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 Nithaniel wrote:
We will all agree that CA being so far in advance fails to create the necessary effect of balancing the meta/game. It doesn't go far enough for the exact reasons you have stated.
BUT
it has achieved something. The rhetorical question(although I'm interested in your opinion) is, has CA achieved any balancing affect?

I don't think CA is doing good job with balancing. As you just discussed, CA being prepared so far in advance (6 months or so) before it's release leads to 2 effects (my opinion):
1. Adjustments in CA upon release are either hopelessly late or nonexistent.
2. Long publication cycle forces them to be too careful with the adjustments.

Especially the 2nd point I find extremely problematic. With, lets say, every 3rd month free internet published point values list, i.e. 'free CA', they could balance the points more aggressively and dial back the changes if needed.
Currently they have to do these little adjustments, or alternatively just refuse to do adjustments because the unit is without purpose and GW has no fething idea how to fix them so they opt to do nothing, like Chaos Space Marine Troops which cost elite-level premium but the only the elite thing about them are the conversion options.
Reece on power armour: '.. point cost can't be decreased because they [presumably GW] don't want marines to become horde army.' This is not direct quote, I don't have time to go find exact quote from 2 hour podcast, but I swear the former quote is close enough in spirit of what he said.
So instead we have point decreases for CSM Chosen, Raptors and Warp Talons, among others. Raptors and Warp Talons are other units that kind of struggle with purpose. Raptors don't shoot or melee well, you essentially pay 2 points more per marine for FLY and Deep Strike ability, this is almost akin to admitting normal CSM are useless. Warp Talons are melee unit that is not good in melee (seriously unit of 5 can barely kill 6-7 GEQs, 24-28 pts, a turn unless you boost them with stratagems and auras! Meanwhile one Warp Talon costs 24 points, they are forced to pay 9 points for +1 A over base A 1 and re-roll wound-rolls!!!) while being prohibitively expensive and has special rule of no overwatch after deep-strike+charge after deep striking has been heavily nerfed. To remind you, GW nerfed Deep Strike because some other combos using deep strike were problematic, and that made already mediocre Warp Talons garbage tier. Warp Talons are still utterly broken and CA18 did almost nothing to make them playable, it's still ridiculously expensive unit that is removed as easily as normal power armor (easy is actually not a good adjective here) while struggling to do anything even if ignored. Chosen are ok I guess, but anyone should be careful with them as they don't have box set and GW have indicated/stated they dislike providing unit options that are not in the sold box sets.

So IMHO CA definitely is a marketing move, it can't be called balancing if 'balanced' units are still total trash after the said 'balancing'. And to be specific, by marketing I mean lying, GW are using these perceived balance adjustments to gather customer goodwill but they are doing very little actual balancing and fixing. Meanwhile rules bloat is about as bad as it has ever been and let's just wait and see for the specialist detachments to get out of control like formations did in 7th edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
I *have* tried the new CA missions. They are IMHO amazing, but ultimately useless as ITC won't (likely) adopt them, which means the competitive "meta" is still going to be using boring missions designed to keep their listbuilding meta going strong. There's a chance they might after LVO, but I doubt it as they seem to feel that bland tournament missions that you can tailor are better than missions that encourage you to bring a balanced force to mitigate potentially bad scenarios.

Also on the other topic, if GW would move to the modern age they could respond quicker with FAQs and actual updates, maybe even do something like Privateer's CID (which is an amazing idea among all the other old GW-like things that company has done recently) to try to balance things and get more feedback than just from people with an agenda like Reece and co.

In recent podcast with FtN (if I remember right) Reece sounded very in-love with their ITC settings and talked for long time about them, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Yeah, Reece thinks the ITC missions are the bee's knees, so I'm sure it will continue to keep the meta fractured by being a deviant set of rules.

I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.

 Crimson wrote:
I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.

I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.

Wayniac wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.

I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.

Are ITC missions even a widespread thing? I can't say I see people using them. They are a niche within a niche, and if you do consider them to have "forked the game", then one of those forks is so tiny that most people probably don't even know it exists. The ITC has far greater internet representation than real-world adoption.

 Trickstick wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.

I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.

Are ITC missions even a widespread thing? I can't say I see people using them. They are a niche within a niche, and if you do consider them to have "forked the game", then one of those forks is so tiny that most people probably don't even know it exists. The ITC has far greater internet representation than real-world adoption.

It's pretty huge in the USA tournament scene. That's a pretty big fork

I pretty much exclusively play in the beer and pretzels field where CA undoubtedly makes an impact. The competitive field is where I'm looking to expand more into in 2019 having just bought my LGT ticket.

If we look at the data from tournaments in 2018, the meta chasing gamers have (since big faq 2) started moving away from the castellan and friends list back to y'nari. The mata is not yet mature since Orks haven't made their impact yet.

So you're right we haven't had anytime yet to see the impact of CA2018 on the meta but its clear in the fact that it didn't touch drukhari, the Y'narri soup or the castellan list that much that they will still be big contenders. The top tier lists will still be the top tier lists but I think the top 10 will be filled with the usual suspects plus orks.

I'm sure however that the mid tier of tournament standings will be affected by the changes to CA. Primaris and marine armies will be more competent but not contenders for the top spots but I'm hoping inventive creative players will surprise us.

Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Have you guys played much of the CA2018 missions? I think they are brilliant.

They've started to adopt (from NOVA and ITC) the idea of prgressive scoring. They've gotten rid of the sudden death rule.

ITC being a variant from the norm is up to ITC and they've proven the field of dreams format of if you build it they will come because LVO is huge and ITC is huge. I have heard but nmot yet attended UK events moving to ITC champs missions.

While ITC and NOVA missions are different from the norm they have had sufficient impact to change the norm.

I urge you guys to play the CA eternal war missions as the changes go some way to shaping this discussion. I believe the missions alone are balancing the game a little

 Trickstick wrote:
Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...

 Crimson wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...

This is actually a very valid point. I would counter it by saying that if half of the world is playing by that yardstick then using it to assess balance is valid because of the sheer amount of data that it produces. We could assume that GW is only looking at that half of the world in its assessments but we'd probably be wrong. Don't forget that they run their own tournaments now and have been for a while at warhammer world. This data must also be used.

The reality is balance is comprised of so many things from rules to terrain to points to missions. The variance in terrain I see from tournaments is vast. We've already said terrain rules are garbage. Actual rules are tweaked in FAQ's so we can't judge CA on these two things. What we can judge it on is points and missions. Points changes are too many to really gauge until we see more data from tournaments. Missions have changed big time and warhammer world tournaments will be using these missions as will the LGT.

 Crimson wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...

This is the entire concern. GW relies on folks like Reece, who think the GW style missions are not balanced and have their own deviant set of missions, to help balance the game as a whole. How can you balance the game as a whole when your set of data is coming from a different set of missions that creates their own meta (as evidenced by the fact GW's Heats do not use ITC missions and have different results and lists showing up) but as a result of their "clout" with GW affect the entire game despite most of their data being directly related to the style of missions they use. Sure, anyone can look at some things and say this is too good/not good enough, but the missions are a huge balancing factor in list design and even gameplay, and I don't think that's being accounted for with GW relying on people who aren't even using their missions as the yard stick.

Little column A little column B, ultimately no.

ITC is not the only culprit here. Nova and Adepticon and the ETC. Everyone who runs a tournament has to make a decision over which missions are used. They all use variations.

We agree that you can't assume a level playing field but how much impact does that have. Are you guys saying that because they use different missions they should not be used to gather data for balancing?

Is it more likely that they are used as sources of data combined with GW's own tournaments?

The ITC is a closed circuit for 12 months. After LVO we will see if Reece chooses to change his missions as he can't change them until the season ends. I have heard him praise the CA 2018 missions though, maybe they will adopt them for the new ITC season

Wayniac wrote:
GW relies on folks like Reece...

We have no way of knowing just how much they utilise outside information though. It could be loads, it could be a simple "oh those couple of things are bad, we'll look at them" situation. I think "relies on" is probably a bit strong.

 Trickstick wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
GW relies on folks like Reece...

We have no way of knowing just how much they utilise outside information though. It could be loads, it could be a simple "oh those couple of things are bad, we'll look at them" situation. I think "relies on" is probably a bit strong.

Absolutely. GW use Nova and Adepticon TO's for feedback as well as a large group of other people. They delayed the BIG FAQ last year following adepticon so they clearly put weight there in decision making as evidenced by the following.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/11/13/13th-nov-adepticon-2019-tickets-now-on-salegw-homepage-post-3/

People love to hate Reece for this but he's only one in a large group and whether his words are true or not (since he's on the payroll) he's always said he gives his feedback then doesn't hear anything until the rules are published.

I am not sure about how many people actually bought the CA books and how many use it via battle scribe without having bought it, but the custom mission issues would most likely be solved if GW published a playable set of missions online and free. That way a new standard set of missions could be introduced.

The maelstrom and eternal war missions in the Core Rulebook don't work for different reasons, so custom missions are more or less needed which causes the forking mentioned earlier.


Another take on the thread topic: If GW was trying to market their models efficiently via rules, they would have changed the core rule set for 8th. With the current rules, there is so much redundancy within almost all codexes that no matter how point costs are changed, GW will always have 90% of their range won't be bought for the rules.

With the basic rules of the game, only expected damage per point spent really matters, so only ~10% that score high in that category will sell for the rules.

If you make assault marines (or raptors) and (chaos) bikers cheaper, only one will sell because those units are basically the same. Just like all the melee units for CSM, there is no functional difference between them.

Halving all weapons ranges while keeping movement the same could be a marketing move because it gives all fast units a purpose.

Removing fall back from the game could be a a marketing move because it gives melee a purpose aside from dealing damage, which is done better by lots of shooting units.

 insaniak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something..

It worked just fine for an awful long time before the internet came along.

The problem isn't the rules being in physical books, it's the rushed production schedule resulting in inadequately edited final products. Whether the rules are in physical books or electronic files, I'd much rather they took the time to fix any issues with them before publishing, rather than after.

The internet has been in widespread use for 23-25 years. I think GW has had enough time to adjust. The problem with physical books is the fact that they take so long to compile, edit, print, and ship, that the information in them can be outdated before they've even hit shelves. CA cannot address balance issues that cropped up in September if it releases in December as a physical book. If the rulebook and codexes were subscription based, they could make last minute changes. It takes minutes to push an update to a mobile app or website. Balance issues that weren't addressed in CA2018 will have to wait for CA2019, which again will have the same problem of correcting the meta of January-August because of the print schedule. GW is stuck in the mindset of the 80s when we're going on 2019. This isn't D&D, the internet is a thing that exists, smartphones are things that exist. I think the main reason they don't want to do that is the fact that they can print a book for $2-3 and sell it for $30-60, and everyone that plays the game has to buy it. However, if they charged subscription fees and just sold fluff/picture books, far less people would buy the books. It is purely driven by profit rather than what is best for the game.

 Toofast wrote:
CA cannot address balance issues that cropped up in September if it releases in December as a physical book.

It wouldn't need to if those balance issues were addressed during playtesting instead of waiting until the rules are published.

Balance issues that weren't addressed in CA2018 will have to wait for CA2019, ...

Or, alternatively, they could stop charging their customers for patches to the rules that they didn't get right the first time around, and just use this newfangled internet for that instead.


Just a thought.



Having said that, I'll point out that in this day and age, I feel that they would be better served dropping the codex model and just including the rules with the models, and/or having downloadable (and updated as necessary) versions for download on the website, which is what we do for Maelstrom's Edge. My contention wasn't that physical books are the best way to present army rules, I was merely opposing the suggestion that it is a 'dumb' way of doing it.

I really don’t get why they went with the free datasheets for AoS and not 40k. I would assume because AoS was a fledgeling IP and they more or less can guarantee their overpriced/instantly outdated codices will sell, but that’s just my assumption.

I really appreciated that with the new edition, the indices were ready to go and every faction had their rules out of the gate. Seemed like a good sign of things to come. Now we have the same codex nonsense that we’ve had in every edition. Granted, they release them fairly quickly, but they still lack cohesion in design philosophy and have varying amounts of creativity.

Of course, writing them all at once is a tall order, and no doubt complicated, but we’re never going to stop having the issues we're having with the same release cycle and format we’ve always had.

In addition, I would guess that separating the factions into their own release “events” may boost sales to some degree. Not sure if that’s accurate, but I’ve seen players complain about the rapid release cycle because they can’t afford to buy everything at once. Why they feel it necessary to buy everything at once, I don’t understand, but it’s certainly a phenomenon for a subset of hobbyists.

 Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote:
I really don’t get why they went with the free datasheets for AoS and not 40k. I would assume because AoS was a fledgeling IP and they more or less can guarantee their overpriced/instantly outdated codices will sell, but that’s just my assumption.

I really appreciated that with the new edition, the indices were ready to go and every faction had their rules out of the gate. Seemed like a good sign of things to come. Now we have the same codex nonsense that we’ve had in every edition. Granted, they release them fairly quickly, but they still lack cohesion in design philosophy and have varying amounts of creativity.

Of course, writing them all at once is a tall order, and no doubt complicated, but we’re never going to stop having the issues we're having with the same release cycle and format we’ve always had.

In addition, I would guess that separating the factions into their own release “events” may boost sales to some degree. Not sure if that’s accurate, but I’ve seen players complain about the rapid release cycle because they can’t afford to buy everything at once. Why they feel it necessary to buy everything at once, I don’t understand, but it’s certainly a phenomenon for a subset of hobbyists.

Thing is as soon as AoS started introducing matched play suddenly all the rules for the games weren't free and if you want to play matched play you need all the equivalent books you would in 40k. Books are clearly a huge seller and an entirely free ruleset seems outside of their purview.

I have always loved army books and codexes but do I think a £25 codex plus £25 a year is a bit much for a few buffs and point changes (if that is all that interests you in these books)? Yes definitely. In this day and age there should at least be a cheap online option for the rules alone. I still think they'd sell plenty of books, many like myself just love having and reading through them.

It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.

E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.

Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.

nareik wrote:
It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.

E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.

Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.

It's just part of Games Workshop being torn between being model sellers and game sellers I think. If it was all about the game only CA2018 would be 'valid' for serious business games. As they don't want to invalidate models we're all a little unsure of what's intended.

nareik wrote:
It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.

E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.

Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.

I'd need to check the verbiage at the start of the Matched Play Points section in CA2018, but I'm fairly sure that it indicates that the only changes which still apply are the ones from CA2018.

Which would mean that, yes, some Index changes have been rolled back.

Whether this is deliberate or an oversight is a question you'd have to pose to GW.

 Crimson wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...

They should rely on tournament results to balance game, since this are the guys that plays allot and have the resources to create busted builds and show what is really strong in the game.
In friendly games balance does not matter as much, since players will bring suboptimal armies and fractions that are considered bad in the tournament scene.
That is the reason i like CA, they nerfed some of the strongest units(if we don`t count that guard and knights are not susceptible changes) and tried to buff units most players will bring on the table.
I don`t understand why most people are not content with the changes, it`s like they are expecting all their units to be OP and their army to be able to smash every opponent without problem.
If you can`t win games in your local community the problem is most likely you, not your army balance.

Marin wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.

Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...

They should rely on tournament results to balance game, since this are the guys that plays allot and have the resources to create busted builds and show what is really strong in the game.

They should rely on tournaments if - and only if - those tournaments are actually playing Warhammer 40,000 as published by GW.

ITChammer, ETChammer, NovaHammer and AdeptiHammer - at a minimum - are four different variants of the game where different units and combinations will stick their heads above water. As a result, they should not be used as anything more than anecdotal evidence for balancing the game. They might give you a pointer for things to keep an eye on in normal games, but that's about it.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.

Ahh, so what I must have done was scanned a Grot tank and used that with a few minor tweeks? Or, did I use the scale as a rough guideline and than use tank features from numerous modern/historical (Mostly WW2) tanks and fill in the dimensions with bitz I liked....like soviet style ridged armor and Sherman tank style turret?

But hey, since GW did it its fine, but feth me If I do it right?

Well, wether you copied/modded real world stuff or ripped of GW, I'd like to see what you came up with. So PM the pics to me already.

Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.

nareik wrote:
It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.

E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.

Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.

CA2017 is now obsolete, and is not used for any points values. You just use the latest index/codex values and CA2018.

 Mymearan wrote:
Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.

Is this a serious question?

If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.