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Good morning

Thank you all for the different solutions on how to deal with the problems we have.

I say we, because the space marine player also feels that the balance is off. I don´t know if his analysis of the game fundamentals is quite the same as mine.
Also we are not above switching armies. So this was never I thread meant to buff my army and make space marines suck. If GW were to buff the living hell out of Tau half a year from now, and Tau would shoot Marines off the Table by round 3 consistently, we would be in the exact same position as we are now.

But there have been many solid suggestions in this thread. From tweaking the armies, tweaking the system and maybe have a small second army each. I sure as hell will not strive to own 5 to 6 armies. But maybe a second might be possible. At least for me, because I don´t have kids. He does.
So between making our own terrain and our own armies, it might not be realistic for him to paint anything except for his marines.

Going apoc is also a fine suggestion, provided they update it for all the new units space marines are getting.

Ultimatly I think it comes down to the question if the art aspect of painting the minis and seeing them on the table is enough enjoyment all by itself. And you know: it might be.

So thanks to all suggestions and critique (including the people who just flat out disagree with my analysis of the core system)

Peace

I think 40ks main problem is GWs absolute to provide balance versus their desire to sell certain new releases and to adjust the game to keep the “community happy”

If they weren’t so desperate to sell over priced rule booked they could deliver all the rules to the whole community digitally and update the game as they test and provide a good balance without having to re launch the game every few years and end up with rules books that are out of date even in the edition that they were released.

I also find the system of FAQs to be ridiculous in 2020.

If they modernised and put all the rules in the app (or a good app) for a subscription fee and did away with rule books the game would open up to becoming much more balanced, assuming they are capable of delivering this.

The only thing that really has been modernised at GW is their marketing strategy and their thinking around maintaining income streams by creating a sort of desperation for new products

A.T. wrote:

Cyel wrote:
New editions are advertised as "deeply tactical", the sheer amount of rules gives an illusion of something deep and complex

I don't think the complexity is an illusion - combinations of units, auras, traits, relics, and stratagems with some factions having 50+ units is complex.

But combined with a great many rolls, rerolls, additional rolls, layered rolls, added effects on rolls, modifiers, and additional circumstantial variants of all of the above makes it more difficult for players to approach the game with a good sense of cause and effect, which is also not helped by increased speed and lethality requiring players to account for yet more variables and outcomes.

You're right! In this case I wasn't clear about how I understand complexity. In games complexity and complication are different things for me (just like the fact that a game is "wide" doesn't mean it's deep). The multitude of things you mention increase the game's complication but do not really create any complex boardstates that require careful dismantling. It's still just a straightforward race of who rolls more high-powered attacks the fastest just with a heavy burden of irrelevant memorisation.

On another end of the spectrum are games which are not complicated at all, but board states can get incredibly complex, with few pieces, but many dependancies and relations between them, like in Go or Chess.

OP keep in mind that marines are designed as an easy to play faction, while the xenos armies (like Tau) are designed for advanced players. Playing correctly a xeno army is harder. Every mistake you make will cost a lot.

If you start the hobby together with other players and some of them take the marines, they will easily win all the first games. There isn't much you can do about that except persevering and learning.

The 9th edition is the most skill based edition since maybe 5th. The better player will win regularly. Dices and lists can influence this, but barring some horribly done lists, the player is the most important factor in who wins and who loses.

If player's experience is similar (as is the case with a group starting from scratch) the easier to play factions will win. Simple as that.

Marines are no longer this absurd boogyman that they were one year ago, they have been brought in line. They still have some outrageous power spikes here and there (hello eradicators), but if the opponent isn't purposely trying to bank on the OP rules/interactions, then you can have a good game.

When a lot of people talk about complexity what they mean is depth. You can have a great deal of strategic and tactical depth with very simple mechanical systems. 40k has immense complexity but is a very shallow experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
OP keep in mind that marines are designed as an easy to play faction, while the xenos armies (like Tau) are designed for advanced players. Playing correctly a xeno army is harder. Every mistake you make will cost a lot.

I don't think thats true. You are attributing to GW a level of design that they frankly don't have the track record to support. Things currently are that way. But that is because SM are basically 2 armies in one now.

If you start the hobby together with other players and some of them take the marines, they will easily win all the first games. There isn't much you can do about that except persevering and learning.

The 9th edition is the most skill based edition since maybe 5th. The better player will win regularly. Dices and lists can influence this, but barring some horribly done lists, the player is the most important factor in who wins and who loses.

Factually untrue. First turn advantage is alive and well in 9th.

If player's experience is similar (as is the case with a group starting from scratch) the easier to play factions will win. Simple as that.

Marines are no longer this absurd boogyman that they were one year ago, they have been brought in line. They still have some outrageous power spikes here and there (hello eradicators), but if the opponent isn't purposely trying to bank on the OP rules/interactions, then you can have a good game.

Also untrue.

I'll concede that I didn't consider the first turn advantage.

Also just incase you need information

Marines have a 49.9% win ratio currently
But that's 57% going first and 44% going second
Tau have 39.2% win ratio over all
Thats 48% going first and only 29%going second.

Though that does seem to imply if the Tau go first every game that should shore up the balance between your factions currently.

The issue is always going second/first is a rediculously huge buff to have to use to balance out 2 factions

Ice_can wrote:
Also just incase you need information

Marines have a 49.9% win ratio currently
But that's 57% going first and 44% going second
Tau have 39.2% win ratio over all
Thats 48% going first and only 29%going second.

Though that does seem to imply if the Tau go first every game that should shore up the balance between your factions currently.

The issue is always going second/first is a rediculously huge buff to have to use to balance out 2 factions

Also, the marine win ratio (from my understanding) has not removed mirror matches. Without mirror matches I think their win rate is closer to 80%. I could very easily be wrong about that but that was the last thing I remember reading.

Mirror matches don't count in this case.

Mirror matches can affect a result if you see that the final number is above or below 50%.

If it is above 50% then the amount of "Draws" that the mirror matches bring, have impacted negatively the percentage, which is actually higher.

If it is below 50%, then the faction actually is performing worse than what the percentage implies.

If like in this case the percentage is exactly 50%, then including or not the mirror matches has no impact on the final result.

 Lance845 wrote:
Also, the marine win ratio (from my understanding) has not removed mirror matches. Without mirror matches I think their win rate is closer to 80%. I could very easily be wrong about that but that was the last thing I remember reading.

This certainly needs a citation.

I would rather link to the specific post, but I don't know how, so here is the relevant link again from the thread "Get you some data":
https://d1w82usnq70pt2.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/40k_H2H_Faction_10-2020_FIXED.png

 Lance845 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Also just incase you need information

Marines have a 49.9% win ratio currently
But that's 57% going first and 44% going second
Tau have 39.2% win ratio over all
Thats 48% going first and only 29%going second.

Though that does seem to imply if the Tau go first every game that should shore up the balance between your factions currently.

The issue is always going second/first is a rediculously huge buff to have to use to balance out 2 factions

Also, the marine win ratio (from my understanding) has not removed mirror matches. Without mirror matches I think their win rate is closer to 80%. I could very easily be wrong about that but that was the last thing I remember reading.

I haven't found anyone doing non mirror matchup ratio's yet but so far marines have played 3500+ games of 9th the next highest us custodes apparently with 1500 games.

Like slaneshy win ratios look mental untill its 90 games of a list that's being played by probably by what sub 10 people who I'm guessing know how to win with. I certainly doubt you have the equivalent of people taking their 3 indomitous sets.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Also, the marine win ratio (from my understanding) has not removed mirror matches. Without mirror matches I think their win rate is closer to 80%. I could very easily be wrong about that but that was the last thing I remember reading.

This certainly needs a citation.

I would rather link to the specific post, but I don't know how, so here is the relevant link again from the thread "Get you some data":
https://d1w82usnq70pt2.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/40k_H2H_Faction_10-2020_FIXED.png

I open the thread in a new tab. Click quote on the post I want to quote. Copy all the text and paste it back into the thread where I want it to show up.

Cyel wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Cyel wrote:
New editions are advertised as "deeply tactical", the sheer amount of rules gives an illusion of something deep and complex

I don't think the complexity is an illusion - combinations of units, auras, traits, relics, and stratagems with some factions having 50+ units is complex.

But combined with a great many rolls, rerolls, additional rolls, layered rolls, added effects on rolls, modifiers, and additional circumstantial variants of all of the above makes it more difficult for players to approach the game with a good sense of cause and effect, which is also not helped by increased speed and lethality requiring players to account for yet more variables and outcomes.

You're right! In this case I wasn't clear about how I understand complexity. In games complexity and complication are different things for me (just like the fact that a game is "wide" doesn't mean it's deep). The multitude of things you mention increase the game's complication but do not really create any complex boardstates that require careful dismantling. It's still just a straightforward race of who rolls more high-powered attacks the fastest just with a heavy burden of irrelevant memorisation.

On another end of the spectrum are games which are not complicated at all, but board states can get incredibly complex, with few pieces, but many dependancies and relations between them, like in Go or Chess.

I agree, and to further your point, most of the tactical depth I perceive in 9th that hasn't been there in 8th is the direct result of the new missions, dense and obscuring terrain and smaller tables. The entirety of all stratagems in every book just barely add as much depth to the game as these few pages of rules while making the game vastly more complex.

Play fun and casual, not competitive, and you'll find that you'll have a more enjoyable game. Leave the competitive side of it to tournaments and store events.


Warhammer 40K has never been a very balanced game though, except perhaps for it's Rogue Trader days, when there was little competitive elements. Back in the days of 4th edition, when my local club was set up, close combat dominated (khorne berzerkers, tyranids/genestealers, scorpions/banshees) far too much but at the same time armies that relied on gun lines (space marines, guard and tau) were too strong in shooting. It has swung back and forth over the last fifteen years but I think the new 8th and 9th editions have generally, not in every case, balanced both out quite nicely. They just need a few tweaks.

That's based on my experiences though so yours may vary.

 Harlech Quinn wrote:
Buckle up: This is going to be rather long. But I will try to be as brief as possible.
Disclaimer: For a long time I took part in the hobby only in a passive manner. I watched battle reports but did not play. During the pandemic and the advent of a new edition me and a relative discovered that we both loved to watch these battle reports (especially the videos from the people at Tabletop Tactics) and decided we would start our own armies. 9th edition looked very promising so he started a space marine army. Me, I always loved the Tau models (though i did not like how they operated in 8th). However the more I learn about the system the more I think there are fundamental flaws in the it.
The way I see it these flaws are as follows:

1. Too many moving parts
There are simply too many armies and models to achieve any sort of reasonable balance. The fact that GW makes its money through sale of new models incentivises them to constantly add to a system which is already too large to give every faction a distinctive playstyle while keeping them on roughly the same efficiency.
[…]

I don’t think the game is unbalanced because there are too many armies, but because the GW don't thinks very much (or don't care) about what they are doing when they write the rulebooks and the codexes. Look for example the rules for the space marines tactical squads of all the chapters: they are a pretty useless unit because they don’t have good weapons: except for the sergeant, who can have the melta bombs and two marines, who can have a special weapon or a heavy weapon, all the others don’t have any really useful weapon. Give to their boltweapons the possibility to choose if shoot a three round burst (whit a -1 to their ballistic skill) or a single shoot (without penalties) and a power sword and you will see how good they will become.

 Harlech Quinn wrote:
[…]
2. Economy of actions
The second biggest flaw is the fact that there are different armies that can take part at different phases of the game. A battleround (or a game for that matter) is a representation of a set time period. However the amount of actions every unit can take during that time is dependant on the phases in which it can act. This will always favor units and armies that can and want to act in as many phases as possible because there is literally no downside to it. Performing a psychic action is not affecting the ability to act in the shooting phase.
This is not only affecting game balance it also breaks the simultaion aspect of the game. Because it is illogical that in the time a unit is channeling the warp another unit would not be using this time to interact with the battlefield in another way (like for example pulling the trigger of its gun a few more times). Yet the unit who is only partaking in one phase does not gain any actions in other phases. While the psychic phase is - for the most part - relative negligible because most armies only have a few token units that can act in the psychic phase the same cannot be said for the charge and combat phases. Which leads me to my third problem:
[…]

Here I totally agree with you and in my opinion the solution is pretty simple: give to the various units the possibility to do only one action in each turn. In this way the game would gain in dynamism, because the time of inactivity of each player would be shorter, it would gain in tactical depth, because the opponent player could react immediately to every action of his adversary and the lack of psykers in one army would be less problematic, because they wouldn't longer able to shoot and psychically attack in the same turn.
And I played the Eldar, which (if I remember well) aren't exactly the army with the weakest psykers in the game, so if that dynamic was frustrating for me, I can imagine how can be frustrating for players who play with armies less psychically powerful.

 Harlech Quinn wrote:
[…]
3. Melee is a weightstone around the neck of this game
The aforementioned problem is heavily exarcebated in the way melee combat is forced in a game of guns, deathrays and artillery (and 9th edition is showing this flaw more than the previous editions). In order to make melee work in 40k the last two phases of the game give you a plathora of additional actions without any cost associated with it. Your average infanty unit is moving 6 inches (some more some less). If this unit using all of its actions during a battle round to cover as much gound as possible it will move 6 plus 1d6 inches. However if the very same unit partakes in the charge and fight phases it does not forgo its shooting, it charges an additional 1d6 (in comparison to the advance roll) and is able to make several attacks with its melee weapons. To add to that it is also given several free move actions along the way (consolidate and pile in movement). This means that a unit that partakes in the melee phase is not only given essentially free attack it is also up to three times as mobile as a unit that is not acting in those phases. In an edition where movement is king, this constitutes a bonus that is not reflected in its point cost.

I could elaborate on many of these points ( and I may in subsequent posts) but if you got to this point you deserve a break from my lacking english and thank you for your indulgence.

The part in bold is a good example of another "age-old" issue of Warhammer 40.000: the GW often tries to solve the various issue of its game adding more and more gimmicks, instead to create a game with rational and credible rules. But in my humble opinion you can't create a good strategic game, if you don't know (and don't care to know) nothing about how a war really works.

P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have an advantage; for example in the chess (the strategic game par excellence) the white, which always has the first move, wins the 53% of the matches.

You started Tau because you like how they look? Stick with the army and use this time to paint and assemble minis.
Rules change way too quickly, tossing away an army just because of how it plays is not a smart thing to do.

Look at Necrons: subpar (even bad) for all of 8th ed, they got a major revamp and new rules in 9th.

I think there's a problem with the development of the Warhammer game and the Warhammer product. The thing is that Warhammer is in a constant mode of expansion, particularly since the renaissance of the 8th edition, the advent of the Warhammer Community site, and the weekly release schedule.

That they have such a pipeline of products is amazing, from a production point of view, and in terms of content (pictures, words, models) they're a firehose. This has several advantages, in that if some segment of the market is underserved one week, they'll be served the next, and the constant income from the collectors and whales keeps things afloat. Obviously there are customers feeling under-served, but on the whole the revenue stream and its profitability seems to be working pretty well for GW. Primaris solved the problem of how many Battle Companies-worth of Space Marines a person can buy, and branching out into other games allows them to sell large boxes like Burning of Prospero and so on for relatively marginal products while maintaining an efficient production schedule.

Game-wise, it means that while the pie is growing, the slices of that pie need to be continually cut thinner and thinner, and the requirement for precision becomes higher and higher. Too simple and soon either the new product is just a retread of a previous release, and too many moving parts and the game becomes unplayable. I haven't played since summer of 2019 when I couldn't face playing in another Warhammer tournament, or really play another game again. I don't really know why, but I'd had my fill of Warhammer, and having really enjoyed 8th I'd been trying to figure out why.

For the main part I think it's because the game doesn't work for me anymore. Despite all the extra rules and whatnot, it gets to be a bit of a repetitive experience, and it takes so long, even in a tournament. I want a game that only lasts for an hour, and is more dynamic, with combinatorial game-play rather than the stochastic fiddling with dice. Maybe it's because I don't want to play games with dice anymore?

I think what would be best for me is if certain parts of the game were simplified, so that GW could release a new set of Space Marines and I could decide to buy them because they look good and I wanted to collect an army of them, rather than because they were new and improved. So make a Devastator, Assault, Tactical, Intercessors, whatever, effectively the same and leave specific models to people's imagination and preference. So far as I can tell most people who buy the models buy them because they're gorgeous and look cool rather than how they work in the game.

Game-wise the problem is that there aren't that many live choices in the game, for all the bells and whistles. You need to kill the other guy first, survive better than him, and move to claim objectives better. Target priority is pretty procedural, and so is movement despite the wiggle room that the D6 advance gives. It's both very easy to play both sides of the table, and kind of tedious.

Like I said, I fell off the game in 8th despite my enjoyment of the game increasing since 4th edition. I don't pretend to know the secret sauce. Maybe it's just not for me anymore and I need to work harder on moving on?

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have always an advantage.

5th edition objective games, especially earlier in the power creep cycle of the edition.

Reactive deployment and final move were powerful to the point of choosing 2nd turn and even refusing to seize, though the last-gasp wins nature had significant drawbacks in of itself.

the last standing model being able to capture the objective and win the game was a nice balance point for first turn advantage

sad thing was just that a lot of people did not like that and ignored the Missions/Scenarios and just played "who kills more wins"

A.T. wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have always an advantage.

5th edition objective games, especially earlier in the power creep cycle of the edition.

Reactive deployment and final move were powerful to the point of choosing 2nd turn and even refusing to seize, though the last-gasp wins nature had significant drawbacks in of itself.

Wasn't 5th edition the first edition to have a variable game length to deal with exactly that problem in 4th?


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 kodos wrote:
the last standing model being able to capture the objective and win the game was a nice balance point for first turn advantage

sad thing was just that a lot of people did not like that and ignored the Missions/Scenarios and just played "who kills more wins"

Not exactly surprising when the main game-play loop is "Try to kill the other guy first." There were two phases dedicated to kill the other dudes (shooting, and close combat) and one phase dedicated to improving how you kill the other dudes (movement).

may not be surprising, yet playing Scenarios or Missions like now was unthinkable for a lot by that time

because that the last standing unit with ObSec can still win the game even if you killed everything else in first turn was on the level of "this is not true 40k any more"

and 5th was not that deadly, there were a lot of options for deployment and cover rules that gave you the option for playing the Scenario and building the list to win by kills or build it to win by missions was an option

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have an advantage; for example in the chess (the strategic game par excellence) the white, which always has the first move, wins the 53% of the matches.

It absolutely is not true that 'in every strategy game the first player has an advantage'. There's only an advantage if you give zero compensation to the going-second player, which is the case in chess.

The late-8th CA missions where the player who would be going first had to deploy all their forces first- allowing the going-second player to counter-deploy- had near parity on the win rates for going first and going second. Giving the going-second player the option to get a cover save to all units was also a move to balance out the first-turn advantage.

First-turn advantage is hardly an inescapable maxim of game design- there are tons of ways to offset it.

 kodos wrote:
the last standing model being able to capture the objective and win the game was a nice balance point for first turn advantage

Deploy and counter deploy was also significant. Being able to place your units so that they were screened or out of LoS of the opponents limited, expensive and usually immobile heavy shooting units, deploying entirely to the opposite flank, or in some cases not deploying at all helped, and the speed and range of most units in the game meant the player going first could often be moving their units into range of devastating weapons (i.e. demolishers) and assault units while having no opportunity to use the same on their own list.

Of course GW went and messed it up almost right out of the gate with the guard, but even so the current alternating unit placement is a benefit to the player going first.

 kodos wrote:
the last standing model being able to capture the objective and win the game was a nice balance point for first turn advantage

sad thing was just that a lot of people did not like that and ignored the Missions/Scenarios and just played "who kills more wins"

To be fair, some armies "captured" those objectives by simply tank-shocking onto them with objective secured tanks with no way to prevent that besides killing them all.

In general, my ork's game plan in 5th always was to wipe out my opponents and only started worrying about objectives in turn 4 if wiping out was unlikely.

A.T. wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the last standing model being able to capture the objective and win the game was a nice balance point for first turn advantage

Deploy and counter deploy was also significant.

"stealing" first turn on a 6 made this not as significant as playing safe was a thing as well

but yes, the one who deploys first always has to take the first turn is significant in helping to prevent Alpha Strikes

@Harlech Quinn

I see that your thoughts have elicited negativity right off the bat.

Your perspective as a new player is a valuable one- most of us here have been around GW for a long time. I agree with your points.

1. There are too many armies, especially subfaction "armies." GW has wasted resources attempting to force different SM chapters, craftworlds, etc., etc., to be "unique" by slapping band-aid chapter "tactics" and stratagems on them. It is a symptom of the shallow core rules. They do not provide enough mechanically for different armies built from the same codex to play in different ways. Play Saim-hann? Take bikes and skimmers. Iyanden? Wraiths. Your custom CW? Whatever you want! No CTs needed!

This is especially problematic with marines. There are vanilla marines, SW, BA, DW, and DA. The latter 4 all have unique units and/or organization, but they're still space marines. I think vanilla marines are a bigger problem, though. Want to play RG? Welp, here's you stratagem and pasted-on rule for -1, +1, or reroll! Like IF gunlines? Here's a different stratagem, and some -1, +1 to other stuff! How unique!

Wolves, angels and DW could all fit in that book, too. All you'd need are separate force organization for them, with different unit availability, and their wargear lists.

2.Yes. Yes. Yes! IGOUGO is terrible for this game, the primary reason there is so little tactical depth. An AA system would be a boon.

An activation could be:

Move and shoot.

Stand and shoot.

Double move.

Charge (double move to melee range and make attacks)

Move and cast psychic power.

Stand and cast long psychic power.

Go to ground.

3. Melee is a puzzle. 40k needs melee. Sword fights in the future is part of the cool, and adds to the visceral setting and nature of combat. Locked in combat sucks. Hard. Spending multiple turns rolling for attacks is neither tactical, nor fun.

I'd like to see melee reworked to: A unit charges, all models make attacks, done. "But melee units will die" you say? This is where a suppression system, better terrain and los rules, and rules, come in. Along with the fact that your opponent only gets to activate a few units before it's your turn again.

I think it's a bit silly to have discussions about balance when only two armies have codices, and have had them for less than a month. This is why I hate new editions, even when they are better than the previous edition.

We all have to wait and wade through the BS of GW releasing the next ten codices for 9th time each before any of us can judge squat.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think it's a bit silly to have discussions about balance when only two armies have codices, and have had them for less than a month. This is why I hate new editions, even when they are better than the previous edition.

We all have to wait and wade through the BS of GW releasing the next ten codices for 9th time each before any of us can judge squat.

And then six months later 10th edition will come along and we'll have to wait and wade through more Codexes before any of us can judge squat?

I feel comfortable in saying that GW yet again decided they couldn't be bothered to make the game work properly now, I don't need to see ten more Codexes of bloat before I can make that call.

PenitentJake wrote:
I think it's a bit silly to have discussions about balance when only two armies have codices, and have had them for less than a month. This is why I hate new editions, even when they are better than the previous edition.

of course we can just wait and judge the game by the 6-12 months between 2 Editions were the it is fine (when enough Codices are there but the "written with the new Edition in mind" stuff is not released yet)

A.T. wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
P.S. In every strategy game the first player has and always will have always an advantage.

5th edition objective games, especially earlier in the power creep cycle of the edition.

Reactive deployment and final move were powerful to the point of choosing 2nd turn and even refusing to seize, though the last-gasp wins nature had significant drawbacks in of itself.

I don't know: I never played the fifth edition, but those seems those kind of gimmicks I was talking about and in my humble opinion the idea to let the various units do only an action (move or charge or shoot or recharge the weapon or use the psychic powers) is a best solution: it is easier to implement in the game mechanics and it allows to the opponent player to react immediately, partially nullifying the advantage to have the initiative. Moreover this solution would exalt the tactical abilities of the players the game, because their capability to predict the opponent's future moves and mislead him would become more important.