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Nagashek wrote: [...SNIP...]
Some codices are too powerful to be affected by something as mundane and irrelevant as the core rule set.

I kinda agree with this. No amount of core rules will balance 15 points for missile launcher on a 18pt marine with 10 points for missile launcher on a 15pt marine.
It's not hard to bring something undercosted to acceptable level. But doing so without breaking some units in other codexes(?) with same rules is close to impossible.

And actually, there's a very good reason that the balance so far in the new Fantasy books hasn't been turned on its head yet;
Orcs & Gobbo - written by Vetock iirc
Tomb Kings - written by Cruddance
Ogres - written by Jervis & Vetock
VC's - written by Kelly
Empire - written by Cruddance

anyone notice who's name is missing yet?!

Hmm, Matt Ward is missing, but there's phil kelly (Writer of Space Wolves) and Cruddance (Who wrote the craptastic Tyranids and the overpowered Imperial Guard)

So what are you getting at, that Ward is writing all the bad and overpowered codexs?

Phil kelly (responsible for one good book, dark eldar), Cruddance (None) and ward (3 out of four are considered mid tier, Space Marines, Blood Angels, and Necrons) with one overpowered (grey knight)

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

And actually, there's a very good reason that the balance so far in the new Fantasy books hasn't been turned on its head yet;
Orcs & Gobbo - written by Vetock iirc
Tomb Kings - written by Cruddance
Ogres - written by Jervis & Vetock
VC's - written by Kelly
Empire - written by Cruddance

anyone notice who's name is missing yet?!

Hmm, Matt Ward is missing, but there's phil kelly (Writer of Space Wolves) and Cruddance (Who wrote the craptastic Tyranids and the overpowered Imperial Guard)

So what are you getting at, that Ward is writing all the bad and overpowered codexs?

Phil kelly (responsible for one good book, dark eldar), Cruddance (None) and ward (3 out of four are considered mid tier, Space Marines, Blood Angels, and Necrons) with one overpowered (grey knight)

It's not fair to claim that Ward writes overpowered codices.

However, it is fair to claim that Ward writes imbalanced codices.

There is a difference. For example, let's take Mephiston. I hate him, so I'm not objective here. However, it can be said very easily that his rules read like a fanboy's wishlist. And while Meph is not always an insta-win, he is sometimes. Some armies, like Eldar, effectively turn Meph into a complete waste of points. However, some armies, like Necrons or Tau, have no reliable way to deal with Meph without dedicating their entire field of resources for multiple turns to take him out, and he will generally wreck your whole army. That is a severely imbalanced character.

Ascalam wrote:That's not necessarily an indicator of game balance though

And here's the problem. There IS no THE balance. It's as if people think that there is a chart out there or a 6-step questionnaire to exactly determine the point value of something. This is false.

In reality, coming up with the points value of something is really complicated. Even if they did get it exactly right, why does anybody think we'd actually see it? How would we know that it reached perfection?

I mean, people complain about guard, saying that they're overpowered. Other people ask if leafblowers are still viable. Some people think BA are hideously overpowered. Go to the tactics forum, and it's a matter of time before another "DoA still viable?" threat pops up. There was even a thread recently asking if Draigowing was still useable. The point is that nobody can agree what the proper points value is, so it doesnt' even make sense to talk about there even BEING a balance, much less if it's a balance that we will understand.

What's more likely is that if something seems overpowered to you, it's because you haven't figured out how to beat it yet, or that you don't understand it over all.

People talking down about things that they don't (and very likely can never) understand is just whining, which is what most of the people are doing here. If you don't think 40k is sufficiently balanced, go play chess.

However, some armies, like Necrons or Tau,

Tau have Plasma Rifles (AP2, S6), which a standard core of crisis suits will have (3) So that's about 3 shots with 6 more missle shots peppering into his hide at S7, though they won't bypass his armor. Railguns (Last resort really, but still). Not to mention Tau are pretty bad against most things armies have, using them as an example would show up the fact that nearly Every army has something horrible that tau cannot really deal with. If you want to make a tau player cry just pit him against a Necron Wraithwing list.

Necrons have wraiths. Along with the potential chance that MSS will cause mephiston to smack himself with his own weapon per turn, and barring that a properly fed scarab farm can potentially devour his armor, leaving him defenseless to anything else in the arsenal, Not to mention vast numbers of weaponry, not to mention large numbers of shots that can provided by the annihilators, a Tremorcon list can put him into difficult to dangerous terrain upon being hit, not to mention deathmarks/harbringer (It's a bit overkill, but hey), not to mention if you have it, a Tesserect can be a funny thing to use on him. Than there's heavy destroyers, or a destroyer arc if you have it.

However, it is fair to claim that Ward writes imbalanced codices.

It is not fair to claim he is the only writer of Imbalanced Codex's however, when several others are given a free pass. I mean I dislike his fluff, and some of his rules, but I understand that each of the major 40k authors has written complete blunders in their time, as well as some good ones.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Not knowing anything factual about 6th ed, I can't say for sure, but GW has been slowly writing better rules over time, and have certainly been writing better codices which, with a couple of exceptions, have actually been getting reasonably balanced over time. I mean, for how much hate there is over BA or GK, look at all of the codices that have come out over the last 5 years as a whole. For how much whining there has been about said two, there has been a notable lack of whining about the Ork, demons, tyranid, dark eldar, necron and space marines and to a only slightly lesser extent guard. Most codices have been pretty well balanced, while giving players more options over time.

It wouldn't surprise me if the trend continues. If WHFB is further along this path, it's probably more to do with that it came out earlier and thus has had more time.

There's still plenty of whining about 'Nids, (because they're lackluster and don't fit into this edition's meta), Dark Eldar & Necrons, (who apparently OP?! )

I'm really hoping 40k follows the 'new balancing' act of Fantasy personally. Sure magic is bork and great weapon hordes are a problem, but they're managible overall, outside of some spanker being a TFG and purposfully tailoring his list to abuse the insta-kill spell/combo that hurts the most.

And actually, there's a very good reason that the balance so far in the new Fantasy books hasn't been turned on its head yet;
Orcs & Gobbo - written by Vetock iirc
Tomb Kings - written by Cruddance
Ogres - written by Jervis & Vetock
VC's - written by Kelly
Empire - written by Cruddance

anyone notice who's name is missing yet?!

Ward wrote the 8th edition BRB, so he's not "missing" per se.

Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

sfshilo wrote:
There is balance, you just have to find it.

That is pretty cool and Zen way of looking at it

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

Ward did the 8th edition rule book. The system you so cherish was written by the one you blame.

Also, last I looked, Imperial Guard and Space Wolves, 2 of the 3 most commonly complained about armies, weren't written by Ward.

. Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

Tsk, this is exactly what I was talking about at the end of my post. Everyone considers Ward the only imbalanced codex writer despite having three mid-tiers and one OP, sure his fluff is stupid, but that doesn't matter when it comes to the tabletop.

Cruddance is the worst, with one underpowered, one overpowered, kelly with one mid-tier, and one overpowered. (Though if we go by his track record, he's made something worse than Grey Knights before)

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Cruddance is the worst, with one underpowered, one overpowered, kelly with one mid-tier, and one overpowered. (Though if we go by his track record, he's made something worse than Grey Knights before)

Over or under powered according to what standard? How do you KNOW that they're over or under powered, rather than the opposite of what you believe, or actually reasonably balanced.

It sounds like you have an opinion that's based purely on your particular experience that you want other people to just agree with because you think you're right, so there. Talking about balance is useless without some way of objectively talking about balance.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

Ward did the 8th edition rule book. The system you so cherish was written by the one you blame.

Also, last I looked, Imperial Guard and Space Wolves, 2 of the 3 most commonly complained about armies, weren't written by Ward.

Ok just so you know 'The spiritual liege' thing is a sarcastic name given to the fact the guy LOVES ultrasmurfs and basically turned the latest C:SM in to C:ultramarines. Not something I made up or particularly agree with. And you can't really break a system your creating, as its your system, so anything that could be 'over powered' is intentional for use with ALL armies making it not broken.

Seriously people complain about SW... really? they're actually pretty tame (thunderwolves excepted)... All I can say is BA and GK (Both have Deamon Prince equivilant characters in them and aren't DP's supposed to be on par to Primarchs?)
And IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK.

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

Ward did the 8th edition rule book. The system you so cherish was written by the one you blame.

Also, last I looked, Imperial Guard and Space Wolves, 2 of the 3 most commonly complained about armies, weren't written by Ward.

Ok just so you know 'The spiritual liege' thing is a sarcastic name given to the fact the guy LOVES ultrasmurfs and basically turned the latest C:SM in to C:ultramarines. Not something I made up or particularly agree with. And you can't really break a system your creating, as its your system, so anything that could be 'over powered' is intentional for use with ALL armies making it not broken.

Seriously people complain about SW... really? they're actually pretty tame (thunderwolves excepted)... All I can say is BA and GK (Both have Deamon Prince equivilant characters in them and aren't DP's supposed to be on par to Primarchs?)
And IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK.

No, Daemon Princes aren't supposed to match Primarchs, and Space Wolves are generally considered more powerful than Blood Angels. Furthermore, you claimed that most of the "broken" Codices were written by Ward and I refuted that. Your statement that "IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK" has nothing to do with my argument; I said that one of three "broken" Codices was written by Ward, you did not refute that.

Ailaros wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Cruddance is the worst, with one underpowered, one overpowered, kelly with one mid-tier, and one overpowered. (Though if we go by his track record, he's made something worse than Grey Knights before)

Over or under powered according to what standard? How do you KNOW that they're over or under powered, rather than the opposite of what you believe, or actually reasonably balanced.

It sounds like you have an opinion that's based purely on your particular experience that you want other people to just agree with because you think you're right, so there. Talking about balance is useless without some way of objectively talking about balance.

Standards apply when one can notice the variables between armies. There's no true common standard, though at the moment the best standard would be the various factors provided by the multiple Space Marine Imperium armies.

As more than half the codex's follow this standard in some manner or form, that can conclusively begin a baseline standard where one can begin figuring out where points costs can deviate based on ability, power, wargear, and the various other factors such as twin-linked and the stat varieties.

One can objectively know the standard because it's become such commonplace with this "Space Marine Standard" that it's provided to the point that it objectively does indeed have a standard, thus until the baseline standard is changed, one can identify the balance issues between the books. Though thanks the updated editions, this standard does change in a manner at times, sometimes it's easier to identify, but sometimes its not.

For example, the standard space marine unit within most codex's is The Tactical Squad, comes with a S4/AP5 weapon with 1 attack standard, with special abilities ASTKNF, and one to two additional abilities, with included frag and krak grenades. Now that we know that this baseline unit is 16 points, that identifies what exactly one can base it off of one can identify baseline costs

The reason I use the standard vanilla codex is based around the fact that it is one of the only consistently updated codex's within the editions with a mostly unchanging pattern, tyranids is the other and unlike space marines it can vary wildly from edition to edition, thus it has no baseline to be based from it.

My experience is nothing compared to cold baseline statistics and variables listed within each codex which can be identified with another, the only thing I'll ever say with objective clarity is my hatred of 4th edition skimmers and the Tri-falcon eldar lists of that era, along with the Fish of Fury tactics.

You may or may not think I'm right, but I can say without a doubt there is a baseline standard all units can be based around. Whether it involves identifying from each to each or identifying the sum of its parts.

Tsk, this is exactly what I was talking about at the end of my post. Everyone considers Ward the only imbalanced codex writer despite having three mid-tiers and one OP, sure his fluff is stupid, but that doesn't matter when it comes to the tabletop.

Ok Zeb just to clarify I'm not bashing Matt saying he is the ONLY one that does it but he is responsible for more codices in this edition that have one or more game breakers in. So over all on this edition he has probably had the largest unbalancing influence. I absolutely did not mean to imply it was ALL his fault, I apologise if I gave you that impression.

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:

Tsk, this is exactly what I was talking about at the end of my post. Everyone considers Ward the only imbalanced codex writer despite having three mid-tiers and one OP, sure his fluff is stupid, but that doesn't matter when it comes to the tabletop.

Ok Zeb just to clarify I'm not bashing Matt saying he is the ONLY one that does it but he is responsible for more codices in this edition that have one or more game breakers in. So over all on this edition he has probably had the largest unbalancing influence. I absolutely did not mean to imply it was ALL his fault, I apologise if I gave you that impression.

I am sorry I jumped on you like that, as it is I've been tired of seeing "Ward is the complete reason for 5th editions faults and failures! Down to even codex's he didn't even have a hand in!" It's like people at times seems to believe he wrote every single dex in the 5th edition, and after seeing someone actually claim that he wrote Tyranids weaker in this edition because he didn't like that they were beating the Ultramarines before, it gets tiring to see him get blamed for every single thing.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

Ward did the 8th edition rule book. The system you so cherish was written by the one you blame.

Also, last I looked, Imperial Guard and Space Wolves, 2 of the 3 most commonly complained about armies, weren't written by Ward.

Ok just so you know 'The spiritual liege' thing is a sarcastic name given to the fact the guy LOVES ultrasmurfs and basically turned the latest C:SM in to C:ultramarines. Not something I made up or particularly agree with. And you can't really break a system your creating, as its your system, so anything that could be 'over powered' is intentional for use with ALL armies making it not broken.

Seriously people complain about SW... really? they're actually pretty tame (thunderwolves excepted)... All I can say is BA and GK (Both have Deamon Prince equivilant characters in them and aren't DP's supposed to be on par to Primarchs?)
And IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK.

No, Daemon Princes aren't supposed to match Primarchs, and Space Wolves are generally considered more powerful than Blood Angels. Furthermore, you claimed that most of the "broken" Codices were written by Ward and I refuted that. Your statement that "IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK" has nothing to do with my argument; I said that one of three "broken" Codices was written by Ward, you did not refute that.

Re-read my original post, I did take back saying they were broken and instead that they are over powered. And yes deamon princes can match primarchs because the chaos primarchs ARE deamon princes now. So why shouldn't they be considered under the deamon prince rules?

*EDIT Also did you know you can get a 2100pt Blood Angel SQUAD (single squad)

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

JbR of the Endless Spire wrote:Here's my 2 cents... I HOPE it will be more balanced, but with GW's track record thats doubtful. There is a common trend in the WHFB balanced rules and its that Matt 'your spiritual liege' Ward (As I've seen him referred to on other forums) has not had much handy work in the army books (so over all he has had a very limited input that COULD break the system). Compared to 40k which is largely on the whole balanced (by the rulebook) and almost totally broken when concerning certain codices and (not to lay all the blame at his feet though) the broken codices are all largely Matt Ward's work (after all someone let the monkey into the development team)

*EDIT sorry I'm going to take that back your right the codices aren't 'totally broken' but very over powered.

Ward did the 8th edition rule book. The system you so cherish was written by the one you blame.

Also, last I looked, Imperial Guard and Space Wolves, 2 of the 3 most commonly complained about armies, weren't written by Ward.

Ok just so you know 'The spiritual liege' thing is a sarcastic name given to the fact the guy LOVES ultrasmurfs and basically turned the latest C:SM in to C:ultramarines. Not something I made up or particularly agree with. And you can't really break a system your creating, as its your system, so anything that could be 'over powered' is intentional for use with ALL armies making it not broken.

Seriously people complain about SW... really? they're actually pretty tame (thunderwolves excepted)... All I can say is BA and GK (Both have Deamon Prince equivilant characters in them and aren't DP's supposed to be on par to Primarchs?)
And IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK.

No, Daemon Princes aren't supposed to match Primarchs, and Space Wolves are generally considered more powerful than Blood Angels. Furthermore, you claimed that most of the "broken" Codices were written by Ward and I refuted that. Your statement that "IG really are nothing to complain about when compared to GK" has nothing to do with my argument; I said that one of three "broken" Codices was written by Ward, you did not refute that.

Re-read my original post, I did take back saying they were broken and instead that they are over powered. And yes deamon princes can match primarchs because the chaos primarchs ARE deamon princes now. So why shouldn't they be considered under the deamon prince rules?

*EDIT Also did you know you can get a 2100pt Blood Angel SQUAD (single squad)

Because there is no one "Size Fits All" power level for chaos things.

Such as the fact that Daemon princes are below low level greater daemons, but stronger Daemon princes can be greater than that, the primarchs power level is somewhere above most of the named Greater Daemons (Such as Ku'gath, Fateweaver) but not above the greatest of the the Greater Deaemons.

It'd go

Newly Ascended Daemon Princes (Powerful, compared to mortals anyways)

Newly Formed Greater Daemons (Just born, it won't take long before these overtake even the named Princes so they can be conquered if they are just newly formed, give a while and they'll soon be around normal)

Daemon Princes that have been at it for a while and have gained power (Mamon, Uraka)

Standard Greater Daemons: (Such as the ones in the current Chaos Daemon books, this includes the ones like Ku'gath and Kairos Fateweaver)

Primarchs: (You know the drill, Angron was represented once, his Retinue was Standard BloodThirsters, and it is awesome)

Powerful First Daemon Princes: (Doombreed, Bubonicus, N'kari, Ghargatuloth)

Greatest Greater Daemons: An'ggranath, Scabeiathrax, Zarakynel, Aetaos'rau'keras (Holy hell I hate remembering this name)

This is pretty close to what I imagine it being for in power, such as Sanguinas achievement being that he broke a bloodthirster in combat (Yeah, one, and it nearly killed him!)

Actually, Fateweaver is stated to be the most powerful Lord of Change, his stats just don't match it. As for JBR, your post implied that Daemon Princes (as in generic Daemon Princes) matched the Primarchs in power level - that is not true, and quoting a small subset of Daemon Princes does not make it so either.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Actually, Fateweaver is stated to be the most powerful Lord of Change, his stats just don't match it. Furthermore, your post implied that Daemon Princes (as in generic Daemon Princes) matched the Primarchs in power level - that is not true, and quoting a small subset of Daemon Princes does not make it so either.

They do not, thats why I had standard daemon princes below greater daemons, which primarchs are above.

Fateweaver is not the strongest, his page lists him as the right hand of Tzeentch because of his oracle status, as Tzeentch threw him into the well of eternity, so that he could begin to understand the strands of fate that would encompass the future.

He is hobbled, weak compared to standard lords of change, however his oracle power still sets him above those, but not above that of Aetaos'rau'keras

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Actually, Fateweaver is stated to be the most powerful Lord of Change, his stats just don't match it. Furthermore, your post implied that Daemon Princes (as in generic Daemon Princes) matched the Primarchs in power level - that is not true, and quoting a small subset of Daemon Princes does not make it so either.

They do not, thats why I had standard daemon princes below greater daemons, which primarchs are above.

Fateweaver is not the strongest, his page lists him as the right hand of Tzeentch because of his oracle status, as Tzeentch threw him into the well of eternity, so that he could begin to understand the strands of fate that would encompass the future.

Ya, I realized I aimed it at the wrong person, sorry 'bout that. Lexicanum lists Fateweaver as the strongest, although they have no source listed for that particular quote.

I get that using deamon prince rules in the latest ed makes deamon princes pretty weak. Unfortunately a lot of MCs are in this edition though. And yes I get that deamon primarchs are WAY up the food chain from the rules in C:CSM, but just as greater deamons are no longer individuals and lumped under one rule its relative to say that primarchs *could* also be lumped into deamon princes rules now. All that aside the original meaning I had was that no Space marine (legendary hero or otherwise) should ever exceed a deamon princes stats as it was the fact that they could over come these foes without having to be monsters themselves that made them legendary. Alternatively beef up deamon princes a little more OR give a second higher option. Or stop the problem in the first place and don't let Matt Ward write rules for special characters... lol.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Standards apply when one can notice the variables between armies. There's no true common standard

Right, and that's sort of my point.

You can't apply a standard because there isn't one.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:such commonplace with this "Space Marine Standard"

But even this is flawed. A CSM marine costs less than a regular marine, but gets twice as many close combat attacks thanks to a free close combat weapon, while they also get better leadership, and the ability to take marks. Does that mean your basic CSM is overpowered for its cost?

Or do you need to look at a unit in the context of its codex as a whole? Do you need to look at things comparing a codex to the current rules edition? The only way that you can use marines as a standard is if they're exactly the same as marines (once again, the only way to have true balance is to have the same pieces, like chess). In this case, the existence of difference itself implies imbalance without some sort of objective judge.

If the next edition is to improve ballance through out the whole game.

Then it needs to adress the inability of the core rules to cover all the in game interaction.
5th ed core rules cover standard infantry.Thats it.

A rule set that covers ALL units interaction using the resolution methods in the core rules is easier to balance.A rule set that alows finer adjustment is easier to ballance too.

So using modern game mechanics and resolution methods , we can improve the depth of the 40k game play , and use HALF the pages the current rule book has.And the reduction in complication in the rules and scalable results will make it so much easier to achive better game balance.

Nagashek wrote:[8th ed nerfed VC into the dirt. It did not touch Daemons, rebalanced DE, and brought Skaven who were meh in 7e to freaking amazing in 8th. So actually Daemons stayed as powerful as before

This brought me from lurking.

Daemons got hit really hard by the change from 7th to 8th, so don't really know what you are on about. They went from completly dominating the magic phase to simply having one.

However, I don't think that 6th will be able to bring about the same balance that 8th has truly brought about in Fantasy, simply because there isn't a single thing that GW can change that will drastically nerf GK - whereas Fantasy had the magic phase that changed the balance of Armybooks drastically.


Cheers

Lanrak wrote:
Then it needs to adress the inability of the core rules to cover all the in game interaction.
5th ed core rules cover standard infantry.Thats it.

I dunno about you, but there's a part in my rulebook that says "vehicles". Similarly, there's a part that covers "cavalry", one for "walkers", and so on.

Ailaros wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Standards apply when one can notice the variables between armies. There's no true common standard

Right, and that's sort of my point.

You can't apply a standard because there isn't one.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:such commonplace with this "Space Marine Standard"

But even this is flawed. A CSM marine costs less than a regular marine, but gets twice as many close combat attacks thanks to a free close combat weapon, while they also get better leadership, and the ability to take marks. Does that mean your basic CSM is overpowered for its cost?

Or do you need to look at a unit in the context of its codex as a whole? Do you need to look at things comparing a codex to the current rules edition? The only way that you can use marines as a standard is if they're exactly the same as marines (once again, the only way to have true balance is to have the same pieces, like chess). In this case, the existence of difference itself implies imbalance without some sort of objective judge.

You certainly need to look at the codex as a whole. I can say, "Necron firepower units are expensive, weak and short ranged", but we need to take into account that they can also manage engagement range with night fight and have unique CC abilities. I can also say, "I can make an 1850pt GK army that no possible Necron army can defeat", which is true - but that GK army would probably be at a disadvantage against its own codex or other SM lists.

But even this is flawed. A CSM marine costs less than a regular marine, but gets twice as many close combat attacks thanks to a free close combat weapon, while they also get better leadership, and the ability to take marks. Does that mean your basic CSM is overpowered for its cost?

Thank you for picking one of the easier examples.

The comparative standard tac marine is one point more. However there is a few examples one can use.

The standard marine has ASTKNF, and X ability (Combat Tactics, for the sake of lessening the diverse variables), while their sergeant is only 10 point increase, with one less leadership under the aspiring champion, and no CCW to go with the bp/bolter combo.

The Chaos marine has to pay an additional 15 points from its base costs in order to gain their aspiring champion.

The leadership bonus is worthless compared to ASTKNF, which is worth above their leadership as it prevents them from being swept up, allows for auto-rally, and it's bonus cannot be accurately matched to just an additional point of leadership.

The Space Marines gain a free to cheap unit upgrade upon reaching 10 units, though the CSM can gain 1 wargear per 5 units, though at standard costs, along with the special Wargear Icons of Chaos.

The only real advantage the CSM has on their tactical brethren is the Icons and the additional CCW, however without ASTKNF they aren't exactly well primed to escape combat intact, not to mention that combat tactics means that space marines may actually attempt to leave combat in order to continue shooting, not to mention that due to wound allocation rules the icon can be potentially sniped out of a unit, thus denying it the advantage it was given

Thus in a tactical advantage, tactical marines win out in general, due to cheaper wargear, better general rules (ASTKNF, Combat tactics), alongside better priced units, with an aspiring champion the CSM is only 5 points behind the Standard Tactical Marines, and thus it's cheaper advantage is lost because of its champion.

Thus one can conclude that the CSM unit isn't exactly cost effective in comparison to the standard.

"Necron firepower units are expensive, weak and short ranged"

I'm sorry, but what? They have a good 24" radius, cheaper than standard space marines, reanimation protocols, and gauss rule. Not counting the immortals with their Tau power weaponry, alongside the telsa and still with reanimation protocols, and space marine armor.

Or do you need to look at a unit in the context of its codex as a whole? Do you need to look at things comparing a codex to the current rules edition? The only way that you can use marines as a standard is if they're exactly the same as marines (once again, the only way to have true balance is to have the same pieces, like chess). In this case, the existence of difference itself implies imbalance without some sort of objective judge.

I have kept hearing the "Context of the codex as a whole" And I don't buy that belief at all, it's just used as an excuse for some bad pricing from what I've seen.

However the second part rings true, one does need to compare a codex to the current rules edition, tau and Eldar were wonderful back in the 4th edition, it was the 5th edition that ruined several of their major powers.

Lanrak wrote:Then it needs to adress the inability of the core rules to cover all the in game interaction.
5th ed core rules cover standard infantry.Thats it.

A rule set that covers ALL units interaction using the resolution methods in the core rules is easier to balance.A rule set that alows finer adjustment is easier to ballance too.

By this do you mean each army lists units like Space Marines Tactical Squads, Eldar Fire Dragons, Chaos Possesed etc. etc. all act uniquely in the movement phase, uniquely in shooting and uniquely in assaults?

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

But even this is flawed. A CSM marine costs less than a regular marine, but gets twice as many close combat attacks thanks to a free close combat weapon, while they also get better leadership, and the ability to take marks. Does that mean your basic CSM is overpowered for its cost?

Thank you for picking one of the easier examples.

The comparative standard tac marine is one point more. However there is a few examples one can use.

The standard marine has ASTKNF, and X ability (Combat Tactics, for the sake of lessening the diverse variables), while their sergeant is only 10 point increase, with one less leadership under the aspiring champion, and no CCW to go with the bp/bolter combo.

The Chaos marine has to pay an additional 15 points from its base costs in order to gain their aspiring champion.

The leadership bonus is worthless compared to ASTKNF, which is worth above their leadership as it prevents them from being swept up, allows for auto-rally, and it's bonus cannot be accurately matched to just an additional point of leadership.

The Space Marines gain a free to cheap unit upgrade upon reaching 10 units, though the CSM can gain 1 wargear per 5 units, though at standard costs, along with the special Wargear Icons of Chaos.

The only real advantage the CSM has on their tactical brethren is the Icons and the additional CCW, however without ASTKNF they aren't exactly well primed to escape combat intact, not to mention that combat tactics means that space marines may actually attempt to leave combat in order to continue shooting, not to mention that due to wound allocation rules the icon can be potentially sniped out of a unit, thus denying it the advantage it was given

Thus in a tactical advantage, tactical marines win out in general, due to cheaper wargear, better general rules (ASTKNF, Combat tactics), alongside better priced units, with an aspiring champion the CSM is only 5 points behind the Standard Tactical Marines, and thus it's cheaper advantage is lost because of its champion.

CSM get double meltaguns at 10 models strong. You're also grossly underestimating the power of the Marks, especially the Mark of Khorne. 3 attacks base means they don't fall over to just any schmuck, and anything strong enough to sweep them is probably strong enough to wipe them out completely anyway. How anyone can come to the conclusion that Tactical Squads are better than Chaos Space Marines boggles my mind. This also, interestingly enough, emphasizes what Ailaros has been saying: it's not a comparable standard, because it's subjective.