Balancing Warhammer, and Why it's so Difficult

[@pancreasnowork9939]

Try Brilliant out now using brilliant.org/PancreasNoWork for a full 30 days free trial! The first 200 users get 20% off their annual plan!

[@OceanWilks]

nice video

[@mokeymokey1035]

Unrelated question: what microphone do you use?

[@nawrden]

A good saying. "Balance is boring, Fair is fun."

[@thejuiceking2219]

okay but seriously, i want a caiphas cain model

[@sheakennedy-ordway1156]

The king of Australia is canon in 40k. His name is Nate.

[@lucaballarati9694]

Glass cannons are always hard to balance because they either win fast or lose fast, and that means even the slightest advantage or disadvantage can rapidly decide the outcome of a fight. That's what in math is known as a Chaotic Attractor

[@LinkiePup]

Love my Guass

[@BrandonGiordano]

I'm personally usually very attracted to this playstyle because when you pull it off it feels like you had to earn it with skill. It's definitely hard to balance though

[@thejuiceking2219]

it also doesn't help in something like warhammer that's turn based, where you just have to kinda sit there and let your opponent do their thing

[@thesittingacheroraptor7565]

'CHAOTIC'? HERESYYYY!

[@sulphuric_glue4468]

Tbh the glass cannon does not gel terribly well with a turn based game in my opinion. A glass cannon relies on player skill to overcome its fragility, rewarding good positioning, technical knowledge and damage avoidance with superior power. This just doesn't gel with a game format where you are incapable of reacting to what your opponent is doing in real-time, especially one heavily dependent on dice rolls and random chance like Warhammer. While good positioning certainly plays a part, it usually leans more towards luck than skill, with the battle mostly being decided by your army composition and whoever is lucky enough to go first. The "skill" part mostly comes before the game has even begun. This is a serious problem with competitive Warhammer in general, particularly because army composition depends heavily on how much money you have available to spend on toy soldiers, but especially so for glass cannon type armies.

[@pancreasnowork9939]

The moral of this video is that I started rambling about balance and decided I would force those thoughts on all of you

[@davidmartin9225]

We all love your ramblings, please keep making more at your leisure sir.

[@Predator20357]

That’s why I’m here good sir, to hear a man’s thought on an Expensive Board Game Balance System

[@mattg6893]

This week I've been thinking about how balance is absolutely necessary for multiplayer games but it can ruin the experience of some single player games. You had good timing for this random rant.

[@BerserkerLuke]

​@mattg6893 Oh my God, this. It kills me when devs nerf something to hell in a single player game, especially something unique. There's no one to bother, just leave it be!

[@ordo_draigo_assault_ham]

The best systems lean into the creativity of players. It’s another good reason to give armies traits like speed based, melee focused and all that stuff. Give a lunatic a book of rules and watch the fun.

[@Necroxion]

3:15 fun fact: chess experts agree that chess is actually in favor of white, as white moves first and gets to dictate whether they play offensively or defensively while black has to respond

[@jamestipton7872]

Yeah, it’s like…..I think 52:48 in favor of white or something.

[@justinlast2lastharder749]

Depends on the individual. That advantage is turned into a disadvantage when you play against a "Counter Puncher"...it's even more of a disadvantage if the black player is crafty and understands the psychology of it. If you know your opponent playing white considers it an advantage and thinks they are dictating pace, you can use that against them

[@shinkiro403]

@justinlast2lastharder749 that still requires a skill advantage to exploit, if the players were more on the same level starting first is unilaterally advantageous

[@williamhaber7523]

The balanced solution there is to play multiple games, alternating white. Admittedly, that’s easier to do with a chess set than two armies and a play table

[@loklan1]

@@jamestipton7872 it's worse than that, it's 37% white wins, 27% black wins with the rest draws at high level play.

[@SomeoneYouDontKnowOfficial]

Warhammer balance is simple, just make every unit's point cost be equal to 10 times their weight in grams

[@mariojorge68]

Folks who still use the old metal dread: I'm never going to financially recover from this

[@mr.god.complex]

Metal model users are sweating rn

[@wolf2965]

Would the cost of Abaddon model include or exclude the arms using that balance method?

[@bestnameever1850]

necron models being 90 air: you fools are doomed

[@cccaaawww8685]

Catachans are .55 grams 🗣️🗣️🗣️

[@twicedeadmage]

Trying to homebrew changes in the name of balance with a group of friends a few years back just showed us how damn hard it really is.

[@ShadowFox178]

It's shockingly easy to break when you try to modify it too much. You make one character just a teensy bit more tanky and suddenly you just can't kill the bastard. Same goes for buffing speed. I recall some madness of Tyranids at one point being able to charge almost endlessly wiping an army gun line so damn fast. Can't recall if that was 5th ed but I think it was that or 6th.

[@twicedeadmage]

@@ShadowFox178 It was Deamons, instead of nerfing them we buffed everything else. It was terrible

[@Lunch_Meat]

Our gaming group got pretty good at making certain kinds of Homebrew rules but they required rules on top of rules or specific instances to make it work (so, for example, we each made our own special characters with special rules and stats but it had to work more like building a character in DnD where you only had so much wiggle room to go beyond the normal HQ unit stats. Or, you could buff or debuff certain units, but only during friendly campaign matches) Even then, it took us a year to really master it so that it was fair and balanced. It probably would have taken us even longer, but one of our older members was an engineer for the US air force who specialized in probability. It still resulted in some crazy issues (turns out giving 4th edition ork flash gitz even 1 extra points in ballistic skill and 2 extra for the nob created an absolute monster unit)

[@fuzzyhair321]

​@@Lunch_Meatyep it what makes them scary right now

[@DeafLord18]

Yeah it is. Ran a full year every weekend possible urban conquest event. The second you think of one tweak the exploit peaks around the damn corner.

[@maximilianmelanader6335]

Angronbeing banished by a random eldar middle manager is now canon.

[@consolescrub4031]

Considering the amount of times the Grey Knights have put him on respawn timer. I think old crystallising Eldrad could do it.

[@matthewmiller257]

Balancing a game is easy. If your opponent plays Bretonia, they automatically lose any other game they play. There, balanced.

[@battiger00568]

perfect, couldn't of said it better myself, you sir are a true genius

[@ivar3654]

This should be pinned,brilliant!

[@jkbscopes1233]

does that mean a bretonia v bretonia battle is a draw?

[@whitewall2253]

​@@jkbscopes1233 nope, both get marked down as a loss.

[@discountplaguedoctor88]

@@whitewall2253 Only for Bretonnia. It's a win-win for everyone else.

[@Rukdug]

Me watching an AoS game where Gotrek tables Archaon: "Thank Sigmar the Chaos player actually brought a high value target, otherwise Gotrek would just be an overpriced chaff chewer."

[@LollipopKnight2]

Another big factor in balance is balance across skill levels. Certain playstyles, like the hit-and-run of Pancreas's beloved Eldar, are always going to be more successful when both players are highly skilled than when both players are complete novices, since a good player gets a lot more out of movement tricks than someone who doesn't know how to avoid enemy fire, and so the army's weakness of relative frailty (which the novice will very frequently blunder into) will come up less frequently. So, do you balance for the pros? Then the new Eldar players will just get stomped. Do you balance for the novices? Then the top tables will be nothing but knife-ears flitting about. And while the latter might not bother our host much, it's probably not an ideal situation for GW, or most of the player base.

[@PauLtus_B]

I feel that is often forgotten. It's basically a trade off between reliability and potential. But even then that's assuming there's only one way to be a skilled player and not multiple potential ways to be good at a game.

[@merccc1]

Simple. Balance for the pro's. NEVER EVER balance for the lowest common denominators, the high end pros usually reveal the actual balance. Then, as GW, the company making the game. You should make solid quality sources online, with products like codex's and so on, that properly teach the novice's how to play that race and get the most out of them. That way you can make quality fun mechanics no matter what skill level and new players at least have a chance. The good players will still have advantage as they may be better at utilizing the strategies and recognizing when to do different things, but the novices will have a general right way to go about things until they master it. Instead they just get the details of the army and have to figure out how they play them completely from scratch... I mean, why is the rule book not filled with this for each faction included instead of an over abundance of lore that you could do in it's own book for the bulk of it. We only need a bit... This also would allow players to look into and understand their opponents general playstyle, but maybe not have all the specifics like the codex would have.

[@Dram1984]

I hate that we live in a world where there are “pro” 40k players.

[@LollipopKnight2]

@@Dram1984 That's valid, though at least it's a job that provides only very small value, rather than jobs that actively do harm to most people.

[@brandonlyon730]

0:27 then there was Brigitte who completely destroyed any balance Overwatch had left.

[@5n4k3d0rk]

I don't miss the stunlock days of OW...

[@justinlast2lastharder749]

You see, I avoided this by just not playing dumb Hero Shooters. Same problems pop up in every single one of them.

[@patrickiamonfire965]

@@5n4k3d0rk​​⁠​⁠though AOE is important in OW even if its stunlock. The game does make it clear which characters can stunlock and how long also these can be avoided. Basically like MOBAs bad decisions leads to disappointment. However there times when the devs did a bad job on balancing but knowing how toxic their workplace is and how normal devs are treated I’m just gonna hold the company accountable for it which they are cause they did enforce bad decisions too.

[@LexYeen]

Overwatch was balanced?

[@Xalerdane]

Whenever I try to imagine gameplay with fluff-accurate numbers I end up tormented with visions of one side fielding the kind of army that you’d normally see represented in a high points _Epic_ game, versus roughly one hundred Space Marines. You’d need to be suspended in the air from a harness just to be able to move your units around the giant table you’d have to play it on.

[@Lunch_Meat]

I can't remember which edition it was in, but at one point in time there were alternative white dwarf rules for "movie" Space Marines that was basically built specifically to feel more "lore accurate." Pretty sure it may have been the proto-kill team game, and it was awesome

[@kglguy]

4th edition epic tried doing more lore accurate marines. A marine army in thatcsystem wasn't that much bigger than a 40k army. You really felt like a single company of marines could take a whole city. A lot of marine fans complained that their faction didn't feel very epic, though.

[@megan00b8]

Lore accurate 40k be like My army: one random unnamed custodian. My opponent: 50000 guardsmen, 200 tanks, 300 artillery pieces, specialised squads, heavy equipment and weapon emplacements and an entire simulated command structure. At that point I may as well just download some mods into Rimworld or Skyrim (depending on which kind of autistic I feel like today) and experience my one guy without waiting a day for each turn to take place.

[@federationprime]

Part of it I think is the use of the D6 rather than a D10 for balancing. You can’t make a unit slightly tougher than another, you have to either make that infantry unit be as tough as a tank or add another layer of rules which make everything even more confusing. It’s paper spaghetti code.

[@ki3657]

You need to group into broader categories for d6. If you only had, i.e. 4 types of troops (light, medium, heavy, vehicles) the d6 pool works fine but it's just really abstract. 40k was built around much more specificity and unit identity. Really not the best combination.

[@theaveragegamer7221]

When everything is op nothing is

[@sophiequam4235]

The 2nd edition way of doing things

[@mrbigglezworth42]

Just so long as we never go back to 6-7th ed balance where the balance was "what was the newest thing GW released?" I tried playing Nids during that period just to see if I could win. It was possible, but nobody liked playing against 3 (minimum) flyrants and cheap chaff to hold objectives while they were unable to kill the flyrants.

[@johndunn1625]

I think one of my favorite things about GW balance (or lack thereof) was back in 8th them going "well of course we can't balance things before public release, our playtesters are only able to play a whopping 4 matches a week and don't believe in trying to stack buffs nor do they intimately understand whichever army they're playing" and not realizing that their incompetence was one of the biggest problems with their attempts at balancing armies

[@jamestipton7872]

Did they really only play four games a week?

[@johndunn1625]

@@jamestipton7872 I can't remember exactly how many they said the play testers would do, but I do know that the number was laughably low

[@justinlast2lastharder749]

It's insane to me that we are already on 10th Edition when 8 was only released in June 2017. By the time anyone other than KZbinrs and the few very rich players had even purchased all the Rule books, 9th Edition released.

[@eliconnon2778]

I feel like 40k is partly hamstrung by the sequential turns, as opposed the players taking turns to activate a single unit, just by the scale of the game. Letting one player activate 2000 points worth of models in seqeunce can lead to some really feelsbad moments, sorry your positioning was off, you have very little you can do as its my turn, say goodbye to half your army. This then only gets worse on player twos turn, if the first round was bad enough, it can be really hard to dig yourself out of that hole. Slightly besides the point but I do also find concurrent turns a lot more dynamic, i get to see what my opponent is doing and react to it a lot faster, and the opportunity cost for any activation vs another adds a fun element

[@minibotas9496]

Wait, I’ve been playing with a friend of mine in TTSimulator for a bit… and you’re telling me that I got the most basic rule wrong? We’ve been taking turns to activate one unit (plus *supporting* character, if any) at a time, no wonder I kept thinking to myself “how does one get tabled on round 1?”

[@eliconnon2778]

@@minibotas9496 yeah that's impressive, but if you do want a system that works like that and can use the same models, look up one page rules:grimdark future

[@thejuiceking2219]

my solution is give units d&d style initiative and reactions for initiative, each unit has a number from, say, 1 to 10, if your number is higher, you go first, so something like an eldar harlequin would have an initiative of 10 and be able to go first almost every time, while something like death guard or necrons would have an initiative of 1 and have to wait for everything else before they can act as for reactions, i'm not sure how that would work, maybe give them like a reaction roll, like say a harlequin during an opponent's movement phase can roll a die and on a 4+ they can move a certain distance or make an attack, or maybe allow them to suspend their current movement and wait until the opponents moving before making their decision

[@youwotboi9288]

The thumbnail made me imagine if GW decided that heavier models were more overpowered and now I'm thankful tha Warhammer is mostly a rules shitshow instead.

[@The_cestelin_Holland]

Ha

[@EgoEroTergum]

Lore IS gameplay; you're 100% right. Tom Francis, the guy who made Heat Signature, Gunpoint, and is working on Tactical Breach Wizards, made a video on game development where he went into how fundamental the imagined context is to the fun of a game. Without the story and fantasy; it's just poker without betting. A meaningless slog of statistical dice rolls. Even chess is a fantasy of knights and kings; imagine if the chess pieces were just named 1, 2, 3. Hell, even regular playing cards have diamonds, hearts, kings, queens, etc; even without deep lore (and there used to be; the face cards used to be named for specific mythological figures) it's still flavor at the very least.

[@Kroq-gar]

Kinda reminds me of Chaos actually. Whenever something is nice, something comes out of nowhere to give you the finger.

[@Bluecho4]

Some armies, like Tau or Knights, are just inherently skew lists. Either the matchup can beat them or it can't, there's little in between.

[@bokybok3558]

4:30 a triangle would've been better to show it, same layout with toughness top, speed bottom left strength bottom right and the closer you are to them the speedier, tougher or stronger it is. it adds a scale to it rather than specific categories, instead of "x army is fast and strong" it's "x army is fast and strong but can still hold a line" or "x army is fast and strong and will get absolutely shredded if a light breeze comes its way"

[@PhilosoShysGameChannel]

As of today... We are officially out of your content! XD We've been listening to them during rabbit cage cleaning days here on the farm. Amazing stuff to listen to with our brain while our body goes through the motions. Keep up the great work! Hope you have a great day!

[@cousinzeke4888]

The tournament turbo nerds don't have much room to bitch about balance in my eyes since they deliberately break anything they can in order to squeeze out any advantage they can. Not to mention that thanks to them people have forgotten that this is a toy soldier game, the rules are what we say they are. 2 examples. 1. The old bodyguard/line of sight thing. Everyone agreed that it was a broken, stupid interaction that shouldn't work that way but everyone kept doing it, and putting up with it, for months until daddy GW changed it. 2. I once saw someone online asking if they could put a certain relic on a certain character. He wasn't sure because the relic said it replaces an astartes chainsword, but the astartes character in question was equipped with a chainsword. If you need that degree of handholding no one can help you. Stop taking the toy soldier game so serious and most of its problems disappear.

[@nexuslord6831]

I see Pancreas is handling Dogehammer's victory well

[@therealfsh]

What bores me about warhammer, the total war warhammer games anyways, is that all the army comps start to feel the same with different models What is really the difference between a bunch of red guys really good at melee sprinting at the empire army thats 75% artillery and a bunch of green guys who are really good at melee sprinting at the dwarf army thats 75% artillery?

[@JetJaguarEnthusiast]

You can boil them all down to unit types, but that's how Total War games work in general. All melee units are melee units, and all artillery units are artillery, the difference is in how they function and what type of melee/artillery they are. You can expect "Red guys" (aka Khorne) to excel on the charge, not rely on any sort of magic, and to have high attack with lesser defense. You can expect "Green guys" (aka Greenskins) to have poor leadership, high numbers, and that's just infantry. There is a lot of variety with monstrous units, swarming with da waaagh, etc. You can play Greenskins and Khorne the exact same way, but it's not necessary or advisable, really. With the artillery it mostly just relies on the way the artillery shoots, but I'll be real with you I don't play Empire enough to really know any of their artillery except the Helstorm rockets. I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong, but I hope this can help you enjoy the game at least a little more. Ultimately it is a lot about aesthetics. Although I do love the druchii melee and ranged infantry play style, truly I play them because I am an edgelord who loves the evil elves.

[@siluda9255]

Volound has being calling that out for years

[@PhilosophicallyAmerican]

If you are playing all factions the exact same, that's on you.

[@therealfsh]

@@PhilosophicallyAmerican i dont, its just when the best army comp for khorne is 15 melee infantry units 2 cavalry units (possibly missile) 2 monsterous infantry units 1 giant guy And the greenskins its the same thing, but instead of army abilities you get "waaaagh" and some spells, its hard to see them as very different and entertaining factions

[@matt_9112]

That's just RTS natural limitations. SC has very different faction compositions, you get three factions, because otherwise balance would be a mess. AoEII has loads of factions but the tech tree is build around 90% same basic units, with upgrades and only some unique stuff making the difference (and still hard to balance).

[@daverage4729]

"But...but I should have won. Thats not fair! I never expected that!?!" "Yup! Thats 40k son....the real 'Game Of Life'.

[@azurewraith2585]

with the grain of salt that I'm someone who doesn't play the game but loves watching battle reports. The game's balance problem seems to come more from the way content is released than the actual rules. Unlike a videogame the rules of the game are a separate product from the game pieces themselves. Because of this gw is not incentivized to make fixes to the core mechanics because that devalues the rules product leaving most changes to only be in point values to the point of ad mech becoming a horde army. if revising stat sheets or adding new weird traits to units was normal within editions I think we would see an immediate improvement in the game's balance at least in terms of matchups being less predictable. instead of buffing the shooting power of an underperforming unit, give them something wacky that only works under certain circumstances

[@patrickprice6757]

love the video Pancreas NoWork could do video on cites of sigmar

[@charlesparr1611]

This should be required viewing for all gamers everywhere. Brilliant work my dude, brilliant work.

[@DustyLamp]

Tldr competitive warhammer is a meme because balancing is not priority 1-10 for this game, and the faster the community comes back around to that fact the healthier it will be.

[@vicentetemes5793]

This is why the Sons of Behemat is the peak of balance. No weapons, no hundred model types to individually tweak. There's six models total, and they all brought their favourite big stick.

[@steveseltz2798]

13:26 I heard him say simple and easy, and immediately thought "Those are the same thing," THEN PANCREAS, THROUGH TIME AND SPACE, KNEW I WAS THINKING THAT. My goodness

[@justinlast2lastharder749]

Simple and Easy aren't exactly the same thing. Flat Wall Drywall Texture is a simple design. Orange Peel or Knockdown is a more detailed Texture. Flat Wall is also the Hardest to do. Orange Peel and Knockdown aren't simple, but they are easy to do.

[@Duncecap64]

lol as someone who played alot of chess no even chess is unbalanced. One player going first literally decides the entire meta, whoever goes second has to react to that and play more defensively. its that big a difference tournaments are usually multiple games at the top tables and both play both sides

[@Appropriatenamenumbervalid]

But you can play aggresively as black

[@Duncecap64]

@@Appropriatenamenumbervalid aggressive is relative and again that's based entirely on how white chooses to play things like open game Sicilian for example are considered very aggressive fast-paced games however that doesn't mean that black isn't still having to react to the first move that white does just what it chose to react with was a very aggressive move to start with.

[@Appropriatenamenumbervalid]

fair point.@@Duncecap64

[@oniswdbs]

I think the problem is that these game companies want to actually balance rather than make them feel like they are balanced. The feeling is more important than the actuality on this

[@jodypschaeffer]

Balance is one of the reasons I enjoy Blood Bowl. They don't care if the teams are unbalanced, to a degree. It creates a more casual atmosphere if one player goes in knowing they're probably going to lose, but if they do pull off a victory the bragging rights will be huge.

[@CatharsisChaser]

You know what makes balancing a game really hard… Underpaying and overworking your rules writers because people will still buy your fomo plastic anyways If GW wanted to have a better game system they could easily accomplish this but they prefer to skate by with barely increasing (and often regressing) levels of bace balance and overall fun Funding for a better game isn’t worth pitching to shareholders when you are essentially a monopoly in the market and you can demonstrate doing it wouldn’t just eat into your profit margin needlessly

[@Marisa_arts]

Trust me, I know how hard it is to balance and keep things very interesting for different army types or just general game balance in all. This mostly stems from my own personal passion project of creating a TTRPG Wargame and also with helping in some game balance for a friend in a few weapons. Even writing down game stats and ideas in a doc to see how well each individual character works and feels while trying to keep that Identity there. Hell, I have a passion project that is for a Card Game that is a bit hard to follow and even Sci-fi, Fantasy and Superhero one that is hard at times to figure out a good balance as it is very much a near impossibility to do with a large diverse cast that plays differently. The way I found it was simple, make it as fair and balance as possible while giving a few off the road picks that are not good in a Competitive Environment, but fun in the most casual of areas, which also at times leads to frustrations. Though due to them being off the beaten path for the Super Elite Sweats, they might find it hard to play against or with those picks from how little they have to play against them at those levels. But if you can bring them in with a very or decently solid team, it can work, though you need to be playing smarter than them to win. (gunplay in games are different as that can be easy, these are characters/army units I am talking about) This is mostly ignoring the terrain and how it is set up along with the rules that are to follow for them. On terrain aspect. We have all see and been there with the maps that are very good or extremely shit. Where the cover doesn't give you much help if any when you are the attacker or if you are defending it. Where the map doesn't compliment any form of the characters, players or units play except for the most bare bones versions of it to be called a Game. From Solo/Co-Op game campaigns to Multiplayer maps for local, LAN and Online Play. From Casual and Competitive. These maps are hard or tricky to make and balance them out if you have 30 different units, player actors (that is what they are called for game coding) and vehicles. Do you make the maps, all, be suited for the players only? Do you make all the maps be suited for vehicles? Do you make them half and half? Do you make them be specialized for only a handful of unit and player types, mirrored? Do you make them be specialized for only a handful of unit and player types, asymmetrical? Do you make them be specialized for all of unit and player types, mirrored? Do you make them be specialized for all unit and player types, asymmetrical? How big should the maps be? All of these are asked for each map and more over for each mode. To be frank, it is on a per dev and per game thing. The weapons follow the same format as well. Balance for a decent but mostly fun game. Bullshit is still bullshit, but that happens in most cases. I am not going into details about the game projects that I have as a passion project as that is still in the works. When I get them to near completion, I will post or talk about them lol Anyways, keep up the good work! Hope this is a bit of an insight for game and balance creations from an Indei dev/gamer.

[@chheinrich8486]

6:49 i just realized who the strongest god in warhammer is, THE DICE GOD😂

[@necroenkai2300]

The fun thing is that as a war game balance itself can lend itself to the lore. Like for example when a new faction is introduce it should stand a higher than the existing factions because it implies they observed everyone and made counters to their strengths. Then comes the rebalancing where the old armies adjust, like modifying an existing unit somehow to level the playing field.

[@swars4526]

Really cranking out the content this year. Nice!

[@Ropsuguy]

9:00 did you know, the crysis suit plasma rifle went from 30 inches in 9th to 24 in the 10th index, to 18 inches in the tau codex. just a fun fact.

[@battiger00568]

6:51 i have a story to describe balance of dice: 5 hellblasters of mine where shooting at basic sisters infantry (10 shots of overcharged plasma) and wounded 9 times. the sisters player failed 7/9 of their saves. this happened twice. in the same game. no hellblasters died to hazardous. what did the sisters do to piss of the dice gods? who knows

[@thegrandnope7143]

they were playing Sisters of Battle, they're cursed by design and in lore to get their shit rocked

[@TheCoCAmbassador]

just watched some lorecrimes, And then bam. Pancreasnowork! Its like Eldrad set this up for me.

[@aliski768]

the exit is to make everything so broken that everything cancels itself out

[@tristanreejakobsen6157]

love ur videos keep up the good work and can you make some videos on chorfs or grand cathay emperor (or maybe just some stuff in cathay like tigermen)

[@roberthill5805]

Once played a tabletop game where you vould build a caster who would die if they casted a spell that was too powerful. They could have a familiar that could roll the save vs death instead saving the caster but risking a piece of expensive equipment. Then you vould have a defender making a single creature or item unable to die for a turn, once per turn. They changed the rules that match to the defender unable to select magic items in others possession.

[@RebelCannonClub74]

To be fair, the whole point of war fare and military might is to be as overpowered as your nation can afford. So even if any war game is one sided, it is by default being realistic

[@robincray116]

3:16 Chess is not what you get if you want perfect balance, (Queen OP). Perfect balance gets you Checkers.

[@shandaniel2999]

As someone who has 400 hours in total war my perspective may be a little off but it seems pretty much impossible to balance Warhammer. You pretty much have to do balance changes as the game develops and even then, you have to accept that it will never be truly balanced without taking away what makes all 500 factions special.

[@capfig4471]

I want a warhammer joke dataslate update where GW changes all factions to be “lore accurate” for a couple of weeks. I:e: eldar get war speed movement across the board. T’au guns have 200” of range. Proper horde armies like the skaven and tyranids can effectively fill the board with units. The basic Guardsmen hit on a Nat20 while custodes hit on anything that isn’t a Nat1. And the leagues of votann are completely unbeatable in every aspect because until there’s lore for them their all canonically primarch levels of powerful.

[@Rompstirdg]

This mans commentary is so good I can watch an entire video on the balancing of a game I've never played

[@michaelpetlicke]

Wow, only an hour out and over a hundred comments. Pancreas getting popular!

[@TheSgruby]

I finally caught up with the current videos, thanks for the great content. I'm waiting for more, because I have a lot of Old World figures to paint.

[@nizofox8881]

you rambling on is exactly why i enjoy listening to you

[@yebzy]

0:23 “ Mercy from Source Filmmaker” the chokehold over watch had on 18+ content was insane

[@Akimbo411]

I think the key to this is internal balancing. If you can play any combination of an army’s units without it being bad against everything and not have an indisputable God List in any faction, the balance between factions basically solves itself because you can make a list that can counter the others

[@redspec01]

Chess is not balanced, as first turn has advantage

[@thorscape3879]

And the game is balanced around that fact.

[@questorincompetus8841]

The thing that kinda keeps me from being interested in the tabletop game is that the rules feel like they’re meant for huge games with big units. But the dice rolls and unit sizes are tiny. It almost feels like it’s trying to be different games.

[@darkdude9248]

Warhammer taught me my favorite playstyle; fast annoying encircling swarms. Even if it's not that useful on tabletop, it usually trips people up when there's like 6 Emperors children with jump packs in each direction

[@DaHUNTER76]

I’ve developing my own mini wargame(s) for a few years now. One thing I consider when making stats, abilities, and even core rules that you sort of touched on is player shakeenery. “How will an enterprising player break this thing over their knee like Bane?”

[@klo45pl]

One thing that makes 40k horrid at balance is new editions. Every time they start to get close. Kaboom. New edition breaks it all.

[@BrotherVoidBomber]

Another problem we have is some intern or old GW staff hates certain armies. Aka the (insert unloved child here army). Question what benefit does the psychic keyword give? Oh only against the keyword?

[@benchristopher9601]

I think space marines exceplify the problem between lore and table top the best as shows/book/games paint even a single marine as being able to best a planet or hordes of what ever is thrown at them but on the tabletop an equal point cost of Gaurd, the ones that lore wise are paper sheets to everything else, can kill/beat the equivalent point cost

[@C.D.G.1]

Playing the Sons of Behemat( aka giants) the only real problem with my army are their saves.

[@Kaiser282]

Reminds me of how in Dominions 5 (now 6) there's something like 86 different nations across 3 ages. It's a nightmare but also very satisfying so I don't really mind the obvious imbalances because that nation is most likely to be ganked by 2+ others anyways. (and possibly even come out on top) Makes the world and game interesting. Thankfully if something is busted (Nazca or Mekone for both sides of that spectrum) they usually will do something to bring it in line but are also willing to let things sit for a while.

[@matthewpohlmann6623]

You make really good points, and it's a pretty fascinating topic, but let's face it, the balance of point values per unit and overall battle point limit is the challenge of army building. Part of the strategy side of the game

[@ethrsag735]

It's easy; just set up a series of personal one on one faction war arcs where each receives logical faction power boosts, (i.e. Ferrus Manus returned after Fulgrim is offered a sacrifice Ynnead, Ghazgull finding a lost Old One lab with Krorks, the Imperium getting their own version of Fabius Bile called Koschei who makes space marine chapters with weapons and geneseed concoctions even Cawl would blush at, Konrad Curze returned thanks to his soul being captured in an unrecognized eldar soulstone in his crown etc etc), and Bob's your uncle.

[@DiabloDude]

love the Rimword music playing in the background

[@anna-flora999]

18:05 fun fact, in German, the Knight in chess isn't called the German word for Knight, it's called the Springer. The jumper

[@leanderschuster3196]

On the one hand, balancing is hard On the other hand, Eldar 10th, Deathwatch MW spam and Votann in 9th should have never ever happened in a million years and is 100% the fault of incompetent rules designer.

[@fifo5553]

Actually chess isn't perfectly balanced. Of the two choices, white goes first and statistically wins more often. My contender for the perfectly balanced game would probably be rock paper scissors.

[@chriswarburtonbrown1566]

I played Warhammer 2nd edition in the 80s. I don't remember balance being a major issue, but it had a lot less big monsters and artillery. Its those big, single pieces that are hardest to balance.

[@TheBerchie]

Thanos would not like tabletop Warhammer.

[@coltonberry985]

It’s why I stopped playing new editions. They keep changing the rules so often by the time I somewhat learn the new theyre outdated. I now play second edition, and 8th edition

[@iang257]

When they cut the Fate Dice in half, as well as butchered the Phantasm recently I really felt the pain. As well as She Who Thirst's laughter at my dismay.

[@ICantThinkOfAFunnyHandle]

12 fate dice was miserable to play against, 6 fate dice combined with every other nerf feels like a bit of an overreaction from GW

[@trongucang7811]

@hinkOfAFunnyHandle while it's true that for any other armies, a nerf of that magnitude would most definitely cripple them, but in the Eldar's case, it might finally make them balanced (and that was after countless nerfs, including core rule changes which ended up crippled several other armies) 10th ed Aeldari index at release was absolutely, mind-bogglingly broken it took that many nerfs to finally rein them in (people still win tournaments with them btw).

[@RebelCannonClub74]

For the whole Points thing, the way I've always seen it is as weight classes. Ideally everyone in boxing should be either a heavy weight (as an example), but not everyone can support that kind of life style. Ideally tournaments (local ones at least) should have point weight classes. But in those kinds of bouts you'd see eldar and maybe mechanicum for light weights and guard/trannids for heavy weight matches, which may or not be a good thing.

[@MrDorkbot]

I am one of those people who gets interested in a faction based on rules. I was looking through OPR army builder and noticed that dwarves could have potentially 20 dudes with power fists and I thought that sounded awesome since power fists were A4 AP4. I also got interested in playing Slaaesh daemons because that harp apparently counts as artillery. I want to run a list with at least 3 of them and see what happens.

[@ThePenAndTheRose]

A very nuanced look at game balance. Well done! 🙏🏻💙

[@creed8712]

0:19 oh I guess they really brought Hanzo back to basics with the last patch

[@dimensionalchaos8422]

I've been trying to make a space warship table-top game. Balancing has been immensely difficult, especially with the lance-destroyers. They keep out-ranging ships and the only solution i have is to increase the cost. production has stalled until more people help playtest

[@specs.weedle]

Good thing you mentioned needing more playtesters on a youtube comment section where potentially interested people might see it. I’d like to try it out.

[@Gorbz]

One time, a guy at my local GW at the time made a lore accurate space marine statblock and army. It consisted of 10 marines, and easily obliterated everything it went up against.

[@blandedgear9704]

Balance is also a moving target as you rebalance other armies and players invent new strategies and you add new models. And sometimes, a unit is very overpowered or very underwhelming depending on the rest of your army.

[@StimmBehr]

As a Custodes fan and player, you’d have to be delusional to say they aren’t directly matched with Harlequins. 19:21

[@ragnarx88]

I think your choice of Topics for a Vid on your day off, was balanced.

[@ConfusCat]

If Ciaphas Caine had rules, there would be two: inspiring presence and secret coward. For the latter, I say the moment he fails morale, he just disappears, he fled with nobody noticing

[@Dasacht095]

Changing range is quite well emphasised in most infantry grade melta weapons. S9 gun with -4ap and d6+melta damage. That sounds amazing but its incredibly swingy/lack luster in 10th. It has 18 range now in 10th edition down from 24. So unless you have a perfect line, you'll be closer than 18 inches to an enemy. You want to use that gun against tanks, monsters or elite infantry. But nearly every monster is wounded on a 4 or higher. And most of what you want to aim at either has a 2+ or 4+ invuln. So if you dont kill something, your enemy IS getting in melee and then youre in trouble. On paper great in practice rotten

[@guilliman1990]

top notch vid my friend, 11/10

[@TheGokuend]

Here I am watching a video about balancing rules of a game that I damn know I'm never going to play

[@THEcoldones]

Thanks to one of your videos' I've been writing my own codex for the Covenant for Wh40k. Whilst trying to fit in every major unit, the balancing has been an absolute pain so far. Not sure what needs to be buffed, nerfed or otherwise. Can't say I've not enjoyed the homebrew experience though, the first version is almost finished

[@jonathanathor117]

Personally I just try to get good st the game and have fun despite if it unbalanced or not.

[@evilemperorzurg9615]

StarCraft is a great anecdote of balancing a game. StarCraft 1 came out in 1998 and only received 1 update in the form of the expansion pack Broodwar which was sold in a box set so most people never even played base StarCraft competitively. From the beginning it was always considered very well balanced between the 3 races despite how powerful some abilities and units were. Many of these even became memes of the early Internet because of how overpowered they were. Zerg rushing is known even by non StarCraft fans and nukes were just that, screen nukes destroying everything but bigger buildings and the beefiest unit in the game only barely surviving. It was actually because each race had a handful of unique and powerful abilities that even though they did not always counter each other directly you always had to be on your toes and find clever ways to respond to deadly threats. The strategic possibilities created balance. More than a decade later StarCraft 2 is released and from the beginning the developers put a heavy emphasis on PvP competitive play because SC1 had exploded in popularity and is often considered the world’s first Esport. The way they did this was by trying to balance the game through the units. Armies became larger and the power of individual units and abilities was toned down. Most games, even professional ones, usually become a game of “who can build the biggest army the fastest” and then whoever can hit the enemy supply line with their giant ball of death first wins. It received regular expansions and balance patches for over a decade and people complained about balance that entire time. The issue is as with the units and core gameplay. Because the focus was on balancing units the game became a game of Unit compositions and micro and macro play rather than actual strategy. Though it still happens most games are about bringing the best club to a fight instead of trying to outwit your opponent. Thus, the units with the best stats, even if only by a little, won far more often.

[@kodansha0]

Even in chess, white pieces have a higher win rate than black pieces. Fluctuating between a 52-56% win rate. Even in a game where everything is identical its still skewed.

[@shandaniel2999]

You know what game is a masterclass in game balance? TF2, if the only thing powerful enough to hurt the fun of the game is a sniper with 5000 hours then you got a well balanced game. Even with sniper it's not impossible to kill him, just difficult and costly.

[@jonttopia]

I love tf2 but that's such a shit comparison. The classes are not at all balanced, medic is a necessity while spy does nearly nothing. Even an insane spy player will at best annoy the other team on a competetive level. The loadouts also are not balanced, some weapons are just useless compared to other options. Now that doesn't matter since both teams are identical and can switch up their classes mid game, so neither side ever gets an unfair advantage.

[@everythingsalright1121]

I wouldn't say that. Spy isnt well balanced either, given that pyro shuts it down so hard as well as how spy tends to die just doing it's job of sneaking up behind people. And as the match goes on people start being paranoid about spy checking, and then you just have the problem thay being one shot by a sneaky guy isnt that fun (then again neither is sniper). Its another class where a casual player cant get much use out of it but a pro spy who knows all the movement tech is a pain. But even then they can be shut down far easier than a sniper. And every class has a few problematic weapons or combinations. Fan of war is...not really worth using. Enforcer on spy is just bad. Pomson...infinite ammo sounds nice on paper till you realize just how slow the projectiles are. The list goes on and theyre not gonna fix any of the balancing

[@kaffykathy8729]

As a person who had to live through the Scout Update, I can tell you from experience that this isn't at all true especially back then when TF2 was still the new kids on the block and the In-Game Lootboxes weren't a thing. Demoman had easily more nerfs post launch than the rest of the roster, and as other people have already pointed out, Spy is basically useless in the modern community and wasn't made for an era where everyone can easily afford a microphone. Unrelated, I still remember that time Valve decided to do something weird in Counter Strike Sourtce, and make it so that every time you buy a weapon it gets more expensive like actual in-game inflation. Yes this was a thing they implemented once. And then immediately reversed that decision because no one liked not being able to purchase an AWP because that's suddenly much more expensive than what it should be.

[@Raist474]

The Venn diagram is perfect. Some could say it's simple geometry.

[@RecklessInternetting]

I don't play Warhammer but I appreciate your take on things, even the boring logistical stuff. Because I like numbers and mechanics because I am the kind of nerd other nerds bully for being a nerd.

[@Grz349]

In a competitive scene if people agree that one army has an advantage over others perhaps they should get a points boost vs certain factions so they can bring in one or two tools that might bring them into balance.

[@TJK10]

0:28 I still think what they did to Genji was unnecessary. His “deep strike” technique was fun to try and master, took some skill, and was a gamble (since you were spending your escape tool in order to assault the enemy’s back lines.)

[@joshthomasmoorenew]

Yriel is a big victim of being hit with the balance stick, in the past, like in his lore, he killed whatever he fought but now he struggles to kill a Tau Etheral (i'm not joking i've seen it happen), now he did need reigning in but i think they've gone to far he needs to be a better killer esspecially with his points.

[@SenseiLlama]

How much of GW's balancing problems is the D6 system? It's somewhat difficult to get granularity out of it. I wonder if going to a higher dice number might give them more room for smaller buffs and nerfs without having to touch points. Right now, if they say go from 4 ballistic skill to 3 on skitarii, that's a big swing, requiring a whole cascade (potentially) of changes. But if it were a d 10 system (for example), going from 6-5 isn't nearly as big a stat change.