Warhammer 40,000 Propaganda Data Slate: Balance – The Beginning

Swapping Soup above there for the word Allies still comes out to the same effect. Some armies are built simply by cherry picking the best units from each faction to create overly powerful and unthematic armies. The choice of word you prefer is irrelevant to the intent of the design. This also hammers home that there is the desire to see fluffy themed armies, yet currently there is little in the way of incentive or reward for doing so, at least in gameplay terms.

“But Chef”, I hear you typing away, “That’s just how it is now, get with the times.”

And yes, perhaps I should catch up with the game. It’s moved on, list building and what works is different now. However, consider how having the ability to take Allies can actually remove or at least mitigate the main army’s weaknesses. Now I am not saying this is a bad thing, if anything it’s a great choice to shore up weaknesses in your arm. It’s the sign of a good general and well built list. However when compared to an Army that doesn’t have access to Allies, they will generally be at a disadvantage, and there is no downside for the Ally using army.

To use Age of Sigmar as an example of, in my opinion a better designed way of running Allies, is to have limitations and restrictions. In AoS, only 20% of the army can be used as Allies, i.e not from your General’s Army. These Allies gain ​zero ​benefits for being such, other than the units themselves being present in an army. Anything over 20% and your Army loses all its unique traits, abilities etc in exchange for the Grand Alliance abilities, which usually means sacrificing at least 2 or 3 powerful army traits for a much less potent generic one. You have the advantage of being able to mix and match across all the units from your Alliance, but at a significant cost. ​That​ is a balancing factor, the exchange that needs to be made for the promise of power.

Imagine Lawrence’s Top 3 Warhammer Grand Final Army with this system. He would either need to drastically reduce the amount of non-Craftworld units in his army in order to meet the 20% restriction, and those would give no benefits (so no Thirst For Power on those units, and no Agents of Vect, for example). Conversely, he could have run his army as it was, but instead of his differing factions having their unique rules and all the other things they bring, there was instead just a generic Aeldari Trait, such as +1” of Movement and +1 Ld. For taking those strong units, he has to use the units as they are with only minor advantages, over the stronger, more focused traits of a “pure” army.

Fixing Points Sometimes Misses The Point

Another thing to consider in the act of balancing is ​how t​hat is achieved, and points have been a key one in this edition of 40k. Points have been part of Warhammer pretty much since its inception. It is a way to control and limit what you can take. Points assign worth and value to units, based on various differing things such as damage output, survivability, effects they can bring to the battle, and so on. The points system is not perfect of course, as there is so much it needs to consider and do, again due to the vastness of the game. It is required to account for all of those things in the game, whilst remaining reasonably fair.

When you add in force multipliers however, the waters get muddied. You could go on theoretically forever. Close Combat focused Space Marine units should be worth less in Ultramarine armies as they don’t benefit from their Chapter Tactic as much as ones with more potent Shooting attacks. Shooting based Marines are worth less to Black Templars, and Raven Guard increases all Marines points, but then they’re all worth less as there’s no Captain to buff them… it would get convoluted to the point of absurdity extremely quickly, were one to break down armies into differing points, based on their sub-faction choice. Stratagem use, how many CPs you have to use those Stratagems, what Allies can do for them, and so on, would be too much to take into consideration.

So points as a balance factor is important, and what GW are doing is both very good and efficient, as it allows quite comprehensive and sweeping changes to many units. However, it doesn’t look at some of these more detailed nuances of game balance, namely stats, synergies, CP access, what Allies can bring, buffs given, traits being used, weapon effectiveness, etc.

If You Fix It, They Will Come

So whilst we await FAQs, army updates, or other tweaks to the system, what can we do to resolve some of these issues? One of the things that would certainly make a difference, at least in competitive events, is a more cohesive format, and one that looks at comping or restricting some of the offending elements.

Comp or restrictions have been a thing in competitive Warhammer games and events, as well as other far bigger games, for many years, yet if you were to raise it in a discussion now, it can be an issue for some people. An event with restrictions is sometimes derided as “It’s not a real game of 40k”, the players should “learn to adapt” and “git gud”, and some are even told “pft, bet you wouldn’t have won if other people could take a proper army.”

Which leads me to a potential fix.

A way to really focus on game balance from the top down would be a “4th Way to Play”, namely “Competition Play”. A universal set of tournament rules, devised by GW (so there is no question on it being the ‘correct’ way to play), but one based on monofaction armies with list building restrictions. This would initially be quite tough for some armies in this version of play, as the inherently stronger dexes will of course have a large dominance, but this can easily be switched to a good thing, as it will only highlight the issues in game balance between these armies in a much greater scope than the current system. As single codexes become more balanced against each other, this will trickle down to other formats of play. It is less of an issue in more Narrative and Open Play, as imbalances can be adjusted within play groups, or even as part of the whole point, such as last stands against overwhelming odds that have been part of the game since day one.

Surely all players, casual or competitive, would rather play a balanced game, or at least one that is attempting to reach that. A game where the better generals rise to the top.

Now, true balance is going to be incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible to achieve in a behemoth of a game such as 40k. There’s a phenomenal amount of stuff going on. The game is constantly being added to and evolving, which is no bad thing. So whilst it is a distant goal, it should certainly be strived for, and that is what I believe GW are genuinely trying to do. But given GW’s desire to touch base with the fans and players even more, only by giving them constructive feedback can we help them shape the game for the better.

Editor’s Note: Why not get involved and give Games Workshop the feedback on how you see the game being played? You can take part in Games Workshop’s latest Big Community Survey here: GW’s Big Community Survey 2019 – Spider

*​Yes, Soup actually means multiple armies in the same detachment and what I’m talking about is Allies, but that didn’t stop everyone referring to the Big Super Formations of 7th as Decurions, so its Soup and you can’t change my mind!

If you have a list with some unique tactics, a Tactica or hobby article that you feel would make an interesting read, or maybe you just want to give Chef a topic to rant about? Send it in to thepastrychef@tabletoptactics.tv and you might see your topic discussed in a future article!