I understand where you are all getting at and I appreciate your advice, I really do guys
, but maybe I simply see things differently. Let me tell you how this unfolds in my mind piece by piece. Nobody I think argues that the game is balanced and everything is ok. What the unbelievers are arguing about is that in a game based on rules we are asked to base our decision on emotions. Reborn said “experienced players know where to draw the line” yet I am posting lists here and nobody can draw it, where is that cheese line I we are not supposed to tread? I am not flaming or counter arguing here, I seriously don’t believe it can be objectively defined.
I keep thinking why in all other competitions people don’t act like this, I mean does the referee deny points if a team has better basketball players because they are cheesy? Do F1 pilots loose championships because they have better vehicles and skills? Even in amateur levels should I be disqualified in a 5x5 football championship because I am too good, imbalanced… cheesy!?
And don’t give me the chess/pieces argument I am not talking pieces here I am talking a whole team being significantly better than another and yet no-one considers that unfair but simply a fact of life.
So all this puzzles me especially since in 40k with not so expensive sum of money almost anyone can have a very good list (team) and yet almost everyone ends up hating that… I remember playing MTG and always being melancholic about the fact that no matter how good I was, I would never have the perfect deck because of money. And then I switched to 40k and I loved the fact that I could with 300 Euros amass a very good force. I painted my favorite army, I read the fluff and the rules, I made a themed Mech list because that’s what I saw as fluffy Eldar (despite everyone on the net and anywhere I asked where telling me to get 3 Wraithlords and a 16 man council), I wrote my fluff, I converted my models, I thought of my strategies and then I saw up and start playing games so that in the end I can hear “Ianos, your Eldar are cheesy!”
I sat down and seriously thought about it and I cam up with the following.
Facts:
1) 40k is not a totally balanced game; no game actually is including chess.
2) 40k is a game based on algebra, probabilities and geometry and for the most part has specific rules.
3) It is a game where there are 3 results, win/draw/loss.
4) Everything is calculated, accurately or not.
5) Armies and equipment are all dictated by rules that allow personal selection but with certain restrictions.
And then comes the cheese thing. This notion circumvents all the above mathematical basis and introduces personal preference to the rules. In essence the player effectively wants to change his opposing player’s rules and codex in accordance to what he thinks is right/good for him.
The anti-cheese theory gains more followers as terrain gets sparser, missions are disregarded and everyone prefers MEQs and then everyone condemns cookie cutters as if there it is only the rules/designers fault. The designers of the game have indeed been faulty but things would be a lot easier if people played the game as it should be played and that is 25% terrain, rolling every mission objective and parameter and most importantly 65% of the people not playing practically the same race.
The reason that most people play the wrong way and thus generate cheese cries is that the company once severely boosted and promoted certain races which now apart from their hard-core fans (which I deeply respect), have amassed a lot of players simply because they are considered “TEH B3ST!!!11”
As a result despite the fact that points costs and options and restrictions are designed to operate when each racial encounter has the same probability as any other, the players are designing lists to specifically beat MEQs practically disregarding all other encounters. This makes MEQ players consider their non MEQ opponents imbalanced since they end up wasting points in inadequate choices. Furthermore since MEQs usually fight MEQs they do not realize how powerful and incredibly cost effective their armies are compared to non-MEQs and consider the fact that there is a pretty much equal chance of a marine beating another marine, as game balance and when some other army appears to specifically designed to attack them, they will consider that improper and unfair.
In the end MEQ players will force themselves into the choices that can put the hurt mostly on marines but will also have a the firepower to kill non-armored troops (Assault Cannon anyone?), making themselves also appear “cheesy” to the non-MEQ players.
Apart from that I cannot count the times where people just want to play Alpha-Annihilate in a valley and then complain that IW beat their CC oriented army with little or no transports. Let’s see those same IW in dense terrain, with night-fight and escalation with the objective being the enemy deployment zone! How lovely!
Now there are two ways to deal with this phenomenon, the one is to endorse comp scoring and try to persuade people to take more fitting choices but this does not really limit imbalance and has the following side-effects:
1) It is a treatment of a symptom and not the cause.
2) Each man/group/community have their own sense of balance.
3) Even if everyone had the perfect sense of justice no one can accurately define where you cross the line except clearly defined rules that if not followed will forbid playing.
The other way around is to re-balance the powerful armies and the low-power armies. This is done right now with the new codices and when the cycle is over people will realize that they cannot win without thinking by selecting race x and will instead orient themselves to what they really like and play best so that they have a chance to win and enjoy the game.
Right now we are in the middle of this phase where every race is being rebalanced NOT according to the meta-game and marine dominance, but according to how powerful something is in relation to it’s enemies with equal chance of engaging any of them (hence combat squads, less heavy weapons etc.)
Until then the best thing people can do is play the race they LIKE the most and honor the scenario and terrain because these are the real game changers and can really make cheese disappear in many cases. For the few cases it doesn’t be patient and JJ has made a promise which I believe he will keep.
P.S. I have been to tournaments too, I have faced all the power lists and once you get to business and play to your strengths and their weaknesses no one seems that powerful. Besides, if you go to a basketball game with your amateur friends and face 5 guys who play professionally, are you going to tell them they are cheesy and that they should change their team? Same with football, same with life and same with 40k… just FIGHT!!!