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

No. Auticus wasn't saying tournament players don't want a fair game. To make me seem like anything.

Auticus was saying many tournament players desire imbalance because imbalance is what drives listbuilding and many tournament players desire listbuilding to be a skill and to have listbuilding be a skill there has to be combos that are good, bad, and in between to be able to choose from them. I can't say all tournament players because I don't know all tournament players, but I spent over a decade AS a tournament player surrounded by tournament players and then another decade trying to play narratively amongst tournament players to have had hundreds of conversations with the ones around me and in my experience (which we all speak from... our experience) the vast majority of tournament players that I personally know and have interacted with have expressed desire for imbalance so that listbuilding can be meaningful.

Desiring imbalance has nothing to do with an unfair game. Desiring imbalance has everything to do with wanting a system where you have to also be smart enough to pick the right choices and ignore the bad choices.

Listbuilding as a skill is the primary driver of deck games. Are those games unfair? I guess it depends on who you talk to. Unfair was never a word that I have used nor a point I was trying to make.

The rest of the fantasy is all entirely 100% projection and assumption.

Discussions require data. Or else its all conjecture and make up and assumptions and jumping to conclusions.

Talking about my ruleset provides me with the context on why I make the decisions I have and why I feel the way I do. Its based on a few thousand pieces of correspondence from a variety of players and their wishes, both good and ill as opposed to just making things up and guessing which is what most conversations on here are.

Some of you take that discussion about said ruleset and then apply some ego maniacal bend to it to serve whatever purpose it is you are trying to serve simply because - you disagree. Same thing happens in political rage fire discussions and other gaming rage fire discussions. One disagrees with another, then it becomes super heated and personal.

None of you on here know me, my desires, or my background to be able to try and accurately describe anything that motivates me - its entirely "i don't agree with you ... so ... you are bad and ego maniacal and all of these other things I am going to project onto you".

I'm also a game designer... you know ... for realzies. I pay my bills from the game industry. I have sat in so many marketing meetings and had to digest reams of marketing data on game design and what players want, so I've seen with my own two eyes the things that people request and want, and I've seen the litany of trash fires that result when you do things that players don't like and they send you hate mail that would make even the most ardent keyboard warrior on here curl up. Does that make me a super ego maniac? I mean I guess it would be cool to have my own snake mountain island where I sit on my throne with my monocle and laugh as I set about my villainous plans to destroy gaming with some ill tempered sea bass with lasers on their heads swimming in my lagoon.

I have had literally hundreds of discussions with players that have explicitly stated they like that some choices are bad and some are good because it makes them feel good to build a powerful deck, or list, or game board, and test it out against someone else's to see who came up with the best list. That is the primary motivator for a lot of folks, for someone to sit on here and say "nah brah... tournament players don't want that brah... you're just ego maniacal brah you're just shilling your failed ruleset brah" is just... beyond words funny. I have NO DOUBT that some tournament players really don't want that. I also know first hand some tourmament players that want the game to be more balanced so that table skill means more than list building excel skill. There are all kinds of tournament players that want different things.

Just as I know nothing about you personally or what motivates you other than some of you are highly emotional and flip out and go off when someone disagrees with you and you begin to resort to personal insults and projections to try and paint the other person as morally bad to win an argument on the internet.

Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

Nou, you're entirely off base about what I meant and what Auticus meant.

Sooo, I won't weigh in on "balance for the sake of balance" or "imbalance for the sake of imbalance", but A LOT of "imbalance" comes from contextualizing a given unit and its particular strengths and weaknesses within a greater army synergy. I see listbuilding as a skill not because there are choices that are better or worse than other choices without context, but it's a skill because the entire army, combined with the expected mission set provides the context for which every unit will be stronger or weaker.

For good listbuilding you're looking at:
Expected Missions
Expected Terrain
Expected opposition
and then finally within whatever grand strategy you're putting together in your army.

Certain units work better with certain other units, which can then make them better than the sum of their parts individually (ye olde Meltas in a Drop Pod example).

Furthermore, if you've got certain units or armies that appear imbalanced in a vacuum, but suddenly that table is way more crowded (or not) with terrain than you were expecting, some of those "worse" units can start to look a lot better.

In short, I expect "imbalance" because I expect the value of any unit to be highly contextual. And because people play 40K in a number of different scenarios/missions, terrain, etc, I have no expectation that any 2000 point army will be particularly equal to any other 2000 point army. Listbuilding is the skill where you squeeze as much value as you can out of your army in preparation for the particular game/s that you expect to play, which can have a huge amount of variation.

Hecaton wrote:
Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

... aaaand with this short sentence you have just proven beyond any doubt, that you have no clue about game design.

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

... aaaand with this short sentence you have just proven beyond any doubt, that you have no clue about game design.

Nope! Points can definitely balance things. You can't just repeat that points are a "shaping" method and expect it to be true because you heard it from someone.

Hecaton wrote:

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

... aaaand with this short sentence you have just proven beyond any doubt, that you have no clue about game design.

Nope! Points can definitely balance things. You can't just repeat that points are a "shaping" method and expect it to be true because you heard it from someone.

Perhaps a quote from Rick Priestley can make you rethink a bit or two...

"So where do points values come into all that? Well, army lists and points values are a great way of working out forces if you know how the scenario will affect the basic utility of the different elements. To put it another way, if the tabletop is six feet by four, if the deployment is 'line 'em up and go', if the terrain falls within certain narrow limits, and if you know what the victory conditions are - then it's possible to work out points values that have some broad credibilty. You will know how useful or how valuable certain kinds of troops will be within the context of the game. Points values make perfect sense if we are talking about a very limited type of confrontational scenario. However, points values make almost no sense if you take armies into radically different kinds of situations. To give a few obvious examples, if a battlefield is impassable to heavy armoured vehicles then the value of tanks is going to be reduced considerably, if the battlefield is very small or very large, then the value of long range weapons is lessened or enhanced respectively, if the objectives set for the armies require positions to be taken by infantry then this affects the effective utility - and hence the value - of infantry/non-infantry units. Simply put- in different situations the value of units will also be different.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the combination of fixed points values and scenarios designed for points balanced armies creates a kind of circular self-sustaining mind-set. For points to be 'balanced' the scenario must fall within very narrow limits. Once those narrow limits are accepted as a standard, the exact points value of a unit becomes a critical factor in picking an effective army. Thus the structured army lists encourage players to adopt the same narrow parameters for scenarios time after time, and focuses players' minds on the cost/competitiveness of units within those parameters. It is wargaming - it is perhaps one of the most popular and enduring kinds of wargaming - but it isn't the be all and end all of what a wargame can be. For one thing, it has absolutely no reference to history or actual warfare. In real war fairness and balance of outcome are things to positively avoided where possible! It is also an approach strongly focussed on the one-on-one game - a kind of toy soldier equivalent of chess - in which the wargame is seen as a kind of intellectual match between two individuals. That kind of game might suit some players - perhaps a pair of regular opponents of comparable aptitude - but it works less well for games between multiple players, teams or games between experienced players and novices." Rick Priestley, in the pages of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine issue 71 (2013). (courtesy of Archbombe in another thread)

Points as a "shaping method" is how many players use the points. I've heard countless players over the years talk about their objective in listbuilding is to take their 2000 point list and make it function many times above that. That is where and why I use that statement.

I know that points are a part of how balancing happens. I have dedicated a good chunk of my life to working with points in various systems and seeing them go. I never claimed that points were not a part of how balance happens. I have said countless times points SHOULD be the balance value of the force so that 2000 points vs 2000 points lets you know the two lists are in the same ballpark. Several times. In this very thread. I have been flamed many times. On this board. For putting that idea forth... because to a lot of players that brought forth the holy flame in aggressive posting were almost all competitive tournament players, that was seen as an abomination and boring and killed off listbuilding.

And that part of my main problem with 40k is that that is not reality. At all. That was my main problem with Sigmar, and a huge issue why I did not like what they did was because the purposely put imbalance into that game to get people to play monsters more.

Which is another example of gw points not being about balance but about a structure you build within to min/max. So whatever I am "wrong" about... doesn't even seem to be based in reality of what I have been saying. Which you might have gleaned had you said "hmm Auticus... it seems like to me you are saying this - could you clarify?"

The Rick Priestley quote I actually have on my wall above my work station. It is 1000% apt. The more scenarios you introduce, the harder it is to point things. But you can find a standard to point toward and then look at the outliers from there. Considering GW games are often the same type of scenarios over and over only in different flavors, thats what boggles the mind that they can't get the balance tighter (unless its intentional, which is what I firmly believe).

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

... aaaand with this short sentence you have just proven beyond any doubt, that you have no clue about game design.

Nope! Points can definitely balance things. You can't just repeat that points are a "shaping" method and expect it to be true because you heard it from someone.

Perhaps a quote from Rick Priestley can make you rethink a bit or two...

"So where do points values come into all that? Well, army lists and points values are a great way of working out forces if you know how the scenario will affect the basic utility of the different elements. To put it another way, if the tabletop is six feet by four, if the deployment is 'line 'em up and go', if the terrain falls within certain narrow limits, and if you know what the victory conditions are - then it's possible to work out points values that have some broad credibilty. You will know how useful or how valuable certain kinds of troops will be within the context of the game. Points values make perfect sense if we are talking about a very limited type of confrontational scenario. However, points values make almost no sense if you take armies into radically different kinds of situations. To give a few obvious examples, if a battlefield is impassable to heavy armoured vehicles then the value of tanks is going to be reduced considerably, if the battlefield is very small or very large, then the value of long range weapons is lessened or enhanced respectively, if the objectives set for the armies require positions to be taken by infantry then this affects the effective utility - and hence the value - of infantry/non-infantry units. Simply put- in different situations the value of units will also be different.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the combination of fixed points values and scenarios designed for points balanced armies creates a kind of circular self-sustaining mind-set. For points to be 'balanced' the scenario must fall within very narrow limits. Once those narrow limits are accepted as a standard, the exact points value of a unit becomes a critical factor in picking an effective army. Thus the structured army lists encourage players to adopt the same narrow parameters for scenarios time after time, and focuses players' minds on the cost/competitiveness of units within those parameters. It is wargaming - it is perhaps one of the most popular and enduring kinds of wargaming - but it isn't the be all and end all of what a wargame can be. For one thing, it has absolutely no reference to history or actual warfare. In real war fairness and balance of outcome are things to positively avoided where possible! It is also an approach strongly focussed on the one-on-one game - a kind of toy soldier equivalent of chess - in which the wargame is seen as a kind of intellectual match between two individuals. That kind of game might suit some players - perhaps a pair of regular opponents of comparable aptitude - but it works less well for games between multiple players, teams or games between experienced players and novices." Rick Priestley, in the pages of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine issue 71 (2013). (courtesy of Archbombe in another thread)

Is this in reference to him being criticized for AoS with no points? In which case lol

Until they release 'Competitive 40k' mission pack to replace 'Competitive Matched Play', then the Meta might matter. Until then, it's kept 40k players from having tournaments that are worth attending. 9th will remain the worst edition to ever be released by GW. If the next edition decides to keep the 'Matched Play' rules set as any sort of standard, then it might be worse off than 9th is.

My own interest in the hobby has me looking at other games and systems that have a truly competitive format. Unlike other players, I'm finding it difficult to find one that is worth the effort. None of them have the accessibility of finding a game or community no matter where I travel, not to mention the huge investment I've made when tournaments were relevant. My own motivation is diminished as I try to work on the miniatures, to make a great list that will never succeed, or even be allowed to participate in an event. The natural progression for players that used to lead up to attending tournaments gets cut off when players are required to build for 'Matched Play'.

Hecaton wrote:
...Is this in reference to him being criticized for AoS with no points? In which case lol

...I'm...pretty sure Rick Priestly wasn't anywhere near GW when the decision to launch Sigmar with no points was made. It might be in reference to the decision to release Black Powder with a set of rough guidelines instead of anything resembling specific army lists, which is in part because it's a very different style of game from Warhammer, and in part a mistake that they rectified later when they did the Clash of Eagles/Albion Triumphant campaign books with proper army lists for the Napoleonics.

Hecaton wrote:

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

nou wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

... aaaand with this short sentence you have just proven beyond any doubt, that you have no clue about game design.

Nope! Points can definitely balance things. You can't just repeat that points are a "shaping" method and expect it to be true because you heard it from someone.

Perhaps a quote from Rick Priestley can make you rethink a bit or two...

"So where do points values come into all that? Well, army lists and points values are a great way of working out forces if you know how the scenario will affect the basic utility of the different elements. To put it another way, if the tabletop is six feet by four, if the deployment is 'line 'em up and go', if the terrain falls within certain narrow limits, and if you know what the victory conditions are - then it's possible to work out points values that have some broad credibilty. You will know how useful or how valuable certain kinds of troops will be within the context of the game. Points values make perfect sense if we are talking about a very limited type of confrontational scenario. However, points values make almost no sense if you take armies into radically different kinds of situations. To give a few obvious examples, if a battlefield is impassable to heavy armoured vehicles then the value of tanks is going to be reduced considerably, if the battlefield is very small or very large, then the value of long range weapons is lessened or enhanced respectively, if the objectives set for the armies require positions to be taken by infantry then this affects the effective utility - and hence the value - of infantry/non-infantry units. Simply put- in different situations the value of units will also be different.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the combination of fixed points values and scenarios designed for points balanced armies creates a kind of circular self-sustaining mind-set. For points to be 'balanced' the scenario must fall within very narrow limits. Once those narrow limits are accepted as a standard, the exact points value of a unit becomes a critical factor in picking an effective army. Thus the structured army lists encourage players to adopt the same narrow parameters for scenarios time after time, and focuses players' minds on the cost/competitiveness of units within those parameters. It is wargaming - it is perhaps one of the most popular and enduring kinds of wargaming - but it isn't the be all and end all of what a wargame can be. For one thing, it has absolutely no reference to history or actual warfare. In real war fairness and balance of outcome are things to positively avoided where possible! It is also an approach strongly focussed on the one-on-one game - a kind of toy soldier equivalent of chess - in which the wargame is seen as a kind of intellectual match between two individuals. That kind of game might suit some players - perhaps a pair of regular opponents of comparable aptitude - but it works less well for games between multiple players, teams or games between experienced players and novices." Rick Priestley, in the pages of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine issue 71 (2013). (courtesy of Archbombe in another thread)

Is this in reference to him being criticized for AoS with no points? In which case lol

You may lol all you want, it only speaks of you. While this here quote is from Priestley, this is a piece of game design knowledge that every game designer on the planet knows. Every. Single. One. Only players seem to be unable to grasp this trivial idea - while you can put a rough point bracket on things, say, this weapon here most should cost between 10 and 20 points - outside of very static games you will never be able to narrow it down, you will never be able to tell, if this weapon should cost 13, 15 or 17 points, because the context in which you try to establish this cost changes with changing of said cost. You do realise, that there are debates about exact point values of chess pieces? And that half of the skill in Bridge is based on a very elaborate, multidimensional point systems with conditional trees, because simple point systems do not work even in games so "simple" as those two?

Hecaton wrote:Sorry Auticus, points are part of how balancing happens. You're wrong.

In an ideal world, do you expect any two armies, regardless of composition, to have perfectly even chances of winning so long as they are both 2000pts? Like, an army of all anti-tank guns going up against an army of all infantry? Or an army of all static defenses playing a mission that requires it to take and hold objectives? If not, and you recognize that a unit's actual, practical value may not always align with its points cost, then you understand what is meant by the idea of points as a shaping mechanism rather than an objective measure of balance.

Or for another example, see if you can figure out the 'objective' value of a unit like a IG Company Commander, whose sole value lies in buffing infantry. How much utility you get out of him depends entirely on how many infantry units are in your army. His points cost isn't an objective, consistent measure of his actual value in all circumstances; it's a shaping mechanism that incentivizes you not to spam CCs without infantry, while still encouraging the use of CCs with your infantry rather than just taking more infantry.

Auticus is right here and everything he is saying tracks with current game design theory. We desire balance as a goal, but that's not a direct function of points- where people go wrong is in interpreting that to mean that balance and shaping are unrelated to each other, when really it's more that points costs are one potential lever among many to shape the game towards a more balanced state.

 catbarf wrote:
Auticus is right here and everything he is saying tracks with current game design theory. We desire balance as a goal, but that's not a direct function of points- where people go wrong is in interpreting that to mean that balance and shaping are unrelated to each other, when really it's more that points costs are one potential lever among many to shape the game towards a more balanced state.

It's just something that's in-vogue to say, but it isn't really true. Nobody's saying that points are the be-all end-all of balance, but saying that points do *not* have to do with balance is just incorrect, but that's what Auticus asserted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
...Is this in reference to him being criticized for AoS with no points? In which case lol

...I'm...pretty sure Rick Priestly wasn't anywhere near GW when the decision to launch Sigmar with no points was made. It might be in reference to the decision to release Black Powder with a set of rough guidelines instead of anything resembling specific army lists, which is in part because it's a very different style of game from Warhammer, and in part a mistake that they rectified later when they did the Clash of Eagles/Albion Triumphant campaign books with proper army lists for the Napoleonics.

I guess I got the name wrong, but I remember that "no points" being the brainchild of someone at GW, which they then had to walk back on. Just like Priestley had to walk back on this here. It's probably possible to make a wargame that's balanced without a points system, but the kinds of people who don't like points systems are usually exactly the kind of person you shouldn't get to do that.

Hecaton wrote:


It's just something that's in-vogue to say, but it isn't really true.

Like, seriously?

nou wrote:
You may lol all you want, it only speaks of you. While this here quote is from Priestley, this is a piece of game design knowledge that every game designer on the planet knows. Every. Single. One.

I didn't say that points were the only way to balance wargames, or that points systems are perfect in all cases. So you're misrepresenting my point.

nou wrote:
Only players seem to be unable to grasp this trivial idea

If you think players don't understand that the value of things changes based on the game conditions I've got a bridge to sell you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

Like, seriously?

Yes, seriously. I can make a game unbalanced by fething with the points values. Ergo, points are a component of balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Akar wrote:
Until they release 'Competitive 40k' mission pack to replace 'Competitive Matched Play', then the Meta might matter. Until then, it's kept 40k players from having tournaments that are worth attending. 9th will remain the worst edition to ever be released by GW. If the next edition decides to keep the 'Matched Play' rules set as any sort of standard, then it might be worse off than 9th is.

My own interest in the hobby has me looking at other games and systems that have a truly competitive format. Unlike other players, I'm finding it difficult to find one that is worth the effort. None of them have the accessibility of finding a game or community no matter where I travel, not to mention the huge investment I've made when tournaments were relevant. My own motivation is diminished as I try to work on the miniatures, to make a great list that will never succeed, or even be allowed to participate in an event. The natural progression for players that used to lead up to attending tournaments gets cut off when players are required to build for 'Matched Play'.

"Open play" is just as screwed up as Matched Play.

it's more that points costs are one potential lever among many to shape the game towards a more balanced state.

<3

Absolutely. I also like a wide variety of missions that have different goals, not just all of them about cap objectives, or all of them kill.

When you have to build a list and then have six or so different scenarios, you have to keep all of them in mind.

I also like terrain rules that matter and terrain placement rules. My preference is 2d6 pieces of terrain on a 6x4. Some tables may have little, some may have a lot, most will have a moderate amount of terrain, but if you skew towards one type of troop and you roll up a battlefield that punishes you - thats on you.

Those are all ways that can work together. There are others, which is always neat seeing new ways designers come up with to challenge players.

I find games where you have one set of scenarios, and standard terrain placement that are predictable all the time to be killing themselves though they do tend to lend themselves to being able to make predictable lists, which I would challenge is something a lot of people enjoy - so your mileage may vary.

Hecaton wrote:
...I guess I got the name wrong, but I remember that "no points" being the brainchild of someone at GW, which they then had to walk back on. Just like Priestley had to walk back on this here. It's probably possible to make a wargame that's balanced without a points system, but the kinds of people who don't like points systems are usually exactly the kind of person you shouldn't get to do that.

In practice there are two ways to make a wargame. You can have a formalized pick-up game structure with symmetrical forces, symmetrical scenarios, and points, or you can have a scenario-based structure with rigid scenario definitions and a GM to adjudicate. Most wargames are the first type. Some historical wargames are the second. Rick Priestly's mistake was thinking he could make the second type a commercial product by itself, without then adding some of the structure of the first type back in. Whoever decided not to put point in Sigmar's mistake was thinking they could take a game that was very much of the first type and transition it to neither of these and have a game that still functioned at all.

All the new codices haven't been nerfed yet.
The competitive scene will be unbalanced until the new edition is complete.

I want listbuilding to be a skill but I think there's a happy medium there. If we could get to the point where the top army is 55% win rate and the bottom army is 45%, and most units within a faction at least fulfill some type of role that would let them be viable in a certain type of list, I would be happy. Having 1 faction with an 80% win rate and a bunch of others at 30% means listbuilding isn't a skill any more, you just choose the 80% win rate list. Listbuilding isn't really a skill when the meta is dominated by 1 faction spamming 1 unit like we currently have.

Toofast wrote:
I want listbuilding to be a skill but I think there's a happy medium there. If we could get to the point where the top army is 55% win rate and the bottom army is 45%, and most units within a faction at least fulfill some type of role that would let them be viable in a certain type of list, I would be happy. Having 1 faction with an 80% win rate and a bunch of others at 30% means listbuilding isn't a skill any more, you just choose the 80% win rate list. Listbuilding isn't really a skill when the meta is dominated by 1 faction spamming 1 unit like we currently have.

"Just the right amount of imbalance", thank you.

And once again, this is not an insult.

The first part though, 45-55 brackets and viability all around is not "happy medium" - in practice this is hell of a tight balance to achieve by any means. Even Chess have a balance somewhere between 52-56% for whites.

nou wrote:

Toofast wrote:
I want listbuilding to be a skill but I think there's a happy medium there. If we could get to the point where the top army is 55% win rate and the bottom army is 45%, and most units within a faction at least fulfill some type of role that would let them be viable in a certain type of list, I would be happy. Having 1 faction with an 80% win rate and a bunch of others at 30% means listbuilding isn't a skill any more, you just choose the 80% win rate list. Listbuilding isn't really a skill when the meta is dominated by 1 faction spamming 1 unit like we currently have.

"Just the right amount of imbalance", thank you.

And once again, this is not an insult.

The first part though, 45-55 brackets and viability all around is not "happy medium" - in practice this is hell of a tight balance to achieve by any means. Even Chess have a balance somewhere between 52-56% for whites.

I don't get why folks seem resistant to the idea of all units being viable... I suspect there's some differences in how were defining "viable" (or maybe I'm misunderstanding and folks aren't resistant to it). I've been taking it to simply mean that the unit has a reasonable situation where there's a reason to include it in your list. At the risk of deleting one of my favorite units from existence (vanquisher LRBT), if a unit isn't viable in any situation you can reasonably expect to encounter, nothing will be lost by deleting it from the codex. I don't feel like it takes very much skill to look at the list of LRBT variants and say "don't take a vanquisher, there will never be a situation where it is a better tool than the other options". Including duds as some sort of noob trap also seems needlessly mean spirited towards new players.

Instead of deleting visually interesting and/or fluffy units, it'd be nice to give them a rules set that makes them a viable option, even if only under certain circumstances.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
I don't get why folks seem resistant to the idea of all units being viable...

No one is.

 Just_Breathe wrote:
All the new codices haven't been nerfed yet.
The competitive scene will be unbalanced until the new edition is complete.

No, no, the competitive scene will be unbalanced because all the new books haven't been nerfed yet until the competitive scene will be unbalanced because books are starting to be written for the new core rules, until the competitive scene will be unbalanced because nobody has books for 10th, and then the cycle will repeat.

Ladies ladies please, to avoid another 3 pages of you all bickering you are both pretty.

I am usually confused by the idea of wanting listing building as a skill.

As mentioned, for that to be the case; the game has to be unbalanced to have good and bad units and/or gear/options a player has to use 'skill' (or the internet a day or two after the codex drops) to determine the good from the bad. Unless they mean good and bad units vary only slightly. But if this variation is so slight, is it actually be even noticed at the table with all the analog errors and tolerances that come with tabletop gaming? That just sounds like well within 'good enough' balance to me.


Unless someone is trying to say the skillful player would be the one picking the right amount of rock, paper and scissors for their meta (or the game itself wants). I assume this balanced ideal version of 40k would still have units that are more effective vs. some units and less effective vs. others. Which I see less about list building and more reading/guessing the meta. Which I suppose could be called a skill.

However, at a local meta level, that seems like it would just be experience of playing games in your opponent pool, knowing which players are the more talented (serious, more competitive or whatever) and learning what sort of mixture of rock, paper, scissors they tend to use to adjust accordingly. Any regular opponent of mine knows I lean extra hard on infantry (it's why I like 28-32mm scale games), and usually heavy infantry at that, and less on vehicles. I wouldn't call it a skill to list tailor to that. It's just playing me 2-3 times and remembering that. More complicated is in a larger or more foreign groups, it'd basically be luck, a player guessed the right combination to edge out their opponents. So, less a skill and more experience+remembering with a dash of luck.

Even then, it would be kinda strange. As in an ideal game system where things are fairly balanced, it should probably be assumed that the best armies would likely fit closely to a patrol, battalion or brigade detachment in composition of rock, paper and scissor. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think ideally that's what a FOC is for: to set guides for the player to build an optimum list. I know that isn't what GW has ever done with it, or else Troop tax wouldn't be a thing. An ideal 40k, Troops would be the most important element of games as they intended to the most integral, if not also the most numerous unit, part of one's army given the way most FOC detachments work and before specialty detachments were a thing.

Otherwise, why have a FOC? Well beyond historical accuracy, which I assume the most common assets are common for a reason and the game should take that into account and not regulate them as a tax but a core part of the experience.


Unless they mean the skill of list building is planning what you are going to do with your army. Which again, I wouldn't call it list building, I'd call it planning how you are going to use your army. Or just planning. And the sort of player I am is one to generate a plan before a game, but at the same time, I value war games that take this quote to heart. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” For me, if you can play a war game and execute the near entirety of your plan more often than a typical baseball pitcher's batting average, the game is not creating enough interesting decision points on the table, your opponent probably easy to beat or your plan exceeding simple and probably more of an outline than a plan.

Like I said, I am always a little confused what other players mean/want when they want list building to matter.

Like I said, I am always a little confused what other players mean/want when they want list building to matter.

That would be useful. I have only really seen one explanation given in some form or fashion. That is:

* - The player that puts more time into their list should have an advantage over someone that just picks stuff they like the look of. I don't really know what that means offhand as it is very general so that would need dove into some depth.

Does that mean, I like thousand sons so I put together a list that has a lot of thousand sons in them, but I get gibbed by someone that cranks an hour into their list to fine tune every weapon to give them the highest power ed coefficient overall and that is acceptable?

What about if I take a lot of thousand sons and mix some other roles in my army like anti-tank, psyker, etc... but still get gibbed because I didn't fine tune my list and thousand sons are overcosted for what they do, so by taking them and a lot of them I have created a "C" level list whereas my opponent knows that thousand sons should only consist of demons, magnus, and mortarion tag teaming and that synergy combo makes an "A" level list because of lethality and durability both being so much higher?

Is that acceptable?

Then there's also - I take a well rounded list that can handle a lot of situations and I should be able to beat the guy that takes nothing but anti-tank. Even though we both have 2000 points, an all anti-tank list can only really kill heavy armor and should in theory be weak at other things.

That particular scenario I do agree with because roles are part of the equation as well as points and I agree that you should have roles represented (but GW games being GW games often the best units do multiple roles so you only ever need that unit)

To me thats what I hear, but I haven't really seen it gotten too deep in explanation. Examples would be awesome since it would provide a lot of that missing context.

I've come to like Auticus more and more over the time I've been on these boards, generally making good points. I'm not sure how much my comment will add to the discussion, but I'd like to add a bit to the pool of listbuilding as a skill, and points as balance.

I've only played a few war games. I don't play very often. Infinity uses points for both balance, and as a way to shape list building. But it also has extra features for both, like availability, and its baked in mechanics, rather than relying on just points. In addition, I really enjoy list building in Infinity, as I have to decide how they'll play on the board, how they'll survive, how they'll move forward, how they'll ARO, how they'll use fireteams, how they'll get the objectives, and how they'll attack before I even start building.

I have an Infinity army for Combined Army that uses Smoke and Impetuous Orders in order to fire and advance as fast as possible, while my Avatar/Nourkias approaches from behind, and I set up Drones with flamethrowers or Total Reaction in order to fire at anyone trying to approach. This is a very basic setup, and I won't claim to be a genius for using it, but it always feels more intuitive and satisfying than what I used to do in 40k, and what I currently do in WHFB. Just grabbing more point efficient units, and putting them in range of auras was never satisfying.
Here's the issue with my list: I had a hard time fitting any specialists for missions, so I only have a few able to actually complete them.

On the other hand, I have a Military Orders knight list that is chock full of specialists, is almost all Heavy Infantry for the sweet 2 wounds and armor, and they all fit in Fireteams. They don't have smoke, so they need to be more careful about approaching, and their ARO stuff is less impressive than my Combined Army list. However, they are an elite list that can complete objectives with a fast and hard hitting hammer. They are definitely not the most balanced list, but surviving and hitting back, while completing missions is what they're all about, and they do it just fine, even if cutting out 100 points of knights would allow me to add 9 models and it would be a better list, because I'd have more people able to act more often. But I used listbuilding to the best of my ability to make a themed list end up good, and I think I made it work.

For points as balance, I really like Infinity, even if that is not the only lever they pulled, because it's not the only one they pulled, and they don't disregard it either. My Avatar for Combined Army is the best TAG in the game, if you ignore points. It is about half a full sized list on its own, so you need cheap units to fill the rest, so you have orders in order for the Avatar to even move and shoot. It can't fully utilize its points unless you use the rest of your points to support it, and once it's fully supported, I've walked it into my enemy deployment and killed them down until only 2 survived, in which the rest of my men could have finished them off, if not for a forfeit. However, it's not able to do that every time. Anti TAG or Anti Armor weapons do kill it fast, and those units with Multi-Spectral Visors to shoot through smoke I bring mean I need to handle those models first, or I'm working with an expensive paper weight. I've even had it die to a few rifles once, despite the chance being so low that I disregarded it as a possibility. But the Anti TAG and Anti Armor models pay through the nose for their quality weapons, and one shot is never enough to fully take it out, as it has insane armor, and 3 structure points. And being in smoke with Mimetism means that even models with Multi-Spectral Visors need to have it at a higher level, or they'll miss most of the time, so they need to be expensive models to handle the Avatar on an even playing field, and more expensive to fight the Avatar with support and destroy it before it causes them issues. Or, as has happened before, load into it with everything you've got, like Ariadna spam, or hackers, or something as simple as just having your guys get into melee, so its Mimetism stops working, which is my friend's plan when he fights it.

I won't claim that Infinity is perfectly balanced, or that its listbuilding is perfect, but it's pretty close to everything I want out of a listbuilding as a skill game. I also prefer skirmish, so that's nice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Eyy, I just responded to this without realizing. I hope my reply works for you.

Yeah its a well thought out detailed response thank you.

I also like Infinity and have enjoyed my games of Infinity greatly because I never feel that I got pummeled because the other guy just copy/pasted a list off of reddit... the other guy has to put thought into how his force is going to work.

Thats the type of game that I enjoy.

However, in Infinity, cheap mercs like the Liberto and Digger can put the balance out of whack.

Again, points and balance in these systems are intimately connected.

Possible argument?

Units should not be identical.
Contexts of engagement should vary significantly.
Different units are differently suited to different contexts.
Every unit should suit some context.
No unit should excel in every context..
No game with different units should be perfectly equal.
Balance comes with varied context.
It appears that so called competitive players do not want varying contexts to affect chosen unit performance.
Balancing mechanics come with the very thing that so called competitive players reject, therefore so called competitive player do in fact want imbalance in order to exploit such in order to win.