Is 40k actually badly imblanced?

[Tawnis]

Lately I've realized that my personal experience with balance in 40k 9th edition has been very contrary to what I've read on forums and heard talked about online, so I wanted to get some more thoughts on the matter. 

 

To be VERY clear, this is a question about your average everyday player that does not go out and buy every list the tops the major tournaments, clearly armies that can end the game in turn one are imbalanced, but I'm talking about playing an army with whatever force you have personally collected over the years. How many of you Ork players actually have 3 dakkajets, and all those trucks and bikes just laying around that you would have thought to put in a list if it weren't for it crushing that tournament? 

 

Just getting back into the hobby and playing in my first league in ages, I wanted to go with something that I thought would be super casual. Everyone says the Tau Codex is in rough shape right now, but they've always been one of my favorites thematically, so I took a bit of time to learn why. 9th is all about objectives and fighting for the midfield. With Tau's out of date rules, slow units, and weakness up close, it makes handling that very difficult, so I went with something that both countered that, and felt very fun and thematic to me, an all Kroot list. From everything I expected going into this, I thought I would get totally wrecked, learn a lot, and come back with a stronger army knowing more about the edition next time. That's not what happened; turns out, I'm crushing it, 5-0 with 4 games left in the league. (I've posted the army and match details in the army lists for any interested in what I run and who I've been up against.) For the TLDR, I've handily defeated Blood Angels, Guard Armour, Farsight Enclaves and Necrons. My only reasonably close game was against Custodes, but even then, it was by over 10 VP (and would have been more if I hadn't made a huge mistake due to general lack of experience).    

 

Now certainly some of the lists I've been up against even I can tell aren't tournament grade (the Guard one in particular), but others seemed quite strong, and as the league goes on, I'm fighting better and better lists as it is partially rank based matchmaking. Which is what got me thinking, if I can walk into a league with only an intermediate understanding of 9th edition, play the memeist part of a widely believed to be very underpowered army and do this well, how imbalanced can the game actually be? Is it actually a matter of the armies being THAT unbalanced, or is it that people look to competitive tournament lists as their go to and measure everything against them? It seems to me if people are just building their own lists for their armies without chasing the meta, that the game is reasonably balanced. 

 

So what do you all think, am I just a fluke, or have you had this kind of experience as well? 

Edited November 1, 2021 by Tawnis
changed formatting

[Dosjetka]

First post edited for legibility and posts referring to that issue have been removed.

[Xenith]

 is it that people look to competitive tournament lists as their go to and measure everything against them?

 

I think that this plays a large part of it. People will build lists to counter what they see as the strongest lists in the game, the ones winning other tournaments. As such, it allows weird dark horse lists to actually gain some ground and win games - we've seen mass-rubric thousand sons win games for example, and Blood Angels have been doing well again, since death guard have been knocked off the top spot. 

[Brother Captain Vakarian]

My experience has been that if you build armies in a “fluffy” or at least fluff-respecting manner, the game is sufficiently balanced to enjoy playing, and for the most part the 9e books are all pretty well-done and enjoyable to play.*

 

By that I mean sticking to this sort of list-building criteria, for *both* sides:

 

1. Use Battalions, and don’t just take minimum troops.

 

2. Don’t spam the “best” unit 3 times: pick something similar that’s a different data sheet for redundancy in purpose. For example, take a unit of Hellblasters or Eliminators with las-fusils to complement Eradicators in a Primaris list, don’t just fill out heavy support with Eradicators.

 

3. Probably stick to 9e books, some of the 8e books just don’t feel like they’re on the same field (guard, CSM outside of a few skew builds, etc.). I’m excited for the 9e books for the rest of the game’s factions because I’ve generally felt that 9e has been the best example of achieving some level of balance in “normal” games (I previously played during 4/5e and hadn’t played in a while until late 8e).

 

I don’t play competitive, so I can’t speak to competitive balancing. From reading Goonhammer and a few other sources it seems like it’s a few specific builds for AdMech and Drukhari that are really problematic, but I won’t even try to handle that.

 

*poor Necrons are a little behind the 9e curve, although we enjoy playing them still in my group. Everything else 9e stacks up pretty well.

[Charlo]

Your experience is a common one.

 

The "hyper competitive" mind-set is actually a very small % of overall players. It's just they tend to congregate and lead the discussion when it comes to broad sweeping statements about 40k's metagame and balance. But that is because that's predominantly what the game is to them, a meta to solve and analyse.

 

Their opinions on books is generally very good, but only applies in their own environment. Make all the players much lower in skill, playing different missions on different tables and suddenly, many more armies are a lot more viable and fun. Yes, a generally stronger codex will have an advantage in an even match up, but that's often not what is happening in 90% of 40k played around the world!

 

The fundamentally best way to play 40k is to get a group, build a cool army and push models around the table and see what happens.

 

People bemoan "gotcha stratagems" and "OP books", but more often than not they're just internet strawmen who don't really play the game - they just regurgitate what they've read on goonhammer or reddit (and I know, I do it enough!)

 

It sounds like you've carved a solid niche out for yourself and I'd emplore you to not worry about external groups!

[Noserenda]

List building is a big thing, but it isnt the only thing. Between scenarios, opponents list and skill, terrain, dice and off table morale there are loads of factors that affect things.

[phandaal]

List building is a big thing, but it isnt the only thing. Between scenarios, opponents list and skill, terrain, dice and off table morale there are loads of factors that affect things.

Basically. Depending on the points level some armies are much stronger. Tournament play depends on armies that are good at 2k points in a very specific board setup, taking certain secondary objectives.

 

That said, some armies really are just straight up weaker than others. Looking at CSM with their single wound for example.

[tychobi]

When you play in the shallow end of the pool everyone looks like they can swim.  For casual play balance is not really an issue but the game would be better with better balance.  Once you are dealing with experienced generals with sharpened lists the balance issues are far more obvious. My local meta is lousy with Admech, Drukari, and Orks piloted by storied generals.  I know the balance problems are real. Should my experience be discounted because your local is different? Why do you care if broken armies you never face are brought in line?

[Valkyrion]

Part of the difficulty of talking on online forums is that we are, for the most part, strangers, so the only thing that connects us is the shared ruleset.

 

Me and mine play a sort of bastardised apocalypse 30k for our main games - it's like 8th edition apocalypse but without detachments, everything has one extra wound, and we limit the command assets to 10 aside and it's all based on the Horus Heresy (or thereabouts - Crimson Fists instead of Imperial Fists, for instance).

For our small games we basically play 2nd edition on a half size table using individual models rather than units, and no vehicles.

All of that works well for us at our homes and we really enjoy it - we're quite big drinkers and utterly non competitive and we all want our guys to die glorious and violent deaths, or heroically stand their ground in the face of adversity - one particularly close game had a single Iron Hand occupy the central objective for the entire game, surviving every possible thing thrown at him - heavy bolters, missile launchers, lascannons - he was utterly inviolable. In the last turn he was in close combat with a captain level enemy and two other guys and, to hell with all other objectives, we agreed that if he survives then the Iron Hands win. He survived, and we all drank rum and laughed about what a double hard dude he was.

 

The point I'm meandering towards is that my experience of 40k isn't, and has rarely been in the last 25 years, competitive, but if you are looking for advice on the internet then you are generally going to get the most competitive advice regardless of your real life experience, and people on the internet will compare and contrast and argue and work out the 'best' of anything you can imagine, will be very vocal about it, and speak with such authority that you are certain they must be right. 

 

It's up to you if you want to follow their advice. I'm not going to tell anyone how to play their 40k, but no one can tell me how to play my 40k. 

[Tawnis]

When you play in the shallow end of the pool everyone looks like they can swim.  For casual play balance is not really an issue but the game would be better with better balance.  Once you are dealing with experienced generals with sharpened lists the balance issues are far more obvious. My local meta is lousy with Admech, Drukari, and Orks piloted by storied generals.  I know the balance problems are real. Should my experience be discounted because your local is different? Why do you care if broken armies you never face are brought in line?

I certainly don't discount your experience, that was the whole point of the post. I wanted to hear from people with difference play groups to see what else was out there. My sample size is terribly small after all. I am actually really hoping to get meet at least one top tier list over the course of the event to see what it's like to fight against at the very least. I love playing the underdogs personally, for me a win is all the more satisfying if the odds are against you, and feels like ash if you come in knowing that you hold all the cards. But I digress. 

 

One of the things I've often thought is that casual play and competitive should have different rules. It seems like GW is leaning this way with Crusade, but we'll have to see what happens there. Things do seem to be fine in "the shallow end" currently but from what I see on the tournaments, that is far from the case. When you've got a bunch of dedicated people trying to break your game to their advantage, balance isn't an easy thing to achieve. But perhaps if the competitive rules were separate from the "fun" rules, it could be. 

[MARK0SIAN]

The balance issue is so pronounced in some cases that even in casual games it creates a really one sided match. It would probably be less pronounced if the speed of the codex rollout wasn’t so glacial but at the moment you could probably make a list by throwing darts at the Drukhari codex and it would still be better than what you could make for several factions.

[Tawnis]

Part of the difficulty of talking on online forums is that we are, for the most part, strangers, so the only thing that connects us is the shared ruleset.

 

Me and mine play a sort of bastardised apocalypse 30k for our main games - it's like 8th edition apocalypse but without detachments, everything has one extra wound, and we limit the command assets to 10 aside and it's all based on the Horus Heresy (or thereabouts - Crimson Fists instead of Imperial Fists, for instance).

For our small games we basically play 2nd edition on a half size table using individual models rather than units, and no vehicles.

All of that works well for us at our homes and we really enjoy it - we're quite big drinkers and utterly non competitive and we all want our guys to die glorious and violent deaths, or heroically stand their ground in the face of adversity - one particularly close game had a single Iron Hand occupy the central objective for the entire game, surviving every possible thing thrown at him - heavy bolters, missile launchers, lascannons - he was utterly inviolable. In the last turn he was in close combat with a captain level enemy and two other guys and, to hell with all other objectives, we agreed that if he survives then the Iron Hands win. He survived, and we all drank rum and laughed about what a double hard dude he was.

 

The point I'm meandering towards is that my experience of 40k isn't, and has rarely been in the last 25 years, competitive, but if you are looking for advice on the internet then you are generally going to get the most competitive advice regardless of your real life experience, and people on the internet will compare and contrast and argue and work out the 'best' of anything you can imagine, will be very vocal about it, and speak with such authority that you are certain they must be right. 

 

It's up to you if you want to follow their advice. I'm not going to tell anyone how to play their 40k, but no one can tell me how to play my 40k. 

I feel you, that's the experience I love. It's actually a very similar story to one I had with my friends a long time ago. We were playing... I want to say 4th ed, it's been so long. We had a small garrison of space marines holding out against an endless tide of (proxied as they didn't yet have models) chaos cultists. There were three lines of defense set up and while the first line broke after a few turns, a lone Space Marine sergeant with a power Axe (I'd traded for it from my friends Space Wolf kit) stood alone hacking through dozens of cultists alone. The second line broke a few turns later and he still stood. The cultists got into the command center, eventually killing the Captain and the rest of the marines, but still the Axe Sargent fought on, we lost track of how many armor saves he made, but it was well over 30. And so I still remember his glorious stand well over a decade later, and have since converted him into a Vanguard Veteran in recognition of his glorious achievements. Those are the moments I love more than anything from this game. :D 

 

I suppose that was a little off topic too, but your story reminded me of it and I wanted to share. 

[Closet Skeleton]

Casual games are the most imbalanced because the players usually never put effort into making sure they bring two armies on the same level. In a game with list building options its always going to be able to make two armies where one stands no chance against the other. There's no effort the rules designers can put in, its on the players to make sure they're fighting out a scenerio that could go either way.

 

If you have two lopsided forces you can write lopsided objectives to even things out. Random guy who shows up A vs Random guy who shows up B playing a stock rule book mission isn't a good way to measure the design of a table top wargame but somehow people who are too lazy for anything else and can't be asked to discuss things and pre-arrange an interesting match can criticise the designers for failing to balance all these unaccountable variables.

 

Of course there's bad design and I'm not excusing that but there's things you can't fix and things you can do to have a lot more fun with your hobby and its on you and your community to have the best time you can.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Closet Skeleton

[phandaal]

When you play in the shallow end of the pool everyone looks like they can swim.  For casual play balance is not really an issue but the game would be better with better balance.  Once you are dealing with experienced generals with sharpened lists the balance issues are far more obvious. My local meta is lousy with Admech, Drukari, and Orks piloted by storied generals.  I know the balance problems are real. Should my experience be discounted because your local is different? Why do you care if broken armies you never face are brought in line?

 

GW needs to tone down their juvenile rules writing for sure. So much recent stuff comes off like children on a playground trying to one-up each other.

 

OP does not seem to be saying that is not the case. They are talking about the casual meta, where it really is better because people are not bringing their deadliest lists each time.

 

I feel your pain though. In my local scene there are many friendly local game stores. One of them had a "beginner 40k league."

 

Turns out people who had been playing 40k for many years brought their "beginner" lists and annihilated the actual noobs. Pretty soon it was nobody but the WAAC crowd attending this league. People did not make a stink about it... they just stopped showing up to those games.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

I dropped out of a casual escalation league for a similar reason -- one guy brought an absolute monster of a FW Custodes list at...1500 points, I think?...and killed my entire CSM army save the HQs and one squad of Havocs before I ever got to take a turn.

 

Sometimes armies are unbalanced, yes. Sometimes players are jerks.

[MegaVolt87]

Yeah, its more of a community issue I believe. No wargame is perfect, its down to how noobs are catered for. Some in the group will always be knives out (like IFF's Custodes opponent), others may make allowances and tone it down/ mentor the new players. It also doesn't help many armies do weirdo skew lists below 2k points- even weaker ones. I have a large CSM collection and been in the game since 3rd ed. I could be technically unstoppable with a weaker book against new players without much effort. It would only even up at 2k points, but as pandaal says, new guys are long gone by then to repay the favour because of my shenanigans. 

Edited November 1, 2021 by MegaVolt87

[jarms48]

DE, Orks, and Ad-Mech definitely need some meaningful nerfs. Sisters and GK need to be monitored, and only might need some point adjustments. 

Edited November 2, 2021 by jarms48

[MegaVolt87]

DE, Orks, and Ad-Mech definitely need some meaningful nerfs. Sisters and GK need to be monitored, and only might need some point adjustments. 

 

The imbalance/creep is more pronounced due to staggered codex releases. Ideally, every codex should have been released in the first year of 9th ed. GW's traditional release structure just isn't cutting it. The pandemic only made this more apparent with delays. Upcoming Nids, Tau and custodes will reign it in better maybe. Perhaps the answer is fast and hard nerfs + points increases that are then wound back as more armies get a 9th ed book. 

[Xenith]

 

 

One of the things I've often thought is that casual play and competitive should have different rules. 

 

 

They do - matched is competitive while Open and Narrative are for casual games. Switching to PL changes up a hell of a lot in terms of strength, where suddenly CSM and Nids are on top despite old codexes. 

 

[Orange Knight]

It's only bad because of the gradual codex roll-out.

 

Half of the armies are using rules from the last edition, and even factions like Space Marines are only partly updated, with Chapters like Black Templars enjoying a powerful 9th edition supplement, whilst Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and Ultramarines are at the bottom of the barrel with their underwhelming or nerfed supplements from 8th.

[Xenith]

It's only bad because of the gradual codex roll-out. writing

 

 

Even if they released all at the same time, they would onloy work on them one at a time, meaning naturally that the later codexes would be more developed for the newer edition as time went on. 

 

The other side, is the potntial that they write earlier released codexes to fit in with 8th ed codexes, so are a bit weaker. If they wrote all before release with 9th in mind, then released all at once, then this would get around things. But people would buy fewer codexes. 

[phandaal]

It's only bad because of the gradual codex roll-out.

 

Half of the armies are using rules from the last edition, and even factions like Space Marines are only partly updated, with Chapters like Black Templars enjoying a powerful 9th edition supplement, whilst Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and Ultramarines are at the bottom of the barrel with their underwhelming or nerfed supplements from 8th.

It is more than just the gradual rollout making some armies stand far above the others.

 

GW errs on the side of "what sounds awesome for this army?" Like if you asked your little cousin to come up with army rules and just printed whatever they came up with.

 

We end up with some armies rising to the top in broken ways like Ork buggy spam, AdMech flyers, or Dark Eldar just playing a better version of 40k.

 

It is more of an issue in Matched Play or tournaments because people deliberately mine those broken rules to win. Thanks to your little cousin giving their favorite units a bazillion mortal wound attacks and they move soooo fast and-- you get outcomes like major tournament championships being over in 1 or 0.5 rounds.

 

Casual play is different because people either do not bring those lists, or if they do bring those lists they end up losing their opponents.

Edited November 2, 2021 by phandaal

[Malios]

I've been in and out of 40k for multiple editions across several decades, so I'm pretty confident in saying this: 40k and most other GW games are extremely unbalanced. Codex creep has always been a thing. Min-maxing broken or cost efficient units has always been a thing. New models being more powerful to push their sales isn't new either. 40k was always supposed to be a fun game to push sales, not a fair one: alot of hobbyists forget that.

 

But, this unbalance isn't new: 40k has always been unbalanced. It's the price of GW being a miniatures company who tacks on a game to sell their miniatures rather then a gaming company who uses miniatures to sell their game. The real crime is paying so much for the rules to play 40k and relying on third parties like ITC to try and "balance" the game when other companies with modern, intuitive rulesets do it for free, or at highly affordable rates.

 

You don't realise the unbalance and flaws in game design as much until you play other gaming systems and see other ideas in this hobby. It's why I laugh when people talk about 40k competitively (but respectfully refrain from commenting 90% of the time): if you really want a more balanced or more competitive experience, try Kings of War, Bolt Action or Infinity instead.

Edited November 2, 2021 by Malios

[Tawnis]

 

 

 

One of the things I've often thought is that casual play and competitive should have different rules. 

 

 

They do - matched is competitive while Open and Narrative are for casual games. Switching to PL changes up a hell of a lot in terms of strength, where suddenly CSM and Nids are on top despite old codexes. 

 

 

True, but it seems more of a guideline than a rule. I really like playing with PL over points, but it seems like even most casual players (at least in my local meta) don't. Even then, I think the difference could be more, though it is certainly going in the right direction. 

[tychobi]

It falls to us players to make uneven games fun and compelling. Good sportsmanship, guidance, focus on narrative, and friendship all can take the sting out of the realization that your chances were slim to begin with. We should foster those intangibles in competative play. I would hope they are the focus and point of casual play.

 

Balance issues stand in the way of what makes warhammer fun. It could be better if it were better balanced.