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Models aren't entirely forever, I was only playing a few years before some of my models dropped off the plane of existence. Now several key units of my army are only legal with my opponent's consent, since they're Legends.

I just change rule systems if GW makes my models invalid. Understand that that is not an option for most people who want to take part in the pick up game side of things.

My models are more important to me than the other aspects of the game. They are cooler and I invest more time in them.

I don't disagree, I wish I had the luxury xD

Yeah you guys are right, the more I think about it , the more I realize I was thinking of new players gettting into the game 5-10 years ago, when things evolved a lot slower

Currently things move so fast (good units becomre priced out of being good any longer, like centurions last year were great, and now no one sees them anymore) it is impossible to predict -what will work and what will not- by the time a new player has painted his/her stuff.

So a new player might as well buy what he/she thinks look cool or has cool fluff. Who knows if it will be good or not in 6 months. If they have opponents willing to tone their lists accordingly all should be ok.

Not at all.
Mathematically, balancing would be an NP-hard problem.

Yeah well that would be nice if stuff moved fast for everyone. If someone decided to buy in to Tyranids, because they like big monsters and Alien in 8th, then they are not having a good time for longer then 6 months. Same with csm playing folks, who actualy want to use csm models in their armies.

Karol wrote:
Yeah well that would be nice if stuff moved fast for everyone. If someone decided to buy in to Tyranids, because they like big monsters and Alien in 8th, then they are not having a good time for longer then 6 months. Same with csm playing folks, who actualy want to use csm models in their armies.

Yeah, it is still incredible to me that people continue to insist there is no double standard, when GW decided to release for free all the datasheets for unique space wolves DA BA DW units JUST so they didn't have to wait EVEN ONE MONTH for their codexes to be released....

....but Grey Knights, Thousand Sons, CSM, DG? Have fun with your 1W marines vs 2W marines games, losers, hope you didn't buy into our brand new chaos space marine army range we launched like 6 months ago because those are going to suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck to play against all your friends for we don't know how long.

Never mind that we're just randomly throwing DA W3 terminators with always-on -1D randomly, so you can't make the argument that we would give imbalanced rules to such crazy, wildly different units as...*checks notes* chaos space marines, who are identical to tactical marines except they have worse chapter tactics and no doctrines

Well I like to think that it is just them having their releases pushed because of corona. Stuff like DG, but probably DE and DA well probably were all ment for 2020, but GW is not going to put them out in to a world where stores are closed and people aren't buying stuff, because of 2ed wave and fear of 3ed wave in spring.

Stuff like that is clear evidence that the design team is not really professional or serious.

 Da Boss wrote:
Stuff like that is clear evidence that the design team is not really professional or serious.

And this is the number 1 reason I don't expect or anticipate balance.

Perfect balance isn't even what I'm asking for, but as pointed out there's some absolutely ridiculous, egregious balance shenanigans out there that aren't "this unit is off by a few percentage points because this gak is hard." It's like "This entire army is unplayable because of a fairly simple interaction between the way they have to build and the way secondaries are scored."

Well, they are professional unless GW is relying on unpaid labour for their rules? Yes, I know you mean acting unprofessionally but that is just an unfounded personal attack and from what I hear GW are not the kind of company to put up with nonsense from staff. As for serious, from interviews I have seen they appear to be very passionate and serious. Warhammer - Serious Business "serious", probably not, I suspect they have some fun with it.

Why do they do such a bad job so consistently then? Look at the example above, how is that defensible? It would be trivially easy to put out an update or to have included the chaos marines in that update, but they don't bother.

As for unprofessional, I understand the pedantic meaning of the phrase, but colloquially it also has the meaning of "not to a very high standard" or "amateurish", which I definitely feel applies to the studios output.

Some of them seem to do a decent job, but overall there is a lack of care or quality control that is very disappointing.

It is pretty common in tabletop games though, I find.

The reason they don't usually give people stuff is that they want to sell it.

I mean we have these debates on digital ruleset, GW just hand out rules and unit entries etc - but they want people to buy books.

*If* their app joined the 21st century I could see that being the main mechanism. But until someone can prove these books don't generate a lot of money for comparatively little work and overhead, they'll keep churning them out. See what will presumably be day 1 DLC to codexes released 20 minutes earlier coming soon next year.

I mean, they do give people stuff for free. All the Space Marine subfactions got indexes to carry them over to their next codex/supplment/bookything.

Why not give CSM some indexes in the same way? Do they really think that CSM players won't then buy the codex when it drops? But they think DA players will buy the supplement after giving them an index?

Tyel wrote:
The reason they don't usually give people stuff is that they want to sell it.

I mean we have these debates on digital ruleset, GW just hand out rules and unit entries etc - but they want people to buy books.

*If* their app joined the 21st century I could see that being the main mechanism. But until someone can prove these books don't generate a lot of money for comparatively little work and overhead, they'll keep churning them out. See what will presumably be day 1 DLC to codexes released 20 minutes earlier coming soon next year.

It would be prime content for a white dwarf and a decent annual rules update book. Smaller sub factions as well could be well served that way and promote sales of the miniatures themselves.

I'll be honest I don't play weird Marines, and don't actually know what's in the indexes. GW having a double standard on Marines versus anything else in the game isn't really new though so I can fully believe it.

I can imagine CSM would be less likely to buy their codex if they got a free decent update that gives them new points with new stat lines - unless it contains a lot of codex creep, which carries its own problems.

Tyel wrote:
I'll be honest I don't play weird Marines, and don't actually know what's in the indexes. GW having a double standard on Marines versus anything else in the game isn't really new though so I can fully believe it.

I can imagine CSM would be less likely to buy their codex if they got a free decent update that gives them new points with new stat lines - unless it contains a lot of codex creep, which carries its own problems.

I'm just pointing out GW themselves don't share your logic, so there must be another reason they didn't update those other armies with their own indexes.

It's plausible that the reason rhymes with "sun processional"

Calling it unprofessional is kind of stupid because it doesn't account for cost/benefit of the work being described. QA can double the cost of doing something; the reason why media platforms are outperforming publishers these days is because they remove the cost of that QA (moderation, editing). Consider that gamers and especially tournament competitive players aren't worth the effort it would take.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Not at all.
Mathematically, balancing would be an NP-hard problem.

That's why you solve that problem through iteration to get sufficiently close enough to the desired point. From previous editions one can assume people feel like an army is healthy if its average win rate is in the 45-55% window.

People still manage to build large circular structures despite not using the exact value of pi.

Nurglitch wrote:
Calling it unprofessional is kind of stupid because it doesn't account for cost/benefit of the work being described. QA can double the cost of doing something; the reason why media platforms are outperforming publishers these days is because they remove the cost of that QA (moderation, editing). Consider that gamers and especially tournament competitive players aren't worth the effort it would take.

It may well be a cost benefit thing, in fact it certainly is. Doesn't mean they ge to be respected for that.

 Jidmah wrote:
People still manage to build large circular structures despite not using the exact value of pi.

They actually don't, they build spheroid structures to varying degrees of eccentricity and smoothness. It's impossible to build a circle in anything but theory as one cannot build with infinitely small particles measured and placed with infinite precision.

Well yeah, that is the point of what Jidmah is saying. We still call approximately circle shaped objects IRL "circles" and no one feels the need to constantly correct us and say "a real circle is impossible!".

I wish the conversation about balance in wargames worked the same way

 Da Boss wrote:
Well yeah, that is the point of what Jidmah is saying. We still call approximately circle shaped objects IRL "circles" and no one feels the need to constantly correct us and say "a real circle is impossible!".

I wish the conversation about balance in wargames worked the same way

Not when discussing it with obnoxious pedants who don't even play the game in question.

But otherwise yeah I think reasonable people recognize that while '''true balance''' is an ever-shifting and impossible target; getting better than what we have is doable. Most often the 'true balance is impossible' line is trotted out to defend the status quo, but it's an extreme straw man argument.

Not when discussing it with obnoxious pedants who don't even play the game in question.

Whomever could you be referring to good sir?

 Da Boss wrote:
Well yeah, that is the point of what Jidmah is saying. We still call approximately circle shaped objects IRL "circles" and no one feels the need to constantly correct us and say "a real circle is impossible!".

I wish the conversation about balance in wargames worked the same way

The issue is most posters grossly underestimate how much work achieving even a 45-55 split between the top and bottom win rates is within 40ks vast potential number of matchups and play experiences. Even getting that level of balance internally to a codex is near impossible let alone also nailing inter-faction balance to that degree. The issue at hand is that list building at 40ks scale will always cause skews in list strength which are further compounded by player skill and the 'pseudo-random nature of dice.

 catbarf wrote:
But otherwise yeah I think reasonable people recognize that while '''true balance''' is an ever-shifting and impossible target; getting better than what we have is doable. Most often the 'true balance is impossible' line is trotted out to defend the status quo, but it's an extreme straw man argument.

How close to perfect is acceptable? How much work do you estimate achieving that balance will take? How did you arrive at that estimate?

 Blackie wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
It's morally wrong if you're gonna be one of those players that won't let their opponents proxy because they chose the wrong paint scheme.

Absolutely. I started painting my orks with the Deathskullz colours during 3rd edition era, then 17 years later colour scheme matters for the rules! Even if I've mostly played Deathskullz since 8th anyway, forgive me if sometimes I play orks with the klan rules I want to try regardless of how they are painted .

And believe it or not, there are actually fans of Iron Hands that don't want to play another Chapter's rules because you whine about it being unfair.

It shouldn't be unfair to begin with.

Free power from paint was a terrible decision. What a balancing nightmare.

As much as I never agree with Slayer, they do have a point.

I have never had any interest in playing my Salamanders as any other chapter. If I wanted to play as someone else, I wouldn't have painted them as Salamanders.

Slayer-Fan123 795143 11023838 wrote:
And believe it or not, there are actually fans of Iron Hands that don't want to play another Chapter's rules because you whine about it being unfair.

It shouldn't be unfair to begin with.

That actualy happened to a guy at my old store. Started at the same time as me. Picked iron hands and his army was 2 halfs of DI and 2 primaris dreads. As everyone can imagine, he was not wining stuff through out most of 8th. Then 2.0 came and people who were rolling over him for 2+ years suddenly started calling him names, and even trying to make others not play him. One of the worse things I have seen with my own eyes directly in my entire life. Dude quit when the store went down, I really felt bad for him, and what people did to him.

The issue is most posters grossly underestimate how much work achieving even a 45-55 split between the top and bottom win rates is within 40ks vast potential number of matchups and play experiences.

I think anyone who does sports or at least follows sport knows it. 50/50 is the general norm for good teams or players. Anything above it is legend. And win rates in the 60% are mind blowing strong. Specially when facing something that has a under 30% win rate. Then the actual chance to win drop so low, that in actualy they may as well mean you never win against this dude. I have seen dudes that have 60%+ win rates and all of them look like mutants. 18+y sized at the age of 15-16, with body build to match. Sometimes it is downright scary to watch the bout.

Yeah linking rules to paint schemes is very silly. It actually punishes people for using official schemes!