Marmatag wrote:
What GW needs is a list building app designed for use in tournaments. If they were truly on the ball, they'd integrate with BCP, and work out an agreement to track aggregated data.

They could have the level of access to tournament data that's being discussed here.

I don't think they'll do anything like that though, because they are very much a "my IP! No touch!" company.

As it stands their balance team is wonky AF. They played in what was it, Adepticon? Their Tyranids rules writers got matched up with the guys running flyrant spam. The Tyranid rules writers got their rules wrong in the game, the players corrected them, and then smashed them with Flyrants. Guess what happened? The BIG FAQ was delayed a week, and the change that came out of it was the Flyrant nerf.

This is how they balance. No idea how people play, show up to a tournament, get rocked, nerf.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

If it's easier to just play the soup - and everyone is already playing that soup - that is what most people are going to do. This is common sense. There is also 0 restriction on taking soup. It doesn't hurt you in anyway to do it. It's not that "no one feels like" playing mono IG. It's more like people will pay less money to get the same power level almost every time. People will take 1 box of models to a game if they can over 2 boxes if it doesn't hurt their chances of winning.

I don't like allies ether. I wish mono was the only way to play tournaments.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Oh that I get, the issue is the players that already had full guard armies and didnt need to go buy anything and can play mono IG lists dont appear to consistently be placing anywhere near on par with the soup lists.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Soup is a problem, and Guard are suffering from a symptom of it.

I wouldn't call being IG suffering.

Acknowledge they're a tall cut above most and enjoy it.

The army might be in a fairly good place, but that doesn't mean that they will continue to be as time wears on.

We've already seen Commissars cut off at the knees. We've seen Conscripts change fairly significantly whether you want to admit it or not, Orders being automatic and then getting a requirement for a 4+ on just that unit is a significant change as is their reduction in unit size.
We also saw the, entirely justifiable mind you, shift to having BS specific points costs in response to Scion spam.

Guard are "suffering" from an overrepresentation and overfocus on one specific unit(their core fricking Infantry Squad) by outsiders who only look at the points values and see them getting souped in.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

w1zard wrote:
For the last time... Stop comparing guard to SM. SM need buffs, period end of story. It's not fair to compare guard units to units from the second weakest codex this edition (and only second weakest because of the joke that is GK).

Stux wrote:
Bare bones, the SM Captain does an average of 2.16 wounds to the Company Commanders, or 16pts of damage.

In return, 2 Company Commanders do 0.59 wounds, or 9pts of damage.

This doesn't account for the Company Commanders ordering themselves though, as there's nothing that directly helps the Fight Phase. However in the second turn they could Fix Bayonets themselves and Fight twice, which puts their damage output above the Captain in terms of points worth of damage.

Your math is incorrect.

You are correct when you say that a space marine captain armed with a bolt pistol/chainsword does 2.16 wounds to the commanders.

You are also correct when you say that 2 company commanders do 0.59 wounds to the SM captain.

However the SM captain does 16.2 "points" worth of damage to the commanders and the commanders do 8.73 "points" of damage back. I am going to assume you rounded in your favor to make the numbers look better.

You are also incorrect when you say that "Fix Bayonets" makes the commanders fight better than the SM captain. According to my math, even with "Fix Bayonets" active the commanders are only doing 15.39 "points" of damage to the captain.

Even in a scenario where we are comparing guard commanders to SM captains (which we shouldn't because SM sucks right now) the SM captain still comes out on top. I still stand by my statement that Guard commanders are nothing more than orders on a stick and are only meant to act as mobile buffs for infantry... while characters like SM captains are meant to be counter-chargers in the thick of the fighting as well as act as mobile buff bubbles.

I can see company commanders going up to 35 points if you want to be a stickler about it. But they really aren't worth 40.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

DUDE........ do you understand examples? who said it has to be done in a week? why cant they do it over 3 months? why cant they have a monthly get together and have the few members play test outside of the HQ? why cant they do video conference games? why cant they use PC programs? blah blah blah, you dont need to be at face, you dont actually need the correct models, and you can model CP's for smaller games if needs be..

Why do you even care to argue about this? I gave an example (that you took literally, b.c you cant use your imagination to work out how it can actually be done). take it for what it was, an example so you can have an idea that it could be done.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. The contrast is just disheartening. It took Blizzard a few weeks in beta to see that 2 armor roaches were too good. GW had doubled down on tacs being gak for decades.

I mean, as I showed you before, to play 1000 games, it can take literally a decade, playing two games a week. So I'm sorry you're disheartened, but no real tabletop game is going to be able to rebalance as fast as a video-game, without using tournaments as data points. To do that, then, everyone needs to play the same games as the tournaments are playing, or they need to recognize that when they don't they're introducing imbalance into the game.

GW's greatest flaw is forcing every major tournament to use their rules, instead only releasing a rules packet for their own tournament. And I'd argue this is a difficult flaw to overcome, as a TO should be able to run their event as they see fit, rather than allowing GW to govern their every action.

Therefore, I can conclude that 40k will never be balanced in a reasonable time frame, and expecting it to be so is just going to get you disappointed.

Cool 2 guys playing 1000 games just twice per week is real playtesting.... or get a team of 100 highly favor members of the community at local GW headquarters for a week to play 20 games each and try to test everything possible while bouncing ideas off each other to get many different view points, and about 2000 games tested. All only costing GW no more than 50k, thats nothing for research that could potential double sales.

20 3 hour games in a week is literally playing for 60 hours a week, for 100 people. So they're playing 12 hours a day, with zero breaks for food or rest, and you expect the playtest results to be flawless and without error?

Who says you play 2k points? play a good amount at 1k, its just to test game mechanics, and to make sure some units are not insanely broken, do 4 games at 1k for the 1st 3-4 days then do a couple days with 2-3 games at 2k. You dont need to get to 2k games, it was an example.. or do you not understand examples? You can easily do 1k games played without trying with 1k games mixed in and a hand full of people.

I think you missed the point tho, the point is, we can test large amounts of games.

The efficacy of a unit (and a codex) is affected by what point level it is played at. For example, mono-Imperial Knights armies will have 3 CP at 1k games since you can't run 3 Knights in a detachment.

And yes, we can test large amounts of games - by forcing 100 people to play for 60 hours a week with no breaks...

I think you don't get the staggering logistics here.

DUDE........ do you understand examples? who said it has to be done in a week? why cant they do it over 3 months? why cant they have a monthly get together and have the few members play test outside of the HQ? why cant they do video conference games? why cant they use PC programs? blah blah blah, you dont need to be at face, you dont actually need the correct models, and you can model CP's for smaller games if needs be..

Why do you even care to argue about this? I gave an example (that you took literally, b.c you cant use your imagination to work out how it can actually be done). take it for what it was, an example so you can have an idea that it could be done.

Let me go point by point:
1) If it isn't done in a week, then the gamestate will have changed in 3 months, with new codexes being released, for example. 40k is never "finished".
2) Because this would take ages to get the 1000 games Martel wants to have the game count as "playtested". If you have 16 people meeting once a month, you will have played 1000 playtest games after a DECADE of testing.
3) What is a "video conference game"? How does that even work? You mean can random people stream casual games to them? Sure, probably. But they'd have to be able to step in and tell the casual players how to play the game the correct way, to ensure consistency.
4) If you can build a computer program that properly models every single possible interaction in the entire gamespace in which 40k exists at quicker than real-time, then you probably deserve a Nobel Prize for advancing the state of the art in computing.

And you absolutely need to be at face so the rules writers can record the data they need to balance the game, as well as ensure the games are always played to the same exacting standards. You also need the correct models, because a real, effective playtest will test things like the Line-of-Sight rules. I don't know what you mean by modeling CPs...

At any rate, you gave me an example, and I blew it up precisely because it was a silly example. It didn't solve Martel's fundamental problem with playtesting the game at all.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Just from playing a lot of online competitive games - I know for a fact that "metas" are mostly in the mind. You will have regional metas. Skill based metas. Sometimes metas shift for no reason. Right now the mind of IG players is that they need to play soup to win. It's just what people are playing. People are sheep basically. There is also the monetary cost. it's cheaper to buy 3 sheild captains for 60 bucks that buying 3 manitcores and 3 basalisks - it's also a lot easier to transport. There are a lot of reasons we don't see as many mono guard lists.

Unless we're going to make the argument that monoguard armies are particularly underrepresented relative to any other monofactionlist, monoIG lists should still be appearing in events and placing very often if they are that strong, but they dont appear to be. That cant just be shrugged off as "eh nobody anywhere feels like playing monoIG, they all went out and bought Celestine just because she looked cool".

Soup/allies/etc has been a major balance issue since GW reintroduced it in 2012, and ive had problems with it since they did that with 6E.

If it's easier to just play the soup - and everyone is already playing that soup - that is what most people are going to do. This is common sense. There is also 0 restriction on taking soup. It doesn't hurt you in anyway to do it. It's not that "no one feels like" playing mono IG. It's more like people will pay less money to get the same power level almost every time. People will take 1 box of models to a game if they can over 2 boxes if it doesn't hurt their chances of winning.

Oh that I get, the issue is the players that already had full guard armies and didnt need to go buy anything and can play mono IG lists dont appear to consistently be placing anywhere near on par with the soup lists.

I don't like allies ether. I wish mono was the only way to play tournaments.

I'm with ya there, I would love to go back to that and would play such a tournament in a heartbeat. Thats still how I build all my armies, I'm loathe to even mix subfactions generally

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

However Mono Knights, Mono Blood Angles and Mono Custodes arn't making the top 20/25 of the BAO like Astra Militarum. Remove that CP and their power drops a lot.
Guard don't see remotely the same drop in power when you swap Shield captains and knights for guard units.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ice, you're saying the CP battery is an issue. To which I agree 100%, and I think most Guard players do too.

But that's not a Guard issue-Guard with unlimited CP are stronger than Guard with limited CP by a decent, but not overwhelming margin. It's others that need the CP that's real bad.

However Mono Knights, Mono Blood Angles and Mono Custodes arn't making the top 20/25 of the BAO like Astra Militarum. Remove that CP and their power drops a lot.
Guard don't see remotely the same drop in power when you swap Shield captains and knights for guard units.

That's fair. But, with the exception of Blood Angels, the three non-Guard armies you listed are DESIGNED to be allied into other forces.

Blood Angels, on their own, have issues similar to all Space Marines, though they have some standouts that rock in soup.

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they? So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they?

So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
No, but the Custodes have Wargear and Relics specifically designed to be used in Imperium soup. (In fact, the Vexila Defensor gives a 5++, which all Custodes already have. But since it applies to all Imperium models, it's actually not bad, in soup.)

IK have at least one Strat specifically designed to be used with soup as well. I'm AFB at the moment, but it's basically have a Knight stand still to give a 5++ to nearby allied units.

Now, knowing GW, they probably expected you to be running Custodes with Marines or Knights with Ad Mech, and not just pop on a Guard Battery for the insane CP regen. But GW is not known for making the rules work well.

Ok it's so bad I moved it to the unusable strategums pile (my bad) But on that note admech already have a 6++ that can be boosted with a +1Sv for 1CP anyway dont they?

Rotate Ion Shields is Questor Mechanicus and only applies to things from Questor Mechanicus that have an Invulnerable Save. That unit gets to add 1 to their Invulnerable Save until the end of the enemy shooting phase.

So maybe its just GW'S rules team not having a clue. But give up moving and spend 2 CP for a 5++ weak sauce.

I mean, 2 CP for a 5++ aura on something that can't normally get it when you're a unit that isn't going to move anyways?
That doesn't sound too shabby to me.

But this is where these kinds of issues lie...you see something you've "moved to the unusable stratagems pile" while someone else might see a cool, fluffy way to get some extra utility out of a big allied piece.

Ice_can wrote:
Spending CP to give stuff with a 5++ or better a 5++ is useless. Not to mention my Marines can already do this while moving and without spending CP.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yep. I can fairly trivially give a Baneblade a 5++ thanks to the Knight, and make it a 4++ with psychic powers to boot.

Heck, in a big enough game, I could do it to 3 Baneblades.

That's why it's two CP.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yep. I can fairly trivially give a Baneblade a 5++ thanks to the Knight, and make it a 4++ with psychic powers to boot.

Heck, in a big enough game, I could do it to 3 Baneblades.

That's why it's two CP.

fe40k wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
What GW needs is a list building app designed for use in tournaments. If they were truly on the ball, they'd integrate with BCP, and work out an agreement to track aggregated data.

They could have the level of access to tournament data that's being discussed here.

I don't think they'll do anything like that though, because they are very much a "my IP! No touch!" company.

As it stands their balance team is wonky AF. They played in what was it, Adepticon? Their Tyranids rules writers got matched up with the guys running flyrant spam. The Tyranid rules writers got their rules wrong in the game, the players corrected them, and then smashed them with Flyrants. Guess what happened? The BIG FAQ was delayed a week, and the change that came out of it was the Flyrant nerf.

This is how they balance. No idea how people play, show up to a tournament, get rocked, nerf.

Can you point me to what rules they got wrong, or a discussion there-of?

The sad part is - I'm not even surprised that this occured.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ultimately, the armies are designed and balancd around certain concepts and specializations and lack of accesd to certain abilities, and very few abilities that intentionally interact with other factions.

Citation needed

If you dont see the apparent self evidentness of this, nothing I say is going to change that. The armies of 8E are largely the same as the armies of previous editons going back to before allies and soup. Their strengths and weaknesses and availability of certain capabilities forms their archetypes and playstyles didnt change, and the extremely limited and mostly afterthought/bolt-on nature of cross factional abilities testifies to the fact that they are largely designed as self containted forces. The release schedule, product presentation, packaging, product line releases, etc typically are self contained with very few exceptions.

The fact that allies and soup is also wildly variable in terms of what factions can meaningfully take advantage of it also speaks heavily to the fact that deep integration of cross faction armies isnt taken into particularly deep account.

The actual cross factional integration is suuuuuuper afterthought-ey. It's pretty much all in the detachment rules, with a very small handful of actual cross-factional interaction at the codex level.

BATTLE BROTHERS The beta version of Battle Brothers is a brand new matched play rule we’d like to test. When we originally wrote this edition of Warhammer 40,000 we wanted to make sure that your army could include appropriate allies. For example, in an Imperium army, Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines should be able to fight side-by-side, and in a Chaos army Chaos Space Marines should be able to burn the galaxy alongside their daemonic minions. The rules for what units could be included in each Detachment were therefore very relaxed, but this has since led to some very ‘mixed’ Detachments that include units from far more Factions than we originally envisioned. We feel that these esoteric mixed Detachments are far better suited to narrative or open play, and so we have decided to trial this rule for matched play games. This means that you can still include appropriate allies, but now they might need to be included in a different Detachment.

 gbghg wrote:
So Field of Fire gaming just put out a blog post about the best armies at BAO, listing them via the average score. Of note to this discussion is the fact that Guard came in below the average score, behind Tau, Eldar, and Tyranid's. make of it what you will but it's a solidly mid tier result. https://fieldoffiregaming.com/best-armies-of-bao-2018/