How to best rebalance 40k?

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**Lance845**

Adjusting points won't fix how broken a broken unit is.They need to have a better more restrictive foc the way the horus heresy does.

Being able to spam fliers or low is ridiculous when you get to these outlier units. granted, fliers are nowhere near the problem they were in 7th, but low still can be.

when they announced the first 3 foc it looked promising. but the vast majority of the ones we got are just dumb as gak

**Melissia**

Lance845 wrote:
Adjusting points won't fix how broken a broken unit is.

For a lot of units, actually they will. Because a lot of units are broken, one way or the other, because they're just not worth the points, or they're worth far more than the points indicate. Similarly with upgrades. It will not solve everything. But it will solve a lot of things (and is also why Powerlevels will never be balanced).

(also, don't get me started on the pile of foetid garbage that is horus heresy; the only reason HH is anywhere close to being more balanced is because everyone is the fething same anyway in that boring mess of a game)

**rollawaythestone**

There is no meta yet. People are just trying things, and people are trying things in response to the people trying things. It will take some time for lists and tactics to stabilize. This thread is a bit premature.

Some units seem pretty strong. Let's wait until GW's first FAQ/errata of the actual Indexes.

**Yoyoyo**

G00fySmiley wrote:
say you don't know what is on your opponents list but the base unit, then "ok deploying this stormraven with assault cannons, missile launcher and hurricane bolters "( may have it magnetized but as it hits the table it is not set in that gear). then opponent says "I am deploying my big mek gun squad they are traktor cannons" (then deploys big guns with that option selected)

That's how all sequential drafts work, where each player tries to outpick the opponent's choices.

40k clearly works better when lists are built cooperatively, this is how you formalize it in a competitive environment.

**Galas**

Lance845 wrote:
Adjusting points won't fix how broken a broken unit is.They need to have a better more restrictive foc the way the horus heresy does.

Being able to spam fliers or low is ridiculous when you get to these outlier units. granted, fliers are nowhere near the problem they were in 7th, but low still can be.

when they announced the first 3 foc it looked promising. but the vast majority of the ones we got are just dumb as gak

What? No. This is so wrong.

If the only way to fix a unit is restricting how many you can take is acknowledging that the unit is BROKEN so you need to put a tax or limit how many you can take.
Theres cases where a rule is broken. In those cases, the rule need to be reworked. But those are like only 10% of the broken unit cases. The rest are just units that are undercosted. Wraitknights where OP because they were so cheap. Now they are basically the same as in 7th but apropiately costed and they ... BOOM, are balanced.

It doesn't fix anything that you say "Na, Wraitknights can remain a 200p model and be completely OP. You just can take 1 to your army". Is just a band-aid. A BAD one.

People has been so contaminated by the Warhammer Fantasy and 40k mentality than the way to fix OP units is not really fixing them but just limiting how many you can take and obligating you to spend 25% of your points in useless gak troops that nobody want to take instead of making those troops WORTH taking in their own, that I don't know anymore.
All the OP lists we have seen since old Fantasy and 3rd edition have been based around evading the restrictions of taking bad units and just spamming the better ones because they were UNDERcosted. If you point apropiatelly the different units, you solve those problems.

If you make Tac Marines a 3ppm+1ppm for heavy weapons unit every tournament list would be spam of Tactical Marines. Would that be OK? Did you fix that restricting how many troops you can take? The theory to make a good and balanced game is not that hard. Going from theory to reality is the hard work, because it requires math and thousands of variables.

**andysonic1**

Hollow wrote:
I don't think a lot of people really know what they mean when they say "balance". Not all lists can be equally balanced against all other lists, that's not how it works.

This. The guys at FLG and their Chapter Tactics podcasts have talked endlessly about this: you will see spam lists winning a lot at first, but TAC lists will still be better in the long run. Thinking anything but erratas and FAQs need to come out to change some things (like the god damn FW books) is absurd. No, the FOC don't need to change. No, we don't need sideboards or whatever silly thing people will think up next. I recommend if people actually care about competitive warhammer than check out Chapter Tactics podcast by FLG, they just had a great one about tournament lists: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/tag/chapter-tactics/

**Kingsley**

I actually think sideboards would be pretty cool, but they'd add time to tournament games and make things more difficult to organize.

That said, imagine an event where you had 1500 points of "core" and 350 or 500 points of "sideboard" - after seeing your opponent's core list, you get to swap in what you want. So if someone shows up with flyer spam, you might well swap in a bunch of anti-air vehicles. If they have only Orks on foot, bring out 500 points of heavy bolters and mortar teams.

I do think this would make spammy lists a lot worse, but it would also make it more expensive to be competitive and would take a fair chunk of time, which is always at a premium at big tournaments anyway.

**Melissia**

Sadly, just like with powerlevels, sideboards benefit space marines and eldar more than everyone else, simply because space marines and eldar have by far the most options to begin with. A lot of the necessary rebalancing 40k needs that can't be done by points really needs to be done by giving armies more options.

**MechaEmperor7000**

Time for a WALL O TEXT:

Some of the reasons why even with this, the game seems skewed are due to the following:

1.) Multiple Choice FoCs. A lot of people don't realize or don't seem to remember that the old "CAD" foc was designed specifically to balance the armies. Namely your "troops tax" and "HQ tax" were suppose to be point sinks. Troops were always inherently worse than any other equivallent you might have in your army; that's because they're the bulk of your army. Back then (and I mean like early 4th ed) the few options that did shift something to the Troops section specifically noted that these were special organizations and were likely not as balanced as the main list (this occured in WHFB too, where it was even more restrictive on non-Core choices). The FoC shenanigans that started in 5th and the event that completely obliterated any semblance of the old FoC in 7th is one of the reasons why a lot more armies became "unbalanced". This trend has somewhat been mitigated in 8th, but until they go back to one unified, troop-centric FoC, I doubt the issue of spam will go away.

2.) The 0-1 and 1+ limits. These most people probably don't remember anymore, but on top of the above-mentioned troops-as-pointsinks, these were another layer on top of it all. Most of the problematic units, if they existed back then, often had the 0-1 limit applied. Conversely, a lot of units that people didn't want to field often had a 1+ minimum applied, to force you to field them. I really wish this would return, as it's a quick and simple way to cut down on people spamming certain units.

3.) Warhammer 40k is a skirmish level game; the introduction of flyers, superheavies and such also brought with them so many variables that it resulted in rules designed specifically to break the existing rules of the game (Strength D weapons). While this edition has done a good job of toning them back down, I still feel like Flyers and Superheavies should be moved into their own game outside of 40k; if everything is basically kept at the skrimish infantry level, there will be very few instances of two armies meeting each other and one having rules that make it basically immune to the other army.

**Melissia**

You're not remembering very well if you think the "troops tax" was actually effective at the job you describe it as having. People found countless ways around it even back in third edition; it was never very good at that job you describe for it.

Its real purpose was to encourage fluffy armies, where "troops" were the general purpose grunts of their armies. With the focus on Space Marines, however, tacticals have been left in the dust over and over again as GW keeps trying to find more and more ways to make marines which are more marine than the previous marines. Thus it doesn't even do THAT job well, either.

**Insectum7**

A fun thing to note is thT chaos can already operate with a "sideboard", as they can choose and summon daemons on the fly.

**Desubot**

Honestly a little sad to see objective secured go in favor of mob the objective rule.

**AnomanderRake**

MagicJuggler wrote:
Ever since Boise GT where the winning list had more Stormravens than Tactical Squads, there has been a fair bit of discussion for what this "means for the meta", and such. There have been assorted suggestions on how to rebalance the game to be less spammy, from restricting units to restricting detachments, but these are at best hacks and at worst outright bandaids. So the question is: How would you rebalance 40k, at least before breaking out the core rule rewrites? Several options:

Sideboards: Either a main army plus secondary units, or bringing two armies to swap out so you can approach a tournament with a Rock and a Scissors list. Personally I view this promotes skew even more than normal (look at WMH's history of Defense-skew -> Armorskew/Miserable Meat Mountain). That said, I could see a lesser form of sideboarding/free gear being ok, for super-situational loadouts (things like Free Transports or Free Weapons = no. Free Grapple Hooks=sure why not?)

-Extreme Counters: Rock >> Scissors >> Paper. The problem being armies mixing towards 33% of each, and the first to break the opponent's counterloop gains the advantage.

-Flatlining/Homogenization: Choice is an illusion.

-Secondary Roles: This one is my personal preference. When you have multiple units that do the same thing, only one will emerge the best. See: Markerlight Drones vs Pathfinders, Wyverns versus Mortar Teams, Scorpions vs Banshees (at least until you break out the Fire Dragons), etc. Rather than having units be only good at one thing, most unit should have some secondary utility in case their primary target isn't around! Increasing intra-unit combos and support options could be one way to encourage a mixed list instead of skew: Letting Mortars fire Smoke or Flare rounds for cover manipulation would give them a purpose against all-vehicle armies, giving Scout Bikes the ability to lay AT mines as they move, bringing back the Monolith's ability to teleport infantry or letting its Exile Gate "pull in" enemy units like a tractor beam, etc. This isn't necessarily about drowning the game in tech or gimmicks, so much as each unit should have one "purpose" depending on what sort of hypothetical skew might be encountered.

Or maybe there's some other option for rebalancing 40k. How would you rebalance armies as a whole?

I don't understand the question. Could you explain what's wrong that can't be fixed without throwing huge radical wrenches into the works?

**Galas**

I just can't see why people feel that troops should be just bad and a tax to field the units that you really want to field.

The same goes with the 0-1 and 1+. "Oh, yeah, you need to take ALL of this units that you don't want to take because they suck, to be able to field some of the units you really like".

Whats the point in that? Isn't better to the game (But harder to make right) to just balance troops and other units, so people can be free to field what they really want and like and still have a balanced experience? Troops are my favourite part of any army. I spend more time painting and personalizing my troops than my heroes. My lowly sargeants/unit champions have much more effort than the generic HQ GW sells, for example.

If the game was properly balanced, spam lists should be posible but tactically inviable.

**Elbows**

Option Q: Don't play in tournaments.

**ross-128**

One thing that's important is to not be too hasty, especially since the dice can swing 40k games pretty wildly. Sometimes one or two key rolls falling off the bell curve can throw a whole game, especially when lists with a very low model count are involved. So we do need to collect large enough datasets to let that randomness shake out. You'll probably need several hundred matches for each unit you want to evaluate.

Isolating confounding factors will be something to watch out for too, so if you want to collect data for balance purposes that data needs to be very detailed. Not just whether a particular faction won or lost, but exactly which models are on the table, what those models did, and how each individual model performed. It could be quite a lot of work to untangle how each model interacts with every other, both friendly and enemy, and how terrain affects them.

**Drager**

lord_blackfang wrote:
pismakron wrote:
The stormravenlist is not the problem. Missions without objectives to hold IS a problem.

The Stormraven list will BRRRRRRR anything off the table in 3 turns tops. Tell me again how important objectives are.

Have you played against it? I have, it's not as bad as you are making out.

**Desubot**

Drager wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
pismakron wrote:
The stormravenlist is not the problem. Missions without objectives to hold IS a problem.

The Stormraven list will BRRRRRRR anything off the table in 3 turns tops. Tell me again how important objectives are.

Have you played against it? I have, it's not as bad as you are making out.

The two times iv seen it played they were blown out of the sky t1 with its caramel filling oozing out in a bad way.

**DarknessEternal**

Desubot wrote:
Honestly a little sad to see objective secured go in favor of mob the objective rule.

Objective Secured wouldn't matter now, just like it didn't matter before. Dead guys don't have objectives on turn 7.

All of those armies that placed highly built to wipe enemies off the table. They built the armies to win the missions that were being played.

If you want more "balanced" armies, you have to create missions which favor those armies.

Eternal War missions are trash. That's the bottom line.

**Cheebs**

Games two weeks old. Dakka wants to rebalance it. Lol wut.

**PoorGravitasHandling**

Balance...?

Bolters wound 99% of vehicles on a 5+. They hit fliers on 4+. I think the issue is being blown out of proportion now that everything and its dog can take effective potshots at most fliers.

**Aesthete**

GreenShoes wrote:
Or the game is two weeks old and everyone can take a chill pill for a while.

I think the first step to rebalancing 40K 8E is for the community to play the game consistently for at least a year. During that time, take extensive notes as the competitive meta evolves as well as paying attention to how narrative play shapes up. Then, referencing those notes, identify the problems you actually want to fix (as opposed to the problems you thought you wanted to fix when you started the process) and start discussing possible solutions. Once you settle on a set of solutions to the identified problems, implement them, play-test them for a while, tweak them a bit, play-test some more, then release to the public. Repeat the cycle in another year or two.

That'd be my preferred approach.

Alternately we could nerf all the armies I don't play while buffing the ones I play. The problem with that, of course, is that other people who aren't me will also benefit from that if they play my preferred armies. So if we're not going to use my preferred approach I think the best and simplest way to rebalance 40K is to let me take all my units at a 25-50% discount in points or PL whenever I play.

**WrentheFaceless**

GreenShoes wrote:
Or the game is two weeks old and everyone can take a chill pill for a while.

This, right here

**G00fySmiley**

for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

**Desubot**

G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

You could just force a everyone must take a base patrol detachment or whatever which limits it down to 2(?) outside of troops.

some flavor of that.

though some peoples troops might be more efficient than others so eh.

(sucks for imperial knight armies but i dont believe that is a real army)

**ross-128**

G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

That might cause some awkward results with certain armies.

Enjoy only being able to have one Commissar, or one Heavy Weapon Squad.

**Unit1126PLL**

G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

I don't know what version of the fluff you've been reading if yo think an IG tank regiment having only 1 Leman Russ is narrative.

**DarknessEternal**

G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

That only makes strong armies stronger, while doing nothing to address the base problem.

**Desubot**

DarknessEternal wrote:
G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

That only makes strong armies stronger, while doing nothing to address the base problem.

What army is super strong at basically highlander?

**Zande4**

Desubot wrote:
DarknessEternal wrote:
G00fySmiley wrote:
for my club's narrative events we might be limiting lists to one unit of a type outside of troops.

want a stormraven? no problem you can field exactly 1 storm raven

want a land raider crusader sure enjoy that 1..

obviously not going to happen on our competitive events but keeping narrative events fun is pretty important to us

That only makes strong armies stronger, while doing nothing to address the base problem.

What army is super strong at basically highlander?

Genestealers come to mind