General concepts on army lists

From: Luca Lettieri <magnus_at_...>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 07:31:14 -0000

I've followed with some interest the Slann debate. I won't go into
that since I know nothing about the Slann, but I'd like to express a
general opinion.

It has been said the Slann units must be balanced since they've been
copied from other units belonging to existing armies. However, the
fact that each unit, singularly, is modeled on a pre-existing one
does not ensure that the army as a whole is balanced.
In Epic all the armies get better deals on some unit types and get
screwed in others. The IG have great artillery but pitiful CC
capabilities, Chaos has great CC units but poor long-range firepower
etc. We know the deal.

Now, if I build an army by copying all the best units of each army,
with the same statistics and cost, maybe the single unit is
"balanced" because it's the equivalent of an existing one; but the
army as a whole is grossly unbalanced. Imagine my "Space Cheese army"
with the equivalent of IG artillery, SM (regular and/or chaos)
infantry, squat superheavies and a mix of Tyranid biotitan with
imperial titan weapons (wait.. now that I think of it, this is the
Eldar actually :-) ok ok I'm joking, Lorenzo). Or, at the other
extreme, the "Space Losers army" with IG infantry, SM artillery,
squat titans and tyranid epic-style chain of command.

So... having an army with "pre-existing" unit templates does not
ensure army balance per se.


Luca Lettieri
Received on Fri Apr 28 2000 - 07:31:14 UTC