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 Ailaros wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:Personally, I want to win a battle because I used superior strategy/tactics (or was extremely lucky) and not because I can pick 3 overpowered units while my opponent is using a codex that's 2 editions out of date.

Then don't pick 3 overpowered units. You have control over that. You don't have to pick an army list that makes winning easy.

You're asking the rules to save you from yourself...

Damn right I am. I shouldn't have to "not pick" a unit I like because it's overpowered or underpowered; the rules should make it so that distinction does not exist, and Unit A might be better in some cases, by which I generally mean some types of lists, and Unit B is a better choice in another list. The answer should never be "If a unit is overpowered just don't take it" because what's the reverse? If a unit is underpowered, don't take it? People already do that, and that's the root of the issue.

As I said before what I like about games like Warmahordes is that it does exactly the above. Some lists rely on Unit A, some rely on Unit B but there's never (or extremely rarely) a case where Unit B is just better at everything than Unit A so you have no reason at all to take Unit A. You can take two lists and they are approximately balanced to where a good commander can win regardless of the list in most circumstances.

That's how 40k needs to be. There should be no "bad" or "excellent" choices, all choices need to be viable under certain circumstances instead of what we have now where certain units you always want to include if you can (ironically unless somebody does as you suggest and choose to purposely gimp themselves by not taking it) and some units that you never want to include because they're just bad. There is no way that's good design. That punishes people for playing what they like, either because what they like is overpowered and ruins the game for others (e.g. 3x Riptides because big anime robots with bigger guns are awesome) or because it will make them lose (e.g. taking a loot of foot Orks because you like the idea of a huge Ork horde).

In a balanced game, both of those choices would be equally viable playstyles and a superior general would be able to win.

Wow....just wow. There is a good deal of GW kool aid in this thread, where it is the fault of the players if they build a army using the models they like and it is too OP.

The idea that imbalance somehow makes games better between newbies and vets is laughable.

First it presumes those vets either own every model in their faction, or specifically buy bad units for games against newbies.

Second, it presumes that a Newbie can easily create a strong list (IME they cannot), and know the rules well enough to pilot said list (again they don't)

Third, what happens in a game between newbies, when 2 buddies get into the game and one picks up Tau because they love riptides and the other picks up nids because they love the Tyranid warrior models...The buy and paint up their armies...then on gets repeatedly stomped and is forced to quit, or buy a new army.

Also apparently some people don't know how to play things like teaching games in chess, where you coach the newbie you play against, not just play straight up as hard as you can to stomp the opponent.

I also love the idea of taking a weaker list somehow proving your are the uber better player...well what happens when an equal or better player stomps you with a better list....oh well now you have a built in excuse as to why you lost. "You're not better than me you just take a cheap, cheesey list."

Take the Chef example sure if 2 chefs compete and the one with the disadvantage wins it might mean he is a better chef (or if could mean the other guy screwed up, which does happen), but what happens when instead of gettting that 83 he gets a 54, and loses horribly, what does that prove then. That we have no idea who the better chef is because now the loser can say "well I was at a disadvantage, so its not fair."

Also the idea, that there is no player skill involved in 40k is laughable, the fact that the same guys always seem to do well...with different armies, at different events, must just mean those guys are really lucky. Also consider that these are the same guys who develop the "net lists", that become popular, not the guys who pick them up and use them...

A balanced game where people can choose to take the models they want, and in the right army build, be successful (saying all combinations will be equal is impossible really), or at least competitive is better for everyone.

Da Butcha wrote:
While I don't agree with this totally (I think balance affects both styles of play), it's a good way of thinking about it, and brings a useful perspective.

Unbalanced units and armies discourage creative and comprehensive armies (why buy these units if they are so bad, and you never use them?). They discourage the player who loves an army's look and feel, but loses with it constantly, and they discourage the player whose army (whether through neglect or poor rules design) is ill-suited to compete in the current game environment.

What's more infuriating to me is that GW uses points costs, which should make it ridiculously easy to balance things better.

If Riptides (or whatever) are really, really, good, and show up all the time--make them cost more points! Don't change the rules and screw up the fluff. Just make better units more expensive in points.

There are very few units in the game right now whose rules are too good. That's a bold statement, but I'm going to explain it. There are very few units in the game which work BETTER on the tabletop than they seem to work in the background and fluff. In my own opinion, that's all the rules should concern themselves with. There are a few. For instance, I don't think it's part of the fluff that Stormtrooper Hellguns blow through Space Marine armor like nothing's there. That doesn't mean that Stormtroopers are overpowered. That means that their rules are poorly written to reflect their background. When Chaos Marines invade, you don't call in the stormtroopers!

On the other hand, there are a LOT of units whose rules are bad. These are units which are supposed to be capable of a particular role, or distinguished for a particular excellence, and don't actually work that way. For example, Space Marine Dreadnoughts are supposed to be incarnate heroes to their Chapter, virtually indestructible demigods of war that stride the battlefield and smite the mightiest foes. Nope. They get plonked apart really quickly. That doesn't mean they need to be cheaper to field. They need better rules to reflect the fact that they are supposed to be awesome warriors, not inexpensive list fillers or a cheap way to get an extra lascannon.

Now, on the other hand, there are a LOT of units whose rules are fine, but who cost too much or too little (mostly too little, I think). If more of these really popular, very powerful units cost more points, then they wouldn't show up as much, and you'd have the option of taking a lot more 'normally powered' units to oppose them.


This would be better for casual gamers as well as tournament players.

For the casual gamer, you could take the units you liked to model, paint, or play with. Your lists might be unusual points totals, but within that points limit, you would have a reasonable chance of doing well vs. most opposition. You might find an opponent whose army was well-situated to take you apart, but, in general, you wouldn't run into cases where a third of their army killed 9/10ths of yours. Picking the units you liked wouldn't sometimes make you into the local loser (if you liked, say, kans, dread, and slugga boys) or TFG (if you happened to think that Riptides were awesome looking mega-robots!). Your unit choices wouldn't be invalidated by army creep, or codex creep, or the new hotness, as the new hotness would also be the new 'really expensive option' if it really was hot.

For the tournament player, you would know that the most popular, most powerful units, would be appropriately expensive. You could make reasonable, educated choices about taking a smaller army composed of the most effective units, or a larger, more varied army of less powerful units, which might give you more flexibility or the ability to absorb some bad dice rolls (or good dice rolls from the opposition). Taking the 'best units' would consistently, regardless of army, mean that you were also taking a much smaller force, and that there was a real trade off between picking the best units and picking more units. Because the effectiveness of units would be better balanced against their points cost, there shouldn't be a preponderance of 'top builds' that showed up at each tournament, which would make games more challenging, since you might need to know how to fight against many different armies with many different, effective army lists, rather than planning for facing a few armies with a few similar builds.

Please apply for a job at GW!

insaniak wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Then don't pick 3 overpowered units. You have control over that. You don't have to pick an army list that makes winning easy.

Which brings us back to the point where players feel like they can't use the models they want to use because of those models having over-powered rules...

But in an imbalanced game, the newbie can pick a stronger army to make the game easier for them...

Provided they don't wind up playing against a better player with a similar list... which they will

Exactly. We agree that a noob playing against a veteran where both players have lists of equal power is bad for the noob.

Which is why the game should allow a diversity of power levels, as forcing all lists to be equally powerful takes a situation that's bad for noobs that sometimes arises, and makes it so that it will always happen.

WayneTheGame wrote: I shouldn't have to "not pick" a unit I like because it's overpowered or underpowered; ... That punishes people for playing what they like, either because what they like is overpowered and ruins the game for others (e.g. 3x Riptides because big anime robots with bigger guns are awesome) or because it will make them lose (e.g. taking a loot of foot Orks because you like the idea of a huge Ork horde).

So, consider how you're already choosing units. You might take something because you like the model. You might take it because it has anti-tank weapons, and you want more anti-tank in your list. You might take a unit because it has synergy with other stuff you're already bringing. The number of different reasons for picking or not picking something are as limitless as the human imagination. As such, saying "well, this is just another thing I need to consider" is sort of silly, as you're already considering potentially infinite variables to begin with. On the other hand, saying "I shouldn't have to choose my units based on their power level" is like saying "I shouldn't have to choose an anti-tank unit if my list doesn't contain anti-tank".

If certain combinations are better or worse, then you're going to need to take the initiative to make a list that is better or worse. It's not exactly a terrible burden, and it's part of what makes 40k so interesting in the first place.

What you're wanting is a world where what you put into your list doesn't matter. Where you could take anything and stand the same chance of winning. A triptide list or a flying circus should, by default, have a 50-50 chance of beating an army that contains nothing but grots or cultists or conscripts. I don't know why this would make the game better, rather than much, much shallower, and as a result, a fair bit worse than it is right now.

Jidmah wrote:- You just should not be able to just pick the most efficient unit from your codex and be able to kill everything with it.
...
While a knight would do well against anything but a pikeman, a pikeman would do awesome against knights (and other cavalry), but not against anything else.

Jidmah wrote:- If my opponent has all planes, and I brought one or two of dedicated anti-air units, he should be the one losing the game, not me. If my imperial army wasted a slot of artillery or heavy tanks in order to bring a unit that's mostly useless if there are no targets, it better should tear right through anything in the sky that's not extremely heavily armored. Of course, the necrons should be able to just take out the trio of hydras, but that would require points spent in something other than night scythes.

Ah, okay. So, sort of like super rock-paper-scissors?

Certainly it would be bad for spam armies. After all, if I want to play a necron air force and I will be comprehensively destroyed if my opponent brings a single hydra, then I'm going to not play a necron air force. In fact, it would sort of enforce that every player play a one-of-each kind of army, as doubling up on anything is only putting more eggs in the hard-counter basket (while reducing your ability to hard counter).

Yes, this would throw out triptide lists, but what about everyone else? Should an ork green tide player be comprehensively destroyed just because their opponent brought a single baal predator? Should it be impossible for a marine player to run a drop pod assault just because his opponent brought a single unit that's good against drop pod assaults? Should I not be able to play a stormtrooper/grenadiers guard army just because my opponent brought a heavy flamer or two?

The problem here is that spam armies aren't bad armies - only bad spam armies are bad armies. You're only looking at the worst few examples and then throwing hundreds of babies out with the bath water. The problem with spamming riptides or helldrakes is the riptides and helldrakes, not the spam.

Plus, I don't know if this rock-paper-scissors thing achieves what you want. After all, you said that a single unit (like a riptide) shouldn't be able to just beat up your whole army, and then turn around and say that a single unit (like a hydra) should be able to beat up an entire army. It sounds like what you're doing isn't solving the problem of uber-units by degrading the impact of uber-units, but instead you're elevating every unit to the status of uber-unit, and trying to drown out the problem with a massive blast of more of the problem.

Jidmah wrote:- If there are combos, they should be hard to pull off and easy to break

Why?

 Ailaros wrote:

What you're wanting is a world where what you put into your list doesn't matter. Where you could take anything and stand the same chance of winning. A triptide list or a flying circus should, by default, have a 50-50 chance of beating an army that contains nothing but grots or cultists or conscripts. I don't know why this would make the game better, rather than much, much shallower, and as a result, a fair bit worse than it is right now.

No, what I'm wanting is a world where there's nothing like "Grots are terrible, you never want to take them" or "You want 3x Heldrakes to be competitive". I want a world where if you make a Grot army the rule support that with certain specific options that balance out the fact you have an army of grots, so you aren't immediately steamrolled by a better list. I want a world where taking a Riptide (or two) has some specific choices with the rest of your list that enables you to be competitive, but not trounce another army at deployment solely because you have a Riptide.

That's what balance is. It's not "An army of Grots can beat an army of Space Marines" but more that choosing to have a Grot army opens up certain options and tactics that you wouldn't have if you played something else (an Evil Sunz biker army, for example), and means that you won't automatically lose. Right now the problem is there are "fool's gold" choices that are just bad units overall, and a player who falls into the trap of taking them will be at a disadvantage for no other reason than they picked the wrong unit. You are basically forced to pick units that you might not like simply to avoid losing every game because the units you do like are weak and/or underpowered.

In short I want a metagame like Warmahordes where while listbuilding is important there isn't any "best" or "worst" list, each list has their own advantages and disadvantages that come down to player preference and skill, and a skilled player can win with list that's unorthodox instead of just being outclassed before a game is actually played. If I want to play a specific list, I should have a chance if I'm a good commander to win against a list with stronger overall units and not lose before I ever deploy my models because I can't deal with what my opponent has. For instance if I want to take a 100% Thousand Sons army because I like them, with strategy and tactics I should be able to beat anyone else in a balanced game, because I use superior tactics and strategy in a way that plays to my list's strengths, while my opponent tries to play to their list's strengths.

The idea of balance in 40k is that every model is worth its points value and nothing more. Seeing as this is the actual reason why we have a points system in the first place, how can you argue that balance is bad for the game?

And yes, specific so-called "hard counters" should exist. 40k is supposed to have a level of tactical depth - do you take AA, do you take some heavy tanks or lots of light tanks, or do you take infantry and support them with fliers or something else? Things like "anti-air", "anti-infantry" and "anti-tank" exist in the game. They should be able to do their jobs effectively based on their points value - not that one AA unit will completely destroy a flier army, but that one AA unit will be good at taking down fliers and generally be worth its points. Instead, what we have now is "anti-everything" (Riptide) or "unbelievably tough" (flying circus). The idea is supposed to be "Do I take a Hive Guard to take out light armour, or a Zoanthrope in a drop pod to hunt AV14? Do I specialise in taking only Hive Guard or Zoanthropes, and risk limiting my effectiveness against one or the other?". Why is 15pts for you worth 30pts, while for me, it's worth 5?

As a Tyranid player, I cannot run a viable assault-based build, even though my army is supposed to be assault-based. No matter my strategies or list-building skills, it just won't work unless my opponent is incompetent or playing a bad army. So what, then? Am I expected to out-shoot every other army in the game with infamously bad Tyranid shooting?

What we have now is armies and units which are just objectively better than everything else. This does not make the game exciting any more than playing Chess where the one team is entirely composed of Queens is exciting and "tactical".

Also yeah, no. Players should not be expected to police themselves any more than they should be expected to start deliberately playing badly when their opponent starts to lose.

EDIT: We already have "hard counters". What you suppose, Ailaros, is that balance will mean we expect people to bring any list and be able to win. This is not the case. Balance is giving everyone equal options in their list-building and strategy. Maybe their army is bad at shooting but really good at assault, so using assault is playing to the army's strengths. No matter how many points of Cultists you bring to the table, a single Land Raider is utterly invincible to them. Balance is not changing that, but making it so that the Chaos player has the tools in his Codex to try to deal with AV14. One of the popular suggestions to take down the new Knights is combi-melta Sternguard in a Drop Pod. That doesn't mean that this combination will always work, but it does mean it is a strategy that can be expected to be reasonably effective.

Essentially what I feel like most "balance" advocates really want is for every unit to be points costed/powered relatively the same in its chosen role in the game. Such that you can take a unit to fill a role and not have it be a horrible choice. Such as taking say a Pyrovore, which should in theory be an anti-infantry choice, but in taking this choice you are playing at a huge disadvantage.

What this encompasses is buffing terrible units, and nerfing current OP units (either through rules or points costs).

No one is advocating "I should be able to take nothing but Pyrovores in my list and have a 50-50 chance of winning."

What at least I am advocating is that for the points in the role of anti-infantry, pyrovores should be about as good at anything else. This includes offense and defense, so maybe they are moderately killy but tough so you can expect several rounds of out put etc.

Now if you take an army of all anti-infantry units, and play against mech...you are going to get beat. But that is balanced, by if you face nothing but infantry you will do really well.

Some all around units might just be Ok at everything, but essentially would be costed appropriately to that role.

This whole argument about noob games is silly because if fails in the case of 2 noobs playing one another, and in a balanced game, if you help the noob improve they will feel like they can make progress with their chosen army, in our current set up if they invest in the wrong things (guy who loves pryovores buys a bunch), they end up in a scenario where they lose all the time, and nothing short of buying a new army will fix it. They cannot practice their way out of it.

Essentially it would be better if they maybe had the wrong mix of units, but could with minimal model change, and a good amount of practice, "make it work".

Right now they couldn't and if they wanted to play their Pyrovores, their opponent would need to nerf their own army.

You want Noob vs vet, you could just say, you take 500 extra points or whatever, and make the game balanced that way.

In fact it might be possible to determine a "handicap" in a balanced game, where you could play pick up games +/- points equal to that handicap because things are balanced, and so you are just accounting for skill.

 Ailaros wrote:
Exactly. We agree that a noob playing against a veteran where both players have lists of equal power is bad for the noob.

No, we don't. Please read the rest of my post.

What you're wanting is a world where what you put into your list doesn't matter. Where you could take anything and stand the same chance of winning. A triptide list or a flying circus should, by default, have a 50-50 chance of beating an army that contains nothing but grots or cultists or conscripts.

If you seriously still think that's what people are asking for in this thread, you're not actually reading the opposing argument.

Nobody is saying that an entire army of grots should be as viable as a 'proper' list. What they are saying is that within an ork army grots should have a viable purpose that is commensurate with their cost.

If unit A costs X number of points, and unit B does the same thing unit A does but for fewer points, or does what unit A does and more for around the same points, there is never any point in taking unit A. And that's a bad thing.

What people want is for each unit to have a cost and a function that gives players reason to take them other than 'I want to take an underpowered list so Eddie the Noob here can win a game occasionally'...

 insaniak wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Exactly. We agree that a noob playing against a veteran where both players have lists of equal power is bad for the noob.

No, we don't. Please read the rest of my post.

What you're wanting is a world where what you put into your list doesn't matter. Where you could take anything and stand the same chance of winning. A triptide list or a flying circus should, by default, have a 50-50 chance of beating an army that contains nothing but grots or cultists or conscripts.

If you seriously still think that's what people are asking for in this thread, you're not actually reading the opposing argument.

Nobody is saying that an entire army of grots should be as viable as a 'proper' list. What they are saying is that within an ork army grots should have a viable purpose that is commensurate with their cost.

If unit A costs X number of points, and unit B does the same thing unit A does but for fewer points, or does what unit A does and more for around the same points, there is never any point in taking unit A. And that's a bad thing.

What people want is for each unit to have a cost and a function that gives players reason to take them other than 'I want to take an underpowered list so Eddie the Noob here can win a game occasionally'...

I would go as far as saying there should be some circumstances where you can include mostly grots and not be guaranteed to lose, depending on your list composition and what your overall strategy is. I personally like the idea of themed lists based around various combinations from the fluff e.g. all Terminator army, a specific ork clan that's all shooting or CC, etc.

Frozen Ocean wrote:The idea of balance in 40k is that every model is worth its points value and nothing more. Seeing as this is the actual reason why we have a points system in the first place, how can you argue that balance is bad for the game?

Is the purpose of the points system to balance the game?

If GW really intended for this to be true, then we wouldn't have unit size or number restrictions, and we wouldn't have a force organization chart, and we wouldn't have the codex system.
Furthermore, the rulebook itself doesn't even promise that equal point armies are equal in quality - the only explicit purpose to the points limit that they mention is that it will determine how long it takes to play the game.

Even if the point of points was to be one small part in making armies of equal power, then it's still made a mockery of by the rest of it. If I show up to a 1,000 point game with nothing but grots, am I likely to win? No. Does that mean that grots are too expensive, points-wise? No.

And that's just one complication. Pricing something based not on its own qualities, but also based on every possible combination of units is insane, and that insanity only increases by an order of magnitude once we start talking about allies.

In reality, they make a good guess about how much something would cost, and then it's the players who find combinations that GW didn't think about that make a unit worth more or less than its points cost.

insaniak wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Exactly. We agree that a noob playing against a veteran where both players have lists of equal power is bad for the noob.

No, we don't. Please read the rest of my post.

Well, either you think that noobs should play against vets with equal-strength lists, in which case noobs getting repeatedly slaughtered in mirror matches are a good thing, or you think that noobs and vets should play with unequal lists, and imbalance is a good thing.

insaniak wrote: What they are saying is that within an ork army grots should have a viable purpose that is commensurate with their cost.

But we already have this. The existence of boyz doesn't invalidate grots any more than the existence of nobz invalidates boyz.

insaniak wrote:What people want is for each unit to have a cost and a function that gives players reason to take them other than 'I want to take an underpowered list so Eddie the Noob here can win a game occasionally'...

Breng77 wrote:Such as taking say a Pyrovore, which should in theory be an anti-infantry choice, but in taking this choice you are playing at a huge disadvantage... in our current set up if they invest in the wrong things (guy who loves pryovores buys a bunch), they end up in a scenario where they lose all the time, and nothing short of buying a new army will fix it.

WayneTheGame wrote:The answer should never be "If a unit is overpowered just don't take it" because what's the reverse? If a unit is underpowered, don't take it? People already do that, and that's the root of the issue.

WayneTheGame wrote:Right now the problem is there are "fool's gold" choices that are just bad units overall, and a player who falls into the trap of taking them will be at a disadvantage for no other reason than they picked the wrong unit. You are basically forced to pick units that you might not like simply to avoid losing every game because the units you do like are weak and/or underpowered.

WayneTheGame wrote:No, what I'm wanting is a world where there's nothing like "Grots are terrible, you never want to take them" or "You want 3x Heldrakes to be competitive"... It's not "An army of Grots can beat an army of Space Marines" but more that choosing to have a Grot army opens up certain options and tactics that you wouldn't have if you played something else (an Evil Sunz biker army, for example), and means that you won't automatically lose.

Right, so we're definitely missing something here.

Grots DO have a place in an ork list. So do pyrovores in a tyranid list. There are no units in the entire game where there is no reason whatsoever to take them.

Reasons to take something are limited only by a person's creativity. I could take a low-power unit because I like the models. I could take one because I like the fluff. I could take one because I like how it jives with my play style. There's no end of reasons. People who say that there is no reason to take something are either lying, or are in desperate need of a little creativity, but in either case, it's the PEOPLE not the game that's at fault here.

What all of the above quotes are saying is that a person should be able to take what they want AND WIN. That's a big difference, and it's also a much more narrow definition of what we're talking about, here. Plus, it seems more than a little strange. If a noob takes a bunch of heavy bolters and doesn't have enough anti-tank, and is sick of losing games, we tell him "well tough, get some anti-tank", but when a noob takes a bunch of pyrovores and doesn't have enough of other things, and is sick of losing games, we're supposed to say "Yeah, it's not your fault, 40k is a broken game".

A person building a low-power list should lose games more frequently against stronger lists. That's how 40k should work. The only way to get around this is to make it so that there ARE no low-power lists, which is how we get to the "all armies are the same" thing I've been talking about.

Also, people seem to be falling into the all-or-nothing camp. If a unit isn't quite as strong as another unit that does the same thing, then it's worthless. If you include even one low-power unit in your army, then you're just going to lose, because your list is worthless. It's almost like people are forgetting that we play a dice game, and that it's a game that has no player skill whatsoever. 40k isn't a game where you show up with your lists and by looking at the strength of them, see who wins without actually playing. Weaker lists beat stronger lists all the time thanks to good luck and better player skill.

And that's a good thing.

I think what's going on here is a fundamental split between the "winning" and "challenging" crowds. People who want a challenge don't want the game to be even because they want to be able to manipulate the inequality. People who just want to win don't want to be encumbered by disadvantages to winning - they want to be able to just take whatever models they want and still have the same chance of winning.

If you take off the WAAC-goggles, though, then what does it matter that pyrovores aren't as good as other units in their codex?

Frozen Ocean wrote:As a Tyranid player, I cannot run a viable assault-based build, even though my army is supposed to be assault-based. No matter my strategies or list-building skills, it just won't work unless my opponent is incompetent or playing a bad army. So what, then? Am I expected to out-shoot every other army in the game with infamously bad Tyranid shooting?

And this is it in a nutshell. Because some units are stronger than others, player skill no longer matters? What? Because some units are stronger than others, 40k is no longer a game whose outcome is determined by die rolls?

If all you want to do is win, then taking a stronger tyranid list is better than taking a weaker one. Of course it is. Furthermore, as the OP said, if all you wanted to do was to win games, you would do best by not playing tyranid in the first place. The only reason that there is a conflict here in the first place is because you want to win, and win against someone from an equal starting place.

Without either of these being conditions, then 40k does fine. Furthermore, if those are your preconditions, then 40k is a terrible game for you. The fact that 40k is a dice game laughs in the face of anyone who wants to pit player skill against player skill.

What you want is a game like chess, not a game like 40k. 40k should be 40k, not chess. If you want to play a real strategy game, then go and play a real strategy game - you have several great options. 40k will never be that, though, nor should it.

 Ailaros wrote:

Frozen Ocean wrote:The idea of balance in 40k is that every model is worth its points value and nothing more. Seeing as this is the actual reason why we have a points system in the first place, how can you argue that balance is bad for the game?

Is the purpose of the points system to balance the game?

If GW really intended for this to be true, then we wouldn't have unit size or number restrictions, and we wouldn't have a force organization chart, and we wouldn't have the codex system.
Furthermore, the rulebook itself doesn't even promise that equal point armies are equal in quality - the only explicit purpose to the points limit that they mention is that it will determine how long it takes to play the game.

Even if the point of points was to be one small part in making armies of equal power, then it's still made a mockery of by the rest of it. If I show up to a 1,000 point game with nothing but grots, am I likely to win? No. Does that mean that grots are too expensive, points-wise? No.

And that's just one complication. Pricing something based not on its own qualities, but also based on every possible combination of units is insane, and that insanity only increases by an order of magnitude once we start talking about allies.

In reality, they make a good guess about how much something would cost, and then it's the players who find combinations that GW didn't think about that make a unit worth more or less than its points cost.

Points can level the playing field at a stroke, nothing is overpowered, simply undercosted, nobody would be quite so bothered by Riptides if they cost 300 points each. It still allows for the ludicrous rules, but mitigates the impact on the game by limiting the volume which it can be deployed.

insaniak wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Exactly. We agree that a noob playing against a veteran where both players have lists of equal power is bad for the noob.

No, we don't. Please read the rest of my post.

Well, either you think that noobs should play against vets with equal-strength lists, in which case noobs getting repeatedly slaughtered in mirror matches are a good thing, or you think that noobs and vets should play with unequal lists, and imbalance is a good thing.

Wow, do you, like, give up at everything that you're not immediately fabulous at, or when you start something new, do you accept that you'll get your arse handed to you repeatedly until you've gained enough skill and experience to make an account of yourself? Noobs should lose. A lot. Then, if they have the dedication to stick with it, they should start to win more, and perhaps, if they're good enough, start to win more than they lose. At least, in any activity where skill is actually relevant to outcome.

insaniak wrote: What they are saying is that within an ork army grots should have a viable purpose that is commensurate with their cost.

But we already have this. The existence of boyz doesn't invalidate grots any more than the existence of nobz invalidates boyz.

But we do have a situation where units are de facto invalidated because they occupy a slot where they are hopelessly out competed by something else.

insaniak wrote:What people want is for each unit to have a cost and a function that gives players reason to take them other than 'I want to take an underpowered list so Eddie the Noob here can win a game occasionally'...

Breng77 wrote:Such as taking say a Pyrovore, which should in theory be an anti-infantry choice, but in taking this choice you are playing at a huge disadvantage... in our current set up if they invest in the wrong things (guy who loves pryovores buys a bunch), they end up in a scenario where they lose all the time, and nothing short of buying a new army will fix it.

WayneTheGame wrote:The answer should never be "If a unit is overpowered just don't take it" because what's the reverse? If a unit is underpowered, don't take it? People already do that, and that's the root of the issue.

WayneTheGame wrote:Right now the problem is there are "fool's gold" choices that are just bad units overall, and a player who falls into the trap of taking them will be at a disadvantage for no other reason than they picked the wrong unit. You are basically forced to pick units that you might not like simply to avoid losing every game because the units you do like are weak and/or underpowered.

WayneTheGame wrote:No, what I'm wanting is a world where there's nothing like "Grots are terrible, you never want to take them" or "You want 3x Heldrakes to be competitive"... It's not "An army of Grots can beat an army of Space Marines" but more that choosing to have a Grot army opens up certain options and tactics that you wouldn't have if you played something else (an Evil Sunz biker army, for example), and means that you won't automatically lose.

Right, so we're definitely missing something here.

Grots DO have a place in an ork list. So do pyrovores in a tyranid list. There are no units in the entire game where there is no reason whatsoever to take them.

Reasons to take something are limited only by a person's creativity. I could take a low-power unit because I like the models. I could take one because I like the fluff. I could take one because I like how it jives with my play style. There's no end of reasons. People who say that there is no reason to take something are either lying, or are in desperate need of a little creativity, but in either case, it's the PEOPLE not the game that's at fault here.

What all of the above quotes are saying is that a person should be able to take what they want AND WIN. That's a big difference, and it's also a much more narrow definition of what we're talking about, here. Plus, it seems more than a little strange. If a noob takes a bunch of heavy bolters and doesn't have enough anti-tank, and is sick of losing games, we tell him "well tough, get some anti-tank", but when a noob takes a bunch of pyrovores and doesn't have enough of other things, and is sick of losing games, we're supposed to say "Yeah, it's not your fault, 40k is a broken game".

A person building a low-power list should lose games more frequently against stronger lists. That's how 40k should work. The only way to get around this is to make it so that there ARE no low-power lists, which is how we get to the "all armies are the same" thing I've been talking about.

Also, people seem to be falling into the all-or-nothing camp. If a unit isn't quite as strong as another unit that does the same thing, then it's worthless. If you include even one low-power unit in your army, then you're just going to lose, because your list is worthless. It's almost like people are forgetting that we play a dice game, and that it's a game that has no player skill whatsoever. 40k isn't a game where you show up with your lists and by looking at the strength of them, see who wins without actually playing. Weaker lists beat stronger lists all the time thanks to good luck and better player skill.

And that's a good thing.

I think what's going on here is a fundamental split between the "winning" and "challenging" crowds. People who want a challenge don't want the game to be even because they want to be able to manipulate the inequality. People who just want to win don't want to be encumbered by disadvantages to winning - they want to be able to just take whatever models they want and still have the same chance of winning.

If you take off the WAAC-goggles, though, then what does it matter that pyrovores aren't as good as other units in their codex?

Frozen Ocean wrote:As a Tyranid player, I cannot run a viable assault-based build, even though my army is supposed to be assault-based. No matter my strategies or list-building skills, it just won't work unless my opponent is incompetent or playing a bad army. So what, then? Am I expected to out-shoot every other army in the game with infamously bad Tyranid shooting?

And this is it in a nutshell. Because some units are stronger than others, player skill no longer matters? What? Because some units are stronger than others, 40k is no longer a game whose outcome is determined by die rolls?

If all you want to do is win, then taking a stronger tyranid list is better than taking a weaker one. Of course it is. Furthermore, as the OP said, if all you wanted to do was to win games, you would do best by not playing tyranid in the first place. The only reason that there is a conflict here in the first place is because you want to win, and win against someone from an equal starting place.

Without either of these being conditions, then 40k does fine. Furthermore, if those are your preconditions, then 40k is a terrible game for you. The fact that 40k is a dice game laughs in the face of anyone who wants to pit player skill against player skill.

What you want is a game like chess, not a game like 40k. 40k should be 40k, not chess. If you want to play a real strategy game, then go and play a real strategy game - you have several great options. 40k will never be that, though, nor should it.

Pretty much all of this monolith of text is rendered irrelevant because we have players who approach the game with a different philosophy. While the rules permit the WAAC and fluffy approaches to be more than an attitude, there is a major flaw in the design in the game.

azreal13 wrote:Points can level the playing field at a stroke, nothing is overpowered, simply undercosted

Are overpowered and undercosted different things?

azreal13 wrote:Wow, do you, like, give up at everything that you're not immediately fabulous at, or when you start something new, do you accept that you'll get your arse handed to you repeatedly until you've gained enough skill and experience to make an account of yourself? Noobs should lose. A lot.

No. I'll link you to this reply, where this position was explained.

Hammering noobs until they get better is only the right thing to do when all a person wants to do is to increase their player skill as quickly as possible. There are LOTS of reasons to play a game other than that, and many of those reasons are seriously compromised by getting hammered early on.

azreal13 wrote: While the rules permit the WAAC and fluffy approaches to be more than an attitude, there is a major flaw in the design in the game.

GW does permit people with a WAAC attitude to play the game, but I don't think anyone would claim that people with a WAAC attitude properly thrive in the world of 40k.

If they did, we wouldn't have threads like this popping up all the time.

Plus, WAAC players will always want to have player skill pitted against player skill. 40k is a game where there is a huge pile of random die rolls shoved in the middle. Any game where you can lose because of a few bad die rolls isn't going to be conducive to this attitude in the first place.

Well, speaking as a confirmed non-WAAC, I still like to feel my decisions make an impact on the outcome of the game.

Every random table, every random effect, every undercosted unit that my opponent is allowed to field (no, they are not different, if something is overpowered, it merely means it costs fewer points than it should. Nobody would be calling 500 point Wraithknights OP) divorces me further and further from my involvement in the game.

I can enjoy a game I lose, I don't mind losing, but I will, by my nature, analyse what I did, try and pick up where I could have done differently, and be better next time. When I've been tabled, despite fielding a fairly balanced list, and genuinely can see no way I could have overcome my opponent, who allegedly fielded a force that should be roughly analogous in terms of power (assuming they didn't slip an extra 300 points in somewhere) in the final analysis, then it undermines my enjoyment of the game significantly, and I would like that to go away.

When I just started playing I got my ass handed to me repeatedly by a veteran Nid player and I enjoyed every minute of it. I learned from my mistakes, improved my skills and came right back in for another beatdown.

It was great fun.

You know why? Because I was getting better at the game, because I kept tweaking my lists to improve their effectiveness, because I felt that I had room to improve and because it's fun playing a game where you feel that your skill matters and the outcome isn't already decided before the game begins.

Unfortunately the game has been rapidly moving away from that over the course of the 6th edition, which is downright sad.

 Ailaros wrote:

azreal13 wrote:Points can level the playing field at a stroke, nothing is overpowered, simply undercosted

Are overpowered and undercosted different things?

I would say so, yes.

It seems like it's a "thin-line" deal, but I'd say Overpowered refers more to things simply with broken rules, like The Hellturkey with its 360 degree baleflamer. Is it gamebreaking or auto-win? No, but a flyer with a 360 degree AP3 Str6 Flamer is overpowered. It is a point-click-kill unit. Now, Vendettas. Do they have a ridiculous armament, or ruleset? No. In fact they honestly perform on-par with quite a few flyers around. The issue is that they are so cheap for what they can accomplish.

So Overpowered refers to messed up rules

while Undercosted implies the rules would be fine if the unit costed more in points.

-TheCaptain

There are no messed up rules if enough is charged for the model. Overpowered and undercosted are the same thing. Unless there is no price at all at which the model is fair.

 TheCaptain wrote:
So Overpowered refers to messed up rules

while Undercosted implies the rules would be fine if the unit costed more in points.

IMO that's not quite right. Undercosted is a subset of overpowered. All undercosted units are overpowered, but units can also be overpowered for other reasons.

How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

Martel732 wrote:
How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

Re-rollable 2++ saves are overpowered. No amount of points would make it reasonable for play in a balanced game.

 Ailaros wrote:
The only way to get around this is to make it so that there ARE no low-power lists, which is how we get to the "all armies are the same" thing I've been talking about.

Only in your special Ailaros world, which is not the one the rest of us inhabit. We've explained many times how "balance" does not mean "all armies are identical".

If you take off the WAAC-goggles, though, then what does it matter that pyrovores aren't as good as other units in their codex?

Yeah, because only WAAC players care about this. I guess the "casual" or "fluff" players who take pyrovores because they're cool should just put up with having less of a chance of winning, because only TFGs care who wins the game?

Plus, it seems more than a little strange. If a noob takes a bunch of heavy bolters and doesn't have enough anti-tank, and is sick of losing games, we tell him "well tough, get some anti-tank", but when a noob takes a bunch of pyrovores and doesn't have enough of other things, and is sick of losing games, we're supposed to say "Yeah, it's not your fault, 40k is a broken game".

Why do you have so much trouble understanding the difference between certain combinations of units being ineffective (a bad list, like one without any anti-tank) and certain units being ineffective. Having to make intelligent list-building decisions (like "take some anti-tank) is part of the game, and should be. Having units be so weak that taking them at all is a mistake shouldn't be.

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

Re-rollable 2++ saves are overpowered. No amount of points would make it reasonable for play in a balanced game.

No, there is likely a calcuable point value. It's just huge.

Martel732 wrote:
There are no messed up rules if enough is charged for the model. Overpowered and undercosted are the same thing. Unless there is no price at all at which the model is fair.

Martel732 wrote:
How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

I'd incline to disagree.

If a unit has sufficiently broken rules, no price would make it fair. Broken rules would either lead to it being undercosted, or if the cost was raised, it would end up so expensive it is untakeable.

For a Hyperbole example: Theoretical new unit:

Imperial Guard Rangers [Troops] (10 Man Squad) 130 Points
Special Rules:
Rerollable 2+ Invulnerable save
Rerollable 2+ FNP that isn't ignored by Instant Death

Each is armed with a Volcano Cannon

Now, are these rules ridiculous? Absolutely, is the price too low? Absolutely. But would raising the price "fix it" no. Any price where this squad would still be takeable in a game would have it still being overpowered, whereas any price where it isn't takeable (Say price was raised to 3000 points) and the price raise doesnt make it "fair" as you suggested; it makes it useless.

I maintain there is a definite distinction between OP and Undercosted, as some rules are fine and simply not in sync with their price, while other rules, even ones that arent made up and are actually in the game, need an Errata, not a price raise.
-TheCaptain

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

Re-rollable 2++ saves are overpowered. No amount of points would make it reasonable for play in a balanced game.

This. Sometimes an idea is just beyond the scope of what should be possible in the game, and making it expensive doesn't fix the problem. D-weapon titans are another example, making them extremely expensive to reflect their power just reduces the game to titan vs. anti-titan (even more than it already is) because the titan player can no longer afford anything else for their army. The titan is the entire focus of the game, and there's no strategy beyond "kill the titan before it kills you".

Martel732 wrote:

No, there is likely a calcuable point value. It's just huge.

Which is the point of something being overpowered and not just undercosted. The point value for something like this would pretty much rule it out of most normal levels of play, thus making it overpowered and not simply undercosted.

*Edit* Peregrine beat me to it.

*Further Edit* And The Captain too!

 Blacksails wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
How can something be overpowered for "other reasons"? If something is overpowered, and you increase the price to an appropriate level, it becomes fine. Hence, it was undercosted.

Re-rollable 2++ saves are overpowered. No amount of points would make it reasonable for play in a balanced game.

Incorrect. For all their durability, any unit is going to have limited damage output over the course of 6 turns. If the necessary elements to construct a unit with 2++ rerollable were sufficiently expensive that the damage it could do was mitigated by the extra units/bodies your opponent could field, it's durability becomes redundant.

If there where an emperor model who allowed you to roll a dice after deployment and on a 2+ won you the game he would be OP even if he cost 40,000 points.

 azreal13 wrote:

Incorrect. For all their durability, any unit is going to have limited damage output over the course of 6 turns. If the necessary elements to construct a unit with 2++ rerollable were sufficiently expensive that the damage it could do was mitigated by the extra units/bodies your opponent could field, it's durability becomes redundant.

Which Blacksails, Peregrine, and I addressed.

Pointing up a unit doesn't fix broken rules. Your suggestion of upping a unit's price tag until it can't do enough damage merely takes a broken unit and makes it unplayable.

 azreal13 wrote:


Incorrect. For all their durability, any unit is going to have limited damage output over the course of 6 turns. If the necessary elements to construct a unit with 2++ rerollable were sufficiently expensive that the damage it could do was mitigated by the extra units/bodies your opponent could field, it's durability becomes redundant.

Both Peregrine and TheCaptain have beat me to a better explanation. I do maintain that certain combinations of abilities are beyond the scope of point balancing for a standard game. A re-rollable 2++ save unit with good damage output is beyond redemption by point values, but that ties into game design overall than simple points calculations.

*Edit* Are you all wizards or something? I thought I was a quick poster, but damn people...

 Jidmah wrote:
Did you actually read my post, or just jump to conclusions after reading that sentence? Considering how your post isn't remotely about what I wrote, I'm guessing second. You don't create hard-counters to strategies. You create hard-counters to units.

I read your post, and what I said applies the same to unit vs. unit hard counters. If a Hydra is a hard counter to 3x Helldrakes then that aspect of the game is never going to be fun. Either the rest of the Helldrake player's army kills the Hydra before the Helldrakes arrive and the Helldrakes slaughter everything, or the Helldrake player fails to kill the Hydra fast enough and the Helldrakes explode uselessly. Neither of these situations is very fun or interesting, even if it's perfectly balanced so that each player has exactly a 50% chance of winning. What you want is soft counters, where, say, Hydras are effective against Helldrakes and will eventually kill them if ignored, but a Helldrake spam list can still flame stuff before all of the Helldrakes are killed. Now it's a race to see which side can kill the other faster and win the counter war, not just an automatic "oh, you brought the hard counter" where you just remove the countered unit from the table.

Also note that WH40k already contains such a hard-counters, most of them are just done very badly. Melta hard-counter vehicles, plasma hard-counters terminators, purifiers hard-counter assault hordes, helldrakes hard-counter MEQ, SitW hard-counters psychers, etc. It wouldn't be exactly something new

I don't think you really understand what a hard counter is. It's a situation where if I bring X then your Y is completely ineffective and there's nothing you can do about it. Melta isn't a hard counter to tanks because melta still has to get in range, and that's far from guaranteed. Simply putting melta guns in your lists doesn't automatically win against tanks. A hard counter is something like GK warp quake vs. old demons, where if the GK player goes first the entire table is an automatic mishap for the demon player and they lose the game without ever getting a single model onto the table.

 Blacksails wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:


Incorrect. For all their durability, any unit is going to have limited damage output over the course of 6 turns. If the necessary elements to construct a unit with 2++ rerollable were sufficiently expensive that the damage it could do was mitigated by the extra units/bodies your opponent could field, it's durability becomes redundant.

Both Peregrine and TheCaptain have beat me to a better explanation. I do maintain that certain combinations of abilities are beyond the scope of point balancing for a standard game. A re-rollable 2++ save unit with good damage output is beyond redemption by point values, but that ties into game design overall than simple points calculations.

*Edit* Are you all wizards or something? I thought I was a quick poster, but damn people...

I'm literally a wizard. Please don't tell the Inquisition.