Can any game system ever truly be balanced? Part 2

Choice and the points systems

Ah yes choice, freedom, liberty. All good things yes? Well yes of course they are but for a games designer, choice becomes a necessary evil. You see choice of what force, faction or even side you take actually can sometimes be used as a tool to try and mitigate those natural imbalances that occur in rule systems... and they also add a further imbalance to be controlled. As I commented in the first part of this article into the theory of game balance we want our wargames to be an abstract representation of war with all its imbalances and brutal imperfections in a fair and controlled manor... and we'd like to pick sides. Not too demanding are we?

Lets be honest would anyone play the wargame where all sides are the same? It might be OK for chess or checkers or their ilk, but in a wargame we don't all want to be Dark Elves, Daemons or Vampire Counts do we? Oh right yeah, bad examples, what I'm trying to hint at is that people want an army that suits them. Some will want a defensive shooty army others a highly aggressive horde army and some might like small elite armies full of specialist troops designed to deal death in specific ways. So how do pretty much all wargames deal with our demanding and unreasonable ways? Points systems!

It is not perfect by any means but it is the best tool and system available to games designers for attempting to maintain balance and for that reason it is also extensively used. However again its far from perfect. Take Warmachine and Hordes as a prime example. In the first edition of both games units were pointed and costed in the 'hundreds', this allows for a greater degree of subtle variance than things pointed in the 'tens' which is what the second editon of both games uses. For instance in the old system Warjack A might have cost 132 points and Warjack B 145. In the new system Warjack A might now cost 13 points while Warjack B might cost 15 points. The disparity between the two units as a proportion has gone up but the relative effectiveness hasn't changed. Obviously the later disparity might be a fairer representation of each units true ability. However where do you stop? Should things be pointed in the millions or billions even? As ever its a judgement call and like all judgement calls its not going to be perfect.

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