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Well argued points Blacksails. I see your perspective better now. I still don't agree with it because I think 40K 7th is a great, fun game. And if someone wants to put a seer council down on the table, I am free to walk away from the table, or I can say 'well, I'm going to lose, but I'm going to go down fighting.' And probably just not play that guy next time I stop by the club.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sir Arun wrote:

Deathwing can be pretty effective as an all terminator army if done right, They got plenty of rules for an effective alpha strike that will leave your opponent reeling, and with the proper model placement and use of wound allocation mechanic, can take quite a bit of punishment as well.

There you go Wayne. Let us know how it goes.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:
Well argued points Blacksails. I see your perspective better now. I still don't agree with it because I think 40K 7th is a great, fun game. And if someone wants to put a seer council down on the table, I am free to walk away from the table, or I can say 'well, I'm going to lose, but I'm going to go down fighting.' And probably just not play that guy next time I stop by the club.

That's fine, I understand why people enjoy the game.

Just to point out, that walking away from a game because of a list/element of a list is a symptom of the rules, and not really a reasonable solution. Playing a lopsided match might be fun once or twice, or for certain people, but I'm fairly positive most people enjoy close, hard fought matches, rather than easy slaughters.

Its a gakky situation for a lot of people, hence the voices of disappointment on this board. Many people are heavily invested and hate to see a game they once loved go further and further in a direction that makes no sense to them. With additions like Murderfang with his Murderclaws suffering from Murderlust from the planet Omnicide, it makes you wonder how much effort the designers are really putting in to the game. I, and many others, don't believe in rewarding a company with our money for a sub par product, especially when the alternatives are so plentiful and excellent.

I sincerely hope GW pulls itself out of the tailspin of poor quality, and takes a good hard look at its games. There's greatness that can be achieved if the effort is put in. Imagine a balanced game of 40k with published rules for campaigns that tie with BFG and Epic, all in beautiful plastic.

When you see the possibilities and look at what we're given, its hard not to feel like you're being given a poor parody of what could be.

The day GW redoes BFG, is the day I max out my line of credit.

*Edit* I should probably thank you for the civil discussion and being reasonable. My intent is not to convince you to quit 40k or stop having fun, but just so you understand where other people on this board are coming from. Which I believe we've accomplished here.

Although I'm not a fan of the loose-ruleset concept, it does seem to have its supporters, and I can understand that. But what I can't condone is the cost at which the rules are published.

On average, new book releases get more expensive every time and content is divided out over more and more books. Plus the lifespans of these books are very short- the 6th edition rulebook is a solid example of something which the lifespan was cut by half. I get that people love 40k, their models, and the concept of the game, but I have to wonder at *what* point GW will cut content-per-cost down such that people say "I'm sorry, this is just too much" and leave.

I honestly think that's what's happening with the most recent reports. Everyone has their different threshold at which the cost to engage in the "current 40k" becomes unacceptable. And 40k is cutting into the core block of customers now...before it was the low-threshold customers who complaints were quickly dismissed. Now, with so much of the base being in the threshold range, frustration is growing more and more prevalent, as is the drop-out rate.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:
I understand your frustration, but I don't think your argument has any merit at all. Building a list that's designed to lose and then complaining that you can't win with it is a choice you made. It isn't GWs fault. What you're asking for isn't fair, balanced rules, it's rules skewed towards Terminators. You could add in some tacticals, scouts, tanks, etc and have a fine Terminator-heavy list. But you are choosing to punch yourself in the balls and then complaining that it hurts.

No, what we're asking for is a game where all choices are approximately equally valid. Yes, one could, perhaps should, construct a list with other units to support the Terminators.

The issue arises when no matter how carefully you construct a Terminator list, regardless of how much attention you pay to ensuring it is balanced against as many potential threats it may encounter as possible, it will still be objectively worse than other armies that can be constructed from the same book.

Understand this, people aren't campaigning for their pet army variant to be the next Serpent spam, they just want a chance at winning with it. Just a general move of the outlying units, be it good or bad, towards a more median power level. It is fair to concede that every item in the game will never be a perfect conjunction of power level and points, there will always be choices that are more or less efficient. What is eminently possible, as is demonstrated by the existence of many other successful games that do it, is to make the circumstances where the efficiency of those choices varies, either by missions and scenarios or synergy with other units, or where the increased efficiency is not at such a huge discrepancy that it essentially determines a winner before turn one, barring some significant statistical anomalies with dice rolling.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

Good post Azreal. I feel like Allies and unbound helps out here. If I absolutely had to play in some horrid group where people ran stuff like that, I'd probably ally in 3 looted Riptides myself.

That's just it, were the game better balanced and written, you wouldn't have to unless you chose to.

EDIT
And the reasons for choosing to would be based on complementing your intended strategy with the rest of your force, or because you thought the models were cool, not because you felt pressured to bring cheese to counter your opponent's cheese.

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

Toofast wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

People aren't choosing not to go that because they are lazy or something. They are choosing not to do that because they like the fluff of an Iron Warriors list with lots of basic marines and havocs as a siege force and think the helldrake is an ugly model.

People are being punished for not playing to the meta, which is one of the worst things a 'fun' game can possibly do.

Toofast wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

Because the game should be balanced such that there is no such thing as a "top tier power build". There should just be builds that ask different tactical questions. That's typically how other games work. I can build a list in Warmachine and it really doesn't matter which units I take as long as I make sure that I have synergy and that I know how to use the correct tactics with it. There are some more common choices, true, but there's no such thing as a power build. Hell I just watched a 35 point game on Youtube where someone was using a very unorthodox list with a caster that's largely considered to be poor and a few specific Warjack choices (Karchev the Terrible, if anyone cares). Using tactics he beat his opponent within 18 minutes, assassination in Turn 2; he didn't even kill a single enemy model before pulling off the assassination. Now that part doesn't apply to 40k, but that kind of situation where you can take a "subpar" choice and with superior tactics not only win but win decisively, is what I want out of 40k. There shouldn't be a situation where Wave Serpents, for instance, are so good that you A) Want to spam them and B) Spamming them gives you an insane advantage in a game. There shouldn't be a situation where a unit, the Pyrovore for example, has zero purpose in a list and there's virtually zero reason why you would ever take it, and choosing to take it is actively hindering you because you didn't take something else instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jonolikespie wrote:

Toofast wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

People aren't choosing not to go that because they are lazy or something. They are choosing not to do that because they like the fluff of an Iron Warriors list with lots of basic marines and havocs as a siege force and think the helldrake is an ugly model.

People are being punished for not playing to the meta, which is one of the worst things a 'fun' game can possibly do.

Also this. Perfect example too. If I want to play a fluffy Iron Warriors army with a couple of squads, some havocs, a unit of berserkers in a Rhino (assault force) and a Maulerfiend, I shouldn't be penalized for not taking Plague Marines and bikes and Heldrakes. I'm being screwed over because I'm ignoring the meta, instead of having the meta not have such a strong influence. Again, using Warmachine as an example (sorry, it's the game I currently play so it's fresh in my mind) there is definitely a meta, but there's also enough variety that there's no single "go to" build that solves most of your problems.

Toofast wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

I'm not sure what you're arguing?

Is it that 40K is fun as long as you sacrifice everything that one personally enjoys about the game and goes out and buys a power build in order to compete with all the other power builds?

Doesn't sound much fun to a player who likes to build thematic or aesthetic focused armies and would love for his gameplay decisions to make most difference to the winner, and not almost exclusively his list building and model purchasing decisions.

 jonolikespie wrote:

People aren't choosing not to go that because they are lazy or something. They are choosing not to do that because they like the fluff of an Iron Warriors list with lots of basic marines and havocs as a siege force and think the helldrake is an ugly model.

People are being punished for not playing to the meta, which is one of the worst things a 'fun' game can possibly do.

When has there been an edition of WHFB or 40K that didn't have that problem though? This isn't some new problem in 7th. There has always been that issue and there always will be because no matter what GW does, people will find a way to abuse the rules. It's human nature in a competitive environment for people to strive to find a compeititve edge.

Fantasy has all these same problems. Try running a Dark Elf list based around spearmen and corsairs. Try running and OnG list based around regular boys and boar boys. It doesn't work in a competitive environment even though it makes sense in the fluff. But lists like that can be fun to play if you can find other players looking to run fun fluffy lists.

Your asking Games Workshop to do something impossible. Make every unit completely balanced. If, for example, they made Rip Tides no longer over-powered, Tau power gamers wouldn't scale back to one rip tide, they'd figure out what the next most over-powered unit was and spam that instead.

All these problems aren't problems with the game itself. They never are. It's a problem with the player base. No one is forcing Tau players to run 3 rip tides. They are doing it because they see it's an easily exploitable, over-powered, under-costed unit. No one is forcing Eldar players to run Seer Stars. The players are choosing to be jerks.

I joined a fantasy group this year with my Vampire Counts army. I didn't want to run any terrorgheists. Well, too bad, to be competitive I had to buy 2. I quit that group because it made the game no longer fun to me. At least, if Fantasy was like 7th 40K I could have also taken an allied undead High Elf detachment with 2 frost phonixes, banner of the world dragon undead White Lions and some undead Phoenix guard with undead Teclis. At least it would be balanced.

40K is actually giving you an chance to be more competitive with the new rules if you want to be. Break out the modeling knife and the green stuff and bring something that fits your fluff but which uses the rules for something powerful.

OR

Find a new group.

OR

Have your group sit down and come up with a comp system or something.

I just feel people are over-reacting to comical levels and I'm trying to talk some sense into them. This happens every edition. People quit for a while. They usually come back after a while when they've calmed down.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:
Your asking Games Workshop to do something impossible. Make every unit completely balanced. If, for example, they made Rip Tides no longer over-powered, Tau power gamers wouldn't scale back to one rip tide, they'd figure out what the next most over-powered unit was and spam that instead.

Why is it impossible for GW, but not others? Honest question. Most games can balance choices so there isn't a unit that is overpowered to the point where it becomes a problem? Most games handle this by restricting how many you have, or having them cost enough that you can't take a ton of them. Even with GW's focus on selling models and not the game (as silly as that is in reality) there doesn't have to be units that are SO overpowered. Power gamers will always find the "best" choices, but you can make the gap between "best" and "not best" a lot smaller to mitigate the problem. Warmachine seems to do this fairly well; you tend to see the same "good" units in most tournament lists, but not 100% of the time, and even then the power level between a "good" unit and an "average" unit is minimal.

Why can't GW do that? I understand fully that they don't WANT to do that, but I don't think it's that they can't. They're just lazy and/or greedy so don't want to put the effort in because why bother when you can sell a Riptide at $85? Make them so good that you want three, and they get 3x the amount than if a Riptide was 500 points or whatever (not that it would be that high even if properly balanced, of course, but as an example) and you only wanted to get one.

Also, you hit a nerve with your comment about just convert to use the OP rule. That should not be an option that has any merit at all in being brought up. I shouldn't be told if I want to play Iron Warriors to just model bionics on them and field them as Plague Marines, because that's competitive. A good game would let me field Iron Warriors and have them be just as competitive, possibly a different way or with different tactics, as fielding Plague Marines. The fact that the common retort is to just model something and proxy/counts-as is a design flaw.

"Deal or find a new group" is not an acceptable answer. Doubly so when a lot of people don't have a "group" but play in a game store as the notion to just find a new game store is ridiculous.

This is a flaw of the game.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

People aren't choosing not to go that because they are lazy or something. They are choosing not to do that because they like the fluff of an Iron Warriors list with lots of basic marines and havocs as a siege force and think the helldrake is an ugly model.

People are being punished for not playing to the meta, which is one of the worst things a 'fun' game can possibly do.

When has there been an edition of WHFB or 40K that didn't have that problem though? This isn't some new problem in 7th. There has always been that issue and there always will be because no matter what GW does, people will find a way to abuse the rules. It's human nature in a competitive environment for people to strive to find a compeititve edge.

Fantasy has all these same problems. Try running a Dark Elf list based around spearmen and corsairs. Try running and OnG list based around regular boys and boar boys. It doesn't work in a competitive environment even though it makes sense in the fluff. But lists like that can be fun to play if you can find other players looking to run fun fluffy lists.

Your asking Games Workshop to do something impossible. Make every unit completely balanced. If, for example, they made Rip Tides no longer over-powered, Tau power gamers wouldn't scale back to one rip tide, they'd figure out what the next most over-powered unit was and spam that instead.

All these problems aren't problems with the game itself. They never are. It's a problem with the player base. No one is forcing Tau players to run 3 rip tides. They are doing it because they see it's an easily exploitable, over-powered, under-costed unit. No one is forcing Eldar players to run Seer Stars. The players are choosing to be jerks.

I joined a fantasy group this year with my Vampire Counts army. I didn't want to run any terrorgheists. Well, too bad, to be competitive I had to buy 2. I quit that group because it made the game no longer fun to me. At least, if Fantasy was like 7th 40K I could have also taken an allied undead High Elf detachment with 2 frost phonixes, banner of the world dragon undead White Lions and some undead Phoenix guard with undead Teclis. At least it would be balanced.

40K is actually giving you an chance to be more competitive with the new rules if you want to be. Break out the modeling knife and the green stuff and bring something that fits your fluff but which uses the rules for something powerful.

OR

Find a new group.

OR

Have your group sit down and come up with a comp system or something.

I just feel people are over-reacting to comical levels and I'm trying to talk some sense into them. This happens every edition. People quit for a while. They usually come back after a while when they've calmed down.

You're right, there hasn't really been a "perfect" edition of either of GWs big two.

This has been less of a problem until now because

- the current environment is throwing more and more options Into the game, via supplements, expansions and dataslates, increasing the complexity and the chances of something ludicrous slipping through the "testing" net. Not inherently a problem until you ally it (see what I did there?) with GW's apparently petulant refusal to maintain any sort of regular release of FAQs and Errata, to the extent where different formats have different wordings.

- other companies are demonstrating how it can be done. For the first few decades, GW had no serious competition, at least none that stuck around for long, but the last ten years has seen the emergence of several games that have a) stuck around, b) continue to grow when GW isn't and c) provide playable, approximately balanced rules, and more importantly, be actively involved with community when it comes to maintaining and adjusting them, something GW is spectacularly bad at to the point of actively retreating from their customer base.

It is demonstrably NOT impossible to produce a reasonably (not perfectly, reasonably) balanced game, GW have just failed to do so in over 30 years of, allegedly, trying.

- (edit) The player base is more and more connected these days too. When I was playing 2nd Ed in my mate's flat in a small group of friends with limited Internet access (and frankly, no real thought to see if people were in the Internet talking about 40K) not one of us came up with any of the broken armies I've heard tales of since returning to the game a few years back. These days, anyone desperate to win just needs Google and a credit card and can pretty much guarantee themselves a minimum 2:1 W/L.


You need to stop banging the drum about the players being jerks too. It has been said that Wave Serpents are a fluffy choice, as they are the only dedicated transport available to the
Eldar, and sending a unit into battle on foot isn't a fluffy choice for many Eldar units, it isn't the players fault that they're ludicrous units that should never have made it into the book in their current form.

I've said before competitive should be an attitude not a playstyle, and pretty much every single other wargame out there manages to achieve this outside of Warhammer.

Also, GW's financials have shown a consistent loss of revenue for the last two reports in succession, so I'd suggest fewer people are having sense talked into them (seriously? How big headed are you?) and aren't calming down.

Sorry, I'm being negative.... My apologies.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

People aren't choosing not to go that because they are lazy or something. They are choosing not to do that because they like the fluff of an Iron Warriors list with lots of basic marines and havocs as a siege force and think the helldrake is an ugly model.

People are being punished for not playing to the meta, which is one of the worst things a 'fun' game can possibly do.

When has there been an edition of WHFB or 40K that didn't have that problem though? This isn't some new problem in 7th. There has always been that issue and there always will be because no matter what GW does, people will find a way to abuse the rules. It's human nature in a competitive environment for people to strive to find a compeititve edge.

 OldSkoolGoff wrote:

I just feel people are over-reacting to comical levels and I'm trying to talk some sense into them. This happens every edition. People quit for a while. They usually come back after a while when they've calmed down.

The difference now is that the market GW is competing in has now matured and there are strong competitors whose playerbases are continually growing. GW's own draconian actions toward FLGSs are speeding the process by making it attractive to promote their competitors games.

It is very telling that they are losing revenue at a time when their industry is experiencing explosive growth.

 Kelly502 wrote:
Don't let the door hit ya on your way out.

Oh, someone with a traditionally pro-GW viewpoint posts something slightly insulting with no actual argument of any substance.

How unusual.

Despite how unhappy you may be with another user's post, just hit the yellow triangle. Slapping back makes you just as bad.

Sounds like you just don't want to forge a narrative.

 TedNugent wrote:
Sounds like you just don't want to forge a narrative.

If only the rules worked as advertised and this was actually possible

Some of what OldSkoolGoff is saying makes absolutely no sense to me. The comments seem contradictory. The game is great for the casual gamer now, as long as the casual gamer is willing to bend and contort into following the power builds. ??? Or you just have to not play with this group, and negotiate with that group and find people that play this way.

So basically a player that wants to play an army he likes, just because it looks cool has good fluff or whatever, can't show up to a random place to play, put his army on the table and expect to start playing a balanced game. Yet somehow this environment is good forthe casual player?

Sounds like a powergamer's paradise, but a wasteland for a casual gamer.

Sorry about my earlier post, I'm just stubborn and I'll keep playing, I don't blame the system when I run across a bad player. I had a very close group of friends who played, of course we'd argue but in jest, never really serious about it, until Steve came along... Steve was serious and when provoked would throw a die at a model and break it doing so...

Never really ran into too much ridiculous stuff, I was involved in tournaments and demonstrating games to all sorts of folk so I've seen a fair number of strange things.

Keep your stuff, you may just need a break, or maybe you've met your limit and need a change from here out. I find that other systems come and go, you get into them and bam they disappear and you're left with a small collection of mini's that has no more support, OGRE was a favorite of mine, then the mini's came out then they stopped, then they came back, then they stopped... see where I'm going? GW has never stopped for me, I run into odd things like, gosh I'd love to get the Chaos Marines but those marine kits look horrible! So I stick with other things, collecting an odd Chaos character here and there because I have a hope that one day they'll make Chaos Marines more detailed like the regular SM's.

I've been delving into too many negative threads and I'm getting sick of negative, knee jerk reaction to negative when I should walk away.

 Kelly502 wrote:
I've been delving into too many negative threads and I'm getting sick of negative, knee jerk reaction to negative when I should walk away.

The thing is though that nearly all of the negative threads are well thought out with solid reasons. It's usually the opposite approach (everything is fine, GW is doing great, blame tournament players, etc.) that tend to just state it without evidence or anything and get rude. Every. Single. Time.

I get increasingly frustrated the more I look at the clusterfeth of rules, all the random nonsense, and the fact that all of the themed armies I want aren't viable in the game when they should be, unless I do something I don't want (e.g. I don't want to play Deathwing, but I can't do an all-Terminator force without it, and even that's going to still underperform). I still miss the lore and feel of the game, but with the cost of it it's not worth investing unless I know I'll be happy and have fun, and everything I've read thus far seems that wouldn't be the case.

I'm in bliss I guess, I haven't played in a while and the last time was at a tournament that was awesome, with great folks who are of good character. I have met some of the players here at my local and so far everyone is great. That may change when I start playing....

 motyak wrote:
Despite how unhappy you may be with another user's post, just hit the yellow triangle. Slapping back makes you just as bad.

I sincerely apologize if anything I've said comes off as slapping, that's literally just how I talk. I shouldn't have even commented in this thread, it's the exact same conversation we all had when 8th fantasy came out. GW is still here, some of the older players actually left, most just took a break until they were all cried out.

And I'm not being glib saying 'find a new group.' I've played in both great and awful groups. It makes a far bigger difference than the ruleset.

 Kelly502 wrote:
I'm in bliss I guess, I haven't played in a while and the last time was at a tournament that was awesome, with great folks who are of good character. I have met some of the players here at my local and so far everyone is great. That may change when I start playing....

I definitely understand. My meta for 40k is more 50/50, they have frequent tournaments so they seem to be more competitive, just I don't want to get invested in the game again if I'm going to just get steamrolled because I want to play a fluffy army, and there isn't that much else that appeals to me anymore in it.

I guess steam rolled is a great term for my games! Plus my dice hate my guts! I love plasma guns, Razorbacks... see where I'm going? lol... I take my troop choices in 6 Razorbacks and that's a roaring 36 SM's... the squads take fire and miss saves I lose half my squad... I'm trying to get away from the ooo that's a cool model syndrome and move into a grown-up gamer... I did hold the right flank on a large game of 40K with my Steel Legion, I was facing the green tide lucky that day, I must have used someone else's dice that day.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Toofast wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:


I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you're part of a relatively small gaming community? Because anyone who has faced a Wave Serpent spam, Riptide Spam, Screamerstar, Jetseer Council or any of the other demonstrably statistically advantaged broken lists from recent times more than a handful of times is really going to struggle to maintain your attitude.

I face those lists all the time. It's rare that I don't see a list including one of those, or daemon factories, necron flying bakeries, necron AV 13 spam, Adamantine lance, etc. It hasn't changed my enjoyment of the game one bit. It has made me a far better player and list builder. My space wolves, which were bottom tier until very recently, have been able to compete and even win over 50% of those matchups. Yes, I had to (gasp!) buy, build and paint new units. I had to adapt my list and play style to the meta. If you're willing to do that, nearly every codex has a build that can compete with the top tier power builds. If you don't want to do that, why do you expect to compete with the people that are doing that?

I'm not sure what you're arguing?

Is it that 40K is fun as long as you sacrifice everything that one personally enjoys about the game and goes out and buys a power build in order to compete with all the other power builds?

Doesn't sound much fun to a player who likes to build thematic or aesthetic focused armies and would love for his gameplay decisions to make most difference to the winner, and not almost exclusively his list building and model purchasing decisions.

How exactly does this differ from MTG where building a deck based on the cards you like the art work of is not going to win you a single tournament game? I'm arguing that expecting the units you like the look of to be able to compete with the best units in the game is insane, asinine and ridiculous and doesn't happen in any other competitive game I've ever played. The only thing unique to 40k about this situation is how many people cry about this simple fact of competitive games. 40k has a winner and a loser. The winner is usually based on who brings the most powerful units to the game. I'm not sure when people decided it should be all about everyone having fun like it's a kindergarten track meet. There is no participation medal and fun to me is winning, just like everything else I do. Don't expect to beat my tournament list by playing a rule of cool fluffhammer army and then cry when it isn't possible. Also, some people's brand of fun is using the best units possible and actually trying to win a game.

Toofast wrote:

How exactly does this differ from MTG where building a deck based on the cards you like the art work of is not going to win you a single tournament game? I'm arguing that expecting the units you like the look of to be able to compete with the best units in the game is insane, asinine and ridiculous and doesn't happen in any other competitive game I've ever played. The only thing unique to 40k about this situation is how many people cry about this simple fact of competitive games. 40k has a winner and a loser. The winner is usually based on who brings the most powerful units to the game. I'm not sure when people decided it should be all about everyone having fun like it's a kindergarten track meet. There is no participation medal and fun to me is winning, just like everything else I do. Don't expect to beat my tournament list by playing a rule of cool fluffhammer army and then cry when it isn't possible. Also, some people's brand of fun is using the best units possible and actually trying to win a game.

To begin with, your way of having fun is not the only way of having fun.


Now the important part of my reply: you have no idea what this conversation is about.

What we are saying is that there shouldn't be a 'most powerful unit', there should not be units that are just 'better' than others.

Now before you go getting the wrong idea I am not saying that a space marine should be the equivalent of a gretchin or that every army needs to play even remotely similar. What we are asking for here is a game where 100 points of an anti-infantry unit is going to get you roughly the same benefit to your army as another 100 points of anti infantry.

People aren't crying about 40k being played competitively, they are annoyed that competitive play comes down to finding the most effective unit for it's points cost and then spamming as many of them as you can.
Other games manage this reasonably well. Why on earth are the people charging the most on the market for their rules not even trying?

 jonolikespie wrote:



What we are saying is that there shouldn't be a 'most powerful unit', there should not be units that are just 'better' than others.

Do you realistically think this will happen? Have you seen a game where this has been achieved?

I mean, a smaller gap between 'good' and 'not so good' units (so even if you pick several not so good units you can still pull off a win through superior skill), more 'good' units (so you have more freedom of choice and are not forced in a narrow set of builds if you want to build a competitive list) these are good and reasonable ideas, but perfect balance? I have yet to see that anywhere.

I don't even think perfect balance is desirable from a business standpoint. Some people do actually enjoy the list building and number crunching game, figuring out whether A is better than B and why. If your game doesn't put any emphasis on this, you lose the $$$ of these guys.

LordBlades wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:



What we are saying is that there shouldn't be a 'most powerful unit', there should not be units that are just 'better' than others.

Do you realistically think this will happen? Have you seen a game where this has been achieved?

I mean, a smaller gap between 'good' and 'not so good' units (so even if you pick several not so good units you can still pull off a win through superior skill), more 'good' units (so you have more freedom of choice and are not forced in a narrow set of builds if you want to build a competitive list) these are good and reasonable ideas, but perfect balance? I have yet to see that anywhere.

I don't even think perfect balance is desirable from a business standpoint. Some people do actually enjoy the list building and number crunching game, figuring out whether A is better than B and why. If your game doesn't put any emphasis on this, you lose the $$$ of these guys.

Perfect balance has never been the goal. Good balance is the goal and Infinity does that amazingly well. Warmahordes also does that very well. Dystopian Wars was almost as bad as 40k until they moved to 2nd edition and completely fixed it.

I'd say that every other game on the market I have tried other than GW games have reached the point of well balanced.

As for list building, it still exists in games like Infinity and Warmachine, in fact it is much more in depth because you're not just googling which unit is best, you need to figure out which unit works best for you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So many people seem to not understand this so I'm just going to post an example of what happened when I got into Infinity. This is basically what I want 40k to become.

I had a quick look at the videos on their youtube channel explaining the setting and each of the factions. Between the fluff and the models I decided I wanted to play Aleph (the AI faction).

I went to the forum here on Dakka and told people I loved the idea of a force made up of a ton of infiltrators, I asked if this would make for a good list. I was told that while the basic game mechanics mean too many models not on the board will handicap me but that keeping that in mind it's still entirely possible to make a list around the units I liked and since the game is well balanced it will be perfectly viable.

It was also made clear that doesn't mean I can throw any models I want on the table and have an exact 50/50 chance of beating anyone else. Things where suggested such as 'you like model X, she can see through smoke so why not look at taking unit Y or Z since they can throw smoke'.

When looking at Warmaching I immediately wanted a Warjack heavy Khardor list. I was then jumped on and told right away Khardor is an infantry heavy faction, only Warjacks is not viable. Looking into it I found some threads about how to do that and while they where right, it's an infantry faction, there where also some very good suggestions about how to still do it anyway. It wouldn't be optimized but it once I learn how to play it properly it should still work well.

Looking at 40k right now I can't see a way to make a Raven Guard infiltration list work. I can't see how to make an Iron Warriors foot slogging siege force work. I can't see how to make an all termi force work.
Admittedly there probably is a way to get some of those to work but in neither Infinity, Warmachine nor Dystopian Wars do I feel like I am being actively punished for taking a unit I liked the look of where as I most cirtainly do feel that way playing Chaos Space Marines.