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 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
But FW is GW tho....

Truth! To draw a distinction is silly. Even so, I will do so if only to indulge the haters.

Same over-arching owning business company =/= same design/rules-writing shop.

GhostRecon wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
But FW is GW tho....

Truth! To draw a distinction is silly. Even so, I will do so if only to indulge the haters.

Same over-arching owning business company =/= same design/rules-writing shop.

Yes, that's true, and regrettable. I still maintain that a large majority (>80% at least) of FW stuff isn't that spectacular.

My list was 0 Forgeworld and ended up middle of the pack. My buddy's had 1 Forgeworld unit and was like top 35%. Another friend fielded an army of exclusively Forgeworld save for Celestine from what I could tell and was pretty close to the bottom.

Forgeworld doesn't seem to have been a predictor of success.

The real problem is that FW doesn't have the same commitment to quick responses to the meta that GW does. We can expect GW's problems to get fixed quickly just as flyer spam was fixed quickly, while Malefic Lords and Elysians will be around for a good long while.

Audustum wrote:
My list was 0 Forgeworld and ended up missed of the pack. My buddy's had 1 Forgeworld unit and was like top 35%. Another friend fielded an army of exclusively Forgeworld save for Celestine from what I could tell and was pretty close to the bottom.

Forgeworld doesn't seem to have been a predictor of success.

^ My point! A lot of the lists had Forge World (mine included).

TBH, I wonder if - regardless of GW/FW - the only way for a force to count as battle-forged was if every Detachment shared the same keyword much of the current imbalance would go away or be substantially reduced. Still have Imperial/Chaos Soup, etc., but no more faction-Detachment internal shenanigans.

Slightly tangential, how do you guys think they should handle factions? My personal thought is your faction should be the most restrictive keyword all of your units share. Want to compete for top Blood angels for instance, play blood angels, not 51% blood angels and 49% imperial soup.

Might be a moot point though as faction identity is at an all time low, and the codexes don't seem to have done much to help with that. Maybe 8th ed isn't going to be a game where factions matter, You'll have chaos, imperium, and a bunch of xenos factions on the way to getting squatted.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

GhostRecon wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
But FW is GW tho....

Truth! To draw a distinction is silly. Even so, I will do so if only to indulge the haters.

Same over-arching owning business company =/= same design/rules-writing shop.

Yes, that's true, and regrettable. I still maintain that a large majority (>80% at least) of FW stuff isn't that spectacular.

I think a lot of it has been poor throughout the editions. Its just you almost never see it on the table. When people bring Forgeworld its almost always the top tier stuff and this gives it the reputation of being broken.

Its pretty clear something needs to be done about the usual suspects. Not sure what GW can do barring some swinging nerfs though, which they seem loath to do.

The problem with Forgeworld units has typically been caused by a larger spectrum of imbalanced units from strong to weak, more so than in GW standard rosters. Which makes a generally very low consensus of FW rules-writing capability. Especially when considering what most people think of 'main studio GW' rules-writing capabilities.

It's no surprise that the top tournament winners are cherry-picking the most broken combinations among GW/FW units.

Mchaagen wrote:
The problem with Forgeworld units has typically been caused by a larger spectrum of imbalanced units from strong to weak, more so than in GW standard rosters. Which makes a generally very low consensus of FW rules-writing capability. Especially when considering what most people think of 'main studio GW' rules-writing capabilities.

It's no surprise that the top tournament winners are cherry-picking the most broken combinations among GW/FW units.

That's the problem I have with FW, generally speaking - the pendulum tends to swing to far greater extremes with FW rules. Which is unfortunate, as I love more than a few of the models.

GhostRecon wrote:

Mchaagen wrote:
The problem with Forgeworld units has typically been caused by a larger spectrum of imbalanced units from strong to weak, more so than in GW standard rosters. Which makes a generally very low consensus of FW rules-writing capability. Especially when considering what most people think of 'main studio GW' rules-writing capabilities.

It's no surprise that the top tournament winners are cherry-picking the most broken combinations among GW/FW units.

That's the problem I have with FW, generally speaking - the pendulum tends to swing to far greater extremes with FW rules. Which is unfortunate, as I love more than a few of the models.

Which is basically never. Stop pretending it's that imbalanced. I can name SEVERAL things in the past decade that GW did wrong. Post yours for FW and we can compare notes!

FW is really no different than GW. Both have unbalanced units. People don't care as much when a GW broken unit is brought as opposed to a FW unit since GW's name is on the game and not FW. There are broken units in the standard game armies that get brought just as often. Just look at Razorwing Flocks and Brimstones from earlier. They got fixed and people are saying GW fIxes more than FW but there was also a FW errata that was released recently too.

Yeah the idea GW balances better than FW is laughable imo. Better proofreading maybe, but not balance. Because, while FW does have imbalanced units, they actually get spread across most factions. As opossums to GW, who tends to dump them on 1-2 (imperial) factions, and if they accidentally make anything else overpowered it'll be nerfed sharpish while the imperial brokenness stays around forever.

Case and point, the "quick" responses to brimstones and razorwings, while doing nothing about any of the issues with guard.

At least FW tries to balance and just screws up, GW actively favors some armies and people act like that should be praised? Good lord non.

Hoodwink wrote:
FW is really no different than GW. Both have unbalanced units. People don't care as much when a GW broken unit is brought as opposed to a FW unit since GW's name is on the game and not FW. There are broken units in the standard game armies that get brought just as often. Just look at Razorwing Flocks and Brimstones from earlier. They got fixed and people are saying GW fIxes more than FW but there was also a FW errata that was released recently too.

Except FW is different. They are run by a separate studio, composed of a completely different team of people that develop rules and models that appeal to a niche group of customers due to pricing, style, etc. I assume that was the point of creating FW in the first place.

Yes, both FW and GW have unbalanced units. But the point being made is there's a wider gap of imbalance among FW units, over-powered and under-powered.

The FW errata that was released mostly focused on fixing typos and poorly written rules. That's not the same as the balance changes made to units' points costs that GW has recently done to razorwing flocks and brimstone horrors.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

GhostRecon wrote:

Mchaagen wrote:
The problem with Forgeworld units has typically been caused by a larger spectrum of imbalanced units from strong to weak, more so than in GW standard rosters. Which makes a generally very low consensus of FW rules-writing capability. Especially when considering what most people think of 'main studio GW' rules-writing capabilities.

It's no surprise that the top tournament winners are cherry-picking the most broken combinations among GW/FW units.

That's the problem I have with FW, generally speaking - the pendulum tends to swing to far greater extremes with FW rules. Which is unfortunate, as I love more than a few of the models.

Which is basically never. Stop pretending it's that imbalanced. I can name SEVERAL things in the past decade that GW did wrong. Post yours for FW and we can compare notes!

Kind of a strawman to bring in GW's performance in the past decade - not to mention that I didn't suggest GW isn't without fault either, I simply suggested that FW swings the OP/useless pendulum with greater extreme. What matters is what GW has given us now, and how they have performed/acted since giving us 8th Edition. GW's past performance can inform some trends, but GW has already bucked several long-standing traditions with the onset of 8th. Indeed, beyond a handful of offenders that will probably be pared back between GW's 'balance compendium' in Chapter Approved come December and the AM Codex coming next month people widely regard 8th as being much better balanced - have people already forgotten where under the much, much longer development/balance cycles of years past we'd see overpowered/broken units/lists often go years before finally being fixed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SilverAlien wrote:
Yeah the idea GW balances better than FW is laughable imo. Better proofreading maybe, but not balance. Because, while FW does have imbalanced units, they actually get spread across most factions. As opossums to GW, who tends to dump them on 1-2 (imperial) factions, and if they accidentally make anything else overpowered it'll be nerfed sharpish while the imperial brokenness stays around forever.

Case and point, the "quick" responses to brimstones and razorwings, while doing nothing about any of the issues with guard.

At least FW tries to balance and just screws up, GW actively favors some armies and people act like that should be praised? Good lord non.

Think the Guard issue w/Conscripts/Commissars may have been differed to the Codex - at least if they recognize it as broken and a problem, which at least according to the way the folks over at FLG talk seems to be the case. That they haven't released a quick FAQ for it suggests they either wanted more time to playtest up a solution to input into the Codex, or that the Codex has a larger/more comprehensive fix rather than just adjusting some points values here and there. For example, they quashed the Command Squad spam issue pretty quickly, if you recall - but it was also a very easy fix.

But where has FW actually fixed/balanced anything in their rules thus far? As Mchaagen said:

Except FW is different. They are run by a separate studio, composed of a completely different team of people that develop rules and models that appeal to a niche group of customers due to pricing, style, etc. I assume that was the point of creating FW in the first place.

Yes, both FW and GW have unbalanced units. But the point being made is there's a wider gap of imbalance among FW units, over-powered and under-powered.

The FW errata that was released mostly focused on fixing typos and poorly written rules. That's not the same as the balance changes made to units' points costs that GW has recently done to razorwing flocks and brimstone horrors.

SilverAlien wrote:
...while the imperial brokenness stays around forever.
...GW actively favors some armies and people act like that should be praised? Good lord non.

This hyperbole is getting ridiculous. Which imperial faction has been broken forever? Imperial Guard? Space Marines? Maybe Blood Angels? Or just imperium in general.. because Necrons have never been good, or Eldar, or Tau, or even Tyranids right?

No one is acting as though GW should be praised for less skew than FW.

If Age of Sigmar is something to judge on, faction soup will soon be points limited.

As far as FW dominating. They have in the past but I don't know anything off the top of my head that's dominating any tournaments right now. I'd say it's pretty balanced. They happen to have some good units that may be slightly OP but for armies that aren't particularly doing well (hello Tau and Necrons).

Hoodwink wrote:
As far as FW dominating. They have in the past but I don't know anything off the top of my head that's dominating any tournaments right now. I'd say it's pretty balanced. They happen to have some good units that may be slightly OP but for armies that aren't particularly doing well (hello Tau and Necrons).

Uh, this whole conversation was started because of the winning list at NOVA Open, which heavily features Elysian drop troops.

And this is the first time I've ever seen a mention of them anywhere in these forums. I'm not sure if they are OP or if people just have no clue how to play against them since they are so rare.

Mchaagen wrote:

SilverAlien wrote:
...while the imperial brokenness stays around forever.
...GW actively favors some armies and people act like that should be praised? Good lord non.

This hyperbole is getting ridiculous. Which imperial faction has been broken forever? Imperial Guard? Space Marines? Maybe Blood Angels? Or just imperium in general.. because Necrons have never been good, or Eldar, or Tau, or even Tyranids right?

No one is acting as though GW should be praised for less skew than FW.

Well yes, back when everything stayed broken forever because GW was even less responsive than FW is now.

However, recent GW "responsiveness" that people keep praising only applies to non imperial armies. Hell, they "fixed" the space marine flyer spam by nerfing all flyers for every single army. Twice. When many of them already weren't worth taking.

That's why I get annoyed at people praising GW "balance" and "responsiveness", it's not actually improved anything, GW is the same as they've ever been, awful at balance and heavily skewed.

I'm glad to see there's nothing worth discussing about NOVA than Forgeworld.

Anyway, from the view in the trenches, there was a really nice amount of diversity present. While Imperium armies were a plurality, I saw multiples of Dark Eldar, Ynnari, Tau, Necrons, Chaos, CSM and even 3 Adeptus Custodes. The top cut down diversity a bit so balancing work isn't done, but people seem to be having fun and bringing out a full range of armies even to a GT.

GhostRecon wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

GhostRecon wrote:

Mchaagen wrote:
The problem with Forgeworld units has typically been caused by a larger spectrum of imbalanced units from strong to weak, more so than in GW standard rosters. Which makes a generally very low consensus of FW rules-writing capability. Especially when considering what most people think of 'main studio GW' rules-writing capabilities.

It's no surprise that the top tournament winners are cherry-picking the most broken combinations among GW/FW units.

That's the problem I have with FW, generally speaking - the pendulum tends to swing to far greater extremes with FW rules. Which is unfortunate, as I love more than a few of the models.

Which is basically never. Stop pretending it's that imbalanced. I can name SEVERAL things in the past decade that GW did wrong. Post yours for FW and we can compare notes!

Kind of a strawman to bring in GW's performance in the past decade - not to mention that I didn't suggest GW isn't without fault either, I simply suggested that FW swings the OP/useless pendulum with greater extreme. What matters is what GW has given us now, and how they have performed/acted since giving us 8th Edition. GW's past performance can inform some trends, but GW has already bucked several long-standing traditions with the onset of 8th. Indeed, beyond a handful of offenders that will probably be pared back between GW's 'balance compendium' in Chapter Approved come December and the AM Codex coming next month people widely regard 8th as being much better balanced - have people already forgotten where under the much, much longer development/balance cycles of years past we'd see overpowered/broken units/lists often go years before finally being fixed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SilverAlien wrote:
Yeah the idea GW balances better than FW is laughable imo. Better proofreading maybe, but not balance. Because, while FW does have imbalanced units, they actually get spread across most factions. As opossums to GW, who tends to dump them on 1-2 (imperial) factions, and if they accidentally make anything else overpowered it'll be nerfed sharpish while the imperial brokenness stays around forever.

Case and point, the "quick" responses to brimstones and razorwings, while doing nothing about any of the issues with guard.

At least FW tries to balance and just screws up, GW actively favors some armies and people act like that should be praised? Good lord non.

Think the Guard issue w/Conscripts/Commissars may have been differed to the Codex - at least if they recognize it as broken and a problem, which at least according to the way the folks over at FLG talk seems to be the case. That they haven't released a quick FAQ for it suggests they either wanted more time to playtest up a solution to input into the Codex, or that the Codex has a larger/more comprehensive fix rather than just adjusting some points values here and there. For example, they quashed the Command Squad spam issue pretty quickly, if you recall - but it was also a very easy fix.

But where has FW actually fixed/balanced anything in their rules thus far? As Mchaagen said:

Except FW is different. They are run by a separate studio, composed of a completely different team of people that develop rules and models that appeal to a niche group of customers due to pricing, style, etc. I assume that was the point of creating FW in the first place.

Yes, both FW and GW have unbalanced units. But the point being made is there's a wider gap of imbalance among FW units, over-powered and under-powered.

The FW errata that was released mostly focused on fixing typos and poorly written rules. That's not the same as the balance changes made to units' points costs that GW has recently done to razorwing flocks and brimstone horrors.

No it ISN'T a straw man because you DO need to compare the two if you're claiming their swing of imbalance is worse.

So I'm waiting for your writeup. Or one from someone else.

Yeah, you can't say "FW's OPness/UPness is more swingy/broader than GW's!" and then say "Woah no I didn't mention GW that's a strawman."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Addendum: Also, while we're discussing things about NOVA specifically, I found it weird that you could win on objective points even if you had been tabled.

That one hurt me pretty bad in my 3rd (?) game, where I tabled my opponent and lost.

I see where they are coming from and it makes sense in a way, but it does leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Yes, keep arguing over forgeworld while Guard continues to get a pass.. that's smart.

Audustum wrote:
I'm glad to see there's nothing worth discussing about NOVA than Forgeworld.

Anyway, from the view in the trenches, there was a really nice amount of diversity present. While Imperium armies were a plurality, I saw multiples of Dark Eldar, Ynnari, Tau, Necrons, Chaos, CSM and even 3 Adeptus Custodes. The top cut down diversity a bit so balancing work isn't done, but people seem to be having fun and bringing out a full range of armies even to a GT.

13 xenos armies in the top 50 is not diverse, with the other 37 armies being either chaos or imperium....

SilverAlien wrote:
Well yes, back when everything stayed broken forever because GW was even less responsive than FW is now.

However, recent GW "responsiveness" that people keep praising only applies to non imperial armies. Hell, they "fixed" the space marine flyer spam by nerfing all flyers for every single army. Twice. When many of them already weren't worth taking.

That's why I get annoyed at people praising GW "balance" and "responsiveness", it's not actually improved anything, GW is the same as they've ever been, awful at balance and heavily skewed.

Your definition of 'broken forever' is significantly different than mine.

The idea that GW is only responsive to imperial armies is nonsense. Necron voidblades and character command barges, Tau shield drones 5+ save from passing on wounds, Ynnari Visarch 4+ invulnerable, Harlequin Solitaire gaining <Masque> keyword, and Chaos Daemon Prince wounds profile adjustment to less than 10 are some of the changes that prove that statement false.

I think they're still heavily lacking in rules balance, but GW has definitely been more responsive lately compared to how they've been in the past.

 Klowny wrote:

Audustum wrote:
I'm glad to see there's nothing worth discussing about NOVA than Forgeworld.

Anyway, from the view in the trenches, there was a really nice amount of diversity present. While Imperium armies were a plurality, I saw multiples of Dark Eldar, Ynnari, Tau, Necrons, Chaos, CSM and even 3 Adeptus Custodes. The top cut down diversity a bit so balancing work isn't done, but people seem to be having fun and bringing out a full range of armies even to a GT.

13 xenos armies in the top 50 is not diverse, with the other 37 armies being either chaos or imperium....

Are you implying that Index armies should be able to beat Codex armies?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So I'm waiting for your writeup. Or one from someone else.

A lack of a comprehensive 'writeup' of all the imbalance between FW and GW in the last decade doesn't prove your point. The reason why you keep suggesting this in the first place and why no one has cared to do it is because it would be just a ridiculously large undertaking to comb through all the broken/unbalanced units in Imperial Armor books for the last ten years. Not to mention how many people have the full collection of books or that are willing to pour countless hours into just navigating through their poorly organized material.

The complaint was they aren't responsive to imperial armies. If they were responsive, guard would be nerfed and they wouldn't have nerfed flyers as a whole to avoid nerf into space marines directly. Basically, imperial armies get to keep their broken toys cause GW doesn't want to make any meaningful nerfs to their precious babies. The worst they've done is the command squad guard thing, which was a fart in a hurricane.