Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Part of what you're describing just has to do with a game's popularity. Burn and churn is a symptom of an evolving meta, which is driven by both new releases and games played. The more games played, the more quickly top players iterate their lists. The more players playing the more different solutions are being tested in parallel. The more popular a game gets and the more tournaments it has, the faster players find problems and jump to them or to things strong against them. Less popular games still evolve their meta, but if that evolution is closer to your own rate of play it feels more natural.

That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

The problem being that a game that is complete at point of sale is dead on arrival - it doesn't need any 'support' and the game will essentially be unchanging. If you can find another dimension to play with beyond durability/output, and make it work, that would be grand.

However, the way 40k (and maybe AoS) are architected the behaviour of the units is separate from the victory conditions of particular games (missions/whatever AoS equivalent), which are separate from the actions/moves players can take in games. In theory you could have a perfectly good game using tokens assigned very basic, bare-bones data-sheets, but I've yet to meet anyone that wants to play that way.

Both systems are kind of inherently broken by their own designers due to giving out free bonuses. These are impossible to balance. How do you assign a points cost to a stormhawk interceptor that might be either iron hands, gaining a ton of free benefits, or black templars, gaining nothing? You can’t. It’s simply not the same unit any more.

As for whether scenarios can fix it, I don’t really think they can. This is my point on igougo. It’s like trying to shore up a house that’s built on rubbish foundations. You should really just start again from the ground up.

Often what happens is you just end up with a new meta. Something like plaguebearers wins events by flooding the board. Or you put in loads of LoS-blockers to counter 1st turn advantage and everyone buys mortars. This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to try and fix things, but there’s just only so much you can do.

Mandragola wrote:
Both systems are kind of inherently broken by their own designers due to giving out free bonuses. These are impossible to balance. How do you assign a points cost to a stormhawk interceptor that might be either iron hands, gaining a ton of free benefits, or black templars, gaining nothing? You can’t. It’s simply not the same unit any more.

The only real problem with the way they do this is that they assign those bonuses to a color palette and you sell each color palette as a separate faction. If you got to choose your free bonuses, then the bonuses would essentially serve to provide list niches to design additional models into. For example, rather than have "White Scar Bonuses" if they were "<Chapter> Bike Bonuses" players would be able to choose that when they want to focus on those models regardless of how they paint their dudes. Sure, the Stormhawk might only be "worth its points" with the "Armormaster Bonus" along with other models that thrive under that bonus, but it would have a place.

 LunarSol wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
Both systems are kind of inherently broken by their own designers due to giving out free bonuses. These are impossible to balance. How do you assign a points cost to a stormhawk interceptor that might be either iron hands, gaining a ton of free benefits, or black templars, gaining nothing? You can’t. It’s simply not the same unit any more.

The only real problem with the way they do this is that they assign those bonuses to a color palette and you sell each color palette as a separate faction. If you got to choose your free bonuses, then the bonuses would essentially serve to provide list niches to design additional models into. For example, rather than have "White Scar Bonuses" if they were "<Chapter> Bike Bonuses" players would be able to choose that when they want to focus on those models regardless of how they paint their dudes. Sure, the Stormhawk might only be "worth its points" with the "Armormaster Bonus" along with other models that thrive under that bonus, but it would have a place.

Better exemple is probably Chaos.
How is a WB csm in any way equal to AL, purge etc.

 LunarSol wrote:
Part of what you're describing just has to do with a game's popularity. Burn and churn is a symptom of an evolving meta, which is driven by both new releases and games played. The more games played, the more quickly top players iterate their lists. The more players playing the more different solutions are being tested in parallel. The more popular a game gets and the more tournaments it has, the faster players find problems and jump to them or to things strong against them. Less popular games still evolve their meta, but if that evolution is closer to your own rate of play it feels more natural.

Great observation. I've always talked with friends about how slowly the 40k meta evolves compared to the metas in competitive video games. Never thought to frame it this way.

Part of why I love 40k is specifically because the meta is so slow to change due to a bunch of naturally occurring factors specific to tabletop. The amount of time and effort involved even just to set up and play a single round of 40k is immense compared to playing the latest patch of Starcraft or whatever. And if you factor in the time and money it takes to purchase, build, and assemble an army... well there's really no comparison.

 LunarSol wrote:

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

As much as I hate defending GW *shudder* in 40k at least the issue with durability/output is largely amplified due to ITC "rules" being regarded as the one true way in the US and other areas. That removes most of the tactical and strategic elements shallow as they are and turns the game into a simple test of target priorities during the game and mathmatics during the list building stage combined with the ability to spot and abuse loopholes/shonky rules.

SeanDrake wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

As much as I hate defending GW *shudder* in 40k at least the issue with durability/output is largely amplified due to ITC "rules" being regarded as the one true way in the US and other areas. That removes most of the tactical and strategic elements shallow as they are and turns the game into a simple test of target priorities during the game and mathmatics during the list building stage combined with the ability to spot and abuse loopholes/shonky rules.

As someone who plays all 3 mission sets regularly, the differences between straight rulebook, ITC and ETC are greatly exaggerated. There is no unit that is bad in one game type that is suddenly good in another - the top 2 or 3 units within a faction may change around a little but they're still legitimate choices, and there's no mission possible that would make the worst 2 or 3 units attractive.

SeanDrake wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

As much as I hate defending GW *shudder* in 40k at least the issue with durability/output is largely amplified due to ITC "rules" being regarded as the one true way in the US and other areas. That removes most of the tactical and strategic elements shallow as they are and turns the game into a simple test of target priorities during the game and mathmatics during the list building stage combined with the ability to spot and abuse loopholes/shonky rules.

Wait, what? When did whatever 'ITC' is become a One True Wayism in the US?

Trasvi wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

As much as I hate defending GW *shudder* in 40k at least the issue with durability/output is largely amplified due to ITC "rules" being regarded as the one true way in the US and other areas. That removes most of the tactical and strategic elements shallow as they are and turns the game into a simple test of target priorities during the game and mathmatics during the list building stage combined with the ability to spot and abuse loopholes/shonky rules.

As someone who plays all 3 mission sets regularly, the differences between straight rulebook, ITC and ETC are greatly exaggerated. There is no unit that is bad in one game type that is suddenly good in another - the top 2 or 3 units within a faction may change around a little but they're still legitimate choices, and there's no mission possible that would make the worst 2 or 3 units attractive.

I certainly agree that it doesn't really change what units are good/bad it certainly changes things more in the wider view of what armies are good and, more importantly, counter play to certain army builds.
ITC's ability to allow you to (almost) entirely ignore board control is certainly Meta shaping.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

SeanDrake wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 auticus wrote:
That is probably a good analysis. However I don't find AOS to be as popular as 40k by a longshot, but the burn and churn in that game is almost equal.

Their bell curve of viability is so narrow that that exaggerates the issue quite a bit.

I find Sigmar a little stagnant at the moment honestly. Its evolution feels trapped under the weight of Slaanesh.

A big part of the problem is just that everything in GW games comes down to raw durability/output of base units and how many of them you can take. There's a huge tendency for a small change, like the cost of a single weapon option, to require the vast majority of models to change their equipment. In many ways, Sigmar avoids this with cleaner implementations of weapon options, but doesn't have enough diversity to allow players to adapt efficiently to changes or new challenges without changing armies entirely.

As much as I hate defending GW *shudder* in 40k at least the issue with durability/output is largely amplified due to ITC "rules" being regarded as the one true way in the US and other areas. That removes most of the tactical and strategic elements shallow as they are and turns the game into a simple test of target priorities during the game and mathmatics during the list building stage combined with the ability to spot and abuse loopholes/shonky rules.

Wait, what? When did whatever 'ITC' is become a One True Wayism in the US?

When GW ran away from the tournament secene in 5/7th and the community had to step in the save the competitive scene. At the time ITC was needed and now that it isn't its hard to let go.

Voss wrote:
Wait, what? When did whatever 'ITC' is become a One True Wayism in the US?

Do you seriously not know what ITC is?
Even if you don't actively play it, you'd almost need to be avoiding any discussion about organised 40k to not have heard of it.

But just in case you've been living under a rock...

Frontline Gaming's Independent Tournament Circuit wrote:The ITC (Independent Tournament Circuit) is a coalition of tabletop gaming tournaments that have joined together to increase their mutual resources, exposure to the community and the prestige of their events. These events run through a season which runs one year, beginning and ending in February. The player that does the best overall through the year will be the Circuit Champion. Last year, that player won $4,000 cash! We also recognize the players that do the best with each specific faction, such as the best circuit Space Wolf Player, or best circuit Tau player, etc. as well as the best teams. For a full beak-down of how this works, read this document. The 2018 season is the fifth year for the ITC! The previous seasons were huge hits and the ITC has now grown to be a global circuit. In partnership with Best Coast Pairings, we’ve also developed an app that facilitates running events.

So in essence it's just a ranking system that TO's can submit scores to. BUT... ITC also publishes a set of custom missions. While it's not necessary to use the mission set, a lot of TO's do, and they are the 'standard' for competitive 40k being discussed online.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ltQMdeDqYRXOhvdYT3dtUSji3AISvZRM8gDlhOXDaF8/edit

Which incorporate 3 methods of scoring:
- 1 VP each round if you kill at least 1 enemy unit
- 1 VP each round if you kill more units than your enemy
- 1 VP each round if you control an objective
- 1 VP each round if you control more objectives than your opponent
- 1 bonus VP each round for achieving a difficult mission specific objective (eg, controll all objectives)
- Each player selects 3 additional tertiary objectives at the start of the game which are worth up to 4pts each (total of 12 VPS). These objectives are for killing specific unit types (eg, 1 for every vehicle or character that you kill) or for controlling specific objectives (1 VP if you have a unit in each table quarter).

A lot of people like these missions for competitive play because they make multiple army styles viable, and the final game score is considered to be very reflective of the game that was played.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
As someone who plays all 3 mission sets regularly, the differences between straight rulebook, ITC and ETC are greatly exaggerated. There is no unit that is bad in one game type that is suddenly good in another - the top 2 or 3 units within a faction may change around a little but they're still legitimate choices, and there's no mission possible that would make the worst 2 or 3 units attractive.

I certainly agree that it doesn't really change what units are good/bad it certainly changes things more in the wider view of what armies are good and, more importantly, counter play to certain army builds.
ITC's ability to allow you to (almost) entirely ignore board control is certainly Meta shaping.

Weird, I don't find that ITC missions ignore board control at all.
You have 3 points per round from controlling objectives, and 5 secondaries that are about holding objectives. I usually pick (and usually score full points for) Recon and Ground Control objectives.

Perhaps compared to GW's missions eternal war which are literally only about controlling objectives... but IMO those in themselves present their own problems with horde style armies (Orks, GSC, Plaguebearers) being able to win missions without dealing any damage at all. There's mathematical min-maxing there, just on a different set of stats.

Trasvi wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
As someone who plays all 3 mission sets regularly, the differences between straight rulebook, ITC and ETC are greatly exaggerated. There is no unit that is bad in one game type that is suddenly good in another - the top 2 or 3 units within a faction may change around a little but they're still legitimate choices, and there's no mission possible that would make the worst 2 or 3 units attractive.

I certainly agree that it doesn't really change what units are good/bad it certainly changes things more in the wider view of what armies are good and, more importantly, counter play to certain army builds.
ITC's ability to allow you to (almost) entirely ignore board control is certainly Meta shaping.

Weird, I don't find that ITC missions ignore board control at all.
You have 3 points per round from controlling objectives, and 5 secondaries that are about holding objectives. I usually pick (and usually score full points for) Recon and Ground Control objectives.

Perhaps compared to GW's missions eternal war which are literally only about controlling objectives... but IMO those in themselves present their own problems with horde style armies (Orks, GSC, Plaguebearers) being able to win missions without dealing any damage at all. There's mathematical min-maxing there, just on a different set of stats.

You chose not to focus on killing secondaries. but armies that ignore board control do. Armies like the eldar flyer list just hold 1 objective and get kill more to balance out the hold more and win on secondaries.

The boobyman of hordes in GW missions has no basis in reality when you look at tournament results. Hordes are not dominating at all.

 Ordana wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ordana wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
As someone who plays all 3 mission sets regularly, the differences between straight rulebook, ITC and ETC are greatly exaggerated. There is no unit that is bad in one game type that is suddenly good in another - the top 2 or 3 units within a faction may change around a little but they're still legitimate choices, and there's no mission possible that would make the worst 2 or 3 units attractive.

I certainly agree that it doesn't really change what units are good/bad it certainly changes things more in the wider view of what armies are good and, more importantly, counter play to certain army builds.
ITC's ability to allow you to (almost) entirely ignore board control is certainly Meta shaping.

Weird, I don't find that ITC missions ignore board control at all.
You have 3 points per round from controlling objectives, and 5 secondaries that are about holding objectives. I usually pick (and usually score full points for) Recon and Ground Control objectives.

Perhaps compared to GW's missions eternal war which are literally only about controlling objectives... but IMO those in themselves present their own problems with horde style armies (Orks, GSC, Plaguebearers) being able to win missions without dealing any damage at all. There's mathematical min-maxing there, just on a different set of stats.

You chose not to focus on killing secondaries. but armies that ignore board control do. Armies like the eldar flyer list just hold 1 objective and get kill more to balance out the hold more and win on secondaries.

The boobyman of hordes in GW missions has no basis in reality when you look at tournament results. Hordes are not dominating at all.

I guess my point is that if there are armies that can compete on board control, and eldar flyers are still winning, then eldar flyers must be ok enough at board control (shooting the enemy off objectives is a legitimate form of board control).

What I do see with eldar flyer lists in ETC/GW missions is that they feature more Wave Serpents, Fire Prisms, Night Spinners and Ravagers to go alongside 3-5 flyers. But these are all top tier units in ITC missions as well - hence why I say that the effect that ITC has on balance is exaggerated. Pure Eldar flyers are an extreme outlier in terms of boots-on-the-ground - And you can still fit 6 units of troops alongside 7 eldar planes - and the next armies on the tier list do just fine at board control

As for your experience with horde in GW missions... mine has been that hordes dominate and are limited mostly by the willingness of people to paint 200 models. Boyz and Gretchin, plaguebearer, gsc, termagants, all are very powerful armies which in the GW CA18 missions can build up big enough lead via weight of bodies that the enemy cant score enough in turns 4/5/6/7. (at least until the Chaos Knight and marine codex which have insane anti-horde capabilities). My last event had the aforementioned mech eldar in first, followed by GSC, Plaguebearers, Plaguebearers, and Termagants. And these are all top tier units in ITC missions as well.
(I'm discounting the actual GW rulebook missions because they favour and I dont know anywhere that has used them all edition. Half of the CA18 missions are at least ok)

Mandragola wrote:
Both systems are kind of inherently broken by their own designers due to giving out free bonuses. These are impossible to balance. How do you assign a points cost to a stormhawk interceptor that might be either iron hands, gaining a ton of free benefits, or black templars, gaining nothing? You can’t. It’s simply not the same unit any more.

^^^^
This, right here, was one of my biggest gripes before I quit.The nonsense started back in 7th where a player could gain super special abilities on his or her units just by bringing the right combination but without paying any more points for them, bonuses that where not even even across the board (the old 'IG vs SM' debate comes to mind, and the sheer dearth of incredibly good bonuses Marine formations gave as opposed to the IG formations that, bar a couple, were utterly useless) and could lead to one army gaining a massive advantage over the other simply because the player brought "super special collection X" to the field whereas the other player brought something that didnt gain any bonuses, or did not even have access to any at all. There was never any acknowledgement that by giving out what were essentially free buffs GW was heinously unbalancing the game and they continued to do so in a similarly badly thought out fashion into Age of Primarchs.

It comes down to it that such free rules are not constructive to a fair and fun game. Whilst I agree they add flavour they should be payed for, in the same manner as other optional weapon upgrades.

Relying on points to balance everything is one of the quickest ways games get stuck with too many things to try and fix to effectively be able to balance anything. One of 40k's biggest issues is after all, the endless question of what a power sword is worth. Sigmar makes players pay for group bonuses, but its kind of nonsense. The battalion costs feel incredibly arbitrary and restrictive.

It's worth noting that sometimes the idea is to create paths that control players to make sure the competitive game looks like the universe you're trying to create. Free bonuses for players that play armies like the kind of stuff you sell in your starter boxes for example helps players make intuitive feeling competitive armies and helps ensure armies feel like they're supposed to. At the same time, its a good way to create design space for a variety of model types. Make the Wraithknight really good and it just takes the place of some other model people are currently taking. Make the Wraithknight good but only in lists that can't take Shining Spears and you've got a few more archetypes to design models into.

7th ed formations could have been so good but were implemented so poorly.

Battle company in particular gets a bad rap. (For those unfamiliar, the battle company formation essentially gave you free rhinos for each unit IF you took a "traditional" 100 marine company.) People complained aboit the "700 points of free transports". But in reality, those transports werent worth 700pts - no-one was running mass marines in rhinos. ose transpors weren't actually worth the points. Battle company turned that style of list from completely unplayable to decently competitive. But importantly, it was quite restrictive.

Contrast to the riptide wing - (take 3 riptides, get bonuses). Where battle company took bad units, and applied heavy restrictions to make them decent, the riptide wing took great units, lifted the restrictions and made them amazing.

Now we're seeing this with 8th. We're getting bonuses lumped with restrictions - doctrines for being pure marines - but the bonuses and restrictions are completely out of line. The most glaringly obvious place I think is the daemons codex, where being pure tzeentch cuts out 3/4 of the codex in exchange for a very negligible bonus: but being pure iron hands comes at the cost of... some people make a face if your marines arent black?

Trasvi wrote:
7th ed formations could have been so good but were implemented so poorly.

Always the caveat to any design.

Trasvi wrote:
7th ed formations could have been so good but were implemented so poorly.

Battle company in particular gets a bad rap. (For those unfamiliar, the battle company formation essentially gave you free rhinos for each unit IF you took a "traditional" 100 marine company.) People complained aboit the "700 points of free transports". But in reality, those transports werent worth 700pts - no-one was running mass marines in rhinos. ose transpors weren't actually worth the points. Battle company turned that style of list from completely unplayable to decently competitive. But importantly, it was quite restrictive.

Contrast to the riptide wing - (take 3 riptides, get bonuses). Where battle company took bad units, and applied heavy restrictions to make them decent, the riptide wing took great units, lifted the restrictions and made them amazing.

Now we're seeing this with 8th. We're getting bonuses lumped with restrictions - doctrines for being pure marines - but the bonuses and restrictions are completely out of line. The most glaringly obvious place I think is the daemons codex, where being pure tzeentch cuts out 3/4 of the codex in exchange for a very negligible bonus: but being pure iron hands comes at the cost of... some people make a face if your marines arent black?

That is just being completely disingenuous.
Being pure iron hands comes at the cost of losing access to (almost) all Imperium units not in the SM codex. Which is a significant cost considering pure SM armies competitively did not really exist.

One could even argue that most of the issues with Iron Hands don't even stem from bonuses of being a pure marine detachment. Combat doctrines are good, no doubt about it, but the real power doesn't even come from them in an IH's list.
The stratagems, warlord traits and relics are something any IH detachment has access to. And they are, for the most part, what breaks the army.

Trasvi wrote:
Battle company in particular gets a bad rap. (For those unfamiliar, the battle company formation essentially gave you free rhinos for each unit IF you took a "traditional" 100 marine company.) People complained aboit the "700 points of free transports". But in reality, those transports werent worth 700pts - no-one was running mass marines in rhinos. ose transpors weren't actually worth the points. Battle company turned that style of list from completely unplayable to decently competitive. But importantly, it was quite restrictive.

It was broken when you consider the mobile nature of play. I admit Marines had better formations, but the ability to load up on free transports and start the game with a massive advantage over your opponent in terms of numbers and mobility was huge. It let you advance to objectives faster, redeploy faster, go on the offensive faster, take strategic vantage points faster. it up-ended the game and utterly shat all over the other armies that lacked such things. That said, there were worse. The triple-Vindicator squadron for instance, a formation built to take any not-toptier army and ruin them.

Contrast to the riptide wing - (take 3 riptides, get bonuses). Where battle company took bad units, and applied heavy restrictions to make them decent, the riptide wing took great units, lifted the restrictions and made them amazing

Yeah, that was awful. That and the scatbike formation really sgowed how little GW cared about balance back then.

 LunarSol wrote:
Relying on points to balance everything is one of the quickest ways games get stuck with too many things to try and fix to effectively be able to balance anything. One of 40k's biggest issues is after all, the endless question of what a power sword is worth. Sigmar makes players pay for group bonuses, but its kind of nonsense. The battalion costs feel incredibly arbitrary and restrictive.

It's worth noting that sometimes the idea is to create paths that control players to make sure the competitive game looks like the universe you're trying to create. Free bonuses for players that play armies like the kind of stuff you sell in your starter boxes for example helps players make intuitive feeling competitive armies and helps ensure armies feel like they're supposed to. At the same time, its a good way to create design space for a variety of model types. Make the Wraithknight really good and it just takes the place of some other model people are currently taking. Make the Wraithknight good but only in lists that can't take Shining Spears and you've got a few more archetypes to design models into.

Seems like it could get complicated quickly, especially when there are inevitably plenty of competing interests coming from outside the rules department. It also just seems like a lot more work period compared to a points system since force org restrictions become more and more bespoke. If the goal is to maintain the same level of creativity and variety in army building you get with a points system, then that's going to be a lot of bespoke restrictions to hash out and test.

I only played a tiny bit of Sigmar but I did spend some time reading the rules and checking out what lists were possible with my 40k daemons collection. It really does feel a lot more restrictive than 40k due to its simplicity and due to how balance would be even more difficult to achieve without limiting army lists to extremely specific unit combos via warscroll battalions. I imagine if the core game was more complicated, going the warscroll battalions route would be even more work to balance properly. It starts to feel a lot more like pre-determined "decks" at that point and takes a lot of the fun out of building an army.

It starts to feel a lot more like pre-determined "decks" at that point and takes a lot of the fun out of building an army.

That pretty much sums up age of sigmar played at the min/max level yes.

Tbf, 40k at the competitive level is similarly "pre-set deck-like", but maybe not quite to the same degree.

Competitive 40k at least has some options in how you build things. Most current competitive lists have a set "core" that's like 1000-1500 points, and then you can basically fill in the blanks with whatever you want. Take 3x Crusader Knights for example... very strong tournament list. I've seen variants with smash captains and guardsmen added, or tank commanders and guardsmen, or admech and smash captains, or even a 4th Knight and some AdMech. You can change it up to suit your playstyle.

Most lists are like that.

 Horst wrote:
Competitive 40k at least has some options in how you build things. Most current competitive lists have a set "core" that's like 1000-1500 points, and then you can basically fill in the blanks with whatever you want. Take 3x Crusader Knights for example... very strong tournament list. I've seen variants with smash captains and guardsmen added, or tank commanders and guardsmen, or admech and smash captains, or even a 4th Knight and some AdMech. You can change it up to suit your playstyle.

Most lists are like that.

Well necrons have like ~300 pts to spend to "free" stuff and that's basically do I take option A or option B. Wealt of options!

Sadly enough, the most fun I had in 8E were probably the Index days. Everyone was just simply using units. No OP bonuses, WLTs, relics, etc. The opportunity cost to be fluffy was really low. It was really when Guard codex landed that the imbalance started.

 Suzuteo wrote:
Sadly enough, the most fun I had in 8E were probably the Index days. Everyone was just simply using units. No OP bonuses, WLTs, relics, etc. The opportunity cost to be fluffy was really low. It was really when Guard codex landed that the imbalance started.

Yup Index was pretty well balanced, not perfect, but much better balanced.

But balance does not sell churn and burn.. churn and burn makes GW money. Unbalanced therefor is in their business interests.

 meatybtz wrote:

 Suzuteo wrote:
Sadly enough, the most fun I had in 8E were probably the Index days. Everyone was just simply using units. No OP bonuses, WLTs, relics, etc. The opportunity cost to be fluffy was really low. It was really when Guard codex landed that the imbalance started.

Yup Index was pretty well balanced, not perfect, but much better balanced.
.

Assuming you guys never faced 4++ brimstones...

Well, Index definitely needed a few points adjustments at the lower end. I remember Conscripts too. But generally, you just ran whatever you wanted. You had blue Space Marines? Well, they aren't Iron Hands just because they are broken. They are Ultramarines.