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I think no unit should be bad "in itself" - which can often be calculated by probability. It may or may not synergise optimally - which will mean there will still be better and worse lists - but it shouldn't be so awful taking it is a trap.

Right now you have "good unit+synergy=great unit" versus "bad unit+no synergy=terrible unit".
I don't really see why its a problem. If a Tau player wants to put say 1000 points into Kroot (which are frankly not an assault unit anyway but go with it) I don't see why they should just be penalised because kroot are bad and you should feel bad for buying them.

I'd argue this is what GW have tried to do in CA, although obviously not perfectly.

Not Online!!! wrote:


Soup exemplifies and basically removes the balancing via designed weaknesses aspect of big factions anyways.
Guard armies internally are balanced by a shitton of CP but meh stratagems. ---> Soup guardsmen feed the CP to their smashcaptain and Knight overlords which in turn lose their CP weakness for beeing elite.

Basically balancing via designed weaknesses is (nearly) dead for big factions and the only ones that still can be balanced that way are Tau and Necrons and Orkz since they lack soup possibilites.

Well it seems to "balance" stuff for weaker factions. For example for GK options were streamlined or removed or outright nerfed, because GW decided that too many people would be allying them in to get smites etc So achiving balance by nerfing stuff still seems to work. It only doesn't work for factions that are good to begin with. IG or eldar on their own are good factions. they get better if they soup. But a bad codex doesn't suddenly become good by taking ally. BA pre deep strike change are a great example of this, or jetbike custodes cpts. They had one good unit the cpts, mono custodes was no where to be seen, but adding either of those in to a IG or IG soup worked great. even 3 smash captins in a pure BA list weren't that great. In a list with a castellan and IG, they were beating eldar and that made people angry.

I say unit vs unit because they should look at the default unit in the game... space marine tactical or equivalent, and then balance the other units and thus the game around that.

Smash captains were absolutely undercosted in any list, it is just that the rest of the BA codex is crap. One OP unit keeping the army afloat is just bad design. But in addition to nerfing the good units, you need to buff the under-performing ones too.

 Crimson wrote:
Smash captains were absolutely undercosted in any list

Smash captains are a combination of stratagems, warlord/army traits, and relics.

The actual model itself - space marine captain with jump pack and thunder hammer - isn't costed unreasonably. It's actually a good example of why different armies can be markedly better at things without having to have discounted or overcosted models.

A.T. wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Smash captains were absolutely undercosted in any list

Smash captains are a combination of stratagems, warlord/army traits, and relics.

The actual model itself - space marine captain with jump pack and thunder hammer - isn't costed unreasonably. It's actually a good example of why different armies can be markedly better at things without having to have discounted or overcosted models.

Actually I think the jump pack option is probably undercosted. But making the relics not cost points was a terrible idea to begin with. That's a utter balancing nightmare. At least with stratagems you can up the CP cost if turns out that they're too good.

Thats something that I hear a lot of as well. If an army can compete in a tournament then its fine. Even if that really means only one or two things in that army are worth anything.

Thats horrible to me.

auticus wrote:
Thats something that I hear a lot of as well. If an army can compete in a tournament then its fine. Even if that really means only one or two things in that army are worth anything.

Thats horrible to me.

Well, that's the situation you end up with if you balance armies instead of units.

 Crimson wrote:

auticus wrote:
Thats something that I hear a lot of as well. If an army can compete in a tournament then its fine. Even if that really means only one or two things in that army are worth anything.

Thats horrible to me.

Well, that's the situation you end up with if you balance armies instead of units.

It's also the natural consequence of armies having specializations. If you specialize in assault, then you double down on assault power, and leave the middling stuff in the dust, because you build to your strength. If most of your codex is generalist stuff (e.g. space marines) then you aren't going to use most of it because it doesn't play to your strengths.

Or so the logic goes, I think.

Then they should just release codex: assault marines. It has two or three units. Done.

That way they get rid of the traps and false choices.

If the overall gaming population are just min/maxing, then write the rules and army lists knowing that the vast majority of your unit lists are being ignored for the max (specialized) stuff.

auticus wrote:
Then they should just release codex: assault marines. It has two or three units. Done.

That way they get rid of the traps and false choices.

If the overall gaming population are just min/maxing, then write the rules and army lists knowing that the vast majority of your unit lists are being ignored for the max (specialized) stuff.

Why?

If there are 100,000,000 players, and 99,000,000 of them only min-max, should you screw over the remaining 1,000,000 that care about fluff just because... reasons? I don't even know why you'd take the options away. There's no problem with false choices or traps, because to some people (who care about things other than simply minmaxing for power) they are actually meaningful choices.

The fact that most people can't look past the power of a unit into its fluff or aesthetics doesn't mean you should screw the people who do. If someone wants to play a fluffy BA 3rd Company list full of 10-man tacticals running Heavy Flamers, they should be able to, even if it isn't "competitive" and is a "trap" or whatever the buzzwords are these days people are using to justify removing options.

I don't use 'trap choices' to justify removing those options, I use it to justify making them actually good (or decent, at least) and thus not 'trap choices'!

 Crimson wrote:
I don't use 'trap choices' to justify removing those options, I use it to justify making them actually good (or decent, at least) and thus not 'trap choices'!

Yes, though this is much much much much much much much much more difficult than simply deleting them.

For example, a specialist assault unit should always be better at assault than a generalist unit.

In an army whose doctrine/chapter tactics/<army thing here> and stratagems generally buff assault units (as their army's archetype is "an assault army" e.g. Blood Angels), then simply playing to the army's strengths (which is why many people will play the army in the first place) will choose the units that play to those strengths, which will naturally be assault specialists rather than generalists.

Think about it this way: how much would you have to buff Chaos Space Marines before they start getting taken instead of Berzerkers as troops for a World Eaters army?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Well, that's the situation you end up with if you balance armies instead of units.

It's also the natural consequence of armies having specializations. If you specialize in assault, then you double down on assault power, and leave the middling stuff in the dust, because you build to your strength. If most of your codex is generalist stuff (e.g. space marines) then you aren't going to use most of it because it doesn't play to your strengths.

Or so the logic goes, I think.

Because in my world for over twenty years 10% of the codex or less is all I ever see so deleting them is the same thing to me.

They are never going to actually balance their game or make 90% of the codex worth a damn. Its either too difficult for them to do or they simply don't want to do it.

When 99 players out of 100 don't care about fluff and only care about super optimization then to me there should just be the gamer edition of codices that are the 10% used and then maybe release a codex for the 1% that put non optimal choices in their army.

Trap choices and false choices are the #1 reason that I've experienced people getting fed up and frustrated and quit altogether because they wasted money and time painting a unit that gets hammered into the dust because its not one of the blessed 10%. To me having false choices and trap choices is detrimental to a gaming community as it bleeds off players not interested in dealing with that crap.

auticus wrote:
Because in my world for over twenty years 10% of the codex or less is all I ever see so deleting them is the same thing to me.

They are never going to actually balance their game or make 90% of the codex worth a damn. Its either too difficult for them to do or they simply don't want to do it.

When 99 players out of 100 don't care about fluff and only care about super optimization then to me there should just be the gamer edition of codices that are the 10% used and then maybe release a codex for the 1% that put non optimal choices in their army.

Trap choices and false choices are the #1 reason that I've experienced people getting fed up and frustrated and quit altogether because they wasted money and time painting a unit that gets hammered into the dust because its not one of the blessed 10%. To me having false choices and trap choices is detrimental to a gaming community as it bleeds off players not interested in dealing with that crap.

But what about factions that don't have units that could be put in to a gamer edition, or they have something like 2. I doubt BA players would like to pay 70$ for a page with scouts and a smash captin on it.

Right, Karol, that's rather talking to my point.

If specialists are better than generalists, then an army of 50% assault specialists and 50% shooting specialists will beat an army of 100% generalists, provided the players have equal skill.

Generalist armies are harder to play - "fight the shooty and shoot the fighty" is actually very difficult to accomplish against an opponent with two brain-cells, and is, as you say, how a generalist unit beats a specialist one (by forcing the specialist into a situation it doesn't want to be in).

So generalist units (e.g. tac marines, intercessors) become viewed as "tax" units, while specialist units (e.g. Imperial Guardsmen, Smash Captains, Company Commanders, Custodes Bike Friendos) become "good" units. It's exactly the same phenomenon that makes the Shadowsword the most talked about superheavy tank, while you say something like "stormsword" and people go "huh, what?"

Wait, so armies double down on their strengths? But I though everyone was playing soup which allows you to freely mix and match and being able to supplement your shooty army with some melee units was a huge problem?

So which is the strength now, focusing or on one thing or diversity?

To my mind the issue here is that if "army vs. army" balance is your central thesis then you end up creating a set of trap options. If you assume that players will "build to their army's strengths" but then leave the possibility of not doing so in the book someone might, say, think taking World Eaters Chaos Marines is a relevant thing to do because they aren't living inside the designer's head and you haven't communicated well that an army that uses basic Marines is just straight-up worse than one that uses only Berzerkers.

To my mind the goal of "balance" isn't to ensure that every unit is exactly as good as every other unit, or that every army is exactly as good as every other army, it is to ensure that there is a real reason to play every army and every unit. It isn't about absolute tournament list-presence level of fiddly specific balance, it's about making sure there are no units/armies whose tactics advice is "never buy this, it's crap" or "never take this, it's always better under every possible circumstance to take this other one."

auticus wrote:
Because in my world for over twenty years 10% of the codex or less is all I ever see so deleting them is the same thing to me.

They are never going to actually balance their game or make 90% of the codex worth a damn. Its either too difficult for them to do or they simply don't want to do it.

When 99 players out of 100 don't care about fluff and only care about super optimization then to me there should just be the gamer edition of codices that are the 10% used and then maybe release a codex for the 1% that put non optimal choices in their army.

Trap choices and false choices are the #1 reason that I've experienced people getting fed up and frustrated and quit altogether because they wasted money and time painting a unit that gets hammered into the dust because its not one of the blessed 10%. To me having false choices and trap choices is detrimental to a gaming community as it bleeds off players not interested in dealing with that crap.

I'd argue that a player who gets frustrated and bins a unit because it is bad probably isn't going to enjoy 40k. 40k is generally most enjoyable for the background and aesthetics, imo, not for gameplay or winning.

I played a Leman Russ Tank Company through 5th edition and won 3 games (that I can remember), since tanks couldn't score on objectives. I drew a few more, maybe 10, but lost >90% of games. And that was totally chill with me, because I'd oftentimes set my own objectives; e.g. knock out enemy armour to win the "tank battle" or capture the objective with a Demolisher squadron (even if they can't mechanically, they can overrun the defenders "in the fluff".

Fundamentally, a unit being bad at winning the game is no reason not to use the unit, unless winning games is the most important criterion for you. If that is the case, then 40k is a terribly designed vehicle in which to find your jollies.

And yet people largely ignore better games. 40k is indeed too big to fail.

 Crimson wrote:
Wait, so armies double down on their strengths? But I though everyone was playing soup which allows you to freely mix and match and being able to supplement your shooty army with some melee units was a huge problem?

So which is the strength now, focusing or on one thing or diversity?

This is speaking to the difference between Army Balance and Faction Balance.

Armies are Archetypes (e.g. World Eaters are an "Assault Army"). Factions are not.

If you are building an army list to win games, it is important to have the options to cover every base. This can either be achieved through Generalists x100, or by mixing a bunch of specialists together (e.g. Assault Specialist x33, Buff Specialist x33, Shoot Specialist x33 or whatever).

Since it is easier to play a specialist with 1 job than to play a generalist who is bad at many, players tend to opt to take armies of mixed specialists, rather than unique generalists.

A Smashcaptain, a Castellan, and the Loyal 32 are a mix of Assault Specialist, Shooty Specialist, and Durability Specialist/Buff Specialist armies. Each "army" within the "faction" has a specialization (Blood Angels bring concentrated Melee power, Knights bring concentrated shooty power, and Guard bring durability and access to buffs through Stratagems). But the "faction" is a generalist one (the Imperium).

 AnomanderRake wrote:
To my mind the issue here is that if "army vs. army" balance is your central thesis then you end up creating a set of trap options. If you assume that players will "build to their army's strengths" but then leave the possibility of not doing so in the book someone might, say, think taking World Eaters Chaos Marines is a relevant thing to do because they aren't living inside the designer's head and you haven't communicated well that an army that uses basic Marines is just straight-up worse than one that uses only Berzerkers.

To my mind the goal of "balance" isn't to ensure that every unit is exactly as good as every other unit, or that every army is exactly as good as every other army, it is to ensure that there is a real reason to play every army and every unit. It isn't about absolute tournament list-presence level of fiddly specific balance, it's about making sure there are no units/armies whose tactics advice is "never buy this, it's crap" or "never take this, it's always better under every possible circumstance to take this other one."

Yes, exactly!

auticus wrote:
And yet people largely ignore better games. 40k is indeed too big to fail.

I can't control the behavior of other people, Auticus, sorry. This doesn't disprove the claim though.

Well I still say army vs army design is garbage, because it creates traps and wastes peoples' time and money.

If an army is competitive but 8 of its 10 entries are garbage and the only reason its competitive is because you just spam the other two entries, that is still not a good game or conducive to retaining players and promoting fun gameplay.

Why are the other 8 entries garbage? Typically because the specialist angle yes, I agree. A "specialist" melee is going to slaughter a generalist unit. So the designers need to find how generalist units can exist in their gameworld without being traps and garbage. Other games do it somewhat successfully. 40k could also.

 Crimson wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
To my mind the issue here is that if "army vs. army" balance is your central thesis then you end up creating a set of trap options. If you assume that players will "build to their army's strengths" but then leave the possibility of not doing so in the book someone might, say, think taking World Eaters Chaos Marines is a relevant thing to do because they aren't living inside the designer's head and you haven't communicated well that an army that uses basic Marines is just straight-up worse than one that uses only Berzerkers.

To my mind the goal of "balance" isn't to ensure that every unit is exactly as good as every other unit, or that every army is exactly as good as every other army, it is to ensure that there is a real reason to play every army and every unit. It isn't about absolute tournament list-presence level of fiddly specific balance, it's about making sure there are no units/armies whose tactics advice is "never buy this, it's crap" or "never take this, it's always better under every possible circumstance to take this other one."

Yes, exactly!

The problem is, this game is bland. If the question: "I'm playing World Eaters, should I buy Chaos Space Marines" is "meh, doesn't matter, each unit is viable" then the difference between World Eaters and Black Legion is basically zilch.

Running a foot horde of guardsmen from Armageddon should be outright worse than running a mechanized regiment, for example.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

This is speaking to the difference between Army Balance and Faction Balance.

Armies are Archetypes (e.g. World Eaters are an "Assault Army"). Factions are not.

If you are building an army list to win games, it is important to have the options to cover every base. This can either be achieved through Generalists x100, or by mixing a bunch of specialists together (e.g. Assault Specialist x33, Buff Specialist x33, Shoot Specialist x33 or whatever).

Since it is easier to play a specialist with 1 job than to play a generalist who is bad at many, players tend to opt to take armies of mixed specialists, rather than unique generalists.

A Smashcaptain, a Castellan, and the Loyal 32 are a mix of Assault Specialist, Shooty Specialist, and Durability Specialist/Buff Specialist armies. Each "army" within the "faction" has a specialization (Blood Angels bring concentrated Melee power, Knights bring concentrated shooty power, and Guard bring durability and access to buffs through Stratagems). But the "faction" is a generalist one (the Imperium).

That's fair. I don't think that generalists or multipurpose units are unworkable concept, but GW often seems to overvalue their effectiveness when assigning the point costs. The marine problem, basically.

auticus wrote:
Well I still say army vs army design is garbage, because it creates traps and wastes peoples' time and money.

If an army is competitive but 8 of its 10 entries are garbage and the only reason its competitive is because you just spam the other two entries, that is still not a good game or conducive to retaining players and promoting fun gameplay.

I voted for Faction vs. Faction, because I agree that Army vs Army is bad.

I disagree with your second premise, though, because 8 out of 10 entries may be garbage from the gameplay perspective but amazing from a fluff or aesthetics perspective. I can't speak to player retention (40k manages somehow it seems?) but "fun gameplay" is ... well, subjective. I can have fun with garbage units on the table.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The problem is, this game is bland. If the question: "I'm playing World Eaters, should I buy Chaos Space Marines" is "meh, doesn't matter, each unit is viable" then the difference between World Eaters and Black Legion is basically zilch.

The answer shouldn't be 'meh, it doesn't matter' it should be 'it depends on the playstyle you prefer.' That the units need to be used differently doesn't mean that one of them needs to be just plain worse.

Running a foot horde of guardsmen from Armageddon should be outright worse than running a mechanized regiment, for example.

Why?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

I disagree with your second premise, though, because 8 out of 10 entries may be garbage from the gameplay perspective but amazing from a fluff or aesthetics perspective. I can't speak to player retention (40k manages somehow it seems?) but "fun gameplay" is ... well, subjective. I can have fun with garbage units on the table.

But wouldn't it still be better if they weren't garbage from the gameplay perspective either? What purpose does them being rubbish serve?

I'm on the opposite end. Garbage units are repulsive and while you will have some units be garbage, the amount of garbage units in a GW game is over the top.

Playing games that are decided before turn 1 is not a fun time for me. It puts way too much emphasis on list building and hardly any on actually playing the game.