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I can't help but wonder if the primary reason why 40k can't be balanced is due to the sheer amount of factions and subfactions that exist.

I was looking at HH and the fact that it is essentially Marines, Guard, Mechanicum, Custodes, Knights (& Titans) and Daemons.

While the rulebook seems obtuse in parts, the game itself feels more balanced.

But when you look at 40k it's a mess. I don't believe they have a staff large enough to adequately play test their armies. This is why you get these seemingly broken Detachments that are released, abused, and then nerfed after a tournament or two.

Do you think that if GW reduced the number of factions/playable armies, the game balance might improve?

It’s not just the number of factions, but the scale of the game. It’s a game that wants to cover everything from grots to titans. They want you to be able to put half a company on the table, but care about what kind of pistols your sergeants are packing.

The creep in size, scale, and variety is huge. And they want to keep legecy concepts and everything on a d6 scale.

I’m honestly suprised it;s as ballanced as it is.

No.

I don't think too many factions is the problem. It is a component, but its not the core issue.


The core issues as I see it are

1) GW keeps changing the core rules. Every 3 years. That's an insane timescale. Changing up the core rules and structure of the game every 3 years is nuts and you can't balance it on that time scale.
Heck just this last edition GW threw points (and basically any custom loadouts) out the window. That's a massive change.

2) GW's resource allocation. Ignoring the timescale issues its clear that GW doesn't allocate enough resources toward balance. Yes they do a LOT more than they used too and YES the 3 year cycle means they have to allocate a lot into it; but they don't have the right allocation. There's no big testing team nor external testing going on to a scale that would support major tight rules system.s

3) Attitude of designers. When you read the rules you can very clearly see there's a bunch of "gentleman's handshakes" going on that makes the game work because its being tested by people who have been playing for decades against each other. They've got a bunch of unwritten rules and ideas floating around when they test and play and with a lack of sufficient time and out-sourced testing those issues get compounded.


4) Protective attitudes of GW management. Even when GW uses external testing they don't send the whole of the rules; they send a preconstructed army and rules. By that very nature it will miss things because the testers can't test the full system. They can't spot the combo that is overpowered if they aren't given it.



Ultimately the 3 year cycle has a LOT to answer for. It's not alone and even before we were on 3 years GW had huge issues in balance. At its very core is the simple fact that there's no actual drive at GW to make the games as balanced as possible and to create and maintain a balanced game.

It's just not there in the system - they get close and honestly I suspect they burn out some staff who must work really hard to get codex/battletomes made in insanely tight deadlines every 3 years. You can see that because every so often GW DOES release a fairly tight and well build rules system. There's skill and drive within GW to do it; but not at the top end of the whole company.




Personally I wish GW would realise that the 3 year cycle has issues and that ultimately its the 3 year model cycle that drives sales more than rules. That they could go to a slower update of the core rules and just re-release books every 3 years or so with updated errata; updated art and lore; adding in new units and so forth that got added over the course o 3 years.







~Scale of the game IS A factor. Heck we've seen GW cutting down on unit options because armies have gone from 6 different models to 30. So instead of 1 kit that builds into a dozen different battlefield roles you have 6 kits that build into two battlefield roles each. And people accept that mostly because it means more toys to build, paint and play with.
But I would argue that its less a factor than the points I raised above.

It is a major issue, along with the need to create additional factions with each edition, which demands every more design space.

I agree that the three-year product cycle is probably a bigger impact, but only insofar as they change it. If GW simply did a review each three years for revisions and upgrades, while keeping the core system intact, you'd get a better game, probably better player retention and I don't think it would hurt sales at all (maybe books).

For example, there's nothing to stop GW from adding new models or refreshing old product lines. The multiplicity of carbine, rifle, etc. variants also would exist in that framework, and would likely work better because the kinks would be worked out.

It is also interesting to see the 'alumni' talk about their experiences and what designs they produce when they are given to opportunity to do so without management sticking their thumbs in everything. One reason why I think 2nd is still worth playing is that it had the longest development cycle and lots of FAQs and clarifications were out by the time it was replaced, which fixed a lot of the more notorious problems. One simply doesn't have time for that in 3 years.

I guess "define true game balance"?

I realise being the White Knight gets old, but I feel the game is relatively more balanced today than it was a decade ago with fewer factions. So not really convinced faction count is an issue.

You see more factions, more subfactions and more datasheets played at a competitive level than was the case. I don't know about "this exact meta" versus a year ago, versus late 9th - but its much better than ten or twenty years back.

A detachment coming out that's a bit good and getting nerfed a month or two later is surely better for balance than a codex coming out that essentially breaks the edition and GW going "ah well, have fun for the next 3-6 years." (Or doing the same in reverse if your book was completely trash.)

I think the game designers at GW can occasionally show brilliance (apocalypse 19', boarding actions), but regarding 40k, they are tied down by a mix of legacy, professional, and personnal shackles.

That being said, i can believe that upper management push for constant shift of rules in order to entice people to buy new books and units, is a major impediment to long term balance.

The community is not blameless either, with a good chunk of it clinging to the outdated turn system out of habit, and the tight hold the competitive community has on the way the game is played.

I don't think 40k will ever be balanced and feel good to play, not because the roster of units is intrinsically flawed, but rather the company culture behind it is not concerned by such things in the long term.

I do think that IGYG that GW uses for its core games is a LOT harder to balance. Even AoS kind of half tries to bring alternating activation in close combat.


Whole army activations in one go have the problem that they can do a LOT of damage very fast; which GW often leans into as a feature for those "epic moments." Which in turn means balancing is hard because you can have one really awesome turn and obliterate so much that even if the armies were balanced; the balance is suddenly skewed out of balance entirely in one go.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:


I realise being the White Knight gets old, but I feel the game is relatively more balanced today than it was a decade ago with fewer factions

I think a huge part of this is that GW makes sure every army gets rules pretty swiftly. In the past armies could miss entire editions before getting a new codex. Heck some factions even missed TWO whole editions before getting properly updated rules. That throws balance entirely out of kilter if one army is running around with brand new rules and another has rules from the last edition that kind of mostly work but not quite etc...

GW finally realised that this was a bad business practice and now you can generally expect to get new rules pretty swiftly and bigger core rule shake-ups often come with a launch compendium to at least get armies functionally on the same level.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I can't help but wonder if the primary reason why 40k can't be balanced is due to the sheer amount of factions and subfactions that exist.

I was looking at HH and the fact that it is essentially Marines, Guard, Mechanicum, Custodes, Knights (& Titans) and Daemons.

While the rulebook seems obtuse in parts, the game itself feels more balanced.

But when you look at 40k it's a mess. I don't believe they have a staff large enough to adequately play test their armies. This is why you get these seemingly broken Detachments that are released, abused, and then nerfed after a tournament or two.

Do you think that if GW reduced the number of factions/playable armies, the game balance might improve?

I think it's less a game balance issue and more an issue of content bloat. GW just doesn't seem to have the team or procedures in place to properly handle the amount of stuff they've got going on, and their blatant favoritism does them no help here. I do think a good number of subfactions/a few factions should probably be merged, but that's coming from a lore perspective as much as a functional one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

GW finally realised that this was a bad business practice

I'm not entirely sure they did. Not to hyperfocus on my own dudes, but IG went the majority of 8e and 9e on their initial 8e codex. Granted, that could have been solved by GW doing indices for 9e the same as they had for 8e/10e; if we get indices for 11e I think that would show some learning on GW's part.

All the responses here are great; I threw an exalt Overread's way, because I support the idea that the three year cycle is at the root for many other issues.

I also want to respond directly to OP's final question though: Do you think that if GW reduced the number of factions/playable armies, the game balance might improve?

Perhaps. Even if it was not the biggest problem, reducing factions MIGHT improve balance. However, it would also end up making the game suck.

Balance is NOT the most important factor in a game. Sacrificing EVERYTHING for it is a stupid idea. What makes 40k unique IS its number of factions, its scale and its craziness. Hundreds of other games have better rules and more balanced gameplay. Most of them will burn bright with a relatively small playerbase for MAYBE a decade, but more likely a year or two before their appeal wanes and new management takes over or the game simply fades from the world.

40k is a monolith precisely because the breadth and depth of the lore and the model range were always prioritized over game play and rules. To chip away at what makes this game fantastic and separates it from all other games would be a catastrophic mistake.

Fortunately, I think GW understands this more than many who would remake the game to their own tastes- better rules, more streamlined, more modern and hip... But ultimate empty, and as bereft of breadth and depth of lore and range than literally every other game one the market.

Edit: Also forgot to mention that subfactions no longer exist for anyone except Marines. It's possible to still think of god-aligned Chaos armies as subfactions- they aren't, but I understand how someone could argue that they are.

As for everyone else? No such thing as a subfaction in any way that matters to the game. Only detachments exist. Unless you're a marine, or Chaos Legion who is in denial. To me, this was ALMOST the beginning of that "Sacrifice in the name of balance" crap that would ultimately bankrupt the game of its value (if not its actual profit). Fortunately, it hasn't gone that far yet, and the pendulum can (and likely will) swing back within the next decade or so.

A lot of great and pretty nuanced responses above. Well said everyone. To throw my 2 cents into it.

First and foremost, I mirror Nevelon's sentiments, I am astonished that the game is as balanced as it is. The fact that GW even tried to get their balance within 45-55% for each faction is a herculean task. Remember, that Chess, a game with only 2 identical armies has a 47.5-52.5% split between white and black based on first turn advantage. That's all it takes to make that kind of win/loss margin. Personally, anything in the 40-60% range is perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of comments made around the core rules changes, and I do somewhat agree, however 11th will really be the deciding factor in this for me. What I mean is, 8th was a full re-boot, where 9th was mostly iterative. 10th was another full re-boot. If 11th is mostly iterative with all the codices remaining valid from 10th, then while we're technically getting a new edition every 3 years, it's more of a major rules update with a proper new edition every 6, which is a lot more time to work on a core ruleset and see what works and what doesn't.

I do also agree that they don't put as much into playtesting as they should. Aside from the things that got really popular for being broken like Aeldari in early 10th (how that didn't see that problem coming still baffles me), there are other rules, ESPECIALLY for the lesser played armies that never even caught on in the meta because of how comparatively slow the meta moves in 40k compared to other games in what people have the time to test and play around with, even when it's out in the world. For instance, back when the 10th T'au codex dropped, there was a really broken strategy you could use in the Kroot Detachment that almost guaranteed a win if you got first turn, and, while it didn't improve going second too much, didn't harm your chances either. However, since no one was playing Kroot competitively at the time since the army was new, looks underwhelming on the surface, and was stupid expensive to collect, no one caught on. The strategy was actually accidentally fixed by GW in a balance pass when then hit on some other armies that were using a similar rule in a different way to be too strong. So, they kinda stumbled into that fix, but at least it happened. It seems that the niche armies get a lot less testing, but that's also mirrored in their chance to be obviously exploitable if less people are playing them to begin with as the interaction was obvious when you actually sat down and thought about how these units worked.

To answer the OP question though, no I don't think more factions would skew balance. I think that the existence of Knights as a faction skews balance more than any new faction would unless they are an army that is more of an only one thing than Knights are. A robust and flexible core rules system that allows for each faction to use the system differently, but fairly is certainly achievable, I'd even say that GW (mostly) accomplishes this despite my existing gripes. For another example, consider the Twilight Imperium 4th ed board game, 24 unique factions, with 6 more that just came out and the game feels well balanced every time I play it. Sure I imagine it has a competitive meta and faction tiers too, but out of the box for people just getting into it, they feel well matched.

Now that I bring that up though, I think I can see an important difference, and one that GW cannot possible control. In TI4, you have every possible component you could use for your faction in each game, so it's much easier to balance around each other despite the factions wildly different playstyles and win conditions. However, in 40k (and other games like it) you build your own army from pieces of the whole, if your specific build and style isn't doing that well in your local meta or overall, it takes a vast investment of time and money to change your army enough to play a different style, which leads a lot of people who don't have massive collections to just stick to their guns and keep running the same things, or to change so slowly that by the time they are running a functionally different list that may have been better, there have been sweeping rules updates and now they are up against a different meta.

That is another thing that is hard to figure out for GW, and there is no easy win here. Because 40k games take so long to play, it's not like MTG where you can knock out dozens of practice games in a weekend so you know how to take on various opponents and iterate your deck to deal with them. 3 months is nowhere near enough time for people to really experiment with what is possible to combat a specific meta, however, due to what I mentioned above about armies being locked for most players, that makes it doubly hard to shift and adapt. This leads GW to run damage control on the strong armies / detachments rather than allow the meta game to shift naturally.

TBH, while I know I'm gunna get some flack for this, if Warhammer cost a lot less and painting was not required for tournaments, I guarantee so many more people would have many different armies so they could shift around in response to the meta. It doesn't solve the whole, takes for ever to play a a game, but that's just part of the nature of the beast at this point. Then again, it's also possible that you might see even more people jump on the best army of the day bandwagon, however, if no counter exists, that's when GW can intervene. Not that that's going to ever happen mind you.

This got a little more rambly than I'd expected. XD

Kinda? Maybe? Sorta? Ish?

Certainly, balancing a game the size, age and scope of 40K is a radically different issue to balancing a new game.

But? For all that I don’t think 40K is too bad on balance. Certainly in more recent years, which frequent, scheduled tweaks to points and even rule? Balance is better than it’s ever been.

Doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Doesn’t mean it can’t be further improved. But I’ll still take its mad variety over limited options any day.

Yeah, balance isn't the problem of today's 40K. Lack of fun narrative rules, cutting equipment, "no models no rules" and of course the 3 year cycle are problems why some people (my gaming group) leave the game, despite much better balance than when we started in 5th.

Whilst I think the "no models no rules" policy has been taken a touch too far (eg removing options that work if you buy two kits like a winged tyrant with twinlinked devourers) I do generally support it in principle.

After all its the same policy almost every miniature game on the market has; and I'd FAR rather that we had that than the old GW policy of releasing rules first and models later. Some of those later models took over a decade to appear.

 Overread wrote:
Whilst I think the "no models no rules" policy has been taken a touch too far (eg removing options that work if you buy two kits like a winged tyrant with twinlinked devourers) I do generally support it in principle.

After all its the same policy almost every miniature game on the market has; and I'd FAR rather that we had that than the old GW policy of releasing rules first and models later. Some of those later models took over a decade to appear.

Eh, even then I don't want to buy 2 tyrants to field one of them. I'll not be sad when they finally fix the Despoiler and stop demanding every Chaos Knights player buy 6 Questoris Knight kits.

Having been a Heresyite since the original books, it's not what I would call "more balanced"; there's just less stuff, and the abuses that have existed can be particularly bad because of that.

The balance between the Legions was crazy bad at times, with some characters being bonkers good or unique units being worthless.
Militia used to be able to take provinces that gave Zealot (giving them Fearless) and Rending on CC attacks, which meant 20 mooks could reliably kill a Primarch from sheer weight of numbers in combat or tie up every single unit if needed.
When 7th Ed swapped Psychic powers to a dice pool, Thousand Sons and Word Bearers became insufferable to play against. Custodes used to be ungodly powerful and were a nightmare in a matchup.
HH2 had Dreadnought problems and Solar Auxilia being unbreakable with some very easy combos.

True balance is a myth; it doesn't exist because it's a game involving dice and measurements.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Whilst I think the "no models no rules" policy has been taken a touch too far (eg removing options that work if you buy two kits like a winged tyrant with twinlinked devourers) I do generally support it in principle.

After all its the same policy almost every miniature game on the market has; and I'd FAR rather that we had that than the old GW policy of releasing rules first and models later. Some of those later models took over a decade to appear.

Eh, even then I don't want to buy 2 tyrants to field one of them.

True but only if you wanted both equipped the same. A lot of the "needs more than one kit to build X combination" use the fact that kits came with spare parts to build alternative loadouts. You just needed more alternatives for some loadouts than others.
So on balance it works for intermediate collectors.


That said considering GW made a "Screamer Killer" model and have been cutting down optoins (eg Tyranid warriors lost ALL their close combat weapon choices); I get the feeling GW is priming the ground steadily toward having more mono-build option models and variations. It's not entirely dafts, as I noted earlier more variation means more toys to buy and such and works with mature armies where you no longer need toolbox kits.

Tyranids don't need a carnifex kit that can do a dozen different roles based on weapon choice; if they have 4 or 5 different named kits that do those roles and that means GW now has 5 or more models to add to the release schedule and it doesn't bloat the army any more than it already is.

Something to consider is that HH uses mechanics that heavily favour 3+ (or 2+) saves and the game is mostly 3+ saves. They even heavily nerfed weapons to reduce their effectiveness on 3+ saves.

The 3rd ed core it uses was basically just a power armour rule set, because they scaled bolters to ap5 and set 5+ saves as a large chunk of factions (not armies) saves - Orks, nids, guard, dark Eldar. marines, sisters, chaos, necrons, all 3+, tau 4+ and 3+ and kroot, and craftworlders similar.

Balancing a game that's mostly just one save with everything built around that is much easier than trying to have a big range.

I went back to fighting games recently and its been very good on my perspective of balance in minis games. The main thing its reminded me is that complaining about balance is often more of how people interact with the hobby than actually playing the game. People will crutch on their faction's tier rating while they're personally struggling to beat Agents. People will complain about balance that haven't played since 6th edition.

One thing that's really stood out is unhappy "the internet" gets when things are overall pretty balanced. They don't want to play in the utopia they envision; their engagement is armchair quarterbacking game design and theorycrafting solutions to problems they haven't actually experienced.

The reality is 40k right now is the most balanced its ever been and I don't think its even close. It's also more competitively diverse than many of the games that made their mark focusing on balance. This comes from someone who plays dozens of games and has, historically, thought 40k was pretty terrible. For much of this edition, whatever army you play probably has a competitively viable build and most players would get more from getting more practice with what they've got than playing something more "optimal".

That's really a pretty ideal situation, even if it could always be better. Even then, for the vast, vast majority of players, the problem probably has more to do with play experience. There are very few situations where a solid 1500 point core is significantly undermined by 500 subpar points compared to the number of games lost because you don't know the table layout, or flow of the scenario or how capable units are against one another. Balance can definitely be a problem, but fixating on it over the experiences you have actual agency over is a good way to get stuck on message boards posting short novels instead of playing the actual game.

 LunarSol wrote:
The main thing its reminded me is that complaining about balance is often more of how people interact with the hobby than actually playing the game. People will crutch on their faction's tier rating while they're personally struggling to beat Agents. People will complain about balance that haven't played since 6th edition.

Yeah, I've seen this a lot too, and the reverse.

Even though I wasn't in the competitive scene yet, back in 9th I placed 2nd in several leagues playing Kroot back when they couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. However, I played the missions, used the strength I did have where it was most needed and took games off of everyone but a couple of competitive players with a lot of experience and strong lists.

Talking about in on Dakka back when I started posted, everyone just poked holes in enemy lists or assumed they were all bad players because how would something possible work that wasn't even in the ballpark of the meta?

While it is a dice game at the end of the day, player skill adds a lot more to the game than most people give it credit for. Yes, sometimes some armies are at a disadvantage, but that doesn't mean that taking the time to improve your skill at the game won't still carry you to victory more often than not against all but the best players.

 Tawnis wrote:
TBH, while I know I'm gunna get some flack for this, if Warhammer cost a lot less and painting was not required for tournaments, I guarantee so many more people would have many different armies so they could shift around in response to the meta. It doesn't solve the whole, takes for ever to play a a game, but that's just part of the nature of the beast at this point. Then again, it's also possible that you might see even more people jump on the best army of the day bandwagon, however, if no counter exists, that's when GW can intervene. Not that that's going to ever happen mind you.

I think this is technically true - but wouldn't really add to balance as most people want?

I mean if we go back to 9th edition - you had some monster codexes. Dark Eldar, Orks (briefly), Ad Mech (also briefly), then say Eldar and Tyranids, Voltan's leaked rules before they were nerfed prior to release etc.
Yes, given time you might discover that 3-4 factions, playing a certain list, have a statistical advantage against the typical "good stuff" lists from those codexes. We usually started to see this sort of evolution after 4-6 weeks.

But... if the meta becomes "that Codex and the few counter lists" - that's still very narrow. I'd argue that's what life was like in the bad-old days when we had a much slower rules roll out and meta evolution.
And clearly not every list is going to be viable - but I think this is a spectrum.

With that said, I agree with you about how the meta isn't really tested. Its easy to say now for instance, but I always felt "statistically" there was nothing wrong with Kroot in 9th after the Tau codex came out. But who had the models?
I feel there have been numerous instances of the relatively tiny "pro-scene" declaring "x will never work" - and then someone goes and proves that it can. But as you say - when it costs so much, its a big investment to try something and if its a style that isn't working (and/or isn't even that fun to play) - its quite a bit to rebuild out of it.

I hold a candle for horde armies - and I'd love to have Chaos Cults, Recon Element, Kroot, even something crazy like mass Guardians. But in practice... the prospect of buying, building and painting them just makes it prohibitive.

I could glibly say that any number of factions beyond 2 has the potential for unbalance, but even chess has shown that the otherwise symmetrical game isn't perfectly balanced, to the tune of White having a 55% or so advantage.

This is in a practical sense the same range that generates complaints about balance in 40k, other board games, and in video games.

Why is chess considered balanced when a theoretical match up between two 40k factions is likely to have a complaint?

I think there are 3 parts:
The first of which is that everyone wants to be good, especially at something that as a baseline in a massive investment of emotion and time as collectible miniatures are. However, 50% of people are worse than the median, by definition, and skill does matter. Its much emotionally easier to blame your loss on "balance" than it is to admit that your opponent is better than you. People quit if they don't win. I have both observed a revolving door of players who start and fail to get wins and quit, and been directly told by at least 2 people that knowing they're at the bottom of the playgroup cause them to quit.

The second point, is that through a variety of factors, the win rates at high levels dont reflect the win rates at low levels. In chess, high level players and low level players are playing the same game. In 40k, high level players and low level players might as well be playing different games. Through a combination of ingorance to willful rejection of listbuilding as a part of the game, and a lack of points-focused thinking, lower level players are often participating in only a 3rd of the game, and are doing so with half a deck in the first place.

New players often don't have the collection size to engage with army composition, many bad players just being "good stuff tribal" with no thought to roles and purposes and interactions, and theres a sizable number of people who actively reject the idea that list building is a reflection of strategy and think more or less any list should have a chance against any other.

The other part of this is mission focused thinking. Most weaker players are often only thinking in terms of exercising destructive effects against the enemy army, that is killing and being killed. You might start to think of the game as a war-game about military tactics amd weapons, but 40k isn't that either. Its a game about doing arbitrary things for points while stopping your opponent from doing other arbitrary things for points that happens to be vaguely militarily themed. Once you understand that, a whole new lens on list building, strategy, and tactics on the field show themselves. Weaker players almost never engage in the game in this way, and starting to think about it this way causes them to move beyond the median quite quickly.

These combine to mean that the gameplay at low levels can be entirely different than at even high intermediate levels, while the game os tightly balanced around high levels. A faction might be able to win a match up against something, say Knights, or Imperial Guard, by fielding adequate antitank or anti-chaff weapons, by occupying objectives with units that the opponent lack the ability or attention to removed, by constraining the enemy's ability to access objectives and decision space, and so on. A low level player is likely only engaged with the antitank or antichaff part of that game, and might not have the collection or desire to build a list that can bring the antitank to face Knights or anti-horde to face Guard in a straight lethality trade, and so feels like theyre always losing because "balance" is just against them, and its really is that bad if you boil the game down to just lethality exchange by arbitrary non-optimized lists.

The final point, is that an asymmetric scenario will always feel less balanced, even if its actually more balanced than a symmetrical turn based game because chess isn't actually symmetrical as white goes first and black goes second. Fundamentally, in an asymmetric game, your opponent will be able to do something that you cant do. When something influences your loss in a symmetrical game, you can do it back tommorrow, so you feel like at least you learned a trick to get better. If my Seraphim & Canoness Pray For Initiative and kill off two squads of Ork Boyz and some Nobz, you cant do that yourself, and you come away having learned that you die to that, but nothing to help you beat it next time.

So, in short 40k and similar games are almost certainly impossible to balance in a way satisfying to players, and while faction count plays a role, there are a number of other factors which cannot be mitigated less a multiple different, and likely incompatible with each other rethinks of game philosophy were made.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Whilst I think the "no models no rules" policy has been taken a touch too far (eg removing options that work if you buy two kits like a winged tyrant with twinlinked devourers) I do generally support it in principle.

After all its the same policy almost every miniature game on the market has; and I'd FAR rather that we had that than the old GW policy of releasing rules first and models later. Some of those later models took over a decade to appear.

Eh, even then I don't want to buy 2 tyrants to field one of them. I'll not be sad when they finally fix the Despoiler and stop demanding every Chaos Knights player buy 6 Questoris Knight kits.

They can demand anything they like, its not going to stop all the 3d printers out there....

Nor will it stop me from either buying bitz off ebay etc or just scratch building missing parts.
I strongly encourage the rest of you to develop hobby skills beyond simply clipping bitz off GW sprues.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
So, in short 40k and similar games are almost certainly impossible to balance in a way satisfying to players, and while faction count plays a role, there are a number of other factors which cannot be mitigated less a multiple different, and likely incompatible with each other rethinks of game philosophy were made.

I think this is a good post - so this criticism/disagreement isn't meant to be a hatchet job or strawman.

I'd argue 40k can be balanced in a way that is satisfying to the players - and its not about a 50/50 win rate.

So yes, White has an advantage vs Black in chess.
But... its not as if that advantage is so great, its going to account for a major skill difference.
If at pro level, White has a 55%~ win rate that's not that much. Its not 100% - which you could argue it could be - even should be - as there's no RNG in chess.

In 40k there are I think 3 elements.
1. Decisions you make in game - from deployment and onwards. Arguably this is "skill".
2. Decisions you make before the game. What faction are you playing, what subfaction (or detachment if we are splitting hairs), what units etc. This is arguably a skill as well - but since you can just copy other people's lists, its not generally as respected. "Good stuff" is quickly identified and shared - with some occasional exceptions.
3. Luck.

The general lament I think on balance is when "2" is too predominant. If you played Eldar at the start of 10th, the odds were massively in your favour. Whether you made the right or wrong decisions, or the dice were a bit above or below average, you were likely to do better than playing something like Ad Mech where the relative maths was not in your favour.
But once things are "close enough", this will not have an outsized effect.

You are then looking for the tension between "skill" and "luck" - and in most cases how much "skill" hides "luck". In Chess there is only "skill". But in 40k or something like Poker you can try and pretend that the winner is the person who makes the fewest mistakes. In reality though, for players at the very top, they don't typically make mistakes, and so luck has an outsized impact. But there's enough decision making to leave you thinking "could I have done something differently/better".

There’s also always the issue of Bad Losers.

You can write a middling list, know how to get the best out of it, and then with a little blessing from the Dice Gods do really well in a game.

If your opponent is a bad loser? Any skill on your behalf is denied, and imbalance is blamed.

Tyel wrote:
The general lament I think on balance is when "2" is too predominant. If you played Eldar at the start of 10th, the odds were massively in your favour. Whether you made the right or wrong decisions, or the dice were a bit above or below average, you were likely to do better than playing something like Ad Mech where the relative maths was not in your favour.
But once things are "close enough", this will not have an outsized effect.

Agreed, and I second the nuance that #2 is both the faction you choose and the choices within the faction, which has additional implications. Competitive winrates across factions are good data, but they only tell you what the top builds of a codex can do. They don't tell you much on their own about internal balance, learning curves, or meta adaptation.

Most people don't expect or demand '''perfect''' balance (a concept I only ever see trotted out as an easy strawman). They just want to feel like they didn't lose at the listbuilding stage, either because their faction sucks altogether, because they took the units they like rather than the ones approved by the tournament meta, because the faction is too difficult to play, or because they went up against a faction or list that they have no chance against.

Framing it as a balance question is a little too narrow, because some of these require core design considerations. So the question really ought to be more like 'does the number of factions make the game design more difficult', in which case the answer is yes, but it certainly doesn't make it impossible to achieve a generally fun game state, especially for a company with the resources of GW.

Not just resources but also age - GW games are decades old. In theory this gives them an insane advantage in developing well balanced rules because they've been at it for ages. Couple that to income, playerbase size and a bunch of other things and the rule debates with GW are always a touch of frustration because they have, in theory, so much potential.

It's certainly a major factor.

Really though, if you're looking for balance, 40k is simply the wrong game for you. GW tries to rebalance things periodically, but there are simply too many factors at play in the rules, rules from factions, special rules for units, and the sheer number and range of units and factions to ever really balance the game.

Play 40k for the cool minis, background and the fluffy way they're generally represented in the rules. If you want balanced (or concise) rules, look elsewhere.

 Overread wrote:
Not just resources but also age - GW games are decades old. In theory this gives them an insane advantage in developing well balanced rules because they've been at it for ages. Couple that to income, playerbase size and a bunch of other things and the rule debates with GW are always a touch of frustration because they have, in theory, so much potential.

It's a double edged sword. While time can certainly lead to perfection, tradition can also be the enemy of innovation. GW's failings have often been less about whatever perfect balance is as they've been about failing to keep up with things like standardized rules templating, scenario and terrain design, resource mechanics and other elements that do so much more to push games more towards providing meaningful decisions than perfect balance possibly could.

I played in 2e when there were fewer factions than today and the balance was awful, though it is a bloody fun game all the same! So I'm not sure faction count is the issue. In fact I hear the game is about as balanced as it's ever been these days.

I've been around long enough that when i hear complaints about balance I just laugh. There were years when entire armies were unplayable bad, or brutally broken. Now, the meta coughs up a strong list and it's got, what, 60 day before it's patched into oblivion?

Still, I don't think that it's the faction count that makes balance difficult. When you look at broken armies of the past, usually they relied very heavily on a handful of broken units. It's the internal balance that GW most struggles with, not the external balance. Obviously sometimes GW gets army or detachment rules wrong (10th edition deathguard have explored the entire arc of the pendulum) but especially in the past, really bad balance happened when players found rules interactions that were really, really good, or abused datasheets that were just too finely tuned or undercosted.

I'll use an example from when I played most competitively: back in 5th edition, wound allocation was done before rolling saves, and you assigned wounds to similarly equipped models in batches. this way, if you did ten wounds to a tactical squad, the sarge, the plasma, and the lascannon all had a chance of dying. But there was no rule that wounsd had to be allocated to already wounded models, and there was minimal ability to do mulitple wounds. So players quickly figured out that if you kitted large, multiwound squads like nob bikers or GK paladins so each model was distinct, you could minimize losing models. Let's say I have 10 paladins, and you did four wounds. I have four models still on 2 wounds, and six with one. I can roll all of those on my full healthy boys, so even if I fail the save, I don't lose a model.

Should GW have realized this outcome? Of course, but they didn't, and so Nob Bikers reigned in terror.

As the game moved away from armories and endless options for unit champions in 8th and 9th, the game also added many other layered rules: sub faction abilities, psychic buffs, strategems, warlord traits, relics, and auras. 10th has also flattened the difference between armies. Nearly every army has one wound, low save "chaff," T10 or 11 monsters/tanks, "uppy downy" units, and the same range of options, with six strats and four enhancements.

What do I mean by flattened? Back in the day, Imperial Knights were AV14 at the front, which meant that you needed a weapon of at least Strength 8 to glace and S9 to pen, and S10 was the cap. This made IK armor skew really tought to deal with. 8th edition made them T8 models, which was the highest effective toughness at the time, but gave them a lot of wounds. Lascannons wounded on 3s, krak missles and melta on 4s. 10th edition made them T12, the current effective cap, making them wounded by lascannons on a 4+, rail guns and other casino guns on 3s, but everything else on 5s. The codex actually dropped them to T11 but with more wounds. This helps their durability against most weapons (more wounds) but makes them more vulnerable to S12 anti tank guns (lascannons, bright lance, dark lance, etc.) and S6 mass fire. this means that more weapons are at least decent against them, making them easier to interact with.

OC is the other area that changed a binary question of objective controlled into a more finely tuned question. In prior editions a single Guardsman could control an objective over a hive tyrant. Likewise, 25 guardsmen with a banner are really tough to overcome wtih OC.

At this point I think 40k is coming close to it's ceiling for balance, and the reason has little to do with army diversity: it's simply the sample sizes available. GW makes balance decisions based on tournament results which generate maybe 10k of games a week, worldwide? Each game of 40k takes about 3 hours, limiting how many games per day can be played. Armies take time to build and paint, limiting the ability for people to simply overload on a new hotness. MTG Arena probably gets 10k of games in a slow afternoon, meaning they have way more data to get a sense of what is balanced.