Is it time to ban special characters (from matched play)?

[Bryan Blaire]

I don’t necessarily think that a points/Power Level restriction would be a terrible idea, but it would need to be tested out fully to determine what the appropriate level might be, not just some arbitrary value like 1000 points. It also would probably need to be tested with a “reasonable person” concept, which honestly, even a beer and pretzels player might not consider vs. how GW considers playing the game. It’s a hard thing to test.

[Eddie Orlock]

... It also would probably need to be tested with a “reasonable person” concept, ...

If we were quiet about it, we could probably test it natively in the tournament environment. Find a competitive scene and start hosting a series of 'limbo-blitz' tournaments. Hold all the bars and as the series progresses lower the points limits until the meta obviously degenerates into something like all Morty on Magnus action with the occasional specifically anti-monster coming out to play. There's probably a way to make this stronger by attempting to forecast matchup results and comparing those to a large enough set of tournament game outcomes.

 

Sell the concept to competitive players by noting that by testing out lower points values you can run the series more often and they can play more games.

 

At this point I hypothesize that meta-degeneracy will start to appear when one element can comprise 33% or more of the force and become reliable at around 50%. At this point either the other side brought a big enough rock to bash against the other sides rock, or they specifically tooled up to cut stones.

 

So, presuming the hypothesis is true, I'd preliminarily set the bar conservatively at no single element should cost more than 25% of the allotted points/power level of the game without specific prior agreement from the engaged players, and work it up or down from there.

[Kite Senet]

 

So, presuming the hypothesis is true, I'd preliminarily set the bar conservatively at no single element should cost more than 25% of the allotted points/power level of the game without specific prior agreement from the engaged players, and work it up or down from there.

 

 

This was my thought as well, though I personally thought about 1/3 of the points total would be more appropriate than 1/4 of the points. Are you suggesting requiring this for all units or just for the Lords of War/special characters? I genuinely have to wonder how it would affect tournament play if no one unit could cost over 1/3 of the point total, though; I'd like to play a full 20-man Ru-brick squad as the focal point of my list in a 1000 point game, which really wouldn't be legal if it applies to all units, but perhaps that gimmick would also be a bit on the degenerate side?

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

So, presuming the hypothesis is true, I'd preliminarily set the bar conservatively at no single element should cost more than 25% of the allotted points/power level of the game without specific prior agreement from the engaged players, and work it up or down from there.

 

This was my thought as well, though I personally thought about 1/3 of the points total would be more appropriate than 1/4 of the points. Are you suggesting requiring this for all units or just for the Lords of War/special characters? I genuinely have to wonder how it would affect tournament play if no one unit could cost over 1/3 of the point total, though; I'd like to play a full 20-man Ru-brick squad as the focal point of my list in a 1000 point game, which really wouldn't be legal if it applies to all units, but perhaps that gimmick would also be a bit on the degenerate side?

You could just use the word ‘model’ instead of unit. No individual model may cost more than 1/4 or 1/3 of the total points value. That way an expensive multi-model unit is fine but an individual like a knight or Primarch is not.

 

Personally I would prefer it if they just said LoWs instead of worrying about models or units as it keeps it simple and stops people just slipping through with the cheapest variety of a big model, you know, keeping to the letter of the law rather than the spirit.

 

That’s the problem with using percentages. If you said a 1/3 for example, in a 1500 point game I could happily take Mortarion, Magnus or Guilliman but I couldn’t take a Knight Crusader or certain variants of the warden or errant. Personally I would argue that Mortarion is more than equal to any of those Knights so it would stay imbalanced.

[Eddie Orlock]

... Are you suggesting requiring this for all units or just for the Lords of War/special characters? ...

Well, the initial contemplation is categorically all units. There's no reason to think you couldn't degenerate the game upon something just because it wasn't nominally a LoW, or Unique. For example, taking a Macro Cannon emplacement fortification in a 1000 point game is likely to make manoeuvers by some force compositions rather moot while the game is decided by the mission roll alone.

 

If there was to be an exemption, the only one that would make sense to me would be things with Battlefield Role: Troops. If you can break the game with troops more power to you, but as people will note in the antecedent discussion in this thread, such a narrativist consideration shouldn't be driving a rule aimed at more reliable game balance.

[Bryan Blaire]

I would definitely think that Troop units would be exempt from a points cap restriction.

[Panzer]

The thing with such a restriction is ... what makes a 300p model worse than two 250p models in a 1k game etc.? (if we go with the 1/4 in this case)

I'm not sure things are THAT easy to balance.

 

About the Knight vs Mortarion argument. Knights are overcosted, we know that already. They shouldn't cost nearly as much as they do currently.

[Claws and Effect]

Well I don't agree with that. In fact, I think banning Knights and Flyers would be a good thing for the hobby.

So you really DO want to ban entire factions from matched play.

 

Knights are getting their own freaking Codex pretty soon and you literally just said they should be banned.

 

I'm really curious. What exactly is it that makes you feel like you should be able to dictate how other people are allowed to have fun? Because that seems to be the point of this entire thread.

 

Most of your responses in this thread have been, essentially "*I* don't like this, so YOU shouldn't have it", in the guise of it being "good for game balance".

 

And I'm sorry, but that is an attitude that I can never agree with.

 

Special characters and Lords of War are not inherently unbalancing the game, since the game was clearly balanced taking them into account. It's not like GW dropped them on us out of the blue, they've been around in some form for over 25 years.

[Wargamer]

The fact that they are included doesn't mean they are balanced. 8th Edition Fantasy died in no small part because they flooded the game with new, broken units. I remember seeing an entire Bretonnian army crushed because of a Skaven monster who essentially ignored all existing rules about unit facing and could charge in any direction it liked.

[Ishagu]

It died because you needed two hundred models to play, took hours and had an overpowered psychic phase.

[Panzer]

It died because you needed two hundred models to play, took hours and had an overpowered psychic phase.

 

Two hundred models in finecrap compared to the hundred metal models you used the edition before. Which also went up in money cost. But that's not the topic here. :P

 

I still fail to see where special characters are that unbalanced. The general tone is that something like Mortarion is not worth taking in super competetive matches because he dies too easily and eats up too many of your points just for himself + support (because you HAVE to build your list around him if you take him).

There are SOME special characters you see regularly like Guilliman but those are clearly in the minority. Compared to those you see a LOT more generic units in basically every list (T'au Commander, Tyranid Flyrants, Blood Angels Captain Smash and so on). So if the issue is "I see them all the time", then there's a bigger issue with some generic units than there's with some few special characters and the whole approach of this thread is invalid to begin with.

[Wargamer]

Needing two hundred models wasn't the issue - the fact they did absolutely nothing was. You know, kind of like how everyone seems to think Tac Marines don't do anything now?

[Fire Golem]

The fact that they are included doesn't mean they are balanced. 8th Edition Fantasy died in no small part because they flooded the game with new, broken units. I remember seeing an entire Bretonnian army crushed because of a Skaven monster who essentially ignored all existing rules about unit facing and could charge in any direction it liked.

Which wasn’t a special character, which lends weight to everyone’s point that special characters aren’t the issue, it’s a balance issue in general.

[Wargamer]

Well now we're talking about a totally different game system, so you can't directly compare. However, the key point stands - if the game system is deliberately making old units crap to punish people who don't buy the latest kits, the game will fail.

[Panzer]

However, the key point stands - if the game system is deliberately making old units crap to punish people who don't buy the latest kits, the game will fail.

 

Then I'm glad that's not happening. ^^

[Ishagu]

I think generic characters should be banned because I'm bored of seeing Blood Angels Captain Smash, Flying Hive Tyrants, Coldstar Commanders and Company Commanders with Kurov's Aquilla.

 

Personally I think the game will be more balanced if generic characters aren't in the game. Also, I feel we should remove all unit customisation as some options are clearly better than others.

[D3L]

I think generic characters should be banned because I'm bored of seeing Blood Angels Captain Smash, Flying Hive Tyrants, Coldstar Commanders and Company Commanders with Kurov's Aquilla.

 

Personally I think the game will be more balanced if generic characters aren't in the game. Also, I feel we should remove all unit customisation as some options are clearly better than others.

and Ishagu again closes a thread he doesn't like by talking off topic, the topic BTW is in the title, we're talking about special characters, not generic 

 

:-/

[Ishagu]

The topic is ridiculous. And I'm merely illustrating how silly it is to call for restrictions.

[Panzer]

 

I think generic characters should be banned because I'm bored of seeing Blood Angels Captain Smash, Flying Hive Tyrants, Coldstar Commanders and Company Commanders with Kurov's Aquilla.

 

Personally I think the game will be more balanced if generic characters aren't in the game. Also, I feel we should remove all unit customisation as some options are clearly better than others.

and Ishagu again closes a thread he doesn't like by talking off topic, the topic BTW is in the title, we're talking about special characters, not generic 

 

:-/

 

 

And again D3L posts nothing but complaining. 

 

Ishagu just turned the argument around to show how little sense it makes. That's imo a valid on topic post unlike yours.

[Claws and Effect]

The fact that they are included doesn't mean they are balanced.

Ok, I'll bite.

 

Exactly which special characters are so broken that they threaten the balance of the entire game?

 

And how does that justify the removal of other special characters like Shrike or Grimaldus who are balanced just fine or even a little underpowered?

[Fire Golem]

Well now we're talking about a totally different game system, so you can't directly compare. However, the key point stands - if the game system is deliberately making old units crap to punish people who don't buy the latest kits, the game will fail.

Never been the case with GW. They just aren’t great at balance. New models are just as often underpowered as they are overpowered. Just like special characters are.

[spafe]

So if I've got this right, there seems to be a few schools of thought here:

1: leave it as is, nowt's broken, maybe one or two characters are powerful for points, but so are some units, no big deal

2: named characters should have some limit/restriction (based on a number of different reasons, from narrative, to immersion breaking, to unbalance, to wrong size of games having their presence)

3: big characters (and potentially LoW/flyers) should be given restrictions due to their balance issues at smaller games levels

4: no special characters, generics only in matched play.

5: no special characters or big LoW esk stuff in matched play, strictly narrative only for such singular models

 

I'm sure I've missed some nuances but roughly I think it boils down to somewhere on that spectrum?

 

I think I fall into 2 or 3 but accept 1 is how it is and can live with that

[Claws and Effect]

I could live with a restriction like only 1 named character per 1,000 points, or something to that effect.

 

That's about as far as I'd go, though.

 

The big stuff is already effectively limited by its points cost. I couldn't justify taking more than 1 Fire Raptor even if I owned more than 1.

[Wargamer]

Well that begs the question of whether customisation improves the game, and I suspect that the majority of people will say that it does. I think part of the initial backlash against Primaris was down to a complete lack of any options whatsoever, suggesting that the people who want cookie-cutter units are a minority.

[Ishagu]

I don't want any restrictions whatsoever. None are necessary.