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Hello,

i was wondering if there is some unofficial set of rules that is actually reasonably balanced and accepted by majority of the community?

I know there are some sets of of rules for some major tournament events but its more like clarification of some unclear rules and banning some OP things etc.

I would be surprised if there wouldnt be some kind of source that actually tries to balance the armies. I mean it doesnt even take that much to do so. In majority of cases it could be solved just by adjusting point costs of units etc.

not really, most of the tourny rules are stuff like "no lords of war! and only 2 detachments tops"

thing is, this can be helpful but isn't nesscarily balanced. especially as some 'dexes have their beatstick character as an HQ (abbaddon) v others for whom it's become a LOW (Dragio)

There is really no fair and balanced version of 40K, all the way back to the beginning, lol. Everything is just different versions of a hot mess.

About the best way to play fair and balanced 40K is the unofficial Kill Team variant out there from Heralds of Ruin. If I played 7th edition, I would play that. Small-unit tactics removes most of the crazy broken nature of 40K.

http://heralds-of-ruin.blogspot.com/p/kill-team-rules.html

I would say the ITC rule tournament packet does a pretty good job. When a major GT with ~200 players and international attendance has SM scout and nids lictor armies placing top 8 or winning the tournament that seems pretty well balanced.

It isn't perfect mind you but a perfectly balanced system doesn't allow for meaningful choice of armies. Any game where you can choose your armies will always have a large element of list building derived wins. The best that can be done is to maximize the variety of armies which have a realistic shot to win.

Thats a shame.

I think its even in interest of players of those top codexes to balance it, isnt it? I woul rather have a choice of what i can bring from my codex then just spam 2-3 units over and over again.

I still hope most of the community are reasonable people and at least i wouldnt complain if i had obviously broken codex nerfed. Its common practise in every game i ever played.

 ansacs wrote:
I would say the ITC rule tournament packet does a pretty good job. When a major GT with ~200 players and international attendance has SM scout and nids lictor armies placing top 8 or winning the tournament that seems pretty well balanced.

It isn't perfect mind you but a perfectly balanced system doesn't allow for meaningful choice of armies. Any game where you can choose your armies will always have a large element of list building derived wins. The best that can be done is to maximize the variety of armies which have a realistic shot to win.

Except it wasn't scouts and lictors, it was buffed up grav cannons and 5 flyrants. The scouts and lictors weren't much of a factor. You could've replaced those units with half the other stuff in the codex and the result would've been the same.

 Toofast wrote:
Except it wasn't scouts and lictors, it was buffed up grav cannons and 5 flyrants. The scouts and lictors weren't much of a factor. You could've replaced those units with half the other stuff in the codex and the result would've been the same.

Have you actually read the lists you are talking about?

Sean Nayden 1st Best Overall Las Vegas Open 2105

That is 3 flyrants. Also, the lictors are an integral part of what wins the game as ITC has objectives and maelstorm components in every single game. In the nids codex there isn't really another unit which could have fulfilled the lictor's role.

Nick Rose 2nd Overall Las Vegas Open 2015

A single unit of 3 grav centurions makes the entire list "buffed up grav cannons"? Sure he did buff the grav centurions at times but that certainly doesn't win a game on it's own. The list has 37 scouts in it. That is 12 times the number of scouts than grav cannons.

IMO it speaks well of a rule set when the top 8 lists have 75% or more different units in them and are mostly different armies.

 ansacs wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
Except it wasn't scouts and lictors, it was buffed up grav cannons and 5 flyrants. The scouts and lictors weren't much of a factor. You could've replaced those units with half the other stuff in the codex and the result would've been the same.

Have you actually read the lists you are talking about?

Sean Nayden 1st Best Overall Las Vegas Open 2105

That is 3 flyrants. Also, the lictors are an integral part of what wins the game as ITC has objectives and maelstorm components in every single game. In the nids codex there isn't really another unit which could have fulfilled the lictor's role.

Nick Rose 2nd Overall Las Vegas Open 2015

A single unit of 3 grav centurions makes the entire list "buffed up grav cannons"? Sure he did buff the grav centurions at times but that certainly doesn't win a game on it's own. The list has 37 scouts in it. That is 12 times the number of scouts than grav cannons.

IMO it speaks well of a rule set when the top 8 lists have 75% or more different units in them and are mostly different armies.

Man, you're arguing with a person who himself claims he's a waac tourney guy striving for easy wins.

The lictors fulfilled a role, but points wise weren't a huge part of the list. I will agree that most nid players are scared to write them into lists though.

Good marine players already knew scouts were good. No one in tourneys carries ap4. It's all either ap 2 or 3, or a bunch of ap -. With the sentinels' bolter proficiency, their scouts are better tac marines than tac marines, in addition to outflank/infiltrate.

Given that the ITC uses their modified d6 maelstrom, where roughly 2/3 of the time you just want to be somewhere, scouts and lictors accomplish that much easier than tacticals and 90% of nid options.

It's not really that a lot of people are wrong about them, it's the combination of their deployment abilities, the tourney meta, cost, and the tournament format that makes them good choices, and many players on dakka don't/didn't know how ITC missions work, or weren't familiar enough with them to know how they changed your general strategy and list building.

Those same lvo players would likely run different lists in say... An eternal war mission style tournament, which is what a TON of people play at home. I rarely find anyone who wants anything to do with maelstrom, ITC version or no, so it makes sense that they don't have a good handle on how maelstrom or ITC maelstrom changes list-building theory.

Swedish Comp does a really good job of setting rules that don't do blanket bans on anything, yet do balance things out a bit.

The problem is, it is always lagging behind, as the people that make it aren't working full time with this, and GW are pumping out new additions to codex all the time.