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I'm of the camp of using simple ways on how to balance the game with list building, like using wounds instead of different mathematical methods because it brings less complexity to the game that I view as unnecessary since it can be done in simpler ways.

This is also probably similar to how others have done it/do it, but I just wanted to put my thoughts out here.

I've used this method for another game I've played that has a similar problem that AoS has, in that there are no built in restrictions allowing for a spam of the most powerful units, and it has worked out very well.


Before setting up the battlefield, both players must agree upon a maximum number of wounds that each of their Warscroll Compendium armies may contain (eg. 100 Wounds). This is called your army list. Once both players have declared they finished making their army list, no changes to their army list may be made.

An army list must contain at least 3 Warscrolls for every Hero Warscroll (making a total of 4 Warscrolls), and for every Hero Warscroll you may have 1 Hero Wizard Warscroll. You must have at least 2 Warscrolls for every Monster or Warmachine Warscroll. If a Hero or Hero Wizard Warscroll contains the Monster key word, then it uses 1 Hero or 1 Hero Wizard and 1 Monster Warscroll choice. Hero and Hero Wizard Warscrolls with named Hero or Hero Wizards may never be duplicated. If your army has a Battalion, you may take that Battalion rather than or in addition to setting up your army list. A Battalion does not count against your total number of Warscrolls. An army list may contain only 1 Scenery Warscroll or 1 Scenery Battalion if an army list contains at least 8 Warscrolls or 2 Battalions.

Battalion
A Battalion is a specific way to organize your Warscoll Compendium armies together to receive certain benefits called Abilities. The Abilities of each Battalion only effects the Warscrolls that make up the Battalion, such as a State Troop Detachment, Skink Patrol, or Chaos Warband.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ARMY LIST TEMPLATE
NUMBER OF WARSCROLLS
BASE_________________4
KEY WORD
ANY*_________________0-3
HERO________________1 (per 3 of ANY)
HERO WIZARD_________0-1 (per HERO)
MONSTER_____________0-2 (per 2 of ANY)**
WARMACHINE_________0-2 (per 2 of ANY)**
BATTALION
SCENERY_____________0-1
SCENERY BATTALION___0-1 (per 8 WARSCROLLS or 2 BATTALIONS)

*Not including Hero, Hero Wizard, Monster, Warmachine, Battalion, Scenery, or Scenery Battalion.
**These are mutually exclusive of the other.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, another thing I've been thinking about on how to balance out the weaker units to the stronger units is to have models with a single wound and a base armor save of 6+ or no base armor save to count as half a wound for the purposes of building an army list. I'd like to try this out and see how it goes.

The balance of warscroll types you have set up looks decent, but I don't think any system derived from wound count is ever going to work. One wound is not even close to equal with another (even within a given category). Every balancing system I have seen based on wound count ultimately ends up as the two players agreeing to bring roughly equal armies, which is what they were doing anyway without any comp.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The balance of warscroll types you have set up looks decent, but I don't think any system derived from wound count is ever going to work. One wound is not even close to equal with another (even within a given category). Every balancing system I have seen based on wound count ultimately ends up as the two players agreeing to bring roughly equal armies, which is what they were doing anyway without any comp.

It's definitely true, it's simply a very rough way to build armies in the simplest terms with what's already given. In my view, the wound count is more secondary to balancing than putting a limit to certain kinds of Warscrolls with certain key words. Warscroll limitation is the biggest thing in my opinion. I think what might be even better and simpler than using wounds is simply using Warscrolls and giving them an upper limit of models/wounds per Warscroll. That way you don't need to bother with tinkering out a complicated formula that may or may not be actually balancing the game.

The idea here is to provide a method of balance, and I am not seeing where it does so. It is certainly more balanced then nothing at all, but the degree of variation means players still need to work out roughly equal forces themselves. If they are doing that anyway, then why add in a balance system at all?

It all depends on what you bring. What this can do is to keep people from spamming characters, warmachines and monsters. Of course there are other units out there that are more powerful than others, but this helps give some order to the game by putting limitations on certain Warscrolls.

No matter what kind of list building system you create, there's always going to be "that guy", you can't get around it, so building a "perfect" balancing system isn't realistic.

People will have to agree to use any balancing system made because it's not part of the rules, so why spend so much time on making complicated pointing methods that, perhaps, most other players wouldn't want to follow? What these things are for are for only your FLGS, not AoS as a whole.

The same question presents itself to you.

Ah, I see what you are going for now. Apologies, I misunderstood previously.

Though to answer your question, we use Project Points Cost at the FLGS I frequent. It's 2 pages of comp coupled with points costs for every warscroll.