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I don’t remember him using anything else at the beginning of his presence here, but I stopped following his threads after couple of months so I don’t know if he eventually expanded his list or not.

Slayer,

You assert that the list in my story was not a tourney list. Well, it came from round 2 of a local tourney last weekend with 44 players. The tourney was billed as a counterpoint to our more competitive club champs that happen in February: no Lords of War, no ForgeWorld. I don't run those in any case, so I went for an oddball themed list. It had fifteen Deathwing Tartaros Terminators and a Land Raider (going for a 30K theme) with some Astra Militarum bullet catchers to bulk out the list. I came 19th. I lost the first match against Ultramarines, but if we had gone to the fourth turn I would have tabled him. I handily won the second match where my Master challenged the Demon Prince and lost the third against Black Templars. I had fun in each game and achieved my objective: have fun games on my first Saturday of Block Leave. I had spent Canadian Thanksgiving painting Cypher as my Master so he was going to put that sword to use. If this makes me CAAC in your eyes then so be it! I came 2nd in an earlier tournament in 8th Edition (with Deathwing Terminators no less). I always run Dark Angels, so its been tough sledding as of late but I am OK with that. I play for fun, but I will admit that the competition in the game is part of the fun. Its just not the dominant part.

I honestly have no idea how my playstyle could be offensive to you or other players. If it hurts your feelings that I buy GW products then I guess I will have to live with that.

As an aside I reject the WAAC and CAAC labels. CAAC is a non-sequitur. Its impossible to be casual at all costs. I assume it was indeed invented by somebody hurt that they had been labelled as WAAC. I don't blame them for being insulted, but making a counter-insult is a little immature.

If my bringing 15 Terminators makes a competitive player feel like I am judging him then he has a real insecurity complex. How about we play the legal lists that we want to? Now, there might be some folks out there who would like to compete at the top table at LVO but are unable to do so. If they make passive-aggressive jabs at their victorious opponents then that's just poor sportsmanship and nothing to do with the casual/narrative gaming mindset. I also dislike the WAAC label. I think that competitive and casual are at least workable categories that avoid making a judgement in the title. They can both coexist in the gaming ecosystem. I also think its possible to float between the two: I think I do. I played at the Canadian Grand Tournament in 2nd Ed and I was nationally ranked in FOW a few years ago (not anymore). I still play tournaments but I now focus on bringing a list that I will enjoy and that my opponent might find a little off-beat.

My favourite 40K Youtube personality is the Glacial Geek. I think he is the champion for the style of gamer that I identify with. Play to win, but also play to have fun and enjoy the good and the bad.

Cheers,

T2B

 Fajita Fan wrote:

The Marine books aren’t going to be recombined. They’ve recently diversified even further. So why bother mentioning it in a thread about whether it’s possible to balance the game?

Because that's kinda the point of the thread? 40k is hard to balance given the number of factions and possible builds. They can't please everyone balance-wise to meet the competitive needs of those who really demand it and they really aren't going to try given their current commercial success.

If nothing else, "they should put all space marine factions under a single codex" and "all factions should only have access to the basic rulebook strategems" at least work as an example of how and why a game that prioritizes competitive, balanced play can often be at odds with a game that prioritizes narrative and simulation of an IP. People like having different codexes and rules and stratagems and such for different flavours of Space Marine because it helps the feeling of each chapter / organization / warband / legion having it's own culture and approach to warfare and strengths and weaknesses and such, it makes it feel like your allegiance to a particular chapter or whatever matters beyond simple cosmetics, and (when done well, anyway... which does not seem to be the case with the recent chapter supplements, I admit) also incentivizes the use of the units that are most strongly associated with that chapter. Thus, a narrative element that is fun for narrative players and ties the rules to the lore and IP comes at the expense of what would be best for creating a balanced and competitive game. This kind of thing is even MORE important when looking at wholly different societies in the setting… Drukhari should NOT look and fight and organize the same way Craftworlders do, for instance, and it would be a huge turn off for me if they did.

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative. Simple things like doing a better job with points values and fitting the level of detail more appropriately to the scale of most games being played would be improvements that wouldn't hurt a player like me at all. But SOMETIMES it does, as in this "less codexes and factional differences" stuff.

This, in theory at least, should help explain one of the reasons why people with a more casual / friendly / narrative mindset bristle a bit at the idea of 40k turning into a competitive tournament game.

nataliereed1984 wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

The Marine books aren’t going to be recombined. They’ve recently diversified even further. So why bother mentioning it in a thread about whether it’s possible to balance the game?

Because that's kinda the point of the thread? 40k is hard to balance given the number of factions and possible builds. They can't please everyone balance-wise to meet the competitive needs of those who really demand it and they really aren't going to try given their current commercial success.

If nothing else, "they should put all space marine factions under a single codex" and "all factions should only have access to the basic rulebook strategems" at least work as an example of how and why a game that prioritizes competitive, balanced play can often be at odds with a game that prioritizes narrative and simulation of an IP. People like having different codexes and rules and stratagems and such for different flavours of Space Marine because it helps the feeling of each chapter / organization / warband / legion having it's own culture and approach to warfare and strengths and weaknesses and such, it makes it feel like your allegiance to a particular chapter or whatever matters beyond simple cosmetics, and (when done well, anyway... which does not seem to be the case with the recent chapter supplements, I admit) also incentivizes the use of the units that are most strongly associated with that chapter. Thus, a narrative element that is fun for narrative players and ties the rules to the lore and IP comes at the expense of what would be best for creating a balanced and competitive game. This kind of thing is even MORE important when looking at wholly different societies in the setting… Drukhari should NOT look and fight and organize the same way Craftworlders do, for instance, and it would be a huge turn off for me if they did.

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative. Simple things like doing a better job with points values and fitting the level of detail more appropriately to the scale of most games being played would be improvements that wouldn't hurt a player like me at all. But SOMETIMES it does, as in this "less codexes and factional differences" stuff.

This, in theory at least, should help explain one of the reasons why people with a more casual / friendly / narrative mindset bristle a bit at the idea of 40k turning into a competitive tournament game.

However, I think a lot of this could be solved by a subsection of Matched Play, Organized Play (or Competitive Play) by either GW themselves or a governing body like the ITC which streamlines and strips down options to make it more balanced for tournaments without impacting everyone else. So you still have the gamut of crazy options for narrative play, but going to an event many of those get removed for the sake of balance. This would come with its own problem, namely the fact that seemingly whatever is "tournament standard" becomes the default standard for everything (in most cases) so removing things for the sake of balance effectively removes them from the game entirely. Just look at how the 3 detachments and Rule of Three tend to show up in every game and are assumed to be baseline rules for matched play, always in effect, despite only being suggested for organized events. Which is its own problem but one that isn't easy to address even with a subset of a subset of rules.

However, that doesn't address the major underlying issue of inter-codex imbalance and even intra-codex imbalance. Even if this hypothetical organized play did things like only allow the base stratagems, or curb CP, or curb soup or whatever, it doesn't fix the inherent issues which still plague the game and have a detrimental effect on narrative even more than competitive (because suddenly if the units which fit your narrative happen to be on either extreme it's going to hurt the game).

Yeah, I mean, I even said a few pages ago that a possible ideal solution is just for GW to lean more into the "three ways to play" concept and create sort of 'rules patches' for them to allow the game to work a bit better for what each "way to play" is trying to achieve!

I also imagine soup-abuse is one of those things that both narratively focused and competition focused players can all agree is awful.

Alternate faction detachments are for stuff like having some allied Harlequins working with your Drukhari, having a Knight in with your AdMechs, adding some Assassins or Inquisitors to an Imperial force, having a full force of Nurgle daemons fighting alongside the Death Guard, that kind of thing. Not blatantly mixing and matching the "best" units from each faction within a wider keyword!

If GW actually made money from competitive players...

nataliereed1984 wrote:

If nothing else, "they should put all space marine factions under a single codex" and "all factions should only have access to the basic rulebook strategems" at least work as an example of how and why a game that prioritizes competitive, balanced play can often be at odds with a game that prioritizes narrative and simulation of an IP. People like having different codexes and rules and stratagems and such for different flavours of Space Marine because it helps the feeling of each chapter / organization / warband / legion having it's own culture and approach to warfare and strengths and weaknesses and such, it makes it feel like your allegiance to a particular chapter or whatever matters beyond simple cosmetics, and (when done well, anyway... which does not seem to be the case with the recent chapter supplements, I admit) also incentivizes the use of the units that are most strongly associated with that chapter. Thus, a narrative element that is fun for narrative players and ties the rules to the lore and IP comes at the expense of what would be best for creating a balanced and competitive game. This kind of thing is even MORE important when looking at wholly different societies in the setting… Drukhari should NOT look and fight and organize the same way Craftworlders do, for instance, and it would be a huge turn off for me if they did.

Well agreed on the Eldar factions, they're completely separate cultures, but not with the marines and other such subfactions. I know that a lot of people feel that they need to have rule support for their chapters unique fighting style, but I really don't. All units should be worth taking in any chapter. And then you can express the flavour with your army build choices. If your chapter prefers close combat, take a lot of assault elements, if they prefer to wage war with heavy siege weapons, take a lot of tanks and devastators etc.

Now, I know I am in minority with this, and that is the reason it is not happening. A lot of players love all these specialised rules and not just narrative players, competitive ones too; they love finding the best subfactions and trait combos etc. Ultimately I feel that this is the sort of rule bloat that leads to imbalance, but I really don't think GW has any incentive to stop doing this. Any possible new customers that could be gained due the improved balance due faction consolidation would easily be outnumbered by players who rage quit because their faction lost its unique rules.

 Azreal13 wrote:
So we can build a large hadron collider, send a man to the moon and access the sum of human knowledge on a device in our pocket, but a team of dozens of people whose job it is to produce a game can't make it more balanced because it's too complicated?

Come on...

Straw man.

What did it cost to go to do those things? Were they required to turn a profit?

Sometimes throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it. GW needs leadership to drive the teams.

Oh, bollocks.

A team of dozens of people being paid to design games professionally by a company with turnover in the hundreds of millions are getting left behind by people writing games in their spare time. Substitute any example of people doing incredibly complicated things to suit your tastes, I stand by the point.

I feel like if we had a DakkaCon we'd probably all get along.

 Fajita Fan wrote:
I feel like if we had a DakkaCon we'd probably all get along.

Imagine the friendly, agreeable games we'd all have!

As long as it wasn't 40K, most likely.

Although, and I mean this most sincerely, there's a short list of (mostly former) posters I'd happily shake warmly by the throat, but it is a pretty short list.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
WAAC mostly to me is RAW vs RAI argued strictly for their advantage and overall cheating. Cut throat lists are an optional part of the equation after that, but they'll at least a somewhat streamlined army.

WAAC is having a 2” measuring key you use to space all of your infantry to minimize blast template casualties, any list with 2 troops but 3 HQs and 6 elites in separate detachments for maximum deathstarage, trying to distract your opponent or obfuscate, modeling for advantage, and treating your movement phase as a physical exercise of micron-precise terrain management.

Have we all agreed that:
There are too many separate codices to balance,
Balance is a moving target given list building preferences,
There are multiple builds within each codex further complicating balance,
Demand for Gw products is relatively inelastic to price or competitive balance,
Ergo balance isn’t something GW has to invest in too heavily,
Thereupon reflected in GW’s production schedule and project management,
And we shouldn’t expect it to change any time soon.

???

Only here would someone say that getting max coherence between models to minimize casualties from blasts can be even close to considered WAAC. No wonder some of you people think small blasts were even close to good!

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Have we all agreed that:
There are too many separate codices to balance,
Balance is a moving target given list building preferences,
There are multiple builds within each codex further complicating balance,
Demand for Gw products is relatively inelastic to price or competitive balance,
Ergo balance isn’t something GW has to invest in too heavily,
Thereupon reflected in GW’s production schedule and project management,
And we shouldn’t expect it to change any time soon.

Missed this earlier, but yeah. I think this is pretty much the basic reality of things that we should theoretically agree on. Which raises the question of why on Earth we've needed 19 pages to fight over "Well, I think this situation is completely awful!" "I think it's not that bad!" "I think it's only mildly awful!" "I think it's great!", and variations thereupon.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Oh, bollocks.

A team of dozens of people being paid to design games professionally by a company with turnover in the hundreds of millions are getting left behind by people writing games in their spare time. Substitute any example of people doing incredibly complicated things to suit your tastes, I stand by the point.

Dozens seems unlikely. Who has written a game in their spare time that is leaving GW behind? What qualifies as 'leaving them behind'?

Look at what they did with Apocalypse. There's clearly knowledge of the mechanics that make games more easily balanced, but there isn't a magic switch you can flip on 40K.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Slayer,

You assert that the list in my story was not a tourney list. Well, it came from round 2 of a local tourney last weekend with 44 players. The tourney was billed as a counterpoint to our more competitive club champs that happen in February: no Lords of War, no ForgeWorld. I don't run those in any case, so I went for an oddball themed list. It had fifteen Deathwing Tartaros Terminators and a Land Raider (going for a 30K theme) with some Astra Militarum bullet catchers to bulk out the list. I came 19th. I lost the first match against Ultramarines, but if we had gone to the fourth turn I would have tabled him. I handily won the second match where my Master challenged the Demon Prince and lost the third against Black Templars. I had fun in each game and achieved my objective: have fun games on my first Saturday of Block Leave. I had spent Canadian Thanksgiving painting Cypher as my Master so he was going to put that sword to use. If this makes me CAAC in your eyes then so be it! I came 2nd in an earlier tournament in 8th Edition (with Deathwing Terminators no less). I always run Dark Angels, so its been tough sledding as of late but I am OK with that. I play for fun, but I will admit that the competition in the game is part of the fun. Its just not the dominant part.

I honestly have no idea how my playstyle could be offensive to you or other players. If it hurts your feelings that I buy GW products then I guess I will have to live with that.

As an aside I reject the WAAC and CAAC labels. CAAC is a non-sequitur. Its impossible to be casual at all costs. I assume it was indeed invented by somebody hurt that they had been labelled as WAAC. I don't blame them for being insulted, but making a counter-insult is a little immature.

If my bringing 15 Terminators makes a competitive player feel like I am judging him then he has a real insecurity complex. How about we play the legal lists that we want to? Now, there might be some folks out there who would like to compete at the top table at LVO but are unable to do so. If they make passive-aggressive jabs at their victorious opponents then that's just poor sportsmanship and nothing to do with the casual/narrative gaming mindset. I also dislike the WAAC label. I think that competitive and casual are at least workable categories that avoid making a judgement in the title. They can both coexist in the gaming ecosystem. I also think its possible to float between the two: I think I do. I played at the Canadian Grand Tournament in 2nd Ed and I was nationally ranked in FOW a few years ago (not anymore). I still play tournaments but I now focus on bringing a list that I will enjoy and that my opponent might find a little off-beat.

My favourite 40K Youtube personality is the Glacial Geek. I think he is the champion for the style of gamer that I identify with. Play to win, but also play to have fun and enjoy the good and the bad.

Cheers,

T2B

Nobody cares about anecdotes in local tournaments that don't matter for anything. That's the thing you're missing. In 7th I used a Tyberos deathstar + Asterion deathstar in the same bloody list and I won a local tournament. Want to know why I didn't bother to write a report? It doesn't report on what is going on in the game whatsoever, what with Battle Demicomany and Scatterbikes everywhere. I don't pretend it's an accomplishment.
So while you can pretend everything is fine and dandy with pretending Dark Angels should be a separate army and that Deathwing means anything...it doesn't. It feeds right into the nice loyal customer GW uses to talk about in the Kirby era. We deserve better and you don't realize it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Oh, bollocks.

A team of dozens of people being paid to design games professionally by a company with turnover in the hundreds of millions are getting left behind by people writing games in their spare time. Substitute any example of people doing incredibly complicated things to suit your tastes, I stand by the point.

Dozens seems unlikely. Who has written a game in their spare time that is leaving GW behind? What qualifies as 'leaving them behind'?

Look at what they did with Apocalypse. There's clearly knowledge of the mechanics that make games more easily balanced, but there isn't a magic switch you can flip on 40K.

Perhaps Apocalypse NEEDS to be the default game everyone plays.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Oh, bollocks.

A team of dozens of people being paid to design games professionally by a company with turnover in the hundreds of millions are getting left behind by people writing games in their spare time. Substitute any example of people doing incredibly complicated things to suit your tastes, I stand by the point.

Dozens seems unlikely.

Over the course of the lifetime of the game, I'd be surprised if it isn't hundreds. As it stands the design studio staff is in three figures, but they're obviously not all rules writers. I have it on good authority that isn't even close to the number of people now employed in marketing and PR, which comes as no surprise when you look at how things are run at GW nowadays.

Who has written a game in their spare time that is leaving GW behind? What qualifies as 'leaving them behind'?

I was specifically thinking of Mike Hutchinson, who wrote Gaslands in his spare time, and straight out of the gate wrote an entirely more balanced ruleset with a decent list of options and factions. He admittedly included one flat out broken unit and made a couple of errors in pointing, but considering the relative availability of resources it makes GW failing to get 40K right in over 30 years look deliberate.

Or then there's Mat Hart and Rich Loxham, who wrote Guild Ball and even now having added factions and extra models some 4 years down the line have grown Steamforged into a multimillion pound company yet still managed, with regular adjustments, to keep the balance between Guilds at 50% win rate +/-10%. There's been hiccups, but even then because the game leans so much less on list building than 40K and so much more on in game decisions, player skill still remains the biggest factor between even the "best" and "worst" factions.

And that's just two I know well enough to comment on.

Look at what they did with Apocalypse. There's clearly knowledge of the mechanics that make games more easily balanced, but there isn't a magic switch you can flip on 40K.

No, you're right. They've never had an opportunity to completely scrap all the stuff that doesn't work, re define the design space and move forward on a more solid platform.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
WAAC mostly to me is RAW vs RAI argued strictly for their advantage and overall cheating. Cut throat lists are an optional part of the equation after that, but they'll at least a somewhat streamlined army.

WAAC is having a 2” measuring key you use to space all of your infantry to minimize blast template casualties, any list with 2 troops but 3 HQs and 6 elites in separate detachments for maximum deathstarage, trying to distract your opponent or obfuscate, modeling for advantage, and treating your movement phase as a physical exercise of micron-precise terrain management.

Have we all agreed that:
There are too many separate codices to balance,
Balance is a moving target given list building preferences,
There are multiple builds within each codex further complicating balance,
Demand for Gw products is relatively inelastic to price or competitive balance,
Ergo balance isn’t something GW has to invest in too heavily,
Thereupon reflected in GW’s production schedule and project management,
And we shouldn’t expect it to change any time soon.

???

Only here would someone say that getting max coherence between models to minimize casualties from blasts can be even close to considered WAAC. No wonder some of you people think small blasts were even close to good!

What do you do to pass time while someone moves Orks or IG spacing out of all of their models perfectly and stopping to reset the mosaic whenever a models shifts? I was so glad to see blast templates disappear and blast guns just roll xD6 hits.

So while you can pretend everything is fine and dandy with pretending Dark Angels should be a separate army and that Deathwing means anything...it doesn't. It feeds right into the nice loyal customer GW uses to talk about in the Kirby era. We deserve better and you don't realize it.

I don't think anyone is saying more balance is bad, I'm just accepting that given the current sales success GW is experiencing we're not likely to see any different behavior from their rules department. I'm a realist, picketing outside a GW or sending a sternly worded letter will accomplish nothing.

As much as I hate this expression it really is what it is, man. Just try to have fun with the game, that's what I try to do.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If nothing else, "they should put all space marine factions under a single codex" and "all factions should only have access to the basic rulebook strategems" at least work as an example of how and why a game that prioritizes competitive, balanced play can often be at odds with a game that prioritizes narrative and simulation of an IP. People like having different codexes and rules and stratagems and such for different flavours of Space Marine because it helps the feeling of each chapter / organization / warband / legion having it's own culture and approach to warfare and strengths and weaknesses and such, it makes it feel like your allegiance to a particular chapter or whatever matters beyond simple cosmetics, and (when done well, anyway... which does not seem to be the case with the recent chapter supplements, I admit) also incentivizes the use of the units that are most strongly associated with that chapter. Thus, a narrative element that is fun for narrative players and ties the rules to the lore and IP comes at the expense of what would be best for creating a balanced and competitive game. This kind of thing is even MORE important when looking at wholly different societies in the setting… Drukhari should NOT look and fight and organize the same way Craftworlders do, for instance, and it would be a huge turn off for me if they did.

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative. Simple things like doing a better job with points values and fitting the level of detail more appropriately to the scale of most games being played would be improvements that wouldn't hurt a player like me at all. But SOMETIMES it does, as in this "less codexes and factional differences" stuff.

This, in theory at least, should help explain one of the reasons why people with a more casual / friendly / narrative mindset bristle a bit at the idea of 40k turning into a competitive tournament game.

I think this is kind of hinting at a false dichotomy- flavorful, fluffy rules don't have to involve finicky, fiddly 'chrome' and bespoke special rules that come at the expense of competitive play.

Some armies do a great job of distinguishing subfactions from one another through simple rules. Take Tyranids for example.

-Hydra lets you re-roll failed hits against targets you outnumber.
-Jormungandr gives you cover as long as you don't advance or charge, and lets you deep strike additional units alongside tunnelers.
-Kraken increases your advance rolls and lets you fall back and charge in the same turn.
-And Kronos lets you re-roll 1s to hit.

Each faction encourages builds and playstyles that make them very different from one another. Hydra is all about swarming hordes. Jormungandr favors deep-striking lists, but not with flying creatures. Kraken lets you build a mobile, aggressive army. And Kronos is the go-to choice for a gunline.

Those are elegant rules: They're simple, easy to remember, easy to balance, and capture the flavor of what they're meant to depict. The Space Marine supplements are not. They capture the flavor, but they're complex, full of layers upon layers of bespoke rules, and clearly aren't very balanced. You don't need that level of granular detail to make green Space Marines who like stealth feel different from yellow Space Marines who like fortifications. Narrative players and competitive players aren't at odds here.

This ties back to a game design concept called designing for effect. The idea is that it is more important for a mechanic to feel right and produce the desired outcome than it is to painstakingly simulate whatever it's supposed to represent.

Warmachine is a good example of simple rules having a massive impact on theme. Each warcaster has fewer than a half-dozen spells and a once-per-game feat. Those abilities radically change how their armies work, such that the same unit or warjack works completely differently under two different warcasters from the same faction. It accomplishes this with rules that fit on a standard playing card.

Edit: Apocalypse is a great example of a 'less is more' approach to game design as applied to 40K. It plays quickly for what it represents, and captures the feel of the 40K units without having a half-dozen special rules and eight weapon profiles for each unit, let alone 50+ dice to resolve a normal shooting attack. The design philosophy of Apocalypse as applied to 40K could make for a much more streamlined game- although I'm sure that there are enough players hung up on rolling dice for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end, that the backlash would be enormous.

I really liked Warmachine at first in its first edition but I didn't find it massively more balanced than 40k. I don't know if X-wing is more balanced in 2.0 either.

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
WAAC mostly to me is RAW vs RAI argued strictly for their advantage and overall cheating. Cut throat lists are an optional part of the equation after that, but they'll at least a somewhat streamlined army.

WAAC is having a 2” measuring key you use to space all of your infantry to minimize blast template casualties, any list with 2 troops but 3 HQs and 6 elites in separate detachments for maximum deathstarage, trying to distract your opponent or obfuscate, modeling for advantage, and treating your movement phase as a physical exercise of micron-precise terrain management.

Have we all agreed that:
There are too many separate codices to balance,
Balance is a moving target given list building preferences,
There are multiple builds within each codex further complicating balance,
Demand for Gw products is relatively inelastic to price or competitive balance,
Ergo balance isn’t something GW has to invest in too heavily,
Thereupon reflected in GW’s production schedule and project management,
And we shouldn’t expect it to change any time soon.

???

Only here would someone say that getting max coherence between models to minimize casualties from blasts can be even close to considered WAAC. No wonder some of you people think small blasts were even close to good!

What do you do to pass time while someone moves Orks or IG spacing out of all of their models perfectly and stopping to reset the mosaic whenever a models shifts? I was so glad to see blast templates disappear and blast guns just roll xD6 hits.

So while you can pretend everything is fine and dandy with pretending Dark Angels should be a separate army and that Deathwing means anything...it doesn't. It feeds right into the nice loyal customer GW uses to talk about in the Kirby era. We deserve better and you don't realize it.

I don't think anyone is saying more balance is bad, I'm just accepting that given the current sales success GW is experiencing we're not likely to see any different behavior from their rules department. I'm a realist, picketing outside a GW or sending a sternly worded letter will accomplish nothing.

As much as I hate this expression it really is what it is, man. Just try to have fun with the game, that's what I try to do.

I was just on my phone, really. What else am I really gonna do? I might sound like a broken record, but that's just one problem with IGOUGO: absolutely little interaction.

 catbarf wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:
If nothing else, "they should put all space marine factions under a single codex" and "all factions should only have access to the basic rulebook strategems" at least work as an example of how and why a game that prioritizes competitive, balanced play can often be at odds with a game that prioritizes narrative and simulation of an IP. People like having different codexes and rules and stratagems and such for different flavours of Space Marine because it helps the feeling of each chapter / organization / warband / legion having it's own culture and approach to warfare and strengths and weaknesses and such, it makes it feel like your allegiance to a particular chapter or whatever matters beyond simple cosmetics, and (when done well, anyway... which does not seem to be the case with the recent chapter supplements, I admit) also incentivizes the use of the units that are most strongly associated with that chapter. Thus, a narrative element that is fun for narrative players and ties the rules to the lore and IP comes at the expense of what would be best for creating a balanced and competitive game. This kind of thing is even MORE important when looking at wholly different societies in the setting… Drukhari should NOT look and fight and organize the same way Craftworlders do, for instance, and it would be a huge turn off for me if they did.

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative. Simple things like doing a better job with points values and fitting the level of detail more appropriately to the scale of most games being played would be improvements that wouldn't hurt a player like me at all. But SOMETIMES it does, as in this "less codexes and factional differences" stuff.

This, in theory at least, should help explain one of the reasons why people with a more casual / friendly / narrative mindset bristle a bit at the idea of 40k turning into a competitive tournament game.

I think this is kind of hinting at a false dichotomy- flavorful, fluffy rules don't have to involve finicky, fiddly 'chrome' and bespoke special rules that come at the expense of competitive play.

Some armies do a great job of distinguishing subfactions from one another through simple rules. Take Tyranids for example.

-Hydra lets you re-roll failed hits against targets you outnumber.
-Jormungandr gives you cover as long as you don't advance or charge, and lets you deep strike additional units alongside tunnelers.
-Kraken increases your advance rolls and lets you fall back and charge in the same turn.
-And Kronos lets you re-roll 1s to hit.

Each faction encourages builds and playstyles that make them very different from one another. Hydra is all about swarming hordes. Jormungandr favors deep-striking lists, but not with flying creatures. Kraken lets you build a mobile, aggressive army. And Kronos is the go-to choice for a gunline.

Those are elegant rules: They're simple, easy to remember, easy to balance, and capture the flavor of what they're meant to depict. The Space Marine supplements are not. They capture the flavor, but they're complex, full of layers upon layers of bespoke rules, and clearly aren't very balanced. You don't need that level of granular detail to make green Space Marines who like stealth feel different from yellow Space Marines who like fortifications. Narrative players and competitive players aren't at odds here.

This ties back to a game design concept called designing for effect. The idea is that it is more important for a mechanic to feel right and produce the desired outcome than it is to painstakingly simulate whatever it's supposed to represent.

Warmachine is a good example of simple rules having a massive impact on theme. Each warcaster has fewer than a half-dozen spells and a once-per-game feat. Those abilities radically change how their armies work, such that the same unit or warjack works completely differently under two different warcasters from the same faction. It accomplishes this with rules that fit on a standard playing card.

Edit: Apocalypse is a great example of a 'less is more' approach to game design as applied to 40K. It plays quickly for what it represents, and captures the feel of the 40K units without having a half-dozen special rules and eight weapon profiles for each unit, let alone 50+ dice to resolve a normal shooting attack. The design philosophy of Apocalypse as applied to 40K could make for a much more streamlined game- although I'm sure that there are enough players hung up on rolling dice for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end, that the backlash would be enormous.

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative.

Yeah, thanks, saw that. Now add the rest of your statement:

Which isn't to say balance is ALWAYS at odds with narrative.

[...]

But SOMETIMES it does, as in this "less codexes and factional differences" stuff.

Balance isn't at odds with factional differences when they're implemented well. The false dichotomy is the idea that fluffy representations of differences between factions/subfactions can only come through complex and difficult-to-balance mechanics, and so we must choose between balanced and bland or imbalanced but fluffy.

Balance is at odds with overly technical mechanics (of any kind, not just faction rules) that prioritize inherent complexity over designing for effect. Letting Kronos re-roll 1s if they don't move isn't the problem. Giving a sub-faction dozens upon dozens of psychic powers and stratagems and conditional abilities and bespoke special rules is the problem.

I've played plenty of simple games that captured the narrative/feel of their subject matter better than more complex and simulationist competitors. Having fewer codices would not necessarily mean less differentiation between the factions.

Catbarf, please go back and read over what that aspect of the conversation was actually about.

I don't see that I've missed anything, so if you would be so kind as to actually point it out it would be much appreciated.

I don't think GW has ever tried until now.

Gaslands while really fun is basically X-Wing and isn't nearly the same level of units and options as 40K. I can't comment on Guild Ball as I'm not familiar with the mechanics, but it looks to me to be an easier place to balance when you're at most dealing with 12 models on each side, which is more comparable to Kill Team.

Over the course of the lifetime of the game, I'd be surprised if it isn't hundreds. As it stands the design studio staff is in three figures, but they're obviously not all rules writers.I have it on good authority that isn't even close to the number of people now employed in marketing and PR, which comes as no surprise when you look at how things are run at GW nowadays.

Rules writes are likely the only people worth mentioning and you're looking at maybe a dozen people making decisions (and it's the decisions we care about). Additionally, it takes a LOT of people in Marketing to handle all the facets of the web these days -- my company has 3 people dedicated to handling Google Reviews, Facebook, and Yelp alone not to mention folks for CRM, ad spots, printing, and so forth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Perhaps Apocalypse NEEDS to be the default game everyone plays.

I kind of secretly hope they adopt a lot of it for 9th (if that happens), but then it will be another huge slog of codex and point releases...

 catbarf wrote:
I don't see that I've missed anything, so if you would be so kind as to actually point it out it would be much appreciated.

The point was that the more factions, units, and special rules there are, the more difficult it is to balance them all while keeping pace with constant new releases. Which is a pretty self-evident truth that almost everyone has agreed on. Not "these kinds of things cannot exist in a balanced game" or "more factions inherently means less balance".

The constant shifting goalposts, strawmen arguments, aggression, hyperbole, not bothering to keep up with what a given point is meant to address, and the amount of people who seem to be deliberately avoiding any possible middle-ground in this thread is incredibly exhausting. I really should have stuck with my instinct like 15 pages ago to leave this conversation alone due to how negative it was getting.

Racerguy180 wrote:

nataliereed1984 wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
GW like most companies wants the best of all worlds. They could, very easily clear all this up and just state on their community page " Warhammer is not and never will be meant to be a hardcore competitive game, play it as such at your own peril. We only give a passing glance balance, never expect more than this from this product. "

If they stated that, quite clearly for all their customers to see, I'd gladly never say another word on their awful balance as they quite clearly made it known that's a non issue for them.

However, they toss around the word and idea of balance about as much any tournament thumper does but it's awful usually.

For the people giving GW a pass, just have GW be clear what the game is and is not and many of these topics would die. GW is as to blame for lack of simple clarity that leads people to believe they actually care about balance, as what else are all these paid point changes, why would they care at all about Legends in tournaments, why would they even run their own tournaments or attend ones they aren't running, etc, etc that makes it seem a lot like they are trying for balance just crap at it.

Have you ever watched any Voxcasts or whatever?

The designers routinely DO say, quite clearly, that balance and hardcore competition is not their priority for 40k. They even tend to make fun of people wanting perfect balance and put scare quotes around it.

whenever they have a game/rules person on, it is reiterated over and over again.

it's like those against GW's stated position are standing in an echo chamber of their own creation. They choose to ignore it since it does not fit their narrative(see what I did there). I could understand this viewpoint if (@some point in the past) GW was the bestest, mostest, awesomest balance machine ever. With the tightest most efficient rules and no OP/under overcosted units. Since this is clearly not the case, continuing to complain about something that clearly is not even a moderate priority for GW, is insane.

A random voxcast or what have you is not putting it out, black and white, for all players to easily see and digest. They do say they don't strive hard for balance but then go ahead and say they are trying to balance things. They need to either give up the ghost and admit they won't be balanced because they want to use it to sell, or they are just crap at it and can't do it despite best efforts or if it happens it's just a happy accident. As is they consistently talk out of both sides of their mouth depending on the crowd and intent they want to put out there. Which leads to these talks. Now, I'd say they were quite clear with the first stage of AoS, it was as casual as can be and only the most foolish tried to make it competitive.

At the end of the day, they need to do a better job with workable balance, or just go all in on casual and purge out those who want balance so that they can have a unified community as is it ends up just a mess with these never ending arguments.

Oh and if their pace leads to them being unable to put out quality then they need to slow it all down so they can actually do what is expected of them. Moving at a break neck pace is a problem of their own design and entirely in their own capability to fix.

Serious question:

Those of you saying that Apocalypse should be the "default version"...

Why?

Why should it be default?

It's right there. It's available to use. If it works better for your kind of games, go play it! Have fun! More power to you! There's no minimum points requirement for it, and it works great for 2000 points!*

So... why does it have to be the DEFAULT???

This is the kind of thing that can sometimes make competitive players seem entitled and selfish; an insistence on their preferred form of the game being the "default", "official", "proper" way to play, and other preferences having to be the spin-offs, options, alternatives, etc. Why can't it be the other way around? Why do you HAVE to play the "default" version of the most popular game instead of anything else, when so many easily available alternatives would suit you better, you know?

This is also the kind of thing GW rules designers make fun of, too, and that makes them take the complaints and issues (even the quite valid ones!) less seriously. When competitive players insist on not doing ANYTHING that doesn't have a big OFFICIAL PROPER MAIN WAY TO PLAY WARHAMMER stamp on it. Like people who would refuse to allow FW units or campaign supplements because they weren't "official".

* - By which I mean the comparable PL. 300, IIRC? And if you think PL is too imprecise, play Apocalypse with points! THAT IS OKAY. No Rules Police are going to smash in your door!

Well the speed of releases was just to catch everyone up on 8th Ed, something people keep forgetting. It took like a year an a half to give all the factions their codex after the overhaul? Imagine how Dakka would react if GW had just kept to their normal release schedule? Can you imagine if major factioms had to wait 3 years to get their non-index codex before they'd even gotten round to the minor ones?