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It's also important to note that some people like unbalanced situations only so they can build the power list and feel like they can get continual easy wins from the game. They are the same kind of player who will complain endlessly if their army isn't the most powerful broken army in the game (or they jump ship continually between armies to keep ahead of the game - which isn't always to GW's benefit because they often have a low value on the models so will second hand buy wherever they can).

So sometimes what people want has to be translated and then extrapolated to work out if its really of benefit for the community as a whole.

this group also misses out on the fact taht if the whole game is imbalanced then at some point people will gravitate toward the imbalanced forces more and more; so the difference in imbalance actually levels out once again. Either resulting in a game balanced at a certain level with certain combos; or resulting in a situation of whoever gets to combo-first wins. That can be ok in something like Magic where you've a lot more random and games are faster; but in wargames the random is a touch less (you don't ramdom draw your army for the table) and the games far longer.



In general I think many are happier with more even pitched games even if they want an easy cheat option to win

 Overread wrote:
It's also important to note that some people like unbalanced situations only so they can build the power list and feel like they can get continual easy wins from the game. They are the same kind of player who will complain endlessly if their army isn't the most powerful broken army in the game (or they jump ship continually between armies to keep ahead of the game - which isn't always to GW's benefit because they often have a low value on the models so will second hand buy wherever they can).

Also "the codex is fine because this single broken build. Does not matter it will be nerfed in 3 months, I will have sold my greytide and bought the new hotness by then".
This is what back then contributed to kill WHFB in my area.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
Its not bad to have units that have different purposes. The issue is when some units are just plain better than others. when you look at a codex adn say well X Y and Z will make oturnamnt lists, A, B, and C have some limited use, meanwhile Units L, M ,N, and O tough luck maybe they will get better rules in another 12 months during chapter approved, until then they are garbage and will not see play.

The differences are far more marginal than the internet would have you believe. I mean we haven't even had a 30 page debate about IS in quite some time.

 auticus wrote:
I used to think the players wanted balance. That seemed obvious to me.

Oh how wrong I was.

I had the privilege of writing one of the Age of Sigmar fan comps that was used by a good many tournaments before GW official points killed all of the fan projects off.

One of the biggest complaints sent to our playtest group was that the points were way too boring because they were too balanced and list building didn't mean as much.

That list building didn't mean as much.

List building.

You can't have list building be impactful if the game is also balanced, because if you look at balanced, you see multiple load outs would be equal in value, which removes the value of list building.

People attracted to GW games want list building to be a major impact.

Which means you require less balance to pull off.

That actuly makes the game sound like a very bland experience, rather than a issue with balance itself. SInce even with as best posible balance, units in Age of Sigmar interact and buff each other. So list building would be a thing that players have to think about. At least over just throwing out units to make up there points quota.

I think it was put very well on the prior page. A lot of people approach the game like a puzzle and want to "solve it" with the most potent list.

Those people are not as excited by games where you don't solve them in the list building phase.

We also have to remember more people complain than compliment (dakka is a good showcase for this - despite most of the membership happily playing the game there is WAY more complaining than complimenting going on).

So sometimes you've got to filter things. I also think that sometimes people mistake things. They mistake army building for finding that broken power list. It takes time for such a mentality to change and it will only change with a rules set that plays outa balance system.


In theory balanced games make FAR more interesting army building because now the gains and losses are far more subtle and harder to spot for the power builders. Whilst at the same time there are far more overall choices for armies; esp armies iwth more unit variety. This means more chance to put the toys on the table rather than only one subset. For GW as a company having balanced armies means more increase of sales because now you've got more reason to build more than one working list. You don't just stop with one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I think it was put very well on the prior page. A lot of people approach the game like a puzzle and want to "solve it" with the most potent list.

Those people are not as excited by games where you don't solve them in the list building phase.

You know another thought is that online we don't actually talk about tactics all that much. Those people might well lack many if any game skills because we don't really talk about it much. List building is ALL anyone really talks about in any depth. Try striking up a chat about flank attacks and deployment strategy or such and its a DARN hard thing to get more than a couple of replies or keep things focused on the game iwthout falling into list building discussion. Even lets-play videos and twitch don't really focus on it and commentators don't really look at the strategy either.

It's a huge gap which results in gamers who are focused on the list building phase and who lack skills, language, understanding and key concepts of the actual "game" itself. So to me its no surprise they get hooked on the list building because its something they can learn and interact with and get feedback on. The rest of the game its far harder to overlooked in a huge way even to the point where many say "Oh there's no tactics its just whoever brings the best list who wins" and "Oh eh I don't know about that; we just play all lined up and see who wins first in the shooting"

You know another thought is that online we don't actually talk about tactics all that much.

Thats very true and in the whfb days on warseer (and before that portent) I used to run a site with tacticals and battle reports which turned into video reports as the internet wore on.

The thing is, there isn't really much to talk about past the first couple videos.

Especially with 40k.

40k is mostly target priority, understanding what to target, and how to get into objectives without losing focus on what your objectives are in the first place.

Its a lot easier to say "ok this army has these two busted units so take as many as you can and then max CP so you can take this busted command ability" than it is to put up a series of diagrams that take a few hours to create, which is why you hardly ever see any meaningful content when it comes to actual tactics.

Though I would love to see someone resume doing videos of that nature that weren't also behind a pay wall.

 auticus wrote:
I think it was put very well on the prior page. A lot of people approach the game like a puzzle and want to "solve it" with the most potent list.

Those people are not as excited by games where you don't solve them in the list building phase.

Thing is even target priority is a lesson for many people. They might get a very basic "this is my anti tank rocket I shoot it at the tank" until someone throws a skimmer army at them and suddenly the accuracy of that 1 rocket fails against the skimmers and they are left floundering.

There's a good chunk of content to cover, but then it needs repeating over and over. Because the market is always moving. It's like a magazine subscription. Anyone who reads hobby magazines often spots the same articles going around and around every single year. That' the magazine focusing a new year on the new generation coming through for whom its all fresh.

Yet they wrap it up in a fresh article each time because that also engages the intermediates who might pick up a little tip each time and don't know it "all" yet, but know enough to get started.



I agree that it would be great to see, but so far its never really caught on in a big way. I figure its because its a lot of work to produce quality video and written articles on the subject andm any of those with the skill to do it well and teach it well don't have the time/money to devote to it. One might hope that a well put together initial series of videos and articles could jumpstart something running through something like patreon - trickle feeding in a good budget through mass appeal and tiny support per person .

 Overread wrote:
We also have to remember more people complain than compliment (dakka is a good showcase for this - despite most of the membership happily playing the game there is WAY more complaining than complimenting going on).

So sometimes you've got to filter things. I also think that sometimes people mistake things. They mistake army building for finding that broken power list. It takes time for such a mentality to change and it will only change with a rules set that plays outa balance system.


In theory balanced games make FAR more interesting army building because now the gains and losses are far more subtle and harder to spot for the power builders. Whilst at the same time there are far more overall choices for armies; esp armies iwth more unit variety. This means more chance to put the toys on the table rather than only one subset. For GW as a company having balanced armies means more increase of sales because now you've got more reason to build more than one working list. You don't just stop with one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I think it was put very well on the prior page. A lot of people approach the game like a puzzle and want to "solve it" with the most potent list.

Those people are not as excited by games where you don't solve them in the list building phase.

You know another thought is that online we don't actually talk about tactics all that much. Those people might well lack many if any game skills because we don't really talk about it much. List building is ALL anyone really talks about in any depth. Try striking up a chat about flank attacks and deployment strategy or such and its a DARN hard thing to get more than a couple of replies or keep things focused on the game iwthout falling into list building discussion. Even lets-play videos and twitch don't really focus on it and commentators don't really look at the strategy either.

It's a huge gap which results in gamers who are focused on the list building phase and who lack skills, language, understanding and key concepts of the actual "game" itself. So to me its no surprise they get hooked on the list building because its something they can learn and interact with and get feedback on. The rest of the game its far harder to overlooked in a huge way even to the point where many say "Oh there's no tactics its just whoever brings the best list who wins" and "Oh eh I don't know about that; we just play all lined up and see who wins first in the shooting"

I think so too, and saw it as a mutation induced by MtG and CCG bleed into a more recent boardgame resurgence, generational due, well, the fact that my generation was less affected (being born earlier and raised during less of a snow-flaky reboot era) and regardless of age due to exposure to certain other influences, for instance having grown up with guns, or playing in the chess leagues...

While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

As I noted above I think its because many gamers understand list building but not the game itself. The community feeds this by focsuing on list building more and more. There is loads of talk on it but so little of actually how to make those lists work on the table. So they build toward power-lists where you put down a combination or unit that is so overpowered that it requires no finesse or control to use. You just point it forward and win. I think if the community had a flipover and focused away from lists and into game tactics the "demand" would shift as more people would be able to get the puzzle solving in the game itself.

Rightnow they see it as boring because they don't understand the potential to do stuff on the table. Of course tables with almost no terrain and no line of sight blocking terrain directly feed into this "lack of choices/thinking" in the tabletop side of things.

 Overread wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

As I noted above I think its because many gamers understand list building but not the game itself. The community feeds this by focsuing on list building more and more. There is loads of talk on it but so little of actually how to make those lists work on the table. So they build toward power-lists where you put down a combination or unit that is so overpowered that it requires no finesse or control to use. You just point it forward and win. I think if the community had a flipover and focused away from lists and into game tactics the "demand" would shift as more people would be able to get the puzzle solving in the game itself.

Rightnow they see it as boring because they don't understand the potential to do stuff on the table. Of course tables with almost no terrain and no line of sight blocking terrain directly feed into this "lack of choices/thinking" in the tabletop side of things.

Regarding the underlined - the issue is that these "overpowered" units generally tends to ignore all the core mechanics of the game (i.e. firing heavy weapon after moving, moving through other units, shoot while within 1" of enemy unit, fall back and shoot). In this aspect, I do agree with the OP in that the creators aren't truly thinking about how these cool, shiny new toys fit into the given sets of rules (apart from the fact they outright ignore them) and instead are provided as "IWIN" buttons until sales start to decline (or they've reached the required margin of return and don't care about pushing sales for that particular item any longer).

Within a balanced set of rules, each individual units need to have their strong suit and intrinsic weakness. Balance is unattainable if select few units are strong in all aspects and weak to none.

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

I mean I kinda get what you mean, but it isn't like the list building is the only thing people who are into it do. They also play, and generally enjoy their games. For me, when I was into this, it was like a little experiment each time to see how my list would work. But I might have spent a lot of time beforehand doing the maths, trying to come up with interesting and powerful combinations, more time than was spent gaming. And sometimes the list only got used once, to test an idea, and was then shelved, so the time spent planning the list was much more than the time spent using it.

I just enjoyed both periods of time, in a different way. The list building was something for me to do while working a boring job with basically no mental stimulation (I was a security guard in a pretty quiet womens clothes shop). I played in a group with likeminded people who also enjoyed the puzzle aspect and liked to test their lists against similarly hardcore lists.

I think it is a perfectly valid way to have fun, but I think it is overall not good for the hobby for the game to be designed to feed into that, particularly when entire factions get left out in the cold because the designers are unprofessional and do not make an effort for all factions.
Now, I am mostly in the mood to throw down some models and get a game in, and I want a game that lets me do that with whatever part of my miniature collection strikes my fancy without having to worry too much about having an unfun game. I essentially do not want to have to spend that time I previously enjoyed on list building because I have a lot of other stuff occupying my time, and I would rather just play some fun games with some models I think are cool. Am I a "better" player now than before? No, but I think I am closer to what a lot of people who play the game "casually" are like, just because they are kids just getting into it and have not even considered anything other than buying the coolest miniatures, or they are old farts like me with demanding jobs who do not want to engage too deeply with the listbuilding outside of the game for whatever reason.

That said, as Auticus points out, there are plenty of people who are like me 10 years ago who love this puzzle-list stuff and they tend to be very active, very engaged and sometimes very vocal. They are also important to the game.

I dunno, I don't think there is an obvious answer to all of this. I find all the stuff about Command Point farming and so on super offputting, and I want to be able to use the models I own without too much stressing out about effectiveness. Grimdark Future seems to give me what I want, so I am gonna start a wee club (third time in my life doing that) to teach some people how to play. YMM, as always, V.

 Da Boss wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

I mean I kinda get what you mean, but it isn't like the list building is the only thing people who are into it do. They also play, and generally enjoy their games. For me, when I was into this, it was like a little experiment each time to see how my list would work. But I might have spent a lot of time beforehand doing the maths, trying to come up with interesting and powerful combinations, more time than was spent gaming. And sometimes the list only got used once, to test an idea, and was then shelved, so the time spent planning the list was much more than the time spent using it.

I just enjoyed both periods of time, in a different way. The list building was something for me to do while working a boring job with basically no mental stimulation (I was a security guard in a pretty quiet womens clothes shop). I played in a group with likeminded people who also enjoyed the puzzle aspect and liked to test their lists against similarly hardcore lists.

I think it is a perfectly valid way to have fun, but I think it is overall not good for the hobby for the game to be designed to feed into that, particularly when entire factions get left out in the cold because the designers are unprofessional and do not make an effort for all factions.
Now, I am mostly in the mood to throw down some models and get a game in, and I want a game that lets me do that with whatever part of my miniature collection strikes my fancy without having to worry too much about having an unfun game. I essentially do not want to have to spend that time I previously enjoyed on list building because I have a lot of other stuff occupying my time, and I would rather just play some fun games with some models I think are cool. Am I a "better" player now than before? No, but I think I am closer to what a lot of people who play the game "casually" are like, just because they are kids just getting into it and have not even considered anything other than buying the coolest miniatures, or they are old farts like me with demanding jobs who do not want to engage too deeply with the listbuilding outside of the game for whatever reason.

That said, as Auticus points out, there are plenty of people who are like me 10 years ago who love this puzzle-list stuff and they tend to be very active, very engaged and sometimes very vocal. They are also important to the game.

I dunno, I don't think there is an obvious answer to all of this. I find all the stuff about Command Point farming and so on super offputting, and I want to be able to use the models I own without too much stressing out about effectiveness. Grimdark Future seems to give me what I want, so I am gonna start a wee club (third time in my life doing that) to teach some people how to play. YMM, as always, V.

Right. I'm not saying list building shouldn't be a large part of the game. Rather, to say that the codex shouldn't be better balanced internally as to produce more than one or two tourney winning archtype lists because it ruins the fun of list building due to the reduced predictability of your opponents during match ups is disingenuous argument.

The way in which the strengths & weaknesses of different armies are set up, it's impossible to have a "chess-like" match ups unless it's a mirror match. In fact, it's more "chess-like match up" in the current state of affair due to lack of variety within the set of min-maxed lists.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
Its not bad to have units that have different purposes. The issue is when some units are just plain better than others. when you look at a codex adn say well X Y and Z will make oturnamnt lists, A, B, and C have some limited use, meanwhile Units L, M ,N, and O tough luck maybe they will get better rules in another 12 months during chapter approved, until then they are garbage and will not see play.

The differences are far more marginal than the internet would have you believe. I mean we haven't even had a 30 page debate about IS in quite some time.

to an extent sure. like when people always insisted Tactical marines were somehow the worst unit in the game at 13 points each. They were not particularly great but they were not the worst units one could even take int the marine codex.

by that same token even the arguments some are saying about newer models being more effective. The ork buggies some are ok but some (like the squigg buggy for example) are jsut terrible for the points and really not very useful in general. mayeb chapter approved will fix it, but for now a squig buggy and to a lesser but still significant effect the snazzwagon seem like obvious wastes of points. the only reason they ever see play by me is A) I painted them so want to sometimes use them, and B) if I am purposefully down scaling my lists power due to facing a lower power army liek grey knights

speaking of grey knights... basically the whole codex even vs pre new codex marines is just bad.

catbarf wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:
I understand what he wants, the only answer would be a radical overhaul of mission design and a move away from fixed predefined missions. I am extremely doubtful that there is much appetite for that in the wider competitive community.

I don't think you understand what he wants at all. 'Make Ork bikes, buggies, transports, and tanks not horrendously overcosted for what they are' has nothing to do with mission design.

They are not poor units because they are suited for specific missions. They just don't offer enough on the table to justify their cost.

Right now the only tournament-viable Tyranid list is Swarmlord, Flyrants, a unit of Hive Guard, and as many Genestealers as I can take, under the Kraken hive fleet. That's it. If I want to take Hormagaunts, Termagants, Warriors, or Carnifexes- you know, the basic units of the army that are staples in the fluff- am I building an overly-specialized fluffy army that deserves to lose in take-all-comers games? What's the niche mission that this army composition is tailored to win?

This tournament mindset that it's balanced if each codex has just one viable build is hurting the game. There are standout units and a lot of crap- not 'only useful for a specific mission type', but actually never worth taking- and it diminishes the idea of meaningful choice in listbuilding.

Have you actually tried playing different missions?

I played some city fight missions with my Tau and found that in those missions my Vespid were the stars of the codex. In a more typical tournament mission they are mediocre and will not make the cut but in those missions they were stellar performers.

The US tournament crowd in particular vocally regard some things as utter trash that do absolutely fine in non-ITC mission sets. I was actually told by someone doing unit reviews that it was a waste of time reviewing a unit I suggested because it was utter garbage; a unit that had been the core of my tournament list for the previous 6 months in which I had two 1st places without losing a single game in that whole period. I am afraid I am rather at the point of not believing online opinion about "this thing is unplayable trash" because the received internet opinion is usually what is trash.

I think I will just let you carry on with your debates and your opinions. Its not like anyone is ever going to change their mind about anything anyway.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
Have you actually tried playing different missions?

I played some city fight missions with my Tau and found that in those missions my Vespid were the stars of the codex. In a more typical tournament mission they are mediocre and will not make the cut but in those missions they were stellar performers.

Vespids are the unsung heroes of 8th ed Tau codex. They are hands down the most underrated unit in the codex for all types of games and not just specifically city fights.

 Overread wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

As I noted above I think its because many gamers understand list building but not the game itself. The community feeds this by focsuing on list building more and more. There is loads of talk on it but so little of actually how to make those lists work on the table. So they build toward power-lists where you put down a combination or unit that is so overpowered that it requires no finesse or control to use. You just point it forward and win. I think if the community had a flipover and focused away from lists and into game tactics the "demand" would shift as more people would be able to get the puzzle solving in the game itself.

Rightnow they see it as boring because they don't understand the potential to do stuff on the table. Of course tables with almost no terrain and no line of sight blocking terrain directly feed into this "lack of choices/thinking" in the tabletop side of things.

@skchsan,

This isn't exactly the same, but one of the things I didn't like about Warcraft III over Warcraft II and Starcraft was the focus on fighting part over the base/army building part. I was never very good at RTS games. I could brute force the single player stuff with numbers in previous games where Warcraft III didn't really allow that abuse if I remember correctly. Kinda sounds familiar to what is being discussed here.

I am becoming a worst and worst miniatures wargamer when it comes to effective playing. I just don't care about winning as much as I used to compared to having a fun game. I will probably always be a bad player in 40k because of that and I find the game far too silly to but the paralegal research and quiz show knowledge to get good at it. I am aware of that the only way I am going to consistently win is to be playing with a stacked deck of a better army. I am not so sure many 40k players know that about themselves.

@Overread,

I think you are right. I don't really care too much for list building, but I do sometimes want to make the best of ________ unit. I am currently, trying to get my all out of Primaris Reivers, and I was a little surprised how few dakkanauts could go further than they are a bad unit. I know they aren't good (but I think they are better than most of Dakka gives them credit for), but I am fielding them because I like them. Ultimately, I did get a couple of useful tips mainly to consider holding them in deep strike longer than I had been.

There does sometimes feel like their is a big divide between people that really only know the theoretical (mathhammer) and those who have actually experimented (actual play). Granted there are a fair number of units that I think don't need to be fielded to know that they aren't the most powerful option. It does seem to me that only fielding the most powerful option would be rather boring as I can see armies falling into rather predictable play patterns game after game.

 skchsan wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

I mean I kinda get what you mean, but it isn't like the list building is the only thing people who are into it do. They also play, and generally enjoy their games. For me, when I was into this, it was like a little experiment each time to see how my list would work. But I might have spent a lot of time beforehand doing the maths, trying to come up with interesting and powerful combinations, more time than was spent gaming. And sometimes the list only got used once, to test an idea, and was then shelved, so the time spent planning the list was much more than the time spent using it.

I just enjoyed both periods of time, in a different way. The list building was something for me to do while working a boring job with basically no mental stimulation (I was a security guard in a pretty quiet womens clothes shop). I played in a group with likeminded people who also enjoyed the puzzle aspect and liked to test their lists against similarly hardcore lists.

I think it is a perfectly valid way to have fun, but I think it is overall not good for the hobby for the game to be designed to feed into that, particularly when entire factions get left out in the cold because the designers are unprofessional and do not make an effort for all factions.
Now, I am mostly in the mood to throw down some models and get a game in, and I want a game that lets me do that with whatever part of my miniature collection strikes my fancy without having to worry too much about having an unfun game. I essentially do not want to have to spend that time I previously enjoyed on list building because I have a lot of other stuff occupying my time, and I would rather just play some fun games with some models I think are cool. Am I a "better" player now than before? No, but I think I am closer to what a lot of people who play the game "casually" are like, just because they are kids just getting into it and have not even considered anything other than buying the coolest miniatures, or they are old farts like me with demanding jobs who do not want to engage too deeply with the listbuilding outside of the game for whatever reason.

That said, as Auticus points out, there are plenty of people who are like me 10 years ago who love this puzzle-list stuff and they tend to be very active, very engaged and sometimes very vocal. They are also important to the game.

I dunno, I don't think there is an obvious answer to all of this. I find all the stuff about Command Point farming and so on super offputting, and I want to be able to use the models I own without too much stressing out about effectiveness. Grimdark Future seems to give me what I want, so I am gonna start a wee club (third time in my life doing that) to teach some people how to play. YMM, as always, V.

Right. I'm not saying list building shouldn't be a large part of the game. Rather, to say that the codex shouldn't be better balanced internally as to produce more than one or two tourney winning archtype lists because it ruins the fun of list building due to the reduced predictability of your opponents during match ups is disingenuous argument.

The way in which the strengths & weaknesses of different armies are set up, it's impossible to have a "chess-like" match ups unless it's a mirror match. In fact, it's more "chess-like match up" in the current state of affair due to lack of variety within the set of min-maxed lists.

Aha, yes. Sorry, I agree with you, misunderstood your first post.

 skchsan wrote:

Spoiler:

 Overread wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.

This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."

As I noted above I think its because many gamers understand list building but not the game itself. The community feeds this by focsuing on list building more and more. There is loads of talk on it but so little of actually how to make those lists work on the table. So they build toward power-lists where you put down a combination or unit that is so overpowered that it requires no finesse or control to use. You just point it forward and win. I think if the community had a flipover and focused away from lists and into game tactics the "demand" would shift as more people would be able to get the puzzle solving in the game itself.

Rightnow they see it as boring because they don't understand the potential to do stuff on the table. Of course tables with almost no terrain and no line of sight blocking terrain directly feed into this "lack of choices/thinking" in the tabletop side of things.

Regarding the underlined - the issue is that these "overpowered" units generally tends to ignore all the core mechanics of the game (i.e. firing heavy weapon after moving, moving through other units, shoot while within 1" of enemy unit, fall back and shoot). In this aspect, I do agree with the OP in that the creators aren't truly thinking about how these cool, shiny new toys fit into the given sets of rules (apart from the fact they outright ignore them) and instead are provided as "IWIN" buttons until sales start to decline (or they've reached the required margin of return and don't care about pushing sales for that particular item any longer).

Within a balanced set of rules, each individual units need to have their strong suit and intrinsic weakness. Balance is unattainable if select few units are strong in all aspects and weak to none.

This.

 Overread wrote:


this group also misses out on the fact taht if the whole game is imbalanced then at some point people will gravitate toward the imbalanced forces more and more; so the difference in imbalance actually levels out once again. Either resulting in a game balanced at a certain level with certain combos; or resulting in a situation of whoever gets to combo-first wins. That can be ok in something like Magic where you've a lot more random and games are faster; but in wargames the random is a touch less (you don't ramdom draw your army for the table) and the games far longer.

I don't think that the existance of pre nerf Inari, eldar flyer lists, all imperial or chaos soups helped to even out the playfield for any people that are not playing them. W40k isn't much about combos, it is more like some people play with 60 cards, with draw mechanics, overlaping synergies etc while others have 20 cards and half of them are basic lands.

Regarding the underlined - the issue is that these "overpowered" units generally tends to ignore all the core mechanics of the game (i.e. firing heavy weapon after moving, moving through other units, shoot while within 1" of enemy unit, fall back and shoot).

It is not like there is a ton of units that ignore the rules of the other game, by being revers overpowered. In w40k you can be fast and good at shoting or melee, can be resilient and good at shoting or melee, can be a tank type of unit. Or all those at the same time, but there is also a ton of units that are weak in melee, weak in shoting, slow and on top of it not resilient. It is the gap that is the problem, because GW has this strange idea, whey they add point value to units for "cool" stuff they can do in one in a milion game, or make people pay for upgrades those units are never going to use, because they will never be in range or they will be dead too fast.

I tend to take a mathhammer approach to balance.

If your unit can't do X% damage (based on most units) for its points - or gives up more than X% damage (based on most units) for its points - its probably a bad unit. Movement abilities, buffs and so on then apply on top of this. Some of these can be mathed out, some not.

Historically GW has just piled abilities and stats onto units so there has been blatant codex creep. WHFB was broken twice - by Skaven and then later by Chaos Daemons - where those armies could plausibly defeat twice the points worth of opposing armies. They were not fixed and caused a new edition to be added.

7th Ed 40k was another example of this. By the end you had a small pool of viable builds, and a vast array of units in the game that were laughably bad. This wasn't fun, or balanced. Ynnari was arguably a good example of "end of edition" madness, that shouldn't be in a game built around buying expensive models and playing 2~ hour games.

8th by contrast has seen them try to bring units into line - by a few nerfs, and more buffs. Grey Knights remain bizarrely overcosted, but most other underperforming factions have been boosted. This doesn't mean there are not "worse" choices, but there are less out and out traps you should never take on a rational basis.

Getting things close is good enough.

Meta balance is completely different. If you bring a list stuffed full of lascannons and melta, and I turn up with 100+ Tau Fire Warriors or Ork Boys or something, then yeah, you are probably in trouble. But I don't see how you can fix that without getting a very boring/shallow game where everything is as good against everything.

Well the problem with GW "math hammer " is that they try to go "safe" sometimes and overcost on models, units or whole armies, or add point cost for lets say deep strike mobility. But 8 months later they remove the option to deep strike from the game, but they do not adjust the point cost of the entire army or the way it is suppose to be played.

Can't have a balanced army based the idea, that most of the army is going to be deep striking turn one. And then make deep strike turn 2 only, and you can only deep strike half your points on to the table.

Tyel wrote:
Meta balance is completely different. If you bring a list stuffed full of lascannons and melta, and I turn up with 100+ Tau Fire Warriors or Ork Boys or something, then yeah, you are probably in trouble. But I don't see how you can fix that without getting a very boring/shallow game where everything is as good against everything.

The original FoC mostly dealt with that when units were being properly attributed.

Troops could be spammed but were also vulnerable to every basic weapon in the game. Anything that could blitz you was in fast attack (including for slower armies units that simply took a transport), anything heavily armoured and/or armed was heavy support, anything with shenanigans was elite, and the rank and file were mission vital.

It was not so much to limit the extent to which you could sabotage yourself, but rather to limit what you would be facing.

Building a balanced army is party of the 40k skill set.

@auticus
Are we sure that the complainers know the exact reason to why, they're unhappy with said ruleset/codex/points cost?

Let's say that the points are "balanced" to a certain degree and the units do not interact or affect each - then I agree that it's rather transparent and rather easy to predict (not saying that you can predict the exact game turn and what your opponent will bring and do) the battle itself, but if there's a myriad of ways to boost or otherwise affect your units through the battle, based on the selected units, then won't this puzzle of list building and boosts be fun and interesting to work out no matter how balanced?

Karol wrote:
Well the problem with GW "math hammer " is that they try to go "safe" sometimes and overcost on models, units or whole armies, or add point cost for lets say deep strike mobility. But 8 months later they remove the option to deep strike from the game, but they do not adjust the point cost of the entire army or the way it is suppose to be played.

Can't have a balanced army based the idea, that most of the army is going to be deep striking turn one. And then make deep strike turn 2 only, and you can only deep strike half your points on to the table.

It's in general difficult to balance an army that hinges on a single gimmick. Gulliman was such a gimmick, as is da jump for orks, allaitoc for eldar or the swarmlord for nids. Basically the whole army is balanced around those - if you take away that gimmick without compensation it obviously falls apart.

The right thing would be to avoid implementing powerful rules that warp an entire army around it, but often it's easier to toss some weak army a bone than reworking the entire thing.

Slaanesh in AoS is also built around the depravity concept.

It's annoying because it means any effective army pretty much has to load up on 6 full commanders for every game (assuming 2K points). Which easily makes half or more of your army in leaders. It also makes you want to summon more leaders to get more depravity each turn.

The result is units like fiends, which are costly but good, get pushed down because you'd rather take a leader than fiends; whilst army options like a chariot force or a seeker or deamonette heavy force also get pushed down. Each one is taking points you could be putting into leaders to summon more units to the battlefield.


Though it gets worse because you don't just want leaders, but leaders with a high number of attacks and a high wound counter. Which pushes you toward the Keepers a lot.


In the end it makes fo ra poor internal balance for the army because there's a clear overriding mechanic that pushes army construction down a very niche pathway.

Chaospling wrote:
@auticus
Are we sure that the complainers know the exact reason to why, they're unhappy with said ruleset/codex/points cost?

Let's say that the points are "balanced" to a certain degree and the units do not interact or affect each - then I agree that it's rather transparent and rather easy to predict (not saying that you can predict the exact game turn and what your opponent will bring and do) the battle itself, but if there's a myriad of ways to boost or otherwise affect your units through the battle, based on the selected units, then won't this puzzle of list building and boosts be fun and interesting to work out no matter how balanced?

The people that complain about it would need to go into detail. The summaries I have heard over the years are "balanced games are boring, if you want balance go play chess (thats probably something I read once a week either on an AOS player's twitter account or a facebook thread), and listbuilding should have a large impact on the game or else the game is boring because then you can just field 2000 points and it will be just as good as someone else's 2000 points".