Does anyone ever think that maybe the reason for certain armies kicking major ass over other armies and being uber powerful (as everyone seems to think daemons are), is done because for fluff reasons you would be facing impossible odds if being attacked by an army of daemons?
That certain armies would make sense to be “all-powerful” in a sense, because they are the prime antagonists in the game and should be a serious threat to deal with…
I know this’ll probably be controversial… but don’t you think you’d get a little bored if everytime you faced a chaos army with a good guy army, instead of looking at them in fear (like you are supposed to), you just think… oh… chaos… we can take em no prob… they’re just the evil version of empire.
EDIT: OK so bare with me some more…
doesn’t the model count difference alone kinda explain why daemons were left at low costs?
can you really imagine how intimidating a small warband of wandering daemons looks compared to your massive horde of ranked troops…
the whole point I’m trying to make is that villians are supposed to seem threatening and like you are against impossible odds…
Remember this is a game about fantasy battles… when in fantasy does the good guy ever outnumber the villian?
Even in history the battles are never totally even (look at today where an unstoppable empire of allied nations pulverizes a tiny lone country)…
I like points values too… and obviously unbalanced doesn’t work great for tournaments, but is this game about tournaments and who wins?? or having fun!
NOTE: I’m not saying bring back Herohammer here, just trying to explain what might have went through GW’s heads when making uber-daemons book… and when everyone complained, we were given weak Chaos Warriors (not my opinion, just the general consensus)
no chance for this scenario, the modek packaging and pricing strategy looks like they wanted to make a powerfull army, or that they are complete idiots that belive that players will not take powerfull option to be friendly :S
I see your logic in this, i strive to play hard armies, thats not to say that i don�?Tt own some hard armies as well ( a full khorne daemon army with all the trimmings ) its more fun to play armies where you are expected to lose to, i use ogres one of the hardest to win with and i have been smashing armies all over the place. If you look at the back ground for daemons one blood thirstier would be enough to destroy a entire empire army with out breaking a sweat
I ve thought about this a lot actually, and I think that deamons were definitely unbalanced because they were suppposed to be a scary tough army… but I hate it so much when I take my chaos dwarfs in to a tournament and have to fight against demons, every time I get massacred by them.
I would say elves, at least High Elfs are priced a bit higher to make a smaller “elite” army. The 6th ed book was especially prone for this (and I think 6th ed books in general), while the 7th ed book has instead piled on more rules and abilities to “make it worth” the cost the models have.
There’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that mixed in there. I do think the Deamon inf are a bit cheaper if nothing else so people would have an incentive to buy the plastic kits. On other hand, if you make an army too ridiculous it will be counter productive. 1. people get ostracised for playing it, 2. third party compsystems will get implemented, 3. you risk loosing OTHER players from the game. In essence I’d say any attempt to push an army beyond an accepted equilibrium will be counteracted by the players themselves.
GW doesn’t get this, and its weird for a company depending entirely on the satisfaction of its customers, but they Do. Not. Own. The. Hobby™.
They seem to believe and act like they do. But they don’t. Without their customers they are absolutely nothing.
On another topic, can you imagine how much more money GW could make, now that they no longer offer bitz service, if they focused and hyped up the conversion aspect of the hobby?
surely no graphs and charts are gonna convince them, but if they put more articles in white dwarf hyping up converting chaos dwarfs from their existing range and other fancy conversions… people will be buying whole boxes of plastics for just a few pieces (I know because I do it ALL THE TIME).
I think the unbalanced aspect is simply due to bad design rather than any psychological intent. They think “I want the army to be balanced for these types of builds” and then ignore the hideous overpowered builds that can be made from the same list, even if the playtesters point it out.
What playtesters? There haven't been any since WoC as far as I know... not externally at least.
Baggronor
And unfortunately books like the new Skaven one shows this to a great extent. Just look at the entry for the doom wheel or warpstone tokens and you will see what I mean.
