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Been reading stuff about how codices should be fixed. That made me think, Is our lovely game really that unbalanced that we need to start posting "fixes" all over internet?
So i decided to make a small poll about the matter.
Vote "Yes" if you think that game is unbalanced and only certain armies can win battles.
Vote "No" if you think its all about how you play the game.

Personally i will vote for "No" because i haven't seen an army so far that isn't able to win.

It's hard to say, because I am tempted to say 'Yes', but it is really only because two armies are glaringly out of date (Necrons, Tyranids).

There's a difference between 'house rule balance fixes' and 'the rules are completely broken and don't work at all half the time fixes'.
Most things I see are the latter.

Balance wise... it could be better, but it's certainly not glaringly horrible.

It's not as bad as Fantasy, apparently. I don't even play Fantasyhammer and I still feel the fallout from how broken Chaos Daemons are supposed to be.

40k's biggest problem is that the codeces don't update terribly often, so there's a lot of overlooked armies. However, most of these still have at least one viable build. Also, no codex truly breaks the game. Most have at least one or two tricks up their sleeves that throws off the metagame, but mostly it's pretty sane. Examples would be the Lash of Submission, Nob Bikers, Jaws of the World Wolf, or something similar. None of these make their respective codex truly broken as sin, but they're new challenges that everyone takes a few months to adapt to.

'because two armies are glaringly out of date (Necrons, Tyranids).'
Ahem...Dark Eldar..Ahem.

Yes, Dark Eldar too. Tau are rather out of date now too; quite a few of the rules in the Codex and wargear don't even apply to 40k anymore.

However, I think the OP has phrased his question in a leading manner that completely negates the purpose of his question. The Yes and No option are not mutually exclusive.

You CAN have a tactically superior player with a terrible army list monkey-stomp a tactically inferior player with a superior army list. By the same token, two tactically even players; one playing Necrons and the other playing....just about anything else....the Necrons will lose pretty much every time. Regardless of how good a necron player is, I don't think I'll ever lose a game to them; I pass as tactically competent too.

So I don't think the questions are worded well. Try this instead:

Vote "Yes" if you think the codexes are unbalanced and player skill being equal, some armies are disadvantaged.
Vote "No" if you think the codexes are balanced and player skill being equal, every army has equal ability to win.

No one army dominates virtually everything in 40k.. Orks, IG, SW are all quite powerful

SM, Chaos and Eldar throw in some interesting meta games and even stuff like sisters can pump out tons of meltas and flamers to be effective

Unlike WFB where no meta works against demons because theyre the best at virtually everthing and ignore anything they dont like

Because of the codex/ruleset lag, no, the game is not as balanced as it could be....but to be totally honest, I don't think ANY game can ever be truly balanced. Even games that update every day end up having unbalanced bits.

For what it is, it's close enough, IMO.

There can be some really cheesy army lists, but even those can have their teeth kicked in through tactical skill and the right wargear.

Heck, with enough cover you can pull anything off.

Yes it's unbalanced, but that's the price you pay for variety.

The only perfectly balanced games are 100% symmetrical, like checkers or chess.

oggers wrote:'because two armies are glaringly out of date (Necrons, Tyranids).'
Ahem...Dark Eldar..Ahem.

The thing with Dark Eldar is that, while they could certainly use some updated models, their rules work really well in 5th edition. Shockingly well.

The Green Git wrote:The only perfectly balanced games are 100% symmetrical, like checkers or chess.

Aside from the White army having the Always Strikes First special rule, suire.

Even when charged by black knights!

No. While there are a few armies that benefit (such as from True LOS or No Retreat! rules) no army is unwinnable. It's all in what you choose and how you play the game.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

The Green Git wrote:The only perfectly balanced games are 100% symmetrical, like checkers or chess.

Aside from the White army having the Always Strikes First special rule, suire.

Curse you Hwang! Foiled again.

Everyones forgot about DH and WH.

The codex order after nids, should no doubt be: Dark Eldar, Daemonhunters, Necrons, Witch Hunters.

Tau should never get a new codex, no more than Jap's in space.

The Green Git wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:

The Green Git wrote:The only perfectly balanced games are 100% symmetrical, like checkers or chess.

Aside from the White army having the Always Strikes First special rule, suire.

Curse you Hwang! Foiled again.

If Chess were played double-blind simultaneous-move with a referee to adjudicate captures, then you'd be right...

It depends entirely on what you mean by "balanced". By "balanced", do you mean that starting from the deployment phase, both players have an equal chance of winning independent of their army choice? If so, then 40K is not balanced, at all.

Consider a game of rock-paper-scissors. Would it be "balanced" if players had to pay $400 each to get a token allowing them to play "rock", "paper" or "scissors"? Does it feel balanced to the kid who can only afford to play "rock" when everyone else owns "paper"? Because that's 40K for you, $400 rock-paper-scissors tokens which you assemble and paint in the hobby portion of your time.

Not even.

At least every army stands a decent chance against another if the lists are made well.

Warhammer Fantasy, on the other hand, is a bit more unbalanced (Damn you DoC!!!) However, both are fine games.

Long development cycle + pendulum game design = inherent imbalance.

Yes. It is imbalanced.

the concept of tournament lists balances the game significantly IMO. everyone needs to build a balanced list to win a tournament, one that can take all comers, otherwise they will be blindsided and loose against the rock to their scissors.

Sure, you can do the whole rock paper scissors thing. and you will crush certain people. and you will loose to others. but you won't win tournaments... you need to be some of all 3, otherwise your screwed.

Horst wrote:otherwise they will be blindsided and loose against the rock to their scissors.

Sadly, amongst the pieces of paper, piles of rocks and sets of scissors, there are a few nukes laying around that destroy them all.

Not all units are created equal - some just suck. This applies to entire Codices as well.

C'mon people it obi=viously isn't!!

I feel that it is balanced fairly well, I think though that Necrons are more horribly out of date then the Tyranids. Other then the outdated codexes I would have to say its more of how you are playing, whether its for fun, or for some tournament. Hell who knows even bad dice rolls can lead the best army to crap heh.

I voted for 'No' as it seems to be balanced fairly well.

To quote Alessio Cavatore [sic], "If you want balance, play chess."

The thing about 40k is it's not the armies that are unbalced it's the lists you can make in the armies.

I see what sternguard rock means. The interaction between various armies seems as good as it can be in that every army can make a force capable of standing on fairly equal terms with anything else. (Necrons excepted)

I don't mean that all armies are created equal, it's probably fair to say you can build a stronger force from the IG codex atm than you can from the daemonhunters codex. But if you knew your opponent was bringing his IG up, and he showed you his army list, you could construct a daemonhunters list capable of withstanding him. Balance between codexes only seems to run into trouble with the very oldest ones - necrons being the worst offenders - a lot of the problems with older codexes seem to stem from:

INTERNAL BALANCE. This is the bit that seems screamingly obvious to me. In every book, there are always a few units that are better than their competition. Sometimes it seems hard to argue that it's not an intentional choice - valkyries and vendettas are damn good unit in the IG codex, probably better than hellhounds and certainly better than sentinels. Sometimes though, it's just amazing how little playtesting was done. Why on earth did the rules-designers think that a chaos lord was any competition to a daemon prince?

When codexes are overtaken by a change in editions, GW really needs to take the opportunity to release 'updated versions' of the codexes. Simply reprint them with a big clear logo on the cover, indicating that it has been revised for X edition. Don't change the background, format or artwork at all. Just any points costs that need shifting, reword or remove options that refer to things that are no longer an issue in the rules.

Some examples of what I mean, if this was done at the release of 5th edition:

Tyranids: upgrades like thornback affect outnumbering, which is no longer used - removed! The upgrade that confers preferred enemy to genestealers just got a lot better - points increase! No-one was taking hormagaunts or biovores - points break! Kill-points affect spore mines, which obviously makes no sense - add a clause saying that spore mines do not give up kill points!

Necrons:
Most points costs need to change! Simplify/clarify the living metal rule! Replace WBB with FNP! Make Gauss weapons inflict a roll on the damage table with a -1 modifier on the roll of a 6, not a -2 glancing hit modifier!

See what I mean? No sweeping changes to the role of units, don't hand out any new abilities, just rephrase language that is giving problems, adjust points, clarify common disputes that have arisen, etc.

I think a lot of the inter-codex balance, and some of the internal balance, could be helped with this kind of thing. Once the chaos codex had been out for a year, it was obvious that lash was comparatively underpriced, chaos lords were inferior to daemon princes, as were thousand sons to plague marines. under the current system, we need to wait 5 years or so for things to change, when the necessary adjustments could be made after a week's playtesting.

Fearspect wrote:It's really only because two armies are glaringly out of date (Necrons, Tyranids).

Nids are being redone in a few months, and Necrons are supposedly underway. Not so bad.
____

solkan wrote:Consider a game of rock-paper-scissors. Would it be "balanced" if players had to pay $400 each to get a token allowing them to play "rock", "paper" or "scissors"? Does it feel balanced to the kid who can only afford to play "rock" when everyone else owns "paper"? Because that's 40K for you, $400 rock-paper-scissors tokens which you assemble and paint in the hobby portion of your time.

Actually, that's WFB for you, with Daemons being the ubiquitous paper, LM and DE being the spoiler scissors, and the rest of the field being the rocks that get pwnt. If the kid were smarter, he'd have done his homework and bought paper to draw against the power armies and pwn those who didn't update their armies, with the occasional bad match against spoiler armies.

Now, back in 3rd, 40k was a bit more of a RPS situation, with Eldar being the scissors totally owning the ubiquitous MEQ paper. But I don't see that being the case today in 5th aside from a few corner cases of bad armies purpose-built from very old Codices. My sense is that a good general with a good list can draw out any given game against any opponent.