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If you can dispel blessings that will be the end of beastar, JSC and ScreamerStar. That would be awesome.

 aka_mythos wrote:
If balance is your one and only concern in organizing a tournament you could always write up a generic marine armylist and make everyone use it in the ultimate mirror match.

Oh, stop it.

Balance in a game about warfare... Question, when has warfare ever been balanced? Take America for instance: one of the largest military forces in all the world and one of the most advanced. Yet looking back at our recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East, we haven't exactly dominated as some may expect that we would. We dropped more bombs in Vietnam than we did in both world wars and yet the Vietnamese still got us the hell out of their country. Hell go even further back in history, the Greeks against the Persian Empire. And I don't mean the movie 300 even though the battle at Thermopylae was a huge turning point for the Greeks, the Greek states were small and divided when the Persian Empire showed up and even when they joined forces they still didn't have but half the forces the Persians had but they still beat their ass and sent them packing with their tails tucked between their legs. So to say that a game based on warfare should be completely balanced and even doesn't really make sense to me. The fact that you're rolling dice even doing all the statistics, I've seen marine players roll nothing but ones the whole game and an army of orks roll nothing but sixes the entire game and it was over in five minutes. Not saying something like that is common but it can happen no matter how you do the math. Thinking about it name one game other than chess that is completely balanced...someone makes a wrong move, you take advantage of it and if you don't your an idiot, if you make a wrong move and expect your opponent not to take advantage you're a jackass too. Hell even in videogames based on warfare modern warfare for example, a man running around with a throwing knife or tomahawk shouldn't be able to take first in points and kills throughout the enitre game give all the weapons, upgrades, and options given to all players...have a seen it happen? Countless times! In modern warfare 2 my friend ran around with a riot shield and throwing knives or at most an m9 and I've witnessed him get to score and highest kill to death ratio and he had a shield and a knife! In a game about guns!!! Is that balanced?! Does it make sense that it's possible to do that? I mean I've seen it so I guess yes but if you've never seen it happen and you were handed the controller and you had the knife shield combo you'd be screaming all aw how could I possibly win with just a knife and shield this is so unfair! But if your on the other side of it with a .50Cal and a SAW machine gun and some jackass with a shield keeps sprinting up behind you and throwing a knife in you're head you'd be Freaking Out!!! But I'll tell you what, running around in that game with a knife and shield and doing good was by far the most fun I've ever had regardless of score. Did I think I'd even stand a chance? Hell No, but every kill I got was freakin amazing! Kind of like if a Nids player using a gaunt hoard takes out a Tau army... Is it balanced? Of course not the Tau are gunna annihilate them! However if they roll like gak the whole time and the Nids make it in, then ask both players how balanced it is, the tau players gunna call it all bs and the Nids player will tell you how amazing it felt to finally get in and slaughter those damn tau! Do I think it makes sense that a squad of terminators who's armor was crafted to withstand nukes be taken out by a squad of fire warriors? No but still it's just a game man. Play Halo, Assassins Creed, Baseball, any sport really. Hell for sports tell me the game isn't balanced, the rules are the same for every player on the team, and yet still there's winners and losers. If it were perfectly balanced like 40k players want 40k to be, you could have three year olds tie with the allstar teams. To Test 40k s flaws, play a game of an army list vs itself. Tell me what about the randomness of dice rolling breaks the game when the rules are played by. It's late and No ones gunna read all this so Peace!

Geeze dude, paragraphs are a thing...

Hell for sports tell me the game isn't balanced, the rules are the same for every player on the team, and yet still there's winners and losers. If it were perfectly balanced like 40k players want 40k to be, you could have three year olds tie with the allstar teams

The passage is near unreadable as it is, but this sentance caught my eye. It shows that you have not understood, at all, the point people are trying to make. No, people don't want everyone to have an equal chance of winning *regardless of skill level. People want the outcome of a game to be *Because* of skill level.

It's more like if the rules of basketball stated that one side got smashed in the knee with a hammer before a game, can you say it's fair, because "everyone is playing with the same rules"?

joemysak311 wrote:
wall of text

Seriously...

Formatting is a thing.

joemysak311 wrote:
stuff about video games/

Different medium. Your knife wielded in cod didn't cost you hundreds of pounds and whole weeks to paint. If it doesn't work, you bail, pick a different weapon load out and wait for the next game. Instant gratification. This scenario doesn't apply to wargames.

joemysak311 wrote:
Balance in a game about warfare... Question, when has warfare ever been balanced?

The 'but in real war' point is irrelevant, It's a wargame. As opposed to warfare.

joemysak311 wrote:

Kind of like if a Nids player using a gaunt hoard takes out a Tau army... Is it balanced? Of course not the Tau are gunna annihilate them! However if they roll like gak the whole time and the Nids make it in, then ask both players how balanced it is, the tau players gunna call it all bs and the Nids player will tell you how amazing it felt to finally get in and slaughter those damn tau!

So he gets one game where get rolls nothing but box cars. That's nice. What about the other hundred where he didn't? That's a massive wasted time to fun game ratio. No one is gonna stick it out waiting for that mythical 'one game' where their army performs. And considering the time, money and effort involved in building an army, they've got every right to be annoyed.

joemysak311 wrote:

If it were perfectly balanced like 40k players want 40k to be, you could have three year olds tie with the allstar teams. To Test 40k s flaws, play a game of an army list vs itself. Tell me what about the randomness of dice rolling breaks the game when the rules are played by. It's late and No ones gunna read all this so Peace!

You could try reading, perhaps?

What you're talking about is snakes and ladders. That's a game anyone can win, as skill has 0 impact. And it's not what people are talking about when we talk about balanced. Balanced doesn't mean 'identical'. Simply put, Balance means everything works. It means that tyranid player has the tools to compete on the same level as the tau player, 'and may the best man win'. It means the tyranid player and tau players are not confined to a single effective 'build' and that there are a variety of 'questions' each army can ask, and multiple 'answers' in which they can respond to those 'questions'.

I feel like sometimes people take drugs, alcohol, then bash their heads with a sledgehammer before they post on forums.

 heartserenade wrote:
I feel like sometimes people take drugs, alcohol, then bash their heads with a sledgehammer before they post on forums.

I feel this is the same way too, especially when we come to the topic of 40k or wargames in general since everyone seems to hold onto their own ideals for dear life.

joemysak311 wrote:
Balance in a game about warfare... Question, when has warfare ever been balanced? Take America for instance: one of the largest military forces in all the world and one of the most advanced. Yet looking back at our recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East, we haven't exactly dominated as some may expect that we would. We dropped more bombs in Vietnam than we did in both world wars and yet the Vietnamese still got us the hell out of their country. Hell go even further back in history, the Greeks against the Persian Empire. And I don't mean the movie 300 even though the battle at Thermopylae was a huge turning point for the Greeks, the Greek states were small and divided when the Persian Empire showed up and even when they joined forces they still didn't have but half the forces the Persians had but they still beat their ass and sent them packing with their tails tucked between their legs. So to say that a game based on warfare should be completely balanced and even doesn't really make sense to me.

The key word there is "game based on warfare", not actual warfare. War is generally not fun, but if a game isn't fun, you can simply play something else--therefore, a game needs to be fun! And losing (or winning) before you start isn't fun, realism be damned. Perhaps the two factions fighting are ludicrously unbalanced in the setting, but in this particular engagement we're simulating right now, they need to have a roughly equal chance of winning, to be decided by player skill.

And you can simulate an assymetric fight very well. Warhammer in the past has done "last stand" scenarios several times, where one side is outnumbered and will inevitably be wiped out. But because victory is defined as "defenders must accomplish an objective before dying, or hold out for X turns", it's possible to make a good game of it, one where both players have a chance of winning (even if one actual army is doomed).

joemysak311 wrote:
The fact that you're rolling dice even doing all the statistics, I've seen marine players roll nothing but ones the whole game and an army of orks roll nothing but sixes the entire game and it was over in five minutes. Not saying something like that is common but it can happen no matter how you do the math.

There are different ways to do randomness. Because of how averages work, both sides should have the same distribution of luck throughout the game--and many games give you ways to control your luck at critical moments, such as Malifaux's hand mechanic or Warmachine's boosting mechanic. You said it yourself, the outrageous results are not common, but they do make the game more unpredictable (which is fitting for a simulation of war, representing the fact that the best battleplan seldom survives contact with the enemy), introducing opportunities to take advantage of or setbacks to try and recover from.

But when it's well done, randomness doesn't decide the game, as it can in 40K when a Titan wins the first turn roll and blows away most of the enemy anti-armour before they can do anything.

Thinking about it name one game other than chess that is completely balanced...someone makes a wrong move, you take advantage of it and if you don't your an idiot, if you make a wrong move and expect your opponent not to take advantage you're a jackass too.

You're making a common fallacy, assuming that balance can't be perfect (and it can't), so therefore it can't be made better than it currently is in 40K (and it most certainly can, and many other games have done just that)

Hell even in videogames based on warfare modern warfare for example, a man running around with a throwing knife or tomahawk shouldn't be able to take first in points and kills throughout the enitre game give all the weapons, upgrades, and options given to all players...have a seen it happen? Countless times! In modern warfare 2 my friend ran around with a riot shield and throwing knives or at most an m9 and I've witnessed him get to score and highest kill to death ratio and he had a shield and a knife! In a game about guns!!! Is that balanced?! Does it make sense that it's possible to do that? I mean I've seen it so I guess yes but if you've never seen it happen and you were handed the controller and you had the knife shield combo you'd be screaming all aw how could I possibly win with just a knife and shield this is so unfair! But if your on the other side of it with a .50Cal and a SAW machine gun and some jackass with a shield keeps sprinting up behind you and throwing a knife in you're head you'd be Freaking Out!!! But I'll tell you what, running around in that game with a knife and shield and doing good was by far the most fun I've ever had regardless of score. Did I think I'd even stand a chance? Hell No, but every kill I got was freakin amazing!

Intentionally handicapping yourself to challenge yourself or be a bit silly isn't the same thing as playing an unbalanced game. It's more like if you have Assault Rifle 1 and Assault Rifle 2 that cost the same in-game resources to get, yet AR2 does 20% more damage with no other differences between them. So AR1 will vanish from the competitive scene of the game, and will have no reason to exist other than to frustrate newcomers. Good game companies make it a priority to fix that sort of imbalance, so that all options are viable. If the metagame can be "solved" with a clear best solution that you'd be a schmuck to not take, then a lot of the metagame becomes irrelevant. Casual players get frustrated, expert players get bored at the ensuring lack of challenge, and move on.

Kind of like if a Nids player using a gaunt hoard takes out a Tau army... Is it balanced? Of course not the Tau are gunna annihilate them! However if they roll like gak the whole time and the Nids make it in, then ask both players how balanced it is, the tau players gunna call it all bs and the Nids player will tell you how amazing it felt to finally get in and slaughter those damn tau! Do I think it makes sense that a squad of terminators who's armor was crafted to withstand nukes be taken out by a squad of fire warriors? No but still it's just a game man. Play Halo, Assassins Creed, Baseball, any sport really.

Of course people tend to cry for nerfs when they get beaten by a particular thing. But beyond that, it's possible to objectively see that the same things seem to be winning tournaments time after time, and that some things (2++ rerolled deathstars) fundamentally break the design of the game.

You seem to be saying that playing against an army that's objectively better than yours is okay because in between the slaughters, you'll get one run of luck and be able to overcome the unbalanced rules to pull out a win. I can't really see the merit of that--I'd rather know that my skill in using my army was the tie-breaker, not that I foolishly spent money on units that were duds by the rules, and never really had a chance.

Hell for sports tell me the game isn't balanced, the rules are the same for every player on the team, and yet still there's winners and losers. If it were perfectly balanced like 40k players want 40k to be, you could have three year olds tie with the allstar teams. To Test 40k s flaws, play a game of an army list vs itself. Tell me what about the randomness of dice rolling breaks the game when the rules are played by. It's late and No ones gunna read all this so Peace!

You don't understand the concept of balance. When the rules are equal for both sides, skill is the decider, so the team with 3-year-olds on would almost certainly lose. Imagine soccer where one teams goal was twice as wide as the other, or they had two fewer players on the pitch at the start--that's what we're talking about with imbalance.

Of course, unlike most sports, 40K armies do different things and have different characters, so it's a bit harder to balance. But, as mentioned above, not impossible. it can be done, and has been done. As it stands, the game is riddled with game-breaker combos (to the point where one player can essentially opt-out of large chunks of the rules), and units with costs that do not reflect their actual worth in play.

GW managed to get a quite balanced game in Warhammer Fantasy.

They have no excuse for 40k being the travesty it is now.

 Kain wrote:
They have no excuse for 40k being the travesty it is now.

Well reason vs excuse is semantics, but here's the reason: Jervis Johnson.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

joemysak311 wrote:
Balance in a game about warfare... Question, when has warfare ever been balanced?

Question, do you know what a game is?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

joemysak311 wrote:
So to say that a game based on warfare should be completely balanced and even doesn't really make sense to me.

I think you may have to brush up on what a game is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

joemysak311 wrote:
In modern warfare 2

I'm sensing you may not be a historical scholar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

joemysak311 wrote:
If it were perfectly balanced

I'm just going to stop you right there. Adding an adjective in front of balance, you're already making a strawman of what a good chunk of players want.




I would say the ideal is somewhere between chess and go, chess being attrition based and go being essentially about controlling larger areas with fewer but better placed resources.

Elite this, elite that, drone on and on and on... I found the original post quite silly and even condescending As a casual player I would never attend a "serious" tournament. Sweating around the table over the latest will never beat the excitement of drinking beer, chatting, joking, discussing strategies while pushing models around. Sorry, there are much better competitive games out there. That said, nothing beats 40K when it comes to casual play and despite the doom and gloom that surround it, I decided to stay with it .It is basically a sandbox - it's what you make of it. And when your main motive is fun, it delivers.

 Kain wrote:
GW managed to get a quite balanced game in Warhammer Fantasy.

They have no excuse for 40k being the travesty it is now.

Fantasy is balanced? Since when?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Kain wrote:
GW managed to get a quite balanced game in Warhammer Fantasy.

They have no excuse for 40k being the travesty it is now.

Fantasy is balanced? Since when?

Since 6th, 7th.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Kain wrote:
GW managed to get a quite balanced game in Warhammer Fantasy.

They have no excuse for 40k being the travesty it is now.

Fantasy is balanced? Since when?

Relative to 40k it's much less borked. Although there are still definitely armies that are better than others.

Tomb Kings vs High Elves is more even then Orks vs Eldar.

 RiTides wrote:
Using quote tags would help

I completely disagree with you, and agree with Reecius. Someone take a picture, Reecius can attest that that didn't happen often for a while

Since the last time you played competitive 40k was in 2012 (based on your intro above) you're a little behind the times, I think... Reecius would've agreed with you then, most likely.

Wish I was young again as had all of that energy Reecus has... though back to the point. He owns a store and it is successful. Give him coodoes for that. He has successfully ran top tier tournaments and has geared upwards on that aspect. Give credit for that. He has created commercial product for the masses. Again successful.

Reecius has to know the going ons in a larger sphere of influence because he has too to succeed. He has also broadened his horizons on what kinds of product to sell and what not too sell.

With all of that business background and success with his game store, his comments weigh a lot more than many in here.

And with that I agree with Reecius's comment

7Th ed is still broken to me.