Do they just completely make it up as they go along?

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.

**The Red Hobbit**

Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
auticus wrote:
Thats why I love alt activation and games where your forces come onto the table.

Alpha strike is not as much a thing because you can actually respond to it instead of just standing there on your thumbs watching your army get removed while you do nothing.

I did have an idea once I never really ran through that could kill two birds with one stone: have it so everything but troops and hq’s have to start in reserves, and you can only bring in a certain amount per turn. Might encourage bringin more normal dudes and decrease alpha strike.

That sounds like a lot of fun. You could also expand it to be per troop slot with Fast attack arriving first and heavy support arriving last.

**Jarms48**

catbarf wrote:

Subfactions in particular are a prime example of a synergy that can significantly improve the value of a unit without touching the cost. Back in 4th Ed if you took Doctrines on Guard or Chapter Tactics on Marines you generally had to pay for them on a per-unit basis. It was crude- a squad of Veterans gets more mileage out of carapace armor than a regular Guardsman squad- but at least it wasn't free.

There were free ones, and they were some of the most picked. For example Close Order Drill, you could give your squads I4. Which meant against armies like marines you'd now be hitting at the same time, or against Orks which from memory had I3 you'd actually hit first. Then there was Drop Troops, which gave all Guard Infantry and Sentinels free deep strike. Whilst deep strike was nowhere near as accurate as it is now, it opened up tons of opportunties.

The others were a great system though, but it did have a lot of balance issues. Like Warrior Weapons being 2 points to swap a lasgun for a laspistol and close combat weapon. Other than that having something like a 90 point infantry squad with carapace armour and other minor buffs was great fun.

**Racerguy180**

chaos0xomega wrote:

Spoiler:

Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
auticus wrote:
Thats why I love alt activation and games where your forces come onto the table.

Alpha strike is not as much a thing because you can actually respond to it instead of just standing there on your thumbs watching your army get removed while you do nothing.

I did have an idea once I never really ran through that could kill two birds with one stone: have it so everything but troops and hq’s have to start in reserves, and you can only bring in a certain amount per turn. Might encourage bringin more normal dudes and decrease alpha strike.

I would argue that you should start with Fast Attack on the board, followed by troops and hq, and then the rest.

It would sure make sense that the fast units get there first. We did this with our Apoc(not game, using 40k rules) deployments and it felt really cool only having infiltrating/fast attack/etc start on the board.
The rule was if it had a movement of more than 10"/jump pack/etc started on the board T1.
Mechanized Infantry & tanks come in T2
Anyone running T3.

**vict0988**

chaos0xomega wrote:
Those game designers are dumb and haven't thought it through, Errata clogs up the game a lot more than a pts change. If Sandy Peterson said that units in Age of Empires should have their stats rather than cost changed then that's a very different thing from a miniature wargame because the game engine handles the rules, you don't have to put sticky notes on your PC screen to remember that your ballista has a lower range than what it says on the unit card. In 40k a Gretchin should not be more difficult to kill than a Guardsman on account of Guardsmen being twice as tall and wearing body armour. The same is true for Age of Empires, if you accidentally assign a stupidly high cost to ballista then you cannot just increase their speed, armour, range and firepower because at some point they stop being ballista and start being a modern tank.

I'll care about your opinion when you pull a few million dollars on kickstarter or launch a multimillion dollar video game franchise. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Until then your opinion about what professionals with a track record of designing and producing actual games are and do is meaningless.

(FYI Sandy Petersen does board games now, and the context he was discussing these changes in was also a board game).

Appeal to authority

**EviscerationPlague**

Jarms48 wrote:
catbarf wrote:

Subfactions in particular are a prime example of a synergy that can significantly improve the value of a unit without touching the cost. Back in 4th Ed if you took Doctrines on Guard or Chapter Tactics on Marines you generally had to pay for them on a per-unit basis. It was crude- a squad of Veterans gets more mileage out of carapace armor than a regular Guardsman squad- but at least it wasn't free.

There were free ones, and they were some of the most picked. For example Close Order Drill, you could give your squads I4. Which meant against armies like marines you'd now be hitting at the same time, or against Orks which from memory had I3 you'd actually hit first. Then there was Drop Troops, which gave all Guard Infantry and Sentinels free deep strike. Whilst deep strike was nowhere near as accurate as it is now, it opened up tons of opportunties.

The others were a great system though, but it did have a lot of balance issues. Like Warrior Weapons being 2 points to swap a lasgun for a laspistol and close combat weapon. Other than that having something like a 90 point infantry squad with carapace armour and other minor buffs was great fun.

Yeah, a system closer to how Tau/AdMech do it where you get a primary Trait and then a few secondary to choose from seems to work best.

**Slipspace**

chaos0xomega wrote:

Spoiler:

To be honest, theres a number of prominent game designers (both tabletop and video games) who I've read various blog posts, interviews, etc. where they discuss balancing games, etc. and they argue that "points" changes (or resource cost changes, etc.) are generally a poor way to balance games (because, again, they are a shaping mechanism more than a balancing mechanism, and by raising/lowering costs you change the shape which causes nth order consequences requiring further changes elsewhere - a good example of this was Astra Militarum in 8th ed, where multiple rounds of points changes attempting to balance conscripts and guardsmen resulted in conscripts costing more than actual guardsmen while still being a better/more effective and efficient choice) and should only ever be adjusted as a means of last resort, and that the more proper way to try to balance a unit in a game would be to adjust stats/abilities to try to make the unit worth the cost ascribed to it. Another argument I often (but not always) hear is that when trying to balance something, its better to try to balance by bringing everything else up to the level of what you are considering to be overperforming than it is to try to balance the overperforming things down to the level of everything else (with only the most egregious examples as the exception), as there are usually less hurt feelings amongst players that way, AND because if you overshoot while trying to "balance up" you have more room to balance back down again and if you undershoot you still have plenty of room to continue balancing up, whereas if you "balance down" you often don't have much room to overshoot or undershoot or make additional changes, etc. as most games tend to balance very close to the "floor" of the design space which leaves you little room to work with (again, astra militarum are a good example of this, if conscripts are overperforming you don't really have much room to "balance down" as their stats are so low that you would be hard-pressed to make them worse and their abilities/intangibles so limited that there isn't much to adjust. If you hike their points cost that very much pushes them above guardsmen in cost, which just breaks them from their intended role of "cheap horde filler unit". If on the other hand you "balance up" other units in the guard list you make them more attractive options to take and thus give incentive to take something other than conscripts while preserving runway (and actually creating runway) for you to then tune down conscripts further via points hike if the improvement to regular guard units comes with a small points increase.

I'm wary of anyone making blanket statements like that. I think it's more accurate to say points are only one way to balance a game. I'd also argue that balancing everything up is not required and can lead to runaway lethality issues as we see in 40k right now. Sometimes it really is the case a unit is just too cheap for what it does. Sometimes the cost is actually important to maintain so you need to use other methods of balancing a unit. For example, SM need to be at least somewhat elite to match their fluff. Individually they should cost more than average and the typical SM army should contain fewer models than most of the other armies in the game. There's a limit to how low you can drop the cost of a SM and still maintain that aspect of their character, so if you find a Tactical is actually worth, say, 10 points, you probably need to adjust their stats and abilities upwards to get them somewhere closer to the 15-20 point range to provide the right feel for the army.

The problem is most systems don't have an easy, user-friendly way to update abilities and stats so points are the go-to method. It's one of the reasons I wish GW would go to a digital ruleset. Necron anti-tank not quite matching the fluff? No problem, just change the damage in the app and it cascades down to everyone using the army overnight.

**Deadnight**

Slipspace wrote:

I'm wary of anyone making blanket statements like that. I think it's more accurate to say points are only one way to balance a game.

Chaos omega is actually more are less on the money with this one.

Points shape structure, they're not a 'way' to balance things. While they can play a role as part of a greater whole, they're the last lever that you should pull. Other structural tools and design paradigms have a far bigger role in feeding into a games balance.

Bear in mind 'assigning a cost' is a problematic approach. You're trying to apply q single, universal, all encompassing value to something irregardless of context and Context is key. What's underpowered in one scenario is broken in another. I give the example of what single value can accurately be applied to an anti tank gun against an armoured opponent on planet bowling ball versus the same anti tank gun on a jungle board with 0 line of sight and against green tide infantry. Unless points values are mutable and self -correct based on the vast amount on quantifiable and semi-quqntofiable contextual aspects of every single unique scenario, they can only ever be considered as a bit-player in the debate.

**Hecaton**

Deadnight wrote:
Points shape structure, they're not a 'way' to balance things. While they can play a role as part of a greater whole, they're the last lever that you should pull.

That totally depends on what the motivation was when assigning the points.

**Slipspace**

Deadnight wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

I'm wary of anyone making blanket statements like that. I think it's more accurate to say points are only one way to balance a game.

Chaos omega is actually more are less on the money with this one.

Points shape structure, they're not a 'way' to balance things. While they can play a role as part of a greater whole, they're the last lever that you should pull. Other structural tools and design paradigms have a far bigger role in feeding into a games balance.

I disagree. Points changes can demonstrably make the game more balanced. They are a way to balance things. Not always the best, but they are a tool designers can use.

The problem with looking at structure and design paradigms is that those are often things you need to set at the start of your game development, then stick to. Not doing that leads to the situations GW constantly finds itself in every edition where the power creep keeps coming because they keep introducing new ideas that are just more powerful than previous approaches.

From a practical POV the problem is that changing those structural issues often involves significant rewrites of the game. So it may well be a more effective way to balance things but it's not practically useful whereas points changes are something you can easily do.

**Kanluwen**

Power Update dataslate just dropped.

**nou**

Slipspace wrote:
Deadnight wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

I'm wary of anyone making blanket statements like that. I think it's more accurate to say points are only one way to balance a game.

Chaos omega is actually more are less on the money with this one.

Points shape structure, they're not a 'way' to balance things. While they can play a role as part of a greater whole, they're the last lever that you should pull. Other structural tools and design paradigms have a far bigger role in feeding into a games balance.

I disagree. Points changes can demonstrably make the game more balanced. They are a way to balance things. Not always the best, but they are a tool designers can use.

The problem with looking at structure and design paradigms is that those are often things you need to set at the start of your game development, then stick to. Not doing that leads to the situations GW constantly finds itself in every edition where the power creep keeps coming because they keep introducing new ideas that are just more powerful than previous approaches.

From a practical POV the problem is that changing those structural issues often involves significant rewrites of the game. So it may well be a more effective way to balance things but it's not practically useful whereas points changes are something you can easily do.

I wonder how many times this has to be iterated, by professionals and educated amateurs alike, so people finally accept the reality that point balance is not some vague, undefined excercise in throwing more or less random numbers at a system and see what sticks. They are a strict math problem that has no solution outside of linear systems. How, just how is this so hard to grasp, that game theory is a well defined discipline of math, of which wargames are just a practical implementation, not some disputable magical land of hunting unicorns? How?

Yes, "points changes are something you can easily do" but those changes do gak to balance the system, they just shift the imbalance around. We had 30 years of practical illustration that this works exactly that way, especially in a living system, and even more so with the expectation of list building as a skill.

The belief that "balance through points" is possible really borders on religious at this point.

**auticus**

I am a points fan. However they can only be strictly accurate when they are designed for a certain type of scenario that doesn't change.

If my scenario has no special rules, line of sight is always what it is, and primary objectives are what they are with a standard terrain set, then the points balanced for that can be very accurate provided that those parameters never change.

Take a dudesman with a rocket launcher that does a bunch of damage. Lets say that the standard is your typical 40k table with very little line of sight blocking and they can do whatever they want basically with minimal effort. You can point cost that at say... 15 points (arbitrary).

The moment you have line of sight blockers on the table and you add more terrain, that dudesman is no longer worth 15 points because he was priced assuming he could do his job with minimal effort... and now he can't because he has to move a lot to see things.

What a lot of designers will then do is find the rough average. Maybe drop dudesman to 10 points.

That can also work assuming that you have games not adhering to one standard....

(we may start seeing one of 40k's main problems here... if they cost on this average or bell curve to take into account a variety of scenarios and tables, but things are always played on a certain type of table... those costs start to be lower than they should be because the playerbase has maneuvered in such a way that the dudesman is always useful, but not paying what he should)

And of course that goes the other way, things costed too high for a set of scenarios and suddenly a scenario shows up where they shine and are worth more than their points.

Which is why I prefer games with gamemasters and narrative lists that aren't trying to optimize.

**EviscerationPlague**

That rocket Launcher argument was literally the worst thing I've read in this thread and we just had someone here say PL was better for balance.

**Slipspace**

nou wrote:

The belief that "balance through points" is possible really borders on religious at this point.

It's a good job I didn't say that, then. Maybe that was difficult to see through the blazing fires of your condescension though.

What I did say, was points are one tool to achieve better balance, but sometimes they're not the tool you need to use. Often, however, they're the only tool a designer can use because the other levers aren't available to them because it would involve changing something fundamental about the way the game or army operates and that's not practical in the real world.

**auticus**

EviscerationPlague wrote:
That rocket Launcher argument was literally the worst thing I've read in this thread and we just had someone here say PL was better for balance.

Thats a wonderful contribution to the conversation. Marvelous. lol

**Dysartes**

EviscerationPlague wrote:
That rocket Launcher argument was literally the worst thing I've read in this thread and we just had someone here say PL was better for balance.

No, this post marks a lower point than auticus' example.

And his example isn't inaccurate. Let's go back to the halycon days where the Chimera was an amphibious vehicle, which had certain advantages when moving through water. How do you apply a universal cost to such an ability, when it can have absolutely no effect on many games (as many tables wouldn't have water features), yet had the potential to be important on others?

**nou**

Slipspace wrote:
nou wrote:

The belief that "balance through points" is possible really borders on religious at this point.

It's a good job I didn't say that, then. Maybe that was difficult to see through the blazing fires of your condescension though.

What I did say, was points are one tool to achieve better balance, but sometimes they're not the tool you need to use. Often, however, they're the only tool a designer can use because the other levers aren't available to them because it would involve changing something fundamental about the way the game or army operates and that's not practical in the real world.

I was commenting at the entire population of people, who think that point balance matter, because as it has been repeatedly pointed out and backed by examples, points aren't a tool to achieve better balance. Points are a tool to shape an imbalance and are used because player base expects them to exist.

Even todays Drukhari update shows, that simple point adjustment wasn't worth a gak and changes to how nerfed units interacted with rules were needed and even "those idiots at GW" recognise that.

**Tyel**

I think you guys are making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Yes - the amount of terrain on a table will impact the wider meta of units. But "Dudesman with a rocket launcher" can be compared against other "Elfman with a Lascannon", or "Fishman with a multimelta" - either in codex, or across codex. And if he's significantly off the pace, he's probably bad, and should have his points changed so he isn't.

You might get a game where *all* anti-tank is weak versus armour, and this encourages an armour meta. But in that case all anti-tank should be buffed (or all armour nerfed).

In theory the amount of terrain on different tables would favour certain armies. Yes. But that's again, not a huge problem - it just means you'd have a slightly divergent meta depending on the terrain you may encounter. Frankly if points were close enough that this was the main kicker, I think it would be hard not to think 40k was actually a fairly balanced game.

Points work because you just need to be close enough. If a unit *should* be 100 points - its not going to break the game if its 95 or 105. Sure competitive players will stuff their lists with the units at 95 - but someone taking a few 105 units isn't throwing the game. The problem is that GW usually end up with units that *should* cost 100 points being 80 or 120. And that sort of gap means someone stuffing 80 point units in their list gets 100-200 points up, and can therefore bring whole extra units - which makes a massive difference.

**Deadnight**

Tyel wrote:
I think you guys are making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Yes - the amount of terrain on a table will impact the wider meta of units. But "Dudesman with a rocket launcher" can be compared against other "Elfman with a Lascannon", or "Fishman with a multimelta" - either in codex, or across codex. And if he's significantly off the pace, he's probably bad, and should have his points changed so he isn't.

All three face the same problem. What single value accurately accounts for their worth against their chosen target on planet bowling ball, and simultaneously against green tide on a jungle board that denies los. Simultaneously for everybunit in the game. One of the three might mathematically be worth 'more' and one of the renining two 'less', but whatever arbitrary numbers you apply won't solve the unsolvable. You don't apply an 'average' value but average =/= accurate.

Tyel wrote:

Points work because you just need to be close enough. If a unit *should* be 100 points - its not going to break the game if its 95 or 105. Sure competitive players will stuff their lists with the units at 95 - but someone taking a few 105 units isn't throwing the game. The problem is that GW usually end up with units that *should* cost 100 points being 80 or 120. And that sort of gap means someone stuffing 80 point units in their list gets 100-200 points up, and can therefore bring whole extra units - which makes a massive difference.

No, you are ignoring context. A unit might be worth 100 in one scenario in one specific match up, twice that in another, half again in another. Times every unit and variable in the game. See above. You're trying to hammer a single universal value to account for all contexts with the underlying assumption being that the average works. The average =/= the accurate/or even the somewhat accurate value. 'Close enough' is a myth. Reducing the variables just shifts the imbalance, hence 'the meta'.

Gw's approach/problem is the assign arbitrary values to whatever they release, under multiple competing and often contradicting design paradigms, coupled to a mechanically poor foundation and complicated by ever increasing auras, multipliers and synergies. 'Point allocation by blind man throwing dart at dartboard' essentially. This is compounded by the age of the system and the lack of constraint/scale (infinity is arguebly better balanced because essentially everything is a human with an autogun and flak armour, 40k has everything from bikers with chains to aircraft to city stomping titans), the # of things in the up (based on the notion that its easier to balance a game of two factions, each with 2 units/single loadout than a game of thousands, but that leaves the issue that were you to gut/combine/homogenise, say 80 or 90% of the game to allow for this, your fanbase will quite literally burn your Nottingham operation to the ground...) amongst many other issues.

Points can work, but there are big costs and compromises involved. but they work as one lever amingst many, in a system where scale is restricted, scope is limited, the unit count is small/manageable and variables reduced to a minimum. And unfortunately with the 'wave' based nature of the business side of thr industry, this won't last long in any game.

**auticus**

I will say this.

When you play 40k and use a variety of scenarios (not just tournament scenarios) with a variety of objectives and a variety of terrain, the game does come closer together.

At least in my experience. The problem was the amounts of holy hell I took in running campaigns that deviated like that because not having optimal lists does make a lot of people very very angry.

**Tyel**

Deadnight wrote:
No, you are ignoring context. A unit might be worth 100 in one scenario in one specific match up, twice that in another, half again in another. Times every unit and variable in the game. See above. You're trying to hammer a single universal value to account for all contexts with the underlying assumption being that the average works. The average =/= the accurate/or even the somewhat accurate value. 'Close enough' is a myth. Reducing the variables just shifts the imbalance, hence 'the meta'.

No, what I'm saying is that if *IF* 40k could get close enough that we were having debates like "oh X is the best list with a lot of terrain, but actually Y is the best list with a medium amount and Z would be the best with none" - the game would be pretty balanced.

Maybe its my lack of imagination - but can you come up with a real unit in today's 40k - not some theoretical one - which becomes dramatically more or less powerful depending on the terrain?

Because I'm drawing a blank. To my mind lists don't work that way now - and I don't think we've ever had that. Historically competitive 40k (and I kind of mean ITC here) has often devolved into a pool of about 3 lists that were collectively agreed to be objectively the best - and this would usually be proven by them dominating the tournament scene until buffs/nerfs changed things up.

Whisper it I guess, but 9th is probably closer to being "balanced" because the nature of the objectives makes gameplay matter a lot more than it did in previous editions. And if you bring a list which works for that purpose it doesn't make a huge difference if you are notionally up or down around 50 points from 2000. Which is possibly why we see a much greater variety of lists placing. As opposed to periods where we've had wall to wall top 4 Iron Hands. Points changes will open that space up more and more - because again, close enough is enough.

**Unit1126PLL**

Zarakynel is the perfect example of a model heavily affected by the terrain.

Her model is smaller than a regular KoS, but has 18 wounds, so regular Obscuring doesn't work. However, being smaller than a regular KOS means she can make use of "actual line of sight blocking terrain" (TLOS blocking) rather than Obscuring much more easily than a KoS can.

So, there are some places Zarakynel can go (e.g. tucked in against walls that block TLOS to her, say a two-level ruin) that a Keeper can't go (the keeper's greater size means it will be seen if it's inside of Obscuring terrain).

Conversely, there are places the Keeper can go that Zarakynel can't go (anywhere behind obscuring terrain, even if nearly half the Keeper towers over the terrain, it cannot be targeted, whilst the same terrain might cover Zarakynel up to her neck but she has 18 wounds so...).

On the tables I've used, employing local terrain built sometimes in 8th and sometimes in 9th, sometimes with bases and sometimes without bases, Zarakynel does hilarious things (a Lord of War her size can fit in a surprising number of places unseen) that a Keeper couldn't do, while a Keeper does hilarious things Zarakynel couldn't do

They almost feel like two completely different models despite one just being the other but with 2 more wounds and a tweaked special rule allowance.

Zarakynel is also 10 points short of literally being twice as expensive...

**Racerguy180**

I've got a question for everyone.

How many datasheets does 40k have across all factions?
Then how many are broken down by unit type?

I think the number would be huge and further illustrates just exactly which type of gak show GW is trying to "BALANCE".

**PenitentJake**

Tyel wrote:
but can you come up with a real unit in today's 40k - not some theoretical one - which becomes dramatically more or less powerful depending on the terrain?

Maybe I'm not seeing your point here, but isn't every unit that ignores LOS more powerful (relatively speaking) on a board packed with terrain than it is on planet bowling ball?

And to build on what Unit said above, any knight is better on a table that actually has scenery that can block LOS- can't see any part of it, you can't shoot it, no matter how big it is.

Again, I may be misunderstanding your question, because this seems really obvious to me.

**auticus**

I know that from 3rd to 8th edition, anytime a lot of terrain was on the table in any of my store campaign events, there was always a chorus of screaming about how unfair it was because the points were balanced around tournament standard tables that barely blocked LOS and now that balance was destroyed because there were a few LOS blocking pieces of terrain on the table.

**Tyel**

PenitentJake wrote:
Maybe I'm not seeing your point here, but isn't every unit that ignores LOS more powerful (relatively speaking) on a board packed with terrain than it is on planet bowling ball?

And to build on what Unit said above, any knight is better on a table that actually has scenery that can block LOS- can't see any part of it, you can't shoot it, no matter how big it is.

Again, I may be misunderstanding your question, because this seems really obvious to me.

Total agreement. but Squigbuggies were still incredibly powerful on planet bowling ball - and that's why you had buggie meta at almost every terrain level.

The point is that you are looking for a unit which is OP in one scenario - and a trap choice in the other. I'm not convinced there is one. Or at least not one I can think of.

Because if you go "well its better on this table, but its okay in that table" then... well, its fine. Its balanced. Its not a problem. Some tables will be better than others - just as certain units will do better in certain matchups than others.

My argument is that this idea of "points can't balance the game" depends on requiring an artificial precision to have a balanced game - which doesn't apply because so much is dependent on dice. This smudges the probability of any individual game.

**auticus**

The point is that you are looking for a unit which is OP in one scenario - and a trap choice in the other.

I find that rarely the case to be honest.

However in D&D I also consider rolling 4d6 and taking the lowest away and assigning the values to your stats fun, and others consider that the avenue of making worthless characters because they can't be optimized.

To many people its binary. Either always take, or never take / worthless.

When I point cost in the games I design its their median value I go with, meaning I acknowledge in some cases they will be worth more and in some cases worth less, but I don't go so far as to say OP in one and TRAP in the other.

The thing is when taking the median, its not precise, but you can't get precise balance from points unless you are only tuning / pointing for a certain scenario under certain conditions.

Anything beyond those conditions and units become a bit more or less useful and to many people that also spells the difference between always and never take because there is a high degree of binary in the community (at least from what I have experienced).

**Backspacehacker**

auticus wrote:
I know that from 3rd to 8th edition, anytime a lot of terrain was on the table in any of my store campaign events, there was always a chorus of screaming about how unfair it was because the points were balanced around tournament standard tables that barely blocked LOS and now that balance was destroyed because there were a few LOS blocking pieces of terrain on the table.

Why do i have a feeling these people that complained mostly played guard, and tau who could shoot your army dead from across the table turn one.

**Toofast**

auticus wrote:

However in D&D I also consider rolling 4d6 and taking the lowest away and assigning the values to your stats fun, and others consider that the avenue of making worthless characters because they can't be optimized.

That sounds like the opposite of fun. I also hated random WL traits, psychic powers, etc. I hate randomness and it also doesn't make sense from a fluff perspective. When you want to learn a new skill or a new language, do you pick something that would be useful or just randomly choose it based on rolling dice?

**nou**

Tyel wrote:

My argument is that this idea of "points can't balance the game" depends on requiring an artificial precision to have a balanced game - which doesn't apply because so much is dependent on dice. This smudges the probability of any individual game.

During 7th ed, there was this "fun" mode of play called Unbound. Nobody ever played unbound because of how ridiculously unbalanced it was, but it is a very good ground for point balance examples, because under Unbound points were the only balancing mechanism in effect. No other restriction applied.

So, under Unbound, you could field a 2000pts army of 400 Hormagaunts against 16 CC Wraithlords with Ghostglaives. In this matchup Hormagaunts would inflict exactly zero wounds on Wraithlords under 7th ed SvsT chart, while Wraithlords would remove only a token number of Hormagaunts, but even then would win every kill point game, 100% win rate, so in this context are ridiculously OP, as even a single Wraithlord with a point cost of 2000pts slapped on it would win at least some games while Hormagaunts would never win.

Now you can instead take 13 Wraithlords with double Scatter Lasers and now 1950 pts Wraith army completely obliterates Hormagaunts swarm, removing on average nearly 300 Hormagaunts in a 5 turn game. We can also skew the game to the opposite side. So now we are back to 16 Ghostglaive Wraithlords, but now they face 250 Hormagaunts upgraded with Toxin Sacs. As soon as CC start, Wraithlords are effectively glued until they die. Those are all 2000 pts armies of units that were usually underperforming in a normal game context.

But that's not all - now see the magic happen. Lets field those 400 naked Hormagaunts against their brothers from another swarm, those very same 250 Toxin Sacs Hormagaunts. Now instead of 2000pts vs 2000pts it is a game of 2000pts vs 1250pts, because Toxin Sacs are a 750pts worth upgrade that does exactly nothing.

Those examples above show why you have to have a functional FOC as a context, because you can only try to weight melee against shooting, against movement, against durability, against vehicles etc if you have well defined boundaries of what proportions of each type of units will be fielded in a game. The more restrictive FOC is, the more balance you can achieve, but at the same time all factions are effectively more and more homogenous. As you approach exactly a single list possible in a single scenario possible, on a single terrain possible, you also approach the best balance possible in a system, but you do so first and foremost by tools completely different than points.