Faction balancing idea: variable command points

[hivefleetkerrigan]

One idea I've had since I started playing multiplayer gwent is to use a variable number of command points based upon your faction to help balance the relative power of the factions.

For those not familiar with gwent, you gain a bonus amount of points to spend on your deck based upon a leader ability chosen. Stronger leader abilities give you less points. This allows the designers to balance leaders by increasing or decreasing the points awarded and allows for surgical adjustments rather than outright crippling nerfs to a given leader.

The same could apply to 40k. Let's say nids are not doing well: they could be given 5cp for being battleforged instead of 3cp. If a specific marine faction is doing too well, they would be given less cp.

Note: this type of balancing could also be based on the needs of the factions as well. GSC need more cp, so they could be given more cp as a base value for having a battleforged army as a faction instead of having to take 3 battalions to scrape by.

All factions would still receive the same amount of CP per detachment.

[yoritomo]

I don't think that changing the command points for detachments is the way to go. I think if you were to use command point as a balance then each army would get a set amount just for showing up. So if I play tyranids I'd get 5 command points plus what my detachments give me. If I play marines I'd get 2 command points plus what my detachments give me. This way it help out more in the lower point games where things can get really unbalanced really quickly, but is less of a benefit in larger games where you already have more options.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

May 24, 2020 18:04:50 GMT yoritomo said:

I don't think that changing the command points for detachments is the way to go. I think if you were to use command point as a balance then each army would get a set amount just for showing up. So if I play tyranids I'd get 5 command points plus what my detachments give me. If I play marines I'd get 2 command points plus what my detachments give me. This way it help out more in the lower point games where things can get really unbalanced really quickly, but is less of a benefit in larger games where you already have more options.

Agreed! That's what I was meaning. Edited my original post for clarity.

[dranzyl]

GW seems to be going in another direction with this (more cp for everyone). Some problems i see with varying cp per faction aproach are:

What happens with multiple faction armies (soup)

It is too meta depended and will always lag behind releases (imagine numarines just released dominating everything and they also get cp bonuses because they sucked before)

It will likely lead to bad feelings all around. Accusations of ez mode, official inferior factions, its an admitance of the designers that they cant fix the game.

I think generaly it would help you win more games but not enjoy them more.

[xsquidz]

The problem with the same for everyone is that hopefully you can still get more by taking a battalion after that, but it might actually just cost you CP to take a spearhead while a brigade might be free, they said taking detachements costs CP.

This hurts armies like GSC bad that NEED tons of CP, say everyone starts at 20, then taking a battalion costs 3 CP, then down to 17, which is less then now by 1 and then you still need to spend a bunch pre-game. In that case GSC has about the same BUT if custodes now start with 20... and take say 3 vanguard and each of those cost 3 CP, they end up with 11.

Now that I write it out, maybe it will work better then it sounds, who knows! We will have to see but I am very worried that GSC aren't going to have enough CP to function competitively but they also might re-balance some of the CP costs, hopefully. PA should not be 3 CP.

[yoritomo]

I think this idea has merit, but as others have pointed out I don't think GW is likely to do it.


What I would really like to see is custom detachments for each army. They used to do it with the old formations, but because they used special rules instead of command points it was broken as hell. Imagine if tyranids had a horde detachment where we could take 10 troop choices.

[kazetanade]

May 25, 2020 14:54:15 GMT xsquidz said:

The problem with the same for everyone is that hopefully you can still get more by taking a battalion after that, but it might actually just cost you CP to take a spearhead while a brigade might be free, they said taking detachements costs CP.

This hurts armies like GSC bad that NEED tons of CP, say everyone starts at 20, then taking a battalion costs 3 CP, then down to 17, which is less then now by 1 and then you still need to spend a bunch pre-game. In that case GSC has about the same BUT if custodes now start with 20... and take say 3 vanguard and each of those cost 3 CP, they end up with 11.

Now that I write it out, maybe it will work better then it sounds, who knows! We will have to see but I am very worried that GSC aren't going to have enough CP to function competitively but they also might re-balance some of the CP costs, hopefully. PA should not be 3 CP.

If I heard right, it's like this:

Everyone starts with x(lets say 20). To unlock a 2nd Codex for soup, you need to pay x-y (let's say 2cp to open it) for a detachment from another faction book. So you'd have 18 CP to start with, but access to IG and Sisters (for eg). This is to promote mono-armies and discourage souping. 

I like the general idea of it, although I am a little sad about this (a fair number of army concepts traded raw power for CP; starting with set CP for everyone means no one has incentive to build balanced lists anymore just bring all the strongest toys from a mono faction and play with the full set of toys). On one hand we'll see extremely streamlined lists soon, and the strategies for dealing with a codex will really boil down to how they take advantage of their strategems and how to handle it. On the other hand, some of this things get super oppressive with free and easy access to a lot of CP. 

There's a lot of ways this could shake out so let's wait and see. I think for the game in general it bodes decently well. 

[dranzyl]

Hmm perhaps what they will do is give more cps but with more stringent requirements to avoid really unballanced lists.

I liked the unique 'battalions' some factions got (namely dark eldar). With the right restrictions i.e. not straight up buffs they can be really fluffy and interesting.