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Looking at the game as a whole, I am also fine with khorne being very anti-magic, because a khorne army won't have a wizard and it does produce a hard counter to a powerful tool.

It gives khorne some use other than as an enhancement talent making their opponent look good.

Something else too is that armies which really rely on magic, like Tzeentch or magic-heavy LoN, will still be able to power through some spells by virtue of their own bonuses & sheer number of them. And it is not like Khorne does not pay points for his anti-magic capability.

Of course now that I said that GW will decide anti-magic is not worth any points and it will become a free bonus that Khorne shuts it down without trying.

It all depends upon how it’s actually implemented, so I’ll reserve judgement until I actually see the rules. I’m not holding my breath though.

So what have we decided so far? Eliminate the double turn? What else? Reducing mortal wound output?

if you're going for balance then for me you eliminate double turn, reduce mortal wound output, cap summoning.

Do those things and the game then comes down to the point costs, which by itself is not great, but not as bad.

auticus wrote:
if you're going for balance then for me you eliminate double turn, reduce mortal wound output, cap summoning.

Do those things and the game then comes down to the point costs, which by itself is not great, but not as bad.

Yeah those three points are the parts there is general agreement on; if those were addressed the game would be in a much better place.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that there are more units which deal MWs than units with rend -2.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that there are more units which deal MWs than units with rend -2.

The designers are strangely afraid of two things: Giving -2 rend or better and giving a 3+ save or better. While at the same time they don't mind giving everyone and their grandmother a Mortal Wound output.

They have mentioned in the past they designed the game so that stuff dies in droves because when things dont die "thats not fun". So I would say that the mortal wound output thing is intentional.

Although obviously factions dealiing mortal wounds are at a great disparity overall. Some do it like breathing, others have to dig deep to do a half a dozen mortal wounds in a turn.

This is not a good trend at all. Ok yeah, you want your attacks to actually land and do something. But imo, units should be able to survive more than 1 round of attacks. And for armies that can’t throw out mortal wounds, they’re at a disadvantage.

Thats part of the balancing discrepancy and why I have a system to cap too many mortal wounds. Solely because not every faction can do it and the have-nots might as well not even come to the table.

I would consider an army that can spam mortal wounds on par with an army that can spam summoning as I see those two things as diametrically opposed. One does massive damage the other regenerates that massive damage.

Armies that can do neither of those things are trash against armies that can.

I liked Mortal Wounds when they were meant to be rare and the counter to things like 2+ rerolling 1s Stormcast or things that could ignore rend (Seraphon stuff springs to mind). But having everything dish out a ton of mortal wounds is just stupid.

Mortal Wounds, in general, are a "negative play experience" since there's usually nothing you can do about it, especially when it's mortal wounds on hit because it usually just removes these models.

The fact the AOS design team seems to be doubling down on them isn't a good thing IMHO.

Absolutely, 100% agree. Mortal wounds should have been special, and quite rare. Imo, they should have been limited to:

Magic
Artifacts
High level characters
The biggest monsters
The most elite units
Terrain effects

Not only that, but they should have been limited to 1 mortal wound 70% of the time, D3 mortal wounds 25% of the time, and D6 or higher should be as rare as hens teeth. But unfortunately they’re throwing them about like confetti...for some. And the ones who can’t are suffering bad.

I’ve been on the receiving end of deep striking star soul mace wielding paladins and the Sword Of Judgement...they suck.

Yeah. They never seem to be able to keep a good idea going, it always ends up with them going off the rails with it. Mortal Wounds were one case. Now we also have endless spells for everyone (except the factions that don't get it) and mandatory terrain for everyone.

It's still a completely backward design cycle where things are languishing because they have no reason to update it without new sculpts, but nobody is telling the model designers to make new sculpts for the factions that need them. I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

The result of this is if the model team has no incentive/desire to work on for example new Seraphon sculpts, they won't get any which reduces the chance for an updated tome because there are no models to go along with it, but if the design team suddenly decides oh it'd be really neat to have Stormcast golems they'll whip those up and then boom another Stormcast release when they don't need it.

I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

If they are like many other game design teams on a long term project there is overwhelming chance it is something like:

- Artists make something, then ask the rules team to fit them in somehow. Some artists may also be more interested in updating old models. That in itself is most likely a slower churn which is probably why we'll get a revamp of older models every now and then.
- The rules team approaches them with ideas because they(rules team) want to add something. The artists then make something to what the rules team requested.

In short: It is a two-way street.


I really doubt management is driving anything because if they are then GW has cracked one of the greatest secret of the game industry: How to hold onto talent while giving them no creative freedom. However, if this is scrum driven like many game development stuiods, then the artists AND rule team must make a case why something should be done because management must accept projects and money people must calculate potential time and money spent on a project vs. potential earnings. This is why if an artists or a rule team suddenly comes up with an idea to make a High Elf Spearmen revamp, and management doesn't see how that would fit into any line, it will most likely not get greenlit. However, if someone comes up with an idea to consolidate one faction into a tome that will use existing models and add a few new ones(like DoK) then management will give it a greenlight because it is a well thought out project that have Objective Key Results(OKR) they can make a case for.

They have design sessions and what ifs with their playtest team, which are largely also the tournament uk guys that hang out and go to the pub together.

So when they float things like endless spells, the idea was pretty awesome and likely the internal playtest crew were excited about it.

The implementation itself of course was another thing.

I always laught when people complains about Mortal Wounds in 40k (And there they are actually much more needed because invulnerable saves are much more common), because they are like 1/10 of what you have in Sigmar.

And I actually like that. I don't quite like mortal wounds, specially in the way they are handled in AoS.

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

The only possible outlier is Legion of Nagash resummoning Grimghasts, but that has a lot more to do with Nagash himself as a character and the addition of Grimghasts to LoN than the actual summoning mechanic. No one was complaining about resummoning Skeletons or Hexwraiths or whatever.

My only real complaint at the moment is armies whose books aren't up to date... and they've specifically said that their intent is to push out AoS books this year at a rate that they did 40k books last year, to get everyone on the same page asap rather than spread out across a decade.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I'm pretty sure the model designers decide on their own, without any input about the game, what to work on (possibly driven by management) and then *tell* the rules team to throw it in.

If they are like many other game design teams on a long term project there is overwhelming chance it is something like:

- Artists make something, then ask the rules team to fit them in somehow. Some artists may also be more interested in updating old models. That in itself is most likely a slower churn which is probably why we'll get a revamp of older models every now and then.
- The rules team approaches them with ideas because they(rules team) want to add something. The artists then make something to what the rules team requested.

In short: It is a two-way street.


I really doubt management is driving anything because if they are then GW has cracked one of the greatest secret of the game industry: How to hold onto talent while giving them no creative freedom. However, if this is scrum driven like many game development stuiods, then the artists AND rule team must make a case why something should be done because management must accept projects and money people must calculate potential time and money spent on a project vs. potential earnings. This is why if an artists or a rule team suddenly comes up with an idea to make a High Elf Spearmen revamp, and management doesn't see how that would fit into any line, it will most likely not get greenlit. However, if someone comes up with an idea to consolidate one faction into a tome that will use existing models and add a few new ones(like DoK) then management will give it a greenlight because it is a well thought out project that have Objective Key Results(OKR) they can make a case for.

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

But this is the internet where nuance and critical thinking do not exist, and all things must be black or white so I must say NO! GW devs just circle jerk whatever ideas they want and draw up rules on napkins during lunch!!

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

As has been said many many many times, we're discussing the games as a whole, not solely at the tournament level. Because things are fine at the tournament level does not mean the game is in a great place unless you are primarily a tournament player.

If you are a tournament player you aren't fielding the casual for fun lists. You aren't fielding about 90% of the game.

It is objectively true that many of the factions in the game cannot have fun games against the power builds. Not certain builds... entire factions.

Mortal khorne armies aren't going to be having fun against tournament mortal wound spam or summon spam armies. Kharadron overlords aren't going to have fun against tournament mortal spam or summoning spam armies. Slaves to darkness aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Free people aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Slaanesh demons or mortals aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam. High elves aren't going to have fun, dark elves aren't going to have fun, wood elves aren't going to have fun.

All kinds of factions not going to be able to have fun against those armies.

Regardless if the tournament scene is just fine and hokey dokey.

Git gud won't help those factions. If you feel git gud will help those factions then please, post about how you take one of those armies against a power build and not get rolled by virtue of just showing up with the wrong faction.

Double turn is just *$*$*@ing a fun killer. Regardless of if its hokey dokey status quo at tournaments.

The game as a whole is not solely dictated by how smoothly your tournaments run because tournament play is only one facet of the entire game of which GW endorses and supports people buying ALL of the factions available, but only a portion of which can be played without getting stomped by a tournament.

A tournament player is not going to give two flaming craps about the casual or campaign players getting crushed because they aren't fielding those types of armies, and if they were going to play in a casual or campaign environment, often will take their tourney power list anyway and tell people to git gud and learn how to work around it.

Either that or you are one of those people that really don't care if you are getting stomped on and just want to play for playing sake. Which is fair enough. But since you brought up tournaments and everything is fine at tournaments my guess is you are a tournament guy and the casual scene below the tournament guys is probably not visible. To which no, by any means, is mortal wound spam or summoning spam just fine and git gud will fix it. Those factions that can't keep up can't keep up because they don't have the mechanical backed by mathematics tools to deal with them.

So as the rebuttal I know is forthcoming, please share HOW those factions, in detail, deal with FEC spam summoning or stormcast teleporting mortal wound spamming, or legion of nagash or DOK tourney builds other than by saying an alternate form of git gud. If there are ways around it that are just lost to a bunch of people, then I ask that those hidden ways be revealed so that these topics don't come up ever again. A youtube battle report or something explaining it or showing it would be greatly appreciated. Because I can't find any out there, so I'm figuring they are on the dark web of aos or something that I just can't find.

And realize some of us in this conversation are current or past tournament players with high placing histories in past WHFB games or current AOS so we're not all clueless baby seals waiting to get clubbed that just don't git it.

auticus wrote:

Why is it that when people complain about aspects of the game, it's always stuff that isn't really a problem. Summoning isn't blowing up tournaments, neither are MW spam armies nor the double turn. They're all things that you learn to play around and stop really becoming an issue once you've experienced them a couple times.

As has been said many many many times, we're discussing the games as a whole, not solely at the tournament level. Because things are fine at the tournament level does not mean the game is in a great place unless you are primarily a tournament player.

If you are a tournament player you aren't fielding the casual for fun lists. You aren't fielding about 90% of the game.

It is objectively true that many of the factions in the game cannot have fun games against the power builds. Not certain builds... entire factions.

Mortal khorne armies aren't going to be having fun against tournament mortal wound spam or summon spam armies. Kharadron overlords aren't going to have fun against tournament mortal spam or summoning spam armies. Slaves to darkness aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Free people aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam armies. Slaanesh demons or mortals aren't going to have fun against mortal wound spam or summoning spam. High elves aren't going to have fun, dark elves aren't going to have fun, wood elves aren't going to have fun.

All kinds of factions not going to be able to have fun against those armies.

Regardless if the tournament scene is just fine and hokey dokey.

Git gud won't help those factions. If you feel git gud will help those factions then please, post about how you take one of those armies against a power build and not get rolled by virtue of just showing up with the wrong faction.

Double turn is just *$*$*@ing a fun killer. Regardless of if its hokey dokey status quo at tournaments.

The game as a whole is not solely dictated by how smoothly your tournaments run because tournament play is only one facet of the entire game of which GW endorses and supports people buying ALL of the factions available, but only a portion of which can be played without getting stomped by a tournament.

A tournament player is not going to give two flaming craps about the casual or campaign players getting crushed because they aren't fielding those types of armies, and if they were going to play in a casual or campaign environment, often will take their tourney power list anyway and tell people to git gud and learn how to work around it.

Either that or you are one of those people that really don't care if you are getting stomped on and just want to play for playing sake. Which is fair enough. But since you brought up tournaments and everything is fine at tournaments my guess is you are a tournament guy and the casual scene below the tournament guys is probably not visible. To which no, by any means, is mortal wound spam or summoning spam just fine and git gud will fix it. Those factions that can't keep up can't keep up because they don't have the mechanical backed by mathematics tools to deal with them.

I participate in a lot of casual events and game nights as well, and of course certain factions are pretty bad at the moment... but it turns out faction rules > no faction rules, so I don't see how that's surprising. Instead of just giving the factions rules to catch up, you'd rather turn the game on it's head to try and balance it? Gitz, Nighthaunt, and Beasts of Chaos were considered almost joke factions before their books, now they're pretty darn good at both casual and competitive. But we need to completely restructure the game because Slaanesh and Free Peoples aren't on the same level? Patience is indeed a virtue, and the books and updates are coming.

(Not to mention KO losing against Summoning even casually is a joke with how good they are at killing Heroes and units that cause summoning. They're one of the best anti-summon armies in the game, their main issue is that they suck against fast melee and can't score certain missions to save their lives. Casually they're a fantastic army)


I think you're conflating some things, to be honest. You're essentially saying that a casual fun list can't play against the best stuff in the game. And that's true. But... why are you comparing a casual list on one side to a cutthroat list on the other? I could easily make a "try hard" Free People's list and a "casual" Stormcast list and then complain about Stormcast not being good enough to deal with the former. If one side is bringing all the best tools available and the other side is just there to have a good time... yeah it's not going to be fun. Is a random draft MTG deck going to do well against a honed Standard MTG deck that someone paid $3000 for? No, but that's not a problem of balancing, that's a mismatch of players.

If you're playing an army that's not yet up to par (say, Slaves) at a regular game night, and the opponent brings a netlist Daughters of Khaine army, it's going to feel like poo poo. But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

Or perhaps the game is just grossly imbalanced, which is the topic of this thread, to discuss how and why the game is imbalanced.

If the game were balanced, or close to balance, then these situations where the powergamers bringing tournament lists everywhere wouldn't be as big a deal.

At the very minimum if every faction had tools to deal with it then it truly wouldn't be as big a deal. As it stands today, many if not most factions cannot stand against the grotesqueries that people bring, despite trying to say a social contract should prevent them from doing it (because in my experience the social contract doesn't mean anything and its go hard or don't bother showing up)

Hand waiving that as not a big deal is a big "eff you" to those people that bought in to the factions GW sells that weren't warned that those factions amount to flaming garbage unless a social contract is being observed.

In auticus' defense, he seems to play with people who will bring a netlist DoK army to a regular game night and say it's the other person's fault for not bringing a netlist and the should just git gud and play a real army. I recall someone, it may have been auticus or maybe not, who said something to the effect once that they saw a person do that and actually get insulted that the other player didn't bring a list "worthy of their time" or some sort of pretentious bullgak. Like they actually felt their opponent "wasted their time" because they didn't bring a tournament-caliber netlist to a game.

auticus wrote:

But maybe one or both of you misjudged what the game night was supposed to be, rather than the game being problematic.

Or perhaps the game is just grossly imbalanced, which is the topic of this thread, to discuss how and why the game is imbalanced.

If the game were balanced, or close to balance, then these situations where the powergamers bringing tournament lists everywhere wouldn't be as big a deal.

Are you joking? That's extremely naive if not.

There's no list or deck building game in existence where a Timmy and a Spike can both bring what they want and have an equal chance at winning (other than crazy random heavy games like Hearthstone where you can RNG to a win). List building is part of the game, and learning what tools do well and synergize is always going to separatee a good list from a bad list. Heck, even in a game like chess, where there's it's completely equivalent on both sides, knowing opening plays can make a game feel unfun and non-game in the first 5 minutes.

auticus wrote:
At the very minimum if every faction had tools to deal with it then it truly wouldn't be as big a deal. As it stands today, many if not most factions cannot stand against the grotesqueries that people bring, despite trying to say a social contract should prevent them from doing it (because in my experience the social contract doesn't mean anything and its go hard or don't bother showing up)

Hand waiving that as not a big deal is a big "eff you" to those people that bought in to the factions GW sells that weren't warned that those factions amount to flaming garbage unless a social contract is being observed.

What things can't be dealt with? Other than actual Legacy armies like Orcs and Goblins/Tomb Kings/Brettonians which will never get balanced, I bet you I can write a list that does well against one thing or another.

Will they be fun for you specifically to play? Will they have all the cool toys? Probably not. But I've seen Mortal Khorne, Free Peoples, and Slaanesh go 4-1 or better at events. I've seen casual map campaigns completely dominated by Ironjawz. But you can't just take whatever boxes off the shelf and expect it to happen.

"Going hard" is a social contract. What the social contract is depends on area to area, play group to play group, event to event. If you want to bring your favorite models and not think about list building, synergies and hard counters, make sure the group doesn't do that either. GW (or any other game studio for that matter) isn't going to modify the game to only be for one type of player, it's up to your group to figure out what that social contract is going to be and if you don't like it... well, try to convince your group or start running events of your own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
In auticus' defense, he seems to play with people who will bring a netlist DoK army to a regular game night and say it's the other person's fault for not bringing a netlist and the should just git gud and play a real army. I recall someone, it may have been auticus or maybe not, who said something to the effect once that they saw a person do that and actually get insulted that the other player didn't bring a list "worthy of their time" or some sort of pretentious bullgak. Like they actually felt their opponent "wasted their time" because they didn't bring a tournament-caliber netlist to a game.

How is that the game's fault? If someone shows up to play basketball and they dunk over your head and smack talk you, it's not Basketball's fault, they're being a dick. Don't change the game, change the players.

Good. Since you've stepped us to learn me, please craft a battle report showing a mortal khorne army with no demons stepping up to the plate against a FEC tournament army or a DOK tournament army and winning. Against a tournament level FEC or DOK player, not a newb.

I've been in game development and design for close to 30 years. While pure balance is impossible, as I've mentioned many many times, a balanced version of a game like AOS is definitely in the realm of possibility. Especially since the fan comps did exactly that, they produced a playable version of the game for all factions where all factions had a viable legit shot at playing.

Demonstrate and shut me up once and for all a legit battle report showing that happen. I promise you I'll never post another post in another AOS thread anywhere on the internet again if you can produce a legit non doctored battle report demonstrating to me how its done.

Hell you post that you will have successfully closed this thread down and showed us all that we just don't know anything about how to really play the game.

Talking about how you've seen those weak factions go 4-1 at a tournament means absolutely nothing because tournaments are ALL ABOUT matchups. I have played probably 1000 tournament games of WHFB in my life and every one of those was against a rainbow array of players and playstyles.

I took 5th in Chicago in the early 2000s because I got lucky against 5 of my 6 matchups. The year after I took 7th. That was two years top 10 placing because I got lucky in my placings. In 40k my eldar star cannon army took 3rd at Chicago in the late 90s. Again, armies made all the difference. I had a marine killer army and played 6 marine players. That doesn't prove nor disprove a balanced game, that proved that I had favorable matchups and got to have a top placing because of it. In 2007 in the height of matt ward mania with broken demons I placed like 28th with mortal chaos on foot. The game was busted as all hell, but I went 4-1-1. Because of my matchups. I played two hard opponents with two hard lists and drew one and got tabled by the other and played four sub par lists after to take 4-1-1. What does that prove balance wise? Not a thing, though anyone that played during 7th will tell you all about the balance of that edition and how it made AOS look like a great balanced game.

GOing 4-1 doesn't mean jack or that the game is balanced. It doesn't show what that player went against. He could have had 4 candy opponents with weak lists and 1 actual tournament list opponent.

The postulation is the game is grossly imbalanced. Your postulation is people just need to get good. So prove that. Demonstrate with a real legit game with a weak faction like mortals of khorne with no demon backup against a tournament FEC or DOK army against a tournament level player that you can win with them.

Its nowhere to be found on the internet. You'd have thunk if those scenarios you are saying exist truly existed that youtube would have some battle report for it, because there are certainly THOUSANDS of battle reports of power builds dominating.

auticus wrote:
Good. Since you've stepped us to learn me, please craft a battle report showing a mortal khorne army with no demons stepping up to the plate against a FEC tournament army or a DOK tournament army and winning.

I've been in game development and design for close to 30 years. While pure balance is impossible, as I've mentioned many many times, a balanced version of a game like AOS is definitely in the realm of possibility. Especially since the fan comps did exactly that, they produced a playable version of the game for all factions where all factions had a viable legit shot at playing.

Demonstrate and shut me up once and for all a legit battle report showing that happen. I promise you I'll never post another post in another AOS thread anywhere on the internet again if you can produce a legit non doctored battle report demonstrating to me how its done.

Hell you post that you will have successfully closed this thread down and showed us all that we just don't know anything about how to really play the game.

Wait, so because no content creators specifically made a BatRep where a Mortal Khorne army beat a FEC army, I can't have a discussion with you? I guess I'll have to start my own channel just to talk on the internet anymore.

I was at an event last month where someone brought Brass Stampede, maxed out on as many Blood Crushers as they could, and went either 3-2 or 4-1. Granted this was pre-FEC book, but it beat a FEC list that had free summoning and iirc a Nurgle army which coincidentally also has free summoning. Leaning in on fast, high wound count models that have MW saves, he gained board control and hit specific characters and units with spearhead strikes, using the KLoJuggernaught CA + allied Wizards to boost their output. But I guess it didn't happen without video evidence.

Like I said above, yeah it's probably not what you imagine as a Khorne Mortal army - no Bloodreavers, no Blood Warriors, no Wrathmongers, but it was very much so a Mortal Khorne army (perhaps with one Daemon Prince? Hopefully that doesn't invalidate the whole thing.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:


The postulation is the game is grossly imbalanced. Your postulation is people just need to get good. So prove that. Demonstrate with a real legit game with a weak faction like mortals of khorne with no demon backup against a tournament FEC or DOK army against a tournament level player that you can win with them.

Its nowhere to be found on the internet. You'd have thunk if those scenarios you are saying exist truly existed that youtube would have some battle report for it, because there are certainly THOUSANDS of battle reports of power builds dominating.

Wait, why do I have to prove my point and you don't? If your postulate is that "Certain armies can never win no matter what", then have you tried? Have you played those armies at a dozen events? Can you give me a statistically relevant set of data that the game needs to be changed?

It works both ways. You can't claim that the game is broken when your whole thing is pretty darn subjective, and certain pieces can be refuted quite easily.

You have objectively stated that the game is fine, that people just need to play better.

Since there is no where on the internet that has demonstrated this to be true, and since I have never in my entire life of playing AOS have seen this be done, I am asking you to produce objective data to your argument.

You are throwing around records like that means anything. I have already expressed why I feel records mean nothing, because they don't express the quality of opponent or say who they played.

I am discussing the balance of this game, how it sucks, and why it sucks.

You're discussing a brass stampede army that is using allies, I'm discussing how factions are not balanced and that is the crux of this entire thread.

If I want to go ahead and show up at my local store with the power gamer roost with "mortal khorne" i can show up with a couple mortal units and then throw in blood thirsters and blood letter bombs and say "well I used a couple mortal units, good enough, but that is not what is being discussed here.

It is already common knowledge that powergamer lists are about 10% of a book usually. Thats not a balanced game. Thats crap. Thats imbalance.

I know all about git gud, I lived git gud for over a decade. Git gud runs off players.

This is a conversation about balance. You said that the game is perfectly fine. We already said back on page 1 that we weren't talking about the powergamer environment.

So demonstrate a casual list from a non represented faction getting good and beating a power list to demonstrate the balance that is just fine, so that I can be educated on how that works so I can shut up and help preach the gospel that AOS is in a great place and is perfectly fine for the people in my community that hate trying to play a game when our resident power gamers show up with their adepticon lists and I have to write house rules to keep those lists out of my events.

Because brother I have to tell you I would *LOVE* to be wrong about this and see things your way.

auticus wrote:
You have objectively stated that the game is fine, that people just need to play better.

Since there is no where on the internet that has demonstrated this to be true, and since I have never in my entire life of playing AOS have seen this be done, I am asking you to produce objective data to your argument.

But you've said you won't listen do objective data, literally on the next line:

auticus wrote:
You are throwing around records like that means anything. I have already expressed why I feel records mean nothing, because they don't express the quality of opponent or say who they played.

You can literally just refute any win % as "well we don't know the matchups!" and then laugh all the way to the next page. Hell, even when you wanted a Battle Report, you stated "a non-doctored" battle report, insinuating that you would just call into question the legitimacy of any video you saw.

What evidence would you accept? Do you want a group of the highest winning players in the world, locked in a room together, playing the same matchup 100 times until statistically relevant data is reached? It's never going to be perfect data, especially in a game involving dice. It's pretty clear that you aren't actually looking to accept any differing opinions, only to smack them down by putting the burden of proof on the person trying to refute you, in a subject that is pretty much completely subjective.

PS: there is a place to look at some set of data: https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-stats-5th-march/
Filtering out the random little subfactions and only looking at the 25 that GW considers "actual factions" + 2 FW Factions + the 4 GAs (so 31 factions), there are only 10 under a 45% win rate. So 2/3 of the armies in the game have an even or near-even win rate at tracked events, including some that you might consider bad. For instance, Free Peoples have a 46% win rate. Slaanesh has a 55% win rate. Pretty not bad for "armies that can't do anything about top lists".

auticus wrote:
I am discussing the balance of this game, how it sucks, and why it sucks.

Just saying "it sucks" doesn't actually discuss anything. Listing off mechanics you don't like doesn't actually make them bad mechanics. Double turn is contentious, but if it's not considered bad by at least half the people using it, and it hasn't gotten people to stop playing the game, is it really bad? Are MWs really that bad considering most armies have a way to ignore, dispel, or otherwise evade them? Some armies are weaker to MWs than others, and that includes a lot of "older" armies... but does that make the mechanic bad or does it just mean you don't like it?

Counterpoint - AoS might not be a game for you. There's plenty of games I don't play because the mechanics don't agree with me, but that doesn't make them bad games that need to be rewritten from the ground up.

auticus wrote:
You're discussing a brass stampede army that is using allies, I'm discussing how factions are not balanced and that is the crux of this entire thread.

I'm discussing an army that was literally 80%+ Brass Stampede with one allied Wizard on mount for thematic purpose. Allies are a base part of the game, and are considered in the balance of factions. To ignore them is to not actually be discussing the game. It was as much Mortal Khorne as a Gitz army is a Grot army even though it includes one unit of Trolls.

Besides, Mortal Khorne isn't even a faction. GW has made it very clear that they balance around Blades of Khorne, which is a faction, and if you're ignoring half the book then you're just limiting yourself.

"I can't make a good army out of only Saurus units and no Skink/Monster/Slann units!" well that doesn't mean anything to me, because Seraphon is still one of the best Factions out there. If you ignore half of it then that's a you problem.

auticus wrote:
It is already common knowledge that powergamer lists are about 10% of a book usually. Thats not a balanced game. Thats crap. Thats imbalance.

Subjective opinion. Also completely exaggerated because 10% of most books would be 2 units at most.

Counterpoint - most units are actually fine and have a place in lists or specific combos, but everyone netlists so you only see the same handful of units. There are very few units (perhaps ~5-10% of units in the game) that I would consider actively bad and not worth using in any list. Just because a unit isn't used doesn't mean it's imbalanced.

auticus wrote:
So demonstrate a casual list from a non represented faction getting good and beating a power list to demonstrate the balance that is just fine, so that I can be educated on how that works so I can shut up and help preach the gospel that AOS is in a great place and is perfectly fine for the people in my community that hate trying to play a game when our resident power gamers show up with their adepticon lists and I have to write house rules to keep those lists out of my events.

Because brother I have to tell you I would *LOVE* to be wrong about this and see things your way.

Literally what does this even mean? "Give me a bad list and then show me how it can beat a good list" It doesn't happen. You're playing the wrong metagame. A casual, slapdash list is never going to beat one designed to win, and wanting that is foolish. To go back to the chess example, it's like randomly jumping a Knight around the board while your opponent sets up a calculated checkmate and then complaining about tryhards.

If you don't want competitive players at your events, run them differently. Play different point values, or play narrative missions, or only have your events give out trophies for sports/paint/door prizes.

Are you running events where people want to win? Then people are going to bring good lists and try to win. And casual lists will never beat tryhard lists, no matter how you try to balance the game otherwise.

Certain factions of course conflate this. Free Peoples, Slaves to Darkness, and Ironjawz, for example, can have competitive lists, but their casual lists are going to feel even worse than other casual lists because they don't have faction rules (or at least, the GHB ones they have are way worse than an actual Battletome). That's expected, they have like half the rules. But again, they're getting books, so maybe wait before you start petitioning people to rewrite the game.

So while you still have not shown any actual proof or, well any reasoning in favor of the game being in fact balanced, why should there be a massively disparate power level between 'casual' and 'tryhard' list building? Of course, there will be obvious optimization and fine tuning within the list building strategy layer of the game, but I believe and understand from you know, actually reading the thread, is that people wish for there to be balance between relative army capabilities, and having no duds or useless units within their army, or to just lose solely in the list-building phase.

 Thadin wrote:
So while you still have not shown any actual proof or, well any reasoning in favor of the game being in fact balanced, why should there be a massively disparate power level between 'casual' and 'tryhard' list building? Of course, there will be obvious optimization and fine tuning within the list building strategy layer of the game, but I believe and understand from you know, actually reading the thread, is that people wish for there to be balance between relative army capabilities, and having no duds or useless units within their army, or to just lose solely in the list-building phase.

I just linked stats that show that most armies in the game, outside some outliers, have ~50% win rates at events. That's pretty darn balanced unless you specifically play Dispossessed or something.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time listbuilding can tell you the difference that one unit choice can make in overall efficiency. If you're complaining about internal balance, I would like an example of where you think an army has units that are basically completely unused vs units that are in any list, and I can tell you the reasoning behind it. As I said above, there are some units that are just stinkers, but most units that are perceived as "bad" can be quite strong with the right build, it's just that said build is not currently popular or doesn't fit well in the meta.

There's no way to make a game where any list is the same power level as any other list of the same point level. The list that thinks about synergies, builds combos in, takes tools to counter common threats, and/or builds around the current meta is always going to beat a list that is just a collection of models, or looks cool thematically. Full stop. I could link the Timmy/Johnny/Spike article, but I do hope most people have already read it or are aware of it.

Edit: also expecting a game with as many units as AoS has (easily in the hundreds, but I don't know the number off hand) to have each unit be balanced against all the others at the same point in time is the next closest thing to impossible. There's just not enough playtesting time in the world, and you can't do it based purely off math because synergies, combos, and random abilities throw those numbers off like nobody's business.

The above seems like the classic discussion boiling down to debunking and re-hashing "those examples of imbalance don't count."

When you put it that way it sounds like a logical and effective way to produce great miniatures and fun factions. It would then follow that people are willing to put up with wild imbalance because the game is fun enough when it does work, and the miniatures good enough looking, that it compensates. One could further follow that this is the reason that the imbalance exists to such an extent, and seems to get worse with more popular wargames; because they do not HAVE to fix it to attract players. The other side of the coin being that balance is still obviously an attractive factor (else smaller games with less resources but a greater need to attract players would not bother) and so to some extent these popular wargames are allowing themselves to 'rest on their laurels' rather than really refine their product. This reasoning would of course need to come with the caveat that it is but one of multiple factors and not the whole explanation itself.

I would add that it is apparent they do want balance, but since they are chasing their tail with analog - ie. hard copy book - releases I am not that optimistic they can properly do that. In digital game development we do have very strict staging dates. A build goes into a staging branch and we do final preparations for mass release. Now, because we are doing this digitally we can release hotfixes as needed, but this is not something you can do if you have a master that must be released to the printers at the beginning of staging where any delay can cost a lot of money. This is why Chapter Approved/General's Handbook will have less fixes than most people desire, and often followed with complaints that the books are not taking into account recent books.

This is why I kinda wish GW would embrace the digital revolution and have an app or something where they can update points on a monthly basis based on internal reviews of external data. I liked Jervis' interview about his approach to balancing, but I would also greatly prefer a more direct input from the developers of why they take certain approaches to their designs much like many digital game companies are doing these days. Sometimes a design decision is taken to directly address a certain meta. They did this with Overwatch when they wanted to address the GOATS meta and I would love if GW would explain their thoughts process better. The strange thing is that White Dwarf is the perfect place for these discussions if they do not want to make more videos than they are already making.