Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?

[AaronWilson]

https://hobbyinthewarp.blogspot.com/2020/08/is-balance-obtainable-goal-for-aos.html Hi guys! My blog post is up. Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS? My thoughts on the subject but really I want to discuss with all of you. I'd be ever so grateful if you took a read and then let me know your take the subject.

[DINOSTAR]

I agree with your blog post. To add to your thoughts,  I also don't think balance is obtainable (without major changes to the game as is) , when so much of the "power" of an army comes from player decisions with list building.  All efforts to balance armies abilities would have to assume a list built at a certain power level of some sort.   Right now, a player could take one of the stronger factions (let's say seraphon) but build it in such a way that it would lose to just about everything.  Conversely, you could build a very competitive list of grots where it beats nearly all non-competitive lists regardless of faction.  Balancing armies around the top/medium/or low tier lists would force you to play it that way to actually remain balanced. As I've become a somewhat experienced player now, it is nice to be able to tone my lists down or up depending on my opponent; not being able to do so would be an additional concern if I only had one army (certainly not the case for me!).  

[AaronWilson]

Yeah, list building is a really hard thing to quantify!

[Popisdead]

There isn't even balance in chess.    This has been a comment for the past 17 years I've been back in the game.  

Just enjoy the hobby and either play the latest broken or enjoy your army for what it is.

[Bayul]

There's one factor you missed: The monetary investment in Warhammer. It's not part of the ludic structure of the game per se, but it is significant for the negative perception of an imbalanced game. If you choose your first army and spent 500 Euro and painted countless hours just to lose most of your games because of outdated warscrolls, power creep and cheese tactics you feel stucked at a certain point. Probably even forced to spent 500 Euro and countless hours again just to compete. "You should have known better" some people might say, but do you really? We are witnessing a short life span of rules on one hand and ancient battletomes on the other hand. You can't be prepared for this bizzare situation when you start playing this game, even if a community like TGA helps out.

There's imbalance in other games too of course, but not with such an financial impact. You surely could spend 500 Euro in Magic: The Gathering for a deck, but if you keep losing you can trade or (very) simply sell all your cards without losing much money. Worth to mention that Magic has regulative methods like banning cards and rotating out whole editions to create a new meta. Imagine banning Lord Kroak.

And you know how vivid video gamers are about the slightest imbalances in their games – demanding a patch asap. These guys complain about a 30 - 60 Euro priced product. More often then not even a free-to-play game! Free. To. Play. Still having access to every other character or tank or army or pokemon or whatever thing with a higher win rate. But most companies, even EA and Blizzard, deliver solutions. To be honest, GW does not. We keep playing a luxurious hobby without luxurious rules.

[Joseph Mackay]

Personally, as long as the game includes stuff that isn’t being paid for or factored into a units points cost (like allegiance abilities or summoning), and as long as the allegiance abilities are so vastly different in strength (khorne summoning vs and other chaos summoning for example), and without a return to standardised Universal Special Rules, then no I don’t believe it is truly possible 

[Overread]

I think the issue with "can we use imbalance to tell stories" is that wargames aren't played like RPG games. In the end Wargames are competitive games built around the idea of typically two or more people competing against each other in an attempt to win. In the end winning is part of the game and people like to win. Sure being a good sportsman means accepting losses, but if one meets continual or heavy losses then it can sap their enthusiasm for the game and even the hobby in general. 

When the issue is the players own skill and a variation in skill at a club there are ways to work around that. If you are a less skilled player at a larger group you might well find others of a similar skill level to play with. Sure you might lose every time you "play the pros" but you'll have a block of friends who have a similar level of skill to yourself where the win/loss ratio isn't as clear cut. 

Higher skilled players can also help teach others, both in terms of army building and in gameplay on the tabletop. Indeed if you can bolster the latter then you free up the former - its fine to take a "quirky" list for the challenge when you know how to make a "good list" and choose not too. It's different from building a list you think is good that is actually very bad. 

Higher skilled players can also take a handicap to level the playingfield a bit. When you've an established group if you always lose to Dave there's far more chance that Dave will be open to taking less units to balance out the challenge. 

 

 

The issue is when these wide imbalances aren't the result of player skill differences (alone), but are instead inherent in the game itself. When one army is able to be far more powerful than normal and goes against one that is underpowered. When that happens player skill is almost removed and its purely a case that mechanical mathematical elements of the game aren't working toward an even balance. 

This is a big issue for gamers. If you've bought - built - painted your army you want to use that army. You don't want to find out that its at the bottom of the meta and that "nothing you do" can fix it. 

 

 

Now sure perfect balance is not attainable. However when you consider that the community at large generally spots the power variations at the extreme ends fairly well and with good accuracy; then it suggests that these elements CAN be spotted. If they can be spotted they can be fixed. Sure it won't be perfect, but the power disparity can at least be reduced. 

Personally I think GW should work toward that, it creates a more even bed upon which player skill (the person - the game - YOU) becomes a more important part of the equation. We know this can be done, MTG and many other wargames can achieve generally more even balance and more reliable balance than GW does. We know nothing is perfect, but that's no excuse for not trying. GW has issues though - they've big edition changes that throw most of the previous balance out the window each time; they often don't write rules in a single block as a team so there are issues with the left hand not knowing what the right is doing; they have issues with the language they choose which can lead to confusion. GW could do a lot better- technical writers - better beta testing (eg actual beta testing rather than handing out one or two pre-designed lists and seeing what people think of them). GW has phenomenal resources compared to many other companies that only have a handful of staff; GW has a vast amount of game data they can harvest. GW has potential to improve AoS to a higher standard of balance - creating a game where competition (at any level) is more even within the games mechanics. 

 

 

 

I think reaching for crutches like "doubleturn makes it harder to predict the auto win/lose based on maths of the battle" and "we can tell a narrative" etc... are just trying to mask the underlying issues. I think a fun game with a good level of balance is something you can build up from FAR more so than one that has inherent problems where the building options are trying to patch over it. Instead of narrative being something you use as a means to try and hide imbalance; if the game were more balanced the narrative becomes a focal point for the game. You are now telling a story rather than trying to use it to hide the fact that you lost 10 games in a row and your army is right at the bottom.

GW can do more IF they want; but it would require some big attitude changes in key positions. If we consider the vast improvement in sales and uptake of AoS when it went from "no rules do whatever you want" to 2.0 then clearly that shows a better, tighter and more balanced rules system IS important to most, even if they don't admit or realise it. Imagine if 3.0 improved balance even more - that we lost the big swings like Slaanesh Depravity Summoning and Ossiarchs with 2+saves (hey we DID lose one of those!). That we boost up the few armies that are a bit too weak; bring down those that can build too strong. We can tell some darn epic stories with a game of that high calibre. 

[Zeblasky]

Well, if Warhammer TW1 started as an unbalanced mess, but in a second game reached a pretty good balance with 15 factions and a lot of units and variables for each with only a few army composition restrictions (that are also already in AoS in one form or another funnily enough), I think AoS can do it too. Some matchups will be inevitably better for some factions versus the other, but it can always be limited with good rebalancing as well as giving certain armies units/abilites that can be key to countering what they struggle with (all within the realm of assymetrical balance of course).  Such balance though requires a lot of qualified feedback and GW resources, as well as constant updates.

 

The one huge core balance problem for AoS however is that you can't adapt with your army to each different faction. If you go to a tournament, you are locked into a single army that must be good versus as many opposing strategies it can run into as possible. Meaning that meta armies gravitate towards strongest swiss army knives compositions. Or sometimes being an overpowering cheese. If you would go into a tournament declaring only your faction and changing your subfaction and models on the fly before each matchup (without knowing your opponent composition) , then balancing (and meta!) could be a lot more fluid and actually easier (also, just think of GW profits, so much more models and cases for transport, muhaha!). But I do not believe such a way is possible yet, so we're stuck with Swiss knifes.

 

And that means that the meta balance in AoS is balancing out those swiss army knifes armies, keeping each of them in line (especially finding out the most imbalanced matchups and trying to get them more equal without hurting already balanced ones), while trying to create as many valid and diversified options for each faction as possible (and also destroying cheese combinations) . So there are problems of both external as well as internal balance, but both are getting slowly better. For example, Cities of Sigmar has 4 subfactions fighting for the best subfaction title with a lot of viable compositions, and that's great. The one thing we as players can do is to gather and summarize as much feedback as we can. We could sometimes be wrong and we won't always be heard, but it's one of the best ways to get balance on track.

 

[LuminethMage]

I largely agree with the OP. I'd rather have more variety in army builds, playstyles etc., then thriving for "perfect" balance. And I rather have them try to make flavorful distinctive armies with new abilities in the future too - even if some of those abilities turn out to be too strong and have to be brought in line in the end. While of course keeping balance in mind, and always aim to keep the factions balanced. 

A few other thoughts about balance in AoS.

- The sample sizes we have tend to be small, so it's often hard to say objectively what is really too strong or too weak. 

- Especially for new armies. Almost every new army is deemed to be OP at the start. Sometimes it turns out to be true of course. 

- Another problem is that because the community is small, a few loud voices can really drive overall community impressions about balance and "fun". Although they also have their preferences and biases, like everyone else. Even if they try to be objective. 

- "This army is OP" sometimes just seems to be an excuse for people who do not like a certain play style, or don't want to adept. 

- Perceived relative army strengths seems to pre-occupy 99% of  balance discussions although for most of us it would be better to care more about things like learning how to move, charge, play objectives etc. efficiently. 

- If you look for very good balance, a computer game might be more to your liking. The sample sizes are much higher, and the company has access to all the data. Even then it's often difficult to achieve balance if you have diverse factions with distinct play styles. And with all the advantages they have, video game producers still mess up balance often whenever they introduce new factions/abilities to their games.

- People tend to ask about power rankings and win possibilities with their army at some imaginative tournament they likely won't attend anyway, then what's going on locally. 

- From the data we have - most armies are in the 40 to 60% win-rate brackets, right? That would be a pretty good overall balance. 

- If you'd take the recent Warhammer Weekly data (survey among 1,000 players) as at least relatively representative for the active community - then many of us locally would either play or have Stormcast, Orruks , Nurgle, Slaves to Darkness and Cities of Sigmar as most likely opponents. Hardly an assembly of the super top meta before the latest changes ... . And we'd have a slightly higher chance to play against Gloomspite Gitz, Khorne, Sylvaneth and Beast of Chaos, then Tzeentch or OBR. 

 

[Overread]

6 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

I largely agree with the OP. I'd rather have more variety in army builds, playstyles etc., then thriving for "perfect" balance.

The worse the game balance the fewer army build varieties you'll have. Because when you have poor balance it means that there's big swings and gains and losses within the game. That means certain builds for certain armies will be, by far and away, superior to others. Look at Slaanesh for a great example. Right now if you don't build an army with at least 3 keepers and aim to summon more keepers then you're basically playing a "weaker" version of the army. Any other combination focusing on say chariots and cavalry; infantry; demons; etc... Is basically a weaker option and not as "ideal". 

In contrast if you have superior balance both internally (a battletome isn't reliant on one powerful trick) and between battletomes; then you create a flatter curve of power variation. This means that you still have losses and gains, but they are much more subtle which means you have much more encouragement for a wider variety of viable army builds. Sure it means you don't get "I win" army combos to use; but at the same time it means you've far more freedom to choose what to deploy. It also means that you have much more of a hunt to find powerful combos and tricks within the system. 

Again better balance produces a wider variety of army types; a wider range of army compositions and removes a pressure to chase the meta (noting that many who chase the meta are often buying secondhand models and thus aren't even generating profit for GW). 

[LuminethMage]

4 hours ago, Overread said:

The worse the game balance the fewer army build varieties you'll have. Because when you have poor balance it means that there's big swings and gains and losses within the game. That means certain builds for certain armies will be, by far and away, superior to others. Look at Slaanesh for a great example. Right now if you don't build an army with at least 3 keepers and aim to summon more keepers then you're basically playing a "weaker" version of the army. Any other combination focusing on say chariots and cavalry; infantry; demons; etc... Is basically a weaker option and not as "ideal". 

In contrast if you have superior balance both internally (a battletome isn't reliant on one powerful trick) and between battletomes; then you create a flatter curve of power variation. This means that you still have losses and gains, but they are much more subtle which means you have much more encouragement for a wider variety of viable army builds. Sure it means you don't get "I win" army combos to use; but at the same time it means you've far more freedom to choose what to deploy. It also means that you have much more of a hunt to find powerful combos and tricks within the system. 

Again better balance produces a wider variety of army types; a wider range of army compositions and removes a pressure to chase the meta (noting that many who chase the meta are often buying secondhand models and thus aren't even generating profit for GW). 

Sure, if one build is much better then the rest, most people will pick that one, and it leads to less differentiation within an army. OBR is another good example. Petrifex likely wasn’t the only good choice, but as long as it seemed clearly better most people will play that.  

These discussion are always problematic because nuances don’t really come across. I totally agree with what you say there, but in the end there is also a trade off between trying to achieve perfect balance and variety in plays styles within and across armies as the OP mentioned in his blog. That is also something video games often struggle with. But of course if you allow one specific army, faction or playstyle be clearly better under most conditions that also has negative consequences on variety (people will play it or quit the game in the long run). The “easy” way out to avoid that problem is to give everyone very similar abilities and just name them differently (and in video games make them look differently). That’s what the OP wanted to avoid and I agree, 

You often see posts like “things were better when shooting wasn’t strong, magic wasn’t strong etc.” Which under a strict balance only POV might be true, but had less variety and didn’t attract some players (like me for example) and will make things pretty stale in the long run, if all new armies play pretty much similar to existing ones. If of course shooting/magic is so strong that it’s the only option then you have a similar issue, and lose variety again. 

You and I probably just differ slightly on where we’d put more emphasize on. 

[Orsino]

On 8/18/2020 at 10:27 PM, Popisdead said:

There isn't even balance in chess.    This has been a comment for the past 17 years I've been back in the game.  

Just enjoy the hobby and either play the latest broken or enjoy your army for what it is.

I don't really get this. Yes, you can argue that no game is truly perfectly balanced, but some games are a hell of a lot more balanced than others.  Chess is extremely balanced, something like Bolt Action is pretty balanced whilst still having distinctive factions that play differently, and AoS is very unbalanced.  Why would the difficulty of achieving perfect balance make a better level of balance an unreasonable expectation or something people shouldn't care about? 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Orsino

[Saxon]

25 minutes ago, Orsino said:

I don't really get this. Yes, you can argue that no game is truly perfectly balanced, but some games are a hell of a lot more balanced than others.  Chess is extremely balanced, something like Bolt Action is pretty balanced whilst still having distinctive factions that play differently, and AoS is very unbalanced.  Why would the difficulty of achieving perfect balance make a better level of balance an unreasonable expectation or something people shouldn't care about? 

I was going to bring up Bolt Action. I have been playing this game recently and find the balance enjoyable (mostly because i have older AOS armies that get stomped frequently by command point spamming +++ save new armies). Bolt action seems to come down to list building and tactics and making the most out of your armies special rules.  In the dozen or so games we have all played we rarely have absolute stompings like we have seen with AOS. 

I think GW's problem seems to be sales driven where new AOS releases (Slaanesh and OBR come to mind) completely blow everything out of the water which attracts a lot of interest and makes them a lot of money. When us rusted on players whinge too much they just nerf it. I'm not a fan of this approach. 

[Malakithe]

Short answer: No /endthread lol

Real answer: Ultimately we play a game that is made by a for-profit organization. With every new model, new faction, even the slightest change in points or rules can and will unravel any kind of previous balancing. 

So we get what we get and roll with it.

[Orsino]

5 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Short answer: No /endthread lol

Real answer: Ultimately we play a game that is made by a for-profit organization. With every new model, new faction, even the slightest change in points or rules can and will unravel any kind of previous balancing. 

So we get what we get and roll with it.

The fact that games workshop is motivated by profit is a bit of a non-sequitur, so are lots of companies that manage to make balanced games. 

The frequent introduction of new factions does make it more difficult to maintain balance, but there are ways that could be mitigated to a greater or lesser extent, more play-testing, updating warscrolls more frequently, etc. 

[Kramer]

Balance for matched play. No. Because that’s a search for perfection. And you’re never attaining that. 

as a balanced game? That’s subjective. For me the external balance is already great. There is no army in my small group that wins on the basis of the list alone. And we tailor for a fair game. 
Internal balance less so. It’s snnoying that to achieve a certain ‘power level’ you are kinda forced into certain combo’s or avoid them. Still at an acceptable level for me. 

[Popisdead]

19 hours ago, Orsino said:

I don't really get this. Yes, you can argue that no game is truly perfectly balanced, but some games are a hell of a lot more balanced than others.  Chess is extremely balanced, something like Bolt Action is pretty balanced whilst still having distinctive factions that play differently, and AoS is very unbalanced.  Why would the difficulty of achieving perfect balance make a better level of balance an unreasonable expectation or something people shouldn't care about? 

No game Games Workshop has released has ever been balanced.  Next to no games out there are balanced, that have any interest in them.  There are way too many factors.  

I don't know what BA is like now but it used to be so terrible that the community wrote the 1.5 rules which were the standard.  Calling it balanced now makes me think it's been homogenized even more so to be pretty week.  Or you are just claiming that.  And since I don't play it any longer and this is an AoS forum,.. seems pointless.

You also seem to not understand what perfect balance is.  You can care about balance all you want.  You can have the expectation of it.  Feel free to yell about it all you want on the internet.  I just won't happen.  

[Orsino]

1 hour ago, Popisdead said:

No game Games Workshop has released has ever been balanced.  Next to no games out there are balanced, that have any interest in them.  There are way too many factors.  

I don't know what BA is like now but it used to be so terrible that the community wrote the 1.5 rules which were the standard.  Calling it balanced now makes me think it's been homogenized even more so to be pretty week.  Or you are just claiming that.  And since I don't play it any longer and this is an AoS forum,.. seems pointless.

You also seem to not understand what perfect balance is.  You can care about balance all you want.  You can have the expectation of it.  Feel free to yell about it all you want on the internet.  I just won't happen.  

You suggest that no games are well balanced and then dismiss examples of well balanced games because you haven't played them and...they're not AoS. That's really not an argument. And again, balance is a continuum and repeating "no game is perfectly balanced" doesn't mean balance can't be improved.

[Saxon]

1 hour ago, Popisdead said:

No game Games Workshop has released has ever been balanced.  Next to no games out there are balanced, that have any interest in them.  There are way too many factors.  

I don't know what BA is like now but it used to be so terrible that the community wrote the 1.5 rules which were the standard.  Calling it balanced now makes me think it's been homogenized even more so to be pretty week.  Or you are just claiming that.  And since I don't play it any longer and this is an AoS forum,.. seems pointless.

You also seem to not understand what perfect balance is.  You can care about balance all you want.  You can have the expectation of it.  Feel free to yell about it all you want on the internet.  I just won't happen.  

BA is up to 2nd edition which is pretty well balanced. Germans can be hard to play with but the gap between the best and worst factions is not even close to AOS. It's also not homogenized, each faction has its special rules that do factor into the game. It's a lot simpler and that is quite different to AOS. Some people would like that, some don't, each to their own. 

There surely has to be a reasonable expectation of balance. These forums become tiresome when people will make any excuse to defend GW and their tendancy to cheese new abilities and then nerf them later as if it was accidental. The cynic in me feels like the regularity that this now seems to happen means that its part of the marketing plan to appeal to the power gamers who will drop a fortune to have a flashy new army. Sure it works. But it's a collective eye roll from my gaming group seeing these flash rules come out each time a faction is updated. 

[Overread]

Most of the "power/meta" chasing players I tend to encounter/speak too tend to swap armies fairly regularly; but importantly mostly buy secondhand. Because they are buying purely for power they often aren't doing it for the hobby side of things. So a pre-made army secondhand on ebay is not only cheaper, but it cuts out all the work for them. If they stick to standard colours of what they buy they can generally get what they need without buying anything from GW. Some go a bit further and pay for commissioned paint jobs and might be buying from GW then; but that's a lot more cost for an army that they will likely be selling for another in a few months.

I'd wager the vast majority of GW's customers tend to buy into fewer armies and stick with them. 

[PlasticCraic]

Good article Aaron, keep 'em coming!  

My $0.02 is that I largely agree with your core point, with the asterisk that it shouldn't be used as a free pass for the egregious BS we do sometimes see.

[RuneBrush]

I do think that balance means different things to different people.  My own thinking has always been that it's that one army configuration shouldn't be able to win every game and there should be multiple ways to counter specific lists.

I am however over the years shifting my thinking that all factions within a game don't need to be "balanced".  My shift in thinking has come about when looking/playing some of GW's Specialist Games.  The Specialist Games team are very upfront in saying that factions within their games have a very distinct tiering.  If you look at Bloodbowl, Halflings (and Snotlings) are very much bottom of the barrel - however they can and do win for a coach who's prepared to put in some practice and really learn how an the team works.  Necromunda is another interesting game to look at where Van Saar are considered one of the best gangs out there - however the game is designed to ensure that the underdog isn't completely outmatched with the scenario limiting what you'll face and providing hired guns and such like to assist.

It's an interesting way of handling things that works well because the games in question don't have a high investment in time or money.  I believe that one of the reasons AoS struggles is because there's a much, much higher investment in your army - and that includes time to learn your army*, time to paint, cost of purchase and personal attachment.  This is actually compounded because we're more likely to see points get lowered for "underperforming" units - so if you play an army that struggles to get wins in, you're probably going to end up having to purchase more models, which increases your investment and maks you more frustrated when you still struggle to win a game.  For something like a Bloodbowl/Necromunda/Warcry etc you're more likely to pick up a different faction to play if you're not enjoying it because you need a dozen or so models rather than 100+.

* As a quick aside how many us spend a lot more time planning and painting our armies than we spend playing practise games?  It's certainly something I'm guilty of.

Edited August 21, 2020 by RuneBrush

[Overread]

I think that game time is also important. A game that lasts 30mins to an hour doesn't feel so bad to lose because often you can finish and jump right into another game or even just have a rematch. MTG which can have games end in 10mins or less has the same appeal. Whilst continual losses still has the same effect, you can get many more games into a time slot. 

Meanwhile for a wargame you might get one or two games a week and often not two games on the same day/night. So if you lose most that means a very long part of the year you are continually losing. If that is because of game balance then that's really going to annoy an other wise decent player. 

 

Also I'd note that there's a difference between an army that requires skill to play and one which is underpowered by design. With the former the hinge isn't the army, its player skill - a property that you can improve. With the latter no matter how much you improve player skill, the lack of power is baked into the army and thus means that you will have a higher chance of losing. Whilst wargames have a lot of components like moving and target selection; at their core they are mathematical games. Even with the random elements of dice there's still an underlaying maths that means certain things are very likely to almost always will happen according to the maths. If the maths is heavily unbalanced that will shine through every time - except if the player skills are vastly different (eg a new player with a top tier army against a pro with a bottom tier army). 

[Belper]

On 8/20/2020 at 6:40 PM, Orsino said:

You suggest that no games are well balanced and then dismiss examples of well balanced games because you haven't played them and...they're not AoS. That's really not an argument. And again, balance is a continuum and repeating "no game is perfectly balanced" doesn't mean balance can't be improved.

Considering 'well balanced' is a largely subjective term, he isn't dismissing 'well balanced' games, he's stating that those games aren't actually 'well balanced' as he would define the phrase. Example: You could argue that chess isn't particularly well balanced because of the first mover advantage white gets.

On 8/20/2020 at 6:43 PM, Saxon said:

BA is up to 2nd edition which is pretty well balanced. Germans can be hard to play with but the gap between the best and worst factions is not even close to AOS. It's also not homogenized, each faction has its special rules that do factor into the game. It's a lot simpler and that is quite different to AOS. Some people would like that, some don't, each to their own. 

There surely has to be a reasonable expectation of balance. These forums become tiresome when people will make any excuse to defend GW and their tendancy to cheese new abilities and then nerf them later as if it was accidental. The cynic in me feels like the regularity that this now seems to happen means that its part of the marketing plan to appeal to the power gamers who will drop a fortune to have a flashy new army. Sure it works. But it's a collective eye roll from my gaming group seeing these flash rules come out each time a faction is updated. 

This is more or less a myth. 'Powergamers' tend to be thrifty a lot of the time. The nature of needing to build, assemble, and paint 'new hotness' units in order to actually be able to use them limits the amount of full faction changes to people who either have pre-existing collections, ridiculous amounts of money, or people looking to enter into factions like space marines that can be acquired(especially prepainted) relatively cheaply. You'll either see a large percentage of their army being purchased second hand or through discount box sets, or they simply stick to a handful of factions and only make purchases that are relevant to those factions. Sure, if one UNIT get broken to hell and gone people will flock to that, but the number of individuals who have the combination of time and money to create tournament ready armies of brand new factions essentially out of the blue, within the time frame where their powerlevel is significantly above curve, is very small.

[Orsino]

7 hours ago, Belper said:

Considering 'well balanced' is a largely subjective term, he isn't dismissing 'well balanced' games, he's stating that those games aren't actually 'well balanced' as he would define the phrase. Example: You could argue that chess isn't particularly well balanced because of the first mover advantage white gets.

Game balance is actually fairly quantifiable and (as I've pointed out a few times) when we talk about a game being well-balanced this is relative to other games. You can make that argument about chess if you like but chess will still be well-balanced relative to AoS because you're comparing  a game with a single point of imbalance to a game with more and greater points of imbalance. Games are relatively more or less balanced when compared to other games, this isn't a point that can be sensibly disputed and you can't make game balance disapear as a design dimension by repeating that no game is perfect or appealing to subjectivity. 

Edited August 23, 2020 by Orsino