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Martel732 wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I'm not saying either. I'm saying that the codexes ARE balanced, (reasonably) and that lack of experience creates the illusion of a power gap between codexes.


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Martel732 wrote:
I could borrow my buddy's Eldar army and you would likely never beat me with pure BA out of 10 games. Not once.

Of course I wouldn't. I don't play Blood Angels.

But if you take two people who have never played the game, say two brand new players, give them a week to study the rulebook and their codex, give one Blood Angels and the other Eldar, I think it would be a tossup between them.

I think that's a bit nuts. Just look at the firepower of the Eldar. The codices are not reasonably balanced at all. It would appear that most agree with me as well for what that matters.

And for above, I don't play Eldar. But I'm confident I could take Eldar and wipe pretty much any BA up pretty easily. Because of the codex.

Aha, so my lack of experience with my BA causes me to take a serious beating from Tau and Eldar nowadays. That's good to know...

Every iteration of the rules seem to have a couple of armies that have seriously overpowered units. It should not be impossible to tune e.g. the points values afterwards.

As a hobbyist it frustrates me.

Naw wrote:
Aha, so my lack of experience with my BA causes me to take a serious beating from Tau and Eldar nowadays. That's good to know...

Every iteration of the rules seem to have a couple of armies that have seriously overpowered units. It should not be impossible to tune e.g. the points values afterwards.

As a hobbyist it frustrates me.

No, it's because it's a crap codex against a meta that is not favorable to meqs in the first place.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, it's clear that I'm in the minority! But I've always known that. I just didn't realize HOW alone I was until this poll! "

At what point do you rethink your position on whether this game is balanced at all?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
...because I recently watched a Blood Angels player trounce an Eldar player?

One game doesn't prove anything. Dice are an obvious factor, one player can be significantly better than the other, one player could be playing an optimized list with every overpowered option in their codex while the other player is playing a bunch of random stuff, etc. To get any relevant information you have to look at a lot of games, and the result is that if you have a BA and Eldar player of roughly equal skill that both use the same level of list optimization the Eldar player should win way more than half the time.

I was being facetious with that statement Peregrine. My apologies. Went back and added a laughy ork to indicate that.

Interesting opinion. I actually think that if you take two players with equal skill both with the game, their own armies, and their opponent's armies, and give one Blood Angels and the other Eldar, their games will be split roughly evenly. Kind of hard to test with players with statistically reliable prerequisites, and in high enough numbers to be statistically significant. But still, we're both entitled to an opinion. (And before it gets brought up, yours is by far the more popular! )

 Jimsolo wrote:
Kind of hard to test with players with statistically reliable prerequisites, and in high enough numbers to be statistically significant.

Actually it isn't, because you can look at tournament results. At major tournaments it's a reasonable assumption that the top players are roughly equal in skill, so the dominant factor in tournament success is list construction. And when we look at recent tournament results we see that the top places are dominated by Tau, Eldar, Tau/Eldar, Tau/Farsight, Tau/C:SM, etc. Meanwhile older lists like BA hardly appear in those top spots. And this pattern holds across events separated by a large distance, so it's unlikely that this is a case of a small number of Tau/Eldar players dominating by skill alone. Instead, the most reasonable explanation for those results is that there is a significant difference in power level between armies.

And in the case of internal balance it's even easier since you can look at the huge pool of lists instead of the smaller pool of final results. How often do you see Tau players using vespids vs. how often do you see them using riptides? How often do you see IG players using rough riders instead of vendettas? When was the last time you saw anyone take a sniper rifle instead of a melta gun in a serious competitive list? Etc. The answers to those questions demonstrate serious problems with internal balance in GW's rules, and that's just as important as the balance between armies.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Kind of hard to test with players with statistically reliable prerequisites, and in high enough numbers to be statistically significant.

Actually it isn't, because you can look at tournament results. At major tournaments it's a reasonable assumption that the top players are roughly equal in skill, so the dominant factor in tournament success is list construction. And when we look at recent tournament results we see that the top places are dominated by Tau, Eldar, Tau/Eldar, Tau/Farsight, Tau/C:SM, etc. Meanwhile older lists like BA hardly appear in those top spots. And this pattern holds across events separated by a large distance, so it's unlikely that this is a case of a small number of Tau/Eldar players dominating by skill alone. Instead, the most reasonable explanation for those results is that there is a significant difference in power level between armies.

If memory serves me Daemons also tend to be rather high (CSM have kinda fallen off, Necrons as well, etc. Which just brings to point.... why is it that tau and eldar are dominating with daemons popping up occasionally and then CSM and Necrons that used to be so popular in 6th have just kinda fallen off?)

Rock/Paper/Daemons meta. Taudar have a favourable matchup against Necrons, Necrons have a favourable matchup against Daemons, Daemons have a favourable matchup against Taudar. My guess is the large numbers of Taudar players have discouraged people from playing Necrons, also a lot of Necron players were probably flavour-of-the-month types that hopped onto the Taudar bandwagon.

Naw wrote:
Aha, so my lack of experience with my BA causes me to take a serious beating from Tau and Eldar nowadays. That's good to know...

That's not what I meant Naw, sorry if you took it that way!

But when a new codex comes out, by definition, we're going to have less experience against it than we will against its predecessor. Because it's brand new. That gives it an edge. My whole point is that I think the 'newness' edge is getting mistaken for an 'imbalance' edge.

In addition, the new codexes require slight shifts in the way we play our armies. I don't know you as a player, obviously, but players who cannot or will not alter their tactics to accommodate the shifting meta are going to find themselves losing games. (I'm not saying that applies to you!)

Again, sorry if you took what I said as a personal attack.

Martel732 wrote:
At what point do you rethink your position on whether this game is balanced at all?

Aw, c'mon brother, there ain't no reason to be mean to one another. We're all buddies here! I'm not attacking you or your opinion, just trying to engage in some friendly discussion. I was just trying to recognize the fact that I'm not in the dominant camp on this one.

I'll rethink my position on whether this game is balanced, however, when personal experience shows me convincing evidence that it is not. To date, I've not seen such evidence. I've seen evidence that I suck against certain armies (I've never defeated Tyranids, for example) but that doesn't mean they're overpowered. (If I seriously tried to say that 'nids were OP today, I'd be laughed off the internet!) It means I don't know how to beat them. If I start seeing some kind of results that indicate the majority opinion is true, then I might be swayed to the other side. But right now, that evidence just isn't there.

Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Kind of hard to test with players with statistically reliable prerequisites, and in high enough numbers to be statistically significant.

Actually it isn't, because you can look at tournament results. At major tournaments it's a reasonable assumption that the top players are roughly equal in skill, so the dominant factor in tournament success is list construction. And when we look at recent tournament results we see that the top places are dominated by Tau, Eldar, Tau/Eldar, Tau/Farsight, Tau/C:SM, etc. Meanwhile older lists like BA hardly appear in those top spots. And this pattern holds across events separated by a large distance, so it's unlikely that this is a case of a small number of Tau/Eldar players dominating by skill alone. Instead, the most reasonable explanation for those results is that there is a significant difference in power level between armies.

An interesting hypothesis, but I think that the 'new armies have an advantage because they're NEW' theory gets just as much support from the Tournament results you're mentioning as the theory that those codexes are inherently more powerful than their older counterparts. For my part, every tournament I've seen since 6th edition has dropped has resulted in a victory for an MEQ army. I think that, absent other evidence, both are plausible explanations for the tournament results you're indicating, at any rate.

I added a late edit to my previous post which you probably missed:

And in the case of internal balance it's even easier since you can look at the huge pool of lists instead of the smaller pool of final results. How often do you see Tau players using vespids vs. how often do you see them using riptides? How often do you see IG players using rough riders instead of vendettas? When was the last time you saw anyone take a sniper rifle instead of a melta gun in a serious competitive list? Etc. The answers to those questions demonstrate serious problems with internal balance in GW's rules, and that's just as important as the balance between armies.

Also, consider things like the new inquisition codex. If the game was balanced prior to C:I then it can't possibly be balanced after every imperial army gets powerful new 55 point divination inquisitors that don't take up any allies or FOC slots. So now you have bad external balance (certain armies get an upgrade while others don't), and you have bad internal balance because now virtually every imperial army is now taking C:I allies as an obvious overpowered choice.

 Jimsolo wrote:
But when a new codex comes out, by definition, we're going to have less experience against it than we will against its predecessor. Because it's brand new. That gives it an edge. My whole point is that I think the 'newness' edge is getting mistaken for an 'imbalance' edge.

But it really is an imbalance edge. Tau didn't change significantly in strategy, they just got better at doing the same things they've always done. Crisis suits got cheaper and the ability to take two of the same gun (and became troops if you buy your $50 supplement), fire warriors got cheaper, markerlights got to remove cover for only two markerlight hits, etc. And suddenly they've gone from being mid-tier at best to dominating tournaments.

I'll rethink my position on whether this game is balanced, however, when personal experience shows me convincing evidence that it is not.

But personal experience is much less relevant than the results from large numbers of players. When you're talking about one person playing a fairly small number of regular opponents skill and how competitively each player's list is make a huge difference, potentially more of a difference than the balance between armies. So you have to look at lots of players playing lots of games against strangers, and when you look at those tournament results you see a severe balance problem.

An interesting hypothesis, but I think that the 'new armies have an advantage because they're NEW' theory gets just as much support from the Tournament results you're mentioning as the theory that those codexes are inherently more powerful than their older counterparts.

That might work for the first event or two immediately after a new release, but Tau and Eldar have been out for months now and people understand them pretty well. Any surprise factor is long gone.

 Jimsolo wrote:
But when a new codex comes out, by definition, we're going to have less experience against it than we will against its predecessor. Because it's brand new. That gives it an edge. My whole point is that I think the 'newness' edge is getting mistaken for an 'imbalance' edge.

That's a good point, but wouldn't the newness of the codex also factor into the ability of the person playing said codex as well?

 Peregrine wrote:

I'll rethink my position on whether this game is balanced, however, when personal experience shows me convincing evidence that it is not.

But personal experience is much less relevant than the results from large numbers of players. When you're talking about one person playing a fairly small number of regular opponents skill and how competitively each player's list is make a huge difference, potentially more of a difference than the balance between armies. So you have to look at lots of players playing lots of games against strangers, and when you look at those tournament results you see a severe balance problem.

I think that might be the crux of the difference in our viewpoints. I think that sitting back and looking at numbers on paper isn't as accurate as a 'boots on the ground' perspective in many situations, and I think that this is one of those situations.

And the more I look at it, the more it seems like both myself and the people on the opposite side of the mirror are looking at the same facts and interpreting them to support their own viewpoint. Very interesting indeed. You've given me quite a bit to think about.

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
But when a new codex comes out, by definition, we're going to have less experience against it than we will against its predecessor. Because it's brand new. That gives it an edge. My whole point is that I think the 'newness' edge is getting mistaken for an 'imbalance' edge.

That's a good point, but wouldn't the newness of the codex also factor into the ability of the person playing said codex as well?

Personally, I think it does, and can be your greatest advantage against someone who always buys the newest, shiniest army. Unfortunately, even if they codex-hop like mad, they're still probably going to have more experience playing WITH their shiny new armies than I will playing AGAINST them. So it's still a net advantage in their favor.

Excellent point earlier, by the way, with the paper-rock-scissors mention. I definitely think there's some merit to the argument that some armies tend to do better against other specific armies. (I just don't think there are codexes which are across-the-board better or worse, just as you implied, better against certain specific opponents.) I've never lost a game to an IG army with my Salamanders, for example, in this or the previous edition, and tend to think that a Salamanders list tends to be coincidentally optimized against the Guard. I wonder how much this R-P-S effect feeds the notion that the game itself is horribly unbalanced.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think that might be the crux of the difference in our viewpoints. I think that sitting back and looking at numbers on paper isn't as accurate as a 'boots on the ground' perspective in many situations, and I think that this is one of those situations.

You realize that you're saying anecdotal evidence is superior to hard data?

everyone in this thread knows perfectly well that 40k is not supposed to be balanced, but any excuse for a trenchant attack on gee dubya eh?

It makes about as much sense as attacking blackadder for being grossy historically inacurrate. Not that that should stop the blind rage from trampling over a discussion about how 40k should be balanced and what it should or should not be doing.


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 Yonan wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I think that might be the crux of the difference in our viewpoints. I think that sitting back and looking at numbers on paper isn't as accurate as a 'boots on the ground' perspective in many situations, and I think that this is one of those situations.

You realize that you're saying anecdotal evidence is superior to hard data?

'hard data', or as we call them 'stats', only make up a small part of a unit's usefulness. You can't make any comparison at all between units based soley on stats, unless they are otherwise identical with identical roles and identical options (vanilla marines vs chaos marines, for example).



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i said that 40k wasn't supposed to be balanced, and your retort to that was an insult and a demonstration of inbalance?

Try again. 40k is not supposed to be balanced and the majority of players are happy that way - hell it's never been balanced, and is still the most popular ttwg in the world, so clearly people are happy.

Your mindset is clearly at odds with this design philosophy - had you thought about other games? You could proxy your 40k models.

I don't think 40k should be perfectly balanced, I merely think that it should be less imbalanced than it currently is. There is a point where imbalance stops being fun when it comes to facing Taudar we're already several kilometres behind us. Fun imbalance: Good for the game, good for the players, good for selling models. Unfun imbalance: Bad for the game, bad for the players, good for making frustrated people quit and discouraging new players from joining.

xruslanx wrote:
everyone in this thread knows perfectly well that 40k is not supposed to be balanced, but any excuse for a trenchant attack on gee dubya eh?

No, actually I think you're the only person that believes that doing a laughably bad job of balancing a game is somehow improving it, or that a balanced game can't be fun and interesting.

'hard data', or as we call them 'stats', only make up a small part of a unit's usefulness. You can't make any comparison at all between units based soley on stats, unless they are otherwise identical with identical roles and identical options (vanilla marines vs chaos marines, for example).

Pay attention to the context. We're talking about the hard data of tournament results, which pretty clearly demonstrate a lack of balance in the game. When the same 2-3 armies (and allied combinations of those armies) are consistently dominating tournaments then you know there's a problem.

Try again. 40k is not supposed to be balanced and the majority of players are happy that way -

No, they really aren't. There are a lot of people who think that balance isn't all that important because they're obsessed with "beer and pretzels" gaming and/or care more about the fluff/models than the gameplay, but you're pretty much alone in your belief that 40k is a good game because it isn't balanced.

hell it's never been balanced, and is still the most popular ttwg in the world, so clearly people are happy.

And once again you're ignoring two very important factors: the fluff/models that drive sales even when the rules suck, and the business side of GW building itself a near-monopoly through things like driving independent stores out of business. 40k's popularity has very little to do with the "quality" of its rules.

Your mindset is clearly at odds with this design philosophy

Not that this is saying very much. Pretty much anyone who knows anything about game design is going to be at odds with a "design philosophy" that consists of "throw something together in 15 minutes and don't bother spending any time playtesting it because that would be a waste of money".

xruslanx wrote:
'hard data', or as we call them 'stats', only make up a small part of a unit's usefulness. You can't make any comparison at all between units based soley on stats, unless they are otherwise identical with identical roles and identical options (vanilla marines vs chaos marines, for example).

Where do you get unit stats from? The quoted post was talking about their perception of the power based on the wins and losses they've seen, compared to the wins and losses of multiple large tournament results.

I have to go with the people saying Hard Data (larger sample) provides more indication of balance than your local meta....If I just used my local meta at times I could state that I was undefeated against all sorts of armies....because I was a better player than those fielding those armies.

If we look at numbers from say Torrent of Fire which right now has results of 5541 games going back to June. Including the results of 23 different tournaments.

Based on these results we can see a very disticnt Difference in Winning percentage by codex

Primary army
Eldar 63.14631463
Tau Empire 60.79136691
Chaos Daemons 59.88779804
Necrons 55.15873016
Space Marines 50.58275058
Tyranids 46.97674419
Grey Knights 46.84684685
Imperial Guard 43.3460076
Chaos Space Marines 42.37668161
Dark Eldar 41.66666667
Sisters of Battle 40
Blood Angels 39.58333333
Orks 38.97058824
Space Wolves 38.76404494
Dark Angels 35.34136546

If you remove mirror matches from the equation
Eldar 69.15297092
Chaos Daemons 56.60091047
Tau Empire 55.27809308
Necrons 53.40206186
Space Marines 47.5
Grey Knights 47.22222222
Tyranids 45.62211982
Imperial Guard 41.10671937
Dark Eldar 39.50617284
Chaos Space Marines 38.70192308
Blood Angels 38.29787234
Sisters of Battle 37.81512605
Orks 37.77777778
Space Wolves 37.35632184
Dark Angels 33.19502075


So Eldar win almost 70% of the time against the Field.

As for the RPS method of the game.

Someone said before Daemons beat Taudar...this is is false according to data.

Eldar Match up favorably with every other army (based on win percentage)

Daemons and Tau are 50-50 more or less

Otherwise it was accurate.

The top 5 armies (1/3rd of the armies) in the game account for 69% of the wins (over 2/3rds of the wins.) The Top 3 Armies (1/5th) make up 52% of the wins.

Now I will point out that the top 5 armies also make up 61% of games played. And the Top 3 make up 44%. So we see a bad balance of armies played. But we can also see that these armies win above their representation.

I felt the games was pretty balanced up until the Heldrake FAQ, and then got even worse around the Tau release.

I would argue the FWs balance is even worse than Codex balance. (this is not to say they have more powerful units, but instead that they generally have great units and crap and little else.)








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That said, I think we are only a few rules tweaks away from a very balanced game.

 Yonan wrote:

xruslanx wrote:
'hard data', or as we call them 'stats', only make up a small part of a unit's usefulness. You can't make any comparison at all between units based soley on stats, unless they are otherwise identical with identical roles and identical options (vanilla marines vs chaos marines, for example).

Where do you get unit stats from? The quoted post was talking about their perception of the power based on the wins and losses they've seen, compared to the wins and losses of multiple large tournament results.

ah, i miss-understood your meaning, i apologise.

I voted no/no for balance. Overall the game is balanced enough to be fun to play. There are a bunch of overpowered/underpriced things out there to mess things up, an some rock/paper/scissors match ups. That's just in the core rules/codexes. FW just tosses more things into the mix, so instead of just cherry picking the one or two top units in the basic codex and spamming them, you have more/better things to add. Well, you can if there are good FW items for your army, not everyone gets the same treatment from there. Although, that can be said for the non-FW codexes as well.

Most of the problems with balance come at the top end, when you are getting very competitive and squeezing every last drop of power out of your lists. When you add more parts and options, things just get more extreme. In casual play, this doesn't matter so much. You aren't spamming the broken stuff, and probably taking some of the less effective (but fluffy and fun) units.

One problem with FW's reputation as broken and overpowered is that we don't see the non-broken stuff. Just like we don't see rough riders or other sub-par units from the basic codexes. And some of the experimental stuff is a little out there. But people rarely ask for advice here on Dakka for fun and fluffy lists.

I almost voted for "other" I feel that both FW and non-FW are balanced enough for normal play, both unbalanced for competitive play. I think that the power level of FW is generally higher then that of stuff produced by the core studio, but brokenly overpowered/underpriced units are not a FW exclusive. I also recognize that my opinion is being skewed by the fact that I'm only exposed to FW stuff from discussions here. These tend to focus only on the high-end and experimental units.

 Nevelon wrote:
Most of the problems with balance come at the top end, when you are getting very competitive and squeezing every last drop of power out of your lists. When you add more parts and options, things just get more extreme. In casual play, this doesn't matter so much. You aren't spamming the broken stuff, and probably taking some of the less effective (but fluffy and fun) units.

IMO it's the exact opposite. Competitive players are quite happy to spam the overpowered stuff and play a competitive game with only the top-tier units. If something is broken they'll have fun exploiting it until the next overpowered thing arrives. Casual players, on the other hand, are usually attached to certain units/lists for reasons besides their power level and so they're reluctant to make changes to stay competitive. So a casual group is very vulnerable to balance issues. A player might not deliberately aim for making a perfect optimized tournament list, but if they happen to prefer a list that's more powerful than the other lists in the group then nobody is going to be having very much fun. And on top of that the group is also vulnerable to "arms race" situations where one person starts competing and optimizing more than everyone else, and either they start dominating games because nobody can keep up, or force everyone to play with the equally overpowered stuff that they don't enjoy as much just to have a chance of winning.

Contrast this with X-Wing, for example. In X-Wing I can play against a relative newbie who doesn't have a full collection of ships yet and still have a reasonably fair game that will be decided by skill and in-game decisions. I'll probably have an advantage based on my list, but not a crippling one. The power level of the various options is fairly balanced, and their point costs are, as a rule, pretty accurate representations of their power. So the newbie might have 70-80% of my list strength, well within the range of what superior gameplay decisions or dice luck can overcome. In 40k, on the other hand, I just can't play against a newer player because even my weaker lists are way beyond anything they're going to put on the table. To make the game even remotely fair I'd have to deliberately cripple my own list (taking squads with no weapon upgrades, not spending hundreds of points, etc) and probably make bad decisions like refusing to shoot with half my units. Is it because I'm just that good? Of course not, I just think that tanks are cool and have a lot of tank models but few infantry. So when the average battleforce-based army doesn't come with any real anti-tank threats I'm pretty much guaranteed to win before the game even begins.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Most of the problems with balance come at the top end, when you are getting very competitive and squeezing every last drop of power out of your lists. When you add more parts and options, things just get more extreme. In casual play, this doesn't matter so much. You aren't spamming the broken stuff, and probably taking some of the less effective (but fluffy and fun) units.

IMO it's the exact opposite. Competitive players are quite happy to spam the overpowered stuff and play a competitive game with only the top-tier units. If something is broken they'll have fun exploiting it until the next overpowered thing arrives. Casual players, on the other hand, are usually attached to certain units/lists for reasons besides their power level and so they're reluctant to make changes to stay competitive. So a casual group is very vulnerable to balance issues. A player might not deliberately aim for making a perfect optimized tournament list, but if they happen to prefer a list that's more powerful than the other lists in the group then nobody is going to be having very much fun. And on top of that the group is also vulnerable to "arms race" situations where one person starts competing and optimizing more than everyone else, and either they start dominating games because nobody can keep up, or force everyone to play with the equally overpowered stuff that they don't enjoy as much just to have a chance of winning.

Contrast this with X-Wing, for example. In X-Wing I can play against a relative newbie who doesn't have a full collection of ships yet and still have a reasonably fair game that will be decided by skill and in-game decisions. I'll probably have an advantage based on my list, but not a crippling one. The power level of the various options is fairly balanced, and their point costs are, as a rule, pretty accurate representations of their power. So the newbie might have 70-80% of my list strength, well within the range of what superior gameplay decisions or dice luck can overcome. In 40k, on the other hand, I just can't play against a newer player because even my weaker lists are way beyond anything they're going to put on the table. To make the game even remotely fair I'd have to deliberately cripple my own list (taking squads with no weapon upgrades, not spending hundreds of points, etc) and probably make bad decisions like refusing to shoot with half my units. Is it because I'm just that good? Of course not, I just think that tanks are cool and have a lot of tank models but few infantry. So when the average battleforce-based army doesn't come with any real anti-tank threats I'm pretty much guaranteed to win before the game even begins.

One advantage of competitive play is that everyone is going for maximum efficiency, so you know everyone is aiming for the same balance point. The game might not actually -be- balanced, but at least everyone is equal. Your point about arms races is a good one. Who defines what is "casual"? Back when my group and I played collectable card games, one of my friends always made his decks just a little bit tighter, just a tad meaner, the the rest of us. Not his tournament decks (which were another scale) or so overt that we told him to knock it off. But he had an edge. Then you had people putting together deck based on themes and pictures. But even theme decks could be brutal, depending on how tight it was and how well supported by the cards available. You could splash in some of the overpowered stuff, and it would help a bad deck, but even a set of Mox gems and a lotus won't make a random collection of cards competitive.

On the subject of new 40k players, some of that is people listening to much to what GW is selling. The one-of-each armies in battle reports and box sets do not make for a good TAC army. Just because you have a little bit of everything does not mean you have a balanced list. 40k also has a pretty steep learning curve for list building. And has the hobby side fighting with the mechanics side for decision making. Sure the unit looks cool, but can it perform on the table? Many of us will prioritize form over function (at least to a point) Or at least build a list to cover some of the flaws of our favorite units.

 anonymou5 wrote:


I don't know man, every since the new codex, Black has been ridiculous. I don't know what they were thinking buffing Knights like that

Believe it or not, one thing people new to Chess frequently sink their teeth in, and many clubs teach, is the French Defense. Why? Because it's a strategy of winning with Black against the advantage of the white opening. Once you have that, you try to master beating the French Defense. Etc., etc...

It's not the only way to move ahead in Chess, but it's a frequent entry. The imbalance of the white opening in Chess, however small, is one of the main things that give the game (of Chess) at least some texture for people to work with, something to learn, master, overcome and move on.


An absolutely 100% perfectly balanced game, even more so than Chess, would be an absolute nightmare. Balance is the opposite of Fun.

I must admit that the idea of perfectly balanced armies does not seem that awesome after longer consideration... As long as the differences between the factions themselves aren't too great, other factors, like terrain, who goes first, and the players' skill will add meaningful variables to the equation.

 Peregrine wrote:


Contrast this with X-Wing, for example. In X-Wing I can play against a relative newbie who doesn't have a full collection of ships yet and still have a reasonably fair game that will be decided by skill and in-game decisions

Not really, Tie Swarms and Double-Falcons own the X-Wing scene (being, funny enough, the two extreme ends of a possible X-Wing line-up). X-Wing suffers from a similar problem that synergies of heterogeneous units isn't usually as good as multiples of the same good units.

 Jimsolo wrote:
...because I recently watched a Blood Angels player trounce an Eldar player?

Seriously, experience as a player, experience with your own army, and experience against your opponent's army will trump codex shininess every time. A Blood Angels player, a dedicated one, (not one who happens to own BA and just flits between a half a dozen armies) should have a fair degree of experience with their own army by now. So long as they embrace the cyclical nature of the 40k rules and adapt to new armies and new editions by modifying their tactics, they should still have a viable army.

I haven't lost a game to the new Eldar codex yet, despite the doomsaying that has accompanied it.

^This