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From mkerr at BOLS:

http://belloflostsouls.tumblr.com/post/32203083

http://belloflostsouls.tumblr.com/post/32362114

The gist of this? Here's the proposed rule:

“Except for the Troop category, no army list may contain duplicates of any Unit Type in a single Force Organization category.”

To me, this is really two questions. Are tournaments broken? And is this a good solution?

I have read reports that the Invitational tournament was 40% triple falcon, 40% Nidzilla and 20% everything else. Is this true? We don't have the data. But we could. Here are the names of everyone who played.

http://www.adepticon.org/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=79

If you are on here, or know someone who is and what they played in the Invitational would you post a quick note here saying what the list was like?

And what does everyone here think of what mkerr has to say?

Personally, I would like to see a lot more data released about tournaments. Not just total scores, but matchups, lists, and per round battle points. Any data hounds have a technological solution here? Would people object to this? Or is it just too much work for (understandably) exhausted organizers? If the sheets still exist, it would be a treasure trove of who beats who kind of data. I don't have the skills to present this data meaningfully, but I might just volunteer to learn them...

Wrecking Crew took 1st and 3rd at the invitational.

The first place army was Orks, with lots of boyz Snikrot, some lootas and other odds and ends. Basically the typical Ork list now.

The 3rd place player had Chaos with 9 oblits DeathGuard and lash.

I don't get it. Are Genestealers not troops?

Doctor Optimal wrote:I don't get it. Are Genestealers not troops?

They are. mkerr forgets some things sometimes.

Ok, alot.

Not a bad idea though. Been dreaming up one like it myself.

Restrictions like those proposed are faulty on several counts. They affect different armies in different ways at different points levels. Restricting armies to mostly Troops affects Eldar to a much greater degree than Chaos or Imperial Guard, while cutting out much of the flavor of the armies in the game. The problem isn't with the FoC, it's that the codex designers need to do some *actual* playtesting. SMF and Holofields should have been nixed, 6 carnifex's and 2 Hive Tyrants with multiple Genestealer rending troops should have been nixed, Double Lash with Jump Daemon Princes or Sorcerers should have been nixed. These are issues with unit balance, not FoC balance. I doubt anyone would complain about my Imperial Guard army, which is essentially composed of 6 Elites choices, 3 HS, 1 barebones HQ and 1 FA. When you look at it only from the FoC choices, it looks bad. But how hard is 60 4+ T3 lasgun wielding infantry and 7 tin-box chimera's in reality as the core of an army? It looks cool, and functions *ok* against non-competitive lists, but gets wiped out to a man against Mech Eldar, Lash Chaos, Nidzilla, etc.

The problem isn't with multiple elites or HS choices, its with Unit balance and points level. Units need to be better balanced and playtested, and points level needs to be considered in restricting units as well. 6 Carnifex's in a 1500 or 1850pt game is abusive, especially when coupled with two HT's and 4 squads of Genestealers, but at 2500? Less so. Imperial Guard at 1500pts versus Chaos at 1500pts with an emphasis on troops may be biased in favor of Chaos.

Now try it at 3000pts. See what I'm getting at?

Tournament rules with arbitrary FoC restrictions don't take into account differences between codex's and the relative value of such to each army, and what the balance of power looks like afterwards. In fact, some may be satisfied with an imbalance as long as it is a *different* imbalance.

Well said, Vak.

Having recently had a chance to sit down a toss a few drinks back with Graham McNeil (who used to work in the Games Dev studio before he took up fiction writing full-time) I've come to the conclusion that the problem is that GW doesn't do enough outside playtesting. With the majority (or all) of their playtesting done in-house, they get a certain efficiency, but they all tend to share the same biases and outlook.

Don't forget, the playtesters that are outside...well, when we don't fit the inhouse pattern we're ignored.

Been that way for a decade plus.

I agree with Vaktathi. Not only does the restriction hurt some codices, but I seriously believe it takes away from the spirit of the game and themed fluffy lists.

That and to second what someone else pointed out: Genestealers are a troop choice.

It's not so much tournaments that are broken, but the tournament players. Been that way for the better part of 20 years. It's just go worse over the years.

2nd ed was the crux. Uber characters and OTT armies.

We have tournaments here where an army comp score is equally as important as your sports score (so if you have a cheesy army, you better be a really nice guy, or you won't win).

Vaktathi wrote:Tournament rules with arbitrary FoC restrictions don't take into account differences between codex's and the relative value of such to each army, and what the balance of power looks like afterwards. In fact, some may be satisfied with an imbalance as long as it is a *different* imbalance.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Stopping duplicates is the wrong way to do it. Nidzilla may be abusive, but how can a Tyranid player kill vehicles without Gunfexes? Even if he is limitd to 3 Fexes rather than 6, all three of those should be anti-tank shooters.

BYE

Actually, having read over everything, I've come to one conclusion:

Mkerr of BOLS doesn't like being contradicted, and will intentional ignore or distort what other people are saying (not to mention the ad hominem attacks) when he's in an argument.

BYE

I was in the invitational at Adepticon with 3 falcons. I didn't see any other 3 falcon armies, but I was fighting a sinus infection and didn't notice much outside my own games. I did play against Eldar in two of my games, and I believe there was more Eldar there than anything else. I think it might be fun to run an occasional tournament with no duplicate units outside troops, but I'm more interested in seeing what 5th edition brings.

I certainly feel it gets boring if one or two armies are dominant. In third edition I ran Kult o' Speed to many victories, and when fourth edition came out I was disgruntled my army got hobbled somewhat. But mostly it was neat to see players bring new armies and new strategies. No matter where we go with this game there will be players that work very hard to win. Almost all min/max, some play shady or use persuasion and intimidation, and a few just plain cheat.

I played Necrons for the gladiator and team tournament while my buddies used the Eldar I painted for Adepticon. On sunday I used a three falcon list because I thought it would be strong and I wanted to win, and also because I didn't have enough other Eldar stuff painted. My metagame choice was poor, as I anticipated it might be. Never bring what everyone is expecting. I might have been better off with my Necrons (lol).

I'm now painting some vibro cannons and a few other pieces to give me some flexibility, and I'm taking a look at expanding my orks. Maybe if someone runs a tournament in the Dayton area with Mkerr style rules I'll be able to make it. I don't care what the rules are as long as everyone knows them in advance. I'm going down to Cincinnati May 18 for the first annual CAG tournament. I'm taking several buddies, and several other friends are also coming. If anyone out there lives close to Cincy, come out and lets play!

H.B.M.C. wrote:Mkerr of BOLS doesn't like being contradicted, and will intentional ignore or distort what other people are saying (not to mention the ad hominem attacks) when he's in an argument.

And H.B.M.C. can't stay on topic or stand not being the center of attention. Are we not giving you and your opinions enough attention? Is it possible for you to engage in a conversation without attacking someone that doesn't completely agree with you?

This topic is 100% opinion and there is no right or wrong. On every forum where someone has posted this thread the votes are split down the middle with players on each side feeling strongly about the problem or lack of a problem. There's no point in personally attacking posters that don't agree with you.

I'm asking for players with reservations to give it a spin -- there are certainly enough people in every vote that feels that it's a step in the right direction. Don't just spam "it's not going to work" or "this doesn't fix the problem". Play a couple of games using the rule and tell us what happened. Or even better come up with a suggestion, like GregSwanson's excellent suggestion on the Adeptus Windy City forums, post it.

HELLO

Krak_kirby wrote:I'm now painting some vibro cannons and a few other pieces to give me some flexibility, and I'm taking a look at expanding my orks. Maybe if someone runs a tournament in the Dayton area with Mkerr style rules I'll be able to make it. I don't care what the rules are as long as everyone knows them in advance. I'm going down to Cincinnati May 18 for the first annual CAG tournament. I'm taking several buddies, and several other friends are also coming. If anyone out there lives close to Cincy, come out and lets play!

That's all I'm asking. Try it out. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn't, then at least you got to play in a tournament with some different armies than the normal tournaments. Either way, everyone has a good time and we learn something about how army composition affects how much fun a tournament is.

I don't know if this "list equalizer" will work. I haven't playtested it, but I intend to.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Stopping duplicates is the wrong way to do it. Nidzilla may be abusive, but how can a Tyranid player kill vehicles without Gunfexes? Even if he is limitd to 3 Fexes rather than 6, all three of those should be anti-tank shooters.

How about we give it a spin and find out? I'm going to test it with my Big Bug army and I'll tell you what I find out. I'm guessing that the loss of 4 TMCs is going to force me to outplay my opponent instead of "out-army list" him. Sounds like a challenge!

H.B.M.C wrote:Mkerr of BOLS doesn't like being contradicted, and will intentional ignore or distort what other people are saying (not to mention the ad hominem attacks) when he's in an argument.

Quoted for truth.

I think Mkerr is on the right track, but I don't know that it will work with the set up of codexes now.
I really like the set up of WHFB where there are a certain number of each slot open to each player at each point level. I think something like that, very similar to what Mkerr suggested, would be good for 40k. The trouble with it in the current set up is that many armies' codexes are set up without that limitation in mind. Some armies just do not have the necessary abilities to get by with just one of a HS selection or the like.
Now, perhaps if it was 1 slot per X points, that might work a bit better across the codexes. Or perhaps X Elite, FA OR HS slots per Y points, or Y troop choices. I think a lot of these have possibilities, instead of the current system which is perhaps a little too open ended.

If I can get someone to try these out though, I will post what we find.

Vaktathi hit the nail on the head. The real problems are a) that GW doesn't playtest well enough, and b) that the Force Org chart doesn't scale at all based on game size. They've got a much more effective version in Warhammer, with Core, Heroes, Special, and Rare units. The minimum number of Core, and the maximums for each of the other categories, scale based on the size of the game.

That said, I think the "no non-Troop duplicates" restriction is certainly a worthwhile thing to try, at least for some events, and will definitely shake things up and be fun. I have some suspicion, however, that armies like Eldar and Marines, which have lots of unit choices, will be favored. Some armies are pretty sparse for choice in some force org categories.

Can you imagine a no-duplicates rule for Necron tournament armies? Talk about a swift kick in the special rules.

The problem is that some lists can spam troops and still win in the "army list creation phase".

Pod Marines
Horde Orks
etc.

mkerr wrote:And H.B.M.C. can't stay on topic or stand not being the center of attention. Are we not giving you and your opinions enough attention? Is it possible for you to engage in a conversation without attacking someone that doesn't completely agree with you?

You're like walking human irony mkerr. It would've been easier to just quote my comment about you and write 'I agree' under it.

Would've taken up less space on the server too.

But c'mon now. You challenge someone to make up a 'cheese' list under your system, so someone does, to which you respond 'Well that doesn't compare to current cheese lists' and call it a day, as though you've 'won' some sort of argument. And you ad hominem (using that as a verb for a second) people for using the Anon ability of the comments thing.

Do you ever read what you write over? Do you know that BOLS is a fantastic site, but you've developed a god complex over it?

BYE

I think that virtually all comp/theme paradigms have failed, for the simple reason that armies are created to work in different way, emphasis different virtues, and span a long time. To expect all of these codices to conform to a single post hoc (created after the fact) scheme is a recipe for failure.

The opposite method, having each opponent judge how "over the top" a build is can be equally difficult. Rigid unworkable objectivity can at least be planned around, unguided subjectivity is really hard to predict.

There are legitimatly builds that many armies have trouble with, and I think it'd be better to tackle those head on. Rather then create a convoluted scheme for docking tri-falcon eldar, or expecting each opponent to decide whether that army is fair, simply cap the number of fully kitted falcons. A few examples, for 1500pt tournaments:
1) No eldar army may include more than 2 holofields
2) Only two dakkafexes may be taken
3) No army may include more than 1 Lash

Etc, etc. I think there are two huge difficulties with this plan, however. First, it would take a pretty even handed and objective group to isolate and identify the strongest builds. Second, it would be horribly tempting to nerf the hell out of them, when a mild decrease would be plenty.

mkerr wrote:This topic is 100% opinion and there is no right or wrong.

That's patently wrong.

'No wrong or right opinions' is a cop-out. An opinion isn't some 'get out of common sense free' card that allows you believe whatever bs you want and pass it off as opinion and therefore become irreproachable. Some opinions, and this may come as a colossal shock to you mkerr, are actually wrong! You know some people, even today, are of the opinion that the world of flat? Yeah, but no, it's their opinion, so they're entitled to it. There's no right or wrong with opinions after all!

Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

I'm all for new ideas that balance the game, but your suggestion, quite frankly, isn't one of them. All it does is arbitrarily (there's your favourite word again!) restrict all armies, even when not broken, and does what GW does every time they create a new Codex - it just shifts the cheese elsewhere. You're not creating balance, all you're doing is recreating the metagame, forcing people to find new ways of cheesing out.

You are mostly right in saying we can't write the rules (well... we did, and we enjoy 40K far more now), but it's not like this idea is a solution and it's not like it hasn't been thought of before. There are still power lists in the game that don't require duplicates of HQ/Elites/FA/Heavy Support, and there are terribly weak and middling armies that do have repetition. Your suggestion does nothing to hamper the former, and destroys the latter.

Good on ya for trying, but 'take it for a spin' doesn't work here. We know how this game works now, so we know this system will just make the troop heavy power lists more desirable whilst at the same time handicapping armies that weren't overpowered to begin with!!!


Now go on Mkerr, ignore my points and attack me personally. You know you want to!

BYE

Yikes. God complex? Ad Hominem as a verb? You need to take a step back and breathe a little. I for one appreciate the discussion of this idea, which is why I have spammed a couple forums with it.

No, it's not a verb, I was using it as a verb. You could even go so far as to say I 'verbed' it.

Heh.

English is funny.

BYE

Wehrkind wrote:I think Mkerr is on the right track, but I don't know that it will work with the set up of codexes now.
I really like the set up of WHFB where there are a certain number of each slot open to each player at each point level. I think something like that, very similar to what Mkerr suggested, would be good for 40k.

I like this idea the most. Revert the FoC chart to something closer to how it was in second edition. 25%-50% of points total must be spent on troops. 0%-25% may be spent on HQ, 0%-25% may be spent on elites, 0%-25% may be spent on fast attack, 0%-25% may be spent on heavies.

Lets pull away from the direct Mkerr attacks shall we? Its not productive.

As noted, I don't believe it helps, other than to help insure a further plethora of marine players. The only way to really work it is: let everyone do what they are going to do; or have one single standardized list with no deviation. It takes the list making right out of the game.

OTT but here's a test:
-Are there any non-marine players that support the MKerr proposal?

I'm an Ork player and I'm very receptive to the idea. Mostly because of Tri-Falcon.

Someone would have to show me how a Nid player would have significant anti-vehicle in V5 under this. Rending is nerfed. That leaves MC's and carnies correct? So are we saying Nids would have have at most, 1 MC HQ, 1 MC dakkafex, and 1 MC carnifex?

What would Nid HS be reduced to: 1 fex and a biovore?

What about Tau? they would have maximum access to two units for HS.

Necrons-monolith and HDs? (or are HD's something else)

The chicks with sticks would be reduced to 1 exorcist and what else?

But of course marines and chaos marines retain three effective HS options. On that basis alone the proposal is unfair.

Polonius wrote:
There are legitimatly builds that many armies have trouble with, and I think it'd be better to tackle those head on. Rather then create a convoluted scheme for docking tri-falcon eldar, or expecting each opponent to decide whether that army is fair, simply cap the number of fully kitted falcons. A few examples, for 1500pt tournaments:
1) No eldar army may include more than 2 holofields
2) Only two dakkafexes may be taken
3) No army may include more than 1 Lash

I think this is an excellent way for a tourney organizer to adequately handle the situation and foster an environment that produces more armies that deviate from the cookie cutter power builds. I would be interested in playing a tournament with Mkerr's suggestion, but Stealer Shock and Orks would still have a definite advantage. I'd take the stance that the problem is not the codex, but rather the mentality of the people that abuse the codex. Yes, the option is there for Eldar, Chaos, or Nids, as there could be a large blunt object next to me, that doesn't mean that the blunt object demands I bash somebody with it.

As a relatively new player, one that loves going to RTTs but without huge aspirations to win, I enjoy playing against and playing armies that showcase a player's skill and creativity. I'd much rather be beaten by a player that just plain out played me rather than facing a list that has the greatest advantage over everyone.

Yet, on that note, we shouldn't criticize or ostracize players that want and enjoy that competitive edge where they want tri-falcons and nidzilla. Perhaps the answer is for tourney organizers to do different levels of a tournament, an Ard Boyz style no comp/no sportsmanship brawl and a more restricted level that does place limitations on power builds and rewards other faucets of the hobby instead of just winning. While separate is not equal, and people will argue endlessly about who is better, they do that now anyway. Perhaps this way more people will be satisfied.

I already feel like a gambler taking only 2 WWP's portals with Wych Cult-having only one would be . . . interesting.

I agree the problem is with the rules. No rules will ever be perfect, but GW's could be better. With V5, maybe some of that goes away. And I think that, despite all the internet teeth-nashing, 40k is headed in a good direction.

I still remember that years ago (say 10) the Dev Team was Shocked! when they hired a new guy who abused everyone in blood bowl with his dirty player(s). A problem that all of us playing in competitive leagues had been dealing with for years. I think Jervis wrote about this when they nerfed fouling or dirty players (or both) in a revision.

I play podding wolves, so this wouldn't change my army list one bit.