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2018/07/11 11:31:47
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
I also feel "nah nah nah, Soup doesn't mean allies. It means mixed faction detachments" has had its day. I mean technically yes, but outside maybe Celestine such list building styles largely died a death shortly after the codexes were released.
So then it lost it's meaning even further back and is now just a dumb buzzword
P.S.A. I won't read your posts if you break it into a million separate quotes and make an eyesore of it.
2018/07/11 12:50:09
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
I also feel "nah nah nah, Soup doesn't mean allies. It means mixed faction detachments" has had its day. I mean technically yes, but outside maybe Celestine such list building styles largely died a death shortly after the codexes were released.
So then it lost it's meaning even further back and is now just a dumb buzzword
I don't see how its a dumb buzzword. It conveys meaning.
I know when someone says "Imperial Soup won tournament X" there is a high chance they mean some "Blood Angels, Knights or Custodes plus an IG battalion bringing the CPs and farm".
When someone says "Eldar Soup is getting me down" I can assume they are referring to a CWE detachment, a Ynnari detachment (probably spears) and 3 Black Heart ravagers or something similar.
2018/07/11 14:13:49
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
At this point, I think between no more mixed detachment, and the rule of three, if they just said, pick on Stratagem set to use from the available ones in your detachments, you can only use that one from the game, you would see soup pretty much fixed.
So if a player had Knights and a 180 point IG farm, he could run only knight Stratagems, or Guard stratagems, not both.
2018/07/11 16:45:40
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
It's not a bad way to go about it, though I think it might make Guard the only viable ally because most people aren't really making use of their strategems anyway. Knight allies would probably go straight out the window since they're so reliant on them for example.
2018/07/11 17:47:13
Subject: Re:Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
Blastaar wrote: Soup also gets in the way of tactical gameplay. This is not currently the case but every army should have specific strengths and weaknesses as part of its design. Soup allows players to shore up those weaknesses, which becomes a balance issue, but also diminishes decision making by removing something players have to keep in mind to try to minimize through good play, while at the same time their opponent is looking to take advantage of that weakness and capitalize on any mistakes. Allies should be removed from matched play.
There's a difference between strengths and weaknesses and differing playstyle. Shoring up weaknesses isn't the same as having all strengths. I wouldn't say an Imperial soup army is an assaulting horde any more than I'd view a Nid army with Genestealer support a gunline. Playstyle is way more about unique strengths, but players seem to have a habit of trying to define them by crippling weaknesses that result in something that doesn't actually work on the table.
You are being disingenuous. While play style and meaningful strengths/weaknesses have some overlap, reducing or eliminating an intended weakness of an army by bringing in units from another codex with no disadvantage for doing so is not a "play style." Strengths matter, but units and armies need to have a downside to be balanced, and to be interesting to play with and against. Like Synapse: It benefits your units, and helps define the army's play style, but the opponent can play around Synapse by killing your big beasties, weakening your army. 40k needs more of this, not less. That's how you get 8th edition blandness- give everyone special abilities and buffs without meaningful weaknesses. It is un-interactive design.
I'm not being disingenuous at all. There's a huge difference between "does not want to engage in close combat" style weaknesses and silver bullet, 2 meter wide exhaust port points of failure. Having unique tools to handle a variety of problems creates interesting and interactive games. Having "dies to swarms" creates pre-game concessions. Even if soup gave every faction ever playstyle (it doesn't, there is no version of the Imperium that's looking to solve genestealers by engaging them in CC for example) each LIST would still have its own playstyle, strengths and limitations. Ultimately though, having the tools available to win games against a wide variety of list types is what makes a game that's largely determined on the table rather than before the game begins, which is really what 40k needs more than anything.
A list that is intentionally designed to be good at everything isn't going to have weaknesses, though. That's what soup allows. I understand many players aren't doing that, and are building lists they enjoy and think are fluffy, but allowing players to take whatever models they want just waters down decision-based gameplay as a consequence.
It DOES have weaknesses though, because points aren't infinite. Take all comers lists lack redundancy. They have the tools to deal with everything, but that means that they have fewer tools to deal with specific things. Your opponent should be looking to identify the things that most efficiently deal with their army and seek to disable them, even via inefficient means, because once they're gone the ability to deal with the army efficiently drops pretty quickly. It essentially creates that Synapse style gameplay; just organically through threat awareness rather than a blunt rule (that, fwiw, you can't generally focus on anyway due to character targeting).
Really, the ideal scenario is both armies being something of generalist take all comers armies. That allows both sides to have a good set of target priority decisions to make throughout the game. That doesn't mean they're identical; while you're going to be wanting to handle cheap infantry with tools that handle cheap infantry, Tyranids and Imperium are likely to go about it via very different means. Overall though, this is a way more interesting game than "I play Knights and you play Boyz and we see who GW currently has made mathematically more points efficient".
Cherry-picking units from various codices to remove an army's weaknesses is not going to leave room for tactical play with or against by its very nature. Target priority is only the most basic level of strategy/tactics. This is what I mean when I say soup allows lists that are un-interactive to play with and against, and create games won and lost by dice rolls, not player decisions. The game needs more counterplay than that to be interesting. Good games need restrictions. Points. Making sure every army has meaningful strengths and weaknesses. Tight list construction that forces you to make choices about what to bring, instead of allowing you to bring all the toys at once. Soup is fine for narrative and open play, but it doesn't belong in matched.
Let's look at Malifaux: it has a strong element of allies/soup, with models that can be hired as mercenaries, masters who can hire crew from outside of their own faction, and many dual-faction masters who can be played as either faction they belong to. However, in Malifaux the master defines the crew- their play style, strengths, and weaknesses. (Factions also have their features, strengths, and weaknesses. Resurrectionists, for example, have lots of summoning to make undead, but are pretty slow moving barring a couple exceptions) So what models they can hire, and what their capabilities are, as well as the master's, can all be adjusted to keep them interactive, and the game tactical despite the broader choices. 40k doesn't have an equivalent to that. There is no "keystone" unit type that lists revolve around and interact with in that way. There are also many more factions and units to account for.
Ultimately this is an issue with GW's narrow, one-dimensional rulesets. There isn't design space for meaningful strengths and weaknesses in 40k or AOS right now because the core GW ruleset is too simple and shallow to support what they're trying to do with it. If we had a deeper, more comprehensive core that could support these differences, the issues with soup (balance aside) would be even more apparent. Soup permits armies that are like playing a 5-color deck in MTG, but you have a special rule from outside of the cards that lets you tap any land for mana of any color. Multi-color decks, by design, because of the pool of cards they have access to and their synergies have an unreliable mana base to compensate, with mana-fixers like dual lands, artifacts, creatures, etc. that your opponent could still have a chance to deal with. Restrictions are important for gameplay.
2018/07/11 18:43:48
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
I guess I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing or envisioning out of cherry picking. I don't get where you get the idea you're taking all the toys in one list. That's why there are different flavors of soup. Different lists are taking different combinations of models that give the list different strengths and weaknesses.
I don't know what kind of weaknesses you're thinking armies should have. It sounds like you're going for the old idea that factions should have something they can't deal with, which is a neat bullet point to give something identity, but a terribly unfun way to play games. A faction lacking the tools needed to play against another faction is the most utterly miserable.
I guess it comes down to this for me. If Orks didn't get one codex in a few months, but 2; one called Orks and one called Cult of Speed, would you think Ork players should no longer be able to mix their bikes and buggies with their boyz? If GW released a couple arm options for Stompas or Wraithknights and declared them their own faction should they no longer be part of Ork or Eldar armies? I get why players feel like a Codex should be a complete army, but its pretty clear at this point that GW doesn't feel the same.
2018/07/11 19:17:25
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
The rule of 3 is the core of why soup has gotten as stupid as it has. Yes, it's been everywhere since...basically forever, but it wasn't MANDATORY like it is now. With the rule of 3 it's not even an option to run mono-faction lists for the vast majority of armies anymore.
Dark angels don't really work mono-faction, neither do space marines, deathwatch, harlequins, blood angels, sisters of battle, custodes, grey knights, CSM, Thousand sons, or Deathguard. Even factions like Eldar, Dark Eldar, and IG that can function perfectly fine under the rule of 3 can't utilize their units anywhere near well enough to compete with crossfaction lists. Yes those lists are likely to be better anyway, but not to the crazy degree they are now.
The rule of 3 has taken a major problem with list building in 8th edition and made it an epidemic.
2018/07/11 19:23:02
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
ERJAK wrote: The rule of 3 is the core of why soup has gotten as stupid as it has. Yes, it's been everywhere since...basically forever, but it wasn't MANDATORY like it is now. With the rule of 3 it's not even an option to run mono-faction lists for the vast majority of armies anymore.
Dark angels don't really work mono-faction, neither do space marines, deathwatch, harlequins, blood angels, sisters of battle, custodes, grey knights, CSM, Thousand sons, or Deathguard. Even factions like Eldar, Dark Eldar, and IG that can function perfectly fine under the rule of 3 can't utilize their units anywhere near well enough to compete with crossfaction lists. Yes those lists are likely to be better anyway, but not to the crazy degree they are now.
The rule of 3 has taken a major problem with list building in 8th edition and made it an epidemic.
I have absolutely no idea what you were looking to take 4 of in.... really any of these armies honestly. Most of them can't even afford 4 of the same thing in a single list.
2018/07/13 00:36:31
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
LunarSol wrote: I guess I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing or envisioning out of cherry picking. I don't get where you get the idea you're taking all the toys in one list. That's why there are different flavors of soup. Different lists are taking different combinations of models that give the list different strengths and weaknesses.
I don't know what kind of weaknesses you're thinking armies should have. It sounds like you're going for the old idea that factions should have something they can't deal with, which is a neat bullet point to give something identity, but a terribly unfun way to play games. A faction lacking the tools needed to play against another faction is the most utterly miserable.
I guess it comes down to this for me. If Orks didn't get one codex in a few months, but 2; one called Orks and one called Cult of Speed, would you think Ork players should no longer be able to mix their bikes and buggies with their boyz? If GW released a couple arm options for Stompas or Wraithknights and declared them their own faction should they no longer be part of Ork or Eldar armies? I get why players feel like a Codex should be a complete army, but its pretty clear at this point that GW doesn't feel the same.
I should have said using allies/soup to eliminate weaknesses in a faction makes decision-making and tactics less present for both players in games generally. I didn't intend to speak purely within the context of 40k or its current edition. In that context, I think that making the game less tactical is a minor issue with soup, and that balance is a larger concern. The imperium consists of so many different units I don't see how it could be balanced internally or externally to account for such loose list construction rules. Points aren't enough.
40k at present is tactically quite simple. There isn't design space to give each army meaningful strengths and weaknesses. In a more complex game however, allying in units that remove an important weakness of an army would make that list play much more simply, and allow less back-and-forth and counterplay between players.
By weakness I don't mean something that causes a faction to automatically lose for some reason like the old Warp Quake shenanigans. Each army in a game should be balanced internally, with all options viable, and externally, so that in a match-up against an equally skilled player, they each have a roughly equal chance of winning. But they should each have different means by which they accomplish their goals, including drawbacks to offset the things they do well, to keep the faction and the game interesting. In a game with more going on than in 40k -and possibly still in 40k 8th- being able to pick units from other factions that are strong where the primary faction is weak makes them take less thought to play because there is no longer something to be mindful of while taking actions with your units, that an opponent could, through good play, turn to their advantage.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/07/13 00:37:33
2018/07/13 06:18:22
Subject: Why there is next to no chance soup is going away anytime soon.
Blastaar wrote: The imperium consists of so many different units I don't see how it could be balanced internally or externally to account for such loose list construction rules. Points aren't enough.
This is probably where we see things differently is all. I don't really disagree with the general ideas above, but I don't think the variety of the Imperium actually fills weaknesses in a way that impacts the playstyle. Part of that is simply because there's really not all that much variety. Generally speaking, a huge portion of the Imperium sports are pretty similar statline and uses and consistent set of weapons. Some kind of specialize in one weapon type over the other, but everything still falls into a similar playstyle of mixed arms shooting with primarily that's generally focused around heroes designed to fight other heroes after the chaff has been thinned by gunfire.
As I see it, despite having a huge array of options, there's so much reuse that it still has a pretty distinct playstyle. There's no Imperium list that replicates a Green Tide or Tyranid swarm. Nothing can attempt to win purely in the shooting phase like Tau, or dominate with speed and psychic tricks like Eldar. The weaknesses soup patches over are the stuff you see in immature factions for other games. Gaps in the model lineup that only exist because its an incomplete design. In 40k's case, a lot of this is simply because in the past GW repeatedly passed off each new Imperial kit as its own faction. I don't consider things like a total lack of super heavies or disposable troops to be the kind of features you want to differentiate your armies with. They're the kind of thing that people ask when they get their version and when it comes to the Imperium, that's not something we need to wait for new model lines to produce.
