i went to my local gw store yesterday and they told me this was THE most balanced game they've seen so far from warhammer...
they said 8th was so unbalanced...
they must be brainwashed to say that...
8th wasn't perfect but imo it was very good!
There are two ways that people are looking at the balance of this game, and there are two different arguments.
The first and most common "internet hates it" argument, is that there is no points system, and therefore you can exploit the game as much as you want. And people think that means that it's not balanced. I agree. I want a balance system of some kind. Not because I
need one, but because I think that a "game" should have one. There needs to be some sense of a predetermined size. When I went to the FLGS, I usually had about 3000pts of any army with me. That was my 2500pt list, and roughly 500pts worth of "sideboard" stuff that could take the game above the "normal" size, but could also be swapped in and out if we played a smaller game (can't field enough Crushers, might as well swap them for extra Chariots, etc) or I wanted to soften/harden my list to suit an opponent. Now, I show up with 100 Wounds worth of models, because that's what I consider balanced, and some other kid shows up with a whole suitcase full of Dwarfs. Umm... sorry kid, but you have a lot of stuff that you're not going to be putting on the table
because...
...the other hand of the argument is that if someone takes an exploitative bent to the game, you just don't play them. The community self-moderates in small groups. The points system wasn't perfect - no balance system in any game ever will be. You could exploit the points system, and people claimed that there was this huge problem where players were saying, "well, the
rules say that our game is fair, because we both have legal 2500pt armies" and then would just steamroll a "fluffy" list with some tournament-optimized "WAAC" army.
And that's what it really boils down to: the whole argument between "Fun" gamers and "Competitive Jerkwad" gamers. The
problem, is that the entire argument is based on the foul-cries of jilted "friendly" players who "don't care about winning and losing as much as having fun" deciding that they're not having fun because they're not winning.
GW targeted AoS at those "for fun" guys. According to GW, they've been targeting that group
forever, so I suppose that's fair.
Among those guys, AoS
is balanced. The simplified "To Hit" and "To Wound" being innate, and not modified by opposed stats, etc, means that the game is
extremely easy to balance. The small range of numbers also means that all units are
very close in performance. To some this is dull, but from a balance perspective, a Skeleton
can and will kill Chaos Warriors now. It's funny, because they have just as hard a time with it as they did in 8th, but we're not telling anyone that, now,
are we?
So if you're the type of person who sits down ahead of time and plans out a story and scenario with your friends, and writes your armies together and aims more at having a "fluffy" army and so on and so forth, then yes: the game is vastly more balanced. Because all of the armies are on a much more equal footing (no more "Tomb Kings are a suck-book, can't compete with Skaven" type comments) and because if someone shows up with a bad attitude and a really exploitative army, you can just
exclude him from your game until he never comes back again.
Buuuuuuuuut....
It's not going to pan out well for GW in the long run. I don't understand why they're pandering to the "Funsies" guys. Yeah, sure, they buy the models. As collectors. They'll always buy the models. But look at the other guys who care a lot more about "fun" than being competitive. Look at the sub-groups that exist within that cadre of players that
doesn't exist in the tournament/competitive guys:
"Money Hammer" Haters
You've heard it. The guy who bashes on all GW games because "the most expensive army wins". This was actually my problem with M:tG and
why I switched to Fantasy, but sure - I get it. The guy is saying, "yeah, I could update my High Elf army from nothing but Cavalry and Spears, and win games, but that means I have to buy $300 worth of White Lions, and that's
not fair"
These guys forget that GW is running a business. Their option as a player is to either keep getting use out of $300 worth of models that they bought 10 years ago, or go and give GW a little of their hard-earned cash
and support the hobby/company/game that they've been enjoying.
These guys usually
don't stop playing, they just stop
buying. If they
do stop playing and switch systems, it's no loss for GW - they weren't buying anything anyways.
--The "Competitive Jerkwad" flip-side
The guy who wants to run a competitive army and win all of his games, is not only more likely to buy those $300 worth of White Lions now that they've become good, but he will
also be more likely to buy
a completely new army if a book/update comes out which is "better" than his High Elves. And when you have a guy like that, you end up with a guy like me: I own half of the armies in the game. This, in turn, makes me
even more likely to buy something new at every release, because I no longer have to start a new army - I just have to buy another $300 worth of an army that I already own.
AND GW KNOWS THIS
Why do you think Codex Creep even exists in the first place? GW knows that if a player loves High Elves, they won't buy Chaos Daemons
unless there's a good reason.
Aesthetics? Probably not - nothing will look quite like High Elves
Fluff? Probably not - High Elves are High Elves because
they're High Elves in the fluff
Playstyle? Probably not - nothing will ever play quite like High Elves
Does it win games? Yeah, this will sell books. The competitive gamer will buy the book to keep winning, the "friendly" gamer will buy the book because he's sick of losing.
GW can't even
begin to deny that they weren't targeting or at least
exploiting the competitive gamers.
OldHammer Guys
Basically, this is
all of us right now, because we're not updating to AoS and are continuing to play 8th. GW acknowledged this group too, when they said that the reason they "dumped WHFB" is because updating to 9th would just splinter the community between the guys who stuck with 8th, and the guys who jumped to 9th. To GW, they see this:
Edition 1: 500 gamers
Edition 2: 250 gamers (half stick with edition 1)
Edition 3: 175 gamers (half stick with edition 2)
Edition 4: 88 gamers (half stick with edition 3)
Edition 5: 44 gamers (half stick with edition 4)
Edition 6: 22 gamers (half stick with edition 5)
Edition 7: 11 gamers (half stick with edition 6)
Edition 8: 5 gamers (half stick with edition 7)
Edition 9? 2.5 gamers (half will stick)
or
Age of Sigmar!!!!!111!!: 2.5 will switch, +500 new arrivals!
It's idiotic. Mostly because the reason that people didn't switch editions was because they believed "this edition was better". That's
always going to happen, but more importantly, if you give them a solid, balance book that isn't just a nerf/buff festival filled with exploits to enlarge unit sizes and sell more models,
people would be more likely to switch to it.
--The Competitive Jerkwad flipside
Even though we
hate Age of Sigmar, the major tournament circuits that we all play or aspire to, have actually adopted it. Because they
always adopt the newest rules. GW could
always sell the tournament players new books, because our option was to either buy up, or quit. And quitting GW "cold-turkey" (to use another addict's phrasing) is a lot harder to do than just phasing back into an older edition. Every time one of my armies got a new book, I bought it. Because my friends wouldn't allow outdated material even in our "for funsies gais!" games, because you wouldn't see that army in a modern tournament anymore.
The bottom line is that GW wants to sell models. That's their first priority. If they could do this
without supporting a game, they would. The game is actually just a way to sell
more models (Elf Spearmen aren't as cool as Swordmasters, but you need to fill minimum Core - buy them)
and to control the collections by saying "you can only use our models in our games". As a legal tool, they know that they can't copyright the mere
name 'Space Marines', but they can copyright the exact fluff, all the iconography, etc. They realize that they're going to be printing and distributing this stuff
anyways, so that they can reference it in court, so there's no reason
not to package rules in there - rules will help sell the fluff, to make back their "insurance premiums".
GW sees companies like Chapterhouse and Scibor and wants to be like them. Just selling models. What they seem to fail to realize is that
they created that industry. Literally: GW kickstarted miniatures collecting into what it is today, and
games are the only reason the hobby hasn't died yet. GW doesn't want to sell to gamers - they want to sell to modellers and toy-collectors. So consider:
Toy Collectors: the closest would be the guys who collect action figures. Why do they collect action figures? Because it's pop-culture. It might be some super-rare Superman that nobody has ever heard of, but
people have heard of superman. GW "fluff" is not mainstream. GW isn't filling cinemas with 'Space Marine: First Blood ptII'. The collector can't show a bunch of strangers his Space Marines and have someone go, "wow, that's a lot of SpaceMarine stuff - I can relate to that because I've seen all the movies/books/comics/fandoms,
even though I'm not 'hardcore' enough to collect the figures"
So those guys are out. That leaves...
Modellers: have you
seen the finescale modelling industry lately? It's like - non existent. I can't find Revel or Tamiya models
anywhere anymore, without going to a
dedicated model shop. And there are actually more FLGS in my area than there are dedicated stockists for Revel/Tamiya kits. I used to subscribe to finescale magazines, and they've either dried up or have switched over to bi-monthly or even
quarterly publications.
Because it's a boring hobby! Once you've seen a King Tiger in 1:48th scale, you've seen
every King Tiger in 1:48th scale EVER. But that's also why modellers stick to real-world stuff as their basis. The only way to separate one of those King Tigers from the other, is which builder took the time to carve
every individual bolt into the proper shape and screw-type used by the German wehrmacht for tanks built during the last 6 months of 1943 in the BMW factory in small town who-really-gives-a-hoots-burg. In other words: attention to
real world detail.
You can't "fact check" a Space Marine for "historical accuracy".
I don't buy Dystopian Wars miniatures because I don't play Dystopian Wars. They look cool, but I would just build/paint them and then sit them on a shelf to look at. And they're a little expensive for that. And hey:
GW IS EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE! If GW wants to sell modes and
just sell to collectors, then they need to drop their batch sizes (nobody needs
five Terminators, one is enough) and funnel all of that effort into making one
really cool model, and then
not charging an arm and a leg for it.
And do you know who's really good at that right now?
FORGEWORLD. And do you know who GW seems to actively want to shrivel up, die, and fall off like some kind of benign tumorous growth?
Forgeworld.
Seriously: f- this sh- I quit.