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 jonolikespie wrote:
When looking at Warmaching I immediately wanted a Warjack heavy Khardor list. I was then jumped on and told right away Khardor is an infantry heavy faction, only Warjacks is not viable. Looking into it I found some threads about how to do that and while they where right, it's an infantry faction, there where also some very good suggestions about how to still do it anyway. It wouldn't be optimized but it once I learn how to play it properly it should still work well.

Looking at 40k right now I can't see a way to make a Raven Guard infiltration list work. I can't see how to make an Iron Warriors foot slogging siege force work. I can't see how to make an all termi force work.
Admittedly there probably is a way to get some of those to work but in neither Infinity, Warmachine nor Dystopian Wars do I feel like I am being actively punished for taking a unit I liked the look of where as I most cirtainly do feel that way playing Chaos Space Marines.

This exactly. Nobody wants "perfect" balance. What people want is for all choices to be viable to use without Unit A being so much better than Unit B that if you choose to take Unit B you are punished with a lower chance to win. Every choice should be balanced to where it comes down to tactical decision and aesthetics. So for example, a footslogging Iron Warriors army might have some advantages (let's assume they have some special rules) like maybe they can lay down more covering fire, but the tradeoff is you don't have mobility. An all Terminator army might be very hard to kill each model, but the drawback is they are expensive points wise and you only have a small force. Instead what you have is that taking a footslogging IW army is likely going to make you lose because you took it, without factoring in tactics or usage or playstyle at all. Taking all Terminators means you're going to lose just because Terminators aren't super hard to kill in the rules, so you have a unit that's easy to kill and not a lot of them. That's poor balance, period.

That's the problem. No other game seems to have that problem, it' s only in 40k which is also the most expensive (relatively speaking) wargame out there too, at the very least in the rules needed to play. So why can everyone else manage this but not the "industry leader"?

Saying "find another group" is much easier said than done basically anywhere except maybe the UK (where there's a lot of gaming clubs in different areas). To most people in the US that basically equates to "find another store" which sometimes isn't even realistically possible (e.g. maybe the next closest store is 2 hours away). These are all fundamental problems with the rules of 40k that could be fixed, if GW actually gave a feth about the rules.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:
Fantasy has all these same problems

I can't speak for 8th because I haven't played it much, but I always found Fantasy to be many times more balanced than 40k. Perfect? No. A hell of a lot better? Yes.

Of all the armies I tried over the past 20 years in WHFB (remembering I didn't really play much 8th) I could make all of them work quite well and never felt horribly outclassed. The main way you could mess up in WHFB is not so much taking the wrong units but incorrectly sizing units, usually making the units too large so that you were burning points, but for the most part it came down to how you used them on the battlefield whether you won or lost vs 40k where the game is often won or lost before I model is even deployed (barring big swings in luck or one player being vastly more skilled).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:
Fantasy has all these same problems

I can't speak for 8th because I haven't played it much, but I always found Fantasy to be many times more balanced than 40k. Perfect? No. A hell of a lot better? Yes.

Of all the armies I tried over the past 20 years in WHFB (remembering I didn't really play much 8th) I could make all of them work quite well and never felt horribly outclassed. The main way you could mess up in WHFB is not so much taking the wrong units but incorrectly sizing units, usually making the units too large so that you were burning points, but for the most part it came down to how you used them on the battlefield whether you won or lost vs 40k where the game is often won or lost before I model is even deployed (barring big swings in luck or one player being vastly more skilled).

Fantasy is a lot better in overall terms of balance. The broken aspects of the game come down to Cannons and "test or die" spells. The latter of the two MOST people have access to, and therefor is at the same chance of power level. Fantasy is a lot more revolved around thinking tactically and planning moves ahead, and making your army work together. 40k has come down to "I have the newest codex with the biggest unit, I win" in most regards.

WayneTheGame wrote:


This exactly. Nobody wants "perfect" balance. What people want is for all choices to be viable to use without Unit A being so much better than Unit B that if you choose to take Unit B you are punished with a lower chance to win.

I don't think this will ever happen. As long as the balance isn't 100% perfect, using anything else but the theoretical best army (or armies) would result in you having a lower chance to win. Take jonolikespie's example of a Kador warjack heavy list. Would that work as effectively (as in win as much) as a list that play's to Kador's main strength (infantry)? I doubt it.

Thing is, in a balanced game, even if you did have a lower chance to win, it wouldn't be that much lower (like 40% not 10%), and you'd still be winning a reasonable amount of the time (whenever you outplay the enemy or whenever your list's strengths come into play, as circumstantial as they may be).

LordBlades wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:


This exactly. Nobody wants "perfect" balance. What people want is for all choices to be viable to use without Unit A being so much better than Unit B that if you choose to take Unit B you are punished with a lower chance to win.

I don't think this will ever happen. As long as the balance isn't 100% perfect, using anything else but the theoretical best army (or armies) would result in you having a lower chance to win. Take jonolikespie's example of a Kador warjack heavy list. Would that work as effectively (as in win as much) as a list that play's to Kador's main strength (infantry)? I doubt it.

Thing is, in a balanced game, even if you did have a lower chance to win, it wouldn't be that much lower (like 40% not 10%), and you'd still be winning a reasonable amount of the time (whenever you outplay the enemy or whenever your list's strengths come into play, as circumstantial as they may be).

The difference is that a Khador 'Jack-heavy list isn't at a huge disadvantage; there are ways to play it effectively. It's an entirely different set of tactics, but you can play it and still win if you use better tactics. In the hands of a good player, yes it will win as much and work as effectively. In the hands of a poor player no it will not. But the same can be said of the infantry list. The infantry list isn't head and shoulders better than the 'Jack list, just things synergize better.

 krodarklorr wrote:

Fantasy is a lot better in overall terms of balance.

Not trying to argementative but this simply isn`t true.

LordBlades wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:


This exactly. Nobody wants "perfect" balance. What people want is for all choices to be viable to use without Unit A being so much better than Unit B that if you choose to take Unit B you are punished with a lower chance to win.

I don't think this will ever happen. As long as the balance isn't 100% perfect, using anything else but the theoretical best army (or armies) would result in you having a lower chance to win. Take jonolikespie's example of a Kador warjack heavy list. Would that work as effectively (as in win as much) as a list that play's to Kador's main strength (infantry)? I doubt it.

Thing is, in a balanced game, even if you did have a lower chance to win, it wouldn't be that much lower (like 40% not 10%), and you'd still be winning a reasonable amount of the time (whenever you outplay the enemy or whenever your list's strengths come into play, as circumstantial as they may be).

The 'theoretical best list' is an idea I've heard before and its simply not how it works in reality. 40k is close, if I asked this forum for the best list I'd get 6 different answers but that's still only 6.

Now I ask that again in the infinity forum and I'd get laughed at.

In these games different lists have different playstyles, and even if list A is mathmatically better than B you won't look at that at all. If you're more familiar with the units in A, or the tactics used in it are more up your alley than Bs then A will win more games for you than B because it all comes down to how you play your army.

As for the khador list, Wayne is right. I'm not at a disadvantage for playing it, I just have to make sure everything synergises proply when I build my list.

With fairness to the Horus Heresy statement, FW did say in an FAQ that it is legal to run in regular 40k as long as you don't take Primarchs or Lords of war. Also as someone who runs Pre heresy World eaters, I don't run them to curb stomp my enemies, I do it because I just like the way the list plays. I have a 3 wins 4 losses with my list. It can be used for power gaming pretty easily, but some people just honestly like the playstyle better.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Fantasy is a lot better in overall terms of balance.

Not trying to argementative but this simply isn`t true.

Not trying to argementative but this simply is true.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
I stopped playing a couple of months before 6.5/7 and despite having picked up a Necron army that ended up costing me $0 and still haven't played...I have a about six armies right now just collecting dust as I have lost interest in playing...though I have been getting into WHFB lately and it is a much better game. It doesn't help that it is still expensive as heck and the rules have some extremely questionable problems, but it is fun still.

WHFB is the way to go.


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Fantasy is a lot better in overall terms of balance.

Not trying to argementative but this simply isn`t true.

Not trying to argementative but this simply is true.

Dern tootin'!

If you aren't playing somewhere that requires you to use GW models, WHFB can be reasonably cheap depending on what army you go with. You can get a pile of Skeletons from Wargames Factory for a fraction of the price of GW skeletons. You can get lots of cheap human infantry for Empire or Brets from Perry. There's also Mantic but I've never been a fan of their aesthetic.

Unfortunately most the WHFB/40k games I play these days are at the local GW so collecting a WHFB army using non-GW models is just shooting myself in the foot.

Lots of people seem to want "each unit to be approximately as useable as any other", when that simply isn't possible in a game whose army lists give the player so many options. With the huge number of weapons options, upgrades, etc that most units in 40k can take there is simply no way to contain make sure that all those variables result in balanced units.

40k players seem to enjoy the near-RPG-like options for customizability and personalization that codex books provide, but such flexibility is an unavoidable source of imbalance.

I can't argue that there are ruleset issues and other codex issues that contribute to imbalance, but I'm not sure you can have your cake and eat it too.

A more balanced ruleset on the other hand requires limiting options. People rightfully point to Warmachine or Kings of War as more balanced rulesets. There's no denying that they are, but both of them greatly decrease the number of build options for the units therein.

I just don't think that all 40k players are going to sign up for such limited option (not a pejorative) games.

On a different subject:
As to "13 good years". I had a good 15 or so run with 40k, but it was the prices that did me in. Not just the insane rate of price rises, but rather It became a choice between playing only 40k and just being able to maintain my two armies, or going indie and playing lots of games and painting and collecting lots of armies. Once I met a group of gamers who were not married to 40k, the choice was easy. After "leaving" I kept buying the rules and codicies for my armies for 6th edition, but when 7th came out I said "Thanks... but no thanks".

I daresay Warmachine has a lot more build options than 40k unless you want to argue swapping a melta gun for a plasma gun makes for a whole new build.

Warmahordes has over 800 special rules that all interact with each other comfortably and swapping the caster and only the caster in a list can completely change how it plays.


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Also, infinity has a perfectly good allies system. Its not tourney legal but its still balanced.

I'll accept unbound has thrown the number of options into overdrive but post 7th ed the idea that 40k has so many more options than every other game would have been laughed at by people playing those games.

 Eilif wrote:
Lots of people seem to want "each unit to be approximately as useable as any other", when that simply isn't possible in a game whose army lists give the player so many options.

This is interesting. For me, good balance doesn't mean I can pick whatever I want and be competitive. Armies that are designed for synergy between multiple units aren't necessarily flawed because you won't succeed if you only take them. If an Eldar guy wants to field nothing but banshees he should expect to get beat. They aren't designed to thrive against hordes, armor and high toughness creatures, but are supposed to be part of a combined arms force each with a specific duty to perform.

You should though be able to take any unit you like and it should have a role that can be expected to be an important part of the army's strategy in any given game. There is a problem if you can't be even remotely competive if you choose to take your favorite unit

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
Lots of people seem to want "each unit to be approximately as useable as any other", when that simply isn't possible in a game whose army lists give the player so many options.

This is interesting. For me, good balance doesn't mean I can pick whatever I want and be competitive. Armies that are designed for synergy between multiple units aren't necessarily flawed because you won't succeed if you only take them. If an Eldar guy wants to field nothing but banshees he should expect to get beat. They aren't designed to thrive against hordes, armor and high toughness creatures, but are supposed to be part of a combined arms force each with a specific duty to perform.

You should though be able to take any unit you like and it should have a role that can be expected to be an important part of the army's strategy in any given game. There is a problem if you can't be even remotely competive if you choose to take your favorite unit

I agree with you. I should have been more clear. I was trying to express the desire that folks have for all units in a codex to be useful.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I daresay Warmachine has a lot more build options than 40k unless you want to argue swapping a melta gun for a plasma gun makes for a whole new build.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Every new weapon, banner, wargear, etc, is one more variable that makes it that much harder to truely balance a system. Warmachine units have special rules and there are hundreds of them over the entire game, but they are mostly fixed and there are far fewer variables in each unit entry that a player can modfiy. This lack of variables that can be modified by the player results in a system that is much more balanced and tournament friendly with much less grey area.

The tradeoff with choosing a game like Warmachine is that you don't get to choose exactly how each unit -sometimes each individual in a unit- is armed and equipped. It's this flexibility that both appeals to 40k's fans, but also dooms the possibility that it could ever be as balanced as a system like Infinity or Warmachine.

For the record, I like the ability to highly customize units, but it seems to me that such flexibility has a very clear tradeoff in terms of the inter-factional balance in the game. More importantly, I definitely don't want to put one type of game above the other as there are excellent examples of both on the market and they have their pros and cons. I just think one can't have their cake and eat it too.

 Eilif wrote:
Lots of people seem to want "each unit to be approximately as useable as any other", when that simply isn't possible in a game whose army lists give the player so many options. With the huge number of weapons options, upgrades, etc that most units in 40k can take there is simply no way to contain make sure that all those variables result in balanced units.

With sufficient thought and testing you can come up with something that is a hell of a lot better than we have. There may not be a consensus on what is "the best", but there's plainly obvious things that are better and worse. You look at the worse things and ask yourself what makes them worse, if it's an issue of cost, you make them cheaper, if it's an issue of function, you change the function.

The problem is GW have just been shuffling the rules for the past 16 years, they don't actually try to IMPROVE them, they just shuffle them. I'm not an expert on the matter, but I'm pretty sure a group of dakkanaughts if they were paid to be game designers could come up with something far closer than what GW currently has.

Will things be perfectly balanced? No. Can things be a whole lot better than what we have at the moment? Hells yes. Half the problem is simply that GW releases a book which appears to have mediocre playtesting and then waits years to update it, they either need to put more effort in to wider playtesting and balancing before they release or have updates to tweak balance after the book comes out.

The second half of the problem (IMO at least) is 40k at its core has too many all-or-nothing rules. Start rewriting those rules and you can start to improve the balance between armies.

The basic point though: Balance can be massively improved if you simply start looking at what is overpowered and asking "why is this overpowered?" and looking at underpowered units and asking "why is this underpowered?" and looking at unbalanced units and asking "why is this unbalanced?"

Yes there are a lot of options and a lot of interactions, but there are NOT actually that many stats so balancing them doesn't need to be as hard as you think (yeah, there might be 100 weapons, but they all have range, strength, AP and even if they have special rules they still act on an opponent's toughness, wounds and armour save... suddenly those 100's of weapons don't actually look all that different).

 jonolikespie wrote:

In these games different lists have different playstyles, and even if list A is mathmatically better than B you won't look at that at all. If you're more familiar with the units in A, or the tactics used in it are more up your alley than Bs then A will win more games for you than B because it all comes down to how you play your army.

Thing is, if a guy likes list A (which is mathematically better than list B) as much and for the same reasons that you like list B, you will be at a disadvantage against him because, with all other things equal, he just has a better list. Well built games just make that less obvious, especially since 'all other things equal' happens in extremely rare circumstances.

Most players are far from perfect, and even if a game is slightly imbalanced, if that imbalance is slight enough, usually when you ask yourself 'why I lost?' after a game there's plenty of fingers to point at your mistakes. You need to delve deep into number crunching and/or be an excellent player (to the point you can run flawless games) before you can find situations where you realize 'this guy had a built-in advantage'.

Game balance really isn't nearly as hard as you seem to think, it just requires the developers to care.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Game balance really isn't nearly as hard as you seem to think, it just requires the developers to care.

Never said it's hard. All I said is that most of the things that pass for 'balanced' games are still imbalanced, but much less so. There still are better and worse options, but until you get to the very top of the competitive scene, the difference is so small it hardly matters (so most people don't notice).

It's also not only about caring IMO. Yes, caring plays a huge part (some companies do feel the return on the time invested in balance isn't worth it) but it's also about competence. Don't know about wargame designers, but in the RPG field it has been repeatedly proven in public by prominent names in the industry (WotC and Paizo mainly) that their own game designers have no clue how the game they designed works.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Will things be perfectly balanced? No. Can things be a whole lot better than what we have at the moment? Hells yes. Half the problem is simply that GW releases a book which appears to have mediocre playtesting and then waits years to update it, they either need to put more effort in to wider playtesting and balancing before they release or have updates to tweak balance after the book comes out.

Yes there are a lot of options and a lot of interactions, but there are NOT actually that many stats so balancing them doesn't need to be as hard as you think (yeah, there might be 100 weapons, but they all have range, strength, AP and even if they have special rules they still act on an opponent's toughness, wounds and armour save... suddenly those 100's of weapons don't actually look all that different).

I completely agree with your first point. The game itself has lots of problems. I even said so in my post.

I do stick with my initial assesment though that the mutiple options given to players to modify their units makes it impossible to balance the game as well as games that don't offer so many options. I've watched 40k through 5 editions and it's always had killer armies and uber-builds and some armies that can't compete no matter how hard one tries. It does seem to be worse now, but the problems have been there for well over a decade, almost 2.

My point is that it's a part of the system that will always be there, even if at some point the rules are fixed enough to make it somewhat less pronounced. However, there is of course also a good side, the flexbility in unit creation. That flexibility is a large part of what lead to the multipart kits with so many options. The ethos of customization is a huge contributor to the culture of kibashing and modding of models that has become such a part of the 40k community. You just don't see these kinds of things nearly as much in games like Warmachine or Malifaux or Infinity.

As I said before, I really am trying not to completely put down one side or the other. I just think there are tradeoffs that are hard to avoid.

Lastly, the issues raised by putting lots of options in the players hands are not unique to 40k either. I play alot of games with unit creation mechanics and using those mechanics makes it really easy for players to "break" the system if they want too. Still, the flexibility of these systems -and playing with like minded players who aren't interested in breaking the system- does bring most of the benefits described above and a freedom that you don't find in games with limited unit customization.

Why would it be impossible to balance trivial stuff like weapon options? I would imagine that's the least of anyone's concerns; also keep in mind that a hypothetical balancing of 40k would also be a rules overhaul so things like AP might go away, which would reduce the idea of complexity in weapon options as a result. Bolt Action seems to balance things fairly well and there's a decent variety of weapons there, almost as much as in 40k (there's maybe one or two less choices IIRC).

Infinity has loadout choices as well. You choose the infantry type and what weapons you want.
"do I want the sniper rifle or the combi-rifle with land mines?"
The difference is price and more importantly, the role in which they play on the field. There's no obvious best one, it depends on what list you're running.

And each unit has a score of special rules.
Infinity can do it. So why can't GW?

 MWHistorian wrote:
Infinity has loadout choices as well. You choose the infantry type and what weapons you want.
"do I want the sniper rifle or the combi-rifle with land mines?"
The difference is price and more importantly, the role in which they play on the field. There's no obvious best one, it depends on what list you're running.

And each unit has a score of special rules.
Infinity can do it. So why can't GW?

Obviously because Infinity is a small-scale game with a few models, and 40k is a large battle game so there's more to track. Duh.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
Infinity has loadout choices as well. You choose the infantry type and what weapons you want.
"do I want the sniper rifle or the combi-rifle with land mines?"
The difference is price and more importantly, the role in which they play on the field. There's no obvious best one, it depends on what list you're running.

And each unit has a score of special rules.
Infinity can do it. So why can't GW?

Obviously because Infinity is a small-scale game with a few models, and 40k is a large battle game so there's more to track. Duh.

Use more models and it would still be balanced. My point stands.

 MWHistorian wrote:
The difference is price and more importantly, the role in which they play on the field. There's no obvious best one, it depends on what list you're running.

That's a huge problem with 40k. Sometimes it's just blatantly obvious that one choice is better than another. That's why people tend to feel GW does insufficient playtesting, sometimes you can just look at a unit entry and realise one option is better than another.

That's not choice, it's lack of choice due to poor balancing.

Some of it definitely comes from the AP system, the game is biased to high AP weapons with heaps of shots or low AP weapons with fewer shots, but the one's in between, the mid AP weapons, struggle to find a role because you can't balance an AP4 weapon against all armies, some armies have a 3+ base so AP4 is worthless, some armies have mostly 6+ saves so AP4 is worthless, the few armies that have a 4+ save suddenly AP4 is awesome.

Other times things are simply not worth it for their capability and simply need to be lowered in cost to match their capability.

I think part of the problem is also vehicles with their AV instead of a T. I think it would do good for balance if vehicles could be hurt by almost any weapons, but had more wounds to compensate. This might mean bringing in a 7+ to wound system where you need to roll a 6 followed by a 4+ to wound high T things. You might also alter traditional anti-tank weapons so they do multiple wounds like back in 2nd edition.

Also, the number of actual maneuver elements can be as low in 40k as in Infinity. In Infinity you make the same or more decisions with one miniature than you do with entire units in 40k. An Infinity game is often more complex than 40k and yet they got the balance, including customization, largely figured out.

All of the answers I've seen in this thread in terms of making 40k work seem to amount to "play with only a subset of the available models" up to and including the idea of walking away from a game if the person sees a unit they don't like. That's not the rules working, that's the rules failing.

Really I think 40k should just use a pinning system like Bolt Action does. It's been a while since I played (and it was just a few demo games) but IIRC troops had an armor save based on their experience e.g. Regular infantry had a 4+ save I think, but you could pin a unit even without casualties and that made a unit less effective or make them not able to act for a turn. I think the only things that ignored saved (if even that) was like high explosive rounds like a tank shell.

40k could do something like that very easily I would think. It could even stay as "armor" and you can rack up pinning. Very resilient units could then have some kind of ignore pinning or automatically remove some pins each turn. Very resilient things like Terminators could even have multiple wounds so they can ignore pinning (for example) and you have to hit them multiple times to remove a model.

At least part of the reason GW hasn't been able to balance the game over the many editions, is that it keeps making sweeping changes instead of tinkering with what isn't working. Basically they have to start all over each edition instead of progressing continuously toward balance. Assault too strong, lets change 6 things in the rules to nerf it. Oops now it is almost useless, lets change 6 things again to buff it. Too strong now. Hmm, lets change 6 things again. GW keeps leaping from one extreme to the next instead of slowly moving toward the middle.

I don't think relative balance is impossible with 40k, but GW refuses to proceed in a way that will allow it to be realized. They keep looking for the quick cash grab that comes with flipping what works, rather than looking long term and building a balanced system that has broad lasting appeal.

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:
At least part of the reason GW hasn't been able to balance the game over the many editions, is that it keeps making sweeping changes instead of tinkering with what isn't working. Basically they have to start all over each edition instead of progressing continuously toward balance. Assault too strong, lets change 6 things in the rules to nerf it. Oops now it is almost useless, lets change 6 things again to buff it. Too strong now. Hmm, lets change 6 things again. GW keeps leaping from one extreme to the next instead of slowly moving toward the middle.

I don't think relative balance is impossible with 40k, but GW refuses to proceed in a way that will allow it to be realized. They keep looking for the quick cash grab that comes with flipping what works, rather than looking long term and building a balanced system that has broad lasting appeal.

But even so the core of the game hasn't really changed since 3rd edition, and even that according to legend was Rick Priestly's homebrew WW2 game that was modified (and, given how close to 40k Bolt Action is, likely the ancestor of that game as well). So they aren't even really doing a rewrite they're likely thinking of what they could change just enough to get people to buy something else.

WayneTheGame wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:


This exactly. Nobody wants "perfect" balance. What people want is for all choices to be viable to use without Unit A being so much better than Unit B that if you choose to take Unit B you are punished with a lower chance to win.

I don't think this will ever happen. As long as the balance isn't 100% perfect, using anything else but the theoretical best army (or armies) would result in you having a lower chance to win. Take jonolikespie's example of a Kador warjack heavy list. Would that work as effectively (as in win as much) as a list that play's to Kador's main strength (infantry)? I doubt it.

Thing is, in a balanced game, even if you did have a lower chance to win, it wouldn't be that much lower (like 40% not 10%), and you'd still be winning a reasonable amount of the time (whenever you outplay the enemy or whenever your list's strengths come into play, as circumstantial as they may be).

The difference is that a Khador 'Jack-heavy list isn't at a huge disadvantage; there are ways to play it effectively. It's an entirely different set of tactics, but you can play it and still win if you use better tactics. In the hands of a good player, yes it will win as much and work as effectively. In the hands of a poor player no it will not. But the same can be said of the infantry list. The infantry list isn't head and shoulders better than the 'Jack list, just things synergize better.

As someone who plays Khador Jack Heavy lists regularly, I can say that there are some matchups where I absolutely will crush my opponent and there is nothing he can do about it, and other matchups where I haven't a chance in hell. That is pretty universally true for every list in every faction, thats part of the nature of the game, and thats why WMHDs competitive play encourages the use of multi-list formats so a player has to make strategic decisions as to what his lists are and what hes going to drop against an opponent.