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 azreal13 wrote:
Phantom Titans in "normal" 40K, I mean, come on?

But you aren't going to see a Phantom in normal 40k because it costs more than 2000 points.


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Waaaghpower wrote:
If Blood Angels had an OP titan, nobody would complain because they currently suck so much.

Everyone would complain, because of allies and formations. You'd see cheap minimum-FOC "BA" armies taken to unlock the titan, with allies/formations used to bring the real Tau/Eldar/whatever army.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Even so, I would be easy in my mind to refuse to play either of them, while I would never refuse to play a core codex.

Which is fine, but that's just your personal preference. There are plenty of people who would never refuse to play against a list with a Baneblade just because it's from Escalation, but would reject codex-only lists that they don't like.


...
...

There have always been justifiable complaints about balance however, since 3rd edition, the way you become a 40K player is to buy the BGB, a codex and an army. If you didn't like that system, you didn't play 40K.

The optional rules extensions like Cities of Death or Apocalypse offer in-depth rules for special situations. That's great for people at both ends of the scale. CoD offers a more in-depth skirmish game, and Apoc offers a large battle game.

I didn't like Apocalypse, because I'm not interested in that kind of large battle and I don't think the 40K rules support it. Of course that wasn't a problem because it was optional.

Escalation changes the game in ways that I think are unsustainable and apparently it's not optional. It's like if you play modern naval games. If you play with tactical nuclear weapons a lot of the rest of the game becomes irrelevant. Making nuclear weapons expensive in points doesn't remove the game changing aspect. The whole game becomes about the nukes.

Modern naval is fun in itself. You don't need nukes. You can keep nukes optional because admirals can't use them on their own authority, they need nuclear release from their government. In player terms this means the two sides have to agree to use them.

But now with Escalation, you have to play with nukes.

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Phantom Titans in "normal" 40K, I mean, come on?

But you aren't going to see a Phantom in normal 40k because it costs more than 2000 points.

I'm not going to get into a discussion of what constitutes "normal" because that's exactly the sort of discussion that you'll keep rolling for pages, but if you can't see the point I was making without making some sort of arbitrary distinction that has no definition outside of your head, more fool you.

Kilkrazy wrote:There have always been justifiable complaints about balance however, since 3rd edition, the way you become a 40K player is to buy the BGB, a codex and an army. If you didn't like that system, you didn't play 40K.

Not true. At the beginning of 3ed you bought the BRB and your army was in the back. There was a significant amount of time that I played from those lists. Therefore in my mind the codex's are recent inventions much as the forgeworld books are when they were introduced around about 3.5ed 40K. There is no mandatory for 40K or any game. You could even throw out the BRB and play your own house rules, which is fine.

Kilkrazy wrote:The optional rules extensions like Cities of Death or Apocalypse offer in-depth rules for special situations. That's great for people at both ends of the scale. CoD offers a more in-depth skirmish game, and Apoc offers a large battle game.

They also were completely forgotten within months of release and were overall a niche product. Sad really.

azreal13 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Phantom Titans in "normal" 40K, I mean, come on?

But you aren't going to see a Phantom in normal 40k because it costs more than 2000 points.

I'm not going to get into a discussion of what constitutes "normal" because that's exactly the sort of discussion that you'll keep rolling for pages, but if you can't see the point I was making without making some sort of arbitrary distinction that has no definition outside of your head, more fool you.

The comment is entirely valid as at 2500 pts for the titan alone you will have to play at least 3000 pts which unlocks double FOC. At this level of play phantom titans really are not that big a deal. You have enough points that you can put out more scoring units than the opponent can even kill. To balance a phantom titan and proper support you would need a 4000 pts army...so yeah.


There are some good things and bad things about escalation. It definitely shifts the meta but it does so by invalidating huge numbers of army types. I don't really mind that much personally as I have the collection to field what I want but I definitely need to mix in regular games so I can use a landraider, paladins, or wraithknight and not have it blown off the table turn 1.

You've made the same mistake as Peregrine in fixating on the unit I named rather than the point I was making.

Forget Phantom Titan, my point was that any and all super heavies have been thrown into the mix, when in actual fact the whole concept would have likely worked much better if they'd shown a little care with which units that were introduced, and a little more in adapting how they worked rather than dumping the Apoc rules straight across.

 ansacs wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There have always been justifiable complaints about balance however, since 3rd edition, the way you become a 40K player is to buy the BGB, a codex and an army. If you didn't like that system, you didn't play 40K.

Not true. At the beginning of 3ed you bought the BRB and your army was in the back. There was a significant amount of time that I played from those lists. Therefore in my mind the codex's are recent inventions much as the forgeworld books are when they were introduced around about 3.5ed 40K. There is no mandatory for 40K or any game. You could even throw out the BRB and play your own house rules, which is fine.

...

You could alternatively play Field of Glory Renaissance and call it 40K and then it would be. No doubt nine out of 10 40K players would agree that was a rational interpretation of the situation.

Basically you're talking nonsense. When 3rd edition was published there were no codexes because they didn't exist in 2nd edition. Some armies had a truncated list in the back of the book to make it playable.

GW published new codexes as fast as possible, including the introduction of the Tau, and the codex became the official source of an army list.

If you think that justifies the inclusion of Escalation in the core rules, you are deluding yourself.

What's this talk about rational, Kilkrazy? We play a game in a universe where 1000 human souls have been sacrificed every day for over 10,000 years just to sustain a giant ghost skeleton man in a really big chair.

Erm, codexes very much existed in 2nd, they were simply hopelessly incompatible with the massive re-write that was 3rd.

Agree with the rest though.

 SRSFACE wrote:
What's this talk about rational, Kilkrazy? We play a game in a universe where 1000 human souls have been sacrificed every day for over 10,000 years just to sustain a giant ghost skeleton man in a really big chair.

A game, yes. It needs rules that work.



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 azreal13 wrote:
Erm, codexes very much existed in 2nd, they were simply hopelessly incompatible with the massive re-write that was 3rd.

Agree with the rest though.

It's the same difference.


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Try playing 4th or 5th or 6th edition without codexes.

In 1st edition you actually could use the core rules to make your own forces from point values.

 azreal13 wrote:
You've made the same mistake as Peregrine in fixating on the unit I named rather than the point I was making.

Forget Phantom Titan, my point was that any and all super heavies have been thrown into the mix, when in actual fact the whole concept would have likely worked much better if they'd shown a little care with which units that were introduced, and a little more in adapting how they worked rather than dumping the Apoc rules straight across.

But the specific unit is the whole point. All of the big FW stuff like the Phantom and Manta costs way too many points for a normal (1000-2000 point) game. Complaining about it makes about as much sense as complaining that Land Raiders are overpowered because you can't kill one in a 200 point game. Meanwhile the small stuff that will actually be used in normal games is all at or below the power level established by the original Escalation book.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
But now with Escalation, you have to play with nukes.

But you already have to play with "nukes" because even with a "codex-only" house rule 40k still has them. A Revenant list is bad, but it's not like screamerstar or Riptide spam lists are balanced armies that produce fun and interesting games for everyone involved. Banning all of the non-codex stuff and pretending that GW is still publishing the game the way you want them to do it doesn't make all the unbalanced stuff go away, it just changes what the game-breaking list is.

Yeah, I'm just going to echo what kilkrazy has been saying. What little I'd add would be...

- 40k was not written with superheavies in mind. As much as people like to pretend there isn't any game balance at all in 40k, there is plenty. The cost of a guardsman makes sense next to the cost of a space marine given their different qualities, and you know that the prices of things have been rigged with an eye towards the prices of others. But can anyone tell me that the price of a guardsman was determined based in part on the price of a revenant? New content always creates these kinds of problems (not that it excuses them), but adding in whole new kinds of content creates whole new kinds of problems, which requires extra attention to detail, which clearly wasn't given.

- Along these lines is my second complaint. Planetstrike was a different kind of 40k game with different kinds of missions, and different kinds of special rules you gave to the players. Apocalypse is the same way - you're playing a similar, but different kind of game. Escalation? Well, it's exactly the same game, but just with more units added. As much as I'm loathe to say it, this feels like an actual bid by GW to just sell more models without adding anything more than the absolute minimum required.

- And likewise in a similar vein, I'd echo the complaint that we already HAD a way to play with our superheavies - it's called apocalypse. It's also, do a different extent, called Epic. There was nothing that was preventing us from playing a 40k-like game with titans and baneblades. What they did is to fill a niche that wasn't there in the first place.

As it is said, nothing is so worthless as doing well that which should not be done at all. I guess the only exception to this is if said thing is done poorly...

 BoomWolf wrote:
Esscalation, as a whole, is pretty good.
It even gives the superheavy-depraved player some bonuses to compensate, and make it a different, yet very intresting type of game.

There are two SPESIFIC issues in there.
The eldar titan
The C'tan.
These two are overpowered, that's the end of the story. fix these two, and the game turns out fine.
Most other SH are even practically underpowered for the price, FW one included. (tau suffer the worst here, out SH are all practically useless)
As proof, in recent turnies that DO allow SH, nearly nobody brought any regardless. and that's a "WAAC" environment if there is any.

in fairness it's not like the eldar have, as far as I know, super heavies OTHER then revenant titans.

well they also have the phantom titan but that's like 2500 points

 Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
You've made the same mistake as Peregrine in fixating on the unit I named rather than the point I was making.

Forget Phantom Titan, my point was that any and all super heavies have been thrown into the mix, when in actual fact the whole concept would have likely worked much better if they'd shown a little care with which units that were introduced, and a little more in adapting how they worked rather than dumping the Apoc rules straight across.

But the specific unit is the whole point. All of the big FW stuff like the Phantom and Manta costs way too many points for a normal (1000-2000 point) game. Complaining about it makes about as much sense as complaining that Land Raiders are overpowered because you can't kill one in a 200 point game. Meanwhile the small stuff that will actually be used in normal games is all at or below the power level established by the original Escalation book.

Please don't tell me what the point is when I'm the one making it.

BrianDavion wrote:
in fairness it's not like the eldar have, as far as I know, super heavies OTHER then revenant titans.

Scorpion, Cobra, Lynx, Vampire Hunter/Raider. That's five non-titan choices that would have been much more appropriate.


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 azreal13 wrote:
Please don't tell me what the point is when I'm the one making it.

Well then if your point isn't about the one specific unit then you have no point at all. Other than the big "too expensive for normal games" stuff the FW Escalation list is no worse than the original Escalation book. None of the things on it are worse than a Revenant, and most of them are Baneblade-level or lower.

Splendid, your opinion is not fact Peregrine, no matter how hard you try and state it as such.

The fact is that you've effectively tried to explain my argument back to me and completely failed to grasp what I was actually saying shows me that spending any further time in this is pointless.

Kilkrazy wrote:You could alternatively play Field of Glory Renaissance and call it 40K and then it would be. No doubt nine out of 10 40K players would agree that was a rational interpretation of the situation.

Basically you're talking nonsense. When 3rd edition was published there were no codexes because they didn't exist in 2nd edition. Some armies had a truncated list in the back of the book to make it playable.

GW published new codexes as fast as possible, including the introduction of the Tau, and the codex became the official source of an army list.

If you think that justifies the inclusion of Escalation in the core rules, you are deluding yourself.

Do you use mysterious terrain in all your games? No, then you are already playing by houserules. It is called hyperbole and it is a tool in the communication toolbox which I used. It obviously failed to communicate the point.

Ailaros wrote:Yeah, I'm just going to echo what kilkrazy has been saying. What little I'd add would be...

- 40k was not written with superheavies in mind. As much as people like to pretend there isn't any game balance at all in 40k, there is plenty. The cost of a guardsman makes sense next to the cost of a space marine given their different qualities, and you know that the prices of things have been rigged with an eye towards the prices of others. But can anyone tell me that the price of a guardsman was determined based in part on the price of a revenant? New content always creates these kinds of problems (not that it excuses them), but adding in whole new kinds of content creates whole new kinds of problems, which requires extra attention to detail, which clearly wasn't given.

Funny enough if the revenant is being compared to a unit of IG IS then the revenant will be vastly overpriced. Against them 4 griffons are more effective and just as survivable. The problem with the revenant is not that it is so overpowering it cannot be beaten and auto wins every game. The problem is that it invalidates more than half the units and army types in the game. If you design your lists to perform in an escalation environment you will do fine and you don't need a SH to do so. However the lists are incredibly limited in valid selections.

Ailaros wrote: - Along these lines is my second complaint. Planetstrike was a different kind of 40k game with different kinds of missions, and different kinds of special rules you gave to the players. Apocalypse is the same way - you're playing a similar, but different kind of game. Escalation? Well, it's exactly the same game, but just with more units added. As much as I'm loathe to say it, this feels like an actual bid by GW to just sell more models without adding anything more than the absolute minimum required.

There are new missions, warlord traits, and you get VP for putting HP on the SH. It really does change the game and really isn't that bad when you ignore D weapons. D weapons are bad because they ignore all the defense attributes in the game and just say dead. This means the price structure for anything that pays for defense and wounds is out of whack with any D weapon.

Ailaros wrote:- And likewise in a similar vein, I'd echo the complaint that we already HAD a way to play with our superheavies - it's called apocalypse. It's also, do a different extent, called Epic. There was nothing that was preventing us from playing a 40k-like game with titans and baneblades. What they did is to fill a niche that wasn't there in the first place.

Except Apoc takes a day or two to complete. The extra rules were a nice balancing factor and the rules in a book people without Apoc could buy for a fraction of the price was not a bad idea. It wasn't as bad as people make it out to be just a bit overpriced and it gave people the D in places they never wanted it.

azreal13 wrote:Splendid, your opinion is not fact Peregrine, no matter how hard you try and state it as such.

The fact is that you've effectively tried to explain my argument back to me and completely failed to grasp what I was actually saying shows me that spending any further time in this is pointless.

To be fair you are both arguing opinions. So neither are fact. Peregrine is correct though that the two most abusive SH were already given to two of the top armies in the game by escalation. All FW did was give the other armies things that could possibly fight back on a SH vs SH battle. The escalation books biggest failing in my estimation is that it didn't give even remotely equal treatement to the different factions. Heck SoB don't even exist according to it and chaos have to take this;

 ansacs wrote:
Do you use mysterious terrain in all your games? No, then you are already playing by houserules. It is called hyperbole and it is a tool in the communication toolbox which I used. It obviously failed to communicate the point.

It is perfectly within the rules to not place any mysterious terrain on the table.

I'm taking part in a tourney that allows Escalation in the near future so I made two lists- one is a balanced TAC list I intend to use against lists I consider "cheese light" and the other has a Transcendent C'tan for use against LoW lists and various cheesy builds that might pop-up.

Normally I'd never play my T C'tan in regular games unless I agreed about it with my opponent well in advanced (usually people who want to see if it's really as cheesy as they heard ).

Escalation is a poor design choice; it works best when either both sides are using a Super-Heavy or the only Super-Heavies that see the light of day are the smaller ones (Lynxes, Malcadors, other six-hull-point tanks) and you ban D-weapons. A normal 1,500pt army has very little chance of killing a Pulsar Revenant before it cleans off the table.