Balancing 40k

May 8th

A small tournament let’s say lists vs. lists. I'll get the prizes and all that crap.
I would like 10 IG armies and 10 non IG lists I don't care who

We play to end this stupid argument about what is broken and what isn't. I'll be there with my sisters. First people to sign up are in 10 IG and 10 Sisters. We play the missions out of the book. Sign up tread in the tournament section of the site.

Scooter Sisters.

Scooter, you'll never end this argument. Bitching about this stuff is part of the attraction of the game.

The fallacy of assuming there's an optimal solution when in reality it's more about luck and skill than just list-building.

In any event, BrianF has the right of it, The only reasonable way to look at these issues is to remember that for all of their incompetance GW is fundamentally trying to sell models, and game balance and all that other stuff is secondary (or lower) to them.

i know its just silly to me.

It would be really funny if all the IG players won.

we will see

Oh it's silly and infuriating at the same time.

Remember this movie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

I"m with the computer on this one.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1197/538139137_ecd2cdf50d.jpg?v=0

All this talk about broken this and broken that and no one is going to bring IG to this tournamnet weak.

Same old story from day one. This is over-powered, this is broken.

Even if every codex was exactly the same, you'd still hear it

some one has got to be on top thats the way it is in everything. i just want to kill some IG

usually yes, but everything has a weakness too.

IG weakness MY SISTERS muhaaaaa muhaaaaaa muuuhhhaaaaaaaaa

well duh, you have meltaguns and flamer throwers, not to mention there's a bunch of crazy women using them. What better weapon to use against a bunch of dudes, ya know, the whole womens wrath thing

There are a lot of fallacies of opinion in the 40k world.

Anyone, for example, who thinks that Vendettas/Valks are what break the guard ... ugh, NO. AV12 vehicles that almost never have cover and cost as much as 2.5 chimeras and have NO fire points (meaning squishy guardsmen inside have to get out to do anything)? Chimeras are FAR more powerful, but by no means broken, as angling side armor shots on them is easy if you aren't a sit-on-your-butt-retardedly player.

40k's balance issues, at most, are with the oldest codices. Necron, Demonhunters, Dark Eldar (who fail miserably even with raiderlance spam, past 1500 points). You want to buff those armies with some kind of whacky comp, go for it, but even they can compete at the tournament level.

I bring Vendettas to most of my lists, for the primary reason that people waste fire on them and ignore the Chimeras and Straken that beat them every single game when it actually counts, in the later turns.

I don't know, this is one of those discussions where you face people with crazy strong opinions, but if worse comes to worse, I'm happy to take the time in Vassal or wherever to "swap lists" with people and point out how silly it all is. 40k is as balanced as it can realistically be in the world of such heterogenous codices and variable rules from tournament to tournament.

More importantly, you run into a different metagame everywhere you go. Nob bikers, for example, are terrifail with me and the groups I play with ... and we're certainly not all guard. You go some places, though, and they are STILL considered broken with their wound allocation and such ... no idea why really, since they aren't.

Use the ole brain box a lil more, and you'll find 40k is a perfectly functional game ... every single codex can bring at least one list that can and will compete at any tournament level. Can the older codices bring the same VARIETY of competitive lists that guard or space wolves or the new BA can? No, not at all, but that doesn't mean they can't compete.

Sorry if I'm reiterating a post made throughout this, but the first few ones of this were enough to show it was headed in a bad direction. Comp or trying to rebalance 40k is a cop-out - a refusal to submit to being imperfect in your knowledge of the game and a refusal to attempt to seek assistance, advice, research or a better perspective.

Happy to - in a POSITIVE manner - help anyone figure out how to get their codex to the pinnacle of competition, even w/in a theme ... but it gets to the pinnacle of stupid when you start hearing that vendetta + expensive STRAKEN + demolisher guard are the NASTIEST ARMY EVAR!!!!11 around the internet ... when that's not anywhere near an optimized, "nastiest" guard list possible.

Not trying to ruffle any feathers here ... but lighting your hair on fire b/c your list got beaten by someone else's is not really productive. 40k is pretty fine right now. This from a guy who plays/owns guard, AND tyranid, AND necron, AND sisters, AND grey knights.

Quote :

well duh, you have meltaguns and flamer throwers, not to mention there's a bunch of crazy women using them. What better weapon to use against a bunch of dudes, ya know, the whole womens wrath thing

Did you just call me a girl. jesse thats it i don't want you on my team on the 8th your going down.

yeah, but you're an attractive girl at least

this is true I'm pretty i cant help it

i cant help but to laugh at your avatar every time i see it

she is a pretty girl i know

Brent wrote:

the irony here is that i didn't attack any one who didn't attack me first, and if every one knows how to beat biker why have i only lost with them once? and the guy that wrote that, while a fine gentleman, run one of the most broken guard list i've seen at an IC event, it's kinda like having hitler defend ethnic cleansing, no i'm not trying to poison the well here but i'm saying the man may have a bias, and once again, many people see the balancing issues in the game, all the people i know that play the game do anyway, so you people that hate comp don't have to play, so once again i would ask you to not post if you don't have constructive input not just angry whining about how your not a douche cause you run the hardest list you can

bottom line you people need to chill out, if you don't like an event we run don't play and we can decide if comp events work after we run one, it may be a huge success it may fail but we won't know till we try out some things

A) comparing me to Hitler = unwise
B) saying the guard list I brought (the one with 5 vendettas, lol) was the most broken ever basically identifies that you're clueless about 40k

If this is the guy running IC 40k stuff, you won't see me at them ... well, ever. Get your head out of your patookus please. Also, preempting intelligent reply with "IF YOU DISAGREE W/ ME YOU'RE WRONG AND MUST PLAY GUARD" isn't "internet clever," it just comes off as sounding ignorant.

Thanks for getting personal with someone who is more or less a stranger. Caveating with "he's a gentleman" is just more internet wordplay, too. That doesn't make dissing someone "OK."

Maybe I shouldn't have read through this thread ...

ZING!

He isn't talking about you mike he is talking about a person he played about 4 months ago and no Brent isn’t the person running IC 40k tournaments. While yes he has ran a 40k tournament that was his and his alone.

Brent’s problem is he is one of those people who believe his opinion is one of the gods. It's not but I'm not in a position to pass judgment on anyone’s opinion. There are plenty of people who fell I play broken and chesses list.

Cheesy list is nothing more than a list that mid mixes’ and I do that in almost every game I play save 40k. And the only reason I don’t do it in 40k is cause of objectives.

It is my position and I may actually be wrong in this opinion but I don't believe in censoring people, or telling them that they need to back off. Brent attacks everyone with the way he argues. You know if you disagree with him you must be a stupid head...........

once again i don't think he was talking about you.

Ryan H. linked a blog post from my blog, and he was specifically talking about me in relation to that link, and the 5 vendetta silly themed straken list I brought to and won his Pancake Jamboree with.

So, yeah, he was ... I'm perfectly fine with him correcting his words, and trying to say what he really meant.

No one's opinion in 40k or elsewhere is that of the gods - it is ALL subject to, in a perfect world, critical thinking, critical analysis, and constant amendment. If you live in "MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" ville you're a waste of peoples' time on the internet, and you end up making crazy statements to protect your opinion ... such as the ones he made in relation to me.

I love you, though, Scooter - you already know that. <3!

Ya'll have to reply to my e-mails though ... forrizzy.

i know man casie is coming back in 3 days and i'll have all the details for you.

Mike I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you at Adepticon when I was hanging with Scooter and them. Once I got linked to your blog I've been reading that almost non-stop catching up on your news. It's really good stuff. It's helped a little in trying to optimize the IG I've been playing for our current campaign. In a cycle of planetstrike scenarios so not sure if what you advise with your list would work but I've done some mods and I'm going to see how it works. Anyways figured I'd give you some props for that and your performance at Adepticon, solid.

Think Brent was talking about me allot there too. Not so much the tournament stuff cause honestly Brent has never seen me at a 40k tournament but for other stuff. I just figured half through the first or second page that Brent's opinion will never be changed on anything no matter what anyone else says so it's a waste of time trying to convince him he's wrong. It's like the whole Transformers thing all over again.

This whole thread makes a great argument for playing any game that ISN'T 40k.

it was supposed to be a discusion on if you were to comp 40k how whould you. insted people got on and started to talk about and argue why you don't need to. o well it got people talking

Now THAT is an interesting thing to draw out of it.

The funny thing is that if you traverse the wider community of 40k blogs and internetdom, composition is basically a "rested" subject. The majority of the "intarweb" doesn't see 40k as imbalanced. There's a lot of angst from people who wish that whatever crappy list they come up with should be able to compete, but most people are able to see past that and acknowledge the fact that the game is what it is, and at the least if you WANT to compete with a codex - tadaa, you can!

This puts it at such a higher level than 7th ed. Fantasy or some of the other games that can be played, it explains the popularity.

If we wanted to talk "balanced" we'd talk something like Malifaux, where besides balanced units, you are specifically supposed to TAILOR and build your list AFTER missions, deployment, etc. are all determined, so as to make sure your list matches up against your opponent's and vice versa :p

scooter wrote:

it was supposed to be a discusion on if you were to comp 40k how whould you. insted people got on and started to talk about and argue why you don't need to. o well it got people talking

If you want to comp 40k, the "best" way would be to amend the options / choices / etc. of the older dexes, and get rid of the allies rule. The problem is, the only really legitimate ways to comp 40k so fundamentally alter certain dexes that - like with most comp, only more clearly - you're creating a homebrew 40k ... and good luck getting people to come.

Could the best daemon hunter list beat the best IG list?
Could the best dark elder
I don't know all I know is my sisters are good I like them and they are my flavor. I would never not play an IG player I'm not afraid to play them.

Each book has a trick look at sisters I have faith organ gun tanks Arco’s i have really good units.

What needs to be changed or the thing that makes Lists broken is mid maxxing.

This is what Brent is not saying instead of talking about the list. Are there broken lists yes and I really don't think anyone can argue there are better lists then others.
Brent has a problem with Mech

I say let him have his problem and when he runs his tournament people can decide wither they want to play in it or not.

I'm with Mike on this one. Though I've only played a couple games of Malifaux I did not get the impression that it was 'balanced' at all, so much as (much like WM only more so) each guy had special rules that break the game. It's a lot of fun and the models are fantastic. Can't really see it as a competitive game though.

Mike, as I posted on YTTH, there's a reason I don't play 40k anymore, and it has a lot to do with the playerbase, and having to argue with these kinds of attitudes.

Scooter, there is such a thing as a counter-productive conversation, and just getting people talking isn't an end unto itself when all it does is create ill-will and frustration in the players.

Min Maxing isn't a problem, and pure min-maxing / MSU play is almost never the best way to build a list.

Yes, the best demon hunter list would be able to beat the best IG list ... would it require the use of IG allies? Sure, it absolutely would, but the point is that codex CAN DO THAT. It's part of the way it works.

The best dark eldar can ALSO beat the best IG ... is there anything other than one list to do this with? NOPE ... but can it do it? YUP

That's the key, right there.

Brent has a problem with Mech, but it's not steeped in critical analysis or deep thought processes, so he makes your site look bad (trust me, it got cross linked to YTTH, and not in a good way) by throwing out insults against respected players who generally treat others with respect ... and saying really, really short sighted things like "IF YOU DISAGREE U MUST PLAY GUARD HAR HAR HERRRRU" ... it might need a muzzling, or even better, Brent could just open up his mind a little and engage in intelligent discourse.

If you want to have a comp tourney, DO IT! But don't try to call it a "better" balancing of 40k, b/c no matter what you do, you're going to be wrong - at least in the eyes of enough people for it to generate a lot of negativity.

For my own part, I never read this thread by visiting the ICGC boards ... I read it b/c I heard from a friend that Brent had said something stupid about me here, and b/c it showed up in a negative light on a popular netblog.

*shrug*

Quote :

Could the best daemon hunter list beat the best IG list?
Could the best dark elder

Depends too much on the player to make a meaningful comment but generally yes, since the best DH list is mostly a IG list anyway due to allies rules.

The best DE list is lance spam, which is exactly what Guard doesn't want to face, so again, it's actually a pretty good matchup.

The game is not that unbalanced.

Quote :

Brent has a problem with Mech, but it's not steeped in critical analysis or deep thought processes, so he makes your site look bad (trust me, it got cross linked to YTTH, and not in a good way) by throwing out insults against respected players who generally treat others with respect ... and saying really, really short sighted things like "IF YOU DISAGREE U MUST PLAY GUARD HAR HAR HERRRRU" ... it might need a muzzling, or even better, Brent could just open up his mind a little and engage in intelligent discourse.

Basically Brent is making the IC look bad (not that the rest of us are helping). If you're serious about being taken seriously Scooter you should probably try to rein him in a bit. Or disassociate the forums from the club so that his %$@@-spewing rants don't get the rest of us/you dirty.

All I was saying about having a comp tournament which I think is fair is that you play hard lists against hard list and soft lits against soft list for the first games then go from there.

I don't see how that is a big deal, and why people wouldnt show up for that.

The only real problem with that - the only problem - is in judging what is a hard and soft list.

Everyone who has tried that before (it would not be the first) have totally whiffed on numerous interpretations of what "hard" and "soft" are, leading to unfair match-ups anyway, but worse - in a tournament that promised otherwise.

Its understandable that people will mess up.

Thats what this post was supposed to be about. How can we make fair judging to do that system of comp.

But it just turned into arguing the whole time.

If people can get back on subject like I said somewhere on page 2 then maybe we could all chip in and give ideas to what a fair comp would be.

Double posting but just thought of some factors.

Comp goes up when you take special charictors.

Comp goes up when you have units that cost of 400 points

Comp goes up when you have land raiders as dedicated transports

Comp goes down when majority of your points are in troops.

Comp goes down when your most expensive units is a troop choice. Only exception to this is blood angels death company.

I don't think it would be that hard to do if we can just get people to agree on some random things.

That's where the argument came from - there is no fair comp. 40k is a generally balanced game. Adding composition IMBALANCES it.

Besides, what fairness is there in pairing someone up against an equal opponent, having him win a hard fought game, and then having him get crushed by a superior list anyway? Standard tournaments w/ random pairings either get it right by luck in the first round, or simply reverse the order.

Swiss system is one of the worse kinds of systems that a person can play in if you really want to get into the math of all this. Thats why it would be better to start out with comp and play with comp throughout the tournament. If two hard list win then they play each other while two soft lits play each other.

So no they don't get it right by random pairings. Because of how scewed the results come from the end.

I actually ran a linear regression test on this stuff so I know I am right. I can show you my work sometime if you would really like to see how the swiss system is broken in itself. But that is a whole differnt topic and once again getting side tracked.

If you don't want to play a comp tournament you don't need to be talking on this forum at all. That is all this was supposed to be about. So if you dont have something constructive to say about how to try and make it work. Then like I said you don't need to be on here.

I started another post for everyone that does not think there should be comp. Go ahead and start talking on that one instead.

joko12 wrote:

Double posting but just thought of some factors.

Comp goes up when you take special charictors.

Comp goes up when you have units that cost of 400 points

Comp goes up when you have land raiders as dedicated transports

Comp goes down when majority of your points are in troops.

Comp goes down when your most expensive units is a troop choice. Only exception to this is blood angels death company.

I don't think it would be that hard to do if we can just get people to agree on some random things.

Devil's advocate to a degree, but stay with me here ...

Special Characters are mostly fluffy - most of them are overpriced and not very good. You punish people who take them for these reasons.
Other armies, like Space Marines, arguably require certain special character use to either create their army (i.e. sallies, crimson fists), or be competitive at all in the first place. You punish them.

Land Raiders as dedicated transports aren't a big deal ... wtf man? Taking land raiders in this edition is a liability, not a negative. People should be rewarded for it lol.

Units that cost 400 points are suboptimal and wasted ... this is why nob bikers are so fail these days.

Some people are quite happy to field their uber powerful lists with the majority of their points in troops ... new blood angels, for instance.

Death Company are NOT good ... they're far below the other choices in the new BA Dex, esp. since you can turn an assault marine into a controllable death company with the simple utilization of auras.

The point should start to become clear over time - but comp cannot be done properly without rebalancing specific codices - and NOT the new ones like guard, wolves, and BA. Careful. It's a slippery slope of simply making the game worse, and punishing the MOST the people you're trying to help.



PS / Edit - 40k IS comped. The people who take worse armies lose and end up paired against other people with weaker armies through the tourney. If you can come up with a comp approach that can't have its numerous flaws pointed out, you'll see my silence in reply, or my pleasant affirmation. Heck, I'd run the tourney myself for you if you could come up with a comp that was *actually* fair. Unfortunately, in 40k, you can't. Feel free to prove me wrong, though. I'd be happy to concede.

If you want to play a special army you get comp for it don't see how that is a big deal. That won't make or break your army it would only be like one comp point.

Second how are landraiders a liablity with the new space wolves, blood angels etc. Once again it would only be 1 comp point.

Fine lets say units over 300 get 1 comp point that will make it more interesting.

And I know that ton's of people would diagree with you and say death company are good. And they wouldnt get comped for having them be their biggest point unit they just dont get a reduction for it.

Mike stop I want to punish people for playing in comp tournament

So if comp isn't a big deal and doesn't matter, why have it?

Land Raiders are 250 point meltabait, in an edition littered with melta. They blow. The "average" melta roll pens them, and 50% of those kill them. Good imperial armies (marines, dh, wh, guard, etc.) have 15+ meltas in most of them. Math = landraiders ftl these days.

Expensive units = bad, so you would want to benefit people for throwing all of their eggs in one basket ... BUTWAIT, what about guard blobs and the like? Now you're benefitting them too! Wait, now I've got it ... it's so darned arbitrary that it's "wrong" for some codices and "right" for others. Crapola.

Death Company are furious charging, feel no pain marines who cost more than regular marines and are affected by "rage" (which is a negative). Assault marines are massively cheaper, can be given feel no pain and furious charge with no effort whatsoever (if you're even half skilled), and are a basic troop. So, people with skill who ran assault marines and FNP/FC buffed them would benefit from your arbitrary rules, while people with no skill who took death company would ... be punished ... what?

Unless you are comping BY codex, and really only by buffing the older dexes, you're going to fall into arbitrary silly land. That's my point.

EDIT - Saw your reply - well played

Expensive units = bad, so you would want to benefit people for throwing all of their eggs in one basket ... BUTWAIT, what about guard blobs and the like? Now you're benefitting them too! Wait, now I've got it ... it's so darned arbitrary that it's "wrong" for some codices and "right" for others. Crapola.

What how does this make sense big units get comped how does that help guard??? That would make the mech armies drop something crazy. And that would be for a lot of armies not just guard.

And throw this in there for every melta weapon you have over 4 you start getting comp points to take away melta spam

And also I realized that I reveresed my comp score thing.

I meant to say lower comp bad higher comp good. I messed that up thats where that confusion came from.

So yeah comp would go down for big units and down for meltas etc....

You want to take away certain armies' capacity to deal with mech?

The game is BALANCED. Part of that = things like melta.

There's a morass of impossibility before you. Unless you go into like 2 codices, and upgrade them by changing the fundamental codices, you will not achieve your goal. And if you do that, no one will play in the event.

Guard are just as effective with big expensive blobs of infantry as with meltavets in chimeras ... different styles, not different effect.

You have to remember that the newer codices have a WIDER variety of effective builds. The more you limit the "best" parts of the competitive game now (mech spam, melta, etc.), the more you punish the OLDER codices with LESS options and therefore less capacity to adjust to changes.

Sisters of Battle have ONE really powerful competitive build style. Cut out melta, and you've just murdered half of it. Grats, now an old dex is punished.

You think guard need meltaguns to kill tanks en masse? Guess what - they don't.

Comp punishes OLD armies, the ones that need help. It just encourages the newer armies to spend 2 seconds thinking, and then break your comp by using their versatility to work around it.

The game is only balanced if everyone plays guard, BA, DH, or SW, other then that it is not balanced.

That is why all the big tournaments have people show up with guard or one of those armies minus BA because they just came out.

If you can explain to me why everyone has this sudden rush to play guard over all the other armies if it is so balanced then I will understand the perfect balance to this game.

just my two cents here...

Balance will never happen because people have different opinions of what balance should be.

not to be a pessimist here, but its just the way it is. No one is going to agree with everyone else, trying to change rules to do that is just going to tick people off more.

Untrue - the final tables at Adepticon had guard, sw, orks, chaos space marines, etc.

I'll happily build you a massively optimized guard list and beat it with dark eldar, necron, wtichhunters, demonhunters, basic marines, etc. That's the point.

If you think the game is only balanced for those few, you're starting from - in my pretty experienced opinion - a flawed premise. This is why comp feels necessary to some people ...