How balanced is AoS now?

[Malakree]

Balance in AoS at the moment is best described by a three teir system.

Teir 1 are armies which don't actually play the game. They ignore some aspects of the rules, whether it's movement, deployment, armour saves, rend or having units wiped out they have someway to bypass those things.

Teir 2 and 3 are the armies who actually play the game and can't ignore a key aspects of the rules. The big difference is that T2 armies can take games off T1 armies if you play well and get lucky. T3 armies on the other hand get smashed by T1 armies no matter what you do.

T2 and T3 do actually dissolve into a more comprehensive list but the T1 armies are so dominant they warp the meta around them.

[Vextol]

I think one of the problems that Sigmar has is a lack of creativity.  The game has (had-it's getting better) to few aspects.  It makes whether a game is "balanced" too, dare I say, easy to notice blatant issues.  

As an example, if you have a unit that's a 1 wound 2A, 3+, 3+, -1 rend 2D model and compare it to another model that's exactly the same but doesn't have the rend...well...the first one is a better model.  Then you look at points and, uh oh.  Same cost.  

And I know everyone will scream "But in certain armies they serve different purposes so you have to balance them based off the allegience abilities!!!".  Yeah, I agree, but I also call.   You'd be hard pressed to convince me on A LOT of these discrepancies.

The big issue comes that for a long time, GW wasn't coming up with new ideas on abilities, just different orientations of the same ideas. 

The death of summoning and the rules of 1 were the start. They began changing everything even a little hard to handle in an effort (I think) to fix the balance problems.  However, instead of tweaking these aspects, they basically just removed them.   For a while it was just a mashup of all the same stuff.

Then they started getting better.  More teleporting, late arrivals, scenery, new abilities and such.  

Now, it seems like they are really trying to initiate new stuff.  Fecculebt Gnarlmaws, grave yards, more instant kill spells (I hate them) and a few more things. 

However, old habits die hard and I'm worried unless they find a way to make these awesome new elements work in matched play, it just won't be enough to keep everything moving in a cool, better direction.

 

[hughwyeth]

21 minutes ago, Vextol said:

As an example, if you have a unit that's a 1 wound 2A, 3+, 3+, -1 rend 2D model and compare it to another model that's exactly the same but doesn't have the rend...well...the first one is a better model.  Then you look at points and, uh oh.  Same cost.  

And I know everyone will scream "But in certain armies they serve different purposes so you have to balance them based off the allegience abilities!!!".  Yeah, I agree, but I also call.   You'd be hard pressed to convince me on A LOT of these discrepancies

Points costs are always going to be an issue in any miniature game. I'm pretty sure it's mathematically impossible to have balanced points costs for all units considering the huge number of permutations of combinations of powers and abilities and units, and considering the infinite variety of setup and movement on the tabletop itself. That's the issue with matched play and competitions in general- there's an implicit assumption that it's going to be fair if a range of forces are used- but it's never going to be the case. Even a game like X-Wing, which has far fewer permutations of options than AoS isn't balanced and there's always specific lists that people field. 

For every issue I've heard with a specific AoS force or unit, I've heard how easy it is to neutralise the threat or counter it. My point is I'm really not sure how useful it is for anyone to argue about points cost taking into account the above. AoS seems to be a very balanced game from the outside- look at GT finalists lists top 20 and there's good representation from pretty much every GA and force.  Even saying that, I think AoS is still a casual, open play game at heart. I think it works best like that too. 

[Vextol]

2 hours ago, hughwyeth said:

I think AoS is still a casual, open play game at heart. I think it works best like that too. 

I disagree.  I think, like people against local coop video games, the extremely vocal minority overwhelms the internet with their opinions and gives a false view on the majority.  

When people build lists, they don't say, "Aren't these units cool!?"   They say, "How does this 2000 point army look.". 

Matched play is where it's at and while open play is fun and entertaining to some,  games are inherently interesting/compelling and keep you coming back due to the competitive nature.  Whether it's against another person, a team of people or the game itself.  Take that away and it's just GI Joe with expensive figurines.  

Please don't take my tone as negative toward open players.  I would never knock someone for doing something they like.  However, from a heirarchical standpoint, it's much easier to make open play flow from matched play and not the other way around.

As to being mathematically impossible, as a game based solely on numbers, it is never mathematically impossible. Just mathematically improbable.  Points are PRECISELY how to balance the game.  If a unit is never fielded, it's because it's too expensive, straight up.  Pick any unit.  Any one.  Now, triple its points.  Would you use it?  If yes, you're probably lying, if no then obviously it has a limit. 

Now, pick a unit you hate. One you'd rather  never field (for me, it's saurus knights).  Cut their price by a third.  Would you field it?  If no, you're probably lying, if yes than obviously the fact that it's terrible is indeed tied to its points. 

Somewhere in the spectrum of infinite numbers there is a point value for every model in existence that makes it viable.  This is where balance lives.

[hughwyeth]

3 hours ago, Vextol said:

As to being mathematically impossible, as a game based solely on numbers, it is never mathematically impossible. Just mathematically improbable.  Points are PRECISELY how to balance the game.  If a unit is never fielded, it's because it's too expensive, straight up.  Pick any unit.  Any one.  Now, triple its points.  Would you use it?  If yes, you're probably lying, if no then obviously it has a limit. 

Now, pick a unit you hate. One you'd rather  never field (for me, it's saurus knights).  Cut their price by a third.  Would you field it?  If no, you're probably lying, if yes than obviously the fact that it's terrible is indeed tied to its points. 

Somewhere in the spectrum of infinite numbers there is a point value for every model in existence that makes it viable.  This is where balance lives.

I think from a purely logical standpoint it does seem to be impossible to truly balance- sure you can get the points so that they are generally fair- but, for example, a command ability that targets a single unit within 14" vs a command ability that affects all units within a 14" bubble- how do you cost those? This exists in the GUO and Glottkin's command abilities (+1 attack to melee weapons).  Obviously the bubble is better, but how many more points should it be? You could literally get every unit in your army within that 14" bubble. If the average number of units in a force is, let's say, 8, then should it cost 8 times more? Well, no, because usually it won't be able to affect every unit every turn. And some units it affects aren't going to find it as useful as others.  When you have unknowns like that (as in you can never know how many units  that bubble ability will be used on in a game) how can you cost it fairly? Sure you can get 90% there maybe by using averages but I don't see how it's possible to get to a perfect point cost. Again, you do it with averages, but then people can exploit that- you don't do average, you min/max everything.

Even more so- (and why it's not really just based on numbers) there is an infinite combination of movements for however many units you field- any unit can move any distance within it's movement range in any direction, and each model in that unit can move any amount within that distance. It is quite literally impossible to therefore cost something like a bubble effect entirely accurately because you don't know how people will move their forces, choose to move out of the bubble to move further etc.

I know this isn't really an argument against:

Quote

Somewhere in the spectrum of infinite numbers there is a point value for every model in existence that makes it viable.  This is where balance lives.

But i think it does illustrate that, when comparing the extremes of point costing, you can imagine some 10-20% discrepancy at least between abilities which would mathematically seem even. Previous to returning to Warhammer, i played (and still do) a lot of board games. These have near perfect balance in them, because they have a definite, limited number of actions to do. Even board games with movement and maps, they use grids or hexes and the cost assigned to particular abilities, characters, powers etc is pretty much perfect. When I began playing AoS again and heard people complain about point cost, I found it amusing that people chucking dozens of dice and moving models with tape measures thought it would be possible to ever have accurate point costing at all. 

[Kugane]

8 hours ago, KnightFire said:

The models that vanished are out of production, and they vanished because what balance there is in age of sigmar mostly comes from all armies being available to everyone (getting annoyed at being alpha striked by a KO clown car, then go and buy your own clown car list and give them a taste of their own medicine). For this reason models that are no longer produced can have no place in the game as they break the prinipal that balance comes from you being able to go out and buy the models that your opponent has.

Some universal clowncars would help though! The kind that you can add to an existing army and have a sense of evolving it. Instead of having to buy a whole new 300 euro army each time it becomes obsolete haha.

8 hours ago, Killax said:

Thats not too hopeful. I pretty much expected the same. The Lord Ordinator is the only one who really makes sence to me. At least in terms of model width it can assist.

What I don't really understand is why the Queen doesn't just affect units with the Mortal Keywords. To me at least that makes slightly more sence as just Slaves to Darkness. The Grot is what it is, might still be of use and the Knight of Shrouds would have been excellent too if it had the Legion rules Legions of Nagash has. Don't even know if he's able to obtain them...

I think it would have been great if the queen affected every model with the keyword "chaos" in it. Even if it were to be slightly out of place and all. I thought the whole idea of Portents was all chaos troops gathering to fight together against a common threat. All chaos troops aparently has now been re-defined to all slaves of darkness XD.  Right now I think the only model I can actually use is the knight of shrouds for death, since he seems quite strong by himself as a hero. I would love the ordinator, queen and perhaps the grot, simply because they are cool models, but thats a 75 euro purchase... You can buy half an army for that kind of money ><.

[Vextol]

1 hour ago, hughwyeth said:

t i think it does illustrate that, when comparing the extremes of point costing, you can imagine some 10-20% discrepancy at least between abilities which would mathematically seem even. Previous to returning to Warhammer, i played (and still do) a lot of board games. These have near perfect balance in them, because they have a definite, limited number of actions to do. Even board games with movement and maps, they use grids or hexes and the cost assigned to particular abilities, characters, powers etc is pretty much perfect. When I began playing AoS again and heard people complain about point cost, I found it amusing that people chucking dozens of dice and moving models with tape measures thought it would be possible to ever have accurate point costing at all. 

I hear you.  So...this is precisely the thinking that leads GW to removing the good parts of a game.  When it becomes difficult to balance things, they remove them.  It seems difficult to balance a bubble because there are a lot of unknown.  Best solution?  Remove bubbles completely or make them smaller.

Yikes...

The 'unknowns' don't have to be balanced.  They're unknowns.  They have to be played with and against.  Thats what makes  the game fun.  That's strategy.

The knowns however should make some effort to be balanced and they really aren't.  

The GH should really make giant strides to fix pointing.  Look at tournaments, look at lists and look at what units are NEVER there.  Yes, balancing armies is hard.  Luckily, you live in the modern world and we have a tremendous amount of data.  If you don't see a unit, like, ever, lower its price.  There were a ton of models that had little or no point change that were never taken and...surprise..they still aren't taken.

I guess what I hate most is when in leiu of adjusting points they change they way warscrolls work or they remove elements of the game entirely (RIP Summoning.)  That should be a last ditch effort  to fix a broken element.  Things need to be going really badly to cross that bridge because I find it really hard to believe  that no change in points can ever compensate.  And yeah, balance is really hard, but sometimes changing a scroll can kill an entire faction, especially of it doesn't come with a point change (RIP BCR).  Most of the time it just kills the unit (RIP Thunderers, Ripperdactyls, Multi Cast Wizards, Plague Drones...etc).  

I understand that sometimes you need to change things.  That's key, but GW doesn't seem to ever go back on a decision once they make it so they'll Willy nilly kill a unit and just leave it to the crows.  I mean, come on. Just say you measure from bases.  Absolutely ridiculous that you're holding onto a stupid mistake for YEARS just because you're..I don't even know...stubborn?  It feels like a child sometimes.

I too play a lot of board games and what I hate more than anything is when a board game feels stale because it's sooooo balanced.  Feels painfully dull or missing interesting content. 

As far as content, I still say that Sigmar is a sheep in wolf's clothing. It seems like there's a lot there but mechanically it's just not that complicated.  Stat lines are the peacocks of the game industry. 

[Vextol]

1 hour ago, Kugane said:

Some universal clowncars would help though! The kind that you can add to an existing army and have a sense of evolving it. Instead of having to buy a whole new 300 euro army each time it becomes obsolete haha.

I hate universality.  It's frustrating when you pick an army because you like "what they do" then people complain so they give it to everyone.  Big issue...the guys that HAD the cool ability always get left behind.  Or, new armies come out with nothing interesting at all that just stink at everything...or you combine everything together and make sure the new army has one of the best of everything that every other army has...cough...new  death...cough...that way no one will yell at you.

[PlasticCraic]

6 hours ago, Vextol said:

As to being mathematically impossible, as a game based solely on numbers, it is never mathematically impossible. Just mathematically improbable.  Points are PRECISELY how to balance the game.  If a unit is never fielded, it's because it's too expensive, straight up.  Pick any unit.  Any one.  Now, triple its points.  Would you use it?  If yes, you're probably lying, if no then obviously it has a limit. 

Now, pick a unit you hate. One you'd rather  never field (for me, it's saurus knights).  Cut their price by a third.  Would you field it?  If no, you're probably lying, if yes than obviously the fact that it's terrible is indeed tied to its points. 

Somewhere in the spectrum of infinite numbers there is a point value for every model in existence that makes it viable.  This is where balance lives.

Not sure I agree with that.  There are a few examples where points adjustments won't fix everything if you don't have the correct toolkit available.

Let's look at a Star Drake with Staunch Defender and Castellant buffs.  Imagine the Castellant is in the nook of a Numinous Occulum with the Drake blocking him in, or a similarly unreachable position (to conventional armies) behind a chaff screen.

The Drake is saving on 1s, rerolling 1s, healing on 5s (both before rend), dishing out mortal wounds on all rerolled saves.  If you attack him with something like Gore Gruntas (or most units in the game for that matter), you are going to heal him and kill yourself quicker that you do damage to him.  You could literally drop the points cost of Gore Gruntas down to zero, and throw an infinite number of them at him, and you would not kill him.  

Drake with Staunch is an obvious example because it's so common.  But there are others, such as the Treelord Ancient with his 2+ save, rerolling 1s, ignoring rend -1, healing D6 wounds per turn.

So you either need the scenario to help allowing you to contain / ignore (which is exactly what I do when I face it, but which won't help you in Duality of Death).  Or you need the toolkit to deal with it directly (a large volume of mortal wounds output), or indirectly (shooting to snipe the support character, preferably ignoring LOS requirements).  Or both (mortal wounds at range coming from magic or something like the Stardrake's own Rain of Stars, or the Celestant Prime for example). 

So although points are a big part of balancing the game, they are not the only factor.  Interaction of various abilities / stacking buffs, and having access to the toolkit to deal with that (or not), also plays its role. 

These may seem like edge cases but the edge cases quickly become mainstream - I faced 2 Stardrakes with the standard loadout in my 5 games at Cancon last week, which at 40% is roughly in line with the proportion of armies at the 104 player event that took them.

[Vextol]

1 hour ago, PlasticCraic said:

Not sure I agree with that.  There are a few examples where points adjustments won't fix everything if you don't have the correct toolkit available.

Well...yeah.  You make choices when you build your army.  You take risks.  If you aren't ready to handle certain threats and you happen to encounter them you're going to struggle.  I hope hope hope that GW never allows an army to be able to handle every possible situation in 2k points.

I would say over half my games in the last 8 months have been against a stardrake with staunch defender blocking a castellnt and someone has mirror shield. 

If each of those models was 800  points, people wouldn't take them.  This means there is a break point. 

I think there are some problems for sure.  Staunch defender shouldn't exist.  It's dumb and it encourages the worst kind of play.  Regardless, it does exist and ignoring the stardrake is key.   I am a frequently despondent of the invincible stardrake and it even caused me to start a post called "I hate my Kharadron Overlords."   GW is not adjusting things in a way that creates balance, they are just  negating problems.  "Shooting seems hard.  Let's add an artifact that says you can't shoot this guy.  Problem solved!"  

However, I think the problem IS with  points.  If Castellant was 200 points, would people still take him?  Probably.  How about 300?  Hmm...maybe sometimes.  THAT is a seriously undercosted model.

Stardrake is not the problem. Yes, he's great. He's also one model and he's really expensive.  Most scenarios have two points at least.  Well, if stardrake sits, you only have 1300 of your opponents 2000 points to deal with.  

Castellant is  the problem.  A guaranteed, non dispellable mystic shield that can be cast multiple times for 100 points.  Not to mention the insane profile for a 5 (6) wound hero.  Complete nonsense. 

How many points would a model cost that granted +1 save to every model within 6 inches that didn't have to go off?!! A year ago you'd be looking at 300+ for a given army.   Heck, a 6+ mortal/extra save luminark is that much and it's much worse. 

Every army is getting a newer, more ridiculous version of it for free.  Ugh.  So how do you fix staunch defender?  POINTS!  

Everyone already knows that there is always one artifact or one command trait that is leaps and bounds better than the rest.  So...why not!  Let's have better artifacts.  But you have to pay for them.  

[Killax]

@Vextol Well I think there are indeed certain scenario's that favour particular models much more over others. I clearly remember a minor hype around the Murderhost being possibly able to reach Objectives turn one to possibly thake the scenariofor a win. But this also works on quite a few assumptions and tactical mistakes from your opponent.

But based on your Castellant experience I'd still say he's not off by much, but certainly could use a minor increase. The thing really is that a lot of things in AoS still depend on Rend or MW and sometimes if you do not have it, you arn't part of the secondary game that's actual melee combat. Because in order to even be part of it, yes, the Castellant too can be sniped away by a ot of armies. Same for the Slaughterpriest etc, Moral is really we don't all play Staunch Defender all the time. The game still expects MW to be part of the game. Because (Slaughterpriest) models like the Castellant excist I'd say that 120-140 points would actually be a propper cost thus it's not off by that much.

The crux is really that if you skip the Shooting phase altogether with your army support like that can look very powerful. But then notice the options at least Order has to deal with that and see how ranged combat snowballs into armies without an engine.

[KnightFire]

2 hours ago, Killax said:

@Vextol Well I think there are indeed certain scenario's that favour particular models much more over others. I clearly remember a minor hype around the Murderhost being possibly able to reach Objectives turn one to possibly thake the scenariofor a win. But this also works on quite a few assumptions and tactical mistakes from your opponent.

 

Murderhost is absolutely a tier 1 list at the moment, it does very well at UK tournaments. All lists work on assumptions and capitalising on mistakes your opponent makes, especially around how they deploy and whether they know what your list is going to do. 

 

While there are (and will always be) points changes that are needed,  the game can't be balanced with points because it is not a static "perfect information game". The value of a unit that gives you +1 to hit in combat is very variable, it depends what else you have in your army (i.e. bloodletters have much more use of +1 to hit in combat than pink horrors).  This means that you would have to point for not just what the unit itself does, but the units it could possibly be paired with, but then a n army that runs 10 bloodletters pays the same for the buff unit as an army that takes 30, so its still not fair. The aim of the rules team therefore is to keep the metagame fresh and changing, rather than to chase an impossible balance. They do this by introducing new armies that have a significant impact on the current tier 1 lists (and esepcially interesting are armies that are strong vs something very popular in the current metagame, but weaker against other lists, as these tame the metagame very well), by changing points with the GHB, and if necessary, by issuing errata or clarifying their intentions with FAQs.

Its a system that works, its not instant and its not aiming for complete balance, but as a system it is giving us a metagame that ebbs and flows, that has seen double kunnin rukk, sayl letterbombs, double stonehorn kunnin rukk, gnarlroot wargrove, mixed order hurricanum, warrior brotherhood, hammerstrike force, vanguard wing, murderhost, clown car, changehost, skyfires and fyreslayers all take their turn in tier 1 over the last 12 months.

 

[Killax]

24 minutes ago, KnightFire said:

Murderhost is absolutely a tier 1 list at the moment, it does very well at UK tournaments. All lists work on assumptions and capitalising on mistakes your opponent makes, especially around how they deploy and whether they know what your list is going to do. 

While there are (and will always be) points changes that are needed,  the game can't be balanced with points because it is not a static "perfect information game". The value of a unit that gives you +1 to hit in combat is very variable, it depends what else you have in your army (i.e. bloodletters have much more use of +1 to hit in combat than pink horrors).  This means that you would have to point for not just what the unit itself does, but the units it could possibly be paired with, but then a n army that runs 10 bloodletters pays the same for the buff unit as an army that takes 30, so its still not fair. The aim of the rules team therefore is to keep the metagame fresh and changing, rather than to chase an impossible balance. They do this by introducing new armies that have a significant impact on the current tier 1 lists (and esepcially interesting are armies that are strong vs something very popular in the current metagame, but weaker against other lists, as these tame the metagame very well), by changing points with the GHB, and if necessary, by issuing errata or clarifying their intentions with FAQs.

Its a system that works, its not instant and its not aiming for complete balance, but as a system it is giving us a metagame that ebbs and flows, that has seen double kunnin rukk, sayl letterbombs, double stonehorn kunnin rukk, gnarlroot wargrove, mixed order hurricanum, warrior brotherhood, hammerstrike force, vanguard wing, murderhost, clown car, changehost, skyfires and fyreslayers all take their turn in tier 1 over the last 12 months.

Playing Murderhost myself and can't say it's a Tier 1 list. What is Tier 1 from Khorne are Bloodletters. The only unit left within the army that I can really put on that level. There is a lot of randomness involved with Murderhost you do not seem to have incorporated in your evaluation of it. In addition it's not doing as well if your opponent is aware of it's excistance. Since GH2017 I believe it has won one smaller event and that's it really...

I agree with you that points are not the end all be all for balance. This is also why I would prefer Battalions to work differently. The same is true for the Shooting phase. They are attached to Core rules, not costs making them so potent. 

But yeah AoS works, luckily most of the community isn't set out to win all. It isn't 40K levels of re-considering choices to the max, yet.... Having said that though some Order armies who do are also Tournament winners. The fun part is really Order can do it mixed, with Fyreslayers, Seraphon and Stormcast. So people seem used to seeing one of these four win and arn't concerned about it. 

[hughwyeth]

12 hours ago, Vextol said:

I too play a lot of board games and what I hate more than anything is when a board game feels stale because it's sooooo balanced.  Feels painfully dull or missing interesting content. 

As far as content, I still say that Sigmar is a sheep in wolf's clothing. It seems like there's a lot there but mechanically it's just not that complicated.  Stat lines are the peacocks of the game industry. 

I agree. The best board games have randomness as an element. The challenge in a game is not mastering the limited number of plays and actions. That's just having a good memory. What makes a game challenging is when it makes you confront unforeseeable events and/or randomness. It takes skill to react to unknowns, it doesn't take skill to just know a game off by heart because it has limited actions.

Regarding the (lack of) complexity of AoS, that's why I like it. I think 40k makes everything people complain about regarding points cost and makes them 10x worse. When the min/max approach and point costing can go down to the individual weapons models have, then it makes it extremely unlikely you can balance 20 factions.  You're adding a whole other layer there with orders of magnitude more complexity when it comes to balancing. In 40k, the difference (balance wise) between the worse faction with the worst weapons (point wise) and the best is astronomical. In AoS it's nowhere near that. I think the rules simplicity is AoS's greatest strength and the constant streamlining (like summoning) is only going to make it better. More complex rules will always lead to less balance in any game. It's why I think AoS as a tactical game is ironically (considering the initial response to it) much more balanced than 40k could ever be and therefore much more suited to competitive play- though I still think it's best as a more relaxed game, not necessarily open play, but casual point-matched games are the best from my experience. 

[Infeston]

30 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

I agree. The best board games have randomness as an element. The challenge in a game is not mastering the limited number of plays and actions. That's just having a good memory. What makes a game challenging is when it makes you confront unforeseeable events and/or randomness. It takes skill to react to unknowns, it doesn't take skill to just know a game off by heart because it has limited actions

This is a statement I couldn't agree more with. I love battleplans and special rules which add random events depending on what you roll.  Because of that no game plays like the other. It is certainly better than playing a game and knowing at the start how the game will turn out.

What I also really liked about the GHB2017 were the "Divine intervention" effects for Coalition of Death scenarios (which can also be used in any game), because they give a chance (for example: For Order the effect triggers if half of the army is slain) to turn around the odds completely and change the whole setting. This especially prevents one-sided games, because the player who is starting to loose will get a bonus so that he still got a chance. 

I like rules like that, because they still make a game exciting to play.

I would recommend everyone whose games turn out to be one-sided to try out or design own rules, which give the side which is loosing some special effects so that the game can still be challenging.

[Vextol]

3 hours ago, Killax said:

I agree with you that points are not the end all be all for balance. This is also why I would prefer Battalions to work differently. The same is true for the Shooting phase. They are attached to Core rules, not costs making them so potent. 

But yeah AoS works, luckily most of the community isn't set out to win all. It isn't 40K levels of re-considering choices to the max, yet.... Having said that though some Order armies who do are also Tournament winners. The fun part is really Order can do it mixed, with Fyreslayers, Seraphon and Stormcast. So people seem used to seeing one of these four win and arn't concerned about it. 

They aren't the BE-ALL no, but they are the easiest way to do it.  And if you mess with warscrolls without the accompanying point change, you end up with what happened to BCR.  Basically a dead faction and no representation in Cancon at all.  Kharadron and BCR both had serious scroll fiddling with the new GHB and both are now very much shunned as competitive armies.  And I'm especially bitter as I glance over at my stone horns and Ironclads just collecting dust .

I agree that the system does need tweaking too, but point adjustments, even very small ones, can make an unplayable faction competitive (without being broken) and can take an overwhelming faction, and bring them back to the slums with the rest of us. 

I believe the biggest problem with balance is the independent turns.  Find a way to remove that and I bet a lot of the issues would go away.  There is SO much randomness thrown in with one die roll that balance really becomes hard to fathom.

The real dig  would be if we all found out that GW can totally balance at will, they just choose to have one or two factions rule the scene to drive the meta....and sales

[Killax]

Well the thing is that GW is going for a really good balance for 40K right now, aside from several armies working with completely different CP.
The beauty of that system is that non of the phases in particular are much stronger as the other. Even Psycic abilities have a massive advantage there and thats them circumventing the character protection rule.

In any case, the game is decent and yeah I agree with thr 3 Tier notion. Ideally those 3 Tiers become more like 2 blurry ones. I do feel this is the case in 40K. Because in 40k Order/Imperium doesn't thake all tournaments home. Both Xenos and Chaos have a lot to say here.

Cancon and LVO and smaller events as the last example, all I see continiously winning is Order and yes all of them have a very relevant thing to do in the Shooting phase again. Which I don't believe anyone with a straight face can tell me is not one of the strongest assets of Order and indeed pretty much confirms they will always have a very solid place and standing in every event.

40K unlike AoS does not have solely Imperium as a strong contender in the Shooting phase for example  Ah well.. Despite my critique I am very happy with AoS. Because it has a ton of tactical depth in actual gameplay vs rules. However a lot of that depth can be ignored by specifically units that are strong in the shooting phase.

The games I find the most interesting are also the games that are largely focused on being effective in the combat phase, because it highlights how important casualty removal and thus placement is.

[Vextol]

3 hours ago, KnightFire said:

Its a system that works, its not instant and its not aiming for complete balance, but as a system it is giving us a metagame that ebbs and flows, that has seen double kunnin rukk, sayl letterbombs, double stonehorn kunnin rukk, gnarlroot wargrove, mixed order hurricanum, warrior brotherhood, hammerstrike force, vanguard wing, murderhost, clown car, changehost, skyfires and fyreslayers all take their turn in tier 1 over the last 12 months.

 

This-ish.  This is what I want.  Lots of good armies that all have a turn being number 1.  But...instead of tweaking points on these guys, they just broke a lot of them.  Almost all of them got totally wrecked by a scroll change instead of a point adjustment.  There were only a few that were pointed appropriately and now they balance quite well.  Gnarlroot is dead because it got pointed into the shadow realms,  skyfires (pointed appropriately and now used competitively without being broken), changehost (pointed appropriately and now used competitively without being broken). 

I was a double Kunnin Ruk player for a while (so fun throwing 200 dice) but the rest of the army was so terrible that I bailed out before any adjustments, Sayl got creamed, stonehorn is a joke now, , KO get bunked by everything (I play them a lot, I play against them a lot-they get bunked by everything now).

I like having different armies end up at the top.  It's cool!  But if one army is consistently dominating everything, you should change the points.  If it seems like the points don't cut it, change the stat line and bring the points back down.  If that doesn't work, start increasing the points again.  Only after EVERYTHING has failed should you change the special rules on the scrolls.  The scrolls are the only thing that keep a lot of factions together.

[KnightFire]

2 minutes ago, Vextol said:

 

I like having different armies end up at the top.  It's cool!  But if one army is consistently dominating everything, you should change the points.  If it seems like the points don't cut it, change the stat line and bring the points back down.  If that doesn't work, start increasing the points again.  Only after EVERYTHING has failed should you change the special rules on the scrolls.  The scrolls are the only thing that keep a lot of factions together.

I think thats fair, but most of the "scroll changes" have actually been clarifications of what GWs intention for how it was played was (where their intention and the  rules written down were not quite the same). Very few of them are "errata", most of them are "FAQs" but its also the case that none of these changes are set in stone. Things that dissapeared in GHB17 may come back again due to points changes in GHB18 (or 19, 20 etc) or even just beccause the metagame changes around them and they are suddenly useful. 

Points can go down as well as up, and GW don't only get one chance to get them right, they can (and will) keep adjusting them as needed. 

It is far better for the metagame to over-nerf something than to under-nerf it, because over-nerfing an army changes the metagame (the old top armies dissapear and new ones rise to take their place, so the metagame changes) and under-nerfing it is the same as not doing anyting (the old armies are still on top, people still complain about having to sit and watch their opponent take 15 minutes to roll 300 dice for their double KR).

 

[Jamopower]

30 minutes ago, Killax said:

Cancon and LVO and smaller events as the last example, all I see continiously winning is Order and yes all of them have a very relevant thing to do in the Shooting phase again. Which I don't believe anyone with a straight face can tell me is not one of the strongest assets of Order and indeed pretty much confirms they will always have a very solid place and standing in every event.
 

Order is hardly an umbrella term in this game. Mixed order is a thing, but coupling stuff like Kharadron overlords, Stormcast, Seraphon, Syylvaneth, etc. to just under the term "order" really doesn't make any sort of sense.

[Vextol]

24 minutes ago, Killax said:

Cancon and LVO and smaller events as the last example, all I see continiously winning is Order and yes all of them have a very relevant thing to do in the Shooting phase again. Which I don't believe anyone with a straight face can tell me is not one of the strongest assets of Order and indeed pretty much confirms they will always have a very solid place and standing in every event.

40K unlike AoS does not have solely Imperium as a strong contender in the Shooting phase for example  Ah well.. Despite my critique I am very happy with AoS. Because it has a ton of tactical depth in actual gameplay vs rules. However a lot of that depth can be ignored by specifically units that are strong in the shooting phase.

Order has a ton of options.  There's a play style for everyone in there and I think that is why they dominate.  That, and stormcast has high save, high rend, high mortal output, great shooting and high speed-some of those things are useful.

I don't believe shooting to be overpowered, it's just to easy to counter someone's well thought tactics with a BLARUGHGH of arrow fire.  Why play smart when you can just shoot the p*** out of everything .   It could definitely use a little tweaking, but I am always worried that a GW little tweak is akin to complete desolation of an aspect of the game.

I am also happy with AoS.  I only critique because I spend SO much time playing that I want to feel that what happens in game is because I played poorly or the dice weren't on my side.  I love the game though and just always want to make it a little better

[Vextol]

6 minutes ago, KnightFire said:

It's far better for the metagame to over-nerf something than to under-nerf it, because over-nerfing an army changes the metagame (the old top armies dissapear and new ones rise to take their place, so the metagame changes) and under-nerfing it is the same as not doing anyting (the old armies are still on top, people still complain about having to sit and watch their opponent take 15 minutes to roll 300 dice for their double KR).

 

In theory I agree, but, they don't historically readdress armies that aren't "OP" anymore.  Once a faction is nerfed, it's usually dead for a looooong time.  It's good business, bad gaming.  Make an army good, sell a bunch of models, kill the army, sell new models.

[KnightFire]

1 minute ago, Vextol said:

In theory I agree, but, they don't historically readdress armies that aren't "OP" anymore.  Once a faction is nerfed, it's usually dead for a looooong time.  It's good business, bad gaming.  Make an army good, sell a bunch of models, kill the army, sell new models.

Ironjawz got some buffs in GHB17 with points changes to gore gruntas and the cabbage, so they definitely do look at weaker armies if they are popular. Unfortunately for IJ the changes to battalion costs and changes to rampaging destroyers meant they ended up pretty much where they were before, but the thought was there, and there definitely is precedent for reducing points where required.

[Jamopower]

And of course there is also the thing that if the top dogs get toned down, the dogs that they surpassed might become good choices again.

[stratigo]

On 2/5/2018 at 5:39 AM, Kugane said:

@Killax I think in case of 40k they also made a mistake by allowing people to do stuff such as spamming commanders for Tau, or Stormravens for Imperial. Especially the tournament scene is also a spam-list environment similar to what we see in AOS right now.

If you look at the rules of Lord of the Rings (at least 12 years ago when I played it), there was a rule along the lines of that only 1/3rd of your army can be a unit that can shoot for example. I'm not sure if that was models or points-wise, but regardless, it allowed people to take some shooting units, but also forced them to play the melee game as well.

I think lots of armies, even Death before this new battletome, on paper are very fun and competive armies, but simply stand no chance to players who either spam stuff like skyfires or behemoths. While the game does restrict us from spamming as much as in 40k in the sense we are only allowed a certain ammount of heroes, behemoths and such in a list, I think Age of Sigmar would benefit from something along the lines of a monthly/bi-monthly banlist, where instead of changing core rules of a unit, they make a list of units we are only allowed a certain number of models of. I think by limiting the player of taking certain overpowered units in lesser numbers it may balance the game much easier and also create less of an outrage when a cool model gets heavily overpriced when a new GHB rolls out, rendering it useless.

a lot of armies only have so many options. If you're playing pestilens, well, you are spamming plague rats by default. If you nerf endrinrigers too hard, kharadrons can't hold up. If you nerf bloodletters too hard, khorne can't keep up. If you nerf skyfires.... tzeentch wins most of the top spots with its other amazing options anyways.

 

Seriously though, tzeentch isn't bad because it has strong units. Destiny dice are, as an allegiance trait, overwhelmingly good.