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Hecaton wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
If Jake cared about arguments on the internet, he'd probably do stupid things like assuming he understands people's motives better than they do, or assume they are lying about something, when really, he has no way of knowing one way or the other.

Well, you have done those "stupid things," when you assume that people don't try to solve the problems that this presents. The community doesn't allow for it.

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

ccs wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
If Jake cared about arguments on the internet, he'd probably do stupid things like assuming he understands people's motives better than they do, or assume they are lying about something, when really, he has no way of knowing one way or the other.

Well, you have done those "stupid things," when you assume that people don't try to solve the problems that this presents. The community doesn't allow for it.

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

Amen. Hecaton falls definitely into the group on here who can’t imagine anything outside their own experience.

ccs wrote:

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

Neither does the portion of the community other people are in, else they'd have specific examples.

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

Neither does the portion of the community other people are in, else they'd have specific examples.

Here you go then matey,

Playing a game of 9th my necrons vs mates craftworlders. We were making army lists and he said he was making his force a scouting type recon force. Lots of rangers and bikes. I had been making an army of lots of infantry and very much a slow moving relentless type force. I said I liked the idea of two recon types forces meeting in no man’s land so I scrapped my army list and made another with lots of canoptek stuff and scarabs, vanguard of a necron army and told him I was doing it.

Before we had finish getting our models out we had a full back story to the game and a simple mission made up. Deployed our armies had a great game that was fast moving carnage. Nothing tailored to beat the other, just thematic fun. I can’t even remember who won, just that it was fun.

I even “allowed” him to go over the PL so he could squeeze in his new warlock on bike model. Just cos we both liked it.

Andykp wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

Neither does the portion of the community other people are in, else they'd have specific examples.

Here you go then matey,

Playing a game of 9th my necrons vs mates craftworlders. We were making army lists and he said he was making his force a scouting type recon force. Lots of rangers and bikes. I had been making an army of lots of infantry and very much a slow moving relentless type force. I said I liked the idea of two recon types forces meeting in no man’s land so I scrapped my army list and made another with lots of canoptek stuff and scarabs, vanguard of a necron army and told him I was doing it.

Before we had finish getting our models out we had a full back story to the game and a simple mission made up. Deployed our armies had a great game that was fast moving carnage. Nothing tailored to beat the other, just thematic fun. I can’t even remember who won, just that it was fun.

I even “allowed” him to go over the PL so he could squeeze in his new warlock on bike model. Just cos we both liked it.

So there was absolutely no consideration to balance or correcting for GW's out-of-whack rules writing. Got it. What you're describing isn't relevant to this discussion, really, as PenitentJake was describing a situation in which players are trying to create a *fair* game. And there's no reason you couldn't have done it with points.

Yeah-that sounds cool, but it doesn’t at all sound like an attempt to balance anything. Just adding some theme to a game.

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:

No, the portion of the community you're in doesn't allow that.

Neither does the portion of the community other people are in, else they'd have specific examples.

What do you want? A notarized audio file of a conversation between a couple of reasonable people? It's not that exciting. There's not much to tell. We agreed that x needed fixing & fixed it. The take away isn't what we decided though. It's that outside of the tourney environment we can discuss things & reach an agreement that suits those playing.

Oh we’ve done that too, adding extra rules to wyches in 8th because they could kill much, used a rule like shiuriken catapults to have extra Ap on 6s.

Lots of tweaks to ORKS since 3rd edition to stop them being so 1 dimensional. Changing weapon rules to make them fit better with how they should feel, change a D6 shot battle cannon to d3+3 or d6+ something. If surging a game such a change is too much it shows and we won’t do it again or tone it down.

Always messing with mission rules, never really play a stock mission, it’s always tweaked to suit us more. Unbalanced forces make for some great narrative games, the underdog troops making a last stand against overwhelming odds is cool.

For most part balancing changes is just what you do and don’t take in your army. Another mate didn’t have much I the way of anti armour stuff in his new chaos army for a while, so wouldn’t take much in the way of armour to give him a chance and make the games fun. When I started out with my primaris only marines they’re were gals in the range which meant my opponents could’ve easily tailored their armies to exploit these but instead we did the opposite and tailored are armies to to make games closer.

Loads of war and stuff like has to be discussed before. While writing lists we’d ask if they were taking x or y and you’d happily tell them.

The theme stuff is balance too, if you take an army theme and it’s very “weak” or “strong” you will let your opponent know wand agree the kinds of armies so they evenly matched or at least make sense.

We use tons of home brew units and rules too. Stuff we liked from older editions. I make datfaxes for units we convert up.

It doesn’t always work, sometimes you get it wrong and it’s a mess but for the most part, even when we’ve got it wrong it throws great narrative moments.

I don’t think we have played a game where we haven’t altered some rules and adapted our lists to suit each other’s armies better.

I wouldn’t say balance is always the aim, more that everyone involved has fun- and they aren’t the same thing at all. And all done with power levels since they started.

I must admit some of you sound like you would be dull as paint to play against. Just wanting to set up and start rolling dice without a word said by the sound of it.

ccs wrote:

What do you want? A notarized audio file of a conversation between a couple of reasonable people? It's not that exciting. There's not much to tell. We agreed that x needed fixing & fixed it. The take away isn't what we decided though. It's that outside of the tourney environment we can discuss things & reach an agreement that suits those playing.

I gave my example.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Jake also does an awful lot of calling people whiners in the same post he asserts that the way they play is wrong.

After all, if you don't play with friends and family outside of stores, you're not doing 40k right.

If suggesting that people try a 25 PL crusade at home with a friend is telling people they're playing wrong, then every time you've suggested someone play Command and Conquer, or 4th ed, or Dust, you're also telling people they're playing wrong.

Now, I will say that perhaps my use of the word "Whiner" was a bit heavy handed. It doesn't happen often, and certainly not "an awful lot" and usually when it does, it's a response to direct provocation- which it was in this case, as others have pointed out. This is my 2130th post, so 1% of that would be 21 posts- I challenge you to find that many where I've called someone a whiner, or been offensive. Then find out how many of those comments I later returned and apologized for, like I'm doing now.

But for what it's worth, to anyone I've offended by using the word "whiner" I apologize, and I'll do my best to avoid in the future for the sake of the Dakka community.

With that in mind, I'm going to try one last time to respond to some of the subsequent discussion posted by Hecaton, and I'll do my best to keep it civil.

Hecaton wrote:


If someone's telling everyone else they're playing the game wrong, and then gives an unworkable solution to fix that, it's a reasonable take.

So first, I'm going to explain the assumptions I'm making.

Given the context, I assume that the "someone" you're referring to is me, and that the "unworkable solution" you're referring to is the swapping IN of troops equipped with specials and heavies when you're faced with an army that is at an obvious advantage, or swapping OUT of troops equipped with specials and heavies when you're faced with an army that is at a disadvantage.

I recognize though, that by generalizing, you are indicating that you've seen similar types of arguments before, possibly even from other people, and that you're kind of responding to those posts too. And that's a fair game- I do it all the time, because after reading 3 pages of posts, even when you're quoting only one person, you're probably also responding to somewhat similar posts by others.

Now clearly my proposed solution won't work for all cases, because sometimes a lack of specials and heavies ISN'T actually what's causing the imbalance. Usually even in cases where it doesn't work, it still moves the game somewhat closer to balance.

I find it encouraging that you yourself said this:

Hecaton wrote:
PenitentJake was describing a situation in which players are trying to create a *fair* game. And there's no reason you couldn't have done it with points.

Because if you're implying that swapping load out and taking a points handicap as result is something that can be done, then it sounds like you're implying that the load out modification has some some potential to bring a game closer to balance. It's hard to say for sure that this is what you're implying though, because you use the pronoun "you" in the second sentence, so you may be implying that Andykyp could have just as easily played his Craftworld Scout vs. Necron Scout game with points.

I won't assume which of those two scenarios is correct- you can clarify if you want, but it's by no means required.

Hecaton wrote:

It's funny how people who say "just have a conversation before the game" never have *actual* examples, they just say "this happens all the time."

Almost like they don't play that much or in the way they say they do.

I will be the first to admit that I don't play as often as many if not most of the people on Dakka- ESPECIALLY the ones who are in leagues, or campaigns run at stores- there's no way I play as often as those dudes, and I've said so on more than one occasion. I've also certainly never claimed anything to the contrary, though I admit that one or two of my posts my have been worded vaguely enough that someone could be forgiven for making that assumption. For example, I frequently state that I've been playing since '89, and I could see how someone might equate that statement with playing often.

So to clarify:

In my entire history with the game, I've played in 2 tournaments back in 2008. I've NEVER played 40k in a store.
I worked at a youth center from 96-98 and ran the center from 98-01. I ran narrative campaigns for both 40k and classic Necromunda 3-5 nights per week, and my entire collection lived at the center at that time so that the kids, many of whom did not have the means, could use my models to play.

The biggest battle I've ever played in was a 6 player 3 on 3 Apocalypse game with 9k points per side - that would have probably been 2008.

In 9th?

I've only ever played Crusade, not yet more than 25PL, though the rosters for each of my Crusades and my collection(s) of models is far larger. I've played Death Watch and Sisters with an without Inquisition allies, and I even once played a pure Inquisition detachment. I've also played GSC, CSM (technically Cultists using some BSF antagonists to create a detachment) and Drukhari. In total, I've played about 8 games. Every single game has been fun for both my opponent and myself.

I've had 3 different opponents: one is my partner, another is a friend I met through work- the husband of a colleague, and the third is one of the kids who used to play at the center I ran- he's all grown up now.

I have never, ever claimed otherwise. If you have assumed something different because the posts that you were responding to did not clearly state my experience, I get that- I have rolled this information out several times in my history as both a Dakkanaught and a Frater, but I don't do it every post because it doesn't always strike me as relevant.

Now that you know EXACTLY how I play, you can see how WILDLY different our experiences of the game are, and it's probably why we disagree as often as we do.

Both of our "ways to play" are equally valid. Mine makes me and my opponent happy... Every time. Your way to play doesn't sound like it makes you happy. Ever.

If I suggest that you try playing the way I play, that is not me telling you you are playing wrong- it is literally me saying "Dude, I've never played a game I didn't enjoy, so if you're having a hard time having fun, you might consider trying it and seeing if it works for you too."

Seriously. If you have a friend who is a nerd, but has never played 40k because they don't want to invest in an army and you have a collection that is big enough to build two, 25 PL forces, teach that friend how to play on your kitchen table or theirs. It might not be your preferred style of play, and in fact it might even be so different from what you think of as 40k that it actually feels like a whole new game that happens to be set in the 40k galaxy.

And I can understand that you want the 2k pick-up game in a store to be fun, and that it currently might not be fun. This is a reasonable expectation, and it is something that GW should work towards. I have never claimed otherwise- because again, suggesting that you try a 25 PL game at home with a friend when you're clearly not having fun playing 2k matched in a store is NOT saying "You're playing wrong", nor is it excusing the state of the 2k Matched game that you are complaining about. If you've already tried it and it didn't work, sorry for assuming you hadn't tried it yet, but since I've never seen you post about trying it and not liking it, I feel that my assumptions is at least understandable, if not forgivable.

Before we move on to my specific stories of swaps, I want to address one more thing: Often when people suggest ways to improve the 2k matched game, their suggestions are valid for improving 2k matched games, but they would completely destroy my way of playing. I've seen people suggest everything from removing ALL strats (common), consolidating factions by removing units (common), eliminating subfaction rules (less common), eliminating ways to play (less common), eliminating entire factions (rare), or completely blowing up the game and starting over (uncommon). Now I fully admit and concede that all of these can be valid solutions for improving the 2k Matched game in stores... But ALL of these suggestions absolutely destroy my way of playing, which I will remind you is currently RAW book legal and just as "valid" as 2k matched.

So when somebody makes one of these suggestions, I do tend to speak up about it, because I would prefer GW fix 2k Matched in a way that DOESN'T destroy 25PL Crusade since I am currently having more fun with 40k than I ever have. And so far, they mostly have, because all the rules changes I have hated (aircraft limit, no mixing subfactions, Ro3, etc) have been restricted to Matched Play.

Okay... so now we are down to the specific PL equipment swaps that have happened in actual 8th edition games I have played:

The most common is removing my Armorium Cherubs from my Retributors when my opponent's army isn't threatening enough that I need those extra shots- that's happened twice: once against Chaos Cultists, once against GSC. I included them, in my list because I was positive my opponent would choose to use the Venomcrawler and they didn't, and once because I thought they'd bring a Ridgerunner and they didn't. I also often swap Simulacra in or out based on need- I tend to pick faith bolstering abilities, so in a 25 PL game when I'm stacked with MD generating subfaction rules, WL traits and Relics, I can really lay the AoF down.

The one game I fielded an Inquisition detachment, I swapped in 2 meltaguns to each Accolyte unit, because my opponent DID choose the Venomcrawler in that game.

And I once switched the Aggressor load out in my DW Indomitor kill team from Boltstorm gauntlets to flamers because he swarmed me with Cultists.

Hecaton wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:
Jake doesn't care about winning an argument- he's been playing 40k since '89 quite happily with friends and family outside of stores, and he's trying to tell people that they are free to choose the same thing rather than pissing and moaning on the internet.

Some of us have jobs that necessitate moving around a lot. And games where the rules don't suck and the community is less toxic than 40k are better for building communities and meeting people in new towns - where you don't have to negotiate the fething Treaty of Westphalia before having a pickup game. Moreover, your practice of shaming people who do run into trouble is toxic positivity, and you're clearly dancing around culpability for that to avoid copping to it.

First off: yes, your situation of moving around often will make it harder for you to try my suggestions, and yes, I now understand the reason why you need the 2k Matched game to be improved as much as you do. This is valid- I hear you, and I understand your point of view.

Second, I can see how you would se the "pissing and moaning" as shaming... and it does sound that way. But allow me to remind you that BEFORE the post you quoted, you said these things to me:

"Your conversation above is entirely farcical, and doesn't apply to 40k"
"No. Mine actually happened. Jake's is just what he *wishes* was true because it would allow him to win an argument."

These two statements are the reason I may have come across as a little shamey and a little fed up. If you want me not to say things seem harsh, you might consider being a little friendlier too.

It's worth mentioning that AFTER I made the statement you quoted, you went on to say this:

"It's such a subservient viewpoint I can't have respect for it."

For what it's worth, I am writing this post now to address my tone, and to respond to your request for specific and detailed information about how I play and times when I've used loadout swaps in actual games with actual people. Do you still feel that I am "clearly dancing around culpability for that to avoid copping to it?"

If you do, then I would humbly ask that you consider whether or not you are "clearly dancing around culpability for that to avoid copping to it" until and unless you address the three statements that you made.

Finally, here is the entire post I made that set this whole ugly chain of escalating anger in motion:

PenitentJake wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
The conversation of “Hey, can I follow the rules as written, or do I need to nerf myself beyond what’s already there?” Shouldn’t need to be had.

Points ain’t perfect-but they’re better than PL.

Nope. It usually goes something like this:

Player 1: Wow, you brought a lot of armour- I'm not sure I've got enough anti-tank to give you an interesting game.

Player 2: Yeah, if I had the rest of my collection here, I'd probably swap a unit or two.

Player 1: I brought a few extra heavy weapons- mind if I substitute them into a few of my TAC squads to give me a fighting chance?

... And then, you have to have discussions about points if that's what you're using- IE whether or not you're going to make the guy adjust his entire army in order to accommodate the extra cost of the heavy weapons. If you happen to be playing PL, you can skip that part of the conversation because swapping the gear doesn't change costs.

Now did you notice that the last lines of this post acknowledge that the same kind of swapping in a points based game IF AN OPPONENT AGREES TO DO SO?

It's okay if you missed it the first time- Gadzilla and Blackie didn't catch it either, but their responses where constructive, helpful and quite frankly awesome, and I think they helped us see each other eye to eye- and in fact all of that respectful dialogue and resolution occurred before your three statements I quoted above.

Anyway, cheers mate- I hope I've explained myself, and addressed my own lack of diplomacy as well as provided you with enough information about how I play, who I play, where I play and when I've swapped which models in, out and the reasons why I did it. If you and Unit don't find this post acceptable, well allow me to apologize in advance for that too- I'm not sure how much further I can go to accommodate and validate you, and my posts are so damn wall-of-text long that I'm not sure you'd want to read another one anyway. But let the record show I tried.

Peace brothers, and may this game, another version of it, or a different game entirely give you the satisfaction you seek.

Penitent out.

Whilst that is a long ass post, massive respect for your demeanour and good will there Jake.

Jidmah wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I mean in Hecaton's example, "the talk" is just "can you please not play crusher stampede?"

Man do I miss the days when you didn't have to have a brunch discussion to get a game in. It used to be three things discussed: Game system, points size, any terrain that was potentially abnormal. Once in a while asking permission to use a named character.

Are you talking about 5th edition? Because my 5th edition's ork codex still has the 14 questions I had to ask my opponent before the game penned in it.

If you're looking for some "gotcha" moment that proves me wrong, try harder. And think back to any edition where pick up games happened repeatedly without a "social contract". I'll check back on you in a bit to see if you need led to it...

JNAProductions wrote:Yeah-that sounds cool, but it doesn’t at all sound like an attempt to balance anything. Just adding some theme to a game.

For the Narrative At All Cost players that IS fixing the balance, usually by eliminating it completely.

PenitentJake wrote:
So to clarify:

In my entire history with the game, I've played in 2 tournaments back in 2008. I've NEVER played 40k in a store.
I worked at a youth center from 96-98 and ran the center from 98-01. I ran narrative campaigns for both 40k and classic Necromunda 3-5 nights per week, and my entire collection lived at the center at that time so that the kids, many of whom did not have the means, could use my models to play.

The biggest battle I've ever played in was a 6 player 3 on 3 Apocalypse game with 9k points per side - that would have probably been 2008.

In 9th?

I've only ever played Crusade, not yet more than 25PL, though the rosters for each of my Crusades and my collection(s) of models is far larger. I've played Death Watch and Sisters with an without Inquisition allies, and I even once played a pure Inquisition detachment. I've also played GSC, CSM (technically Cultists using some BSF antagonists to create a detachment) and Drukhari. In total, I've played about 8 games. Every single game has been fun for both my opponent and myself.

I've had 3 different opponents: one is my partner, another is a friend I met through work- the husband of a colleague, and the third is one of the kids who used to play at the center I ran- he's all grown up now.

I have never, ever claimed otherwise. If you have assumed something different because the posts that you were responding to did not clearly state my experience, I get that- I have rolled this information out several times in my history as both a Dakkanaught and a Frater, but I don't do it every post because it doesn't always strike me as relevant.

Now that you know EXACTLY how I play, you can see how WILDLY different our experiences of the game are, and it's probably why we disagree as often as we do.

Ok. So your method of play is entirely inapplicable to basically everyone else, but you're acting like it applies. You are only using a fraction of the rules breadth of 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
For the Narrative At All Cost players that IS fixing the balance, usually by eliminating it completely.

Yup. Most players don't find a game with a predetermined outcome fun.

 Just Tony wrote:


If you're looking for some "gotcha" moment that proves me wrong, try harder. And think back to any edition where pick up games happened repeatedly without a "social contract". I'll check back on you in a bit to see if you need led to it...

Older editions didn't have many gotcha moments since factions' rules were a tiny fraction of what we have now. But pre-game talks were still necessary to tweak the players' lists and have a fair game. Just like now it was very possible, and easy, that one of the players had a much stronger list that needed to be countered somehow to get a balanced game.

 Blackie wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:


If you're looking for some "gotcha" moment that proves me wrong, try harder. And think back to any edition where pick up games happened repeatedly without a "social contract". I'll check back on you in a bit to see if you need led to it...

Older editions didn't have many gotcha moments since factions' rules were a tiny fraction of what we have now. But pre-game talks were still necessary to tweak the players' lists and have a fair game. Just like now it was very possible, and easy, that one of the players had a much stronger list that needed to be countered somehow to get a balanced game.

Going back further, the pre-game talk is almost assumed decorum for a lot of historical games and often still is. My friends wargamed back in the 70s and this is simply how it was done.

A further note is the original incarnation of 40k - rogue trader- has scope for a gm and this was kind of the expectation of things as well.

I remember when I got into 3rd Ed 40k and played my first games, we didn't have the 'negotiation phase' in our games. And 3rd was terribly balanced. Looking back, out games probably would have benefitted from that approach rather than the expectations that the game would be fine out of the box.but that's hindsight for you.

The 'pick-up game' is a relatively recent evolution in gaming.

Hecaton wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
So to clarify:

In my entire history with the game, I've played in 2 tournaments back in 2008. I've NEVER played 40k in a store.
I worked at a youth center from 96-98 and ran the center from 98-01. I ran narrative campaigns for both 40k and classic Necromunda 3-5 nights per week, and my entire collection lived at the center at that time so that the kids, many of whom did not have the means, could use my models to play.

The biggest battle I've ever played in was a 6 player 3 on 3 Apocalypse game with 9k points per side - that would have probably been 2008.

In 9th?

I've only ever played Crusade, not yet more than 25PL, though the rosters for each of my Crusades and my collection(s) of models is far larger. I've played Death Watch and Sisters with an without Inquisition allies, and I even once played a pure Inquisition detachment. I've also played GSC, CSM (technically Cultists using some BSF antagonists to create a detachment) and Drukhari. In total, I've played about 8 games. Every single game has been fun for both my opponent and myself.

I've had 3 different opponents: one is my partner, another is a friend I met through work- the husband of a colleague, and the third is one of the kids who used to play at the center I ran- he's all grown up now.

I have never, ever claimed otherwise. If you have assumed something different because the posts that you were responding to did not clearly state my experience, I get that- I have rolled this information out several times in my history as both a Dakkanaught and a Frater, but I don't do it every post because it doesn't always strike me as relevant.

Now that you know EXACTLY how I play, you can see how WILDLY different our experiences of the game are, and it's probably why we disagree as often as we do.

Ok. So your method of play is entirely inapplicable to basically everyone else, but you're acting like it applies. You are only using a fraction of the rules breadth of 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
For the Narrative At All Cost players that IS fixing the balance, usually by eliminating it completely.

Yup. Most players don't find a game with a predetermined outcome fun.

I mean ironically your method of play is entirely inapplicable to me too Hecaton, I'm at about 40 games played of 9th, with everything between crusade (25-55PL) and points matched play (500-2k) but I don't play tournament mission packs, I don't play hyper competitive lists, I have a stable group of players and we do talk beforehand if there's any adjustments we need to make for fair games. But you act like your world applies to everyone else as much, if not more, than Jake does.

I feel like we aren't really talking about powerlevels and points but more about different playstyles and approaches to the game.




I think anyone stepping back and objectively looking at the game can agree that having a game which works based on mathematical differences in values for different models; then using a single value for a range of values is not an improvement on balance over using a more granular points system ot account for variation in mathematical values for each unit.


Simple put Power Levels ARE fundamentally a worse system. The only benefit they have is being simpler and quicker to add up. However I would argue that a big part of that isn't just that they are smaller numbers, but that they are on the unit profiles. GW at some point started writing codex in a very bad way. 3rd edition it was easy to point up a unit because points and upgrade costs were on the unit profile along with their stats and abilities. It was all in one space in the book.

Today a unit might require you to look on multiple pages to find that information. You have to cross reference multiple pages per unit which slows down and makes the process feel more complicated. It makes points less easy to use because you're checking more pages, wasting more time, getting lost. Heck I recall one edition had stats infront and behind the colour photo pages in the middle. Not even keeping rules in one section of the book.



It's no surprise to me that some end up wanting to use powerlevels as its information presented so neatly and easily to use. On the surface, PL is better presented and easier to use. It masks the inherent inbalances that it introduces whereby it then hinges heavily on local pre-game setup to impose some restriction, structure or no structure at all upon how players use PL.
Which is where we fall into the trap of endlessly debating/arguing over how to use them. Because some care and some don't care about balance.










Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

 Overread wrote:
Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

I think the issue is also that you've got two types of imbalance - neither of which are really fixed by swapping points to PL.

I.E. "I'm bringing Tyranid Warriors"/"I'm bringing Heavy Intercessor" - oh look, you seem to get a lot more bang for your buck with the first over the second. You'd expect the Tyranid Player to win as a result. Its not however clear Tyranid Warriors should be better point for point than Heavy Intercessors - so this seems like imbalance.
vs
"I'm running a wall of tanks/knights etc"/"I've not brought enough anti-tank units". Well you'd expect the tank player to have an advantage and win as a result. And in this case its not "imbalance" exactly, just a skew producing a potentially bad/un-fun game.

And really, the former can be resolved by points, the second probably can't. It need to be resolved in how you can select an army. But equally, some people will want to run knights/pure mech armies. Some people might want to run 3 Tervigons+180 termagants. Some people won't be bothered by the challenge of running into such an army while others will be.

A lot of people care about their unit's cost-effectiveness and PL encourages ripping models apart to an extreme extent because the cost-effectiveness disparity is crystal clear when you have bolter for 0 pts and stormbolter for 0 pts. Even if 2 pts would be more fair and the price is 1 or 5 that's still better than nothing because at least you can feel good about saving that 1 pt or you can feel good about having a better gun even if you overpaid. The only time pts can be worse than PL is when the bad gun costs more than the good gun, which does happen once in an embarrassing while, but for most datasheets pts are a great thing.

 Overread wrote:
GW at some point started writing codex in a very bad way. 3rd edition it was easy to point up a unit because points and upgrade costs were on the unit profile along with their stats and abilities. It was all in one space in the book.

Today a unit might require you to look on multiple pages to find that information. You have to cross reference multiple pages per unit which slows down and makes the process feel more complicated. It makes points less easy to use because you're checking more pages, wasting more time, getting lost. Heck I recall one edition had stats infront and behind the colour photo pages in the middle.

True for 8th, but it's not that bad in 9th. I think moving the wargear and options sections from the datasheet to the points section such instead of:

Canoptek Wraiths {pg 103)
Unit size ........................................................................................................ 3-6 models
Unit cost... ................................................................................................. 35 pts/model
• Particle caster ............................................................................................... +5 pts
• Transdimensional beamer ..................................................................... + 10 pts

It becomes

Canoptek Wraiths {pg 103)
Unit size ........................................................................................................ 3-6 models. Every model is equipped with: vicious claws.
Unit cost... ................................................................................................. 35 pts/model
• Any number of models can each be equipped with one of the following: 1 particle caster +5 pts; 1 transdimensional beamer + 10 pts.
• Any number of models can each have their vicious claws replaced with whip coils.

Would help a little more and the best option is what Wahapedia has, but if you're using an app to make your list it really doesn't matter. Having the special rules mixed between art and lore instead of in an appendix and having stats in 3 places in older editions made them just as bad.

Tyel wrote:
"I'm running a wall of tanks/knights etc"/"I've not brought enough anti-tank units". Well you'd expect the tank player to have an advantage and win as a result. And in this case its not "imbalance" exactly, just a skew producing a potentially bad/un-fun game.

This should be fixed by missions. For tournament missions where you don't want people to win because they skewed in the right direction based on luck you punish skew, if you want a game to feature a lot of tanks pick a mission that encourages tanks, if one player skews the other direction they'll be punished by the mission but might come out ahead because they won't be vulnerable to all the enemy's anti-tank guns.

Tyel wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

I think the issue is also that you've got two types of imbalance - neither of which are really fixed by swapping points to PL.

I.E. "I'm bringing Tyranid Warriors"/"I'm bringing Heavy Intercessor" - oh look, you seem to get a lot more bang for your buck with the first over the second. You'd expect the Tyranid Player to win as a result. Its not however clear Tyranid Warriors should be better point for point than Heavy Intercessors - so this seems like imbalance.
vs
"I'm running a wall of tanks/knights etc"/"I've not brought enough anti-tank units". Well you'd expect the tank player to have an advantage and win as a result. And in this case its not "imbalance" exactly, just a skew producing a potentially bad/un-fun game.

And really, the former can be resolved by points, the second probably can't. It need to be resolved in how you can select an army. But equally, some people will want to run knights/pure mech armies. Some people might want to run 3 Tervigons+180 termagants. Some people won't be bothered by the challenge of running into such an army while others will be.

Agreed and part of the second type of imbalance I think can only be solved by things like unit limits and force organisation charts.

Avoiding skew lists is an issue for wargames because on the one front people like building varied and different lists; getting to use models they feel are cool and fun. No one wants to build a whole mechanised tank force and then have GW say "actually you can only use 2 tanks per army". Similarly someone bringing a whole tank army against a full infantry force that has only a standard amount of anti-tank, presents problems of its own.


It's hard, esp with a mature game where GW doesn't want to turn some people away with too many restrictions and where many armies are now getting quite big and have multiple units covering similar enough roles that they can be spammed as a theme even if you have limits like "rule of 3"

 Overread wrote:

Spoiler:

Tyel wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

I think the issue is also that you've got two types of imbalance - neither of which are really fixed by swapping points to PL.

I.E. "I'm bringing Tyranid Warriors"/"I'm bringing Heavy Intercessor" - oh look, you seem to get a lot more bang for your buck with the first over the second. You'd expect the Tyranid Player to win as a result. Its not however clear Tyranid Warriors should be better point for point than Heavy Intercessors - so this seems like imbalance.
vs
"I'm running a wall of tanks/knights etc"/"I've not brought enough anti-tank units". Well you'd expect the tank player to have an advantage and win as a result. And in this case its not "imbalance" exactly, just a skew producing a potentially bad/un-fun game.

And really, the former can be resolved by points, the second probably can't. It need to be resolved in how you can select an army. But equally, some people will want to run knights/pure mech armies. Some people might want to run 3 Tervigons+180 termagants. Some people won't be bothered by the challenge of running into such an army while others will be.

Agreed and part of the second type of imbalance I think can only be solved by things like unit limits and force organisation charts.

Avoiding skew lists is an issue for wargames because on the one front people like building varied and different lists; getting to use models they feel are cool and fun. No one wants to build a whole mechanised tank force and then have GW say "actually you can only use 2 tanks per army". Similarly someone bringing a whole tank army against a full infantry force that has only a standard amount of anti-tank, presents problems of its own.


It's hard, esp with a mature game where GW doesn't want to turn some people away with too many restrictions and where many armies are now getting quite big and have multiple units covering similar enough roles that they can be spammed as a theme even if you have limits like "rule of 3"

The key issue here is though, that there is such a thing as having too much options for a given task, aka skewing gets rewarded through missions and terrain instead of punished.
A good designed wargame especially mechanically in regards to terrain, unittype diversification and mission structure, would force players to bring not nearly as much skew as to become problematic.
I think its relative fair to assume that 40k isn't doing a good job there imo.
Then there is also an issue with certain factions and their design, cue current era knights, that can't work in an wargame above described but are made to fit 40k.

I agree its the same issue as when GW added dedicated air units to the game instead of hovering ones. The issue back then was again that the dedicated air unit needed dedicated anti-air to function and suddenly a layer of choice became mandatory and skewing very broken.

They've changed it up now, but Knights are in a similar spot in that they bring to the table a very specific set of weapons and armours that are unlike anything else.


Personally I think knights could work better, but the way to do it would be to make them more complex as an individual model. So instead of just a flat health bar and high armour; give them varied armours and healthbars over the whole unit. So if you didn't bring loads of anti-heavy armour you could still cripple them by shooting out weaker parts and subsystems and such.


But honestly that starts to become heavy on paper and much more tricky to work when you also have to take knights as attachments in regular armies; and when regular armies can do things like bringing 4 Keepers of Secrets (or indeed any multiple great demon); which are functionally similar to knights.

Hecaton wrote:

You are only using a fraction of the rules breadth of 40k.

As are you.

And thanks for owning up to those three pieces I quoted that where responsible for my ill will.

That was big of you, and certainly helped promote peace going forward.

 Overread wrote:
I agree its the same issue as when GW added dedicated air units to the game instead of hovering ones. The issue back then was again that the dedicated air unit needed dedicated anti-air to function and suddenly a layer of choice became mandatory and skewing very broken.

They've changed it up now, but Knights are in a similar spot in that they bring to the table a very specific set of weapons and armours that are unlike anything else.

TBF, GW could've just added the caveat that all missile launchers get AA missiles. Bam done, most armies now have effective AA adn you managed to make a weapon that often wasn't taken an viable choice.

Personally I think knights could work better, but the way to do it would be to make them more complex as an individual model. So instead of just a flat health bar and high armour; give them varied armours and healthbars over the whole unit. So if you didn't bring loads of anti-heavy armour you could still cripple them by shooting out weaker parts and subsystems and such.


But honestly that starts to become heavy on paper and much more tricky to work when you also have to take knights as attachments in regular armies; and when regular armies can do things like bringing 4 Keepers of Secrets (or indeed any multiple great demon); which are functionally similar to knights.

Far too complicated, if they'd instead get a rule that big knights could be Super heavies and warlords, aswell as a full list, with feudal tech levies, even smaller bots as elite and FA and the Heavy support and Super heavy + HQ slot being reserved for knights you'd have still a functional army, with the units to support the knights aswell more adaptable.

 Overread wrote:
I feel like we aren't really talking about powerlevels and points but more about different playstyles and approaches to the game.




I think anyone stepping back and objectively looking at the game can agree that having a game which works based on mathematical differences in values for different models; then using a single value for a range of values is not an improvement on balance over using a more granular points system ot account for variation in mathematical values for each unit.


Simple put Power Levels ARE fundamentally a worse system. The only benefit they have is being simpler and quicker to add up. However I would argue that a big part of that isn't just that they are smaller numbers, but that they are on the unit profiles. GW at some point started writing codex in a very bad way. 3rd edition it was easy to point up a unit because points and upgrade costs were on the unit profile along with their stats and abilities. It was all in one space in the book.

Today a unit might require you to look on multiple pages to find that information. You have to cross reference multiple pages per unit which slows down and makes the process feel more complicated. It makes points less easy to use because you're checking more pages, wasting more time, getting lost. Heck I recall one edition had stats infront and behind the colour photo pages in the middle. Not even keeping rules in one section of the book.



It's no surprise to me that some end up wanting to use powerlevels as its information presented so neatly and easily to use. On the surface, PL is better presented and easier to use. It masks the inherent inbalances that it introduces whereby it then hinges heavily on local pre-game setup to impose some restriction, structure or no structure at all upon how players use PL.
Which is where we fall into the trap of endlessly debating/arguing over how to use them. Because some care and some don't care about balance.










Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

This is a big pile of assumptions and misconceptions. Points aren’t better than power levels or visa versa. The game to me and many isn’t about “ a game which works based on mathematical differences in values for different models” it’s a game about using your models to create stories and history or narrative and characters. The maths and the the other stuff is just a means to an end.

There isn’t a best system, there is a system that suits some people more than others. Tournament types like points that can be tweaked and adjusted to get the maximum efficiency out of each unit, I like power levels as it give a vague approximation of the armies size so you can aim a level of parity on measured disparity but, I don’t care if a certain gun is 2 points more than another or if it dropped by a point could squeeze in another model.

Points to me are just a lot of wasted time adding stuff up that makes little to no difference and then they go and change them again because some bloke I never met won a competition with that unit. Not better but worse, FOR ME. it’s subjective. For some having no costing system at all and just playing what ever models they fancy works great.

And this myth that a game needs to balanced out the box to be fun is so annoying. Keep chasing balance and you end up with chess, but even then someone gets to go first! Chess is a fine game but not what I play 40k for, I play it for a laugh and a story.

I remember the move from the whacky and unbalanced but amazing fun second edition, to the stripped down and streamlined 3rd edition, and balance was a huge driver in those changes and it sucked all the life and character out of the game.

Now they to create balance and character but the game has so many more units and factions so all they end up with complexity. So you cannot say the game would be better for EVERYONE if it was more balanced, because I have seen them do that and it was worse. FOR ME.

Andykp wrote:

This is a big pile of assumptions and misconceptions. Points aren’t better than power levels or visa versa. The game to me and many isn’t about “ a game which works based on mathematical differences in values for different models” it’s a game about using your models to create stories and history or narrative and characters. The maths and the the other stuff is just a means to an end.

The maths is indeed the means to the end, so having good maths - ergo balance - means a better means to a better potential end.
You can't ignore the maths if you are using or modifying the game rules; its a mathematical game. It runs on maths.

You can use that mathematical structure to play competitive games; narrative games; retell great stories; create new stories; have adventures and it all.



Having better core balance in the game means that when you come to play a narrative game your units still have a style and feel and impact, but now they have a more measured performance. This means you can do funky stuff and have some idea how it will affect things. You can have one player take more models or more models of a certain kind and have a better idea how it might pan out on the tabletop. You can have that last-chance stand where its your army VS an opponent with twice as many models where you fight it out to see how long you can last. Better balance won't spoil that in the least.


Honestly better balance in the game is a net gain for all users as a base line to work from. What you do with it after that is up to you, but the best most common baseline is a balanced game. From there you can add your own imbalances; adjust balance; mess with things. Heck you can ignore latter updates as they will likely only be minor shifts and changes that won't really affect your game if you are totally focused on narrative and don't care that a few units have shifted up and down in points by a bit.



You can't build a game system around not caring about the mechanics and have it work for the majority of people. The only way you can kind of get that to work is though something like DnD where the mechanics run through a human filter - the DM - who interprets the results and uses them to create the game. Even there there are efforts to make the game balanced; to have level ups that aren't broken and the like.

Whether or not balance is better depends on the changes made for the sake of that balance, for the most part they aren’t good for how I play the game.

Take the 2nd to 3rd edition changes. (Which you ignored in your post). They were the biggest change to the game ever and done for balance. They stripped all character from the game and it’s taken years to come back in and is still no where near close.

So was 3rd more balanced than 2nd, clearly yes. Was it better? That’s subjective, which is my point. But FOR ME, it was much much worse.

On top of that I play ORKS mostly, they were hit hardest by the changes and went from brimming with character to zero in an instant. They were more balanced but dull. Balance, much much much worse for me.

It’s not universal, some changes for balance will be beneficial, more so for some players. I’m sure there is someone out there who loved the changes from 2nd to 3rd. Not me.

Power levels give me the mechanics to easily create my own units and rules. Costing a homemade unit was always the toughest part. PL make it simple.

Andykp wrote:
.
Take the 2nd to 3rd edition changes. (Which you ignored in your post). They were the biggest change to the game ever and done for balance. They stripped all character from the game and it’s taken years to come back in and is still no where near close.

That's a take I hadn't seen before. The transition from 2nd to 3rd, from a skirmish size game to a bigger battle game had previously been explained as a sales move. Supposedly the studio had submitted a slightly revised version of 2nd and management rejected it because it didn't increase the model counts in the armies. So, as GW also produced historical rulesets at that time, they grabbed a ruleset that was developed for WWII and hastily 40kified it. If the resulting game turned out to be more balanced than the previous edition, then it was probably just a byproduct of that era's "index 40k" with all the army lists in the main rulebook and not because they specifically set out to make a more balanced game.

Overread wrote:I think anyone stepping back and objectively looking at the game can agree that having a game which works based on mathematical differences in values for different models; then using a single value for a range of values is not an improvement on balance over using a more granular points system ot account for variation in mathematical values for each unit.

Simple put Power Levels ARE fundamentally a worse system. The only benefit they have is being simpler and quicker to add up. However I would argue that a big part of that isn't just that they are smaller numbers, but that they are on the unit profiles. GW at some point started writing codex in a very bad way. 3rd edition it was easy to point up a unit because points and upgrade costs were on the unit profile along with their stats and abilities. It was all in one space in the book.

Today a unit might require you to look on multiple pages to find that information. You have to cross reference multiple pages per unit which slows down and makes the process feel more complicated. It makes points less easy to use because you're checking more pages, wasting more time, getting lost. Heck I recall one edition had stats infront and behind the colour photo pages in the middle. Not even keeping rules in one section of the book.

It's no surprise to me that some end up wanting to use powerlevels as its information presented so neatly and easily to use. On the surface, PL is better presented and easier to use. It masks the inherent inbalances that it introduces whereby it then hinges heavily on local pre-game setup to impose some restriction, structure or no structure at all upon how players use PL.
Which is where we fall into the trap of endlessly debating/arguing over how to use them. Because some care and some don't care about balance.

Exalted, because this is spot-on. The advantages of PL as a system aren't about balance, it's all about ease of use and how you approach the game.

Andykp wrote:Take the 2nd to 3rd edition changes. (Which you ignored in your post). They were the biggest change to the game ever and done for balance. They stripped all character from the game and it’s taken years to come back in and is still no where near close.

So was 3rd more balanced than 2nd, clearly yes. Was it better? That’s subjective, which is my point. But FOR ME, it was much much worse.

The points vs PL issue isn't directly related to GW's decision to strip out options for the sake of balance. Those have very little to do with one another. GW could decide that balance is all-important while embracing PL, or they could decide flavor is more important than balance while using points.

The difference is that if balance is a goal, points makes it easier to preserve all those weird flavorful options, because you can set an appropriate cost to them. If balance isn't a priority, GW could just as easily say 'we're not going to try balancing these, go nuts' and assign every upgrade a value of zero points, like they did with Infantry Squads, and presto, you have PL-style options and freedom. Under PL, if you want to balance out options, your only adjustment lever is changing their rules (or those of the unit that can take them). That's going to have more immediate impact on your game experience than changing costs. So even if you personally aren't super invested in competitive play, a points system provides more opportunity to tweak the game for the sake of balance while still supporting the options you find compelling.

More importantly, good balance does extend to all levels of play like Overread said- even if you use it just as a starting point to heuristically balance out two forces, it sure beats having no structure whatsoever and having to feel it out by trial and error. And balance isn't just about setting up your forces; it's about ensuring that units function in the way they should, and that outcomes are what you expect. It's not a good narrative experience if the desperate last stand is actually a one-sided stomp, nor is it good narrative when the melee specialists get butchered in melee by shooting specialists. Having more levers for balancing helps to avoid these situations (and curate a better play experience) without needing to start stripping out rules and losing flavor.

It should be telling that even when 40K was a narrative-focused game and tournaments were a ways off, it still had a points system to establish structure.

Andykp wrote:Power levels give me the mechanics to easily create my own units and rules. Costing a homemade unit was always the toughest part. PL make it simple.

Because the valuation is coarser- simpler, at the cost of precision. Deciding between 4PL or 5PL is no harder than deciding between 80pts or 100pts. The only reason points feel tougher is because you have the opportunity to set a more precise value; but if you want to make units quick-and-dirty there's nothing stopping you from rounding to increments of 20.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Spoiler:

Tyel wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Personally I feel that is just a huge red herring. Whether an individual player cares about balance or not shouldn't matter; nor if one club or group cares. The core structure of the game should be balanced however the units are bought to play on the table. A balanced game "out of the box" allows for any kind of playstyle to use it. If you don't care about balance its fine because you don't care; if you care about balance its great; if you want narrative games it gives you a functional local structure whereby you know what will likely happen if you tweak things.

I think the issue is also that you've got two types of imbalance - neither of which are really fixed by swapping points to PL.

I.E. "I'm bringing Tyranid Warriors"/"I'm bringing Heavy Intercessor" - oh look, you seem to get a lot more bang for your buck with the first over the second. You'd expect the Tyranid Player to win as a result. Its not however clear Tyranid Warriors should be better point for point than Heavy Intercessors - so this seems like imbalance.
vs
"I'm running a wall of tanks/knights etc"/"I've not brought enough anti-tank units". Well you'd expect the tank player to have an advantage and win as a result. And in this case its not "imbalance" exactly, just a skew producing a potentially bad/un-fun game.

And really, the former can be resolved by points, the second probably can't. It need to be resolved in how you can select an army. But equally, some people will want to run knights/pure mech armies. Some people might want to run 3 Tervigons+180 termagants. Some people won't be bothered by the challenge of running into such an army while others will be.

Agreed and part of the second type of imbalance I think can only be solved by things like unit limits and force organisation charts.

Avoiding skew lists is an issue for wargames because on the one front people like building varied and different lists; getting to use models they feel are cool and fun. No one wants to build a whole mechanised tank force and then have GW say "actually you can only use 2 tanks per army". Similarly someone bringing a whole tank army against a full infantry force that has only a standard amount of anti-tank, presents problems of its own.


It's hard, esp with a mature game where GW doesn't want to turn some people away with too many restrictions and where many armies are now getting quite big and have multiple units covering similar enough roles that they can be spammed as a theme even if you have limits like "rule of 3"

The key issue here is though, that there is such a thing as having too much options for a given task, aka skewing gets rewarded through missions and terrain instead of punished.
A good designed wargame especially mechanically in regards to terrain, unittype diversification and mission structure, would force players to bring not nearly as much skew as to become problematic.
I think its relative fair to assume that 40k isn't doing a good job there imo.
Then there is also an issue with certain factions and their design, cue current era knights, that can't work in an wargame above described but are made to fit 40k.

All it requires is that Knights are pretty bad and aren't particularly vulnerable to anti-tank. That way most lists can handle Knights. How do you make a vehicle durable against anti-tank? Give it an invuln and make its brackets meaningful (don't give them a 1CP ignore brackets Stratagem). If you're not playing an army that spams S4 then Knights haven't been an issue in most of 8th and 9th.

Andykp wrote:
I play it for a laugh and a story.

The story of "Iron Hands destroyed the Necrons turn 3 without suffering meaningful losses" becomes a boring story the third time it plays out in a row. PL isn't much better than just allowing each player to bring 100 wounds, you can use that as a starting point and then remove or replace stuff from one army until you find it appropriate to the scenario you want to play. It would also allow people to get to the exact number of wounds so the game is perfectly balanced (sarcasm) by adding one 1-4 extra Tempestus Scions to reach exactly 100 wounds.

Power levels give me the mechanics to easily create my own units and rules. Costing a homemade unit was always the toughest part. PL make it simple.

If you're not BSing me I'd appreciate if you could assign power levels to my fandex, from what I understand GW usually goes the opposite way so I am not sure how you can easily assign a PL to a unit. At first I assigned one of my units 30 pts/model, then I checked things over and had the radical idea that 20 pts/model actually might not be OP. I have no idea whether the unit should be PL 6 or 9.