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Just to add to the excelent points Deadnight listed above, let’s not forget, that 40k competitive players DO NOT want balance, they actively DEMAND imbalance and just obscure this desire by calling it „list building skill”. As long as „a bunch of assorted units should lose to carefully planned army” remains to be a value in a game, there will be problems of seal clubbing the newbies, there will be problems of „this cool looking unit means I auto lose/win”, and the more listbuilding should matter, the bigger this problem will be. We’ve been over this many times over - „nobody expects perfect balance, just good enough” in reality means something different entirely - „we expect just a right amount of imbalance, not too little, not too much”.

Now about „4th ed was vastly better balanced and this is the same game but older” is a false statement altogether - 2nd ed, 4th ed, 8th ed, those games basically share only the name and models. You can’t really say that because some design elements like d6 and hit/wound/save are constant, they are the same game. They all result in a vastly different gameplay and feel, and attract different playerbase.

About balance and what can be done to improve it - there are many mechanics that are utilised in various games that improve balance and exactly none of them can easily be ported to 40k, but not because of game design limitations, but because of the community resistance and false beliefs about „balance through points”. Just two examples that keep appearing - sideboards and gradual deployment/„summoning” of units from collection, not army list. Both of those cause gak storms and both are great balancing tools at game designer disposal. There are more, like sensibly implemented stratagems, end of round damage resolution, etc, but all of them „are not 40k”. Just look at the „your somewhat realistic ideal 40k” thread and the limitations put on the excersise.

The bottom line - the biggest obstacle to fix 40k is the rut the community is in.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Remember, World Eaters are getting their own book at some point.

Which is all well and good for those wanting to play World Eaters. But for those of us who just want to keep using Cult Troops in our Chaos armies, we're just gak outta luck. Well, except for Noise Marines, but Noise Marines are also gak out of luck as well, given they're a resin conversion kit for a model that GW doesn't even produce anymore.

First they took away our Daemons. Now our Cult Troops. Why do they hate us?

The rumor is that you can actually keep cult troops, the datasheets just aren't in the book.

Right. "You want to run some Berzerkers in your Black Legion warband? That'll be another $55 for another codex for one datasheet. Want some Rubrics too? That'll be another $55 for one datasheet, again. Oh, and you want some Plague Marines too? Big spender, aren't you?"

And none of them get Legion traits either. Definitely not an optimal solution.

Ha I keep forgetting people pay for the rulebooks.

GW's habit of demanding people spend 200 dollars on books before they even play is really dumb. Especially since they also demand you pay a monthly fee to use all of those digitally in a sub par program that is often just incorrect

nou wrote:
Just to add to the excelent points Deadnight listed above, let’s not forget, that 40k competitive players DO NOT want balance, they actively DEMAND imbalance and just obscure this desire by calling it „list building skill”. As long as „a bunch of assorted units should lose to carefully planned army” remains to be a value in a game, there will be problems of seal clubbing the newbies, there will be problems of „this cool looking unit means I auto lose/win”, and the more listbuilding should matter, the bigger this problem will be. We’ve been over this many times over - „nobody expects perfect balance, just good enough” in reality means something different entirely - „we expect just a right amount of imbalance, not too little, not too much”.

Now about „4th ed was vastly better balanced and this is the same game but older” is a false statement altogether - 2nd ed, 4th ed, 8th ed, those games basically share only the name and models. You can’t really say that because some design elements like d6 and hit/wound/save are constant, they are the same game. They all result in a vastly different gameplay and feel, and attract different playerbase.

About balance and what can be done to improve it - there are many mechanics that are utilised in various games that improve balance and exactly none of them can easily be ported to 40k, but not because of game design limitations, but because of the community resistance and false beliefs about „balance through points”. Just two examples that keep appearing - sideboards and gradual deployment/„summoning” of units from collection, not army list. Both of those cause gak storms and both are great balancing tools at game designer disposal. There are more, like sensibly implemented stratagems, end of round damage resolution, etc, but all of them „are not 40k”. Just look at the „your somewhat realistic ideal 40k” thread and the limitations put on the excersise.

The bottom line - the biggest obstacle to fix 40k is the rut the community is in.

Not true, you're making a blanket statement that is probably true for a few meta chasers, but all of the competitive players I know of have a favorite faction and want to play that faction. Case in point, https://www.goonhammer.com/editorial-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-play-drukhari. They switch to the latest meta army because they have to in order to compete. So your whole cause-and-effect is backwards. Furthermore, as ancedotal evidence, if you watch the 40k channels on youtube, all the playtesters are petitioning GW to fix the balance.

Sideboards aren't a great balancing mechanism in a tournament scene, they're just a way of list tailoring for specific opponents to provide an advantage. One of the balancing mechanisms in the game is "TAC". If you can't deal with knights and deal with 100 guardsmen, then you won't get very far in a tournament. However, if Tau can tailor their list to either take 100 S4 indirect shots, or tons of railguns, or tons of S6 AP0 shots as needed, then those types of lists aren't gatekeepers anymore, we're in a worse boat than we are now.

However, I think you're dead-on with "sensibly implemented stratagems". Strats right now just dial everything up to 12 on units that are already dialed up to 11. It's just pure unadulteraded gak right now.

Wanting list building being a skill explicitly is a desire for imbalance. Almost nobody will say that, but thats exactly what they are looking for.

Otherwise you could assemble a 2000 point list and your opponent could assemble a 2000 point list and know that the two things are in the same ballpark so long as they were 2000 points.

List building as a skill means having the skill (which is in most cases primary school math skill) to figure out which items are not worth their point cost and which items are worth more than their point cost, and then hemming in on those things.

================================
In tournament environments this is fine.

The problem is that tournament environment often is also casual environment for a lot of groups so buying what you think looks cool and play with that is a great idea in theory but can be utterly ruined in practice if you don't have the kind of group that you can do that with.

So at least for me I hold GW's bad balance accountable and I don't want list building to be a heavy factor in the game.

Why can't GW just give each army a potential army list you can build, but test and optimise it with one specific build in mind. This way the same book would have a working army for people that have to actually play the game, and those that want to pick stuff at random would have the option too.

Karol wrote:
Why can't GW just give each army a potential army list you can build, but test and optimise it with one specific build in mind. This way the same book would have a working army for people that have to actually play the game, and those that want to pick stuff at random would have the option too.

I'm not sure what this would fix or how it would fix anything.

 auticus wrote:
Wanting list building being a skill explicitly is a desire for imbalance. Almost nobody will say that, but thats exactly what they are looking for.

Otherwise you could assemble a 2000 point list and your opponent could assemble a 2000 point list and know that the two things are in the same ballpark so long as they were 2000 points.

List building as a skill means having the skill (which is in most cases primary school math skill) to figure out which items are not worth their point cost and which items are worth more than their point cost, and then hemming in on those things.

================================
In tournament environments this is fine.

The problem is that tournament environment often is also casual environment for a lot of groups so buying what you think looks cool and play with that is a great idea in theory but can be utterly ruined in practice if you don't have the kind of group that you can do that with.

So at least for me I hold GW's bad balance accountable and I don't want list building to be a heavy factor in the game.

I don't want list-building to be a skill. At least, not any major skill.

I'm okay with there being bad lists, but basic competency with the system should let you know when you're building a bad list. It should be really flipping obvious when you're doing something stupid-like taking, say, three Chaplains, three units of Servitors, and three Drop Pods for your entire list. If that list is bad, even against an equal points list, that's okay. But when a basic battalion of Space Marines or Guard or whatever are bad... That's a problem.

nou wrote:
Just to add to the excelent points Deadnight listed above, let’s not forget, that 40k competitive players DO NOT want balance, they actively DEMAND imbalance and just obscure this desire by calling it „list building skill”. As long as „a bunch of assorted units should lose to carefully planned army” remains to be a value in a game, there will be problems of seal clubbing the newbies, there will be problems of „this cool looking unit means I auto lose/win”, and the more listbuilding should matter, the bigger this problem will be. We’ve been over this many times over - „nobody expects perfect balance, just good enough” in reality means something different entirely - „we expect just a right amount of imbalance, not too little, not too much”.

Now about „4th ed was vastly better balanced and this is the same game but older” is a false statement altogether - 2nd ed, 4th ed, 8th ed, those games basically share only the name and models. You can’t really say that because some design elements like d6 and hit/wound/save are constant, they are the same game. They all result in a vastly different gameplay and feel, and attract different playerbase.

About balance and what can be done to improve it - there are many mechanics that are utilised in various games that improve balance and exactly none of them can easily be ported to 40k, but not because of game design limitations, but because of the community resistance and false beliefs about „balance through points”. Just two examples that keep appearing - sideboards and gradual deployment/„summoning” of units from collection, not army list. Both of those cause gak storms and both are great balancing tools at game designer disposal. There are more, like sensibly implemented stratagems, end of round damage resolution, etc, but all of them „are not 40k”. Just look at the „your somewhat realistic ideal 40k” thread and the limitations put on the excersise.

The bottom line - the biggest obstacle to fix 40k is the rut the community is in.

actual competitive players want the joy of matching skill across the table and that is more fun when games are balanced and your choices are what decides the outcome.

its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

Karol wrote:
Why can't GW just give each army a potential army list you can build, but test and optimise it with one specific build in mind. This way the same book would have a working army for people that have to actually play the game, and those that want to pick stuff at random would have the option too.

They do. They often give you several. They have for years & many editions and across several games (40k/Sigmar/WHFB). Or do you think that is pure happenstance that certain "builds" just conveniently fit nicely into 2k pts (or whatever the norm is for the time the book is published)?

Of course then they'll go feth around with the pt values etc while claiming "better balance".

 Ordana wrote:
actual competitive players want the joy of matching skill across the table and that is more fun when games are balanced and your choices are what decides the outcome.

its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

Exalted, and I wish more people understood that not everyone who's interest in 40k as a game is a meta chasing, WAAC donkey cave

 Ordana wrote:
actual competitive players want the joy of matching skill across the table and that is more fun when games are balanced and your choices are what decides the outcome.

its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

Few will understand this message.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
actual competitive players want the joy of matching skill across the table and that is more fun when games are balanced and your choices are what decides the outcome.

its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

Exalted, and I wish more people understood that not everyone who's interest in 40k as a game is a meta chasing, WAAC donkey cave

Ordana, youre not wrong, but just... be careful with statements like this.

This ridks going down the road of 'othering' - talking about 'true' competitive players embodying all these wonderful positive traits and 'competitives' that dont who are presented as the real bogeymen who are the real villains of the community is often a double edged sword thay allows folks to handwave away any notions of personal responsibility, accountability or awareness of the effects and consequences on others of the lists they bring to the board.

I mean he'll, I am a competitive player. Give me a list and watch me do the absolute best I can with it (unless of course if I'm playing against someone who I think deserves the win a bit more). I love list-building. As a narrative player who subscribes to the idea of 'game-building', making fair lists collaboratively is a skill, what you won't see me or mine do, or champion is blind, 'list-building-for-advantage'. In that way lies the dark side...

The issue is that listbuilding sort of covers two different things.

There is just stacking as much mathhammer advantage as you can. Most people I think don't actually like this - or consider it especially skillful. Mainly because its all on the internet... seemingly almost hours after a codex drops these days.

But there is also just building a list with the various missions, secondaries and likely opponents in mind.

So for example - take Siegler's last LVO winning list.
Its not especially skewed. You've got 4 characters. 2 big blocks of troops. 2 small units of troops. One small unit of elite shooty guys. 3 bigger units of punchy guys. 3 chickenwalkers (sorry Semper) and 2 tanks.

But the point is those units all have an explicable purpose. You've got anchor units, chaff units, counter charge/pressure units. Cornering/long range output units. The mathhammer is very good (which realistically tends to be a thing in most upper half tournament list) - but the game plan has been thought about. This is usually the case with all competitive lists - even as the pool of viable options may be narrowed down by overpowered mathhammer.

Its not really surprising - even before we get into rules imbalance - that this forward planning has an advantage over someone who has just gone "uh... I've just grabbed whatever cos I liked them". And realistically I think it should.

The problem is its often hard the separate the two out. I mean someone might have a plan if they show up with ye old cliche of 3 blinged out 10 man tactical squads (with obligatory rhinos), a devastator squad, some assault marines, a unit of terminators, a dreadnaught, a predator and 5~ characters. But odds are they didn't. That's just what they'd collected.

Now you could take that list and try and work out a plan. And if you do you'll probably do better than if you don't. But its hard to separate out the two.

I think that in a system where 2000 points vs 2000 points SHOULD BE IN THE SAME BALLPARK that the player that puts more thought in their list is still going to have the advantage because they simply put more thought into their list.

The lists however are mathematically in the same ballpark with each other.

The lists where a 2000 point list functions at the power of a 5000 point list vs another 2000 point list is the issue that I think needs to die in a fire and where a lot of players enjoy and see as a skill (being able to take their 2000 point box and make it weigh like a 5000 point box).

 Ordana wrote:

nou wrote:
Just to add to the excelent points Deadnight listed above, let’s not forget, that 40k competitive players DO NOT want balance, they actively DEMAND imbalance and just obscure this desire by calling it „list building skill”. As long as „a bunch of assorted units should lose to carefully planned army” remains to be a value in a game, there will be problems of seal clubbing the newbies, there will be problems of „this cool looking unit means I auto lose/win”, and the more listbuilding should matter, the bigger this problem will be. We’ve been over this many times over - „nobody expects perfect balance, just good enough” in reality means something different entirely - „we expect just a right amount of imbalance, not too little, not too much”.

Now about „4th ed was vastly better balanced and this is the same game but older” is a false statement altogether - 2nd ed, 4th ed, 8th ed, those games basically share only the name and models. You can’t really say that because some design elements like d6 and hit/wound/save are constant, they are the same game. They all result in a vastly different gameplay and feel, and attract different playerbase.

About balance and what can be done to improve it - there are many mechanics that are utilised in various games that improve balance and exactly none of them can easily be ported to 40k, but not because of game design limitations, but because of the community resistance and false beliefs about „balance through points”. Just two examples that keep appearing - sideboards and gradual deployment/„summoning” of units from collection, not army list. Both of those cause gak storms and both are great balancing tools at game designer disposal. There are more, like sensibly implemented stratagems, end of round damage resolution, etc, but all of them „are not 40k”. Just look at the „your somewhat realistic ideal 40k” thread and the limitations put on the excersise.

The bottom line - the biggest obstacle to fix 40k is the rut the community is in.

actual competitive players want the joy of matching skill across the table and that is more fun when games are balanced and your choices are what decides the outcome.

its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

Well, in my experience such "truly competitive" players... stay away from 40k and seek more symmetrical games that are vastly better suited for that kind of competition. As a former competitive Bridge player I can assure you, no iteration of 40K have ever got close to proper mind sport. So, while I most definitely agree, that such difference exists in wide gaming context, in practice vast majority of 40k competitive players are "competitive".

Agreed. IMO, a "perfect" system would have every unit viable, but you'd still need to build towards synergy of the units and have as good of an answer to different scenarios as possible: while bad lists can still happen, the winner would be determined by who made the best in-game decisions, with the units and synergy they brought, to maximize the effectiveness of what they brought in relation to the scenario and objectives and minimize the effectiveness of the opponent's units as such.

Today was listening too one of my fav podcasts, walking dogs, and one of the co hosts confessed that it had taken him a while, but he realized recently the overtly competitive bent taken by WarCom articles and suggested that it was not so good, because people get the impression that what is cool about a model or unit or faction is the buffs, the table-top in-game performance in the current so-called meta, rather than the background, the artwork, the story and what each model or unit or faction bring to the table in this way..

Point being, the so-called meta affects everyone, and the hobby, and is effectively corrosive, reductive, and counter to the spirit of both the game and the community that supports it.

Have to say that I agree with this assessment, completely. GW management should be ashamed.

nou wrote:


Well, in my experience such "truly competitive" players... stay away from 40k and seek more symmetrical games that are vastly better suited for that kind of competition. As a former competitive Bridge player I can assure you, no iteration of 40K have ever got close to proper mind sport. So, while I most definitely agree, that such difference exists in wide gaming context, in practice vast majority of 40k competitive players are "competitive".

True. Only thing tournament players hate is a cheap to get and easy to play army. Confusing rules overlaps, noob bashing, super expensive armies from factions that struggle to have a non tournament build etc those things are okey. But as soon as a tournament army consists of 40-50 intercessors and 3 dreadnoughts with the point and click game play, suddenly it is a world ending event. Tournament players just don't want to run in to a mirror game 1 and lose it on a go first roll or some random stuff, they have no control, to Jimmy Myfirsttournament.

Karol wrote:

nou wrote:


Well, in my experience such "truly competitive" players... stay away from 40k and seek more symmetrical games that are vastly better suited for that kind of competition. As a former competitive Bridge player I can assure you, no iteration of 40K have ever got close to proper mind sport. So, while I most definitely agree, that such difference exists in wide gaming context, in practice vast majority of 40k competitive players are "competitive".

True. Only thing tournament players hate is a cheap to get and easy to play army. Confusing rules overlaps, noob bashing, super expensive armies from factions that struggle to have a non tournament build etc those things are okey. But as soon as a tournament army consists of 40-50 intercessors and 3 dreadnoughts with the point and click game play, suddenly it is a world ending event. Tournament players just don't want to run in to a mirror game 1 and lose it on a go first roll or some random stuff, they have no control, to Jimmy Myfirsttournament.

I don't think ANYONE wants to lose simply because they lost the first-turn roll off.

That doesn't sound fun for anyone involved.

 jeff white wrote:
Point being, the so-called meta affects everyone, and the hobby, and is effectively corrosive, reductive, and counter to the spirit of both the game and the community that supports it.

That's basically what I said in my first post in this thread:

The meta affects everyone, even those that do not play competitively, because GW bases their rules changes on the meta, because they've gone all in on tournament gaming this edition.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's basically what I said in my first post in this thread:

The meta affects everyone, even those that do not play competitively, because GW bases their rules changes on the meta, because they've gone all in on tournament gaming this edition.

Que someone saying "but 9th edition isn't good for tournament players", completely missing the point...

 JNAProductions wrote:
I don't think ANYONE wants to lose simply because they lost the first-turn roll off.

That doesn't sound fun for anyone involved.

yes, but there is a difference between your side losing because durning a football match the other side got the best player on the entier street in their team, and Germany ending up in a death group, while Brasil easily sails through easy opponents in all stages of an event. Losing a game to me, is not fun, but it doesn't put in question what I am doing with my time or money. For a tournament player this is rather different. And as I said, the last thing any tournament player wants, is to get an influx of noobs who can suddenly win vs the best tournament players, just by the virtue of an army being easy to get and to play.

nou wrote:
Just to add to the excelent points Deadnight listed above, let’s not forget, that 40k competitive players DO NOT want balance, they actively DEMAND imbalance and just obscure this desire by calling it „list building skill”.

I play competitively, I play literally one faction and only one faction. I DO WANT balance. I ACTIVELY Demand it in fact. I have taken the time to write to GW, talked with their staff via e-mail and on their community site. I participate in their polls and surveys and do the community survey as well so that my input is seen.

You are taking a wonderfully broad brush and painting every competitive player as TFG WAAC douche canoes. Sorry but I have been to countless tournaments over the last decade and some change and beyond maybe 2-3 players the other thousands of players have been polite, cordial and fun to play with and against. 40k is in its essence a competitive game, just like the vast majority of games in existence, there is a winner and a loser. The competitive/tournament scene just increases the competitive level for players to test their LIST BUILDING and playing ability.

Now, competitive players will almost universally advocate for their favorite army the hardest. I mean, I write posts here about Orkz all the damn time, others do the exact same for Tau, Marines, Grey Knights etc. But again, beyond a few posters in here, nobody wants the game to be horribly imbalanced in favor of their army. The two worst game's I have ever played was against Tau Players, both were at Tournaments. Against the first Tau player I felt really bad because I had brought a list that just destroyed his army by the end of turn 3. I kept apologizing to him that GW had written him a terrible codex to play this edition and he kept saying its fine and just play the mission to get points. On the flipside, in 7th I played against a Tau player who almost completely tabled me Top of turn 2 because of how broken the power imbalance was between the two factions. That guy did the exact same thing I did and I likewise said, its just the bad design of the game and lets keep going for points.

A game in which you blow out your opponent isn't fun. Its kind of a let down honestly, and if you are on the receiving end of a blow out, its really deflating because you can just see that there was literally nothing you could have done differently to change the outcome, GW just screwed up that badly and the game isn't functional when your two armies meet.

In my opinion the best games are the close ones, even if the score isn't necessarily that close. I lost to a Custards player at a GT where he absolutely decimated me on the score sheet, I mean it wasn't even close, something like 65 to 17. But at the end of the battle we were both laughing hysterically because of the pure shenanigans that had happened on the table. The game ended turn 4 with me having a Mek gun, a trukk and a really confused Warboss sitting near the center and him having 5 infantry models of various types scattered around the board.

SempeeMortis - thank you.

One the one hand, while I don't know you or your 'game', i'll happily accept what you say. Reading your anecdotes I think we'd have a lot of common ground in describing what an 'enjoyable' game looks like.

And yet, on the other hand, auticus always comes to mind with regard to his 'balanced aos' rules set he made back when aos was just out and it didn't have any kind of a points system. And while I can't speak for him, iirc most of thr complaints he received for his efforts were along the lines of 'it's too balanced, list building doesn't matter any more'. And when push came to shove and gw provided 'official' (and flawed, far more flawed than some of the community efforts) rules, auticus and his peers' efforts were unceremoniously dumped by the community.

In my experience, 'official' rules count for far more to the community than 'good' rules, irregardless of the balance or lack thereof within. I also do not think nou is wrong when he says essentially that while a lot of people say they want balance, what they actually want is the 'illusion of balance' and a system that can be manipulated and exploited.

I see that some posters haven’t understood what I wrote - competitive 40k players demand the list building to be a skill important for the game. In order for the list building to be a skill, there has to be at least some internal imbalance. „Just the right amount, not too little, not too much”, exactly as I wrote.

From my experience competitve players start to complain about balance in two cases - the internal imbalance is so large, that competitive choices are so obvious, that there is no fun in numbers crunching and newbies lacking „the skill” of a vereran player can club baby seals just as easily; or when external imbalance is so large, that everybody play the same few factions, so the tournaments are boring due to not being varied enough. Many times in various threads over the years I saw the definition of „good enough” as „each faction has at least one valid tournament build” underlined by „assorted random units should not be a valid tournament list”.

The most curious case is describing listbuilding skill as „building lists with proper synnergies should be rewarded”, which in reality means only that you want the internal imbalance to be there in significant amount, you just want it not to be too obvious and require a basic understanding of how the game works. Those synnergies are not created or invented by the player - they are right there in the sources, waiting to be identified, embedded in the point efficiency differences, just spread over the combo of unit/aura/relic/subfaction trait/stratagem/whatever.

So again: if you want list building to be a skill, then you desire the imbalance to exist.

 Ordana wrote:
its the "competitive" player that isn't actually good enough to win on his own skill and generally stuck at the upper mid tier of a tournament ranking (because he loses to the actually good players) who wants an unbalanced list to club baby seals with.

This is the take. You see the same thing in the competitive MtG scene. The players who hit their competitive plateau and languish in the top 8-but-never-1st zone love to go to FNMs and prereleases looking to stomp
the more casual elements those two events attract. They're also the exact type of player who rages hard when the stars align and they lose to a random pile.

nou wrote:
I see that some posters haven’t understood what I wrote - competitive 40k players demand the list building to be a skill important for the game. In order for the list building to be a skill, there has to be at least some internal imbalance. „Just the right amount, not too little, not too much”, exactly as I wrote.

From my experience competitve players start to complain about balance in two cases - the internal imbalance is so large, that competitive choices are so obvious, that there is no fun in numbers crunching and newbies lacking „the skill” of a vereran player can club baby seals just as easily; or when external imbalance is so large, that everybody play the same few factions, so the tournaments are boring due to not being varied enough. Many times in various threads over the years I saw the definition of „good enough” as „each faction has at least one valid tournament build” underlined by „assorted random units should not be a valid tournament list”.

The most curious case is describing listbuilding skill as „building lists with proper synnergies should be rewarded”, which in reality means only that you want the internal imbalance to be there in significant amount, you just want it not to be too obvious and require a basic understanding of how the game works. Those synnergies are not created or invented by the player - they are right there in the sources, waiting to be identified, embedded in the point efficiency differences, just spread over the combo of unit/aura/relic/subfaction trait/stratagem/whatever.

So again: if you want list building to be a skill, then you desire the imbalance to exist.

You're painting with a very broad brush, and confusing balance with strategy & tactics.
- wanting a particular dice roll to be good means you want imbalance
- wanting to play absolutely whatever unit you want without regard to your opponent or the missions is wanting imbalance
- wanting to play white in Chess is wanting imbalance
- placement of models on the table is wanting imbalance (making charges longer, out of LOS so they can't be shot, etc.)

But none of that means you want an imbalanced game. Nobody wants a game where you spend $$hundreds/thousands, lots of time assembling and painting models, then each players rolls 1 die and the game ends.

List building is a skill, just like planning 2-3-4 turns in advance, just like Richard Siegler plans out the entire game before he gets to the table. That's not imbalance, that's tactics. Designing a list to be able to do multiple secondaries is tactics (well, strategy really). Building a list to score primary points on missions is strategy.

That's different than imbalance, where you pick an army to table your opponent on turn 1, or pick a random assortment of units that do nothing (like an entire list of drop pods) and still expect to have a decent chance of winning.

Karol wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I don't think ANYONE wants to lose simply because they lost the first-turn roll off.

That doesn't sound fun for anyone involved.

yes, but there is a difference between your side losing because durning a football match the other side got the best player on the entier street in their team, and Germany ending up in a death group, while Brasil easily sails through easy opponents in all stages of an event. Losing a game to me, is not fun, but it doesn't put in question what I am doing with my time or money. For a tournament player this is rather different. And as I said, the last thing any tournament player wants, is to get an influx of noobs who can suddenly win vs the best tournament players, just by the virtue of an army being easy to get and to play.

Which is exactly what we have right now. There's countless anecdotes of people who barely know how to play 40k showing up with their new custodes army and winning a 30+ player GT. The same is happening with Harlequins now which went from a high skill army to "LUL my voidweavers go brrrr".

I think there's some conflict over "listbuilding as a skill" and what it means.

Obviously it means different things to different people.

There is definitely a large chunk of people that want listbuilding as a skill to mean to take your point allocation and make it weigh as much as you possibly can and make it function beyond the point allocation by finding out the synergies and combos that make 2000 points function as double its value.

To be able to do that means things have to be imbalanced to allow for that, as the other end of the line is tighter balance, in which case a 2000 point list vs another 2000 point list against two equal opponents will be a tight game.

Then there are these other variations of list building as a skill which is spending time wiht your list to assign roles and understand the list and building a list that works well with itself.

Its still a 2000 point list, its just one that the author knows a lot about and put thought in and will beat another 2000 point list where the player has not thought about any of those things.

Which is to say that the player that put more thought into his 2000 point list has more skill than the player that just showed up and threw stuff down on the table and threw down. Which to me should result in the player that put more thought into the list as having an edge.

But not the likes we see in GW games where one person is playing casual sportball and the other person showed up with the all star elite sportball professional team and both have the "2000 point list" tag stuck to it. We all here understand exactly what that means.

That is the Listbuilding As a Skill we are discussing.

And yes as pointed out above with the Azyr point system for AOS... it got hammered by the community tournament players for being too boring because it was too balanced and listbuilding didn't account for much, because they could throw a 2000 point list together and have to them the same chances of their buddy throwing a 2000 point list together, which was seen as bad. (THIS WAS THE GOAL OF AZYR IN THE FIRST PLACE SO MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - and this was only a point system - no rules of the game or changing warscrolls which were still as assorted as they are today)

They were especially aggressive about shitposting against that system because at the time there was an official point system coming and it was said that the top three or so were being considered and that Azyr was allegedly one of those three systems. The system that won had built in purposely imbalanced elements (monsters were pointed much cheaper on purpose to encourage people using monsters, this was a black and white fact as they posted it in black and white on their forum - that they did it and why they did it - and it was embraced by the tournament community (who claimed to want balance but embraced imbalance) and embraced by GW (because they could sell those monster kits that no one wanted because in warhammer fantasy a single 100 point cannonball could eliminate your nasty 500 point dragon - so people stayed away from monsters).

(and no i'm not saying it had PERFECT balance - not even close it had its flaws like any system - but we did achieve a great outcome where mostly you could build two lists and have it come down to player skill instead of combo-chaining-list-building skill)

It was an eye opening experience for me as a game designer as up to that point thats what I thought points were supposed to be for. The game and the players within the game had changed drastically over the years and I hadn't caught on to that.

There have been enough people in this very forum over the years (40k and AOS) that have been VERY aggressive in their posts about how a system where you could just throw down 2000 points and have the same chance of winning as another person who threw down 2000 points was an abomination.

It could be that they were just over generalizing and their points got lost in their aggressive posts, I'm sure there is more common ground between players like me and players like them that internet communication and posturing defeats sadly.

 auticus wrote:
I think there's some conflict over "listbuilding as a skill" and what it means.

Obviously it means different things to different people.

/snip

There have been enough people in this very forum over the years (40k and AOS) that have been VERY aggressive in their posts about how a system where you could just throw down 2000 points and have the same chance of winning as another person who threw down 2000 points was an abomination.

Not really, there are 2 very distinct things that you're trying to use interchangeably. One is actively trying to hack the system, the other is improving oneself to be better within the system. While a person can be doing both, they are not one and the same.

40K used to be just 'last man standing wins', no objectives, secondaries etc. that required any skill. Nobody used to move in 2nd edition because all the shooting models were always on overwatch. If there is no movement requirements, no primary/secondary objectives and the armies are all fairly balanced, then those people complaining are probably right, as they could just be playing chess.

However, none of that is true in modern 40k. This game should be won in the movement phase. If it wasn't so lethal, it would be, and player skill would be king (working within the system). However, the game is so brokenly lethal, that finding the broken combos trumps player skill, so that's where people are gravitating (hacking the system). Put another way, 'hacking' is where people go when they've reached their skill cap, or when skill doesn't matter.