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We all forget guys that it was GW who came up with points and balance. To a traditional war game points are a denial of its very soul. War isn't balanced. I'm not against a points system but it's war games I want to play not monopoly. There were no point systems at the somme, ypres or Bosworth.

MWHistorian wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I see, something based on that could potentially work, though it would have to be done quite carefully.

And would restrict army creation more than a points system.

Indeed, points are more flexible so I still prefer them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Knockagh wrote:
We all forget guys that it was GW who came up with points and balance. To a traditional war game points are a denial of its very soul. War isn't balanced. I'm not against a points system but it's war games I want to play not monopoly. There were no point systems at the somme, ypres or Bosworth.

It's also a GAME so competitive balance is needed, whatever this pseudo-philosophical nonsense says.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

MWHistorian wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I see, something based on that could potentially work, though it would have to be done quite carefully.

And would restrict army creation more than a points system.

Indeed, points are more flexible so I still prefer them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Knockagh wrote:
We all forget guys that it was GW who came up with points and balance. To a traditional war game points are a denial of its very soul. War isn't balanced. I'm not against a points system but it's war games I want to play not monopoly. There were no point systems at the somme, ypres or Bosworth.

It's also a GAME so competitive balance is needed, whatever this pseudo-philosophical nonsense says.

It's really not nonsense. Lots and lots of people play war games without points. Society of Ancients don't even recognise GW games for lots of reasons and the obsession with balance is one of them. Try telling the society that they don't play a GAME.

The feth is society for the ancients?

Knockagh wrote:
It's really not nonsense. Lots and lots of people play war games without points. Society of Ancients don't even recognise GW games for lots of reasons and the obsession with balance is one of them. Try telling the society that they don't play a GAME.

Then what balance mechanism do they use?
If none, how the hell is that a good thing?!

 Desubot wrote:
The feth is society for the ancients?

http://soa.org.uk/joomla/

They only play war games as a war game. Stuffy lot but still they carry the heart of war gaming. The hobby, not GW, but the whole hobby of war gaming has a little history and is bigger than GW.

It seems like the kinda group that ONLY plays historical war games

naturally they would avoid GW stuff since its not really history.

Still waiting for the answer to my question though.

Yes they only play historical but that's neither here or there. The point is they quite successfully play WARGAMES without obsessing over balance. They replay battles, real ones, we could replay imagined ones without points or balance.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Still waiting for the answer to my question though.

They are sensible.

Its not really a game at that point. its more historical reenactment.

Since they know what they start with

and they know how it should finish.

They know one side with have x cavalierly and one will be in the open field or whatever.

though this is from my vague understanding of what they do.

so take that with a dumpster of salt.

I can sympathise with Knockagh, balance is not at all important to some of us, its only really needed when it comes to some competitive tournaments for certain games.

Its not just historical re enactments that have unbalanced games either, blood bowl seems to be doing just fine and theres plenty of gobbo and fling teams out there.

GW gamers seem almost as fascinated with it as world of warcraft players are nowadays.

Having said that. this is the tourney section so i will pipe down now.

Knockagh wrote:
They are sensible.

That doesn't really answer it, either.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Knockagh wrote:
They are sensible.

That doesn't really answer it, either.

Then you will never understand.

Knockagh wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Knockagh wrote:
They are sensible.

That doesn't really answer it, either.

Then you will never understand.

Actually I will, as soon as you answer the bloody question instead of dodging it for absolutely no reason!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here, will quote it for ease of answering:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Knockagh wrote:
It's really not nonsense. Lots and lots of people play war games without points. Society of Ancients don't even recognise GW games for lots of reasons and the obsession with balance is one of them. Try telling the society that they don't play a GAME.

Then what balance mechanism do they use?
If none, how the hell is that a good thing?!

Balancing a game point wise is quite a bad idea actually, you are assuming that single models strenghts build up linearly to a goal. That, as we all know, is false. There will always be force multilpliers, critical masses, synergies and so on and so on.

Now, i don't posses a better way to balance stuff, but if GW is trying to made the jump and propose something new on that front, then kudos to them. If with AoS they show me something new and convincing then Age of the Emperor can't come soon enough.

Points, or gtfo

Reenacting battles with set forces and set outcomes isnt what I want in a fantasy game.

Oh gosh, it's been a while since I'd been on a forum, and I'd forgotten how many people ignore what each other say so they can rant angrily...

OP, I agree that removing the structure from a tournament is a bad thing for Warhammer overall. Personally, I very much like lists, point values for things, and trying to squeeze as much worth out of things. I love the story of this game, I love the depth, and I find a lot of the flubb over the years endearing - but I am also a competitive gamer, and removing a balancing system from the game removes a huge part of my enjoyment.

If you don't agree with this, you don't have to get annoyed, you know. People play games in different ways, and enjoying how you play it isn't wrong. I was so surprised that no one replied to the rules pack snippet for the AoS event - if you have a picture of a cat, you get a bonus? If you have skulls on your models, you get a bonus? That's ridiculous. That's not game balance, it's encouragement to pretend you have a dog and to edit models that you might have been happy with un-skulled.

I really hope that 40K keeps it's point system, and it's relative complexity, and that GW keep supporting the game in a way that allows a competitive tournament to be structured. If you dislike it, but want to play the game you can always choose to ignore it. But you can't re-add an objective balancing system to a game that doesn't have one on the fly.

Nidzrule! wrote:

Btw the crash on the ToS event for HH was caused by a glitch in the system rather than a total sellout as published on the WHW website. Remains to be seen how many people will eventually turn up. It's an interesting experiment but I am afraid what conclusions GWHQ will draw from it.

Source for this? Because, two separate sources told me that it crashed due to sheer weight of numbers trying to get on at 8:00 am which caused the issue.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm genuinely curious as well as to how many of the posters who are against the loosening (not losing - big difference) of points restrictions actually had intent to go to the ToS?

To start wailing that the sky is falling in is a little premature at best, immature at worst.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Knockagh wrote:
It's really not nonsense. Lots and lots of people play war games without points. Society of Ancients don't even recognise GW games for lots of reasons and the obsession with balance is one of them. Try telling the society that they don't play a GAME.

Then what balance mechanism do they use?
If none, how the hell is that a good thing?!

I think this is the question you were asking. If not I lost it in all of the noise.
As far Them: I don't know them so I can't Answer for them.

For Me and my Group: You must ask what is fair and Balanced. It comes down to so many factors that a Points system can only be a gauge, but an imperfect gauge. Where you can measure how effective one model is to another it becomes harder when you start to add other to a mix and Synergy starts to happen.
You also have to look at how each army was designed to play vs how each player plays the same army.
Very Quickly the points system becomes a flawed system. The only way a Point System can remain 'Balanced' is for both players to have a true balance is to play the exact same list on a mirrored Terrain Table. That also is not perfect because of play styles and I won't get into 'Luck of the Dice'.
So we sort of stopped trying. When we set up to play a game we currently set a points limit (Our Normal is 2k), but then we try to set up scenarios that either play against or to each armies Strengths and/or Weaknesses. This things like If have my Gunline Guard and Billy-Bob has his Orks we may pull out my Hill42 Terrain piece that is a Vietnam Style Fire-Base Hill filled with Trenches, Razor-wire and a Command Tower in the center. We then let the Ork Player Deploy from any Table-side he wants, but he must deploy from all 4 sides. The way the hill is set up this gives him an average Deployment distance of 12"-24".
This makes it hard on the Guard Gunline because I will probably be Assaulted on turn in some locations, but a lot of the Orks have to cross a lot of open terrain and make lots of Dangerous Terrain test.
The games are quick and brutal, but we have a blast. We have even done 3,000 points of Orks vs 1,500 points of Guard that way using a 5 turn Planet Strike type of deployment.
At that point we have gone from 'Two Forces Meet In The Field' to running a 'Forging The Narrative Scenario' based game where Balanced Forces are not that important, in fact sometimes a "Balanced Force" set up might ruin the battle.

TL;DR: It takes both players to plan set up fun things when you don't worry about points.

Funny. Outside of GW games, points work pretty good.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Funny. Outside of GW games, points work pretty good.

Lol, no.

At least for Warma/Hordes i can easily tell you that.

Spoletta wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
Funny. Outside of GW games, points work pretty good.

Lol, no.

At least for Warma/Hordes i can easily tell you that.

There's more game companies out there than Privateer Press and Games Workshop.

Corvus Belli and Wyrd manage to make very, very balanced games using points systems.

I can agree, or at least i can give you the benefit of doubt since i don't know those games.

But then don't say "Outside of GW" if the other major game company is afflicted by the same issue (even worse since PP games are sinergy based), you risk passing as a clueless GW hater.

 -Loki- wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
Funny. Outside of GW games, points work pretty good.

Lol, no.

At least for Warma/Hordes i can easily tell you that.

There's more game companies out there than Privateer Press and Games Workshop.

Corvus Belli and Wyrd manage to make very, very balanced games using points systems.

Yes but recognizing that those games/companies exist doesn't allow people to make pithy, sideways pro-GW comments. I would argue that even though PP's points system is imperfect,.that they at least try to balance their games and have a strong history of post-release support vs the GW model of release and forget (FAQs and errata are for sissies and WAAC gamers only apparently).

 -Loki- wrote:
Corvus Belli and Wyrd manage to make very, very balanced games using points systems.

Every new game is "very, very balanced" according to people who used to be blind GW fans and were "born again" into GW haters and blind whatever-fans. Once you get a good pool of sensible people playing and the novelty of having at least some semblance of balance wears off, all the usual problems inherent with points systems come up, and it becomes clear that the semblance of balance really is just a semblance.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Corvus Belli and Wyrd manage to make very, very balanced games using points systems.

Every new game is "very, very balanced" according to people who used to be blind GW fans and were "born again" into GW haters and blind whatever-fans. Once you get a good pool of sensible people playing and the novelty of having at least some semblance of balance wears off, all the usual problems inherent with points systems come up, and it becomes clear that the semblance of balance really is just a semblance.

I fail to see how that's worse than not even a close approximation of balance. I do agree that newer systems have less moving parts than 40K with its 20 years of bloat and baggage but there's a great difference between attempting to create balance before and, shocking I know, after release and what GW does, just throw some crap together, copy and paste some background that somebody wrote 15 years ago and then call it done.

Though I'm not a fan of WM/H, I have played it a few times and have to say that the creators have done a good job with a daunting task of creating even that semblance you mentioned in a game that is all about synergy, like MtG and like MtG it takes a great deal of work to keep the whole thing from just flying apart due to all of the competing synergistic elements.

It's not worse, GW is certainly near the bottom in this regard. Just saying that GW's immediate satellites get praise based more on anti-GW bias than on their own merit. It's a sad state of affairs when smaller companies advertise themselves by stating in what ways they are different from GW, or even actively mock it, and when the default defense that fanboys fall back on every time PP or CB or BF or Wyrd or Mantic do something boneheaded is "this is okay because GW is even worse."

All I hear is people making the perfect the enemy of the good.


There's been good points raised, as in its hard to account for synergy and force multipliers in a point cose that doesn't change regardless of context .

With that said, we all know deep down the point costs aren't right on the money and often for reasons above. With that said though, how is an imperfectly pointed system worse than not having any poinst?

The answer is it isn't. At every oppertunity in the damn brb jervis reminds you "this is just a set of guidelines, by all means do whatever you want" and the problem with that is nothing is stopping people from doing that to a tight ruleset, so why on earth is the ruleset so bloated and loose, there's no reason to take a ruleset and turn it into a bunch of suggestion for the sole benefit of the people who would do that regardless.

Jervis wants us all playing unbalanced scenarios. Thanks jervis, but no, a lot of us don't want to do that. Why? We have lives. No, seriously, I've done big involved scenarios but they take a lot of time to setup and play and worst of all if they're really one sided, a lot of people lose interest because of that and you can't blame them when a 40k game feels like space hulk and they're just the ai for their gamer friends to kill. At least we had a chance to even remotely attempt balance in the way of points limits, it's difficult enough with them, without them its just a waste of time. I think it's just hipster bs to look down on all the people who get in games whenever they can, the idea that everyone could or should be playing historical reenactments for 10 hours every thursday at their local flgs is ludicrous. The existence of a faster, less convoluted and potentially more balanced method of play doesn't detract from those who want to do more of a historical thing with 40k, there's no reason to ruin the fun of those players with less refined tastes (jervis's view of us lowly competitive peasants).

I also don't believe any human has truly evolved past basic human emotion. When people tell me they don't mind losing, ever, I tend to think they're full of gak.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Corvus Belli and Wyrd manage to make very, very balanced games using points systems.

Every new game is "very, very balanced" according to people who used to be blind GW fans and were "born again" into GW haters and blind whatever-fans. Once you get a good pool of sensible people playing and the novelty of having at least some semblance of balance wears off, all the usual problems inherent with points systems come up, and it becomes clear that the semblance of balance really is just a semblance.

Exept that hasn't happened? Infinitys been around for 10 years with massive expansion of the range over the last couple of years, and is still regarded as excellently balanced with few, if any, outright bad units and no 'autoincludes' due to power level. Malifauxs younger, but no less regarded since 2nd edition (admittedly, 1.5e was GW level bad, but they at least saw the issues and fixed them).