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The presence of flyers, and their current and probable future dominance, assault armies look to only get weaker. Shooting was already dominant in 5th edition, but now it's pretty much the only thing.

I feel like massed shooting makes fliers a lot less scary.

Autocannons, Assault cannons, Scatter Lasers, and the like have enough shots to make hitting on 6's viable. Additionally, you can ally to get most of this stuff in if it's not native to your army. On top of that, you can take an Aegis Defence Line, which comes with an Anti-Aircraft piece.

I kept hearing that Assault was king in 5th, then again I never played competitive 40k.

People said that, thanks to cannons, Monsters were useless in 8th. I still see Hellpit Abominiations and War Hydras at the minimum, not to mention Dragons and their ilk.

1. I really don't think it's as poor as you make it out to be. Having played games of 6th (only 4 or 5, I can't pretend to have a final verdict) I haven't found transports to be any more weaker than they were in 5th. Sure, the odd Hull Point loss is a bit of a bummer, but nothing so groundbreaking as to make transports unviable.

You can't assault the turn you disembark from a transport, even if it didn't move. You can't assault in the following assault phase if the opponant blows up your transport either (that ones contested). Why would I take rhinos if all i can do with them is run up, get out, and then stand there and get shot for 1-2 turns without being able to assault with my assault troops? I don't care about hull points, I care about non open topped or assault vehicles being fundamentally worthless in assault armies.

Overwatch and challenges aren't that big of a deal either. While Overwatch can, on certain rare occasions, alter a charge distance, you're always welcome to refuse a challenge. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of the inclusion of these things either, so I won't really work hard to defend these points.

Good luck assaulting that tzeenth flamer unit, burna boyz, or flamer sternguard. You'll be lucky to have an assault squad left at all after the flamers overwatch you. Admittedly, BAs aren't as harmed by overwatch as some other armies.

I don't believe that because assault was nerfed that GW and it's designers have reached "incompetent". Tau certainly got a huge boost, and I'm sure that Tau players aren't exactly complaining all of these changes either.

How did tau get a boost? Vaguely better fire warriors? They'll still get tabled by any other shooting army out there and without wound allocation crisis suit squads are considerably less survivable.

Arguments ensued. Claims of "Fantasy's dead" and "8th is stupid" were popular at the release. But if you look now, there's a large, competitive Fantasy community. If you stick around and wait to see what GW does, you might find that the army you play may not be so bad, or that certain things that seemed powerful aren't so much.

Fantasies competitive community hemmoraged towards the end of 7th and into 8th. It shrunk considerably and is now regaining what it lost. Fantasies sales took a dive as well.

For example: Wood Elves are easily the worst 8th edition army. Steadfast and the removal of movement restrictions to forests have really nerfed their playstyle hard. But there are still Wood Elf players out there. In fact, some Wood Elf players can even go out there and win tournaments.

I neither care about nor play fantasy.


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 Cryonicleech wrote:
I feel like massed shooting makes fliers a lot less scary.

Autocannons, Assault cannons, Scatter Lasers, and the like have enough shots to make hitting on 6's viable. Additionally, you can ally to get most of this stuff in if it's not native to your army. On top of that, you can take an Aegis Defence Line, which comes with an Anti-Aircraft piece.

I kept hearing that Assault was king in 5th, then again I never played competitive 40k.

People said that, thanks to cannons, Monsters were useless in 8th. I still see Hellpit Abominiations and War Hydras at the minimum, not to mention Dragons and their ilk.

Assault hasn't been king since third edition. An assault canon has a miniscule chance of damaging a flyer (66% chance to hit once, 11% chance to get the 6 it needs to damage a vendetta/night scythe/stormraven, ~2% chance to blow it up. Go ahead, fire 25 assault canons and you'll get a ~50% chance to blow up one night scythe. Good luck doing that six more times. Without anti air weapons available aircraft and specifically av12 aircraft are overpowered. The vendetta is monstrously overpowered.

 Cryonicleech wrote:
I feel like massed shooting makes fliers a lot less scary.

Autocannons, Assault cannons, Scatter Lasers, and the like have enough shots to make hitting on 6's viable. Additionally, you can ally to get most of this stuff in if it's not native to your army. On top of that, you can take an Aegis Defence Line, which comes with an Anti-Aircraft piece.

Which is great for assault armies how?

I kept hearing that Assault was king in 5th, then again I never played competitive 40k.

You heard wrong. Imperial Guard mechvet, Space Wolf longfang spam, Grey Knight Psycannon/Psyrifleman spam, and Dark Eldar Dark Lance spam were the kings of 5th. All of them extremely heavily shooting based armies.

The funny thing is that mechanized shooty lists are just fine, if not even more powerful than they used to be. 6th edition didn't put a dent in the more powerful armies of 5th.

1
You can't assault the turn you disembark from a transport, even if it didn't move. You can't assault in the following assault phase if the opponant blows up your transport either (that ones contested).

To be fair, you couldn't do that in 5th unless you had an assault transport.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

Good luck assaulting that tzeenth flamer unit, burna boyz, or flamer sternguard. You'll be lucky to have an assault squad left at all after the flamers overwatch you. Admittedly, BAs aren't as harmed by overwatch as some other armies.

Gee, what a fun coincidence. I've had my flamer unit (5 strong, so 5d3) been charged at least 3 times in my 6th ed. games. With no armor saves and wounding on a 4+, you'd think I'd never lose the assault.

Not so much. Especially when those units are over 10 men strong.

How did tau get a boost? Vaguely better fire warriors? They'll still get tabled by any other shooting army out there and without wound allocation crisis suit squads are considerably less survivable.

This I'll concede, fair points.

Fantasies competitive community hemmoraged towards the end of 7th and into 8th. It shrunk considerably and is now regaining what it lost. Fantasies sales took a dive as well.

It's getting back up there now, and the point being that people are beginning to realize that the edition change isn't nearly as bad as we thought it was?

I neither care about nor play fantasy.

Wasn't asking you to. You're complaining that your Assaulty BAs took a hit. Congratulations, Wood Elf players took a much, much worse hit. You can still run shooty BA and be ok. GW literally threw every Wood Elf build into the garbage. They can still do well. So can BAs.

Assault hasn't been king since third edition. An assault canon has a miniscule chance of damaging a flyer (66% chance to hit once, 11% chance to get the 6 it needs to damage a vendetta/night scythe/stormraven, ~2% chance to blow it up. Go ahead, fire 25 assault canons and you'll get a ~50% chance to blow up one night scythe. Good luck doing that six more times. Without anti air weapons available aircraft and specifically av12 aircraft are overpowered. The vendetta is monstrously overpowered.

Ally some IG and take Hydras then? It's not like you're just stuck to your own book now. Additionally, what's to stop you from taking flyers too? (I know that cost is going to be brought up here, but the point being that you can take flyers as well)

To be fair, you couldn't do that in 5th unless you had an assault transport.

Yes, you could. So long as the transport didn't move you could disembark 2 inches, move six and then assault six for a 14 inch total. That means that with a 12" deployment, 18" move and 14" assault I could have a blood angel 44" foreward on my second turn. By third turn I could hit the table edge. In sixth I get 12+18+6 and can't assault meaning at best I can assault third turn after being exposed to enemy fire outside of the transport for a full turn. Two turns if they blew up my transport on the first.

This is a titanic nerf. A well made IG army can kill every marine I have on the table in three turns if i'm not hiding inside of a tank, let alone leave me combat effective to actually use my assault troops. I could ebay like 40 jump packs and throw away the transport models I put effort into constructing but I'm not a fan of almost every aspect of sixth, let alone the plain imbalance and the nerf to my army. It's more palatable just to abandon the game.

It's getting back up there now, and the point being that people are beginning to realize that the edition change isn't nearly as bad as we thought it was?

No, it's just been out long enough that codex creep has managed to tame some of the more ludicrously broken units. With the normal churn rate GW games have as long as they aren't kill their own audience numbers every month they should always see modest growth after a fall.

Wasn't asking you to. You're complaining that your Assaulty BAs took a hit. Congratulations, Wood Elf players took a much, much worse hit. You can still run shooty BA and be ok. GW literally threw every Wood Elf build into the garbage. They can still do well. So can BAs.

I follow tournament meta because it's fun. I have NEVER heard of wood elves being successful in a major event. Maybe it happened and I missed it, but the onus is on you to prove that claim. As for making shooty blood angels, no thanks. I'd rather just move on to a different game system where assault armies aren't universally better for putting down the knives and picking up guns.

Ally some IG and take Hydras then? It's not like you're just stuck to your own book now. Additionally, what's to stop you from taking flyers too? (I know that cost is going to be brought up here, but the point being that you can take flyers as well)

That's a 200 dollar investment to debase the fluff and design of my army and play a fundamentally worse version of 40k. I would have been happy to make minor adjustments to my army, but "just add guard" is the answer to every balance problem this game has now. Why does GW even sell models other than imperial guard if that's the game they're making?

 Cryonicleech wrote:

1
You can't assault the turn you disembark from a transport, even if it didn't move. You can't assault in the following assault phase if the opponant blows up your transport either (that ones contested).

To be fair, you couldn't do that in 5th unless you had an assault transport.

But you could assault from a stationary transport in 5th. Not so in 6th. No matter what, you have to spend at least one turn standing right in front of your enemy with your thumb up your ass, essentially offering the unit up as a sacrifice.

Assault hasn't been king since third edition. An assault canon has a miniscule chance of damaging a flyer (66% chance to hit once, 11% chance to get the 6 it needs to damage a vendetta/night scythe/stormraven, ~2% chance to blow it up. Go ahead, fire 25 assault canons and you'll get a ~50% chance to blow up one night scythe. Good luck doing that six more times. Without anti air weapons available aircraft and specifically av12 aircraft are overpowered. The vendetta is monstrously overpowered.

Ally some IG and take Hydras then? It's not like you're just stuck to your own book now. Additionally, what's to stop you from taking flyers too? (I know that cost is going to be brought up here, but the point being that you can take flyers as well)

So your response is to play a specific army or lose? So forgo every other army combination, as well as running a solitary army of his choosing. Doesn't solve any problems.

 Fafnir wrote:


So your response is to play a specific army or lose? So forgo every other army combination, as well as running a solitary army of his choosing. Doesn't solve any problems.

Of course, because taking Hydras is the only way, and every other way is wrong.

I'm saying that he doesn't have to completely re-do his entire list, just add some things. I'm sorry that I can't magically tell him his army will be fine this edition, I don't pretend to be able to. He can add things and deal with flyers, he can take his own fliers, he can switch to shooty, or he can just run the same list. I'm not telling him he can't do anything, please don't assume I'm attempting to arbitrarily tell him what to do.

There's ways he can deal with the things he doesn't like, or he can choose not to. Sure, if he doesn't change his army it's less competitive for it, but it's his call. I don't assume that there's only 1 way to play an army.

Towards the original topic: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep

This was referenced in the video in the OP and it's very relevant to the conversation at large. We have seen power creep. You don't need to take a look between Dark Angels, to CSM, to Blood Angels, to SWs, to GKs to not see the trend in pricings of similar units.

 marielle wrote:
Surely enjoyment and pleasure is the goal?

The issue of balance is imo overblown.

I can see how it is an issue in video game design, where everything is mathematically constrained within a mathematically constrained box, where only what the designers planned for is allowed - Warhammer Online died for me when I discovered that if I fired from the top of a cliff the bullet didn't reach the floor because it didn't have the range.

And ok I can see why certain personality types enjoy haggling over what is broken/useless, but... meh... I'd just rather play the game and have fun.

And enjoyment and pleasure is much easier when I don't realise "Oh crap, he's playing Army X." and knowing I've got no chance, or realising that though I love the models and background for unit Y, unit Z is strictly better. When I can do my best to win and not have to watch for using "cheesy" or "dishonourable" tactics. A lot of people who complain would like to just play the game and have fun, but find they're not able because the rules throw themselves secret service style in the way of fun. If you have no problem, then nobody's forbidding you to have fun, but it's rude to claim that people who complain are wilfully not having fun to score internet debate points.

The essence of "balance" is that you don't need to choose between what you find fun and what's effective. Anyone who tries to paint that choice as inevitable is making excuses for shoddy rules design.

To those that say that "GW is a model company and that's where their effort is, not balancing the rules" I say GW often fails with models too. Look at the tyranid codex. Out 2 and half years and there still aren't models for: parasite, tyranid prime, spore pod, harpy, ymgarl stealers, doom, wings for shrikes, and they only came out with tervigon/t-fex and hive tyrant kits a couple of months ago (and for the outrageous price the tyrant kit doesn't come with even one set of devourers when GW made one of the most common builds 2 sets of devourers). The warrior kit has only one set of rending claws for 3 models when GW made the current dex require each model to be armed the same, and I have to pay a lot extra to make bonesword/lashwhip warriors and pay more again if I want them to be shrikes. If GWs focus really was on models shouldn't this have been sorted out quickly? This dex alone shows GW fails if the central focus is models.

Balance takes additional effort from designers and lots of playtesting, especially for a continuously evolving game when new rules mess up older armies. Thing is, even with some gakky core rules, so much of the dex imbalance could easily be mitigated by a detailed errata which would keep players happy, buying more models and starting more armies which in turn would keep GW happy. The pyrovore is a good example. GW produced the model but the rules sucked so they probably didn't sell many. If its rules were errated and maybe the unit moved to fast attack (out of the overstuffed elite slot) they would likely sell lots of the models - seems a goal for a model company - nope - fail again.

The competitive vs casual/narrative/fluffy argument about balance also does not stand IMO. Sure there are bound to be people that don't care about the rules at all and could just as easily set up their models and through legos at them, removing the ones knocked down as casualties, as I remember doing as a kid. But as has been explained in so many threads balance (not perfect balance but an honest attempt to try to ensure internal and external balance for each dex) benefits both tournament and casual players.

I have to agree with those that have been pushed away from 40K by 6th edition and GWs continuing crappy approach to balance. I have decided to shelve my armies for the next few months or longer as I don't find the game fun. I am not a power gamer but I to be able to field a variety of units in my army (using some of the models that I particularly like) without feeling that I am hampering myself because they don't work well. Each player should have a decent chance at winning versus each army. It is a game and there is a winner and loser (sometimes tie). And yes I'm not impressed with all the random nonsense added rather than put the effort in to fix balance problems with each dex. GW produces a poor GAME that has so much potential and could easily be so much better. It is sad.

 Elemental wrote:

 marielle wrote:
Surely enjoyment and pleasure is the goal?

The issue of balance is imo overblown.

I can see how it is an issue in video game design, where everything is mathematically constrained within a mathematically constrained box, where only what the designers planned for is allowed - Warhammer Online died for me when I discovered that if I fired from the top of a cliff the bullet didn't reach the floor because it didn't have the range.

And ok I can see why certain personality types enjoy haggling over what is broken/useless, but... meh... I'd just rather play the game and have fun.

And enjoyment and pleasure is much easier when I don't realise "Oh crap, he's playing Army X." and knowing I've got no chance, or realising that though I love the models and background for unit Y, unit Z is strictly better. When I can do my best to win and not have to watch for using "cheesy" or "dishonourable" tactics. A lot of people who complain would like to just play the game and have fun, but find they're not able because the rules throw themselves secret service style in the way of fun. If you have no problem, then nobody's forbidding you to have fun, but it's rude to claim that people who complain are wilfully not having fun to score internet debate points.

The essence of "balance" is that you don't need to choose between what you find fun and what's effective. Anyone who tries to paint that choice as inevitable is making excuses for shoddy rules design.

This has nothing to do with the rules - shoddy or not - it is simply an issue of your poor social skills, and misunderstanding the social contract involved in tabletop gaming.

If you are not going to have a fun game, or enjoy yourself, then why bother to play?

Just say 'no thanks' and find someone else to play.

 marielle wrote:
This has nothing to do with the rules - shoddy or not - it is simply an issue of your poor social skills, and misunderstanding the social contract involved in tabletop gaming.

If you are not going to have a fun game, or enjoy yourself, then why bother to play?

Just say 'no thanks' and find someone else to play

First, that personal attack does nothing to improve your argument.

I'm not sure what "social contract" you mean, other than "Don't be a dick", which applies to all styles of play, and is irrelevant to any discussion of balance. Perhaps the agreement not use an overly competitive army for a friendly game? But my point was that with a balanced game, you don't need that distinction, because it's possible to make a much wider variety of armies work, and you don't have to modify your list for either:


"If I take that, I'm putting myself at a big disadvantage when this is better in every way."

or

"Everyone knows that's overpowered, if I take that because I like the model or it works for the theme of my army, I'm going to get labelled a WAAC guy."


Both of those impede my fun, so I prefer balanced systems rather than imbalanced ones, to avoid the game itself being unfun, independently of the players.

I agree with Elemental.
Lots of games I play dont NEED 'social agreements' NOT to use certain units or load outs etc, to prevent massivley unbalanceed and unenjoyable games.

I can use these rules for narative -cinematic games , because thay are easy to adapt to most playstyles.
And if we want to use unballanced senarios we , can and know how imballanced they are , if thats important to us....

There is a massive difference between finely tuned imbalance, (everything has a weakness,)to promote player investigation and engagment.
And hap hazzard diffuse game development and resulting chaotic balance issues.

I am not for one minuite saying you can not have fun playing games with chaotic balance issues.
But simply it has a lower return on the level of investment needed, and artificualy restricts player chioce.

Lanrak wrote:
Games that are focused on game play, eg player tactical interchanges that are wide and varied, no matter what the strategic loading .
Are far more engaging and retain player interest for longer.
(Eg the mission and army list does not dictate a specific set tactical option , like it does in so many poorly crafted games.)

Can you offer any examples of such games?

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Lanrak wrote:
Games that are focused on game play, eg player tactical interchanges that are wide and varied, no matter what the strategic loading .
Are far more engaging and retain player interest for longer.
(Eg the mission and army list does not dictate a specific set tactical option , like it does in so many poorly crafted games.)

Can you offer any examples of such games?

Infinity.

If you make a perfectly balanced game, how do you sell people on a new edition?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
If you make a perfectly balanced game, how do you sell people on a new edition?

Either you make a book so nice they can't pass it up or you don't make a new edition for the balanced system you just make balanced expansions.

I know of atleast 1 system that takes the second path, well atleast after the community feedback was used to fix the very few flaws with 1st edtion. Yeah I know a company that not on listen to the player base, but willing to make changes based on are feedback, go figure.

HI Scott 66.
Here are a few games that focus more on tactical interactions.

Fantasy Battle games.
Kings Of War, Armies Of Arcana.

WWII wargames,
Flames Of War, Blitzkrieg Commander,Crossfire.

Sci fi.
Infinity, Fast and Dirty,Tommorows War, Warmachine, Heavy Gear,Dust Warfare,Dirtside, Full Thrust,Classic Battletech.

And GW plcs own SGs.
Blood Bowl.(Best GW game ever IMO.)
Epic Armageddon.(And fan supprted Net Epic.)

None of these games claim to be perfect, but they focus more on tactical game play and player interaction.I think its important for gamers to play a wide range of games to understand what rules set is best for them personaly.


@ Lord Blackfang.
After creating the 'perfect balance in a rule set '.
By totaly understanding how everthing works and all the synergistic effects as well as the directly comparable ones.

Simply add ballanced expansions.
Either progress the time line and increase the options available.And/or open up differrent theatres of war.
Or expand the scope of the game by adding more support assets.
(Eg Battletechs advancing time line and clan tech -innersphere tech race for supremicy. FoW campain books etc.)

 lord_blackfang wrote:
If you make a perfectly balanced game, how do you sell people on a new edition?

Expansion of choice and mechanical options. Increased clarity and efficacy in rules. Streamlining difficult or ponderous mechanics. The introduction of new mechanics. You can do a lot. Miniatures games are a unique animal though as they have to iterate within their already invested user base and can't innovate in isolate. They have to consider previous builds of their game and their player bases financial investment into it. They can't do the kinds of things that M:TG or starcraft does.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HI Scott 66.
Here are a few games that focus more on tactical interactions.

Larnak, I don't think it's very helpful when you list every competitor in every genre as being "more tactically focused".

Lanrak wrote:


Sci fi.
Infinity, Fast and Dirty,Tommorows War, Warmachine, Heavy Gear,Dust Warfare,Dirtside, Full Thrust,Classic Battletech.

Fixed that.
GW are obsessed with balance compared to DP9, who not only don't care about it, they are actively hostile to it.
For that matter, GW also cares more about the game and giving their customers value for their money than DP9.
And don't get me started on the clarity of the rules...

In fact, don't get me started on DP9's utter incompetence at all.

mrondeau wrote:

Lanrak wrote:


Sci fi.
Infinity, Fast and Dirty,Tommorows War, Warmachine, Heavy Gear,Dust Warfare,Dirtside, Full Thrust,Classic Battletech.

Fixed that.
GW are obsessed with balance compared to DP9, who not only don't care about it, they are actively hostile to it.
For that matter, GW also cares more about the game and giving their customers value for their money than DP9.
And don't get me started on the clarity of the rules...

In fact, don't get me started on DP9's utter incompetence at all.

FOW is also not the most balanced game out there. Larnaks post about the difference between games that focus on tactics vs customization kinda falls flat given half of those games don't do that.

 YotsubaSnake wrote:
I understand the point and I offer this: It is next to impossible to create a perfectly balanced enviornment,

Nah it's called chess. ...well at least everything in chess is balanced besides the main variable which is the players skill. Personally I think chess is boring.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

FOW is also not the most balanced game out there. Larnaks post about the difference between games that focus on tactics vs customization kinda falls flat given half of those games don't do that.

To be fair, I only commented on the one I knew did not belong.
I know Infinity and Warmachine are fine, the others, I either either know only theoretically, or I just recognize the name.
I have doubts about Dirtside and Classic Battletech. The rules are a mess, but I never actually played any games.

mrondeau wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

FOW is also not the most balanced game out there. Larnaks post about the difference between games that focus on tactics vs customization kinda falls flat given half of those games don't do that.

To be fair, I only commented on the one I knew did not belong.
I know Infinity and Warmachine are fine, the others, I either either know only theoretically, or I just recognize the name.
I have doubts about Dirtside and Classic Battletech. The rules are a mess, but I never actually played the game.

Warmachine focuses on customization over tactics. It's a great tactical game, but matchups are intensely important. It's why their tournament formats require that you have three separate army lists to play and will sometimes feature sideboards. Warmachine is actually more army build focused than even 40k. There are almost no miniatures games that focus tactical exchanges over customization or maximizing "builds" because the nature of the miniatures hobby stresses the "collection" aspect. You need a game where everyone always has access to the same components of decision making (like in videogames or boxed boardgames) to get away from that.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

Warmachine focuses on customization over tactics. It's a great tactical game, but matchups are intensely important. It's why their tournament formats require that you have three separate army lists to play and will sometimes feature sideboards.

I agree, but it's more a question of "perfect storm" than "all games": some matchups are really, really bad for one side, but most lists are more or less equal.
There are a lot of possible builds, and very few that are simply unplayable.
Still, when you have a bad matchups in Warmachine, you might as well go home.

mrondeau wrote:

 ShumaGorath wrote:

Warmachine focuses on customization over tactics. It's a great tactical game, but matchups are intensely important. It's why their tournament formats require that you have three separate army lists to play and will sometimes feature sideboards.

I agree, but it's more a question of "perfect storm" than "all games": some matchups are really, really bad for one side, but most lists are more or less equal.
There are a lot of possible builds, and very few that are simply unplayable.
Still, when you have a bad matchups in Warmachine, you might as well go home.

Same could be said about 40K. The match ups, the list building and the eventually of just packing up and going home.

I think it's less stark with 40k though, given Warmachine's ever present caster kill win condition. You can lose without moving a model, as in "game over, we're done" lose, not as in "well I'm probably done but let's play this one out".

 plastictrees wrote:
I think it's less stark with 40k though, given Warmachine's ever present caster kill win condition. You can lose without moving a model, as in "game over, we're done" lose, not as in "well I'm probably done but let's play this one out".

I'd argue that it's worse in 40k because of the cash investment required in fielding a list with a different playstyle. In warmachine if you switch your caster and an infantry unit or warjack you can have an army that functions wholly differently than the one before.

Perhaps, I'm talking about the games from the point where dice start rolling though, and you're obviously taking a broader view.
From personal experience I can say that you can get pretty deep in to a Warmachine faction (money wise) before realising that you can't get it to play the way you want to no matter which casters you use.