The Warlock cannot summon the Avatar.

You are omitting a lot of things in your equation, like the 2 Gorgons that also shoot, and absorb the Titan hits, the prior to assualt prepping, and the mandatory support fire. But my argument was not that you would win the assault or not, more that you actually had reasonable chances of killing the beast in such a scenarion, whereas with comparbale units in other lists that is unthinkable.

aka. 6 void shields and 4 + RA and 8 DC and an irrelevant critical, is immensely more resilient.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I completely disagree with your first statement. I think it is not fine and that everything possible should be done to diminish the problem.

Concerning the myopic effect, what point are you trying to make? Are some of the units you are considering undervalued at 3k, and better at larger games? Or Vice versa?

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

in your example, you could BTB 16 stands of krieg against a warlord titan, and the entire company against a great gargant which would ignore the shields.....

I could just as easily say 'warlocks are rubbish, my deathstrikes take them out no problem when they've suffered a critical and lost the holofields...... the ONLY fair comparison is one unit vs one unit, the warlock is rarely left alone.... in fact if it is, it's probably being played wrong.....

on the avatar bit, I played a game where Tiny-Tim summoned the avatar with a warlock.... I assumed this was ok, but I' can't find anything to corroborate this.....

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Just some guy

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kyuss -> knowingly, or unknowingly, he was cheating

Lord -> let me guess, did you used to be a 40k player? List design for wargames has the objective of providing a subjectively balanced game where both players enjoy themselves. Impossible to achieve balance in asymmetrical contests. Closest I've seen is Magic The Gathering who have a limited set of play parameters, compared to a tape measure wargame with multiple variations of terrain collections, miniature basing and so on. And the M:TG team has probably the best and most comprehensive testing of any hobby game ever. And still they darn up and release lots of unbalanced cards because of the unexpected synergies. As usual with hobby games the question is always: do you want a game that feels like a narrative being played out with lots of dramatic moments, a large variety of playing pieces and many peculiarities that give variety? Or do you want a fair contest between two players? Most people go for the former with attempts at the latter knowing fully well that it's an unachievable goal and it just needs to feel somewhat balanced.

As for "Concerning the myopic effect, what point are you trying to make? Are some of the units you are considering undervalued at 3k, and better at larger games? Or Vice versa?" Yes, of course! That's pretty obvious, isn't it? If people play 'line up and shoot each other for VPs' a lot of units go up or down in value. The NetEA effort is not openly just about the 3k GTS. Heck, even doing a few 2k games recently has highlighted new interactions between units that throw our pre-conceived ideas into space. For instance, my club doesn't have a lot of 6mm buildings so sometimes I take my collection. When I take them, all of a sudden infantry is much better than before. Is this balanced? A lot of reports I see here, players use far less terrain than the rulebook advises. Are their points values balanced against the terrain tables we use in my club?

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I agree with Carlos, having units which are harder to use effectively is something which I feel adds a huge amount to the game..... taking them forces you to think in unconventional ways which may well open your eyes to a new tactic, or demonstrate how a different unit could be employed to the same end more effectively.....

I'm fully planning on an eldar army stuffed to the gills with cobras, war walkers, banshees in wave serpents and phoenix bombers..... I'll probably stick some scorpions and a phantom titan in there from time to time, as well as avoiding falcons, void spinners and vampires whenever possible...... who knows, it may well win loads of games......

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My brother's first game against Gavin (Ginger), he had to face an Avatar with 3+ RA, heh heh.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

btw not meant as an accusation or anything....... it made sense to me at the time and I have a lot of respect for Tim (which is why I took it as gospel) I'd also not use the word 'cheating' I think cheating is only done when it's intentional, and this was anything but

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Farseers can summon the Avatar, not units with Farsight. Important distinction.

As for balance and having crap stuff in the list, why not? In the world of high-sample gaming (online multiplayer), there are always balance issues no matter how much balancing effort happens. And players will discuss their god, top, mid and bottom tiers... and some people will play the mid and bottom tier options anyway because they like the challenge! Also points costs are a stopgap measure to fix balance issues. There's a point that having crap really cheap doesn't make it less crap, there's just more of it. Also, changing points costs and stats can have a detrimental value to this game's real purpose which is closer to a shared narrative than a contest of intellects. Don't agree? Then how do wargamers speak about their 'best' games if not as narratives including climax moments and unexpected turnarounds? Players of 'balanced' games speak in dry, technical terms. That's fine too, but that's not wargaming's purpose and reason to exist.

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Are you actually arguing in favour of the status quo?

Shall we not try to improive the Knight list for example?

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I think it's clear he's arguing that at a certain point, tinkering becomes redundant........ there will always be units which are narrower in scope and ability than others, but when a list plays pretty damn well (as most of the approved NetEA lists as well as all of the EUK lists I've faced do) then a line should be drawn under it as basically finished.... you can tinker around with it till the cows come home, but all it will really entail is pushing the list balance around a little bit..... you can't make all the weak units better without some kind of nerf to the strong ones

equating balanced, core lists to a developmental list like knightworld is comparing apples to oranges

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Again, I feel like I'm repeating myself:

To summarise:
1) Some units bring different abilities to the table that are not available anywhere else: VS = Artillery, Rangers = cheap and useful activation, Falcons = AA, Guardians = Farsight etc.
2) Some units whilst good, face stiff competition for their role against units that bring other abilities to the table: e.g. Scorpion is in competition with Falcons. Scorpion is a good unit but Falcons bring a higher speed and AA to the table = Scorpions lose out to Falcons when points are tight.
3) The above factors change at bigger points levels. I don't take a Scorpion at 3000pts because it's not efficient. It has no AA for a start. I NEED AA, so I take Falcons and EUK FPs instead. At 4000 pts though I freaking love 75cm range Scorpions, etc, etc.
4) Some builds/ combinations are just more fun to use and/or more versatile. PF/Pulsar Phantom for e.g. is more versatile than 2xpulsar Phantom as well as being more fun to use. Changing the Pulsar stats won't make me spend 750 pts on a unit that minces around and shoots stuff from the back field. I want my Phantom to be getting stuck in, rolling engagements along, adding support fire and generally just clobbering stuff. Ditto the Warlock.

I totally concur with carlos and kyussinchains but want to add one thing.

List balancing has to be a mixture of bumping up and bumping down stats, other wise everything creeps up. We can see the same issue over the AA4+ debate.

Lists will always have units that are less useful at certain points levels or in certain scenarios - this IS NOT a bad thing!

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if you really want to use a particular unit for personal preference, model, or thematic reasons, just use it and play the game...... I'm probably never going to win the EUK championship, but I still enter tournaments because I enjoy playing the game..... my 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Tim and his warlock at BotCH is STILL my favourite game to date....

nothing in any of the approved lists is completely unusable, it can all be made to work very effectively with a bit of thought

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Just some guy

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What's wrong with leaving units and lists unchanged? Not everything needs to be updated.

As I've said to you before, there's no issue with making changes to units which are shown to be either too effective or too weak at that which they are supposed to do, and where reasonable proposals are made to deal with such problems, it would seem sensible to play test them extensively, and then reach a decision.

I feel that the reason why you are encountering a lot of resistance to many of your ideas is that you're trying to change too many things too quickly, and quite often a lot of these units don't really need much, if any, work doing on them in the first place.

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re: my knight sub-championship
Yes, I want to get it to a point where opponents and players of the list feel it is somewhat balanced enough to provide an intriguing contest against most armies. Actually I'm starting with "what are knights supposed to feel like when facing them?" rather than "some people say they are too tough, therefore I need to reduce their save or increase their points".

As for established lists, I'd rather make more of them usable than tweak existing usable ones into 'perfect balance'. I'm in favour also of making more options usable inside each list, but those amends always create new issues w/ existing builds so we need to thread carefully.

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