WARHAMMER 40k's BALANCE PROBLEM, and why it's so hard to solve!

Warhammer 40k is not a very balanced game, and it's a subject of constant argument, complaints and division from the community, despite Games Workshop's constant updates and FAQs that try to address it. In this video, I take a look at why.

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Copyright: Unless noted in the video, all images © Games Workshop 1987-2022. Title music is 'Black Rainbows' by Karl Casey @White Bat Audio

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[Benry]

I'm really happy you've broken through into the main GW channels as a voice for the game. You always give well thought out opinions and insights on the game that I feel help smooth out some of its rougher edges.

[TheOneTheyCallJack]

Every time I see balance come up I’m reminded of a tweet by Eric Lang where he essentially says statistical balance is far less important than the perception of fairness and I think a lot of people conflate the two (wilfully or otherwise)

[TheEmpiricalGuy]

Really glad to see someone put together a sensibly worded video on this.

My hot take: the reason people often perceive 40k as being so imbalanced is because they are not playing the game how it's meant to. That's not to say that they're 'doing it wrong' by playing competitively, everyone enjoys the game different ways, but it isn't something that was even considered to be on the radar when fantasy miniature wargames were first invented. As a result, although there's been a shift towards that, the entire framework of the system (such as moving freely on an open board, dice rolling for things instead of pure stat comparison etc) is based on not reducing the game to a pure competitive "I can break this game better than you" match up. Thankfully it's something GW has upheld.

Where this becomes a problem is when people try to force it in to some form of perfect balance, but it was never designed for that. It was designed for 2 people to have a fun couple of hours playing with the miniatures they'd collected. Then you enter this loop of trying to constantly adjust for balance you'll never have.

Look at things like Warlord Traits or Relics that you're not paying points for. You typically see the same ones over and over as people quickly identify which is 'best'. But why would GW be including sub-par options just to trick people in to choosing the wrong thing? Why not just make the best Trait a dataslate ability for the relevant character? It's because they don't want you to choose the free, tack-on rule that will help you get the most wins, they want you to read that flavour text on each ability as well and choose the one you genuinely think is coolest, that matches your homebrew character lore and seems like the most fun. When people ignore that they're really forcing the game out of the original design intent, and complaining that it doesn't work. It's like cutting wood with a metal hacksaw, sure it'll do it but don't blame the tool for not doing the best job possible.

As a mainly narrative gamer who tries to mainly play against other narrative minded people, I've noticed that my perception of how balanced 40k is is generally a lot higher than most competitive gamers. On the flipside of that, when I do spot something to be an issue or needing adjustment, it often gets overlooked because though it is over/under powered, if it's not in the current meta the vocal minority of tourney players don't complain enough to get it changed. This is getting gradually exaggerated as the matched play balance dataslates become more and more extensive and just turn it in to an entirely different game from 'regular' 40k.

[normtrooper]

I really appreciate the balanced, nuanced position you provide. Other channels are definitely a lot more vitriolic without actually being helpful

[WALDO]

One of the things that makes Blood Bowl so great is that it is very transparent about the fact that some teams are just easier to play (i.e., better) than others. You want to play goblins or halflings, well you have accepted the fact that these teams are harder to win with (which is thematically consistent with the fluff too). You either embrace that challenge or pick another team. As long as you have the right mindset this can still be a lot of fun. Its often fun to actually put the pressure on my opponent by reminding them that, "they better not lose to Goblins, that would be pretty embarrassing" (in good fun of course). But importantly, even when showing up with a weaker team, I can still win if I am strategic and get a bit of luck.

As I understand it, games like Warmaster were also were fairly transparent about this. Some armies are easier to wield than others, its just a fact. High Elves, Dark Elves (and any other command 10 army) are easier to make do what you want. This is balanced by points, but since command value is such a core mechanic to that game, if you choose Orc, or Skaven, you are accepting that your army has an inherent handicap you have to account for. Nevertheless, in the right hands and with a bit of luck any army stood a fighting chance.

Necromunda (classic) also had this to a degree in that outlander gangs were just harder to play. Heck, even Warhammer Fantasy was fairly transparent about the fact that Dwarfs were one of the harder armies to play because they were slower. This thematic decision meant that you could easily end up in, "I can charge you but you cannot charge me" situations, although this did a bit get better with random charge ranges in 8th. Nevertheless, the slower movement of Dwarfs was a thematic handicap that you just had to accept.

I think the problem with modern Warhammer 40k is that unlike the above handicaps, which may make an army or team more or less forgiving but you nevertheless have a shot at winning, the power imbalances in 40K are often such that some some games are can be more or less decided by list building before the game is even played. It not that this army is easier to play or more forgiving, its that this army is just better (I get the same equipment as you for 30% less type stuff).

Its okay if some 40K armies are easier or harder to win with, but ideally that should be because of on the table game mechanics are more or less forgiving, not points values being so out of whack that there really is no way to overcome. The examples I give in Blood Bowl, Warmaster, and Necromunda feel like a challenge to overcome rather than a forgone conclusion and an exercise in futility.

[sangomasmith]

I think that another issue with balance is the internet. In the old days, your wargaming group might have "that guy" who took the competitive scene really seriously, read the rulebooks every night looking for exploits and generally made a nuisance of himself by trying to turn every game into an "I win" button. But his impact was limited to a fairly small area, and he couldn't crib too aggressively off the notes of other powergamers trying to break the game.

These days, anyone can go online and look up optimised builds or rules exploits for any game. They can then test them, come up with their own variations or improvements and feed those back into the system for the next powergamer to work with. The result is that a small team of designers is now trying to out-think a fully networked super-intelligence that wants to ferret out and exploit every flaw in their game (ruining it for more casual players in the process). So they institute constant balance updates, unit changes and rule changes. Which results in the floor to be competitive rising and rising over time. Which, of course, favours the powergaming approach even more. So the casual players leave or adopt powergaming approaches themselves, and the process intensifies.

In short, there's now a fundamental asymmetry in mental horsepower which favours the side trying to break things. Which I think contributes to the development of a balancing arms race by developers against powergamers that leaves the more casual players feeling either locked out or like cannon fodder.

[mark]

As always Ian makes a lot of sense. Personally I'm fine with 40k being unbalanced I just want GW to target the most broken, "feels bad" rules and units. A big thing for me is that many factions don't make tradeoffs in exchange for their advantages. 9th Ed started well, Death Guard are really tough but painfully slow and have very little high quality shooting but then we got books like Nids and Custodes that just don't have any real drawbacks. Powerful, tough, active in most or all phases and mobile to boot. I like the old engineering saying, "cheap, good, fast - pick two". You can't balance 40k but I do think you can write rules that don't feel terrible to play against

[marcjohnson]

An element I didn’t consider about this was how some players won’t play with armies they like because they feel put off by them being overpowered.

IIRC, JT from play on tabletop talked about how when Drukarii were ridiculously overpowered he felt he couldn’t even play them casually because it was hard to even deliberately nerf them

[Michael_Raymond]

An important bit of additional context for Magic; a lot (most) of the cards released aren't meant for every format, and the vast majority of the simple/common/"weak" cards are explicitly meant for randomized play, where decks are built or drafted from random packs.

The difference between that and a wargame where everything is expected to play in the same pool/format is impossibly vast.

[weetsy]

Wow, finally someone agrees with me! This is what I've been saying for years. Balance = Not as deep of game play... If you want it so that you can always have a fair game, you're going to have to sacrifice bajillions of combinations of equipment, and all kinds of special rules... Every army will essentially have the same units, just re-skinned and re-named, you'd play on a board that was essentially always the same.

We all like the game because its so diverse though. We like the customization. Therefore we have to accept there's always going to be an army that's the most powerful. If you could make a chess set with 6 queens, it would be cool, but that's obviously going to be hard to balance out against other lists without special rules that will probably be impossible to word correctly. But you can make a Warhammer army that's like a chess set with all queens if you want, and that's why we love the game.

Tournaments I feel are the way 40k players have found a community. Its a really not the best community though, and severely limits the actual fun you can have with the game. Because everything is focused on efficiency and win/loss records, when most of us want to be playing narrative based games where our forces develop as characters and build a reputation for themselves, battling across the galaxy.

Wanna play Inquisitorial storm troopers or Kroot mercenaries? In current 40k there's no reason to even try unless you're a really good painter. Even then, who wants to lose a tournament with nice looking minis? It makes the most sense to just pick whoever is best and then paint them up nice because the game is really all about win/loss records.

Maybe its GW's fault, maybe they encouraged the tournaments in the old days an easy way to get data to improve their products? I'm sure the answers are out there. lol.

My games of Necromunda lately have helped me bring these thoughts together about what I think would be best for the future of 40k. I think a good set of community-building tools for the Crusade system, along with a heavy re-vamping of it to support rich, interesting campaigns like you get in Necromunda would radically change the game for the better. A balance slate is fine, and could be used with a narrative based-system to make the world feel more dynamic, but helping the community re-envision itself as a community of model and lore enthusiasts, instead of serious sportsmen playing a balanced test of skill, will make it a lot more fun for everybody.

Instead of 2 day tournaments, you can have 2 day campaigns with lots of awards for all kinds of stuff, so that who wins the most games isn't the focus of what's going on.

[CrimsonTemplar]

I love that you did so much research & cited your sources. I’m
Going to keep this video in my hip pocket for the next time I get embroiled in one of these ‘balance’ conversations.

[RockRanchCowboy]

My biggest frustration with the balance of 40k is that there are many models that I love (I play Necrons) that I can't really even have fun with in a casual game at my small local game store, because they just don't do anything on the tabletop. I was disappointed when GW said that they didn't really care about internal balance in the latest dataslate.

[BillNyeTheBountyGuy]

The best games are the ones where it starts a strange group superstition like 'Don't take flying Hive Tyrants', because every time in our games they got dunked out of the sky by the luckiest shots imaginable (Rolling all 6's on Tesla or getting so many hits from an Ork Boyz squad it died. That's what I live for.

[andrewjolly]

It's interesting. The last time I played 40k would have been probably 1998 or 1999. I don't remember these discussions of balance or competition really ever coming up. Maybe it's because I was a teenager and there was no internet - but even playing in GW stores with adults it seemed to be more narrative and fun based. Where there competitions back then?

[ChopsTV]

This is one of the reasons I play Kill Team instead of "BigHammer"

It's wildly simpler and better balanced, the community on the whole is *way* more flexible regarding proxies (even in competitive settings) so you can bring your army and models you love and play a game. Or several. Me and my gaming buddy routinely get through a game in about the time it takes the BigHammer guys to get through a turn or two. So if you lose, whatever. The next game takes less than an hour.

And because the rules are simpler, theres much more flexibility and room to let the dice tell the a story. Rather than trading card decks worth of strategems back and forth that you probably didnt even know the other team had.

[noamtepper]

I feel like warhammer can learn a lot from Pokémon’s smogon, which is a community led completive battling rule set, with tiers bans on pokemon, items, moves and abilities from a community of experts in order to make the game the most competitive and fun possible, banning stuff that’s limiting fun and choices, it can be used in game to ban non model factors, like stratagems, warlord traits, psychic powers, relics, etc… trying to get rid of the most oppressive paper based combos while allowing most lists to have a fighting chance without limiting modeling options.

Also you can have tournaments in different tiers like:
40k anything goes - no bans
40k general play - banning only essential problematic elements
40k heavily moderated - more liberal bans of most things that can throw the balance off
And you can pick at which tier you choose to play

Also community rulings gives us the opportunity to make needed changes quicker then GW to stop a single list from having a 70% win rate for 3-6 months for example.

[andrewpackham]

I just wish GW would take time to consolidate and work with what it's got, rather than to relentlessly push for more rules, more faqs, more options, more new armies, and more ways to play. I just feel like I'm always playing catch up and have to do homework before my game to work out what is going to give me and my opponent a good time.

[supersiamesisk]

THIS is my problem with 40k. The time investment could so easily be shattered that I've come to focus more on skirmish games now. 2000AD, Monsterpocalypse, Kill Team and Gaslands see way more table time with me now and I love the 40k lore. I think the formula to this stipulated problem is to game with people you like and who share your vision of a great time.

[ryanschmidt]

Thank you. You simplified a two hour, raging, argument I had yesterday. This video brought out all the warts and slapped them with reality. What I hope to promote more of is that people enjoy playing. Too many min-maxers crying on the internet won't fix this.

[JB-kheb]

Some of your points are things I've talked about in LARPing. We fight as a class with certain abilities and equipment and each person has their own inherent skill set based on their body and experience.
Always choosing the strongest class for your skills and fighting your hardest significantly skews the game in your favor.
Specifically limiting yourself by being inefficient when winning and exerting yourself when losing creates a much more balanced game. Basically Counterweighting.
I've seen it in some video games too - battlefield gives the losing side big vehicles and stuff, for example.