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A suggestion I had before was that GW include army lists as part of the officially supported tournament pack, so that players just needed to bring the models. Make 2-3 options for players to account for 'play-style' and tweak as necessary like they do with the points and FAQs.

It's honestly stunning to see people assert that 40k cannot ever possibly be balanced.

Yeah, I don't get that either. Plus, if it's that bad, why are those people still here? lol

We've seen plenty of times where 40k, for short periods of time actually was balanced. I really don't get the sentiment that it's not possible.

A suggestion I had before was that GW include army lists as part of the officially supported tournament pack, so that players just needed to bring the models. Make 2-3 options for players to account for 'play-style' and tweak as necessary like they do with the points and FAQs.

I think this defeats the purpose of collecting models for a lot of people, and GW themselves would probably tell you that this approach would limit sales more than they would want. Also, pretty sure the community would riot.

That being said, and given the large disconnect we know exists between the rules writers and the people who actually play the game, I'd be very interested to see what they came up with.

Nurglitch wrote:
A suggestion I had before was that GW include army lists as part of the officially supported tournament pack, so that players just needed to bring the models. Make 2-3 options for players to account for 'play-style' and tweak as necessary like they do with the points and FAQs.

I can understand having restrictions as part of a tournament pack (no FW, no named characters etc), but fixed lists would be something I would stay away from. This speaks to something that makes 40K difficult to balance - the players have choice regarding what they bring.

I played Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) and Debellis Antiquitatis (DBA) in the 90s. As a scenario-based board game, ASL could achieve balance in each scenario. The scenario designer set all the mission parameters. There was no such thing as an "over-powered" unit (although there were OPs) since the effect of each piece meshed into the scenario design. The players rarely (if ever) had any choice in their force composition. DBA, an Ancients minis game, had many fixed lists and a fairly small number of unit types that were shared by all lists. So the player could choose to play Alexandrian Macedonians but had no choice about what units to take as part of that list (although you could swap out some units in some lists). The designers could, therefore, have more control over balance.

List building has been a core element of 40K as long as I have been playing (2nd Ed). The relative freedom to bring your choice of models within varying levels of contraint/restraint is part of 40K's success as a miniatures game. People like having choice. They like thinking for days and weeks about their list before a tournament. This makes balance hard, since the designers have more variables to contend with. Reducing choice could, in theory, increase balance. Its not an either/or, but I would not sacrifice armies or units at this point to achieve "balance." This doesn't mean that balance is unachievable, but we need to be realistic.

 Jidmah wrote:
Oh, we are at the "40k is the only game in the universe that can't be balanced" discussion again.

You're wrong. Every game can be balanced with sufficient effort. Especially since 40k is vastly less complex than both MtG and LoL.

LoL is vastly less complex than even 40k while collecting vastly more data about each game played which includes player skill for all 10 players in each game. The stuff that would make LoL complex, like the exact position of a champion and the exact moment an ability is used, is abstracted out and analyzed based on gold differences at set times (both team v team and champion v champion), kill differentials, first blood, first turret plate, and first blood timing, jungle clear and first gank times, and other discrete moments significant to the game state.

 Jidmah wrote:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/its-possible-to-build-a-turing-machine-within-magic-the-gathering/

Yes, but that machine has nothing to do with the state of the game. The machine itself is trivial to disrupt if you were to play against it and that level of complexity is only achieved in certain eternal formats.

Of course, it is neat that a game as complex as MtG has balance as close as it does even if MtG players while always whine about it. We could always have a game like YGO instead.

Nurglitch wrote:
A suggestion I had before was that GW include army lists as part of the officially supported tournament pack, so that players just needed to bring the models. Make 2-3 options for players to account for 'play-style' and tweak as necessary like they do with the points and FAQs.

I honestly think many (me included) would stop playing if the listbuilding was terminated this way. Choosing from "official tournament lists" would take 40% of the flavor out of the game lol. But perhaps some people don't like the list building part of 40k ?

What do you mean by balance? That every faction should have the same chance to defeat any other faction regardless of combination used? I would think this unreasonable to achieve in a living game (I am sure a programmed AI/machine could balance such a scenario...)

Personally, no. I don't overly covet or expect balance. As with life, there should be varying levels of difficulty and factions that are better against others. At the same time, factions that are harder to play should be more rewarding, perhaps more nuanced/accurate to the fluff. I'm also not advocating that the imbalances should be hilariously one sided but I think there needs to be a little more Rock, Paper, Scissors going on.

There should be clearer counters and drawbacks to certain benefits rather than just the usual brute force approach and a point tweak. IE, if Daemons are meant to be tough and nearly impervious to mortal weapons but weaker to psychic attacks, then they should be bloody tough and nearly impervious to mortal weapons and weaker to psychic attacks! This is why psykers and GK are around, why we have mortal wounds and why invulnerable saves exist that are better than a 5+! I appreciate this has to be done with some moderation but I think that, all too often, accuracy to the fluff is sacrificed for sales and a degree of balance that can be achieved without overlooking the fluff to such a length.

 addnid wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
A suggestion I had before was that GW include army lists as part of the officially supported tournament pack, so that players just needed to bring the models. Make 2-3 options for players to account for 'play-style' and tweak as necessary like they do with the points and FAQs.

I honestly think many (me included) would stop playing if the listbuilding was terminated this way. Choosing from "official tournament lists" would take 40% of the flavor out of the game lol. But perhaps some people don't like the list building part of 40k ?

I love list-building so much I built it into my Titanomachina game, but where the armies themselves are badly balanced internally, with a few must-have units and so much dross, all the competitive lists end up looking the same anyways. More to the point, there's no reason why a fixed-list format can't co-exist with an open or freestyle format, just as events run Narrative Play campaigns alongside competitive tournaments.

What do you mean by balance? That every faction should have the same chance to defeat any other faction regardless of combination used? I would think this unreasonable to achieve in a living game (I am sure a programmed AI/machine could balance such a scenario...)

I think everyone is generally ok with some asymmetry. No one expects the mythical "perfect balance". Generally it's more, is there a super faction that has become auto-win to the point that you don't even have to play the game? Are some factions almost auto-lose no matter what they do? etc.

So for me at least, it's not so much "everyone has a equal chance to win", and more, are the various factions getting generally even support, is everything structured so that there aren't any factions that are just straight fethed by either the core rules, or by their own codex rules (or possibly the rules of another codex - i.e. 5th ed Grey Knights being able to defeat Demons by preventing them from ever actually deploying in the first place).

If we look at it like this:

on a 1-5 rating with 1 being as bad as it can be, 3 being average and 5 being almost perfect:

Are the various factions getting generally even support?
No. Not even remotely close. I would give this a 1.

Are there any super factions that are pretty much auto-win?
Probably inconclusive at this point post the new Marine dex, but I would say this is getting better than it was. The new Marine dex still has problems, but it fixed a lot of the issues 2.0 caused. Harleys are tough, but have a very high skill floor, so it's probably ok? I would say this is tentatively a 3 barring much useful data thanks to the pandemic, although you might be able to argue for a better score.

Are there any factions that are nearly auto-lose?
Yep. Way too many. I would score this a conditional 2. Conditional because 9th really borked a handful of codexes. This is to be expected to a point, and can, to an extent be forgiven as it's usually a temporary condition. Given how much of the design space was given over to other places, most of the Xenos dexes would not be out yet under the best of circumstances, but the pandemic makes this much worse. I would cut more slack here than I did, but when the very core rules seem to target the makeup of your army, as well as the way those same writers intended your army to function, I worry that the new codexes aren't going to help those armies all that much. They are in a spot where they need to either make significant changes to the core rules (I'm counting the mission packets as part of "core rules" here), or make changes to the very nature of those armies. Both approaches are going to cause issues but that's where we are.

I'm going to show an example of a Guard list that should illustrate the balance issue rather well:

Battalion:

HQ:
Company Commander w/ Bolt Gun - 37 pts.
Lord Commissar w/ Bolt Gun - 37 pts.

Troops:
Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon HWT and Vox - 75 pts.
Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon HWT and Vox - 75 pts.
Infantry Squad w/ Lascannon HWT and Vox - 75 pts.

Elites:
Master of Ordnance - 35 pts.
Command Squad w/ Medi-pack, Vox, and Regimental Standard - 40 pts.
Tech-Priest Enginseer - 35 pts.

Fliers:
Valkyrie w/ Multilaser, 2x Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pod - 145 pts.
Valkyrie w/ Multilaser, 2x Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pod - 145 pts.
Valkyrie w/ Multilaser, 2x Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pod - 145 pts.

Fast Attack:
Scout Sentinels x3 w/ Autocannons - 135 pts.
Scout Sentinels x3 w/ Autocannons - 135 pts.
Armoured Sentinels x3 w/ Plasma Cannons - 150 pts.

Heavy Support:
Hydra Battery w/ 3 guns - 240 pts.
Hydra Battery w/ 3 guns - 240 pts.
Rapier laser Destroyer Battery w/ 3 guns- 255 pts.

I didn't bother with relics or regimental special rules because they wouldn't fix this mess. My fluff idea is that this is a rear area defence force assigned to an airfield. The elites are that base's command staff/specialists and the Valkyries are the few fliers that were caught refueling when the airfield was attacked. This force has to be balanced so that it's roughly equal to ANY other force it could face while not being overpowered against anything.

How do we propose to fix this one single list so it can meet these goals?

Tycho wrote:
<snip>

The issue is what will appease you won't appease other people in this same thread who want closer than a 45-55 spread of win rates in casual players between the best and worst lists in the game. There will always be a next level to any fix we can make and to the fix after that. Just look at the new FAQ which is a clear attempt at fixing mission balance and the mixed response this forum is giving it for proof of that.

So how do we balance the balance that everybody says they want with what is possible and with what meets GW's sales goals?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Oh, we are at the "40k is the only game in the universe that can't be balanced" discussion again.

You're wrong. Every game can be balanced with sufficient effort. Especially since 40k is vastly less complex than both MtG and LoL.

LoL is vastly less complex than even 40k while collecting vastly more data about each game played which includes player skill for all 10 players in each game. The stuff that would make LoL complex, like the exact position of a champion and the exact moment an ability is used, is abstracted out and analyzed based on gold differences at set times (both team v team and champion v champion), kill differentials, first blood, first turret plate, and first blood timing, jungle clear and first gank times, and other discrete moments significant to the game state.

 Jidmah wrote:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/its-possible-to-build-a-turing-machine-within-magic-the-gathering/

Yes, but that machine has nothing to do with the state of the game. The machine itself is trivial to disrupt if you were to play against it and that level of complexity is only achieved in certain eternal formats.

Of course, it is neat that a game as complex as MtG has balance as close as it does even if MtG players while always whine about it. We could always have a game like YGO instead.

Yeah Yugioh got REALLY bad, especially before I quit when they introduced Pendulum Summoning or whatever that garbage was. I didn't get it, it didn't click, so...I left. The worst format was the Elemental Dragons and Spellbook format. Pretty cancerous there all around, and literally the only deck that was capable of standing up was Evilswarm, which didn't exactly fair well either. Once your dude that you went for ASAP died (I forget the name but he stopped special summoning of LV5 or higher monsters) you basically lost.

I'd say that list has too few anti-tank weapons to be a "proper" list.
So to make it balanced you should be expected to swap a Valkyrie for a Vendetta or something, then it can be balanced from there.
That's the sort of thing I mean.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I'd say that list has too few anti-tank weapons to be a "proper" list.
So to make it balanced you should be expected to swap a Valkyrie for a Vendetta or something, then it can be balanced from there.
That's the sort of thing I mean.

But why does every list need x anti-tank, y anti-horde, z anti-PEQ, etc. If the game is supposed to be balanced should any list have a fairly equal chance against any other list? I know this is a bit smarmy and rhetorical but I've brought up the example of a list with now weapon with a strength higher than 5 versus an all T7+ list and gotten responses like:

"Like I said above, few are arguing that list building should have zero impact on winning, the argument is more that you should be able to build a list that doesn't put you at an automatic disadvantage due to trap choices.

In your example, depending on the mission I could easily see the win rate swing one way or another - in a heavily cluttered urban area where the big vehicles cannot really put their power to bear the mechanized list could be at a disadvantage for taking hold of objectives and taking out an entrenched force, meanwhile in a low terrain map with little cover, the mech list could just pick off the infantry list at its leisure and stroll up to objectives to hold them.

Ie: people are arguing that terrain, mission objectives, and your strategy vs your opponent's strategy should count for more than list building."

So I think it's fair to consider that some people do expect answers to make even the worst mismatches close to balanced.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Oh, we are at the "40k is the only game in the universe that can't be balanced" discussion again.

You're wrong. Every game can be balanced with sufficient effort. Especially since 40k is vastly less complex than both MtG and LoL.

LoL is vastly less complex than even 40k while collecting vastly more data about each game played which includes player skill for all 10 players in each game. The stuff that would make LoL complex, like the exact position of a champion and the exact moment an ability is used, is abstracted out and analyzed based on gold differences at set times (both team v team and champion v champion), kill differentials, first blood, first turret plate, and first blood timing, jungle clear and first gank times, and other discrete moments significant to the game state.

What the data is abstracted to doesn't really matter, everything that affects the game adds to complexity. The game itself is much more complex, if just for the fact that vastly more things can happen over the course of a game than in 5 turns of 40k.

Think of it this way: Imagine how many lines of text it would take to specify LoL in a way to make it playable as a board games in the exact same way as it is played now. That's its complexity, and 7th edition's fully bloated final form would be a joke compared to that.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/its-possible-to-build-a-turing-machine-within-magic-the-gathering/

Yes, but that machine has nothing to do with the state of the game. The machine itself is trivial to disrupt if you were to play against it and that level of complexity is only achieved in certain eternal formats.

Of course, it is neat that a game as complex as MtG has balance as close as it does even if MtG players while always whine about it. We could always have a game like YGO instead.

I think you need to google what a turing machine is.

Being able to build a turing machine out of it proves that the game is turing complete - which in turn means that the game states of MtG are exactly as complex as a modern programming language such as java, C#, python or javascript.
You could literally use MtG to write software without violating any of its rules, assuming some insane person builds a compiler for it.

Because if absolutely every possible list is equally balanced, you can't have a game with any sort of variation at all.

IMO the game should require a basic level of balanced list building.
In that state the game should be balanced.
Skewing your list any way will result in a decrease in list effectiveness.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I'd say that list has too few anti-tank weapons to be a "proper" list.
So to make it balanced you should be expected to swap a Valkyrie for a Vendetta or something, then it can be balanced from there.
That's the sort of thing I mean.

But why does every list need x anti-tank, y anti-horde, z anti-PEQ, etc. If the game is supposed to be balanced should any list have a fairly equal chance against any other list? I know this is a bit smarmy and rhetorical but I've brought up the example of a list with now weapon with a strength higher than 5 versus an all T7+ list and gotten responses like

That's not what balance is, that's just a luck based game then. In MtG you still need to build a deck with a proper mana curve, sufficient lands and the right mix of creatures and spells in order to win, and a league team also needs certain positions to be filled to have a shot at winning.

If your airfield has insufficient anti-tank weapons, the dreadmob knocking on your door has every right to stomp all over you.

Game balance and take all comers are two different things.

 Jidmah wrote:
What the data is abstracted to doesn't really matter, everything that affects the game adds to complexity. The game itself is much more complex, if just for the fact that vastly more things can happen over the course of a game than in 5 turns of 40k.

Think of it this way: Imagine how many lines of text it would take to specify LoL in a way to make it playable as a board games in the exact same way as it is played now. That's its complexity, and 7th edition's fully bloated final form would be a joke compared to that.

Most of that code is for things like graphics, sound effects, matchmaking, lag reduction, etc. So cut away all of that and it would depend on how you wanted to play the game. Most actions would be quick, but tedious for a human to do, moving minions some distance along their path, moving your character x distance and then waiting until your turn to move them again. Even attacks would be as simple as select skill, check cooldown, check mana, aim skill. Then for anything other than a point and click skill you'd simply move it at set intervals and check if it hits or misses.

That's the thing with video games. Each action is simple and discrete, and most of them can be abstracted because they are essentially equivalent to another action you could have taken such as moving to pixel 101 instead of 102 and then to 104 instead of 103 while running to your lane at the start of a game. Given this, you can simply gather much more abstract data about the state of the game at specific points and go from there.

If you wanted a sample every 30 seconds things you might want to snapshot are champion health and mana. Champion gold, kills, assists, minions killed, and items held. Tower health. Champion proximity to the river. And other things. You don't care about the exact champion position on the map, if they're currently attacking something, or any of that specific data.

For 40k because the movement of models is a significant portion of each turn and effects which actions a player can take you'd want to record it if you were to make a balanced eSport out of it. Heck, you'd also want to log every die roll (including the order they were made, why they were roled, what the target was, etc.), every stratagem used, the exact position and coherency of a unit, etc. You'd have fewer batches of data but far more data in each batch.

I think you need to google what a turing machine is.

Being able to build a turing machine out of it proves that the game is turing complete - which in turn means that the game states of MtG are exactly as complex as a modern programming language such as java, C#, python or javascript.

I saw that video the day it came out and I know what a turing machine is. Just because it can be done doesn't mean that it's relevant to the game's balance any more than the ability to build a computer in Minecraft doesn't mean anything in terms of its adventure mode being too easy or hard.

--------

On the subject of just build a better list kappa; if that's the case then why does the 40k community start frothing at the mouth when skew is overperforming? We even have people saying that fielding an all PEQ and GrEQ list in marines is skew these days, should those players just git gud and build a list that has more 2 and 3 damage weapons in it or does that only come up when T8 models are involved?

 jeff white wrote:
Game balance and take all comers are two different things.

Pretty much. Just because Imperial Guard and Tau aren't known for being melee monsters it doesn't mean Ogryn and Kroot should be garbage.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
On the subject of just build a better list kappa; if that's the case then why does the 40k community start frothing at the mouth when skew is overperforming? We even have people saying that fielding an all PEQ and GrEQ list in marines is skew these days, should those players just git gud and build a list that has more 2 and 3 damage weapons in it or does that only come up when T8 models are involved?

It's because people don't want listbuilding to be a problem that's trivially solvable. It shouldn't be a matter of going through a codex and seeing "Oh, these are the units that are undercosted/exploit the rules" and just maxing those out and minimizing everything else. They want listbuilding to be *sophisticated*, they don't want it to be simply a matter of *complexity*.

Hecaton wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
On the subject of just build a better list kappa; if that's the case then why does the 40k community start frothing at the mouth when skew is overperforming? We even have people saying that fielding an all PEQ and GrEQ list in marines is skew these days, should those players just git gud and build a list that has more 2 and 3 damage weapons in it or does that only come up when T8 models are involved?

It's because people don't want listbuilding to be a problem that's trivially solvable. It shouldn't be a matter of going through a codex and seeing "Oh, these are the units that are undercosted/exploit the rules" and just maxing those out and minimizing everything else. They want listbuilding to be *sophisticated*, they don't want it to be simply a matter of *complexity*.

Not everybody wants that though. Some players want list building to have limited impact on your odds of victory and for only what happens on the table to have a significant impact on who wins. How would you square the game you want with the game they want?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
On the subject of just build a better list kappa; if that's the case then why does the 40k community start frothing at the mouth when skew is overperforming? We even have people saying that fielding an all PEQ and GrEQ list in marines is skew these days, should those players just git gud and build a list that has more 2 and 3 damage weapons in it or does that only come up when T8 models are involved?

It's because people don't want listbuilding to be a problem that's trivially solvable. It shouldn't be a matter of going through a codex and seeing "Oh, these are the units that are undercosted/exploit the rules" and just maxing those out and minimizing everything else. They want listbuilding to be *sophisticated*, they don't want it to be simply a matter of *complexity*.

Not everybody wants that though. Some players want list building to have limited impact on your odds of victory and for only what happens on the table to have a significant impact on who wins. How would you square the game you want with the game they want?

I don't believe those are mutually exclusive. List building is trivial due to the lack of internal balance. If units are on a more level playing field internally, that doesn't necessarily translate into lists deciding games on the table. I'd even expect the exact opposite to be the case.

 BertBert wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
On the subject of just build a better list kappa; if that's the case then why does the 40k community start frothing at the mouth when skew is overperforming? We even have people saying that fielding an all PEQ and GrEQ list in marines is skew these days, should those players just git gud and build a list that has more 2 and 3 damage weapons in it or does that only come up when T8 models are involved?

It's because people don't want listbuilding to be a problem that's trivially solvable. It shouldn't be a matter of going through a codex and seeing "Oh, these are the units that are undercosted/exploit the rules" and just maxing those out and minimizing everything else. They want listbuilding to be *sophisticated*, they don't want it to be simply a matter of *complexity*.

Not everybody wants that though. Some players want list building to have limited impact on your odds of victory and for only what happens on the table to have a significant impact on who wins. How would you square the game you want with the game they want?

I don't believe those are mutually exclusive. List building is trivial due to the lack of internal balance. If units are on a more level playing field internally, that doesn't necessarily translate into lists deciding games on the table. I'd even expect the exact opposite to be the case.

How does that fix the idea of skew lists? If skew is bad that punishes people for playing units they like and means Knights are going to stay bad forever if skew is good it makes list building to easy. How do you fix that so everybody is happy?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Not everybody wants that though. Some players want list building to have limited impact on your odds of victory and for only what happens on the table to have a significant impact on who wins. How would you square the game you want with the game they want?

It should 100% have limited impact on your odds of victory. That's not the same as zero or near-zero impact.

Listen, you come off like someone who doesn't really play and so does nothing but listbuild and theorycraft - and you want that to be the whole of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

How does that fix the idea of skew lists? If skew is bad that punishes people for playing units they like and means Knights are going to stay bad forever if skew is good it makes list building to easy. How do you fix that so everybody is happy?

It doesn't necessarily mean skew lists are punished. Going skew should be a meaningful choice - running a denial strategy, maximizing one aspect of your list while making big sacrifices elsewhere. It should not just be a matter of taking max amounts of whatever the best unit in the codex is.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

How does that fix the idea of skew lists? If skew is bad that punishes people for playing units they like and means Knights are going to stay bad forever if skew is good it makes list building to easy. How do you fix that so everybody is happy?

There is a lot of room between "forever bad" and "so good it makes list building trivial". Imo skew lists should generally be disadvantaged, though. If you heavily lean into one aspect of your army instead of bringing a well balanced force, that should be a risk and not a boon. That's not to say the risk cannot ever pay off, but that hinges on whether or not you correctly anticipated other contributing factors like missions, terrain and whatever you expect your opponent will bring to the table.

Also, if internal balance was to be improved, there would be less incentive for players to build skew lists in the first place. If you really love your tank brigade then you'll probably be fine with it having very clearly defined strengths and weaknesses.

Okey, but this only works for armies with large number of units of different kinds, who actualy can make a choice if they want this or that unit.

A SoB player doesn't really have a choice in picking troop options or taking MM devastators.

Also don't think that just giving more unit types of different kind would stop people from playing skew lists. IF someone plays Deathwing or GK termintor armies, then just because GW adds another type of primaris psyker doesn't really change how the person will build his army. Same with knights, by definition they are a skew army. Now they probably shouldn't be in the game for its health, but now they already are and removing them would be a bad idea, specialy as it wouldn't give any garente that the rules set without knights would be better.

right now knights aren't that often seen, but the game is not better because of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BertBert wrote:


I don't believe those are mutually exclusive. List building is trivial due to the lack of internal balance. If units are on a more level playing field internally, that doesn't necessarily translate into lists deciding games on the table. I'd even expect the exact opposite to be the case.

But that is impossible to achive, because of how GW writers their core rules. A core rule regarding LoS or cover, or promoting a specific weapon as The Weapon to use in a given edition, can make whole chapters of a codex not valid to play.

Lets say we are in 10th, and GW drops down a rule which makes t3 +3sv models really bad. What is suppose a SoB player suppose to do, besides buying a new army?

Sure, and playing Deathwing or pure GK terminators should be an inherent risk due to their one-sidedness. Same goes for Knights, which is probably the biggest outlier army anyway.

And if we are talking how to fix balance issues, we have to at least assume the necessary competence on GW's part to produce a fitting framework. Ideally, there would be no such core rule that makes T3 3+ SV units inherently bad.

40K's list building brings up an interesting point - how much of the game should be won by your ability to concoct the list pregame vs. your actions on the battlefield? Skill at list-building vs. Skill in play? How does that play into balance?

As I recall, in at least one of the older editions, GW codified a "strategy rating" for armies that was supposed to be an indicator of how difficult it was to use the army properly, and how forgiving it was to player mistakes (if I'm remembering this correctly).

I can see GW creating armies where there is a skill to putting together a list correctly; I used to associate this with Eldar where the units each had a specialty where they excelled, but in most other uses they were a poor fit. Conversely, marines were all-rounders, but not particularly great at any one thing. Marines were durable and could survive a player's mistake, whereas if the Eldar player made a mistake and pitted their units against the wrong enemy unit type or activity, his unit would likely get decimated.

Somewhere along the way, this degraded that people would just pick the "best" Eldar unit and spam it, and SM players moaned until their units were the best at everything, it seems. Balance at the list-making level went out the window.

This is difficult to express in words, but:

I don't think I'd mind the listbuilding metagame if I knew that certain armies were more difficult to use effectively that others before I dumped a couple hundred dollars on them beforehand - point it out on the tin. Building the "right" list for difficult armies should be about correctly guessing the enemies composition though, not "spam the best unit", and it should never contribute to more than, say 25% of the game overall.

Once each side gets to the table though, I still want the other 50% of the game decided by who has the better strategy. They brought the right units, now they have use them properly.

That last 25%? Let luck have that - or hand it back over to in-game strategy.

Hecaton wrote:
It should 100% have limited impact on your odds of victory. That's not the same as zero or near-zero impact.

How would you do that? How would you fix the balance between a T3 W1 5+Sv army with nothing but lasguns and a tank company that went full anti-horde skew? I'm being extreme on purpose because it forces people to confront the fact that the balance for 40k is really, extremely difficult to find due to its sheer scope and scale.

Listen, you come off like someone who doesn't really play and so does nothing but listbuild and theorycraft - and you want that to be the whole of the game.

I'm sending up extreme examples because they're things that won't go away in 40k. People will buy models that make 'bad' lists and play against people that only bought tanks in a meta that only changes every few months when somebody finally buys and builds that new model they saved up for. At the same time, people will grind tournaments and others will play crusade with their middle-aged friends and everybody will use the coolest and best-painted stuff from their 10k+ points collection. The game will have to work for all of those to be balanced. It'll also have to work when Timmy guard horde goes into the store and plays Spike tournament grinder.

I want the people asking for balance to confront this fact and then, rather than saying GW needs to fix it, give concrete and specific examples for how they would fix problems. Anybody can whine about balance and propose vague and unworkable solutions, but I think Dakka can do better. So let's fix 40k.

It doesn't necessarily mean skew lists are punished. Going skew should be a meaningful choice - running a denial strategy, maximizing one aspect of your list while making big sacrifices elsewhere. It should not just be a matter of taking max amounts of whatever the best unit in the codex is.

It does though. If a skew list only has a 10% advantage over the list that it hard counters it's going to suck on toast against anything semi-competitive. This in turn means your game is balanced only for a very narrow range of TAC tournament-style lists. This is the balance we have now and people are constantly complaining that marines are too good in casual play and crying help my DE beat Knights and a million other things. If your 'fixed' game doesn't cover this it frankly isn't fixed.

 BertBert wrote:
There is a lot of room between "forever bad" and "so good it makes list building trivial". Imo skew lists should generally be disadvantaged, though.

So that means Knights will always be bad and to an extent that Custodes and Harlies who are skew by virtue of not having unit variety should be bad because they always skew. Is this fair to players who own those models and want to play on an even playing field?

If you heavily lean into one aspect of your army instead of bringing a well balanced force, that should be a risk and not a boon.

So little Timmy who spent his hard-earned allowance and Christmas money on a pure Terminator DW force should just suck it up and lose because he picked a skew list and his buddy had help from his dad and built a semi-competitive TAC force of some other army. Is this going to keep Timmy playing 40k long term?

Karol wrote:
Okey, but this only works for armies with large number of units of different kinds, who actualy can make a choice if they want this or that unit.

A SoB player doesn't really have a choice in picking troop options or taking MM devastators.

Troops wise, no.
But as the point of playing a SoB army is to play with SoB, why would you not want to use them??? Though I guess you might spend the CP to run a Vanguard detachment or such if you wanted to skip Troops.

Heavies? We have 4 options thank you very much!
1) Retributors (can be armed with MM/HB/Heavy Flamer - all have uses)
2) Mortifiers
3) Penitent Engines
4) Exorcist missile tanks
All four of these are effective & have their uses.

Karol wrote:
Lets say we are in 10th, and GW drops down a rule which makes t3 +3sv models really bad. What is suppose a SoB player suppose to do, besides buying a new army?

HA! Most SoB players - prior to the new blood brought in by the shiny new plastics last year - are really dedicated to playing their army. They will power through & Win/Lose/Draw proudly be that person who puts the rare & often neglected army on the table.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
There is a lot of room between "forever bad" and "so good it makes list building trivial". Imo skew lists should generally be disadvantaged, though.

So that means Knights will always be bad and to an extent that Custodes and Harlies who are skew by virtue of not having unit variety should be bad because they always skew. Is this fair to players who own those models and want to play on an even playing field?

If you heavily lean into one aspect of your army instead of bringing a well balanced force, that should be a risk and not a boon.

So little Timmy who spent his hard-earned allowance and Christmas money on a pure Terminator DW force should just suck it up and lose because he picked a skew list and his buddy had help from his dad and built a semi-competitive TAC force of some other army. Is this going to keep Timmy playing 40k long term?

Your argument boils down to the false dichtomy that the result can only be armies that are either super good or super bad. The degree to which something like Deathwing will differ in strength to an all comers Space Marine list is determined by several factors, each of which can be adjusted to produce a reasonably equal chance of winning for both sides. Core rules, missions, terrain, individual ability and dice luck are all factors here that need to be considered. That being said, I do find it reasonable to balance the game around those all comers lists to have a solid base to work from.

If an army book offers all those options, let's take space marines as an example, then a generalist approach should on average outperform a skew list if internal balance is good. Custodes don't have these additional options, so their army needs to be designed in a way that the few units they have do cover all important facets, just scaled back onto fewer, relatively stronger models. Knights will have problems (they were absolutely op not too long ago btw.) in some ways, because they are the single most extreme outlier and as such, difficult to tweak to the same standard as generic armies.

As for Timmy, he should be made aware by the nice people working in their LGS that Deathwing is an "intermediate" army that requires more finesse than others, because they are specialised. The notion that you should just be able to pick up any legal constellation of units and have the same chance at winning as everyone else is utopic.