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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 spaceelf wrote:

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

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

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


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





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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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




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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technically not true.

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

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

for chess this depends on the statistics and data used.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

X-Wing is also quite good.

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

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

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

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

Same as the other games I mentioned above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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

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

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

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

And look what sells more.

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

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

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

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

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

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

also 40k has a bajillion moving parts...

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

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

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

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

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

 auticus wrote:

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

And look what sells more.

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

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



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

 auticus wrote:

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

And look what sells more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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