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 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

 jeff white wrote:


Not my expectations - I have zero interest in investing time into 28mm EPIC when it looks weird on a 6x4 table.
6mm epic, sure. Liked that game when I played it decades ago.
But, the charm that was squad level play - "Jones!" - is absent in a flurry of mad plastic that might as well be cards in a deck.

Sorry but the charm that was squad level play has been dead for a minimum of 5 years, if not closer to 10 years.


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nou wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

TLOS is an abomination that made the game worse.

People keep saying that apoc and killteam are leadins to 8th edition, but we've no confirmation of that. I wish this rumor would stop for now.

nou wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

Gotcha. I get what you mean there. It's been a long time since 40k has had meaningful ranges, so that aspect is hardly new. I do think its weakness has long been its lack of positioning and a part of the reason I really like games like Infinity that really make LOS and facing important. I don't think Apoc really loses anything in that regard over normal 40k, but I don't think 40k does those things well either.

nou wrote:
Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

So, using rules that are decades old and from a game that is completely different from 40k on terrain that hardly anyone has? Not exactly a convincing argument there.


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 jeff white wrote:
We managed LoS, proportions of models, even talked through "it is only the wing-tip" issues just fine.
Only see the antennae? Not enough to affect anything on the damage chart, so - no shot.
Laser pointers work wonders to work out percentages if this is the issue, facing and so on, easy.

Yes, there were ways of resolving it, but how often did any of it matter? Let's say we have an enemy model taking cover behind an obstacle and you send a squad around to flank it and get a clear shot. Does TLOS really matter for that? No. The vast majority of the time drawing a laser line between base centers is going to give the exact same strategy and narrative events as TLOS, and the only thing TLOS can add to the situation is arguing over whether or not a tiny corner of a model is visible. You're still going to have the model taking cover behind the obstacle, and you're still going to be rewarded with a clear shot when you flank it. And these events will still play out the same way if you're using cardboard tokens on a hex grid.

You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.

Apocalypse does not require more models. The basic rules are a much better replacement for normal 2000 point 40k games. And it isn't a simpler card game because positioning still matters. Lining up cards doesn't account for terrain, line of sight, etc, like playing out the game on a tabletop battlefield does (whether you use miniatures or tokens to represent units). In fact, Apocalypse becomes even less of a CCG than 40k once you remove the unnecessary stratagem deck because it strips out all the "I have aura X and special rule Y and special rule Z and buff card A and therefore I roll a million dice and win" nonsense in favor of basic interactions between units on the tabletop.

GW took a terrible game, got rid of the worst of it, and made something even simpler to sell more models to people who want moar models and faster games with fewer discussions because, you know, people can't discourse with civility when their own vested interests are at stake over a miniatures war game.

Apocalypse being a better game has nothing to do with the balance arguments and "civility" required to negotiate a power level for a game. It's about removing the rules bloat of 40k, all the pointless mechanics that add to the word count of the rulebook and turn it into a tedious slog of dice masturbation and trying to figure out how all the various special rules interact.


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YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
Unless you don't want to spend a couple hours writing up a list. At which point PL is handy, say for the first time player who doesn't know what a point is or how many of them would be an army. It's accessibility that costs you nothing.

This is an absurd argument. PL is a point system, just one that has less accurate evaluations of unit strength. You use it the exact same way that you use the conventional point system. If you can't figure out how to use normal points then how exactly are you going to use PL? And honestly, how are you going to understand how to play the game at all if something as basic as "you have a budget of X points and each thing you add to your army spends some of those points" is a meaningful obstacle to overcome?

Don't turn this into PL vs. Points. Both are fine, regardless of your personal views. Someone who likes PL isn't "doing it wrong" just like someone who likes points aren't.

 LunarSol wrote:

nou wrote:

Spoiler:

 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

Snugiraffe wrote:

But I'm that strange kind of person who believes that expecting two 2,000-pt 40k armies to both be worth exactly 2,000 points is laughable at best. Which points the finger back at GW and a lack of balance, I suppose.

I agree that it's often laughable to expect 2,000pts to be equal to 2,000pts. However, I disagree that it points the finger back to gw. Simply truth is it's often laughable to expect 75pts in warmachine to be equal to 75pts, or 300pts in infinity to be equal to 300 other points. It's true for pretty much all ttgs. Accurate points values, essentially is a unicorn.
No, it's fundamentally an issue with 'the system' itself. and by 'the system', I mean table top games themselves, in general. As systems, they're extremely limited in the amount of 'weight' they can carry, and what they can be expected to do.



And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

Deadnight wrote:


And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

This. So much this.

Deadnight wrote:


And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

This here is pure heresy in the eyes of the many who worship The Adequately Pointed Gods.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

This is probably the most accurate description of the issue ever seen on dakka.
Yes gw is doing questionable design rulewise.
Massively abusing the flaws are however the players.

Deadnight wrote:

And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

It helps to recognize that points are more just another stat on a model than something that can balance a model all on its own. The "points stat" being too good is no different than a model having too many wounds or attacks. For the most part, if two models fit a similar design space, points efficiency simply determines which one of them is viable, rather than give players any meaningful choice between the two. Sometimes the point stat is the problem, but you don't create real diversity by adjusting it. Games get in real trouble when designers believe in points as their balancing mechanic instead of focusing on ensuring that models have unique design space and compelling features.

I think it is a fair point that points will never balance exactly, but they can do a much better job than they do currently. The biggest problem is the release schedule being one faction at a time in my view, with favourite factions getting several updates before the red headed stepchild factions get one, resulting in factions designed for entirely different paradigms having very limited options to compete. A newbie does not know this and blunders into the problems after spending a large amount of time and money. That is the most compelling reason for balance to me. I thought GW were on the right path with the indices but it seems they veered into the ditch again before too long. No doubt some manchild at GW HQ got excited about his favourite toys and got carried away, AGAIN.

I find the "points will never be balanced so thats ok that 40k and AOS are not balanced because its impossible" to be mega cop outs.

It is true, points will never be perfectly balanced.

But they can damn sure well be 1000x better than what they are today, and the fan comps of AOS before it had points were proof of that.

 auticus wrote:
I find the "points will never be balanced so thats ok that 40k and AOS are not balanced because its impossible" to be mega cop outs.

It is true, points will never be perfectly balanced.

But they can damn sure well be 1000x better than what they are today, and the fan comps of AOS before it had points were proof of that.

This is what I find so amusing. "It can't be totally balanced, so mediocrity is acceptable" is fething bullgak, plain and simple. That doesn't excuse poor quality because you can't get it to be perfect (which nobody wants). There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

So why accept a half-assed job?

Because its the biggest game in town and your financial investment into it is secure and you know others will be found everywhere on the globe to play against is what I'm thinking.

Wayniac wrote:
There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way. If there's a small exploit that only 1 in 10,000 players will notice, it won't get noticed in Infinity but a half dozen will notice it in 40k, and that exploit will be posted to the internet and become common knowledge. The smaller games aren't better designed, they just have security through obscurity.

I mean, GW isn't trying to make airtight rules though, so somebody pointing out that the rules aren't airtight is just pointing out that they are working as intended. I really don't understand why people play GW games competitively then complain that they aren't competitive enough, when they were never intended to be.

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way. If there's a small exploit that only 1 in 10,000 players will notice, it won't get noticed in Infinity but a half dozen will notice it in 40k, and that exploit will be posted to the internet and become common knowledge. The smaller games aren't better designed, they just have security through obscurity.

I mean, GW isn't trying to make airtight rules though, so somebody pointing out that the rules aren't airtight is just pointing out that they are working as intended. I really don't understand why people play GW games competitively then complain that they aren't competitive enough, when they were never intended to be.

Err, no. You can't have it both ways. Either GW deserves credit for trying and only fails because the task is impossible, or GW is deliberately not intending to make competitive games.

 Peregrine wrote:

Err, no. You can't have it both ways. Either GW deserves credit for trying and only fails because the task is impossible, or GW is deliberately not intending to make competitive games.

Reality isn't black or white. Things can be somewhere on the spectrum between two extremes.

GW does not intend to make these games competitive games - primarily. They do pay lip service to competitive play and since the "three ways to play" and the General's Handbook making points a separate document, they have thrown competitive players a bone. But if you listen to ANY of the designers talk about the game, not a single one of them has a competitive mindset. Almost universally, they talk about the stories behind their characters and the fiction of the game universe over how to maximize competitive advantage. That's not to say that they don't care about competitive players (and their money), but the people making the game are explicitly not competitive players and are designing a game they enjoy playing.

That being said, the points they put out are about as good as it possibly could be, given that points are an extremely imperfect system for determining balance. They update them twice a year based on player response and tournament successes. GW does make an attempt to use them in a way for the betterment and health of the game. They are more successful at breaking up specific strategies than they are providing true balance though, but that's the nature of points.

The problem is, within a week of the points updates, there've been a few thousand games played and hundreds of forum posts applying every mathematical formula to the new balance, essentially breaking it before it even gets a chance to be used. This new understanding of balance informs people's purchases and within two weeks, entire armies built around these imbalances have been purchased. A less popular game, like Malifaux or Infinity - their balance is just as suspect, but mostly shows up in specific combinations of elements that someone might realize early on, but it might take months before this imbalance is so commonly known that it becomes a standard to build armies against.

Malifaux also has strong faction loyalty, to the point where I've seen people say that so-and-so master is overpowered and they won't play as them or against them, and will stick to the masters they enjoy. Balance is somewhat maintained simply by the fact that most people don't bother to use the exploits. Meanwhile, 40k has people who plop down hundreds of dollars to buy entire armies built around exploits that will undoubtedly be errata'd in a few months. Even one of these types of players, not even locally, but regionally, can force an arms race the spreads across a large territory.

If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

 Sqorgar wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way.

No, and in the very biginning the guys in my club back than tried and those thing they found were FAQed after wards

We have also done those things with each Fantasy Army book when it came out. ~6 people with some who played the army and some who did not (to get a different point of view), played for 1 day and found everything that was broken

Not talking about a minor difference in power level or points, but things that made the army overpowered or rules that did not work at all

of course, the more games played the more issues are found and you get the way of eternal balancing if you want to change from 45:55 to 49:51
but broken rules or clearly overpowered compinations that are found by some players on day one making it more a 20:80 is a diffent issue


also the different experience here is while for Infinity it was changed and GW just did not cared and changed minor issues instead

GW changed that in between and for some time it looked like they would really care, but this somehow we ended up in the same situation that we always had at the end of the lifetime of the current edition. The other GW game is the better one although it was worse when it current edition started and we get Supplements which fix some of the major issues but are advertised as optional and/or use a different point frame so that it is for now use in standard games (would have been easy to say for everything between 1500-2500 points use the Apocalypse rules without the big stuff)

Peregrine wrote:If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

It’s my understanding that the people who make the rules and the people who make the points are different groups of people. I believe the points are largely outsourced to the tournament community. I don’t know about 40k, but AoS originally used a community comp system for points and the players who did that are still in charge - or at least consulted and involved in play testing. The points are created by the competitive players directly.

kodos wrote:For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

It’s worth pointing out that power levels are included on the data sheets, while the points require purchasing a second product (repeatedly). That says to me that power levels are what GW wants to be the default for the majority of their players.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is an absurd argument. PL is a point system, just one that has less accurate evaluations of unit strength. You use it the exact same way that you use the conventional point system. If you can't figure out how to use normal points then how exactly are you going to use PL? And honestly, how are you going to understand how to play the game at all if something as basic as "you have a budget of X points and each thing you add to your army spends some of those points" is a meaningful obstacle to overcome?

Can you flip through the book, including flipping to the points appendix and build a list in your head? Because you can do that with PL, it's a vastly simplified points system. Which no matter how much you dislike it has a point, you just refuse to acknowledge that. I mean hell, would you rather sit in a chair and count to 1000 or count to 50? That's literally the difference here.

The AOS team however ARE mainly tournament players, at least from what they've indicated. So on that front I'd say it's deliberate to reward finding those combos, a staple of game design now since CCGs dominated. It's only the 40k designers, they're different teams now, who are the "throw some models down with me mates over a pint" type.

Part of the issue, in general, is that GW has *made* their game so bloated it's become harder and harder, dare I say nearly impossible, to balance. It's a symptom of their lack of caring for so long (if they even do today) about having a good *game* versus having a lot of good *models* that just so happens to have something resembling a tabletop game along with it to let you do more than have your models sit in a display case. There's no reason for the huge amount of bloat in 40k; it serves no useful purpose and actually hurts more than it helps because of how unstable the game has become, even with a total revamp for 8th edition, as a result. There's what, 25 codexes? Or close to that? And, despite not actually needing all of those documents to play, now over 100 FAQ documents that each and every book needs to fix things that should either be caught in proofreading or caught with even a basic amount of testing beyond "Oh that sounds about right".


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 Sqorgar wrote:

Peregrine wrote:If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

It’s my understanding that the people who make the rules and the people who make the points are different groups of people. I believe the points are largely outsourced to the tournament community. I don’t know about 40k, but AoS originally used a community comp system for points and the players who did that are still in charge - or at least consulted and involved in play testing. The points are created by the competitive players directly.

kodos wrote:For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

It’s worth pointing out that power levels are included on the data sheets, while the points require purchasing a second product (repeatedly). That says to me that power levels are what GW wants to be the default for the majority of their players.

I think the outside testers are only for testing, GW still comes up with points and supposedly they have a spreadsheet with formulae although I question that since the way they price things seems like it has little rhyme or reason, and certainly not a formula grounded in probability and statistics since mathhammer that comes from fans consistently shows different results

Again let's not derail this into PL vs. Points as many threads do when Peregrine gets involved but it's clear the idea is that PL is for more quick and dirty games, likely asymmetrical, where you aren't too concerned about things. And, as stated many times, if you aren't the type of person like Peregrine clearly is, who will immediately look at "options cost no points" and think how that means you can take everything and anything, and only pick the best because it's all the same. The mindset instead is "I built this model with X so I'll use X" or "I envision this squad equipped with Y for my army theme" and basically everything EXCEPT considering raw output. Which seems to be an incredibly hard, if not impossible, thing for some people to even consider exists, let alone do.

nou wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

Exactly.^^


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 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

So, using rules that are decades old and from a game that is completely different from 40k on terrain that hardly anyone has? Not exactly a convincing argument there.

That terrain is not unlike much available today - and the rules, well, these are sort of what is at issue here in this thread, no? I mean, limited variance implies more consistent expectations across gamers feeding the competitive scene with, well, more like-minded gamers... no?


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 Peregrine wrote:
If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

I disagree here, unless you intend to mean 'look out for the competitive mindset' as otherwise we get stripped down cardgames wherein the miniatures don't matter any more than the mythology or the sarcastic double-take on pc doublespeak that inspired the originals especially...


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 auticus wrote:
Because its the biggest game in town and your financial investment into it is secure and you know others will be found everywhere on the globe to play against is what I'm thinking.

So, who wants to buy 15000 points of mixed metal models collected for characteristic representation of available resources rather than uber optimized with the cutting edge rule-bending plastics that litter the side tables of today?

Wayniac wrote:
The AOS team however ARE mainly tournament players, at least from what they've indicated.

Huh? The AoS design lead is Jervis Johnson, who's very name causes competitive players to burst into fire like a vampire stepping into daylight. This is the guy who literally wrote the book on "you don't need points to have fun" and the reason why AoS 1.0 went over with competitive players about as well as sexual assault. I don't think I could name a designer who is LESS of a tournament player than JJ. He can't even beat his wife at backgammon. AoS's second in command, according to Stormcast, is Sam Pearson, who I know is not a competitive player from his posts in defense of AoS here.

Part of the issue, in general, is that GW has *made* their game so bloated it's become harder and harder, dare I say nearly impossible, to balance.

That's because their business is built around constantly expanding a game to continue selling you new product. That's what they care about and GW would literally die if their games stopped growing. GW is like a shark. If it stops moving, it dies. That's also the case for Warmachine, which is (was?) a completely competitive game that was starting to buckle under its own girth well before players started to abandon it. That's just what miniature games are. Even the competitive ones.

There's no reason for the huge amount of bloat in 40k; it serves no useful purpose and actually hurts more than it helps because of how unstable the game has become, even with a total revamp for 8th edition, as a result. There's what, 25 codexes? Or close to that? And, despite not actually needing all of those documents to play, now over 100 FAQ documents that each and every book needs to fix things that should either be caught in proofreading or caught with even a basic amount of testing beyond "Oh that sounds about right".

The amount of actual rules in a single codex is a minority of the book. The vast majority of the books are pictures of models and background fluff. I just got the Syvaneth battletome, so it is here right next to me, and the rules don't even start until page 64 and last just under 40 pages. When the GHB or Chapter Approved comes out, people only look at the 10 pages of matched play content, but there's TONs of non-matched player stuff in these books - some of which is absolute gold. GW sells rules, both intended for competitive play and decidedly lot, but it also sells novels and characters and settings. And this stuff is important to competitive players too, or else they'd go play actual competitive games like Chess or Go rather than a bunch of space marines fighting cenobites and xenomorphs.

if you aren't the type of person like Peregrine clearly is

A troll?

The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

So, the guy at the top - the guy who has written articles about how competitive gamers are bad for the hobby and how you don't need points - doesn't have any influence over the game? And I know bottle went to tournaments, but he wasn't (primarily) a competitive player. If you go back and read his posts here, and look at his accomplishments as a designer - heck, if you listen to interviews with him or go to his Twitter page, he's not a competitive player.

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

This, pretty much. Jervis is the head and clearly isn't a competitive player, but from everything that's been indicated the rest of the AOS team enjoy competitive play, and the people they consult with are also regulars on the UK tournament circuit or bigtime UK organizers (like the guys who run SCGT) so at the very least they seem to "get" what matters to competitive players. I'm not sure at what point the AOS team branched, but the original 1.0 team was I think the same as the 40k team (which explains that debacle) and post-GHB expanded to be different.

A couple of points from above posts..

1-Dice Masturbation. Great term But I don't think we come at it from the same angle.

Dice rolling is GOOD. It allows for the player's plants to work great, be super effective.. or fail spectacularly.

SKILL in a game should be encouraged and skill isn't doing the Mathhammer to be unbeatable. Skill is being able to handle what the dice give you.

Which leads to my divergence from Apoc being "good" new rules. Yes, it reduces unneeded dice rolling. That's good. But it also starts to remove so much that the game starts to get flat, stale, cardboard.

The problem in 8th and the bloat of dice is due to it's idiotic rules design.

Dice masturbation is rolling lots of dice when you 1-shouldn't and 2-it isn't adding to the game.. its dice for dice sake.. because dice. Which is 8th.

Why? Because it has so many mulligans built in that it's lame. Part of having skill is winning despite the dice. When the dice hand you a win no one says.. wow you so skilled! No, it's the dice gods that won the day, not the player.

But when a player with bad dice ends up winning through skill. then it is clearly the player who is laudable.

Re-rolls, roll more re-rolls, bubbles of re-rolls. There were a lot fewer re-rolls in 8th. Even with FNP being abused.. you didn't get bubbles of re-roll all misses in ranged and combat and also re-rolls of 1s plus every six is another roll.

Rolls rolls rolls. Let alone the rolls for "shots" by AOE weapons then rolling AGAIN to hit, then to wound.

So I get the perspective on excessive dice for dice sake. But Apoc is as tasteful as cardboard pizza.

Right now abusing -1 to hit is a huge thing and the WACs field it at all costs (-2 being even better, zero ork shooting possible!).

8th is bloaty with special rules that could have been handled in just a few pages in the main rule book.

2- Game Complexity-weapons
Nothing wrong with the games variety of weapons. The problem is the copy-paste job version of them. Weapons used to actually be DIFFERENT and MEANINGFUL. In today's game you could safely cut about 3/4 because they are just dupes of each other.

In the old days, weapons had short and long range stats. These variables made different weapons.. different. Auto-guns were different than lasguns and minus to hit at long range OR short range (for unwealdly things) was a thing.

So an Auto-pistol was not the same stat line as a Las Pistol which was different from a slug thrower (yeah there were three tiers of weapons back in RT/1st edition days.)

So from today's perspective flattening out the weapons isn't so bad since they kept stripping "features" from weapons and combat to "streamline" things which resulted in many weapons becoming superfluous

3- TLOS.. yeah it sucks. By far the best LOS system was that in Warmachine where BASE SIZED was a thing. It made everything straight forward. No arguments or wasted time on visible, not-visible, in-cover, not-in-cover.

GW should have gone to base size (cylender) LOS a long time ago. If you want to "streamline" without turning the game into boring gak.. that's how you do it.

If Warmachine can do templates in fast, clock controlled, play then removing the templates does not abjectly speed up the game.. but it does make it more boring.

Tournaments need CLEAR, SPEEDY, but rules that maintain randomness to limit the ability to Mathhammer to "total victory".

Complexity is GOOD if it limits tactical moves and makes bad moves COSTLY. Dice for dice sake sucks and wastes TIME. TLOS sucks use base-size LOS. Bring back templates (sorry horde guys, but as a long time ork guy I've lived with templates my entire 40k time and its not the end of the world.. you just have to be cunni'n brutal.. not just brutal.... use yer 'eads)

AoS has gotten a lot smoother over the years than 40k. A lot of their stuff is pretty streamlined and workable. Your AoS games are faster and more "time efficient" than your 40K games atm despite the rules copy-pasta from AoS into 8th.

But AoS will never be a "fantasy battle" game. It's a fantasy skirmish game. Totally different than the old battles which felt great... if they were time consuming.

I know people don't like to have to REALLY think.. or think REALLY HARD.... REALLY FAST (on the tourney clock) but hey.

Not everyone is a winner.

But I totally understand GWs goal of Race-to-the-bottom approach to modern wargamming as it hopefully will draw in more people to an otherwise fairly static or shrinking field of players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

This, pretty much. Jervis is the head and clearly isn't a competitive player, but from everything that's been indicated the rest of the AOS team enjoy competitive play, and the people they consult with are also regulars on the UK tournament circuit or bigtime UK organizers (like the guys who run SCGT) so at the very least they seem to "get" what matters to competitive players. I'm not sure at what point the AOS team branched, but the original 1.0 team was I think the same as the 40k team (which explains that debacle).

Hah, well that explains it all doesn't it. Wow, no wonder 8th was such crap and now is a bloaty wonky system. Newer AoS is actually pretty lean and mean and functional. You could totally play it on a clock.