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This came up in another thread where someone said GW themselves do not want balance in 40k.
Imbalance shifts product as people will rush to try and keep up with the meta/flavor of the month/whats cool.

Park that for a moment but ask the question, do you as a player really want balance in 40k?
Do you want, or at least expect your Ork bike army to be able to compete VS a dedicated Tau gunline line or your footslogging Primaris to be able to beat IKsoup?

Or is it fair to just accept that 40k does not and cannot have balance when you factor in the range of armies, rules, special abilities, interactions etc.
In the above case, accept these are bad match ups and move on? (I used to play friendly MtG as white and really struggled against blue but had much better matchups vs black funnily enough. Eventually learned to accept it ).

Or should GW balance the game by giving each army "roughly equal units". e.g. a waveserpent is so far ahead of a rhino as a transport its kinda imbalanced? Hence GW should focus on fixing this via more equal abilities, points increase/decrease or better unit interactions.

Im on the fence on this one and have to give it more thought

It's not a binary choice for me.

I don't think people would actually enjoy it if it's was 100% skill based and balanced. This is because most people overestimate their ability by quite a large amount, and imbalance and randomness both serve to give these players something other than themselves to blame for their losses.

But that isn't to say that balance can't be improved. Just that perfect balance is neither desirable nor attainable.

Yes.

Rock/paper/scissors matchups are only fun to be if the difference if subtle - when a game is won or lost at listbuilding phase, then there's not much point in playing the game, IMO.

In an ideal world, I'd like for list building to simply be a case of configuring what stuff you want to use this game, rather than a competitive 'phase' of the game.

The world is not ideal though, and synergy/combos would have to flat out not exist for list building to work like that. What I would realistically like is for matchups to be more subtle and less swingy and for no unit to be so bad that it's too much of a burden to ever bring to a game.

I dunno. Models and aesthetic are considerably more of a thing in this game than, say, a video game, and you actually need to physically buy, build and paint them. It's really demoralising when you do and they either do nothing but cost points in your army, or you need to buy them in huge quantities at the expense of variety to achieve anything with them.

I want balance, I'm not realistically expecting to actually get it. The more flavour you put in the game, the further out of reach it gets, and that's fine too.

Imbalance shifts some product in the short term, but a balanced game shifts more as a wider array of viable builds out of a codex means a wider array of stuff people will buy for thst army.

Not to mention we saw what a heavilly imbalanced game did during 6th and 7th: bleeds players constantly. So with dead taking up warehouse space and a loss of players what does a heavily imbalanced game really do for the company?

I think the execs learned this the hard way and have stopped meddling so directly with the new stuff. Points changes are frequent and dead units don't stay dead.

Removed - BrookM

 Haanz wrote:
when a game is won or lost at listbuilding phase, then there's not much point in playing the game, IMO.

This. When you take army focused on anti-tank, don't be surprised you get stomped to the ground by pure infantry army, that is okay, but so-called "autotake" units, that are so good people give you weird looks if you don't take them are the biggest problem.

Well, balance cannot be attained.
First, you have to define concretely what balance means.
Then you will see that this is an NP-hard problem and so intractable for larger problem instances.

Ah come on dudes, lets not get the thread locked this early

If I had to choose between balance and the list building phase being a game in itself, I would choose balance every time.

I am in these games to play with minis. I can do the maths on the most powerful stuff as easily as anyone else, but it does not interest me. I want to collect miniatures that inspire me due to their aesthetics and background and then make what I consider to be a fun and interesting army out of whatever I have chosen.

I want a fair enough shot at winning with this if I make a few concessions to list building like ensuring a good mix of anti tank and anti infantry options, some mobile options and some more slow, long range ones. I don't mind list building giving an edge, but I really disagree with entire factions being trash because GWs lazy and unprofessional game designers cannot be bothered ensuring that any kid who likes the look of a faction and picks up a start collecting and a codex does not get autostomped by another kid who happened to choose whatever the powerful faction is by sheer accident. That is unpleasant for new players, it is unpleasant for older players too.

A more balanced game with more consistent design means people are free to do what they want and will still get a satisfying game most of the time. The free for all, list building is super important style favours people who like the intellectual exercise of breaking lists down into their most powerful configuration and who do not care too much about the miniatures or the story behind the game. It also compensates for a lack of tactical skills, because you can easily google what the best stuff is and then just apply it, particularly if you play on boards with predictable, GW mandated terrain.

I do not mind some imbalance and am not seeking perfect balance to be clear. Just something decent enough. And it is important that the design paradigm remains fairly consistent throughout an edition, which is a problem for GW because their designers seem to be really immature and unprofessional and they do not seem to care about what it means to radically change the design paradigm halfway through an edition (not to mention leaving stuff without an update for years and years, though I can see they have gotten better about that).

To me though the entire paradigm has changed and all GW games are a bit more card game or board game like in nature than what I consider a classic wargame to be like.

Balance is a nice thing to have, but it is a direct enemy of model and rule range. The bigger your range of variables, the worse the balance. That happens in all games.

40k is first of all a narrative game. Sure, we all play matched games, but everyone does with his idea of an army. Only a really small minority builds list purely by numbers. The biggest part of players builds lists by the models and then uses numbers to tweak it, which is a fine approach.

As long as there aren't extreme cases of imbalance (like the old castellan, the old ynnary and so on), the game is fine like this. It's already a miracle that with a model range this big and a continous stream of releases, the game is actually reasonably balanced.

Look at MtG for an example of why range of choices is the absolute enemy of balance. The amount of variables in MtG is simply huge, and the balance respects that. In fact, there is absolutely no balance, It was thrown out as a concept. There is no concept any more of "fluffy decks". If you want to play (not to compete) you are supposed to bring the most broken stuff available, and anything else is not supported.

So, since these are the rules of game design, and since this game wouldn't work without all these choices and releases because it is a narrative focused game, the current situation is fine. As long as GW keeps squashing the worst cases of imbalance.

No.

I wish the rules were much more "simulationist" with stats, equipment, etc accurately reflecting a cohesive vision of the 41st Millennium.

"Balance", as most people describe it, flies in the face of that because it wants to skew fundamentally unequal objects into a relative equality rather than adjusting for power difference through the use of in-universe logic.

There will always be units better than others depending on how the meta looks so it doesnt have to be perfect since that is impossible.

But what I would like to see is that externally most lists have if well balanced and built with a good plan have some chance in each matchup even if they go second. Right now it can be like a 5% chance to win if going second depending on terrain even if you have a rather good list just due to how lethal 8th is and how bad a matchup can skew it sometimes. Even some "allrounded" lists have rock paper scissor matchups right now. I have had games that were only down to if my opponent rolls 30%+ ones on their first shooting phase I might have a chance if not I have 0 chance to bring it back unless I just roll sixes on almost every roll for the next 2 turns.

But if I show up with a pure intercessor list on planet bowling ball and face a guard list with 3 plasma TC and other D2 weaponry spam I don't mind it if the marine player has 0% chance in winning. A balanced rules set that can do both is what I want. A spam list with no good thought behind it against its pure counter list without sufficient terrain should have 0 chance to win.

I also want the internal balance in a codex be good so even before you sit down and build your list and consider the meta you dont ignore 2/3 of the available units because they are just so much worse than everything else that no matter what you try to build you know you wont use them. Its ok if some units generally are better than others in most lists and metas but when you dont even consider them ever there is a problem. There should be situations that you would want to use terminators or land raiders in a space marine army.

I rather have some units lose some wargear options so they dont always become the superior choice before another unit with a similar role. Have discussed it in other threads about BA jump infantry. I want all of them to be viable for different things but when the cost is so similar and the different veterans have so much more options and attacks there were barely no situation normal assault marines were better than taking DC,SG,VV or CV. Surviving mortal wounds point for point is what AM do better but anything else you could do better with a certain build of the 4 veteran squads. They are so flexible that they could be cheaper, shoot better, fight better, survive better, better detachment for CP, bodyguards or a bunch of other extra rules that they could do everything AM could do but just straight up better no matter what role you wanted.

It's a bit the same with the tactical marines. t4 3+ isnt that sturdy anymore so if you want cheap troops for your troop tax you take scouts and they also have some special rules that do something the tacticals cant. If you want some tough troops the intercessors just cost a tiny bit more but have twice the wounds and attacks, longer range and better ap. Sure tacticals can have more options but unlike some earlier editions they dont get them for free or heavily discounted so at that point you are paying quite a lot for a heavy weapon while the rest of the unit is quite bland, Probably better to just use scouts and save the points for a more dedicated anti tank unit. Shock assault helps tactical and assault marines more compared to the more expensive units and the lower price for tacticals helps too so now there might be a reason to take them but a month ago there were close to 0 non fluff reason to. As long as each unit have a reason to exist on the board more than they exist in the fluff I will be much happier than now with the balance.

Top lists against top lists seems quite ok in 8th so the top units are fairly balanced it seems its just those forgotten units like terminators and land raiders that need a reason to see the light.

The thing with shifting product is that GW isn't just selling a product that you put on the table. It's ap roduct you might spend many hours building and painting before it even makes it to the tabletop. If GW sells and promotes imbalance as a means to sell "the newest shiny thing" that can work somewhat; but many people are not going to buy "every army". In fact many will only buy a few.

Therefore if GW leaves armies in the dust without support those players bleed away. They are less likely to invest into a new army because why bother when the old army got abandoned and the new could likely get abandoned too.



Honestly whislt balance is still an issue, I think that this is something that GW finally realised with their newest editions of the game. That armies left behind were not selling; that GW was losing investment potential in them, but also resulting in having to increase investment to bring armies "back from the dead" when they didn't need to.

GW isn't selling short term products; they are selling long term products for the majority of their core customers.



Better balance will breed better sales over a far broader range of products for GW. If all the armies were "perfectly balanced" the only shortfire sales GW would lose out on would be the "army flippers" and honestly that group would be army flipping even if results of balance changes were marginal gains.
Just look how GW was steadily bleeding off players and losing long term customers for a long while. A bad thing because long term customers are what keeps clubs and shops going and what helps attract new fresh blood into the game. When GW started makign efforts toward equal rules support for 8th edition and rebalanacing adjustments through FAQ, Errata and annual updates etc... they've seen their sales SOAR higher and maintain a higher threshhold than before. Old customers came back, new people are getting involved and GW has seen more pickup than in a very very long while.

Clearly better tighter and more balanced rules that means more armies are on par with each other results in better sales for GW. Remember many a player is not going to buy every army. That Tyranid player is a Tyranid player; they might get one more army on the side; but their main army is their one. GW can continue to sell new models and updated sculpts to that player over years and that player is there playing games with the newbies and getting newbies into the game as well. But if that player is left with an army with no updates, bad rules and a weak force that can't have a chance to win - then they will drift away. Worse they'll also likely take a few more players with them and discourage others getting involved.

There's always going to be the mathcrunchers who will calculate the the most survivable units point for point, most killy units point for point etc. But those numbers don't really mean much outside of a vacuum. The amount of variables is just too big to ever reach absolute balance. I mean even the meta affects the perceived balance of certain units.

Take the humble Primaris Space Marine for example. In a meta where there's an abundance of D2+ weapons around, they are not perceived as very survivable because they are more expensive than Tacticals yet die just as easily. However in a meta where most weapons are D1 the Primaris marine is mostly twice as survivable as the Tactical marine yet doesn't cost twice as much and actually shoots a bit harder than the Tactical.

Of course this is just an anecdote but just one example where a unit can be "well balanced" in one meta, but "poorly balanced" in another one.

Add stratagems to the mix that can turn a well balanced unit into an utterly broken OP game changer.

To answer the question: Yes, I want balance. Is it possible to achieve balance? Probably not.

What I want is:

1) for decisions made during list-building to be far less important than tactical decisions made during the game, and

2) for the 'best' (i.e. most competitive) lists to look at least something like the armies we see/read about in the fluff, and

3) for points 1 and 2 to be achieved without hamfistedly stripping out options (e.g. weird skew lists and soup armies should still be legal) or eliminating real choices (I'd never want all SM Devastator heavy weapons reduced to a single generic profile, for example).

When I ask for 'better balance', it's just a shorthand way of saying all that.

Do you actually want balance in 40K

Yes of course! Why would anyone say no to this?

Of course the subject of balance is far more nuanced than that but for me it goes back to the idea of points. I do not expect a 7 point ork to be balanced against a 13pt marine but I do expect that a 2k Ork list should be capable of winning at approximately 50% of the time against any other 2k list. But we know this isnt the case. The concept of points implies balance and the design team fail to understand this.

Such a big influx of new players to 8th edition now which is a great thing but I can't help feeling pity for the new player who walks into a store and decides to play grey knights because they sound and look cool. They might not realise the truth of that choice until they're 100's of £/$ invested

In the words of the late great Geoff Robinson,

"This is a games workshop game, it will never be balanced but thats part of the fun"

I think that moving forward we might see balanace improve, but only once GW actually changes some of its rules writers. They are clearly stuck in a rutt with a skill set and expectation setup that isn't quite what is conductive to a tight rules system. You can see it in the way they write rules whereby there are gaps and clear omissions or hazy interactions. Even just a purely technical writer with no gaming could tighten up things on that score alone.

They have made big changes, but I think some of the old culture is still there ingrained in the system.

 Ratius wrote:
...do you as a player really want balance in 40k?

Yes

 Ratius wrote:
Or is it fair to just accept that 40k does not and cannot have balance when you factor in the range of armies, rules, special abilities, interactions etc.

Changes made to the scale, unit types, and army restrictions over past few editions have made balance particularly difficult, but that's on GW.

I don't want balance in the way players think they want balance i.e symmetry/equality.

Do I actually want balance? Yes
Do I actually expect everything both intra-codex and inter-codex to be perfectly balanced? No
Do I think balance means symmetry? No

It would be very nice if out of the choices available for any given army, that out of the range of units that are suitable to fill a given niche/ role, that all those choices are comparable. This doesn’t mean they are all the same, some may be more expensive (and have suitably increase ability), some may trade offence for defence (or vise-versa). It more about avoiding the situation that frequently occurs now which is that of those units some are significantly more efficient at delivery that ability than others (e.g. offers similar performance to other options but is way cheaper, it’s points cost is comparable to other options but is notably better at doing the job…)

This would allow for army choices to be more about personal preferences, an increase the variability of the gaming experience, and the outcome of a game being more about the game than the choices of what's gone into the two armies. Even all you play is casual games there is often a point you’ll go I could get unit X as I like the model but my wallet is limited and as it’s totally over costed in game I’m not actually going to use it…

Yes, what a silly question.

I belive most want gw to actually attempt a fair shot at internal and external balance.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
What I want is just for the core system to be scrapped and rebuilt with a technical editor and someone who actually knows game design.

Which would require rewriting all 24 codecies for the 9th time, rereleasing all the marines again before anything new can happen. We'd lose another 3 years just to get back to where we are now, and even if it was a perfect edition for you and the way you like to play, there would be just as many other people who would be just as disappointed the new version as you are with this one.

I think they should just make a version of Kill Team Arena for 40k scale games. Of course, then they'd err on the side of caution and make it too streamlined, and you probably wouldn't like that either.

As for me, balance is nice, but I don't want it at the expense of moving forward. Nothing new will ever happen until we can stick with an edition for 5+ years, and the longer we stick with one, the better.

 Ratius wrote:
This came up in another thread where someone said GW themselves do not want balance in 40k.
Imbalance shifts product as people will rush to try and keep up with the meta/flavor of the month/whats cool.

Park that for a moment but ask the question, do you as a player really want balance in 40k?
Do you want, or at least expect your Ork bike army to be able to compete VS a dedicated Tau gunline line or your footslogging Primaris to be able to beat IKsoup?

Yes and yes. Assuming all armies are build with a similar mindset, of course. Awesome models arranged as a diorama will rarely, if ever, defeat an army which is playing the best of the best.
However, if both players want to run top competitive lists or both players just run the best from their limited collection, the game should be decided over the course of the game. Not during list building, not during the roll who goes first and not during the first turn.

Or is it fair to just accept that 40k does not and cannot have balance when you factor in the range of armies, rules, special abilities, interactions etc.

The assumption that WH40k being extremely complex and can therefore not be balanced is but an illusion. Sure it is complex compared to a regular board game, and matches that of many trading card games, but its complexity is completely dwarfed by video games like turn based or real-time strategy, mobas or auto-chess games which are all relatives of our turn-based strategy game with just 5-7 turns.

Imagine the entire game being folded into a video game, with you picking 2000 points like you do on the battlescribe app, deploying them onto a virtual table, moving them by dragging them, shooting and charging works by selecting models and right-clicking targets, optional abilities can be clicked.
The game does all the things like measuring, determining how much damage a shot does, resolving abilities automatically and just removing moral casualties on its own.
It would be a game that could be played on your phone, and your 5-7 turns would be over in less than half an hour, despite working exactly like our hate-loved WH40k.
So, compared to things like Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Command&Conquer, Supreme Commander and all the game that evolved from those, the complexity is ridiculously low in comparison. Many of those games have archived balance that is good enough for 90% or more of the player base, so - without doubt - WH40k can archive that as well.

In the above case, accept these are bad match ups and move on? (I used to play friendly MtG as white and really struggled against blue but had much better matchups vs black funnily enough. Eventually learned to accept it ).

I understand what you are trying to say, but balance in MtG doesn't work that way. WotC hasn't been balancing colors against each other for multiple decades now. And, of course, a decent white weenie will give any blue deck a run for its money.

Or should GW balance the game by giving each army "roughly equal units". e.g. a waveserpent is so far ahead of a rhino as a transport its kinda imbalanced? Hence GW should focus on fixing this via more equal abilities, points increase/decrease or better unit interactions.

This was the attempt that was done in strategy games at the end of the 90s - human race gets big tank, aliens get same big tank, but with different look and sounds, maybe with slightly different abilities. Orks get dragons, humans get dwarfs throwing hammers. Allies get missile troops, russians get tesla troopers. Or you just gave everyone the same stuff and just altered which they could access.
Then came StarCraft and proved that three races which had absolutely nothing in common, not even a single thing, could be balanced against each other. Everybody's mind was blown.

The "trick" to balancing such a complex system is not to find the god equation and solve it for X.
Instead, you iterate. This is the reason why most successful competitive games get patches at least every few months - they are iterating to get closer to a perfectly balanced game.

1) You basically pick a starting point and then look at the data.
2) You then analyze that data and find stuff that over-performs and stuff that under-performs. Check if the measures you took last time have been effective, or maybe too effective.
3) You reduce the efficiency of the over-performers and increase the efficiency of the under-performers.
4) If you find that something simply doesn't work/isn't fun no matter what you do with it, that unit (or army) needs a major overhaul
5) You release the whole thing and go to 2) analyze data again.

Of course, sometimes iterations will make the game objectively worse, but in general, the game will be getting more balanced the more iterations you have. Some successful games have archived a state where the devs just mess with the balance intentionally to shake up things, because otherwise nothing would change anymore.

GW is only iterating twice a year (big FAQ and CA), so we are moving very slowly. But people are not playing as many games as video gamers and armies take time to build, so it can't really compared to a game like LoL which is patching twice a month.

Subjectively we have come a long way from conscript spam, 7 storm raven lists, the unbroken reign of the Ynnari, Magnus&Mortarion soup, Guilliman's razorbacks, pox walker farm, commander spam, hive tyrant spam and all the castellans that were deployed whenever 32 guardsmen showed up anywhere in the imperium.
Remember all those problematic lists GW addressed in 7th? Yeah, me neither.
On the other hand, they undid the "TO THE GROUND!" nerf on comissars, gave Marines a second codex to get them out of the Ultramarine trap, additional attacks and CP for CSM and a bunch of other buffs to units that saw little play.
If you look at tournament results, there is a slight imbalance in favor of TS, but in general you see all sorts of armies playing on the top to tables of tournaments. And this matches what I see in my casual matches, the game is in a better state than ever.

Of course, there are still some major flaws in the game, which need to be address and GW often does things like a drunk toddler, but the direction is a good one. Unless they decide to toss 8th out of the window for something completely new, balance will improve over time, even if slowly.

Last, and most importantly: Of course GW wants to balance 40k. Despite not being a huge idiot like Kirby, Rountree first and foremost still wants our money.
Balanced games draw in gamers and keep them in, while games with major imbalances frustrate players and loses them. Multiple gaming companies, including Riot, WotC and Blizzard have shown statistics that they were losing gamers during times where huge imbalances have been present in their games. Players = customers = $$$.

TL;DR: Balancing WH40k is possible, and GW will try to do that in order to make sure that people keep spending money on the game.

Did some cleaning, I would kindly ask people to stay on topic and to not snipe at one another.

PenitentJake wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
What I want is just for the core system to be scrapped and rebuilt with a technical editor and someone who actually knows game design.

Which would require rewriting all 24 codecies for the 9th time, rereleasing all the marines again before anything new can happen. We'd lose another 3 years just to get back to where we are now, and even if it was a perfect edition for you and the way you like to play, there would be just as many other people who would be just as disappointed the new version as you are with this one.

I think they should just make a version of Kill Team Arena for 40k scale games. Of course, then they'd err on the side of caution and make it too streamlined, and you probably wouldn't like that either.

As for me, balance is nice, but I don't want it at the expense of moving forward. Nothing new will ever happen until we can stick with an edition for 5+ years, and the longer we stick with one, the better.

They need to scrap 8th because they shot themselves in the foot by making such a bare bones core game. It lacks all complexity and requires stacking rule sources to create any depth of mechanics (it fails to do so). 8th can only become more of a bloated mess as they slap layer after layer of changes on top of a bare bones and minimal foundation. Balance is the least of 8ths concerns as it suffers from being a bloated mess and yet mechanically a very shallow gameplay experiences.

As to the original subject. I use to want a more balanced game but I felt like 8th was a monkey's paw situation. 8th became more balanced than 7th but at the cost of all it's fun and depth. I realized that what matters more than balance is having all units being semi viable. There needs to be depth of mechanics that allow units to operate much more differently from each other and close enough balance that no unit is completely useless in the long term while no other unit remains so powerful that it makes all other units invalidated. And between the factions it needs to be close enough in balance that it's not all but determines who wins based only on what faction they bring to the table. That last bit is the hardest to achieve but it should be something that is the aim to at least partially achieve. Above all, there needs to be interesting mechanics at play which creates fun and interesting gameplay instead of the current bland as dust gameplay we have now.

I have trouble with the word "balance", maybe GW has ruined it for me, I think to be "fair" is the better word.

Finding a means to apply appropriate cost to model points is the pivotal breaking point of this.
I have taken many kicks at trying to make an equation to assess an overall cost or value to a model for relative comparison.

What almost throws this out the window is the various aura capabilities and how many models it can affect.
Going to keywords has drastically helped with these not affecting models they were not intended for.
NOTE: I am including various psyker abilities and the chaplain hymns since they are all relatively short range buffs.

Stratagems are also a growing concern of the relative worth vs affected models for each point used.
Oddly, some of these have had me dust off a few models because they specifically buff certain units.

<edit> Lost my mind there, we also have MANY faction buffs that are huge force multipliers, the new Ultramarine ability treat firing weapons like you had not moved is huge BUT your entire "army" must be Ultra... not sure how I would do the math there... so yeah, given up on that. We can at least say it is sufficiently complex that only the HUGELY unfair combinations stick out.

The main overarching goal is to have "no model is an auto-include" and "no model is an auto-shelf".
We pay money for our models and typically want to use them.
Makes me rather sad to see a fully painted model that will never see play without it feeling like a major handicap to use.

I would much rather have a mroe balanced game.

GW realyl needs to do an app of some sorts for points even if is has a subscriptin model and make incremental points changes. this once a year and juse that is all you get (outside edge cases like the Castellan and possibility of new codex) is insufficient. I keep hearing how this edition is "the most balanced" and yet my main arm (orks) has fewer effective builds then it did in 5th edition.

we all know some units need adjustment, some up , some down. Often the units needing to go up are the same ones in every tournament list for a faction, meanwhile every unit needing buffs are the ones never making it into tournament lists or even casual play.

An example here is the wraithknight. at release it was really good. in 6th-7th overpowered. 8th you can pick them up CHEAP as there are so many and they are basically useless now as the balance swing was to hard.. When GW added 100 points to a Castellan you coudl likewise pick them up cheap on ebay.

Going back to OP's idea - the game itself is indeed balanced through via plus/minus of "approximately equal units". Meaning, in theory, the game's overall balance is determined by the minute differences in performances in certain aspects, whether be it shooting, assaulting, moving, claiming objectives, etc.

Generally speaking, SM/CSM (supposed to be) serves as the baseline where offense and defense is more or less balanced; Aeldari/Drukhari sacrifices defense for more specialized offensive toolkit; Tau sacrifices assault capabilities & defense for stronger ranged offense; Ork foregoes ranged offense for superior model count & melee capabilites; Tyranid trades off some firepower & requirements for internal synergies for numerical supremacy; IG sacrifices melee prowess and weaker troops for increased durability of vehicles, firepower and numerical supremacy; Necrons trade offensive capabilities for defensive gimmicks; Daemons have numerical advantages plus other offensive gimmicks at a price of unreliability. In short, all armies are balanced between quality and quantity of varying degrees.

The issue here is that the game's core mechanics are skewed to favor three particular aspects of the game currently: cheap 1W models, expendability and shooting. Of course, we must acknowledge that there are certain outliers such as smash captains + scout CP batteries that are tailored specifically to counter certain lists.

All in all, tournament winning lists have few things in common - 1. it has a minimum sized battalion (or two) 2. majority of models are single-wound 3. has big gun unit where majority of CP's are spent on. So, which ever army that can: 1. make a cheap battalion for CP, leaving pts for the big guns in the list and 2. exercise superior board control through cheap units tend to be stronger than those who cannot. This is further exacerbated by the strength of weight of dice in the current edition where it doesn't make sense to bring quality units. Redundancies always made for a stronger list, but expendability has come to outweigh the qualitative aspect of the redundancies observed in the offense department.

So what does this tell us? The balance of 40k rests mainly on the mechanics of cheap individual wounds, stratagems and CP generation. The internal/external balance of units and codex is secondary to the current scheme of things in 40k.

Potential solutions for overall balance would be revisit how stratagems are composed - the game desperately needs to 1. remove stratagems that guarantees benefits across all armies (i.e. improve X characteristic by Y) and 2. expand on the game-wide stratagems focusing on out-of-turn interruptions to provide more proactive decision making (i.e. intercept, move out of turn, shoot out of turn)

 skchsan wrote:
Going back to OP's idea - the game itself is indeed balanced through via plus/minus of "approximately equal units". Meaning, the game's overall balance is determined by the minute differences in performances in certain aspects, whether be it shooting, assaulting, moving, claiming objectives, etc.

VERY good point. Taking into account the relative "bias" of the game toward a unit role like shooting or assault would have a huge impact on relative worth of the unit.

I find combinations of factors improve things:
- Assault unit, relative survivability to come to grips with the enemy - deepstrike, minuses to hit, relative toughness, high armor, high attack stat,... etc.
- Shooting - Range, auto-hit, need line of sight, high hits, high damage, Oeverwatch buffs...etc.

I have trouble with the word "balance", maybe GW has ruined it for me, I think to be "fair" is the better word.

Thats an interesting quote.
I'll keep that for next Fridays philosophical debate