Horus Heresy 2nd Ed HH design changes

[TheTrans]

2 hours ago, WolfLogic said:

Do you and your group embrace the WAAC mindset? My local group is around 20 or so people and they all play different armies and styles, and we all communicate what kind of game we want to play and someone who wants something similar agrees to play them. I've played literally 1 game with both of my Scorpius' and 3x contemptors and that was a game where the other guy wanted his opponent to bring the strongest list they could. It's fairly easy IMO to lean away from having these problems if you actually want to

I honestly don't get why people give the game designers a pass with this sort of 'well its on the community'.

If the game actually had better balance we wouldn't have to go into these circle jerks of rules vs waacers or whatever. There will always be people that take stronger stuff vs weaker stuff.

 

But like, how in gods name would say a 'middle of the pack' Solar Aux army (so not just full heavy slots with vanquishers and rapiers) against a 'middle of the pack' Legiones Astartes list (some tacs, some elites, a couple of contemptors etc) ever compete. The LA army, will just stomp all over it as it has all the tools available to it, while the SA list is such a vestigial little list it can't reply to many of the threats that the other reasonable army has. This has nothing to do with community imbalance, unless either the LA player really handicaps himself, or the SA player leans into only the best units, the power skew is pretty off the charts.. this is a design/balance issue and honestly can't be put back on the community. 

I have a mate who has a large resin solar aux army, loves them to bits, he knows the rules well, uses cool and cooky :cuss:, and had a decent 50% win rate back in the day and he loved every second of it. In this new edition he has lost every, single game when using Solar Aux, and while he is the most 30k-positive dude in the world, I honestly can see some cracks starting to appear, there isn't anything fun about, even if you play your absolute best game, with good dice, you'll still get curb stomped by someone just kind of 'playing' the game with their LA army. 

So in short, while the 'get better friends' is a great strawman argument for the imbalances of the game, the core issue is a :cuss: set of rules and terrible, almost malicious balance decisions from these 'game designers' and no amount of 'good dude-edness' will remedy them. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

2 hours ago, TheTrans said:

I honestly don't get why people give the game designers a pass with this sort of 'well its on the community'.

If the game actually had better balance we wouldn't have to go into these circle jerks of rules vs waacers or whatever. There will always be people that take stronger stuff vs weaker stuff.

 

But like, how in gods name would say a 'middle of the pack' Solar Aux army (so not just full heavy slots with vanquishers and rapiers) against a 'middle of the pack' Legiones Astartes list (some tacs, some elites, a couple of contemptors etc) ever compete. The LA army, will just stomp all over it as it has all the tools available to it, while the SA list is such a vestigial little list it can't reply to many of the threats that the other reasonable army has. This has nothing to do with community imbalance, unless either the LA player really handicaps himself, or the SA player leans into only the best units, the power skew is pretty off the charts.. this is a design/balance issue and honestly can't be put back on the community. 

I have a mate who has a large resin solar aux army, loves them to bits, he knows the rules well, uses cool and cooky :cuss:, and had a decent 50% win rate back in the day and he loved every second of it. In this new edition he has lost every, single game when using Solar Aux, and while he is the most 30k-positive dude in the world, I honestly can see some cracks starting to appear, there isn't anything fun about, even if you play your absolute best game, with good dice, you'll still get curb stomped by someone just kind of 'playing' the game with their LA army. 

So in short, while the 'get better friends' is a great strawman argument for the imbalances of the game, the core issue is a set of rules and terrible, almost malicious balance decisions from these 'game designers' and no amount of 'good dude-edness' will remedy them. 

 

Hey, its definitely on your friend. 

 

Didn't he know when Tempest came out 9 years ago that the army wasn't actually meant to be in line with every guard style list that had come out during the times? No, Alan Bligh made an obvious error in how mass humans should play, and so did your friend for being dumb enough to be drawn in by those play styles. Everyone knows that humans only serve as punching bags for marines, so the players should have a similar dynamic and just spend hundreds and hundreds (or thousands, for the resins) of dollars for the privilege of losing 7 years after Bligh's misleading attempts were corrected. 

[Valkyrion]

The lack of updates is also poor considering the main thing is already out.  

By that I mean, there's no Codex Sons of Horus or Codex Imperial Fists to change the balance of legion lists, there's just a smattering of new characters here and there, so LA and LH and everything therein is, more or less, immutable. 

If you have X (the Legions) that is set in stone, it should be easy to create Y (the other factions) in balance with it, because X isn't changing 18 times with new codex releases, which is part of the problem 40k has always had. There is no power creep in 30k if 18 factions are finished at the beginning, there's only deliberate choices to make the other factions over or underpowered compared to the legions. 

 

[MegaVolt87]

On 4/24/2024 at 7:48 AM, WolfLogic said:

Do you and your group embrace the WAAC mindset? My local group is around 20 or so people and they all play different armies and styles, and we all communicate what kind of game we want to play and someone who wants something similar agrees to play them. I've played literally 1 game with both of my Scorpius' and 3x contemptors and that was a game where the other guy wanted his opponent to bring the strongest list they could. It's fairly easy IMO to lean away from having these problems if you actually want to

 

Its not a WAAC mindset to avoid a problem and have a solution. My post you quoted was just a natural thought progression and action to take if you read/ play the ruleset long enough and the current HH product range offerings, what you end up with buying the starter box etc. You shouldn't apologise for building to your legions strengths, thats the point. Its very easy to make something pretty hard tuned unintentionally. While communication is important, its no substitute for a well designed ruleset. If I see an obvious puddle I can step around and avoid, I'm not going to splash through it getting wet, muddy and even more cold when the wind picks up. 

[Razorblade]

On 4/23/2024 at 11:48 PM, WolfLogic said:

Do you and your group embrace the WAAC mindset? My local group is around 20 or so people and they all play different armies and styles, and we all communicate what kind of game we want to play and someone who wants something similar agrees to play them. I've played literally 1 game with both of my Scorpius' and 3x contemptors and that was a game where the other guy wanted his opponent to bring the strongest list they could. It's fairly easy IMO to lean away from having these problems if you actually want to

This is a terrible solution. 

First up, it requires for people to buy and paint far larger armies than they need with the price of the hobby that alone should be enough of an argument.

Second up, there is no good concensus on what constitutes a WaaC list.

3 Dreadnoughts and 2 Scorpii for example are pretty reasonable in a 3k game, or at least so I would think, but then again I've heard people cry and cuss about a single Scorpius whilst running a fullsize lascannon Squad themselves. 

And there are armies that simply cannot be run at certain power levels, forcing everyone else to ho out of their way to create a balanced game. Auxilia will always be to weak and Custodes will always be too good. 

Even if Lists are overall balanced that does not address :cuss:ty unfun gamedesign (Shooting in Reactions) so even those games will have plenty of feelbad moments.

 

[Valkyrion]

We never really liked restricting what people can take - it is their army, their fun, their money, their time etc, though we always discussed in advance if someone was taking a primarch or lord of war, but we house ruled that HSS must be bought in 5 or 10 man numbers and if bought in 10, must be 'combat squadded' to 2x5 man units without impacting on your FOC slots, and the sergeant's leadership was used for both squads.  We found it helped mitigate lascannon return fire and overwatch. 

 

We also made it so that dreadnoughts could only react to other dreadnoughts, vehicles with more than 5 HP and primarchs. Just a small change that made charging certain dreadnought builds more viable, and mitigating shooting with a vindicator, doing no damage, and have the dreadnought obliterate it with return fire.