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I have been asked to run a warcry event this summer. And while I have sworn off AOS until they get around to addressing the issues I have with AOS that I don't need to go into here, I have found Warcry to at least be more engaging. However, I have heard there are some balance issues that also exist in warcry (surprise! I'm sure you can see my shocked face) that can make for some severe negative play experiences in regards to non tournament events.

This event is a campaign event not intended to come in and put people through tables. It is supposed to be a very casual campaign thing. However, my area has people that will do so anyway if the rules allow it.

So my question is - before I get too involved in designing this summer campaign - if the system still allows people to show up and dominate based on school both arithmetic, I'd like to know about where and how.

Thanks!

Honestly, there are 3 (same would say for) warbands that are on another level compare to the others, SCE, FeC, Gitz. Those 3 are just a full tier higher than all other warbands, some warbands are for sure not as balanced as others (example, LoN and IJ are lower tier but still can win depending on the deployment and mission), but the RNG of missions/deployment and how you build your list will matter more, but if you are one of the top 3, then no it doesn't matter.

If someone is playing those 3 warbands they still are fine, they just have 2-3 fighters that are OP and a couple list builds that make them stupidly gross to play against. With the new warbands, maybe a couple more might be at their levels, but i haven't seen the new ones in game yet.

But at least they still can lose b.c of the cards RNG and i have seen them lose many times, its just an uphill battle.

I know a few locals are giving the "warcry" starting warbands (basically non aos added warbands) a handicap of 100pts, others are just having 2 leagues/events 1 for all warbands, 1 for Warcry only ones.


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Oh to add, i have played 5 warbands and have about 50 games, so i might not have all the experience of warcry only players. I'm in a couple groups and they have 100+ games in already b.c some games are only 20min long, others can be an hour. but thats still very short. So if someone else has more experience they might see it differently and don't think they are as strong as my group thinks they are.

Can probably add SCE Warrior Chamber to the S Tier list, maybe Skaven.

Most of the imbalance in Warcry comes from a bad mix of two good things tho: very varied scenarios + very varied factions. Beefy flyers in particular simply auto-win some scenarios. Unfortunately, it seems the easiest way to curb the outliers is to simply restrict the scanarios to basic point holding and attrition missions, and skip the assassination and mobility based missions.

The perfect OP combos are either high damage with speed and survivability, or high shooting long range damage with survivability and then you have access to lots of cheap chaff units, even better if they can move fast.

First set of SCE can take 3 super powerful shooting guys and then 6+ fast moving cheap chaff for an example.

GW just needs to re point a few fighters (maybe 10 at the most) and instantly the game is much more balanced.

In a campaign, it is tempting to run it in a way where the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting screwed.

Simply put, to keep a campaign going, you need to “penalize” winning and “reward” losing.

For example, if a player wins, they get a -5% points handicap per win. After 3 consecutive wins, they’re playing at a 15% handicap, while someone that’s lost 3 consecutive games will have a 15% bonus.

You’ll probably find your homeostasis point pretty quickly. The campaign winner is the player with the greatest penalty after “x” number of games. Maybe decrease the penalty shift to 3% after half of the games have been played.

Narrative players have fun because after a couple early losses, their “weaker” forces are balanced against the “stronger” forces and they have a chance to win games.

Competitive players will enjoy the struggle as their forces have to face ever mounting challenges.

Power gamers will be pissy. No easy wins after the first couple of games, taking the “best units” won’t give them easy wins. This seems to be the type you’re trying to weed out anyway.

While I’m not familiar with Warcry itself, I can imagine a 10-game campaign where the first 3 games have a 10% shift each, then 3 games with a 5% shift, followed by 4 games with a 3% shift.

Hypothetically, if someone won their first 9 games they’d have a 54% handicap... potentially vs someone that lost 9 games with a 54% bonus. Could you imagine someone going into their last game at a roughly 3:1 disadvantage? Crazy!

Story-wise, the winners’ bands begin taking on the harder missions, aggressive hit-and-runs, behind enemy lines, guerilla style actions while the losers are being pushed back into their home territories where defences and resources are more plentiful.

I feel like the biggest problem with campaigns is you reach the point where you’re eliminated, but there’s still half a campaign to go. With the handicap system, even people that lost early get “support” to start winning games (if not the campaign) and they can still have fun playing and learning.

Thank you for the insight guys. I do appreciate your input.

I'm 100% against house rules for public events at this time because of having done house rules since 2010, the drama that they incur is just simply not worth it. Though greatbigtree, your system would be interesting to see play out (id play in something like that to see how it turned out for sure)

I picked up a box of spire tyrants I'm going to try and get painted before summer along with my conquest stuff (and if anything I can use the bits in my conquest army because the models are pretty great).

 greatbigtree wrote:
In a campaign, it is tempting to run it in a way where the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting screwed.

Simply put, to keep a campaign going, you need to “penalize” winning and “reward” losing.

For example, if a player wins, they get a -5% points handicap per win. After 3 consecutive wins, they’re playing at a 15% handicap, while someone that’s lost 3 consecutive games will have a 15% bonus.

You’ll probably find your homeostasis point pretty quickly. The campaign winner is the player with the greatest penalty after “x” number of games. Maybe decrease the penalty shift to 3% after half of the games have been played.

Narrative players have fun because after a couple early losses, their “weaker” forces are balanced against the “stronger” forces and they have a chance to win games.

Competitive players will enjoy the struggle as their forces have to face ever mounting challenges.

Power gamers will be pissy. No easy wins after the first couple of games, taking the “best units” won’t give them easy wins. This seems to be the type you’re trying to weed out anyway.

While I’m not familiar with Warcry itself, I can imagine a 10-game campaign where the first 3 games have a 10% shift each, then 3 games with a 5% shift, followed by 4 games with a 3% shift.

Hypothetically, if someone won their first 9 games they’d have a 54% handicap... potentially vs someone that lost 9 games with a 54% bonus. Could you imagine someone going into their last game at a roughly 3:1 disadvantage? Crazy!

Story-wise, the winners’ bands begin taking on the harder missions, aggressive hit-and-runs, behind enemy lines, guerilla style actions while the losers are being pushed back into their home territories where defences and resources are more plentiful.

I feel like the biggest problem with campaigns is you reach the point where you’re eliminated, but there’s still half a campaign to go. With the handicap system, even people that lost early get “support” to start winning games (if not the campaign) and they can still have fun playing and learning.

I completely agree with this for campaigns. Too often I have seen campaigns built for the strong to get stronger so only the first couple of games really matter in determining who is going to win the campaign as they just going to pull ahead with all the extra buffs they are award in addition to how the campaign tracks the winner. Not surprising that these campaigns generally have a some 50% or more drop off from the players that lose their first few games as they go from struggling to win when the campaign was 'balenced' to barely having a chance to win.

In campaign play I think a combination of rubber-banding and endurance should be rewarded. The campaign doesn't need, and shouldn't, go full Mario Cart on the rubber-banding where a player can be in the top spot every single week until the last when that blue shell appears. However, I do think as a player moves toward becoming the King of the Hill they should have to struggle more than those a the foot of said hill. To win a campaign a player as to be both good and lucky.

I also think rewarding continued play should be important. I think campaign organizers would be wise to try and take pages out of Free-to-Play videos which have players coming back.. The don't have to be predatory or scummy, but things like escalating points just for playing games could mean that players than win still want to play those earlier weeks to be a couple points ahead. While players that didn't do very well, or joined late, are completely out of the running as later weeks could be many times points as week one.

I have been considering something like this:

Players can play up to 3 games a week for points. Each game played earns 1 point just for playing. Winning a game gives the player 3 points. No player can earn more than 3 points the first week.
Week 2 all points points earned are double (so playing earns 2 points, winning equals 6 points). No player can earn more than double the maximum amount of points (6pts) as week one. Each week the points and maximum points multiplier increases by one. So Week three has each earning 3 points, wins earning 9 points and no more than 9 points can be earned that week. At about the half way point, just playing games no longer has the week multiplier active. So if Week 5 was the halfway point, during Week 6 just playing games earns only 5 points while wining earns 18 points with no more than 18 possible points earned. So a player that plays the maximum of 3 games can only earn 15 of the 18 maximum possible.

As of army/team/force bonuses. A player with an equal number of a wins and losses has the same number of points for their force. For every loss over then number of wins, a player has they may add 10% more points to their force. Conversely, a player with more wins than losses subtracts 10% of the maximum points for that week's total for every win they have over their losses.

Finally, in the event of a tie or multiple ties at the end of the campaign, a single elimination tournament will be held with the player with the most wins being seeded first and so on.

This is still a very rough draft I have been thinking about. Plus, I am kinda buzzed from the beverage I just had. So I hope it both makes sense and isn't too crazy.

The updated glory rewards from Tome of Champions go a long way to evening things out. Also I highly recommend forcing players to roll for their greater artifacts and their command traits. Being allowed to pick them just makes it really easy to break things by combo-ing up certain options on the right leader.

As for further advice... Well I'd link you the rules I'm using for my league but my community is the polar opposite yours; they can be relied upon not to take things to the limit. Still, the balance in Warcry is far better than that of AoS.

Thats good info to have. I do prefer randomly rolling traits and artifacts because it does help stop the ccg power comboing that tends to happen, and its also not a house rule so I can get more leverage behind that.

Any rules you are using would be nice to read because it helps me understand the overall picture better.

What I'm trying to avoid is starting a campaign and then two or three games in the usual suspects bring forth the warcry equivalent of triple keepers and everyone drops except that handful of people because no one wants to deal with that.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c6s347aadbmmqd5/League%20of%20Sigmar%20Warcry.docx?dl=0

Thanks for the info!

Happy to help!

best way to play warcry is with default boxed warbands. its relatively balanced and doesn't make playing intolerable netlists a thing. Warcry is for fun, aos is for winning. Warcry is a great game, but obviously still i development, like aos in the first years after they deleted the fantasy cannon.