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Post by glassiya on Oct 29, 2013 17:05:08 GMT
In tournaments you need rules that are good against most anything, not units that depends on matchups and other units to be viable. Then I guess all this time you've been playing the wrong army. You want guys who do anyting - you run draigopals. |
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Post by WestRider on Oct 29, 2013 19:06:30 GMT
Things like 'inter-unit synergy' (other word for dependability) and 'highly specialized' doesn't sound good at all. In tournaments you need rules that are good against most anything, not units that depends on matchups and other units to be viable. I tend to respectfully disagree (purely personal opinion as a game designer). Having a roster full of well rounded units means that all tactics homogenize into a single blob, and there's little evolution of play. The game gets stagnant because everyone adapts to the same meta, because the meta is filled with units that can do a little of everything. If you have a diverse roster of units with a defined role (and those roles need to have a realistic presence in the game), you'll have a more dynamic play arena. People will bring different lists, and the meta will need to adjust to meet the advantages that such lists bring. It requires more player engagement and, thus, keeps things interesting. If I could put together one competitive list that covered all bases equally well, what motivation do I have to try different lists or tactics? If they all "good against most anything" wouldn't that just get boring after a while? Legitimate questions. I'm actually curious about the thoughts behind all this. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards Specialized Units encourage a meta full of extreme builds. If everyone's solutions for each type of target are discrete, it's much easier for, say, Mech Armies to take out the Anti-Tank quickly, or Hordes to drop the Anti-Infantry solutions. Then they can just stomp the rest of the opposing Army at will. Makes for very boring Games that tend to be effectively over by Turn 2 or so. Except for the times when they run into someone who's bringing enough of their particular counter that it can't be quickly taken out, in which case it becomes a boring rout in the other direction. But that hard counter Army is going to get stomped by pretty much else. Basically it turns the game into Rock/Paper/Scissors, with most Games being determined by the Army Lists that are matched up, rather than what's actually done on the table. |
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Post by greyseer on Oct 29, 2013 19:18:47 GMT
Specialized Units encourage a meta full of extreme builds. If everyone's solutions for each type of target are discrete, it's much easier for, say, Mech Armies to take out the Anti-Tank quickly, or Hordes to drop the Anti-Infantry solutions. Then they can just stomp the rest of the opposing Army at will. Makes for very boring Games that tend to be effectively over by Turn 2 or so. Except for the times when they run into someone who's bringing enough of their particular counter that it can't be quickly taken out, in which case it becomes a boring rout in the other direction. But that hard counter Army is going to get stomped by pretty much else. Basically it turns the game into Rock/Paper/Scissors, with most Games being determined by the Army Lists that are matched up, rather than what's actually done on the table. But isn't that just bad list design? I mean, I'm not gonna build a 100% anti-flyer list and expect to do well against lists with no flyers. That seems short sighted. Same for anti-tank, infantry, MC's, etc. I WOULD build a list that has a few counters to a each of those, and possibly tweak to suite my opponents as necessary. That's part of the fun for me: figuring which units can work against my opponent and which need to sit out the battle. It's part of why Magic: the Gathering allows for the Sideboard. I guess my ultimate point is, the list should be generalized against as much as possible, but the units within the list can be specialized to a role as long as that role has a place. Granted, for 40k I much prefer narrative play where game balance is largely irrelevant, so my view does tend to skew in that direction. I don't think the 300 Spartans brought the same amount of points to Thermopylae as the Persians, for example, but it still was an epic battle. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards |
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Post by WestRider on Oct 29, 2013 19:31:06 GMT
In competitive 40K, you don't get to sideboard, as a general thing. You need to make it through all 3-8 Games of the Tournament with just the one List, and no sure pre-knowledge of what your Opponents are going to be bringing. And in a system that's full of specialized Units and hard counters, one of the best ways to do that is to skew hard in one direction or another and hope you don't run into your hard counter.
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Post by greyseer on Oct 29, 2013 20:16:55 GMT
In competitive 40K, you don't get to sideboard, as a general thing. You need to make it through all 3-8 Games of the Tournament with just the one List, and no sure pre-knowledge of what your Opponents are going to be bringing. And in a system that's full of specialized Units and hard counters, one of the best ways to do that is to skew hard in one direction or another and hope you don't run into your hard counter. I see. So do hard counters exist because of the way the units are designed? Or because of the rules in the current edition? Or is it a mixture of both? I design games that aren't meant to be played uber-competitively. I prefer to encourage creative approaches to solutions (if you're familiar with MtG psychographics, I'd be a "Johnny"), so having a variety of tools at my disposal has been my mentality for a while. With regards to the Tyranid codex, I'm personally getting tired of fielding Flyrants and Tervs to be even casually competitive within my local meta, so the idea of units working together more effectively to shore up the tactical deficiencies excites me. It gives me more reason to field a wider variety of units. But its difficult for me to see it from a tourney perspective. Hence my questions. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards |
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Post by leeroy1986 on Oct 29, 2013 21:26:45 GMT
Queue Dark Eldar lol
Take Eldar for instance good eldar players take Eldar bikes with Warlocks to give them the +1 cover save which in turn gives them a 2+ turbo boost save. Sprinkle in a bit of fortune and you get a 2+ re-rollable save. Because of how far Eldar bikes can move no flamers should be able to get anywhere near you. Lets not forget all their shots are twin-linked rending too, for a troops choice that is downright ridiculous......have an army of these with the Unkillable Biketarch and Crimson Hunters, you're pretty much set for the next few years in this edition of competitive gaming.
To me that is a mixture of both.
Overpowered codex design & silly BRB rules.
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Post by WestRider on Oct 29, 2013 22:21:08 GMT
In competitive 40K, you don't get to sideboard, as a general thing. You need to make it through all 3-8 Games of the Tournament with just the one List, and no sure pre-knowledge of what your Opponents are going to be bringing. And in a system that's full of specialized Units and hard counters, one of the best ways to do that is to skew hard in one direction or another and hope you don't run into your hard counter. I see. So do hard counters exist because of the way the units are designed? Or because of the rules in the current edition? Or is it a mixture of both? I design games that aren't meant to be played uber-competitively. I prefer to encourage creative approaches to solutions (if you're familiar with MtG psychographics, I'd be a "Johnny"), so having a variety of tools at my disposal has been my mentality for a while. With regards to the Tyranid codex, I'm personally getting tired of fielding Flyrants and Tervs to be even casually competitive within my local meta, so the idea of units working together more effectively to shore up the tactical deficiencies excites me. It gives me more reason to field a wider variety of units. But its difficult for me to see it from a tourney perspective. Hence my questions. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards To a certain extent, the phenomenon can be mitigated by changes in the general rules (like when Infantry were made into much greater threats to vehicles by the changes in the Vehicle Assault Rules in 5th and then again in 6th), but in large part, it's a matter of Unit design and distribution. To oversimplify, let's say you have to worry about 3 things: Anti-Infantry, Anti-Vehicle, and Anti-Flyer. And that the Unit Design has been toward Specialized Units, so that anything that's good at any one of those is bad to mediocre at the other two. In this case, skewing your Army hard toward one of the three elements allows you to essentially ignore 2/3 of a balanced Army, and focus on pounding the 1/3 that can actually hurt you. Because of a number of factors*, actual hitting power in and uneven situation in 40K is very roughly equivalent to the squares of the differences in points value. So matching your entire Army against a third of an Opponent's gives you something like a 9:1 advantage in actual effectiveness, letting you quickly wipe the real threats with only minor damage in return, and then mopping everything else up. If, on the other hand, the Unit Design is done such that most Units are at least solid at at least two of the three roles, and there are perhaps some that are decent, but not great, at all three, a balanced list ends up falling out so that, say 2/3 of it is solid Anti-Infantry, 2/3 of it is solid Anti-Tank, and 2/3 of it is solid Anti-Flyer. Now a list that's skewed hard in one direction is only ignoring a third of the enemy force instead of two thirds, and is thus only fighting at something like a 2.25:1 advantage, while still being just as vulnerable to a Hard Counter list as before. Furthermore, hard counter lists are more viable, since they no longer have to sacrifice all their capabilities in the other two areas to be able to devastate in the third. This leaves out a huge number of factors, like Holding Objectives, but it fits with both my own observations and those I've seen other experienced players make. A note: I haven't played M:tG for years, but I have noticed that many people coming into 40K from M:tG have some difficulty adapting, because the rules design is so much sloppier in 40K, leading to a lot of phenomena that seem like poor list-building choices, but are actually rational responses to poor game design choices. 40K is also weird in part because the overall rules are updated at a different rate than the rules for individual armies, and the edition changes are paradigm-shifting, rather than just refining. *Seriously, there's an entire essay I could go into about this. I actually did, years ago, but I can't find it anymore. |
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Post by gigasnail on Oct 29, 2013 22:37:57 GMT
yeahhhh there is no comparing MtG's rules to GW's frankenstein hodge-podge of (please do not swear). it is what it is, and we enjoy our plastic crack in spite of it.
mostly.
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Post by Raven on Oct 30, 2013 0:05:24 GMT
On the bright side, 40k has better balance and less money-grabbing than Yu-Gi-Oh did before I quit the game, so it's not the worst thing out there... still shoddier rules writing though.
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Post by infornography on Oct 30, 2013 0:37:13 GMT
A couple points. You could have a carnifex, that carnifex is a diverse platform that can be designed to do a number of different things very well. Each at the cost of potency against something else it could do well. For example, you could have a biomorph that gave it skyfire. That would make it's shooting less useful against ground targets, or you could give it a biomorph for interceptor which wouldn't come with skyfire but would make it harder to sneak up on and able to remove problem units that drop in within range. Or you could give that carnifex melee oriented biomorphs that would allow it to mulch problems in close combat.
The carnifex is not a "highly specialized" unit, but it has some biomorphs that could alter it's role.
Alternatively you have the pyrovore. The pyrovore has no biomorphs, it is just a heavy flamer on a fragile platform with stupid rules. The pyrovore is a highly specialized unit. Units that rely solely on a single role often get beaten out by more diverse platforms that are capable of filling that role and often one or two others by using careful selection of biomorphs to customize their role. For example, no matter what arms you put on a carnifex or what head, it will always be effective in melee against vehicles or slow acting elite infantry.
Synergy could mean dependency, and at the most competitive levels will always mean that, but if designed well a fluffy synergistic army played well, could significantly outperform a fluffy non-synergistic army played well because force multipliers are awesome. At the most competitive levels however, if the codex is not balanced to consider how well it can perform at it's very best, it will run away with win after win making a lot of people unhappy. The codex has to be balanced so that an army maximally utilizing it's synergies is not significantly better than a non-synergistic army using it's best units. At that point in order to compete in a highly competitive environment you are forced to use the synergies to maximum effect in order to compete and they become dependencies.
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Post by brassangel on Oct 30, 2013 2:10:43 GMT
One of the few imbalances in 6th edition has nothing to do with the rules or codices at all. It's the fact that people still play with terrain like we are in 4th or 5th edition. Those old plastic trees and small footprint ruins were fine in 4th when a Dreadnought was the tallest model in the game. 1 square of terrain in each quarter of the board was fine in 5th when every army zoomed around in tanks and needed roads.
Some of the latest models are 6-8 inches, or taller; there are flyers on tall stands; objectives are more important (thus requiring a larger variety of units), yet people are still playing on the same, low-profile pieces of terrain and using far too little of it. I can't count how many tournament organizers I've seen set tables up this way; let alone the number of internet battle reports that are still just a green board with 1 block of terrain in each quarter of the table.
If people used tighter terrain that offered a wider range of heights (see the inside of a GW Battle Bunker, for example, or a White Dwarf report), a lot of armies would be able to utilize mobility and close combat more effectively.
Currently, Eldar and Tau (together), as well as Chaos Space Marines are shooting their way to victory across tournaments because they can just sit back and shoot another army to pieces. If we thought more like Cityfight instead of marsh flats we'd probably see a less shooter-dominant game.
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Post by Raven on Oct 30, 2013 2:17:21 GMT
Specialisation isn't necessarily a bad thing, some of our best units are specialised, they just don't need to be so overspecialised it's crippling (Which is the biggest issue with the Pyrovore).
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Post by j0rdan on Oct 30, 2013 13:17:02 GMT
With regards to the Tyranid codex, I'm personally getting tired of fielding Flyrants and Tervs to be even casually competitive within my local meta, so the idea of units working together more effectively to shore up the tactical deficiencies excites me. It gives me more reason to field a wider variety of units. But its difficult for me to see it from a tourney perspective. Hence my questions. I think the issue here is that those are just about the ONLY TWO (Flyrant and Terv) generally good units in a codex ALREADY FILLED with over-specialized units*. If we had more "generally effective" units, perhaps there'd be more room to go back and use said specialized units. *Arguments could be made for a few others, namely gants and Zoeys, but I think my point remains. Both need the rest of the list to be as good as we currently think of them, Flyrants and Tervs don't. |
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Post by Raven on Oct 30, 2013 15:34:31 GMT
More rumours inbound:
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Post by greyseer on Oct 30, 2013 16:28:39 GMT
I love my Zoeys, and I hope these are accurate, because I really don't like the finecast models. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards |
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