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 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

I hope not. As I think balance can't be reached without losing a lot of things I like in the games GW makes. Fluff, options for models and units, variation in rules, things that really make armies different. With more balance the game would become too serious for me, I play for the beer & pretzels not for the tournament style. GW creates hype, creates money with different armies/units being 'good' in the game, which we would loose with balance.

No offense meant, not directed at OP specifically, but why are people playing a game they don't like. You can't say you like/love 40k then complain about imbalance, because that is what 40K makes the game it is. Offcourse you can give your opinion about the game you're playing, I don't agree with a general 'If you don't like it, don't play it' sentiment. But... since it's existence 40K is not balanced, so 'demanding' it should be gets kinda old.

I disagree that 40k has never been balanced. As someone playing 40k 4th edition RIGHT NOW, in the current era, with the Chaos 3.5 dex against my Imperial Guard 3.5 and with my Aeldari against the 4e Ork book, things are way better than playing Orks into Aeldari or IG into Chaos likely will be after their book drops.

 Blackie wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.

There's no such thing as wrong armies. I believe it's a matter of wrong lists instead.

My armies orks and firstborn SW and played lots of times against drukhari and now tyranids and harlequins. Those armies are clearly better but I won several games against them without even playing tournament winning lists. With the exception of maybe a couple of armies, anyone can win against the top armies, even stomping them pretty hard. Just not against the top lists. Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face. And if I were a tournament player I'd either tailor against the top tiers or field a total anti meta list.

Slipspace wrote:

There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.

For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.

Yes, I do blame the players since I disagree with what's a lot of players think these days. I don't like 2000 points games as the standard format for example and would love 1500 points ones. Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended. I also blame the players who want to play competitively without putting the required effort and resources in it and complaining if they can't keep up, and I blame GW for encouraging competitive gaming so much.

When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff. The ork codex freaked out the community at some point but it was never OP in the first place, simply people needed to adapt and a very few things (that was very unlikely to see in casual games) needed their correction.

I agree with this. And I think it's possible to blame the players (or let's say the competitive minded players) if they experience a bad situation over and over because other wargaming communities can handle imbalances pretty well without having entire forums dedicated to whining about imbalance. Take Oathmark for example, it's a pretty new Rank and File game with pretty loose army building and ally rules. Players found out that elves often seem overcosted, artillery is rather powerful as well as some monsters. What the community does is giving players hints how to work around these problems and stay away from breaking the game tournament style.
Meanwhile in 40K/ dakka the "tactics threads" tend to tell you which units are "unplayable" and the advise more often than not goes along the lines of "don't take that, instead get this and that". I think it would be much more helpful to give hints or scenarios which can improve bad codizes. Or actual tactics. I often find myself playing the game and realizing that what people write on Dakka doesn't translate at all to the actual 40K game (like: just shoot everything, movement is useless in 9th, Codex X is unplayable, the game plays itself yaddayadda).
We play wargames to throw some dice and show our painted models, rules are just a tool and it's part of the hobby to adjust them according to our needs, something that in my experience needs to be done in every wargame (I've played 40K, lotr, War of the ring, oathmark, ST Attack Wing, Stargrave and One page rules).

Deadnight wrote:

 aphyon wrote:


Sorry not true at all.

our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.

'At all' covers an awful lot of ground I fear.

I will politely disagree with this bit aphyon from my personal experiences but agree with everything else you said. For what its worth I'm glad your experiences differed from mine - towards the end of fourth that csm codex has basically ruined the edition for a lot of us.

May I ask what lists were used in your games above? I remember an appalling match up from that era, especially the dual Nike lords, 3x3 obliterators, 3x5 tank hunting havoks with autocannons (24 bs4 pseudo-s8 attacks every turn did a lot to blunt our skimmers, in addition to everything else) and an indirect firing basilisk and 2 infiltrating csm squads for added oomph.

Well my experience may be anecdotal but it does come from over 20 years of playing 40K very actively from 3rd edition up until 8th (when we went back to 5th although we did skip over 6th after testing it out the first month). When i say actively i mean we game every weekend for 12+ hours, we obviously play more than just 40K now but it used to be the main game aside from battletech for the first decade or so from 2002 onwards. Having said that we tend to favor flavor over raw power in our games. the armies should feel like they should be in the 40K universe.


i also note i agree the 4th ed CSM codex was garbage.

As for the list our IW player runs at 2k, it is the same one he has had basically since 3rd ed.

.warsmith
.X4 las/plas squads
.3X3 obliterators
.X3 las/heavy bolter predators fully upgraded with demonic and parasitic gifts
.X1 basilisk


When he fought the tau
i will try and remember the other list as it was not mine-

.commander ra'alai
,X2 full fire warrior teams in devilfish
.hazard suit
,X2 stealth suit squads
.a couple tetras
.X2 hammerheads
.broadside team of 3



Other examples

3rd ed armored company VS 3.5 iron warriors




3rd ed armored company VS 4th ed tau-



7th ed mechanicus VS 4th ed tau-



4th ed tau VS 5th ed dark eldar-



3.5 chaos VS 4th ed tyranids-



Massive (like 7K) game 3.5 chaos VS 5th ed DIY marines-

Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended.

They didn't have to. From what I have seen posted by other people 2000pts or 1999+1 is a format people have been playing for multiple editions. On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts. the loyalist knights won't work, maybe the chaos ones do, because they seem to support a warhound list. But stuff like custodes or GK just lack the super point efficient eldar or tyranid style unit to be playable.
And people don't have to refuse anything. They play on the boards that their stores have or their clubs have. And does have limited space there won't be any 8x8 boards to play. Not to mention the fact that such bigger tables promote armies with skimmers transports, flyers etc Armies which already ignore speed and table size already.

There's no such thing as wrong armies.

I would like you to go back in time, and tell a GK player or even in 9th a pre codex GK player that there are no bad armies. That his army can beat any army, it doesn't have to use a tournament build, as long as it doesn't face those top build played by evil people. Specialy as builds , and I guess people, can become evil over night, just with something like GW puting out a codex which turns intercessors from a luckluster and bad unit options to one of the 3 corner stones of marine lists under 2.0.

Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face.

What wierd point of view. 2000pts is a strange point game, but the way you describe how someone would have to prep for a playing the game, if your way of playing was the way the game is played, people would have to own multiple thousands of points in an army, and probably even multiple armies just in case even having 3-4k pts in an army doesn't let someone tailor. Plus how the tailoring somehow doesn't end up in everyone playing the top lists is beyond me. if someone wanted to "tailor" against the entire field as DE, harlis, pre DE harlis or tyranids right now, they just pick a tournament list or something very close to it.
It is a world when a new player would take years to start playing the game, get bogged down in painting and spend thousands of dollars, while the game resets. Probably never really playing the game, because they are so busy with other stuff and saving up to buy different tailor builds, that they would quit, before they even start playing the game. Meanwhile playing infinity or something else would cost the 300-400$ tops, maybe a 50$ more if they had to pot some money for infinity specific terrain.

When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff.

yeah that is why we saw those 60% win rates from GSC and 1ksons. And all those tournament players, specialy those that sell tutoring, have paint studios YT channels and want to be or want to stay being playtesters for GW totaly don't want to adapt. They are just too stupid to do it and want to play the armies their like too much. Although tournament players probably don't really like their armies, because as we all know they are bad people.

It is just the casual Imperial Fist player, who doesn't want to adapt to a 400-500pts under priced DE, Tyranid or Eldar army that is the problem, and why the game is being painted in a bad way by a fringe of the community. Because most of it is too busy painting those thousands of points and can't play games or read forums.

I would like you to go back in time, and tell a GK player or even in 9th a pre codex GK player that there are no bad armies. That his army can beat any army, it doesn't have to use a tournament build, as long as it doesn't face those top build played by evil people. Specialy as builds , and I guess people, can become evil over night, just with something like GW puting out a codex which turns intercessors from a luckluster and bad unit options to one of the 3 corner stones of marine lists under 2.0.

Karol

I know you are younger and comparatively new to the game compared to some of us, but yeah if you did go back in time and played GKs as the original game designers made them to be circa 3rd edition as part of the chamber militant of the ordo hereticus/inquisition they worked as intended. a specialized force intended to fight chaos aligned forces and demons backing up whatever other force the inquisitor requested for the task. meaning they were never really meant to be a stand alone force like the terrible 5th ed codex made them out to be (and continued on in the following editions). but rather a special part of a marine army or a guard army or a sisters army, or an inquisitorial strike force etc...

I know because i play GKs and i play them that way and they work great against chaos and demons. rather i add them to my marines or my admech.

We have a guy at our store that is building an inquisitorial force centered around storm troopers backed up by some GK units.

Karol wrote:
On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts.

Every army is playable at 1500 points, even at 1000 points. They just need different builds and tactics than what they use to bring in larger games. Custodes, Grey Knights, Harlequins, etc... they can all do great in lower formats. Only knights might be an exception.

Karol wrote:

It is a world when a new player would take years to start playing the game, get bogged down in painting and spend thousands of dollars, while the game resets. Probably never really playing the game, because they are so busy with other stuff and saving up to buy different tailor builds, that they would quit, before they even start playing the game. Meanwhile playing infinity or something else would cost the 300-400$ tops, maybe a 50$ more if they had to pot some money for infinity specific terrain.

Yes, the game takes years to be played at competitive levels, and that's a good thing. That's why I blame those who want to be competitive without accepting that they'd have to re-work their collection constantly.

If you want "everything now" and a challenging experience skirmishes like Infinity would be a much better option indeed.

Karol wrote:

yeah that is why we saw those 60% win rates from GSC and 1ksons. And all those tournament players, specialy those that sell tutoring, have paint studios YT channels and want to be or want to stay being playtesters for GW totaly don't want to adapt. They are just too stupid to do it and want to play the armies their like too much. Although tournament players probably don't really like their armies, because as we all know they are bad people.

Some competitive players really don't like their armies, they play them only because they're the flavour of the month. And it's also a fact that some of them refuse to adapt, or are incapable of doing that. That's why months ago the community screamed against orks and not many players became band wagoners. They don't like that faction for multiple reasons (including the fact that it takes forever to be played at top levels), they don't want it to be top tier so they demand hard nerfs. Other armies are more appealing to them so even if they are OP they don't scream that loud.

Karol wrote:

It is just the casual Imperial Fist player, who doesn't want to adapt to a 400-500pts under priced DE, Tyranid or Eldar army that is the problem, and why the game is being painted in a bad way by a fringe of the community. Because most of it is too busy painting those thousands of points and can't play games or read forums.

Paint job is irrelevant ruleswise. That Imperial Fists player can use whatever chapter rules he wants to use. The only limitations are on named characters, but still no one prevents someone from playing blue Imperial Fists or yellow Salamanders if he wants to. Not even at events. There's no Imperial Fists player, there's a space marines one.

As I already said there are no wrong armies, but it might be wrong lists. Balance in 40k is not designed on random collection on models vs another random collection of models but on faction X vs faction Y, taking into account all the possible combinations those factions have. And I've always recommended NOT to play with the entire collection, but with a fraction of it so changes can be made in order to get more balanced games between friends.

 aphyon wrote:


Well my experience may be anecdotal but it does come from over 20 years of playing 40K very actively from 3rd edition up until 8th (when we went back to 5th although we did skip over 6th after testing it out the first month). When i say actively i mean we game every weekend for 12+ hours, we obviously play more than just 40K now but it used to be the main game aside from battletech for the first decade or so from 2002 onwards. Having said that we tend to favor flavor over raw power in our games. the armies should feel like they should be in the 40K universe.


i also note i agree the 4th ed CSM codex was garbage.

As for the list our IW player runs at 2k, it is the same one he has had basically since 3rd ed.

.warsmith
.X4 las/plas squads
.3X3 obliterators
.X3 las/heavy bolter predators fully upgraded with demonic and parasitic gifts
.X1 basilisk

Thank you for elaborating aphyon. I don't disagree with your approach on flavour rather than power. I think in the real world we'd probably get on great.

However, if I may (and please dont take this as an attack of any kind, its not meant as such)? Respectfully I've been playing as long as you. I played a lot back in third/fourth and with folks whose names ended up in the rulebooks special thanks section. I'm not saying this to crow, but to point out we are peers and my experiences in what looking back i can only describe as a competitive-at-all-cost dominated bear pit are not invalidated by yours.

I respect what you say but it does not disprove my position from earlier - maybe you didn't mean it but 'sorry not true at all' was an extremely condescending dismissal of my experiences back then and my point of the imbalances between the forces, especially when your friends iron warriors list is quite toned down in comparison and respectfully, has nothing on the beast that stomped its way through the tournament scene back then and which was the focus of my point.

I like how you play. I like those lists of yours. They're very reasonable. But they're not necessarily representative of where the game broke down so awfully back then, which is what my point was based on.

They're an example that the game can be built towards a more level playing field for sure (its absolutely true that the game didnt have to be played to that extreme), but sadly yours was far from the 40k fourth ed that a lot of people experienced.

Incidentally thanks for the pictures- your games look great. I'll need to up my game and do the same!

Cheers!

 aphyon wrote:


Sorry not true at all.

our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.

People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'

Nomeny wrote:
People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'

It's the 'illusion of balance', but really its a system to exploit and manipulate.

Karol wrote:

Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended.

They didn't have to. From what I have seen posted by other people 2000pts or 1999+1 is a format people have been playing for multiple editions. On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts. the loyalist knights won't work, maybe the chaos ones do, because they seem to support a warhound list. But stuff like custodes or GK just lack the super point efficient eldar or tyranid style unit to be playable.

1500 was the official GW recommended size for 3rd - 7th, it was only really the US pushing 1999+1 or 2k. 8th saw GW meshing with US influences, hence the increase in size.

All armies work at 1.5k, they just don't work the same way, often it allows room for counters and deficiencies in lists to creep in.

Nomeny wrote:People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'

You're going to have to explain how being a fun game with options and tactics is at odds with being balanced, because that does not follow.

I've played a number of games that were interesting, engaging, let you feel like you did something, and that you were clever when you did it, while still being better balanced than 40K. Some of them were published by GW.

It seems like a straw man to suggest that balance means every game is a total coin flip irrespective of the decisions of the players, because I don't think that's what anyone else means by 'balance'. I can well envision a 40K that's driven more by decisions on the table and less by listbuilding matchups.

 catbarf wrote:

Nomeny wrote:People don't want a balanced game though. A perfectly balanced game is just a 50/50 coin flip. People want stuff that's interesting, that's engaging, that makes them feel like they did something, and that makes them feel clever when they do it. All those things are at odds with a game being 'balanced.'

You're going to have to explain how being a fun game with options and tactics is at odds with being balanced, because that does not follow.

I've played a number of games that were interesting, engaging, let you feel like you did something, and that you were clever when you did it, while still being better balanced than 40K. Some of them were published by GW.

It seems like a straw man to suggest that balance means every game is a total coin flip irrespective of the decisions of the players, because I don't think that's what anyone else means by 'balance'. I can well envision a 40K that's driven more by decisions on the table and less by listbuilding matchups.

yeah, a 50% winrate across the board doesn't mean the games become a coinflip, it means that what matters is player skill on the tabletop. If i win with an army that has a 50% winrate against another that has a 50% winrate, it means that as a general i executed the better strategy.

Best example why it wouldnt be a coinflip : if i decide to shoot all my bolters at tanks and put my lascannons into gretchins, i probably won't win that game against an opponent that does the inverse

Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

That wasn't the question OP posed though.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

my main gripe with Competitive 40k is that its soo fething boring. Every game is basically the same and listbuilding has too much of an impact.

"Ok so i play thousand sons, i get 15 from TTL on my termies and characters, if they bring a psyker i get 15 from WoM, then i can do engage because i'm playing duplicity with crystal"

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

That wasn't the question OP posed though.

Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.

Just a few points to make.

(1) "Balanced" means different things if you're looking at it from a competitive versus a casual situation. And GW conflating the two with "matched play" being the default for so many causes some issues.

From a competitive standpoint, recognize that competitively-driven players are going to find the optimal "meta" builds across all the available factions and that this is inherently going to skew the perceived level of balance and win-rates. You can push and pull on points all day long, but you're just changing what's going to become the new meta. At a certain point, it might best to just ignore this context for practical balance purposes.

From a casual standpoint, I feel that "balance" is achieved when a player can show up to a game with a thoughtful list against an unknown opponent/list and have an "enjoyable" game and where their decisions on the table matter as much (ideally more, but who are we kidding) than the list they brought. I think this really hinges on having good internal balance in the codex so each unit has a compelling reason to be selected.

(2) Mission Design. I'll say it again - but I don't feel that the current matched play mission set, where all the missions are slight variations on a control point system, will support balanced casual play. Limited scope of missions makes certain types of lists better suited than others at the mission, and so you can't just take whatever units sound cool or fit your list's theme unless you want to handicap yourself relative to the mission objective. A more diverse set of mission design that makes it harder to optimize towards any specific one type would help break down the prevalence of meta lists in casual play and manage player expectations. Sure, a player could take a list tailored to certain missions (upping their potential win rate) but it would mean having a reduced change of winning in other types. Or you build a list that can do everything sort of well, losing so specialists in some missions but wining against others, and having tense close games against similar TAC lists.

 Blackie wrote:

Karol wrote:
On top of that elite armies are not playable at 1500pts.

Every army is playable at 1500 points, even at 1000 points. They just need different builds and tactics than what they use to bring in larger games. Custodes, Grey Knights, Harlequins, etc... they can all do great in lower formats. Only knights might be an exception.

I'd say that even Knights could tackle a 500pt game. It's only 3 Armigers/War Dogs or 1 medium-sized Knight for the madlads if we ignore detachment requirements at low point games. Some of the synergies that go with the combination of bigger and smaller knights aren't there, but it's enough to learn the rules/get a player by until they can field more points. But my experience has been that's the nature of 500pt games. They are usually pretty screwy no matter what faction is involved, and should only serve as a stepping stone to getting to at least 750-1000pts where the game begins to normalize.

I generally like having an ever shifting number of points allowed for my games. In the last month I have played 1000, 2000, 1300 and 1500pt games. I like switching it up as each amount changes my angle-of-attack toward the game. In fact, this weekend, I am playing a 1500pt game with 1200pts Chaos Knights and 300pts of CSM. With the CSM being placeholders until I get a couple more War Dogs built and painted.

While I much prefer full sized tables, I don't mind the occasional minimum-sized boards. I look at kinda like baseball/hockey. Some fields/rinks are bigger or smaller than others. And you adjust your play during the game to deal with this change. I appreciate external variables like that to force me to think on my feet (even if it is just a little) over planning out an army list engine and seeing how well it runs.

I generally think that 40k is pretty balanced at the moment. Or at least good enough for me. There are certainly lists that will completely wreck other lists, but I find with IRL players, just playing an army they like over what is optimal is fine. Doubly so if you change up points totals, board size and game type (Open War, Tempest, Matched). A lot of players' ability seems to come from 'reps' of their army list engine. Change up the external variables, and the lesser players relying on their list power to carry them often become revealed.

Dudeface wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

That wasn't the question OP posed though.

Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.

Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.

I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.
(What do I mean by cutthroat?) These people ghost you as soon as they start losing.

No; and they mean not to.

The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.

 oni wrote:
No; and they mean not to.

The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.

Yeah this way they can hype new editions as they purport to fix all the self inflicted wounds of the prior edition.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.

I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.

Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc

And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....

ccs wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.

I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.

Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc

And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....

Thanks man. I didn't read it. Welcome to the ignore list.
Totally unnecessary.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Not to have a go at you or kick a dog when its down, but just because you've played your best game doesn't mean you've played well. If you're a bad player, your best game could still be worse than your opponents worst game if they happen to be a very good player.

I'm not a bad player, and I suppose the only way I could back that up is by saying that when I'm not getting a 90%+ loss rate in cutthroat comp TTS, I'm teaching new players how to play the game.

Teaching new players does not make you not a bad player yourself....
Lord knows there's been a fair # of local players over the years for various games that whoever taught them did them no favors.
"But the guy that taught me said..."
"My brother told me x worked like ______"
And then we consult the BRB/Faqs/etc

And even if you're a good+ player? What/how you teach could be influenced by your own bias.
Take my friend Dan for example. He was a really good player in many game systems. But in 40k? He loved melee & despised shooting. And that bias got stronger through the years.
So people Dan taught? They learned the CC aspect of the game really well. But for him the shooting phase amounted to basically point & fire as an after thought. At most just a pre-melee phase. Dan was NOT the guy you wanted to have teach you how to play something like Tau, or Guard....

Thanks man. I didn't read it. Welcome to the ignore list.
Totally unnecessary.

You'll note that I did not call you a bad player.


Anyways, I'm glad you've had a crappy competitive experience.
The less people poisoning our hobby via the tourney scene the better.
Hope your casual experience goes better.

1. GW makes very poorly balanced games. Especially their large scale ones. Some skirmish level games are balanced decently well (underworld and warcry) but on the whole they're terrible at balance.

2. The previous fact doesn't not dismiss the self-evident truth that even if the game WAS perfectly balanced, no one in the community would BELIEVE it was perfectly balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 oni wrote:
No; and they mean not to.

The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.

Yeah this way they can hype new editions as they purport to fix all the self inflicted wounds of the prior edition.

The big flaw in this theory is that GW has never once admitted to any flaws in any of their games. If anything negative is mentioned (and it is only very rarely) it's usually blamed on players misreading or misapplying the rules.

It's the playerbase who says the new edition will fix the 'self-inflicted wounds of the prior edition' specifically people like you who say it sarcastically, forget they were the ones who said it, attribute it to GW, and then have a warped memory of GW's marketing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

That wasn't the question OP posed though.

Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.

Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?

...The defense is super easy: Chess is considered to be one of the greatest, if not the most perfect games ever designed. It has 2 factions that are identical mirrors of each other and one STILL has a 55% winrate over the other.

40k has 34 factions that are TRACKED by our statistics dashboard (and about 100 more subfactions besides), with infinitely more moving parts than Chess has and manages to have ELEVEN factions that are more equally balanced than White against Black in chess. 11 balanced factions vs ZERO in chess.

Therefore, 40k is more balanced than chess.

ERJAK wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 oni wrote:
No; and they mean not to.

The destruction of each edition is intentional and planned. It is part of their business model to perpetuate sales.

Yeah this way they can hype new editions as they purport to fix all the self inflicted wounds of the prior edition.

The big flaw in this theory is that GW has never once admitted to any flaws in any of their games. If anything negative is mentioned (and it is only very rarely) it's usually blamed on players misreading or misapplying the rules.

It's the playerbase who says the new edition will fix the 'self-inflicted wounds of the prior edition' specifically people like you who say it sarcastically, forget they were the ones who said it, attribute it to GW, and then have a warped memory of GW's marketing.

You don't remember "Most playtested version ever?"

Sure they let the playerbase hype it, but they help themselves a bit too.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea I don't know what other people are experiencing, but I'm having a blast with competitive 40K ( there was a shaky period there before the dataslate ).

Am I going to be a world champ and take down Tyranids at a major? Nope, but I will have tons of fun trying.

That wasn't the question OP posed though.

Is perfect balance more important than fun is the counter question and it leads to a messy grey area.

Like someone trying to deflect a valid criticism about something they have no defence for?

Sure, give me the precise and correct definition of balanced for this discussion.