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Trollbert wrote:

 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.

The CA18 eternal war missions fix the majority of the issues but it's still doubtful they will be adopted. It is odd that the AoS missions are considered acceptable but the 40k ones are not.

CA is probably more a "here's your token effort at balance" move, which is both a vague attempt at balance and an attempt at marketing (in the sense of making it seem like they're making an effort) combined.

Reading back through some of the points in the thread, I'd be very surprised if they only had 6 rules writers. Unless something has radically changed in the last year then we know they had a team that worked exclusively on specialist games for a start. They most likely have separate teams for AOS and 40k. It's also been explained to death by various former writers that the process starts with model design. So the sales side of the business produces data about what is selling well and what isn't and feed this to the model team. That team produces new models and then feeds that to the game designers who are basically told "make this fit into the game", which then goes back for approval and where balance becomes subordinated on the altar of selling products. It's why you don't get frequent digital balance adjustments, because like it or not, that's not as profitable for GW as codexes and army books and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

CA seems like their token effort at appeasement as much as anything else.

Trollbert wrote:

 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.

Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.

bouncingboredom,

That seems to be a likely explanation. And for the most part it seems like they've succeeded on that front, at least in terms of general perception. Hardcore competitive players will look at the numbers from CA2018 and see it for what it is, but from what I've observed the more casual you are the more you have to be enthusiastic about with the points drops.

Kids just don't wanna get stomped by really plain, obvious cheese like 200+ cultists...even though they are probably getting stomped harder by Castellans and either don't realize it or simply don't play in that environment.

Trollbert wrote:

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.

If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.

 Crimson wrote:

Trollbert wrote:

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.

If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.

They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.

Marin wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Trollbert wrote:

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.

If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.

They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.

Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?

Wayniac wrote:

Marin wrote:

They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.

Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?

We recently had a fifteen week 'tournament.' Well, a league, really, but basically the same thing. Plenty of time to play the games.

But if you have only two or three days, and there is not enough time to play 2000 point games, then play smaller games. This isn't so hard. Either play the game properly, or don't play at all.

Wayniac wrote:
Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?

Took the words right out of my mouth

Mymearan wrote:

Trollbert wrote:

 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.

Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.

Maelstrom is progressive scoring as well, it just doesn't work satisfactorily. I don't know about the killiness of AoS, but I think the key problem is that missions where being tables results in a loss don't really make sense if you can easily table your opponent after 3 turns.

Wayniac wrote:

Marin wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Trollbert wrote:

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.

If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.

They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.

Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?

How low can you go? At 1000 points, I guess even less armies would be playable. Just imagine playing vs. 1000 points of Death Guard, 1 HQ, 2x Cultists/Poxwalkers for objectives and the rest drones and crawlers. This is the absolute definition of 'not fun'.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?

Took the words right out of my mouth

Then we remember general gradual fall in unit point costs and increase in suggested army points costs and realise it's in the interest of GW to gradually increase amount of models needed for so called 'suggested' match size.
Also smaller match sizes can be problematic for some armies because different codices effectively pay different amounts to get equal amount of CPs.

One should also note that in AoS army options are more restricted and many lists end up bringing similar amounts in points (EDIT!) of battlelines, which differs greatly from 40k.

Trollbert wrote:

Mymearan wrote:

Trollbert wrote:

 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.

Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.

Maelstrom is progressive scoring as well, it just doesn't work satisfactorily. I don't know about the killiness of AoS, but I think the key problem is that missions where being tables results in a loss don't really make sense if you can easily table your opponent after 3 turns..

I would just implement AoS-style missions in 40k then. Progressive scoring with set objectives (no random cards or anything like the Maelstorm nonsense) and tabling is never auto-loss. Generally the missions are great and used by just about every tournament out there. Sure, tabling is a problem with top-tier armies just like in 40k, but not a guaranteed loss late in the match.

Wayniac 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...

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.

Guys...

Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.

So...stop trying to blame ITC?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Wayniac 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...

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.

Guys...

Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.

So...stop trying to blame ITC?

But it does. Again, you keep ignoring the fact you don't see anywhere near the same type of lists that you see dominating ITC events as you do at say Heat 3 which uses Chapter Approved. That's not to say that we should necessarily blame ITC but it does indicate that the mission does affect quite a bit more than you're giving credit for.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.

But that's exactly the thing : Missions change how useful a given unit is within the army, and as a result change the way armies are constructed and used.

So if an event is using non standard missions, any data on the armies used, the composition of those armies and the effectiveness of the units in them is only really applicable to that event.

At best, it gives you skewed results. Nobody is using Army X, or unit Y. Is that because they're sub-standard generally, or is it just because there are better options for this specific event's mission pack?

Add in event-specific FAQs and house rules, and it gets even more confused.


Tournaments are potentially a great resource for fine tuning the game... But only so long as they are playing the same game as the guys writing the rules.

I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.

Or vice versa.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.

Or vice versa.

It doesn't have to OP under ITC and underpowered under GW missions. It just needs to be different. Missions have a big impact on how people build armies and what is and isn't considered competitive.

Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.

Other cases would be taking multiple fast units to complete Maelstrom objectives, whereas under ITC rules you could get most of your points from holding the same single objective all game and killing one enemy unit a turn.

ItsPug wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.

Or vice versa.

It doesn't have to OP under ITC and underpowered under GW missions. It just needs to be different. Missions have a big impact on how people build armies and what is and isn't considered competitive.

Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.

Other cases would be taking multiple fast units to complete Maelstrom objectives, whereas under ITC rules you could get most of your points from holding the same single objective all game and killing one enemy unit a turn.

A great example of this is pre-Chapter Approved Celestine.
Because of how her and her Geminae counted for secondary objectives, taking Celestine for an ITC game effectively meant giving away 8 Victory Points, while taking her in a GW game was a great way to deny Slay the Warlord.

ItsPug wrote:


Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.

So literally 4 points per squad is playing a different game?

I with Daedalus here. Sounds so strange that ITC is having a huge effect on things based on what you described. I just don't see much point in trying to balance based on mission/terrain. Perhaps because I don't bother with tournaments as well as trying to play a wide variation of mission types and differing terrain setups. The only thing that makes the BRB even worth owning to me is the shear amount of mission element fodder contained within. What is described here sounds like tournaments should implement some sort of Battle Builder (from Dust Warfare is where I used one) where each opponent tries to bid more mission elements more to the favor of their army or at least one that doesn't favor their opponent. That, or random/blind missions for said tournament where it would be in the best interest of the players to make more of a TAC list.

Don't get me wrong. I totally see how knowing the mission and tailoring to it is going to shape your army and don't need a list of examples. However, given that there are so many units that are bad no matter what mission/terrain setup is created, I don't see a need to concern with GW trying to balance a unit that is good for one mission type but bad for another mission type.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I don't see a need to concern with GW trying to balance a unit that is good for one mission type but bad for another mission type.

It's not specifically about a unit being bad for one mission and good for another - that's exactly what should happen, and it's a large part of why missions are randomly chosen.

Where it becomes a potential issue is if tournaments favour a particular mission type, so other mission types are never even considered in their data. Or where tournaments have non-standard scoring that skews either army selection or the way games play out on the table.

So far I am not a big fan of balancing for tournament results.

The outcome of that is usually, that whatever turned out to be the broken combo last few events gets hammered down. Ideally that should eventually get us to spme kind of 'flat' peak with a few different picks competing for the top spot on about equal power level.
This may sound great for tournament players...

But to me, the far greater issue is the huge amount of broken and unusable units that all the armies have. Or sometimes entire armies that are just so bad. This would be much more important to change in a chapter approved.
Instead, the tournament-balance approach seems to make this issue worse. Often that OP soup piece, that gets shafted for tournament abuse, is also the only thing that keeps an otherwise horrible non-tournament army afloat. And by nerfing that one unit, but at the same time not improving anything else for that army, we get yet another completely shafted faction.

This is from the perspective of a player with multiple finished armies who does not want to buy the newest OP of the month all the time, mind you. It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.
If 'buffing units that don't sell' gets me that, I am ok with it. But so far, I did not see much of that in CA? Did I miss something?

HMint wrote:
This is from the perspective of a player with multiple finished armies who does not want to buy the newest OP of the month all the time, mind you. It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.
If 'buffing units that don't sell' gets me that, I am ok with it. But so far, I did not see much of that in CA? Did I miss something?

Completely agree with you, and especially with this:

It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.

Which arguably is definition of balanced game. Of course some units can only have some niche uses, but I'm still waiting to hear explanation for niche uses of CSM Mutilators or Warp Talons in current state of rules.

Meanwhile however many posters in various currently hot threads seem perfectly happy with the status quo and seem to consider Castellan, Guardsmen and MEQs and various other units to have balanced rules and point costs. So everything is working as intended, so you, me and everyone else should suck it up, get our wallets out and continue chasing the meta. And meta generally means next new OP thing GW publishes.

I don't know.

At an intellectual LVO tournament level yes, I think the Castellan, Guardsmen, elements of ELdar and Chaos soup etc are too good. I think this is bad for the game because I like that element of the hobby.

But the fact is 99% of games are not against Ynnari or an optomised imperial soup list played by someone "chasing the meta". For a casual player 8th is leagues ahead of 7th, and CA has made that better still. GK are still the weakest faction - and certain units remain clearly inferior - but the broad middle has expanded.

On the central premise, it can be both, no?

Units not selling? There’s usually a reason for it. Could be awful models (Mutilators), or another unit in the army doing the same job better.

Reducing points can address that. Do enough of them, and you shake up the meta for those that follow it, possibly to the point where they need to resign and buy more.

Tyel is for the most part right. When I am playing in non-tournament and mono-army settings the armies tend to even out much more against each other and even more so with the point changes. However, there are of course some duds and the problem is more that they are trying to support so many units from earlier editions that are now heavily overlapping with each other(or perhaps too specialized in case of Grey Knights) and for those units it is not enough to change points, but they must themselves be fundamentally changed. How that is accomplished I have no idea. With how GW usually runs business I fear that only happens during Codex revamps.

Mutilators always struggled to be relevant. I've not used my chaos this edition but in 6th/7th era they were passable as cheap drop and forget options.

Fluff wise a lot of chaos units are meant to manifest and immediately cause carnage but the core / beta rules don't do much to enable that narrative, in part because unmitigatable alpha strikes make for neither a fun game nor battle of wits.

Personally I'd like a reduction in alpha strike, and it is clear with the beta cover stratagem that the community FAQ team are at least making cursory glances in that direction.

It must be a difficult balance to strike; allowing super heavies et al to be sufficiently devastating while also preventing them from dominating turn 1.

Perhaps they need a turn or two to 'warm up' their main weapon systems, or a limit to how much they can fire at once (the Stompa actually has a few mechanics to this effect).

Well, in terms of Codex Revamps they’re not in a bad position at all.

GSC and Sisters, and that’s all your core armies out in the wild. As well as meaning we’ll likely get new forces (World Eaters etc), it also frees them up to go back and have another crack at existing armies that aren’t quite working.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, in terms of Codex Revamps they’re not in a bad position at all.

GSC and Sisters, and that’s all your core armies out in the wild. As well as meaning we’ll likely get new forces (World Eaters etc), it also frees them up to go back and have another crack at existing armies that aren’t quite working.

Which only helps if they understand why they don't work, and they've shown over a year they dont.

Or the changes need a full Codex, rather than tweaks here and there?

ItsPug wrote:


Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.

That was specifically fixed in the latest ITC secondaries.

- They removed the ability to score multiple secondaries on models that gave them up easily (like Kingslayer & Headhunter).
- They change 'The Reaper' to be every 20 models killed so taking a bunch of 9 model IS units doesn't do much.
- They added Butcher's Bill to give up 1 point for every two units killed.

You should check into the new rules as the dynamic has changed considerably.