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Lulz.

Platinum Angel < Disenchant, Shatter, “Destroy Target Creature”, “Destroy All Creatures”, Destroy target Permanent, Destroy all permanents, 4 points of direct damage.

There are near countless solutions to Platinum Angel, outside of a straight race to 7 mana.

Yeah, platinum angel wasn't even that great. It's just a classic case of low-skill casual players whining about "broken cards" because they can't win by mindlessly turning 5+ mana creatures sideways until someone wins.

The Allfather wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

So not true. Explain platinum Angel ?

MTG is completely unbalanced there are cards so obviously over powered that only certain people have.

What? Do you even play magic? Platinum angel hasn't ever been op in any competive format. I don't even think it's ever even seen play in competitive.

Fun in a wombo-combo deck to create the most uttterly untouchable Platinum Angel... and then watch your opponents draw to death.

Or create the ultimate griefer deck by also playing Abyssal Persecutor... Every turn you ask, “Do you wish to continue?” The griefing of course comes in the form that the only way the game can end is in a forfeit.

So how to tie that back to the OP? Hmmm... Magic balances in several ways... the simplest of which is to release cards in the following set that changes the meta. Or banning cards. Or other limiting factors.

Similarly, a living ruleset / points adjustments through CA continues to tip the meta back and forth, hopefully towards better balance. Tougher to do with 40k as there are fewer games being cycled and, to be frank, I think the Magic designers are more concerned with game balance.

cerberus_ wrote:

The Allfather wrote:
[So not true. Explain platinum Angel ?

MTG is completely unbalanced there are cards so obviously over powered that only certain people have.

What? Do you even play magic? Platinum angel hasn't ever been op in any competive format. I don't even think it's ever even seen play in competitive.

In fairness, it did see play alongside Leonin Abunas in Tooth and Nail decks back in Onslaught-Mirrodin Standard (before Darksteel was released) - I had one copy in my deck when I came third in a local 100-man PTQ back in the day.

Of course, MTG could be balanced better - there are always some decks (and some cards) which are better then others. But the issue isn't nearly so bad with MTG as 40K, for several reasons:

- There are multiple MTG formats, allowing people to choose the playstyle that suits them best.
- MTG is more abstract and discrete than 40K - there's no debate about "how much terrain is enough" or "does this model have line of sight".
- MTG's release schedule allows existing decks to pick up new tools every few months, as well as potentially introducing new strategies. This keeps things fresh for all decks.
- Because there's no build-and-paint style time constraints, it's easier for someone to change things around and try new things if they're not happy with it.

I would say overall that I agree 40K cannot be perfectly balanced while being reasonably computable, and it's not feasible to have the game be "well balanced" through static points while allowing for the variety of game sizes and types that GW seem to go for. And I don't think that's a bad thing, or that it means GW aren't doing their jobs; it's just an inevitable result of the number of variables and inter-relationships.

So is this thread done?

torblind wrote:
So is this thread done?

No

I’d say the thread was done on conception. The moment “good enough” was specifically discounted (which was non-sense, good enough is good enough by definition!) it was over.

If balance was good enough the game would be widely accepted as balanced, which it isn’t. Steps seem to be taken to improve balance, and that’s good.