Levels of Expansion for 40K

[daboarder]

Sadly not, because I get your 'sarcastic' lines given to me in all seriousness on far too many forums. And even the local GW store manager's response to me not getting games was "Well, you should start playing a different army if you want to play."

thats rough Morgrim, sorry to hear that

[Mr Mystery]

Sounds like the manager may have got too pally with his regulars.

In all seriousness? Might want to see if you can make a complaint to his manager. GW stores are meant to be 'neutral ground' type affairs, not sad little cliques, whichever way said sad little clique prefers to game.

[Charon]

Sadly not, because I get your 'sarcastic' lines given to me in all seriousness on far too many forums.

Which is odd as we do not even post in the same threads (yes I went through all your posts). So where does the notion come from that I am sarcastic with you on far to many forums?
Especially as I play DE too...

And even the local GW store manager's response to me not getting games was "Well, you should start playing a different army if you want to play."

Can relate to that. DE are garbage atm. But don't worry. Mystery or Pathwalker will come as soon as possible and try to tell you that DE are balanced, you should just get a different gaming group or the store manager should be punished for beeing honest.

[Muninwing]

i've been trying to write about this same idea for a bit... i might post it later as an addendum.

one point of order... do you think that Wargames need to be less of a sport-style A vs B setup, and more of a GM/ref mediating the game that one is playing and the other is opposing?

it might only work in leagues, but it would certainly change the flow of the game, and would definitely distract from the old meat-grinder missions...

alternately, would it be a good idea for a group (or an individual) to have a short multistep process to lead to a series of objectives? like
1. why are these two fighting?
2. based on that, what is the most important thing that the attacker can achieve? what can the defender do instead?
3. are they roughly equal in difficulty, based on your lists? if not, how can you make them more balanced?

and done. two people discuss for five minutes before setting up terrain, and they have a game that they can play with a narrative and a fair set of rules. if they want to use Maelstrom missions to adequately represent the needs of the mission, or if they want to just use objective markers, or buildings, or whatnot, it's really about how they stitch it together.

still... some people need more guidelines as to what is posssible and what is reasonable. i know in the decades-old article Jervis wrote about points and balance being detrimental to the game (because he played with people who are good at setting up rough balance and seemed to not understand that that's not always available to players) he seemed to claim that the rulebooks and codexes encouraged narrative play -- but it's not been truly supported.

even in the supplements (planetstrike, cities of death, etc), it was merely "here are some additional rules" and not "this is an example of a narrative campaign in various steps that uses these rules." thus, why they were dropped pretty quickly by players.

[Charon]

and done. two people discuss for five minutes before setting up terrain, and they have a game that they can play with a narrative and a fair set of rules.

If you watch the forums we have page long discussions for days about the quality of armies, what is balanced and what is OP.
As long as there are people who think the Wraithknight is reasonable balanced, CSM is a strong codex or the FW tau suit is overcosted there is no way you settle these contradictionary viewpoints in 5 minutes.
A friend of mine still considers his ravenwing bike army "weak"....

[daboarder]

Which is odd as we do not even post in the same threads (yes I went through all your posts). So where does the notion come from that I am sarcastic with you on far to many forums?
Especially as I play DE too...



Can relate to that. DE are garbage atm. But don't worry. Mystery or Pathwalker will come as soon as possible and try to tell you that DE are balanced, you should just get a different gaming group or the store manager should be punished for beeing honest.

i think you'll find Morgrim means that most people encountered on forums are like that, not you in particular, hence Morgrims initial response

[Muninwing]

From the sound of it you are more lacking a decently balanced army. Because exactly this is what bad internal and external balance causes. Dont have units that do not suck? Too bad for you, you lost the codex lottery now suck it up. While on the other side well written books can basically field anything without losing hard.

i'm amazed that you and i seem to be at odds frequently in posting sections of articles, because this is pretty much what i would have responded... well, i'd have gone on for three more paragraphs because that's what i do, but you get the gist.

there's lots of factors that play into this.

- game balance is hard. legitimately, it's not an easy task to accomplish.

- many systems for balancing exist, but few are universally effective. this does not mean that they are worthless, but that they are imperfect and imcomplete.

- game balance issues can be overcome with agreeable players, a constructive gaming scene, and fair reworkings of rules that do not work for a given player. but this requires the other player to accept the fix. some people want to play as-is, either because they like simple directions, they only know how to play one way, or they gain an advantage they do not want to give up.

- sometimes, you only have the opportunity to play with people who do not want to play how you want to play. when you are having balance issues, sometimes they don't care, and you get frustrated.

- points are not the only style of balance, but are one of the more comprehensive and (when done properly) more fair ones, if done properly.

- few to no other alternatives exist to mititgate the unfairness issues within points-based balance, except entire layers of additional limitations (such as Highlander), and these come with their own problems.

- GW in particular is terrible at actually striving for balance with a points-based system, worse at managing their system, and it's probably because they have little respect for the "game" end of their product.

- because it is not a priority, we have not seen proper efforts taken to balance 40k. an official GW product that detailed better balancing systems, or easy contruction of narrative games, would do wonders to mitigate the resistance you might encounter to having a fair game with a subpar army. asking people to accept a homebrew or unofficial product is sometimes difficult.

- competitive play is fun. narrative play is fun. league play is fun. all three are less fun, overall, for everyone involved, when the balance is skewed and one person has an unfair advantage. unless you are playing to try something out, to investigate a possibility, in a super-relaxed manner, or in any other circumstance in which a winner is unimportant, which might just be your thing, but it isn't always and should not be an excuse for bad product.

- sometimes, you need to adapt to game balance issues with changes and house-rules, but a good product will have that as a feature (the ability to say "we wanted to represent this instead, so we tweaked it to represent this idea") and not as a requirement for play, or even a system billed as a positive. an incomplete gaming product, or a poorly-constructed one, should not be let off the hook.

- unweighted extremes are often bad, meaning that the people who only play competitive cutthroat games regardless of what their opponent wants, or the people who actively strive to break a system while their competitors are playing in good spirit, often give competitive players a bad name. not all tournament-players are this competitive. not all competitive players are this disrespectful. and two people playing this way and knowing that it's what is expected or even promoted is great when it's clearly what is intended.

- some armies are wonderful in theory, but terrible in practice... usually due to balance issues. not just the book itself, but the style of play. these, in a balanced game, would be reviewed and fixed. people who want to play these armies should have some sort of recourse for getting trounced all the time due to their sensical army not being min/maxxed to the teeth, but unfortunately some people just get screwed. a system could be put into place to give a "handicap" to these players in order to create better balance, but that goes back to the issue of how much work do you need to put in, and how many unofficial structures do you need to create to also create that balance when the product as-is does not seem to care about balance.

- we would all probably be better off if GW contracted their game out to another company for rules, and just focused on making minatures and supplies.

[Morgrim]

i think you'll find Morgrim means that most people encountered on forums are like that, not you in particular, hence Morgrims initial response

daboarder is correct. I was meaning 'your' in the "the argument you made sarcastically" sense, not in the "the comments you have made to me elsewhere" sense.