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Hello Folks!

I’m interested in gathering some data, regarding recommended points “Disadvantage” for high-teir factions and sub-factions.

The idea would be, that a person could take the recommended disadvantage to help balance the game with their friends, to make for more interesting and close-fought battles. A point value would be agreed to, such as 1500 points, and the “stronger” faction would take fewer points than their opponent. Perhaps a 10% disadvantage (play 1350 points) to help even the playing field.

It’s something I’ve done in the past, and it worked great for my friends and I. It would be an ever-evolving thing, as new codices are released, rules change, points are updated... the ideas is to change no rules... just the points costs.

If you’re interested in sharing your game results, there’s some general data I’d like to have included.

Sub Faction Name vs Sub Faction Name - ie SM Salamanders vs Necron Mephrit Dynasty
Points / Power level, and if a disadvantage was used - ie 1500 points, 5% Disadvantage to SM
Mission and Result - well, that, exactly
Special scenario / house rules - ie 3-player game, custom scenario
Notes on the game:
Your recommendation for future games - would you suggest a different disadvantage %?

It is my hope that this information could be used by garage gamers and pickup players, potentially, to provide more satisfying and tense games. No right or wrong answers, just looking for opinions and recommendations.

If you’d like to try it, because you and your friend both feel one or you has a notable advantage in your games, I’d suggest starting with a 5% disadvantage, and add 5% more until you’re bouncing back and forth with wins and losses. I’d guess that a 20% disadvantage should be the *most* that even a weak faction, built and played well, should need to overcome a powerful opponent but I could be wrong!

Thanks!

It depends how you want to view things, in general, or with a top-tuned list. One sub-faction might be great in general, while another one is even stronger, but only if you take one specific unit and build you army around it, without that one unit it is weaker than the former sub-faction.

Are you okay with further punishing someone that has chosen an already sub-par list just because his sub-faction can be built in a nasty way? Do you want to encourage people to build nastier lists to make up for having a handicap? We are early in the edition and nothing is settled in stone, if you're absolutely sure a sub-faction is OP then go ahead and nerf it if everyone is happy with it, but I think you'll be going back and forth a lot, there is also the issue of some armies being strong against certain matchups, so if you're grinding losses against a hard matchup do you need a discount on all your units against an easy matchup?

Personally I have found that it has generally been units that have been OP rather than factions, my group used to put a huge pts increase on Wraith Knights in 7th and maybe also in 6th. For Necrons it was a formation that was OP, if a "fair" handicap was put on me then I would have to always use Decurion and I would stop using CAD to self-handicap.

One thing I would recommend you note down is the winning strategy for each match and a link to a word bucket with the exact lists used. Have you had success in getting people to note down all that stuff BTW? I had a lot of trouble doing it when I was trying to balance some fandexes I was writing, I only got a log of about a third of the games that were played, if not less.

Presupposing that handicaps are necessary stops people from personal growth and introspection why they can just say, "well the handicap clearly wasn't enough".

Sorry. That's all I'll say on the matter.

Or we can get GW to correctly write the game instead of having to balance it ourselves

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Presupposing that handicaps are necessary stops people from personal growth and introspection why they can just say, "well the handicap clearly wasn't enough".

You could say exactly the same thing about the common advice to talk with your opponent and detune your list as necessary to make for a more even game. 'Well clearly you didn't detune your list enough', right?

I don't think 'bad balance is okay because it encourages you to git gud' is a very compelling argument. Nor will I appreciate the generous opportunity for personal growth and introspection when a casual opponent shows up with nine Salamanders Eradicators.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Or we can get GW to correctly write the game instead of having to balance it ourselves

How? Not trying to be snarky, but how do we actually get them to do that?

The problem with handicaps is that they assume they'll somehow get right what was already attempted to get right without making the same mistake and somehow that they will do so with a fairly arbitrary multiplier.

The end result is generally that you just move the problem around. The multiplier is off or even if its on, it just causes people to shift to the new optimization created by the multiplier and the problem repeats. That's why meta always turns into a never ending cycle. Most of the time, the purpose in updates isn't really to fix the problem, but simply change it so players don't get board and so different groups have a moment in the sun.

 catbarf wrote:
You could say exactly the same thing about the common advice to talk with your opponent and detune your list as necessary to make for a more even game. 'Well clearly you didn't detune your list enough', right?

I don't think 'bad balance is okay because it encourages you to git gud' is a very compelling argument. Nor will I appreciate the generous opportunity for personal growth and introspection when a casual opponent shows up with nine Salamanders Eradicators.

Its debatable.
Git Gud can be upsetting - but 9th's just come out, and due to the circumstances people have barely started to play. So while we can mathhammer (and I love mathhammer) it seems a bit early to say "faction X needs a 10% handicap". There are far too many things t find out to conclude that's the case.

With that said handicaps have been used before. For example they were often used in WHFB 8th edition tournaments. But that's because you had a stagnant meta. You got a book maybe 4-10 years ago that's basically trash now? Well sucks for you, GW have done nothing to rebalance the game and they never will. So if players didn't, the tournament scene would have been reduced to about 3 factions, which was boring for everyone. So let the crap books have some more points.

But there's a difference to "its been years, this book has been gone over each and every which way, its just bad and getting worse* and *9th came out yesterday, I played my first game, I lost, gib 10% more points*.

But cynically, for the OP, find one of the apps. There isn't much data yet, but you should get a much clearer view than people on the forum posting their results.

 catbarf wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Presupposing that handicaps are necessary stops people from personal growth and introspection why they can just say, "well the handicap clearly wasn't enough".

You could say exactly the same thing about the common advice to talk with your opponent and detune your list as necessary to make for a more even game. 'Well clearly you didn't detune your list enough', right?

I don't think 'bad balance is okay because it encourages you to git gud' is a very compelling argument. Nor will I appreciate the generous opportunity for personal growth and introspection when a casual opponent shows up with nine Salamanders Eradicators.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Or we can get GW to correctly write the game instead of having to balance it ourselves

How? Not trying to be snarky, but how do we actually get them to do that?

Send them emails saying you won't buy their printed product until they do so, and actually don't buy the rules. Everyone here that complains about the rules is a hypocrite so long as they continue to buying said rules and every bloody supplement with them.

Tyel wrote:Its debatable.
Git Gud can be upsetting - but 9th's just come out, and due to the circumstances people have barely started to play. So while we can mathhammer (and I love mathhammer) it seems a bit early to say "faction X needs a 10% handicap". There are far too many things t find out to conclude that's the case.

With that said handicaps have been used before. For example they were often used in WHFB 8th edition tournaments. But that's because you had a stagnant meta. You got a book maybe 4-10 years ago that's basically trash now? Well sucks for you, GW have done nothing to rebalance the game and they never will. So if players didn't, the tournament scene would have been reduced to about 3 factions, which was boring for everyone. So let the crap books have some more points.

But there's a difference to "its been years, this book has been gone over each and every which way, its just bad and getting worse* and *9th came out yesterday, I played my first game, I lost, gib 10% more points*.

Yeah I can definitely agree with all that; and do agree that it's a little presumptive to start making faction-by-faction handicaps based on initial results in 9th. I'm just saying I'm not unilaterally opposed to the concept like Daedalus seems to be.

I have recently wondered what sort of results you'd get if you compiled tournament results each month, then applied a -5% handicap to subfactions scoring above 55% win rate, and +5% to subfactions below 45% win rate. Just do those small, incremental changes for a few months with no other rules alterations, and see what happens. Ironically, it's GW's recent trend towards constant releases- as opposed to those languishing 5+ year old codices- that makes it impossible to do fan balancing in this manner.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Send them emails saying you won't buy their printed product until they do so, and actually don't buy the rules. Everyone here that complains about the rules is a hypocrite so long as they continue to buying said rules and every bloody supplement with them.

That's reasonable. I'm not sure how much impact it will have, but can't hurt. I already have stopped buying codices and supplements that get invalidated within months (at most); might as well send an email stating such.

So just because after multiple years of being bad, now my faction is fun to play, I should be punished for it, so people who had fun through most of 8th ed can have fun now too? No, thank you.
Want better rules wait for next CA/FAQ or codex, wants better lists build a tournament one to play vs casual lists of other people, like others had to do before you. And if this doesn't work you can wait or buy another army. Trying to make the game less fun for others just so you can have fun is stupid.

 catbarf wrote:

I don't think 'bad balance is okay because it encourages you to git gud' is a very compelling argument. Nor will I appreciate the generous opportunity for personal growth and introspection when a casual opponent shows up with nine Salamanders Eradicators.

And who is determining bad balance? People who haven't played at all? Against models in a book that isn't officially out yet?

Git gud is not the thrust of my point.

But what happens when Salamanders deserve a handicap of 15%, because someone at some point faced 9 Eradicators. Should all Salamanders then face the same consequence even though they took only three or none?

I play Salamanders weekly. They're effin' tough games, but at no point do I feel hopeless or that I can't find mistakes of my own to correct for next time.

People used to play in far more unbalanced versions of 40K and yet they still managed to have fun.

Karol wrote:
Trying to make the game less fun for others just so you can have fun is stupid.

...You have, in the past, literally argued that everyone is out for themselves, everyone wants their army to be the best and everyone else's to be weak, and that you have no concern for the enjoyment of the opponent, only your own victory.

Somehow this appeal to egalitarianism rings hollow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
And who is determining bad balance? People who haven't played at all? Against models in a book that isn't officially out yet?

Git gud is not the thrust of my point.

But what happens when Salamanders deserve a handicap of 15%, because someone at some point faced 9 Eradicators. Should all Salamanders then face the same consequence even though they took only three or none?

I play Salamanders weekly. They're effin' tough games, but at no point do I feel hopeless or that I can't find mistakes of my own to correct for next time.

People used to play in far more unbalanced versions of 40K and yet they still managed to have fun.

Hey, I get it, I have a buddy who plays Salamanders and has specifically avoided Eradicators because he doesn't want to be That Guy. If Salamanders took a huge nerf because it was assumed that every army is running 9 Eradicators, it wouldn't be fair to him.

But if some subfactions consistently outperform others- demonstrably, with a statistically significant quantity of reliable data, not saying this early into 9th Ed- then I'm not convinced that applying a handicap will, on the whole, make the game less balanced than it currently is.

In the past, we spent points on subfaction traits, rather than getting them as a freebie bonus. A handicap based on subfaction seems, on the whole, to be basically a reintroduction of that concept; you're essentially paying or gaining a certain number of points based on game size to play as that subfaction. At the very least, it reintroduces subfaction granularity rather than having some be must-take or useless.

...You have, in the past, literally argued that everyone is out for themselves, everyone wants their army to be the best and everyone else's to be weak, and that you have no concern for the enjoyment of the opponent, only your own victory.

Somehow this appeal to egalitarianism rings hollow.

It is not about egalitarianism. You are advocating to making my army be worse in 9th. Worse, there is absolutly no system, besides some sort of social one, to decide which faction and when it is suppose to be considered the weaker
yes, everyone should be out for themselfs, to get better rules for themselfs, the get fixs, supplements and advocate for them. One should not make it fun for oneself, by making it unfun for everyone else. Want better rules, work 2-3 years for it, the way GK players had to. Maybe GW will fix your army rules, this edition, or maybe it will wait for it till 10th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

But what happens when Salamanders deserve a handicap of 15%, because someone at some point faced 9 Eradicators. Should all Salamanders then face the same consequence even though they took only three or none?
.

This and also, when the game is between two armies that are good or ones considered really bad, who decides who gets the 15% less points to play with, roll of a dice maybe?

Ideally, if one army has a recommended 15% handicap, and another has a 10% handicap, then the "better" faction would take a 5% hit on points sort of thing.

I'm not advocating this be widely adopted. The aim here is to get a feel for how different sub factions are doing, and how closed-group players might find their games improved, competitively speaking within their own closed meta.

It can also give people an idea of how "tough" a faction / sub faction might be to play in an open group, like a pickup game at an LGS.

I'm not trying to impose rules on anyone. I'm interested in how things look, and to get an idea of "if I take Tau Sa'Cea Sept vs Eldar Uthwe, or Necron Mephrit, or SM Salamanders, or Knight Ravens, how things would match up. Did I play poorly, well, or is there a distinct advantage between our armies that we could tweak to get a better game?

If I'm playing with a 10% handicap, and losing... am I a poor player that needs to git gud, am I an OK player that happens to be playing against an equally strong faction?

It's really just a request for information. People can do with it what they will. I wasn't aware that there are Apps tracking this sort of thing already, and I'm shocked that they're also tracking handicap options. So that's cool and I can go look at that information.

Regarding specific units, the information is handy, but I find that in general, most sub factions have a predictable build template. Sally are (were?) going to focus on Melta and Flamers. White Scars are going to focus on Bikes. Iyanden will focus on Wraith Constructs. Leviathan will focus on super long melee range (I think?) so will favour choppy Nids instead of Shooty Nids.

I wouldn't be angry about having detail lists and such, but I was trying to keep the information short and sweet in hopes of getting more responses.

Responses with data... that is. Thanks folks!

I think the solutions to this problem lay in communicating with your opponent. I can't speak for everyone, but I've yet to have a pickup game where I wasn't able to have a discussion with my opponent before hand about the lists being played. Although you will have moments where you want to try out a casual list you made for your GSC and your opponent shows up with a Salamanders list with 6 Eradicators, 2 dual multimelta Contemptors, an Achilles land raider, and 9 Flamestorm aggresors to spite you for playing an NPC faction.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that instead of imposing a system that simply nerfs armies based on key word, try discussing things with your opponent to make the game balanced. Not everything has to be a by-the-books 2k tournament game, and if your opponent is so insistent on fielding their WAAC tournament winning list against your Dark Eldar infantry list, then you can always turn down the game. But I know there are ways to make a game fun (the main reason, imho, for balancing the game to begin with) that don't impose a flat across the board penalty.

Obviously there will be games where one list outmatches the other and both players only own the models in that specific list, but then you can change/create the mission being played to balance that out in a way that makes the game fun for both participants without the need of a system to penalize factions for having their turn with the good rules.

Just my opinion though

Again, the overall goal is to allow players to go all out. Play the models they want to play, just find the right fudge factor between some lists.

*Not* impose this on anyone. Create a guideline based on community experience, that two players could, like consenting adults, choose to adjust their games. For myself, I’d rather be able to take a finely tuned 1800 point list to a 2000 point game, rather than a detuned 2000 point list. I’d rather play hard with a weaker list, then play soft with a stronger list.

I’m trying to gather information to inform that.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Presupposing that handicaps are necessary stops people from personal growth and introspection why they can just say, "well the handicap clearly wasn't enough".

Sorry. That's all I'll say on the matter.

This is not at all true in Go.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Again, the overall goal is to allow players to go all out. Play the models they want to play, just find the right fudge factor between some lists.

*Not* impose this on anyone. Create a guideline based on community experience, that two players could, like consenting adults, choose to adjust their games. For myself, I’d rather be able to take a finely tuned 1800 point list to a 2000 point game, rather than a detuned 2000 point list. I’d rather play hard with a weaker list, then play soft with a stronger list.

I’m trying to gather information to inform that.

I see what you mean, I could definitely get behind something like that. Perhaps make the system key off faction, but then also key off certain units? Its definitely a slippery slope to defining the power between not just 2 armies, but 2 lists

Handicaps assume there is only one valid build for any given army, and that there is not a skill difference. It hampers creativity and problem solving. Just because a tournament sees certain results doesn't mean your sallies player in YOUR group is any good. Nor does it mean they use the "broken" build of the week.

Back in 6th and 7th I lost every single game for the first year I played. Then I finally figured out how to use my units effectively and play the game better, and at worst hit a 60% win rate with the same army I'd been using the entire time I'd been playing, against the same 4 people using the same or similar armies to what they always used. There were no FAQs or changes in the factions we were playing with. If we'd handicapped in our group initially, I would still be losing every single game now because I would likely still suck due to ingraining terrible habits.

Regardless, you're then re-balancing the entire game, and ensuring those utilizing the handicaps will lose outside your group.

If you have players who truly don't care about improving, expanding their horizons, or ever playing outside your group...Do it by player. Have those who want to improve going in against bad odds, where the other player brought more points. Otherwise, have them play more, and change their lists, and change their tactics.

PS: 9th just came out, and is going to be continually changing. It's a bit early to think the balance is shot unless you're playing several games a week against high level players. You're going to be putting in as much energy into it as GW is, not getting paid, and end up playing an offshoot of 40k (only important if your group ever plays with anyone outside your group).

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Again, the overall goal is to allow players to go all out. Play the models they want to play, just find the right fudge factor between some lists.

*Not* impose this on anyone. Create a guideline based on community experience, that two players could, like consenting adults, choose to adjust their games. For myself, I’d rather be able to take a finely tuned 1800 point list to a 2000 point game, rather than a detuned 2000 point list. I’d rather play hard with a weaker list, then play soft with a stronger list.

I’m trying to gather information to inform that.

I see what you mean, I could definitely get behind something like that. Perhaps make the system key off faction, but then also key off certain units? Its definitely a slippery slope to defining the power between not just 2 armies, but 2 lists

This. While I like your approach, I fear that it requires internally balanced codices. And, unfortunately, they're not.

To everyone that has replied:

I acknowledge that there are flaws in this proposed system. That I am pre-supposing an imbalance that may or may not exist.

That’s why I’m asking for data. Since you’ve been willing to volunteer your time to reply, I’m asking for further input in the terms of data. Please reply with the results of your games. It may turn out there isn’t consistent data to draw conclusions from. That’s the nature of investigation. I won’t know without data though, so that’s what I’m interested in. Yes, things will change. No, I don’t imagine that I’ll collect enough data to represent all metas in the world. I exhibit hubris, but even I know that I have some (hypothetical) limits.

I’m asking for data. If you’re willing to provide it, I would be grateful.