Buff

Buff (n.)

A yellowish-beige color, or a stout, dull yellow leather with a velvety surface.

Buff (v.)

To polish something. When applied to games it refers to something being made better or stronger. This is usually done (hopefully) to bring things into line with others in hopes of making them relevant or competitive. This will usually cause a great deal of rage from other players that their own stuff hasn't been buffed. This may or may not lead to said character or thing being nerfed after realizing that they were made to good.

Examples of Buffing

(tabletop/traditional games only please)

• Armies in Warhammer 40k tend to leap frog one another in power thanks to the codex power creep.
  • After being stuck with a weak, outdated codex throughout 5th edition Tau became the most powerful army in 6th edition. The codex alone was great, giving them Riptides and the farsight bomb on top of making Etherals and Kroot actually useful, but it was 6th ed's addition of overwatch and changes to assault that made them ridiculous. The enemy already had to eat a ton of very powerful, crazy accurate, cover ignoring shots. Now they had to roll their charge range randomly, and eat another around of shooting from several units just for trying.
  • After being one of the best armies around for most of 6th edition, Eldar got buffed even more with the nex Codex:Craftworld Eldar, which made every warrior aspect good, every single unit in the codex very seable, and let them spam scatterbikes (the best troops in the game), and gave them one of the game's most cost-effective Lords of War choices (the Wraithknight), fantastic new decurion-style detachments, along with ranged S:D weapons everywhere! Even without a competitive list or any allies, they can beat any other army, often without tailoring too much.
  • After spending waaay too many editions with their old codex, Necrons finally got a new codex with 7th edition. Boy, was it Awesome! It made every single unit good, often tremendously buffing them either directly like the Flayed Ones, or through their new Decurion detachments (like wraiths). It also insanely buffed the already excellent Necron durability with the changes to Reanimation Protocols - making Necrons the hardest to kill army in the game.
• Khador of Warmachine has the infamous "clam-jacks" that boast crazy ARM as long as you don't attack, severally handicapping it at the same time. Then its rules were errated, allowing it to make Slams, Tramples, and Headbutts, without losing the ARM bonus, letting it run over infantry, knockdown jacks, and push other models around while being just as durable as ever.

See Also

• Nerf, the exact opposite of this subject.