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  • After being stuck with a weak, outdated codex throughout 5th edition Tau became the most powerful army in 6th edition.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 almost every warrior aspect good and almost every single unit in the codex useable, and let them spam scatterbikes (one of the best troops in the game). It also 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! They can be really strong even without too much high intensity fine-tuning.
  • 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 a ton of units really 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.
  • The Angel of Death Warlord trait in 6th ed Vanilla marines was fairly underwhelming. In 7th it was changed so that the Fear test is on 3d6, making it more likely to matter.
  • After being used as the beta test for Vanilla marines in 6th ed, Dark Angels came back with a vengeance in 7th. Army wide BS2 on overwatch, Ravenwing re-rolling jink saves(this includes the fliers), access to grav weapons, buffs to the fliers(though the Nephilim is still shit), and their own psykic discipline. The demi-company makes greenwing overwatch at BS3, while the Deathwing and Ravenwing strike forces let Deathwing shoot and run the turn they drop, and allows Ravenwing to ignore the snap fire from jinking for a turn.
• 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.