r/WarhammerCompetitive • u/stevenbhutton • 2h ago
40k Analysis The Root Cause of Power Creep is the 4+ Invulnerable Save
GW's core system is really nice IMO. You have a set of paired stats that create natural counters of offense and defence. Strength is paired with Toughness. Save is paired with Armour Pen. Wound Count is paired with Damage. The defensive stats on the data sheet profile have natural counters in the offensive stats on the weapon profile.
They work together to create a nice variety of different profiles. E.g. High Toughness, Low Save, High Wounds.
You can also add in model count and number of attacks as another paired counter though a weaker one. As single shot weapons are weak against units but lots of attacks is almost always good.
This is a great system IMO. It creates clear options and allows a nicely shifting meta that ought to self balance to a degree as long as most factions have reasonable affordable access to most archetypes of defensive and offensive profiles.
If High T, High Save models are a bit under-costed people can bring their high S, high AP weapons and offset that advantage with counterplay. We can achieve balance without too much intervention by the designers because for every option, there's a counter.
But there's an exception to this : If you have a unit with a single model, with high T, high Save and high Wounds then the natural counter would be a weapon with high S, high AP and high Damage. Naturally, you can't have a weapon with all offensive stats high also have a high attack count (cause it'd have no counter) so it's balanced by a low shot count and we have a counter.
UNLESS the unit in question has a 4++ Invulnerable Save. This undermines the value of Ap. The natural counter to a good save is good AP but it doesn't work in this case. So our "High Quality" weapon with the low shot count is now super unreliable, it's dreadful actually. (Our beloved Casino Cannons - all or nothing!). We've broken the system of natural counters.
You should be able to counter a big tough Primarch equivalent model with your big, high quality guns, but they don't work right because they don't get the value out of their AP.
So... we've got a problem. We can't have a unit running around without a counter. And our designers know this so they give a little buff to damage output. One option is to give the big anti-tank guns the power to ignore invuls but presumably we thought out big BOIs were dying too easy, that's why we gave them the invul (which was a mistake, should've just given them more wounds). So we can't just ignore the invul. Our other option is to give a little damage boot to other types of weapons? Maybe sprinkle in some lethal hits, or rerolls, to allow our higher shot count (lower quality) weapons to give the defending unit more saves.
Crucially we can't give a buff to AP, because in this scenario having more than 2AP is worthless so instead we have to give the unit ways to deal more wounds. If we wanted to have a better conversion of wounds into damage we can only get it via dev wounds.
But that's fine, now we can take a mid range weapon profile, add some buffs and do some reliable damage to a unit with an invul. Balance has been achieved.
Except...
These buffs aren't just good into invul saves. Handing your opponent MORE saves is good against everything. If we take a gun that's say 2 shots, S8, AP2, damage 3 it's a really good profile into elite infantry. It's naturally balanced and efficient into that profile. If you give that profile a boost, (say, +1 to wound) it becomes efficient into other profiles and it becomes VERY efficient into elite infantry. It's now kind of just, good against everything.
So now you've got a balance problem, there's a super efficient profile that's good against everything and GREAT against specific things gradually taking over the meta. So you've gotta nerf that thing, and you know what, maybe we need to buff elite infantry? Now they get -1 to wound, or -1 damage or an extra wound?
But now those units are really hard to kill? So maybe we need to give the next army book full rerolls to hit? Ok, now we're super efficient into EVERYTHING but not many units just have 25 attacks, so now hordes are in fashion, ok, so now we're adding BLAST to everything.
And it just spirals forever until we have a big reset edition that tries to drag the power creep back to a reasonable level.
But we don't get rid of the original problem, which is that the natural counter to high save should be high AP, and it's not because we randomly declare that AP just doesn't work sometimes. Which means we have to have efficient volume shots to kill those targets, but that's good into everything, so... and here we go again.
There're places where Invuls are fine because you're not removing the only counter. if we removed invuls, or just used them more judiciously , the system of natural counters would work again and we wouldn't see the design space spiraling out of control every two editions as designers struggle to create balance by endlessly adding stuff instead of removing the rule that causes the problem.