Did we ever have 40K balance issues back in the day?

[Denzark]

Just mulling over SH and some of the big stuff and then, remembering the retro thread, the thought ocurred to me - did we have balance issues way back when?

More specifically, remember the old targetting template editions? Well we had a scratchbuilt Baneblade in White Dwarf - that was clearly 40K approved. Our US brethren had ready access to Armorcast.

Did people think these were over/under costed? OP or not?

You could design something of almost limitless points using the old 3rd/4th ed VDR in Chapter Approved - was that too much?

I just wonder if the complaints about SH are purely a modern phenomena or if there have always been OTT stuff?

[SaveModifier]

Tyranids were overpowered as heck in 2nd Edition, and it was full of wacky randomness from Vortex grenades to the dreaded virus outbreak strategy card.

[Quaade]

2nd ed. was a massive cluster**** of balance issues where if you played Eldar, you pretty much won by default, unless the other guy put down a SW terminator list with cyclone launchers and some assault cannons.

[Mr Mystery]

2nd Ed was my first proper edition (had RT, never really played it).

2nd Ed was not in the least bit balanced I'm afraid.

Was still fun though!

[Deadlift]

4th was when I started. I could be wrong but it felt the most balanced of what's come after. Not just the various armies but internally in the rules too.

[Psychosplodge]

We didn't care about the lack of balance back in second because we were having more fun...

[Mr Mystery]

3rd Ed was terribad for balance.

Codex Blood Angels and the 42" charge of RAGE, on the first turn anyone? Not to mention then just piling into combat after combat, because you're such a tactical genius?

[SaveModifier]

Balance and fun just don't go hand in hand

[Denzark]

We didn't care about the lack of balance back in second because we were having more fun...

I am undecided as to whether all my 2ed reminisces are rose tinted glasses or not.

I remember one game using the WD rules for Gotrek and Felix, adding them into a Squat and IG mix army, because the fantasy profiles were interchangeable...

[Mr Mystery]

That's a fair point.

For me, 2nd Ed and Titan Legions era are my golden times, due to my age, and the amount of gaming I got in.

Shortly after, job. Low pay, long hours, crappy conditions, all impacted on hobby enjoyment, all kicking off at the same time 3rd Ed came out. So it's hard to say for certain whether 2nd Ed really was as acecakes as I recall, or if it's perspective.

[Psychosplodge]

There may be an element of that.

But for me I can't think of a time were I had a really bad game.
I can for both 3rd and 4th

[This Dave]

Having played all the editions there have always been horrible balance issues. I remember in Rogue Trader a friend of mine's Ork Warboss rolled a following fire blast Lascannon. Who thought that was a good idea?

[SaveModifier]

I played 2nd Edition last month, its still a very silly game, but its smaller and the close combat system is much more exciting (if utterly unsuiited to a mass combat game) and its a lot of fun, we knew going in that it was all just for laughs so no one minded when things went crazy, I did manage to draw the Virus Outbreak though, 2 squads of Guardians gone before the game began, it'd have killed his Farseer too but I was feeling generous

[YorkNecromancer]

40K has never EVER been balanced. Anyone who claims otherwise has clearly glued their nostalgia goggles on. There have been times when it was better balanced (early 5th edition up until GK's springs to mind) but even then, it was never perfect. It never will be; too many moving parts, too many different combinations, and too many bad players prepared to blame their failings on a 'broken' game mean it's impossible.

2nd edition however, was crazy. Much better than 1st (which was about as balanced as a drunk on a see-saw), but still crazy.

I scratch-built a Baneblade out of cardboard (it looked terrible, but I was proud because I was twelve and lacked better judgement) and fought precisely one battle with it.

After 45 mins of setting up, my Ork opponent (who was a WAAC munchkin who hated me personally - we were 'friends' through geographical proximity and a shared hobby as opposed to anything else) fired a single plasma cannon shot at the thing. Which penetrated the armour, hit the cannon's magazine, and detonated the tank.

The resulting explosion covered my half of the table in a ball of burning death which killed my ENTIRE ARMY.

Total battle time: 3 minutes.

Total time for my opponent to gloat about his 'brilliant win': two years.

Yeah, love the fluff, love the old models, nostalgia's in full effect there, but the early 40K rules set can go **** itself.

[DarkLink]

4th was when I started. I could be wrong but it felt the most balanced of what's come after. Not just the various armies but internally in the rules too.

4th ed was when Nidzilla and the Eldar flying circus were OP. You either had a ton of massively underpriced Hive Tyrants and Carnifexes that put out a ton of Str 6 shooting, in a time when no one had the firepower to kill that, or triple Falcons that couldn't be penetrated and forced you to reroll all damage results so they were virtually unkillable in a time when heavy anti-tank was much more expensive, filled with Harlequins that were, at the time, almost unbeatable in assault because they'd rend everything in their killzone to death and consolidate from combat to combat.

[bfmusashi]

40K has never EVER been balanced. Anyone who claims otherwise has clearly glued their nostalgia goggles on. There have been times when it was better balanced (early 5th edition up until GK's springs to mind) but even then, it was never perfect. It never will be; too many moving parts, too many different combinations, and too many bad players prepared to blame their failings on a 'broken' game mean it's impossible.

2nd edition however, was crazy. Much better than 1st (which was about as balanced as a drunk on a see-saw), but still crazy.

I scratch-built a Baneblade out of cardboard (it looked terrible, but I was proud because I was twelve and lacked better judgement) and fought precisely one battle with it.

After 45 mins of setting up, my Ork opponent (who was a WAAC munchkin who hated me personally - we were 'friends' through geographical proximity and a shared hobby as opposed to anything else) fired a single plasma cannon shot at the thing. Which penetrated the armour, hit the cannon's magazine, and detonated the tank.

The resulting explosion covered my half of the table in a ball of burning death which killed my ENTIRE ARMY.

Total battle time: 3 minutes.

Total time for my opponent to gloat about his 'brilliant win': two years.

Yeah, love the fluff, love the old models, nostalgia's in full effect there, but the early 40K rules set can go **** itself.

I'm sending waves of hate at that kid through space and time.

[Captain Bubonicus]

3rd Ed was terribad for balance.

Codex Blood Angels and the 42" charge of RAGE, on the first turn anyone? Not to mention then just piling into combat after combat, because you're such a tactical genius?

Word. I still get twitchy at the thought of seeing black and red Rhinos lined up at the front edge of their deployment zone.

[Eberk]

We didn't care about the lack of balance back in second because we were having more fun...
This...

this is soooooo true. There were no internet forums to moan about balance issues and whatever. You only had your (small) group of friends and had some serious fun.

(That group of friends had at least 1 WAAC player who always moaned about imbalance when it not concerned his own army - which was always overcosted and not good enough :rolleyes:)

[confoo22]

this is soooooo true. There were no internet forums to moan about balance issues and whatever. You only had your (small) group of friends and had some serious fun.

This is probably how it would still be for most groups if it wasn't for the rise of internet forums and the need by some people to prove how terrible the game is for no other reason than to prove it. It just kills the mood when someone in your group talks about how horribly unbalanced the game is now because some joker you've never met and never will lost in three turns to some other joker you've never met and never will from halfway across the country.

Nobody is going to enjoy every game they play but when they can come and find others complaining they feel justified and hold on to that dissatisfaction for longer then they would and begin to blame every loss on whatever it is the internet is complaining about at the time.

[newtjedi]

I played 2nd Edition last month, its still a very silly game, but its smaller and the close combat system is much more exciting (if utterly unsuiited to a mass combat game) and its a lot of fun, we knew going in that it was all just for laughs so no one minded when things went crazy, I did manage to draw the Virus Outbreak though, 2 squads of Guardians gone before the game began, it'd have killed his Farseer too but I was feeling generous

Why hello!

[Mike Lawler]

2nd edition was a lot of fun IMO as well.. it felt more "interesting"..

That said.. it wasn't balanced at ALL.. I think the big difference is now we have the internet and can:
A) Compare results so that imbalances stick out more
B) Complain in a more focused area blowing things out of proportion or creating a scapegoat reaction rather than a "find another way around" type of mentality.

We were forced IMO to work things out in our personal communities and arrive at concessions on dealing with the imbalances or understanding and dealing with the fact that certain things were just going to wreck shop. I have been out of the loop the last few years but back then it seemed like every year or so an "unbeatable" army would make it's rounds and then just kind of die off. I usually tried to avoid this except that I made a leafblower army before that was really a thing.. and I was running the broken Khorne DP with Wings and Blood Thirster combo when that was really all you needed to field... Which I mostly ran to counter the other DP steam rollers that were frequenting my FLGS back then.

[GrauGeist]

have always been OTT stuff?

No, don't be silly. Everything has always been perfectly balanced, from the day Rogue Trader was released. Then 6E came out and everything fell apart.

We didn't have ridiculous tables of tables back in RT that could cause models to swing from uberawesome (Chaos-favored Exalted Champion) to pure crap (Spawn!), nor people lobbing Vortex Grenades willy-nilly. We didn't have Tyranid tables that affected the entire game board in 2E, nor Psykers running amok. We didn't have Eldar stomping MEQ new buttholes with massed Starcannon in 3E, nor stupid "Iron Warriors" Chaos Marine builds with extra Heavies. Custom VDR wasn't an issue. We didn't have Rhino Rush or Hellturkey or Necron issues. Tyranids were never unbalanced. Orks have always been perfectly competitive.

No, this imbalance thing is totally new and unique to 6E. When "7E" comes out, everything will be returned back to perfect balance.

[Brother Horatio]

I started playing in 3rd edition, so my experience with cheese is limited. Rhino Rush was incredibly lame, and I even played blood angels (I only used 3 tactical squads in Rhinos, the rest of my army was 6 dreadnoughts: back then, Blood Angels were the only ones who could have that many!)

But I think the cheesiest army ever is still the Alaitoc Ranger force, with the Ranger Disruption Table. Why was it the cheesiest? It killed your army before you even deployed, and other than being entirely mechanized (which was fairly rare then, at least in my local gaming community), there was nothing you could do about it. At least not taking your army out of the case before you lost saved your time. And of course, in the "stealthy sniper list," you could always count on seeing 3 Wraithlords and the Avatar...

[sparti67]

Many years ago, I had a conversation with a local U.S. hobby store owner. The topic was on the freedom U.S. consumers demanded and ultimately won (for a time) in relation to GW. We could order any bit directly, and had the ability to create our own vehicles and unique troop choices. Orcs could loot, but most armies had some degree of flexibility too. OP was fine because every army had some loophole they could use to level the playing field. Today the structure of the game has infected the spirit of the game. At times it's like reading a code of conduct policy or the bi-laws at the workplace. Listing all of the "you cant's" and "you must" and "you wills" takes away something that used to be there and made the game much more enjoyable. I hope that our community can find that "something" again where vortex grenades, although "op" ran rampant through the ranks and everyone went mad with laughter. There are days I opine for the return of the swarm lord who ate half your army before the first turn began. Who knows, maybe the ambiguity of rulesets will eventually produce something we all can live with. But then again, maybe I will win the lotto.

[Eldar_Atog]

You'll never find a game that is perfectly balanced. Even chess is not perfectly balanced since the initiative always lays with white.

[Lord Draekor]

Over the years (decades) I've gone from scenario gaming in RT and early/mid 2nd edition to competitive gaming late 2nd edition into 4th edition with 5th being a break and 6th I'm back to scenario gaming and plan to keep it that way. Balance has never been a priority for GW games design. While I foolishly spent time playing competitively successfully I look back on it now wondering what the hell was I taking to think that was a good idea?


You'll never find a game that is perfectly balanced.

Tic-Tac-Toe
Checkers

[Horse]

Well, i played alot of second ed as a 15 year old kid, and thinking back, i have no idea what was and wasn't balanced. I played a game every weekend for about 3 years, sometimes also played at lunchtime at school and i have zero recollection of balance issues. The game was not balanced and thinking about it it now it definitely had serious 'flaws' buy todays internet standards, but none of us cared. At all. We took what we had painted or had available to play with. We never had much regard for the power list or actual characteristics. We made armies out of what we had as poor state school kids building armies from pocket money and birthday presents.

I try to maintain that view now, unfortunately the internet says different. We are spoiled now, we have our higher disposable incomes and access to a world of whinge. I don't think the internet has been overly friendly to our little hobby.

[dirtycrabcakes]

The interwebs ruined balance (and variety)... or at least it ruins balance much faster than was ever possible.

[dirtycrabcakes]

I scratch-built a Baneblade out of cardboard (it looked terrible, but I was proud because I was twelve and lacked better judgement) and fought precisely one battle with it.

After 45 mins of setting up, my Ork opponent (who was a WAAC munchkin who hated me personally - we were 'friends' through geographical proximity and a shared hobby as opposed to anything else) fired a single plasma cannon shot at the thing. Which penetrated the armour, hit the cannon's magazine, and detonated the tank.

The resulting explosion covered my half of the table in a ball of burning death which killed my ENTIRE ARMY.

Total battle time: 3 minutes.

Total time for my opponent to gloat about his 'brilliant win': two years.



Oh... damn... I considered you my best friend too. Sorry about that. I was going to ask you to be my best man at my wedding. :confused: Also, my win was epic, so eat it.

[Denzark]

I found an old army list I wrote the other day - it was a handwritten masterpiece with tick box charts to count down the 40 psi points from my Level 4 terminator librarian. There were 3 techmarines on bikes - with missile launchers. There was a Marine Lieutenant Commander and a Lieutenant - remember those guys?

I had also written columns for the wound tables to be rolled upon when the medic got to the guys. D100, oh shugar your leg has given you -2" move and -3WS haha...

But even then I don't remember thinking anything that got put down in front of me was undestroyable. The only game I got upset about was when a chap humped me with marines - I had squats. We were playing with card markers for both armies. I found out he took about 3k to my 1k...

[Eberk]

I don't think the internet has been overly friendly to our little hobby.

Excuse me... The internet can't be blamed. Blame the people that use the internet !! ;)

[DarkLink]

Tic-Tac-Toe


Actually, tic-tac-toe has a perfect strategy to both first and second players. If the first player uses it, it's impossible for the second player to win. The second player can only tie, and if they don't use a perfect strategy, the first player wins.

[Eberk]

There was a Marine Lieutenant Commander and a Lieutenant - remember those guys?
Yep, still have the army list in the Compendium (0-1 Lieutenant Commander, 0-1 Captain & 1 Lieutenants)

PS: I always chuckle about the 0-6D6 Techmarines within that army list and their "claw" shoulder pads (from illustration in the list)

[Eldar_Atog]

Tic-Tac-Toe
Checkers

Darklink answered this pretty well but I would like to add something

Both games give the initiative to the opening player. They are just as imbalanced as anything else.

Any game that has player turns is going to be a bit unbalanced. The opening player has the initiative while the second turn grants a defensive bonus. A person that plays somewhat defensive is going to favor the second turn while a more aggressive person will prefer to have the initiative.

[Gwhizz84]

I'm really surprised no one's mentioned 2nd ED assassins ripping through whole armies (Eversor) or casually sniping hidden targets behind heavy cover on like a 4+? (vindicare). Or close combat monsters like Mephiston or Ragnar being practically unstoppable unless you fired your entire army at them! Or silly things like Kharn being killed by 1 krak missile cos if you deployed him near your zerkers he'd go mental.

[jonsgot]

Most editions have been balanced, until the codex for .... Or the explanation ..... got released. Anyone remember when grey knights got temporal distort?

[Horse]

Excuse me... The internet can't be blamed. Blame the people that use the internet !! ;)

yes, my bad.

[daboarder]

Actually, tic-tac-toe has a perfect strategy to both first and second players. If the first player uses it, it's impossible for the second player to win. The second player can only tie, and if they don't use a perfect strategy, the first player wins.

Same with knotes and crosses

[Browntj007]

I love reading the historical collective memories posted here. Yeah, there were balance issues back in the day, but strangely enough there were so many random chance events /cards/ items that in reality we hardly noticed. Strategy cards...awesome. Wargear cards - sweet. Pyskic powers that made gods of men...too much fun. I think perhaps I'm suppressing the 2nd Ed awful parts, but today things seem way too predictable. Maybe Escalation with its D weapons are the way to go. Maybe in our efforts to balance the game we've removed the fun piece that drove us all to play the game in the first place. I've practically given up on tournaments - no point given the current state and tournament results seen. I have no intention of padding someone's win total when they're taking the latest 'unbeatable' netlist. I play for fun now, and the stress level is much less. That baneblade blowing up and taking out his entire army post? Epic. Yet, even today...HE REMEMBERS. Tell me - can you say the same for many tournament games? I can't. Most were just another faceless person I intended to crush and often did. After a while no fun for anyone. So getting back to balance - screw it...the more wackiness the better. Insane stuff happens in real battle too, and it is remembered. Good stuff.

[Ahren McLaren]

Before the first turn my Farseer will use his psychic power that makes me have the first turn, and in the psychic phase of that first turn I'll use the power that lets me take another turn, once per game....unless that vortex grenade/barbed strangler/grot launcher killes the farseer before the first turn that is.

[gijoe1313]

It's good to read some sensible posting here about the fun players had (and I'm sure we still do!) How often have we allowed our fellow gamers to take a move back or even reminded them of a unit which they forgot to move/shoot/charge with? Heck, I'm pretty sure a lot of us here have even done the cool, fluffy thing of charging/moving into a position we know is tactically dis-advantaged just so we could have that cinematic moment. We've all suffered the outrageous bolt rounds of various editions and watched as nefarious and outright shenanigans were got up to, but we still found it in our wargamer's hearts to keep pitching up with our beloved armies and spending a few hours playing with a few like-minded individuals.

I for one am loving the plethora of new miniatures and ideas, bemused by the usual net-rage of the idiosyncratic way our favoured Games company performs (rope-a-dope?), but above all, once again, the hobby has pulled me back in (due to some novice players suddenly sprouting like Ork-shrooms in my local area). This new renaissance has seen me throw out min-max, spamming units and all the usual tricks of the trade in favour of giving the new players a more balanced intro to the way our game can be. All the best bits, all the fluffy bits and the most lauded mechanic of it all "meh, roll a D6! 1-3 yea, 4-6 neigh (horsey talk)" Balance? We're wargamers, we game and we war over the way we do it! Carpe diem!

[Ivarr]

Does anyone else remember 2nd ed. Space Wolves? Wolf guard terminator army...several cyclone missile launchers...Alpha Strike my opponents deployment zone 1st turn and remove half of their army...Ridiculously broken.

And Commissar Yarrik...7 attacks...if he killed off what he was in melee with and could advance into another unit, he started over with another 7 attacks....

Definitely some balance issues early on.

[Attaturk]

I'll fly in the face of opinion here. I think 2nd ed was pretty well balanced at least with the armies our group used to field. Balanced because they were all crazy over the top in what they could do. I played eldar, my main opponent used guard. As powerful as eldar were, 6 battle cannon shoes before the game started was nasty.

[SaveModifier]

I wouldn't say a lot of these were balance issues as such, Heroes ruled the day back then, a single hero would stomp through an opposing army until they came face to face with another hero, it wasn't so much an issue as a different aim with game design, the game was more rooted in RPGs then, with the hero being your Player Character, 3rd edition began the move towards troops being the mainstay of the army and HQ units were pulled back a lot, in what some might think was a cynical way of getting people to buy more models!

The game seems to have slightly shifted back, were heroes, although no longer able to take on many times more than their cost and know they'll win, are certainly a lot meatier than they have been

[stuciferthemighty]

It's good to read some sensible posting here about the fun players had (and I'm sure we still do!) How often have we allowed our fellow gamers to take a move back or even reminded them of a unit which they forgot to move/shoot/charge with? Heck, I'm pretty sure a lot of us here have even done the cool, fluffy thing of charging/moving into a position we know is tactically dis-advantaged just so we could have that cinematic moment. We've all suffered the outrageous bolt rounds of various editions and watched as nefarious and outright shenanigans were got up to, but we still found it in our wargamer's hearts to keep pitching up with our beloved armies and spending a few hours playing with a few like-minded individuals.

I for one am loving the plethora of new miniatures and ideas, bemused by the usual net-rage of the idiosyncratic way our favoured Games company performs (rope-a-dope?), but above all, once again, the hobby has pulled me back in (due to some novice players suddenly sprouting like Ork-shrooms in my local area). This new renaissance has seen me throw out min-max, spamming units and all the usual tricks of the trade in favour of giving the new players a more balanced intro to the way our game can be. All the best bits, all the fluffy bits and the most lauded mechanic of it all "meh, roll a D6! 1-3 yea, 4-6 neigh (horsey talk)" Balance? We're wargamers, we game and we war over the way we do it! Carpe diem!

This post makes me very happy to be a wargamer and to be a part of this community. Cheers!

[gijoe1313]

I think that there are a lot of us mellowed out types in the woodwork, we just prefer not to waste our energies in net' arguments since it's counter-productive. When was the last time we heard of anyone donating miniatures to novices so they can build up their skills vs the usual anti-GeeDub rants that are oh-so-common? When I got the new release starter box with all the DAs in it, I thought "kewl minis" and shelved them since I am a BA player. Turns out later on a friend of mine suddenly got into the hobby and loved the fluff of the DA, he bought the starter set and since we all know the incredible set-up cost to field a FOC army, I just donated all my DA minis to him (I kept the limited edition Chappy for myself natch ^_-) Lo and behold, he has painted up and modelled conversions for it ... and pestered me for heaps of games to learn it!

It has been a long time since I had so much fun in my wargaming career, I guess over the decades(!) I forgot how the hobby can be to a newbie. I got to see the game again through young eyes again! Debating the worthiness of units and also the philosophical(!) decision to go for balanced armies, turns out that he dragged a couple more friends in and they have a ball learning the game (using my armies!)

And of course, being the grognards/longbeards we are, the wealth of weird information we know adds more to their wargaming knowledge - along with miniatures that have them shaking their heads and asking "is that even a legal model?" (Chaos Marine cavalry anyone?) Ahh, good times to be a wargamer at this point of time!

Now, where did I put that army list of the 1st and 10th I've always wanted to try out ... (Termies and scouts? Yes, please!)

[Ivarr]

When was the last time we heard of anyone donating miniatures to novices so they can build up their skills vs the usual anti-GeeDub rants that are oh-so-common? When I got the new release starter box with all the DAs in it, I thought "kewl minis" and shelved them since I am a BA player. Turns out later on a friend of mine suddenly got into the hobby and loved the fluff of the DA, he bought the starter set and since we all know the incredible set-up cost to field a FOC army, I just donated all my DA minis to him (I kept the limited edition Chappy for myself natch ^_-) Lo and behold, he has painted up and modelled conversions for it ... and pestered me for heaps of games to learn it!



I worked at a game store a couple of years back, and it was regular practice to pass on a few models to new players...huge tool for bringing new players into the community. People should do this more often.

[quindia]

I've had fun with all of 40k's editions. IMHO balance in a game as complex as 40k is a myth anyway. There are too many variables. Choosing armies takes different skills than fielding them. One army composition might trash one opponent while being owned by another. Terrain, deployment, heck even who gets the first turn can alter a game dramatically. Trying to balance models, units, and armies is fine on paper but once the game moves to the table there are simply too many factors to maintain symmetry.

[DarkLink]

IMHO balance in a game as complex as 40k is a myth anyway.

No offense, but bull****. There are numerous wargames out on the market right now far better balanced than 40k is. Nothing's ever "perfectly" balanced, but 40k is pretty terrible in this regard, and it could be vastly improved.

[quindia]

No offense taken, but I did offer it as MY opinion. Chess is perfectly balanced, but introduce players with different levels of experience and it becomes one sided rather quickly. Experienced 40k players will fare better against casual or novice players regardless of how balanced their forces may be. A simple mistake in deployment can cost you a 300+ point unit on turn one and balance leaves the game for that session immediately, regardless of how great the rules are designed. Some army builds will work better for some scenarios and if you have the wrong composition you can be at a disadvantage even though you and your opponent have the same number of points.

I just think the concept of balance only works on an open field in a straight up fight with players of equal skill.

[DWest]

Honestly, I think balance could be brought back into the game pretty quickly with basically two lines of rules: "For every duplicate of a specific unit in your army amongst all detachments, there is a surcharge of (5 x number of other copies of the unit) points per 100 of base price (round to the nearest hundred). Troops choices and Dedicated Transports count as 2-for-1 for determining price (so 1-2 are free, 3-4 are [5x1], 5-6 are [5x2], etc.)." My point with this is there doesn't seem to be anything that is "broken" all on its own. Good, yes, but not broken. It's when you get 3x/4x/5x of the same unit in a single list that they become overwhelming, and a surcharge would help even out that situation, without biting so deep that you feel you can't run doubles of something if needed.

For example, let's take the infamous Riptide: at 180 points base, it gets the 10-point surcharge. So 1 = 180; 2 = 360 +10; 3 = 540 +10+20. When you get to the crazy 5-Riptide shenanigans, you're paying 100 points extra for blanketing the table in pie.

[DarkLink]

Chess is perfectly balanced

No, actually, White has a small advantage.




I just think the concept of balance only works on an open field in a straight up fight with players of equal skill.

That's the whole point. You both bring an army, and the more skilled player wins. That's balance. It's when you have a poorly balanced system where even a great player struggles to win with one of the weaker armies, or where everyone gravitates to the top three codices and everything else is left behind. It's perfectly achievable to create a game balanced enough where you could take an army from any codex and have a solid shot of winning a tournament, based purely on your skill as a player.

[Lexington]

Heroes ruled the day back then, a single hero would stomp through an opposing army until they came face to face with another hero
This is a pretty persistent myth in the 40Kosphere, but the fact is, 2nd Edition restricted you to fighting whatever you were in base-to-base contact with. A canny player could charge a character with some chump unit, then tie him up all game by feeding him a model a turn. Even in the case of bigger models, a multiple models in combat against a single model got an advantage to their WS for every extra model in the combat. With the sort of round-robin combat this turned into, a single Guard squad with a Power Fist ended up being more than a match for a Bloodthirster.

2nd Ed had some real balance issues (that dumb Space Wolf Artillery Brigade mentioned above being one), but close combat wasn't particularly one of them.

[Ivarr]

That's the whole point. You both bring an army, and the more skilled player wins. That's balance. It's when you have a poorly balanced system where even a great player struggles to win with one of the weaker armies, or where everyone gravitates to the top three codices and everything else is left behind. It's perfectly achievable to create a game balanced enough where you could take an army from any codex and have a solid shot of winning a tournament, based purely on your skill as a player.

Not possible with 40k. You are asking for a predictable outcome in regular play for a game that is based on random rolls of the dice. GW could strive, even harder than they do, to create "balance" and on a given day, the best player is still not guaranteed to win. And as long as everyone thinks that they are the best player, but not everyone gets to win every game, there will always be this whining about balance...

There are so many factors that go into the appearance of balance that just don't get talked about here...experience with a given list for example...perhaps anyone who wants to complain about balance should have to provide 100 battle reports with their current list before being allowed to whine. The rules being available for the faction being complained about is a big one. So very bored with the thousands of posts saying that something is broken or OP before the official rules have even hit the market.

[daboarder]

Not possible with 40k. You are asking for a predictable outcome in regular play for a game that is based on random rolls of the dice. GW could strive, even harder than they do, to create "balance" and on a given day, the best player is still not guaranteed to win. And as long as everyone thinks that they are the best player, but not everyone gets to win every game, there will always be this whining about balance...

There are so many factors that go into the appearance of balance that just don't get talked about here...experience with a given list for example...perhaps anyone who wants to complain about balance should have to provide 100 battle reports with their current list before being allowed to whine. The rules being available for the faction being complained about is a big one. So very bored with the thousands of posts saying that something is broken or OP before the official rules have even hit the market.

This is incorrect. a single die roll is random, as in every event has an equal probability. Multiple dice rolls are statistics and are completely predictable.

[DarkLink]

Not possible with 40k. You are asking for a predictable outcome in regular play for a game that is based on random rolls of the dice.

There's this thing called math. You might have heard of it once or twice. Particularly relevant is statistics, that magical beast that casinos use to rob idiots blind all over the world.

[Dave Mcturk]

There's this thing called math. You might have heard of it once or twice. Particularly relevant is statistics, that magical beast that casinos use to rob idiots blind all over the world.

lol... brighten my day... and they are allowed to advertise because the government rakes off about 25% and its the biggest growth sector in the economy !

[quindia]

No, actually, White has a small advantage.

Thanks for making my point. White only has an advantage if the PLAYERS are evenly skilled. Other than that both sides have identical armies on a flat field. The fact that white goes first is fairly useless if the player with the black pieces is more skilled as advantage will quickly shift.

I guess we're speaking different languages or something. I don't play in tournaments so I don't even approach the game at that level of competition. I know locally when a player rolls out something new that wipes the board with us there is a tendency to declare it cheesy or unbalanced, but after a few games people have usually figured out how to counter it. I can see in a tournament setting you don't get the chance to do that.

I just don't see how you can mathematically balance every model, every weapon, every special ability, and every combination and synergy of these things. There are always going to be some things where point costs are subjective and there will always be someone who finds that combo that breaks the best of intentions.

Finally, my original point was no matter how balanced armies are, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Using your chess example, the first player gains instant advantage and unbalances the game. I used the same example in one of my earlier posts. In 40k you can loose on turn one if you go second against some armies...

We'll have to agree to disagree because neither one of us is getting anywhere.

[DarkLink]

No, white simply straight up has a small advantage for going first. The exact degree is debated, but in competitive chess white wins something like 3-10% more frequently than black, iirc. I don't know the margin of error, but that is a significant difference. And I mean significant in the mathematical means. So, chess is not perfectly balanced, but it's not exactly poorly balanced.


40k, on the other hand, is basically always dominated by the top 3 codices, which tend to be newer books, though this isn't always true. Right now, Eldar, Tau, and Daemons are the most generally overrepresented. In the case of Tau, it's mainly due to the lack of LOS blocking terrain, as at the LVO they had extremely good terrain coverage and Tau suffered for it (they performed well, but were replaced by SM biker armies in the top tiers). That's not an opinion, either, that's statistical data pulled off of Torrent of Fire. It's not a huge sample size, but for most armies there's enough data to draw some conclusions.

Compare that to Warmahordes. A little while back, they had a big 200 person tournament. If it were 40k, the top 10 would have been mostly Eldar, then Tau (unless, like the LVO, there was lots of terrain), a few Daemons, and maybe some SM bikes, and anything else that snuck in there was a small miracle. At the Warmahordes tournament, though, all but one faction was represented in the top 16, no single faction was represented more than three times in the top 16, and the army that most people consider to be the weakest faction in the game took 2nd overall.

That's why I call bull**** on the idea that 40k is as balanced as it is possible to be. If you expand your horizons to other wargames reasonably comparable to 40k, you'll quickly find that GW is behind the curve in terms of the quality of their rules.

[quindia]

I never said 40k is as balanced as it can be. I just don't think it's important. I've been playing wargames for 30 years and most of them don't bother with point values. Maybe you should play games without regard to tournament play and you wouldn't be so worried about the math.

[DarkLink]

I play in tournaments because I enjoy it more than casual games. Don't assume that just because you don't care, that no one else should. That's the same assumption GW makes, and it works well enough because there are a lot of gamers who do play that way. There's also a lot of players who are outright begging GW for higher quality rules, and you (and GW) are completely sidelining all of them because you seem to think that your way to play is the only way to play. It's not like balanced, well-written rules hurt casual gaming. They only make it better in that regard, too. So why the resistance?

[Veteran Sergeant]

2nd ed. was a massive cluster**** of balance issues where if you played Eldar, you pretty much won by default, unless the other guy put down a SW terminator list with cyclone launchers and some assault cannons.I think you were doing it wrong then, lol. I never had a significantly harder time against Eldar than anything else. Tyranids and Chaos had some ridicubuilds too.

But yeah, the game has never really been balanced all that well. Though with the grand scope of all the ridiculousness in 2nd Edition, I think what evened it out was that nearly every army could be broken, so it was left to the players to police themselves. Most places I played had some pretty hefty house rules to reign in the cheeseballs. But this is also the era before netlists too, so it wasn't like every broken combo was instantly and immediately available.

[DrBored]

Are you all high? The game is perfectly balanced.

All you have to do is play the army or net-list that's winning. Once everyone does that, then the game really does become a game of skill and knowledge.

Since most tourney players do that anyway, then I can hardly see a complaint about balance! If you're a tourney player, it's as balanced as your wallet is willing to make it. If you're a casual player, why do you care about balance? You're playing casually, and if you're playing against other casual players, then you all should just have fun.

[DarkLink]

I'm trying to figure out if you're being sarcastic or not...

[DrBored]

I'm trying to figure out if you're being sarcastic or not...

It was midnight, I was drunk.

[DarkLink]

Haha, it all makes sense now.