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 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.

No, it is beyond redemption within the bounds that they've introduced of what is "reasonable" which is an arbitrary and personal concept which has no relevance to the point.

The only rule that couldn't be balanced would be the "deploy model, win on 2+" type, everything else can be fixed with points, starting to impose further restrictions on how many points it would take, and how some units would be "too many" doesn't invalidate the core idea.

People have made some great arguments in this thread. Still, I think when people state "Riptides at 300 points wouldn't be overpowered" or "Noone would complain about 400 point Wraithknights" they forget that GW wants to sell as many of these models as possible. If people generally play 2000 point games or under, it doesn't make much business sense to make molds for small or medium sized kits that people will only buy one of. There's definately a points per dollar value to think about. A Warhound Titan can cost a lot of points because the kit is very expensive for consumers. Therefore it's unrealistic to expect GW to balance some strong units by drastically increasing points costs. If a change would come it would be a nerf to the actual stats and abilities instead of a points increase.

I'm not sure what the ongoing debate is about though. Both sides quote paragraphs out of context just to argue a minor detail. I don't think there's a good argument to be made that a game isn't better if it's more balanced. Yet, a game that isn't at all balanced can still be awfully fun and succesful. Both Warhammer 40K and Warhammer have proven this to be true.

Hard counters belong in balanced games. They're the very things that make the player decisions exciting. If everything was good against everything the game would be very bland. In Starcraft, an important part of the game is scouting and finding out what units the opponent is making, so that you can build the counters to them. Your opponent is responding in turn. Same can be said of card games.

I'm not a believer in the argument that two players should be able to pick any types of armies they like and the end results should be balanced against eachother, just like I don't believe that a Starcraft player should be able to build random buildings and units and expect them to be able to hold against an optimised timing attack. I doubt that's the type of balance I'd even want, but a lot of people seem to be advocating the "I want to take any models I like the look of and win" approach.

I'd say the balance the game should strive forwards is the one where an elite level player can build an army out of any army book and have it be reasonably competitive against the best armies he could make out of other army books. It's not that much to ask, but GW hasn't succeeded in it during any edition of any of their games ever, so in that sense I'm curious why people talk about it that much now.

 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.

But even if it's theoretically balanced by low damage output a re-rollable 2++ is so effective at stopping damage that you have two frustrating choices: either ignore the 2++ unit and let it kill whatever it wants, or throw your entire army at it in a desperate hope that maybe you get lucky with the dice and get a wound through. None of the interactions around the 2++ unit are fun, so its presence in the game is bad no matter what point cost it has.

 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.

Precisely. Points are a useful tool for balancing, but are not balance in and of themselves. Points are not the great leveller. Sometimes things need to have their rules changed.

 azreal13 wrote:


No, it is beyond redemption within the bounds that they've introduced of what is "reasonable" which is an arbitrary and personal concept which has no relevance to the point.

The only rule that couldn't be balanced would be the "deploy model, win on 2+" type, everything else can be fixed with points, starting to impose further restrictions on how many points it would take, and how some units would be "too many" doesn't invalidate the core idea.

Uh... you can't discount someone's point based on the subjective meaning of "reasonable" then make a point based on the (Also incredibly subjective) judgement of "balanced" or "fixed". That's self-invalidating.

 azreal13 wrote:


No, it is beyond redemption within the bounds that they've introduced of what is "reasonable" which is an arbitrary and personal concept which has no relevance to the point.

The only rule that couldn't be balanced would be the "deploy model, win on 2+" type, everything else can be fixed with points, starting to impose further restrictions on how many points it would take, and how some units would be "too many" doesn't invalidate the core idea.

Not quite, and I get that it may seem like an arbitrary and personal concept, but a unit that has no weakness (durable, moves fast, hits hard) has no place in a game in the first place, regardless of the cost. Seer councils and similar units are too cheap for what they offer, and even if they were costed appropriately, it still seems unreasonable to have a game where a single 1000pts unit should be able to square off against an army that had to bring a variety of units to cover their bases.

Really, at the end of the day, Overpowered vs. undercosted is more a semantics argument, but from a straight mechanics perspective, there really shouldn't be units who require an obscene of points to even be considered balanced. Making a super powerful, all-in-one unit is poor game design, and no amount of points will fix that.

To quote myself,

 TheCaptain wrote:


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

There is literally no point cost that would make this unit acceptable in normal play. It is simply too powerful as a single unit. You can have it at a useable point cost, whence it will be overpowered, or you can point it up to the point where it is too pricy to be used in a list, which makes it useless.

-TheCaptain

 Peregrine 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.

But even if it's theoretically balanced by low damage output a re-rollable 2++ is so effective at stopping damage that you have two frustrating choices: either ignore the 2++ unit and let it kill whatever it wants, or throw your entire army at it in a desperate hope that maybe you get lucky with the dice and get a wound through. None of the interactions around the 2++ unit are fun, so its presence in the game is bad no matter what point cost it has.

Agreed, I run daemons and will never field a Screamerstar out of respect for the poor sod who'd have to deal with it.

But, again, that is beside the point, fun or not, frustrating or not, if the unit costs sufficient that it compromises what else my opponent can bring, or allows me to bring sufficient extra units to just tie it up or ignore it, then it is balanced.

Whether it then becomes fun is a separate argument.

 Therion wrote:
I don't think there's a good argument to be made that a game isn't better if it's more balanced.

But that's exactly what some people in this thread are arguing: not just that 40k is balanced enough to be fun, but that better balance would make the game worse. That's why the "debate" keeps going.

Hard counters belong in balanced games. They're the very things that make the player decisions exciting. If everything was good against everything the game would be very bland. In Starcraft, an important part of the game is scouting and finding out what units the opponent is making, so that you can build the counters to them. Your opponent is responding in turn. Same can be said of card games.

See previous post about this. Soft counters are good, and staying one step ahead of your opponent's reactions to your strategy is interesting gameplay. Having hard counters, on the other hand, isn't, because even if you win exactly 50% of the games you're winning or losing 100% of them by huge margins that aren't really fun or interesting.

I'm not a believer in the argument that two players should be able to pick any types of armies they like and the end results should be balanced against eachother, just like I don't believe that a Starcraft player should be able to build random buildings and units and expect them to be able to hold against an optimised timing attack. I doubt that's the type of balance I'd even want, but a lot of people seem to be advocating the "I want to take any models I like the look of and win" approach.

But nobody is arguing that. All-lasgun IG is bad and should be bad. What people want when they expect balance is that:

1) Every unit has a reasonable purpose. I might not be able to take a certain exact combination of units A, B and C, but I should be able to make good use of each of them individually. If my favorite model is unit B I shouldn't be crippling my chances of winning if I use it at all instead of just spamming A. Contrast this with the current game, where there are tons of units that just have no place in a well-designed list.

2) There is a wide range of viable lists and strategies. Throwing a bunch of random stuff together shouldn't win because it isn't a strategy. But if, say, I like to play a flyer-heavy list I shouldn't auto-lose because flyers are hard countered by overpowered AA units and taking them at all is suicide. Contrast this with the current game where there are a small number of top-tier lists, and huge parts of the game might as well not exist.

 Therion wrote:
People have made some great arguments in this thread. Still, I think when people state "Riptides at 300 points wouldn't be overpowered" or "Noone would complain about 400 point Wraithknights" they forget that GW wants to sell as many of these models as possible. If people generally play 2000 point games or under, it doesn't make much business sense to make molds for small or medium sized kits that people will only buy one of. There's definately a points per dollar value to think about. A Warhound Titan can cost a lot of points because the kit is very expensive for consumers.

I'm not sure what the ongoing debate is about though. Both sides quote paragraphs out of context just to argue a minor detail. I don't think there's a good argument to be made that a game isn't better if it's more balanced. Yet, a game that isn't at all balanced can still be awfully fun and succesful. Both Warhammer 40K and Warhammer have proven this to be true.

Hard counters belong in balanced games. They're the very things that make the player decisions exciting. If everything was good against everything the game would be very bland. In Starcraft, an important part of the game is scouting and finding out what units the opponent is making, so that you can build the counters to them. Your opponent is responding in turn. Same can be said of card games.

I'm not a believer in the argument that two players should be able to pick any types of armies they like and the end results should be balanced against eachother, just like I don't believe that a Starcraft player should be able to build random buildings and units and expect them to be able to hold against an optimised timing attack. I doubt that's the type of balance I'd even want, but a lot of people seem to be advocating the "I want to take any models I like the look of and win" approach.

I'd say the balance the game should strive forwards is the one where an elite level player can build an army out of any army book and have it be reasonably competitive against the best armies he could make out of other army books. It's not that much to ask, but GW hasn't succeeded in it during any edition of any of their games ever, so in that sense I'm curious why people talk about it that much now.

Then why does GW make so many units that are unfieldable? I don't think they even put as much thought into the game as think. The DA flyers were new and unusable as soon as they hit.

 TheCaptain wrote:
To quote myself,

 TheCaptain wrote:


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

There is literally no point cost that would make this unit acceptable in normal play. It is simply too powerful as a single unit. You can have it at a useable point cost, whence it will be overpowered, or you can point it up to the point where it is too pricy to be used in a list, which makes it useless.

-TheCaptain

Except that it in a 6 turn game, it could, at most, target 6 units. If the points it costs means I have the points to field 15, I have 9 units that will not be targeted all game, who will be free to compete for objectives, or remove my opponents scoring units (which will be few and limited, because this unit will cost so much)

 azreal13 wrote:
Whether it then becomes fun is a separate argument.

Not at all. Part of balance is that "what is fun" establishes boundaries on what is acceptable for a unit/army/etc to do. For example, having a single unit be the entire focus of the game isn't much fun, so that puts an upper limit on the power (and point cost) of a single unit. And any unit that is so powerful that its point cost makes an army consist of "unit X + 300 points of minimum troops + HQ" is overpowered no matter what its point cost is, simply because it exceeds the limit on what single units should be capable of.

No balance is about what is fair.

Bring your own fun.

 azreal13 wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
To quote myself,

 TheCaptain wrote:


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

There is literally no point cost that would make this unit acceptable in normal play. It is simply too powerful as a single unit. You can have it at a useable point cost, whence it will be overpowered, or you can point it up to the point where it is too pricy to be used in a list, which makes it useless.

-TheCaptain

Except that it in a 6 turn game, it could, at most, target 6 units. If the points it costs means I have the points to field 15, I have 9 units that will not be targeted all game, who will be free to compete for objectives, or remove my opponents scoring units (which will be few and limited, because this unit will cost so much)

Which my point addressed.

If that unit above was so expensive that fielding it would put me at a point level where you could field 15 units in return, then the above unit is expensive to the point of being useless.

Like the very real rules for the Emperor titan. Is it crazy good? I mean...yeah. Is it fieldable? Absolutely not; your opponent could field 20 armies against it.

You could just give those Imperial Guard Rangers split fire, or independent fire or something.

Boom. Now truly well and broken.

 Blacksails wrote:
You could just give those Imperial Guard Rangers split fire, or independent fire or something.

Boom. Now truly well and broken.

Please excuse me while I field-test this unit against some unwitting opponent.

"What did you say their weapons were?!"

Muwahahaha

 TheCaptain wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
You could just give those Imperial Guard Rangers split fire, or independent fire or something.

Boom. Now truly well and broken.

Please excuse me while I field-test this unit against some unwitting opponent.

"What did you say their weapons were?!"

Muwahahaha

Well now we're in the realm of absurdity, but I guess that's partly the point. Granted, a year ago I would laughed out anyone in the proposed rules section if they mentioned even a re-rollable 4++.

And now we have these...star things running around.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:
To quote myself,

 TheCaptain wrote:


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

There is literally no point cost that would make this unit acceptable in normal play. It is simply too powerful as a single unit. You can have it at a useable point cost, whence it will be overpowered, or you can point it up to the point where it is too pricy to be used in a list, which makes it useless.

-TheCaptain

Except that it in a 6 turn game, it could, at most, target 6 units. If the points it costs means I have the points to field 15, I have 9 units that will not be targeted all game, who will be free to compete for objectives, or remove my opponents scoring units (which will be few and limited, because this unit will cost so much)

Which my point addressed.

If that unit above was so expensive that fielding it would put me at a point level where you could field 15 units in return, then the above unit is expensive to the point of being useless.

Like the very real rules for the Emperor titan. Is it crazy good? I mean...yeah. Is it fieldable? Absolutely not; your opponent could field 20 armies against it.

But it still doesn't disprove the point.

You can just keep throwing extra criteria into the mix to try and support your argument, but there is a points value for almost any rule you can conceive outside of the truly and obviously absurd (like the aforementioned win on 2+) which will make it balanced, if not precisely, then approximately. Essentially that number is at the point where the player has an element of indecision as to whether it is "worth it" or not, too much outside of that sweet spot and it is under or over costed.

You've provided an example of a unit with absurdly powerful rules, why wouldn't you expect it to have an equally absurd points cost to field?

Peregrine wrote:See previous post about this. Soft counters are good, and staying one step ahead of your opponent's reactions to your strategy is interesting gameplay. Having hard counters, on the other hand, isn't, because even if you win exactly 50% of the games you're winning or losing 100% of them by huge margins that aren't really fun or interesting.

Depends on the definition. A soft counter can be a Howling Banshee to Tactical Marines. They're superior in many assault scenarios, but not always. A hard counter can be an Imperial Knight against a unit of Tactical Marines with bolters. I'm not saying armies should hard counter other armies, but that some units can and should be impervious to others, while others simply should have a smaller advantage against others. The game has to be filled with varying degrees of soft and hard counters for it to be interesting. The balance should come from the fact that you shouldn't be able to take only units that hard counter one type of enemy because it would lead to your own army getting hard countered by much more stuff. That leads to the player self-regulating himself and building a balanced army that as a whole isn't vulnerable to being countered at all. Units that are great against everything are the worst offenders, because there's no weakness in just maximising points usage on them. Units like those have always existed in GW games unfortunately, but atleast back in the day you were somewhat limited by the FOC. These types of units always get spammed.

1) Every unit has a reasonable purpose. I might not be able to take a certain exact combination of units A, B and C, but I should be able to make good use of each of them individually. If my favorite model is unit B I shouldn't be crippling my chances of winning if I use it at all instead of just spamming A. Contrast this with the current game, where there are tons of units that just have no place in a well-designed list.

2) There is a wide range of viable lists and strategies. Throwing a bunch of random stuff together shouldn't win because it isn't a strategy. But if, say, I like to play a flyer-heavy list I shouldn't auto-lose because flyers are hard countered by overpowered AA units and taking them at all is suicide. Contrast this with the current game where there are a small number of top-tier lists, and huge parts of the game might as well not exist.

You won't find anyone who disagrees on either point. However, you will find people who could argue that every unit does have a reasonable purpose, and that a wide range of viable lists and strategies does exist. You didn't say that every unit needs to be highly competitive, and if you had said that I would have disagreed. I just don't find it very realistic. I also don't agree with your statement that huge parts of the game might as well not exist. It's hyperbole. You're looking at the cutting edge tournament results where truthfully a small margin of the 40K players worldwide participate and passing judgment on the results. As if a Taudar army winning a tournament in Las Vegas would have any effect on a 10-man gaming club's battles in Paris, France.

 azreal13 wrote:
No balance is about what is fair.

And, again, "fair" is defined in part by what is fun. Balance is more than just whether or not both players have a 50% chance of winning, it includes things like "what is the maximum power for a reasonable single model/unit in this game" which depend on what produces fun and interesting games.

 azreal13 wrote:

You've provided an example of a unit with absurdly powerful rules, why wouldn't you expect it to have an equally absurd points cost to field?

I feel like you're not recognizing that even though there are point costs for any set of rules that are mathematically acceptable, those point costs CAN make said unit unfieldable.

That's what I'm suggesting. My thesis is literally "Units CAN have rules so overpowered that the only acceptable point costs for them would make them unfieldable, so for said unit: it's either playable and broken, or expensive and useless"

There's nothing wrong with hard counters. Protoss Phoenix annihilate Zerg Mutalisks, but that's just one possible unit matchup in Starcraft. If Protoss Phoenix were awesome against everything, you'd have wave serpents.

Martel732 wrote:
There's nothing wrong with hard counters. Protoss Phoenix annihilate Zerg Mutalisks, but that's just one possible unit matchup in Starcraft. If Protoss Phoenix were awesome against everything, you'd have wave serpents.

Well, probably not the best example, being that currently Protoss are crazy overpowered...

Protoss can't hold the Eldar's jock strap.

 Therion wrote:
A hard counter can be an Imperial Knight against a unit of Tactical Marines with bolters.

But that's not what a hard counter is. A knight against a bolter squad isn't a hard counter, it's just a unit encountering another unit that it isn't meant to fight (an anti-infantry squad against a tank). A hard counter is where you take unit X specifically to counter unit Y, and having X makes Y useless. That isn't the case here because even if you take the knight for its tactical-killing battle cannon the tactical squad is still relevant as it kills your infantry and claims objectives, and the marine player's anti-tank units attack the knight like they're supposed to.

You didn't say that every unit needs to be highly competitive, and if you had said that I would have disagreed.

I didn't say it, but it should have been implied. When I say "viable" I'm talking about high-level competition. There should not be units which are only ever useful if you're deliberately playing with non-competitive lists.

You're looking at the cutting edge tournament results where truthfully a small margin of the 40K players worldwide participate and passing judgment on the results.

But the point is that if a game can't hold up to that kind of competition then it's a bad game. Balance problems don't go away just because a lot of games are played between newbies or "fluff" players who don't exploit them.

As if a Taudar army winning a tournament in Las Vegas would have any effect in a 10-man gaming club's gaming in Paris, France.

Until someone in the 10-man club netlists the Taudar army and starts dominating.

Peregrine wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
No balance is about what is fair.

And, again, "fair" is defined in part by what is fun. Balance is more than just whether or not both players have a 50% chance of winning, it includes things like "what is the maximum power for a reasonable single model/unit in this game" which depend on what produces fun and interesting games.

TheCaptain wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

You've provided an example of a unit with absurdly powerful rules, why wouldn't you expect it to have an equally absurd points cost to field?

I feel like you're not recognizing that even though there are point costs for any set of rules that are mathematically acceptable, those point costs CAN make said unit unfieldable.

That's what I'm suggesting. My thesis is literally "Units CAN have rules so overpowered that the only acceptable point costs for them would make them unfieldable, so for said unit: it's either playable and broken, or expensive and useless"

The pair of you are trying to make a theoretical point practical.

It is theoretically possible to use points to balance the whole system. At no point have I said it is a good idea, but it is possible. You start throwing concepts of what is "fair" "fun" and "reasonable" into the discussion, but that isn't the point, those are subjective and arbitrary ideas.

At no point have you actually argued anything other than semantics. Undercosted is exactly the same thing as overpowered, it is just there is clearly a tipping point where some things are so far undercosted that in order for them to become fairly priced, it is a more practical solution to alter their rules than to try and find a points cost that accurately reflects their abilities in game.

 azreal13 wrote:
Undercosted is exactly the same thing as overpowered, it is just there is clearly a tipping point where some things are so far undercosted that in order for them to become fairly priced, it is a more practical solution to alter their rules than to try and find a points cost that accurately reflects their abilities in game.

But that's why they're not the same thing. You can have abilities that come about due to a combination of rules, that when looked at apart are perfectly costed for what they do but when brought together are far greater than the sum of their parts (psychic powers show this tendency all the time). Points aren't always the solution, and "overpowered/undercosted vs "underpowered/overcosted" isn't the same thing.

There are some things that can be incredibly underpowered, yet making them free wouldn't change the fact that other things better fulfil their role. This is what balance should strive to achieve, far more than just getting the points costs right. Making something useful isn't the same as getting something's cost right. Getting the cost right is only part of it.

Peregrine wrote:
But that's not what a hard counter is. A knight against a bolter squad isn't a hard counter, it's just a unit encountering another unit that it isn't meant to fight

Well, you're not meant to fight against units that hard counter you. By my definition, a unit that always beats you both at shooting and in assault is your hard counter. Whether it was chosen to the army to counter that unit specifically is irrelevant. It was chosen to counter all units of that type. 40K has too many armies and too many units for you to go to micro level decisions, like: "I'm going to take unit XYZ in my army just in case one of my 6 opponents in the upcoming tournament uses Kharn the Betrayer". Rather you take some units that hard- or soft counter footslogging Marines of all types.

But the point is that if a game can't hold up to that kind of competition then it's a bad game. Balance problems don't go away just because a lot of games are played between newbies or "fluff" players who don't exploit them.

I'm not going to argue against that. I could say though that even a bad game can be a lot of fun. It would be more fun if it was better, but fun is fun.

Wow, by that definition, tactical marines have an awful lot of "hard counters".

Martel732 wrote:
Wow, by that definition, tactical marines have an awful lot of "hard counters".

Of course they do, and they counter almost noone in turn. Just in case you were wondering, they also suck, and have sucked almost forever (they weren't that garbage in 2nd). That's why people refered to Marines with deck chairs, where one guy is holding the lascannon and the rest are waiting to die.