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A friend of mine, who's been playing Fantasy Battle for 12 years, stopped by the FLGS while I was there browsing for some 40k Orks. We started talking about WHFB and I mentioned to him that I haven't started a WHFB force yet because the game is apparently skewed in favour of certain armies. According to him, though, this is not the case and only applies to tournament builds. So I thought I should post this here and make sure other prospective WHFB players won't be put off or feel they have to play Dark Elves/Daemons to win anything.

That's true to a great extent. The disparity between list strengths can really get amplified in the Internet Echo Chamber. You'll find plenty of Ogre players with a winning record down at the club, and we have a new Daemon player here who loses most games.

As I like to say, no substitute for playing. And if you develop into a tournament goer, it can be all the more rewarding to win games with a list that isn't top tier.

RZ

its not that a few armies are better than everyone else, its more like rock paper scissors, its commonly thought that ogres suck ass, but deamons are pretty good, however I play ogres, I'm not great (5/5), but I beat the first deamon player I went against pretty easily (I believe that was my 4th game), and the total kill count for all of my skaven games is 18 models... 8 were gnoblars and 7 was from a lucky rear charge, but I just cant seem to beat beast men or dwarves.

and like zeke was saying, the only way to see is to play, even with my less than stellar record, lack of XP, and the fact I play a bottome tier army, I still much prefer fantasy over 40K

Fantasy is the Chess, and 40k is the Checkers.

Fantasy requires alot of thought in movement, and one mistake can be disastrous, its much less forgiving.

This is not the same for 40k at all.

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Anyways, I am starting beastmen, who are generally seen as Lower-Middle Tier, and am going for a build that is cool, and fun to play against, a fluffy list, but still can kick ass if used correctly, just like every other army can.

That chess/checkers comment was what first intruiged me about fantasy, even though I was a 40k player at the time... since I love chess

I've made the switch and love the strategy that fantasy brings. I actually thought 40k was much worse as far as army builds go- meaning, there were times when I felt I had almost no chance at a fun/competitive game, just due to my army build and my opponent's.

In fantasy, I've been wiped out at times, but I always felt that I had the opportunity to tactically out-think my opponent, and if not win, at least gain an advantage due to strategy, rather than the strength of my army.

The "echo chamber" is also definitely true- sometimes the units/builds that are supposedly "best" are actually expected, and a seemingly less effective, but unexpected, build could do better on the table.

I used to think that the 40k = checkers, FB = chess comparison was apt. Then I learned how to play 40k.

That's true, it definitely oversimplifies the comparison between the two games... but then again, once people really learn how to play checkers well, it's not a simplistic game, either! (or so I hear... I'm not a very good checkers player)

Karon wrote:Fantasy is the Chess, and 40k is the Checkers.

Given how slowly WFB units move, I think you've got it the other way around.

If WFB really did require deep thought, why is it that most experienced players can usually guess the likely winner at the end of deployment?

because most of the armies are unbalanced (thus the name of this thread) and like Karon said, one mistake can be disastrous, this includes mistakes in setting up your force. and whenever anyone tries to guess the outcomes of my games they are usually wrong.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Karon wrote:Fantasy is the Chess, and 40k is the Checkers.

Given how slowly WFB units move, I think you've got it the other way around.

If WFB really did require deep thought, why is it that most experienced players can usually guess the likely winner at the end of deployment?

I'm pretty sure that experienced chess players can also determine the outcome after the first move or two.

That's exactly what I was going to say... if someone doesn't know what they're doing and opens badly in chess, it's almost game over.

That said, it doesn't mean that people have to use standard openings... I remember reading that when playing against supercomputers, some chess masters would try to think up opening sequences that had never been used before (not an easy thing in chess) to throw the computer off.

I think it's a useful analogy, but shouldn't be taken too far... otherwise, it's just a "We're cool and you're not" type of argument . But I don't think anyone could deny that WHFB is more tactical in certain areas than 40k (such as deployment, as has been mentioned a number of times) although the reverse is also true for a some things.

It's a useless and annoying analogy that smacks of completely unwarranted elitism. Quite frankly, it's insulting.

Hmmm.... well, like I said, I had never played fantasy before, and it's that phrase that originally piqued my interest...

If it annoys you, you take it quite a bit too seriously.

It's a true analogy for the sake of saying Fantasy is more tactical and complicated. You can't deny this simply because Fantasy is 40K, but more advanced. 40K doesn't have shooting/combat modifiers, no dedicated magic phase (instead they just tied in in with the shooting phase), and I've noticed, after reading both the WHFB and 40K rulebooks, Fantasy is much more explained and written better than 40k.

Fantasy is more complicated, yes. Tactical, no, not really.

I'd agree with that, JHDD. I think what bothers you is the "we're superior" attitude... more than what we're saying, really. If you prefer to call it complicated rather than tactical that's OK by me

Also, somewhat due to this thread, I had my first game of checkers in about 10 years last night... and was soundly victorious over my wife (who says she didn't play with "forced jumps" when she used to play it).

To come back from our rabbit trail (since this thread is supposed to be about balance in friendly fantasy, as compared to imbalance in tournament level fantasy) I've had good success against some "top-level" armies in friendly games, but got sent home with my tail between my legs at the last tournament after facing, Daemons, then DE (both Hard tournament lists), and then finally, mercifully, Empire.

I'm still hoping to continue to play in events/tournaments, but perhaps find a friendlier crowd.

Back to the topic at hand, i would assume its like any other competitive game (magic, warhammer, 40k etc)...

There are going to be particular builds that are more powerful all around then others, and these are generally played more.

However other players that arent playing that army typically have to factor it into the metagame, and build their army to AT LEAST have a 50/50 chance against the current popular army in the metagame. Preferable, they want to do better than 50/50.

Heres where other armies being better come in to play. If you get your chances to beet the "top army" to 50/50, you want your other less likely match-ups to be as high as possible in your favor also. Some armies accomplish this very well, (dark elves for instance). They can build around beeting the best armies and remain competitive if they dont face them.

Other armies for instance, might get their chance to beet the top armies to around 50/50, but run the risk of dropping their chances of beating less played archetypes to 30/70 or something like that. That is why they are considered lower tiered.

When you see some random army that is considered "not that good" win or place high in a tournament its probably for a few reasons.
1) player skill, i cant discount this as this is what warhammer measures the most.
2) The matchups. If someone has a 60/40 chance to beat say deamons, but sacrifices their chance to beet another army at say 60/40 or 70/30 and they play 2 daemon games and win, and only play against one other matchup that they do 50/50 against thats luck of the draw.

The same player could go against 2 armies that stomp him, and not go against the armies that he predicted would be there and built around..