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IMOGW should balance the game around killing, defensive power, and mobility. Everything else falls into place. Mission objectives should not be considered during balance.
Currently - GW charges practically nothing for mobility - charges way to much for armor saves and undercosts the 1W statstic. It also charges large units too much for degraded stats in a lot of cases. IMO.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Crimson wrote: Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.
This is an excellent point, but it's also mathematically easy to show which units are bad. Sure there are things like mobility and various rules that are hard to take into account, but overall we can get a decent idea of how a unit should perform.
CaptainStabby wrote: If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.
jy2 wrote: BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.
vipoid wrote: Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?
MarsNZ wrote: ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
They just lack the randomness to actually test a players tactical skills on the table. Since it's always "hold something/more, kill something/more", armies can be much more easily played by rote without any thought given to tactical adaptation or strategic nuances.
They are great at simplifying the game, I guess, accounting for the greater number of players and success of large events in the US, but they just aren't even remotely as cerebral as GW missions where you cannot predict the win conditions as easily and as predictably and actually need some skills to adapt to sometimes very different win condition that challenge players to change the way they play their army from game to game.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
When some people say "the mission disadvantaged my army" what they are actually admitting is "my army wasn't flexible enough to achieve the objective." Earlier in the thread, I illustrated a plan with which I, as daemons, could potentially win the Null Zone mission. There's no way of knowing, without actually playing the game, of course. But I am willing to give it a go, because I like the challenge it causes. Other people would rather build "their" list as how they want it, and want to be as disadvantaged (or advantaged!) by the mission as little as possible.
I suppose the difference is what we want from the wargame. I want to have to confront difficulty in the course of play. I want a reason to have a different plan for each game, for each turn, for each model, for each attack. I want the missions to make me think, to present my list with unforseen challenges.
I view army lists like D&D Characters - you plop them in a world and see how they do. ITC is the other way around - army lists are static, and you can bend the world (choose the mission objectives) to match what you'd like your army to do. I have much more fun seeing how my 'character' overcomes challenges, then I do having the challenge difficulty able to be dialed on the fly in the name of "competition."
Playing the mission is just as challenging as playing the opponent sometimes, and that's a good thing imo.
This is my favorite post so far. With no tabling what's to stop you from just slamming everything you have in their path to keep them from getting deeper into the objective? Just try the damn mission first.
(ITC is still great, but I do hope they adopt some of these aspects)
This is also a great post (I'm on both sides).
In ITC missions you have to react to the player across from you. The people playing the game have the agency. Each side has the same chance to score points as those conditions are clear and equal at the outset of the game.
In GW missions, the win conditions don't give each army an equal chance of scoring points/achieving victory. This is a pretty standard definition of non-competitive. Sure it's fun to have to overcome all odds a pull out a victory but knowing that your opponent has an advantage over you means it's not a equal contest.
I'm not sure how this is hard to understand.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/12 18:42:05
Crimson wrote: Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.
This is an excellent point, but it's also mathematically easy to show which units are bad. Sure there are things like mobility and various rules that are hard to take into account, but overall we can get a decent idea of how a unit should perform.
Correct, but you don't get the overall picture when the missions factor so heavily into it. I'm fairly sure there are things that are at least somewhat viable in non-ITC missions that aren't viable at all with ITC missions due to how they work. That's skewed data to GW because, while those units still might need a buff, they aren't getting the whole picture to know what needs to be adjusted. It might be why we generally see them only making points adjustments and thinking units that are never taken (in ITC) are just too expensive. If they could see those units maybe being taken but underperforming, it might indicate there's more than just points to be fixed, because they'll see that they don't work rather than they may as well not exist at all.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/12 18:41:23
Well I played one of the CA18 Eternal War today, it was the first mission, don't remember the name. 5 fixed objectives, the player who had first turn rolled at each new round, on a 6 every objective is "active" and give two points when controlled at the end of the battle round, on any other number it's the objective on the dice that is active, the non active ones give only one point.
What was interesting is that having second turn is actually great in the way that you can react to your opponent's movement by shooting or charging the controlling units to retake his objectives, so having first turn effectively means having to defend each objective you capture, as you have to keep it until the end of the opponent's turn. I really liked it and my opponent too, even if he lost. He wished he had given me first turn.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
DarknessEternal wrote: ITC is run by arrogant nonsense. They'll always think that their ideas are better.
They aren't wrong, a bunch of monkeys banging away at typewriters would eventually come up with something more balanced and with less print errors than most of what GW puts out. I'm just glad ITC exists and has come into general acceptance so I can play games with strangers that have decent missions. A few years ago you were stuck playing rulebook missions and hoping to agree on a set of house rules beforehand.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
Randomization does the exact opposite. That's why a noob can beat a pro player in Hearthstone but would lose 100 out of 100 games to a pro player in MtG. Randomization narrows the gap between a good player and bad player. That's why casual games have more random aspects and more competitive games tend to have less.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/12/12 19:27:14
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
The cards are way too swingy. They are trash.
Those six-sided dice are way to swingy too. Should drop them as well for those poor sensitive souls in the US competitive scene, I assume
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
The cards are way too swingy. They are trash.
Those six-sided dice are way to swingy too. Should drop them as well for those poor sensitive souls in the US competitive scene, I assume
The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.
Toofast wrote: Randomization does the exact opposite. That's why a noob can beat a pro player in Hearthstone but would lose 100 out of 100 games to a pro player in MtG. Randomization narrows the gap between a good player and bad player. That's why casual games have more random aspects and more competitive games tend to have less.
You do realize that MtG is randomized as well, right?
We mortals are but shadows and dust...
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Wayniac wrote: I think the GW missions need to be the baseline. GW apparently does their points adjustments with their new missions in mind, while ITC is essentially a completely different game due to how it changes things (this is why there are generally great differences in the meta between ITC events and like GW's own GTs). Unfortunately, ITC is so ingrained in the USA that I doubt anyone will care about these missions; I already see people bitching over the one that Warhammer Community previewed because not allowing invulnerable saves near the objective "screws over Daemons and Harlequins"
I'm honestly tired of seeing ITC held up as the standard when it's fan-made stuff, basically house rules. Sure, Reece and his cronies might be "playtesting" for GW, but they have essentially forked the game. GW can't balance matched when the very guys they're getting input from on what to change don't even use the missions they are doing the balancing based around! I hope that ITC will adopt these missions but I doubt it and I am betting nothing will change as a result; the issue isn't so much the points/rules (which are problems, don't get me wrong) but the fact the missions are not helping and are actually CAUSING the meta we see in the major tournaments.
I think at this point ITC only needs to be ranking and not their own mission pack. Same like they do for AOS; the AOS ITC rules are basically "Use the matched play rules from the General's Handbook" and that's it. Only the 40k ones are completely deviant and, as a result, fork the game.
ITC plays a different game because too many of the GW missions have a built-in advantage or disadvantage to certain types of armies that would decide games before dice are even rolled. If GW would start making missions more for balance than storyhammer, ITC wouldn't need its own mission packet. As BoomWolf said, some of the missions punish you for having characters, not having characters, only having invuln saves, etc. None of the ITC missions are structured this way because that's a stupid way to decide a competitive game where listbuilding already plays too large a part in deciding the outcome of games. You shouldn't auto lose just because you're playing Chaos Daemons or only have 1 character in your army.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
The cards are way too swingy. They are trash.
Those six-sided dice are way to swingy too. Should drop them as well for those poor sensitive souls in the US competitive scene, I assume
The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.
Fine, forget the cards. Let's roll for them instead using dice! Problem solved
We mortals are but shadows and dust...
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Tamwulf wrote: CA 17/18 missions affect army selection. ITC missions affect army selection. An army that would be good in a CA18 mission may not be good in an ITC mission and vice versa. As long as ITC continues to think they know best for 40K and playing the game, this is always going to be an issue. For me, personally, I find the ITC missions bland and uninspiring to play.
Yes, it's much better to play the CA missions and auto lose because you are playing an army based on invuln saves.
The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.
You don't need large numbers of dice to make a good tournament game. A psychic test roll or a steal the initiative roll don't use many, and anticipating the result of either of those is a much more tactically interesting aspect of the game than anticipating the result of 100 Ork attacks. The latter is basically irrelevant to tactical considerations, precisely because of the law of large numbers.
Weighing risk and reward of low-number of dice roll also makes games like Blood Bowl excruciatingly tactical.
The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.
You don't need large numbers of dice to make a good tournament game. A psychic test roll or a steal the initiative roll don't use many, and anticipating the result of either of those is a much more tactically interesting aspect of the game than anticipating the result of 100 Ork attacks. The latter is basically irrelevant to tactical considerations, precisely because of the law of large numbers.
Weighing risk and reward of low-number of dice roll also makes games like Blood Bowl excruciatingly tactical.
Not really. But keep thinking that. I don't care how you play. But I'm not playing maelstrom of any kind.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/12 19:41:44
Tamwulf wrote: CA 17/18 missions affect army selection. ITC missions affect army selection. An army that would be good in a CA18 mission may not be good in an ITC mission and vice versa. As long as ITC continues to think they know best for 40K and playing the game, this is always going to be an issue. For me, personally, I find the ITC missions bland and uninspiring to play.
Yes, it's much better to play the CA missions and auto lose because you are playing an army based on invuln saves.
You mean exactly like a footslogging Harlequin army would fare against Plaguebearer spam in any ITC mission?
We mortals are but shadows and dust...
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Tamwulf wrote: CA 17/18 missions affect army selection. ITC missions affect army selection. An army that would be good in a CA18 mission may not be good in an ITC mission and vice versa. As long as ITC continues to think they know best for 40K and playing the game, this is always going to be an issue. For me, personally, I find the ITC missions bland and uninspiring to play.
Yes, it's much better to play the CA missions and auto lose because you are playing an army based on invuln saves.
*literally posts a game plan and plays through a bit of the game with another poster as a Daemons player in the relevant mission*
Come on, man, I play Slaanesh Daemons and I'd be willing to give that mission a go. I have a plan to keep it from being auto-lose. Are you afraid you won't be able to come up with such a plan on the fly if /you/ played Daemons or something?
Wayniac wrote: I think the GW missions need to be the baseline. GW apparently does their points adjustments with their new missions in mind, while ITC is essentially a completely different game due to how it changes things (this is why there are generally great differences in the meta between ITC events and like GW's own GTs). Unfortunately, ITC is so ingrained in the USA that I doubt anyone will care about these missions; I already see people bitching over the one that Warhammer Community previewed because not allowing invulnerable saves near the objective "screws over Daemons and Harlequins"
I'm honestly tired of seeing ITC held up as the standard when it's fan-made stuff, basically house rules. Sure, Reece and his cronies might be "playtesting" for GW, but they have essentially forked the game. GW can't balance matched when the very guys they're getting input from on what to change don't even use the missions they are doing the balancing based around! I hope that ITC will adopt these missions but I doubt it and I am betting nothing will change as a result; the issue isn't so much the points/rules (which are problems, don't get me wrong) but the fact the missions are not helping and are actually CAUSING the meta we see in the major tournaments.
I think at this point ITC only needs to be ranking and not their own mission pack. Same like they do for AOS; the AOS ITC rules are basically "Use the matched play rules from the General's Handbook" and that's it. Only the 40k ones are completely deviant and, as a result, fork the game.
ITC plays a different game because too many of the GW missions have a built-in advantage or disadvantage to certain types of armies that would decide games before dice are even rolled. If GW would start making missions more for balance than storyhammer, ITC wouldn't need its own mission packet. As BoomWolf said, some of the missions punish you for having characters, not having characters, only having invuln saves, etc. None of the ITC missions are structured this way because that's a stupid way to decide a competitive game where listbuilding already plays too large a part in deciding the outcome of games. You shouldn't auto lose just because you're playing Chaos Daemons or only have 1 character in your army.
The rationale here is that you should build a balanced army. Maybe you shouldn't only take 1 character because that's what theoryhammer shows is the most optimal approach to building the list and God forbid you not min/max 110% of the list.
I think the underlying problem here is wanting to approach 40k like deckbuilding in Magic. The GW missions are the way they are by design to encourage (some might say "force") non-skew armies that can deal with a variety of scenarios. That is absolutely by intent to reduce the huge effect listbuilding has on games. If you know you could run into a mission that doesn't favor you, it will influence your army selection to prepare against it so it doesn't completely catch you off guard.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/12 19:50:51
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
The cards are way too swingy. They are trash.
Those six-sided dice are way to swingy too. Should drop them as well for those poor sensitive souls in the US competitive scene, I assume
The number of dice rolled in 40k effectively ameliorates the randomness to controllable and predictable levels.
Also, the significance of any given die roll is pretty tiny, compared to the card draws.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/12 19:57:43
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote: The number of dice rolled in 40k effectively ameliorates the randomness to controllable and predictable levels.
So then why go through the motions at all? Just put a tag-on app to BCP that calculates averages - if your whole claim is that "dice tend towards average over the tournament" then just use the averages and stop wasting time.
It would also resolve the question of whose time saves are rolled on, because you don't have to roll saves. Just use your BCP app to calculate how many dead X's there are / how many wounds X suffered and bingo, move along. If "dice aren't random because in large quantities they average and that's the desirable state" then skipping straight to the averages is both faster and more efficient.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/12 19:59:54
The irony here is supposedly the new missions are what the updated points costs in Chapter Approved are balanced against, not ITC missions.
The points are balanced against the idea of "how to shift what sells around". Not to concept of balance.
And as usual GW scenarios are lol bad for competive use. Fun enough if you don't care about competive game but if you want competive game burn them with fire until they stay down. Only way to be sure.
Oh enough with this conspiracy nonsense.
Most models are either always has been bad, or always has been good.
If GW was shifting points to make sells, what is good and what is bad would change, and often. but it doesn't, at all.
The same things that were great from the day they dropped were always at the very least OK, and usually good or better, and many models were released with bad rules, and never got better.
How about shining spears, which went from being the worst unit in the entire Eldar/Dark Eldar arsenal to one of the best units in the entire game? Or jetbikes that went from almost never played, to 20-30 in every army, back to never played.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
Except that scenario is literally impossible to achieve as defend takes two turns and as I stated there is only one left.
If they were drawn at the beginning of one turn, and scored at the end of the next, then they might be decent. Because then you'd be able to take extra steps to accomplish them, plan around them, and you'd be able to react to and deny the enemy theirs.
At this point, though, it's basically a measure of occupying as much of the board as possible.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/12/12 20:08:09
Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.
Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.
Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.
There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.
"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."
I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/12/12 20:11:27
Galas wrote: I remember when Marmatag was a nooby, all shiney and full of joy. How playing the unbalanced mess of Warhammer40k in a ultra-competitive meta has changed you
Bharring wrote: He'll actually *change his mind* in the presence of sufficient/sufficiently defended information. Heretic.
Ah yes. The old "Defend the objective that's under my opponents biggest blob of troops with one turn left". What a test of my abilities.
Indeed. It is. Just as much as rolling a bunch of 1s on your saves or wound rolls.
Newbs blame bad dice or bad card draws. Good players know how to stack the odds in their favour and win regardless. That's why randomisation separates the wheat from the chaff.
The cards are way too swingy. They are trash.
Those six-sided dice are way to swingy too. Should drop them as well for those poor sensitive souls in the US competitive scene, I assume
Honestly you showed why the system needs to move beyond D6 so...
CaptainStabby wrote: If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.
jy2 wrote: BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.
vipoid wrote: Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?
MarsNZ wrote: ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
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