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Can't GW get it right?

906 views 9 replies 10 participants last post by  chaosdude 
#1 ·
Stolen from Bugmans Brewery -

After 24 years of failed attempts, why is it that GW has continuosly failed to achieve balance between their different army books.
How hard can it be???
TWENTY FOUR YEARS.
That has got to be some kind of Guiness Book of Records failure.
Do they employ professionals?
What sort of qualifications do their Game Designers have?
Now do you agree?

Personally I do. Now I haven't played many games against varied opponents but I do own all the current books (Woodies in the post), and even looking through them you can see the increase in power. Each book is just that 'little' bit more powerful than the last, the first three were fine - Greenskins; can be abused but mainly a pretty balanced list; Dwarfs - Again balanced but lacking in true power and Empire - Has potential but lacks the ability.

It started with Asur, Vampires and Skaven and has risen from there. The characters, items and certain units became commonplace as you could win with them, other units/items/characters were shunned because you couldn't win easily. Then after these it gradually increased - Chaos, Lizardmen, Bretonnia, Tomb Kings, Ogre Kingdoms, Druchii and from reading the new Woodies they have some serious potential.

Why the power creep? Why not have the books slightly tweeked from the pervious incarnation or reworked if it was that bad? IMO this fails to make a fun game, if you want proof at power creep look at the tourney scene -

The usual armies seen there are...

Skaven - SAD
Brets - RAF/Flying Circus or all cav
Asur - Cav and lots of magic
Chaos - Slannesh/Tzeentch elite warriors/chariot army
Lizardmen - Skink swarms + magic
Druchii - CoP
Dwarfs - Slayers


When was the last time you actually heard of a balanced army doing all that well? Top twenty? When did dwarfs or Empire or Greenskins last win a large tourney? TBH I can't remember ever hearing so, GW does need to do something about this. It appears if you ever want to do well in a tourney you have to 'cheeze'/'beard' up or get an abusive army.

Will it ever stop?

KU
 
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#3 ·
I totally agree that the power of the WHFB armies has slowly been ramped up with each successive book. Well, I DO have one exception: Skaven are still the most broken army in the game. Far more broken than any army that came out after them.

I am also a Dwarf player myself, and I sold my Dwarves soon after the Skaven book came out. I was totally disgusted with the amount of nearly unstoppable firepower they can put out. It's a decision that I now regret, but me and the wife needed the money at the time. :rolleyes:

I really hope the new Dwarf book will take their neutered army and bring it back to the glory it once was in 4th edition. The Organ Gun USED to be my favorite weapon until they doubled the price, cut the range in half and only let you shoot with all barrels at once. Now I hardly use one.

What I want to know is why WHFB has such a problem with this but 40k really doesn't? 40k has a lot of "That's a stupid ass rule" going on, but the armies are actually fairly balanced. (except for *cough* Cheddar *cough*)
 
#4 ·
I'd agree that things are getting more powerfull, however I do think that things have gotten better since 5th. I think that they tackled the magic problem, and are now dealing with making special units and special rules balanced. I do like that I can field a lot more troops now than I used to be able to. The outnumbering rule was a great addition, but it almost needs to be inclueded in a units profile anymore. I don't really have to many quibbles with the magical items. I'm building my Empire Army right now, and so far doing surprizingly well on the field with it.
 
#5 ·
i have only played like 5 armies, but from what i hear, i agree what KU said, but i do have to kind of disagree with some of the points made here.There are like 14-16 armies, (not including the SoC armies, and Kislev), as well as 10 or so 40k armies, so making everyone of those perfectly balanced to a 300 page rulebook is a bit hard. However that does not excuse the fact that you can take almost any army and make them "cheesy". You can take dwarfs and make them cheesy, just as easily as you can make bretonians cheesy. What they need to do is implement minimums. Like a minimum of Men at Arms for Bretonnians, or a maximums of thunderers for dwarfs. Just think about it, a Bretonnian village wouldnt have all knights, it would be a mix because they couldn't possibly find enough horses. I think they need to take the warp stones from the skaven. They can just say they ran out or something, skaven can be a good enough army without them.
 
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#7 ·
The Pink Panther said:
I think they need to take the warp stones from the skaven. They can just say they ran out or something, skaven can be a good enough army without them.
You sir, have got to be effin' joking. Why not take the skinks/pegasus knights/slayers/elite chaos warriors out of the armies? The reasoning? They ran out!

Eshin use Warpstone for poison and blades, Skyre use warpstone for power sources, Pestilens use warpstone for concocting their diseases, Moulder use warpstone for mutating beasts. What are Skaven then left with?

Grey Seers (not as powerful without snuff/tokens)
Warlords
Chieftains
Assassins
Clanrats
Slaves
Stormvermin
Gutter/Night Runners (no more warpstone stars)
Plague Monks
Rat Swarms
 
#8 ·
People push armies to the limit, that is what they do.

Even under a balanced ruleset, people will always try to squeeze one more advantage of the list and the rules. Some armies will always have an advantage in competitive environments if they have to roll fewer or no dice for critical actions (blanket ItP in VC, for example).

Powergaming and balance only exist in the context of a particular edition of warhammer. When you update the rules, you update the position of the goal posts. The 6th ed magic system was much better than the 5th ed one until people worked out the "dice factory" attitude to spell casting.

Near-perfect balance isn't possible - there will always be something that has an "edge" over the rest, and some will always take an army list that uses that "edge" to the extreme.
 
#10 ·
I think the worst army in WHFB is Skaven.
I bought the book, thinking that I might start an army of those things. I really liked the look of those guys and their technology seemed pretty funny...
BUT!
They totally suck.
It's like impossible to make a fun army of those guys that works, but is not cheesy.
Either the units suck, or are way to powerful.
The warpstone tech and those mages are SICK.
2D6 st5 shots at a pretty easy powerlevel? (warpstone engineers)
Whole batteries of snipers that easily deal with heavy cavalry? (jezzails)
Big anti-tank cannons that rip everything apart? (warpstone cannon)
Big blocks of supercheap fleshwalls that stall enemy advances (slaves)
+ofcourse the You CAN shoot into CC rule...
What were they thinking?
Ohyeah...Lets just make a downside to it! Your guns can blow up if you roll a 1! So that should do the trick.
Yeah, those guns blow up eventually, but only after they shot about 100 points out of the enemy army. And then they brought their points back anyway.

All the other units are pretty much useless. (either cost too many points for what they do, or just dont do anything at all)

I decided not to collect an army of those funny looking rats.
They are not fun to play with or against.
I think Skaven are simply the most unbalanced army in that game.
 
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