Working on some possible comp/rules fixes

[Sir_Prometheus]

I think nerfing twinlinking would hurt Space marines and grey knights more than anyone else.

[Mike_k]

So you don't want to fix the game. You just want to nerf a few units and codexes and call that Balanced. Sorry I wasted our time.

Or you can look at it as an attempt to restore viability to the armies that get crushed the majority of the time and have no chance in competitive formats and there is NOTHING they can do about it other than play Eldar, Taur, Daemons, or SM.  Again this is just some theory ideas of ways to alter core rules that have created an imbalance with the goal of achieving a "net gain" in balance.  Maybe none of the changes we mentioned in this thread even get used or considered.  They where some ideas we have been discussing and wanted to see all the angels of how they impact the armies we hope get raised up.

Regarding the understanding of how we are viewing balance. You can view many definitions of the word but in its most relevant definition balance should equate to some form of an even distribution.  Never will there be an exact distribution of army power between all currently available codex armies.  The hope and expectation should be that in a competitive format winning percentages for all armies should fall between the 45-55% range.  We also believe that is slightly unrealistic but it should the target and expectation of a competitive format. 

A great article that identifies some of the holes in the current balance of the game from the guys at torrent of fire.

http://www.torrentoffire.com/2309/lets-go-data-mining-do-you-need-to-buy-the-latest-book

The second graph is the frightening one:



This indicates that against the 4 armies with the highest win % overall most of the remaining armies available to players fall WELL below a 40% with orks as low as 17%.  Yes several armies need a new book but of the 15 available armies to have 10 well below a balanced winning % that would indicate there is a clear balance issue.

Maybe by the end of 2014 when most armies have new books things level out and fall more in line with an acceptable range of balanced win %'s.  I know most people dont want to wait that long to play competitively or to continue to play in tournaments where they have little to no chance.

[Mike_k]

Oh, the twin linking adjustment was about Tau?  I will admit that 6e appears to be all about twinlinking and bikes. 

But Tau don't really need your twinlinking, if they want, they can just make their missilesides BS 5.

Twin linking was not just about tau it was about 4-5 armies that have it everywhere and many armies that have little to none of it.  You have several armies that have twinlinked almost everything and the ability o prescience and then you have armies that have a few twin linked options or can get prescience by taking a specific unit or 2.  So yes this may hurt ork bikes but it also makes volume shoooting which is a strength of orks a bit more balanced.

Again just a possible idea most likely not going to remain on the table at this point.

[Mike_k]

The independet character restriction also affects Blood Angels poorly (or any other codex that has independents in non-HQ slots).  Not allowing for a sanguinary priest to join the same unit an HQ does, pretty much ruins one of the major bonus of Blood Angels.

Very true good point Tharcil.

[robpro]

We ALL have seen what this game has turned into and instead of bickering like children (looking at Matt and Rob here guys) how about we start assessing topics like this with the idea that we are doing it for the the health of the game?

I like how you did the thing you accused me and Matt of doing in your post. Cool story bro.

I asked a question earlier that I think was reasonable - a detailed rationale behind these changes. Mike provided one, and thanks to him for doing that.

Maybe before we come up with fixes, we should agree on what the problems are? Some people in this thread have gone waaaay off the original topic, which was to discuss the things in Mike's first post. Let's list the things we think are the biggest problems (we can go codex specific because targeted player errata is better than sweeping changes). For the purposes of that discussion, we can put Escalation, Stronghold Assault, Dataslate Formations, and Knights (since I haven't seen the book yet) on the shelf for now.

Problems we generally agree on -

-The Grimoire can relatively easily allow units to get a 2+ invul save. Obviously a 2++ is good, but is it the reroll that makes it over the top or the fact that its easy to get? Making it so the max it can bring a save to 3++ could work, but that does nothing about the Tzaeentch reroll (rerolling 1s on a 3+ still gives you pretty much a 2++ on the first roll) and are there other things we could look at. What if we changed Daemons of Tzeentch to let you reroll failed psychic/instability tests? Would that still be useful and allow grimoire to do its thing (get you a 2++ on like 1-2 models unless you're super lucky on the warp storm chart, which I would guess GW pictured as the only way to get 2++ on a unit).

-Battle Brothers allow for some crazy combos/deathstars/force multipliers. Bringing a farseer in a Tau army for 2 free twinlinks and possibly fortune always seemed over the top to me, and running the baron in the seer council gets ridiculous. If you changed it so battle brothers were basically allies of convenience but counted as friendly (for things like AOE stuff that pings enemy units, so you won't kill your allies), would that help? It sort of incentivizes allying in death stars/cheap and fast scoring units since your allies have to be self contained, but it means you can't cherry pick pieces to buff the rest of your army. But I guess that forces us to ask ourselves what the role of allies in the game should be?

-Psychic spells. Some are super good, some are meh, and it's impossible to stop someone from buffing their own dudes all game unless you've allied space wolves in. I've played against flying demon prince armies where they were T8 the whole game. There wasn't much I could do and I can't said it was very fun, but it's in the rules so what can you do. I don't think giving everyone rune priest weapons is the way to go (in fact I expect those to be out of the next SW book, they've gotten rid of all the other similar psychic defense). I think the tables in the book were poorly thought out and hope they get rewritten in 6.5/7. Nobody ever takes pyromancy, telepathy is amazing, biomancy is good 1/3 the time, etc. I don't know what a good solution is beyond rewriting the tables to be more balanced or making you pay 25 points per table to be able to roll on it or something (which still wouldn't really fix it). This one I'm drawing blanks on.


So, do those 3 things seem like big problem areas that we agree on? It doesn't matter if you like or agree with my analysis, it's just do we think those 3 things are big problems?

[Sir_Prometheus]

Black templar are part of space marines, now?  How old is that graph?

[andalucien]

Black templar are part of space marines, now?  How old is that graph?

Not sure exactly how old that version of the graph is, but it's a summary of all games EVER recorded with Torrent of Fire.

[AstartesXXVI]

big response here

It seems that you all (at least on this board) concur what the problems are. I don't know why these things don't just get a special rule written that BG can require be in use at all your tournaments that changes these specific elements slightly. The best part is you then get people used to the idea, and can have that rule change as the game changes to keep up with the times.

This happens because you have no centralized way of making a definitive decision as a group, I suspect. The closest thing you all have to a central point of authority is the stores themselves and they have already made it clear they are not interest/qualified/prepared to implement this stuff and it is up to the community. But to go forward with that, you need to accept three things:

1.) You have to be prepared to lose a few people. Some people just aren't gonna like the idea and see it as  "some dude changed the game so I'd lose more!" In the long run the better folks you will attract level it off.

2.) Committing to a policy with conviction is pretty much almost always more effective than communal debate. You all agree there is a need for this sort of thing, but if you discuss and discuss there will never be 100% acceptance and there will always be camps looking for a perfect solution that doesn't exist. I'm not saying don't talk about it at all, but keep in mind that at some point the time for talking about the problem is over.

3.) Keep it simple and focused. Rob has the right of it here -- you have identified the problems, don't change 14 armies if the problem is only with 3 of them. You're just be making it harder on yourselves!

[robpro]

big response here

It seems that you all (at least on this board) concur what the problems are. I don't know why these things don't just get a special rule written that BG can require be in use at all your tournaments that changes these specific elements slightly. The best part is you then get people used to the idea, and can have that rule change as the game changes to keep up with the times.

I think we agree on some things, but the first 3 pages in this thread have all kinds of things listed as problems I hadn't heard of yet. For example, is twinlinking the problem, or is it people allying in a farseer to get 2 twinlinks for units that didn't already have it the problem? If we agree it's allies, then we don't need to try changing how twinlink mechanics work as a whole. If we agree it's the psychic powers, then maybe we can look into those instead of messing with allies or rerolls to hit. See what I'm getting at?

If we can boil things down as tight as we can to what causes these things to be problems, we can make effective changes. We just have to agree on what needs to be changed before we start changing stuff.

[Grimwulfe]

These inquires are not about BG and their tournies 100% this is an effort to bring this full scale.  Major issue here as I see it.  Is you have people from 3 different camps trying to fix the game.

The main focus of this discussion was ONLY the 3 fixes and how they effect all armies. 

[PhoenixFire]

Adepticon is the next big one right? They Talked About Their Plans For Comp Yet?

[Tharcil]

These inquires are not about BG and their tournies 100% this is an effort to bring this full scale.  Major issue here as I see it.  Is you have people from 3 different camps trying to fix the game.

The main focus of this discussion was ONLY the 3 fixes and how they effect all armies.

I see what Mike's trying to do with this post and appreciate the point.  I think the problem with this approach is that many people disagree with the fundamental approach we're being asked to evaluate. Which as I see it is, adjust the rules to fix specific problems, rather than just adjust the specific problems. This seems backwards to me.

[Grimwulfe]

Actually its exactly what some of you have been asking for. Some say the community cant do this because of differing opinions and so on.  Were not asking the community what they think are the problems what we are doing here or what Mike is doing here for that matter is looking for feedback on things he or we haven't thought about. 

The problems with the game have already been discussed in our inner circle what we are trying to do is put together fixes.  Then take those fixes and see if people thought of something we didn't and why they are bad or good etc. 

The idea here is not to debate what the issues are but to debate how a POTENTIAL fix effects others armies etc. Or to find out if a POTENTIAL fix causes more problems then it helps. 

[Tharcil]

Actually its exactly what some of you have been asking for. Some say the community cant do this because of differing opinions and so on.  Were not asking the community what they think are the problems what we are doing here or what Mike is doing here for that matter is looking for feedback on things he or we haven't thought about. 

The problems with the game have already been discussed in our inner circle what we are trying to do is put together fixes.  Then take those fixes and see if people thought of something we didn't and why they are bad or good etc. 

The idea here is not to debate what the issues are but to debate how a POTENTIAL fix effects others armies etc. Or to find out if a POTENTIAL fix causes more problems then it helps.

This is a nice clarification.  We're being brought in on the process part way through which I think is not intuitive and a bit confusing.  With that out of the way I'll try and add more constructively to where you guys are going with this.

[Ian Mulligan]

Actually its exactly what some of you have been asking for. Some say the community cant do this because of differing opinions and so on.  Were not asking the community what they think are the problems what we are doing here or what Mike is doing here for that matter is looking for feedback on things he or we haven't thought about. 

The problems with the game have already been discussed in our inner circle what we are trying to do is put together fixes.  Then take those fixes and see if people thought of something we didn't and why they are bad or good etc. 

The idea here is not to debate what the issues are but to debate how a POTENTIAL fix effects others armies etc. Or to find out if a POTENTIAL fix causes more problems then it helps.

I think the reason the discussion isn't going the way you guys may have expected it to is because your process isn't entirely open. Your "inner circle" may have discussed it but its seems a little dictatorial to privately decide what the problems with the game are, determine solutions, and then ask the community at large to jump in the process without getting to participate in the entirety.

I think you'd get better results sharing a complete draft of fixes or going 100% community based. Half and half seems like worst of both worlds.