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 EnTyme wrote:
Every AoS balance thread ends up showcasing the same arguments by the same people. I feel like it should be noted that both auticus and NinthMusketeer have created their own points systems. Because of this, they are both very knowledgeable when it comes to balance, but they also have an inherent bias. Listen to wait they have to say, but keep this in mind. They have a tendency to make hyperbolic statements about the state of the game.

I think it's a valid criticism to say I can be hyperbolic. When I focus on the imbalances it an come across that my opinion is much worse than it actually is because I fail to mention the stuff that I feel IS balanced. It's something I'm still working on getting better about.

At any rate I didn't create my own points system, I do the points for battalions in PPC but the system isn't mine. All the units are done by Attilla, who started PPC. It still ties into where me and Auticus are that though; because we have analyzed points across all the different armies in detail, crunched numbers, etc we have a more 'zoomed in' view. This is coupled with a lot of game experience, going back to well before the GHB. This means where an inexperienced player would look at a given game and see a close game with player A winning over player B due to dice and/or skill, we could see that they both played at the same level and that player A just had a bit better of a list. We've also both played a good amount of games using our preferred systems and using GHB, so we've seen things from both sides first-hand. On the other hand, being so zoomed in easily leads to imbalances seeming bigger than they really are so even if a statement we make is correct it can be, as you said, hyperbolic.

Also ditto on Open War cards being sweet. I like how you can scale how crazy you want your game to be by using just objective/deployment, that plus a twist, adding ruses on top of that, etc.

I find that the game is balanced depending on what your group is like, although that is dependent on most games.

Open war cards make the game far more interesting or although AOS has the advantage of focusing on missions, so if you have a worse army than your opponent, I try and focus on objectives and trying to achieve as many points as possible, before I am tabled.



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I find that the game is balanced depending on what your group is like, although that is dependent on most games.

Open war cards make the game far more interesting or although AOS has the advantage of focusing on missions, so if you have a worse army than your opponent, I try and focus on objectives and trying to achieve as many points as possible, before I am tabled.

 EnTyme wrote:
I can't think of a single wargame where I could take only the models I find cool and expect to go toe-to-toe with a tournament list. That's a pretty extreme example. Of course AoS has some serious balance issues, but it's no where near as bad as you and Ninth claim it to be. There are extremes on both ends of the power spectrum, but any mid-tier list can compete with most top-tier armies and have a decent chance of playing a close game. The game has a few very strong outliers (Skryre Fyre and Tzeentch being two of the best examples), but for the most part, games are competitive.

have you tried WoK? I have found it to be very much "bring what you like" and have no problem matching with folks of any build.

 thekingofkings wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
I can't think of a single wargame where I could take only the models I find cool and expect to go toe-to-toe with a tournament list. That's a pretty extreme example. Of course AoS has some serious balance issues, but it's no where near as bad as you and Ninth claim it to be. There are extremes on both ends of the power spectrum, but any mid-tier list can compete with most top-tier armies and have a decent chance of playing a close game. The game has a few very strong outliers (Skryre Fyre and Tzeentch being two of the best examples), but for the most part, games are competitive.

have you tried WoK? I have found it to be very much "bring what you like" and have no problem matching with folks of any build.

While I think WoK is amazing lets not pretend it doesn't have the same problem. Especially not in a competitive environment. If you could always choose your objectives sure but the use a different one per game in a tournament is rough on some lists (looking at goritsi mostly). Also Teknes has some dudes, the initial rank 1 specialists are terrible. So was 1/2 of Shael-han's and Nasiers were spectacular for all ranks. Haven't played with the updated Fan girls from Shael-han but they used to be literally pointless. But overall it's a hell of a balanced game. Basically 2 steps ahead of anything else but thats over 5 factions with way, way less units than your standard newer battletome.

For the record regardless of the above WoK is my FAVORITE game.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
I can't think of a single wargame where I could take only the models I find cool and expect to go toe-to-toe with a tournament list. That's a pretty extreme example. Of course AoS has some serious balance issues, but it's no where near as bad as you and Ninth claim it to be. There are extremes on both ends of the power spectrum, but any mid-tier list can compete with most top-tier armies and have a decent chance of playing a close game. The game has a few very strong outliers (Skryre Fyre and Tzeentch being two of the best examples), but for the most part, games are competitive.

have you tried WoK? I have found it to be very much "bring what you like" and have no problem matching with folks of any build.

While I think WoK is amazing lets not pretend it doesn't have the same problem. Especially not in a competitive environment. If you could always choose your objectives sure but the use a different one per game in a tournament is rough on some lists (looking at goritsi mostly). Also Teknes has some dudes, the initial rank 1 specialists are terrible. So was 1/2 of Shael-han's and Nasiers were spectacular for all ranks. Haven't played with the updated Fan girls from Shael-han but they used to be literally pointless. But overall it's a hell of a balanced game. Basically 2 steps ahead of anything else but thats over 5 factions with way, way less units than your standard newer battletome.

For the record regardless of the above WoK is my FAVORITE game.

We definately have completely different opinions of those Teknes specialists, I usually have at least 1 zalaak in my force. I have a partiality for the galvanic defender. Every tourney I have played in (3 so far) I have always been allowed to choose my objectives.

Your tournaments allow you to choose the same objective twice? As that's what I was referring to. However matched play is a but better because you essentially have side boards so you can bring stuff for that one style of enemy list or that one different objective. Overall still the best game I've played to date and one of the most solid tournament games I've run into. Esel0ecially with the new stuff.

If AoS can get to the same spot it'd be amazing. That said aos is still head and shoulders variety wise for balance amongst the most common tournament miniature games.

in my experience AOS is completely off balance.
But consider this when fidling and discussing fair pts values:
Try to take chess, assign values to each peace.
Let people build there list.
Try to have a balanced game (better then it was when you said that both players had the same thing to start with).

There are point values in chess.
Pawns = 1 pt
Knights and Bishops = 3 pts
Rooks = 5 pts
Queens = 9 pts
Kings have no points

Therefore a typical chess spread is 39 points + king.

If chess had open piece selection up to 39 points, you'd never see a typical chess spread again.

Wouldn't 39 pawns and one King win against any other "army"?

 Xyxel wrote:
Wouldn't 39 pawns and one King win against any other "army"?

Depends on whether or not you need to spend reinforcement point to convert one to a queen.


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 thekingofkings wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
I can't think of a single wargame where I could take only the models I find cool and expect to go toe-to-toe with a tournament list. That's a pretty extreme example. Of course AoS has some serious balance issues, but it's no where near as bad as you and Ninth claim it to be. There are extremes on both ends of the power spectrum, but any mid-tier list can compete with most top-tier armies and have a decent chance of playing a close game. The game has a few very strong outliers (Skryre Fyre and Tzeentch being two of the best examples), but for the most part, games are competitive.

have you tried WoK? I have found it to be very much "bring what you like" and have no problem matching with folks of any build.

Can't say that I have (considering I can't even figure out what WoK is the initialization of).

@Entyme

Wrath of Kings. It's a skirmish/battle game (generally 25-50 models per side at full battle size). Made by CMoN.

TY. I'll look into it.

What about balanced compared to regular fantasy? Was regular fantasy so bad they really did need to nuke it or was that just because they wanted a fresh slate?

 Hulksmash wrote:
@Entyme

Wrath of Kings. It's a skirmish/battle game (generally 25-50 models per side at full battle size). Made by CMoN.

I'll duck in here to second Wrath of Kings as a potential alternate game. It's got a simple but complex ruleset, cool factions, interesting fluff, and plays well at each of the different "levels" of engagement (Patrol, Skirmish, Battle, and Modified Skirmish). Like Hulksmash said, I've found that I can basically take anything in a list for my faction (Shael Han) and find a use for it during the game.

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
What about balanced compared to regular fantasy? Was regular fantasy so bad they really did need to nuke it or was that just because they wanted a fresh slate?

I think GW thinking AoS was a good idea was more due to how far Kirby had their head up their own ass. I seriously doubt the current GW would have nuked the Fantasy setting the way they did. Keep in mind that the only reason AoS has balance at all is because it performed so abysmally at launch, from all indications it wasn't originally in the plan.

To me AOS is close to any GW game in terms of balance if you're coming at it from a powergaming perspective. There are a few armies you'd always take, most middle tier armies you'd still likely avoid in a competitive environment, and a few stinkers you'd never bother with even in a casual game.

I feel its on par with what WHFB used to balance-wise.

No one knows for sure why AOS came to be, though it is widely suspected it was due to IP protection and the fact that WHFB was low fantasy and had a bunch of 3rd party model producers that people were buying from instead of their (overpriced) models from GW.

Seems the biggest killer of 8th was the combination of initially being very geared to much larger units than before while selling fewer per box at high prices. This combined with long droughts of no new army books put it in a real spiral.

It actually got back to a rather elite friendly landscape by the end after books finally came out but the damage was done.

A shame too as the End Times actually got a lot of people involved again. I think if the current people were in place we might have got more of a huge Old World post apocalyptic shakeup (Ie 40k galaxy split etc) than the hard reboot.

I think aos is pretty well balanced in terms of the abilities of the various factions. Stormcast, Khorne, nurgle, tzeentch, Kharadron Overlords, mixed chaos, mixed order, bonesplittas, Seraphon and Wanderers are all capable of winning tournaments. We will have to see where death and daughters of Khaine fit in.
The problem is that with most of those lists there are one or two builds that are exceptionally strong.
There balance changes that GW is doing seem to be helping. Many of the most obviously broken builds, like the stormcasts vanguard wing are being nerfed. It is only really tzeentch that stands out now.

For the average player it is the variance between units in a battletome that is a problem. Hopefully future points adjustments will help with that.