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There is a deep fix needed because of a basic truth of balance: choice is power.

Even if the choice is niche and doesn't come up in 99% of cases that 1% will win you a game and if it doesn't cost you anything to have?

The Imperium faction keyword covers half of all units in the game. How big is the chance that somewhere in that wealth of choices sits an OP combo? More over finding and balancing all these possibilities and combos is pratically impossible.

therefore the keyword imperium and to a lesser extent Chaos and Aeldari/ynnari cannot almost not exist in matched without compromising more niche Xenos armies. Unless they are made far more powerfull than any individual codex in the big soup(s).

A solution is putting limitations on soup lists but this is equally hard to balance since the advantage is impossible to quantify.

Best to just ban it in Matched and go whacky in narrative

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Did it though? One 40 man tournament isn't really much of a start. None of the majors have even glanced at it (Adepticon, NOVA, BAO, SoCal Open, even Renegade ((who did drop points)).

Do you feel this is the end? A one time thing from this one tourney and we will hear no more on Soup? All the fixes are done, no more attempt, clearly this limited one time thing is over?

As it seems you might be implying that?

 Earth127 wrote:
Best to just ban it in Matched and go whacky in narrative

OR! Let people play what they will and make slow adjustments to cut out the major issue instead of taking a hatchet to the thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reemule wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Did it though? One 40 man tournament isn't really much of a start. None of the majors have even glanced at it (Adepticon, NOVA, BAO, SoCal Open, even Renegade ((who did drop points)).

Do you feel this is the end? A one time thing from this one tourney and we will hear no more on Soup? All the fixes are done, no more attempt, clearly this limited one time thing is over?

As it seems you might be implying that?

Neither us knows - all I'm saying is this isn't a major. It is impossible to predict what other events will do because this event isn't big enough to be a trend setter.

And back to the start of the discussion. I think its going to be fixed. And I hope they don't just ban it but penalize it's play.

/thread

Ah, but does the great "soup" threaten game "balance"?
I see more an issue with models or units that are "auto-include" or "auto-exclude" to get a measure of the game.

I keep seeing this as some strange blend of winning matters and fitting in the fluff matters.
Only rules updates can hope to get those two elements to meet somewhere in the middle.

"In defense of soup" different elements of other armies may have more serviceable units than in others.
Much of the "fluff" has all kinds of different factions allying together for a common goal so "justifying" combinations would not take much.
Eldar and Slanesh as allies could possibly make my head explode but your results may vary.

Do the rules allow it?
What kind of game are you and your opponent trying to have?
Figure it out from there.

I guess rules wise the biggest problem with soup is that you either balance units to their individual codex or in regards to soup. As soup at its most competitive is just picking the strongest pieces from component and playing an army of those.

Which means that each codex component of the soup will either be weaker when compared to a non soup codex, or if they're equal the soup simply is at an advantage. In which case we'll need some drawbacks to even the playing field, which currently there don't seem to be enough.

Now I doubt anyone (including GW) currently has THE SOLUTION, but perhaps limiting passive bonuses or a small CP tax might be a good start. While factions designed around the ability to ally in other codices would obviously need a way around this tax.

Personally I enjoy playing fluffy and diverse armies/soups in a casual environment, forging a narrative etc. Yet believe the ability to ally in other factions without opportunity cost skews the playing field. (or would if the overall balance was established).

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Earth127 wrote:
Best to just ban it in Matched and go whacky in narrative

OR! Let people play what they will and make slow adjustments to cut out the major issue instead of taking a hatchet to the thing.

There is a game mode for that it's called OPEN play. They even recently added Apocalypse to it.

Joking aside there is a game mode called OPEN advertised as bring whatever you want, Narrative for well forging the narrative and story, and matched wich places restrictions in exchange for better balance.

 Earth127 wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Earth127 wrote:
Best to just ban it in Matched and go whacky in narrative

OR! Let people play what they will and make slow adjustments to cut out the major issue instead of taking a hatchet to the thing.

There is a game mode for that it's called OPEN play. They even recently added Apocalypse to it.

Joking aside there is a game mode called OPEN advertised as bring whatever you want, Narrative for well forging the narrative and story, and matched wich places restrictions in exchange for better balance.

Correct and those restrictions are in place - its called having to take a battle forged army. Don't condescend - your idea is a broad stroke that accomplishes nothing other than alienating people who enjoy/already are invested in soup armies. The idea that you ban all soup obviously doesn't work because any time its typed it comes with the caveat of 'just hand wave all these small factions that require soup to function' or more broadly read as 'some soup is OK, just not the soup I don't like'. The far more practical solution is to slowly move the needle until you reach a spot where multiple source armies are viable as well as single source armies.

Why dont we wait until some more codexs come out. Maybe the reason for the soup is that the orks are coming back strong and the only thing that will stop them is all of the soup! waaaaaagghh!

kombatwombat wrote:
Or, to put it another way, there is more to this hobby than the top 3 tables at LVO.

This is what everybody should remember.

 RiderOrk wrote:
Why dont we wait until some more codexs come out. Maybe the reason for the soup is that the orks are coming back strong and the only thing that will stop them is all of the soup! waaaaaagghh!

Exactly. Anything else is a hasty generalization of the state of the game (Reemule does love his logical fallacies).

 Sleep Spell wrote:
I guess rules wise the biggest problem with soup is that you either balance units to their individual codex or in regards to soup. As soup at its most competitive is just picking the strongest pieces from component and playing an army of those.

This is an either/or logical fallacy, it is also not true. Soup codices can be balanced according to their function within the soup paradigm, at the same time individual codices can be internally balanced to be competitive versus soup lists.

 Talizvar wrote:
Ah, but does the great "soup" threaten game "balance"?
I see more an issue with models or units that are "auto-include" or "auto-exclude" to get a measure of the game.

This is much closer to what we’re actually seeing in tournament settings. Specific units and combos are problematic. However, banning soup is a sledgehammer when what you need is a scalpel.

 Earth127 wrote:
There is a deep fix needed because of a basic truth of balance: choice is power.

Begging the question logical fallacy. It begins with an assumption that soup is inherently broken rather than deeply analyzing what is causing problems with it.

I don't mind soup existing I do think it should be more even or banned in matched.

More even as in introduce a XENOS faction keyword to balance out imperium. Tough Chaos really gets quite a shaft there.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
This is much closer to what we’re actually seeing in tournament settings. Specific units and combos are problematic. However, banning soup is a sledgehammer when what you need is a scalpel.

This is assuming that the reason for banning soup is to ban specific overpowered lists, rather than correcting GW's utter idiocy in allowing such a terrible design concept to exist in the first place. The sledgehammer is exactly what is needed.

Both specific OP and underpowered lists/units need adressing. the availabillity of soup is just a headache of consequences for this at top lvl.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is assuming that the reason for banning soup is to ban specific overpowered lists, rather than correcting GW's utter idiocy in allowing such a terrible design concept to exist in the first place. The sledgehammer is exactly what is needed.

Again, we have begging the question logical fallacy, it assumes that soup is fundamentally flawed because it is soup.

 Peregrine wrote:

This is assuming that the reason for banning soup is to ban specific overpowered lists, rather than correcting GW's utter idiocy in allowing such a terrible design concept to exist in the first place. The sledgehammer is exactly what is needed.

This is hilarious. This is exactly the sort of comment I've seen you fighting against countless times when it was directed at FW stuff.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
That makes the assumption that SoB wasn't designed with that possibility in mind. Objectively, this is something you could not know unless you are part of the design team or specifically informed by them.

On that specific example what you’re saying is true, but you’re missing the forest for the trees of what I’m trying to say here. Do you really think GW attempts to - or that it is even possible to - consider the effects of cross-Codex Soup effects when designing a unit? The permutations are mind-boggling.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Soup codices can be balanced according to their function within the soup paradigm, at the same time individual codices can be internally balanced to be competitive versus soup lists.

This depends on the assumption that every unit is equally valuable as a stand-alone entity - that is, that 200pts of Space Marines is exactly as useful as 200pts of Custodes. i’d argue that assumption is false; armies appear to be designed in such a way as ‘Custodes may have better infantry, but Marines have better tanks’. With that philosophy you can internally balance a Custodes Codex and a Marine Codex, and a take all comers Custodes army against a take all comers Marine army by offsetting their internal strengths and weaknesses, but how could either of those armies compete with a take all comers army of Custodes infantry with Marine tanks?

If you’re going to have this ‘uneven but equal’ design philosophy you have to balance units based on a Pure army, and then have a downside to cherry-picking a Soup army.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Again, we have begging the question logical fallacy, it assumes that soup is fundamentally flawed because it is soup.

Soup is flawed because it breaks an important principle of game design: consistent faction identity. If you play space marines you play space marines, with their various strengths and weaknesses. If you play IG you play IG, with their strengths and weaknesses. And the two armies are very different experiences. Soup breaks the strength of faction identity by homogenizing everything into a single "take the best of everything" faction.

 Crimson wrote:
This is hilarious. This is exactly the sort of comment I've seen you fighting against countless times when it was directed at FW stuff.

It's not at all the same. The anti-FW arguments were ridiculous complaints based on which piece of paper a particular set of rules was printed on, assuming that somehow FW rules weren't "real GW" or whatever. The anti-FW crowd would have been fine with the exact same rules (and, in many cases, was fine with them) if they were printed in a book with the magic "codex" word on the cover, or even in one of the non-codex sources they arbitrarily decided were ok. The argument against soup is based on entirely different reasons, related to fundamental game design principles.

kombatwombat wrote:
Do you really think GW attempts to - or that it is even possible to - consider the effects of cross-Codex Soup effects when designing a unit? The permutations are mind-boggling.

Considering that they were aware of this variable, and knew they were going to have these rules in place throughout the entire development process, yes, I think it's a fair assumption. I mean, if you weren't planning around this why even bother with a keyword system in the first place?

Yes, it's possible.

However, you're more than welcome to try to prove a negative and say that they did not, but then we get off into the question of whether you can prove that nerve gas farting dragons don't exist.

kombatwombat wrote:
This depends on the assumption that every unit is equally valuable as a stand-alone entity - that is, that 200pts of Space Marines is exactly as useful as 200pts of Custodes.

That's not what I'm saying at all, it's also a hasty generalization logical fallacy. Warhammer is not nearly so binary as to be able to take 200 points of this and say it's exactly equal to 200 points of something else, it has to be balanced on a number of factors, it's placement in force org, it's existence as part of a larger Imperial paradigm, not to mention it's existence within the context of the codex itself, and those are just the considerations off the top of my head. I would submit that more than likely a process like this inherently means that some units are point for point better because of the context they exist within.

kombatwombat wrote:
With that philosophy you can internally balance a Custodes Codex and a Marine Codex, and a take all comers Custodes army against a take all comers Marine army by offsetting their internal strengths and weaknesses, but how could either of those armies compete with a take all comers army of Custodes infantry with Marine tanks?

Again, this is an either/or logical fallacy that assumes the ability to prove a negative.

This assumes that Space Marines and Custodes standalone codex armies are equivalent to single codex armies. Custodes haven't been around long enough to really have much data on this. Space Marines standalone, well, if you went by the .001% of the community represented on these boards, the consensus is they don't. Regardless, it's not a valid logical argument

Where's xeno when I need him? I'm sure he has the long catalog of reasons why Space Marines don't work as a standalone army, it's his pet project, along with cosplaying as Chicken Little.

kombatwombat wrote:
If you’re going to have this ‘uneven but equal’ design philosophy you have to balance units based on a Pure army, and then have a downside to cherry-picking a Soup army.

This is again an either/or logical fallacy. You can absolutely have units that are balanced within a soup paradigm and a single codex paradigm.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Soup is flawed because it breaks an important principle of game design: consistent faction identity. If you play space marines you play space marines, with their various strengths and weaknesses. If you play IG you play IG, with their strengths and weaknesses. And the two armies are very different experiences. Soup breaks the strength of faction identity by homogenizing everything into a single "take the best of everything" faction.

Who's principle of game design? A universal principle of game design? Are those detailed somewhere?

I'd identify the logical fallacy here, but I'm pretty sure you're just making up this "important principle of game design".

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Who's principle of game design? A universal principle of game design? Are those detailed somewhere?

I'd identify the logical fallacy here, but I'm pretty sure you're just making up this "important principle of game design".

Your lack of understanding of game design does not make something a logical fallacy. Nor do you get to yell "FALLACY" unless I spend a bunch of time giving you a Game Design 101 lecture to save you from having to do your own work.

 Peregrine wrote:
Your lack of understanding of game design does not make something a logical fallacy. Nor do you get to yell "FALLACY" unless I spend a bunch of time giving you a Game Design 101 lecture to save you from having to do your own work.

Sorry, allow me to clarify. bs. There is no principle of game design that dictates some sort of faction identity as a core principle of game design. Graphic design, sure, art design, sure.

The questions were rhetorical, I kind of assumed that was obvious.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
There is no principle of game design that dictates some sort of faction identity as a core principle of game design.

Of course there is. If you're going to have different sides/units/etc in your game then those things should be different. If a king and a pawn have different rules then they should actually play differently. If IG and space marines are different armies with their own rules then they should play differently. That's the whole point of having different choices instead of just different colors for your pieces. Otherwise what's the point of having different rules for IG and space marines? Just give them the same rules and let people pick whichever aesthetic choices they prefer.

And I'll also point out that this faction identity principle is something that GW has benefited considerably from in the past. If I say "space marine army" you immediately have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about rules-wise and how it will play on the table. If I say "ork army" you have an entirely different picture, but one that is just as clear. That's how you get iconic images/units/etc that stand out in a potential customer's mind, not an over-homogenized mess of generic stuff.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Considering that they were aware of this variable, and knew they were going to have these rules in place throughout the entire development process, yes, I think it's a fair assumption. I mean, if you weren't planning around this why even bother with a keyword system in the first place?

Yes, it's possible.

However, you're more than welcome to try to prove a negative and say that they did not, but then we get off into the question of whether you can prove that nerve gas farting dragons don't exist.

Keywords have uses beyond Soup, but that’s beside the point. The point is that variable is simply too large to be reasonably considered. For example, if you’re considering how adding a new unit will affect the Codex it’s going in, you could consider different army builds with that Codex. If that Codex has 11 distinct unit entries and you’re going to pick 10 to make an army, you have to consider 11!/10! permutations - i.e. 11 possible combinations. Now if you want to consider how it will fit into the full Imperium Soup, say there’s 9 Imperium Codexes each with 11 distinct entries, and again you pick 10 to make an army, you’re looking at 99!/10!, which is something like 10^20 permutations - a hundred times the number of seconds since the Big Bang.

Now those numbers are pulled out of nowhere and the specifics of them are irrelevant - the point is that once you start to consider how a unit will fit into Soup the factors to consider become staggeringly large - way beyond what you could hope to design around - whereas staying within one Codex the job is far more manageable. So no, I do not think it is a fair assumption that GW considers the effect of Soup on a unit in a truly meaningful way. It simply isn’t a good use of limited resources. They may consider some obvious options, but I’m sure they missed 2+/3++ Bullgryns with the Custodes Vexilla, for example.

That's not what I'm saying at all, it's also a hasty generalization logical fallacy. Warhammer is not nearly so binary as to be able to take 200 points of this and say it's exactly equal to 200 points of something else, it has to be balanced on a number of factors, it's placement in force org, it's existence as part of a larger Imperial paradigm, not to mention it's existence within the context of the codex itself, and those are just the considerations off the top of my head. I would submit that more than likely a process like this inherently means that some units are point for point better because of the context they exist within.

As a personal request, please take a break from using the term ‘logical fallacy’. You’ve used it 7 times on this page alone and it doesn’t help your argument - if you want to convince someone of your point of view, you have to show them why their logic is false, not just tell them it is.

That’s exactly the point though - a Guardsman might be well balanced and worth 4 points within the context of a Pure Guard army. In the context of a Grey Knights army though, that Guardsman might be doing 6 points’ worth of work. So what cost do we give him? 4 points, so he’s crazy OP in Soup armies but balanced in Pure Guard armies? 6 points, so he’s balanced in Soup armies but overcosted in Pure ones? 5 points, so he’s OP in Soup and overcosted in Pure? Do we delve into the dizzying world of having two points costs for one model for Pure and Soup? Or do we just do as I’m suggesting, balance him for a Pure army, then depower his rules slightly when he’s being Souped?

Again, this is an either/or logical fallacy that assumes the ability to prove a negative.

This assumes that Space Marines and Custodes standalone codex armies are equivalent to single codex armies. Custodes haven't been around long enough to really have much data on this. Space Marines standalone, well, if you went by the .001% of the community represented on these boards, the consensus is they don't. Regardless, it's not a valid logical argument

Where's xeno when I need him? I'm sure he has the long catalog of reasons why Space Marines don't work as a standalone army, it's his pet project, along with cosplaying as Chicken Little..

Notice how I keep changing which army I’m using as an example - it’s because the specifics of the armies involved aren’t relevant. I’ll rephrase the point: Faction A has great tanks point-for-point but poor infantry, while Faction B has poor tanks but great infantry. A battle between a balanced army from each Faction leads to a good, balanced game where each player has to play to the strengths of their Faction and mitigate their natural weakness. How could either Faction A or Faction B hope to compete with Faction C, who can cherry-pick tanks from A and infantry from B?

This is again an either/or logical fallacy. You can absolutely have units that are balanced within a soup paradigm and a single codex paradigm.

This is what I’m saying - you can’t just tell me it’s a fallacy because you disagree and expect to convince anyone, least of all me. I have tried to show above an example of why a unit can’t be balanced both in a Pure context and a Soup once simultaneously if you are going to have armies with native strengths and weaknesses.

Imperium key word needs to be replaced with an imperium key word and a marine key word.

DA, BA, wolves, vanillas SM = marines

IG, AdMech, sisters = Imperium

GK, assassins, custodes, inquisition, knights both.

Seems like it would make it a little easier to balance. SM should play like SM (kick@$$ guys in power armor), imperium should play like imperium (lots of dudes and some big guns) and the others are proper soup elements like they should be.

Sucks if you went out and bought a bunch of IG to support your marines but the other option basically assumes all marine players will add some cheap IG chaff.

Being able to cherry pick the units I want theoretically has made imperium powerful so it seems like GW has compensated by making the other factions just more powerful. Hopefully by removing so much soup GW can focus on making marines play like marines and not this soupy mess (just ally guards to solve any and all problems...)

With spam and the detachment system it has just lead to power imbalances that can't be solved no matter how many options I have (since they all are worse than a handful of options available to xeno armies).

Chaos soup is a little different. That needs to be dealt with by not allowing cross god factions. Mono god/mark armies, feel free to combine codexes.

At least my 2c

Hmmm... What if you only get the Free 3 CPs for Battleforged in pure Armies? Its not crippling, but would change list building ideas right away. I'm used to running 7-9 CPs, but maxing out on 4? ouch.

Soup wouldn't be as much a problem if every faction was able to soup equally:

SM+IG+misc
Chaos+demons+IG
Eldar+DarkEldar+?
Orks+?+?
Tau+?+Kroot
Tyranids+GSC+IG

As it stands, Xenos get no benefits.

That said, my favorite idea I've seen presented is that each army gets an equal amount of CP to start, and additional detachments reduce CP, instead of adding it - it would cut down on soup quite a bit; that said, you're only really losing a re-roll+misc strategems... still, would be a good start.

Soup is a problem; but it's here to stay - units can either be balanced for an entire soup, or one codex. The funny part is that it doesn't really matter - GW couldn't balance one codex, let along multiple, even at the same time, so... shrug.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Sleep Spell wrote:
I guess rules wise the biggest problem with soup is that you either balance units to their individual codex or in regards to soup. As soup at its most competitive is just picking the strongest pieces from component and playing an army of those.

This is an either/or logical fallacy, it is also not true. Soup codices can be balanced according to their function within the soup paradigm, at the same time individual codices can be internally balanced to be competitive versus soup lists.

I tend to disagree, even if we disregard that there always have been and will be units that perform better than others for the same cost, there is a distinct advantage in having access to a wider variety of profiles or army passives to get the same job done. What I mean is that even if everything was balanced perfectly the ability to tailor your forces to a task just isn't the same. Guard can't deepstrike in a punchy character/squad with reliable charge to take care of units that are resilient to shooting, GK have a hard time creating a horde to tarpit an enemy etc.

Taking this into account along with the fact that the units are not perfectly balanced and there is a very real advantage in being able to pick top performers from different codices means some drawback to even the playing field would be nice. As others have suggested a CP reduction could make for a good starting point; siphoning some of the soup's power without reducing the number of flavor of the units people are already playing. Want different armies to work together? Well it might take a bit more administration and tax your chain of command so pulling the usual combat tricks becomes more difficult.

Actually the more I think about it the more I like what fe40k mentioned. Reducing CP for each battalion or allied force brought into the fight from a total and encouraging people to fill out/play full strength detachments instead of minimums. Of course there would have to be some major and minor reworks and the nerf to Tau Commanders (and maybe Demon Princes?) would become pretty harsh, but in general I think it's an interesting concept.

fe40k wrote:
Soup wouldn't be as much a problem if every faction was able to soup equally:

And that's impossible: imperium soups can pick up units form 10ish different books, chaos from 4 at least. Adding allies to those factions that currently lack that option means allowing them to pick units from 2 books.

Again, soups wouldn't be a problem at all if mono-codex armies were more optimized competitively speaking.

I think soups should be exceptions, not the normal. I'd hate a 40k meta in where the majority (if not all) of the lists are soups.

It boils down to the fact that soup make sense if you were building a fluffy Army. But the flexibility of the rules also allows you to just cherry pick the best units out of everything when you are able to. That is what is broken, but there is no real way to limit cherry picking without taking a sledgehammer to soup itself. It is absolutely bad game design to give factions distinct strengths and weaknesses, and then turn around and ignore those weaknesses by simply picking units from a different, Allied faction that removes them.

bananathug wrote:
DA, BA, wolves, vanillas SM = marines

Like Adeptus Astartes? Or Heretic Astartes?

bananathug wrote:
Chaos soup is a little different. That needs to be dealt with by not allowing cross god factions. Mono god/mark armies, feel free to combine codexes.

Cool, we'll tell the Black Legion, Word Bearers players to go ride the pine, see you when we see you.