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Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

Let's say a fictional army in 40k finds itself against 5x Wraithknights. They're going to warn higher command, delay it, disengage, and consolidate for orders or reinforcements. They're not going to complain it was cheesy, that D-Weapons need nerfing, that GW is unfair. That's war. Suck it up buttercup.

This is not war, war sucks. feth that, like hell I'm going to pay money to experience that. This is a game, and GW's gaming ethos has never been about "sucking it up". That's not something GW has ever attempted to sell, in fact their tone has generally been very much the opposite when talking about their games and bringing powerful things when looking at the statements made in their publications. Ultimately, the problem is we have a game that's built around force-on-force engagements, and has been since at least 2E, really late RT, and the current edition is no exception. The problem is that the current edition is increasingly trying to masquerade as something different , but is having problems for two reasons. First, it's largely being done as a "buy whatever you want, we're not going to put any barriers in the way of purchases" thing, and second, the fundamental mechanics of the game missions, unit interaction mechanics, force construction and deployment are all still built around force-on-force battles.

Likewise, scenarios still need some measure to balance forces against each other, even if it's in its imbalance. Sending 5 Wraithknights against a single squad of Guardsmen is a pretty absurd scenario to try and play out without having some measure of how insanely stilted the victory conditions should be in the Guardsmen's favor.

Victory conditions and terrain are always part of wargaming. Balance is not. It's not all about who has too much S6/S7, or what flavor of the month is undercosted or overcosted. Thermopylae is the most famous tabling in history, and we consider the defeated force to have won. This is as much a part of 40k's "balance" problems as anything in the Eldar codex.

There's basically no wargame that works this way, there just isn't unless you're talking historical wargames with largely predetermined forces and detailed scenarios, which GW has historically not done, and when they try, are absurdly terrible at.

For what tabletop miniatures games have traditionally been about, dramatically asymmetrical objectives, particularly those based on force composition, have never really been a thing, and for most purposes, are simply far too complex without what amounts to a 3rd party GM spending time designing scenarios for you (which, admittedly, Rogue Trader had)

Automatically Appended Next Post:
We should add that GW has done themselves no favors by more or less abandoning promotion for wargame-style narrative play, which has allowed the GT scene to carry the banner for how 40k is supposed to be played.

GW has abdicated responsibility for the play experience pretty much entirely and left it to the community to shape itself. GW has gone out of its way to do that, and notes proudly in its messages to stockholders how it does no market research or community interaction. GW doesn't even consider itself a game company, it describes its customers as basically being akin to beanie-baby collectors, who buy model kits because they're cool and everything else is a secondary or tertiary concern. That's how GW sees their market.

Vak, the victory conditions for the lone Infantry Squad are pretty simple.... reach the long-range Vox, send a message to the garrison, and wait to die as heroes. We need to put enough terrain down that they stand a 50/50 chance of making it. But I know what you're saying man.

 Vaktathi wrote:
[40k] is having problems for two reasons. First, it's largely being done as a "buy whatever you want, we're not going to put any barriers in the way of purchases" thing, and second, the fundamental mechanics of the game missions, unit interaction mechanics, force construction and deployment are all still built around force-on-force battles.

Just wanted to snip this for emphasis. To paraphrase, you can't run narrative lists with tournament scoring.

 Vaktathi wrote:
GW has abdicated responsibility for the play experience pretty much entirely and left it to the community to shape itself.

Head and shoulders above their other errors in judgement. It's easy and cheap for GW to hire 1-2 dudes who can write and publish scenarios, explain the process of building your own correctly, and even push out tournament-style comping "unofficially" (wink wink) so they don't abandon those players. Everyone can win here. Why GW isn't doing so is beyond me. They'd probably get a lot more traction out of some customer appreciation than their army of lawyers.

kburn wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

I actually agree with you. Balancing in GW is really hard, because of the number of armies involved. Also, the fact that points per unit are small, making up a huge point total of 1500, magnifies any imbalances. Also, 40k units tend to be troops with some variation on the standard marine statline, rather than the utility functions of warmahordes. Combine all of these with people like cruddace of phil kelly who write books based entirely on their personal feelings, and you get abominations like the nids codex (abominably weak) or eldar (abominably overpowered)

I actually hope rumours are true and 40k goes the way of AoS. 20 years on, they have not balanced anything in a single edition. eldar has been grossly overpowered 7 editions straight. you get aberrations like rhino-rush from blood angels in 3rd, to becoming one of the weakest codexes today. You get codexes like nids, which has been underpowered for years, or even orks, who has been underpowered (save for biker-nobs) 7 editions straight.

I think the combination of hiring lousy writers, having a hard system to balance, and an emphasis on being a "modelling company" has led GW down this path.

If they want good balance, they need to scrap the entire system, change units to be much more utility-based, or scrap the whole thing and go AoS

Im gonna bring this up, the number of Armies has nothing to do with it. Look at KoW, they have a ton of armies, but they are all fairly balanced against each other.

 Grimmor wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
But at a more friendly/casual level, where people aren't bringing the same kinds of lists, the game is somewhat more balanced and a lot more fun for many people.

I don't know if I would quite say that. Eldar (Warhost or not) are better than most casual lists. Same thing with Necrons (I'd even go as far as saying without Decurion). I've played casual lists against other casual lists, and some armies are just that good, regardless of how you slice it.

I dont know. Casual Crons arent to bad. I fought some the other day with my Sisters. Ok granted it wasn't Wraith spam, but it was still a Decurion. The only unit that i couldnt really handle was the Nightbringer, but that was because i couldnt get a decent shot with my Exorcist (stupid LOS blocking building). Idk, maybe Sisters just have the odd collection of tools where Necrons arent that terrible for them? I mean i can have a ton of boots on the ground if i choose to, and all of them have Acts of Faith (granted its max of twice per game) to boost their killing power.

Personally i feel that RP are overhyped, i mean its FNP+. Then again im coming from a place where i rarely get to take away FNP so i just shoot them a ton and hope they fail, so Iron Hands and Necrons are very similar to me

Sisters are actually very well equipped to deal with Necrons. Maybe not Wraith spam, but most of their infantry will die to the sheer volume of Flamers, Heavy Flamers, and Meltas everywhere. Also, Rending Heavy Bolters.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Alternative view time. Force-on-force balance is garbage. Overrated and in truth undesirable.

Wargaming doesn't need points at all. It needs objectives and victory conditions that correspond to the nature of the forces.

Let's say a fictional army in 40k finds itself against 5x Wraithknights. They're going to warn higher command, delay it, disengage, and consolidate for orders or reinforcements. They're not going to complain it was cheesy, that D-Weapons need nerfing, that GW is unfair. That's war. Suck it up buttercup. That's a lot more accurate to the prosecution of warfare. You don't always get to pick your engagements.

Victory conditions and terrain are always part of wargaming. Balance is not. It's not all about who has too much S6/S7, or what flavor of the month is undercosted or overcosted. Thermopylae is the most famous tabling in history, and we consider the defeated force to have won. This is as much a part of 40k's "balance" problems as anything in the Eldar codex.

This is a ridiculous and terrible idea.
Yes war isn't balanced but this isn't an actual war, this is a warGAME. GAMES are supposed to be balanced in some way!
And sure it might never be perfect but that doesn't mean "screw balance, lol", that means "try your best and recognize that your best might still leave some holes, but don't let that stop you".
It doesn't matter if a lack of balance is more accurate to true warfare, Warhammer 40000 is NOT in any way accurate to true warfare and few if any are wanting that.
The biggest thing of all is that if you personally aren't interested in balancing stuff or want to tweak or ignore the points then you're free to do so and it's not even hard. It's very, VERY hard to just invent points or other balancing mechanics in a game without them.

And while it's not necessarily something you advocate I wish to address something I think others who support the "no balancing mechanic" idea are thinking. The idea being to strip it out because as long as it's there people won't just see it as a guideline but just go straight for it and taking it away would force them to play along with the "narrative campaign and discussion" idea instead. Truth is some might, but others wouldn't be willing or able to do it and would be forced into quitting the game or even hobby by it if they don't just keep on with the older version, and that's simply not worth it. I didn't add "in my opinion" because it isn't, it's completely not worth it to destroy a particular playstyle you don't like and drive people away from 40k just to further push the playstyle you prefer when it isn't any more valid. It's not like driving away TFG types to make it more enjoyable for people who aren't jerks, it's driving away people who are playing and want to continue playing in a perfectly valid way. I say this as someone who needs a balancing mechanic. I can work with a different idea then points (but I actually push points because it's better for people like you, much easier to tweak or ignore points than a point-less system balanced via a strict FOC or formations and because it's more flexible in general) but I NEED a balancing mechanic. This is why I simply can't try AOS at all and I'm desperately hoping that 40k never goes down that road because I simply couldn't handle it at all. Not because I'm some sort of selfish prick who'd go "I MUST BRING 3 IMPERIAL KNIGHTS, A BANEBLADE, A DEOZEN SQUADS OF BLACK KNIGHTS AND 7 DIFFERENT TERMINATOR SQUADS TO EVERY SINGLE GAME!" but because... Well I wouldn't know how much to bring to each game. How much should I get? How much do I upgrade the units? How many of these should I bring? How many of those should I bring? And without a balancing mechanic to tell me, there goes my hobby right there. At most I could continue on with 7E (or maybe even earlier) 40k but that's it. I couldn't play the new one and I'm not interested in any other wargames, nor would I find much of an audience for anything else... So really, why should I be driven out of the hobby for the sake of this stupid idea?

Exalted

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I say this as someone who needs a balancing mechanic. I can work with a different idea then points [but] I wouldn't know how much to bring to each game. How much should I get? How much do I upgrade the units? How many of these should I bring? How many of those should I bring? And without a balancing mechanic to tell me, there goes my hobby right there.

You're not wrong to feel that way. Do we have a 40k List Building forum, or a 40k Campaign Development forum? The balancing mechanic in games without points is the experience and judgement of players and scenario developers. Right now, the 40k community isn't capable of it, and GW certainly didn't shown any kind of community leadership in the AoS release. Trying to move towards a more historical-style game concept isn't easy -- those games are completely different than something like X-Wing (which is essentially an overdressed boardgame).

Curiously enough GW actually tried to crack the historical market once, too. Which might explain the disconnect when the design team is thinking "historic", the players are thinking "tournament", and the corporation is thinking "minimize shareholder risk". Anyway, check out who produced this game if you're interested. You might see some names who stir up a lot of controversy when it comes to "fixing" 40k.
http://www.beastsofwar.com/historical-battles/warhammer-historical-good/
http://tinylegions.blogspot.ca/2012/05/eulogy-of-warhammer-ancient-battle.html

And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

When you have people like the OP in this thread who run around saying "LOL L2P" yeah Im forced to agree with you, if their is no STRONG central rulebook that BALANCES the game then it is doomed to failure as we have seen for the last few editions. 1-3 armies being OP as hell and most being meh and then the bottom 1-3 armies getting ROFL stomped unless they get great rolls or the opponent the opposite or the opponent is a moron.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
And since I have neither and still wouldn't even if there was "community leadership" or whatever the hell.

I need a balancing mechanic and so do many others, having one causes no real negative effects as those who do campaigns and crap can ignore or tweak it and thus there's no good reason not to have one.

No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

When you have people like the OP in this thread who run around saying "LOL L2P" yeah Im forced to agree with you, if their is no STRONG central rulebook that BALANCES the game then it is doomed to failure as we have seen for the last few editions. 1-3 armies being OP as hell and most being meh and then the bottom 1-3 armies getting ROFL stomped unless they get great rolls or the opponent the opposite or the opponent is a moron.

Your still upset.? Let it go man.

The game is unbalanced and that's GWs fault, but by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part) or who knows maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Dman137 wrote:
by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part)

There is quite literally zero evidence that would suggest this, and GW's past history doesn't support this theory either. The only thing you can and should expect from GW is random. For all we know, the next codex could be total trash and make CSM look good in comparison, or it could be so god tier that Eldar bow in shame.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
No amount of "community leadership" will ever make up for not having one, so drop it.

Oh for god's sakes relax. It's not going to hurt your brain to think about something different than you're used to for 5 minutes.

It's very, very easy to take points out of 40k, and simply publish an online link to "suggested points" for garden variety Eternal War and Maelstrom scenarios. Update this periodically. It's too easy mate.

Maybe you missed the post where I said "Everyone can win here"?

*Edit* Off topic, don't want to make it worse.

Fix Eldar.

 Blacksails wrote:

Dman137 wrote:
by this time next year or sooner every codex will be on par (at least for the most part)

There is quite literally zero evidence that would suggest this, and GW's past history doesn't support this theory either. The only thing you can and should expect from GW is random. For all we know, the next codex could be total trash and make CSM look good in comparison, or it could be so god tier that Eldar bow in shame.

Yeah because we all saw AOS coming.

 krodarklorr wrote:

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:

Dman137 wrote:

maybe 40k will get the AOS treatment (sure hope not)

I sure hope so.

Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

Granted, I hope they keep some form of point system or Force construction method that's more balanced than "bring what you want". Otherwise, bring on AoS 40k.

1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

1. As I've said before, I can agree on Windriders needing less firepower, and potentially being moved to Fast Attack.

2. Nope. The Wraithknight needs to be fundamentally changed. Gargantuan Creatures just have too many things going for them. Making it T7 won't stop it from claiming stupid dover saves and stomping units into oblivion. Besides, I think the Wraithlord is just fine for its points at S8 T8.

3. Nope 2: Electric Boogaloo. Formations are here to stay. Everything has built up to this; GW just stupidly decided to go all-out with the Necron book before all the other armies had caught up. There is a price to be paid for the Eldar formations. They are very restrictive in terms of units you can take, and require upgrades and point spending that would otherwise be considered sub-optimal. The opportunity cost of the formations balances out their bonuses.

4-5. Nope Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses. Warlocks are 35 points apiece, and are very limited in the number of spells they can cast. Most of the time they only serve as Warp Charge batteries for other psykers. A unit of three costs about the same as a unit of pink horrors. Besides, the precedent has already been set in terms of models being able to get around the restrictions of Brotherhood of Psykers; just look at Zoanthropes. Guide probably should go to WC2, and Fortune should wither only affect units other than the caster or only affect armour and cover saves. I can see the Farseer increading in cost, but keep in mind that they're only T3 with a 4++ save. The jetbike upgrade needs to go up in cost, but the base Farseer shouldn't be too more expensive; I'd say around 120-125 points.

Dman137 wrote:

The game is unbalanced and that's GWs fault

THEN STOP REJECTING THE IDEA OF PEOPLE FIXING IT!

Yoyoyo wrote:
Oh for god's sakes relax. It's not going to hurt your brain to think about something different than you're used to for 5 minutes.

You're right about that. Too bad that dealing with your awful idea wouldn't just be "thinking about something different for 5 minutes".

Yoyoyo wrote:
It's very, very easy to take points out of 40k, and simply publish an online link to "suggested points" for garden variety Eternal War and Maelstrom scenarios. Update this periodically. It's too easy mate.

No, that's a horrible idea. It sucks enough having 7th be as house rule reliant as it is, having making the game PLAYABLE AT ALL be reliant on house rules would suck harder than a vacuum cleaner powered by a black hole.
A much better idea is to keep the same points system and just tweak the values that need to be tweaked, hell even with no tweaks it's better than this crappy idea because at least there's a 100% official framework to start from, work off of and to fall back on. With your awful idea if the players couldn't agree on a WHOLE CODEX OF HOUSE RULES they couldn't even start playing...

Yoyoyo wrote:
Maybe you missed the post where I said "Everyone can win here"?

No, I saw it, you were just 100% wrong about it, with that idea everyone loses.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Same here. I was tabled in three turns by a rookie Grey Knight player using a Nemesis formation.

Why? Now it goes from needing a few house rules to balance a few things with at least an official starting point to complete pandemonium.
Remember that homebrew TFG Space Marine player you complained about a while back? That would make the whole game like that...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
3. Nope 2: Electric Boogaloo. Formations are here to stay. Everything has built up to this; GW just stupidly decided to go all-out with the Necron book before all the other armies had caught up. There is a price to be paid for the Eldar formations. They are very restrictive in terms of units you can take, and require upgrades and point spending that would otherwise be considered sub-optimal. The opportunity cost of the formations balances out their bonuses.

That doesn't make it a good thing or something we should accept. Banning all the MFDs (Decurion, Gladius, Lion's Blade and so on) would be a really good idea and the sort of house rule that should be spread around and hopefully catch on.
Maybe smaller stuff like the standalone auxiliaries and the various Strike Force type things could stay but honestly if it's all or none with Formations, we're better off with none.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
1. Scatterbikes go back to 1 on every 3 models. Or at least max 3 per unit. Yes you can buy multiple units of 3 bikes to max on your lasers, just like mehreens can 2xgrav + combi grav, but that's way more manageable than units of 5-7-10. Giving troop choices unlimited special/heavy weapons is just silly. That's like giving every tactical a heavy bolter, only the laser is better than the heavy bolter and the jetbike is better than the tactical. And giving all tacticals heavy bolters is a stupid idea to boot. go figure. If I want to press it, send the scatterbikes to the fast slot, where they actually belong. 12" move + flat out jetboke troops. Yeah right.

Agreed on all points. They need -1 Armor save and moved to Fast Attack, and 1 heavy weapon per 3 models. Making them as they are now was just a cash grab from GW....and sadly it worked. I was considering Eldar as my next army, but after this codex I either won't buy anything to support that army, and even if I do, I won't buy Jetbikes.

2. Drop the Wraithknight to toughness 7 and give it a slight price hike, maybe +50 pts or something. Toughness 8 and above is plain silly, no wound-characteristic model should be immune to basic strength 4 weapons, I would know, I play a hierophant bio-titan in apoc. But at least that's apoc and stupid things should belong there. Not in normal games tho.

I don't know if we should go that far. As it is now isn't terribly bad.....if it were 450 points. Make it cost accordingly, and in the next edition nerf Strength D slightly and fix Stomps to not be stupid and it'll be set.

3. This point goes towards all the new Decurion-style themes in all the newest books (necron, elder, space marines, deamonkin). Having specific formations that give flat out bonuses makes no sense UNLESS said formation has an actual tax included. For example a unit of dark reapers costs X. Now you take it in the aspect warrior formation and suddenly the same dark reapers have an upgraded BS for the same X points. This is bad design: Either the original Dark reaper is correctly costed X, therefore the formation makes it overpowered, or it is costed with the formation in mind, therefore the codex intro is underpowered. It would be justified if you had a silly tax, ie have to also take 2 units of plain guardians as a part of the formation. But you don't, and that's plain stupid.

I have to disagree with this. First off, the formations aren't the broken part of the Eldar codex. Second, yes you are right, Dark Reapers can become BS5/6 for essentially no points. Except those points spent on the other 2 required units to get the bonus. "I wanna take nothing but Wraiths and give them all 4+ RP har har har" Nope, gotta take a unit of scarabs and a Spyder per 6 wraiths. That is your cost. Making it cost more points, and still require you to take units you might not always want to take is too much.

4. Make warlocks proper psychic brotherhood unit. If 16 horrors of tzeentch are needed in order to add 3 warp charges, I don't see a reason why 5 warlocks would add 5 warp charges. No army should be able to generate that many dice for so little cost in such a durable platform. On a second step, nerf the elder spells. If Prescience was nerfed to WC (2) in the last edition because even GW could see it was plain stupid, why should the Eldars keep their own as WC 1?

Because Eldar couldn't only have the best GC and the best troop choice in the game, as well as some of the best firepower. They had to dominate the Psychic phase too, you didn't know? /sarcasm

5. Nerf/upcost the farseer. 100 pts for a psyche that puts to shame every other psyche in the game is not a good price tag. 115 with a jetbike. (Plus who the heck thought 15 pts for a jetbike is ok when normal bikes cost 20). 4++ and ML(3) included... A chaos sorcerer would have to pay 135 pts to come on equal grounds with a 100 pt farseer. Sorc would have the advantage of power armor, but then the farseer ignores perils rolls, can reroll its dice, can cast on a 3+ with a formation, has WAY better spells and is 35 pts cheaper. I have no problem with Eldar having better posychers than the other races, but this should be reflected in its point cost.

Sadly one of the things I thought they would fix with this codex. Last codex, 15 points for +1 T, Jetbike, 3+ armor save. Why wouldn't you put him on one? I guess GW still didn't want to sell the standard Farseer models.

And how would be in charge of making these changes/comping of dexs.? If you want to balance eldar then do people get to also comp SM from talking free transports, necrons from having a 4+ RP.? It's easy to comp one thing but then we have to comp all of it, and I'm sure there will be people that don't like the comp for one thing and not the other, they should do something like ETC did for fantasy and go tru each codex and comp accordingly. That system seemed to balance out a lot of over powered fantasy 8th army's.

Then we can talk about all that other stuff in a topic that's about them.
Sure we should do all of them (that need fixing) but this topic is about ELDAR so your complaints about other factions fall flatter than a crushed pancake. Not to mention I (I'm assuming that was directed at me) just advocated killing ALL the MFDs, the source of free Space Marine Transports. And I as a Dark Angels player am not puling my version of that crap ever.

That's a nice, but an ultimately misguided thought Crash. Rick Priestly mentioned in his AMA on reddit:

"Game balance is a real chimera for GW because the games are driven by model releases that are entirely out of the hands of the designers".

Priestly was referencing the issues with flyers in 6th. Now it's superheavies in 7th. Scatterbikes? Maybe it's the model team's jetbike that drove that addition. Who knows? The facts are, if you think GW is going to nail balance using points -- EVER -- you're wrong. And the "100% official" holy grail you're tweaking over isn't currently used by any of the major GTs anyway, who have extensive FAQs and comping.

Hyperventilating doesn't make for a very compelling argument. Clarity and evidence does. If you're so keen on official GW decisions, why are you yourself asking to modify design choices like mega-formations that are clearly not leaving?

Yeah, that's the thing, I DON'T expect them to nail it but there's a world of difference between house-ruling or otherwise fixing a few things and having to basically scratch-build the rules just to play. I literally said that in my previous post on the subject, I know it was long but I'm sure it didn't make you pass out reading it...

Hopefully you didn't pass out writing it.

If you design a game to be played 100% rules as written, the rules need to be airtight. If you intend a game to be played competitively, you need to track meta and make changes as necessary. I've seen all sorts of powergaming abuse in RTS games; the complaining on dakka is exactly like WC3 or SC2 on BattleNet way back when. You should have seen the exploits some people tried and pull. Don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Designers will eventually be outfoxed by players, always.

Now, I think there has been a serious bleeding of competitive players into 40k, tied to the phenomenon of gaming as sport rather than hobby. This is pure gaming rather than wargaming; the goal is winning and high performance, not theme or storytelling. Lists are built like a Magic deck for advantage rather than to create a sandbox for tactics on the table. That's the cause of the "planet bowling ball" thing.

Now, people play for different reasons and that's fine. But it's been a massive strain on 40k and we should recognize that. Consensual games don't require the same controls on the playerbase that competitive games do -- freedom is encouraged rather than fairness. The first step in GW fixing this is to clarify what kind of game 40k is. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that's exactly what they did with Sigmar.

Yeah, gamers can totally outdo the designers and such, where did I say otherwise?
I'm not disputing the need for tweaking but to not even provide a baseline is just crap and is worse in every way.

Limit scatter laser upgrades on bikes to 1 per 5. Unit of 6 takes 2. Give the bikes a different, less insane weapon. Lower point cost a wee bit.

Slow and purposeful on the wraiths, or don't let those D flamers overwatch, or... I dunno, they are just insane.

Wraithknight needs to be a little more expensive. People will take one no matter what, they are just amazing.

Honestly, changing D a bit would make the eldar codex be less crazy.

Dman137 wrote:And how would be in charge of making these changes/comping of dexs.? If you want to balance eldar then do people get to also comp SM from talking free transports, necrons from having a 4+ RP.? It's easy to comp one thing but then we have to comp all of it, and I'm sure there will be people that don't like the comp for one thing and not the other, they should do something like ETC did for fantasy and go tru each codex and comp accordingly. That system seemed to balance out a lot of over powered fantasy 8th army's.

CrashGordon94 wrote:Then we can talk about all that other stuff in a topic that's about them.
Sure we should do all of them (that need fixing) but this topic is about ELDAR so your complaints about other factions fall flatter than a crushed pancake. Not to mention I (I'm assuming that was directed at me) just advocated killing ALL the MFDs, the source of free Space Marine Transports. And I as a Dark Angels player am not puling my version of that crap ever.

While it is true that Eldar do not have a monopoly on cheese and OP units, CrashGordon94 is right. This topic is how to balance Eldar, especially in relation to armies that are not on the same level of power. You can't just handwave away one army's balance problems by saying that other armies are just as cheesy/OP. Also, comp is one of the worst possible balancing formats. All it does is create another mate around exploiting the comp system. The only comp that I can get behind is Highlander, the most restrictive system, and even that needs to be modified to account for the needs of different factions.

On the subject of MFD/Decurion-style/Voltron detachments, I don't think that they are inherently broken or bad. I can understand just wanting to play with the standard CAD or a modified CAD (ex. Baal Strike Force, Wolves Unleashed), and that's perfectly fine. But the problem is that not all of those kinds of detachments are created equal. The Decurion provides an insane boost in durability to all its units. The Demi-Company/Lion's blade is only OP by virtue of the free transports it can provide. In comparison, the Eldar Warhost is relatively tame. The base formation has a lot of units that are considered to be a tax and sub-optimal. The Aspect Host is nasty, but is very restrictive and has a high cost to be effective; 700-800 points is not uncommon. I think that formations are an important and necessary part of the game now, but I understand wanting to avoid them for more friendly/casual games.

Yoyoyo wrote:Hopefully you didn't pass out writing it.

If you design a game to be played 100% rules as written, the rules need to be airtight. If you intend a game to be played competitively, you need to track meta and make changes as necessary. I've seen all sorts of powergaming abuse in RTS games; the complaining on dakka is exactly like WC3 or SC2 on BattleNet way back when. You should have seen the exploits some people tried and pull. Don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Designers will eventually be outfoxed by players, always.

Now, I think there has been a serious bleeding of competitive players into 40k, tied to the phenomenon of gaming as sport rather than hobby. This is pure gaming rather than wargaming; the goal is winning and high performance, not theme or storytelling. Lists are built like a Magic deck for advantage rather than to create a sandbox for tactics on the table. That's the cause of the "planet bowling ball" thing.

Now, people play for different reasons and that's fine. But it's been a massive strain on 40k and we should recognize that. Consensual games don't require the same controls on the playerbase that competitive games do -- freedom is encouraged rather than fairness. The first step in GW fixing this is to clarify what kind of game 40k is. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but that's exactly what they did with Sigmar.

Unfortunately, as the YMDC section will quickly make you aware, GW is not good at writing airtight rules. House rules/RAI are necessary to play essential parts of the game and to resolve many rules conundrums.

In any game, there is a divide between the competitive and casual scenes. Warhammer 40k just has a larger divide than most games due to fundamental imbalance and other assorted issues.

GW has made it abundantly clear that 40k is not a competitive game. Their lack of support for tournaments, approach to rules writing, and their avowed lack of research into the playerbase is all you need to know that 40k is a casual game. Personally, I enjoy the friendly game a lot more than competitive games. But 40k should have a tighter and more balanced ruleset in order to provide the best experience for both casual and competitive games.

Baselines are definitely important. The problem we have with points is inflexibility. The challenge is in finding an attractive baseline if we try to implement something else.

Until then points + houseruling is the easiest thing to work with.