GW was never very good with faces, aside for maybe WFB elf models, but they always made good looking hair and fur. The new models they make for w40k, necromunda and even AoS are attrocious to a pont where having stuff without helmets is a very bad idea for some armies.
GW could balance the game quite easily. That's what points are for. All they need to do is an in-depth MFM that addresses every faction and nearly every unit in those factions.
One massive problem is point compression at the floor. If Gretchins are suppose to represent a 5 point model, then everything should be based off that cost.
Say for example, look at the massive difference between 5 and 6 point models. 5 and 7 point models. 5 an 8 point models. Etc. GW needs to push model costs up. Such as:
- Gretchin 5 points
- Conscripts and Cultists 6 points
- Guardsmen and Neophytes 7 points
45-55% is the sweet spot.
But even then people would still complain, as they lose more than 55% of the times against certain factions.
45-55% is for the overall winrate, if you consistently play vs the few factions you struggle a lot with, it's perfectly fine to lose more often than not.
But that is because just being a troop option or cheap, doesn't mean that GW had plans for the specific unit to be core of the army. With orks for example the boys or grots don't have the rules or point costs for ork players to want to run them. If any infantry is taken, it is/was the specialists, commandos, trukk boys etc The basic ork in 9th, at least when the codex was efficient, had the form of a buggy and a flyer.
On top of that GW has point costs glued up, if they are shared by different books. A unit or gear may have totaly different jobs in two different armies, but GW will keep the cost the same. And then we get such gems as 20pts strikes with 1W and csm with 1W for 2 years of 9th.
Nomeny wrote: The thing is that you can 'leave' the game without leaving the hobby. I collect GW models, I paint them, I like reading the novels. The game isn't really necessary.
Theres even free alternatives that let you use your GW minis are they are to play a much better game. Yes, i'll keep shilling for OnePageRules
So it looks like TTL and Stranglehold are gone from the new mission set. If it's true I think it could be good since those were a little too binary.
are they? I stopped paying attention to GT stuff since tempest of war came out. Thats a good news, hopefully theres some new stuff overall because it feels like half the secondaries are (almost) unplayable
Jarms48 wrote: GW could balance the game quite easily. That's what points are for. All they need to do is an in-depth MFM that addresses every faction and nearly every unit in those factions.
One massive problem is point compression at the floor. If Gretchins are suppose to represent a 5 point model, then everything should be based off that cost.
Say for example, look at the massive difference between 5 and 6 point models. 5 and 7 point models. 5 an 8 point models. Etc. GW needs to push model costs up. Such as:
- Gretchin 5 points
- Conscripts and Cultists 6 points
- Guardsmen and Neophytes 7 points
Then keep pushing things up from there.
It gets way more difficult than that. Not all armies have parity of units. Not all armies have the same support characters. Marines generally can't compete on bodies and have to compete elsewhere.
If you also imagine a marine unit with an absurd gun with a million shots. Then an Ork gun with two million shots. The marine gun will be far more effective with access to reroll hits/wounds and increased AP.
They should definitely double the points for more granularity though.
Jarms48 wrote: GW could balance the game quite easily. That's what points are for.
The implication here is that adjusting points is the only mechanism needed for balance. Things would be a lot easier if that were true.
Design can make certain units or factions difficult or impossible to balance. Combos that punch well above their weight, for example, make it hard to appropriate cost the constituent pieces. Buffs like support units and free subfaction bonuses have a major impact on the utility of a unit. And you can very well end up with a codex where if you take the tippy-top competitive list it's reasonably balanced against other optimal competitive lists, but the balance is completely out of whack for more casual play. There are also design-based limitations on points adjustment- GW's insistence on having universal costs for wargear means that it may be impossible to set a cost for a weapon that is appropriate for every platform it can be taken on.
I'm hardly an apologist for GW's rules-writing but if achieving decent balance were as easy as reworking points, GW would probably have managed it by now. Design change has to go into it as well and that's a much taller order, particularly while they're also beholden to the obsolete distribution limitations of print media.
Jarms48 wrote: GW could balance the game quite easily. That's what points are for.
The implication here is that adjusting points is the only mechanism needed for balance. Things would be a lot easier if that were true.
Design can make certain units or factions difficult or impossible to balance. Combos that punch well above their weight, for example, make it hard to appropriate cost the constituent pieces. Buffs like support units and free subfaction bonuses have a major impact on the utility of a unit. And you can very well end up with a codex where if you take the tippy-top competitive list it's reasonably balanced against other optimal competitive lists, but the balance is completely out of whack for more casual play. There are also design-based limitations on points adjustment- GW's insistence on having universal costs for wargear means that it may be impossible to set a cost for a weapon that is appropriate for every platform it can be taken on.
I'm hardly an apologist for GW's rules-writing but if achieving decent balance were as easy as reworking points, GW would probably have managed it by now. Design change has to go into it as well and that's a much taller order, particularly while they're also beholden to the obsolete distribution limitations of print media.
I think a new game edition should release when the design team has enough ideas and improvements to put a new and improved game out if they are beholden to not having a living game.
Unfortunately it seems marketing decides the release schedule alone.
Karol wrote: I wonder why they suddenly forgot how to make good fur or hair. GW was never very good with faces, aside for maybe WFB elf models, but they always made good looking hair and fur. The new models they make for w40k, necromunda and even AoS are attrocious to a pont where having stuff without helmets is a very bad idea for some armies.
Very likely because their plastic models are all designed for rigid steel moulds, and possibly only 2 part steel moulds. When they were casting pewter from silicone or another soft substance, they could do things with hair that would be impossible to do now.
Here are the win rates for Blood Bowl teams from the NAF (sorry for the formatting from copying/pasting). Except for most of the Tier 3 "stunty" teams (ex. Halflings, Goblins, etc.) which everyone playing the game knows are a challenge to play, the win percentages for the rest of the teams range from approximately 45% to 55%. That's quite good and what I consider to be a "balanced" game.
https://member.thenaf.net/index.php?module=NAF&type=statistics
Edit: But I do not credit GW for the balance of Blood Bowl. The game was in the hands of the fans for many years, after GW abandoned it, who kept it alive and made updates to a "Living Rulebook" to create a more balanced ruleset. GW adopted that ruleset for its 2016 re-release, and only made relatively minor tweaks to the rules for the 2020 rules (which are quite good overall in my opinion).
The implication here is that adjusting points is the only mechanism needed for balance. Things would be a lot easier if that were true.
Design can make certain units or factions difficult or impossible to balance. Combos that punch well above their weight, for example, make it hard to appropriate cost the constituent pieces. Buffs like support units and free subfaction bonuses have a major impact on the utility of a unit. And you can very well end up with a codex where if you take the tippy-top competitive list it's reasonably balanced against other optimal competitive lists, but the balance is completely out of whack for more casual play. There are also design-based limitations on points adjustment- GW's insistence on having universal costs for wargear means that it may be impossible to set a cost for a weapon that is appropriate for every platform it can be taken on.
I'm hardly an apologist for GW's rules-writing but if achieving decent balance were as easy as reworking points, GW would probably have managed it by now. Design change has to go into it as well and that's a much taller order, particularly while they're also beholden to the obsolete distribution limitations of print media.
Better to make an attempt than no attempt at all. If you rebalance all the points for every faction at once it'll be more balanced than the game is now. Then just closely watch the meta and see what's working and what's not working. Then make smaller adjustments from there.
It's not perfect, but it's the easiest process to do until the new edition drops.
They already did, its called Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, check it out! The specialist games in general seem to have tighter rule sets, meanwhile 40k and AoS exist to sell models, which requires imbalance.
Or if you really want to play 40k, find like minded casual people. Once you move away for the comp list crowd, the game can still be a lot of fun, regardless of the current meta.
A game is uninteresting if it isn't won on the table IMO. Winning it in the army construction/codex choice stage is boring.
^This. If you can win a game just by making a good list, then there's no point to having a game. Just compare lists and maybe roll a die. Tactics should matter.
Even if by some unforseen divine providence, 10th edition releases EVERY codex and supplement at the exact same time, and gives us an entire year without modification, there would still be extreme power indifference. This is the nature of any competitive "game".
In the fighting game environment, take SF4. Everyone thought the power rankings were entirely set, there was a clear "best" character to use, skill was largely irrelevant. Then Daigo Umehara appeared and began winning every major with what most people thought was a bad character, that being Ryu. Before Diago invented the Ume-Shoryu, no one had "Ryu" anywhere near the top 5. Then over night people started claiming he was "broken" and "for low skill players".
Point is: You cannot make balance in this game, becuase player skill will always, ALWAYS, offset any design intent. Someone will create an unforeseen combo, and exploit the hell out of it. Thus creating the perception of imbalance.
To most people, the BA Smash Captain created "unbalance". But does anyone honestly think that GW designed BA to be able to do that specific thing? Or that GW designed Eldar to make JetBike lists? No.
Don't ascribe malice, when incompetence is the more likely option.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
As a Necron player, I disagree. Arks are terrible game pieces and the Skorpekh lord is a ugly and nonsensical model.
Also, the fisher price ork rig wagon thing doesn't look great either.
what is subjectivism
If parts of it breaks apart in transit, then it objectively is a terrible game piece. Not to mention that it's a hassle to build.
The Skorpekh lord is also a pita to build due to that awkward thing you have to do where you nestle the arms in it's chest cavity and try to push it all together, which may result in gap in the torso because of course the damned things don't sit right.
Design wise there is no way it could actually fight, because of the short tubes restricting the movement of the arms and the awkward positioning of the gun, preventing it from acquiring targets. It's not subjective, it literally does not make sense design wise. The gun arm should really be coming out of the back and over the shoulder instead of sharing an arm socket and being trapped under the shoulder pad, and there should not be any tubes connecting to the arms.
The Skorpekh lord is also a pita to build due to that awkward thing you have to do where you nestle the arms in it's chest cavity and try to push it all together, which may result in gap in the torso because of course the damned things don't sit right.
Design wise there is no way it could actually fight, because of the short tubes restricting the movement of the arms and the awkward positioning of the gun, preventing it from acquiring targets.
It's not subjective, it literally does not make sense design wise. The gun arm should really be coming out of the back and over the shoulder instead of sharing an arm socket and being trapped under the shoulder pad, and there should not be any tubes connecting to the arms.
disagree, plenty of room to swing his sword, even with the cables. And its a pretty simple model to assemble too. More complex than a space marine but still easy to build (tm i guess)
The Skorpekh lord is also a pita to build due to that awkward thing you have to do where you nestle the arms in it's chest cavity and try to push it all together, which may result in gap in the torso because of course the damned things don't sit right.
Design wise there is no way it could actually fight, because of the short tubes restricting the movement of the arms and the awkward positioning of the gun, preventing it from acquiring targets. It's not subjective, it literally does not make sense design wise. The gun arm should really be coming out of the back and over the shoulder instead of sharing an arm socket and being trapped under the shoulder pad, and there should not be any tubes connecting to the arms.
disagree, plenty of room to swing his sword, even with the cables. And its a pretty simple model to assemble too. More complex than a space marine but still easy to build (tm i guess)
The flayer arrays are attached to a very weak point and I always use a lot of padding. It's not a question of "being careful", its a question of sloppy design. They should really be a single piece or have a shaft that you insert into a hole.
The sword arm does not have a cable on it. The gun arm and the claw arm do. The claw arm also has two cables on it for some odd reason, one of which appears to be rather short. They did have the foresight to give it some slack, but even then it does seem restrictive and is unnecessary to have when there's already a massive cable connecting the arm to the back.
The gun arm has a short little cable attaching it to the waist, meaning that there is absolutely no way for it to ever to actually acquire targets, especially as it has to get clear of the sword arm. Once again, this cable is redundant because there's already a massive power cable connecting the gun to the back, which does actually have quite a bit of slack and length.
The sword arm still has it's movement restricted by the gun arm sharing the same socket. Which is a design choice that I don't understand at all.
Even if by some unforseen divine providence, 10th edition releases EVERY codex and supplement at the exact same time, and gives us an entire year without modification, there would still be extreme power indifference. This is the nature of any competitive "game".
In the fighting game environment, take SF4. Everyone thought the power rankings were entirely set, there was a clear "best" character to use, skill was largely irrelevant. Then Daigo Umehara appeared and began winning every major with what most people thought was a bad character, that being Ryu. Before Diago invented the Ume-Shoryu, no one had "Ryu" anywhere near the top 5. Then over night people started claiming he was "broken" and "for low skill players".
Point is: You cannot make balance in this game, becuase player skill will always, ALWAYS, offset any design intent. Someone will create an unforeseen combo, and exploit the hell out of it. Thus creating the perception of imbalance.
To most people, the BA Smash Captain created "unbalance". But does anyone honestly think that GW designed BA to be able to do that specific thing? Or that GW designed Eldar to make JetBike lists? No.
Don't ascribe malice, when incompetence is the more likely option.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
Isn't actually the opposite? The only way to completely balance a game is to make player skill the only variable in the equation, i.e. giving them the exact same units and abilities.
That being said, I think the biggest barriers to GW creating a more balanced game are:
Combos: Too many abilities (especially Stratagems) can be piled onto one unit to make it far more than the sum of it's parts.
Unequal Choice Options: Things like Warlord Traits, Relics, and Sub-Faction Traits having wildly different value for the same cost.
Failure to compare unit values across codexes: If I can place two equal points units side by side between two codexes and immediately see one is better than the other, we have a problem.
Open List Construction: List construction is so loose in 40K that you can't count on a list having anything. That makes balancing things so much harder.
Even if by some unforseen divine providence, 10th edition releases EVERY codex and supplement at the exact same time, and gives us an entire year without modification, there would still be extreme power indifference. This is the nature of any competitive "game".
In the fighting game environment, take SF4. Everyone thought the power rankings were entirely set, there was a clear "best" character to use, skill was largely irrelevant. Then Daigo Umehara appeared and began winning every major with what most people thought was a bad character, that being Ryu. Before Diago invented the Ume-Shoryu, no one had "Ryu" anywhere near the top 5. Then over night people started claiming he was "broken" and "for low skill players".
Point is: You cannot make balance in this game, becuase player skill will always, ALWAYS, offset any design intent. Someone will create an unforeseen combo, and exploit the hell out of it. Thus creating the perception of imbalance.
To most people, the BA Smash Captain created "unbalance". But does anyone honestly think that GW designed BA to be able to do that specific thing? Or that GW designed Eldar to make JetBike lists? No.
Don't ascribe malice, when incompetence is the more likely option.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
Isn't actually the opposite? The only way to completely balance a game is to make player skill the only variable in the equation, i.e. giving them the exact same units and abilities.
That being said, I think the biggest barriers to GW creating a more balanced game are:
Combos: Too many abilities (especially Stratagems) can be piled onto one unit to make it far more than the sum of it's parts.
Unequal Choice Options: Things like Warlord Traits, Relics, and Sub-Faction Traits having wildly different value for the same cost.
Failure to compare unit values across codexes: If I can place two equal points units side by side between two codexes and immediately see one is better than the other, we have a problem.
Open List Construction: List construction is so loose in 40K that you can't count on a list having anything. That makes balancing things so much harder.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
You're right. One of GW's biggest problems is the ridiculous amount of content they produce. The game has over 20 factions and some armies have more than 100 individual datasheets. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, SM have more bolt weapons than some armies have ranged weapons total. That's insane. It's also something that's entirely under the control of GW as the designers of the game. Pretty much every other game on the market manages to provide variety and tactical depth with may fewer moving parts, with the added bonus it makes things easier to balance.
You're also making the mistake here of thinking things have to be perfect in order to be better. That's just wrong. GW can, and should, do better, even with the way they've chosen to build their game. Will we ever achieve perfect balance? Probably not. Should we have to put up with obvious mistakes like AdMech, DE, Custodes, Tau, Harelquins and Tyranids? No.
Given the number of decisions - and dice - GW could make a game where faction choice wasn't the obvious determinant of winning multiple games in a row.
Bloodbowl is a sometimes vexing game designed to make you flip tables - but there is undoubtedly a huge amount of skill in its order of operations gameplay - and a huge amount of luck because the dice can let you do miracles - or spend 3 turns just trying to pick up the ball.
I don't know if the new edition has issues - but the long maturity of the older edition shaved off the more typical GW issues. Some factions have advantages (especially at certain stages of team development) - but its not as extreme unless you go that way by selecting an obviously weaker faction.
The problem with AoS and 40k is not the amount of things in the game (look at the number of teams in Bloodbowl) - but that one faction can suddenly degenerate into halflings/goblins - while the other is like Wood Elves - but in addition we decided every player should get block for free "cos lol lmao". Guard for example are crap now - but were probably the best mono-faction in the game for the first half of 2018. Ad Mech went from hero to zero on a much more rapid basis.
Its not hard to look at a new codex and go "this is clearly overpowered when you do a like to like comparison with what came before". And then you see a few games, and shockingly what you'd expect to see in the maths, happens when you move around the table and roll some dice. This is what GW could stop doing. (I don't think they will - but they could.)
People use the Chess Analogy to point towards a "perfectly" balanced game. Every player has the exact same pieces, and most contests are held via multiple games, alternating who goes first. The average of those games often determines the better player. This indicates player skill is the only possible variable factor, but it's not 100% correct. There is a forethought aspect to consider. If player 1 knows ahead of time, or guesses correctly, that player 2 will use strategy A, and it's perfect counter is Strategy B, Player 1 will win. It's all about guesses and what you know about your opponent. The mental aspect. Some people would lump this into "player skill" but it's not. Because many chess masters are given the title far before they're old enough to "know" the entire strategy of most opponents. For instance, Bobby Fisher beat Donald Bryne at 13, having never met him. Because he gambled that if he sacrificed his queen, his opponent would make a mistake of going for it. And it paid off.
TLR
You cannot balance this game, or any game, with player skill and if it's inherently based around an RNG system. It's like saying you are going to "balance" poker.
If you want to "increase balance" in this game, you have to do several things:
1. Reduce bloat
2. Increase uniformity among factions "Everyone plays by the same rules"
3. Make games more reliant on strategy. Right now it's just like Napoleanic Wars. Everyone get in a line and shoot at each other is the height of Strategy in this game. There is no incentive to do "feints" or "gambits". No harrying tactics. The closest thing to "gambling to win" in this is praying for 6s.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: People use the Chess Analogy to point towards a "perfectly" balanced game. Every player has the exact same pieces, and most contests are held via multiple games, alternating who goes first. The average of those games often determines the better player. This indicates player skill is the only possible variable factor, but it's not 100% correct. There is a forethought aspect to consider. If player 1 knows ahead of time, or guesses correctly, that player 2 will use strategy A, and it's perfect counter is Strategy B, Player 1 will win. It's all about guesses and what you know about your opponent. The mental aspect. Some people would lump this into "player skill" but it's not. Because many chess masters are given the title far before they're old enough to "know" the entire strategy of most opponents. For instance, Bobby Fisher beat Donald Bryne at 13, having never met him. Because he gambled that if he sacrificed his queen, his opponent would make a mistake of going for it. And it paid off.
That's not really what happened. The mistake in that game was the preceding move by white, which allowed the queen sacrifice. It wasn't Fischer assuming his opponent would make the mistake of taking his queen, it was Fischer literally calculating better than his opponent and realising sacrificing his queen was simply the better play. It's not a psychological factor, nor is it guesswork at that point. It's still an absolutely brilliant play from Fischer, but its brilliancy is based on solid concepts and not some romantic notion of reading his opponent so well he had his whole gameplan figured out.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: You cannot balance this game, or any game, with player skill and if it's inherently based around an RNG system. It's like saying you are going to "balance" poker.
If you want to "increase balance" in this game, you have to do several things:
1. Reduce bloat
2. Increase uniformity among factions "Everyone plays by the same rules"
3. Make games more reliant on strategy. Right now it's just like Napoleanic Wars. Everyone get in a line and shoot at each other is the height of Strategy in this game. There is no incentive to do "feints" or "gambits". No harrying tactics. The closest thing to "gambling to win" in this is praying for 6s.
Those would help. However, the notion that you can't balance the game due to differences in player skill is nonsense. Player skill is the thing you're testing for. Therefore, you assume equal skill when balancing the game, which should result in the player with the greater skill winning because all else is "equal". In practice that's never 100% achievable, but games designers should strive to get as close as possible to that scenario.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
You're right. One of GW's biggest problems is the ridiculous amount of content they produce. The game has over 20 factions and some armies have more than 100 individual datasheets. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, SM have more bolt weapons than some armies have ranged weapons total. That's insane. It's also something that's entirely under the control of GW as the designers of the game. Pretty much every other game on the market manages to provide variety and tactical depth with may fewer moving parts, with the added bonus it makes things easier to balance.
You're also making the mistake here of thinking things have to be perfect in order to be better. That's just wrong. GW can, and should, do better, even with the way they've chosen to build their game. Will we ever achieve perfect balance? Probably not. Should we have to put up with obvious mistakes like AdMech, DE, Custodes, Tau, Harelquins and Tyranids? No.
ONE, maybe two, could be claimed as a mistake. Same way you could look at say, the Ork codex as being a mistake on the too weak end of the scale.
But 5, + the Harlie bit of the Eldar book, & 4 of those 6 being released in a row? That's not an error, that's an intentional trend.
Oh, and if you don't feel like putting up with it? There's the door. You can quit playing this game anytime.
You won't do it though.
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
You're right. One of GW's biggest problems is the ridiculous amount of content they produce. The game has over 20 factions and some armies have more than 100 individual datasheets. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, SM have more bolt weapons than some armies have ranged weapons total. That's insane. It's also something that's entirely under the control of GW as the designers of the game. Pretty much every other game on the market manages to provide variety and tactical depth with may fewer moving parts, with the added bonus it makes things easier to balance.
You're also making the mistake here of thinking things have to be perfect in order to be better. That's just wrong. GW can, and should, do better, even with the way they've chosen to build their game. Will we ever achieve perfect balance? Probably not. Should we have to put up with obvious mistakes like AdMech, DE, Custodes, Tau, Harelquins and Tyranids? No.
ONE, maybe two, could be claimed as a mistake. Same way you could look at say, the Ork codex as being a mistake on the too weak end of the scale.
But 5, + the Harlie bit of the Eldar book, & 4 of those 6 being released in a row? That's not an error, that's an intentional trend.
Oh, and if you don't feel like putting up with it? There's the door. You can quit playing this game anytime.
You won't do it though.
You know it's possible to recognize something has flaws, to want those flaws corrected, but still enjoy it, right?
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
You're right. One of GW's biggest problems is the ridiculous amount of content they produce. The game has over 20 factions and some armies have more than 100 individual datasheets. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, SM have more bolt weapons than some armies have ranged weapons total. That's insane. It's also something that's entirely under the control of GW as the designers of the game. Pretty much every other game on the market manages to provide variety and tactical depth with may fewer moving parts, with the added bonus it makes things easier to balance.
You're also making the mistake here of thinking things have to be perfect in order to be better. That's just wrong. GW can, and should, do better, even with the way they've chosen to build their game. Will we ever achieve perfect balance? Probably not. Should we have to put up with obvious mistakes like AdMech, DE, Custodes, Tau, Harelquins and Tyranids? No.
ONE, maybe two, could be claimed as a mistake. Same way you could look at say, the Ork codex as being a mistake on the too weak end of the scale.
But 5, + the Harlie bit of the Eldar book, & 4 of those 6 being released in a row? That's not an error, that's an intentional trend.
Oh, and if you don't feel like putting up with it? There's the door. You can quit playing this game anytime.
You won't do it though.
You know it's possible to recognize something has flaws, to want those flaws corrected, but still enjoy it, right?
I don't believe they will. What sells better is what I call "buy and luck" games where the mass appeal comes not from how much effort you can put into becoming skillful, but from the feeling that when you lose, buying this thing or two and rolling a few more sixes could have given you victory.
That's why MtG is more popular than, say, Android Netrunner amd GW games are more popular than more skill-based wargames. And for this constant pursuit of better things to buy you need questionable balance.
This and GW not really knowing what works and why it works in their games
Cyel wrote: What sells better is what I call "buy and luck" games where the mass appeal comes not from how much effort you can put into becoming skillful, but from the feeling that when you lose, buying this thing or two and rolling a few more sixes could have given you victory.
Yup. If you had to actually "git gud" instead of effortlessly stomp your opponent with an overpowered codex or complain about being underpowered with an underpowered one, a lot of people would leave 40k (or go back to just collecting models).
Again, you cannot balance any game this advanced with this many moving parts unless you completely remove player skill from the equation. IE, all players are forced to use the exact same units and abilities.
You're right. One of GW's biggest problems is the ridiculous amount of content they produce. The game has over 20 factions and some armies have more than 100 individual datasheets. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, SM have more bolt weapons than some armies have ranged weapons total. That's insane. It's also something that's entirely under the control of GW as the designers of the game. Pretty much every other game on the market manages to provide variety and tactical depth with may fewer moving parts, with the added bonus it makes things easier to balance.
You're also making the mistake here of thinking things have to be perfect in order to be better. That's just wrong. GW can, and should, do better, even with the way they've chosen to build their game. Will we ever achieve perfect balance? Probably not. Should we have to put up with obvious mistakes like AdMech, DE, Custodes, Tau, Harelquins and Tyranids? No.
ONE, maybe two, could be claimed as a mistake. Same way you could look at say, the Ork codex as being a mistake on the too weak end of the scale.
But 5, + the Harlie bit of the Eldar book, & 4 of those 6 being released in a row? That's not an error, that's an intentional trend.
Oh, and if you don't feel like putting up with it? There's the door. You can quit playing this game anytime.
You won't do it though.
That's a dumb and unhelpful comment. Who made you the gatekeeper of 40k? So we're not allowed to critique something we enjoy aspects of because...you say so?
Here's the thing. I have a great group that I play 40k with. We don't play the newest, hottest meta lists as a matter of course, though sometimes our collections coincide with whatever GW have randomly broken this month. We like some level of competitiveness but we don't go all out to break the game. We have good social interactions. We like painting and modelling. There are many, many aspects of the game, the hobby and the social experience that we enjoy. Some parts of it could be a lot better, so I'm going to discuss that here since this is a discussion forum. If I took your attitude maybe I'd just tell you to quit the forum if you don't like reading discussion about the game.
I also vote with my wallet. GW haven't seen any money from me in over a year. Throughout the lifespan of 9th, I've spent way, way less than I have in previous editions, due to a combination of already having a lot of models, and disillusionment with the some of the direction of the game. So rather than quit, I'll make my voice heard and I'll vote with my wallet, while still spending my own free time however I choose, regardless of what some random guy says on the internet.
Every level of stats and special rules create more variables and make it that much harder to have balance. 40k has tried a couple times to simplify and balance the game but they always end up destroying that with Codex creep and layers of new special rules that are unique to each army and/or unit. GW and it's players seem addicted to layers of rules to represent the fluff.
If you want Balance you need something with less variables like Grimdark Future or Kings of War but those sorts of games nearly always involve abstractions such that some units will feel samey.
The gamer needs to decide whether they want the rules to represent the units with an RPG'ish feel of accuracy (as in 40k) or if they want a balanced game, because it's near impossible to have both.
Lastly though, a caveat that my argument is structural and not a slight on GW or their players. I don't use GWs rules for my 40k games because of price and my preferred play experience but, I'm not surprised many people enjoy them. Whether it's more casual gamers enjoying the ubiquity/playerbase and level of fluff representation, or competitive gamers sifting the massive stew of rules for that punishing combo, there are plenty of ways to enjoy the game.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
Well sorry for not wanting to have an individual spot in my case for the 150 infantry models in my Nid lists. I'd rather feth them in a box than cart about 6 KR cases.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
Well sorry for not wanting to have an individual spot in my case for the 150 infantry models in my Nid lists. I'd rather feth them in a box than cart about 6 KR cases.
good on you, but don't be surprised or complain when you lose some arms on your gaunts/stealers.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
Well sorry for not wanting to have an individual spot in my case for the 150 infantry models in my Nid lists. I'd rather feth them in a box than cart about 6 KR cases.
150 infantry sized models are super easy to fit in a standard case, magnetized or foam. It's not like you're taking 300 infantries and 20 monsters with wings...
My carry case is magnetized, my models arent moving in there. Same with foam cases, unless you're sitting on your box, it shouldn't damage your minis.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
I don't know how buses look where you live, but when I use my to get to the store in hours where people are there, they are full the brink carrying a case with you would make people hate you. and if the case is bigger then 50x50x50 you have to pay for a ticket for it. Local trains are even worse. And school buses, good luck protecting a case from other people. And if you are too carrying about it, someone which can't be named on the forum, may decide that it is time to try to steal it because clearly there is something important in it.
You could take a private "mini bus" but those are even more tight packed then the regular ones, because they always take more people then they should take. Specialy for the last few years when gas prices went crazy.
i have no idea how people even manage to break pieces of their minis.... Just be gentle with them.
How often do you use public transport to get to the place you play at?
My carry case is magnetized, my models arent moving in there. Same with foam cases, unless you're sitting on your box, it shouldn't damage your minis.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
Not everyone has a magnetized case. Some of us has to make to with a lot of foam pellets, because foam inserts aren't always suitable with some models, especially the large, awkward ones with a lot of thin sticking out bits. I know this because I have a bloody foam case and I still lost bits from my models.
Try putting spear men or a ghost ark in a case with foam inserts, and see how that goes.
The only person i've seen at my LGS with broken minis is the guy that litterally just piles them all up in a cardboard box with zero protection at all
Well sorry for not wanting to have an individual spot in my case for the 150 infantry models in my Nid lists. I'd rather feth them in a box than cart about 6 KR cases.
150 infantry sized models are super easy to fit in a standard case, magnetized or foam. It's not like you're taking 300 infantries and 20 monsters with wings...
It's the monster with wings that matters though. My orks don't suffer from breakages because of how they're designed, but models with parts that are just sticking out in awkward places tend to be a bear to transport.
My orks don't suffer from breakages because of how they're designed, but models with parts that are just sticking out in awkward places tend to be a bear to transport.
I know, it's actually the main reason why I sold my Drukhari a couple years ago.
But a typical 40k horde army, tyranids in the specific example, but also orks, guards, etc... is quite easy to carry with safety.
Just to add to this, I use Really Useful Boxes with a sheet of magnetic paper on the bottom. Stick a magnet on your bases and you're good to go. Cheap and very efficient way to transport and store models. Been doing it for years and very rarely have an issue.
lare2 wrote: Just to add to this, I use Really Useful Boxes with a sheet of magnetic paper on the bottom. Stick a magnet on your bases and you're good to go. Cheap and very efficient way to transport and store models. Been doing it for years and very rarely have an issue.
My buddy does the same. A Stack of those seems to take up less volume than a foam case and unless you drop them, it's as safe an option for transport.
Not everyone has a magnetized case. Some of us has to make to with a lot of foam pellets, because foam inserts aren't always suitable with some models, especially the large, awkward ones with a lot of thin sticking out bits. I know this because I have a bloody foam case and I still lost bits from my models.
A magnetic carry case costs like 30$ to make, just need a plastic box and a piece of sheetmetal
I don't know how buses look where you live, but when I use my to get to the store in hours where people are there, they are full the brink carrying a case with you would make people hate you. and if the case is bigger then 50x50x50 you have to pay for a ticket for it. Local trains are even worse. And school buses, good luck protecting a case from other people. And if you are too carrying about it, someone which can't be named on the forum, may decide that it is time to try to steal it because clearly there is something important in it.
You could take a private "mini bus" but those are even more tight packed then the regular ones, because they always take more people then they should take. Specialy for the last few years when gas prices went crazy.
theres buses every 5-10 minutes where i live and no need for a case thats 50x50x50 lol, mine is like 20x30x30 and thats when i bring large armies.
Not everyone has a magnetized case. Some of us has to make to with a lot of foam pellets, because foam inserts aren't always suitable with some models, especially the large, awkward ones with a lot of thin sticking out bits. I know this because I have a bloody foam case and I still lost bits from my models.
A magnetic carry case costs like 30$ to make, just need a plastic box and a piece of sheetmetal
And the magnets to attach to the models.
How much are sturdy magnets for 100+ models?
Also, where do I magnetize an awkward model such as a flyer or ark?
It might be easier for whatever you have, but not all armies are designed equally.
Not everyone has a magnetized case. Some of us has to make to with a lot of foam pellets, because foam inserts aren't always suitable with some models, especially the large, awkward ones with a lot of thin sticking out bits. I know this because I have a bloody foam case and I still lost bits from my models.
A magnetic carry case costs like 30$ to make, just need a plastic box and a piece of sheetmetal
And the magnets to attach to the models.
How much are sturdy magnets for 100+ models?
Also, where do I magnetize an awkward model such as a flyer or ark?
It might be easier for whatever you have, but not all armies are designed equally.
Just on the magnet price front, you can get a lot for for not much at all. Obviously this is location dependant but it costs very little to magnetise a horde army. I've done it plenty of times in the past. For awkward models, it depends but when you apply a little creativity it always seems to work out.
Not everyone has a magnetized case. Some of us has to make to with a lot of foam pellets, because foam inserts aren't always suitable with some models, especially the large, awkward ones with a lot of thin sticking out bits. I know this because I have a bloody foam case and I still lost bits from my models.
A magnetic carry case costs like 30$ to make, just need a plastic box and a piece of sheetmetal
And the magnets to attach to the models.
How much are sturdy magnets for 100+ models?
Also, where do I magnetize an awkward model such as a flyer or ark?
It might be easier for whatever you have, but not all armies are designed equally.
13$ for 100 N52 magnets
flyers are as easy to magnetize as anything else, just get bigger magnets (10$ for 50) and put like 5 on the base
I play thousand Sons, CSM, Demons, Drukhari, Eldar, Admech, necrons, SM
How do you attach the magnet to the base, there's a deep recess in it.
Do you stack them?
I have some N52s for loadout swaps, and they are really small.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: How do you attach the magnet to the base, there's a deep recess in it. Do you stack them?
litterally just glue them in, only for bigger models do i stack on them on a piece of sprue to get them closer to the metal, small guardsmen-like models are light enough that just having the magnet close is good enough
You can also stack them if you want to, but thats gonna eat through more magnets
I mean, if GW can't be expected to design game pieces that can't be moved from point a to b without breaking unless you build a specialized way to transport them, then they probably can't be expected to write proper rules either
The Void Dragon looks like a bastard to transport without magnetizing. As well as those floaty AoS models, for that matter.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: How do you attach the magnet to the base, there's a deep recess in it. Do you stack them? I have some N52s for loadout swaps, and they are really small.
I followed this guide to build my magnetic cases, works like a charm for everything from boyz and pox walkers to full metal daemon prince with metal bloodthirster wings, landraiders and Mortarion.
It's so easy and cheap, I felt like a total idiot for ever bothering with foam. The only model I own which can't be transported this way is the gargantuan squiggoth and I own most of the ork and DG range.
I don't see how a microfibre cloth is going to stop the guns on a ark from snapping off though. It will still move and bump into things, wouldn't it, and those things really stick out.
Oddly enough, I never had problems with paint chipping or scratching. It's just something that I haven't noticed.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I don't see how a microfibre cloth is going to stop the guns on a ark from snapping off though. It will still move and bump into things, wouldn't it, and those things really stick out.
Oddly enough, I never had problems with paint chipping or scratching. It's just something that I haven't noticed.
None of my models are moving and bumping into anything.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I don't see how a microfibre cloth is going to stop the guns on a ark from snapping off though. It will still move and bump into things, wouldn't it, and those things really stick out.
Oddly enough, I never had problems with paint chipping or scratching. It's just something that I haven't noticed.
None of my models are moving and bumping into anything.
What do you use to secure them? Because a model that's just wrapped up in cloth is still going to move around in the box and hit the sides, unless you have a specific box of the right size for it that you unpack and repack every time you go to a game.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I don't see how a microfibre cloth is going to stop the guns on a ark from snapping off though. It will still move and bump into things, wouldn't it, and those things really stick out.
Oddly enough, I never had problems with paint chipping or scratching. It's just something that I haven't noticed.
None of my models are moving and bumping into anything.
What do you use to secure them? Because a model that's just wrapped up in cloth is still going to move around in the box and hit the sides, unless you have a specific box of the right size for it that you unpack and repack every time you go to a game.
do you actively shake your boxes? Because just the friction between the magnetic sheet and model is enough for it not to move around freely
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I don't see how a microfibre cloth is going to stop the guns on a ark from snapping off though. It will still move and bump into things, wouldn't it, and those things really stick out.
Oddly enough, I never had problems with paint chipping or scratching. It's just something that I haven't noticed.
None of my models are moving and bumping into anything.
What do you use to secure them? Because a model that's just wrapped up in cloth is still going to move around in the box and hit the sides, unless you have a specific box of the right size for it that you unpack and repack every time you go to a game.
do you actively shake your boxes? Because just the friction between the magnetic sheet and model is enough for it not to move around freely
I don't use magnetic sheets, I use packaging peanuts. And I walk to where I need to go, so yes some shaking may be involved. Which doesn't matter in the end, because no amount of packaging is going to save a model that just decides to pop parts off in the display case. Gravity doesn't like Necron models, it seems.
I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
nou wrote: I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: How do you attach the magnet to the base, there's a deep recess in it.
Do you stack them?
I have some N52s for loadout swaps, and they are really small.
I followed this guide to build my magnetic cases, works like a charm for everything from boyz and pox walkers to full metal daemon prince with metal bloodthirster wings, landraiders and Mortarion.
It's so easy and cheap, I felt like a total idiot for ever bothering with foam. The only model I own which can't be transported this way is the gargantuan squiggoth and I own most of the ork and DG range.
I was not aware that there were such things as rubber magnetic sheets. I had the strange idea that I was going to have to literally get a plate of steel
nou wrote: I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: How do you attach the magnet to the base, there's a deep recess in it.
Do you stack them?
I have some N52s for loadout swaps, and they are really small.
I followed this guide to build my magnetic cases, works like a charm for everything from boyz and pox walkers to full metal daemon prince with metal bloodthirster wings, landraiders and Mortarion.
It's so easy and cheap, I felt like a total idiot for ever bothering with foam. The only model I own which can't be transported this way is the gargantuan squiggoth and I own most of the ork and DG range.
I was not aware that there were such things as rubber magnetic sheets. I had the strange idea that I was going to have to literally get a plate of steel
The stuff's great. Been doing it for years and honestly cannot recommend it enough. It's so convenient. I basically put a full list in 1 or 2 of the 9L boxes and I'm good to go. When I get home, it just goes straight on the pile of boxes, ready and waiting for my next game.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I had the strange idea that I was going to have to literally get a plate of steel
That's what I did. Cut to shape with tin snips, rivet each corner with a cheap hand riveter. Provides much stronger adhesion for the magnets, and no worries about the adhesive losing strength and peeling off. YMMV.
nou wrote: I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
Not everyone lives in Posen, Cracow or Warsaw. Some people have to drive on a gymbus, mini bus or a local PKS. Try carrying 3 boxs when everyone is going out of school/work to get home, and you want to get to the store. If I was smaller, my models would have been crushed ages ago. Specialy my Lumineth Lords which are 100% plastic.
nou wrote: I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
Not everyone lives in Posen, Cracow or Warsaw. Some people have to drive on a gymbus, mini bus or a local PKS. Try carrying 3 boxs when everyone is going out of school/work to get home, and you want to get to the store. If I was smaller, my models would have been crushed ages ago. Specialy my Lumineth Lords which are 100% plastic.
Get one of these, they come with a full volume of raster foam you can customise, I transport my seriously valuable musical instrument on crowded trains in one of these. The price is just one or two boxes of minis, the volume is enough for more than 2000pts and it is lightweight and durable. https://allegro.pl/oferta/aluminiowa-skrzynia-40x30x30-6234667199
nou wrote: I’m amazed how people find safe transport problematic… The oldest and simplest way - hard tool case and a sandwich of cotton wad, cloth, models, cloth, cotton wad, repeat with next layer prevented any chipping or breaking even with metal models during 2nd. Later on, cotton got replaced with those wavy foam sheets, but soft cloth remained to prevent chipping. Modern magnetized solution let you carry any model surrounded by nothing but air, so there is no way of breaking or chipping unless you literally throw the case around.
Btw, that GW focusses on look instead of durability gives a tiny little hint about what their minis are mostly bought for and it aint for gaming.
Not everyone lives in Posen, Cracow or Warsaw. Some people have to drive on a gymbus, mini bus or a local PKS. Try carrying 3 boxs when everyone is going out of school/work to get home, and you want to get to the store. If I was smaller, my models would have been crushed ages ago. Specialy my Lumineth Lords which are 100% plastic.
if you have room for a backpack on the bus, you have room for a carry case
yeah just let me throw out my book for school, throw out my training bag to go to the store. Or try to play on weekend, when all tables are always reserved by the vets who know the store owner for 20+ years.
Karol wrote: yeah just let me throw out my book for school, throw out my training bag to go to the store. Or try to play on weekend, when all tables are always reserved by the vets who know the store owner for 20+ years.
why are you bringing your books and training bag to the store? I'm guessing you're leaving from school? Which means you bring your 40k to school which is the last place i'd want my minis to be
Where else am I suppose to keep the army? At home I don't have a metal locker, only I have access to. I already live on a space smaller then a prison cell. I have to keep my training equipment outside of house, because it doesn't fit.
Karol wrote: Where else am I suppose to keep the army? At home I don't have a metal locker, only I have access to. I already live on a space smaller then a prison cell. I have to keep my training equipment outside of house, because it doesn't fit.
Maybe you really shouldve gotten an ipad like your sister then. if you don't even have room at home to store your army. Especially if school is half as insane as you say it is. I would be scared of someone getting in my locker and smashing up my army if i was you.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: What do you use to secure them? Because a model that's just wrapped up in cloth is still going to move around in the box and hit the sides, unless you have a specific box of the right size for it that you unpack and repack every time you go to a game.
Uh, literally nothing except the magnets underneath? The cloth is just to make sure if anything ever does slide (for example if the box goes flying in your trunk) things don't smash into each other.
Regular walking should absolutely not move a single model unless you are doing cartwheels on your way to the store.
No they should literally be balanced out of the (storage) box. The fact you have to do anything at your end indicates magnetised boxes are a failure and anyone advocating them is a shill.
Karol wrote: On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts.
You're flat out wrong here.
The style of play you're used to may not work, but that's actually a positive as it makes you see the capabilities of your models in a different way.
They wouldn't create so much content for Combat Patrol and Incursion if a majority of the armies don't work.
Playing imperial knights with actual imperial knights in it at 1500 is not very fun, same with custodes. GW creates a lot of "content" for stuff people don't play or use. It is not very much in their favour to say that AoS and w40k is played world wide at a certain points size, which is not 500 or 1000 or evern 1500.
Top heavy models are OP. They just fall once and it wipes out an entire squad. Nerf nao!
Well it is not fun to transports something like 5-6 drakes for a SCE army or 6 raiders for DE or multiple void weavers for harlis etc Plus GW had this idea that modern models should look cinematic and dynamic, creates certain problems for some units and at least one army in AoS.
Not while models are to be sold, and rules are to be stripped down. GW always had balance issues within their games, but you are just noticing it worse now because with the lack more in depth rules comes a lack of ability to balance.
On top of that, GW is first and foremost out to make money, meaning rules reflect the need to sell.
Karol wrote: Playing imperial knights with actual imperial knights in it at 1500 is not very fun, same with custodes. GW creates a lot of "content" for stuff people don't play or use. It is not very much in their favour to say that AoS and w40k is played world wide at a certain points size, which is not 500 or 1000 or evern 1500.
Top heavy models are OP. They just fall once and it wipes out an entire squad. Nerf nao!
Well it is not fun to transports something like 5-6 drakes for a SCE army or 6 raiders for DE or multiple void weavers for harlis etc Plus GW had this idea that modern models should look cinematic and dynamic, creates certain problems for some units and at least one army in AoS.
Oo don't you get like 1 Knight and 6-7 Armigers in 1500 points?
If anything I would imagine such an army would be more powerful in 1.5k then 2k because your opponent is less likely to have a critical mass of AT firepower.
Karol wrote: It is not very much in their favour to say that AoS and w40k is played world wide at a certain points size, which is not 500 or 1000 or evern 1500.
You do know that there a huge Crusade following that plays 25PL ~500 points all the time, right? 1000 points is popular enough to be included in the tournament book.
Just because your local gamers won't play anything other than 2000 point Matched Play tournament games all the time (we have the problem here, I'm trying to make a small board for 25PL/500 point games).
Have you considered asking your local library if they have space you could use, a back table, a study room? That's what my old group did for years. We had to play quiet, roll dice on felt or something soft, but we played.
Hell's, we used to use any tables, and put boards across as bridges. Totally non standard, but, again, I got to play.
storm troopers backed up by some 
