How to cook your MESBG homebrew to price perfection

 

As long as you can balance better than this then you're doing fine

This article’s topic is a little more niche, but is responding to a specific question that comes up surprisingly often: how do you balance homebrew profiles created for the MESBG ruleset? This hobby is filled with wonderful, creative people who have pulled together all sorts of interesting rules for models and factions that aren’t in the core game. But balancing those new rules so they fit seamlessly into the rest of the game is hard, and a lot of players don’t necessarily know where to start. And if they aren’t balanced appropriately, then it can be hard to use those models alongside existing profiles without one side or the other having a bad time.

Hence, this handy guide for all your homebrew-balancing needs. Just follow these 5 steps, and your model should be at least as well-balanced as the Dragon Emperor was on release.

Step 1: Make the profile

A cool Anárion conversion that deserves some great rules to go with it (u/Virtute_Probitate)

This step is the one that people are generally pretty good at, and honestly there isn’t to much to say here. Let your creativity run wild! One thing to be aware of is that the further your model diverges from existing profiles, the harder steps 2-5 are going to be. If your profile for Anárion is just Isildur with 1 Fate and 3 Will then it will be really easy to balance him; on the other hand, if he has a unique auric buff that gives nearby warriors +1 Attack but -1 Fight value, then it’s going to take a lot of playtesting to price him appropriately. That’s not at all to discourage creativity in designing profiles, but just to encourage awareness about this difficulty.

In any case, once you’ve got the profile sorted, then it’s time to…

Step 2: Pick a comparison model

A great, well-balanced profile to compare models to

This is arguably the most important and challenging step in the whole process: picking a model against which to compare your new profile. The two key things to master here are picking a model that’s performing the same role, and making sure your comparison model is appropriately balanced.

The first of these is simple enough generally: if your new profile is a standard combat hero, then you’re better off comparing them to a profile like Éomer than to Saruman. Similarly, if they’re elite heavy infantry then Uruk-hai Warriors would be a good starting point, rather than Orc Trackers. This just makes your life easier when comparing them, as you don’t have to do too many adjustments to take into account the different roles they’re fulfilling. One more key trap to avoid here is comparing combat heroes that can purchase mounts to those who can’t. A hero walking around on foot has to be substantially underpriced compared to one who can buy a mount, simply because mounts themselves cost so much less than they should (see this throwback article for why). So it’s much easier for you to compare a foot hero to Glóin, or Rhutabi, or Shagrat, rather than to Éomer or Aragorn.

The second thing to take into account here is making sure that the model you’re balancing from is at the right level to start with. Any half-competitive player can tell you that Suladân is a bit too cheap for what he does; if you decide to balance a new profile by comparing it to Suladân, it follows that your new profile will end up a bit undercosted. Going the other way, if you price your model off King Brand then they will end up a little overcosted, because King Brand was overcosted to begin with.

Look, this guy probably shouldn't be your starting point for balancing (Now for Wrath)

Generally, you’re looking to find a happy medium, where your models are equivalent in value to things that are seen in competitive lists, but not in an oppressive way. Think Mordor/Morannon Orcs, or Éomer, or any of a swathe of other profiles that are broadly paying the right price for their stats and rules.

Once you’ve written your profile and found the right model to compare it to, then it’s time to start pricing!

Step 3: Adjust for stats

How Games Workshop generally prices their models

Up next, we adjust the price of that comparison model to take into account the stats differences of your new profile. Generally, GW uses a simple formula for this: for warrior models, add +1 to the model’s points cost for every additional Fight, Strength, Defence and Courage, add +2 for every additional Attack, and add a varying amount for additional Shoot value, Movement and Wounds. For heroes, multiply all these numbers by 5, and add 5 points for every Might, Will and Fate.

These numbers can be seen in the Battle Companies book, and are pretty evident in a lot of the game’s pricing decisions. Morannon Orcs have +1D and +1S over Mordor Orcs, so they cost 2 points more. Mordor Uruk-hai have +1F and +1C but -1D relative to Morannons, so they cost one extra point. Simple, easy to understand, and a decent starting point all around.

However, these numbers aren’t perfect, and even GW has come to realise this in recent years. To start with, not all of these stats are created equal: extra Courage is nice, but it’s distinctly worse than extra Fight value, which is itself normally worth a little less (on warriors) than extra Strength or Defence. Extra Shoot value is either critical or useless, 1 pip of Movement is never worth 1 point, and 1 Might is clearly worth a lot more than 1 Will or 1 Fate.

Moreover, these stats all vary in value according to the model that they’re on. Having a second Attack on a warrior model is worth about 2 points when that warrior has bad stats (see: Orc Warriors v Hunter Orcs), but is worth much more than that when the model has good stats (see: Dwarf Warriors v Iron Guard). That’s because an elite model will get much more value out of that second Attack than a random mook would, as they’ll survive longer and deal more damage. Similarly, an extra Might point is probably worth about 5 points on Grishnakh, but potentially 50 points on Sauron or the Balrog.

Imagine this guy with couple of Might

This complexity is a lot of why Step 2 is so important, but hopefully you’ve done that step well and don’t have to make too many changes. Assuming that’s the case, then just start with that base cost and adjust in increments of 1/2 or 5/10, before adjusting a bit to take into account the relative value of those increases on the profile you’re designing. Treat Courage, Shoot and Movement as about half an increment each, and you should end up with a fairly balanced starting point.

From there, it’s time for the really tricky bit:

Step 4: Adjust for special rules

Special rules are fun, and are a great way to add uniqueness to a new profile. On the other hand, they’re also a lot more complicated to price than a stat increase or decrease. GW takes the approach in their Battle Companies book of pricing special rules generally as 2 point for warriors, or 10 for heroes. That is, frankly, a dumb approach. Don’t do that.

Instead, have a look at your special rule and see which of the following four categories it fits into. Is it:

•         a Ribbon rule. This is a rule that’s there for flavour, but only very rarely impacts the game. A classic example is Rangers of Mirkwood getting Hatred (Spiders), which is clearly not impacting the power of the Legion overall, but rather adding some lore-appropriate flavour. Ignore these rules for the purposes of costing your model.

Contrary to popular belief, their rule to reduce stats is probably a ribbon

•             Niche. These rules do come up, but they’re rarely worth as much as a simple stats boost. Think Woodland Creature, or Stalk Unseen, or Shieldwall. They are relevant to the pricing, but generally as ‘half points’ like extra Courage or Movement. A classic example are Warriors of Minas Tirith, who (relative to Morannons) trade one Strength for one Courage and Shieldwall. Those two half-boosts are roughly equivalent to the one proper stats boost of the Morannons, so the two profiles are approximately balanced against each other.
•             Relevant. These are rules like Wall of Blades, or Burly, or Bodyguard, that are likely to materially impact a game and are therefore worth at least one increment of points. Often these are fairly easy to price: Burly is about twice as good as +1S, so it should cost twice as much. Wall of Blades is the same but only triggers about half the time, so it should cost about the same as +1S. Other rules like Blood and Glory are trickier, but by estimating how often they’ll trigger and how big a deal it is when they do you should be able to fudge a value for them.

Their Many Blades special rule is always relevant

•             Game-changing. These rules, like Mighty Hero– free Heroic Combats or the ability to cast lots of powerful spells– are hard to balance. You can’t just stick Mighty Hero on Isildur’s profile and say ‘okay, now he should cost 30 points more.’ He’s no longer doing the same thing, so it’s best to compare him to a model that does, like Aragorn. Other examples here include wargear like the Banner of Gondor or Thranduil’s Circlet, either of which radically changes what that model brings to the army (and both of which, incidentally, are very undercosted).

Putting these first 4 steps together, we see that balancing a profile is basically writing its rules, picking an appropriate comparator, and then adjusting the price to take into account the changes to the models stats and special rules relative to that comparator. The key with all parts of this is trying to remember that a model is more than the sum of its parts, and altering one stat or special rule will have flow-on effects to the value of the rest of the profile.

All of that is frankly hard though, and very easy to mess up. That’s why we have the final step…

Step 5: Playtest (and playtest again, and playtest again)

How many rounds of balancing did this Legion require, even after the pre-release playtesting?

Even the most diligent of pricing methodologies still messes up sometimes, and the way you pick up on that is playtesting. Try the model out in different lists, against different enemies, in different scenarios. The more unique the profile, the more playtesting it’s likely to need before you land on the correct price. So get in those practice games, and pay close attention to whether the model is performing how it should. One way of doing so is to keep asking yourself after each game whether you would have preferred the 'balanced' comparator profile you priced it off. If the answer is yes, then maybe the price is too high; if it’s a strong no, then maybe the price is too low.

Bonus step: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet

Eventually, you’ll want to share your cool (and balanced!) profile with others. And if you’re doing so online, then be prepared for immediate howls of indignation that the model is overpowered and undercosted.

These howls will be wrong.

Well, they might not be. Sometimes things are actually overpowered or undercosted. But for whatever reason, the automatic response of most people to a new profile appears to be seeing it as too good for its points, whether it is or isn’t.

So, when people leave the hate comments about how this model would break the game, filter through them for people who are applying some kind of comparison to fairly-balanced base models. That kind of analysis is useful, and worthwhile listening to. The rest of it? Don’t sweat it.

At the end of all that, you should have a profile that’s balanced against the rest of the profiles in MESBG. Or rather, that’s balanced against the well-balanced models: if you’ve done your job right, then it should be less efficient than the Witch King but more efficient than Gandalf the White.

Gandalf seeing the points value he'd been given by Games Workshop 

 I hope you enjoyed this somewhat different article, and that it's inspired you to come up with your own suitably-balanced homebrew profiles. This is a great way to dive into the creativity of the hobby, and hopefully this article has helped with providing some structure to it.

Leave your favourite homebrew profiles in the comments below or on socials and I'll have a crack at pricing them, or comment what profiles you'd like to see added to the game.

And until next time, may your homebrew profiles never be flamed too hard on the internet!