Topic: 'Pick-up' Balance in AOS

[Archon]

I've gone into more detail on this over at Bugman's Brewery: http://www.bugmansbrewery.com/topic/46969-pick-up-parameters/

Essentially, we were trying to develop parameters for "come with a list and play" days, and have found issues with the current (lack of) system.

What we are trying out to add balance to games, but still maintain a certain amount of list-building freedom in accordance with the spirit of the game, is minimum models and maximum wounds.

For a "smaller" game (think 1k or 1250 in 40k), we were thinking of doing a minimum of 30 models and maximum 75 wounds, or 35/70 (essentially requiring an average of 2 to 2.5 wo per model).

Wondering if anyone else was taking this tact, or if anyone had thoughts on this, or suggestions on setting actual values.  Obviously this would require some serious testing and scaling, but we thought that might go faster if we could incorporate other's experiences.

[GenOmar]

we did a couple of games within our club set point size based on wounds.  not really sure that was overly fair.  ogres walked all over Orcs,  or whatever they are called now

[knightofthelance]

Honestly I think following the set up guide is going to be a better balancing tool than anything based on wounds.

[Darknight]

Number of wounds was - when I suggested it to the manager of the local GW - enthusiastically endorsed as a clever idea. No idea if that means he has played that.

[Dosiere]

Wounds is a good place to start, but it's not enough if you're actually trying to achieve something that makes armies more or less equal. 

I would suggest using wounds + # of attacks (melee and shooting together) + maximum damage +1 if it has Rend anywhere as somewhere to start.  That means a state troop is 3 points, a handgunner is 5, a great cannon is 37.   Not great, but it's better if you don't want to use the RAW. 

[Archon]

Thanks for the feedback.

The problem we want to avoid with having too complicated of a system is setting parameters that its not easy to agree upon in advance.  Wounds seems straight forward, so could max war scrolls (not sure about that)

But I think the important thing here is the MINIMUM models AND maximum wounds.  That's what stops the Ogre players from trouncing in my opinion -- they have so many wounds per ogre, they'll have to bring more gonblars, et. al. to balance it out.

The more we discuss, the more interested we are.  Its seemed to have worked so far, but its still a fairly limited scope of games.

[shavixmir]

You can't maximise wounds to balance the game.
Say you have Warriors of Chaos fighting goblins....
7 scrolls of WoC can have 50 wounds and be a horrendous fighting force. 7 scrolls of goblins with only 50 wounds is gonna be weak and pointless.

[Captain Alard Krusen]

My biddy and i had balanced games with just setting wound cap. Obviously some allocation is better spent - a stegadon arguably has better output than 10 state troops - but the games are fun.

If you run into a situation like, he plays woc and ypu run all goblins, work out a compromise.

Trying to arbitrate a balance system for people to use will probably not work. It's easier to just not be a jerk and just field some models to have fun

[Archon]

You can't maximise wounds to balance the game.
Say you have Warriors of Chaos fighting goblins....
7 scrolls of WoC can have 50 wounds and be a horrendous fighting force. 7 scrolls of goblins with only 50 wounds is gonna be weak and pointless.

Sure, and in WFB I could take 1,000 points of free company and they'd fall to just about anyone with an actual army-- it doesn't guarantee balance, but at least provides parameters to determine a rough size of the game, and the minimum model count encourages use of more 1 wound models, who are generally not that great model-to-model as multi-wound multi-damage units, i.e. ironguts.