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The Helbrute and Cultists formation literally did that as well.

Back onto what 40k "should" be something that has crossed my mind a few times is that I sometimes wish 40k did the whole tier thing you see in Blood Bowl. Like tell us what armies are supposed to be bonkers good versus the stunty armies (which I assume would include Guard).

I don't mean this as a cheapshot at anyone's army, (heck I'm working on a Catachan army ATM) but I almost wonder if setting expectations early by saying "this is roughly where your army sits in terms of power by design" would help smooth things over in the community.

For those who are curious: in Blood Bowl the best teams tend to have few special rules to start with but have very good stats and cost a lot to field, while as you move down the tiers the stats get worse but the teams tend to pick up extra rules and are cheaper so you get more models on your team. This brings you down to the stunties who get a slew of rules and are basically the easiest to spam a large number of models but are slow and generally have poor stats (basically if you hit a stunty they're probably injured or dead) and sometimes have access to relatively strong options that only exist for a single drive when fielded because they're technically illegal in universe.

I know the idea isn't super popular with the more diehard comp crowd who wants every army to fall into that 45%-55% win rate range, but I still wonder sometimes if it'd promote a healthier game overall.

I mean just look at Blood Bowl which is a fairly competetive game despite saying "some teams are better or worse than others on purpose".

 ClockworkZion wrote:
The Helbrute and Cultists formation literally did that as well.

Back onto what 40k "should" be something that has crossed my mind a few times is that I sometimes wish 40k did the whole tier thing you see in Blood Bowl. Like tell us what armies are supposed to be bonkers good versus the stunty armies (which I assume would include Guard).

I don't mean this as a cheapshot at anyone's army, (heck I'm working on a Catachan army ATM) but I almost wonder if setting expectations early by saying "this is roughly where your army sits in terms of power by design" would help smooth things over in the community.

For those who are curious: in Blood Bowl the best teams tend to have few special rules to start with but have very good stats and cost a lot to field, while as you move down the tiers the stats get worse but the teams tend to pick up extra rules and are cheaper so you get more models on your team. This brings you down to the stunties who get a slew of rules and are basically the easiest to spam a large number of models but are slow and generally have poor stats (basically if you hit a stunty they're probably injured or dead) and sometimes have access to relatively strong options that only exist for a single drive when fielded because they're technically illegal in universe.

I know the idea isn't super popular with the more diehard comp crowd who wants every army to fall into that 45%-55% win rate range, but I still wonder sometimes if it'd promote a healthier game overall.

I mean just look at Blood Bowl which is a fairly competetive game despite saying "some teams are better or worse than others on purpose".

I don't think this is a good idea for a whole host of reasons completely independent of the comp crowd; if you're trying to be a 'model company' telling people who want to play with their cool toys "oh, no, the stuff you like is low-tier on purpose, don't expect to have interesting games unless you buy different models" is a recipe for even more frustration and complaining than you get already because people will realize that their stuff is crap on purpose faster. Not to mention that GW's business model relies on armies fluctuating from the top tier to the bottom tier and back again, so trying to implement an official tier system would still require that they dramatically alter their release model, unless you're expecting people to not be grouchy when their top-tier army gets pushed to the bottom tier by age and inattention.

You say that but look at Blood Bowl. Heck, people even go out of their eays to play bad teams on purpose there, and really it's more "strong, average, weak" split than "best, good, worst" split with the biggest component being based around the innate stats of the army with the weakest teams getting the most rules to ignore rules (like dodging at no penalty) to balance their weaker statlines.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
The Helbrute and Cultists formation literally did that as well.

Back onto what 40k "should" be something that has crossed my mind a few times is that I sometimes wish 40k did the whole tier thing you see in Blood Bowl. Like tell us what armies are supposed to be bonkers good versus the stunty armies (which I assume would include Guard).

I don't mean this as a cheapshot at anyone's army, (heck I'm working on a Catachan army ATM) but I almost wonder if setting expectations early by saying "this is roughly where your army sits in terms of power by design" would help smooth things over in the community.

For those who are curious: in Blood Bowl the best teams tend to have few special rules to start with but have very good stats and cost a lot to field, while as you move down the tiers the stats get worse but the teams tend to pick up extra rules and are cheaper so you get more models on your team. This brings you down to the stunties who get a slew of rules and are basically the easiest to spam a large number of models but are slow and generally have poor stats (basically if you hit a stunty they're probably injured or dead) and sometimes have access to relatively strong options that only exist for a single drive when fielded because they're technically illegal in universe.

I know the idea isn't super popular with the more diehard comp crowd who wants every army to fall into that 45%-55% win rate range, but I still wonder sometimes if it'd promote a healthier game overall.

I mean just look at Blood Bowl which is a fairly competetive game despite saying "some teams are better or worse than others on purpose".

That would require GW to both know their game well enough to do so, and admit that not all factions are equal.

...That sounds like you're proposing making the job of balancing 40k dramatically harder by adding a whole extra layer of nuance to the tier designations, as well as telling customers "no, the minis you like are deliberately weak on purpose".

I think they know how they intend the game to be played fine, thst judt tuns counter to the "optimize the he'll out of it" approach people take when the limiters are off.

If anything it's the transparency on army balance that is the real hurdle.

I think it works for Bloodbowl because teams are small, cheap, and easy.

You can dip into and out of teams for £20 and a weekend, easily, for fully painted. There's no hard feelings if your favourite team sucks because little was invested into them.
If you get bored of having your favourite Halflings pasted, it's not big deal to paint up some Dwarfs and go smash some people for a couple of games.

But for 40k you're looking at £hundreds and months of work. You're easily looking at 10x the investment of Bloodbowl, if not 20x.
That's waaay too much to turn around and tell someone "sorry, they're supposed to suck, they always will suck. If you don't like sucking - do all of that again for this other army".

 AnomanderRake wrote:
...That sounds like you're proposing making the job of balancing 40k dramatically harder by adding a whole extra layer of nuance to the tier designations, as well as telling customers "no, the minis you like are deliberately weak on purpose".

I think you misunderstand.

What I'm saying is something that could be applied right now AND would tighten design focus.

So points are already half of this system, but the other half is special rules. The stronger the average statline on a Blood Bowl team is (passing, movement, agility, toughness, armout, ect) the less bonus rules that team starts with (there is a whole levelling system for playing in a season which allows teams to improve and the strong teams often have the modt positional players who can learn a wide range of skills versus the weaker teams who don't have nearly as many positional players). The weakest teams are typically the Stunty teams (Snotlings, Goblins, Halflings) who have the slowest movement, are the easiest to injure and have some the lowest skill based stats of all the teams. But they also get a bunch of extra rules making them harder to actually tackle as they run it up the field.

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

Yes, this means admitting that there is a reasonable expectation players should have to win with an army because it's statline isn't as strong but they get rules than can help them in different ways (Goblins are great at employing weapons and fouling for example, and Halflings are pretty good at getting thrown by their Freeman teammates allowing them to get up the board faster).

Basically playing stunty is going in to play the underdog and knowing your games will be uphill battles against foes stronger, faster and better equipped than you. Kind of sounds like playing the Guard honestly.

What I'm saying is something that could be applied right now AND would tighten design focus.

It _might_ tighten design focus on the factions that are 'supposed' to matter, but it would obviously have the opposite effect on whichever poor schlubs don't make the cut. That isn't a reasonable approach to game design.

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

Here's your first point of failure. Nothing is designed like that. The more layers of special rules, the more likely the army is to have absurd exploits.

I have a solution: Go to a D12 system in 10th. That was GW can still sell it's stupid D6 dice, but we now predominately roll off a d12 system. So now GW gets to sell us all new dice, and we get a system that is doubled the possibility for balance and refinement. Now instead of 3s to hit, it would be 6s. And Guard Laspistols would wound Titans on a 12+, etc.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

So how will you make the "strong" armies feel unique, do things that you'd expect those forces to be doing, if you don't give them the special rules to do it.

ccs wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

So how will you make the "strong" armies feel unique, do things that you'd expect those forces to be doing, if you don't give them the special rules to do it.

Different stat focuses, different comp and different base abilities of the few that they get mainly.

How would you even determine which armies are supposed to be strong and which armies are supposed to be weak?

I mean, based on my admittedly biased reading of the lore, the weak armies should be the Imperial ones, Tau and Eldar. The IoM because their whole thing is that they are facing the End of Times, Tau because they are the newbies, and Eldar because they are almost extinct.

Now try to sell that to Space Marines players, and I can guarantee that you will get a shitstorm. And I don't expect Tau players to accept it any better (Eldar are used to getting gak on though).

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I think they know how they intend the game to be played fine, thst judt tuns counter to the "optimize the he'll out of it" approach people take when the limiters are off.

Sure, but they also seem indignant to the idea of actually putting in the work to make the game play like their vision. That's entitlement on GW's part.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
What I'm saying is something that could be applied right now AND would tighten design focus.

It would also make 40k a vastly shittier game. Players like fairness. Outright telling people that army X is supposed to beat you for less effort will make people mad; that's what happened when Ward said that about the Chaos Demons codex/Army book.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I have a solution: Go to a D12 system in 10th. That was GW can still sell it's stupid D6 dice, but we now predominately roll off a d12 system. So now GW gets to sell us all new dice, and we get a system that is doubled the possibility for balance and refinement. Now instead of 3s to hit, it would be 6s. And Guard Laspistols would wound Titans on a 12+, etc.

GW's issue really isn't the limitations of the d6 system. Double the possibility is useless when the current issues don't stem from the dice but all the extra gak piled on top.

@Hecaton: you say that it'd make people mad, but is there anything that GW does that doesn't actually make them mad?

And I stand by that it'd at least lean into the lore better considering.

Also, war games don't have to be "fair". Asymmetrical design can work if it's intentionally designed for.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
@Hecaton: you say that it'd make people mad, but is there anything that GW does that doesn't actually make them mad?

And I stand by that it'd at least lean into the lore better considering.

Also, war games don't have to be "fair". Asymmetrical design can work if it's intentionally designed for.

There's a difference between asymmetrical mission design, and "Your army is worse than your friend's army. Deal with it."

 ClockworkZion wrote:
@Hecaton: you say that it'd make people mad, but is there anything that GW does that doesn't actually make them mad?

'You don't have to worry about making things worse because people will be mad anyway' is an amazing new low for design principles.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
@Hecaton: you say that it'd make people mad, but is there anything that GW does that doesn't actually make them mad?

And I stand by that it'd at least lean into the lore better considering.

Also, war games don't have to be "fair". Asymmetrical design can work if it's intentionally designed for.

There's a difference between asymmetrical mission design, and "Your army is worse than your friend's army. Deal with it."

I think there is a drastic misunderstanding of my point, much less what I'm trying to describe (more than likely my fault because I suspect most of the 40k community hasn't tried Blood Bowl).

So to try and clear things things up let me share how the Blood Bowl book describes tiers:


Now I'd like people to think about the lore of the setting and tell me that all armies really feel like they fit into the same tier. Points go a long way to try and smooth the curve, but it's never given the finer tweaks needed to really smooth things by enough to really strike a real balance.And I don't mean to imply different tiers can't play and have a good game. Part of how they balance this is through Team Values which give the weaker team bonus resources (namely gold) to help give them a leg up through the purchase of extra re-rolls, apothecaries, booze, star players, ect that give them bonuses to the game to allow the weaker team things to help them out.

Conceptually I'd rather see something similar in 40k where the team designs around an army fitting into different tiers and admitting that armies like Orks or Guard aren't going to have the same innate power as Marines or Eldar. The lore doesn't support armies being on the same level (heck, lore wise every Marine should basically be it's own unit on the table able to solo multiple squads of Guardsmen with ease but I honestly don't want to push the game to that point), and retooling Power Level to be the tool we use to compare army strength at set up and let the weaker army have a leg up through things they can purchase (such as re-rolls) would smooth the curve quite a bit more while the tier system would tell people which armies are easier or harder to play.

But I also know this was a thought that was not likely to get a lot of traction because it's obvious people like the idea that every army should be exactly equal, even if the game has never managed that and I don't think it ever realistically will.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
@Hecaton: you say that it'd make people mad, but is there anything that GW does that doesn't actually make them mad?

'You don't have to worry about making things worse because people will be mad anyway' is an amazing new low for design principles.

It's more that claiming that something will make people mad isn't a realistic reason to not consider it because people are always mad at GW.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

...Conceptually I'd rather see something similar in 40k where the team designs around an army fitting into different tiers and admitting that armies like Orks or Guard aren't going to have the same innate power as Marines or Eldar. The lore doesn't support armies being on the same level (heck, lore wise every Marine should basically be it's own unit on the table able to solo multiple squads of Guardsmen with ease but I honestly don't want to push the game to that point)...

I see where you're coming from, but I think that this kind of misses the point. A Guardsman shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with a Space Marine (not unless Big E himself comes down to punt the Marine in the ghoulies), but that doesn't mean that Guardsmen can't or shouldn't be on the same level as Space Marines. That's kind of the whole raison d'être of points (and squad sizes, and bespoke systems like Orders, and many other balancing/mechanical systems) - a Space Marine is worth multiple Guardsmen, but there's multiple Guardsmen per Space Marine on the tabletop.

Also, remember: the lore's a double-edged sword. Sure, Chaos Space Marines are capable of soloing Guardsmen en masse in the Chaos books, but swap over to the IG books and suddenly they're getting picked apart by a few Guardsmen, some clever traps, and a whole lot of Poisoned Weapons.

The Blood Bowl comparison doesn't work because it also pokes fun at the fact some sportsball teams are just garbage.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
The Blood Bowl comparison doesn't work because it also pokes fun at the fact some sportsball teams are just garbage.

And every military force is well trained and equipped to handle any foe? Not even true in 40k.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
...Now I'd like people to think about the lore of the setting and tell me that all armies really feel like they fit into the same tier...

The lore, the setting, and the power tier of the armies isn't in any way fixed. Write a tier list now, then write a tier list in a year, lots of things will have flipped around. Write a tier list now, and compare it to a tier list from 4e, and they might have nothing in common. Trying to nail the game to a fixed tier list would pretty much require GW to burn their business model down.

(Before you start talking to me about the lore I will remind you that everyone's army book is written 100% as in-universe "THESE ARE THE STRONGEST THING IN THE GALAXY!" marketing propaganda, and trying to use the lore to create power tiers is purely nonsense.)

Every faction should be capable of creating 2000 point armies roughly combat-potential-equivalent to other 2000 point armies, with high potential for asymmetry in how that's achieved.

I mean just look at Blood Bowl which is a fairly competetive game despite saying "some teams are better or worse than others on purpose".

I don't like how blood bowl does it either, and while it is a fairly competitive game, you also tend to see the same teams repeated over and over for a reason. Those are the good teams.

I've run leagues in BB for 20 odd years and 75-85% of the league rosters are the same small subset of teams.

I'd rather every team or faction be viable because I don't want every game or league or season to be against the same subset of teams / factions every single time.

40k is already a garbage fire of bad balance, so them saying "these factions are supposed to be weak and these factions are supposed to pwn your face" I don't think really solves much of anything other than "if you play this faction we intend for you to be playing on nightmare difficulty while the rest of your opponents know to grab easy-mode armies". Thats what happens in Blood Bowl as well. You DO get the random player that decides the halfling or vampire teams are fun and plays them despite the fact they suck, and they end up winning maybe one or two games if they are lucky and then bow out for playoffs while the rest of the guys that played easy-mode teams go to the playoffs year in year out.

Thats akin to having a Madden league where you get to pick whatever team you want and copies of the same team can exist.

You get a 30 team league with the same 4 nfl teams repeated over and over with the random one or two others thrown in for lolz. Tom Brady would exist like 6-8 times in that league lol.

Thats not a fun league there, not a fun time in BB when everyone is playing dwarfs and orcs and chaos over and over again, and not a fun time in 40k when so many really cool models and factions sit on a shelf while everyone plays the same builds over and over again claiming skill in list building for copy/pasting what they found here or reddit or wherever or had some GT winner build their list for $200 on their site building website.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

...Conceptually I'd rather see something similar in 40k where the team designs around an army fitting into different tiers and admitting that armies like Orks or Guard aren't going to have the same innate power as Marines or Eldar. The lore doesn't support armies being on the same level (heck, lore wise every Marine should basically be it's own unit on the table able to solo multiple squads of Guardsmen with ease but I honestly don't want to push the game to that point)...

I see where you're coming from, but I think that this kind of misses the point. A Guardsman shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with a Space Marine (not unless Big E himself comes down to punt the Marine in the ghoulies), but that doesn't mean that Guardsmen can't or shouldn't be on the same level as Space Marines. That's kind of the whole raison d'être of points (and squad sizes, and bespoke systems like Orders, and many other balancing/mechanical systems) - a Space Marine is worth multiple Guardsmen, but there's multiple Guardsmen per Space Marine on the tabletop.

Also, remember: the lore's a double-edged sword. Sure, Chaos Space Marines are capable of soloing Guardsmen en masse in the Chaos books, but swap over to the IG books and suddenly they're getting picked apart by a few Guardsmen, some clever traps, and a whole lot of Poisoned Weapons.

I spose a big factor here as well really is the kind of culture around playing the game isnt it? you could argue its a bit like choosing a list you know isnt optimized for maximum effectiveness but you think fits into the lore or is just fun to play. I think there is fun to be had playing with a handicap personally even in competitive games.

I mean I wouldnt often just pick a totally handicapped list but I would often think "I want to use X unit/s, how do I do this most effectively?"

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think it works for Bloodbowl because teams are small, cheap, and easy.

You can dip into and out of teams for £20 and a weekend, easily, for fully painted. There's no hard feelings if your favourite team sucks because little was invested into them.
If you get bored of having your favourite Halflings pasted, it's not big deal to paint up some Dwarfs and go smash some people for a couple of games.

But for 40k you're looking at £hundreds and months of work. You're easily looking at 10x the investment of Bloodbowl, if not 20x.
That's waaay too much to turn around and tell someone "sorry, they're supposed to suck, they always will suck. If you don't like sucking - do all of that again for this other army".

Yeah. Deliberately gimping hundreds of £'s army just for fun of it is...Might just as well make army legends at that point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

So how will you make the "strong" armies feel unique, do things that you'd expect those forces to be doing, if you don't give them the special rules to do it.

It's GW style to have illusion that you need special rules to be unique.

tneva82 wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think it works for Bloodbowl because teams are small, cheap, and easy.

You can dip into and out of teams for £20 and a weekend, easily, for fully painted. There's no hard feelings if your favourite team sucks because little was invested into them.
If you get bored of having your favourite Halflings pasted, it's not big deal to paint up some Dwarfs and go smash some people for a couple of games.

But for 40k you're looking at £hundreds and months of work. You're easily looking at 10x the investment of Bloodbowl, if not 20x.
That's waaay too much to turn around and tell someone "sorry, they're supposed to suck, they always will suck. If you don't like sucking - do all of that again for this other army".

Yeah. Deliberately gimping hundreds of £'s army just for fun of it is...Might just as well make army legends at that point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

40k could take the same design ethos where strong statline armies could have the smallest number of bonus rules, while armies like Guard have more bonuses due to how weak their statlines are.

So how will you make the "strong" armies feel unique, do things that you'd expect those forces to be doing, if you don't give them the special rules to do it.

It's GW style to have illusion that you need special rules to be unique.

Well then, they're in good company. It is the rare game indeed that can make unique units with no special rules attached to them. And 40k is definitely not one of them.

A special rule or two is A-OK.

GW takes it to extremes though.
My favourite example is the Ork buggy - the model has a grot hanging off the side with a pistol.
So the vehicle has an extra special rule allowing it to shoot a pistol on top of everything else as an exception to the normal rules.
For a S3 AP- pistol. Genuinely, who cares? Why bother? The time spent rolling that dice isn't worth the damage it does, let alone the ink used to print the rule.
Any sane game would have just left that grot as a cute little piece of decoration and character.

moreorless 803436 11323039 wrote:

I spose a big factor here as well really is the kind of culture around playing the game isnt it? you could argue its a bit like choosing a list you know isnt optimized for maximum effectiveness but you think fits into the lore or is just fun to play. I think there is fun to be had playing with a handicap personally even in competitive games.

I mean I wouldnt often just pick a totally handicapped list but I would often think "I want to use X unit/s, how do I do this most effectively?"

Well the anwser to armies with a limited pool of good units is often that you do not take them, and if you do you will have a very bad time. No idea how GK lists looked before 8th, but since 8th ed the army has been all about 3 units NDKs, Strikes and Interceptors. Everything else is at best very niche and in most cases very bad. this creates a situation where if someone were to decide that they really trust the whole , play what you like, mythos and have an army with a Librarian, GK not in NDK armour and a ton of termintors and paladins, they may as well not come to play vs half the field. And it gets even worse when the person gets the advice that their army can easily be made good, they just need to buy 4 boxs of NDKs and 6 boxs of power armoured troops, and never use the units they like, and everything should be fun for them. Well at least till the army gets nerfed and then when the 2-3 good units get removed you end up with a bad codex, with a bad army and no units to replace the bad stuff.