I stopped playing MTG sometime around Mercadian Masques (spelling?). I can't comment on it's balance but I do know they still have some of the best artists in the world working on the game and every Friday my FLGS pulls in 50-100 players weekly, 50-200 for tournaments. No Joke. So they did -something- right.
He who has the most money often has an advantage in 40k. You are lying to yourself if you say otherwise.
Although WoTC did change D&D quite a bit, they also kept on producing Forgotten Realms books which kept on many of the original designers and artists from TSR, and is still, even in 4th edition, more similar to AD&D. D&D 3.5, while somewhat of an annoyance was generally accepted by most players as fixing many rules, and also fit seamlessly with 3.0, so it didn't hurt anything and you didn't need to buy the books if you didn't want to.
So yes, while not everything WoTC did with D&D and MTG was great but they are successful with it. They also offer prize support just for playing D&D everyweek or MTG at the store. Like wtf they give you money for playing their game :clapping: ?
I would take dozens of mediocre supplements with a few good ones over a company that only releases a few books a year for a single game system.
In essence you don't mind the idea of spending 2-3x as much regularly just to keep up with the current edition, or the idea of having dozen's of poorly balanced supplements basically wrecking any sense of balance is something you consider a perk? More isn't always better.
I used to play MtG in 7th Edition. It was an apparent race to spend the most money to build the best deck. I got out when 8th rolled around and everyone jumped on the Darksteel Forge/Colossus bandwagon. Needless to say the mechanics of an indestructible artifact deck was so broken just about everyone was trying to play it because it was THE way to win. I tried playing a Myr deck but just couldn't keep my interest up. And out I went.
D&D 3.5 was fun, but allowing the wrong supplement into a campaign essentially meant dealing with trying to balance encounters for one player. And D&D 4 is so bad it killed the D&D games at my flgs (and I've heard several people say that they only play 3.5 or Pathfinder instead).
When it comes to development, yes GW is slower, but they're a smaller staff within a smaller company. And for all our complaints of balance they still do a better job that WotC.
Additionally, points costs are what help balance two competing armies out. It isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than "at least 60 cards, no more than 4 of any one card" and requiring you to memorize a new list of banned cards every couple months.
Furthermore if money was such a great factor into building an uberarmy then why is Draigowing so popular? Oh that's right, one of it's big selling points is that it doesn't need a lot of models.
"Chaos Dreadnaught is removed and replaced with a new unit (like how pariahs were replaced with Lychguard)"
I call major bull on this one, why would GW remove an iconic unit with multiple models and multiple references to been with CSM for something else, even GW wouldnt be so stupid, so i highly doubt it would be removed, more likely theyll have something similar to dread as another unit entry ie Contemptor dreads or Decimator or new types of dreads ie something similar to mortis pattern.
I assume it's still going to be in essence a Dreadnought but it's going to get a new name or perhaps a different style model. Probably something to reflect the hundreds millenia these these things have been stomping around in the warp.
