Balance and how to achieve it

[Nikobot]

23 minutes ago, zedatkinszed said:

How to achieve balance? Play chess mate. Two evenly matched diametrically opposed sides with exactly equal forces and a completely fair and even playing field. It has a sound mathematical basis that's been play-tested and perfected over centuries. And it even has miniatures representing units with special moves and rules

Sorry I'm getting really tired of these threads. Warhammer has never been a perfectly balanced game. It's a fantasy battles simulator fought with toy soldiers. And in all fairness to GW re: the fairness of games, things have gotten so much better since AOS and 40K 8^th edition.

Wargames being ‘balanced’ is a bit of a silly idea anyway. War isn’t balanced and most scenarios and narrative experiences in wargaming (not just in AOS but historical etc) involves unequal forces in a specific engagement, in particular terrain with individual objectives.

I'm sorry but the straight forward massed battle or "Little Wars" style game that fundamentally boils down to killing more of the other guys' soldiers is never going to be interesting in a fantasy or SciFi setting because "balancing it" means reducing it to chess and chess already exists.

Totally agree. Same stuff just keeps kicking around when most people should be able to tell that something with this many moving parts is impossible to balance.

In addition, also something that people should think about a bit, balance is counter-productive to selling more models. New armies need to be more exciting and raising the power bar or they don't attract as many sales. Armies that have been released for 2 years need to fall off their perch in order to incentivise people to move on and pay for more shiny new stuff. 

GW is never going to balance their games because they will make less money. History is testament to this.

[Dead Scribe]

GW is never going to balance their games because they will make less money. History is testament to this.

This is true.  

However on the opposite end of the coin the same thing that gets often repeated at our store is "how many would want to play a game where you know you're going to lose before the game starts", and thats a hard argument to counter.

[jaebird]

I really don't think you can say power levels drive sales when Stormcast and Space Marines are easily the most popular models.

Balance is way more achievable, imo, in games like AoS and 40k than they're given credit for. I think the problem GW has is one of breadth. The thing is, when you have so many armies and so many units, playtesting takes time, and the pressures of having to sell something means there are deadlines. AoS might be a better game if it was 10 factions with a book about as big as the Fyreslayers or the FEC, but I'm not sure the hobby would be better for it?

And like, there's a level of balance we got to talk about. Is balance a 50/50 winrate in a specific match play scenario? Or is it that every unit in every book can hang in any game you want to play them in? Either way, I think Age of Sigmar is pretty balanced, and more balanced when you use books only from a single "era" of rules writing. I think when it looks unbalanced the most is when there is a lag in competition; models are expensive and take a while to make ready for a tournament. Countering new stuff can take some time because people got to hobby to get there, imo.