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What makes a game of Warhammer 40k exciting to play?

It's a question that I see come up time and again in one form or another, and one that is answered with a plethora of quick tips and generalized advice, yet it is rarely properly examined. Most of these questions and answers dance around the real issues of meaningful actions & decisions, and the creation of astonishing moments. These two core concepts are what leads to exciting games of 40k. If players incorporate these elements in their games, I believe it will result in a more enjoyable play experience.

I hear many players suggest that the key to an enjoyable game of 40k is about game balance. It's probably the #1 suggestion. And yet, even here, the concept of what a balanced game is eludes many people. Probably the most accurate statement of what a balanced game is would be one where, once agreeing to play a game, independent of who is in command of what force, both sides would stand an equal chance of winning. It's easy to see how this would be balanced, that both sides start from 50/50, and by a mix of actions and luck they adjust those until it's 100/0. Theoretically, the only real way to achieve a perfect balance like this would be for both players to take the exact same army. That, right there, would be perfect balance. However, this doesn't by itself ensure an enjoyable game. There are armies in the game that can deal such incredible damage on turn 1, while being weak to return fire, that even if you both had this army, whomever would go first would win nearly all the time. Obviously, simply being "balanced" is not an answer.

Perhaps this is because players are merely using the concepts they're aware of to express a thought that's more basic than balance. Perhaps what they really want is for their actions and decisions to matter and have meaning. There are plenty of potential actions that a player can take in a game. They can move models, fire ranged weapons, declare charges, but they can also turn infantry models around to face opposing models, can dance to bless their dice rolls, or can take photos of their game. Some of these actions have in-game meaning, and others do not. That doesn't mean they're not worth doing, just that some actually change the state of the game, while others do not. Players also can make many decisions during a game. Sometimes these decisions matter, like do I shoot my bolt pistols and flamer but hope to still be in charge range, while others do not, like what order to I shoot my Bolters and Plasma Guns in when all my weapons are within half-range of the entire enemy unit that's completely out of cover with no special models?

When actions and decisions have meaning, players will care about them more and become more invested in their outcomes. Few people care about an Ork Boy making a 4+ cover save, but all players care about Marneus Calgar, who has one wound left, passing a 4+ Inv save. Players care because in one situation you have a model that won't have much affect on the game, while in the other situation, you have a model whose death would have a massive affect on the game. Both have meaning, but the players ascribe more meaning to Marneus Calgar. Players effectively "care" more about that. It requires attention to the game and takes more time to make decisions and actions that players care about.

The trouble is, player attention is a limited resource. We can only "care" so much during a game, so our attention has to be conserved for the moments that we care most about. One of these is caring about actions and decisions that feel meaningful. If something is too likely or too unlikely to occur, we don't attribute much meaning to it. No one is surprised when an Invisible unit with a 2+ rerollable invulnerable save isn't harmed by ANY attack. We're surprised when they are hit, but unless that one previous attack ended the 2+ rerollable invisibility, the next attacks still won't have meaning. Conversely, no one is surprised when the twin-linked BS10 ordnance blasts hits exactly on target. We might be surprised when it misses, but the degree to which is will miss is insignificant, so despite this action having in-game consequences, it doesn't actually take up any of a player's ability to care.

Unfortunately, the most successful courses of action in the game are ones that are "sure things" where you can know with a much higher certainty whether something will or won't proceed as planned. Games played where players attempt to maximize how many of their actions will be "sure things" do not tax the limited resource of player attention. This means you have two players who are not attentive to the game they are playing, because it is, quintessentially, boring. Players may be making game-altering actions, but without meaning, even if these actions have large consequences, they are still boring in that they do not require our attention to process.

If you want an action or decision to have meaning, there needs to be the chance for the action or decision to either fail, or to have been the incorrect play. There needs to be a risk of some kind or another. Plasma Guns have an in-built risk; if you mess up the shot, your model could die, and then you are down a model and an important weapon. Everyone pays attention for the little "1" when rolling a Plasma Gun. Similarly, when a player suffers a Perils of the Warp and rolls on the random table, everyone pays attention for that "1". A common critique of risk is that no one wants to lose the game to a random roll, and that random tables, such as Gifts of Chaos, are much despised. This is true as well though, because in these situations players also feel that the roll has no or little meaning, because the results on the table are so random, that no one is surprised when the result is without consequence. Does it matter that your Aspiring Champion gains a wound when there's only 2 turns left in the game and he's on the other side of the table? Not in the least. And yet it eats up a lot of time to process. It is boring, or even worse, hampering, while taking up a lot of player time, for something the players will not care about, or only care about in a negative way.

To foster meaningful actions and decisions, you need to create astonishing moments. You need to create moments where major changes take place, and that these changes are unexpected by all players. When the Guardsmen Heavy Weapons Team defeats the Space Marine Bike Sergeant to win the close combat, that's astonishing. When the Crimson Hunter crashes into Obliterator, destroying its target in its death throws, that's astonishing. When a Hive Tyrant dies to a Squig's attack, that's astonishing. These are moments that no one expects to happen because they are unlikely, but they are also moments that matter because they will change how the game proceeds. If models are too tough, deadly, or fast for these moments to occur, then they won't occur frequently enough to matter.

So, if you want to have a game where astonishing moments happen, and where meaningful actions and decisions are taken to make exciting play, you need to create a game where you allow those things to happen. This means taking a mix of units and weapons and handicapping yourself. Taking the sub-optimal choices because those sub-optimal choices will lead to more exciting game-play. This doesn't mean avoiding powerful options, but only take those powerful options if they come with a true risk to their use, like being wildly off-target, or harming the model that uses them. Avoid psychic powers and "buffs" that increase the reliability of your units, unless doing so makes the unit also less reliable in other ways, or riskier.

Well stated. Oddly, it is for these very reasons that I vastly prefer playing 2nd edition 40K with friends and have little to no interest in modern 40K gaming.

To be completely honest I don't see much in the atmosphere of the current game to encourage any of the above. 40K has always had a younger audience than many equivalent games. Combine the younger audience with the ADD style culture that is growing in the United States at least and you see the draw and push for quick tournament style games, etc. I'm a bit shocked when I see people here state that a 40K game should take no longer than 1-1.5 hours. I understand that's common...but that's a huge difference from the expectation back in the day.

The increase in lethality of almost everything in the game also encourages sweeping handfuls of models off the table, and tabling your opponent within a turn or two. There isn't much room for narrative, story building or unique moments in a game where most weapons hit and kill on a 2+, etc.

I suppose I'm just another grognard who enjoyed the story-aspect that you could get with 2nd edition which I haven't seen since. Individual vehicle damage tables, Terminator armour actually protecting marines from most weapons, being able to hide in terrain, being able to use vehicle crewmen when their vehicle was destroyed, the reduced power and relative lack of super heavy vehicles etc. Games lasted about 2-4 hours depending on size and players and it was an "afternoon" or "evening" event etc. It produced far more exciting moments than I ever had as I tried 3rd, 4th, etc.

I agree. The other day, I had a kill team battle, (my first 40k game this year :-| ), as Eldar against Ultramarines.

7 Sternguard with a Grav-Cannon and a Power Sword Sergeant, against 5 Dire Avengers with Diresword Exarch and 5 Swooping Hawks with Power Sword Exarch. Rather than playing it properly, we just played king of the hill with a tower in the center of the board.

There was much repositioning, with my fragile Eldar trying to force the Sternguard into compromising positions, and the Sternguard making tactical use of their varied firepower, and relying on their heavy armour to mitigate my shooting.
The battle was damn close, resulting in a draw, and it had many critical moments.

Highlights:

-Turn 1, I lose the Diresword Exarch, a SH specialist and two Dire Avengers, due to my opponent seizing the initiative on me.

-Turns 2-5 I have to frantically run around trying to abuse cover and LOS block to prevent casualties.

-Turn 3, One Sternguard holed up in the base of the tower lobs a grenade at my Eldar, all of whom have been clustered into one piece of cover next to a tower window. 3 casualties.

-Turn 3-4, my SH Exarch makes a desperate charge at the marines, and takes out two via powersword, and lucks out with cover saves,

-Turn 5, the SH Exarch jumps onto the tower's battlements and assaults the occupying marine, the last of his force. Assault ends in a tie.

-Game ends on turn 5, and both the Exarch and the last Sternguard shake hands and call it a day.

There were many significant moments, and the game lasted around 45 minutes, including deployment.

The codexes are on relatively equal terms (once you remove the obvious cheese with Scat spam and D weapons), there was very little in the way of unnecessary rolls, and each model/unit mattered.

T'was a good game. Much Re.

A good game is one both players think they have a good chance at losing.
If they are both worried about the other player maneuvering their dangerous units into firing arcs/charge range before they can be stopped then their attention is focused.

Exactly this. It is a much more enjoyable game for me, if I have to hunt after The Most Important Enemy Model and have a game hinged on a couple of moves and rolls in last two turns (having to actualy figure out on the fly how I can achieve my goals), than to have a preplanned easy tabling… This is why I only play custom Mealstrom missions now, and don't play more than a couple of games with the same force. Each mission, table setup, opponent force and my force is different, so there is much room for unexpected turns of fate.

And I think that this thread nails it, when it comes to answer the question of "why the game is so frustrating to a whole lot of people" - we all care about our minis, we spend countless hours modeling and painting them and imagining what spectacular things they will acomplish… And yet the poll on "how often you play" indicates, that at least 2/3 of all players here play no more than a couple times a year... I think this is why many gamers hate all this random stuff in the game - thay want their army to perform exactly as they imagine, sometimes missing the obvious result of such approach: one of the players must loose, and if there are no "hinge points" in the game then this loosing player will, most likely, be disappointed/frustrated.

And on the exactly oposite side: if you play often - couple of times a month - then there is no way to play always with new oponent, on a new terrain, with new minis, so playing always "as carefully planned beforehand as possible" tends to be repetitive and you may develop frustration and disappointement, that your beloved game do not excite you anymore. This is where maelstorm and random unpredictability increases replayability of this game so much. But it strips the game from "carefull planning"...

To reiterate: in my opinion it is VERY easy to develop a huge imbalance between time&effort investment and resulting excitement/feeling of accomplishement when playing 40K. This, combined with natural solicity of many hobby players (we spend literally hundreds of hours alone with our minis and painting supplies) and objective social difficulty of establishing a group of like minded RIVALS, who all enjoy their rivalry (in any game) is what leads to permanent hate of GW for making an awfull yet addictive game.

[This is not in any way intended to forbid anyone to enjoy this game any way they like. It is simply an attempt to grasp on why there are so many frustrated players out there, and what are the "edge points" of posible aproaches to this game. On an abstract, meta level.]

Nice post Yarium, I very much enjoyed it and on the whole, I very much agree.

I play narrative games as much as possible and I've always thought 40k is intended to be played in such a way. I can completely see the enjoyment of being creative with lists to create powerful combinations but I don't think 40k is the right game for it, its just too imbalanced to make it as fun as it should be. To me nothing is more fun than playing a one sided battle with loss more or less inevitable but setting myself a task such as slay the opponents warlord.

I play orks or BA and my most common opponent is Eldar yet we have really good fun and often close games.

 Yarium wrote:
I hear many players suggest that the key to an enjoyable game of 40k is about game balance. It's probably the #1 suggestion. And yet, even here, the concept of what a balanced game is eludes many people. Probably the most accurate statement of what a balanced game is would be one where, once agreeing to play a game, independent of who is in command of what force, both sides would stand an equal chance of winning. It's easy to see how this would be balanced, that both sides start from 50/50, and by a mix of actions and luck they adjust those until it's 100/0. Theoretically, the only real way to achieve a perfect balance like this would be for both players to take the exact same army. That, right there, would be perfect balance. However, this doesn't by itself ensure an enjoyable game. There are armies in the game that can deal such incredible damage on turn 1, while being weak to return fire, that even if you both had this army, whomever would go first would win nearly all the time. Obviously, simply being "balanced" is not an answer.

This is simply wrong. Perfect balance is independent of single games, it exists when every reasonable* list averages a 50/50 win ratio over an infinite series of games against a wide variety of opposing lists. For example, a list might be 60/40 against one strategy but 40/60 against another, balancing out to 50/50 in the long run. This is a very, very simplified way of summarizing a complicated concept, but it should make it clear how you can have diversity in options while still having balance.

Also, the idea of perfect balance is usually a straw man. Nobody really cares about the level of fine-tuning required to balance 51/49 into 50/50, we want things to be better balanced. You can come much closer than 40k does without having to sacrifice diversity and make every army identical. It might not always be 100% perfect if you err on the side of keeping options open, but it would be a much better experience than what we have now. And the "but perfect balance is hard!" arguments lose sight of this goal and get bogged down in arguing over the impossibility of perfection. Don't do this.


*IOW, no deliberately stupid lists designed just to prove that you can make a list that always loses.

If you want an action or decision to have meaning, there needs to be the chance for the action or decision to either fail, or to have been the incorrect play.

This is true, but you're focusing way too narrowly on dice failures. It doesn't matter if that BS 10 twin-linked blast weapon is almost guaranteed to hit, it's still a meaningful decision if your choice of target to auto-hit plays a big role in deciding the outcome of the game. The chance of failure comes on a strategic level, where it's much more interesting. After all, nobody is going to say that chess is a boring game where there's no chance for a decision to be the incorrect play, despite the complete lack of randomness in executing that decision.

So, if you want to have a game where astonishing moments happen, and where meaningful actions and decisions are taken to make exciting play, you need to create a game where you allow those things to happen. This means taking a mix of units and weapons and handicapping yourself. Taking the sub-optimal choices because those sub-optimal choices will lead to more exciting game-play.

And here's where you go completely wrong. Taking "exciting" units that have high chances of random dice failure adds a very superficial level of excitement to the game. You gain the suspense of waiting to see if your army will function the way you want it to, but you lose the feeling that your choices as a player have any meaning. When everything is unreliable all you can do is hope the dice land in your favor, and your clever strategy can be undone by random failures. You'll remember the times when the random dice produced an unlikely outcome, but it's not a very satisfying sort of memory. You didn't accomplish anything as a player (or as a painter or fluff writer), you just had lucky dice. You're a passive observer in a dice game, nothing more.

A good game derives its excitement from the interaction between player choices. Will my bluff in the direction of objective #3 succeed, or will my opponent out-guess me and counter my planned attack on objective #5? Should I sacrifice this unit to stall my opponent's progress, or should I retreat and save it for later? Etc. None of this depends on having a random 1/6 chance for your guns to explode, or units with a terrible mix of weapon upgrades, or overpriced expensive units that can't do anything to justify their point cost.

And here's where you go completely wrong. Taking "exciting" units that have high chances of random dice failure adds a very superficial level of excitement to the game. You gain the suspense of waiting to see if your army will function the way you want it to, but you lose the feeling that your choices as a player have any meaning. When everything is unreliable all you can do is hope the dice land in your favor, and your clever strategy can be undone by random failures. You'll remember the times when the random dice produced an unlikely outcome, but it's not a very satisfying sort of memory. You didn't accomplish anything as a player (or as a painter or fluff writer), you just had lucky dice. You're a passive observer in a dice game, nothing more.

A good game derives its excitement from the interaction between player choices. Will my bluff in the direction of objective #3 succeed, or will my opponent out-guess me and counter my planned attack on objective #5? Should I sacrifice this unit to stall my opponent's progress, or should I retreat and save it for later? Etc. None of this depends on having a random 1/6 chance for your guns to explode, or units with a terrible mix of weapon upgrades, or overpriced expensive units that can't do anything to justify their point cost.

This is a perfect example of two "philosophies" of playing 40k clashing and calling the other "wrong". Peregrine - there are players, who do not want to ensure certainty in a fundamentally random game. There are people, who enjoy the disparity, between being a general leading an army, which may or may not be able to perform the way he likes - like on a real field of battle, when you do not lead an army of mindless, perfect, ideal drones, but a mess of frightened, rushed and battle frenzy units, which may screw your perfect plan by their lack of skill. For whom this is not a game of skill and carefull planing, but a spectacle - half controlled and half only observed. I will never construct a deathstar unit, which has guaranteed rerollable 2++ save and 100 str10 ap1 attacks because I will have absolutely no fun plaing it. Even a simple experimental play of "removing always a mathematically expected number of cassaulties" was dull for me, as I do not want to explore mathematically optimum strategies (in games theory meaning). I want to play a battle of sci-fi warfare, with unpredictable results and changes of fate. If I want to play a mathematic game of skill and knowledge, I play Bridge.

Of course, you may want to play completely different 40K, but calling the other aproach wrong is just… wrong. We, as a whole player base of 40K are as diverse as possible, to an extent, where you can derive parallels to real-life politics and study social patterns just within dakka forum. Ther is no simple "right way" of playing or balancing 40K...

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius]

Well that's just rude. Did you seriously create a Dakka account purely to spite people who enjoy wargames?

nou wrote:
For whom this is not a game of skill and carefull planing, but a spectacle - half controlled and half only observed.

And here I ask: honestly, why 40k? Miniature wargaming is never going to have the kind of spectacle you can get from other places. If you want to passively experience something awesome happen why not watch a movie or read a book? If you want to kind of play a bit while the spectacle happens why not play a video game? Why settle for rolling some dice and having the 1/1000 outcome where the wreckage of a shot-down plane crashes into a key enemy model and obliterates them with the pilot's last dying act when you can add millions of dollars in effects budgets and see the whole thing happen in all its spectacular detail?

It seems fairly obvious that the primary appeal of wargaming is that you don't just passively watch the spectacle. From building your models to choosing your list to playing the game you are the general, you are the author. The story on the table is yours. Your army succeeds or fails based on the choices that you make, not because someone else decided that it should, or because of what you rolled on a random table. Wargaming often benefits from having a modest degree of randomness in resolving events (preferably in a nice predictable bell curve manner) to add some hidden information and strategic depth, but if the biggest stories in your playing career are various forms of "I finally rolled a 12 on that 2D6 table" then something is badly wrong.

I very much disagree. 40k, in my opinion, is a game of skill and strategy. Mass-scale randomness severely hampers player agency and the ability to utilize skill.
Take Kerbal Space Program for example. It's a game where you build rockets.
Why is it fun?
There are no random failures. Whether your rocket crashes and fails horribly or successfully completes its mission is entirely based on your skill in flying and designing the rocket. The game would be awful if parts randomly failed and ruined your stuff.
Why is this relevant?
Because 40k is much the same. It's a game where your models, guided by your skill and strategy, fight enemy models guided by another player. Randomness should only ever apply to things like whether shots hit, or whether a squad breaks and runs, or things like that, because the player can use skill to make himself more likely to succeed. Things like guns randomly exploding are inherently unfun, because there is no way to prevent it. (Gets Hot is a different story because you can save it, that is at least semi-interesting)
Your failures should always be traced back to you, not the dice. If your shot missed because you didn't make the 4+, you failed to set the shot up with buffs and modifiers to make it hit. There is no fun in absolutely unavoidable failures that nullify your skill as a player.

Aside from the random tables, which parts of 40k grant unavoidable failures?

If we go by the shooting/assaulting mechanics, you kinda need a chance of failure so force you to make decisions. Should I fire three shots at that guy, or two and one on the other thing? If you knew from the start that "X" shots WILL score a kill, you'll only ever devote exactly that many resources to it, and all the rest of your things may as well not bother.

But things like random Warlord Traits, Psychic Powers and Game Modes is an oft-unfluffy pain in the ass.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but sufficiently tall line of sight blocking terrian and Maelstrom balance the game by forcing both players out of their comfort zones. You have to move to shoot. You have to sit to hold an objective. Close combat is a thing. Shooting lanes create kill zones. Each decision matters. Each model matters.

That's where the fun is for me, my skill at making less mistakes versus my opponent's skill at making less mistakes. A battle of wit proxied on the table top. A good game feels like I won a boxing match.

SJ

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
For whom this is not a game of skill and carefull planing, but a spectacle - half controlled and half only observed.

And here I ask: honestly, why 40k? Miniature wargaming is never going to have the kind of spectacle you can get from other places. If you want to passively experience something awesome happen why not watch a movie or read a book? If you want to kind of play a bit while the spectacle happens why not play a video game? Why settle for rolling some dice and having the 1/1000 outcome where the wreckage of a shot-down plane crashes into a key enemy model and obliterates them with the pilot's last dying act when you can add millions of dollars in effects budgets and see the whole thing happen in all its spectacular detail?

It seems fairly obvious that the primary appeal of wargaming is that you don't just passively watch the spectacle. From building your models to choosing your list to playing the game you are the general, you are the author. The story on the table is yours. Your army succeeds or fails based on the choices that you make, not because someone else decided that it should, or because of what you rolled on a random table. Wargaming often benefits from having a modest degree of randomness in resolving events (preferably in a nice predictable bell curve manner) to add some hidden information and strategic depth, but if the biggest stories in your playing career are various forms of "I finally rolled a 12 on that 2D6 table" then something is badly wrong.

Because, as I clearly wrote, I see 40K as half controlled and half passive spectacle. It is this balancing on the point of "I can decide the fate of the game only to a some degree, by making tactical decisions which can be altered by random mechanics". Form me, my way of playing 40K is in the right spot between bland and short-lived board games, which do not justify time end effort put into learning rules and setting up the board for the hundreth time and completely virtual worlds of computer games. It is a huge, mouldable "engine" to play varying games - a trait that is very difficult to achieve in video games. I am also a tactile person who earn money with a computer, so working on models, paintjobs and terrain in my spare time gives ballance to various needs in my life, which computer games or films do not provide. And, as a long time RPG player, 40K can be much more spectacle for me than a high-budget film (not saying in any way, that I do not enjoy those - I'm all in into movies with perfect ballance between action, music and overall "production integrity"), just as a RPG session made up entirely in players imagination can be.

And - once again - I do not intend to udermine tournament/competitive/skill approach to 40K. If this is what you seek, then i'm perfectly fine with it. I understand what is appealing in ultimate listbuilding and perfectly executed Eternal War scenarios. As I wrote eariler - I see it as one of couple of perfectly viable approaches to 40K. Just not the only one justifiable. And I personally choose to play with different goals in mind and my posts are here only to ephasize what I find laking on Dakka forums - that there is more diversity to 40K than just tournaments and pickup games with victory in mind (and again - I see nothing wrong with tournaments or tournament players as long, as those different worlds do not mix forcefully).

 Verviedi wrote:
I very much disagree. 40k, in my opinion, is a game of skill and strategy. Mass-scale randomness severely hampers player agency and the ability to utilize skill.
Take Kerbal Space Program for example. It's a game where you build rockets.
Why is it fun?
There are no random failures. Whether your rocket crashes and fails horribly or successfully completes its mission is entirely based on your skill in flying and designing the rocket. The game would be awful if parts randomly failed and ruined your stuff.
Why is this relevant?
Because 40k is much the same. It's a game where your models, guided by your skill and strategy, fight enemy models guided by another player. Randomness should only ever apply to things like whether shots hit, or whether a squad breaks and runs, or things like that, because the player can use skill to make himself more likely to succeed. Things like guns randomly exploding are inherently unfun, because there is no way to prevent it. (Gets Hot is a different story because you can save it, that is at least semi-interesting)
Your failures should always be traced back to you, not the dice. If your shot missed because you didn't make the 4+, you failed to set the shot up with buffs and modifiers to make it hit. There is no fun in absolutely unavoidable failures that nullify your skill as a player.

And what you've stated here is how you enjoy playing 40K. Other people enjoy it for different reasons, in different ways.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but sufficiently tall line of sight blocking terrian and Maelstrom balance the game by forcing both players out of their comfort zones. You have to move to shoot. You have to sit to hold an objective. Close combat is a thing. Shooting lanes create kill zones. Each decision matters. Each model matters.

Very much this - I play on fully 3D terrain with lots of LOS blocking and area cover (with a lot of "trenches" style cover tunnels) with a heavily modified Maelstrom objective set and playing even as often as "four match weekend" two-three times a month and it just never gets boring or repetitive. Even when playing 4 matches in a row on the same terrain, with exactly same lists feels and plays completely different because of assymetric terrain (which gives advantages or hinders you a bit depending on how deployment zones are set up) and with random mysterious objectives and random Maelstrom missions. This way of play does not in any way strip you from decision making - it is just different decisions set than playing preplanned Eternal War scenario on a bare table or with standard terrain pieces set. And even a Pyrovore can be usefull (and sometimes even deadly) in such games...

Maelstrom doesn't so much balance the game as it does make it more random.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is simply wrong. Perfect balance is independent of single games, it exists when every reasonable* list averages a 50/50 win ratio over an infinite series of games against a wide variety of opposing lists. For example, a list might be 60/40 against one strategy but 40/60 against another, balancing out to 50/50 in the long run. This is a very, very simplified way of summarizing a complicated concept, but it should make it clear how you can have diversity in options while still having balance.

Also, the idea of perfect balance is usually a straw man. Nobody really cares about the level of fine-tuning required to balance 51/49 into 50/50, we want things to be better balanced. You can come much closer than 40k does without having to sacrifice diversity and make every army identical. It might not always be 100% perfect if you err on the side of keeping options open, but it would be a much better experience than what we have now. And the "but perfect balance is hard!" arguments lose sight of this goal and get bogged down in arguing over the impossibility of perfection. Don't do this.

The reason for bringing up the concept of perfect balance in the first place was to show that it's wrong. I believe you may have missed the point of that. It was to point out that it's fundamentally unachievable. Calls for "better balance" are, therefore, unlikely to be asking for perfect balance, but are indicative of something else. It's still good to strive for better balance of course, but we need to be cognisant of our own choices in creating that balance rather than just assume that it's there. So, ultimately, I believe we agree on the point I think you were trying to make here.

This is true, but you're focusing way too narrowly on dice failures. It doesn't matter if that BS 10 twin-linked blast weapon is almost guaranteed to hit, it's still a meaningful decision if your choice of target to auto-hit plays a big role in deciding the outcome of the game. The chance of failure comes on a strategic level, where it's much more interesting. After all, nobody is going to say that chess is a boring game where there's no chance for a decision to be the incorrect play, despite the complete lack of randomness in executing that decision.

Try to see the forest separately from the trees. I brought up dice failures because they most easily communicate the greater point. They illustrate the concept of a meaningful action. The choice of which target to shoot at is a meaningful decision. Hence why I tended to use the terms "meaningful actions and decisions" to communicate the entire point. Just having one or the other isn't good enough. I think the Missile Launcher is a great example of a weapon that creates interesting meaningful decisions. It can be fired as a S8, AP3 single-shot, or a S3, AP5 small blast. This means that it's not great at either being a tank hunter or an infantry killer when compared to other weapons, but it's also not useless. When you use one mode, you lose the chance of using the other mode. It's a lost opportunity (an opportunity cost) that is much greater than with other weapons. With a Lascannon, I can either choose to shoot a Grot or a Battlewagon. Unless this is the Grot to end all Grots, I don't have a very meaningful choice. Sure I could choose the Grot, but since no rational person would make that decision, the choice doesn't "feel" very meaningful. To compare; when I drive to work in the morning, and I'm in my car in the driveway, I can choose to hit the brake or the gas. There may be situations where I want to choose the brake, but the expectation is that, in normal conditions, I will hit the gas so that I can pull out of the driveway and proceed to work. Hitting the brake doesn't serve this purpose, so while it may be an option, the chances that I would choose it are so low that it is not a meaningful decision.

Same in reverse. If I have a lasgun, and have a choice of targets of either the Grot or the Battlewagon, I would be insane to choose the Battlewagon, since I have a 0% chance of harming it. Of course you can come up with situations where this may not be true (unit has gained Relentless and Split Fire, and part of the unit shot something else, so I need to shoot the Battlewagon in order to charge it because I also have a Meltabomb in the squad), but the expectation is that, in a normal situation, having 0% chance of harming the Battlewagon is universally worse than trying to harm the Grot. It's a possible decision, but not a meaningful one, since any rational person would choose it.

In the case of a Missile Launcher, the meaningful choices are much more obtuse. Do I shoot a small blast at the unit for the chance to kill more than one model, or do I shoot the single shot to definitely kill one guy? I could shoot it at the AV10 vehicle for a good chance to harm it, but without AP1 or AP2, maybe I should shoot it at the Flyer, even though I need a 6 to hit. Is that Space Marine with a Grav Cannon more threatening, or this Land Speeder Typhoon that's closing on my vehicles' rear armour?

If your response would be "well, the Missile Launcher's a bad weapon, because Grav can do both things better", then I think you see the problem with Grav. It's inclusion makes the Missile Launcher a less meaningful choice because it effectively removes the choice. My favourite choice of all was always "Meltagun, Plasma Gun, or Flamer?". Why? Because each is really useful in very different situations for similar costs. Plasma covered the most "middle ground", but was worse at the role of infantry or vehicle killer than the other two, but also cost as much as the other two combined. The choice between the three is fundamentally fantastic.

And here's where you go completely wrong. Taking "exciting" units that have high chances of random dice failure adds a very superficial level of excitement to the game. You gain the suspense of waiting to see if your army will function the way you want it to, but you lose the feeling that your choices as a player have any meaning. When everything is unreliable all you can do is hope the dice land in your favor, and your clever strategy can be undone by random failures. You'll remember the times when the random dice produced an unlikely outcome, but it's not a very satisfying sort of memory. You didn't accomplish anything as a player (or as a painter or fluff writer), you just had lucky dice. You're a passive observer in a dice game, nothing more.

A good game derives its excitement from the interaction between player choices. Will my bluff in the direction of objective #3 succeed, or will my opponent out-guess me and counter my planned attack on objective #5? Should I sacrifice this unit to stall my opponent's progress, or should I retreat and save it for later? Etc. None of this depends on having a random 1/6 chance for your guns to explode, or units with a terrible mix of weapon upgrades, or overpriced expensive units that can't do anything to justify their point cost.

And this is where I think we have our main disagreement. If I wanted to play a game where I knew exactly what the result of my actions would be, I would play chess. Chess is a phenomenal game of skill and strategy. Did my opponent realize that by moving to that position that they've left their Queen open to be taken by my Rook or Bishop in 2 turns? 40k adds a level of "well, I don't actually know if my opponent will lose the Queen, because there's a chance that when I go to take the Queen with my Rook, the Queen will beat the Rook instead."

I wouldn't call this a superficial level of excitement at all! If all my actions were nearly 100% successful, then I no longer am making meaningful actions, I am ONLY making meaningful decisions. You claim that this makes those decisions more meaningful, but I would argue that it actually makes them less meaningful. If you have to make a decision while not being sure on the outcome, it makes the decision more exciting. Sometimes the right decision will lead to wrong outcome, or the wrong decision to the right outcome. If something is so next to impossible that it shouldn't happen, and then happens anyways, that's upsetting. If something is possible but unlikely, then happens anyways, and you had a choice in increasing or decreasing that chance, then it's exciting.

Here, take these two examples:

Example #1 - For my last ranged attack for the turn, I fire a Krak Grenade into the rear armour of a full-health Heldrake. Do you jink or not? The "correct" choice here is not to jink, between the Krak Grenade only has a 1 in 486 chance of the attack destroying you. I did the math, but you probably didn't need to, as you can know that the chances of a destroy result are there, but there are a ton of ways (485 ways to be exact) for that not to happen. You also know that jinking only improves those odds slightly (your 5+ Inv goes to a 4+ Jink - again, to be exact, it improves it to 1 in 648). So in this case, was there any effectively real choice? No. And if the Krak Grenade DOES get through and destroys the Heldrake, that's pretty upsetting, right? It's upsetting because you know that not only did you make the right choice, but that making the wrong choice probably wouldn't have mattered either. This is the essence of "lol!random!" and why people don't like it.

Example #2 - For my first ranged attack for the turn, I fire a Lascannon at your Valkyrie. You know that I have few dedicated anti-air weapons in my army, but I have a wealth of Lascannons remaining. If the Valkyrie doesn't jink, you'll have lots of good targets for your Missiles, but if you do Jink, you still can drop off the embarked Veterans. Do you jink or not? There's a real choice here. If you Jink now, your opponent might just stop shooting at it. If you don't, and your opponent hits, there's a definite chance that you'll be making Snap Shots anyways. But it's still a low chance of even hitting, and they might not pen. I can't even say for sure what the "correct" choice is (because this situation is too complex to analyze so simply), but my instinct is that it's correct to not jink here. Still, it's close, and I know that jinking will massively improve my odds of survival (going from no save to 4+ save). If I chose not to jink and am destroyed, then both that action and the decision to not jink had meaning. If I chose to jink, and am still destroyed, then both that action and the decision to jink STILL had meaning! It's not "lol!random!", it's "dang, well now I have to make the best of the situation". If I chose to jink, and avoid being destroyed, it's "wow! glad I jinked!", while my opponent can say "well, at least he jinked.", as both the action and the decision had meaning. If I chose not to jink and am not destroyed, that is the only situation where things are not exciting, as often you'll just go to the next model.

If we make everything so sure of success that we don't leave room to be surprised, we're only left with Example #1, where no matter what the outcome is, no one finds it interesting. So I'm not saying that everything in the game needs to be weak (because that also leads to only Example #1), but that taking the game to either extreme is bad. Right now, it's way too easy to take the game to the extreme, and I blame the designers for that, but we also have the tools to avoid those extremes. And that is what I am suggesting.

Obviously, for tourneys this doesn't quite add up, because you want to win. But for casual games, this would be my suggestion.

If any game designer for 40k were reading this, I would suggest to them that they keep these things in mind. That simply putting in more and more powerful stuff doesn't create the game they may think it'll create.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
For whom this is not a game of skill and carefull planing, but a spectacle - half controlled and half only observed.

And here I ask: honestly, why 40k? Miniature wargaming is never going to have the kind of spectacle you can get from other places. If you want to passively experience something awesome happen why not watch a movie or read a book? If you want to kind of play a bit while the spectacle happens why not play a video game? Why settle for rolling some dice and having the 1/1000 outcome where the wreckage of a shot-down plane crashes into a key enemy model and obliterates them with the pilot's last dying act when you can add millions of dollars in effects budgets and see the whole thing happen in all its spectacular detail?

It seems fairly obvious that the primary appeal of wargaming is that you don't just passively watch the spectacle. From building your models to choosing your list to playing the game you are the general, you are the author. The story on the table is yours. Your army succeeds or fails based on the choices that you make, not because someone else decided that it should, or because of what you rolled on a random table. Wargaming often benefits from having a modest degree of randomness in resolving events (preferably in a nice predictable bell curve manner) to add some hidden information and strategic depth, but if the biggest stories in your playing career are various forms of "I finally rolled a 12 on that 2D6 table" then something is badly wrong.

Verviedi wrote:I very much disagree. 40k, in my opinion, is a game of skill and strategy. Mass-scale randomness severely hampers player agency and the ability to utilize skill.
Take Kerbal Space Program for example. It's a game where you build rockets.
Why is it fun?
There are no random failures. Whether your rocket crashes and fails horribly or successfully completes its mission is entirely based on your skill in flying and designing the rocket. The game would be awful if parts randomly failed and ruined your stuff.
Why is this relevant?
Because 40k is much the same. It's a game where your models, guided by your skill and strategy, fight enemy models guided by another player. Randomness should only ever apply to things like whether shots hit, or whether a squad breaks and runs, or things like that, because the player can use skill to make himself more likely to succeed. Things like guns randomly exploding are inherently unfun, because there is no way to prevent it. (Gets Hot is a different story because you can save it, that is at least semi-interesting)
Your failures should always be traced back to you, not the dice. If your shot missed because you didn't make the 4+, you failed to set the shot up with buffs and modifiers to make it hit. There is no fun in absolutely unavoidable failures that nullify your skill as a player.

And that is likely where our divide is. You would say that you want to reduce randomness in games because you want the story to be just about your own actions. Ultimately, I can only say "I disagree". I want it to be about me, my opponent, my army, and my opponent's army. When we make the game just about "me", then we lose the flavour of "my army" and "your army" and "you". Chess is a fine game, as is Kerbal Space Program, but in those games the pieces are just, well, game pieces. Chess is about "me" and "you", whereas Kerbal is about "me" and "my minions" (though just about them hoping to see whether or not I made the right decision, so actually are not very important). I don't just want a game where it's only about my decisions that matter. I want a game where I can see if my little plastic men, women, and aliens can achieve or fail to achieve the tasks I give them.

I have a slightly simpler theory for exciting play:

The more models are removed on both sides, the more fun it will be. Hence why things like Trukk Boyz, Tyranid Swarms, Kharn and his Butcherhorde tend to be fun to play against and things like deathstars/Monster Mash not as much.

I second all of what Yarlum wrote.

And a quick word about the essencial need of variation in a game like 40K and sources of it:

1. if you are a tournament player or a pickup player, then you can go on the path of minimizing in-game randomness, because you have other sources of varying challenges, namely: different opponents' playstyles, different opponents' armies and (to some degree) different table terrain. So you realy do not need a lot of in game randomness to get high replayability.

2. if you are a wealthy player (in terms of money and/or time to spend on army building), you can almost indefinitely purchase new models/armies and play even the same single scenario with a single opponent on a single terrain and you will have sufficient replayability, to keep things interesting. Of course, you have to hinder yourself in terms of pursuit after optimum strategies, as there are only a few viable optimum winning strategies at any given state of 40K. But you can self impose restrictions like "I will optimise the use of faction A vs every other faction", or "I will use as many vechicles as I can fit" or "I will not use scatterbikes and wraithknights".

3. If you are a player who seeks high replayability but have limited options in terms of opposing players and limited acces to new models/armies, then any built-in randomness actualy benefits your experience. Not in a single game, but throughout many games.

… the list isn't complete of the possibilities, but it should give anyone a clear view on my oppinion on "sources of variation", one of which is built-in randomness. I personally can think of no one, who don't use at least one source of variation in 40K (or any other board/card game for that matter). And because we cannot entirely rule out randomness in 40K due to dice mechanics, one can either embrace it as a source of "feel" to 40K or dedicate himself to minimize it's influence (via inventing invincible deathstars, spamming identical units, playing identical scenarios, ensuring psychic power availablility and catability etc…)

And I personally choose embracing it and derive my fun from that, but by all means I don't think it is the only "true" way.

 Blacksails wrote:
Maelstrom doesn't so much balance the game as it does make it more random.

Reducing randomness does not increase balance. In point of fact, reducing randomness increases inbalance by removing risk. Like it or not, randomness in a game of chance is the "chance" part. Skill is were better decisions are made. The issue with 40k is better decision occur at list building, to stack the odds in your favor, which creates the imbalance you list build against.

SJ

Likewise, increasing randomness doesn't increase balance.

Point is, the addition of Maelstrom (a predominantly random mechanic through and through) does not further balance the game. It simply adds another layer of completely unnecessary random mechanics that the game was doing fine without before hand and currently.

 Blacksails wrote:
Likewise, increasing randomness doesn't increase balance.

Point is, the addition of Maelstrom (a predominantly random mechanic through and through) does not further balance the game. It simply adds another layer of completely unnecessary random mechanics that the game was doing fine without before hand and currently.

That would be an opinion, yes. The unnecessary randomness I dislike is all the charts we roll on pre-game; however, I acknowledge those charts as being balancing due to previous editions where some armies could purchase those results while others couldn't. Those days were by no means "balanced".

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

That would be an opinion, yes. The unnecessary randomness I dislike is all the charts we roll on pre-game; however, I acknowledge those charts as being balancing due to previous editions where some armies could purchase those results while others couldn't. Those days were by no means "balanced".

SJ

Well, you or I liking Maelstrom or not is an opinion, sure, but the statement that it adds more randomness is much closer to a factual statement. Compared to Eternal War (or prior editions' missions), Maelstrom has a random card mechanic and a few cards with random VPs. That is objectively more random. The necessity or whether or not it improves the game is where the opinions can vary.

That and increasing the randomness (like, say, adding Maelstrom) does not increase balance among armies. An argument can be made that already strong armies/codices are made stronger in Maelstrom with their ability to rapidly move around the field and reliably destroy enemy units by a variety of means, something weak codices struggle to do, regardless of the mission.

But yes, the charts in the pre-game are completely unnecessary random mechanics that were done so the devs didn't have to sit down and either balance the choices so a player could pick them, or assign differing point values so a player could buy them.

You win Eternal War in the army building phase.

You win Maelstrom by being a better player, by making less mistakes, and by a bit of luck.

SJ

Exciting play, as proven by most of the above replies is to find like minded opponents, everybody has a different opinion on how the game is played at its best.
The tricky bit is to find that person and hope he/she is close enough to play regularly

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
You win Eternal War in the army building phase.

You win Maelstrom by being a better player, by making less mistakes, and by a bit of luck.

SJ

You can also win Maelstrom in the army building phase, and you can't really control your mistakes any more than Eternal War because your objectives are completely random and constantly changing. I'd argue there's a far greater luck component in Maelstrom simply due to the increase in randomness.

In Eternal War, you can walk in with a plan and execute that plan and react or adjust according to your opponent. In Maelstrom, you're reacting and adjusting based on cards that are entirely random and vary greatly in their ease of completion. Its fighting against the game more so than your opponent.

Plus, in Maelstrom, army building is still as important, if not more so, than in Eternal War, as more static or slower armies are punished further if they happen to draw a bunch of objectives across the field. Some armies don't have access to good mobile units, compared to say Marines or Eldar.

I think its disingenuous to state Eternal War is won primarily by a list, when Maelstrom is literally a random version of it with schizophrenic objectives.

At the end of the day, adding a layer of random to the game does not in any way balance it any further. It literally only makes it more random and removes a degree of player control.

 Huron black heart wrote:
Exciting play, as proven by most of the above replies is to find like minded opponents, everybody has a different opinion on how the game is played at its best.
The tricky bit is to find that person and hope he/she is close enough to play regularly

While I do not doubt you for a second, the marketing part of my brain tells me otherwise. "Look for patterns" it says. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a market majority either. Granted, this is why I called it "exciting" play, and not "strategy" play. Some people may play the game for reasons other than excitement, but for those that do, I hope this thread has proven helpful.

 Blacksails wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
You win Eternal War in the army building phase.

You win Maelstrom by being a better player, by making less mistakes, and by a bit of luck.

SJ

You can also win Maelstrom in the army building phase, and you can't really control your mistakes any more than Eternal War because your objectives are completely random and constantly changing. I'd argue there's a far greater luck component in Maelstrom simply due to the increase in randomness.

In Eternal War, you can walk in with a plan and execute that plan and react or adjust according to your opponent. In Maelstrom, you're reacting and adjusting based on cards that are entirely random and vary greatly in their ease of completion. Its fighting against the game more so than your opponent.

Plus, in Maelstrom, army building is still as important, if not more so, than in Eternal War, as more static or slower armies are punished further if they happen to draw a bunch of objectives across the field. Some armies don't have access to good mobile units, compared to say Marines or Eldar.

I think its disingenuous to state Eternal War is won primarily by a list, when Maelstrom is literally a random version of it with schizophrenic objectives.

At the end of the day, adding a layer of random to the game does not in any way balance it any further. It literally only makes it more random and removes a degree of player control.

Doesn't matter how much you argue it, Eternal War is not a "better player" game, it's a "better army" game. That extra layer of randomness you dispies changes the game from being "who has more money" to "who can think faster".

SJ