Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

An ongoing struggle has persisted in the tournament scene since the beginning of organized Warhammer/ 40k. Everyone has opinions on how to correct the various imbalances brought about from GW's vision towards the hobby which promotes modeling/narrative over hyper simulation.

With all the options presented most takes on the matter delve into changing rules or burden army construction alternatives into the equation. Where this always will veer into is the feeling that players will never get to use their toys as intended. Indeed many superheavies are bared from ITC and a host of other events. Furthermore by removing or changing effects newcomers to tournaments can make ill informed choices as veteran players have a leg up.

What I would propose is a working framework to modify points, updated on websites or spreadsheets. This idea gets shot down from time to time however I feel the effort would be valuable in myriad ways. It would allow all models to be used and pointed at an appealing price point for competitive play, allow all rules and models to be used as is and can be centralized to be applicable to everyone wanting it.

As it stands the current model range GW promotes falls into three categories; obligatory, competitive or unreasonable. Warp spiders and jet bikes are the price of doing business while Deffdreads are laughable under all but the most ludicrous situations. Having a uniform price adjustment would help. Are warp spiders a 32 point a model unit while Deffdreads might need to start out as 50? Who knows but any change would see something positive. More importantly warp spiders play as written, you get infinite jumps and don't have to refer to an addendum of new rules.

Newer players entering tournaments would have less buyers remorse. Hellions valued at 8 points would also move some boxes for local stores that adopt the change. You can go down the range and find models, all as a whole spectacular, and see none of that variety at top tables.

The final part is acceptance on a large scale. The ITC works due to its increasing growth. Where I fundamentaly differ is the need to modify the game. I feel the models on the tabletop should work as advertised out of the box and shouldn't require a neverending anxiety over what dominates and what needs to be changed. By adjusting points all models in your collection can see play. If Swarmlord were 140 points he may very well see usage, for instance. Growing the concept would also allow for the universality needed for adoption.

With all of this how would you do it? My proposal would be to treat points like a stock value that fluctuates based on use. Simply take the top X results from major tournaments, note the models/upgrades that are both present and absent and simply apply a modifier to them. Formations that are utilized also see a tax on them as well. After each month or so tournaments simply see what are the top units and tax their points, plus all the upgrades taken by 15% or so. All units not used can take a slight dip, maybe after multiple cycles of neglect drop them 15%. Formations/detachments can be taxed a 15% amount equal to the minium amount needed to field them. For instance if the gladius strike force costs 880 points minimum then the tax on it is roughly 125 or so points to field. Importantly formations could even get to be cheaper giving you a price break would you decide to feild it. Double dipping formation and unit taxes could be done, or not, that could be debated.

How much to tax and how much constitutes as heavy use can all be hammered out as a community, Frontline does a great job of polling. The actual database would be simple to upkeep as well since there are innumerable number savy players who would jump at the chance to organize and scrutinize the document. A one time adjustment can even be eyeballed to set initial prices; should a Revenant Titan be 1400 points or 1600? Debate away and come to a quick placeholder and go. The important thing is to treat the points as a living document that slowly reflects gaming reality.

The weakness of all of this is list checking and upkeep. Again upkeep can be teased out from the community so I feel that's less of an issue. In the realm of list checking this already is becoming a problem in which proposed solutions would also encompass this situation. Making lists final some time in advance and having peer online groups review them is a strong start. Smaller tournaments are more close knit and can probably check a small collection of lists the day of.

Ultimately this is still a modification of the game and alternatively one could just simply impose cost breaks instead of point hikes. What you would see over time is an equilibrium where things settle to their naturally attractive price point. More importantly Warhounds, Revenants, Pyrovores and others would see their due. More importantly you would see basic Chaos Space Marines as well as many other iconic units hit the board if set at a price that makes them competitive.

Other benefits would be in no longer tailoring missions to the meta since the points would suffice. pick up games at FLGS would be easier and maybe just maybe GW would pay attention. One final suggestion would be adopting 1500 points; most units are going to be cheaper and thus 1500 would retain a similar model count.

The best argument I could make in doing this over how we currently do things is that it would be based on actual data. Actual results of winning lists would be taken into account rather than estimates. Months down the road real world inference would conclude the actual value of a Leman Russ Punisher instead of just staring at the top units and focusing on needing them.

*The numbers and percentages listed are all spiralling and in no way reflect what the actual value should be.

Thoughts?

"Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue"

- Peter Hitchens

That's your response? Nothing about the actual topic, no refutation of my signature quote, no actual advocacy for any idea of your own? You... win the internet today I guess.

 lazarian wrote:
That's your response? Nothing about the actual topic, no refutation of my signature quote, no actual advocacy for any idea of your own? You... win the internet today I guess.

I think what he means is when someone decides what balance means they tend to do it in a way they see fit. Altho your heart may or may not be in the right place when someone house rules things to make it more fair it tends to give way to those who complain the most getting what they want.

A direct quote from the brother of the person in my signature, both famous for being polar opposites in regards to theism/ anti theism. Maybe your right, I find it somewhat unlikely especially since the entire foundation of internet forums includes personal opinions of those messaging.

I was simply making a suggestion about my thoughts on balancing 40k, last I checked my job title didn't include forcing others to agree, read or act upon dictates. I get to respond and make posts just like everyone else with no other expectation.

It's largely irrelevant if anyone takes my OP and does much with it beyond ignore it however the one thing that is somewhat questionable is to go straight for attacking someone's signature out of context..

Although I think it is a great concept that would ultimately work in to achieve a greater balance amongst unit point values in the game, it has a few major hurdles I can see:

1) People spend a LOT of money buying models and a LOT of time and effort painting them up. While there is definitely a small percentage of tournament players that are willing to constantly buy & paint new models/units to be on the cutting edge of rules changes, the vast majority of tournament players don't have the $ or time (or a combination of the two) to do this.

So while your system would help identify and 'punish' those super powerful units (by adding to the total points cost of those units), the majority of players who have taken the time to buy & paint their models will now be in a situation where they feel like they have been screwed out of the ability to use those units. Even if in reality all your system has done is to make those units appropriately costed, it will 'feel' to them like they have been shafted, all while *they* (the majority) have not placed in the top 10 of any tournament with those units, and so feel like they shouldn't be getting penalized for what some other 'top' players have accomplished.


2) People give far, far too much credit to what units are taken in a player's army and not enough credit to the skill of the players. While certainly there are limits to what a player's skill can accomplish on its own, when people online look at tournament results, they act as though the units taken in certain armies that placed well are 'obviously' great. The reality is: a great player can accomplish amazing things with units that other people struggle to replicate.

Your system is effectively doing that: it ignores the skill of the player and just assumes that every unit taken in a top 10 finisher's army is undervalued and needs to have its points raised. In most armies, there are some units which are included because they are incredibly good value for their points, but then there are other units which are appropriately costed (or even over-costed) for their abilities, but which are still included because of the way they synergize with other units in the army. Again, your system doesn't differentiate. It assumes that all units included in a top 10 player's army are all under-valued.


3) Having been involved in creating/maintaining online tools for tournaments myself, I can tell you that maintaining *anything* is a giant pain in the butt. People think it would be relatively easy, and it is for a few months. But when the years start to roll by and you have to keep slogging away keeping this thing updated, it becomes a huge drag.

What Frontline continues to maintain for their ITC format is already a big workload. I guarantee that trying to maintain what you propose would be an even bigger headache, no matter how simple you think it would be.


4) Anytime you change point values on units, no matter your good intentions, all you are really doing is to change what the 'flavor of the month' power models are. At the end of the day, all your system would really be doing would be speeding up this process from what GW does, so it would constantly be in flux as to what the most powerful units were. This would certainly keep specific builds from dominating tournaments for too long, it would also be incredibly frustrating for players to keep up with (as I mentioned in point #1). Not only would 'casual' tournament players feel completely out of the loop and that random units in their army are being penalized with an extra 'tax' of points, the hardcore top 10 players that like to constantly buy/paint to have the most powerful army would be under an even greater pressure to buy/paint new stuff constantly to keep up with the shifting point values.

Balance rules as you see fit for any tourney you host. Ask for assistance if needed but do not try to overwhelm with multiple questions that each would take a thread in an unto itself to answer.

and define the tourney size ...an army thats competative at 1K is no longer competative at 1500-2k..becomes competative again at 4K (AM/ORKS)
Where eldar and tau seem to be in the zone at 1500-2000 they are overwheled at 500 to 1000 and at 4K+

Balancing the Game by point adjustment would not work for 40k.
Points are not everything in this game and there are broken rules and mechanics that need to be fixed first.

There are units which would remain useless even if they would cost 1 ppm because they are missing important rules to get back on the board.

Point adjustment would only work for the top factions while those who miss an real codex update for too long are out anyway.

The next thing is that as long is there is a confection to GW releases, all work you have done is scrapped as soon as a new formation come up.

As far as punishing people for their purchases that already happens. Aside from tournament players the vast majority of purchases go directly to models people like for one reason or another, how often have you experienced new players being dumfounded when faced with experienced input or units they didn't consider?

The idea of a stock exchange for points means that largely most models will be usable. It's not intended to make scatterbikes worthless, it's to make an environment where a larger number of options exist.

I would also argue that by trying to account for as many results as possible player skill will be accounted for. If every Eldar player runs warp spiders and in turn one third of all top lists are Eldar then some addressing is in order. The workload may be heavy however this can easily be a community project. Furthermore it's a different type of workload, you no longer guess how to deal with X, simply see if it's worth it by actual results.

At its heart all it would be is list all the winning units, tack on a few points every month or three and give a break for stuff that never makes it. Assume every tournament with over 30 participants submit their top ten lists and your not dealing infinitely.

The goal is to see variety, new formations can be voted on when they appear and quickly modified. Again do point changes four times a year at the most to avoid too much work. Most veteran gamers model collection is largely units unsuited for competitive play, while this might be too much work and I'm certain nothing will come from this largely, I feel it's far better than any other option presented.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
Balancing the Game by point adjustment would not work for 40k.
Points are not everything in this game and there are broken rules and mechanics that need to be fixed first.

There are units which would remain useless even if they would cost 1 ppm because they are missing important rules to get back on the board.

Point adjustment would only work for the top factions while those who miss an real codex update for too long are out anyway.

The next thing is that as long is there is a confection to GW releases, all work you have done is scrapped as soon as a new formation come up.

I cannot think of a unit that would be weak at 1 point a model. I agree there are very strong combinations however if they suddenly become less point efficient they lose out. Again looking towards Eldar jetbikes, if they were suddenly 44 points a model vs 3 point ork Boyz or 4 point battle sisters they would dry up. Just make a scatter laser a 25 point upgrade and you would see a shift. Imagine a war convocation against essentially a guard army with double or triple points. Some units are statistically outliers (screamers with grimore) however even those units can be outplayed with numbers and a point value that actually reflects how insane they are. The idea is capitalism; how much is something actually worth and what are tourney players willing to pay for it?

New formations would of course be an issue, however it did not stop immediate action in Frontlines part when new stuff appears like ghostkeels.

At the moment the whole game is all about to get more units on the table that ignore core rules than your opponent.
And to get as much fast stuff in as possible

taking Standard CSM in Rhinos for 20 points per unit (including transport and upgrades) is still not worth it because they are too slow and die too easily.

New formations would of course be an issue, however it did not stop immediate action in Frontlines part when new stuff appears like ghostkeels.

This is something different.
For example, the new starter box formation would call for a massive point increase to some units while to use them outside the formation a massive decrease is necessary.

You would need to add extra point costs for Formations and Contingents to balance things out, not only change per model cost.


ok, it is always easy to say that something would not work, but we here already did something similar.
In fact we are working for a solution since introduction of 6th edition and tried several things.

Our conclusion is that without changing broken game mechanics and bring all factions to use the same stage (some are written for 5th, some for 6th, some for 7th edition) point cost adjustments will not work.

the only easy solution would be to decrease the total army point level. Instead of playing 1500-2000 points, just stay below 1000 or better use 500-750 points.
Of course it is just shifting around the problem, but it works out better to get everything back in small scale instead of increasing it.

 kodos wrote:
At the moment the whole game is all about to get more units on the table that ignore core rules than your opponent.
And to get as much fast stuff in as possible

taking Standard CSM in Rhinos for 20 points per unit (including transport and upgrades) is still not worth it because they are too slow and die too easily.

I'm not sure I agree with this at all. If I get 10 CSM and a Rhino for 20 points, and say those Ignores fover units increase in price so at 2k points I have 100 Rhinos and 1000 CSM I'm pretty sure they would be durable enough if say you had 6 Wave Serpents or what have you for the same points. The issue would really end up being table space (100 Rhinos would be unable to move on a 6 x 4 table, or even fit in the deployment zone).

I think the issue with the idea is that unless the whole community adopts it, it makes list mistakes even more common than they already are as tournaments all use different point values.

If we could step back from the minutia of the rules for a minute.(Which tend to lead to discussions based on opinion.)

The 40k rule set has serious issues that need to be addressed before it could even be considered suitable for any form of random pick up game, let alone competitive tournaments.

I am aware several people have agreed to play the game of 40k in a similar way , with specific restrictions in place.
And with a lot of effort, (compared to other games,) it is possible to have an enjoyable game of 40k.

But if we look objectively at the game of 40k , from a game design/development point of view..

A)It has not clearly defined the game scale or scope,

B)It has not clearly defined what sort of game play it is supposed to generate/support.

('Jewel like objects of wonder' , and 'forging the narrative' are sales pitches BTW.And have nothing to do with objective game function. )

So without these very basic concepts that provide the frame work for clearly defined game play .
There is no hope of writing clearly defined rules that deliver intuitive tactical game play.
And without this there is no hope of achieving provable levels of (im)balance.

I agree with Kodos the game is broken, and has been for a while.It can not be put right with point value adjustment.

What I mean by broken is the majority of units in the game are out side the scope of the core rules.
The core rules are still based on (WHFB) skirmish rules, but the unit used are those found in large battle games.(Like Epic Armageddon.)

And as there are than many non proportional results , and special exceptions.It is impossible to assign Point Values with any sort of provable accuracy.

Nearly 30 years later and 40k STILL has not had a rule set written specifically for it.

Breng77 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
At the moment the whole game is all about to get more units on the table that ignore core rules than your opponent.
And to get as much fast stuff in as possible

taking Standard CSM in Rhinos for 20 points per unit (including transport and upgrades) is still not worth it because they are too slow and die too easily.

I'm not sure I agree with this at all. If I get 10 CSM and a Rhino for 20 points, and say those Ignores fover units increase in price so at 2k points I have 100 Rhinos and 1000 CSM I'm pretty sure they would be durable enough if say you had 6 Wave Serpents or what have you for the same points. The issue would really end up being table space (100 Rhinos would be unable to move on a 6 x 4 table, or even fit in the deployment zone).
.

So you get an army with 100 Rhinos and 10 Marine Swuads
You cannot place all of them at the start so they have to stay in Reserve
The Rest is on the table but cannot hide/move properly because there too much of them, so most of them get killed in your opponents first round while some units manage it to get to the objectives and get killed there.
, if your reserve arrives everything that cannot be placed is dead and the rest get shot down like the units before.

So nothing changed and your are called TFG because you want to play an unbound army (otherwise it would only be a maximum of 6 units, and getting 6 units+transport for free is nothing special in this edition if they have no other rules)

If people want a competitive tournament that focuses on the skill of the players, they would want tournaments where the army lists are either identical, or assigned by the tournament organizers. Every time I've floated these ideas they've met with either silence, or the objection that list-building is essential to the tournament scene.

I think this will happen some day but it can only happen after a successful List database is built and easily maintained. The community should go in this direction eventually but right now we simply don't have the data to make the adjustments in a completely impartial way.

 kodos wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
At the moment the whole game is all about to get more units on the table that ignore core rules than your opponent.
And to get as much fast stuff in as possible

taking Standard CSM in Rhinos for 20 points per unit (including transport and upgrades) is still not worth it because they are too slow and die too easily.

I'm not sure I agree with this at all. If I get 10 CSM and a Rhino for 20 points, and say those Ignores fover units increase in price so at 2k points I have 100 Rhinos and 1000 CSM I'm pretty sure they would be durable enough if say you had 6 Wave Serpents or what have you for the same points. The issue would really end up being table space (100 Rhinos would be unable to move on a 6 x 4 table, or even fit in the deployment zone).
.

So you get an army with 100 Rhinos and 10 Marine Swuads
You cannot place all of them at the start so they have to stay in Reserve
The Rest is on the table but cannot hide/move properly because there too much of them, so most of them get killed in your opponents first round while some units manage it to get to the objectives and get killed there.
, if your reserve arrives everything that cannot be placed is dead and the rest get shot down like the units before.

So nothing changed and your are called TFG because you want to play an unbound army (otherwise it would only be a maximum of 6 units, and getting 6 units+transport for free is nothing special in this edition if they have no other rules)

Not true on unbound though I would need fewer squads, but you can just take multiple Combined arms detachments with 6 squads each. I'm sure you could still get say 50 squads with HQ choices pretty easily. Lets say I take chaos lords for ~60 points I think. SO I take 1 60 point lord and 6x 20 point marines in rhino. So that is 180 points per detachment. So at 1800 I get 10 such detachments, which is still 60 Rhinos and 600 marines. Still won't fit on the board though.

Which if you note I said was the issue, rather than durability being the issue.

SO say I forgo the Rhinos, Just take 20 man CSM squads instead. I could probably fit 600+ guys in my Deployment zone (1" base in a 12" x 6' deployment zone is 864 sq in), So to get 600 guys that would cost me 600 points, then I spend other points giving the fearless. You are going to have a lot of issues doing 600 wounds through 3+ armor and some cover and everything is OS. SO I walk and sit on objectives to score points, and you likely don't wipe me out easily especially if the units that wipe things out easily have increased in points. Now this game isn't fun, in fact it would be quite boring, but it may well be balanced.

Here most players consider using more than 2 detachments/formations already as unbound.

ok, so back to 600 Marines
We once we once treid it with 400 Ork warriors and with 300 Guard soldiers.
The game was boring, the ork/guard player would lose a tournament game because he will never get something done within the time limit (it took us 3 hours to reach turn 3) but he lost those games anyway because just pure mass did nothing to really help him.

Situation with CSM is different, but at the end the work would be done again by the same units which have the right special rule and not just by standard marines no matter how cheap they are.

if the units that wipe things out easily have increased in points.

this is something different.
adjusting points in both ways is not a good idea. You either make the bad units cheaper or the good units more expensive
Doing both at the same time

This is a tough thing to do. The time it takes to make the changes, to maintain the new standards (let's call them FAQ's) and then to update the FAQ's each and every time sometime new comes out is prodigious. Here are the 3 largest factors to consider:

1. A lot of people are against change. You deviate slightly from the Rules-as-written and a large uproar ensues. So what happens when you make more drastic changes like an overhaul? Well, good luck buddy. You're probably better off re-writing the entire game.

2. Most people have differing opinions on what is or isn't fair with regards to the rules. So how do you decide which house-rules is the most balancing? Who makes that determination? If you do it, good luck justifying your changes to the community. Sometimes, these houserules will be easily accepted. Other times, you will come up to a lot of resistance. If you make the changes via community input (i.e. such as the ITC voting process), then prepare for a slow and long process. It isn't easy getting people to agree with your changes.

3. Time/effort to maintain changes. Many people don't realize this, but iIt takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort not only to design these changes, but to maintain and to constantly update them as well. Unless you make it your "job" to do so (or get some compensation financially for doing so), most people cannot maintain this level of effort.

A lot of people just don't realize how hard the process is. You make an instant change. People complain. You make a change via community vote. It takes much longer and while it is more acceptable, people still complain. Though your intentions may be "good", what ends up happening is that people are still ungrateful towards your endevours and you end up having to fight for every change you make. It is a thankless job and the wear and tear of constantly having to defend yourself will make you give up this prodigious task sooner rather than later, especially if you aren't compensated for your time at all.

But if you can pull it off, then my hats off to you.

 jy2 wrote:
This is a tough thing to do. The time it takes to make the changes, to maintain the new standards (let's call them FAQ's) and then to update the FAQ's each and every time sometime new comes out is prodigious. Here are the 3 largest factors to consider:

1. A lot of people are against change. You deviate slightly from the Rules-as-written and a large uproar ensues. So what happens when you make more drastic changes like an overhaul? Well, good luck buddy. You're probably better off re-writing the entire game.

2. Most people have differing opinions on what is or isn't fair with regards to the rules. So how do you decide which house-rules is the most balancing? Who makes that determination? If you do it, good luck justifying your changes to the community. Sometimes, these houserules will be easily accepted. Other times, you will come up to a lot of resistance. If you make the changes via community input (i.e. such as the ITC voting process), then prepare for a slow and long process. It isn't easy getting people to agree with your changes.

3. Time/effort to maintain changes. Many people don't realize this, but iIt takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort not only to design these changes, but to maintain and to constantly update them as well. Unless you make it your "job" to do so (or get some compensation financially for doing so), most people cannot maintain this level of effort.

A lot of people just don't realize how hard the process is. You make an instant change. People complain. You make a change via community vote. It takes much longer and while it is more acceptable, people still complain. Though your intentions may be "good", what ends up happening is that people are still ungrateful towards your endevours and you end up having to fight for every change you make. It is a thankless job and the wear and tear of constantly having to defend yourself will make you give up this prodigious task sooner rather than later, especially if you aren't compensated for your time at all.

But if you can pull it off, then my hats off to you.

Not to mention unless you play all and love all the same bias will be placed in your work.

DoW 2 had that dumb update to dow pro or something like that. Which quickly became the most popular race SM getting buffs and everyone else slightly less good at what made them unique.

Actually to think about it I could never write rule I love wraith knights and white I can submit to a 25 point hike I would greatly like to boost swooping hawks. Oooo and give harlies a 2+ invul save so it makes them more viable.

 kodos wrote:
Here most players consider using more than 2 detachments/formations already as unbound.

ok, so back to 600 Marines
We once we once treid it with 400 Ork warriors and with 300 Guard soldiers.
The game was boring, the ork/guard player would lose a tournament game because he will never get something done within the time limit (it took us 3 hours to reach turn 3) but he lost those games anyway because just pure mass did nothing to really help him.

Situation with CSM is different, but at the end the work would be done again by the same units which have the right special rule and not just by standard marines no matter how cheap they are.

if the units that wipe things out easily have increased in points.

this is something different.
adjusting points in both ways is not a good idea. You either make the bad units cheaper or the good units more expensive
Doing both at the same time

You need to do both at the same time other wise you can never achieve balance because there is a floor. Essentially for a rebalance to work you would need to repoint every single unit. Which takes time and playtesting. As such it ends up not really being a feasible fix as any change during your test cycle will negate all results.

As for the 600 marine thing, it depends on the missions really. In a straight objective sitting mission it could do fine, but if it needs to kill things less so. As for getting only to turn that hurts both players especially if the CSM player has planned for it.

Unbound is a specific thing with no FOC. Just because someone considers taking multiple detachments Unbound doesn't make it true. I mean is the decurion unbound? it is a detachment of multiple formations.

Unless you define the frame work of the game play scale and scope first, point value changes are irrelevant, to game balance.
As its all reverts to ideas based on opinion.

If a special rule totally ignores a core rule, how much is that special rule worth?

How can you assign points accurately when many of the resolution methods deliver all or nothing results?

The ONLY way to get a rule set balanced for tournaments, is to write the rules with this level of balance in mind.

It is possible to get the balance better than GW plc can be bothered to get.

But to achieve a provable level of imbalance other war games have, a complete re-write is required.
(And we can reduce the complication in the rules, and increase the tactical depth at the same time.)

Nobody's yet mentioned comp systems. Here's a popular example http://www.communitycomp.org/files/CommunityComp.pdf

@axisofentropy.
So that is adding another 40+ pages on top of the hundreds of pages of rules already in place .

And I am sure that a 'comp system' can improve perceived balance by adding restrictions , based on general opinion.

But lots of other games have rules that are written specifically for the intended game play, and achieve far more tactical depth and provable levels of balance, with a fraction of the complication the 40k rule have.

40k has had at least a decade of GW sales department forcing the focus on short term sale of minatures over improving the game play.

They have been pushing for exclusive rules writing , (special snowflake rules) .
Over inclusive rules that make focusing on game play and game balance much easier.

So to balance the game of 40k for tournaments, you need a complete re-write.With the focus on game play and not on inspiring short term sales of the latest releases.

yeah I didn't say it was a good idea, just that a lot of what this thread's OP suggested is already being done elsewhere.

Personally I think ITChammer is a good enough game for me, but I don't recommend warhams to friends interested in tabletop gaming.

The big challange is building consensus. ITC achieves this through conservative incremental FAQ's, Frontline's popular media, and ease of adoption. Proposals like a full rewrite, points adjustments, and even comp systems have much higher barriers to adoption.

All that said, Mantic's success with Kings of War shows that alternative rulesets are possible. If such an alternative ruleset for my tiny spess mahreens overcame those obstacles and emerged, I'd quickly consider it.

I agree that a re write would need to be undertaken by a game company get any sort of real up take.
Mantics Warpath is a good larger skirmish game , but not really a 40k replacement IMO.

It would really be great if GW plc let the game developers, (if there are any left at GW towers?)Do a proper job of re-writing the rules for the battle game of 40k.

(AFAIK the GW devs have asked to re-write the rules for 40k from 4th ed on wards, after they realized the over sights made in 3rd edition needed to be corrected with corrections to the core rules.)

As this is the only way 40k would have the same level of balance as other war games.
As the rules would have been written specifically for a particular game scale and scope , with a focus on defining a specific intended game play.

I don't see what's so great about list-building that fixed army lists aren't an easy solution to the problem of balance in 40k tournaments.

Nomeny wrote:
I don't see what's so great about list-building that fixed army lists aren't an easy solution to the problem of balance in 40k tournaments.

What's "so great" is that people rarely have all of the specific models required for a fixed-list tournament so attendance is going to be nonexistent.

 Peregrine wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
I don't see what's so great about list-building that fixed army lists aren't an easy solution to the problem of balance in 40k tournaments.

What's "so great" is that people rarely have all of the specific models required for a fixed-list tournament so attendance is going to be nonexistent.

You know, I've heard that before and given the state of competitive 40k I don't think it's valid. If I wanted to play in a competitive ITC tournament I'd have to buy an Eldar army if I wanted to compete. Or perhaps a Space Marine army including bikes, grav cannons, and a couple of other things I don't own.

Conversely, one might imagine that fixed-list tournament lists would be written to include common units that people own, and would themselves be standardized so that people could build them in preparation just like we already do.

This is somehow similar to the difference of Formula 1 and Nascar.
For the first one, building the car and have an technological advantage is more important than just having a good driver, while in the other one all cars are more or less the same.

So having a tournament with pre-written army lists players can chose from is a good alternative as long as there is more than one faction available. (and proxy need to be allowed, eg play Sisters as Salamanders etc)

This would be the best option to deal with the rules from GW.
Everything else is only an option if the rules are written by the Community

Hey look over here https://onepagerules.wordpress.com/portfolio/one-page-40k/