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In my experience as a game becomes older and more ridiculous the fanbase becomes more polarized when it comes to trying to balance things. Even if the tournaments aren't as popular, the idea of a competitive rule set will attract people in middle getting sick of the crazy. The more hardcore oriented people in the middle are going to be attracted by tournaments and tournament rules, the more casual oriented people in the middle will adapt the "who cares, beer and pretzels" ideology. Others will just quit.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
No, Tournaments will keep chugging along. Why? Because, they are not about winning. They are about drinks, friends, drinks, playing people you have never me, drinking, visiting other places, drinking, and road trips.
40k is an afterthought.

This, a thousand times. Everyone knows that 40k is not a competitive tabletop, it's horrendously balanced and bears no competitive value at all, especially not after blatantly going pay-to-win. Tournaments, however, are so much more. It's about the experience, not being the "best" 40k player there is.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
No, Tournaments will keep chugging along. Why? Because, they are not about winning. They are about drinks, friends, drinks, playing people you have never me, drinking, visiting other places, drinking, and road trips.
40k is an afterthought.

This, a thousand times. Everyone knows that 40k is not a competitive tabletop, it's horrendously balanced and bears no competitive value at all, especially not after blatantly going pay-to-win. Tournaments, however, are so much more. It's about the experience, not being the "best" 40k player there is.

Technically any wargaming "tournament" is like that though. But ultimately the point of a tournament is to play against presumably better players to hone your skills and show your skillz and win.

 Peregrine wrote:

valace2 wrote:
You don't believe that they are deliberately writing broken rules?

No, I don't, because deliberately writing broken rules would be such a stupid idea that even GW wouldn't do it. And because I know how much effort it takes to make good rules. For example, WOTC has a large staff dedicated to game design and development, including paid playtesters, and spends months of hard work on every new set for MTG. That's because the first draft of a new set is always completely broken and the only way it gets to the point where it can be published is through lots of hard work. And despite this effort occasional mistakes slip through and have to be banned to preserve the tournament metagame. GW doesn't do that, so it's inevitable that completely broken rules are going to make it into finished products even if nobody is deliberately trying to break anything.

But tell me this: if you think GW is deliberately writing broken rules then why are they doing it? What do they gain from having broken rules, and how does it make up for losing customers who aren't happy about the rules?

"No, I don't, because deliberately writing broken rules would be such a stupid idea that even GW wouldn't do it."

Whats stupid about writting rules that cause you models to fly off the shelves the day they are released? It's genius. The shops in my area can't keep crons of the shelves, finding an eldar jetbike is going to be a real errand in the next couple of months. Good thing I won't be trying.

The stupid part would be where they write bad rules for new models, like the WoC warshrine and big monsters in fantasy.

GW are just hit and miss in their powerlevels, this is exaggerated for new unit entries as there is nothing to base the entry around; so they end up being either over or underpowered.

With respect OP, I'm not sure the "GW wants to kill tournaments," theory makes much sense. Tournaments encourage people to buy certain models. If GW really wanted to be underhanded, they could easily make some models especially powerful thus encouraging people to buy the models GW has chosen for them.

Making tournaments no longer viable would take away the motivation for players to buy the newly powered up units. This would cause all their xenos models to come off the shelves more slowly. Which, y'know, means they're making less money.

As for trying to push 30k, marines already sell very well in 40k. Pushing people towards 30k wouldresult in a relatively minor boost in sales as people would essentially just be filling in gaps in their armies. The majority of players in 40k have a marine army, so turning that into a 30k army mostly just requires you buy a couple new units to bring your army size up or to get certain weapon bits. You can use a lot of the same models between the various armies too, so getting tired of, say, Blood Angels and switching to Imperial Fists is a matter of repainting stuff and maybe buying a new unit or two. Compare that to someone who wants to start a new army of orks after playing Necrons. They need to buy an entirely new rulebook and entirely new models for every unit in their army.

Much more likely is that GW just doesn't stress-test well (possibly because it takes a lot of time to run a given test with 40k) or that an editor didn't realize the "one-heavy-weapon-per-jetbike" thing was a typo.

GW doesnt make OP rules on purpose. Robin Crudace said in some interview that they have about a month to work on each book, and that was 5th edition. Has to be 2 weeks or sth now so I guess they do it based on intuition alone or some flawed point calculation system. The results are not bad tbh given the circumstances and GWs attitude, oh wait eldar I mean weren't that bad.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Whats stupid about writting rules that cause you models to fly off the shelves the day they are released?

1) Making overpowered rules to sell models is not the same thing as deliberately making bad rules to kill tournaments. Please go back and look at the claim I was responding to in the post you quoted.

2) Selling the new stuff doesn't help if those sales are coming at the expense of old stuff. Making jetbikes overpowered so that a customer spends $100 on jetbikes instead of $100 on tactical squads doesn't help GW at all. Meanwhile, since the rest of the codex is going to be ignored in favor of jetbikes and D-weapons, they've got a whole range of Eldar kits that will be selling slowly at best.

3) Power creep might be good for short-term sales, but it's a terrible long-term strategy. Sure, you made some new sales from that guy who bought a jetbike army, but the DA player he crushed just gave up and decided it's not worth spending another $500 on the army expansion he was considering. Even GW has to understand that if a player's first experience with the game is "buy the overpowered army of the month or you're never going to win" it's going to be very difficult to get them to invest in their own army.

And, again, the evidence for deliberate power creep just isn't there. If GW is deliberately making new stuff overpowered then why weren't the admech models blatantly overpowered like the Eldar ones? Why is their pattern of balance issues a random distribution of "weak and useless" and "so overpowered it breaks the game" instead of a straightforward trend of every new release being obviously better than the previous one?

Exactly, Peregrine..Remember how those armies spamming mutilators and heldrakes broke 6th ed 40k?

 Peregrine wrote:
And, again, the evidence for deliberate power creep just isn't there. If GW is deliberately making new stuff overpowered then why weren't the admech models blatantly overpowered like the Eldar ones? Why is their pattern of balance issues a random distribution of "weak and useless" and "so overpowered it breaks the game" instead of a straightforward trend of every new release being obviously better than the previous one?

While I agree GW is stupid rather than malicious, assuming they WERE malicious, the smart thing wouldn't be to make every new release more powerful, it would be to do what they currently do, just shuffle it up so what is powerful is constantly changing.

It doesn't matter if they buy the 2 year old $50 kit or the 2 day old $50 kit. Having large imbalances and shifting where the imbalances lie gets those suckers who like to stay on top of the game to buy more stuff.

The only reason to make the newer product popular over the older ones is if the profit margin on the newer kit is higher or you think most players already own the old kit. But if you just shuffle the poor balance in your game so sometimes new kits get powerful and sometimes old kits get more powerful, you get a bit more mileage out of it before your customers rage quit when they realise you're being a d-bag.

But that said, I don't think they are malicious so much as stupid. I'd hazard a guess and say many Eldar players already owned a Wraithknight, so buffing it didn't really make sense.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
While I agree GW is stupid rather than malicious, assuming they WERE malicious, the smart thing wouldn't be to make every new release more powerful, it would be to do what they currently do, just shuffle it up so what is powerful is constantly changing.

It doesn't matter if they buy the 2 year old $50 kit or the 2 day old $50 kit. Having large imbalances and shifting where the imbalances lie gets those suckers who like to stay on top of the game to buy more stuff.

The only reason to make the newer product popular over the older ones is if the profit margin on the newer kit is higher or you think most players already own the old kit. But if you just shuffle the poor balance in your game so sometimes new kits get powerful and sometimes old kits get more powerful, you get a bit more mileage out of it before your customers rage quit when they realise you're being a d-bag.

But that said, I don't think they are malicious so much as stupid. I'd hazard a guess and say many Eldar players already owned a Wraithknight, so buffing it didn't really make sense.

I also subscribe to stupid rather than malicious

But actually, if they WERE malicious (or at least Profitus Maximus), in my opinion, they would give old models that weren't selling and new releases the most advantageous rules; and likewise penalize models that are selling well, or that sell themselves.

Actually, though, that doesn't really happen, at least not consistently.

Sure, Windriders are fantastic. But how many people rushed out to buy 10 boxes of Assault Terminators? And that was their Christmas time release! And, like you said, Wraithknights and Wraithguard got a nice buff -- but practically every serious Eldar player owns at least 1 of each (if not multiples), and the new rules make WK harder to spam -- like you say, most Eldar players won't be going out to buy WK.. WG, either, because the only War Host option for WG **requires** 3 (not 1-3), making it a gigantic point sink.

So... I can only conclude that GW generally likes some factions, and haphazardly, randomly buffs or nerfs others based on some bizarre internal "playtesting" But, WTF, I'm used to it now. It's not like, for 6 editions of 40k balance was fantastic, and now it's horrible. I'd just be shocked if they went through a whole edition where all of the factions were externally balanced. I mean, that just wouldn't be 40k

I think the only somewhat "malicious" intent is to screw people up by making certain things standard.

"So you don't like Superheavies and don't accept them in supplements? Here, have an Ork codex with a superheavy in it!"

"So you don't like Lords of War? Guess what! All your old powerful HQ's are now Lords of War!"

"So you feel D is unbalanced and ban it from tournaments? BAM! Have some D weapon Wraithguard and Wraithknights!"

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the only somewhat "malicious" intent is to screw people up by making certain things standard.

"So you don't like Superheavies and don't accept them in supplements? Here, have an Ork codex with a superheavy in it!"

"So you don't like Lords of War? Guess what! All your old powerful HQ's are now Lords of War!"

"So you feel D is unbalanced and ban it from tournaments? BAM! Have some D weapon Wraithguard and Wraithknights!"

We must start to hate ballance...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And, again, the evidence for deliberate power creep just isn't there. If GW is deliberately making new stuff overpowered then why weren't the admech models blatantly overpowered like the Eldar ones? Why is their pattern of balance issues a random distribution of "weak and useless" and "so overpowered it breaks the game" instead of a straightforward trend of every new release being obviously better than the previous one?

While I agree GW is stupid rather than malicious, assuming they WERE malicious, the smart thing wouldn't be to make every new release more powerful, it would be to do what they currently do, just shuffle it up so what is powerful is constantly changing.

It doesn't matter if they buy the 2 year old $50 kit or the 2 day old $50 kit. Having large imbalances and shifting where the imbalances lie gets those suckers who like to stay on top of the game to buy more stuff.

The only reason to make the newer product popular over the older ones is if the profit margin on the newer kit is higher or you think most players already own the old kit. But if you just shuffle the poor balance in your game so sometimes new kits get powerful and sometimes old kits get more powerful, you get a bit more mileage out of it before your customers rage quit when they realise you're being a d-bag.

But that said, I don't think they are malicious so much as stupid. I'd hazard a guess and say many Eldar players already owned a Wraithknight, so buffing it didn't really make sense.

I agree - power creep doesn't need to be consistent - just consistently shifting. Quens and ad mech, I'm sure no one expected to be big sellers anyways but think of it this way - they do make great allies and their models are unique - so the codex will sell because of it. So it's high profit margins still. That's my theory I guess.

IMO the wraithknight currently is weak - my dreadknights spank their ass. I don't own any because of it. With str d range weapons and now a gargantuan creature - it's now auto include.

 Xenomancers wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And, again, the evidence for deliberate power creep just isn't there. If GW is deliberately making new stuff overpowered then why weren't the admech models blatantly overpowered like the Eldar ones? Why is their pattern of balance issues a random distribution of "weak and useless" and "so overpowered it breaks the game" instead of a straightforward trend of every new release being obviously better than the previous one?

While I agree GW is stupid rather than malicious, assuming they WERE malicious, the smart thing wouldn't be to make every new release more powerful, it would be to do what they currently do, just shuffle it up so what is powerful is constantly changing.

It doesn't matter if they buy the 2 year old $50 kit or the 2 day old $50 kit. Having large imbalances and shifting where the imbalances lie gets those suckers who like to stay on top of the game to buy more stuff.

The only reason to make the newer product popular over the older ones is if the profit margin on the newer kit is higher or you think most players already own the old kit. But if you just shuffle the poor balance in your game so sometimes new kits get powerful and sometimes old kits get more powerful, you get a bit more mileage out of it before your customers rage quit when they realise you're being a d-bag.

But that said, I don't think they are malicious so much as stupid. I'd hazard a guess and say many Eldar players already owned a Wraithknight, so buffing it didn't really make sense.

I agree - power creep doesn't need to be consistent - just consistently shifting. Quens and ad mech, I'm sure no one expected to be big sellers anyways but think of it this way - they do make great allies and their models are unique - so the codex will sell because of it. So it's high profit margins still. That's my theory I guess.

IMO the wraithknight currently is weak - my dreadknights spank their ass. I don't own any because of it. With str d range weapons and now a gargantuan creature - it's now auto include.

God forbid a unit has a weakness. DK were built to kill MC, now the WK is a GC the DK loses some of its own value. Hell 5 termies in assault with force and hammerhand spanked the WK because they're meant to kill multi-wound models. Now the DK is going to get destroyed in assault or shooting.

 Quickjager wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And, again, the evidence for deliberate power creep just isn't there. If GW is deliberately making new stuff overpowered then why weren't the admech models blatantly overpowered like the Eldar ones? Why is their pattern of balance issues a random distribution of "weak and useless" and "so overpowered it breaks the game" instead of a straightforward trend of every new release being obviously better than the previous one?

While I agree GW is stupid rather than malicious, assuming they WERE malicious, the smart thing wouldn't be to make every new release more powerful, it would be to do what they currently do, just shuffle it up so what is powerful is constantly changing.

It doesn't matter if they buy the 2 year old $50 kit or the 2 day old $50 kit. Having large imbalances and shifting where the imbalances lie gets those suckers who like to stay on top of the game to buy more stuff.

The only reason to make the newer product popular over the older ones is if the profit margin on the newer kit is higher or you think most players already own the old kit. But if you just shuffle the poor balance in your game so sometimes new kits get powerful and sometimes old kits get more powerful, you get a bit more mileage out of it before your customers rage quit when they realise you're being a d-bag.

But that said, I don't think they are malicious so much as stupid. I'd hazard a guess and say many Eldar players already owned a Wraithknight, so buffing it didn't really make sense.

I agree - power creep doesn't need to be consistent - just consistently shifting. Quens and ad mech, I'm sure no one expected to be big sellers anyways but think of it this way - they do make great allies and their models are unique - so the codex will sell because of it. So it's high profit margins still. That's my theory I guess.

IMO the wraithknight currently is weak - my dreadknights spank their ass. I don't own any because of it. With str d range weapons and now a gargantuan creature - it's now auto include.

God forbid a unit has a weakness. DK were built to kill MC, now the WK is a GC the DK loses some of its own value. Hell 5 termies in assault with force and hammerhand spanked the WK because they're meant to kill multi-wound models. Now the DK is going to get destroyed in assault or shooting.

Theyll still be good vs tau but the DK seems to be losing value at a huge rate compared to these new books. Wraiths eat them for breakfast and now WK and D weapons all over the palce on eldar - plus even their troops wound me on 2+ now. I really wonder what the new GK stuff is going to be like. Maybe interceptors will become troops and each model can take an incinerator for 10 points and the psilencer gains str D.

Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mess of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

 buddha wrote:
Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mass of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

GK wasn't even that bad in 5th compared to 6th edition deathstars.

Unless you were daemons, but you might as well be 5th Edition Tau as well..

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mass of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

GK wasn't even that bad in 5th compared to 6th edition deathstars.

Unless you were daemons, but you might as well be 5th Edition Tau as well..

If i remember tournaments back in 5th, they were overwhelmingly filled with GK players at the top tables.
So if by survive you meant join....

Tournaments happen as others stated so we can all get in a room and have fun.
The tournament rules to give a hope of balance would be akin to publishing a thesis but everyone tries to give it a shot.

GW may not endorse tournaments but we pretty much carry on despite them.
There is such a history to the game that short of an IP issue/shenanigans the fan-base does pretty much what it wants.

Due to rules ill-suited to pick-up games, it is hard to get new players involved.
As Peregrine has so passionately pointed out; they have chosen not to expend resources in making good rules, whatever seems to be a quick sell fix appears to be the case.

The end of a tournament era may only be for 40k if it fails to draw each generation of player and retain the old.

Akiasura wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mass of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

GK wasn't even that bad in 5th compared to 6th edition deathstars.

Unless you were daemons, but you might as well be 5th Edition Tau as well..

If i remember tournaments back in 5th, they were overwhelmingly filled with GK players at the top tables.
So if by survive you meant join....

Most just ended up adapting. Typical razorback spam or mech spam in general.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Akiasura wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mass of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

GK wasn't even that bad in 5th compared to 6th edition deathstars.

Unless you were daemons, but you might as well be 5th Edition Tau as well..

If i remember tournaments back in 5th, they were overwhelmingly filled with GK players at the top tables.
So if by survive you meant join....

Most just ended up adapting. Typical razorback spam or mech spam in general.

Can you source this? I know it's difficult, but GK was over half of the top tables by my memory. I don't remember everyone adapting. I remember a ton of I HATE GK and WOLVES ARE STUPID posts/threads. Less than now but still quite a few.
Razorback spam of various flavors were the strong armies, and that was mostly wolves and GK, with GK leading the pack.

Akiasura wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Akiasura wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Pfft if tournies can survive the GK mass of 5th they'll survive Eldar.

GK wasn't even that bad in 5th compared to 6th edition deathstars.

Unless you were daemons, but you might as well be 5th Edition Tau as well..

If i remember tournaments back in 5th, they were overwhelmingly filled with GK players at the top tables.
So if by survive you meant join....

Most just ended up adapting. Typical razorback spam or mech spam in general.

Can you source this? I know it's difficult, but GK was over half of the top tables by my memory. I don't remember everyone adapting. I remember a ton of I HATE GK and WOLVES ARE STUPID posts/threads. Less than now but still quite a few.
Razorback spam of various flavors were the strong armies, and that was mostly wolves and GK, with GK leading the pack.

It's mostly from memory, typically it was based on army for what I remember

GK was the most popular, Necrons about second in the tournament scene:

GK/SW/BA/SM: Razor Spam with Dakka dreads
Necrons: Annihilator/CCB spam
IG: Chimera spam with multi-lasers.
Sisters of Battle: Exorcist, with whatever else
Tyranids: Tervigon Spam with Hiveguards
Dark Eldar: Venomspam/Raider spam with Ravagers
Tau: Crisis/Broadside
Eldar: Can't remember.
Orks: Mech spam/Killa Kan Spam
Chaos Daemons: Bloodthirster/Fiends/Crushers/Flying DP's
CSM: Slaanesh DP with Warptime/Lash of Submission, Plague Marines in rhino's and Obliterators.

That's what I remember of the 5th edition scene for what people had brought when those armies were brought. Yeah every second army was GK, they were also cheap in comparison to how much you could buy to how much you could take.

I think 5th GKs are a great analogy to the new eldar as well. They were super powerful and undercosted in the context of the meta and way past the point of overpowered.

However, 40k went on, people adapted. Ya it was a crappy matchup at times dealing with wound shifting paladin brick nonsense or psyback spam but the game went on. It will go on with eldar.

 buddha wrote:
I think 5th GKs are a great analogy to the new eldar as well. They were super powerful and undercosted in the context of the meta and way past the point of overpowered.

However, 40k went on, people adapted. Ya it was a crappy matchup at times dealing with wound shifting paladin brick nonsense or psyback spam but the game went on. It will go on with eldar.

Not even close dude. Like really...GK were not that strong man. There were no defensive buffs in the game and IG had LR exterminators with 5 plasma blasts - literally metled everything in the GK arsenal in a single volley. Or just vets in chimeras shooting 3 plasma out the front door.

5th edition was the IG edition if i remember correctly. 135 point valks flying around with 3 LC and 10 man transport scouting in your face on the first turn. LOL. Pretty sure they got cover saves on the first turn for their scout move too.

Not saying GK were bad - but they were just marines that didn't suck - it's strange seeing marines actually have firepower or something I guess. Some of the henchman combos were over the top but everything died pretty easy to massed firepower. There was no invisibility, no endurance...the days when you could actually kill things so deathstars were not viable. It's hard to remember those times.

 buddha wrote:
I think 5th GKs are a great analogy to the new eldar as well. They were super powerful and undercosted in the context of the meta and way past the point of overpowered.

However, 40k went on, people adapted. Ya it was a crappy matchup at times dealing with wound shifting paladin brick nonsense or psyback spam but the game went on. It will go on with eldar.

Slightly different. You could play GK, tank IG did very well against them for example though they hosed Daemons, orks, and nids.

New Eldar hoses everyone but Necrons and Knights. Maybe marines with star.


Zebio, true, GK being so cheap was a factor. I do remember suddenly having 1 GK player and within a month having over 10

It was those sweet looking plastics man, so beautiful....

The new codex did not kill off the GT or create an "end to the tournament era". Not by a loooooong shot.
That snowball started rolling with the inclusion of superheavies and titans and so forth into mainstream games.

valace2 wrote:


Better hope you get the first turn against these guys because half your army isn't going to get a chance to fire back. D weapons at range is truly an abomination.

You know that the only strength D weapon that is going to be on the board turn 1 with any significant amount of range is the Wraithknight, right? And even if they allow multiple wraithknights (which they shouldn't - it's a Lord of War), each one has two shots - assuming it isn't going for the melee build. My own prediction is that by and large, tournaments will uphold a ban on ranged D weapons. But even if it isn't, it's two shots per turn at 36". You will (probably) survive.

Akiasura wrote:

 buddha wrote:
I think 5th GKs are a great analogy to the new eldar as well. They were super powerful and undercosted in the context of the meta and way past the point of overpowered.

However, 40k went on, people adapted. Ya it was a crappy matchup at times dealing with wound shifting paladin brick nonsense or psyback spam but the game went on. It will go on with eldar.

Slightly different. You could play GK, tank IG did very well against them for example though they hosed Daemons, orks, and nids.

New Eldar hoses everyone but Necrons and Knights. Maybe marines with star.


Zebio, true, GK being so cheap was a factor. I do remember suddenly having 1 GK player and within a month having over 10

Actually orks did pretty fine with Warbikers and mech against GK, they only killed off Green Tide with the Purifer psyker ability's to hit every model, Nids were boned due to having lack of anti-mech in THE mech edition and GK certainly wasn't the thing that had murdered them considering that was when Tyranids painfully realized they had gained a very poor codex as they couldn't kill off so much good dakka mech, and Daemons had so many problems due to it's shoehorned 4th edition codex after they had forcefully split it from 4E CSM that they were in trouble against most armies to begin with (Once again, not good anti-mech vs mech armies, not to mention their own army book had horrid rules, curse you First/Second Wave! )

GK being compared to what's been around in 6th and 7th is laughable, they were common yes but they were pretty much beatable as the old tournament statistics had.

And yeah, they were cheap, they looked rather good, and they were easy to play/collect. Which helped their factor in being used...That and being strong for cheap.

You know that the only strength D weapon that is going to be on the board turn 1 with any significant amount of range is the Wraithknight, right? And even if they allow multiple wraithknights (which they shouldn't - it's a Lord of War),

Their Decurion allows you to take 1-12 after taking a guardian host.