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Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.

I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.

The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.

All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.

Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.

In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!

Spoletta wrote:
All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.

Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.

In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!

Funny, in my mind, I see it as the exact opposite. 8th edition has large discrepancies between codex and index factions, but even in codexes, the damage done on turn 1 is greater than it was in 7th.

It wasn't.

Spoletta wrote:
All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.

Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.

In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!

That's not entirely true. Eldar were strong but basically spammed 4-5 units, tau even less. SM with free transports were at the same levels but they also spammed a few units on the table. However in 7th edition I managed to beat the best tau and SM lists with orks and dark eldar, just not very often since of course those armies were more competitive, but not impossible to defeat. Eldar at their highest levels were unbeatable for me.

But now using my index armies is litterally impossible to counter the current top tiers, even tailoring them. I had better results in 7th edition against the top tiers, the turn 1 tabling is more likely to happen in this edition if you play index vs codex.

In my opinion seventh was more overall balanced, but had worse skews due to formations that gave free stuff and allies. 8th is just a huge cluster right now and while the rules may be simpler the actual gameplay is just stacking Buffs and auras and using soup lists when able to in order to maximize your strengths and Shore up your weaknesses.

In general though I think the problem is that tournament 40K is so far from anything else but it might as well be a different game. And it should have solutely not be the Baseline for deciding everything else, we could seems to be since GW has Reece and the front line crew spearheading balance apparently, people who only play the game competitively and only care about competitively

 Vankraken wrote:
This is the type of arguments that really irk me when people look back on 7th. Most games played where not involving top tier tourny lists but instead it came down to which codexes generally had viability and which ones where underpowered. Tau for example was extremely strong in 7th but they just lacked the tools to deal with psychic deathstars (hope for 6s on stormsurge stomps or lose) which is why they suffered in tournament play. The kind of imbalances that plagued 7th was the divide in game design between the still in 6th and early 7th edition codexes (base codex nids, non forge world guard, orks, dark eldar, grey knights, blood angels, etc) while the releases starting with Necrons where incredibly powerful due to the decurion style detachments and general power creep. Seriously stuff like horrors lists almost never saw play because people generally don't have gak tons of the models required to play such a list while bark bark stars where fairly time consuming and generally unfun for everyone to play (for both parties). Grill 7th's imbalances all you want but listing tournament lists as a reason why the game had poor balance is not very compelling because most games where not played in such a format. Its when somebody brings Dark Eldar to a pick up game and the other side has Tau and thus the game is already next to impossible to win for the DE was the issue with balance in 7th. 8th is better in balance but it definitely has other short comings which imo makes 8th an inferior edition to 7th.

Except gaining 600 pts of free razorbacks with SM was trivial, what SM players doesn't have 33 foot SM models needed to unlock that pile of BS? Ditto for Eldar which made your units supernaturally accurate for bringing a grand total of three of them for no reason (other than Kelly making Eldar OP every single edition with his inept writing), or Tau getting to ignore 80% of game rules with their respective nonsense. And what models, pray tell, apparently so hard to get that normal players had no access to them whatsoever, were needed to unlock invisibility?

But yeah, if you ignore 99% problems with 7th, and leave 8th as it is, 7th is a tiny bit more balanced. Which should tell you volumes which is more balanced, really

At the very least the use of Index and following up with completing the codex releases in around a year for the entire game is a huge balance improving aspect to the game. As is GW abandoning the need to make each new codex release "the best ever".*

Those things alone have already swing 8th edition toward a more balanced game; sure its not perfect, but if we then add in the use of Chapter Approved I suspect that 8th will continue to improve. We also don't know if GW will even make a 9th edition.
In the past GW has marketed itself on massive rule re-writes every period of years. These, of course, generate new interest and refresh the game as well as generate income out of existing gamers through the introduction of new mechanics, new units and new rules (ergo books to be bought).

We don't know how they'll now tackle the future of 40K; they could well shift into a series of lesser updates through Chapterhouse with a new codex every so often that updates all the previous FAQ/Errata/Dataslate units and chapterhouse changes; without actually changing hte games "core" rules. Or we might see 8th edition simply last a lot lot longer before they try for a 9th edition.



* Which I believe was partly the result of many armies, esp those going longer and longer without a new codex, requiring a huge investment in new moulds and models and new rules all at once; thus GW had to make a huge noise and make them very competitive in order to generate a huge amount of hype. For armies that went for a long while it was almost akin to GW launching a fully new army since the fanbase would continually dwindle whilst an army fell further and further behind and performed worse and worse on the tabletop.

Tbh... i played a girly man with dev squads list and no joke he killed 1k of my 2k list on turn 1.... it was the most op unbalanced bs Ibhave ever seen! But at the same time I also play orks! Now orks suck this edition but last edition I genuinely lost a cc battle between my 30 boyz and 5 necron snipers! That's how bad it was!

A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.

Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.

8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.

The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.

40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.

Here we go again, dealing with a question capable of generating only anecdotal responses, which will be offered only by those with extreme viewpoints that only represent their own opinion. Nothing gets proved and all we do is waste a bunch of each other's time.

Maybe the OP wants to offer a better definition for what balanced means, since 7th edition and 8th edition are very different games. The word could not possibly mean the same thing for both editions.

8th ed armies can draw from different factions to the point where they identify with no single Codex. In this sense, 'balance' means very little, your army can be constructed from multiple factions.

As far as pure Codex or Index armies go, very few of them are designed to operate stand-alone in 8th. The best armies are ones that synergize with forces from several sources (i.e. RG and Guard) to create powerful combos.

In 8th, when any player can pick any unit from any Codex as part of their army, it doesn't matter what the rules are for your own Codex. Find the parts that are useful and add on things from other Codexes. Why is it so hard to see this is fundamentally different from the previous edition?

 Gamgee wrote:
A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.

Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.

8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.

The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.

40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Bartali wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.

I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.

The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.

This is spot on. 8th edition by the very way it is presented is not a tournament level game system. It is one designed for the casual player who plays with friends and at a local shop/club. Using tournament players to iron out issues and certain balance concerns was a great idea but a lot of the recent issues have been the result of players trying to shoehorn in a competitive mindset. The smite spam beta test rule, for example, has no place in the default rules but should be a part of tournament rules instead.

The fact Marines needed 10 free vehicles in a list to have a chance to compete tells you all you need to know.

If the game had continued as is, I would've predicted Genestealer Cults being broken to the point I was actually finding points for Combi-Flamers and Flamers in my list!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bartali wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.

I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.

The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.

Except if they don't they won't find the broken combos...

 Blackie wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.

Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.

In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!

That's not entirely true. Eldar were strong but basically spammed 4-5 units, tau even less. SM with free transports were at the same levels but they also spammed a few units on the table. However in 7th edition I managed to beat the best tau and SM lists with orks and dark eldar, just not very often since of course those armies were more competitive, but not impossible to defeat. Eldar at their highest levels were unbeatable for me.

But now using my index armies is litterally impossible to counter the current top tiers, even tailoring them. I had better results in 7th edition against the top tiers, the turn 1 tabling is more likely to happen in this edition if you play index vs codex.

lol, no you didn't. You beat lists you THOUGHT were the best space marine lists but were actually pretty garbage and Tau were NEVER top tier last edition. Get outta here with that nonsense


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.

Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.

8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.

The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.

40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I gotta say, of all the people no one would miss...

No, it wasn't.

Period.

I actually think 5th was more balenced, and doesn't get why everyone compares 8th to 7th.

Isn't 7th widely understood to be a dumpster fire? It's not the benchmark for saying if something's balenced or not.

A bruised apple is better than a moudly apple, but neither a great standards for comparing other apples too...

 techsoldaten wrote:
Here we go again, dealing with a question capable of generating only anecdotal responses, which will be offered only by those with extreme viewpoints that only represent their own opinion. Nothing gets proved and all we do is waste a bunch of each other's time.

Maybe the OP wants to offer a better definition for what balanced means, since 7th edition and 8th edition are very different games. The word could not possibly mean the same thing for both editions.

8th ed armies can draw from different factions to the point where they identify with no single Codex. In this sense, 'balance' means very little, your army can be constructed from multiple factions.

As far as pure Codex or Index armies go, very few of them are designed to operate stand-alone in 8th. The best armies are ones that synergize with forces from several sources (i.e. RG and Guard) to create powerful combos.

In 8th, when any player can pick any unit from any Codex as part of their army, it doesn't matter what the rules are for your own Codex. Find the parts that are useful and add on things from other Codexes. Why is it so hard to see this is fundamentally different from the previous edition?

Because it's not?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!? In 7th you could draw from XENOS as an imperial player and chaos was even more soupy than it is now, or did you forget about '5 Sorcerors in a unit of 20 khorne dogs'? Allies are far more restrictive now than they used to be, especially now that codexes are coming out and forcing you to take entire detachments of the same faction to get chapter tactics and stratagems.

 Gamgee wrote:
A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.

Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.

8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.

The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.

40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.

No pity for Tau players after the dumpster fire of 6/7th. Wait for your codex so you can be OP again.

Wayniac wrote:
In my opinion seventh was more overall balanced, but had worse skews due to formations that gave free stuff and allies. 8th is just a huge cluster right now and while the rules may be simpler the actual gameplay is just stacking Buffs and auras and using soup lists when able to in order to maximize your strengths and Shore up your weaknesses.

In general though I think the problem is that tournament 40K is so far from anything else but it might as well be a different game. And it should have solutely not be the Baseline for deciding everything else, we could seems to be since GW has Reece and the front line crew spearheading balance apparently, people who only play the game competitively and only care about competitively

So what you're saying is that 7th was more balanced as long as you didn't use any of the rules from 7th? Seems legit. Also interesting how you DO include 8th edition soup lists while completely ignoring 7th edition soup lists.

Oh, and no it fething wasn't. Without the 'broken formations and allies' mono-eldar lists and Mono-ultramarines centurion stars (both requiring no allies, and no formations) would table every other army in the game turn 1 every time, except mono-daemon Screamer stars(again, requiring no allies or formations.)

People who clearly never played 7th chiming in all over the place.

90% of formations weren't broken at all. That's the sad part.

 Gamgee wrote:
A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.

Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.

8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.

The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.

40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.

Hey I thought you were quitting because Custodes are the next codex?

Martel732 wrote:
90% of formations weren't broken at all. That's the sad part.

This part is true, ultimately. Formations were an excellent idea that was just poorly executed at times (like Gladius/Demi Battle Company as overpowered and Brazen Onslaught as middle to underpowered) whereas others were very well designed (1st Company Strike Force, Judicator Battalion, and Terminator Annihilation were ones I consider well designed overall).

Soup is a sidegrade for Imperials and Chaos, and a flat nerf for the rest. Your army as a whole must have one common Keyword, but you can have multiple subfactions in the same detachment. The opportunity cost for staying monofaction within one detachment and souping in another isn't too far removed from how you could tradeoff between maximizing Decurion benefits or getting allies.

As far as balance, 7th versus 5th interests me, as despite the view that 5th is the most balanced...I remember that edition favoring mass light mech over most other builds. Sure, you could run a Loganwing and do reasonably well, and the Draigowing janked its way to runner-up status at Nova 2011...but the game ultimately favored a critical mass of Lasplas Razorbacks/Mechvets, and aura of choice. "Gee, do I take Smite or do I take Null Zone?"

By contrast, 7th had the Gladius, Bike armies, War Convo...at least three distinct types of army. Given more time to experiment, I believe Genestealer Cults also had the potential to be a competitive horde army.

The game did have problems of course. Too many USRs, some rules didn't work (Ex: barrage weapons were better at sniping than actual sniper weapons), and there were too many "all or nothing" scenarios. However, cover meant something, and games generally weren't decided on turn 1.

40k has never been well balanced and has had major issues in every edition. 8E has brought it back to the realm of 4E/5E in terms of the scale of that imbalance. 7E was an unsalvageable dumpster fire that nobody should mourn and certainly not anything that anyone should look upon with fondness. That doesn't mean 8E is perfect, it's not and very real issues exist. This will likely always be the case.

7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.

8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.

fithos wrote:
7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.

8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.

Call me when you find a Chapter Tactic that gives you 500 points of free tanks.

Jesus Gamegee
Thats a temporary banning if ever I saw one

See ya in a week

Well, I mean it's our fault for ruining 40k n'all, what with us having the audacity to play it and have any fun.

His anger at those of us who dare to enjoy something he does not is righteous and justified.