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I voted no.

Not because I think 40K should be unbalanced.

Also not because I like a pay-to-win environment.

But because you cannot balance unit to unit without army CONTEXT. Some armies should pay more for similar/same items/units.

This is an old argument going back to at least 3rd edition and the answer is always the same - context.

In an absolutely perfect world, the points would be balanced. The points involved in an upgrade should directly correlate to its effectiveness in game.

The trouble with that is always metagame. If you regularly play against Nids, Melta will always seem inferior. If you regularly play against Knights, anything less than S7 is basically a waste. If you regularly play against Green-Tide Orcs, you're only ever going to be taking Heavy Bolters.

When the scale of 40k stretches to encompass too wide of a spectrum, the centre can't hold. You can't make a points system in which a Lasgun toting Guardsman is worth anything, relative to a Knight. They simply can't hurt them. They could essentially be free and the Knights would eventually win, assuming you have more than half of the available objectives' worth of Knights.

[3 Knights in a 5 objective game, for example.]

I believe an after-the-fact balancing factor could easily be applied. Particularly at a tournament level. If you observe that certain armies "always" perform better, or at least appear to do better, apply a percentage modifier to their points cost, army-wide. For example, Orks get a +0% point modifier. IG get a +5% modifier. Eldar get a +15% modifier [for the giggles.]

At that point, you can easily figure out the relative base cost for all units, if you're willing to reverse engineer the costs. It simply takes effort, and a willingness to spend the time on research. You could hypothetically alter unit costs pretty easily.

My opinion is that you can only truly determine the cost of a unit relative to an army, which would make the "army" modifier system work well. Allies can be easily handled by applying a different modifier to each faction. Eldar get +15%, while DE get +5% , so if they're allies, apply the appropriate modifiers to units from the correct codex.

The centre can hold by averaging across all possible matchups. Melta is not valuable because vehicles have a plethora of weakness while MCs laugh off almost every weapon in the game.

greatbigtree touches on a problem with 40k that would need a total overhaul; the scale of the game is off. Its a 28mm heroic platoon+ game but has been dressed up to essentially be a reinforced company level game. Many of the mechanics (look out sir, shooting from the front, model by model movement, damage tables) are all in line with how a smaller skirmish level game would work, but then units like Knights (and whole armies of them at that) show up and the game is no longer a skirmish game.

So while you could get pretty damn close to balance with regards to basic infantry weapons, the disparity between unit sizes and general game bloat/creep has rendered many basic infantry weapons a waste to bring, let alone shoot.

Now, you can always just adapt to what the game is now, and that's fine, but it also misses out on all the units left behind the power curve or creep.

With every edition comes change, and your army will always need to change to adapt to the changes, but there's also a point where you start scratching your head about the rate of the power and scale creep of 40k. Of course, house rules for army construction help greatly depending on your play group, but something should be done to 40k so that weapons like the humble lasgun are not just a waste of time to shoot.

 Vash108 wrote:
I think you should be rewarded for having more of a TAC list. Where units excel at certain things but can baseline in others.

I feel spam should be punished to an extent, not sure how to do it. But, if someone brings only Scat Spam, there should be a hard counter to it that will give them a disadvantage for only having that one type of unit.

Well, for starters, Windriders should be shifted back over to Fast Attack, where they belong. They were a FA choice back in 3rd edition. They got shifted to Troops in the 4th ed dex because GW dropped the Craftworlds supplement, and they wanted to keep Samm Hann armies viable - this was before conditional FOC swaps were a thing. That said, they haven't been a problem as a Troops choice till every single squaddie could take a heavy for +5pts. Now that they can, they definitely deserve to be back in Fast Attack.

One idea for discouraging spam would be to require Troops choices be taken to unlock other slots. Say the compulsory 2 Troops unlocks 1 each of Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support. Then, to get another of any of those slots unlocked, you have to take another Troops choice. It's not perfect - it rewards taking many smaller Troops choices over beefing up existing ones - but it does impose a cost on spamming units.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:

 Vash108 wrote:
I think you should be rewarded for having more of a TAC list. Where units excel at certain things but can baseline in others.

I feel spam should be punished to an extent, not sure how to do it. But, if someone brings only Scat Spam, there should be a hard counter to it that will give them a disadvantage for only having that one type of unit.

Well, for starters, Windriders should be shifted back over to Fast Attack, where they belong. They were a FA choice back in 3rd edition. They got shifted to Troops in the 4th ed dex because GW dropped the Craftworlds supplement, and they wanted to keep Samm Hann armies viable - this was before conditional FOC swaps were a thing. That said, they haven't been a problem as a Troops choice till every single squaddie could take a heavy for +5pts. Now that they can, they definitely deserve to be back in Fast Attack.

One idea for discouraging spam would be to require Troops choices be taken to unlock other slots. Say the compulsory 2 Troops unlocks 1 each of Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support. Then, to get another of any of those slots unlocked, you have to take another Troops choice. It's not perfect - it rewards taking many smaller Troops choices over beefing up existing ones - but it does impose a cost on spamming units.

Or you could go back to 1 in 3 and fix prices and not invalidate peoples armies.

That idea seems bad. I don't want to have to take a load of troops just to field my army. Some troops is fine but having to spam them isn't.

From the Troops entry in the main rulebook:

These represent the most commonly available soldiers in an army. ... Typically, these are the warriors that make up the bulk of an army.

Armies should be mostly Troops. That is what's thematically appropriate, and having a high concentration of Troops makes lists actually look like military units from the factions they are representing, rather than the cherry-picked wishlist most lists resembled before GW started coming up with Detachment bonuses to basically bribe players into playing thematically appropriate lists. Furthermore, units that are supposed to be super-rare should go back to being 0-1. I shouldn't be seeing armies entirely comprised of Riptides and Ghostkeels. Things like those, or Wraithknights, etc, should only be one per army, or if the player takes multiples, pays a steep penalty for doing so.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
IM:

We've had basically these discussions before, and I'm willing to concede the general idea:

Yes, yes, I understand that exactly, or even roughly, 50/50 is probably unattainable.

Fine.

But I'm with black sails on this point:

We aren't even close to what is achievable. The fact that an unupgraded wraithknight is 295 points and a landraider is 250 points is a joke.

Here, I fully expect Peregrine to start telling me about how they are for different things, have different uses, and aren't really comparable...

...

...even though meanwhile he completely agrees that each of those things are, in fact, ridiculous.

Even if you compare the same release:

Iron Warriors legion tactics compared to Death Guard?

Ravenguard chapter tactics and Cptn. Shrike compared to white scars chapter tactics and khan?

It's like GW isn't even fething trying.

A thought occurs.

Maybe instead of arguing for perfect point balance, you should be asking for what you really want.

Tactical Marines are quite weak nowadays. They could use a buff.

Ask for that instead. You might get more support.

Tactical Marines don't need a buff as much as they need an adjustment.

Think about why units like Scouts, Bikers, Sternguard (granted they aren't troops, so Deathwatch instead), Grey Hunters, Sisters, Chaos Space Marine units (especially after Legions), and even Scions are better. The answer is because they have the ability to somewhat specialize. The reason Trad thinks Relentless is broken is because Tactical Marines are STUCK with taking a Heavy Weapon, even though no CSM unit is going to be taking any (because why would they? Special Weapons are the workhorse and any heavy weapon is going on a different unit).
So the simplest solution I always propose is to let them take a second special or heavy at 10 dudes. That is the reason you don't see them at 10 dudes and won't even see them at 5 dudes until the Rhino is free. Once that is done people might actually want to spend points on them.

Actually, tac marines being completely inept at CC rubs me the wrong way the most. I can just not buy a heavy weapon and pretend the option doesn't exist. Being inept at shooting isn't great,but the CC really hurts. Bottom line: tac marines can't punch the shooty or shoot the choppy.

I believe that every unit should be, within an acceptable range of variation, equally playable. What I mean by this is that every unit should have at least one reason to take it, that those reasons should be relevant versus at least one unit in any army either on its own or with minimal support like a transport (though maybe this is a lot to ask if we keep getting mini-codices like Militarum Temptestus), that whatever the reason to take them is is in the form of something that doesn't make it powerful against an entire army (such as the dreadknight vs orks, again mini-codices kind of complicate this), and that the unit's point efficiency is inversely proportionate to its TAC utility and consistency. It would work better if units from the same army didn't overlap too much.

In short, everything should be good against some things, shouldn't be good against everything a faction has, and should be less efficient the more versatile and the more consistent it is. Under these guidelines S6-7 spam units like scatbikes would become less efficient, because they are useful versus most things the game has to offer, the bubblechukka would either be reworked or made cheaper to reflect its inconsistency, and wyches would be reworked so that they are effective versus at least one kind of enemy in each army.

"that every unit should have at least one reason to take it, that those reasons should be relevant versus at least one unit in any army either on its own or with minimal support like a transport"

This is not a difficult bar, actually, and yet GW pumps out crap like half the DE codex and terminators.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
From the Troops entry in the main rulebook:

These represent the most commonly available soldiers in an army. ... Typically, these are the warriors that make up the bulk of an army.

Armies should be mostly Troops. That is what's thematically appropriate, and having a high concentration of Troops makes lists actually look like military units from the factions they are representing, rather than the cherry-picked wishlist most lists resembled before GW started coming up with Detachment bonuses to basically bribe players into playing thematically appropriate lists. Furthermore, units that are supposed to be super-rare should go back to being 0-1. I shouldn't be seeing armies entirely comprised of Riptides and Ghostkeels. Things like those, or Wraithknights, etc, should only be one per army, or if the player takes multiples, pays a steep penalty for doing so.

The armies can be mostly troops without being forced into taking silly amounts of it. You're trading the WK spam issue with another problem.

pm713 wrote:

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
From the Troops entry in the main rulebook:

These represent the most commonly available soldiers in an army. ... Typically, these are the warriors that make up the bulk of an army.

Armies should be mostly Troops. That is what's thematically appropriate, and having a high concentration of Troops makes lists actually look like military units from the factions they are representing, rather than the cherry-picked wishlist most lists resembled before GW started coming up with Detachment bonuses to basically bribe players into playing thematically appropriate lists. Furthermore, units that are supposed to be super-rare should go back to being 0-1. I shouldn't be seeing armies entirely comprised of Riptides and Ghostkeels. Things like those, or Wraithknights, etc, should only be one per army, or if the player takes multiples, pays a steep penalty for doing so.

The armies can be mostly troops without being forced into taking silly amounts of it. You're trading the WK spam issue with another problem.

Agreed - the other thing that campaign books have demonstrated is that regardless of the most commonly available soldiers in an army, some missions / campaigns / vanguard deployments / or specific strike-forces call for smaller more elite forces.

If we are going to stick to canon, then most battles fought by Imperials would be AM by an enormous margin, with only rare involvement by Space Marines in general. The beauty of 40K is that we are not stuck to that narrative.

Martel732 wrote:
"that every unit should have at least one reason to take it, that those reasons should be relevant versus at least one unit in any army either on its own or with minimal support like a transport"

This is not a difficult bar, actually, and yet GW pumps out crap like half the DE codex and terminators.

One of GW's issues, to me, is they often build in too much specialization into certain units. I don't mind so much if I bring a unit that has a disadvantage against a certain unit, but with the fact armies are generally built without knowing exactly what the enemy is bringing, the resulting match-ups can be frustratingly ineffective. Doubly so if you aren't familiar with the enemy army's units (I couldn't tell you what one Dark Eldar unit has/does, for example).

Example, hormagaunts vs. vehicles - there's simply nothing I can ever give them that would even let them harm an AV10 vehicle. Yeah, I'll bring bigger bugs to the fight but if my IG opponent is running a fully mech list, my little gribblies are just going to be a'knocking, but they can't get in.

Pretty sure you can give Hormogaunts furious charge so they can kill AV10 and 11.

I know it has been said but I want to emphasize that a major reason that the game is probably impossible to balance is meta.

The most commonly complained about problem in the game right now are WraithKnights, Scatter bikes, and Grav. I play Astra Millitarum as my primary army and I usually play tons of infantry with light tank/Artillery support. Wraith Knights don't bother me a bit. Sure it will kill my artillery as soon as it can see it but my challenge with artillery is keeping it protected. If the wriathknight can't draw line of sight to my artillery it's killing two 5pt models a turn. Oh Darn. The wraithKnight is a problem for everyone who plays death stars and super units where that one D shot can invalidate their army but if the meta shifted to tons of cheap dudes I think wraithknights would become a less common (though still good) unit.

Same with Grav Cannons. I always have a good laugh when I see my SM opponent podding up a bunch of grav because I know it won't get anywhere near my tanks which means it will be an very expensive and inefficient cheap dude killer again. I especially enjoy seeing grave come out when I am playing my deamon army.

Scatter bikes are much more of a problem for me because they are able to gun down so many of my guys so quickly I accept that is a hard counter to my play style. But I also know that scatter bikes are pretty useless against high AV or tough creatures.

The major problem I see is that Eldar are able to so easily spam Scatter bikes and D cannon wraithknights and that is what makes them unbalanced and it would be an easy issue to solve. Beyond that I don't have too much of a problem with balance in the game. I'm actually pretty sure Traditio would beat me in a game of points effectiveness because my army is pretty weak to flamers and missile launchers but I would never claim that makes Tac Marines OP.

My favorite example of how meta impacts power levels is that Tyranid Lictor shame list from a while back. If you told me lictors were OP I would have laughed in your face and yet they were able to find a competitive niche because the meta allowed it.

Any given creature has to be VERY tough to make a scatterbike useless. Tyranids MCs die like chumps, but WKs and Riptides laugh them off.

I voted no because I like pay-to-win and have more disposable income than you. Fear the units I have purchased to be superior to you! Fear the Nurgling spam! My plague bearers can glance vehicles of any AV! My daemon princes can FLY! There is nothing I can't do, I've spent my money so well!

I have two points to make:

1. Against the person who said that grav should be the best become it costs the most:

A. That's true broadly speaking. If x costs more points than y, than x should probably be better than y.

B. It's not true as applied.

Grav should, like everything else, be a niche weapon that's proportionately more effective at doing its specific job.

It isn't an niche weapon. And it's not proportionately more effective. It's the most expensive weapon (and that's the grav cannon; grav guns cost the same as plasma guns, even though they're superior in most circumstances), but it's also the most points efficient in most games.

It's simply not true that grav vs. plasma vs. lascannons is even a real option in the current meta.

2. I disagree with the people who are saying that the same things should cost different points in different armies because army-context matters.

The appeal of 40k is that I can play what I want. GW itself says, at least in the 4th ed rulebook (I'm sure it said the same thing before and after), that you should buy what you like, not what you think you "should" bring.

If that's how the game is marketed, then I should expect to be able to bring a kroot army and have just as good of a chance at winning, point for point, as if I had brought an army of space marine scouts.

If the book doesn't tell me "bring this army list," then you can't assume the "context" that you're basing unit points prices on. Unless you tell me that I have to take a librarian, you can't assume that I'm taking a librarian when you put a points cost on a tactical squad.

And even if context did matter, literally all that GW can assume is that I'll take at least one HQ and at least one troop. Which HQ? Which troop? If they're giving me the option, then they can't assume.

 Gunzhard wrote:

If we are going to stick to canon, then most battles fought by Imperials would be AM by an enormous margin, with only rare involvement by Space Marines in general. The beauty of 40K is that we are not stuck to that narrative.

By that logic, there should only be 2 armies, period - IG and Orks. Obviously that's taking the argument to the illogical extreme. It not the illogical extreme to argue that army rules should encourage lists that resemble each faction's most typical fighting forces, and disincentives spamming what are supposed to be rare support units. If players actually had to take lists that were indicative of the factions they were playing, we wouldn't be having this discussion on whether or not Tactical Marines were any good - in an environment where everyone has to take a healthy chunk of Troops, Tac Marines stand up pretty well on their own merits. So do IG Infantry Platoons, Tau Fire Warriors, Eldar Dire Avengers, Adeptus Sororitas Battle Sisters squads, and so on.

But that's the way the game is played. People "hypothetically" choose models that work well together, to form a cohesive whole. I'd enjoy a game where each faction had two or three "playable" archetypes in the codex, and that the points for the units assume you play with one of those styles in mind.

The only way to balance that, points wise, is in relation to the rest of the force. AM for example, as an Infantry Swarm, As Mechanized Infantry with Tank Support, and maybe... Full Mix with Aerial Support. Just to throw a few ideas out there.

In the current format, even if you took a SM Psyker in an Astra Millitarum force, no matter what unit you buff, the buff is less valuable than if you buffed a Deathstar unit. Math is simple. You buff a Vet squad with a trio of Plasmaguns with re-roll misses... or you buff a Deathstar with re-roll misses. The benefit to the Deathstar is more valuable than the Vets, therefore the Psyker is more valuable to the Deathstar using army than to a typical AM force. The only way to balance that would be to pay more for the Psyker depending on... the most valuable unit in your army list?

40k was never intended to be a take anything and have a competitive chance game. I think it was originally intended to have a nice mix of units that all had a reasonable chance to interact with one-another. See the Imperial / Chaos ethos of giving a small number of dudes from each unit an upgrade that "could" allow them to attack a variety of units, not just other Infantry.

You can only balance those sort of points as a whole army... not as an individual unit.

 Pouncey wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
just because your faction gets completely screwed over doesn't mean space marine players or people who love space marines have to pay for it.

This is gonna sound weird, but since I posted that, I found a lot of reasons to be happy about my army.

You're right though. Space Marines are a significant part of the Imperium's defence and lore, it makes sense they be playable. I just wish they'd stuck to a single Codex with a well-made traits system to let them customize their chapter.

 Traditio wrote:
Grav should, like everything else, be a niche weapon that's proportionately more effective at doing its specific job.

This directly contradicts your stated opinion that your army full of missile + flamer tactical squads should be viable. If everything is a niche weapon then that missile/flamer army should be effective at killing the specific targets that missile launchers and flamers have as their niche, and bad at killing everything else. IOW, it should lose most of its games because you didn't bring a TAC list. What you actually want is for there to be a weapon that is good at every role, you're just outraged that it's grav squads that would require you to spend money on grav bits instead of the missile launchers and flamers that you already own the models for.

2. I disagree with the people who are saying that the same things should cost different points in different armies because army-context matters.

Too bad, you can disagree all you like but you're obviously wrong. This is basic game design here, the game is played between armies so balance at the army level is most important. And having good balance between armies often requires having units and/or upgrades that are not equal in power, especially when you're comparing units and upgrades in two different armies.

GW itself says, at least in the 4th ed rulebook (I'm sure it said the same thing before and after), that you should buy what you like, not what you think you "should" bring.

So what? This isn't 4th edition. Please stop quoting stuff from previous editions of the game.

Unless you tell me that I have to take a librarian, you can't assume that I'm taking a librarian when you put a points cost on a tactical squad.

You absolutely can do that. In fact, you must do that. If the librarian and tactical squad interact in a way that makes the whole better than the sum of its parts (as often happens with buff/leader type units) then you have to price the tactical squad based on the assumption that it has the buffs from the librarian. Otherwise you create a situation where the tactical squad is priced appropriately some of the time, but becomes overpowered if you add a librarian. And then you either accept the fact that people will exploit the combination and win more than 50% of their games as a result, or you turn the community into a toxic mess where people like you whine endlessly about "WAAC TFGs" and shame people into never playing librarians and tactical squads together.

In short: you once again fail at basic game design.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
But hey, sisters players are the only people that can melt their army down and sell it for scrap if the economy goes down the hole

Silver lining indeed.

 Traditio wrote:
I think that the poll shows why the 40k community is so toxic.

There is basically a 50/50 split.

A little less than half of people agree with me:

Yes. I should be able to take whatever the bloody feth I want and have a decent chance at winning.

The other half disagree:

No. There should be bad units, bad builds, etc. In other words, some lists should be auto-lose.

If you don't take a dakka flyrant, then yes, your tyrranids army should lose. Every time.

GW should DESIGN it that way.

Obviously, the is the only conclusion to be made from such a gakky question.

In the programming world, the phrase is "Garbage in, Garbage out."

In the trash disposal world, the phrase is "gakky lines of code in, gakky output."

In the food industry, the phrase is "Taco Bell in, toxic waste out."

i.e., bad questions lead to stupid answers, which lead to idiotic conclusions.

"Learn a book, Seth."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:


2. I disagree with the people who are saying that the same things should cost different points in different armies because army-context matters.

bs.

Take an imperial guard sergeant and a space marine sergeant.

Give them each a power fist. The Space Marine is now S8, and the IG fether is S6. Is that equal? One will cause instant death on any T4 or lower enemy (Half the fething models in the game), the other causes instant death on commissars and eldar.

Now take a BOG standard marine and a BOG standard IG feth head and give them each a plasma gun.

One needs 3's to hit, and the other needs 4's.

Furthermore, if they each have a Get's Hot result, one needs a 3+ to not fething die, and the other needs a 5+.

Still think all options should cost the same, regardless of whom the item/weapon is for?

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:

If we are going to stick to canon, then most battles fought by Imperials would be AM by an enormous margin, with only rare involvement by Space Marines in general. The beauty of 40K is that we are not stuck to that narrative.

By that logic, there should only be 2 armies, period - IG and Orks. Obviously that's taking the argument to the illogical extreme. It not the illogical extreme to argue that army rules should encourage lists that resemble each faction's most typical fighting forces, and disincentives spamming what are supposed to be rare support units. If players actually had to take lists that were indicative of the factions they were playing, we wouldn't be having this discussion on whether or not Tactical Marines were any good - in an environment where everyone has to take a healthy chunk of Troops, Tac Marines stand up pretty well on their own merits. So do IG Infantry Platoons, Tau Fire Warriors, Eldar Dire Avengers, Adeptus Sororitas Battle Sisters squads, and so on.

Yeah seriously if we are sticking to canon you're right... just IG and Orks... I get the point you are trying to make though. But here's the thing. Using Space Marines as an example... the way a chapter is organized, and exactly how many Tactical marines and Devastator marines, squads and companies etc, is not necessarily reflective of the "most typical fighting forces"; read through any SM codex.

Nearly every space marine chapter has tons of tactical marines throughout all of their battle companies - but space marines don't fight that way where they send the entire chapter and its mass organization of tactical marines into battle. This, also being a narratively driven game, to varying degrees anyway, lends itself perfectly to situations where just Scouting type elements might be fighting, or just heavy Armour, or just close-quarters (terminator) fighters, or just elite vanguard units, or some odd mix of several different elements.

In a world where tournament players insist on fielding Sisters of Silence and Custodes, Space Marines must adhere to some narrow vision of just tactical marines? ...please.

In regards to purchasing options in the game and their point totals, you can't look independently at the model and the upgrade, you have to look at the whole.

When a guardsman gets a plasma gun, he is upgrading g his weapon significantly more than a marine is. As a model, he is also still significantly cheaper than the marine in that instance as well while maintaining the same maximum damage capability.

Now, for melee weapons I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a change, but not to the price. I have a house rule that makes any weapon that multiplies strength by 2 to instead add 4 to strength. I alleviates the price discrepancies significantly while also rebalancing a lot of units.

Why add 4? It doesn't seem that useful to me. S4 is the same, S6 is a tiny bit better and S5 is the only one to get nerfed.

Could do something like 30k where it's more points efficient to have larger squads of troops

 Traditio wrote:
Grav should, like everything else, be a niche weapon that's proportionately more effective at doing its specific job.

Be a bit less vague if you want people to stop poking fun at you. You're talking about stuff being "efficient" at doing "jobs", but there's never any specifics. What "jobs" do Grav guns do that makes them points efficient or OP or whatever?

2. I disagree with the people who are saying that the same things should cost different points in different armies because army-context matters.

The appeal of 40k is that I can play what I want. GW itself says, at least in the 4th ed rulebook (I'm sure it said the same thing before and after), that you should buy what you like, not what you think you "should" bring.

So I stick 14 Purestrains and a Patriarch in a Land Raider Crusader and that's fine by you? That's "what I want to take", and if army context is irrelevant then it doesn't matter what I mount where. There's no particular advantage to be gained by sticking that unit in a Crusader so why bother with the restriction?

If that's how the game is marketed, then I should expect to be able to bring a kroot army and have just as good of a chance at winning, point for point, as if I had brought an army of space marine scouts.

The way the game is marketed is irrelevant to the way the game must be played if you want to compete. Fact is you **can** buy and bring whatever you like to a game, but if you bring a bunch of gak then you'll probably lose games.

I **can** turn up to a drag race in a forty year old Morris Minor. If I do that, I shouldn't expect to win. If and when I don't win, I shouldn't go on the drag racing forums posting threads about "OP Bored-Out Cylinder Cheese" and whining because cars have too many components to tune up and I shouldn't be expected to know which ones I need to work on if I want to win a drag race.

If the book doesn't tell me "bring this army list," then you can't assume the "context" that you're basing unit points prices on. Unless you tell me that I have to take a librarian, you can't assume that I'm taking a librarian when you put a points cost on a tactical squad.

What you're saying here is that because the game gives you choices, every single one of those choices should be exactly as useful in every situation as every other. In a system where tanks, monsters and infantry models are all exactly the same as each other, that might work. that's not the game we're playing. It's not a game I want to play, because it sounds like a gakky boring game.


If you don't want to learn the game, or can't be bothered building proper army lists, that's fine. If you want to dodge even these cursory efforts yet still whine about "OP Cheese", expect to be mocked. If you think that's toxic, that's fine too. Other readers may disagree, even ones who you think agree with you.