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I liked the concept of the 7th edition Psychic phase; lord knows it was an improvement in implementation over 6th edition psychic rules. The problems were with being able to cast the same spell multiple times per phase with different casters (allowing summoning shenanigans) and not capping the dice that could be generated per turn (making some armies utterly dominant beyond any hope of resistance in the psychic phase

Disagree, the psychic phase was broken in design because some armies (like demons or Grey Knights) were designed to have a ton of psykers, some of which had limited access to powers. So limiting the casting of spells to one of each per turn, or capping dice would have made things like Tzeentch armies unplayable as written. The problem with powers was they were made too powerful in 6e, and too easy to cast. 7e didn't fix the level of power (they actually made it worse in many cases), but instead made the phase totally one sided. Now if they re-wrote all codices to make it so that only HQ units were psykers, and other "psychic units" just had powers they could choose to use or something, maybe they could have fixed it, but I think in general it was a poor attempt to copy the fantasy magic phase.

You most certainly can.

Game design is about trade offs. When GW decided to allow allies and mixing units from different space marine chapters, it was to allow people to broaden their collection and to encourage the purchase of a wider range of new releases by each customer. It wasn't to make a game with cross faction deathstars like Tigerius and Azrael holding hands while taking fifty dogs for a walk.

"They should have known" or "they should have errata'd it!" or whatever.

Nah, people were just doing something with the game the designers never intended and then blaming the designers for it. Like exceeding the load limit of a bridge and blaming the engineers when it collapses.

You really cannot though, because in a tournament setting you cannot rely on other people making use of the holes in the rules to win. So asking people to "not use broken rules" unless they tournament is then FAQing or Comping, is asking them to compete at a disadvantage. It is not at all similar to your bridge example because that presumably has a posted rule that is being actually broken. It is also inaccurate to say it never happens in casual play. There are plenty of times I have seen very mismatched games in casual play because people took models they liked (Riptides, Wraithknights, Knights, Heldrakes).

Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.

GW has been running official tournaments in their own stores for over 25 years.

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

Nice anecdotal evidence. I on the other hand have seen "fluffy" casual games with 3 Riptides against Orks because one guy liked big robots. Alliances and deathstars aren't the only problem in the game.

Further GW pushed "bring your broken stuff" back in 5e when they ran ard boyz tournaments. So you cannot say out of one side of your mouth that it isn't a tournament game or intended, while on the other side you run a tournament that encourages bringing the most broken stuff.

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.

Whether true or not, that doesn't matter in the slightest. Where do you draw the line for how the "game is meant to be played?" Sure, stacking special characters might be an obvious one, but where exactly is the line drawn? It's going to be different from group to group and person to person. It's a gakky ruleset, and you can't just write a gakky ruleset and then say "well, while you're using it as it's written, you're not using it right" and just shift the blame for your gakky ruleset to the customer without giving any inclination as to what "right" is. A gakky ruleset is a gakky ruleset, no matter what side you're looking at it from.

I worry for juggerlords. They don't have a model as such...

 Asmodai wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.

GW has been running official tournaments in their own stores for over 25 years.

Agreed. I think its absurd not to acknowledge the competitive nature of the game which has existed since its inception almost. I think it's pretty funny when people suggest that the "right" way to play 40K is to abandon common since in your builds. Have advantage, use advantage. The real goal of this edition should be to make sure broken things dont stay that way for long, as Privateer Press has done and Magic: The Gathering has attempted to do. Being able to correct things midstream is going to be really cool if they can pull it off. Then the fluff guys and tournament guys can stop pretending for each other.

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

I say anyone who plays 40k like this are playing it like fools and are a bunch of scrub-lords too afraid of realizing just how bad they are at the game to man up and play a REAL game.

Not very fun when people dismiss your playstyle out of hand is it?

ERJAK wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

I say anyone who plays 40k like this are playing it like fools and are a bunch of scrub-lords too afraid of realizing just how bad they are at the game to man up and play a REAL game.

Not very fun when people dismiss your playstyle out of hand is it?

And yet godardc doesn't have to deal with deathstars or unfluffy alliances and the tournament players do. So regardless of how out of hand play styles are dismissed, the fact remains that the egregious armies of the later part of 7th edition are something tournament players did to themselves.

And as well, if you think competing with toy soldiers counts as "manning up" well....

 frozenwastes wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

I say anyone who plays 40k like this are playing it like fools and are a bunch of scrub-lords too afraid of realizing just how bad they are at the game to man up and play a REAL game.

Not very fun when people dismiss your playstyle out of hand is it?

And yet godardc doesn't have to deal with deathstars or unfluffy alliances and the tournament players do. So regardless of how out of hand play styles are dismissed, the fact remains that the egregious armies of the later part of 7th edition are something tournament players did to themselves.

And as well, if you think competing with toy soldiers counts as "manning up" well....

It's cute that the concept of pointed hyperbole just sails right over your head.

ERJAK wrote:

Spoiler:

 frozenwastes wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Except that 40k had never been a tournament game, and never was intended to be.
So what happened in tournament is of no importance, at all.
My friends and I always played the game as it was intended to be, and we never had any deathstar problem or unfluffy alliance, everything was good.
Now, with 8th, things seem different however.

I say anyone who plays 40k like this are playing it like fools and are a bunch of scrub-lords too afraid of realizing just how bad they are at the game to man up and play a REAL game.

Not very fun when people dismiss your playstyle out of hand is it?

And yet godardc doesn't have to deal with deathstars or unfluffy alliances and the tournament players do. So regardless of how out of hand play styles are dismissed, the fact remains that the egregious armies of the later part of 7th edition are something tournament players did to themselves.

And as well, if you think competing with toy soldiers counts as "manning up" well....

It's cute that the concept of pointed hyperbole just sails right over your head.

Nope, I caught it.

Maybe the real manning up is accepting that a game might not be designed for your play style and thus it's actually logical that it is dismissed as not being how the game was intended to be played?

Hopefully 8th edition actually delivers on the promise of 3 ways to play in a way that actually supports a tournament approach for those who want it. If it doesn't, then people who don't play that way will keep not having problems just like they didn't have problems in 7th. And the tournament players will get to deal with whatever replaces things like bark bark or crazy shooting armies.

 frozenwastes wrote:

While it's true that game designers can indeed fix a lot of things, I think the idea that GW has ever been about really balanced rules sets is a bit of misconception about what their design team is for. I really hope this new edition involves a change for the better. An actual willingness to spend some staff hours adjusting things rather than prioritizing working on the rules for the next release.

I used to hope that the 'new' edition would involve a change for the better. An actual willingness to try to balance the game would be nice this time around.

 frozenwastes wrote:
The problems were definitely fixable, but I think GW simply chose not to because fixing tournament play in the current edition just wasn't a priority for them when they could concentrate on making competitive play better in the next edition. The designers probably feel the best solution to cross faction synergy outstripping everything else was the adoption of AoS style keywords. And that effectively requires a new edition.

Except they never tried to make competitive play better in the 'next' edition. They just randomly changed things around and put a price tag on it. I haven't been following AoS much since the announcement of the general's handbook - is the game relatively balanced? That's what i'm looking for.

 frozenwastes wrote:
In the 90s White Dwarf provided a semi-regular reminder of the fix for any balance issue caused by players pushing things further than the game designers intended to the detriment of an individual's enjoyment of the game. I wonder how many years it has been since "don't play with gits" appeared in the pages of White Dwarf.

Sometimes "don't play with gits" means "don't play at all". Having a good ruleset does a lot to mitigate the problems that gits will cause. It was too easy to push things further than the game designers intended because they didn't do a lot in the way of designing. My million dollar question is - has this changed? Or is this another case of same old s***, different edition?

 Torga_DW wrote:
Except they never tried to make competitive play better in the 'next' edition. They just randomly changed things around and put a price tag on it. I haven't been following AoS much since the announcement of the general's handbook - is the game relatively balanced? That's what i'm looking for.

I've been looking through some of the lists at the bigger tournaments that have happened at Adepticon and the South Coast GT and there definitely is a power level difference between those lists and if you just take random stuff you think is cool. Even if you concentrate on synergy and making sure your keywords line up, I still don't think you'll get to where the top lists are. They are usually really well crafted to accomplish specific tasks related to scoring in scenarios and dealing with other top tier armies.

The tournament players say it's way ahead of current 40k in balance, but the way they talk about it sounds exactly like how X-Wing players talk about what makes a list competitive in that game. So if you just get a start collecting box and add some units you think are cool, you'll probably not have a chance of getting in the top half of a larger tournament. Just like if an X-Wing player did the same thing.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Sometimes "don't play with gits" means "don't play at all". Having a good ruleset does a lot to mitigate the problems that gits will cause. It was too easy to push things further than the game designers intended because they didn't do a lot in the way of designing. My million dollar question is - has this changed? Or is this another case of same old s***, different edition?

My guess is that the new version of 40k will have a similar period of relative balance (the army lists are all being playtested together) and then future balance will depend entirely on how the annual review of points actually works. We're coming up on the first Age of Sigmar annual review, so no one has yet seen whether or not the idea actually works.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I've been looking through some of the lists at the bigger tournaments that have happened at Adepticon and the South Coast GT and there definitely is a power level difference between those lists and if you just take random stuff you think is cool. Even if you concentrate on synergy and making sure your keywords line up, I still don't think you'll get to where the top lists are. They are usually really well crafted to accomplish specific tasks related to scoring in scenarios and dealing with other top tier armies.

The tournament players say it's way ahead of current 40k in balance, but the way they talk about it sounds exactly like how X-Wing players talk about what makes a list competitive in that game. So if you just get a start collecting box and add some units you think are cool, you'll probably not have a chance of getting in the top half of a larger tournament. Just like if an X-Wing player did the same thing.

That sounds like it could go either way then. The chaos marine codex was relatively balanced in the past - if you took certain combos. The thing is, i never really played in tournaments but i was in a power-heavy meta, so if something was broken i was going to meet it eventually.

 frozenwastes wrote:
My guess is that the new version of 40k will have a similar period of relative balance (the army lists are all being playtested together) and then future balance will depend entirely on how the annual review of points actually works. We're coming up on the first Age of Sigmar annual review, so no one has yet seen whether or not the idea actually works.

So, wait and see is still the best option. Well, it has the potential to be better at least. Here's hoping it delivers.

edit: quote issue

Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Let's be fair: the players didn't create the imbalance per se but players do contribute pretty readily to the perception of imbalance. The myths regarding the enormous gulfs between codex's are perpetuated and sung from the mountaintops by players until they gain just mythical proportion. I can say with confidence that GW could do better...and looks like they will... But players have overblown the "bad job" they've done to an extreme. No one is arguing that overall power can be silly in places but the rift to hear some players tell it is as big as the grand canyon.

 Jancoran wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Let's be fair: the players didn't create the imbalance per se but players do contribute pretty readily to the perception of imbalance. The myths regarding the enormous gulfs between codex's are perpetuated and sung from the mountaintops by players until they gain just mythical proportion. I can say with confidence that GW could do better...and looks like they will... But players have overblown the "bad job" they've done to an extreme. No one is arguing that overall power can be silly in places but the rift to hear some players tell it is as big as the grand canyon.

Oh yes, complete myth. Dark Eldar vs Eldar, completely winnable match up. Have fun with that.


There really is a massive tier difference between the bottom tier and the upper tier. Is there a massive tier swing between say Necrons and Tau? No. But saying that there isn't a big power difference between many armies is just ridiculous. 40k is hands down the least balanced game I've ever played except for competitive video games that were never given patches. 40k is 30 years old and has been getting new balance updates multiple times yearly, and ones that cost the player $100 for his own army and more again for the core rules in my country's prices. There is no way it's balanced sufficiently, and absolutely no way that there isn't MASSIVE power gaps between certain armies.



That being said, I do partially agree with your sentiment - some match ups that aren't so bad are definitely exaggerated, as most people are close minded to doing anything different or taking a more TAC style lists and then complain that they have hard counters in other armies when they bring say 5 flyers to the table.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Let's be fair: the players didn't create the imbalance per se but players do contribute pretty readily to the perception of imbalance. The myths regarding the enormous gulfs between codex's are perpetuated and sung from the mountaintops by players until they gain just mythical proportion. I can say with confidence that GW could do better...and looks like they will... But players have overblown the "bad job" they've done to an extreme. No one is arguing that overall power can be silly in places but the rift to hear some players tell it is as big as the grand canyon.

Oh yes, complete myth. Dark Eldar vs Eldar, completely winnable match up. Have fun with that.


There really is a massive tier difference between the bottom tier and the upper tier. Is there a massive tier swing between say Necrons and Tau? No. But saying that there isn't a big power difference between many armies is just ridiculous. 40k is hands down the least balanced game I've ever played except for competitive video games that were never given patches. 40k is 30 years old and has been getting new balance updates multiple times yearly, and ones that cost the player $100 for his own army and more again for the core rules in my country's prices. There is no way it's balanced sufficiently, and absolutely no way that there isn't MASSIVE power gaps between certain armies.



That being said, I do partially agree with your sentiment - some match ups that aren't so bad are definitely exaggerated, as most people are close minded to doing anything different or taking a more TAC style lists and then complain that they have hard counters in other armies when they bring say 5 flyers to the table.

My Dark Eldar...ironically...did win their last battle with Ynnari.

 Jancoran wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Let's be fair: the players didn't create the imbalance per se but players do contribute pretty readily to the perception of imbalance. The myths regarding the enormous gulfs between codex's are perpetuated and sung from the mountaintops by players until they gain just mythical proportion. I can say with confidence that GW could do better...and looks like they will... But players have overblown the "bad job" they've done to an extreme. No one is arguing that overall power can be silly in places but the rift to hear some players tell it is as big as the grand canyon.

Oh yes, complete myth. Dark Eldar vs Eldar, completely winnable match up. Have fun with that.


There really is a massive tier difference between the bottom tier and the upper tier. Is there a massive tier swing between say Necrons and Tau? No. But saying that there isn't a big power difference between many armies is just ridiculous. 40k is hands down the least balanced game I've ever played except for competitive video games that were never given patches. 40k is 30 years old and has been getting new balance updates multiple times yearly, and ones that cost the player $100 for his own army and more again for the core rules in my country's prices. There is no way it's balanced sufficiently, and absolutely no way that there isn't MASSIVE power gaps between certain armies.



That being said, I do partially agree with your sentiment - some match ups that aren't so bad are definitely exaggerated, as most people are close minded to doing anything different or taking a more TAC style lists and then complain that they have hard counters in other armies when they bring say 5 flyers to the table.

My Dark Eldar...ironically...did win their last battle with Ynnari.

cool

SHUPPET wrote:Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Game 1 and game 2 can both be the same category of game and have drastically different approaches to play if you want the game to work. So if you take an approach not suited the game, then who else is to blame? The designer for not making the game they didn't intend to make?

A perfect example from the RPG world would be if you played D&D 3.5/Pathfinder and then went and played Call of Cthulhu in the exact same way as you did 3.5/PF. It's going to not work and it's not the designer's fault. So who is left?

The players.

Though the ultimate blame might be on the zeitgeist of the community that ends up encouraging an approach to play contrary to what would work. This in turn might be shaped by bad marketing or communication by the original publisher. Though I don't really know if GW ever really pretended their games worked for tournaments without heavy patching, composition rules, soft scores, etc.,. Even back in the days of UK and US GTs run directly by GW. They certainly spent more recent years downplaying the competitive approach.

You can play matched play without trying to find the places where the points system falls apart or where synergy gives your list power well beyond the individual point costs of the things you take. You don't have to approach list building with the goal of breaking the game. And surely it's silly to blame the designer when the player goes out of their way to break things.

 frozenwastes wrote:

SHUPPET wrote:Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Game 1 and game 2 can both be the same category of game and have drastically different approaches to play if you want the game to work. So if you take an approach not suited the game, then who else is to blame? The designer for not making the game they didn't intend to make?

No. it's the designers for making the game they didn't intend to make.

If something can be done within the confines of the rules but isn't intended by the designers, then the designers need to add a clause that stops it from being done. It's supposed to be a rigid ruleset, not a compilation of intentions.

 frozenwastes wrote:

SHUPPET wrote:Blaming the players for an unbalanced game. Yep, only in GW.

Game 1 and game 2 can both be the same category of game and have drastically different approaches to play if you want the game to work. So if you take an approach not suited the game, then who else is to blame? The designer for not making the game they didn't intend to make?

A perfect example from the RPG world would be if you played D&D 3.5/Pathfinder and then went and played Call of Cthulhu in the exact same way as you did 3.5/PF. It's going to not work and it's not the designer's fault. So who is left?

The players.

Though the ultimate blame might be on the zeitgeist of the community that ends up encouraging an approach to play contrary to what would work. This in turn might be shaped by bad marketing or communication by the original publisher. Though I don't really know if GW ever really pretended their games worked for tournaments without heavy patching, composition rules, soft scores, etc.,. Even back in the days of UK and US GTs run directly by GW. They certainly spent more recent years downplaying the competitive approach.

You can play matched play without trying to find the places where the points system falls apart or where synergy gives your list power well beyond the individual point costs of the things you take. You don't have to approach list building with the goal of breaking the game. And surely it's silly to blame the designer when the player goes out of their way to break things.

this myth that balance doesn't benefit casual play has been dispelled so many times, so this argument doesn't even have the legs to make it off the ground


but assuming you were right, and they deliberately said "balance is absolutely irrelevant to this game its supposed to be played casually", and were somehow correct in this statement, then it makes no difference. That just confirms it's a direct result of their choices that the game is unbalanced, and not at all the players fault. They would have been making a conscious decision not to support tournament play, and such, anyone who claims that this game is completely unbalanced at a tournament level thanks to Game's Workshops choice here, would be absolutely correct.

I don't see how this is even a debate to be honest.

 SHUPPET wrote:

this myth that balance doesn't benefit casual play has been dispelled so many times, so this argument doesn't even have the legs to make it off the ground

I'm not making that argument. I'm point out that casual play can mitigate the damage done by intentionally pushing the boundaries of the points system for maximum advantage by simply only having those problems appear by accident rather than on purpose. it's far more likely to happen on purpose. Something tells me no casual player accidentally paired Tigerius, Azrael and 50 fenrisian wolves.

"balance is absolutely irrelevant to this game its supposed to be played casually"

Not "absolutely irrelevant." Just not as important as the damage that can be done by intentionally pushing on the boundries of a points system.

I don't see how this is even a debate to be honest.

Probably because you think I'm saying something I'm not.

I'm pointing out that there have been many people who played 7th edition without encountering the types of armies that people run at the top tier of tournaments. The ones that people describe as the worst problem lists and hope 8th fixes.

So if person A takes the same game as person B and they get different results, it's probably not the game that is doing it but the difference in what person A and B are doing with the game in question.

Obviously balance helps casual players, but how people approach the game can have a greater impact.

The game designer simply isn't there to protect you from the actions of other players if they intentionally try to push things to the breaking point.

I sincerely hope the annual points evaluations end up working. It benefits everyone if it does. That said, if it doesn't quite work out, those who are experiencing games with people intentionally trying to find the weaknesses in the points system will be more prone to problems than those involving people who are not trying to do that on purpose,



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Purifier wrote:
It's supposed to be a rigid ruleset

Sounds like someone has a case of the sposdas.

I think flexibility is better than rigidity. You want something else. Hopefully the execution of "three ways to play" will give us both what we want. Something tells me though that it is very unlikely to create a points system that can stand people intentionally trying to find the errors and spam the more efficient options while looking to create synergy so they can have more power in their list than what the points costs indicate.

Think of it this way:

What are points systems for?

To help players have enjoyable balanced games.

So if someone takes a points system and uses it as a tool to seek out imbalance then aren't they going against the very reason the system exists?

"We have this tool to make balance. Let's use it to make imbalance so we can win more!"

"Stupid designers! Why can't they make a points system that works?"



-

@frozenwastes - You seem to think that bad unbalanced matchups only happen through deathstar combos. This is provably false. There have been plenty of casual players that have had to face multiple Knights (imperial or wraith), or wave serpents back in their day, or Riptide wing (built into the game by the designers). What about scat bikes? Was it unintended for people to take scatter lasers on every bike?

You cannot blame players for the incredible imbalance in the game. There are some units that are horribly overpowered and others that are horribly underpowered.

You seem to imply that this only happens in ridiculous situations where things like Azreal and Tiggy Join Wolves. What about things that happen within single books? What about invisibility? What about 2+ re-rollable saves? Grav vs terminators? None of these things take "pushing the rules to the breaking point" to be wildly un-fun to play against, to make wildly unbalanced games etc.

Bad design is bad design, it is not the fault of the players.

So if person A takes the same game as person B and they get different results, it's probably not the game that is doing it but the difference in what person A and B are doing with the game in question.

False it is the game, just because one person doesn't end up with an unbalanced game doesn't mean those who do are doing something "wrong" to end up with that imbalanced game.

Breng77 wrote:
@frozenwastes - You seem to think that bad unbalanced matchups only happen through deathstar combos.

No, I don't think that. It does happen by accident in a variety of forms. Deathstar combos are simply a really obvious example of things going wrong in a lot of people's minds. It's an example of something loads of people hope is not in 8th edition.

Which will produce more bad unbalanced matchups:

The ones that happen by accident
The ones that happen by accident and the ones people intentionally try to create.

Considering that one is a subset of the other, the answer should be obvious.

Bad design is bad design, it is not the fault of the players.

Yes, but bad design to make one type of game might be good design to make another. Sadly GW's design brief for 40k has been so out of touch with what most players want.

Hopefully the three ways to play and annual reviews will help there be less of a disconnect. But even if they fail, see above for which approach will have less bad unbalanced matchups.

False it is the game, just because one person doesn't end up with an unbalanced game doesn't mean those who do are doing something "wrong" to end up with that imbalanced game.

If you are trying to have two different armies with the same points end up with differing power levels then you are using a tool to help you balance to intentionally introduce unbalance. And then blaming the designer for something you did.

 frozenwastes wrote:

Think of it this way:

What are points systems for?

To help players have enjoyable balanced games.

So if someone takes a points system and uses it as a tool to seek out imbalance then aren't they going against the very reason the system exists?

"We have this tool to make balance. Let's use it to make imbalance so we can win more!"

"Stupid designers! Why can't they make a points system that works?"



-

No, a points system is not "to help players have enjoyable balanced games." It's to create a balanced playing field in which to match wits, and building a list that does a job very well or that takes your opponent by surprise is very enjoyable. You can't do that in 40k because the counter is to simply spam whatever is the strongest, and you can be as clever as you want, it won't win you the game. Not to mention that if you completely outbuild your opponent, even if you did it in an intelligent way, since you know how imbalanced 40k is, you still have that feeling like "maybe I just beat him because my guys are better and imbalanced, and it had nothing to do with my skill either in the field or as a list builder?"

There are a MULTITUDE of other games that have points systems that work very well. I want to bring up Malifaux, where every model does a wildly different job, and yet almost everything has a place.

Yes, stupid designers. Why have they made a points system that is not just easy to abuse, but one that you can actually abuse by accident! You can know nothing about the game, just think that a certain unit is incredibly cool, and accidentally make an army that is nigh unbeatable. If two new people each make an army based only on looks with no experience of the game between them, chances are one of them is going to get ground to paste every single game because the other guy randomly hit something that was ridiculously stronger than his. That's a poorly made points system.

A points system tells you that "these things are balanced to work together in these amounts." That's what it's supposed to do. But it's just a lie in current 40k. You might as well just roll dice to see how many guys you have in each unit. It will be the same balance.

If a tool that is made to create balance CAN BE USED TO CREATE IMBALANCE it's clearly a gak tool. It's not doing the one job it was made to do.

A points system is about making the game FAIR. This points system doesn't even start to attempt that.

No, I don't think that. It does happen by accident in a variety of forms. Deathstar combos are simply a really obvious example of things going wrong in a lot of people's minds. It's an example of something loads of people hope is not in 8th edition.

Which will produce more bad unbalanced matchups:

The ones that happen by accident
The ones that happen by accident and the ones people intentionally try to create.

Considering that one is a subset of the other, the answer should be obvious.

My question is which creates less bad match-ups a system where accidents don't produce wildly imbalanced match-ups, or one that does? it is also disingenuous to say those things happen by accident when they are part of the design of the game. Perfectly fluffy armies exist that are wildly imbalanced with regards to other such armies.

Yes, but bad design to make one type of game might be good design to make another. Sadly GW's design brief for 40k has been so out of touch with what most players want.

Hopefully the three ways to play and annual reviews will help there be less of a disconnect. But even if they fail, see above for which approach will have less bad unbalanced matchups.

See my above response for what system will have the least bad matchups, I do have high hopes that they are going a long way to resolve some of these issues.

If you are trying to have two different armies with the same points end up with differing power levels then you are using a tool to help you balance to intentionally introduce unbalance. And then blaming the designer for something you did.

Except the point system is far from providing balance so far so that I don't need to try to create imbalance.

EDIT: Shortening my reply to this:

At this point I think it's fair to say that we have fundamentally different assumptions about miniature gaming. I accept the responsibility of players in creating balance if they desire it. And the cause of imbalance when they don't, or worse, intentionally try to create it by having more power per point than the opponent.

A more balanced rules set is better for everyone, but it probably can't both survive contact with those trying to get an advantage and still be as flexible as needed to represent the breadth of units GW wants to make model kits for and sell. They might be able to get close, but there is probably a point of diminishing returns in terms of balance produced per dollar spent on studio salaries.

The thing you have the most control over in the creation of balance in your games is how you approach list building. It's the point where you decide what the gaming experience will be like for both players. Act accordingly.

ugh. People. Seriously. Who gives a crap why anyone plays this game? Really, does it matter? Is there now a "wrong" MOTIVATION to play as well as a wrong "Way" to play? Is this really a road worth a damn? I think not.

The reality is, there's this game called 40K. if you like playing it...play it. If you lose because you are a so-called "fluffy player" then you got exactly what you wanted out of it... You played a fluffy army and got to push plastic around. If you are REALLY there to compete and win...stop calling yourself a fluffy player and just get down to business.

If youre a tournament player and you play to get better and compete, then you got what you wanted: a pell who calls himself a fluffy player. Dont like soft targets? Play someone else.

Either way who gives a rip. Play or dont. Lets talk about the actual game itself instead of trying to find some weird gamer moral high ground. Lots of crunchy bitz to discuss in this thread that is entitled "New 8th Edition FAQ"
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 Jancoran wrote:
ugh. People. Seriously. Who gives a crap why anyone plays this game? Really,

It seems to be having an impact on how enjoyable people find the game play.

does it matter? Is there now a "wrong" MOTIVATION to play as well as a wrong "Way" to play? Is this really a road worth a damn? I think not.

It's like how you approach things will impact what you get out of them. Crazy, I know.