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jonolikespie wrote:

If GW suck at making point systems the answer is not to remove points, it is for GW to hire competent game designers.

Plain and simple, if they are putting out an inferior product is is on them, the manufacturer.
It's unreasonable for someone to buy a car and then be told they need to know how to rebuild the engine because as it comes off the factory line it has a problem with overheating if you drive it over 50 km/h.

And heres the thing with analogies – you can use anything as an analogy Jono. It dosnt necessarily make your point right. You use a car and describe how GW is bad because you have to tune it yourself. How about an analogy of a sandwich, legos, or even a kit car or other modular products? You know, DIY stuff where the onus is on you to put it together? I mean, sure I can buy a pre-made sandwich, or I can buy the ingredients and make it myself. Neither is wrong. Especially with a product where there is no one ‘proper and true way’ of how to use it. Sometimes it makes sense to let people figure it out or mould it so suit their own needs. This is not a bad thing.

Bottle wrote:
@Deadknight do you play unpointed games of Age of Sigmar? (Do you play Age of Sigmar?). Yeah I am sure eyeballing FoW is easy enough, just count the tanks and the dudes with guns

Can I be pedantic Bottle? There’s no K in Deadnight.

And no, I don’t play Age of Sigmar. As a game, I find it uninteresting for a variety of reasons (dislike the models, dislike the core mechanics etc. Now, had the game been truescale and based on the LOTR ‘engine’ instead of 30 year old mutated 40k/WFB, it may very well have been a different story!) but I really enjoy the themed/narrative style of play that AOS tries to cater to.

And I had to chuckle when you claim FoW is ‘easy enough’ to eyeball, by ‘just counting the tanks and dudes with guns’. You’ve no idea, do you? Its as true as saying AOS is just a bunch of 3+s and 4+s. There is a lot of variety in that game. tanks aren’t just ‘tanks’. There are huge differences between your tigers and king tigers, and your shermans and matildas in terms of output and in terms of resilience, numbers, organisation etc. Same with infantry – its not just ‘dudes with guns’. Mortar platoon, heavy machine gun platoons, rifle platoons, mechanised platoons, paratroopers, engineers, artillery companies, anti tank guns etc. This gets further compounded by whether things are conscripted, trained or veteran and there are further considerations when you decide if its early, mid or late war and how the various tanks and infantry platoons are organised across different countries. Then you’ve got aircraft on top of it all. And really, I’m just scratching the surface here. Heck, we’re doing naval landings right now! There is a lot going on, there is a lot happening and there are a lot of directions you can take a game. its nowhere near as easy as ‘count the tanks and dudes with guns’. And yet, we do it. And we have bloody good games (double meaning is deliberate!)

And furthermore, FoW isn’t the only game we’ve played this way. We’ve done themed/narrative games of X-wing, Firestorm Armada, dropzone commander and the king of them all – Infinity. All by ‘eyeballing’. And you know what? We’ve had a hell of a lot of fun with all of those. Furthermore, I see no reason why we couldn’t brew up, and ‘eyeball’ an interesting and balanced game of 40k or warmachine if we really wanted to.

Bottle wrote:
If AoS was just different flavours of Freeguild it would be easy enough. But this is a game where every unit has multiple special rules. A shield, sword, musician, banner and champion all do something different across units too.

Freeguild? Hmm, *checks GW website* greatswords, pistoliers, outriders, crossbowmen, handgunners, archers and spearmen. Yeah, flames of War is far, far bigger than this mate! You are doing it a disservice.

And so what if shields, swords and all those little things do different things? No different to Flames of War either. Germans and Brits and Russians and Americans all get different rules and can do different things. Like I said earlier, Its far more than just ‘dudes with guns’ .

In any case, if all the special rules and minutae are getting you down, then don’t use them? Do you need to use everything in every game, and all the time? You don’t need every ‘hook’ all the time to make a good story. Sometimes less is more, after all. Sometimes all that stuff does is just gets in the way.

Bottle wrote:
Most of the time I am not sure what my opponent's stuff all does, and the same for them.

Then find out! The more information you have, the better able you will be to make a judgement call. No different to points-based games where you don’t know what their stuff does.

If you are going into a game with none of the knowledge required, don’t be surprised when blowback occurs. This is entirely on you, and not on the ‘pointless’ nature of these games. This is no different in ‘balanced’ point based games. One of my last games-Vlad3 v Madrak1 I ended up being turn-1 assassinated by the trolls and their norther fire breathers. Never played them before, never saw or knew about the potential combo, and I trucked my caster right out in front inviting it. And I’ll know for next time – put wind wall up, or don’t go so far forward!

Bottle wrote:
In pointed games it doesn't matter as the comp has already done it for you. In unpointed games of AoS it 9/10 times leads to imbalance from my experience.

Not true. As has been pointed out, there are plenty examples of pointed games where precisely this happens-you just gloss over it. If 9/10 games of AOS in your experience leads to imbalance, you are not learning from your experiences/mistakes and building upon them and are instead doubling down the road towards the confirmation bias and preconceived conclusions that you wanted to make in the first place-it’s that simple.

Bottle wrote:
If you do play unpointed games of AoS, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't play with what I would consider good balance. I could be wrong, but I've never seen it done by anyone (even if hypothetically possible). Even as much as I love Matt's battle reports (and everything he does for the hobby) they are most often very one sided affairs due to imbalance.

Or does it show one player outplaying another with superior skillz? Because that’s what would likely be claimed in a points based game. Precisely this has happened to me on numerous occasions in point based games, balanced ones and not so balanced ones.

And furthermore, does it really matter, assuming both players had an enjoyable game? Some of the very best games I’ve played have been unbalanced, whether they were ‘last stand’ scenarios or whatever. I find that having an interesting ‘hook’, or an interesting theme/narrative goes a long way towards mitigating any lack of balance in the first place, and being honest, taking a slightly different perspective towards this style of wargame helps enormously. Think less ‘duel of one-upsmanship’ and more ‘play out this particular story for its own merits, rather than using it as a competitive vehicle to massage your ego and prove you somehow ‘better’ than your opponent’. Put one foot forward as a spectator instead of as a participant. Even if things do end up skewed, you know for the next time and you’ve got an idea of changes to make. I really don’t see the issue. Again, its no different to points based games where you take/face a new caster, use/face a new combo or whatever. You’re not going to know how it works, (table-time is often a completely different beast to theorycrafting), and it will probably give you a good thumping, and you’ll know for the next time to do x instead of y, or use your second list, or whatever.

Like the example I gave earlier, this scenario happens and is just as likely to happen in points-based games as well, even in balanced ones. My mate’s army evaporated against my murder ponies and winter guard. Balanced game. But because it’s a points based game, I guess it came down to him ‘playing poorly’, and me ‘outplaying’ him, eh? Wonderful get out of jail free card, eh?!

Bottle wrote:
The tournament I went to used the Clash comp and there were 32 players.

Interesting. Warmachine sized (at least around here,) Thanks!

Deadnight wrote:
And heres the thing with analogies – you can use anything as an analogy Jono. It dosnt necessarily make your point right. You use a car and describe how GW is bad because you have to tune it yourself. How about an analogy of a sandwich, legos, or even a kit car or other modular products? You know, DIY stuff where the onus is on you to put it together? I mean, sure I can buy a pre-made sandwich, or I can buy the ingredients and make it myself. Neither is wrong. Especially with a product where there is no one ‘proper and true way’ of how to use it. Sometimes it makes sense to let people figure it out or mould it so suit their own needs. This is not a bad thing.

Right, ok. Um.. random question but where is AoS ever actually advertised as a DIY product?

Obviously I am not talking about the modeling part but the rules. I don't recall ever seeing it being described as any such thing, and the rules for building armies in the PDF just says more is better and to continue deploying until you are either out of space in your deployment zone or out of models.

I don't see anywhere were AoS is sold as a DIY RPG-light experience, as far as I know that is purely how the community has taken it and how the GW redshirts have explained it. That is not the same as it being sold as a DIY ruleset, that is the community having to fix a broken product.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Right, ok. Um.. random question but where is AoS ever actually advertised as a DIY product?

It's not. The players are the ones who forge their own narrative.

Actually, AoS is quite straightforward. Most of the profiles are strictly defined by a very specific way to equip your model(s). For example, Liberators can have a hammer and a shield, a sword and a shield, two hammers or two swords. But you can't play them with one hammer and one sword or a spear with a shield, unless making a "house-ruled" profile (that isn't difficult to do, granted).

Davor wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
All this makes me think they should talk to the LOTR/Hobbit folks for rules design, there are some OP pieces, but on the whole its the best balanced ruleset GW has produced..

Well for that to happen, they would need to talk to Matt Ward. It was his baby. Well maybe I shouldn't say his baby, all I know is he wrote the One Rule Book, so not sure if he did the other 3 before this one or not.

The Talented Mr. Ward continued the work of Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestly. Those two people created the game in its elegant form. A form that who wrote the weapon rules for the Hobbit, BTW, was just not able to appreciate.
The Talented Mr. Ward did reasonably well, actually, with just some fluff murder like the Orc Shamans (which I re-fluffed as the orcs with the black medicine and the alcool, hence Fury) and power creep (new units with mandatory new rules, corsair reavers that out-elf the elves in some regard, and so on. But nothing terrible).
Actually, I do prefer the GW version of, say, Radagast or the Gundabad Orcs (meaner moria/misty mountain orcs, covered with metal) than the Peter Hackson ones.

The Perry are great (those metal orcs!) but do not forget Brian Nelson.

On topic, one comment about the "with no-points you have to talk about the kind of game with the opponent". Is all fine and dandy, but we people in Dakka overlook a specific thing, too big to be noticed: we are generally gaming veterans.
I could balance AoS now with time and will to bother (and pick up GW crap, so ultimately not) but i can do this because I grew up with games with point systems and I have sort of an ingrained sense of balance. A contact with AoS when I was a neewb would have ended in a disaster I fear. This, disregarding lots of friends that were problematic somehow back then and are not the mature gamers I know now.

 Bottle wrote:

Even as much as I love Matt's battle reports (and everything he does for the hobby) they are most often very one sided affairs due to imbalance.

I am going to argue against that

I don't think we have had one battle where an imbalance was clear from the outset and where a lop-sided victory did not stem from poor choices/luck of the dice. Most of our battles seem to be characterised by the fight swinging one way, then the other and perhaps back again.

Swing by my place, Bottle - we'll have a day of point-less narrative battles, and I promise you won't feel you are ever needlessly heading uphill in a fight

One observation I will make on this though: If there are points involved (like most of our games of 40k), I very much care about winning. If there are no points (AoS), I really could not care less...

@Deadnignt (sorry for spelling your name wrong )

I'm not really interested in talking with someone who doesn't play AoS on how easy it is eyeball balance the game to be honest.

Also, I don't want to memorise exactly what every Warscroll can do. There must be between around 500 Warscrolls in AoS. It would be a mammoth task. Alternatively a good points system does the work for you.

When playing under Clash, I would play games where I didn't know exactly what the enemy could do, but once I found out I had enough troops at my disposal to deal with them.

I think we're about done with this chat, what do you think?

Onto people playing default games. I rate how good/robust a points system is on the amount and variety of competitive builds available - but as well as the points framework the scenarios are also super important with me. When playing pick-up games I now always say "I want to play a game where I can't gunline", because that's what my army defaults too, and it's too easy to fall back on that if you're just playing pitched battles. In the same way, if you are playing a choppy army you need motivation to not just be charging forward every single battle.


This is where Clash Comp in particular is really good because you have 6 different objectives to complete each game. Your primary (which is usually a variation on capturing positions) and then 5 secondary objectives. 3 are the Sudden Death Assassinate, Blunt and Seize Ground, plus you need to get a unit in the enemy deployment and try to kill half the deployed army. These all come together and force armies to play in a dynamic way. I am really hopeful for the 6 scenarios in Matched Play and hope none of them can be considered a "default". No pitched battle, kill points scenario please! I think the input from the SCGT guys will hopefully mean this is not the case.

This whole topic is a fascinating case study.

It is my hope that there aren't just six scenarios people will play either. A thing I have fought pretty much the last 20 years is getting people to play narrative scenarios, and to get away from all battleline all the time (or a derivative of that).

MongooseMatt wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

Even as much as I love Matt's battle reports (and everything he does for the hobby) they are most often very one sided affairs due to imbalance.

I am going to argue against that

I don't think we have had one battle where an imbalance was clear from the outset and where a lop-sided victory did not stem from poor choices/luck of the dice. Most of our battles seem to be characterised by the fight swinging one way, then the other and perhaps back again.

Swing by my place, Bottle - we'll have a day of point-less narrative battles, and I promise you won't feel you are ever needlessly heading uphill in a fight

One observation I will make on this though: If there are points involved (like most of our games of 40k), I very much care about winning. If there are no points (AoS), I really could not care less...

I would love that, mate. Let me send you a PM and get this booked in over the summer. I finally have a fully painted army so I won't feel shown up by you :-)

 auticus wrote:
This whole topic is a fascinating case study.

One could say the whole Dakka but.. what do you mean in specific? Care to elaborate?

 auticus wrote:
This whole topic is a fascinating case study.

It is my hope that there aren't just six scenarios people will play either. A thing I have fought pretty much the last 20 years is getting people to play narrative scenarios, and to get away from all battleline all the time (or a derivative of that).

I still find it hard in AoS. Most people in my GW just want to play a kill battle and look at me like I've pulled out the Karma Sutra on a first date when I start suggesting scenarios from the app lol.

Imagine the following situaton:

You play a match of AoS against an opponent you like playing with (that's your premise).

You both field forces that you agree look more or less balanced in a scenario that does not favor any of the two.

One of you loses badly.

Which conclusion should you draw from this loss? Is the loser the inferior player? Were the armies not balanced after all? Was it due to bad luck?

At this point you have not a single reference as to why the game was lost so badly. Without reference, how can you make sure the next match will go better? The loser might argue that a particular unit from the winner's force is too strong. They might argue that certain unit synergies are too strong and tipped the game in the winner's favour. They can argue a lot of things, but in the end you can't really check if any of this is actually the case, so you play a couple more games to see if you can spot any trends.

Doing so, you both realize that unit X performed very well in most of your matches, while unit Y tended to be less effective overall. You make a mental note that for every unit X you field, your opponent should probably field 2 x unit Y in order to make things more balanced. So what happens here is that you've alredy assigned a value to these two units.

Adding points is the same basic principle, with the unit value represented in a numerical fashion.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This whole topic is a fascinating case study.

One could say the whole Dakka but.. what do you mean in specific? Care to elaborate?

The case study on the emotional need for points, how one can be ok with abusing bad points but how one feels bad if they field the same force but without points. Things like that.

I still find it hard in AoS. Most people in my GW just want to play a kill battle and look at me like I've pulled out the Karma Sutra on a first date when I start suggesting scenarios from the app lol.

The pickup games here are 100% like that. If you suggest a scenario they just look at you funny. It seems to be totally ingrained in our culture to just play kill points.

Our campaign requires the use of scenarios and so for that event we have people using them pretty much with no issue though but that rule is laid out in the campaign packet that scenarios should be used.

 auticus wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This whole topic is a fascinating case study.

One could say the whole Dakka but.. what do you mean in specific? Care to elaborate?

The case study on the emotional need for points, how one can be ok with abusing bad points but how one feels bad if they field the same force but without points. Things like that.

I find it quite dismissing, if not dishonest, sorry. People elaborated rationally why points are needed, you cannot downgrade their opinion and arguments as "emotional".

In this regard, I stated in a similar thread why for us is intuitive how to balance games, why is not for newbies and how is this viable without points, and I have still to receive a decent answer about that.

I'm not downgrading anything. It is an emotional need.

Its an emotional need because if I take an army X:

where X is derived from points but min/maxes underpointed units and is thus considered "OP" - it will be seen as ok because it follows the rules and points.

where X is the same X as above but is not derived from points, it is seen as dirty and makes the player feel bad for using it because they know its "OP".

In one instance with points they will field it with impunity. In the latter case they will feel dirty for using it.

There is nothing really logical about this, it is based on emotion.

 auticus wrote:
I'm not downgrading anything. It is an emotional need.

Its an emotional need because if I take an army X:

where X is derived from points but min/maxes underpointed units and is thus considered "OP" - it will be seen as ok because it follows the rules and points.

where X is the same X as above but is not derived from points, it is seen as dirty and makes the player feel bad for using it because they know its "OP".

In one instance with points they will field it with impunity. In the latter case they will feel dirty for using it.

There is nothing really logical about this, it is based on emotion.

You have yet to provide any evidence that people who will not spam very effective units without points will suddenly start to spam them when points are introduced and indeed your whole premise is based on the assumptions that there will be units which are undercosted enough to make that a possibility.

Your premise is fundamentally flawed.

I still feel that's its good to have some form of balance mechanism in place. In my GW we used age of balance yeah it's not a point system but it's a form of balance we still talk about it a bit if things don't seem right.

It's easier to do pick up games with such systems. Now as I said most people in my store are more interested in the narrative part of the general handbook.

 auticus wrote:
I'm not downgrading anything. It is an emotional need.

Its an emotional need because if I take an army X:

where X is derived from points but min/maxes underpointed units and is thus considered "OP" - it will be seen as ok because it follows the rules and points.

where X is the same X as above but is not derived from points, it is seen as dirty and makes the player feel bad for using it because they know its "OP".

In one instance with points they will field it with impunity. In the latter case they will feel dirty for using it.

There is nothing really logical about this, it is based on emotion.

I think you could be right in case of GW. But points are not necessarily assigned in an imbalanced way - just in case of bad game design.
If your point is "I do not trust GW points allocation methods" well my 400 pt Balrog completely agrees with you.
But is not the demand from the players per se being wrong - just GW designers don't giving a Snotling.

You have yet to provide any evidence that people who will not spam very effective units without points will suddenly start to spam them when points are introduced and indeed your whole premise is based on the assumptions that there will be units which are undercosted enough to make that a possibility.

Your premise is fundamentally flawed.

Couple things:

1) it is impossible to prove it other than via anecdote, in which case my case study is about 20 players at my store who fall into this category. That is not acceptable proof though.

2) I'm not saying that they will do so in one case and then not in the other case.

I'm saying that they will do so regardless, but with points will not feel bad about doing it (its the rules so I'm fine), and without points they will feel its bad (its OP and there were no rules stopping me from doing it so its bad).

There are also several forum posters on various forums that fall into that... in tactics forums they will list out broken combos and be ok with that, but then will slam AOS for not having balance via rules structure even though they don't feel bad about running one of the big broken combos in 40k, for example.

But is not the demand from the players per se being wrong - just GW designers don't giving a Snotling.

I wrote Azyr Comp because no one would touch AOS without points, so I totally understand. The demand from players is not wrong (or right), nor am I saying its wrong. I'm saying that what I find interesting are people in general who state that balance is super important to them, won't play a game without points because eyeballing balance is not trustworthy (i get it, and I agree its very hard to do) but have no problem breaking games like 40k.

 auticus wrote:


I wrote Azyr Comp because no one would touch AOS without points, so I totally understand. The demand from players is not wrong (or right), nor am I saying its wrong. I'm saying that what I find interesting are people in general who state that balance is super important to them, won't play a game without points because eyeballing balance is not trustworthy (i get it, and I agree its very hard to do) but have no problem breaking games like 40k.

Oh, those are people I do not like to play with either. Consider that in the times of WHFB (6th to 8th, begain in 5th), with my buddies we used to play 1000-2000k and to apply local (or global? not sure) tournament rules with 0-1 each rare, 0-2 each special and 0-3 each core, dice powers limited to 10. We limited ourselves and this stimulated plans and tactics. We knew (until an horrible codex written by Thorton came out) that the others would play with a similar framework. Furthermore, knowing that the choices were limited actually stimulated collecting because once I had, say, 2 spawns (2 was 1 rare choice IIRC) I knew I needed no more. This could be counter-intuitive but made things look levelled and thus affordable.

WAAC are horrible but with a good ruleset are kept in check. They have to cheat to always win and then you have a good evidence to get rid of them (I mean do not play with them anymore! ).

Finally, I always think about the future. Kids need a framework more than us (and, albeit I do not play with AoS, thanks for the effort put in the comp - an effort from the community is always great even when does not benefit you directly, because it keeps the hobby alive).

 auticus wrote:
I'm saying that they will do so regardless, but with points will not feel bad about doing it (its the rules so I'm fine), and without points they will feel its bad (its OP and there were no rules stopping me from doing it so its bad).

Well... yeah.. if the rules of football clearly stated punching your opponent in the face was allowed there would be a lot more punches thrown.

Poorly balanced rules are still official rules, and therefore you're entirely within your right to take them. The rules are literally telling you that.

Now people abusing this to beat up noobs or people wanting a casual game are donkey caves, but not technically in the wrong as far as the rules are concerned.


Hence why the solution is and always has been to have GW hire competent rules writers again and balance their point systems. All this talk of OP units and spamming undercosted things and creating an 'illusion of balance' aee just symptoms of poorly balanced games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I'm saying that what I find interesting are people in general who state that balance is super important to them, won't play a game without points because eyeballing balance is not trustworthy (i get it, and I agree its very hard to do) but have no problem breaking games like 40k.

Have you actually asked those people who say balance is important to them if they still play 40k? I can only speak for myself but I'm one of those people saying I won't touch AoS without points but I keep away from 40k like it's the plague too.

I can only go by the fact that they talk about listbuilding in 40k and discuss it heavily that they are still involved in 40k on some level.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
Finally, I always think about the future. Kids need a framework more than us (and, albeit I do not play with AoS, thanks for the effort put in the comp - an effort from the community is always great even when does not benefit you directly, because it keeps the hobby alive).

There is a fear of the WAAC player and the possibility of him exploiting the rules so he wins "unfairly" while at the same time there may be NO such player at all in the group. People must learn to trust each other - from letting roll dice without looking at the results, trusting with measurements to rules interpretations and last - army composition and mission set up. It is a simpler and purer form of gaming that, should the young gamers (young either in years or in experience) become acquaint with at early on, they will have no problem branching off to points, FOCs or whatever form of army/mission composition they want to. The reverse IMO is more prone to selfishness as points/structure may lead to ideas of strength equality, ultra competition, skill superiority complex (strive for totally balanced game so you can prove/feel good that you bested the other through superior intellect and judgement, and other less desirable qualities in the "true" gamer.

 CoreCommander wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
Finally, I always think about the future. Kids need a framework more than us (and, albeit I do not play with AoS, thanks for the effort put in the comp - an effort from the community is always great even when does not benefit you directly, because it keeps the hobby alive).

There is a fear of the WAAC player and the possibility of him exploiting the rules so he wins "unfairly" while at the same time there may be NO such player at all in the group. People must learn to trust each other - from letting roll dice without looking at the results, trusting with measurements to rules interpretations and last - army composition and mission set up. It is a simpler and purer form of gaming that, should the young gamers (young either in years or in experience) become acquaint with at early on, they will have no problem branching off to points, FOCs or whatever form of army/mission composition they want to. The reverse IMO is more prone to selfishness as points/structure may lead to ideas of strength equality, ultra competition, skill superiority complex (strive for totally balanced game so you can prove/feel good that you bested the other through superior intellect and judgement, and other less desirable qualities in the "true" gamer.

That's a good point that the ideal solution would be to fix the behavior problems; once that's out of the way it doesn't matter what points/comp/system is. That said, players shouldn't have to be responsible for fixing their community to consistently find good games - that's a bit much to ask for, so people's concerns about WAAC (and the like) are valid as well. Yet that still takes it beyond the system; both of these things are not so much about whether or not points are in place but rather about how best to manage less-than-ideal opponents.

Points

 CoreCommander wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
Finally, I always think about the future. Kids need a framework more than us (and, albeit I do not play with AoS, thanks for the effort put in the comp - an effort from the community is always great even when does not benefit you directly, because it keeps the hobby alive).

There is a fear of the WAAC player and the possibility of him exploiting the rules so he wins "unfairly" while at the same time there may be NO such player at all in the group. People must learn to trust each other - from letting roll dice without looking at the results, trusting with measurements to rules interpretations and last - army composition and mission set up. It is a simpler and purer form of gaming that, should the young gamers (young either in years or in experience) become acquaint with at early on, they will have no problem branching off to points, FOCs or whatever form of army/mission composition they want to. The reverse IMO is more prone to selfishness as points/structure may lead to ideas of strength equality, ultra competition, skill superiority complex (strive for totally balanced game so you can prove/feel good that you bested the other through superior intellect and judgement, and other less desirable qualities in the "true" gamer.

I do not speak out of fear of the waac, just of fear of "newbiesness". I am way better now into balancing stuff than I was back then.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Hence why the solution is and always has been to have GW hire competent rules writers again and balance their point systems.
All this talk of OP units and spamming undercosted things and creating an 'illusion of balance' aee just symptoms of poorly balanced games.
.

Partly True. But the embracing of, and the proliferation of those spammed op units and whatnot isn't just a symptom of poorly balanced gsmes. It is also a symptom of the community itself, and of lazy, selfish and entitled gamers, stewing in their own intertia and self defeating toxicity, and playing poor games with even worse attitudes with no sense of community or empathy and no desire to be proactive and do something about it. Gw writing better rules might solve the game, but it won't solve the community.

But you go right ahead there and hand wave any sense of the personal responsibility that gamers oweto themselves and should be bringing to the table. Because personal responsibility is hard, far better to simply not do anything at all and just blame someone else for all your problems, especially when there are things you could do to solve, or at the very least mitigate those issues people complain about.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Well... yeah.. if the rules of football clearly stated punching your opponent in the face was allowed there would be a lot more punches thrown.
Poorly balanced rules are still official rules, and therefore you're entirely within your right to take them. The rules are literally telling you that.
Now people abusing this to beat up noobs or people wanting a casual game are donkey caves, but not technically in the wrong as far as the rules are concerned.
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No. Whether they are ‘technically’ not wrong is irrelevant. You can’t ‘just’ look at ‘the rules’ and end the debate there. The 'rules' don't define everything that is involved with playing games or dealing with people. This is a hobby based upon community and social contract, and those things matter just as much as the words in the book. How you act matters. And how you act carries a huge amount of weight in any debate in terms of the consequences of actions, and people are all to willing to ignore this. Following broken rules ‘because its in the book, hur hur and therefore OK’ regardless of consequences carries as much ‘silent’ weight, has as many negative consequences and is just as destructive, if not moreso as anything ‘official’, but hypocritically, this is glossed over like its invisible.
This attitude is no different to blindingly adhering to scripture to justify one’s reprehensible actions, and declaring since it’s in the book, it’s OK to hate and do horrible things. (Regardless, its wrong, and you simply shouldn’t do it) Then there is the ‘we were just following orders’ excuse which is hokum.
In a game built upon community and social contract, the negative effects of ‘blindingly following the rules’, washing your hands of all personal responsibility regardless of consequences (and blaming it all on someone else when you were perfectly capable of doing things yourself to stop it, but chose not to) is deluded and counter productive; it is a terrible approach to take, and people who embrace this, condone this, or just shrug their shoulders and let these things happen this are just as much in the wrong as you claim GW are. This is an entitled, selfish and lazy-gamer attitude, and it stinks. It is not part of the solution; its part of the problem.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Hence why the solution is and always has been to have GW hire competent rules writers again and balance their point systems. All this talk of OP units and spamming undercosted things and creating an 'illusion of balance' are just symptoms of poorly balanced games.
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You’re partially right, but you are also wrong and misguided in a lot of ways, as it seeks to handwave away and deny any and all personal responsibility when decency and personal responsibility is such a key part of any hobby based on social interaction and can go a long way towards acting as a ‘shock absorber’ for any issues. It’s not just GWs fault. We, as players are equally to blame. Gamers are a terrible community that often stinks of inertia, entitlement, selfishness and a lack of empathy and proactive and positive attitudes. This may surprise you, but you can still have a lot of fun even with poorly balanced games. It takes time and effort, and a degree of good judgement, emotional maturity and cooperation. None of these is a bad thing to bring to the table in the first place so I don’t see anything wrong with bringing these attitudes here.
I see nothing here about the community’s responsibilities towards itself. Again, this is a social hobby where social interaction and community are two of the key cornerstones of a functional group and long term health and stability. Whilst those OP units are a problem, peoples obsession and embracing of said OP units, and reprehensible, toxic and self-defeating gaming cultures is just as much of a problem. GW didn’t tell you how to play. People did that themselves. And when they play in self-destructive and self-defeating ways, well, its on them.You hold up GW’s poor writing as the single source. You are only wrong in stating it as the ‘single’ source. The players themselves and their toxic attitudes are the other side of that very same coin. One cannot be held up and blamed without acknowledging the other because one doesn’t exist without the other.

If little Timmy and little Jimmy pick up an AoS starter and the big Bloodbound and Sigmarine expansion boxes to play together but one keeps kicking the others teeth in because they are unbalanced. Is Timmy a WAAC toxic community member 'That Guy' because of that? How is he even supposed to know the reason he keeps winning is because his army is too powerful, maybe he just thinks he is better than Jimmy at the game? Maybe he's just had good dice rolls the first 2 or 3 games? How is he supposed to know he is doing something wrong just because he wins more often than not?

 jonolikespie wrote:
If little Timmy and little Jimmy pick up an AoS starter and the big Bloodbound and Sigmarine expansion boxes to play together but one keeps kicking the others teeth in because they are unbalanced. Is Timmy a WAAC toxic community member 'That Guy' because of that? How is he even supposed to know the reason he keeps winning is because his army is too powerful, maybe he just thinks he is better than Jimmy at the game? Maybe he's just had good dice rolls the first 2 or 3 games? How is he supposed to know he is doing something wrong just because he wins more often than not?

He might be. Waac is an attitude, not a list. How he plays determines if he is Waac or not. He is not wrong for winning. But he would be wrong for insisting in a broken game mode or playing things as they stand without some kind of evidence that the game is fine. Or changing things up a bit. Quick google or a chat with peers goes a long way at this point. A bit of cop on and emotional maturity, or heck, even showing some consideration to your mate goes a long way.

but if he insists on playing the same lists against the other, repeatedly, with the same outcome, when it's obvious one is capable of doing more, then what exactly is he proving? At a certain point he is just out for scalps, not to play a game with a mate. That's the point where you change things up, swap sides or do something different. Or find a different opponent.

And they're incapable of a bit of research? Quick Google 'losing with aos starter. What do I do?' Or something along those lines. Take further steps from there. Dice rolls are a possibility. But you'll remember that string of 6s or 1s that one time. That's fine. It won't always be a thing. It will generally be obvious if one list hard counters the other with very little to be done about it.

again, figuring these things out is not a hard thing to do. Your hobby enjoy,ent is entirely in your hands. It makes sense to work with your community rather than actively campaign against it.

From my personal hobby experience, I haven't really had many games with an opponent whose attitude I would even remotely call toxic. Maybe I am lucky? But the talk of "TFG" seems to be more of an Internet occurrence.

Still, in a casual setting I would always be willing to add a handicap on my army if I felt the points system didn't adequately balance them. A points system can be a great framework for adding a handicap as you can give x number of additional points and tweak it from there.

What I think is better though is choosing a scenario that puts the player out of their comfort zone. Force the gun line into the middle of the board with objectives that need capturing - force the charging-choppy army to leave models back in reserve to defend from a "break the line" style objective.

A nice one is to make the gun-line the attacker in The Ritual or Breakthrough and the choppy army the defender. Not only does it keep the gaming and tactical challenges fresh, it also means the player can't always fall back onto one strategy in their list building like a kill-point battleline allows.

 Bottle wrote:
From my personal hobby experience, I haven't really had many games with an opponent whose attitude I would even remotely call toxic. Maybe I am lucky? But the talk of "TFG" seems to be more of an Internet occurrence.

Me too. After few games we figured out with our buddies that the codex were crappliy written and we were just a bit sad that we could not challenge each other in a proper way.

Even in tournament I'd say a 10% of players in my area brought cheese. The others with "pumped" lists were the ones with a crappy army book so people did not scorned them for trying to make it even.

Looking back, I almost hope GW fails. They just treated with contempt people money and time for too long.