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 Jidmah wrote:
Orks currently have 74 datasheets available for play. Two thirds of that is ~49. Show me a single codex in the game that has ever had that many datasheets show up top tournament lists in any edition.

Do you feel that every datasheet in the codex is on the same level as the ones that had to be hard-limited, or are you missing the actual point, which was that aircraft and buggies doing great does not mean everything in the codex is doing equally great, and internal balance is still a concern?

 Jidmah wrote:
No proof, just yet another person stating their subjective opinion as absolute truth and telling everyone to complain to GW while they complain to dakka.

Statistically we're probably not likely worse off, but I think with the pace of things it gets very difficult to deal with new armies.

Take T'au -- W4/W8 suits with W2 drones that have a 4++. Previously D2 was becoming verboten, but now it might need some sunlight to deal with suits and drones. Trying to puzzle that out while still striking a balance against other armies like Custodes with W5 bikes can be difficult - especially if you're not a Dark Lance army.

We're going to be dealing with GSC, Custodes, T'au, Eldar, and Tyranids all within 3 months worth of time or so. And then we'll have CSM not long thereafter.

It's a ton of info to process.

 catbarf wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Orks currently have 74 datasheets available for play. Two thirds of that is ~49. Show me a single codex in the game that has ever had that many datasheets show up top tournament lists in any edition.

Do you feel that every datasheet in the codex is on the same level as the ones that had to be hard-limited, or are you missing the actual point, which was that aircraft and buggies doing great does not mean everything in the codex is doing equally great, and internal balance is still a concern?

Honestly I think the buggy limit is a crap rule that isn’t needed anymore with the last point adjustment. I don’t see people taking more then 3 squigbuggies anymore and/or 3 scrapjets On the current meta. Without dual subfaction lists the need for 2 detachments has waned. Plus orks have fallen out of competitive placings.

Best edition was 7th Ed index after the first faq to nerf greyknights and guard.. the rules bloat was minimal and lots of armies placed… it was a lot of Allies though which people didn’t like.. 9th feels like an extension of 8th with lots of rules bloat…to sell books.

 auticus wrote:
5th edition probably had the best core rules IMO but the balance was just as jacked. It was the edition of grey.

I think people need to recall that the community had a large desire to self regulate during that period. Special characters almost never saw tables. There were lots of missions and other changes - especially within ITC.

5th was not unfettered like 9th has been.


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gungo wrote:
Honestly I think the buggy limit is a crap rule that isn’t needed anymore with the last point adjustment. I don’t see people taking more then 3 squigbuggies anymore and/or 3 scrapjets On the current meta. Without dual subfaction lists the need for 2 detachments has waned. Plus orks have fallen out of competitive placings.

DE fell out pretty hard, too. Figuring out how the new armies operate is going to take a couple weeks. Though I am not sure what level of headwind is involved with Custodes and T'au yet.

DE is still very strong the only real change from lvo was the loss of dual subfaction lists which wasn’t a huge deal.

The biggest hit to DE was the chapter approved point adjustments to custodes was horrendously bad. Nerf custodes/tau and DE and Tyranids are back on top.

I think people need to recall that the community had a large desire to self regulate during that period. Special characters almost never saw tables. There were lots of missions and other changes - especially within ITC.

5th was not unfettered like 9th has been.

To a degree yeah. I definitely agree from 6th on that it started to be more and more masters of the universe style games with huge special characters slamming against each other and more and more take whatever you want because thats whats FUNNNNN.

And I guess to be fair for a lot of people that is whats fun.

But that comes at the cost of the gameplay itself.

Sigmar is all about that philosophy as well.

And I think that 4th edition after the chapter approved and trial assault rules were initiated was pretty well balanced.

 Jidmah wrote:

Orks currently have 74 datasheets available for play. Two thirds of that is ~49. Show me a single codex in the game that has ever had that many datasheets show up top tournament lists in any edition.

In fairness, a lot of those 49 were ones and twos that showed up in some random list and never again. Its like the lunatic Aussie Ork player who keeps winning with random builds including killakanz. Yeah it happens but its more of an exception rather than the rule

Some of those units likewise are pre-reqs as well. Boyz/Grotz for example are usually only taken as a tax. The beast snaggas I still don't see a use for beyond tax and since you are taking the Kilrig you might as well take the extra 20pt beast snaggas over Boyz so you can use the transport capacity. Hell, i've seen units that you and I both agree are trash tier being played in tournaments and winning somehow.

I'll gladly admit mind you that competitively this is the best codex we have had since 4th edition.

gungo wrote:

Best edition was 7th Ed index after the first faq to nerf greyknights and guard.. the rules bloat was minimal and lots of armies placed… it was a lot of Allies though which people didn’t like.. 9th feels like an extension of 8th with lots of rules bloat…to sell books.

7th didn't have index points, 8th edition had the index points costs, 7th edition was the worst edition in my opinion EVER.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

DE fell out pretty hard, too. Figuring out how the new armies operate is going to take a couple weeks. Though I am not sure what level of headwind is involved with Custodes and T'au yet.

No...no they didn't. DE had 2 of the top 8 placings at LVO. They owned 30% of the top 10 and 20% of the top 20. Overall they owned 19% of the top 100. A faction which "fell out pretty hard" does not finish with a 62% win rate and own that many top spots at the biggest event in the community.

9th ork dex had a competitive spike, 8th ork dex looking back was competitive for longer I think.

gungo wrote:
DE is still very strong the only real change from lvo was the loss of dual subfaction lists which wasn’t a huge deal.

The biggest hit to DE was the chapter approved point adjustments to custodes was horrendously bad. Nerf custodes/tau and DE and Tyranids are back on top.

Preliminary and limited data, but -- 1/1 to 2/11 there were 263 unique DE players. 40 of those played this past weekend. Of those 20 stuck with DE ( for that weekend anyway ).

Four switched to T'au and all did worse than their prior records with DE. Five when to Custodes and 4 out of 5 did better.

This chart below shows how they ( the ones who stayed loyal to DE ) did with DE from 1/1 to 2/11 as compared to how they did this past weekend. Most notably the ones who did worse attended Beachhead where competition was stiffer.





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SemperMortis wrote:
No...no they didn't. DE had 2 of the top 8 placings at LVO. They owned 30% of the top 10 and 20% of the top 20. Overall they owned 19% of the top 100. A faction which "fell out pretty hard" does not finish with a 62% win rate and own that many top spots at the biggest event in the community.

I'm referencing this past weekend. LVO is last season and T'au codex wasn't active yet as well as the dataslate.

SemperMortis wrote:
No...no they didn't. DE had 2 of the top 8 placings at LVO. They owned 30% of the top 10 and 20% of the top 20. Overall they owned 19% of the top 100. A faction which "fell out pretty hard" does not finish with a 62% win rate and own that many top spots at the biggest event in the community.

Edit - Ninjaed by Daed.
Post still has info though.

He means in the last week. DE Win percent over the weekend tournaments fell back to 53%.
By contrast Custodes 63%, Tyranids 62%, Tau 60%. (FWIW, Orks down to just 48%)

The loss of 2 detachments (vital for getting DT on Cronos - without it they are kind of just fat low damage bully sponges), plus the loss of some buffs to Talos and Cronos due to the removal of core sort of put a line under Thicc City.

Nothing stops you running say 170 Wracks - or indeed a more balanced DE list. But the LVO was then and this is now.

I'll gladly give it a few weeks to balance out. But I don't see a faction like DE doing that much worse. The supreme irony being that they dropped to a 53% win rate which is still great.

 oni wrote:
When are people going to wake the feth up and realize that the issue is the mission design.

A particular faction and/or specific army build will keep winning because the game has only one mission, only one way to play. There is nothing that changes from one game to the next. It's rinse and repeat each and every time.

There is nothing to push a player to use their army in a different way from game to game.

For anything to change... The meta must change... This places the onus on each new book to enact change throughout the whole environment. Warhammer Tourney-K requires a significant power escalation from book to book to force this change on the play environment lest the whole thing become stale. Historically, this was something the missions / mission design handled. Not any more. No thanks to Mike Brandt.

yeah, the mission design of 9th is terrible, everything is bland with no variety. We need missions that push truly different army composition.

SemperMortis wrote:
I'll gladly give it a few weeks to balance out. But I don't see a faction like DE doing that much worse. The supreme irony being that they dropped to a 53% win rate which is still great.

Yea they still have teeth and it will be interesting to see how others fare or if they just straight switch out armies instead.

 oni wrote:
When are people going to wake the feth up and realize that the issue is the mission design.

Amen. I can't say this enough myself.

The mission design, intentionally or not, also engenders a competitive outlook to matched play, which reinforces people's competitive tendencies rather than tempering them.

What do I mean? The missions are setup -- with their symmetrical win conditions, symmetrical and fixed layout of objective markers, and a min-maxing choose your own secondary objectives -- to give the pretense of a fair and level playfield field where players are told they will win or lose through no contribution of the mission parameters. Why do tournament maps have symmetrical terrain layouts? Same thinking at work.

And this thinking spills over into the entre swath of "matched play" and shapes the communities attitude.

-------------------------------------------------

The other factor is, I truly believe, the streamlining and simplification of the core rules. Simplification of morale, removal of vehicles, eliminations of restrictions for firing and target selections, etc. all reduce the avenues for counter-play and generalship that previously created openings for different units to play an impactful role on the battlefield. This in turn makes the game even more of a numbers game than it already was. If there is no avenue for counte rplay, all I can do is hope that I can statistically put out more fire than you and roll well enough to get ahead.

---------------------------------------------------

Because of the above, it's entirely possible than a modest portion of perceived external imbalances result from the above issues magnifying whatever inherent imbalances there might be in the list. DE probably wouldn't have an amazing win rate at the current matched play scenarios if they were forced to occasionally play mission types they weren't well-suited for.

 Mezmorki wrote:
DE probably wouldn't have an amazing win rate at the current matched play scenarios if they were forced to occasionally play mission types they weren't well-suited for.

The prevalent issue here is they're able to be well suited for anything.

Regards mission formats, I'd hasten to add that what we have now is the natural next step of the ITC which is was largely praised as more balanced and competitive than GW maelstrom missions which are nearer what you're intending. To the point that most of the US didn't know how to or want to play maelstrom.

I don't think you'd get any real buy in from competitive players for any game mode that isn't a mathematical exercise, they don't like to have uncertainty.

Not gonna lie, this isn't THAT bad. We don't have any IH Dread Lists, or completely game breaking Knight lists to worry about. Granted, I play custodes, but I haven't been completely shot off the table turn 1 in this edition YET.

8th was a pretty terrible edition, so yeah, I think this is kinda silly. 9th has it's obvious flaws, however nothing as bad as a turn 1 pick up my models off the board and shake a hand, then go home.

These are some of the most interactive missions 40K has ever had. People like interaction, which is more akin to Maelstrom than other mission types. Not who is on the hill on the last turn or the kill points.

DE wouldn't have had an amazing win rate if it weren't for the very complex books where the power of an army isn't necessarily derived from over/undertuned points.

The mission design and competitive mindset is self-reinforcing. That's the issue.

ITC-like competitive missions have become the defacto missions for matched play, which now has subsumed casual pick up games with its competitive approach.

Ironically, people are praising ITC missions for being more balance and competitive and simultaneously complaining that the game itself and armies are notable out of balance - seemingly without noticing the possible correlation (and causation) between the two.

People look at ITC-style missions and say "oohhh, it's more balanced" .... but balanced for what? It may be balanced within the context of mutually equal opportunity (in theory) over a single game. But when played over many games, the mission set absolutely favors certain types of armies (which is what we see in the data, no?).

What do people want? Do you want balance within a single match? Or do you want balance and things to equal out over the entire run of playing an army? That's the question people aren't asking. I think we're collectively chasing the former - and it's an impossible goal. We should be focused on the latter.

EDIT: FWIW - I never like Maelstrom missions either. They solved a perceived problem with a solution most people didn't like.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The mission design and competitive mindset is self-reinforcing. That's the issue.

ITC-like competitive missions have become the defacto missions for matched play, which now has subsumed casual pick up games with its competitive approach.

Ironically, people are praising ITC missions for being more balance and competitive and simultaneously complaining that the game itself and armies are notable out of balance - seemingly without noticing the possible correlation (and causation) between the two.

People look at ITC-style missions and say "oohhh, it's more balanced" .... but balanced for what? It may be balanced within the context of mutually equal opportunity (in theory) over a single game. But when played over many games, the mission set absolutely favors certain types of armies (which is what we see in the data, no?).

What do people want? Do you want balance within a single match? Or do you want balance and things to equal out over the entire run of playing an army? That's the question people aren't asking. I think we're collectively chasing the former - and it's an impossible goal. We should be focused on the latter.

What's the alternative, exactly, though? Asymmetrical win conditions?

I'd argue that to be a good game, you're going to want to chase the former.

If I am hearing you right your rub is that we don't have the 6th / 7th style missions where people would lose invulnerable saves or units with FLY would get impacted in some fashion, which means certain units wouldn't be quite so viable all of the time.

We have some of that in the mission that prevents scouting, but leaning to heavily into mission design like that would only make armies avoid those units and DE would still come out on top, I think.

If 40K were to have a sideboard then I think such a dynamic might be more viable.

Hecaton wrote:

What's the alternative, exactly, though? Asymmetrical win conditions?

I'd argue that to be a good game, you're going to want to chase the former.

missions that arent just "stand on objectives as long as possible with obsec units"

Use the actions framework to force list variety.
Have a mission where you need to unearth relics by clearing rubble (an action) with vehicles or monsters for example
Have a mission where a character has to retrieve data from an objective by doing an action on it.
Have missions with multiple steps. Step 1 : identify what objective contains an STC, Step 2 : retrieve the STC.

I don't know, right now , the missions could very well just be completely bypassed for :

4pts for hold 1
4pts for hold 2
4pts for hold more

50pts for the secondaries you built your list to take

its boring, bland and makes games super repetitive and predictable.

Hecaton wrote:

What's the alternative, exactly, though? Asymmetrical win conditions?

Yes - at least some of the time. But there are other missions parameters to consider as well.

Let me lay down a few a different levers that could be used:

Victory Timing. People used to complain about all the missions being based on who crawled out from behind cover to sit on the objective on last turn of the game. The rest of the game was taking pot-shots at each from across the map, hugging cover, etc. Totally fair criticisms, and it incentive certain types of lists. Now, most of the missions primary objectives are all about sitting in circles around the objective points for as many turns as you can. This likewise incentivizes certain types of lists.

Ideally - a mission set would include some missions with end game scoring, and some missions with progressive scoring. Or how about threshold scoring where you instantly win after X-feat is completed Y-times? The timing of victory and scoring affects the pacing and tempo of the mission and different armies are going be better or worse at certain ones.

Objective Type Primary objectives right now are all just about controlling points. Players pick min-maxed secondary objectives. The 'mission' secondary objectives are generally ignored. It's all the same feat you're asked to do in every mission. But it wasn't always this way. What about having to breach and secure bunkers? What about having to infiltrate off your opponent's table edge? What about centralized objectives (i.e. artifact hunting) where you need to secure an object and hold it till the end? What about just attaching the enemy in a straight up shoot-out?

Ideally - a mission set would have a range of actual objective tasks players are trying to accomplish. Some armies will be better suited than others at any specific tasks, but the intent is to provide a variety, which evens out in the end.

Asymmetry Yes - there should be missions setup with distinct attacking and defending sides, including asymmetric deployment zones. There should be ambush missions, and bunker assault missions, and breakthrough missions, and sabotage missions. And yes - there should also be missions are that are symmetrical still. Again, this is going to help and hurt different factions at an individual mission level - but the aim is for it to even out over playing many different types of missions.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

What can also be done is to provide some better structure around how the missions are setup and selected.

For example, what if prior to a match players randomly determined 3 possible missions, and each vetoed one. You could have players bid CP's for the right to pick sides/deployment zones (so, for example an army that struggled to attack in certain missions could bid CP's for the right to remain on defense). Give players the tools to customize mission parameters to better balance the scenario before you even start pushing models around.

Hmmm. Mixed views really.

A lot of 40k's historic missions have been kind of terrible. Generally devolving into "just shoot each other for 3-4 turns and whoever's come off better just wanders over and grabs the objectives."

I mean I think there could be more variety maybe - but I do think scoring should be progressive, and have a board presence dimension to discourage castling up in the corner nuking anyone trying to jog across the table.

Scenarios which went say "Necron Radiation, all vehicles have -6M" would mess with certain lists, but I'm not sure they'd make the game much more fun. Depends on what you want I guess.

I agree with OP, AdMech horde was stronger relative to the field at the time than Broviathan was relative to its field.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The mission design and competitive mindset is self-reinforcing. That's the issue.

ITC-like competitive missions have become the defacto missions for matched play, which now has subsumed casual pick up games with its competitive approach.

Ironically, people are praising ITC missions for being more balance and competitive and simultaneously complaining that the game itself and armies are notable out of balance - seemingly without noticing the possible correlation (and causation) between the two.

People look at ITC-style missions and say "oohhh, it's more balanced" .... but balanced for what? It may be balanced within the context of mutually equal opportunity (in theory) over a single game. But when played over many games, the mission set absolutely favors certain types of armies (which is what we see in the data, no?).

Don't pretend that certain types of armies don't do better in the Maelstrom mission set or any of the 4th edition asymmetric mission sets.

ITC did help balance 40k by nerfing some OP things in 7th and making the missions harder to win in 8th for certain OP lists. Space Marines did ITC missions really well and the ITC missions never had time to adapt and become balanced for Space Marines, but again, let's not forget Iron Hands were still stupidly OP in any other game mode. Yes, you should play the mission, but it never hurts to deal tonnes of damage, be ultra-resilient and/or fast.

What do people want? Do you want balance within a single match? Or do you want balance and things to equal out over the entire run of playing an army? That's the question people aren't asking. I think we're collectively chasing the former - and it's an impossible goal. We should be focused on the latter.

I want the former, I don't see how yesterday's game against Mike changes today's game against Jim and it's something we are constantly discussing here on Dakka and have been since 8th edition at least with the ITC haters vs the ITC fanboys.

The missions are setup -- with their symmetrical win conditions, symmetrical and fixed layout of objective markers, and a min-maxing choose your own secondary objectives -- to give the pretense of a fair and level playfield field where players are told they will win or lose through no contribution of the mission parameters. Why do tournament maps have symmetrical terrain layouts? Same thinking at work.

That's ridiculous, the win conditions are not symmetrical since players choose their own secondaries, players don't even have access to the same secondaries. It is explicitly an unlevel playing field because it is meant to skew the field in favour of lists that don't skew with secondaries that punish spamming vehicles, titanic units, characters or hordes of infantry.

Symmetrical terrain means you don't have to switch sides, it's just easier to do things that way. It is unfair because it leaves the defender at a disadvantage, but if you didn't have symmetrical terrain and objectives then the disadvantage of the attacker could be huge. It's a lot harder to make a fair asymmetrical table than an almost fair symmetrical table.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
If I am hearing you right your rub is that we don't have the 6th / 7th style missions where people would lose invulnerable saves or units with FLY would get impacted in some fashion, which means certain units wouldn't be quite so viable all of the time.

We have some of that in the mission that prevents scouting, but leaning to heavily into mission design like that would only make armies avoid those units and DE would still come out on top, I think.

If 40K were to have a sideboard then I think such a dynamic might be more viable.

I'll be done with my sideboard mission set tomorrow, it's very inspired by 4th edition missions, I hate it.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Victory Timing. People used to complain about all the missions being based on who crawled out from behind cover to sit on the objective on last turn of the game. The rest of the game was taking pot-shots at each from across the map, hugging cover, etc. Totally fair criticisms, and it incentive certain types of lists. Now, most of the missions primary objectives are all about sitting in circles around the objective points for as many turns as you can. This likewise incentivizes certain types of lists.

Lists that are built for fighting over objectives over the course of the game are just a lot more fun to play with and against than lists that are meant to kill the enemy bestest and then hop on objectives by the end of the game.

Symmetrical games may be boring, but asymmetrical ones are infuriating if there wasn't a significant degree of planning and compromise from both parties, meaning they are crap for pick up games.

And 9th edition does have asymmetrical missions.

Tyel wrote:
Hmmm. Mixed views really.

A lot of 40k's historic missions have been kind of terrible. Generally devolving into "just shoot each other for 3-4 turns and whoever's come off better just wanders over and grabs the objectives.

5th editions missions, despite the 5th ed core rules generally being quite good, were a total low point IMHO. Control objective markers at the end game, capture marker in opponent's territory, or annihilation.

6th + 7th basic missions weren't much better.

3rd + 4th edition missions were good - particularly if you used the full range of missions types as part of your pool of missions. There was a set of 5-6 standard missions, but also battle missions, breakthrough missions, and raid missions. Many had some fun special rules attached to how they worked.

4th in particular did a good job of balancing VP's derived from killing units against VPs derived from achieving the mission objectives.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

What's the alternative, exactly, though? Asymmetrical win conditions?

I'd argue that to be a good game, you're going to want to chase the former.

missions that arent just "stand on objectives as long as possible with obsec units"

Use the actions framework to force list variety.
Have a mission where you need to unearth relics by clearing rubble (an action) with vehicles or monsters for example
Have a mission where a character has to retrieve data from an objective by doing an action on it.
Have missions with multiple steps. Step 1 : identify what objective contains an STC, Step 2 : retrieve the STC.

I don't know, right now , the missions could very well just be completely bypassed for :

4pts for hold 1
4pts for hold 2
4pts for hold more

50pts for the secondaries you built your list to take

its boring, bland and makes games super repetitive and predictable.

Those are good ideas. Positive reinforcement is probably better than negative reinforcement to get players to bring a wider variety of units, but...

I am not sure they really work.

In a mission where monsters have to action the opponent that goes first or has the most flexible removal will prevent you from achieving the mission, some armies come across disposable characters more easily, etc. The third example pretty much exists.

If the goal is to get variety into lists - it already exists. You rarely see the same list even when Thicc City was at it's peak.

 Mezmorki wrote:

The other factor is, I truly believe, the streamlining and simplification of the core rules. Simplification of morale, removal of vehicles, eliminations of restrictions for firing and target selections, etc. all reduce the avenues for counter-play and generalship that previously created openings for different units to play an impactful role on the battlefield. This in turn makes the game even more of a numbers game than it already was. If there is no avenue for counte rplay, all I can do is hope that I can statistically put out more fire than you and roll well enough to get ahead.

Exactly this, the dumbing down of gameplay until only two battlefield roles remain: be good at standing in circles or be good at removing things from circles.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Ideally - a mission set would include some missions with end game scoring, and some missions with progressive scoring.

Exists:

Or how about threshold scoring where you instantly win after X-feat is completed Y-times?

Favors run-away wins.

Objective Type Primary objectives right now are all just about controlling points.

Not sure I understand the skepticism about objectives involving points. Anything you do is going to be somewhere on the battlefield whether it is an arbitrary objective or not.

Players pick min-maxed secondary objectives. The 'mission' secondary objectives are generally ignored. It's all the same feat you're asked to do in every mission. But it wasn't always this way. What about having to breach and secure bunkers? What about having to infiltrate off your opponent's table edge? What about centralized objectives (i.e. artifact hunting) where you need to secure an object and hold it till the end? What about just attaching the enemy in a straight up shoot-out?

It sounds like you might not be familiar with the recent CA missions. There's no more mission secondaries as it were. We used to have Relic Hunter as a mission and it was awful, because whomever got there first basically won.

Assymetrical stuff is fine...if both players play the game twice and switch sides. They're otherwise hugely impractical for tournaments. What if you're just a better bunker holding army and you win that roll off?

Ideally - a mission set would have a range of actual objective tasks players are trying to accomplish. Some armies will be better suited than others at any specific tasks, but the intent is to provide a variety, which evens out in the end.

Secondary missions do this fairly well and they're being tweaked often.

For example, what if prior to a match players randomly determined 3 possible missions, and each vetoed one. You could have players bid CP's for the right to pick sides/deployment zones (so, for example an army that struggled to attack in certain missions could bid CP's for the right to remain on defense). Give players the tools to customize mission parameters to better balance the scenario before you even start pushing models around.

CP bid is a good idea, but then armies like DE start with 12 almost all the time.