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 An Actual Englishman wrote:

I'm also confused why I've just read pages and pages of ITC vs GW mission set discussion too. The reason GW absolutely should and do balance around the ITC mission set is quite simple - it is by far the most popular way to play 40k competitively.

This thread is about stats and balance between factions. One of the problems with the data we have is that it all comes from different versions of the game, so that's why ITC vs GW mission set is being discussed.

I would hope we can all agree that, in an ideal world, there would be one version of the game that everyone played (for competitive events at least). It would give more reliable data which could be used to balance the game better- imagine the amount of feedback GW could get to improve CA missions if all ITC events used them.

GW's missions are the only ones that have any chance of being the default set that everyone uses.


If ,when more data is available, we can see that ITC events have win rates significantly closer to 50% for the various factions than in other formats, then there is a reason for it to exist.

If ,when more data is available, we see that win rates are roughly the same across different formats, then things like ITC need to die, because they are harming the game for no benefit.

Selfcontrol wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Why are people discussing BA specifically in this thread? Go to a tactica discussion if you want ideas on how to beat hordes with BA. Let's also not disregard the fact that Bloody Baals has released relatively recently and has had no chance to impact the competitive meta.

I'm also confused why I've just read pages and pages of ITC vs GW mission set discussion too. The reason GW absolutely should and do balance around the ITC mission set is quite simple - it is by far the most popular way to play 40k competitively. Whether you think it's the best way to play is irrelevant.

It's like people forget that some of the largest events around the globe have their own, specific rule set too. Many massive events don't use pure ITC or pure GW rules, they use a mix and match approach.

And just so we're all on the same page here, regardless of what mission set you play, certain factions are still way over/under performing. Generally the data of which factions perform well and which perform poorly correlate across all mission sets with a few outliers - Tyranids the most common.

Finally - do bear in mind that almost all the detailed statistical analysis we have in this thread relates to one month. The quietest competitive 40k month with the least games played where the stakes are at their lowest. I'd suggest the data sample in and of itself isn't the most useful for any balance discussion.

ITC doesn't exist in my country and in pretty much all Europe.

Last time I heard, the US were not the center of the world.

Thanks, but no thanks.

while ITC is barely a thing in Australia too... I'm still inclined to agree with Englishman. Whats the point in attempting to balance around the RNG of rulebook missions? You cannot really. May as well balance around the working missions. Hopefully now that they have a set of their own, thats what they do. But really GW's balance is so wack I kinda doubt they approach any of it from the perspective of "what missions are we playing".

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Sterling191 wrote:

88% Harlies, 80% Ynarri Drukhari, 80% Mortan and 80% Ryza. *chef's kiss*

Dreaming Shadow was Sean Nayden who went 7-1 at Atlanta Open.
Reborn Drukhari was Nathan Billings; 4-1 at Merry Slaaneshmas
Mortan was Adam Houser; 4-1 at Hooded Goblin 2
Ryza (Servitor Maniple) was Gabriel Rocheleau; 4-1 at Atlanta Open

This was the "Dreaming Shadow" list:

Biel-Tan

Autarch SR
Farseer SR
Seer
20x Guardians
2x5 Rangers
7 Spears
2 Spinners

Dreaming Shadow

Shadowseer
Yncarne
Yvraine

Silent Shroud

6 Skyweavers

I find it absolutely hilarious that it's labeled Dreaming Shadow. These people picking their primary should not be allowed. These people need to get someone who understands data.

I'll stand by my initial skepticism of 40kstats as anything but a directional tool.

Yea, i also have noticed that BCP data is wrong in to many cases, so the data in the end is not really correct.
Maybe the only the last LVO have the right data, since the Falcon checked every list by himself(what a hero).
Sean Nayden list was also labaled as Biel-Tan and it was soup with DE.

Aeldar have 5-6 very good players that manage to pump the numbers alot, performing good on 2-40 persons events.
You could expect that with the extra rules CWE and DE have advantage, but in Socal not single one manage to get into top 10. It reminds me of the last year Toa, tha put impressive WR durring during tthe mounts after CA, but underperformed on the LVO.
It`s to early to do something, because the most faction did not have their PA yet.

RNG is part of the balancing. Ideally in a tournament you should randomise the missions from CA, without people knowing beforehand what they get. That way winning in the army building phase is less of a factor as you cannot tailor your list for the mission.

I understand that a lot people want to win before any dice are rolled, and ITC takes that on next level by not only allowing to tailor the list to the mission but the mission to the list as well. But frankly, that is just a stupid way to play.

 Crimson wrote:
RNG is part of the balancing. Ideally in a tournament you should randomise the missions from CA, without people knowing beforehand what they get. That way winning in the army building phase is less of a factor as you cannot tailor your list for the mission.

I understand that a lot people want to win before any dice are rolled, and ITC takes that on next level by not only allowing to tailor the list to the mission but the mission to the list as well. But frankly, that is just a stupid way to play.

if thats to me, im not talking about the current CA missions. I'm talking about their pre-that garbo

Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

Sorry, I'm confused. I look at the ITC mission packet, I see this:

-Identical deployment rules, i.e. identically random. You roll off to determine who sets up first, and then you roll to see if you seize initiative on a 6. So, rulebook missions not more random there.

-Objectives are then either dictated by the mission, or placed by players, or more commonly a bit of both. This is not random, unless I have a different definition of random than other people.

-Then you choose secondaries.

Then I look at the CA2019 mission set.

Same deployment.

Players either place objectives, or objectives are placed by default.

Fixed secondaries.

How...how are these missions "More random?" Are they random because in a couple of scenarios if you achieve bonus objectives you can score D3 victory points? RNG is only meaningfully involved in one mission setup, and it's HIGHLY mitigated. You roll randomly for which objectives are numbers 2-5 and then that is known information to both players throughout the game.

Disregarding the ITC secondary system for the moment, the biggest difference between ITC and CA2019 is that CA2019 varies a little bit when scoring takes place, and ITC goes for the (Much inferior IMO) "End of the Turn" Scoring in all their missions.

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The problem with Martel's view is he's fixating on killing those 150 dudes. Can't say for sure, but this may be a result of him playing nothing but ITC, where you can get rewarded for that and not appreciating that in many of the CA missions it doesn't really matter if you kill 100 Guardsmen or not. It's often much more important that you kill a specific 20-30 Guardsmen so you can control objectives. In the new Maelstrom missions you can tailor your deck to the opponent somewhat. So if you don't think you'll have much board control, take out a bunch of the objective-based cards and vice-versa. I agree adding in the odd secondary to the CA missions along those lines might be interesting.

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The thing that frustrates me with Martel's argument here is that it basically hinges around the idea that blood angels are ONLY allowed to be power armored dudes that engage in melee.

You know what another army might call the following two rules?

"Rapid fire weapons can fire twice the shots out to their full range if the firing model didn't move in the movement phase. Additionally, on turn 1, all Heavy weapons gain an additional -1AP. On turn 2, all Rapid Fire weapons gain an additional -1AP."

They might call that a shooting-focused chapter tactic. Blood angels get that AND have an enormous roster of efficient shooting-focused units they can take to clear out hordes, on top of a really good melee-focused trait. Accounting for morale casualties, a squad of ABR or bolt rifle intercessors deletes 80% of an infantry squad per turn. Heck, a 5-man squad of BA knife scouts for 55 points kills 10.9 guardsmen on average rolls with no auras no doctrines no nothing.

Martel's position that because every shooting unit in the BA codex would be slightly more efficient if you ran them with a non-BA chapter so they don't count as things BA can use is the only thing causing 150 guardsmen to cause an auto-loss for him.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Why are people discussing BA specifically in this thread? Go to a tactica discussion if you want ideas on how to beat hordes with BA. Let's also not disregard the fact that Bloody Baals has released relatively recently and has had no chance to impact the competitive meta.

I'm also confused why I've just read pages and pages of ITC vs GW mission set discussion too. The reason GW absolutely should and do balance around the ITC mission set is quite simple - it is by far the most popular way to play 40k competitively. Whether you think it's the best way to play is irrelevant.

It's like people forget that some of the largest events around the globe have their own, specific rule set too. Many massive events don't use pure ITC or pure GW rules, they use a mix and match approach.

And just so we're all on the same page here, regardless of what mission set you play, certain factions are still way over/under performing. Generally the data of which factions perform well and which perform poorly correlate across all mission sets with a few outliers - Tyranids the most common.

Finally - do bear in mind that almost all the detailed statistical analysis we have in this thread relates to one month. The quietest competitive 40k month with the least games played where the stakes are at their lowest. I'd suggest the data sample in and of itself isn't the most useful for any balance discussion.

ITC doesn't exist in my country and in pretty much all Europe.

Last time I heard, the US were not the center of the world.

Thanks, but no thanks.

while ITC is barely a thing in Australia too... I'm still inclined to agree with Englishman. Whats the point in attempting to balance around the RNG of rulebook missions?[u] You cannot really. May as well balance around the working missions. Hopefully now that they have a set of their own, thats what they do. But really GW's balance is so wack I kinda doubt they approach any of it from the perspective of "what missions are we playing".

No one said the game should be balanced around the rulebook missions.

In my country, no competitive tournament uses rulebook missions. They all use CA missions.

Marin wrote:
Aeldar have 5-6 very good players that manage to pump the numbers alot, performing good on 2-40 persons events.
You could expect that with the extra rules CWE and DE have advantage, but in Socal not single one manage to get into top 10. It reminds me of the last year Toa, tha put impressive WR durring during tthe mounts after CA, but underperformed on the LVO.
It`s to early to do something, because the most faction did not have their PA yet.

I'd say a bit more than 5-6 - but I think its a good point that player skill can skew faction win rates.
Really the pool of players in 40k full stop is quite small - and the pool who are "good" among that is smaller still. Metas take a bit of time to shift, as if you have an Aeldari army, and you've been playing it for 6-18 months, you can't necessarily just drop it and have another entirely different army, which you know just as well, immediately - there might be a bit of a learning curve.

Really these stats are about confirming a sort of sequence of knowledge.
Get a codex - apply mathhammer. Theorise on what is efficient, what is not.
Test this yourself - both playing with and against that army. Get some results - "this seems strong", "this seems weak".
Then look at tournaments around the world. Are your results seemingly normal - or is there maybe some skill imbalance/faction imbalance in your specific local pool?

I mean one of the interesting things on the stats is how good Cult Mechanicus have been doing. Which from a mathhammer perspective isn't a huge surprise - they have lots of seemingly points efficient stuff (and even more so with the new points decreases). But in terms of "40k culture" it doesn't seem a recognised thing. Instead its Marines Marines Marines, Tau (if you can win Socal, it must be meta defining right?), Eldar, Chaos soup. With a sort of ghostly voice going "Orks are good too" and the stats/evidence going "uh...."

But there are also limits of stats. So mono Chaos Daemons seem to "work" and get a good win percentage. But its just 11 lists. So this could be a few good players skewing the system rather than indicating very much. After all if it is good, why are not other people copying/emulating them? Whereas the 8 mono Harlequins lists do badly - which doesn't surprise based on theory and playing - but I wouldn't take these statistics as great evidence of them being underpowered in isolation. The conclusion would be "very few people are playing mono-Harlequins" - although this is probably because they think they are bad, because they are bad."

Whereas the theory is Marines are top tier, the experience of most people as individuals is that marines are top tier, and lo, considered tournaments around the world, they disproportionately seem to win. In fact there are so many people playing marines, the "its a few good players" is likely diluted down to nothing. (Which wouldn't necessarily be the case if we considered only getting top 3 in reasonably sized tournaments).

What's this RNG rubbish about the CA missions?

The Eternal War missions are great with clear objectives. Sounds like people literally don't know what they're talking about

Marin wrote:


Yea, i also have noticed that BCP data is wrong in to many cases, so the data in the end is not really correct.
Maybe the only the last LVO have the right data, since the Falcon checked every list by himself(what a hero).
Sean Nayden list was also labaled as Biel-Tan and it was soup with DE.

Aeldar have 5-6 very good players that manage to pump the numbers alot, performing good on 2-40 persons events.
You could expect that with the extra rules CWE and DE have advantage, but in Socal not single one manage to get into top 10. It reminds me of the last year Toa, tha put impressive WR durring during tthe mounts after CA, but underperformed on the LVO.
It`s to early to do something, because the most faction did not have their PA yet.

It's weird data to handle. We're missing a lot of pieces.

Last time I checked the ITC Champion missions (2018?), objectives were in set locations on the table, you didn't place them. Which added to the whole "You can know everything before sitting down to play" which I dislike. You would know that an objective is going to be 12" in from the short edge and 24" up from the long edge, no matter the deployment, for example. Maybe that changed.

I think the ITC missions are just too bland. It's the same thing (kill units/capture objectives) no matter the "mission", and with secondaries, as I said above you can just tailor everything. You know during list construction what secondaries your opponent will probably take against you based on what you're bringing (if you're bringing 100 dudes, you can reasonably guess that Blood Angels player is going to take the anti-horde secondary), and what secondaries you will probably choose against any army you face (which due to ITC being ITC is probably also roughly known what people would bring). I think they removed it but a while ago this made it possible to "game" the secondaries. Before they changed it, the anti-horde was something like 1 point for 10+, 2 points for 20+ so you would just take a unit of 19 and deny your opponent 1 point. They did change this eventually but it led to essentially gaming list building even more than before.

I haven't played the CA19 missions yet but the CA18 ones were great. The new Maelstrom ones with the preconstructed deck sound like the best of everything: Enough random to discourage skew armies, but not so random that you have no idea what might happen, and not zero random like ITC missions.

The primary complaint still seems to be the lack of secondaries/being able to tailor what gives you VP depending on your opponent rather than the mission/chance, and to a much lesser extent non-fixed objectives (but that might have changed too in the latest ITC Champions missions, I don't know).

I think the biggest point though for them abandoning their own missions is simply that they DON'T do this for AOS. So there's no real need to for 40k either. Let them focus on the logistics of tournaments, not trying to balance them. Because otherwise they might as well go even further to balance them and have their own FAQs/errata again like they did in 7th edition. It's pretty clear what they REALLY want is to have the one and only set of competitive 40k rules above and beyond regular Matched Play. So why stop with missions?

Wayniac wrote:
Last time I checked the ITC Champion missions (2018?), objectives were in set locations on the table, you didn't place them. Which added to the whole "You can know everything before sitting down to play" which I dislike. You would know that an objective is going to be 12" in from the short edge and 24" up from the long edge, no matter the deployment, for example. Maybe that changed.

I think the ITC missions are just too bland. It's the same thing (kill units/capture objectives) no matter the "mission", and with secondaries, as I said above you can just tailor everything. You know during list construction what secondaries your opponent will probably take against you based on what you're bringing (if you're bringing 100 dudes, you can reasonably guess that Blood Angels player is going to take the anti-horde secondary), and what secondaries you will probably choose against any army you face (which due to ITC being ITC is probably also roughly known what people would bring). I think they removed it but a while ago this made it possible to "game" the secondaries. Before they changed it, the anti-horde was something like 1 point for 10+, 2 points for 20+ so you would just take a unit of 19 and deny your opponent 1 point. They did change this eventually but it led to essentially gaming list building even more than before.

I haven't played the CA19 missions yet but the CA18 ones were great. The new Maelstrom ones with the preconstructed deck sound like the best of everything: Enough random to discourage skew armies, but not so random that you have no idea what might happen, and not zero random like ITC missions.

The primary complaint still seems to be the lack of secondaries/being able to tailor what gives you VP depending on your opponent rather than the mission/chance, and to a much lesser extent non-fixed objectives (but that might have changed too in the latest ITC Champions missions, I don't know).

I think the biggest point though for them abandoning their own missions is simply that they DON'T do this for AOS. So there's no real need to for 40k either. Let them focus on the logistics of tournaments, not trying to balance them. Because otherwise they might as well go even further to balance them and have their own FAQs/errata again like they did in 7th edition. It's pretty clear what they REALLY want is to have the one and only set of competitive 40k rules above and beyond regular Matched Play. So why stop with missions?

I'm going to bang on this drum again, but to add to this, it's the same people writing these ITC missions that are testing the CA approved missions and signing them off as fit for purpose. Either they're intentionally misleading GW with the mission feedback (possibly to keep ITC being a thing), GW aren't playtesting them or people are blindly stuck in their ways and unwilling to try change.

Dudeface wrote:
I'm going to bang on this drum again, but to add to this, it's the same people writing these ITC missions that are testing the CA approved missions and signing them off as fit for purpose. Either they're intentionally misleading GW with the mission feedback (possibly to keep ITC being a thing), GW aren't playtesting them or people are blindly stuck in their ways and unwilling to try change.

Right. But then again we have no insight into what specifically they are testing. Presumably, they are testing the new missions but we can't be 100% certain since the entire testing process is kept hidden and under an NDA so we can't see where it's flawed. But I agree if they are testing the CA missions and saying these are good, then there's something funky going on if they are keeping their own set of missions too. Especially since, despite what they may think, they have to know ITC is mostly a USA thing and sees much smaller use outside the states so most people outside that are going to use the CA missions for tournaments too.

Wayniac wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm going to bang on this drum again, but to add to this, it's the same people writing these ITC missions that are testing the CA approved missions and signing them off as fit for purpose. Either they're intentionally misleading GW with the mission feedback (possibly to keep ITC being a thing), GW aren't playtesting them or people are blindly stuck in their ways and unwilling to try change.

Right. But then again we have no insight into what specifically they are testing. Presumably, they are testing the new missions but we can't be 100% certain since the entire testing process is kept hidden and under an NDA so we can't see where it's flawed. But I agree if they are testing the CA missions and saying these are good, then there's something funky going on if they are keeping their own set of missions too. Especially since, despite what they may think, they have to know ITC is mostly a USA thing and sees much smaller use outside the states so most people outside that are going to use the CA missions for tournaments too.

I once tried asking about this from some of the ITC guys on these forums (I think Reece was one of them, he has a Dakka account right?) but I really didn't get a sensible answer.

I think Klickor already said everything I have to say at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The problem with Martel's view is he's fixating on killing those 150 dudes. Can't say for sure, but this may be a result of him playing nothing but ITC, where you can get rewarded for that and not appreciating that in many of the CA missions it doesn't really matter if you kill 100 Guardsmen or not. It's often much more important that you kill a specific 20-30 Guardsmen so you can control objectives. In the new Maelstrom missions you can tailor your deck to the opponent somewhat. So if you don't think you'll have much board control, take out a bunch of the objective-based cards and vice-versa. I agree adding in the odd secondary to the CA missions along those lines might be interesting.

I'm fixated on it because they physically prevent my army from functioning.

Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Martel732 wrote:
I think Klickor already said everything I have to say at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Martel's entire argument is that, his skill aside, he can pick the ITC secondary that's about killing hordes of dudes (I think it's 1 point for killing 10+? It might have been changed) and get extra VP while slogging through hordes, while in a non-ITC mission VP doesn't come from that (there might be a Maelstrom card for it? No idea) so he's at 0 until he can slog through 100 guys, if he can at all. ITC missions let him be at let's say 3 (3 turns of trying to get through) instead of 0 so he feels like he's doing something other than killing guys without any benefit for doing it.

That's it. And honestly, I wouldn't mind if the GW missions had something like that as a bonus in some missions. My issue with ITC secondaries is entirely that they are able to be tailored to your oppponent. So if you play someone with 100 dudes, you will pick the "kill hordes" secondary. If they have all elites, you will pick that. All knights, you pick the superheavy one. Etc. etc. it puts even more emphasis on what you bring versus how you use it, since you get to pick what extra bonuses you get based on your opponent's army, rather than not being certain of what you might face and having that push you more towards covering all your bases. It encourages the sort of gamey specific netlists that we see because there's no drawback to bringing a skew list since you'll always have SOME secondary objective that gives you a bonus against any sort of list.

While it's my viewpoint that being able to do that is part of the problem. If you didn't' know what mission you would get or, in the case of Maelstrom what card you might draw (I love the new version of this, however) it means you are less incentivized to bring a heavy skew list since you might get a mission that doesn't favor your skew and be at a disadvantage. On the contrary, you are incentivized to bring a more well-balanced list that can handle any of the missions you might get. Knowing the mission(s) beforehand on top of being able to tailor your secondaries removes any reason whatsoever to bring something more balanced.

The problem with Martel's view is he's fixating on killing those 150 dudes. Can't say for sure, but this may be a result of him playing nothing but ITC, where you can get rewarded for that and not appreciating that in many of the CA missions it doesn't really matter if you kill 100 Guardsmen or not. It's often much more important that you kill a specific 20-30 Guardsmen so you can control objectives. In the new Maelstrom missions you can tailor your deck to the opponent somewhat. So if you don't think you'll have much board control, take out a bunch of the objective-based cards and vice-versa. I agree adding in the odd secondary to the CA missions along those lines might be interesting.

I'm fixated on it because they physically prevent my army from functioning.

Define function please, it's not preventing you from capping/contesting objectives in your half/midfield, you have some shenanigans to get to the backfield if needed. What does it prevent you from doing that stops you competing within a game?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

surely even if you achive the moment where you could activate the relic turn one and end the game before your opponent had a turn, you would not do it as you would be forging the narrative of the game, just like GW tells everyone to do. So all we have to do for good armies to not be good is for their players to not use the rules on their good units. If 3 exorcists can blow up the most important part of my army turn one, and I can't do nothing about it, then my opponent should wait with doing so till turn 3-4, so I get at least 2 turns of playing.

 Crimson wrote:
Sorry Martel, the BA have been brought to supplement marine level, if you still can't beat the IG it's on you.

LOL supplement level is an area that is producing nearly a 20% difference in win rate right now. BA are more of in the Ultramarines 45%-50% WR area - they aren't at Ironhands 68% WR area. Clear and drastic difference in power. Keep in mind. A 50% WR is what GW should be shooting for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Lets be clear that all non Ironhands and IF have access to about as many stratagems and WL traits as Ultras and Salamanders....Yet they produce near a 20% difference in win rate. Having options is a cool thing to have and I have sympathy for armies that don't have options but that is a claim about an army not being fun to play - not about it's ability to win battles.

Wayniac wrote:


I haven't played the CA19 missions yet but the CA18 ones were great. The new Maelstrom ones with the preconstructed deck sound like the best of everything: Enough random to discourage skew armies, but not so random that you have no idea what might happen, and not zero random like ITC missions.

The primary complaint still seems to be the lack of secondaries/being able to tailor what gives you VP depending on your opponent rather than the mission/chance, and to a much lesser extent non-fixed objectives (but that might have changed too in the latest ITC Champions missions, I don't know).

Just to pick up on this small section, the new Maelstrom rules are basically like choosing your own objectives as they do for the ITC secondaries with the trade-off that you have more total objectives to complete but less control over when you can attempt them. It works really well. You no longer get screwed over by drawing specific cards and if you end up with a hand full of useless objectives it's pretty much always due to a mistake from the player, either in constructing the deck or playing the objective cards.

I think the whole "everything always known" factor of ITC missions came to its ridiculous head with the recent Pro-Tabletop tournament in Atlanta where the terrain set-ups, including terrain heights, and objective set-ups were known beforehand. Because war is nothing if not utterly predictable.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Sorry Martel, the BA have been brought to supplement marine level, if you still can't beat the IG it's on you.

LOL supplement level is an area that is producing nearly a 20% difference in win rate right now. BA are more of in the Ultramarines 45%-50% WR area - they aren't at Ironhands 68% WR area. Clear and drastic difference in power. Keep in mind. A 50% WR is what GW should be shooting for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Lets be clear that all non Ironhands and IF have access to about as many stratagems and WL traits as Ultras and Salamanders....Yet they produce near a 20% difference in win rate. Having options is a cool thing to have and I have sympathy for armies that don't have options but that is a claim about an army not being fun to play - not about it's ability to win battles.

Does your data actually show BA at those numbers post-Blood of Baal? Also, I don't remember exactly, but Martel is complaining about guard here and guard numbers from what I remember weren't super great.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

An army having access to twice as many stratagems, relics, and warlord traits from another army provides them with twice the options and many more times the potential combinations of options. The odds that you're going to be able to find something broken are dramatically increased.

If this wasn't the case, then Soup would provide nobody any benefit, and we all know that soup has been perfectly balanced all edition and has caused no problems nor complaints!

Space marine fanboys have never complained about soup lists!

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Sorry Martel, the BA have been brought to supplement marine level, if you still can't beat the IG it's on you.

LOL supplement level is an area that is producing nearly a 20% difference in win rate right now. BA are more of in the Ultramarines 45%-50% WR area - they aren't at Ironhands 68% WR area. Clear and drastic difference in power. Keep in mind. A 50% WR is what GW should be shooting for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

Lets be clear that all non Ironhands and IF have access to about as many stratagems and WL traits as Ultras and Salamanders....Yet they produce near a 20% difference in win rate. Having options is a cool thing to have and I have sympathy for armies that don't have options but that is a claim about an army not being fun to play - not about it's ability to win battles.

Does your data actually show BA at those numbers post-Blood of Baal? Also, I don't remember exactly, but Martel is complaining about guard here and guard numbers from what I remember weren't super great.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Someone please explain this idea that having more psychic powers/warlord traits/relics than someone else is inherently broken from a game-balance perspective.

An extreme example:

You have 48 different stratagems, 24 warlord traits, and 12 relics.

I have 6 stratagems, 3 warlord traits, and 1 relic.

My relic says that "When a model in your army destroys an enemy model, you win the game". How much influence is the fact that you have eight times as many stratagems as I going to have?

An army having access to twice as many stratagems, relics, and warlord traits from another army provides them with twice the options and many more times the potential combinations of options. The odds that you're going to be able to find something broken are dramatically increased.

If this wasn't the case, then Soup would provide nobody any benefit, and we all know that soup has been perfectly balanced all edition and has caused no problems nor complaints!

Space marine fanboys have never complained about soup lists!

In the december data gaurd did reasonably well (BA data was not in there yet from the new update). Gaurd is still pretty strong and often gaurd means gaurd and knights or gaurd and custodes or something but that is what martel is talking about anyways I think. Martles complaint is mainly a matchup issue. Hordes beat elite melle armies...that is just the way it is. He'd be better of spamming shooty intercessors to clear those guardsmen than bringing a bunch of iconic BA stuff like SG and Libby dreads/mephiston.

It's just my personal opinion that BA likely fall under the IF/IH power level. They are in the lower tier of marines. They don't even have the chapter master upgrade (a big loss) they are great in melle. They don't have ven dreads (one of marines best units) but they can just take contemptors mortis. I would put them somewhere around ultramarine power level which realistically is like...mid tier game wide.

Martel is mostly saying that the weakness of BA isnt fixed and it is still countered the same way and there is no downside to counter it with hordes of chaff in GW missions. In ITC you at least get points for killing. Not that guard is broken and BA cant win at all. Not even seeing him say BA shouldnt have bad weaknesses/matchups but using it mainly to illustrate an example.

BA is obviously buffed but not nearly to the same level as the better supplements since BA lack some of the strongest units and lack good all around traits, relics(more strat related to them), powers and stratagems that the true supplements got. You cant really build very well against IH since they can play about anything except perhaps Assault Marine spam very well and can easily change lists according to the meta since its the overall power of their and IF/RG rules that make them so good. For BA its a few JP units, a trait, a relic and a handfull of stratagems that all do one thing and its relative easy to counter since they cant do anything else really.

Dont think ITC or GW mission really affects BA. Killing gets rewarded more in ITC but also artillery units that can threaten t4 3+ behind screens are also better in ITC, and they are really strong since they force BA to engage even with loads of terrain, so I think it doesnt matter too much overall for BA which set of rules is played. Some matchups might change though since other armies will change certain things depending on mission type and that will also affect us.

Soup will always provide the benefit of Cheap CP generation and objective holding for elite armies. Which IMO is the main reason it is used - the other is to fill rolls your army doesn't have (IE guard don't have great Mobil melee so shield captains work great for them). It typically not combos that they are looking for. In the case of eldar bringing doom for DE stuff - that got shut down really quick because it was broken.

Marines can take a lot of WL traits and relics. They aren't free though - they cost pregame CP. That is CP they can't use on stratagems later. So it is a give and take. For example my ultramarines are typically spending 7 CP pregame - giving me like 6 strating CP. I get a lot out of that. 6+ FNP aura from an apoth - a chapter master - typically an additional relic. However - That means I'm not shooting twice with an intercessors squad every turn. It also means I wont have CP to fight again with my chaplain dread...these are big considerations. Plus marines lose their main source of power if they go for cheap CP regen from IG and cheap marine CP batteries are utter garbage - scouts and tech marines are pretty damn bad. IMO you are always better off taking quality detachments with marines which pretty much maxes you out at 14 CP (if you decide to take 5 hq's) 13 if you take 4.

Really fascinating stuff.

Having had a few matches against Eldar (playing Blood Angels myself), I can definitely see they're pretty handy.

I actually think, from my limited experience admittedly, that the game isn't anywhere near as imbalanced as it's often made out to be.

Club I play at also isn't filled with Marines either - in fact, I'm the only regular player (there was a IH player I saw once and a Grey Knights player, again only saw once), but other than that there are Eldar, Tyranids, Thousand Sons, Astra Militarum, Genestealer Cults.

I used guardsmen, but I could insert any cheap throwaway model. I could also replace BA with BT. Or even WS. Klickor has the right of it: people are clinging to my exact examples too much.

Also, GW terrain rules suck for assault armies. Being shot through windows is awful.

I actually disagree somewhat Martel, BT have two ways of getting 6" consolidates (stratagem and litany) and the no-fallback stratagem that makes screens significantly less effective. Having to spread your screens out with a 7" gap is much worse than a 4" radius, and if you can charge one guardsman squad and tag a second you can hide in combat. It's still going to suck, but dropping some stuff in turn 1 and combining it with a barrage of TFCs and Intercessors plonking away gives you a decent shot to be able to capitalize on the disorganization in the enemy ranks in turn 2 in a way that I don't think Blood Angels can.