Comp, no comp, an elephant?

[AoS Noob]

Haha it would be quite a haven to find a place where life, for once, doesn't seem to get the better of us all, eh?!

I see what you mean that by playing first or second you may have a better chance of winning, and it would certainly make sense to play both ways if you truly must know who is better, but I stay with my original stance that it does not affect the game. That comes off a bit screwy so let me try to explain what I mean agin, if I can't say it right, then I admit I'm less than Plato, and we can all move along merrily anyhow...

Completely theoretically, since not realistically possible in complex games, If two players of equally high experience and logical skill start a game of chess then it may be likely that white will win more of the time... But the game would be played exactly the same way if the two players flip-flop sides. That is not a matter of luck per-se, it is a matter of purely incidental statistics. I'm tip-toeing here, admittedly, but what luck is to me in a game is when a "good" decision is made, it can turn out for the worse! If going first were luck, then I argue that sometimes it should turn out for the worse, but in our scenario it never can. White is always the better.

Luck is like you're describing that 40K 1 dice roll wins scenario. If you make a good decision and decide to fire you "ultra-death-laser-destroy" cannon at some evil blob monster, let's call it a good decision because 5 out of 6 of the nodes lead to victory, and only 1 does not, and let's say that 5/6 is the best chance possible for winning the game given all other moves and nodes available.... But you roll a 1, and your "ultra-death-laser-destroyer" blows itself to pieces! GOOD SHOW! You just lost, to luck.

You may have a better chance to win going first, but it's not luck. (Tip-toeing in my Jordan's....)

[Mr Mystery]

Well, I've been playing GW games now for oooh....24 years, perhaps 25? And I can genuinely count on one hand the number of times I've won or lost a game entirely down to a single dice roll.

It's one.

Old old oooooold version of Warhammer, where Vampires, inexplicably, weren't immune to fear and terror. Opponent had taken my army apart very quickly - Screaming Skulls had knacked my Chaos Hounds, who fled, panicking three out of four Chariots. My best hope was to go and job the Vampire Lord in the face with my tooled up Slaaneshi Lord on Manticore, who was already flying high (told you this was an old game) I charged. My opponent fluffed his Terror test, and the Vampire ran off the board. General gone, all his units fell apart and the game was mine.

And that's it. Once. In 24, possibly 25 years of gaming.

Don't get me wrong, I get why some want a perfectly balanced system. I just don't know why they can't accept that GW don't want to write that sort of game.

I can think of very, very few games with anything close to the balance they seem to demand. And when I say very few, I can't actually think of any I've tried. MtG and X-Wing? If I've got deeper pockets than you, the advantage is mine as I'm more likely to have the ming cards and upgrades to push a synergy you just can't match. Warmahordes? I regularly see new units for the game complained about as 'garbage' - that kind of suggests no real balance either.

Doesn't mean the games aren't enjoyable though. Far from it. I love MtG and X-Wing meself.

[Path Walker]

I lost once in 5th edition 40k running to contest an objective, that's about it over hundreds of games.

Balance doesn't exist in games realistically, especially if they're going to be interesting, you can try and many people do but the return for the effort really isn't worth it for most.

[Mr Mystery]

True, but I can see the value in going for it.

From slight tweaks for a Tournament (say, no more than two of each unit type), right up to the Azyr points values - it's all part of the hobby, there to be taken or left as the player chooses. Those that swear by metagaming and mathshammering their way to victory? Whatever floats their boat.

I think sometimes we all (and I mean all, so very much myself included) just need to step back, take a breath and leave each other be.

[AoS Noob]

Amen, Mr Mystery! Like really, the different rules everywhere keep stuff exciting, and the frustration ironically makes it fun. If you think frustration can't be fun just ask anyone who plays golf! Hahaha GO TO YOUR HOME BALL!

We could really snowball this discussion into some esoteric talks about what fun is and the pursuit of happiness, but none, or few, of us will come to a full consensus. It's one of those debates worth debating for the sake of debate. I liked how the munchkin rule set coyly put a statement "or just ignore this rule and do it anyway, like we could stop you"... Something like that I don't know it verbatim ha! But, what they are saying is they realize you're going to probably make your own house-rules anyway, cause that's what gamers do.

Basketball to four square, beer pong to warhammer, gamers are gunna game, and they gunna game their way.

[nsc]

I mean, some people still play diplomacy so no matter how bad your game is, someone will play it

I kid I kid

As far as the actual discussion we basically run the game out of the box uncomp'd, we keep wounds mostly in line, sometimes people play objectives and scenarios from the lore books, often it's just a pitched battle to the death, never is it "push your guys into the middle and hope you win"

I don't think you need comp, but I do think you need comp in a tournament, but I don't think tournaments are necessarily good for wargaming.

I've seen lots of tourney games, I've been a tourney gamer, but people who churn out one list for one tourney, then flip the army on ebay and move on to the next. They're not really hobbyists, they just take a game and abuse it until it works for them. They're frowned upon in tabletop RPGs as "munchkins" or "min-maxers", we call them "WAAC", we call them "rules lawyers" etc etc.

I do like how things are moving away from this extreme, with some really awesome events being run in the UK and even nova's story-campaign-"casual"-event.

But what do I know, I play "imbalanced" historical wargames all the time. I must be weird for thinking that it's not about winning or losing in a game, but how many of those jerks you take down with you

As a side note the game becomes super fun when things happen like my opponent pulls out an aracknarok that he's only recently built saying it's his first game, so I don't shoot it with my ranged troops so he can play with it :P


As far as Mr Mystery is going yeah Warmahordes has no balance at all. They argue "you can play with any model you like!" but if you're talking top-level tourney tables there are very clear "best" units, which is the same in warhammer (whether you like swords or bolters) and malifuax and x-wing and just about every game ever there are units and pieces that are better than one another. Then in chess you have the timing advantage of going first (which also exist in wargames). And it becomes a huge explosion of complexity that can never truly be balanced.

Even in Starcraft there are units that are worthless and optimal strategies. It's a fact of games with complexity that balance isn't a realistic outcome.

That said I also pick the elephant, lets best out some ancient wargaming rules and rampage over pike blocks with elephants