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Discussing balance in AoS


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1 hour ago, stratigo said:

They had the third highest number of top finishes in literally the THW link you posted. Which is roughly where they sit fairly consistently. 

 

Third is just because I like numbering things, the top five or so factions tend to be a very rough place, I think Seraphons and IDK show up so consistently at the top that they are the best, while LRL also show fairly consistent next to the other three armies (KO, Tzeentch, DoK). 

 

Legit I just wanted to know where you were getting your numbers because I couldn't find them, and am disappointed that they get presented with so little context given via twitter. 

 

Ok, yes, that fair, the LRL were in the top three there. They were also the second most played faction during that period on TTS, which means just by total numbers if the faction isn't bad would mean that it's not surprising that they had a good amount of top 10 entries (only one win though). That's why a combination of tournament wins and the general win rate are important. Even THW didn't rate them top 5 in their own review at that time. That's what I also meant with perception is important. THW was one of those who were responsible for the "LRL so OP" train - and then had to dial it back a bit when they didn't sweep everything in front of them. I'm sure you watched the show - and they were surprised that LRL weren't better. 

If you look at the in-person statistics (which AoShorts has), you can see they haven't been top 3 or 5 in terms of tournament wins so far. They haven't been bad and very likely got stronger (I guess especially the already strong Teclis in Syar build will be even better now), so it might come to a point where GW has to look into the Syar for example. 

All I meant to show was that so far - if it's really about balance (not talking about NPE), I don't think LRL are the most pressing issue, and haven't been as powerful as many people thought at first. 

It would be good if we had more statistics easily available. That's one thing GW could do much better, instead of leaving it almost completely to the community. And the problem is of course that right now, there is an overall lack of data because there aren't that many larger events and TTS isn't always representative. And we have constant changes because of Broken Realms. 

If I'm not mistaken tomorrow's Warhammer Weekly show has the guy behind the Listbot as their guest and will talk about these things (balance, skill etc.), if not it should be next week. 

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9 hours ago, stratigo said:

Or player skill just feels like the dominant indicator because we all want to feel like we have more control over events than not. Realistically, the most skilled players take the best lists, so, like, it doesn't matter that much in AoS because there isn't really a difference here. The best list and most skilled player are the same thing nine times out of ten.

And, who wins between those top lists? A player who goes 3-2 consistently and one who goes 4-1 and one who 5-0s are all taking basically the same lists. That is a 20% margin, or over a year of events between 8-10 victories between each segment of players. And, it's not luck of the draw, most people's tournament results are quite consistent. 

If you are talking about casual play which is for all intents and purposes unskilled play then sure if you minimize skill, you obviously maximize other factors like wallet, faction strength and list strength.

We can look at the lists for Hammertime 8 if you want anecdotal evidence, the one major benefit of TTS is all this information is open to people who don't regularly attended events. Are 2-3 and 4-1 players taking the same quality list? Probably not, but I would not definitely rule it out without research. Further, list construction is a skill as well, as is research and data collection.

Have you considered *you* have compelling reasons to suggest skill is more marginal than it might be? Most players like a staggering amount are not good at AoS, this is true of almost every endeavour mankind has put it's mind to. And, many players take builds that don't provide a good platform for decision making.

For example the standard Zilfin build is a low skill build, which means it folds to any build that can screen and trade against shooting. Because the list itself minimizes skill, not because the game does, this also means a mediocre player might over perform against players of similar skill, but even that isn't necessarily true in the long run. This is why I believe the best skyport is Barak-Thryng actually as it provides more opportunities for high skill play at list construction.

 

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Ok, I see we have a vast difference in the measurement in what is balanced in this discussion.

I would like to post a thesis and discuss ONE point of view from this.

"I am playing BoK and I can never ever win any game versus any of the armies, no matter what tier they are in. I have played A LOT of different lists, since I own 7000 points of the army. I also played competetive lists, that where suggested in this forums, with no success at all.

Therefore I think the game is not balanced enough, to keep my army at a viable point, and I want the game to be fixed to that degree."

What would you say?

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27 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

Ok, I see we have a vast difference in the measurement in what is balanced in this discussion.

I would like to post a thesis and discuss ONE point of view from this.

"I am playing BoK and I can never ever win any game versus any of the armies, no matter what tier they are in. I have played A LOT of different lists, since I own 7000 points of the army. I also played competetive lists, that where suggested in this forums, with no success at all.

Therefore I think the game is not balanced enough, to keep my army at a viable point, and I want the game to be fixed to that degree."

What would you say?

I'd ask a series of questions. 

Starting with

Why do you think you are good enough to win against the people you play?

How much do you play/practice/read vs the players you play against most regularly?

In what context do you play games? Tournaments? Casual but TAC? Casual but tailored? Narrative? Match play? Match play but peer pressure to not take allies?

Is it 7000 points of BoK or models with access to *KHORNE*?

The crux of which is that there is no reason for a listener to leap to imbalance as the foundational reason for you losing all your games.

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13 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Why do you think you are good enough to win against the people you play?

Because I play since the very release of AoS, I am reading a lot in forums to get movement, placing screening, etc correct. Also, I read a lot through the rules several times, and I am discussing with other people of the community about rule tweaks, that I might have missed.
 

 

15 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

How much do you play/practice/read vs the players you play against most regularly?

I play via the rules as written in the actual BoK book. Practicing for me meant to take on 2 games a week at minimum versus different players. Often I played versus the same players to find a way to defeat them. Other players also tested several lists of my army to give me tips, but tbh there was nothing new they could tell me, as what I play seems to be the optimum, that can be made out of the army.

 

17 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

In what context do you play games? Tournaments? Casual but TAC? Casual but tailored? Narrative? Match play? Match play but peer pressure to not take allies?

We play via the rules for matched play. That means, players in a non torunament would bring an army, that they concider to be as good as possible, to see what it can make. Taking Allies is absolutely welcome, and I used S2D to upgrade the army.

 

18 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Is it 7000 points of BoK or models with access to *KHORNE*?

The crux of which is that there is no reason for a listener to leap to imbalance as the foundational reason for you losing all your games.

It is 7000 points of models, that have, or can have access to the the keyword "Khorne". Basically, I have it all, including the Khorne Models that nobody can buy in the shop ( Khorgorath, Secrator & stuff ).

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10 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

Because I play since the very release of AoS, I am reading a lot in forums to get movement, placing screening, etc correct. Also, I read a lot through the rules several times, and I am discussing with other people of the community about rule tweaks, that I might have missed.
 

 

I play via the rules as written in the actual BoK book. Practicing for me meant to take on 2 games a week at minimum versus different players. Often I played versus the same players to find a way to defeat them. Other players also tested several lists of my army to give me tips, but tbh there was nothing new they could tell me, as what I play seems to be the optimum, that can be made out of the army.

 

We play via the rules for matched play. That means, players in a non torunament would bring an army, that they concider to be as good as possible, to see what it can make. Taking Allies is absolutely welcome, and I used S2D to upgrade the army.

 

It is 7000 points of models, that have, or can have access to the the keyword "Khorne". Basically, I have it all, including the Khorne Models that nobody can buy in the shop ( Khorgorath, Secrator & stuff ).

The first response doesn't really answer if you are as good as them, or good enough to make up any differences in the raw materials you are using. My Zilfin perspective is important here, it's possible you are just playing skill based lists without sufficient skill. It's not every person with a license that can drive F1.

For example; I came to football late, and was better than my peers by the end of the season. Do you have any examples of you playing with other factions and getting substantially better results? 

Skill is obviously difficult to quantify, but indications would be sufficient. Just putting in the work isn't enough. 

The rest is good. What is the best example of a competitive list you have recently used and what have you used it against? Including battleplans.

 

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35 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

The first response doesn't really answer if you are as good as them, or good enough to make up any differences in the raw materials you are using. My Zilfin perspective is important here, it's possible you are just playing skill based lists without sufficient skill. It's not every person with a license that can drive F1.

For example; I came to football late, and was better than my peers by the end of the season. Do you have any examples of you playing with other factions and getting substantially better results? 

Skill is obviously difficult to quantify, but indications would be sufficient. Just putting in the work isn't enough. 

The rest is good. What is the best example of a competitive list you have recently used and what have you used it against? Including battleplans.

 

If your opponent would suddenly bring on 12 players or two keepers on the pitch you'd probably have something to say about it, or maybe your opponent decides to pick up the ball with his hands and throw it in the net but you're not allowed to? Analogous to under and over-costed units and/or objectively more powerful units/rules.

Battletomes serve as a force multiplier. A skilled player will run away with it and some armies are even able to thrive when used by otherwise unexceptional players. In casual games, where the majority of play takes place, if these battletomes has too much of a gap between them the game will suffer.

It is inevitable that some armies will be better/worse given the diversity of armies and playstyles but at the very least we should be able to expect SOME level of consistency between the armies in terms of game design. DoK, HoS, and LRL pretty much look like they were did for different games. First is hugely practical and powerful, the second barebones but also very neatly designed IMO, the latter is a bloated mess of useless, frustrating, flavourful, fun, and powerful rules as if they added everything they could think of. None of these approaches are wrong I just want them to be more consistent (especially when we're talking about three tomes released so close to each other.

That said, I think we shouldn't underestimate new players. They probably understand that they won't be awesome day one but I did hear from people when first getting into AoS that I could pick whatever. Fortunately I read up on stuff myself before investing more money. Rule of cool is everlasting but similarly if you buy shoes which doesn't fit you probably won't run far. In this regard I think it is good to be honest about what to expect because much like has been mentioned WHFB/40k/AoS never have been very balanced. For the majority of time in WHFB for instance I only came into contact tournaments with comp rules (to those unfamiliar, your army list gets points depending on how powerful your list were and the filthier it was the larger the impact on your total score).

I was going for a point here, I think, and think it is to give new players the right set of expectations. Some armies will struggle immensely and if that player doesn't see themselves as someone who wants to delve deep into the game that kind of army won't be for them. As a community we should be straightforward with that while also mentioning that many armies will sometimes have a bump ride from being top to low tier. 

Also, your local meta matters a lot. Another dataset I'd like to see more of, i.e. the collection of armies at local events.

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55 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

For example; I came to football late, and was better than my peers by the end of the season. Do you have any examples of you playing with other factions and getting substantially better results? 

Absolutely. My Stormcast Army was significantly better, as I have won like half of the games. That army wasn't optimised at all though. The wins with SCE changed, when the new FEC & Slaanesh book dropped. From that on it became a hustle too.

 

57 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

The rest is good. What is the best example of a competitive list you have recently used and what have you used it against? Including battleplans.

 

The best example would be some lists during the time:

Murderhost with Blood Bound Heros to buff them ( first book, before the nerf hammer ), hab my best wins with that, like 7 out of 10.

Tyrants of Blood with several Thursters, who could activate after each other, when the destroyed an enemy unit ( old book ). Also used Blood Bound support to buff them. With the new book it also works kind of, but that list is a gamble, no matter what. Win rate was 5 out of 10 in the old book. In the current meta 1 out of 10, due to massive shooting, magic and general movement / bravery / buff shenanigans.

Gore Pilgrims almost pure Blood Bound with core units from S2D. Works, but not as good as other armies. Win rate almost not existing due to massive outcome of shooting, magic, buff stacking, etc.

What all lists have in common:

All Heroes are very easy to kill, core heroes like the Priests are a very easy target with their 5+ save. Due to the rule design it is not benefitial to take more than one secrator. He s not that easy of a target, but he is just one hero with 6W. A lot of trap rules, like Reavers buffs for attacks, cripple the army a lot. Most of the units are kind of useless due to the pure warscrolls and point cost ( Blood Warriors as a 10 men 200 point tarpit unit...that doesn't make any damage in reality for example ). Bravery of 5 to 6 all over the place is just stupid. Demons are a little better, but lack diversity and buff potential, since alsmost none on the non demon units can buff them.
Almost not existing viable shooting or range units. Units are not moving fast at all, like just never, except Chaos Knights and Marauder Horsemen.
The altar is a trap rule to re roll failed prayers within 6" of it...so the very important priests are more likely to stay there, just to erase the potential of them to shoot themselves away due to failed prayers.
Army has no unique allegiance ability, beside the Blood Tithe sheet, wich is totally bollocks for most of the stuff. Rules for that table are ridiculous, as it is emtied when you even use one of the gained points. Summoning is okeyish I would say, but due to the fact, that it also empties when even 1 point is used, so the players basically has to decide for summoning OR abilities.

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10 minutes ago, pnkdth said:

Also, your local meta matters a lot. Another dataset I'd like to see more of, i.e. the collection of armies at local events.

Agree with you absolutely.

At my local area people play the following armies:

Lumineth Realm Lords
Hedonites of Slaanesh
Disciples of Tzeentch
Flesh Eater Courts
Stormcast Eternals
Sylvaneth
Ossiarch Bonereapers
Nurgle Maggotkin
Legions of Nagash
Orruk Warclans
Ogor Mawtribes
Cities of Sigmar
Fyreslayer

Armies, that where played, but fell out the local meta:

Nighthaunt
Beats of Chaos
Blades of Khorne
Duardin
Goblins
Slaves to Darkness


Top 5 placements at tournaments until Summer 2020:

Disciples of Tzeentch
Hedonites of Slaanesh
Ossiarch Bonereapers
Cities of Sigmar
Stormcast Eternals

Lumineth didn't quite qualify in a tournament, since we can not do any events atm. But being casually played 1vs1 we all clearly see, that they will be place 1. People in the community agree with that statement.

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@Battlefury cool that helps a lot.

The thing a lot of players struggle with is being trapped by their collections. So lots of Khorne players are left trying to build competitive armies out of models that structurally (ie having little to do with their warscroll) are not competitive. 

Part of what made Khorne heroes viable at the time was the absence of effective shooting. The more widespread useful shooting becomes the more quickly their relative value tanks. 

So at list design you need to ask yourself a series of questions. Why do I want those buffs? Are they actually useful or just nice to have? How many of them do I actually need? 

A lot of times people lock themselves into unproductive chains of behaviour and then reverse justify the behaviour by saying I wouldn't have done it if I thought it wasn't necessary. But when I examine most Khorne lists there isn't much reason for any of the choices beyound it was good or I prefer it. Which is fine, but it's not a sufficient grounds to be reactionary about the whole construct imo. 

Let's take your last build a part and we can see how this works? Do you have the full list?

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The last games I played was in 2019, don't have those lists anymore. The last one I tried in casual with S2D was in 2020.

It would be a thing for the BoK discussion, but I can give you the most units, that I used, when I got the worst win rate:

1 Blood Secrator
2 Slaughterpriests
1 Stoker
1 Skull Grinder
3x10 Chaos Warriors as Battle Line
3x5 Skull Reapers
2x5 Skull Crushers
6x10 Reavers ( sometimes )

This is by no means the exact list, but it had those units in it.

We should agree, that we will not shift the discussion into a direction, where we discuss lists for a specified army, since it will miss the point.
I would say, that just due to the warscrolls most units in BoK are bollocks, except:

Skarbrand
Khorgorath ( can't be bought in the GW store )
Stoker ( can't be bought in the GW store )
Blood Secrator ( can't be bought in the GW store )
Flesh Hounds
Skull Grinder
Slaughterpriests

The rest is just a bunch of sitting ducks, even if they got buffed. Thing is with this army, that most of the buffs are just wasted due to the pure lack of individual tools, that a unit can use.

Same goes for other armies.

That's initially why we say, that AoS is not balanced in a great way and it easily could do better.

Notice
When I first bought my army at AoS release, I went for the rules of cool and wanted only non demon units, since I like the appeal of those.
I had to drop my preference when the first book came out. Why? Because forums, rules and experience told me very fast, that mortals are total lacklusters, and are really only good as support.

So I am actually one of them, who had to learn the hard way, that rules of cool doesn't work. That was after I spent about 400€ into the army, trying everything I could to make it work.

Important
I was told in the BoK discussion, that lists with Archaon are the best we can get. Guess what happened to Archaon turn 2. Spoiler: Sniped straight into oblivion by Stormcast Raptors ( those with the longstrike stuff ). Rest of the army was no match for those Evocators. And Stormcasts aren't even that tough in the current meta.

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19 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

The last games I played was in 2019, don't have those lists anymore. The last one I tried in casual with S2D was in 2020.

It would be a thing for the BoK discussion, but I can give you the most units, that I used, when I got the worst win rate:

1 Blood Secrator
2 Slaughterpriests
1 Stoker
1 Skull Grinder
3x10 Chaos Warriors as Battle Line
3x5 Skull Reapers
2x5 Skull Crushers
6x10 Reavers ( sometimes )

This is by no means the exact list, but it had those units in it.

We should agree, that we will not shift the discussion into a direction, where we discuss lists for a specified army, since it will miss the point.
 

Yeah it's more using the list as an example of how decision trees lead people to do things that aren't going to contribute to victory.

So once I write a list the first thing I do is go back and ask why for each warscroll, CMD Trait, Artefact and weapon option. Is it part of a power pair? Is it a combination that pumps a good warscroll far beyond its normal capacity? Questions like this.

So my first question is: why this collection of heroes? What do they get you and are their better ways to get it into a list.

So for example Slaughter Priests are terrible, but Blood Blessings and Judgements are good. So why not take Warshrines? Which are harder to kill, and provide additional benefits, including a DPR, and Favours. You can easily have Chaos Knights on a 3+ save rring, hitting on 2s, rr hits and wounds for example. 

Chaos Warriors are good enmass, and a good platform for prayers, they have decent baseline stats to buff Including a RR save on the warscroll and 2 attacks with rend. 

You want units to trade for Bloodtithe but you want them to do something while there are on the board. Spawn and Chaos Chariots are better than Reavers for this in the current meta as shooting has proliferated and battleshock is a thing. Chariots do MW on the way into combat which bypasses a lot of rules as such, and can clip units and have their full output, importantly are fast 12" plus run and charge once per game. Turn 1 I would be Using Blood Sacrifice on a 5 man CW unit, hopefully negating a wound with my DPR and starting to build my blood tithe early on. 

The long and short of it is when the game changes you need to chuck the bad and retain the good. 

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5 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Ok, I see we have a vast difference in the measurement in what is balanced in this discussion.

I would like to post a thesis and discuss ONE point of view from this.

"I am playing BoK and I can never ever win any game versus any of the armies, no matter what tier they are in. I have played A LOT of different lists, since I own 7000 points of the army. I also played competetive lists, that where suggested in this forums, with no success at all.

Therefore I think the game is not balanced enough, to keep my army at a viable point, and I want the game to be fixed to that degree."

What would you say?

I d say, Khorne number is 8, not 7 so get to 8000pts and you ll be rewarded 😀

Seriously, I shelved my Khorne army after I read our latest tome 2 years ago. It came around the same time as FEC and Skaven that were way better than what we got at a time where we were already struggling. Today, my friends who kept on playing Khorne have some success with 80%+ of the army being Slaves to Darkness marked Khorne

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1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

 

Chaos Warriors are good enmass, and a good platform for prayers, they have decent baseline stats to buff Including a RR save on the warscroll and 2 attacks with rend.

Well they dont have rend with the shield to dish out mw

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@whispersofbloodI appreciate your will to help, very kind of you.

I see what you mean and be asured, that I do the same while list building as you do. What @azdimymentioned is pretty much the same for me. The point of BoK is, that we need to bring all of your buffs in the perfect order, on the perfect place at the perfect time to the perfect unit. And that's impossible due to the rules written. The buff ranges are so very small, it isn't fun. Other armies do way better, because the rules are designed better. Actuall strategies can be pulled reliable ( of course depending on dice rolls ). That's not athing BoK can do.
Thats just being an example and I am grateful you went into that with me.

I hope you can see the problem I have with the army, and with other armies too. And that leads to my assumption, that the game suffers of a big balance discrepancy between the armies.

I also see, why I would take several units from other books to fullfill my army with them. But what, if I really like the BoK as it is?
I would suggest I should be allowed to play this then, and be successful with it as it stands for itself.

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8 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

And, who wins between those top lists? A player who goes 3-2 consistently and one who goes 4-1 and one who 5-0s are all taking basically the same lists. That is a 20% margin, or over a year of events between 8-10 victories between each segment of players. And, it's not luck of the draw, most people's tournament results are quite consistent. 

If you are talking about casual play which is for all intents and purposes unskilled play then sure if you minimize skill, you obviously maximize other factors like wallet, faction strength and list strength.

We can look at the lists for Hammertime 8 if you want anecdotal evidence, the one major benefit of TTS is all this information is open to people who don't regularly attended events. Are 2-3 and 4-1 players taking the same quality list? Probably not, but I would not definitely rule it out without research. Further, list construction is a skill as well, as is research and data collection.

Have you considered *you* have compelling reasons to suggest skill is more marginal than it might be? Most players like a staggering amount are not good at AoS, this is true of almost every endeavour mankind has put it's mind to. And, many players take builds that don't provide a good platform for decision making.

For example the standard Zilfin build is a low skill build, which means it folds to any build that can screen and trade against shooting. Because the list itself minimizes skill, not because the game does, this also means a mediocre player might over perform against players of similar skill, but even that isn't necessarily true in the long run. This is why I believe the best skyport is Barak-Thryng actually as it provides more opportunities for high skill play at list construction.

 

Because if on the board skill was more important, then the list variety would have been consistently higher throughout the lifespan of the game than it historically has been.  Of course it controls because everyone takes the best lists if they are looking to win, but that tells me lists matter first, player skill second. So everyone controls for the list first. Or, essentially, everyone gets a small loan of a few million from their parents to start their business sort of thing.

 

The best players.... build the best lists first and then everyone else plays it too. 

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16 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

@whispersofbloodI appreciate your will to help, very kind of you.

I see what you mean and be asured, that I do the same while list building as you do. What @azdimymentioned is pretty much the same for me. The point of BoK is, that we need to bring all of your buffs in the perfect order, on the perfect place at the perfect time to the perfect unit. And that's impossible due to the rules written. The buff ranges are so very small, it isn't fun. Other armies do way better, because the rules are designed better. Actuall strategies can be pulled reliable ( of course depending on dice rolls ). That's not athing BoK can do.
Thats just being an example and I am grateful you went into that with me.

I hope you can see the problem I have with the army, and with other armies too. And that leads to my assumption, that the game suffers of a big balance discrepancy between the armies.

I also see, why I would take several units from other books to fullfill my army with them. But what, if I really like the BoK as it is?
I would suggest I should be allowed to play this then, and be successful with it as it stands for itself.

Here is the thing, only the very best faction ever has that possibility. Once there is something that can be defined as a meta it automatically categorizes everything into useful and productive and not useful and not productive. 

If you look at the units that aren't good in a book, you can find examples of similar units. But, those units have some other thing that lets them be productive. Take for example Blightkings and Wrathmongers (both the same points). They are only better in a few keyplaces on their characteristics, have access to rend from a battalion and run+charge from the allegiance. Instantly useable. But, let's say Nurgle didn't have run+charge access there is a good chance they aren't good enough at the objective part of the game to be useable. Do you see how fine the margina can be on warscrolls between productive and not?

Which is why everyone would be better off (assuming winning matches is your objective) by be as open minded about the units you are taking as possible. Because if you insist on taking specific non-productive combinations of models then you are holding yourself back not the game, not balance, not the battleplan. Like it should go without saying that a constructed list will beat an unconstructed list.  

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6 minutes ago, stratigo said:

Because if on the board skill was more important, then the list variety would have been consistently higher throughout the lifespan of the game than it historically has been.  Of course it controls because everyone takes the best lists if they are looking to win, but that tells me lists matter first, player skill second. So everyone controls for the list first. Or, essentially, everyone gets a small loan of a few million from their parents to start their business sort of thing.

 

The best players.... build the best lists first and then everyone else plays it too. 

That's because you can't control for player skill.

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Just now, whispersofblood said:

That's because you can't control for player skill.

I mean, yes you can. It just takes longer. The game isn't unsolvable. A lot of it is just learning probabilities and some geometry and how to apply that on a table.

 

But the argument you are making, at least as it appears to me, is that player skill is so important that list building and what is and is not OP doesn't matter that much and we should stop worrying about balance because player skill can't be. I argue that list building (which, as ninthmusketeer pointed out, is a skill itself) is the primary importance and player skill only matters in that everyone can easily copy the work of the players that solve the list building phase and thus take the same types of lists against each other, thus balancing the tools that go into building is actually very important for the game. Particularly for those players who aren't looking to chase competition but still want to have a fun and not one sided game with their friends.

 

 

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1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

Here is the thing, only the very best faction ever has that possibility. Once there is something that can be defined as a meta it automatically categorizes everything into useful and productive and not useful and not productive. 

If you look at the units that aren't good in a book, you can find examples of similar units. But, those units have some other thing that lets them be productive. Take for example Blightkings and Wrathmongers (both the same points). They are only better in a few keyplaces on their characteristics, have access to rend from a battalion and run+charge from the allegiance. Instantly useable. But, let's say Nurgle didn't have run+charge access there is a good chance they aren't good enough at the objective part of the game to be useable. Do you see how fine the margina can be on warscrolls between productive and not?

@whispersofbloodI see what you mean, and you brought an important point by figuring out, that only the very best factions have that possibility.
And you made the same point, that we do, just in a different wording. The circumstance, that cathegories can evolve is due to the design of an army, and therefore for the Power Level. It is of course normal, that some armies will perform better than others do.
In a perfect world, each amy would be on the same tier. But that's most likely not to happen.
What we would like to see is the armies being spread from Tier S to Tier B maybe. And not from Tier S to Tier E. That's basically it.

We know for a fact, that AoS isn't balanced like this and never was. But there where time, where it was better. And to call that out, we discuss here.

You mentioned right, that some units will be productive in certain ways and special tasks, that's true. But what makes the difference is the comparison sometimes. Because then we see, that some units do kind of the same, but the point cost difference doesn't justify that at all.

 

1 hour ago, stratigo said:

I argue that list building (which, as ninthmusketeer pointed out, is a skill itself) is the primary importance and player skill only matters in that everyone can easily copy the work of the players that solve the list building phase and thus take the same types of lists against each other, thus balancing the tools that go into building is actually very important for the game. Particularly for those players who aren't looking to chase competition but still want to have a fun and not one sided game with their friends.

I absolutely agree, and this is where the entire balance issues come from. Some factions just have tools, that others never had and won't have. Wich can be fine, if it doesn't take overhand...but it has taken overhand a lot recently.

 

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

Which is why everyone would be better off (assuming winning matches is your objective) by be as open minded about the units you are taking as possible. Because if you insist on taking specific non-productive combinations of models then you are holding yourself back not the game, not balance, not the battleplan. Like it should go without saying that a constructed list will beat an unconstructed list.  

It is true, and I agree. The issue I see is, that the book then determines, what people should like and what they should buy.
And here we go with a thing, that GW does very "good":

Controlling the meta by the books and therefore adjusting the sales.
I saw it with Khorne very clear. In the first book we had certain effective units. These days, a Thirster, Skullcrushers, cannons and a little more where not benefitial to use, therefore they kept in the shelves.
Guess what happened in the new book... . All of those went better in the rules, prices where adjusted in some case. The cannon had a possibility to be buffed from the Wrathmongers, what gave s viable shooting for a good point cost...for 2 weeks...until the buff was errated away.

The combination of poor rules writing, external balance ( meaning in comparison t other armies ), the will to make money at all cost in the first place and the lack of admit mistakes makes this game not balanced. To be honest, it will never be balanced. But sometimes people have o get off steam and see, if they are alone with that opinion.

The only solution would be 3 options:

1. Wait for your army to get a good book. Wich can take forever.
2. Buy another army. Yeah, if one is willing to spend like 500€ again.
3. Write your own books & rules.

I think, that option 3 ist the best here. And maybe...but that's just an illusion I guess...GW will see, that they can not play with their customers.

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Too many moving parts for balance.  So, this is how I feel;

Hobby First.  Over the years your collection should grow and embrace a few armies.  With ebb and flow of power, some armies will get the shelf and other armies will shine again.  Personally, I am sitting on 4 - 2500point armies, I play all regardless of powerlevel, but I certainly don't compete with all of them and demand that they perform or be sold/throw out.  My original KO builds were ship heavy, as I loved the models.  In their first tome the ships were lack luster, but they were fun.  But now, they absolutely rip and the army is top tier with ships at the forefront!  Ebb and flow!  Enjoy the hobby, build a collection, roll with the meta, roll with with the powercreep, and remember that one day your skinks (or insert some trash tier unit) could be top tier... 

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FWIW in my local community we have cultivated a culture that disregards the normal values where competitiveness is a positive trait and winning is the goal, and suddenly a lot of the balance problems become immaterial. Not only are people not seeking them out, they are actively being avoided because they get in the way of fun games. It isn't a wonder cure that fixes everything as the imbalance of AoS runs far deeper than that but dam does it really, really help.

As somewhat of a shameless plug I also run exclusively Path to Glory leagues using my '2nd Edition' Road to Renown ruleset (found in the narrative section). Because it is not matched play and the theme is customizing one's warband people are less looking for what's strong and more towards what they want to use.

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