Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Jidmah wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

Are you sure?
Among the people I know nobody did never said: «I need a new army because this sucks». They preferred stop to play; also the people with the strongest armies.

And you would be right. It's well established that games draw more players, and thus more sales, if the game is more balanced because more people enjoy playing balanced games.
Especially in miniature gaming, where people have to build and paint their expensive sets first, a stable near-balanced state will generate a lot more sales than catering to the few meta-chasers who actually keep up with all the releases. A clear indicator of this would be the massive drop of tournament attendance and community activity after the Iron Hands supplement dropped.

See, however, GW is in many ways a closed ecosystem. That means in conjunction with their defacto monoply through IP / Copyright law, that they can search their point of optimal profit not on demand but on production cost. Basically , like Videogames GW can and imo does, whalehunting.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Slayer6 wrote:
Do I expect 40k to be balanced?

No.

Why? Because imbalance sells more than balance... You wouldn't buy a useless unit to play (and lose) with, you would buy one that you think will win...

damn, thats a big assumption on your part.

Tell that to my :

Warp talons
Raptors
Wyches
Wraith Host (purchased before PA)
Thousand sons (purchased before PA)

But it's true. All those units you mentioned, or even the entire TS faction, don't seel because people want to expolit their abilities on the battle field. They may sell because someone likes the models or their style of playing.

If a unit is considered "needed", it'll sell a lot. There's a large portion of players who are mostly into gaming rather than the hobby part.

Which is why I'm a strong advocate for low-mid tier SM. They'll always sell a lot because they're the favorite faction of the fanbase, and in fact primaris sold a lot even at the beginning of 8th when firsborn were still superior, but if they weren't competitive those who play them only because they're good will switch to other factions, making mirror matches against imperium forces less frequent.

Imagine being am advocate for an army to be garbage LOL you're full of gak

Most businesses have started chasing "whales" rather than supporting the wider player base.

And in my experience a rather large subset of the community can be described as "whales". Regularly dropping large amounts of money on whatever the new hotness is.
Hence GW's priority is on generating new hotness. This doesn't always translate into better rules competitively, but trying to make every new unit have cooler and more interesting rules often results in more powerful rules. This is exactly what drove the obscene formation powercreep in 7th.
I'm sure GW was 100% serious about "Forge the Narrative". It just ended up as the perfect storm for clobbering the absolute gak out of anyone that actually tried.

In fact, this attitude has become so pervasive I regularly see any complaints about the constant churn of new hotness addressed along the lines of "if you can't afford it you shouldn't play".
Excuse me? If I wanted a hobby that was just waving my massive <wallet> in people's faces I'd get a boat.

Not Online!!! wrote:
See, however, GW is in many ways a closed ecosystem. That means in conjunction with their defacto monoply through IP / Copyright law, that they can search their point of optimal profit not on demand but on production cost. Basically , like Videogames GW can and imo does, whalehunting.

In games that require multiple players to play, when you lose players, you lose whales as well. If you gain players, you also gain whales.

It's also worth noting that many whales aren't competitive players - see the titan owner's club, for example.

I agree that imbalance (or just in general a sub-par game) can result in GW losing whales, this doesn't happen at an equivalent rate to which it encourages whales to spend more money.
40k has reached a size and popularity such that it's self-sustaining. If you want to regularly play a wargame, for most people the *only* option is 40k, because the community for any other games isn't large enough.
I've had to diversify into like 4 other games to even start to sustain 1/game, if I played 40k I'd be able to find an opponent daily if I wanted.

The key factor driving GW's business is that new hotness drives sales more than well balanced, fun, and engaging rules will.
So they focus on driving new hotness with minimal consideration for the latter.
Which is a crying shame, but so long as GW are the industry giants and 40k is the largest driving force behind that, with large sections of the community worshipping their every move, this won't change.

From the few whales I know personally, I have found that they are people who don't really care about their investment. They'd drop thousands of euros worth of models without batting an eye and invest into another game when it brings them more enjoyment, and they'd drop that game when 40k is awesome again.

And by "other game" I don't necessarily mean wargames. Jumping from MtG to 40k to eve online to path of exile to some mobile game doesn't really matter when you aren't emotionally bound to this hobby.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
See, however, GW is in many ways a closed ecosystem. That means in conjunction with their defacto monoply through IP / Copyright law, that they can search their point of optimal profit not on demand but on production cost. Basically , like Videogames GW can and imo does, whalehunting.

In games that require multiple players to play, when you lose players, you lose whales as well. If you gain players, you also gain whales.

It's also worth noting that many whales aren't competitive players - see the titan owner's club, for example.

Also, correct, i didn't say however GW was smart about it didn't i.
Further a lot of the older hobbiests and potential longterm collectors can also be rather easily monetised with Nostalgia units/ models, Limited editions etc.
GW attempts to get both and often therefore either loses those that want to play due to the balance becoming so untenable for x faction that people drop out en masse.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I agree that imbalance (or just in general a sub-par game) can result in GW losing whales, this doesn't happen at an equivalent rate to which it encourages whales to spend more money.
40k has reached a size and popularity such that it's self-sustaining. If you want to regularly play a wargame, for most people the *only* option is 40k, because the community for any other games isn't large enough.
I've had to diversify into like 4 other games to even start to sustain 1/game, if I played 40k I'd be able to find an opponent daily if I wanted.

The key factor driving GW's business is that new hotness drives sales more than well balanced, fun, and engaging rules will.
So they focus on driving new hotness with minimal consideration for the latter.
Which is a crying shame, but so long as GW are the industry giants and 40k is the largest driving force behind that, with large sections of the community worshipping their every move, this won't change.

It's funny, that hegemonic position collapsed over here, it's still by far one of the most played games, however a lot of people took it badly what GW did with WHFB and also many were not happy with 7th /6th ed which made the sales plummet, did diversify the games though in my FLGS, for the better imo.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Further a lot of the older hobbiests and potential longterm collectors can also be rather easily monetised with Nostalgia units/ models, Limited editions etc.

They also suck at this. I totally bought the red gobbo two years ago, but this year? A nob without gear and an ammo runt? Seriously? The only thing more bland I could think of is "slugga boy seen on a book once". At least make them named characters with unique rules like you do for all the imperium nobodies FFS.
Same for the collector edition's. Either they cost an army and a leg, or you just get a pile of worthless junk. If they had released a Saga of the Beast or War of the Spider faction specific edition with an alternate cover for my factions, some dice and an upgrade pack for the datacards, I'd totally have bought it at twice the price.

 Jidmah wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Further a lot of the older hobbiests and potential longterm collectors can also be rather easily monetised with Nostalgia units/ models, Limited editions etc.

They also suck at this. I totally bought the red gobbo two years ago, but this year? A nob without gear and an ammo runt? Seriously? The only thing more bland I could think of is "slugga boy seen on a book once". At least make them named characters with unique rules like you do for all the imperium nobodies FFS.
Same for the collector edition's. Either they cost an army and a leg, or you just get a pile of worthless junk. If they had released a Saga of the Beast or War of the Spider faction specific edition with an alternate cover for my factions, some dice and an upgrade pack for the datacards, I'd totally have bought it at twice the price.

TBF the community often makes it really easy to get away with the most minimal effort in these "special editions" , and "most minimal"is cheap to make jid, it's all about those production cost.

Is it smart or particullary enticing for the hobbiests with some higher standards? na not really, but for the vast part of the community these things seem to be good enough.

There were some comparisons to MtG and computer games earlier on, and some discussion of "skew" lists.

I think the problem with those comparisons is nothing to do with complexity, but rather to do with set up time.

Setting up to play a game of MtG takes what, 2 minutes? You gotta shuffle your deck basically? And then playing a game takes max half an hour? So if you run an extreme deck in Magic and my deck is a poor match up to that, well, cool, I get stomped over half an hour and I learn something. It's not so bad. And you can play a game of magic on any flat surface, so you can play pretty much anywhere.

GW games, even leaving out all the time spent making and painting minis, involve transporting these delicate models to a particular location, laying out terrain and then deploying your dudes. That alone probably takes longer than the average game of MtG. Then you actually play, and maybe an hour later you are finished getting your arse handed to you by a "skew" list or whatever. It feels way worse, because you just wasted (conservatively) three times as much time to learn that lesson. Not to mention the emotional attachment to the minis you spent time assembling and painting only to see them wiped off the board before they even got to do anything.

This is a pretty negative experience and you have to have a very particular attitude to find it amusing. A lot of people don't have that kind of time to spend. Same argument applies to computer games, a round is easy to log into and only lasts a short amount of time. If you get beat, you can be back in the game quickly, and each iteration does not take that long so you can at least enjoy learning.

That is why having a Force Org chart that constrains what you can bring to the table is a good idea. It helps to put a broader structure on the game that limits the sort of skew you can have. It gives you a better chance that what you've brought will broadly match up to what your opponent brought and you will be able to have a fun game.

 Da Boss wrote:
There were some comparisons to MtG and computer games earlier on, and some discussion of "skew" lists.

I think the problem with those comparisons is nothing to do with complexity, but rather to do with set up time.

Setting up to play a game of MtG takes what, 2 minutes? You gotta shuffle your deck basically? And then playing a game takes max half an hour? So if you run an extreme deck in Magic and my deck is a poor match up to that, well, cool, I get stomped over half an hour and I learn something. It's not so bad. And you can play a game of magic on any flat surface, so you can play pretty much anywhere.

GW games, even leaving out all the time spent making and painting minis, involve transporting these delicate models to a particular location, laying out terrain and then deploying your dudes. That alone probably takes longer than the average game of MtG. Then you actually play, and maybe an hour later you are finished getting your arse handed to you by a "skew" list or whatever. It feels way worse, because you just wasted (conservatively) three times as much time to learn that lesson. Not to mention the emotional attachment to the minis you spent time assembling and painting only to see them wiped off the board before they even got to do anything.

This is a pretty negative experience and you have to have a very particular attitude to find it amusing. A lot of people don't have that kind of time to spend. Same argument applies to computer games, a round is easy to log into and only lasts a short amount of time. If you get beat, you can be back in the game quickly, and each iteration does not take that long so you can at least enjoy learning.

But shouldn't that mean that GW has to put more effort into making every single game enjoyable, not less?

That is why having a Force Org chart that constrains what you can bring to the table is a good idea. It helps to put a broader structure on the game that limits the sort of skew you can have. It gives you a better chance that what you've brought will broadly match up to what your opponent brought and you will be able to have a fun game.

I don't really get this leap in logic. Whether you limit the game to a FOC (which really is the same as a patrol/battalion) or not has little to no impact on the ability to balance the game or on building skew lists.

 Da Boss wrote:
There were some comparisons to MtG and computer games earlier on, and some discussion of "skew" lists.

I think the problem with those comparisons is nothing to do with complexity, but rather to do with set up time.

Setting up to play a game of MtG takes what, 2 minutes? You gotta shuffle your deck basically? And then playing a game takes max half an hour? So if you run an extreme deck in Magic and my deck is a poor match up to that, well, cool, I get stomped over half an hour and I learn something. It's not so bad. And you can play a game of magic on any flat surface, so you can play pretty much anywhere.

GW games, even leaving out all the time spent making and painting minis, involve transporting these delicate models to a particular location, laying out terrain and then deploying your dudes. That alone probably takes longer than the average game of MtG. Then you actually play, and maybe an hour later you are finished getting your arse handed to you by a "skew" list or whatever. It feels way worse, because you just wasted (conservatively) three times as much time to learn that lesson. Not to mention the emotional attachment to the minis you spent time assembling and painting only to see them wiped off the board before they even got to do anything.

This is a pretty negative experience and you have to have a very particular attitude to find it amusing. A lot of people don't have that kind of time to spend. Same argument applies to computer games, a round is easy to log into and only lasts a short amount of time. If you get beat, you can be back in the game quickly, and each iteration does not take that long so you can at least enjoy learning.

That is why having a Force Org chart that constrains what you can bring to the table is a good idea. It helps to put a broader structure on the game that limits the sort of skew you can have. It gives you a better chance that what you've brought will broadly match up to what your opponent brought and you will be able to have a fun game.

I completely agree. I mentioned earlier that if you want to balance the game you should probably start by restricting its scope in some meaningful way, likely starting with going back to the FOC. That's not because I think it's literally impossible to balance a game that allows you to take armies full of tanks, or Knights, or Grots, or a more TAC-style force. It's because I think it's practically much more difficult to do to the point where it's more beneficial to make those structural changes to the game at the outset. The FOC also acted as a brilliant guide for people building their armies as it indicated what a balanced, effective army should look like. GW didn't always get their own balance correct, of course, but that doesn't mean the approach was bad.

The time investment is a big deal and a real problem. I've seen 40k players get really disheartened after their lovingly built and painted army gets slaughtered for a couple of hours, having also spent 30 minutes setting up the game. At the same time, I've seen similar styles of beatings for new players in X-Wing but the much quicker set-up and "build" time in that game ended up being an encouragement for them to try something different in their next game, which was often immediately after their initial beating. Imbalance has a powerful psychological effect, especially on new players, and that effect is magnified by the amount of time they've spent on the models as well as the time the game itself takes.

The idea behind the FOC is that building a skew list would become impossible, as you cannot physically fit enough of anything to make it skew.
You are, in effect, forced to take a balanced TAC list as that's all that will fit within the confines of the FOC.

Personally I don't think the old FOC achieved this particularly effectively, as a units classification really had very little to do with actual tabletop performance.
But it's a solid concept.

 Jidmah wrote:

But shouldn't that mean that GW has to put more effort into making every single game enjoyable, not less?

Critical mass...
as allready described.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
The idea behind the FOC is that building a skew list would become impossible, as you cannot physically fit enough of anything to make it skew.
You are, in effect, forced to take a balanced TAC list as that's all that will fit within the confines of the FOC.

Personally I don't think the old FOC achieved this particularly effectively, as a units classification really had very little to do with actual tabletop performance.
But it's a solid concept.

I think WHFB's system was better. That classified units, broadly speaking, into power levels. You had Lords - the most powerful characters - and Heroes - lesser characters. Then you had Core, Special and Rare which had progressively better quality units in it. Many armies could only take heavy cavalry via the Special or Rare slot, for example. The Special and Rare categories also included more exotic stuff like monsters or war machines but it was generally sorted by quality (or at least GW's idea of quality). So basic cannons and stone throwers were often Special while weird things like organ guns were Rare.

The problem with 40k is those unit distinctions don't really exist beyond mapping Troops to Core. Some armies could differentiate characters into broad power levels but the rest of the system is often quite messy, as we can see with the SM Elite section containing Servitors and Scouts. It might be an interesting exercise to take an army and try to map its units to those categories though.

I completely agree that when games of 40k take 3~ hours (or more to play) - you shouldn't have the same "I'm completely screwed 3 minutes in" you can have in things like MTG. There is a fundamental difference to games which can last less than 10 minutes and you can just break out another deck and go again.

Which is why I think 40k should be a game of soft counters, not "X destroys Y, gets destroyed by Z". Certain builds should have advantage over others (antitank->Tanks, Anti flyers->Flyers, Antiinfantry->Infantry etc) - but not ludicrously so. (I.E. not the current state of multimeltas.)

But this idea that restoring the old FOC - or 40k's core/special/rare would have any impact on this is hard to square.

Because as an example, someone bringing say a wall of Leman Russ today *is not a problem*. Its a skew but because Leman Russ are just not very good, who cares? By contrast someone bringing a optimised Harlequins/Daemons/Sisters/Marines *is* - because those units are too good/too cheap compared to other lists, and for the most part they'd slot into these brackets easily.

Again, the issue of "skew" in 40k is relatively small when compared with "this stuff is too good when compared to the same points worth of that stuff". Someone running 120 Acolytes in GSC for example is a "skew" - recognising that this single unit is better than everything else in the codex (before any of the recent points reductions). This is a problem of bad codex design/point allocations (and, tbf, would still be permissible under almost any FOC/points allocation system.)

Someone running 2-3 Marine characters, 3~ troops, some dreads, some inceptors and/or some vanguard/bladeguard isn't obviously a skew. Its just "the efficient stuff". Ditto for say a Sisters list which has a few characters, some min sized troops, some Repentia, Celestians and Retributors.

I think it'd be good to decouple unit balance from "what I bring should be able to beat whatever you bring", as these are two separate things.

The most feelsbad matter for me, balance wise, is the gap in power between units with similar roles in different armies. This is something I have no agency over when building my force, apart from playing another army. "You lose because your codex sucks" is not fun.

Although I'd be happy to see the other issue addressed in some way too; in my (casual) group I face an all-vehicle army, a fast horde infantry army and a dark angels player focussing on bringing the most durable multi-wound, inv save stuff they can. And then there's me, trying to build a tac list that can somehow handle all of this and not simply have the effective parts for the match-up singled out and ganked asap.

But then again, I wouldn't want my standard infantry easily killing tanks ("balanced"), and I wouldn't want to limit my opponent's or (my own) ability to play a force they want to play. I don't know how I'd solve this one.

True balance in a tabletop game is something to be aspired to, but is unattainable. As a previous poster mentioned, even chess isn't balanced, with white having a 55% win rate. That's a game with only 6 different unit types, and only 64 possible positions on the board.

Tabletop games have to account for dozens / hundreds of units, each with dozens of varying compositions and loadouts. That's before we even get into synergies, buffing, and random events.

Points values are a "net of assurance" for players, nothing more. Even if one somehow managed to account for all the above factors, we have the fact that any given unit is stronger against certain units, and weaker against others. If your opponent brings plenty of tanks, ant-tank units are going to very effective, statistically speaking. If he brings none at all, they will underperform.

Then we have the board itself, with an infinite number of variations, and dozens of possible scenarios which completely change victory conditions. A unit that receives bonuses for being in forest terrain is going to be more effective on a heavily forested board than an urban one. Even if we adhered to complex terrain generating algorithms, the individual terrain pieces on each board will differ in density dimensions and positioning.

There really should be a disclaimer at the start of the thread that we all understand that perfect balance is unattainable and are talking about improving balance or having "close enough" balance.

And Jidmah, absolutely, what I was saying was not an argument for GW to have worse balance. Just that it was even more severe than initially pointed out in comparison to those games because poor balance also feels worse in GW games than in those ones. I did express myself badly though so I can see why you would have thought I meant something else, sorry about that!

As to "Y FOC tho", well, of course it can still be unbalanced if the units are really badly designed. That definitely happened at various points in the past because GW has terrible designers who don't care about the game and does not do quality control.

But it is easier to balance the game if there is at least a framework for force composition that gives you a somewhat constrained possibility space to design for. At the moment, it is just a more challenging job to design for all the different forces.

However, I think FOC will never come back, because the game has moved past it in a way that means that bringing it back would feth over a large number of players and mean their collections were no longer playable. And I just don't see GW doing that, and having had chunks of my stuff invalidated over the years, I don't support that.

And if you're gonna have to design to balance for absolutely every combination because of that, there is probably no point in having a FOC in the game for some other game mode, because the point is the holistically balance taking the FOC into account.

I thought it was a pretty terrible decision to get rid of it back in the day, motivated in that specific case by a desire to sell more stuff, and I think it was bad for the game ultimately.

 Da Boss wrote:
However, I think FOC will never come back...

Which means there will never be true balance and the game will most assuredly be a game of pay to win, plunk down for the new hotness, delete and get the NEW new hotness when the old new hotness is obsolete.

shortymcnostrill wrote:


Although I'd be happy to see the other issue addressed in some way too; in my (casual) group I face an all-vehicle army, a fast horde infantry army and a dark angels player focussing on bringing the most durable multi-wound, inv save stuff they can. And then there's me, trying to build a tac list that can somehow handle all of this and not simply have the effective parts for the match-up singled out and ganked asap.

But then again, I wouldn't want my standard infantry easily killing tanks ("balanced"), and I wouldn't want to limit my opponent's or (my own) ability to play a force they want to play. I don't know how I'd solve this one.

If you play only vs optimized skew lists it's very hard, if not flat out impossible, to build a TAC list and expect to compete with your opponents. Unless your army is overpowered to the core.

When you have access only to a very selected player base and those players refuse or maybe can't change their lists frequently it has always been hard to get balanced games of 40k. That's why I always suggest players who mostly (if not entirely) play within a restricted pool of friends to play with up to 50-75% of the players' collections: substantial changes to organize more balanced games would be immediately possible this way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
However, I think FOC will never come back...

Which means there will never be true balance and the game will most assuredly be a game of pay to win, plunk down for the new hotness, delete and get the NEW new hotness when the old new hotness is obsolete.

40k has been unbalanced in the past, even with the the FOC in play.

ccs wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

1) So why did you, the experienced player who's been fleeced exactly like this, just stand by & watch it happen? YOU knew when 9th was arriving.

2) And no, it's never been true that you can use anything ever released as there'll be rules for it. Even with Legends it's not true.
As exhibit #1? I present you .... the Squats.
Here in 9th? Oh sure, I could use most of them as short Guardsmen. Or Nurglings, or Knights, or anything else my opponent will agree to. But the only editions I've been able to run them as Squats is RT & 2e.
Or how about my Las/Plas Razorback turrets? Where are these for 9e?

1. Because the GW rep was somewhat dracconian in his attempts to usher out people who didn't pimp the brand. If you brought in non-gw models, banned, if you brought in non gw terrain, banned, if you we caught actively dissuading a sale or interfering in the business - Banned. It's not uncommon. GW runs their stores like jerks. The guy was fired after 9th dropped, so moot point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CommunistNapkin wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I think GW's obligation to be up front about a purchase is hit or miss at best. It really depends on the sales person. My very first experience with 40k was 2 weeks before 8th dropped. I had no idea what an edition was, or what a faction was. I just knew this looked awesome and I wanted to get started.

I walked in to my local GW store, and said I wanted to get started with the hobby but I didn't know what was good or fun, but I thought the GK looked cool. Cut to an hour later and he's ringing me up for a 7th BRB, a GK codex, and a few boxes of Paladins and strikes, and an appropriate paint set, glue, snips, brushes, etc. I walk out of the store over 400 dollars lighter, and start assembling my minis. I quickly learn that 8th has been announced, and my recent book purchases are now invalid. I went back to the store and asked why he sold me books when he knew they were about to be invalidated. (I didn't care about the models) and he said "I wanted to help you get started playing the game as soon as possible, and we aren't allowed to know when new editions are coming out". This suffice to say put me off the hobby for a few months.

Cut to 3 weeks before 9th drops, around when Sisters was still hawtness, and I watched this guy sell a brand new player like me, a SM Codex, and SM supplement, a 8th BRB, and two boxes of Intercessors. This happens ALL the time. GW is under ZERO obligation to help you from being screwed over by their "releases". One of their corner stones until "legends" became a thing was that you can literally play anything GW ever released (Modelwise) and there will always be rules for it. Obviously this is factually not correct, or at best, misleading as hell.

Out of curiosity, I don't guess that the manager mentioned that GW was providing credits for folks who had bought new rulebooks/codexes in the months leading up to 8th edition, so that they could get new books for free? I run a FLGS and worth with GW regularly. All of my customers who bought books within like 60 days (it's been a few years so I can't quite remember. May have been 90 days?) of 8th edition being announced were given credit directly from GW (done through me) so that they could get their new books for free when they came out.

Nope. All sales are final. Written on the store wall. This wasn't a local gamming store, this was a legit GW Brick and Mortar.

You can add to this slow shipments to some parts fo the world. GW sent the last WFB books to our store, so late, that by the time they got here AoS became a thing, and people that ordered them didn't get refunds either. Although our store was not a GW one, so maybe that is the difference.

The "refunds" thing was unique to the launch of 8th edition. Presumably because that invalidated EVERY book at once, GW felt that was too much negativity.

They didn't actually offer a refund per-say either, you store credit to the value of the books. So you could get more GW stuff, but they were keeping the money regardless.

 Blackie wrote:


But it's true. All those units you mentioned, or even the entire TS faction, don't seel because people want to expolit their abilities on the battle field. They may sell because someone likes the models or their style of playing.

If a unit is considered "needed", it'll sell a lot. There's a large portion of players who are mostly into gaming rather than the hobby part.

Which is why I'm a strong advocate for low-mid tier SM. They'll always sell a lot because they're the favorite faction of the fanbase, and in fact primaris sold a lot even at the beginning of 8th when firsborn were still superior, but if they weren't competitive those who play them only because they're good will switch to other factions, making mirror matches against imperium forces less frequent.

i think there is a false assumption that tournament/competitive players represent the majority of 40k. Its the complete opposite. Casual players that buy the models they think look good are the majority and these are the ones that don't necessarily buy models because of their performance on the tabletop.

In my experience, although the majority of players aren't hyper competitive, the majority of players are playing to win as their primary goal.

It seems that my local groups (there's 4) are constantly either playing a tournament, or practising for a tournament.
Whenever a discussion of a new unit comes up, it's almost always about how good is it. Whether or not they're worth taking vs this other unit, and what buffs you can stack on them to get disgusting damage output.

"X is a really cool model, but Y is better, so I bought that" is very common.
Similarly, "I don't like the look of A, but they're so good I bought two anyway".

 Da Boss wrote:
As to "Y FOC tho", well, of course it can still be unbalanced if the units are really badly designed. That definitely happened at various points in the past because GW has terrible designers who don't care about the game and does not do quality control.

But it is easier to balance the game if there is at least a framework for force composition that gives you a somewhat constrained possibility space to design for. At the moment, it is just a more challenging job to design for all the different forces.

See, the reason why I wonder about this FOC thing is because I don't really think that it's more limiting than 9th edition's battalions.

In 4th and 5th you had to bring 1 HQ and 2 troops, and had the option to bring an additional 1 HQ, 4 troops and 3 of everything else. The game also was much more lenient with dedicated transports (battlewagons or landraiders come to mind) and stuff counting as troops through characters.

A patrol forces you to bring 1 HQ and 1 troop, but also limits you to 3 troops and one of everything else. A battalion is a lot like a FOC but forces you to bring 2 HQ and 3 troops and gets an extra HQ and 3 more elite slots in return (which is a weird, I admit). Brigades really just force you to bring a ton of stuff you don't want with little reason to do so. The only good way to get more slots is by sacrificing 2 or 3 CP to bring an additional detachment, but you are still bound by the rule of 3.

The FOC was clearly superior to 8th edition's "bring whatever you like!", but I really don't think that the FOC limits options any more efficiently than what we currently have. Most armies try to fit everything into battalions and rarely add more than an additional patrol detachment.

Jidmah: Fair enough! I can see that POV.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


i think there is a false assumption that tournament/competitive players represent the majority of 40k. Its the complete opposite. Casual players that buy the models they think look good are the majority and these are the ones that don't necessarily buy models because of their performance on the tabletop.

While there is really no way of knowing this, one could argue that diehard tournament players might have the largest proportion of whales amongst them. It's basically the premise for the whole idea that GW incentivises sales of certain armies/units through their consistently "bad" balancing, which again is not that easy to prove in the first place.