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Jidmah wrote:So yes, internal balance is not a concern for orks outside of the troops slot.

So internal balance is still a concern for Ork infantry.

So, past all the nitpicking of things you've read into my posts, you actually agree with my original point.

Slipspace wrote:I agree. It's odd when the counter arguments for changing the mission design are "but then each mission would favour different types of army" when that's kind of the point in the first place. It's true that you need to be really careful with the mission design in an system with asymmetry because you can't just create scenarios that are flat-out "this style of army loses".

I think the best approach is something used in a number of games, most notably a couple of FFG's Star Wars miniature games. Each player has cards with deployment maps and missions on them, chosen from a larger set of cards, and these form a pool of options at the start of the game. There's a back-and-forth mechanic of eliminating cards from the pool until you end up with a mission/deployment combination (there's also a third set of cards that may or may not be secondary objectives, can't recall right now). It's quite similar to how pairings work in team tournaments in that there's some control for both sides but rarely total control. So you can choose to bring missions that favour your own army, but you may not actually get to play those in some games so you still need flexibility. The good thing about this system is you don't need a huge number of options to create a large number of possibilities. It also leads to scenarios where both players may generally favour the same mission/deployment combo but you then have to decide whether the specific match-up of players and armies favours your preferred mission or whether you'd have a better chance of winning by coming out of your comfort zone.

Dust Warfare took a similar approach. Basically you got a number of points pre-game to spend on mission, deployment, and condition tracks. You and your opponent take turns allocating points to advance the tracks (they're all one-way, so you can't spend points to undo what your opponent did). So if you were playing a gunline, you could put points into battlefield conditions to get rid of night fighting and ensure clear visibility- but then if your opponent was a melee army, they might put points into deployment to start the armies closer together.

I find that the challenge with these systems (and with pick-your-own secondary objectives) is that it's tough to make it so that you can mitigate a bad matchup, without also making it such that you can skew the game to favor your list. I haven't played Star Wars, but I would think that if I have a static gunline, I'd bring just deployments and missions that favor me, and so I'm bound to get something that gives me a leg up. But if it does work in practice, I'd definitely be open to something like that for 40K.

As time goes on, the more I think that 40K's approach of having armies, missions, and battlefields all determined in a vacuum is pretty dated. We talked a little bit about it in the 'do they just make it up as they go along' thread, but I'd be interested to see a 40K where there's more of a tangible connection between those pre-game elements. Maybe a sideboard or 'reinforcement points' so you can bring in tailored forces to counter your opponent or suit the mission, or just mechanics like you discuss where players have some input into the mission setup. I think a lot of the heartburn over skew lists and varied mission objectives could be alleviated if you had some control over the process.

The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Well, if you can you'll probably be paying 85+ points to do so and tanking their charge. It'd be something that would concern me more in 8th when overwatch was free and unrestricted.

That said this is the way they have to word it. The charge result can't be determined prior to overwatch.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Well, if you can you'll probably be paying 85+ points to do so and tanking their charge. It'd be something that would concern me more in 8th when overwatch was free and unrestricted.

That said this is the way they have to word it. The charge result can't be determined prior to overwatch.

I think the leaked rumor has them at 18 points per model as well. Seems like a risky gamble, but does appear to be a bit of an oversight. I'd be curious how they can reword it to work. Maybe "Cannot fire overwatch or etc at this unit when the charge is declared"

Tyel wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
AoS tried designing missions like that for a long time and what happens is that around 20% of games end up finishing with 10 minutes of deployment. People still skew, hoping for favorable draws. If they get those good draws against a TAC army or an army with an unfavorable skew, they win pretty much automatically. If they get bad draws against tac armies or against an army that has a more favorable skew, they pretty much always lose. So you end up with a lot of events where the results were: 1. Skew army that got lucky, 2. Tac army that didn't draw skew in the bad missions, 3. Slightly less lucky skew army, 4. Slightly less lucky skew army.

Was going to post something like this.

Whether in a casual game or a tournament, its not fun to roll up the mission and find one list has a major advantage over the other.
Saying "players should mitigate" is a bit meaningless - because some won't.

That's why you need to have a system where you do something like draw/roll three missions, and then players each get to veto one.

 Sasori wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Well, if you can you'll probably be paying 85+ points to do so and tanking their charge. It'd be something that would concern me more in 8th when overwatch was free and unrestricted.

That said this is the way they have to word it. The charge result can't be determined prior to overwatch.

I think the leaked rumor has them at 18 points per model as well. Seems like a risky gamble, but does appear to be a bit of an oversight. I'd be curious how they can reword it to work. Maybe "Cannot fire overwatch or etc at this unit when the charge is declared"

I suppose they could just say up to two units and not worry about legitimate edge cases.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

What really needs to happen is content creators need to start publicly dragging them for it, but that is unlikely to happen because people love those clicks too much.

Hecaton wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

What really needs to happen is content creators need to start publicly dragging them for it, but that is unlikely to happen because people love those clicks too much.

There are plenty of content creators who entire platforms are built on dragging GW (such as Spikey Bits), thing is when all you do is drag GW for everything then it all becomes white noise, especially for those being targeted by it.

It's not that I don't think deconstructing the game and what works and what doesn't wouldn't be valuable, I just think that your average person who'd want to drag GW for their design choices are the ones who farm reactionary clicks all the time to the point that I don't think GW would notice.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Well, if you can you'll probably be paying 85+ points to do so and tanking their charge. It'd be something that would concern me more in 8th when overwatch was free and unrestricted.

That said this is the way they have to word it. The charge result can't be determined prior to overwatch.

Doesn't need to be this way. Could have been a simple 'you cannot shoot overwatch at this unit' and it would still have done the job.

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The WarCom article today showing the new Howling Banshee rules really make me scratch my head.
The banshee mask rule is either massive oversight that will be FAQ'd or working as intended and the power level is through the roof.
RAW you can declare a charge on every single unit within 12" of a banshee mask unit and those units cannot overwatch or set to defend that turn... You do not even need to successfully make a charge roll...
Is it time to boycott GW until they can get competent rules team?

Well, if you can you'll probably be paying 85+ points to do so and tanking their charge. It'd be something that would concern me more in 8th when overwatch was free and unrestricted.

That said this is the way they have to word it. The charge result can't be determined prior to overwatch.

Doesn't need to be this way. Could have been a simple 'you cannot shoot overwatch at this unit' and it would still have done the job.

I guess the intent was they wanted it to apply even if the Banshees fail their charge?

That or WHC isn't showing the full rule again.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I guess the intent was they wanted it to apply even if the Banshees fail their charge?

That or WHC isn't showing the full rule again.

That's the full rule, the whole datasheet has been leaked already (picture of the codex page). RAW, they turn off overwatch against every target they declare to charge.

 Aenar wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I guess the intent was they wanted it to apply even if the Banshees fail their charge?

That or WHC isn't showing the full rule again.

That's the full rule, the whole datasheet has been leaked already (picture of the codex page). RAW, they turn off overwatch against every target they declare to charge.

So a 12" bubble of no overwatch followed by auto-failing their charge because they can't reach out and touch every unit they're targeting.

Slipspace wrote:
It's odd when the counter arguments for changing the mission design are "but then each mission would favour different types of army" when that's kind of the point in the first place.

To me the benefit of diverse missions is changing how you win, not whether you win. If the mission decides the victor once in a while I'm okay with that, even if the missions were designed for competitive play, but I am saying that is an unfortunate but acceptable cost to get something desirable (different ways to enjoy the game) not the goal in and of itself. If all you wanted was randomly determining whether your army is good or bad at a mission you could just give each player 1D20 VP at the start and/or end of the game. It's much easier to make a game imbalanced than it is to balance a game. How do I wave a wand to get balanced games against Knights if there is a "Titanic bad" mission and a "vehicles bad" mission and the remaining missions are "Titanic stomping ground" missions? I'd much rather every mission be more or less equally easy to play against Knights. If the Knight player wants to go easy on me they can bring a softer Knight list and if I want to go easy on the Knight player I can bring a softer list.

 Mezmorki wrote:

Tyel wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
AoS tried designing missions like that for a long time and what happens is that around 20% of games end up finishing with 10 minutes of deployment. People still skew, hoping for favorable draws. If they get those good draws against a TAC army or an army with an unfavorable skew, they win pretty much automatically. If they get bad draws against tac armies or against an army that has a more favorable skew, they pretty much always lose. So you end up with a lot of events where the results were: 1. Skew army that got lucky, 2. Tac army that didn't draw skew in the bad missions, 3. Slightly less lucky skew army, 4. Slightly less lucky skew army.

Was going to post something like this.

Whether in a casual game or a tournament, its not fun to roll up the mission and find one list has a major advantage over the other.
Saying "players should mitigate" is a bit meaningless - because some won't.

That's why you need to have a system where you do something like draw/roll three missions, and then players each get to veto one.

Yeah, the ideal system is one where neither army gets their ideal scenario but both have a workable path to victory.

ERJAK wrote:

Except, as demonstrated by the CA and balance sheet we've already had, GW doesn't intend to use CA OR the slate to do anything to balance the game.

CA2022 and the Balance Slate arguably made balance WORSE. They didn't do much to curb the most powerful armies, took the legs out from under mid-tier armies, and did nothing to help low tier armies/units.

Real cool that a mono-build mid-tier at best army like Daemons got fethed. And people expect me to pay GW for their books?

I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

I secretly suspect that anyone that's still mad at other people acquiring rules...nontraditionally...works for GW.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

How you get your rules is between you, God, & some Russians....

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

I secretly suspect that anyone that's still mad at other people acquiring rules...nontraditionally...works for GW.

Some people just have a servile demeanor to the point of absurdity.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

I think the issue is less that GW is losing out on money because of you, but rather that you are publicly promoting illegal activities despite the forum operators explicitly not wanting that.
There is a difference between pointing to wahapedia when it fits the topic and regularly starting rallying cries for piracy whenever the word "book" is used.

I buy a lot of books that other peoples wouldn't, but I draw the line where GW isn't even close to providing enough value for the money I spend. Book of Rust was a book like that which I didn't buy because they were massively overcharging for the content. However, compared to this pair of booklets with just 12 missions and an afternoon's work worth of point updates, even the Book of Rust looks like an awesome publication. There are white dwarf issues with more content than that.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Speaking of, a friend got his a few days ago and it was two mission books, no point book in the shrinkwrap

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Speaking of, a friend got his a few days ago and it was two mission books, no point book in the shrinkwrap

That's the best thing that could happen to him, isn't it?

 catbarf wrote:


So internal balance is still a concern for Ork infantry.

Only if you believe that troops have to be the bulk of the army. For example kommandos and stormboyz are great, and they're basically boyz (just faster or with better save in cover + infiltration trick), meganobz are ok. Even trukk boyz are ok. Or snaggas in kill rig based lists.

Overall we never had an internal balance so high. It's not perfect of course, but for GW standards we can't complain. At least half of our codex see play at competitive levels, even more if we just consider semi-competitive metas, and ours is a pretty wide roster.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

I think the issue is less that GW is losing out on money because of you, but rather that you are publicly promoting illegal activities despite the forum operators explicitly not wanting that.
There is a difference between pointing to wahapedia when it fits the topic and regularly starting rallying cries for piracy whenever the word "book" is used.

I buy a lot of books that other peoples wouldn't, but I draw the line where GW isn't even close to providing enough value for the money I spend. Book of Rust was a book like that which I didn't buy because they were massively overcharging for the content. However, compared to this pair of booklets with just 12 missions and an afternoon's work worth of point updates, even the Book of Rust looks like an awesome publication. There are white dwarf issues with more content than that.

Not speaking from experience, but don't most large companies just factor in "theft" as "loss". When I worked in Lowe's Sales, we called it "Loss Prevention" and it was factored into the cost of the goods, and the amount we did for sales. The biggest item not surprisingly was obviously Copper wire/pipe. A 100' roll of copper conduit might never go on sale, because we would get 6-10 bundles stolen per month.

Point being, I am sure GW likely has some form of similar metric/calculation for IP Theft. They aren't playing or even trying for 100% product sales. They are happy if 40-60% of their consumer base buys the books. Because they know that it only cost them X dollars to write it, print it, and ship it. If they make X>|=60% they've covered costs and made a suitable return on investment.

Someone with an economics degree please help me to understand this. Am I wrong?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I'd wager that even some of the most diehard fans didn't pay 40 bucks for the new missions and worthless points updates.

Don't mention that to some of the posters here, the idea that I'm not paying for my rules drives them up the wall.

I think the issue is less that GW is losing out on money because of you, but rather that you are publicly promoting illegal activities despite the forum operators explicitly not wanting that.
There is a difference between pointing to wahapedia when it fits the topic and regularly starting rallying cries for piracy whenever the word "book" is used.

I buy a lot of books that other peoples wouldn't, but I draw the line where GW isn't even close to providing enough value for the money I spend. Book of Rust was a book like that which I didn't buy because they were massively overcharging for the content. However, compared to this pair of booklets with just 12 missions and an afternoon's work worth of point updates, even the Book of Rust looks like an awesome publication. There are white dwarf issues with more content than that.

Not speaking from experience, but don't most large companies just factor in "theft" as "loss". When I worked in Lowe's Sales, we called it "Loss Prevention" and it was factored into the cost of the goods, and the amount we did for sales. The biggest item not surprisingly was obviously Copper wire/pipe. A 100' roll of copper conduit might never go on sale, because we would get 6-10 bundles stolen per month.

Point being, I am sure GW likely has some form of similar metric/calculation for IP Theft. They aren't playing or even trying for 100% product sales. They are happy if 40-60% of their consumer base buys the books. Because they know that it only cost them X dollars to write it, print it, and ship it. If they make X>|=60% they've covered costs and made a suitable return on investment.

Someone with an economics degree please help me to understand this. Am I wrong?

You’re correct that GW is just looking for a % of it’s x consumers to buy various books (and I’m sure these % goals differ based on what the book is).

That said this is different from loss prevention. Because product theft and general loss causes a business to physically lose the product. That means loss prevention has to include costs of replacing, shipping, and potential of lost sales of a product in its calculations.

Pirating just causes lost sale as you are more less copying their product not taking it away from someone else. This means GW just needs to worry about cost of inventory retention and revenue loss when dealing with it. Why I don’t really feel bad doing it as I don’t believe their non-fluff books warrant existence as a product.

And being able to access the books for free might keep someone in the game and buying models who wouldn't otherwise, which is a clear net positive for sales.

I personally still will buy books that are directly related to my army, I know I'm practically getting scammed but I like the feeling of having a physical book.

But anything beyond that like CA? yeah there are other ways.

It's actually funny to me that GW hasn't come down with far more draconian anti-3d printing measures. Surely they stand to lose the most money due to non-sales of minis?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It's actually funny to me that GW hasn't come down with far more draconian anti-3d printing measures. Surely they stand to lose the most money due to non-sales of minis?

Nah not really, they have no need to because 3d printing is not an threat to GW.
When you really break it down and look at it, GW has no reason to worry about 3d printing currently like many people like to say it is and here is why.

3d printing, for all its ease of access that it has is still a very cumbersome, lengthy, and space consuming process that is not something you can just go out and easily get into and then come out ahead in a matter of a few months over just buying GW products. The other things is, look at the people who are 3d printing, they fall into 3 major groups.
Bit printers
Terrain printers
Full blown model reprints.

The first 2 groups are non issues to GW, because the bit printer groups are a market that they cant actually maintain themselves, the cost to make all the various shoulder pads, doors, helmets, special weapons is in no way possible to do on a global scale, the market for people who want a kopesh power sword for their thousand sons, or a rune marked storm shield for terminators, is not big enough to warrant them sculpting, building, stocking, shipping and making the mold for, so this is really no revenue loss to them, if anything it helps them because when people can make the models look the way they want, they would be more inclined to buy the base model from GW.
This is however a great market for OnDemand printing, which we see great success with through things like pop goes the monkey.

The second group, being terrain printers, also dont really pose an issue to GW as this again is not a market they really do anything in, and GW terrain overall has been notoriously bad/overpriced, so much so, that GW hardly even stocks the things anymore, good luck finding a bastion or an imperial bunker in the store. So really, they dont care, + they know that they cant force people to use GW terrain no matter how hard they try, imagine if GW said you had to use realm of battle boards when they existed.

Then finally the third group is the one that so many people think is going to be the down fall of GW, but it wont be. The people who invest this type of time, and money, to go out of their way to 3d print models, are the same group of people who already buy china cast, who downloads the books from mega up loads, the people who are not in the store buying paints, or brushes from GW. The main audience that are doing this are already not really GW customers, they are just changing where they are getting the product from, rather then GW, rather then China, they are just doing themselves, so GW was never really getting a profit from them any way.

The other reason why 3d printing is not a threat, is because its not reasonably fast enough to be a reasonable production threat like recasting is over in china.
The cost to get a recasting set up is far cheaper then the set up to 3dprint. Think of how long it would take you to print a single warlord titan, then think how long it takes for a re-caster to do so?
So even then, its not a threat to their production like recasting is.

It truly is a boogie man.