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 Crimson wrote:
No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.

If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.

Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.

Tyel wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.

If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.

Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.

Everything is not the same. For example a Nurgle unit may be above average defence whilst for example having below average offence and/or movement. But you absolutely should always pay the fair price for the abilities.

 Crimson wrote:

Tyel wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.

If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.

Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.

Everything is not the same. For example a Nurgle unit may be above average defence whilst for example having below average offence and/or movement. But you absolutely should always pay the fair price for the abilities.

I think this kind of shows the issue. Increase in unit toughness + increase in unit cost generally translates to the same unit toughness for points efficiency. It doesn't disprove Tyel's point.

It is possible for a Nurgle unit to have good defence for its points, but if it has that, the unit must have other attributes which are bad for their points.

As a simplified example, if a Nurgle Marine costs the same as a Khorne Marine, and both offence and defence are equally valuable, Nurgle Marine could have 'it's point budget' spent 70% defence and 30% offence whilst the Khorne marine has those other way around.

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 Crimson wrote:
It is possible for a Nurgle unit to have good defence for its points, but if it has that, the unit must have other attributes which are bad for their points.

As a simplified example, if a Nurgle Marine costs the same as a Khorne Marine, and both offence and defence are equally valuable, Nurgle Marine could have 'it's point budget' spent 70% defence and 30% offence whilst the Khorne marine has those other way around.

.

As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Having a crazy amount of BALANCED UNITS to choose from, is going to be an advantage over someone who has 10% as many equally powerful units, as was your original hypothetical. NOBODY is saying that it's op to have 2 good units and a bunch of garbage in your dex. You've completely moved the goalposts to something else. The entire SM line has never once ever been balanced. Why are you pretending you don't understand what the discussion is here? You are the one who set the goals up yourself, this post here is what this quote chain leads back to:

 Crimson wrote:
If it is possible to balance all those marine units and marines don't need to be banned from matched play, then it is possible to balance the eldar soup as well.

The question is answered, are you capable of backing down from a point thats been proven fallacious or will you give zero ground on anything ever?

That's my fething point. The exact same situation you complain about soup (some factions having way more options than others and the amount of options makes balancing difficult) already exists even without the soup!

What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact. As it currently stands however, it's not an issue, SM has feth all good units and the largest roster of junk.

You need to pick 1 and stick to it:

a.) this a hypothetical situation where every SM unit is at the same power level as each other and the rest of the game. In which case, yes this would be imbalanced, which is exactly my point.

b.) this is a question concerning the current and past power levels of the dex in reality, in which case the answer to your question is that they have never BEEN all balanced at a codex wide level, nor have the units from every other dex that they fought against, and as a result, an advantage purely from having triple as many playable and equally strong units as other armies has never occurred.


You're the one saying "every dex would be balanced and soup would not ruin that if every unit is equally balanced", which is just a no. Codex Sisters will inevitably be stronger when you let them take anything they might need to cover their gaps from codex Guard, Knights, PA dexes, whatever. There's no way around that.

I still think that soup can be nerfed to make it more like two or three independent forces working together instead of an ultra mix of the best of each house.

Darsath wrote:

As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.

Dark Eldar do not have access to psychic support due their fluff, not for balance reasons. Harlequins used to be in DE codex in past editions, and they have psykers. If both Psykers and DE units are properly costed, and there is proper limitations on which psychic powers can affect allied units, there is no problem. DE shooting at least is criminally undercosted though, and it is an issue even in mono environment; being boosted by allied psykers mere accentuates the issue.

And again, units cost points. Sure, if Nurgle lacks mobility, you can use some of your points for mobile units from another faction. But now you have spend less points on your tough units, diluting your army's toughness. If units are properly costed this trade off should balance things. If it doesn't then that is a sign of miscosted units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:


What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact.

I already saifd this is madness:
"Now if you suggest that armies with access to more units need to have worse units to counter that 'advantage' then that is just pure madness. Do we increase the point cost of tactical marine every time a FW releases a new Space Marine flyer?"




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
I still think that soup can be nerfed to make it more like two or three independent forces working together instead of an ultra mix of the best of each house.

Yes, this is fair. Compared to the previous editions where marine characters could join conscript blobs and deflect all incoming fire with their relic stormshield whilst providing numerous buffs to the unit, the eight edition is way toned down. Most of your powers and abilities only affect the units of the same subfaction. But it is certainly possible that there are still some cross-faction synergies that are too strong. Separating the CP pools is a common suggestion, though it is kinda kludgy. Also, it would probably require changing again how detachments provide CP, as otherwise anything less than battalion would be pretty much worthless, and that' would be shame.

I think a mix of "Each subfaction can only use his own CP+the 3 generic ones" + "Vanguard, Spearhead and the other I never remember detachments now give +2CP instead of +1" would be enough to fix the CP problems of Soup.

Then you add another "You can take relics only of your warlords faction" and that psychic powers only benefit the subfaction of the psyker that is casting them even if they affect an enemy unit (Like Doom or some of the Space Marines ones), and from there I can see Soup becoming less of an obvious choice.

"As an example, take the Eldar + Dark Eldar alliance. Dark Eldar don't have access to Psychic support by design, and instead have powerful mobility and strong shooting. However, Eldar have strong Psychers and Specialists at the cost of any powerful generalist units. Dark Eldar having access to Psychers makes the army stronger than not having access to them. Similarly, a Nurgle army having tough units but low mobility can shore up that weakness by including some slaanesh demons in the list. Just an example, but it showcases how access to different options increases the power than certain armies can play to.

 Galas wrote:
I think a mix of "Each subfaction can only use his own CP+the 3 generic ones" + "Vanguard, Spearhead and the other I never remember detachments now give +2CP instead of +1" would be enough to fix the CP problems of Soup.

Then you add another "You can take relics only of your warlords faction" and that psychic powers only benefit the subfaction of the psyker that is casting them even if they affect an enemy unit (Like Doom or some of the Space Marines ones), and from there I can see Soup becoming less of an obvious choice.

Might be OK, if a tad unwieldy. Patrol would need to grant some CP too.Though the relic limitation is completely unnecessary, you already need to pay CPs for relics other than the warlord's faction, and if the CPs are way more restricted in this way, then doing so is actually kinda big deal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darsath wrote:
This ignores the primary point that I made of choice. These armies have the option to opt into mobility against certain matchups where mobility is a strong factor, while other's without soup do not have these options. Again, just an example, but it proves my point clearly enough. How does your proposal deal with this. As to showcase times when mobility would be a deciding factor, take short-range shooty armies. Say a Dark Angels force, with plasma guns, bolters/Stormbolters, flamers etc. Having the mobility to keep at a distance against these kind of weapons would be a strong factor. Or again, Wraithguard. Their weapons are also short ranged.

This is normal rock-paper-scissors thing that happen in this game, and it is fine if you don't list tailor. Perhaps the more mobile army is better against certain foes while tougher army is better against other foes. And assuming you don't know beforehand which foe you're facing that's fair.

 Crimson wrote:

Darsath wrote:

What? That was never my point at all. Without soup, SM can be balanced as an army, even with more tools then everyone, by balancing FOR that fact.

I already saifd this is madness:
"Now if you suggest that armies with access to more units need to have worse units to counter that 'advantage' then that is just pure madness. Do we increase the point cost of tactical marine every time a FW releases a new Space Marine flyer?"

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

I don't like list tailoring either. But this does showcase that some armies can have more favourable matchups than others. Assuming that list tailoring does not happen unfortunately doesn't dismiss the issue. Especially at higher ends like tournaments, where you can prepare your list against the most popular or successful lists out there, or that have performed well at past events. Some factions simply can't adapt to this, while others can. More options is more power.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darsath wrote:

I don't like list tailoring either. But this does showcase that some armies can have more favourable matchups than others. Assuming that list tailoring does not happen unfortunately doesn't dismiss the issue. Especially at higher ends like tournaments, where you can prepare your list against the most popular or successful lists out there, or that have performed well at past events. Some factions simply can't adapt to this, while others can. More options is more power.

OK. This actually makes sense. I fully agree that a larger selection of units allow to build larger selection of viable combinations, effective against larger selection of foes. However, if the units are properly balance, you still can still only build one such combination at once. I really don't see this is an issue. For any one given game you only choose certain units from your collection. It really doesn't matter if your original pool was 'Imperium,' 'Craftworlds' or the more likely pool of 'the models I happen to have painted and laying around at the moment.' I mean if Space Marines would not suck, and it would be possible to make a fully effective assault marine based force or an effective tank and devastator gunline, why does it matter that both of those builds are from the same faction? They're composed mostly of different models anyway. How is that any different than one player having both Khorne and Tau armies and using Khorne against opponents who are vulnerable to melee and Tau against opponents who are vulnerable to shooting?

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.

What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.

The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.

Shuppet has a point. It's a small point though.

We need to get away from a tac marine being 13 compared to a guardsmen at 4 points first. No amount of "strength of options" nonsense is going to present its self with glaring power gaps like this one or hundreds of others that exist in this game.

Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently. I assure you - if units are properly costed most the problems in this game disappear. You'd actaully see diversity in tournament play.

 Xenomancers wrote:


Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.

Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.

What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.

How then you're suggesting balancing factions with larger selection of units with armies of smaller selection of units? Please explain what you actually mean.

The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.

If those other units are not undercosted, it can be balanced. You actually don't get those allied units for free, you know, you pay points for them.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.

What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.

The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.

Pretty sure Crimson is suggesting that "cheap CP rewards" aren't properly costed. Plus Sisters plus other units - which don't synergize with their core choices rules - (faith points and what not) will not offer any real power advantage. The power advantage of souping in units has been gone over. It is mostly grabbing undercosted units to do things your overcosted similar choices in your codex already do. Soup for unintended interaction should be removed obviously - doom should not work with DE units...after those issues are fixed - the advantage of soup is gone. It would more or less be balanced by the list designer. If you can make a better list with soup than you can with deliberate design synergies within your mono dex - then you just deserve to win. Nothing wrong with that.

The biggest issue the game currently has is likely the connection between Command Points and detachments. Even without this, I'm confident that Guardsmen are undercosted at 4 points per model, but this CP issue is certainly the biggest balance issue. I think the issue we're discussing atm is like the 3rd biggest balance issue. It's entirely possible that the command point issue is biggest contributor to the over-prevalence of allied forces in the top tables of events.

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:


Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.

Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.

Absolutely agree soup should be nerfed.
CP system needs to be reworked to be fair to all types of armies. (You've all seen my suggested system - it encourages mono army by docing commpand points for allied detachments)
unintended interactions like Doom with DE/ harliquens need to be removed.
Improper pointed units need to be fixed.

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.

What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.

How then you're suggesting balancing factions with larger selection of units with armies of smaller selection of units? Please explain what you actually mean.

There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc, to power them up in other ways. SM's strength should be in it's versatility in units that was always the design philosophy. But that is a real strength, and you have to recognise that. Just because you can't take them all at once doesn't mean it offsets the fact that you will likely have a perfect tool in kit for every role you need in your army, where other armies will have holes and weak matches as a result. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.


Regardless I'm unsure how your argument is currently trying to prove what you claim at all. Even if it wasn't perfect, why would we default to a completely unbalanced game instead of something much better? :S it doesn't make sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:


Changes to the game do not need to be prefect. They just need to lead to better game play than we have currently.

Agreed with this part. If we could get enough units from each army in a good enough shape that each dex could all compete with each other on a similar level, that would be great. However for that to work, soup has to be nerfed, or else it's free picks from all the strong stuff from each faction and those balanced mono dexes are all back to being underpowered. It's as simple as that.

Absolutely agree soup should be nerfed.
CP system needs to be reworked to be fair to all types of armies. (You've all seen my suggested system - it encourages mono army by docing commpand points for allied detachments)
unintended interactions like Doom with DE/ harliquens need to be removed.
Improper pointed units need to be fixed.

We agree on that. Crimson is arguing soup needs to remain unchanged, and that it doesn't create imbalances. Which is absurdity. I understand the argument that someone may prefer to be able to run multiple armies, or that it's better for GW sales and thus boosts the community, or whatever. But to say it doesn't create an imbalance is just rejection of reality.

Tyel wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
No, this is just bad design. Every unit needs to pay for its actual effectiveness. Some units should not get discount because some other units in the codex are overpriced.

If everything has the same "efficiency at shooting"/"efficiency at assault"/"psychic power"/"toughness"/"board control" etc for the points, then everything is the same.

Part of Nurgles thing is that they are tough. If they are however mathematically only as tough as every other unit in the game per point invested they are not tough.

Disagree. They are tougher on a per model basis, but should pay for that toughness. Giving armies free properties based of the fluff is untenable, especially for gw. Nurgle should not be tougher on an army level. That's cheating, because they are getting unpaid for benefit.

Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would.
This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Yeah, you said it, but that strawman argument doesn't actually disprove any of the overwhelming logic you've been hit with as to why YOUR perspective doesn't work.

You haven't displayed any logic. Your idea that you should intentionally write badly balanced units because of some other units they happen to share a faction with is just bonkers. It is terrible game design.

What? I didn't say that at all. This is just you building a strawman.

The flipside of the coin, thinking solo Sisters can ever be as powerful as solo Sisters + any choice of any unit from 10 other factions, with cheap CP rewards for doing so? THAT'S bonkers.

Pretty sure Crimson is suggesting that "cheap CP rewards" aren't properly costed. Plus Sisters plus other units - which don't synergize with their core choices rules - (faith points and what not) will not offer any real power advantage. The power advantage of souping in units has been gone over. It is mostly grabbing undercosted units to do things your overcosted similar choices in your codex already do. Soup for unintended interaction should be removed obviously - doom should not work with DE units...after those issues are fixed - the advantage of soup is gone. It would more or less be balanced by the list designer. If you can make a better list with soup than you can with deliberate design synergies within your mono dex - then you just deserve to win. Nothing wrong with that.

The issue the above is with the way GW has traditionally written codex's. Some are designed to favour certain play styles or units.
Hence units that play to that design flavour will either have inbuilt imbalance or will have faction special rules that make them better than another factions unit at that job.

So it will always be better to take differences between codex's and exploit them when building a tournament list to make sure each portion of your army has the most favourable faction rules or such.

Take spacemarines for example

I probably want any long range shooting to be Raven guard for that -1 to hit. But I Don't want that for anything that is going to be getting close you want ultramarine for ground troops and something else for flying units as they already have fly(they gain nothing from fly-1).

As the special rules arn't costed their will always be ways to combine diffrent sub section of your army into detachments that give better bonuses to that section of your army over having a single faction for your entire list. Their isn't anyway you can balance that with points with turning 40k into mirrior codex's.
Simply put soup must have a downside to counteract this ability to optimise. The obvious way to dow that is via CP. But this whole soup is never an issue isn't true.
Undercosted units are a problem
Overcosted units are a problem
Unintended crossover interactions are a problem
Simbly being able to optimise your specialist without a downside is a problem

Soup is irrelevant as long as guardsmen are miscosted.

 SHUPPET wrote:

There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.

Right. So if a player playing the first army in tour example (one with large potential selection of units) builds a force consisting of glass cannons and speedy units, because that fits their theme and those are the models they want to use, they should be at disadvantage against the player who is playing the second army in your example? The first player should be punished because they could have taken some other units instead?

Yeah, I think I trust my understanding of game design over yours...

Regardless I'm unsure how your argument is currently trying to prove what you claim at all. Even if it wasn't perfect, why would we default to a completely unbalanced game instead of something much better? :S it doesn't make sense.

Game is not completely unbalanced, and you misidentify what is causing the balance issues.

We agree on that. Crimson is arguing soup needs to remain unchanged, and that it doesn't create imbalances. Which is absurdity. I understand the argument that someone may prefer to be able to run multiple armies, or that it's better for GW sales and thus boosts the community, or whatever. But to say it doesn't create an imbalance is just rejection of reality.

Soup doesn't create the balance issues in the way you think it does. You're misdiagnosing the problem thus your solutions will be faulty too. I think Galas had way better grasp of the actual problem areas and had solutions designed to specifically address those.

Salt donkey wrote:
To give my last points of the thread I will Summarize what I’ve seen and why I remain unconvinced by the anti soup crowd
1) While souping will often be the best option for the list, it also carries opportunity costs that make it much less powerful than the anti-soupers claim. Factors such as the 3 detachment limit, wreaking in-book synergy, and the watering down of an armies strengths in order to cover its weaknesses are all costs of soup. This means that soup isn’t nearly as powerful as the anti-soup crowd makes it out to be. Because soup is less powerful then what they claim, the problems that it causes are also exgerrated. There is plenty of evidence to support this as tau frequently do well in big tournaments and single faction armies have been able to quite well in the past (such as pure dark eldar winning capital city blood bath.

You are seriously overstating the downside to taking Soup. The opportunity costs are almost nonexistent. It's possible, for instance, to take the loyal 32 in a Space Marine list for about the price of one unit. Not only is that opportunity cost minuscule, but the Loyal 32 grants 3 units that can do board control and take objectives, freeing up far more than their points cost in SM units from those tasks to do other things. So, if anything, that the reverse of an opportunity cost, it is an opportunity bonus. A BA Smash-Captain is about 130pts - less than the cost of a Leman Russ. One can get 3 of them for about the cost of 2 Russes, but each can kill a Knight Helverin in one turn, or two can take out one of the bigger Knights, in both cases for less points than the target they are smashing. They're also considerably faster and easier to hide than Russes, and the cost of three Smash Captains barely impacts the force an IG list can bring to the field. So your opportunity cost argument is facetious.

Salt donkey wrote:
2)The anti-soup crowd also has /tendency to misattribute other problems in game to soup. Does anyone honestly expect factions like necrons to be much better off against pure craftworld eldar than they are against eldar soup? Will codex space marines suddenly become the bees news if imperium soup disappeared? Which brings me to my next point.

No one is claiming that Soup is the only problem with 40K, only that is the biggest, most obvious one, and the one with some of the most obvious and easily implemented solutions. Re-pointing every unit in the system would be quite a bit of work. Toning down Soup could be easily accomplished in Chapter Approved or with one of the bi-annual FAQs.

Salt donkey wrote:
3) What happens after soup gets changed? Thoughout my life I’ve found that people have a very easy time picking apart flaws of the current system, but tend to faulter when building a better one (see communism ). That appears to be no different here. The anti-soup group seem to be pretty consistent in their issues with soup, but begin to differ heavily on how to things should be changed. I’ve seen people suggest removing allies entirely, using a system that is similar to age of sigmar, or change how command points are generated based on how many allies you bring. These are just a few of the suggestions brought forward, btw. I believe the big reason for the varied suggestions is that people can see pontential flaws in other posters suggestions (I know I sure can) and therefore want to come up with a better solution. The simple fact is that there will always be unforeseen problems with any new system, and that the answer to the currents systems issues is rarely “tear it all down!” I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a better system than the keyword one (although I do think that will be extremely difficult since I believe it’s flaws are heavily exgerated) but if you truly are interested in making 40k a better game (doubtful for some here) then you should be more focused on building a replacement for soup rather than just trying to prove that it should be replaced.

That is not an effective argument for not addressing the problems inherent with Soup. GW is being much more pro-active than they used to be. They could start with one or more small changes and adjust as they see the result. An obvious start would be to get rid of CP-sharing, which has been a pretty common and consistent suggestion, much as you assert otherwise. That would make a big difference right out of the gate. It wouldn't deal with all of the issues inherent with Soup, but it would be a good start. We can then go from there. It is not an all-or-nothing proposition, as you seem to be asserting here. With the way GW is operating, a staged approach is possible.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would.
This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.

It will never be perfect. But GW is taking steps addressing the unit costs, so it will be better. Banning soup because it cannot be perfectly balanced is absurd. Nothing in this game can be perfectly balanced; if solution was to ban everything with some balance issues, then there would be no game.

 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

There's multiple ways to do it. If you have a faction that has glass cannons, bricks, artillery, CC units, psykers, etc, and you compare them to an army that has just glass cannons and speedy units, like say imagine DE (at least in past editions), well you would give the army with more limited choice in units, better choices in things like stratagems, army rules, etc. Regardless, what you say, if there's an army with 10x as many options as everyone else and is OP as a result, as it has to be, bringing it back down to balanced by tweaking the points costs isn't bonkers, or terrible game design as you claim. It's just you not understanding game design at all.

Right. So if a player playing the first army in tour example (one with large potential selection of units) builds a force consisting of glass cannons and speedy units, because that fits their theme and those are the models they want to use, they should be at disadvantage against the player who is playing the second army in your example? The first player should be punished because they could have taken some other units instead?

Wait so your dex gave you the tools to build to cover the weaknesses of a glass cannon list, but because you wanted to keep a "theme" you left literally every single one of them at home, and yet you want that dumber style of play to just as powerful as every well built list from other dexes for the sake of your fluff, and at the cost of propelling other people's sensibly well built list from your own dex into a state of overpoweredness as a result? Each faction has it's identity. If you want to play PURE GLASS CANNONS, play the army that is designed and balanced around that style of play. If you play the army who's strength is versatility of units, your strength is that your list can always find the ideal unit to patch up those holes. This is like complaining that you built an all-shooty Ork army, and expecting it to be as powerful as an all shooty Tau army. Each faction needs to do certain things well and certain things poorly, to have any sort of gameplay identity. I'm quite certain you don't understand game design as strong as you think you do pal.


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 Crimson wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Also even if it was correct, which it quite blatantly is not, the whole argument "just achieve perfect balance between 2000 different entities and soup doesn't need to be fixed!", just reeks of absurdity. If that's what it takes to make soup work, let's remove soup from competitive play for the time being, so that we can just focus on making every dex capable of COMPETING on it's own for now without needing to soup. And then when we finally achieve this mythical state of perfect balance between LITERALLY EVERYTHING that soup requires to be balanced, we can talk about bringing it back, and seeing if it has zero impact on that balance as you claim it would.
This whole argument is hilarious to me for some reason. I have incredibly strong doubts that people actually believe what they are saying here, because it's just so outlandishly illogical.

It will never be perfect. But GW is taking steps addressing the unit costs, so it will be better. Banning soup because it cannot be perfectly balanced is absurd. Nothing in this game can be perfectly balanced; if solution was to ban everything with some balance issues, then there would be no game.

I didn't say ban soup, I said balance it.

You realise there's a middle ground between just completely removing allies from the game, and completely ignoring a major point of imbalance currently in the game, right? "It can't be perfectly balanced, so rather than attempt to improve that balance I say let it rock!" You realise how biased you sound right now? As I said earlier:

 SHUPPET wrote:
If soup is going to stay it needs to be drastically changed. There needs to be SERIOUS opportunity costs to taking those units, not just "well you get them and everything they bring to the table, and you've plugged the thing that your army does poorly by design, and you get more CP, but they don't benefit from any auras you already have!" which is just lolworthy. That's not a real penalty.