A Modest Proposal / Balance / Allegiance Abilities / Sub-Factions

[Sleepa]

I'd suggest a different approach. I think adding a points-cost to subfactions would "round off" the top and bottom tiers as RuneBrush theorized. I think people would take the same armies, with slightly less inclusions to accommodate the points cost of the subfaction. I imagine most competitive players wouldn't really enjoy this, because they'd lose a little flexibility in the list-building stage.  I also can't imagine GW would want to add a blanket points-increase to the most popular armies, because that just means they're going to sell fewer models.

Balance-wise, I think a better solution would be to set dynamic points costs for ALL units in an army, based on the choice of subfaction. Granted, without using Azyr to build your army, this would mean a lot more work for players. GW could make it work with the now separately-printed points indexes released with the annual GHB publications. Even if this dynamic points change only applied to matched play, it would still be a fundamentally huge change to the game. 

It would however, almost completely solve the issue of internal army balancing. Want to run Petrifex Elite? Ok, maybe your non-unique heroes, crawlers and harvesters receive a 10% points deduction, but your unique heroes (except Katakros) and battleline suffer a 10% hike.

I have no idea what kind of specific changes would be required bring the subfactions for each army (that has subfactions) in line with each other. With the disparity in power level between subfactions for some armies, I don't see how the introduction of a single faction point cost could ever hope to address the problem. I'd posit that imposing asymmetrical changes in the list-building phase is the only way to address the asymmetrical way that subfaction bonuses scale exponentially with some armies,

[Phasteon]

2 hours ago, Sleepa said:

I'd suggest a different approach. I think adding a points-cost to subfactions would "round off" the top and bottom tiers as RuneBrush theorized. I think people would take the same armies, with slightly less inclusions to accommodate the points cost of the subfaction. I imagine most competitive players wouldn't really enjoy this, because they'd lose a little flexibility in the list-building stage.  I also can't imagine GW would want to add a blanket points-increase to the most popular armies, because that just means they're going to sell fewer models.

Balance-wise, I think a better solution would be to set dynamic points costs for ALL units in an army, based on the choice of subfaction. Granted, without using Azyr to build your army, this would mean a lot more work for players. GW could make it work with the now separately-printed points indexes released with the annual GHB publications. Even if this dynamic points change only applied to matched play, it would still be a fundamentally huge change to the game. 

It would however, almost completely solve the issue of internal army balancing. Want to run Petrifex Elite? Ok, maybe your non-unique heroes, crawlers and harvesters receive a 10% points deduction, but your unique heroes (except Katakros) and battleline suffer a 10% hike.

I have no idea what kind of specific changes would be required bring the subfactions for each army (that has subfactions) in line with each other. With the disparity in power level between subfactions for some armies, I don't see how the introduction of a single faction point cost could ever hope to address the problem. I'd posit that imposing asymmetrical changes in the list-building phase is the only way to address the asymmetrical way that subfaction bonuses scale exponentially with some armies,

Sub-factions balance each other out by improving units for a particular playstyle. People think that blobs of Mortek Guard are the only playstyle in OBR, thats why Petrifex is always taken. 

They dont factor in that maybe a fast cavalry army could be strong and fun too, so they discard Stalliarch Lords for example.  

People wont agree to this, I know, but I still dont think Petrifex is more unbalanced than any other sub-faction in any other army that sees the majority of play compared to the others. 

Its more a matter of prefered playstyle by the players. 

People talk about „How cool a full cavalry army would be“ but instead of going for it they play the „standard mortek spam petrifex“ list anyway. 

Not because its better but because the internet made them think that if they dont they will lose. 

Its not about sub-factions being unbalanced its about people dont want to commit to a particular playstyle so they stick to the sub-factions that seem to be the „allround“ choice in most cases. 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Phasteon