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 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

Is the very long answer "heeeellllll noooooooooo"?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

Tristanleo wrote:
Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

Immediately after he said that about units only intended to be balanced within their own codexes, you should have shown him a Leman Russ vs. a Vanquisher.

Tristanleo wrote:
Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

And that is why GW fails.

Martel732 wrote:
And that is why GW fails.

It's not unreasonable for units to cost more or less in context.

Though it is increasingly difficult to have a defined 'army balance' as books get larger, allies and unit selection gets more permissive, and everything is cross-buffed by auras, stratagems, and other sweeping bonuses - and it is on GW for putting themselves in that situation.

They need to at least look at things like guardsmen vs cultists. CSM vs tacticals. Etc.

A.T. wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
And that is why GW fails.

It's not unreasonable for units to cost more or less in context.

Though it is increasingly difficult to have a defined 'army balance' as books get larger, allies and unit selection gets more permissive, and everything is cross-buffed by auras, stratagems, and other sweeping bonuses - and it is on GW for putting themselves in that situation.

This wouldn't be as bad if GW at least committed to a Standard when they implement a rule, rather than giving units a super-specific better variation on the same rule or applying the rule to one model in an army but not to a functionally similar model in another army.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

What seems missing is a systematic approach to relative faction design. What seems necessary is a chart with X factions and at least X specilizations, then designers spend a set number of points into those specializations. So, in the design process, the eldar have 4 points spent on speed, and the orks spend 3, the marines 2, imperial guard 1 (just a or example). With armor, guard spends 4, marines 3, orks 3, eldar 1... making sure that every faction has specializations that suit their intended play style. Then, these numbers are used to make coefficients modifying points ascriptions to different units. So, a guard tank may be a bit cheaper than a marine tank, though it may perform differently than those of other factions because of other aspects characteristic of the army, in this case speed. So, during the design process, a guard tank unit that moves fast (basically a speed upgrade over a basic tank platform in the guard army in this example) should be more points costly than an eldar tank getting a speed upgrade, for instance. Eldar, on the other hand, would have more costly armor upgrades, heavily armored units may be more expensive or have limitations (for example, the wave serpents have seen such heavy use on so many fronts for so long, that they have become rare! and so while still super effecive, they are more costly or the army is limited to only 3, or some of both...).

 jeff white wrote:
What seems missing is a systematic approach to relative faction design. What seems necessary is a chart with X factions and at least X specilizations, then designers spend a set number of points into those specializations. So, in the design process, the eldar have 4 points spent on speed, and the orks spend 3, the marines 2, imperial guard 1 (just a or example). With armor, guard spends 4, marines 3, orks 3, eldar 1... making sure that every faction has specializations that suit their intended play style. Then, these numbers are used to make coefficients modifying points ascriptions to different units. So, a guard tank may be a bit cheaper than a marine tank, though it may perform differently than those of other factions because of other aspects characteristic of the army, in this case speed. So, during the design process, a guard tank unit that moves fast (basically a speed upgrade over a basic tank platform in the guard army in this example) should be more points costly than an eldar tank getting a speed upgrade, for instance. Eldar, on the other hand, would have more costly armor upgrades, heavily armored units may be more expensive or have limitations (for example, the wave serpents have seen such heavy use on so many fronts for so long, that they have become rare! and so while still super effecive, they are more costly or the army is limited to only 3, or some of both...).

This is a super terrible idea, all this is going to do is make 80% of the 40k range useless, just ban the units that don't fit the MO of an army instead of giving them terrible pts costs. Make every unit conform to the army's playstyle instead and make all units equally pts efficient such that every unit is balanced, no units are useless and every army feels like it's representing the faction it is representing and not just a generic tank list, but bad because CSM are not supposed to have tanks that are as efficient as AM tanks. Instead of saying Craftworlds is a Tanky 1, Fast 4, Killy 3 army you just make every unit somehow fit in with how Craftworlds play, helping them play their mobile tricksy glasscannon playstyle instead of introducing a cool-looking super slow unit for them and then just ensuring it won't ever be played by making it terrible. This is the reason why the big Tau mechs were a mistake, even if they were terrible as your "balancing" doctrine would have made them because they don't fit the Tau fighting doctrine, that would still leave a lot of people with minis they cannot enjoy on the battlefield. How does it make sense for a military to field units that don't fit the tactical doctrines of that military? I don't care how cool the Riptide concept is, it didn't fit, it shouldn't have been made, but after it was making it trash to fix the mistake of developing it is anti-consumer BS.

A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good


The only crappy army was grey knights but they just got a minor update with one of the first codex they still sucked However but were okay since they were one of the first codex. they only got Outdated and worse since.

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

Is the very long answer "heeeellllll noooooooooo"?

Let's stop exaggerating, jesus. It's "heellll noooo" at best, stop being insane.

gungo wrote:
A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

I'm afraid I can't agree with this idea there was good balance.
Someone can disagree with my history but...

The index was a thing - and people (and so "the internet" found weird combos such as lots of Razorwing Flocks and weird plays with horrors and GW went "NO!"
But we had Guilliman with lots of flyers - nerfed.
Guilliman with lots of razorbacks - nerfed.
Smite Spam armies - nerfed.
A succession of "game breaking codexes" - starting with Guard (leading to nerfs). Eldar Alaitoc Flyers entered the stage (and Ynnari was still going crazy - prompting various nerfs). It was a period of commander and hive tyrant spam which was slowly eliminated, leading to the rule of 3 shortly before the DE codex (top tier on release in April 2018)
Then, June 2018, the Knights Codex. Relatively quickly we enter the pax-Castellan.
Enter 2019, GSC enter the scene and the Castellan is nerfed to death. Period of vague "balance" or at least an evolving meta as Abberants fight flyer spam and all the boyz and "that competitive Chaos build" which has evolved every 3-6 months. Marines are progressively terrible but really they have been that way for over a year, with Grey Knights a sub-tier kind of laughable even when they got their codex joke.
Then Aug 19, New Marines and UM+White Scars enter the scene. Start winning tournaments, performing well. Clearly strong.
Then a month later, IH and RG enter. Take "strong" and turn it to "daft". One month later GW tries to rectify things with a slew of nerfs to IH. It does very little to a codex which rivals WHFB's edition breaking Skaven and Chaos Daemons codexes.
Pax-Marines begins and very soon every tournament where the top 4 are not all Marines is cheered.
Due to GW's unfortunate time problem of writing and printing rules 6-10 months before, CA nerfs a lot of armies which were doing well circa April/May 2019, and have long since fallen to Marine dominance.
In late February 2020, Marine FAQ brought in. Maybe Marines brought under control. Unfortunately within weeks Covid will effectively end tournaments across the globe.
A new meta, with diminished Marines, buffed Grey Knights and Orks, Commander Spam Tau, new Sisters of Battle, now Engine War and the sound of 9th edition remains to be forged.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Yes. If I as a veteran and daemon player frequently play someone less experienced than me and win frequently due to their inexperience then the less experienced player may think that daemons are unbalanced in this instance because that's their only exposure to the game.

This is what I meant by "factors" beyond just what's printed in the codex (and again I don't JUST mean player experience before anyone decides to hyperfocus on that as a basis for argument). There are more things at work in 40k beyond unit rules and points and people very rarely acknowledge that when discussing balance.

I'm not sure 40k has ever been 'balanced', at least from a tournament point of view, and i think when discussing balance competitive play is the format a lot of people consider. I used to play in 40k tournaments on a fairly regular basis but more recently (the last 10-15 years) i play 40k more casually, and when i want to play a hyper competitive balanced tournament style game, i play infinity. While Infinity is a skirmish game the main difference between it and 40k is it has been designed as a competitive tournament style game, whereas 40k from its inception has been, imo, a beer and pretzels game.

Infinity has free rules (all of them) no auto take or auto ignore units (a few do come close though), there are no net lists, it is absolutely impossible to spam the best units with the best weapons, and even if you could, those units can't complete (generally) whatever the mission objectives are. any unit in the game can kill any other unit in the game. the units are generally well pointed, and at the regular points value of a game you can never take all the stuff you want to. Alpha strikes are almost impossible, and a high risk win/lose strategy. I have never gone into a game and thought at the outset that i am automatically going to win or lose. Infinity also has the benefit of having a really tight ruleset, to the extent of if 2 players disagree on how a rule works, one of them is wrong, and looking up the rule will show that. I've also never had to discuss with my opponent beforehand about what kind of player they are (competitive versus casual) with one or both of us having to tone up or tone down our force. new players are pretty much the exception, but in any game they generally are, infinity has a complex rule set and punishing learning curve which is a major point which ive seen keeps people from playing it. The majority of games i have played have been decided by player skill and knowledge, a few have come down to luck spikes. fewer still have been down to army selection.

40k, in my experience, pretty much fails at everything that infinity succeeds at. As soon as you start to get competitive at 40k, it fails, and fails hard. its just not designed for it, and the bloated mess of rules, inconsistent unit power, and a myriad of other issues which have been discussed in this discussion and many others demonstrate that.

Where 40k is far superior to Infinity is the background fluff, the size of the player base, the freedom to pick pretty much whatever you want for your army, and the freedom to play whatever scenario you want, with whatever forces you want dispensing with points entirely. Infinity is much more restrictive in that regard as the primary focus is competitive play. 40k gives you freedom at the expense of balance, infinity gives you balance at the expense of freedom.

I enjoy both games, for different reasons of course, and this is just my subjective opinion. enjoy your weekend

Except look at factions like DE. What freedom do they have, what with hemorrhaging characters and options...

Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Tyel wrote:

gungo wrote:
A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

I'm afraid I can't agree with this idea there was good balance.
Someone can disagree with my history but...

The index was a thing - and people (and so "the internet" found weird combos such as lots of Razorwing Flocks and weird plays with horrors and GW went "NO!"
But we had Guilliman with lots of flyers - nerfed.
Guilliman with lots of razorbacks - nerfed.
Smite Spam armies - nerfed.
A succession of "game breaking codexes" - starting with Guard (leading to nerfs). Eldar Alaitoc Flyers entered the stage (and Ynnari was still going crazy - prompting various nerfs). It was a period of commander and hive tyrant spam which was slowly eliminated, leading to the rule of 3 shortly before the DE codex (top tier on release in April 2018)
Then, June 2018, the Knights Codex. Relatively quickly we enter the pax-Castellan.
Enter 2019, GSC enter the scene and the Castellan is nerfed to death. Period of vague "balance" or at least an evolving meta as Abberants fight flyer spam and all the boyz and "that competitive Chaos build" which has evolved every 3-6 months. Marines are progressively terrible but really they have been that way for over a year, with Grey Knights a sub-tier kind of laughable even when they got their codex joke.
Then Aug 19, New Marines and UM+White Scars enter the scene. Start winning tournaments, performing well. Clearly strong.
Then a month later, IH and RG enter. Take "strong" and turn it to "daft". One month later GW tries to rectify things with a slew of nerfs to IH. It does very little to a codex which rivals WHFB's edition breaking Skaven and Chaos Daemons codexes.
Pax-Marines begins and very soon every tournament where the top 4 are not all Marines is cheered.
Due to GW's unfortunate time problem of writing and printing rules 6-10 months before, CA nerfs a lot of armies which were doing well circa April/May 2019, and have long since fallen to Marine dominance.
In late February 2020, Marine FAQ brought in. Maybe Marines brought under control. Unfortunately within weeks Covid will effectively end tournaments across the globe.
A new meta, with diminished Marines, buffed Grey Knights and Orks, Commander Spam Tau, new Sisters of Battle, now Engine War and the sound of 9th edition remains to be forged.

You just gave 3 year history I’m talking when 8th released after the initial FAQs.
As an example 8th dropped in June 2017
LVO is the first major in January 2018
It had in the top 10
Elder
Ynnari
Blood angles
Space wolves
Guard
Demons

That’s a lot of representation even if there were 3 separate Eldar or ynnari variants
I was fine w smite spam guillimam and razorbacks and conscript spam.. I think that initial round of nerfs just lead to decline in balance.coommander and hive tyrant spam was fine. Razorwing was a problem. Once they nerfed razorwing and commissars I think things were pretty balanced regardless of certain units were spammed to hold up an army.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

Errrrrrrrrrr....... what? Like, seriously... what the? That was my first post on this thread... I'm a massive detractor of GW and I've said multiple times the franchise would benefit from a change in ownership.... I don't think I've ever in my life said forge the narrative, or used narrative as a justification for anything ruleswise, I've literally argued for further separation between the two in the past.

Are you just throwing out buzzwords today? As is well known on these forums slayer, you are not exactly the level of player who should be talking about balance lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Absolutely it's possible, and that isn't exclusive at all with what Sim-Life was saying. I don't think 40k is a balanced game in every instance, but nor do I think every match-up needs to be 50/50 for good balance because that would likely be even worse design and simply isn't how balance works. Regardless, the main point is that the majority of "undefeatably poor balance!" complaints are actually more like "slight to insignicant advantage to one side or another". This isn't just a 40k thing (though our community is particularly bad for it), but just a thing with gaming in general. Bad players will always blame balance because they aren't capable of understanding their flaws as a player.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

He's not saying it scales super well just better then anything else. that's a reasonably fair statement. can you name a game that does it better?

BrianDavion wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

He's not saying it scales super well just better then anything else. that's a reasonably fair statement. can you name a game that does it better?

Honestly I think a lot of other games that play in a similar design space scale just fine and better than 40k does. Most games just don’t scale up as often for most gamers.
GW just gets a huge pass and years of support leading to people thinking it’s doing it well.
It’s the same reason people seem to struggle with so many 40k rules but still say they are great an no issues as a common thought, GW got fan support that can cushion there mistakes.

gungo wrote:
You just gave 3 year history I’m talking when 8th released after the initial FAQs.
As an example 8th dropped in June 2017
LVO is the first major in January 2018
It had in the top 10
Elder
Ynnari
Blood angles
Space wolves
Guard
Demons

That’s a lot of representation even if there were 3 separate Eldar or ynnari variants
I was fine w smite spam guillimam and razorbacks and conscript spam.. I think that initial round of nerfs just lead to decline in balance.coommander and hive tyrant spam was fine. Razorwing was a problem. Once they nerfed razorwing and commissars I think things were pretty balanced regardless of certain units were spammed to hold up an army.

Again I'm not sure I can agree. Maybe looking at top 10 is better - but while the 2018 LVO had quite a bit of drama I think 5 of the top 8 were Aeldari lists, 3 of which were very similar in leveraging the same Alaitoc+Ynnari spears/reapers. I guess I should look at the wider tournament - but that's frankly very close to the level of Marine domination enjoyed in 2020 (and Castellan/Aeldari in 2019.) It would take time for the Eldar Codex to really impact the meta - but it was clearly doing so.

But you see my view on balance is a bit more complicated. Because while saying its not great - it also is great.
I think 8th has been far more balanced than 7th, and 6th and 5th and so on.
While you can pick at the fringes - and it may prompt outrage - I can't think of a reasonably well support faction that has been a total trap choice from start to finish in 8th. Grey Knights aside maybe.
Necrons didn't have a good edition - but 2018's CA brought the triple triple doom scythe, triple doomsday ark list, and while it may not be a list that will walk you to 6-0 in a tournament, its certainly viable to play with your friends.
By contrast several factions in 7th just didn't have builds that allowed them to compete against Marines/Eldar/Tau - or were reduced to spamming the one good unit they had.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

Errrrrrrrrrr....... what? Like, seriously... what the? That was my first post on this thread... I'm a massive detractor of GW and I've said multiple times the franchise would benefit from a change in ownership.... I don't think I've ever in my life said forge the narrative, or used narrative as a justification for anything ruleswise, I've literally argued for further separation between the two in the past.

Are you just throwing out buzzwords today? As is well known on these forums slayer, you are not exactly the level of player who should be talking about balance lol.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Absolutely it's possible, and that isn't exclusive at all with what Sim-Life was saying. I don't think 40k is a balanced game in every instance, but nor do I think every match-up needs to be 50/50 for good balance because that would likely be even worse design and simply isn't how balance works. Regardless, the main point is that the majority of "undefeatably poor balance!" complaints are actually more like "slight to insignicant advantage to one side or another". This isn't just a 40k thing (though our community is particularly bad for it), but just a thing with gaming in general. Bad players will always blame balance because they aren't capable of understanding their flaws as a player.

What are you even babbling about? Bad balance is absolutely the main issue, not "player skill". The game isn't deep with mechanics. Imagine making this argument for someone using Grey Knights before they got their Psychic Awakening garbage, because that's what you're doing. If you're actually a detractor like you say you are, you'd not make the argument you're trying to even ONCE.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.