I am in favor of it. I just reject this idea of it being in the form of a separate tournament ruleset instead of putting all of those changes into 9th edition and using the new rules for all games. This conversation started with the idea of making separate rules because they wouldn't be appropriate for non-tournament games, when in reality what is needed is a comprehensive overhaul of the entire game where at the end of it there is no further need for separate tournament/narrative/etc rules.
It will surprise you (though it shouldn't given sales) that a lot of players really like the rules we already have. In my experience, most of those people don't play tournaments, which is why they like the rules.
I explained to another guy in another thread that he could start with BSF, play a character through all of those missions Then step up to kill team by adding a few more models, and play there for a while and letting a whole squad of characters grow organically, before creating a detachment and taking that same BSF character into 40k and playing there for a while until the army grew into an Apocalypse sized game. All of these games can be linked in a huge story that takes literally years to tell and would rival any novel in its complexity by the time you get to the end.
Now the player said he didn't want to play that way, and that's fine. But since I do want to play that way, and because it is actually the only way I ever play this game, I am living through the MY golden age of 40k. I've been playing since 89 and for my preferences, the game really and truly is the best it's ever been. You and many other Dakkanaughts are unhappy with the current rules; I get that, which is why I want GW to create rules that make you happy. But since I am already happier than I've ever been with the game, I also want to keep doing what I'm doing, dig?
So if they release tournament only rules EVERYBODY wins- you get what you want, but those of us who love what we have get to keep it.
You seem to not only want rules that you like, you want everybody else to have no choice but to play using the rules you like. That seems selfish when there is a perfectly viable option that keeps everyone happy.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
This, as well as you can like rules but still think they are not in a good state. I myself still like some of the systems they have in 40k, as well as some they have abandon.
The rule set would probably be a whole lot better if they just cleaned up each of the factions, and set about making sure they all play the game well.
That includes how missions function and the base rules for terrain and how factions themselves interact with them, Things like the knights codex is a failure of design and i can only think of the company lowly until they step up.
Do not even have to put the rules out all at once, but at least have a good idea what rules are coming in a edition.
Right now some army, seem to just be left with no release for models. But should have full access to others without issue, or no good plane from the company. GW is big enough that this should not be a issue, ANd yet i think they are the only company that has this issue. Poor planing ? Poor design ? Poor Writers? at some point i think it has to come back to poor handling of the whole game from management.
The key pick up I found from most of the gw fanverse is that tighter rules are not desired for the most part, and additionally that moving away from CCG style stratagems is most definitely not desired.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
For that to work we would also need to step away from the CCG style stratagems and add in more actual battlefield mechanics.
But alas.
Strats were a good idea that was poorly executed in some manners. I think the pre-game ones like with Infiltration and Deep Strike were good and helps affect army building (much to the disagreement of some I'm sure), and then there's silly situations out of it. For example, Space Wolves have the True Grit Strat and it affects one unit. For whatever reason, only one Space Wolves squad remembers they can shoot into melee like Pistols. I also don't think Strats handling Relics was good at all. Relics need to be paid for, period.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
For that to work we would also need to step away from the CCG style stratagems and add in more actual battlefield mechanics.
But alas.
Strats were a good idea that was poorly executed in some manners. I think the pre-game ones like with Infiltration and Deep Strike were good and helps affect army building (much to the disagreement of some I'm sure), and then there's silly situations out of it. For example, Space Wolves have the True Grit Strat and it affects one unit. For whatever reason, only one Space Wolves squad remembers they can shoot into melee like Pistols. I also don't think Strats handling Relics was good at all. Relics need to be paid for, period.
Alternativ deployment is somewhat ok, i agree with that. The rest is bs.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
For that to work we would also need to step away from the CCG style stratagems and add in more actual battlefield mechanics.
But alas.
Strats were a good idea that was poorly executed in some manners. I think the pre-game ones like with Infiltration and Deep Strike were good and helps affect army building (much to the disagreement of some I'm sure), and then there's silly situations out of it. For example, Space Wolves have the True Grit Strat and it affects one unit. For whatever reason, only one Space Wolves squad remembers they can shoot into melee like Pistols. I also don't think Strats handling Relics was good at all. Relics need to be paid for, period.
GW has a really bad habbit of going all in on some things, and half doing other things. Its why i think so much of there ideas seem like they just copy what another game did better. :(
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
For that to work we would also need to step away from the CCG style stratagems and add in more actual battlefield mechanics.
But alas.
Strats were a good idea that was poorly executed in some manners. I think the pre-game ones like with Infiltration and Deep Strike were good and helps affect army building (much to the disagreement of some I'm sure), and then there's silly situations out of it. For example, Space Wolves have the True Grit Strat and it affects one unit. For whatever reason, only one Space Wolves squad remembers they can shoot into melee like Pistols. I also don't think Strats handling Relics was good at all. Relics need to be paid for, period.
Alternativ deployment is somewhat ok, i agree with that. The rest is bs.
A redo of Strats being army wide would've been a better idea. For example, with True Grit, you could pay 2CP at the beginning of the turn and everyone gets it. The Snakebites Strat might be 1CP too expensive, but it affects the whole army and that's why I'm a fan of it.
auticus wrote: The key pick up I found from most of the gw fanverse is that tighter rules are not desired for the most part, and additionally that moving away from CCG style stratagems is most definitely not desired.
And that first part is really baffling.
How is it a contentious point that what the rules actually say and what the intended outcome of the rules is should be the same?
How is it a contentious issue that armies should have access to units which allow them to be on a roughly even playing field when taking an equal number of points?
These do nothing to take away from narrative players, in fact they help them! Knowing that 2000 points of Tau is roughly equal to 2000 points of blood angels makes creating narrative campaigns and scenarios easier as it gives you the framework to construct imbalanced match ups in such a way that they work. That 1000 point Tau garrison defending a fixed position as a rear guard against 2000 points of marines will have a tough time surviving as they try to hold off the attackers for 5 turns. That battle is telling a narrative that fits the universe. 2000 points of marines getting slaughtered by a Tau force half their size is not.
If GW did produce cleaner rules those people would also not have a problem with that.
Thats what white-knighting is all about. Supporting the game no matter its state, good or bad.
For many many people, the game is a lot more than its rules. Its that you can go into literally any game store anywhere on the planet and get a game of 40k. You can't do that with any other game. Its also the closest miniatures game that exists that is eeking towards tournaments with thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in prize money (reference the warzone atlanta tournament coming up later this year where there is a $10,000 first prize) because of the massive player population that supports that.
Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The reason I don't play 40k anymore is I got tired of churn and burn, I have no interest in continuing to have to buy new armies every year, and my city is HIGHLY competitive so getting people to tone down is difficult.
I'm not a huge fan of CCG mechanics in games either, and would much rather play a wargame that is built around the concept of battles and battlefield management (terrain that matters, etc) but I would still play if the balance was tighter and I didn't have to constantly rotate armies out and play certain builds that changed yearly.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
It is very much a cascading effect of the above with some extra stuff on top.
For the above, you often have units which are weak in books with weak stratagems which are competing against strong units from books with stratagems which make them even stronger and which can generate more CP than the weaker book.
If it were me, I'd do away with all re-roll stratagems. They don't do anything to make the game more interesting to play, they just make you roll more dice. I'd also do away with roll modifier strats, they also don't make the game more interesting and for the most part are just ways to avoid interacting with rules such as Gets Hot. If a game mechanic is unfun and players are trying to avoid it, then just get rid of the mechanic.
Have less stratagems on the whole but those which remain change how units interact with the gamespace and each other rather than just mechanical probability bonuses. Also, flat CP available to armies determined by points limit of the game, no CP generation. CPs are a limited resource, once you spend it it's gone.
I'd also like rules which reward positioning and manoeuvring. Bring back rules like pinning which gives players methods of hampering movement, along with giving weapons abilities that make them more effective at pinning the enemy in place. This allows for weapons to contribute beyond pure damage which increases player choices. A heavy bolter which can shut down the movement of an enemy unit moving towards an objective can be a good choice even if it is less damage efficient than other alternatives. Successfully flanking a pinned enemy should be a decisive action which has a huge chance of destroying or breaking the target unit, meaning units now need to support each others flanks to prevent them from being outmanoeuvred and destroyed.
Also, revamp the missions. I'm a big fan of asymmetrical mission goals, like is used in games like Risk. So say you have 6 objectives on the board, player A might need to capture 3 and 5 whilst player B needs 2 and 6. Neither player knows what objectives the opposing player needs and this allows for the use of strategies such as feinting to try and draw the opponent away from your true target.
If GW did produce cleaner rules those people would also not have a problem with that.
Thats what white-knighting is all about. Supporting the game no matter its state, good or bad.
For many many people, the game is a lot more than its rules. Its that you can go into literally any game store anywhere on the planet and get a game of 40k. You can't do that with any other game. Its also the closest miniatures game that exists that is eeking towards tournaments with thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in prize money (reference the warzone atlanta tournament coming up later this year where there is a $10,000 first prize) because of the massive player population that supports that.
Which is anoying, Also. The its played everywhere is super annoying. We get so many new players that turn up to play, have been told its easy to find players, and have purchased into 40k without anyone smart enough to tell them they should find out what games are played in the area. Or if they need to travel further.
I think its harmful to the hobby as a whole, these players wont even be set up for kill team without more purchases. Honestly makes me really angry when its younger player that thought they where getting good advice to get into the hobby.
Even a starter box, plus some paints can be a lot of money if your left unable to play with most of the box.
A town called malus, there was one game that had racial mission objectives along with normal mission objectives. It was really interesting and made the games more interesting with a base narrative in every game being quite a bit complex
If GW did produce cleaner rules those people would also not have a problem with that.
Thats what white-knighting is all about. Supporting the game no matter its state, good or bad.
For many many people, the game is a lot more than its rules. Its that you can go into literally any game store anywhere on the planet and get a game of 40k. You can't do that with any other game. Its also the closest miniatures game that exists that is eeking towards tournaments with thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in prize money (reference the warzone atlanta tournament coming up later this year where there is a $10,000 first prize) because of the massive player population that supports that.
Which is anoying, Also. The its played everywhere is super annoying. We get so many new players that turn up to play, have been told its easy to find players, and have purchased into 40k without anyone smart enough to tell them they should find out what games are played in the area. Or if they need to travel further.
I think its harmful to the hobby as a whole, these players wont even be set up for kill team without more purchases. Honestly makes me really angry when its younger player that thought they where getting good advice to get into the hobby.
Even a starter box, plus some paints can be a lot of money if your left unable to play with most of the box.
Saying that the issue is not knowing what kinds of games are being played is so wrong it's not even funny.
If there were more balance you wouldn't HAVE to worry about that and you could do pickup. All that needs to be negotiated is points and Mission. Quite frankly, that's all that SHOULD be discussed.
If GW did produce cleaner rules those people would also not have a problem with that.
Thats what white-knighting is all about. Supporting the game no matter its state, good or bad.
For many many people, the game is a lot more than its rules. Its that you can go into literally any game store anywhere on the planet and get a game of 40k. You can't do that with any other game. Its also the closest miniatures game that exists that is eeking towards tournaments with thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in prize money (reference the warzone atlanta tournament coming up later this year where there is a $10,000 first prize) because of the massive player population that supports that.
Which is anoying, Also. The its played everywhere is super annoying. We get so many new players that turn up to play, have been told its easy to find players, and have purchased into 40k without anyone smart enough to tell them they should find out what games are played in the area. Or if they need to travel further.
I think its harmful to the hobby as a whole, these players wont even be set up for kill team without more purchases. Honestly makes me really angry when its younger player that thought they where getting good advice to get into the hobby.
Even a starter box, plus some paints can be a lot of money if your left unable to play with most of the box.
Saying that the issue is not knowing what kinds of games are being played is so wrong it's not even funny.
If there were more balance you wouldn't HAVE to worry about that and you could do pickup. All that needs to be negotiated is points and Mission. Quite frankly, that's all that SHOULD be discussed.
I was saying, that players should look what other players are playing, No matter how good a game is. If no one wants to play with you it does not matter. Its why i reply to the post about how its played literally everywhere.
Killteam is the 40k game here now, outside of narrative which i do at my house. It was a comment at whiteknighting like that.
I honestly wonder, if someone were to build a set of rules for "Tusslegavel 60M" and then release it online, so that everyone could have a free set of rules, why it hasn't been done yet.
We have legions of fans with the ability to knock this out, hell, we could have BCB fact check it. It would be a living set, constantly updated. And it would be free so GW couldn't kill it.
Why hasn't this been done yet? Honestly asking. If we as a forum spent half the time building this that we do bitching about the GW rules updates, it would have been done yesterday.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
A reasonable start, but how do you account for terrain or missions?
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't have the statistics on it either.
You'd have a point if the terrain rules commonly used actually mattered. It only matters for the dudes automatically getting it (ala army bonus) and when you pop the strat T1. The City Fight terrain rules go a longer way to make terrain matter more, BUT nobody plays "narrative" and, because it not being part of the official rule set, nobody cares. When it comes to stopping LoS it sometimes helps, but it doesn't actually make Assault Marines better at their job. It just means they love longer before I laugh at the pitiful attempt they make at their job.
Missions are kinda fine but definitely favor certain armies rather than certain compositions for those various armies, and I wouldn't say ITC or ETC completely fix this either. That's both an internal and external issue for the codices.
I'll totally admit that the terrain rules should be better, but simply increasing the amount and variation of LOS blockers, and throwing down more terrain impassable to tanks will change the value of units. It takes very little effort to create a big effect.
Sure, drive your Leman Russ commanders into dense terrain where their range is reduced and they cant move, and they can't support the objective without driving closer. Watch Assault Marines land within strike range but out of LOS, then charge and make the Leman Russes useless.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Why hasn't this been done yet? Honestly asking. If we as a forum spent half the time building this that we do bitching about the GW rules updates, it would have been done yesterday.
It has been, but it's all fandexes and fan rules. Hard enough to get a local group to switch let alone pick-up players.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I honestly wonder, if someone were to build a set of rules for "Tusslegavel 60M" and then release it online, so that everyone could have a free set of rules, why it hasn't been done yet.
We have legions of fans with the ability to knock this out, hell, we could have BCB fact check it. It would be a living set, constantly updated. And it would be free so GW couldn't kill it.
Why hasn't this been done yet? Honestly asking. If we as a forum spent half the time building this that we do bitching about the GW rules updates, it would have been done yesterday.
Things like that are done all the time. Its just that fan made rulesets without an official miniatures line or a company backing them are ignored by the vast majority of people because no one knows when it will disappear, and honestly its not 40k. Look at all of the professional games out there that are blips. Even with their own miniature line. Because its not 40k. Antares is a pretty solid system, has its own miniature line, has a great pedigree of top industry rules developers... and no one plays it. Because its not 40k and you can't get a game of it anywhere (self fulfilling prophecy) and there aren't huge tournaments and world rankings for it.
I have a feeling if someone wealthy decided to back Antares and put out tournaments with $10,000 prize money that you would start to see more Antares though but that would need tested.
Fan made game projects rarely if at all do well. Not neccessarily because the rules aren't that good (I've seen a lot of great amateur games pushed out over the years) but because of the 40k phenomenon that plagues even professionally backed games with their own miniature line.
Fan made 40k alterations are not tournament standard, which is where they fall on their face. If you want to see fan made 40k alterations (yes technically ITC is a fan made 40k alteration) do well, you need to pump a lot of money into prize money and world rankings (like ITC does).
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I honestly wonder, if someone were to build a set of rules for "Tusslegavel 60M" and then release it online, so that everyone could have a free set of rules, why it hasn't been done yet.
We have legions of fans with the ability to knock this out, hell, we could have BCB fact check it. It would be a living set, constantly updated. And it would be free so GW couldn't kill it.
Why hasn't this been done yet? Honestly asking. If we as a forum spent half the time building this that we do bitching about the GW rules updates, it would have been done yesterday.
Time is a big one, not being payed for it would suck. The fear of GW stamping you down if you overstep in anyway is a big issue.
As well as getting adoption of even a fantastic set of rules is hard without players knowing about it.
There are sets of rules that i think lots of people would love if they know they exist, and got outside of there comfit zone a bit.
Even i want 40k to succeed due to nostalgia for the setting.
If i was completely rational i would likely have just walked away from 40k in its entirety and never looked back. GW has that over any other rules that come out, even great rules someone did for 40k that play great.
Its the same reason i would still use warmachine rules if someone come out with a full and fantastic re-imagining.
Infinity would be the same, I still have and run both Inquisitor and Mordheim.
As well as having about 30 other mini games rule sets, and way to many RPGs.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
Terrain rules are too simplistic (cover largely doesn't matter), stratagems + abilities + IGOUGO encourage CCG-like combo stacking as the basis of army composition, wargame-essential concepts like maneuver and positioning only exist in the context of abstract, game-y concepts like 9" deep strike bubbles and auras, morale is just weird, and there is just so much bloat and dice rolling and rerolls and it's a bit excessive.
I still play and enjoy the game- not competitively- but those are my big five. It doesn't feel like a wargame to me anymore.
My go-to comparison is Epic. Epic preserves a lot of the flavor of the individual armies while simplifying the base mechanics and not requiring an avalanche of special rules. It models command and control, morale, and suppression through simple mechanics, and it really emphasizes maneuver and strategy over simple target priority and abilities.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
Honestly it's that, and in general, the rules are just bad. They're poorly written, with little or no strategy other than target priority and combos, and in general, it's a piss poor wargame overall. And it's repeatedly shown that the designers either could write good rules and choose not to or have no idea how to actually write good rules so don't even try. But it's a near-total disconnect with how a gaming company should be, because GW doesn't consider itself a gaming company so the rules are an afterthought rather than something done in tandem with the models like it should be.
It's just popular with a lot of fire and motion behind it, and GW's fanbase has repeatedly shown that they don't really care about rules because they forgive the terrible rules every time they showcase a new over the top model and continue to support GW to the point where they have what, doubled or tripled profit while doing barely anything different? If that doesn't show that the fans don't care about having a good game, I don't know what will.
White knighting. It shows that people care more about the social environment that 40k fosters, where they know that a ton of other people also play the game, than they do about the rules of the game itself.
If there never was a 40k and no juggernauts existed today and someone came around and produced 40k or AOS and tried to push it, I think it would fall flat on its face because I honestly don't think a lot of people play it because they think the rules are great; they play it because they know a ton of other people also play it and THAT is a powerful motivator.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
Uhhhh. Nope. Just nope.
Like, you can have a strong opinion about it, but IGOUGO clearly works and thousands of players don't have any problem with it. If it "didn't work", the game wouldn't be enjoyed by as many people that enjoy it.
Imagine playing a game of chess where the player playing white could move all of their pieces before black got to move. That is what IGOUGO does, it exponentially increases the first turn advantage, even in games where both sides have identical forces.
Now imagine that the white player also has 3 queens, 3 rooks, 3 bishops and 3 knights instead of some pawns whilst the black player has no queen, one rook, one bishop and no knights but these missing pieces aren't even replaced by pawns. Think how ridiculous it is that the white player gets to move every one of their pieces before the black player, who was already at a massive disadvantage due to their lack of pieces, can move a single one. That is how imbalanced some match ups can be in 40k and demonstrates how first turn advantage, coupled with ability to use your entire army on the first turn before your opponent can react and the potentially ludicrous imbalance between armies all build off of each other.
Okay, but now imagine parts of the board only allowed certain models to have access, Queens cost 200 points each.... Ect ECT.
The chess metaphor falls apart because we're working with more variables than chess does.
I agree I would like something more like how Apoc works in 40k (I actually feel Apoc captures the game better but that's just me) I don't think turn order is the part of the game that breaks the game.
If anything, the chess metaphor is so great *because* 40k has more "variables" than Chess does.
Chess is a structured game with a *vaslty* simpler rulesset (but more complex gameplay). So if a problem is inherent to the common foundations, it can be examined more easily in Chess than 40k. And Chess is widely regarded as well balanced (but not perfectly balanced).
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
A reasonable start, but how do you account for terrain or missions?
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't have the statistics on it either.
You'd have a point if the terrain rules commonly used actually mattered. It only matters for the dudes automatically getting it (ala army bonus) and when you pop the strat T1. The City Fight terrain rules go a longer way to make terrain matter more, BUT nobody plays "narrative" and, because it not being part of the official rule set, nobody cares. When it comes to stopping LoS it sometimes helps, but it doesn't actually make Assault Marines better at their job. It just means they love longer before I laugh at the pitiful attempt they make at their job.
Missions are kinda fine but definitely favor certain armies rather than certain compositions for those various armies, and I wouldn't say ITC or ETC completely fix this either. That's both an internal and external issue for the codices.
I'll totally admit that the terrain rules should be better, but simply increasing the amount and variation of LOS blockers, and throwing down more terrain impassable to tanks will change the value of units. It takes very little effort to create a big effect.
Sure, drive your Leman Russ commanders into dense terrain where their range is reduced and they cant move, and they can't support the objective without driving closer. Watch Assault Marines land within strike range but out of LOS, then charge and make the Leman Russes useless.
Which now begs the question: how much LoS blocking terrain do you actually need to add for that to actually work?
Also Russes basically never need to move because of the range they have. I think I've seen them move maybe once a game, twice at most.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
A reasonable start, but how do you account for terrain or missions?
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't have the statistics on it either.
You'd have a point if the terrain rules commonly used actually mattered. It only matters for the dudes automatically getting it (ala army bonus) and when you pop the strat T1. The City Fight terrain rules go a longer way to make terrain matter more, BUT nobody plays "narrative" and, because it not being part of the official rule set, nobody cares. When it comes to stopping LoS it sometimes helps, but it doesn't actually make Assault Marines better at their job. It just means they love longer before I laugh at the pitiful attempt they make at their job.
Missions are kinda fine but definitely favor certain armies rather than certain compositions for those various armies, and I wouldn't say ITC or ETC completely fix this either. That's both an internal and external issue for the codices.
I'll totally admit that the terrain rules should be better, but simply increasing the amount and variation of LOS blockers, and throwing down more terrain impassable to tanks will change the value of units. It takes very little effort to create a big effect.
Sure, drive your Leman Russ commanders into dense terrain where their range is reduced and they cant move, and they can't support the objective without driving closer. Watch Assault Marines land within strike range but out of LOS, then charge and make the Leman Russes useless.
Which now begs the question: how much LoS blocking terrain do you actually need to add for that to actually work?
Also Russes basically never need to move because of the range they have. I think I've seen them move maybe once a game, twice at most.
Last time I faced Russes, of the 6 of them, only 2 could draw LOS first round - and then only to Serpents. Only 3 in the following round. And on round 3, charged 2 with Banshees, two with a Serpent, and LOS'ed the other two. He certainly *did* need to move his Russes - and even then, very few good targets for them.
With lots of LOS terrain, Russes (and most gunlines) get a lot worse. Eldar get a lot more upsides than Marines, though. ASM could actually be great on such a table versus Russses. It changes the game.
As for "the right amount", the right amount is "it changes". I love to clog the table with terrain. But, for best results, you shouldn't know the terrain (density, type, layout, etc) while building your list.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Imagine playing a game of chess where the player playing white could move all of their pieces before black got to move. That is what IGOUGO does, it exponentially increases the first turn advantage, even in games where both sides have identical forces.
Something to note - before 5th edition went entirely off the rails it was frequently advantageous to play second rather than first. The reasons weren't all good (last turn grabs) but the counter-deployment was often enough of an advantage against a slower moving ruleset with lesser alpha strike potential.
8ths alternating deployment doesn't have that.
Get rid of TLOS and suddenly you have a lot more freedom in terrain.
Terrain can have one of the following keywords <Sparse> <Dense> <Impenetrable> which determines how far into a terrain feature units can see.
So a terrain piece with the <Impenetrable> keyword completely blocks LOS through it, <Dense> blocks LOS past 3" into it, <Sparse> is 6", for example. Negates having to get down eye level with models and you're already having to measure for weapon range so you don't even need to do any more measuring.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Imagine playing a game of chess where the player playing white could move all of their pieces before black got to move. That is what IGOUGO does, it exponentially increases the first turn advantage, even in games where both sides have identical forces.
Something to note - before 5th edition went entirely off the rails it was frequently advantageous to play second rather than first. The reasons weren't all good (last turn grabs) but the counter-deployment was often enough of an advantage against a slower moving ruleset with lesser alpha strike potential.
8ths alternating deployment doesn't have that.
Certainly, alternating deployment is certainly how it should be short of physically blocking your opponent from being able to see the opposing deployment area prior to the first turn
I liked counterdeployment, as at lower levels (non-tournies) going first was usually such an advantage. Deploying everything first if you're going first gave the second player an easy counterdeployment option, to help alleviate some of the IGOUGO skew. And counterdeploying meant a lot more in previous editions (plasma meant nothing to Russes or LRs, for example).
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
Prioritizing the narrative over rules also benefits EVERYONE.
Prioritizing the narrative over rules usually results in neither.
Let's use a common in universe example of Imperial Forces defending against the invading forces of chaos and represent it with 8th Edition. To save space, you can read the entire narrative in the spoiler.
Spoiler:
To start, let's take equal points in infantry squads and cultists to represent the common humans fighting for their beliefs. The guardsmen will outnumber the cultists despite the cultists being inferior stats wise due to poorly balanced point costs. This results in the overwhelming numbers of the Imperial Guard crushing the cultists without having to rely on their discipline (orders on the tabletop) and the cultists cannot use their lore tactics of overwhelming the guard with worthless bodies.
However, both forces have their elite astartes providing reinforcement and directing the forces around them in this high stakes desperate battle. (Iron Warriors directing the siege against the Imperial Fist's defense network) Taking equal points of basic marines for both armies, the loyalists will use their superior infrastructure and resources to have slightly higher numbers than their heretic counterparts who typically are scraping by whatever they can raid/find. (No problem here, this is actually fluffy) The Imperial Fists will win the infantry war of attrition due to both their superior numbers as well as their strictly better Chapter Tactic that includes exploding 6s despite the CSM being hardened by the endless wars/strife within the eye of terror. When the vehicular reinforcements for both armies get there, the loyalist astartes will remember their training and use their chapter tactics to crush the heretics who threw all their legionary tactics out the window the moment they stepped inside their predators. Meanwhile, the Iron Warrior Lord has been standing around idle behind the cultists to make sure they don't run off like the sniveling cowards they are.
The forces of Chaos aren't out of the fight just yet, they still have one card left to play, Daemons. Fortunately, the Emperor protects and the Grey Knights have been deployed to safeguard the loyalists against the unspeakable horrors of the warp. Taking equal points, the endless seas of daemons spill forth against the massively overcosted and outnumbered Grey Knights. The Grey Knights prepared for this and apply all of their special rules to do maximum mortal wounds against the first wave of daemons completely obliterating them from reality and back into the warp. Unwilling to lose that easily, the Daemons turned to the strategems section of their codex to completely reinforce their numbers with the exact same squad at full strength. Unable to banish basic daemons for more than a few moments, the Grey Knights crumble under the weight of respawning daemons fueled by their lower point costs granting them more CP.
Tldr; for the lazy:
Spoiler:
Bad balance has resulted in guardsmen drowning cultists in bodies, loyalist marines being superior fighters as well as more numerous than their heretic counter parts, and the Imperium being better off using literally anything else but the Grey Knights to fight daemons.
Good rules can create narratives like we see in the lore, but bad rules can leave you going "LOL WUT?" when you try to recreate those very same stories. This is before you even consider things like the Imperial Fist marines one-shotting entire squads of CSM with infinite hits after the new FAQ broke exploding 6s without a "these hits may not grant additional hits themselves" clause.
I am in favor of it. I just reject this idea of it being in the form of a separate tournament ruleset instead of putting all of those changes into 9th edition and using the new rules for all games. This conversation started with the idea of making separate rules because they wouldn't be appropriate for non-tournament games, when in reality what is needed is a comprehensive overhaul of the entire game where at the end of it there is no further need for separate tournament/narrative/etc rules.
It will surprise you (though it shouldn't given sales) that a lot of players really like the rules we already have. In my experience, most of those people don't play tournaments, which is why they like the rules.
Anecdotal for anecdotal, see my experience above. My group slowly disappeared over the years because of frustration.
Concerning the battlefield rules.. how can we even hope is stuff like pinning has been removed and morale is done AoS style? I know this statement will attract fire but this is what I think.
And if GW really wanted to put focus on the narrative, we would have a game closer to an RPG. It used to be like that, but then moved toward more models because.. well of course.
Seriously, the narrative is an excuse, it's really that simple.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Certainly, alternating deployment is certainly how it should be short of physically blocking your opponent from being able to see the opposing deployment area prior to the first turn
What I was trying to say is that alternating deployment is not a good idea with non alternating unit selection - because it benefits the alpha strike style armies.
The older style deployment meant that the player going first could pick the strongest starting position (allowing for the risk of seize), but the second player had full information to mitigate this deployment.
Especially with the practical limit of three heavy units, and with armour giving the option to deploy presenting a strong facing while concealing a weak facing.
New style deployment means that whoever goes first will have had the opportunity to place most/all of their army in ideal firing positions against one or more targets, and can begin firing immediately with everything.
Let's use a common in universe example of Imperial Forces defending against the invading forces of chaos and represent it with 8th Edition. To save space, you can read the entire narrative in the spoiler.
Spoiler:
To start, let's take equal points in infantry squads and cultists to represent the common humans fighting for their beliefs. The guardsmen will outnumber the cultists despite the cultists being inferior stats wise due to poorly balanced point costs. This results in the overwhelming numbers of the Imperial Guard crushing the cultists without having to rely on their discipline (orders on the tabletop) and the cultists cannot use their lore tactics of overwhelming the guard with worthless bodies.
However, both forces have their elite astartes providing reinforcement and directing the forces around them in this high stakes desperate battle. (Iron Warriors directing the siege against the Imperial Fist's defense network) Taking equal points of basic marines for both armies, the loyalists will use their superior infrastructure and resources to have slightly higher numbers than their heretic counterparts who typically are scraping by whatever they can raid/find. (No problem here, this is actually fluffy) The Imperial Fists will win the infantry war of attrition due to both their superior numbers as well as their strictly better Chapter Tactic that includes exploding 6s despite the CSM being hardened by the endless wars/strife within the eye of terror. When the vehicular reinforcements for both armies get there, the loyalist astartes will remember their training and use their chapter tactics to crush the heretics who threw all their legionary tactics out the window the moment they stepped inside their predators. Meanwhile, the Iron Warrior Lord has been standing around idle behind the cultists to make sure they don't run off like the sniveling cowards they are.
The forces of Chaos aren't out of the fight just yet, they still have one card left to play, Daemons. Fortunately, the Emperor protects and the Grey Knights have been deployed to safeguard the loyalists against the unspeakable horrors of the warp. Taking equal points, the endless seas of daemons spill forth against the massively overcosted and outnumbered Grey Knights. The Grey Knights prepared for this and apply all of their special rules to do maximum mortal wounds against the first wave of daemons completely obliterating them from reality and back into the warp. Unwilling to lose that easily, the Daemons turned to the strategems section of their codex to completely reinforce their numbers with the exact same squad at full strength. Unable to banish basic daemons for more than a few moments, the Grey Knights crumble under the weight of respawning daemons fueled by their lower point costs granting them more CP.
This is awesome and spot-on. But we know the answer. You should adjust adjust the numbers yourself. But hey please, still buy the books!
AngryAngel80 wrote: They release things like that to say " Lol, the game isn't supposed to be balanced it's all about forging the narrative ! " Which is a phrase I'll never ever forget from 6th 7th days as the mantra of the most broken crap I'd ever seen.
Yet, they release rule sets to make under performing units, armies strong, do yearly points balances and FAQs for balance they say, when they don't intend to balance it ? Seems odd and they support and attend all these tournaments which seem to be using their rules in ways they don't intend, to pound each other to paste.
So why even bother with rules and just say that nothing is tournament legal or cut out for it.
They just love to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Forging the narrative didn't work in 6th, 7th and almost killed AoS on its launch. They either need to be very over the top clear in that their rules are a joke involving balance of any kind, or actually hire real rules writers to balance it for them.
I add further, if this narrative approach was their goal they would support their old products more, as pushing that narrative is seemingly all well and good when selling new stuff, but I guess all that narrative goes out the window when it comes to kitbashing models, or using out of print models, why even bother calling out legends not for tournaments if the rules are just for narrative anyways.
I don't want to pick on a particular person or post but honestly this exemplifies the problem with this thread - and sometimes Dakka in general . The whole thread appears to be made up of people who did not bother to listen to what the designer said on the podcast. I get the overwhelming feeling that people are responding to what they imagine a GW employee to have said rather than what he actually said. As he did not say the things you are apparently responding to all I can see in your post is straw men being relentlessly knocked down.
There is a whole segment where he discusses why they sometimes do not give rules support for narrative ideas because they would break the game in a more competitive format. e.g In the fluff a Tau commander can commandeer any battlesuit they like but putting commanders in Riptide or Ghostkeel battlesuits did not make the codex because it would have been horribly unbalanced. Similarly you can paint your chaos knight as dedicated to Khorne but if they did not give rules support for that it is because it created balance issues in matched play. The idea that they are all about "forge the narrative" is directly contradicting the content of the actual podcast that the thread is supposed to be about.
I don't want to pick on a particular person or post but honestly this exemplifies the problem with this thread - and sometimes Dakka in general . The whole thread appears to be made up of people who did not bother to listen to what the designer said on the podcast. I get the overwhelming feeling that people are responding to what they imagine a GW employee to have said rather than what he actually said. As he did not say the things you are apparently responding to all I can see in your post is straw men being relentlessly knocked down.
There is a whole segment where he discusses why they sometimes do not give rules support for narrative ideas because they would break the game in a more competitive format. e.g In the fluff a Tau commander can commandeer any battlesuit they like but putting commanders in Riptide or Ghostkeel battlesuits did not make the codex because it would have been horribly unbalanced. Similarly you can paint your chaos knight as dedicated to Khorne but if they did not give rules support for that it is because it created balance issues in matched play. The idea that they are all about "forge the narrative" is directly contradicting the content of the actual podcast that the thread is supposed to be about.
In other words it's enough that the designers declare that they put some thought in the rules writing. Actual results be damned.
happy_inquisitor wrote: e.g In the fluff a Tau commander can commandeer any battlesuit they like but putting commanders in Riptide or Ghostkeel battlesuits did not make the codex because it would have been horribly unbalanced. Similarly you can paint your chaos knight as dedicated to Khorne but if they did not give rules support for that it is because it created balance issues in matched play. The idea that they are all about "forge the narrative" is directly contradicting the content of the actual podcast that the thread is supposed to be about.
Why would it automatically be horribly unbalanced to have a Tau commander in a Ghostkeel or Riptide? Just point it accordingly. It could be very powerful, yes, but that would mean it was also very expensive to field.
That they cannot do so is an admission that they lack the capacity to balance their own game.
Also the potential loadout, and therefore variance in potential power, of a commander in a riptide or Ghostkeel is actually less than a commander in a normal crisis suit due to more limited weapon options.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
I don't want to pick on a particular person or post but honestly this exemplifies the problem with this thread - and sometimes Dakka in general . The whole thread appears to be made up of people who did not bother to listen to what the designer said on the podcast. I get the overwhelming feeling that people are responding to what they imagine a GW employee to have said rather than what he actually said. As he did not say the things you are apparently responding to all I can see in your post is straw men being relentlessly knocked down.
There is a whole segment where he discusses why they sometimes do not give rules support for narrative ideas because they would break the game in a more competitive format. e.g In the fluff a Tau commander can commandeer any battlesuit they like but putting commanders in Riptide or Ghostkeel battlesuits did not make the codex because it would have been horribly unbalanced. Similarly you can paint your chaos knight as dedicated to Khorne but if they did not give rules support for that it is because it created balance issues in matched play. The idea that they are all about "forge the narrative" is directly contradicting the content of the actual podcast that the thread is supposed to be about.
In other words it's enough that the designers declare that they put some thought in the rules writing. Actual results be damned.
Well, outside an observable parallel universe where they did these things and we can observe the impact, the only way to compare realistic scenarios is by theory. And here we have the designers name specific mechanics they considered, but avoided nominally because of balance impact.
Sure, you can pretend that comparing game-as-is to game-as-perfect yields a viable metric for how good GW is, or what the game could be. But comparing to game-as-perfect is a fantasy that will never happen. So comparing it to only that leads to skewed impressions of where it should be and how good they are at their job (and thus, whether we should consume their product).
Consider a specific professional that's successful roughly 37% of the time. Knowing just that, should we assume he has no idea what he's saying? After all, compared to what he could be - successful 100% of the time - he's terrible. So should he be fired and replaced?
Knowing just that, you can't have a meaningful opinion. If he's a doctor doing low-end easy surgeries, certainly - he's terrible. If he's an MLB hitter, certainly not - it doesn't get better than that.
I don't want to pick on a particular person or post but honestly this exemplifies the problem with this thread - and sometimes Dakka in general . The whole thread appears to be made up of people who did not bother to listen to what the designer said on the podcast. I get the overwhelming feeling that people are responding to what they imagine a GW employee to have said rather than what he actually said. As he did not say the things you are apparently responding to all I can see in your post is straw men being relentlessly knocked down.
There is a whole segment where he discusses why they sometimes do not give rules support for narrative ideas because they would break the game in a more competitive format. e.g In the fluff a Tau commander can commandeer any battlesuit they like but putting commanders in Riptide or Ghostkeel battlesuits did not make the codex because it would have been horribly unbalanced. Similarly you can paint your chaos knight as dedicated to Khorne but if they did not give rules support for that it is because it created balance issues in matched play. The idea that they are all about "forge the narrative" is directly contradicting the content of the actual podcast that the thread is supposed to be about.
In other words it's enough that the designers declare that they put some thought in the rules writing. Actual results be damned.
This. GW can say whatever they want until the cows come home. Their results show otherwise and that they don't care about balance, despite them saying they thought about it.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You say that and forget this is the same rules team that had the 7th edition Wraithknight get published and Pyrovores blowing up the whole table.
It's also the same rules team that dialed back the WK in 8th and fixed the Pyrovore problem.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You say that and forget this is the same rules team that had the 7th edition Wraithknight get published and Pyrovores blowing up the whole table.
It's also the same rules team that dialed back the WK in 8th and fixed the Pyrovore problem.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I think a more apt anology would be if a car manufacturer created a line of mini smart cars for driving 30-40 mph to and from work (priced as a luxury car, of course), but everyone was buying it and trying to use them to win the Indy 500 (and the manufacturer just shrugged and went “okay”). That’s the sort of mentality I seem to pick up from tournament players.
GW’s game works -but only if you squint very hard and don’t purposely try and game it - and in the latter case, that’s not a guarantee against breaking something anyways.
Would we benefit if GW purposely built their ruleset for competitive play? Sure we would, but that’s Too much effort for GW for overall little gain. They make their money on the minis, the rules are just a side gig to promote buying more than one copy of a model. They only put in enough effort to sell the next kit they put out - and that’s all the effort they see the need to do. They only fix something if it’s dragging down model sales.
the issue with this metaphor is that one can buy the luxury car, the high end sports car the performs like a dream, its fast, it handles like a dream, it has features other cars envy.. and then GW send a software update making the car the worst thing on the road, all the features have been disabled, its previous 200+mph top speed has been governed to 40mph and 0-60 has gone from 4.0 seconds to 12. but we have to still be happy to use our now useless car as a commuter in city car that looks nice (most of thier models do look nice)
as examples the wraithknight and stompa, thier rules looked great when they came out. the ork stompa was good for apocolypse games and the wraithknight on release was one of the strongest models for several years. currently both do not do anything but gather dust on shelves. they still look good but the rules have made them both fairly useless. what was good when purchased has been significantly devalued as WG changed thier rules and cost to make them bad. not ok... bad
note i am not advocating for wraithknights to be 7th edition levels of brokenness just that they be comparable to an mid range imperial knight ditto the stompa tough it has outside of apocolypse never been good since being introduced to 40k always overpriced and never fixed.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You say that and forget this is the same rules team that had the 7th edition Wraithknight get published and Pyrovores blowing up the whole table.
It's also the same rules team that dialed back the WK in 8th and fixed the Pyrovore problem.
In the same edition?
As much as I love a pedantic slap fight, is this really relevant? Everyone knows GW spews broken garbage from time to time using every possible definition of broken. (good,bad,non-functional) Maybe a discussion on prioritizing balance vs prioritizing narrative would be more productive.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
O'vesa still exists in 8th, he was in the last Chapter Approved. According to the internet he (and the Eight in general) is trash. The internet is almost totally wrong on that but if we were just to listen to online opinion we would have completely the wrong ideas about how that unit is balanced.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You say that and forget this is the same rules team that had the 7th edition Wraithknight get published and Pyrovores blowing up the whole table.
It's also the same rules team that dialed back the WK in 8th and fixed the Pyrovore problem.
Where GK bad in 6th, 7th edition too? It doesn't look as if the "good" designers and playtesters of 8th somehow made stuff better. In fact from what I was told, GK had more unit, and gear options in the past.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You say that and forget this is the same rules team that had the 7th edition Wraithknight get published and Pyrovores blowing up the whole table.
It's also the same rules team that dialed back the WK in 8th and fixed the Pyrovore problem.
In the same edition?
As much as I love a pedantic slap fight, is this really relevant? Everyone knows GW spews broken garbage from time to time using every possible definition of broken. (good,bad,non-functional) Maybe a discussion on prioritizing balance vs prioritizing narrative would be more productive.
My point is, what are you comparing them to? Of course they've done some bad stuff. Most professional outfits have.
This discussion reminds me of all the people who laugh at how dumb Bill Gates was for the 640k memory limit. *Obviously* more memory will be possible, so how could anyone be so stupid to build such a limit into such a system?
Yet all the people bitching about that weren't the ones who put out functional, COTS OSes back in those days.
Of course GW does dumb things. Expecting them never to is asinine. Expecting them to do so less often is reasonable. But how much less often? What success rate is reasonable? How could you possibly answer such a question?
@Karol:
8th Ed is *much* better balanced than 6th/7th. There were a couple shining moments in 6th/7th where some of what they did was great, balance-wise. But there were also a lot of derp decisions.
Where GK bad in 6th, 7th edition too? It doesn't look as if the "good" designers and playtesters of 8th somehow made stuff better. In fact from what I was told, GK had more unit, and gear options in the past.
5th edition codex GK had loads of units and options because they also had all the inquisition stuff. They were in many ways the first faction to have allies built in and the high point of them being top tournament list was also when they had that wide variety of units they could take.
From the moment they lost all those other units they have been one-dimensional and rather limited as a result.
happy_inquisitor wrote: 5th edition codex GK had loads of units and options because they also had all the inquisition stuff. They were in many ways the first faction to have allies built in and the high point of them being top tournament list was also when they had that wide variety of units they could take.
From the moment they lost all those other units they have been one-dimensional and rather limited as a result.
The inquisition stuff in the GK codex was a pale shadow of it's 3rd edition origins - options wise at least. A dozen different units and henchmen were all crammed into a single squad structure and the inquisitors themselves were watered down to corteaz and the xenos grenade caddy.
5e GK weren't strong because of their variety, they were strong because they had better stuff for fewer points.
5th ed GK in my city was always the same two builds. 80% draigo paladin builds, because you only needed a handful of models and it was grotesquely powerful, or the 20% that ran the Coteaz builds. While the codex may have had variety, I never saw that being fielded. I saw the same two lists over and over again.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
Wayniac wrote: This. GW can say whatever they want until the cows come home. Their results show otherwise and that they don't care about balance, despite them saying they thought about it.
This fails to understand something fundamental about game design: the problems you see are only the ones that were missed. Reese has talked about this on his own podcast in that some of the issues that cropped up were things that he and his testing team failed to catch because the way they approach the game is different than the way others approach the game, and with the internet making it easy to publish those things unintentionally broken things (like 0" charges) become widespread faster than they ever did before.
Basically people can climb up on their soap boxes all.day and claim this is broken and that is broken and we should sack people over this, but that fails to understand that when things are functioning correctly we don't notice them like we do all the things that don't.
And that's before we start layering on our own biases pn what makes a game "good" or not.
There is a Stormcast episode I feel people should give a listen to since its with a former editor who is one of the rules devs for Warhammer Underworlds. He talks about how he wants to game to be a super balanced competetive game system and how that even when you think you've nailed the most perfect way to lay a rule out you can still get feedback on that rule.
Honestly in general I feel like more people should listen to the GW podcasts just to get a better idea of how the games they play come together.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: You aren't defending your viewpoint because tighter rules benefit EVERYONE.
Prioritizing the narrative over rules also benefits EVERYONE.
Prioritizing the narrative over rules usually results in neither.
Let's use a common in universe example of Imperial Forces defending against the invading forces of chaos and represent it with 8th Edition. To save space, you can read the entire narrative in the spoiler.
Spoiler:
To start, let's take equal points in infantry squads and cultists to represent the common humans fighting for their beliefs. The guardsmen will outnumber the cultists despite the cultists being inferior stats wise due to poorly balanced point costs. This results in the overwhelming numbers of the Imperial Guard crushing the cultists without having to rely on their discipline (orders on the tabletop) and the cultists cannot use their lore tactics of overwhelming the guard with worthless bodies.
However, both forces have their elite astartes providing reinforcement and directing the forces around them in this high stakes desperate battle. (Iron Warriors directing the siege against the Imperial Fist's defense network) Taking equal points of basic marines for both armies, the loyalists will use their superior infrastructure and resources to have slightly higher numbers than their heretic counterparts who typically are scraping by whatever they can raid/find. (No problem here, this is actually fluffy) The Imperial Fists will win the infantry war of attrition due to both their superior numbers as well as their strictly better Chapter Tactic that includes exploding 6s despite the CSM being hardened by the endless wars/strife within the eye of terror. When the vehicular reinforcements for both armies get there, the loyalist astartes will remember their training and use their chapter tactics to crush the heretics who threw all their legionary tactics out the window the moment they stepped inside their predators. Meanwhile, the Iron Warrior Lord has been standing around idle behind the cultists to make sure they don't run off like the sniveling cowards they are.
The forces of Chaos aren't out of the fight just yet, they still have one card left to play, Daemons. Fortunately, the Emperor protects and the Grey Knights have been deployed to safeguard the loyalists against the unspeakable horrors of the warp. Taking equal points, the endless seas of daemons spill forth against the massively overcosted and outnumbered Grey Knights. The Grey Knights prepared for this and apply all of their special rules to do maximum mortal wounds against the first wave of daemons completely obliterating them from reality and back into the warp. Unwilling to lose that easily, the Daemons turned to the strategems section of their codex to completely reinforce their numbers with the exact same squad at full strength. Unable to banish basic daemons for more than a few moments, the Grey Knights crumble under the weight of respawning daemons fueled by their lower point costs granting them more CP.
Tldr; for the lazy:
Spoiler:
Bad balance has resulted in guardsmen drowning cultists in bodies, loyalist marines being superior fighters as well as more numerous than their heretic counter parts, and the Imperium being better off using literally anything else but the Grey Knights to fight daemons.
Good rules can create narratives like we see in the lore, but bad rules can leave you going "LOL WUT?" when you try to recreate those very same stories. This is before you even consider things like the Imperial Fist marines one-shotting entire squads of CSM with infinite hits after the new FAQ broke exploding 6s without a "these hits may not grant additional hits themselves" clause.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
O'vesa still exists in 8th, he was in the last Chapter Approved. According to the internet he (and the Eight in general) is trash. The internet is almost totally wrong on that but if we were just to listen to online opinion we would have completely the wrong ideas about how that unit is balanced.
There is a melee Tau build that centers around the 8 that seems to be decent, though that's anecdotal evidwnce provided via hearsay since I never played against it.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
O'vesa still exists in 8th, he was in the last Chapter Approved. According to the internet he (and the Eight in general) is trash. The internet is almost totally wrong on that but if we were just to listen to online opinion we would have completely the wrong ideas about how that unit is balanced.
There is a melee Tau build that centers around the 8 that seems to be decent, though that's anecdotal evidwnce provided via hearsay since I never played against it.
The 8 is not broken because the multitude of special rules each unit had were mostly niche applications and did not stack on top of each other creating a uber unit.
The melee The 8 list doesn't focus on killing everything via melee (they have a few options but they're not a game changer), but by using their fly keyword and high durability that of HQ level units that allowed them to soak overwatch and "hide" in combat by triangle locking their target, making it impossible for a fall back. In the ensuing turn, the 8 would fall out of combat and shoot. This was nerfed after changes to how fly works in charge phase.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
CoD rules favor FLY and INFANTRY too much to be of a fair mission across the board. Lists need to be tailored specifically to do well in CoD ruleset.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
I 100% agree, just pointing out that they didn't fix gak since their "fix" is explicitly not for the segment of the rules that virtually everyone who plays Warhammer use. And, as with everything that isn't matched play or doesn't have points, it might as well not even exist at that point.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
Seems to be the players' fault if they're on the one hand consider a rule that is not matched play but useful as default matched play rule ("rule of 3") and on the other hand consider a rule that is not matched play but even more useful (Cities of Death terrain rules) as not worth it.
Also, some people seem to miss that CA also updated most terrain rules from the rulebook. These terrain rules aren't even optional (unlike rule of 3) yet I'm not sure if many people noticed them.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
O'vesa still exists in 8th, he was in the last Chapter Approved. According to the internet he (and the Eight in general) is trash. The internet is almost totally wrong on that but if we were just to listen to online opinion we would have completely the wrong ideas about how that unit is balanced.
There is a melee Tau build that centers around the 8 that seems to be decent, though that's anecdotal evidwnce provided via hearsay since I never played against it.
My point is that hardly anyone knows what they really do because on release they were universally panned as uncompetitive gak so you do not see many tournament players using them - or even tournament focussed sites like Frontline Gaming reviewing them. I asked when they finished the Tau reviews and was straight told that they were such gak that it would be a waste of time writing an article on them.
This tells me that so-called experts on the internet know nothing about balance, nor is the wisdom of crowds very wise. So when I see the usual stuff about balance in the usual rants I have developed a certain disdain - magnified in this thread by the apparent lack of people bothering to listen to the podcast they are then commenting on.
We even saw a Riptide character from the Farsight Enclaves codex in 6th or 7th (cannot remember which). He was not game breaking.
O'vesa still exists in 8th, he was in the last Chapter Approved. According to the internet he (and the Eight in general) is trash. The internet is almost totally wrong on that but if we were just to listen to online opinion we would have completely the wrong ideas about how that unit is balanced.
There is a melee Tau build that centers around the 8 that seems to be decent, though that's anecdotal evidwnce provided via hearsay since I never played against it.
My point is that hardly anyone knows what they really do because on release they were universally panned as uncompetitive gak so you do not see many tournament players using them - or even tournament focussed sites like Frontline Gaming reviewing them. I asked when they finished the Tau reviews and was straight told that they were such gak that it would be a waste of time writing an article on them.
This tells me that so-called experts on the internet know nothing about balance, nor is the wisdom of crowds very wise. So when I see the usual stuff about balance in the usual rants I have developed a certain disdain - magnified in this thread by the apparent lack of people bothering to listen to the podcast they are then commenting on.
Well, if they're anything like the previous versions of the Eight then I could see what they mean, as they had some of the most schizophrenic mechanical designs I've ever seen, with loadouts that seemed to just be randomly thrown together, almost.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
Seems to be the players' fault if they're on the one hand consider a rule that is not matched play but useful as default matched play rule ("rule of 3") and on the other hand consider a rule that is not matched play but even more useful (Cities of Death terrain rules) as not worth it.
Also, some people seem to miss that CA also updated most terrain rules from the rulebook. These terrain rules aren't even optional (unlike rule of 3) yet I'm not sure if many people noticed them.
People don't use the COD rules because they're a janke first draft that HEAVILY favors some units/armies over others.
They absolutely need another balance pass before they get implemented, even by 40k's loose standard for balance.
auticus wrote: Caveat: if ITC used them, then they'd also be used by everyone as they would be tournament standard.
ITC is too busy making magic boxes and putting bullet proof glass on the ground floor of buildings for that.
They are trying to fill gaps in the BRB. TLOS is just terrible. It's practically impossible to block it with anything but solid castle walls or mountains. Magic boxes are also stupid. As you should be able to launch HE rounds into a ruined building and dispatch everything inside but you can't do that in this game ether.
I am in favor of it. I just reject this idea of it being in the form of a separate tournament ruleset instead of putting all of those changes into 9th edition and using the new rules for all games. This conversation started with the idea of making separate rules because they wouldn't be appropriate for non-tournament games, when in reality what is needed is a comprehensive overhaul of the entire game where at the end of it there is no further need for separate tournament/narrative/etc rules.
If your tzeentchs' gift to rules design maybe you should go work for GW? No, better yet, create your own game system and manage it the "best" you can. Cuz you'll go far kiddo.
No thanks, I'm pretty happy with where I am and I'd rather not take a pay cut to change careers.
Well, the amount of time I've seen you waste arguing nonsense over the past year could've gone along way to instead penning "Perfect 40k".
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
There are far many more terrain elements than just those 2. It's just that ITC uses only ruins, so for some reason people decides to use only ruins.
There are craters.
There are barricades.
There are sector mechanicus.
There are woods.
There are a huge number of different elements that people refuse to use and then complain that there aren't in depth terrain rules.
This has even skewed the common thinking of players. For example many think that lists based on bike and beasts for melee isn't good, because they can't charge someone on a terrain element WHICH IS WRONG. They cannot go only on RUINS, every other terrain element is perfectly fine. If you identify an element as a sector mechanicus instead of a ruin, you actually have the opposite effect, with infantries being limited in mobility.
To the absolute best of my knowledge, while GW condones it, there has never been a set of competitive rules released for 40K. So, the OP makes complete sense.
AoS, on the other hand, did get a set of competitive rules.
happy_inquisitor wrote: My point is that hardly anyone knows what they really do because on release they were universally panned as uncompetitive gak so you do not see many tournament players using them - or even tournament focussed sites like Frontline Gaming reviewing them. I asked when they finished the Tau reviews and was straight told that they were such gak that it would be a waste of time writing an article on them.
This tells me that so-called experts on the internet know nothing about balance, nor is the wisdom of crowds very wise. So when I see the usual stuff about balance in the usual rants I have developed a certain disdain - magnified in this thread by the apparent lack of people bothering to listen to the podcast they are then commenting on.
Part of the issue with the discussion of balance is that while people talk about it, and even make broad statements about TAC lists (a loaded term because TAC are geared towards specific metas not the game in general), we can never come to an agreement of what balance looks like. Basically people put too much stock in what balance is while failing to understand that it's a largely meaningless term.
Now before the hate squad jumps down my throat again, I'm not saying that tighter and less exploitable rules are bad, nor am I saying that I wouldn't love for two units of equal points costs to feel equal to each other, I'm just saying this argument about balance will never die. Even games like Chess where both players have identical starting layouts and forces have a balance issue involving turn priority being important (and even chess went through hundreds of years of development and changes)
So yes, tighter rules with less room for people do create "feels bad" moments are important to every game are important, but I don't think that strictly should be laid onto an altar dedicated to this idea of perfect balance. To steal a term from Warhammer Weekly, the goal of the devs should be to have as many books as possible sitting in the "fat middle" while hammering down combos that break the curve. That said, there needs to be some attention focused on armies that fall below that curve as well (something we haven't seen much of from the Chapter Approved or FAQs, so likely that is something they're saving for codexes for better or worse).
happy_inquisitor wrote: My point is that hardly anyone knows what they really do because on release they were universally panned as uncompetitive gak so you do not see many tournament players using them - or even tournament focussed sites like Frontline Gaming reviewing them. I asked when they finished the Tau reviews and was straight told that they were such gak that it would be a waste of time writing an article on them.
This tells me that so-called experts on the internet know nothing about balance, nor is the wisdom of crowds very wise. So when I see the usual stuff about balance in the usual rants I have developed a certain disdain - magnified in this thread by the apparent lack of people bothering to listen to the podcast they are then commenting on.
Part of the issue with the discussion of balance is that while people talk about it, and even make broad statements about TAC lists (a loaded term because TAC are geared towards specific metas not the game in general), we can never come to an agreement of what balance looks like. Basically people put too much stock in what balance is while failing to understand that it's a largely meaningless term.
Now before the hate squad jumps down my throat again, I'm not saying that tighter and less exploitable rules are bad, nor am I saying that I wouldn't love for two units of equal points costs to feel equal to each other, I'm just saying this argument about balance will never die. Even games like Chess where both players have identical starting layouts and forces have a balance issue involving turn priority being important (and even chess went through hundreds of years of development and changes)
So yes, tighter rules with less room for people do create "feels bad" moments are important to every game are important, but I don't think that strictly should be laid onto an altar dedicated to this idea of perfect balance. To steal a term from Warhammer Weekly, the goal of the devs should be to have as many books as possible sitting in the "fat middle" while hammering down combos that break the curve. That said, there needs to be some attention focused on armies that fall below that curve as well (something we haven't seen much of from the Chapter Approved or FAQs, so likely that is something they're saving for codexes for better or worse).
No one is saying "Balance has to be perfect!" Stop strawmanning.
auticus wrote: Caveat: if ITC used them, then they'd also be used by everyone as they would be tournament standard.
ITC is too busy making magic boxes and putting bullet proof glass on the ground floor of buildings for that.
They are trying to fill gaps in the BRB. TLOS is just terrible. It's practically impossible to block it with anything but solid castle walls or mountains. Magic boxes are also stupid. As you should be able to launch HE rounds into a ruined building and dispatch everything inside but you can't do that in this game ether.
Right, but his point remains. If ITC updated their packet to say Cities of Death would be used, then you would see a lot of games use it (Incidentally I absolutely think they should do this). But I do think it's obnoxious how pick and choose people are. Something like the Ro3 isn't matched play but is widely accepted as a default option. Better terrain rules get ignored because it's not matched play, despite making the overall game better. I can only deduce from this that people don't want terrain to matter much.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
There are far many more terrain elements than just those 2. It's just that ITC uses only ruins, so for some reason people decides to use only ruins.
There are craters.
There are barricades.
There are sector mechanicus.
There are woods.
There are a huge number of different elements that people refuse to use and then complain that there aren't in depth terrain rules.
This has even skewed the common thinking of players. For example many think that lists based on bike and beasts for melee isn't good, because they can't charge someone on a terrain element WHICH IS WRONG. They cannot go only on RUINS, every other terrain element is perfectly fine. If you identify an element as a sector mechanicus instead of a ruin, you actually have the opposite effect, with infantries being limited in mobility.
The players are shooting in their foots here.
But TLOS means that woods and craters and (maybe) barricades are often completely useless for vehicles and models not standing literally in them.
auticus wrote: Caveat: if ITC used them, then they'd also be used by everyone as they would be tournament standard.
ITC is too busy making magic boxes and putting bullet proof glass on the ground floor of buildings for that.
They are trying to fill gaps in the BRB. TLOS is just terrible. It's practically impossible to block it with anything but solid castle walls or mountains. Magic boxes are also stupid. As you should be able to launch HE rounds into a ruined building and dispatch everything inside but you can't do that in this game ether.
I feel like terrain should have been a BS modifier (with 6s always hitting for everyone, not just Orks) more than a bonus to the model's save.
Then again I feel like there should be a BS penalty shooting through the footprint of another unit as well.
happy_inquisitor wrote: My point is that hardly anyone knows what they really do because on release they were universally panned as uncompetitive gak so you do not see many tournament players using them - or even tournament focussed sites like Frontline Gaming reviewing them. I asked when they finished the Tau reviews and was straight told that they were such gak that it would be a waste of time writing an article on them.
This tells me that so-called experts on the internet know nothing about balance, nor is the wisdom of crowds very wise. So when I see the usual stuff about balance in the usual rants I have developed a certain disdain - magnified in this thread by the apparent lack of people bothering to listen to the podcast they are then commenting on.
Part of the issue with the discussion of balance is that while people talk about it, and even make broad statements about TAC lists (a loaded term because TAC are geared towards specific metas not the game in general), we can never come to an agreement of what balance looks like. Basically people put too much stock in what balance is while failing to understand that it's a largely meaningless term.
Now before the hate squad jumps down my throat again, I'm not saying that tighter and less exploitable rules are bad, nor am I saying that I wouldn't love for two units of equal points costs to feel equal to each other, I'm just saying this argument about balance will never die. Even games like Chess where both players have identical starting layouts and forces have a balance issue involving turn priority being important (and even chess went through hundreds of years of development and changes)
So yes, tighter rules with less room for people do create "feels bad" moments are important to every game are important, but I don't think that strictly should be laid onto an altar dedicated to this idea of perfect balance. To steal a term from Warhammer Weekly, the goal of the devs should be to have as many books as possible sitting in the "fat middle" while hammering down combos that break the curve. That said, there needs to be some attention focused on armies that fall below that curve as well (something we haven't seen much of from the Chapter Approved or FAQs, so likely that is something they're saving for codexes for better or worse).
No one is saying "Balance has to be perfect!" Stop strawmanning.
Perfect was too strong of a word perhaps, but there is a rather vocal minority who wants a game more balanced than we're ever realistically ever going to see unless GW stops making stuff for the game and only focuses on refining the rules from this point on.
auticus wrote: Caveat: if ITC used them, then they'd also be used by everyone as they would be tournament standard.
ITC is too busy making magic boxes and putting bullet proof glass on the ground floor of buildings for that.
They are trying to fill gaps in the BRB. TLOS is just terrible. It's practically impossible to block it with anything but solid castle walls or mountains. Magic boxes are also stupid. As you should be able to launch HE rounds into a ruined building and dispatch everything inside but you can't do that in this game ether.
Right, but his point remains. If ITC updated their packet to say Cities of Death would be used, then you would see a lot of games use it (Incidentally I absolutely think they should do this). But I do think it's obnoxious how pick and choose people are. Something like the Ro3 isn't matched play but is widely accepted as a default option. Better terrain rules get ignored because it's not matched play, despite making the overall game better. I can only deduce from this that people don't want terrain to matter much.
Cities of death rules are pretty Janky IMO. Like -2 to hit modifiers and +2 cover....It's silly. Honestly I don't want terrain to matter much. Because while terrain is an important factor in warfare. So is choosing your battlefield (which you can't really do in this game) You are just thrown onto a random field and there you go. I want terrain to do two things. I want it to obstruct movement of big units to give smaller units a purpose and I want it to allow you to protect important units turn 1 - but not your whole army. I don't want it to be indestructible pillboxes and I don't want it to be useless.
I suppose when you play a lot of other games and then play 40k, you can feel and taste the difference in balance with most games and with GW games.
There is no perfectly balanced game, but the massive amount of feel bad moments in GW games seems disproportionately high compared to playing Antares or battle tech or saga or kings of war.
Honestly? If the rules aren't very good, GW SHOULD probably spend some time refining them, rather than introducing new things that will likely have unexpected interactions with the rules. But whenever they introduce "fixes", they always seem to introduce something new that makes something else in the game break.
That said, I'm one of the types who don't think the rules are actually all that bad. I'd just like to be able to use my cool models without my opponent having to give up using their cool models, or play half-heartedly, to give me a fighting chance.
Well, the amount of time I've seen you waste arguing nonsense over the past year could've gone along way to instead penning "Perfect 40k".
And this addresses the points he raised exactly how...? Is he the only one pointing out rules inconsistencies? I don't think so, the thread is full of people pointing out this or that failure.
Perfect was too strong of a word perhaps, but there is a rather vocal minority who wants a game more balanced than we're ever realistically ever going to see unless GW stops making stuff for the game and only focuses on refining the rules from this point on.
I find amazing the fact that the minimum work required from a game designer it's presented as a sort of extraordinary effort that GW would carry out as a magnanimous deed only for us. Writing a game? Asking money for the rules? Well playtest these rules, make them clear and consistent, etc.
Well, the amount of time I've seen you waste arguing nonsense over the past year could've gone along way to instead penning "Perfect 40k".
And this addresses the points he raised exactly how...?
Is he the only one pointing out rules inconsistencies? I don't think so, the thread is full of people pointing out this or that failure.
No, but he is the one saying we should sack all the rules writers and replace them.
Well, if they're anything like the previous versions of the Eight then I could see what they mean, as they had some of the most schizophrenic mechanical designs I've ever seen, with loadouts that seemed to just be randomly thrown together, almost.
How do you see what they mean when neither they nor you have ever tried to actually play them in a competitive format - or probably at all?
Which comes back to this thread and people slating what some GW designer has said without even bothering to listen to what he said. So they are putting words in his mouth and then slating the words they put in his mouth.
Perfect was too strong of a word perhaps, but there is a rather vocal minority who wants a game more balanced than we're ever realistically ever going to see unless GW stops making stuff for the game and only focuses on refining the rules from this point on.
I find amazing the fact that the minimum work required from a game designer it's presented as a sort of extraordinary effort that GW would carry out as a magnanimous deed only for us.
Writing a game? Asking money for the rules? Well playtest these rules, make them clear and consistent, etc.
They do playtest the rules with multiple groups. This blatant show of ignorance of how the rules are written when there is so much publicly said by the studio and the testers baffles me.
Here's what GW does to playtest rules:
1. Write the rule to try and capture the feeling of the lore and the design of the mini (James even mentions that's the most important part of his job, making the rules represent the setting and the models)
2. Peer review the rule in the studio
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until they feel satisfied with the rule.
4. Playtest with said rule so they know that it feels good to play with and against
5. Rewrite or scrap rules as needed
6. Give all the rules of that codex or campaign to playtesters who represent Matched Play, Narrative and Open play for testing. Reece is part of this step and brings in a competitive mindset into the Matched Play feedback as well as has mentioned that they do try to stress test things and look for broken combos though things can fall through the cracks.
7. Take feedback from the playtesters and rework the rules for greater clarity and less "feels bad" moments
8. Send rules off to printing
And those are just the steps we know of. This isn't counting any more playtesting that can crop up between sending something off to printing and release, like what happened to the Space Wolves and their Sagas.
Just because you don't like something that comes out in the end result doesn't mean they aren't doing their jobs or that what you see is all the work they put in. The game you get is not proportional to the amount of work that goes into making said game. You're looking at the tip of the iceberg and ignoring everything you can't directly see as being non-existant.
The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
AnomanderRake wrote: The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
That's why they hand them to three different playtesting groups outside of the dev team.
Perfect was too strong of a word perhaps, but there is a rather vocal minority who wants a game more balanced than we're ever realistically ever going to see unless GW stops making stuff for the game and only focuses on refining the rules from this point on.
I find amazing the fact that the minimum work required from a game designer it's presented as a sort of extraordinary effort that GW would carry out as a magnanimous deed only for us.
Writing a game? Asking money for the rules? Well playtest these rules, make them clear and consistent, etc.
They do playtest the rules with multiple groups. This blatant show of ignorance of how the rules are written when there is so much publicly said by the studio and the testers baffles me.
Here's what GW does to playtest rules:
1. Write the rule to try and capture the feeling of the lore and the design of the mini (James even mentions that's the most important part of his job, making the rules represent the setting and the models)
2. Peer review the rule in the studio
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until they feel satisfied with the rule.
4. Playtest with said rule so they know that it feels good to play with and against
5. Rewrite or scrap rules as needed
6. Give all the rules of that codex or campaign to playtesters who represent Matched Play, Narrative and Open play for testing. Reece is part of this step and brings in a competitive mindset into the Matched Play feedback as well as has mentioned that they do try to stress test things and look for broken combos though things can fall through the cracks.
7. Take feedback from the playtesters and rework the rules for greater clarity and less "feels bad" moments
8. Send rules off to printing
And those are just the steps we know of. This isn't counting any more playtesting that can crop up between sending something off to printing and release, like what happened to the Space Wolves and their Sagas.
Just because you don't like something that comes out in the end result doesn't mean they aren't doing their jobs or that what you see is all the work they put in. The game you get is not proportional to the amount of work that goes into making said game. You're looking at the tip of the iceberg and ignoring everything you can't directly see as being non-existant.
Citation please? I'd really like to know where you're getting this from.
Because, from an outside perspective, it really seems they do mostly in-house playtesting, and do NOT hand it to people who want to break the rules as best they can, which is what playtesting SHOULD be.
AnomanderRake wrote: The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
That's why they hand them to three different playtesting groups outside of the dev team.
I mean, if none of those three independent playtesting groups could notice that they were (for instance) using "maneuver" to mean two different things in Aeronautica Imperialis, maybe they need to find better ones.
From what I've read their playtesting is weird anyway. They will be like here playtest this predetermined thing and see if there's anything wrong, so they never give the playtesters the option to show the flaws in list building since they aren't allowed to build their own lists.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had strict rules for what the playtesters are even allowed to bring up rather than let them actually test the whole thing and provide feedback. I also doubt they can provide suggestions.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
There are far many more terrain elements than just those 2. It's just that ITC uses only ruins, so for some reason people decides to use only ruins.
There are craters.
There are barricades.
There are sector mechanicus.
There are woods.
There are a huge number of different elements that people refuse to use and then complain that there aren't in depth terrain rules.
This has even skewed the common thinking of players. For example many think that lists based on bike and beasts for melee isn't good, because they can't charge someone on a terrain element WHICH IS WRONG. They cannot go only on RUINS, every other terrain element is perfectly fine. If you identify an element as a sector mechanicus instead of a ruin, you actually have the opposite effect, with infantries being limited in mobility.
The players are shooting in their foots here.
But TLOS means that woods and craters and (maybe) barricades are often completely useless for vehicles and models not standing literally in them.
They give cover quite easily. With a single wood you can give cover to 6 razorbacks, they are far from useless.
Perfect was too strong of a word perhaps, but there is a rather vocal minority who wants a game more balanced than we're ever realistically ever going to see unless GW stops making stuff for the game and only focuses on refining the rules from this point on.
I find amazing the fact that the minimum work required from a game designer it's presented as a sort of extraordinary effort that GW would carry out as a magnanimous deed only for us.
Writing a game? Asking money for the rules? Well playtest these rules, make them clear and consistent, etc.
They do playtest the rules with multiple groups. This blatant show of ignorance of how the rules are written when there is so much publicly said by the studio and the testers baffles me.
Here's what GW does to playtest rules:
1. Write the rule to try and capture the feeling of the lore and the design of the mini (James even mentions that's the most important part of his job, making the rules represent the setting and the models)
2. Peer review the rule in the studio
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until they feel satisfied with the rule.
4. Playtest with said rule so they know that it feels good to play with and against
5. Rewrite or scrap rules as needed
6. Give all the rules of that codex or campaign to playtesters who represent Matched Play, Narrative and Open play for testing. Reece is part of this step and brings in a competitive mindset into the Matched Play feedback as well as has mentioned that they do try to stress test things and look for broken combos though things can fall through the cracks.
7. Take feedback from the playtesters and rework the rules for greater clarity and less "feels bad" moments
8. Send rules off to printing
And those are just the steps we know of. This isn't counting any more playtesting that can crop up between sending something off to printing and release, like what happened to the Space Wolves and their Sagas.
Just because you don't like something that comes out in the end result doesn't mean they aren't doing their jobs or that what you see is all the work they put in. The game you get is not proportional to the amount of work that goes into making said game. You're looking at the tip of the iceberg and ignoring everything you can't directly see as being non-existant.
Citation please? I'd really like to know where you're getting this from.
Because, from an outside perspective, it really seems they do mostly in-house playtesting, and do NOT hand it to people who want to break the rules as best they can, which is what playtesting SHOULD be.
Pieced together from listening from their podcasts and listening to Reece briefly talk about playtesting on his own podcast.
Jervis even talks about killing your darlings in rules writing because often they're the rules that are the biggest mess.
And just because you hand it to number of fresh eyes we have thousands more people who will comb over the game with a thousand different ways of looking at it and then post those things online on release. It's inevitable that we'll catch more because of the sheer numbers involved. We lose perspective of that I think.
AnomanderRake wrote: The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
That's why they hand them to three different playtesting groups outside of the dev team.
I mean, if none of those three independent playtesting groups could notice that they were (for instance) using "maneuver" to mean two different things in Aeronautica Imperialis, maybe they need to find better ones.
Aeronautica is a box game, I can't speak for how they test those. I was speaking of 40k and AoS.
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Wayniac wrote: From what I've read their playtesting is weird anyway. They will be like here playtest this predetermined thing and see if there's anything wrong, so they never give the playtesters the option to show the flaws in list building since they aren't allowed to build their own lists.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had strict rules for what the playtesters are even allowed to bring up rather than let them actually test the whole thing and provide feedback. I also doubt they can provide suggestions.
That's what old playtesting was like, but I haven't heard those claims being raised for modern playtesting.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
Seems to be the players' fault if they're on the one hand consider a rule that is not matched play but useful as default matched play rule ("rule of 3") and on the other hand consider a rule that is not matched play but even more useful (Cities of Death terrain rules) as not worth it.
Also, some people seem to miss that CA also updated most terrain rules from the rulebook. These terrain rules aren't even optional (unlike rule of 3) yet I'm not sure if many people noticed them.
People don't use the COD rules because they're a janke first draft that HEAVILY favors some units/armies over others.
They absolutely need another balance pass before they get implemented, even by 40k's loose standard for balance.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
There are far many more terrain elements than just those 2. It's just that ITC uses only ruins, so for some reason people decides to use only ruins.
There are craters.
There are barricades.
There are sector mechanicus.
There are woods.
There are a huge number of different elements that people refuse to use and then complain that there aren't in depth terrain rules.
This has even skewed the common thinking of players. For example many think that lists based on bike and beasts for melee isn't good, because they can't charge someone on a terrain element WHICH IS WRONG. They cannot go only on RUINS, every other terrain element is perfectly fine. If you identify an element as a sector mechanicus instead of a ruin, you actually have the opposite effect, with infantries being limited in mobility.
The players are shooting in their foots here.
But TLOS means that woods and craters and (maybe) barricades are often completely useless for vehicles and models not standing literally in them.
not if the rules state that models/units in/on craters are a -1 to hit and +1 to their save. so TLOS wouldnt work due to a rule interaction. If a vehicle is more than 50% on/in terrain with this rule, then it would receive full benefit, just like it does currently.
There should be a movement modifier for going thru a crater/ruin/woods. You cant move as fast in a forest as you can a city street as you can across a ruined building.
The COD rules do not favor anyone in particular. If you're a gunline, deployment is key and choosing where to move even more so. If you're an assault army, deployment is key and choosing where to go even more so.
auticus wrote: Thats been their stance for 30 odd years. I don't think most people who play competitively really care what the gw design studio intent is. The reality is the rules ARE used to crush each other into paste.
Truth rings like a bell.^^
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slave.entity wrote: This video aligns with what I've been experiencing lately. After getting tired of competitive play, I switched mentalities and started thinking of the ruleset as a base with which to play out fun lore-centric scenarios on the tabletop. It wasn't hard to convince my friends to start playing this way. Suddenly, all of those models collecting dust that we've longed to run for months or years now have a purpose! All of those "useless" datasheets suddenly have a ton of value! And since we've all been focusing so hard on competitive strength for the past few years, it's been relatively easy to put our heads together and set up fairly "balanced" lists and matchups before our narrative game session starts.
I'm looking forward to playing more games in this style. It's opened up a whole new dimension of play among my group.
Well, if they're anything like the previous versions of the Eight then I could see what they mean, as they had some of the most schizophrenic mechanical designs I've ever seen, with loadouts that seemed to just be randomly thrown together, almost.
How do you see what they mean when neither they nor you have ever tried to actually play them in a competitive format - or probably at all?
Which comes back to this thread and people slating what some GW designer has said without even bothering to listen to what he said. So they are putting words in his mouth and then slating the words they put in his mouth.
Because you can see from their loadouts that no thought went into making them functional or coherent.
Brightsword: wielding fusion blades, a target lock and a counterfire defence system. Yes, because re-rolling his 2 overwatch shots which hit on 6s was better than having another gun or a shield generator. Bravestorm: Plasma Rifle, flamer, Onager gauntlet, shield generator, ATS. What is this suit trying to do? Who is it trying to kill that a single plasma rifle and flamer is optimal? The gauntlet would suggest vehicles but the plasma rifle and flamer do not mesh well with that. Sha'vastos: Plasma rifle, flamer, shield gen, drone controller. Again, what is this suit trying to do? What target is it meant to threaten with a single plasma rifle and flamer? Arra'kon: AFP, CIB, Plasma Rifle, CDS. Again, who is it trying to target? Does it fire each of its guns at a separate target? They're pretty short range to do that. Torchstar: 2 flamers, ATS, drone controller. Because two -1AP flamers are the best weapon choices for the only BS2+ model we've got. Ob'lotai: Just a standard missileside, so no real issue here. O'vesa: Ion Accelerator, target lock and velocity tracker Riptide with re-roll 1s to hit and ignores mortal wounds from nova on a 4+.
JNAProductions wrote: If the intent is just a vehicle for cool stories, why does it cost so damn much money?
With suffering comes inspiration.
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Peregrine wrote: And beyond the issue of cooperative vs. competitive 40k doesn't have the narrative elements that define a game like D&D. In terms of how the printed rules function, not GW's inane author commentary about "DRINK BEER* AND FORGE A NARRATIVE", 40k is just a straightforward tabletop miniatures game with poor balance and dysfunctional rules. All of the "narrative" elements in 40k exist in purely competitive wargames, but GW seems to depend on creating a wall around their private retail chain and selling to customers who don't know about any other games.
*It should really say something that GW's strongest demonstration of a "narrative" gaming approach is a concession that they're a bunch of marginally-functional alcoholics.
AHHHH... it is the alcoholism! That explains a lot...I knew that I liked Warhammer for some reason,,,
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Da Boss wrote: It is fine for their intent to be to make more narratively focused games. But that is not an excuse to not bother to design a robust core system to hang your narrative games around.
8th certainly looks on the surface to be better than the previous two editions in that regard, but there is stil a lot of silliness and bad design ideas in the game that are obvious from even a fairly superficial read.
As others have said, if GW expect me to do the work of fixing all that stuff and designing my own stuff, that is cool, but then I will not be spending money on their over priced and poorly written published materials. There are plenty of simpler, easier to adapt systems out there with a more robust core, and if I am gonna be negotiating everything anyway with my opponent, I figure I will start the negotiation with "Hey lets use these cool models to play this other, better game!".
I think what that designer is saying is really more of a justification or excuse though. One of my favourite modern games is 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, which certainly lends itself towards a tailored experience and is certainly helpful in creating a narrative (though I would dispute that it is purely a narrative game). And to appeal to people who like a narrative, one of the main things they release are pre written adventure narratives to inspire people, give them stuff to take apart, locations and stories to work with or play through. GW does sometimes release stuff like this, but it is not the majority of their releases in the same way it is for Wizards of the Coast. They were releasing a bunch of narrative campaigns for Age of Sigmar, so perhaps that was their intent, but I think the books were too expensive and the system they were based on was too half formed and controversial, so they seem to have stopped with that model now. Maybe they will try again? I liked the narrative stuff for the Third War for Armageddon, it was great.
Wargames are resource heavy and expensive hobbies, a robust core set of rules is really important to make sure that the experience is satisfying on a base level.
skchsan wrote: Aside from point values for units not properly reflecting its performance on the board, stratagems being unevenly helpful, and typos on the rulebook/codex, exactly what about the rules do you guys truly think is wrong/bad about it?
Or is it simply the sins of the above that brings down the entire game?
The terrain rules fething suck and you can't defend them as is.
CA18 fixed them and now terrain works great.
Would that be the Cities of Death, which are touted as being for Narrative play and seem to have never been picked up for Matched? If so then I agree it fixed them, just that fix is never in place where it matters because it's "not for matched play" so might as well not be a fix at all.
Seems to be the players' fault if they're on the one hand consider a rule that is not matched play but useful as default matched play rule ("rule of 3") and on the other hand consider a rule that is not matched play but even more useful (Cities of Death terrain rules) as not worth it.
Also, some people seem to miss that CA also updated most terrain rules from the rulebook. These terrain rules aren't even optional (unlike rule of 3) yet I'm not sure if many people noticed them.
People don't use the COD rules because they're a janke first draft that HEAVILY favors some units/armies over others.
They absolutely need another balance pass before they get implemented, even by 40k's loose standard for balance.
then they should add them to the matched play rules.
Actually, I agree with this. Only by "they" I mean "everyone" since unless it involves PL the rules should port over into matched play games just fine (and even then since points costs for things exist even the Looted Wagons and Custom Land Raider tules can be made Matched Play just by adding up total points costs).
That said, I feel the big fault of terrain in 40k is that it's only really two categories: ruins or fortifications. That isn't enough depth (and titanic units should be able to hit anything that isn't higher up than they are tall in melee) and that leaves a loy about the game feel rather meeeeeh when it comes to board layout.
Then again I miss replacing exploded vehicles with craters and using wrecked vehicles as terrain, so I have biases.
There are far many more terrain elements than just those 2. It's just that ITC uses only ruins, so for some reason people decides to use only ruins.
There are craters.
There are barricades.
There are sector mechanicus.
There are woods.
There are a huge number of different elements that people refuse to use and then complain that there aren't in depth terrain rules.
This has even skewed the common thinking of players. For example many think that lists based on bike and beasts for melee isn't good, because they can't charge someone on a terrain element WHICH IS WRONG. They cannot go only on RUINS, every other terrain element is perfectly fine. If you identify an element as a sector mechanicus instead of a ruin, you actually have the opposite effect, with infantries being limited in mobility.
The players are shooting in their foots here.
But TLOS means that woods and craters and (maybe) barricades are often completely useless for vehicles and models not standing literally in them.
not if the rules state that models/units in/on craters are a -1 to hit and +1 to their save. so TLOS wouldnt work due to a rule interaction. If a vehicle is more than 50% on/in terrain with this rule, then it would receive full benefit, just like it does currently.
There should be a movement modifier for going thru a crater/ruin/woods. You cant move as fast in a forest as you can a city street as you can across a ruined building.
The COD rules do not favor anyone in particular. If you're a gunline, deployment is key and choosing where to move even more so. If you're an assault army, deployment is key and choosing where to go even more so.
There is already a movement modifier for crates and woods. -2 charge distance.
AnomanderRake wrote: The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
That's why they hand them to three different playtesting groups outside of the dev team.
I mean, if none of those three independent playtesting groups could notice that they were (for instance) using "maneuver" to mean two different things in Aeronautica Imperialis, maybe they need to find better ones.
Aeronautica is a box game, I can't speak for how they test those. I was speaking of 40k and AoS.
Did the playtesters not notice that the Khorne Bloodbound are flagrantly unplayable against any army with any shooting at all, given the degree to which they're priced around/reliant on their character auras? Or did the design team only hand them best-case playtest scenarios?
How about the GSC's complete lack of ability to meaningfully engage any kind of flyer at all? Or did the design team only hand them best-case playtest scenarios?
The Death Grip stratagem? "Kill or cripple a 300pt tank without actually using any attacks as long as you can touch it, 1CP"? Did none of the playtesters find that degenerate, or is it like all the D-strength Eldar in 7th where they said "That's what a Knight should do, and to he** with any attempt to make the game fair"?
Battle cannons? Did the independent playtest groups not notice that maybe having the ability to RFP any squad of Space Marines at 72" range might create a ludicrous alpha-strike meta that'd render the flagship army of the game nigh-unplayable? Follow-on: Did nobody consider that all the "fire twice if you don't move!" abilities might render all the Forge World armour kind of irrelevant if they didn't bother pushing the changes to them?
Flamers and aircraft? Characters screening for characters? Drop pod doors?
I know they say they have independent playtesting groups, but what do they do? It clearly isn't playtesting.
AnomanderRake wrote: The missing step is handing the rules to someone outside the development team who doesn't already know what they're supposed to mean, so they can check that they don't use the same word to mean two different things in different places.
That's why they hand them to three different playtesting groups outside of the dev team.
I mean, if none of those three independent playtesting groups could notice that they were (for instance) using "maneuver" to mean two different things in Aeronautica Imperialis, maybe they need to find better ones.
Yeah, the Frontline guys are sometimes fun, but ... maybe their skills do not extend to technical writing.
Did the playtesters not notice that the Khorne Bloodbound are flagrantly unplayable against any army with any shooting at all, given the degree to which they're priced around/reliant on their character auras? Or did the design team only hand them best-case playtest scenarios?
How about the GSC's complete lack of ability to meaningfully engage any kind of flyer at all? Or did the design team only hand them best-case playtest scenarios?
The Death Grip stratagem? "Kill or cripple a 300pt tank without actually using any attacks as long as you can touch it, 1CP"? Did none of the playtesters find that degenerate, or is it like all the D-strength Eldar in 7th where they said "That's what a Knight should do, and to he** with any attempt to make the game fair"?
Battle cannons? Did the independent playtest groups not notice that maybe having the ability to RFP any squad of Space Marines at 72" range might create a ludicrous alpha-strike meta that'd render the flagship army of the game nigh-unplayable? Follow-on: Did nobody consider that all the "fire twice if you don't move!" abilities might render all the Forge World armour kind of irrelevant if they didn't bother pushing the changes to them?
Flamers and aircraft? Characters screening for characters? Drop pod doors?
I know they say they have independent playtesting groups, but what do they do? It clearly isn't playtesting.
You're picking examples out after the fact and claiming the playtesters don't do anything just because you don't know what the rules looked like before they were released. For all we know the rules we got now came out because testers gave feedback that resulted in buffing or nerfing of things based on the feedback which lead to the problems you mentioned. If anything it shows we likely need a second round of playtesting after the first to ensure that the changes made based on playtester feedback doesn't swing too far the opposite way.
We don't get to see the beta rules so it's hard to know what they exactly play with versus what we get as an end product, but assuming the playtesters do nothing is ridiculous. Especially when you have tournament players/organizers who chase a highly competitive play style in their games involved in the process.
They aren't doing enough-or, GW might not be listening to them enough. It's possible the playtesters pointed out all these issues and more, and GW just ignored them. Or it's possible that the issues didn't come up, or the playtesters ignored them.
The point? The point is that GW is selling a subpar product, but charging ludicrous prices. If the rules were all free PDFs, with the option to buy books, or even if it was something like a $10 a year subscription for the rules, that'd be... I won't say FINE, but one hell of a lot better, since you can get all the rules for free or really cheap. But they're not doing that. They're charging anywhere from $40 (Codex, no Chapter Approved, no supplements, not even the main rulebook) to...
$60 (Main Rulebook)+$115 (three Codecs, such as the three Eldar books)+$35 (Chapter Approved)+$50 (Vigilus)=$260.
And that's assuming you ONLY run Eldar. What if you have Eldar and Imperium? Or Eldar and Chaos?
Edit: Add $24 if you want to any Forgeworld units. Not that bad, but still-that's just $16 shy of $300 on rules alone.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...You're picking examples out after the fact and claiming the playtesters don't do anything just because you don't know what the rules looked like before they were released. For all we know the rules we got now came out because testers gave feedback that resulted in buffing or nerfing of things based on the feedback which lead to the problems you mentioned. If anything it shows we likely need a second round of playtesting after the first to ensure that the changes made based on playtester feedback doesn't swing too far the opposite way.
We don't get to see the beta rules so it's hard to know what they exactly play with versus what we get as an end product, but assuming the playtesters do nothing is ridiculous. Especially when you have tournament players/organizers who chase a highly competitive play style in their games involved in the process.
If your argument is "you can't know if the playtesters are competent, therefore they are" that's about as right as "you can't know if the playtesters are competent, therefore they aren't".
I'm operating under the assumption that no matchup should be unplayable/an auto-win for one side simply because I picked Codex A and you picked Codex B, and Codex A beats Codex B or vice versa. From that assumption I derive the idea that there are things in the game that cause Codex A to auto-win against Codex B, and I suggest that a competent group of playtesters might notice those and do something about them. If you disagree I suppose that's your perogative but I will note that asking someone to spend $4-500 on an army and then saying "Oh, by the way, you auto-lose to (this other army), so don't bother playing those matchups" is limiting, frustrating, and creates friction in your playerbase (go ask Martel to explain why all Eldar players need to be burnt at the stake someday).
JNAProductions wrote: They aren't doing enough-or, GW might not be listening to them enough. It's possible the playtesters pointed out all these issues and more, and GW just ignored them. Or it's possible that the issues didn't come up, or the playtesters ignored them.
Or it's possible a different issue came up and GW swung the pendulum too hard and over-corrected the issue.
JNAProductions wrote: The point? The point is that GW is selling a subpar product, but charging ludicrous prices. If the rules were all free PDFs, with the option to buy books, or even if it was something like a $10 a year subscription for the rules, that'd be... I won't say FINE, but one hell of a lot better, since you can get all the rules for free or really cheap. But they're not doing that. They're charging anywhere from $40 (Codex, no Chapter Approved, no supplements, not even the main rulebook) to...
$60 (Main Rulebook)+$115 (three Codecs, such as the three Eldar books)+$35 (Chapter Approved)+$50 (Vigilus)=$260.
And that's assuming you ONLY run Eldar. What if you have Eldar and Imperium? Or Eldar and Chaos?
Edit: Add $24 if you want to any Forgeworld units. Not that bad, but still-that's just $16 shy of $300 on rules alone.
That's assuming you run ALL flavors of Eldar, and don't just pick one.
Most people who get into this game pick up the main rulebook, a codex and maybe some expansion stuff when it comes out. New Marine plays might pick up a supplement as well. Let's not pretend the most you can spend on a given faction is how much the average player actually spends on their army.
How many rulebooks do you own, Zion? GW rulebooks, that is.
And I specifically picked something that someone could reasonably run at 2,000 points. Because hey, guess what? Ynnari are a thing, and in addition to explicitly mixing all three dexes, you ALSO have to buy a White Dwarf for their rules!
ClockworkZion wrote: ...You're picking examples out after the fact and claiming the playtesters don't do anything just because you don't know what the rules looked like before they were released. For all we know the rules we got now came out because testers gave feedback that resulted in buffing or nerfing of things based on the feedback which lead to the problems you mentioned. If anything it shows we likely need a second round of playtesting after the first to ensure that the changes made based on playtester feedback doesn't swing too far the opposite way.
We don't get to see the beta rules so it's hard to know what they exactly play with versus what we get as an end product, but assuming the playtesters do nothing is ridiculous. Especially when you have tournament players/organizers who chase a highly competitive play style in their games involved in the process.
If your argument is "you can't know if the playtesters are competent, therefore they are" that's about as right as "you can't know if the playtesters are competent, therefore they aren't".
I'm operating under the assumption that no matchup should be unplayable/an auto-win for one side simply because I picked Codex A and you picked Codex B, and Codex A beats Codex B or vice versa. From that assumption I derive the idea that there are things in the game that cause Codex A to auto-win against Codex B, and I suggest that a competent group of playtesters might notice those and do something about them. If you disagree I suppose that's your perogative but I will note that asking someone to spend $4-500 on an army and then saying "Oh, by the way, you auto-lose to (this other army), so don't bother playing those matchups" is limiting, frustrating, and creates friction in your playerbase (go ask Martel to explain why all Eldar players need to be burnt at the stake someday).
No, my argument is that you're putting blame on the playtesters for what fell short at the end, but fail to credit them for everything that works correctly. If you're assigning blame, then you need to assign credit in equal measure. And there is a LOT more about this game that works great than stands out as a real problem. This idea that they're useless is just using them to scapegoat the problems we do see while ignoring the fact that there are problems that we don't have because we have playtesters.
Or do we want to pretend the unplaytested 6th and 7th editions didn't happen?
ClockworkZion wrote: ...Most people who get into this game pick up the main rulebook, a codex and maybe some expansion stuff when it comes out. New Marine plays might pick up a supplement as well. Let's not pretend the most you can spend on a given faction is how much the average player actually spends on their army.
And if you pick the wrong Codex? Custodes. Grey Knights. GSC. Space Wolves. Harlequins? Things that aren't designed to be played standalone and aren't signposted as such?
Also, Zion-even if they JUST buy the main rulebook ($60), a Codex (usually $40), and a supplement like Vigilus ($50) that's $150 right there.
If I spend $150 on an Imperial Knight, I'm happy-you know why? I paid good money for a quality product. It has instructions on how to build it, fits well together, and I get a cool-looking model out of it.
And I specifically picked something that someone could reasonably run at 2,000 points. Because hey, guess what? Ynnari are a thing, and in addition to explicitly mixing all three dexes, you ALSO have to buy a White Dwarf for their rules!
For 8th? Core Rulebook, Mechanicus, Guard, Harlequins and I pick up every month's WD which included the Ynarri rules (which I'm planning on using to run Ghost Clowns).
Eventually I'll be adding Space Marines + Imperial Fists to that, and I'm definitely getting the Sisters release which comes for the rules so that'll be 3 more.
During 5th I owned every book released, and I owned most of the ones during 6th, but I've eased off on collecting books just to have the books.
And I specifically picked something that someone could reasonably run at 2,000 points. Because hey, guess what? Ynnari are a thing, and in addition to explicitly mixing all three dexes, you ALSO have to buy a White Dwarf for their rules!
For 8th? Core Rulebook, Mechanicus, Guard, Harlequins and I pick up every month's WD which included the Ynarri rules (which I'm planning on using to run Ghost Clowns).
Eventually I'll be adding Space Marines + Imperial Fists to that, and I'm definitely getting the Sisters release which comes for the rules so that'll be 3 more.
During 5th I owned every book released, and I owned most of the ones during 6th, but I've eased off on collecting books just to have the books.
Okay. So you've spent, not counting the White Dwarves, $60 (Main Book), $40 (Mech), $40 (Guard), and $35 (Quins). That's $175 right there.
You could've bought an Imperial Knight with that money. And you can't use those books without ALSO getting Chapter Approved-at least, not in most places.
JNAProductions wrote: Also, Zion-even if they JUST buy the main rulebook ($60), a Codex (usually $40), and a supplement like Vigilus ($50) that's $150 right there.
If I spend $150 on an Imperial Knight, I'm happy-you know why? I paid good money for a quality product. It has instructions on how to build it, fits well together, and I get a cool-looking model out of it.
Why can't GW do the same for their rules?
You do know you can play a game for less than that right? If I get the free rules and a starter box (which has power levels on the datasheets) I can play a game for the cost of just a starter the same day.
Yeah it's toned way down in complexity, but it is an option and a better way to start a new player off with how to play the game then dumping book after book on them.
And I specifically picked something that someone could reasonably run at 2,000 points. Because hey, guess what? Ynnari are a thing, and in addition to explicitly mixing all three dexes, you ALSO have to buy a White Dwarf for their rules!
For 8th? Core Rulebook, Mechanicus, Guard, Harlequins and I pick up every month's WD which included the Ynarri rules (which I'm planning on using to run Ghost Clowns).
Eventually I'll be adding Space Marines + Imperial Fists to that, and I'm definitely getting the Sisters release which comes for the rules so that'll be 3 more.
During 5th I owned every book released, and I owned most of the ones during 6th, but I've eased off on collecting books just to have the books.
Okay. So you've spent, not counting the White Dwarves, $60 (Main Book), $40 (Mech), $40 (Guard), and $35 (Quins). That's $175 right there.
You could've bought an Imperial Knight with that money. And you can't use those books without ALSO getting Chapter Approved-at least, not in most places.
Most places my foot. As long as you have the current points costs most people don't care, and that's only assuming you don't play PL (which I see happen almost as often as I see people play points locally, so I know that at least some of the community plays PL).
Ah, so you endorse pirating? After all, the only LEGAL place to get the newest points values is from Chapter Approved!
Now, being less snarky, you can obviously have five or so people chip in and drop Chapter Approved down to about $5-$7 a person. But you're, at this point, nitpicking. The rules might not be out-and-out BROKEN-they function, reasonably well-but they're not GOOD. They're not HIGH QUALITY. They're not worth three digits of dollars.
ClockworkZion wrote: No, my argument is that you're putting blame on the playtesters for what fell short at the end, but fail to credit them for everything that works correctly. If you're assigning blame, then you need to assign credit in equal measure. And there is a LOT more about this game that works great than stands out as a real problem. This idea that they're useless is just using them to scapegoat the problems we do see while ignoring the fact that there are problems that we don't have because we have playtesters.
Or do we want to pretend the unplaytested 6th and 7th editions didn't happen?
Let me back up a step.
The point, to me, of a wargame with rules is that I can walk into a game store anywhere in the world (...that I spoke the language, I suppose), pull out my army, say "Let's play Warhammer!", and some random person I've never met before can take up my challenge, we put down equal points of models, and we have a good game.
If a game fails to do this, because the rules require creative interpretation as to what I can and can't do, or because some armies just lose to some other armies, or some other barrier to having a functional pick-up-game experience, I suggest that the game has failed to meet the basic demands of being a wargame. It might make a functional RPG, I suppose, but to my mind if I need to have a GM to play a pick-up game with a stranger it isn't a functional wargame.
So you may assert that more things have gone well than have gone badly as a result of playtesting, but to me that's roughly equivalent to looking at the Titanic and saying "well, most of the hull doesn't have holes in it"; it doesn't matter whether more rules were written well than written badly if the ship fails to remain afloat.
ClockworkZion wrote: No, my argument is that you're putting blame on the playtesters for what fell short at the end, but fail to credit them for everything that works correctly. If you're assigning blame, then you need to assign credit in equal measure. And there is a LOT more about this game that works great than stands out as a real problem. This idea that they're useless is just using them to scapegoat the problems we do see while ignoring the fact that there are problems that we don't have because we have playtesters.
Or do we want to pretend the unplaytested 6th and 7th editions didn't happen?
Let me back up a step.
The point, to me, of a wargame with rules is that I can walk into a game store anywhere in the world (...that I spoke the language, I suppose), pull out my army, say "Let's play Warhammer!", and some random person I've never met before can take up my challenge, we put down equal points of models, and we have a good game.
If a game fails to do this, because the rules require creative interpretation as to what I can and can't do, or because some armies just lose to some other armies, or some other barrier to having a functional pick-up-game experience, I suggest that the game has failed to meet the basic demands of being a wargame. It might make a functional RPG, I suppose, but to my mind if I need to have a GM to play a pick-up game with a stranger it isn't a functional wargame.
So you may assert that more things have gone well than have gone badly as a result of playtesting, but to me that's roughly equivalent to looking at the Titanic and saying "well, most of the hull doesn't have holes in it"; it doesn't matter whether more rules were written well than written badly if the ship fails to remain afloat.
JNAProductions wrote: Ah, so you endorse pirating? After all, the only LEGAL place to get the newest points values is from Chapter Approved!
Now, being less snarky, you can obviously have five or so people chip in and drop Chapter Approved down to about $5-$7 a person. But you're, at this point, nitpicking. The rules might not be out-and-out BROKEN-they function, reasonably well-but they're not GOOD. They're not HIGH QUALITY. They're not worth three digits of dollars.
Who said anything about pirating? If you have a club you play at the club likely has a copy you can borrow and scribble the points into your book, and most army builders have the points costs updated pretty quickly. And that's ignoring the stuff like GMG's video that showed all the points costs.
Functional is more credit than some people are giving them, so I'll accept that. I freely admit they could be better, but they aren't broken. They play well enough in most situations and with playtesters the overall quality is leaps and bounds over what the studio was giving us in 6th and 7th. Since they broke the studio into teams to focus on specific game systems it seems to be helping further by keeping the rules devs in the right mindset for the setting they're writing for.
ClockworkZion wrote: No, my argument is that you're putting blame on the playtesters for what fell short at the end, but fail to credit them for everything that works correctly. If you're assigning blame, then you need to assign credit in equal measure. And there is a LOT more about this game that works great than stands out as a real problem. This idea that they're useless is just using them to scapegoat the problems we do see while ignoring the fact that there are problems that we don't have because we have playtesters.
Or do we want to pretend the unplaytested 6th and 7th editions didn't happen?
Let me back up a step.
The point, to me, of a wargame with rules is that I can walk into a game store anywhere in the world (...that I spoke the language, I suppose), pull out my army, say "Let's play Warhammer!", and some random person I've never met before can take up my challenge, we put down equal points of models, and we have a good game.
If a game fails to do this, because the rules require creative interpretation as to what I can and can't do, or because some armies just lose to some other armies, or some other barrier to having a functional pick-up-game experience, I suggest that the game has failed to meet the basic demands of being a wargame. It might make a functional RPG, I suppose, but to my mind if I need to have a GM to play a pick-up game with a stranger it isn't a functional wargame.
So you may assert that more things have gone well than have gone badly as a result of playtesting, but to me that's roughly equivalent to looking at the Titanic and saying "well, most of the hull doesn't have holes in it"; it doesn't matter whether more rules were written well than written badly if the ship fails to remain afloat.
Sadly I find pick up games with strangers the least enjoyable part of the game, but I'm more introverted so I burn through all the social interaction I can deal with working retail so more dealing with strangers just to get a game in doesn't exactly fill me with excitement.. I'd rather play in tournaments (where the haggling over how the game is handled by a tournament pack) or with friends (since all that is easier to do with someone you know).
So yeah, for me the game works better than it does for you because I don't have that travelling wargamer approach to the game.
That said, I don't want people assuming I don't think the rules should be tighter, I just think that there is a level of expectation people keep setting themselves up for that can never be met.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...That said, I don't want people assuming I don't think the rules should be tighter, I just think that there is a level of expectation people keep setting themselves up for that can never be met.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
ClockworkZion wrote: ...That said, I don't want people assuming I don't think the rules should be tighter, I just think that there is a level of expectation people keep setting themselves up for that can never be met.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
I tried to get into Warmachine, but the density of stuff to memorize just to play the game was too much of a wall. I know people really loved in in 2nd, but between that and the models being metal or plastic resin just killed it for me. I don't have an interest in historicals, and the only other game I've seen make a dent here (X-wing) dried up almost as fast as it popped up, which is a shame because I did like that, though I barely managed to get any games in.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
There is definitely a vocal minority who demand a level of perfection no product ever reaches and then complain about how bad something is because it's not perfect.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
I have never seen bcb or Peregrine claim 0% is only good enough.
And for a company that rakes in that much money and is that long in the buisness it is a rather lacking ruleset.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
I have never seen bcb or Peregrine claim 0% is only good enough.
And for a company that rakes in that much money and is that long in the buisness it is a rather lacking ruleset.
Especially when you think about how many glaringly bad design choices they make over time.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
I have never seen bcb or Peregrine claim 0% is only good enough.
And for a company that rakes in that much money and is that long in the buisness it is a rather lacking ruleset.
BCB's entire rules complaint threads are about pulling rules apart (sometimes even listing things out of context of the full rule), and Peregrine's complaints start at the IGOUGO and continue from there, meaning that even if the game was balanced to a way that everyone would be happy with the game would still be "broken" because it doesn't fall into a game play style they prefer more.
Those are things they claim are errors, which is a bar above and beyond what most people would be happy with.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
I have never seen bcb or Peregrine claim 0% is only good enough.
And for a company that rakes in that much money and is that long in the buisness it is a rather lacking ruleset.
BCB's entire rules complaint threads are about pulling rules apart (sometimes even listing things out of context of the full rule), and Peregrine's complaints start at the IGOUGO and continue from there, meaning that even if the game was balanced to a way that everyone would be happy with the game would still be "broken" because it doesn't fall into a game play style they prefer more.
Those are things they claim are errors, which is a bar above and beyond what most people would be happy with.
Otoh it is a good sign that launch day faq are delivered?
As for igougo, it certainly is an issue, even chess admits that and chess has more reactionary actions then 40k.
See, of course bcb takes it to far sometimes aswell as Peregrine but let's not pretend gw is faultless in that situation.
106 documments is more then enough for the ammount of factions in the game.
Way to much imo.
And consequently making players pay for them and what amounts to a balance Patch certainly must make gw even in your eyes a bit questionable.
What i am getting at, some people may never be happy but just outright discarding their criticisms is also not Productive.
It's an improvement at least. I mean we deal with day one patches in video games all the time, I see this as basically the same thing. It's tolerable, even if some things in that FAQ tend to be head scratchers. Then again I started in 3rd and really got into the game in 5th where issues could go years before they were addressed.
Not Online!!! wrote: As for igougo, it certainly is an issue, even chess admits that and chess has more reactionary actions then 40k.
It doesn't make or break a game though. I'd like to see the game to knick the "roll for priority" thing from AoS every turn since it shakes up the game a bit and works pretty well if we're going to stick to IGOUGO.
Not Online!!! wrote: See, of course bcb takes it to far sometimes aswell as Peregrine but let's not pretend gw is faultless in that situation.
106 documments is more then enough for the ammount if factions in the game.
Way to much imo.
And consequently making players pay for them and what amounts to a balance Patch certainly must make gw even in your eyes a bit questionable.
What i am getting at, some people may never be happy but just outright discarding their criticisms is also not Productive.
I never said GW is faultless or that there aren't valid criticisms, I'm saying that there is a level of perfection that is demanded that can never be met and the community needs to chill out a little bit on what we demand out of the company. It's easier to have real issues heard when people aren't screeching constantly about how utterly broken they think the game is.
It doesn't make or break a game though. I'd like to see the game to knick the "roll for priority" thing from AoS every turn since it shakes up the game a bit and works pretty well if we're going to stick to IGOUGO.
maybe not for all factions, but it does hinder elite factions. and promotes the use of chaff units, and really punishs armies that don't have either chaff or super protection.
If my army goes first, and my opponent has an elite one, and I drop on him turn 1, and wipe out 800pts of his, then we are practicaly playing a 2000pts vs 1200pts game.
IMO that could be considered a big impact on the game.
It's an improvement at least. I mean we deal with day one patches in video games all the time, I see this as basically the same thing. It's tolerable, even if some things in that FAQ tend to be head scratchers. Then again I started in 3rd and really got into the game in 5th where issues could go years before they were addressed.
Not Online!!! wrote: As for igougo, it certainly is an issue, even chess admits that and chess has more reactionary actions then 40k.
It doesn't make or break a game though. I'd like to see the game to knick the "roll for priority" thing from AoS every turn since it shakes up the game a bit and works pretty well if we're going to stick to IGOUGO.
Not Online!!! wrote: See, of course bcb takes it to far sometimes aswell as Peregrine but let's not pretend gw is faultless in that situation.
106 documments is more then enough for the ammount if factions in the game.
Way to much imo.
And consequently making players pay for them and what amounts to a balance Patch certainly must make gw even in your eyes a bit questionable.
What i am getting at, some people may never be happy but just outright discarding their criticisms is also not Productive.
I never said GW is faultless or that there aren't valid criticisms, I'm saying that there is a level of perfection that is demanded that can never be met and the community needs to chill out a little bit on what we demand out of the company. It's easier to have real issues heard when people aren't screeching constantly about how utterly broken they think the game is.
1. Exemple is one of the reasons why the modern gaming industry sucks, hard.
as for editions, sure it's an improvement theorethically to have ca, but when ca misses the marks by miles and has the audacity to demand additional money then my comment to that is feth them.
2. Kt firepriority? Imo a good way maybee n
Certainly a removal of the stratagems imo.
3. They point out what is wrong, fix it and go on.
Also as a csm player that got allready dex 2.0 compared to the later sm dex 2.0, isn't frustration understandable?
The community imo has sometimes a tendency to go to far true, especially dakka but in 106 documments and questionable rules cycle with some allready getting the short straw again shortly afterwards a propper update is released is frankly absurd and shows that the gw rules team seriously lacks in communication and coordination within.
3.5 also it wouldn't hurt them to hire a competent Editor.
It doesn't make or break a game though. I'd like to see the game to knick the "roll for priority" thing from AoS every turn since it shakes up the game a bit and works pretty well if we're going to stick to IGOUGO.
maybe not for all factions, but it does hinder elite factions. and promotes the use of chaff units, and really punishs armies that don't have either chaff or super protection.
If my army goes first, and my opponent has an elite one, and I drop on him turn 1, and wipe out 800pts of his, then we are practicaly playing a 2000pts vs 1200pts game.
IMO that could be considered a big impact on the game.
We already have this issue in 40k where chaff is preferred over elites because the way leadership doesn't work to balance the chaff properly (too many ways to just ignore it). Regardless of the system I want the wounding from Apoc to be a thing in the game: stack markers on a unit and they roll at the end of the turn, but operate as normal during the turn. It gives the game more of a feeling that everything happens at the same time instead of a JRPG turn order sequencing.
It doesn't make or break a game though. I'd like to see the game to knick the "roll for priority" thing from AoS every turn since it shakes up the game a bit and works pretty well if we're going to stick to IGOUGO.
maybe not for all factions, but it does hinder elite factions. and promotes the use of chaff units, and really punishs armies that don't have either chaff or super protection.
If my army goes first, and my opponent has an elite one, and I drop on him turn 1, and wipe out 800pts of his, then we are practicaly playing a 2000pts vs 1200pts game.
IMO that could be considered a big impact on the game.
We already have this issue in 40k where chaff is preferred over elites because the way leadership doesn't work to balance the chaff properly (too many ways to just ignore it). Regardless of the system I want the wounding from Apoc to be a thing in the game: stack markers on a unit and they roll at the end of the turn, but operate as normal during the turn. It gives the game more of a feeling that everything happens at the same time instead of a JRPG turn order sequencing.
There is no incentive for cheap units to go over msu.
Just as there is no incentive for elite armies to field anything not msu.
Because you can see from their loadouts that no thought went into making them functional or coherent.
Brightsword: wielding fusion blades, a target lock and a counterfire defence system. Yes, because re-rolling his 2 overwatch shots which hit on 6s was better than having another gun or a shield generator.
Bravestorm: Plasma Rifle, flamer, Onager gauntlet, shield generator, ATS. What is this suit trying to do? Who is it trying to kill that a single plasma rifle and flamer is optimal? The gauntlet would suggest vehicles but the plasma rifle and flamer do not mesh well with that.
Sha'vastos: Plasma rifle, flamer, shield gen, drone controller. Again, what is this suit trying to do? What target is it meant to threaten with a single plasma rifle and flamer?
Arra'kon: AFP, CIB, Plasma Rifle, CDS. Again, who is it trying to target? Does it fire each of its guns at a separate target? They're pretty short range to do that.
Torchstar: 2 flamers, ATS, drone controller. Because two -1AP flamers are the best weapon choices for the only BS2+ model we've got.
Ob'lotai: Just a standard missileside, so no real issue here.
O'vesa: Ion Accelerator, target lock and velocity tracker Riptide with re-roll 1s to hit and ignores mortal wounds from nova on a 4+.
Which honestly just shows that you have not understood how the unit works. There is no shame in that, I underestimated how well they work until I put them on the table and played with them. Until you playtest them you will fail to understand them - it is a hugely complex unit with lots of moving parts that it would appear people just cannot work out on paper. What I can assure you is that nobody who has played against my Eight list has left the table thinking that they are underpowered and overcosted, a few thought so before the game but they learned better the hard way.
That applies more generally to the online analysis of stuff. Too many hasty opinions based on insufficient evidence are taken as facts and "proof" of balance problems in the game.
You're picking examples out after the fact and claiming the playtesters don't do anything just because you don't know what the rules looked like before they were released. For all we know the rules we got now came out because testers gave feedback that resulted in buffing or nerfing of things based on the feedback which lead to the problems you mentioned. If anything it shows we likely need a second round of playtesting after the first to ensure that the changes made based on playtester feedback doesn't swing too far the opposite way.
We don't get to see the beta rules so it's hard to know what they exactly play with versus what we get as an end product, but assuming the playtesters do nothing is ridiculous. Especially when you have tournament players/organizers who chase a highly competitive play style in their games involved in the process.
If a dermatologist successfully removes a blackhead and ignores a melanoma, is not a good dermatologist. Edition after edition we have witnessed so many examples of badly written rules, silly combos, blatant favoritism, ludicrous math etc to the point that we cannot just defend all of this with "good things have been done". I will never forget my friends putting money together to buy an Ork army for a friend as a gift and then 6th-7th edition happened. The value of the gift is still great, so it's the friendship, but not the enjoyment this friend could have had from a similar gift if the army was Eldar.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...That said, I don't want people assuming I don't think the rules should be tighter, I just think that there is a level of expectation people keep setting themselves up for that can never be met.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
I tried to get into Warmachine, but the density of stuff to memorize just to play the game was too much of a wall. I know people really loved in in 2nd, but between that and the models being metal or plastic resin just killed it for me. I don't have an interest in historicals, and the only other game I've seen make a dent here (X-wing) dried up almost as fast as it popped up, which is a shame because I did like that, though I barely managed to get any games in.
And there is your problem right there. You've only ever experienced the GW ecosystem of games.
WMH's rules clarity is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Now, the game does have a few rock paper scissors matchups but not entire FACTIONS like 40k does. It even has in its own tournament rules a feature to simply swap out your list with a second one if you have one of those matchups.
There are a laundry list of games that do stuff far far better than GW's writers ever did, but people will never know a they're only willing to try 40k. As Auticus says- It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
Grimtuff wrote: And there is your problem right there. You've only ever experienced the GW ecosystem of games.
I disagree that it's a "problem".
Grimtuff wrote: WMH's rules clarity is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Now, the game does have a few rock paper scissors matchups but not entire FACTIONS like 40k does. It even has in its own tournament rules a feature to simply swap out your list with a second one if you have one of those matchups.
There are a laundry list of games that do stuff far far better than GW's writers ever did, but people will never know a they're only willing to try 40k. As Auticus says- It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I gave WHM a try, and couldn't get into it. I'm sure it's plenty fun for those who like it, but it wasn't my taste (even if the Convergence models are really cool looking being all Art Deco).
Outside Gladius and metas where everyone buys one-of-everything and doesn't bother to optimize by even a percent, they suck.
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JNAProductions wrote: If the intent is just a vehicle for cool stories, why does it cost so damn much money?
Which is the crux of the issue. I don't need to spend 40$ to tell stories. I already know Marine fluff, and I can get summaries of new fluff for inspiration.
The game should try harder for balance, period.
The $40 rules you are so upset about aren’t all rules. More of the codex space marines is fluff than rules. Rules don’t kick in until late 108 of 192. You are paying for story.
As for balance, it’s just fine we don’t need any more. PERIOD.
See I can make repetitive and baseless arguments purely in my subjective view. Doesn’t make me any tighter than you.
Grimtuff wrote: And there is your problem right there. You've only ever experienced the GW ecosystem of games.
I disagree that it's a "problem".
Grimtuff wrote: WMH's rules clarity is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Now, the game does have a few rock paper scissors matchups but not entire FACTIONS like 40k does. It even has in its own tournament rules a feature to simply swap out your list with a second one if you have one of those matchups.
There are a laundry list of games that do stuff far far better than GW's writers ever did, but people will never know a they're only willing to try 40k. As Auticus says- It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I gave WHM a try, and couldn't get into it. I'm sure it's plenty fun for those who like it, but it wasn't my taste (even if the Convergence models are really cool looking being all Art Deco).
Give MEDGe a try. Or Zone Raiders. Heck, pick up a few hot wheels and play Gaslands. All far better written, with deeper and more enjoyable gameplay than anything GW has put out.
If a dermatologist successfully removes a blackhead and ignores a melanoma, is not a good dermatologist.
Edition after edition we have witnessed so many examples of badly written rules, silly combos, blatant favoritism, ludicrous math etc to the point that we cannot just defend all of this with "good things have been done".
I will never forget my friends putting money together to buy an Ork army for a friend as a gift and then 6th-7th edition happened.
The value of the gift is still great, so it's the friendship, but not the enjoyment this friend could have had from a similar gift if the army was Eldar.
It’s not cancer though is it. It’s a game. If a doctor misses cancer people can die. If a rule set is loose then people can still enjoy the game. Some people even more so. No one dies. Or suffers at all. AT ALL!!!
If you don’t like the game don’t play it. The game plays great if you play with nice people who also want to tell stories with the models they care about. No body dies. The reason 40k is still so popular after so many years isn’t the rules, it’s the story and the models. The reason the black library is making money hand over fist is the stories. The reason GW is the market leader and has been for decades, the story and the models. And . NO ONE DIES!
You're picking examples out after the fact and claiming the playtesters don't do anything just because you don't know what the rules looked like before they were released. For all we know the rules we got now came out because testers gave feedback that resulted in buffing or nerfing of things based on the feedback which lead to the problems you mentioned. If anything it shows we likely need a second round of playtesting after the first to ensure that the changes made based on playtester feedback doesn't swing too far the opposite way.
We don't get to see the beta rules so it's hard to know what they exactly play with versus what we get as an end product, but assuming the playtesters do nothing is ridiculous. Especially when you have tournament players/organizers who chase a highly competitive play style in their games involved in the process.
If a dermatologist successfully removes a blackhead and ignores a melanoma, is not a good dermatologist.
Edition after edition we have witnessed so many examples of badly written rules, silly combos, blatant favoritism, ludicrous math etc to the point that we cannot just defend all of this with "good things have been done".
I will never forget my friends putting money together to buy an Ork army for a friend as a gift and then 6th-7th edition happened.
The value of the gift is still great, so it's the friendship, but not the enjoyment this friend could have had from a similar gift if the army was Eldar.
Also if you’re friend liked eldar more than ORKS then get him them not ORKS. If he likes ORKS then great. Edition doesn’t matter at all. I like ORKS, played them for 8 editions now. Did not prefer eldar in 6th and 7th.
Andy, I admit my comparison was quite daring, but the point is that one can appreciate some nice work only if some the most essential elements are well done. I cannot appreciate my clean pores if i am dying of melanoma. I cannot appreciate many design choices if some unit is cannot been deployed or terrain rules are a joke. I just cannot enjoy that part of the game. And no. My friend could not enjoy the orks because they were unplayable in that period. The system made them non enjoyable for him. "If you don’t like the game don’t play it." It's exactly what happened with him. When I go back to the old country I always talk with him, have a beer or go and listen him playing. But for sure we never played Warhammer anymore, he occasionally built and painted what he already had. We were all very casual players in that group, but there should be a minimum of playability. Such playability should allow you to field a decent list without forcing other players to cripple themselves or to make too many sacrifices about which models could be fielded in order to win. To have an interesting game. And that did not happen, especially when other players had 7th edition tau to field.
You cannot just dismiss other people's claim about balance and rule writing outright. There is no way is all "baseless" if this is a returning topic, am I right?
Grimtuff wrote: And there is your problem right there. You've only ever experienced the GW ecosystem of games.
I disagree that it's a "problem".
Grimtuff wrote: WMH's rules clarity is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Now, the game does have a few rock paper scissors matchups but not entire FACTIONS like 40k does. It even has in its own tournament rules a feature to simply swap out your list with a second one if you have one of those matchups.
There are a laundry list of games that do stuff far far better than GW's writers ever did, but people will never know a they're only willing to try 40k. As Auticus says- It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I gave WHM a try, and couldn't get into it. I'm sure it's plenty fun for those who like it, but it wasn't my taste (even if the Convergence models are really cool looking being all Art Deco).
Give MEDGe a try. Or Zone Raiders. Heck, pick up a few hot wheels and play Gaslands. All far better written, with deeper and more enjoyable gameplay than anything GW has put out.
So try games no one plays in my area? At least WHM has people who play.
Grimtuff wrote: And there is your problem right there. You've only ever experienced the GW ecosystem of games.
I disagree that it's a "problem".
Grimtuff wrote: WMH's rules clarity is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. Now, the game does have a few rock paper scissors matchups but not entire FACTIONS like 40k does. It even has in its own tournament rules a feature to simply swap out your list with a second one if you have one of those matchups.
There are a laundry list of games that do stuff far far better than GW's writers ever did, but people will never know a they're only willing to try 40k. As Auticus says- It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I gave WHM a try, and couldn't get into it. I'm sure it's plenty fun for those who like it, but it wasn't my taste (even if the Convergence models are really cool looking being all Art Deco).
Give MEDGe a try. Or Zone Raiders. Heck, pick up a few hot wheels and play Gaslands. All far better written, with deeper and more enjoyable gameplay than anything GW has put out.
So try games no one plays in my area? At least WHM has people who play.
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
Less assumption, more inference from the little information provided. My LGS is similar- 40k, MTG, Pokemon and Keyforge is all anyone seems interested in. They used to carry Mlalifaux, but stopped before I started hanging out there. I'm planning to bring two forces for a few different mini games in to run demos- I just haven't had the time to finish them yet.
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
Less assumption, more inference from the little information provided. My LGS is similar- 40k, MTG, Pokemon and Keyforge is all anyone seems interested in. They used to carry Mlalifaux, but stopped before I started hanging out there. I'm planning to bring two forces for a few different mini games in to run demos- I just haven't had the time to finish them yet.
Either way I'm not dropping money for games blind just in the hopes I'll like them and start a desire for people to play them.
The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
I have something I enjoy playing and am already spending money on, so I should stop playing it and take the money I'm setting aside for those hobby purchases just to go play something else? Not a friggin chance. I get -why- people are arguing this, but I don't think I'm the only one who is resistant to blowing my hobby budget on something I don't care about just to see how other games work.
Having finally watched most of that video I don't entirely disagree with his sentiment but take issue with GW essentially wanting to have it's cake and eat it too. This has pretty much been the purge edition between more and more options either being flat out eliminated or put on the bus in some weird gray area that leaves no one all that satisfied.
He talks about 40k almost as if it's a D and D style rpg when rules wise GW has pretty much doubled down on making the game a CCG with plastic tokens. 8th is essentially combo hammer at this point with a lot games being determined on who can stack more auras, strats and army rules together to have so much offensive output that you sweep your opponent off the table.
Things like range, positioning, terrain and movement have not mean less than any edition I've played in and GW continue to prune units and options kills any idea of this being a narrative game were I can tell stories with in the framework of the official rules.
HoundsofDemos wrote: Having finally watched most of that video I don't entirely disagree with his sentiment but take issue with GW essentially wanting to have it's cake and eat it too. This has pretty much been the purge edition between more and more options either being flat out eliminated or put on the bus in some weird gray area that leaves no one all that satisfied.
He talks about 40k almost as if it's a D and D style rpg when rules wise GW has pretty much doubled down on making the game a CCG with plastic tokens. 8th is essentially combo hammer at this point with a lot games being determined on who can stack more auras, strats and army rules together to have so much offensive output that you sweep your opponent off the table.
Things like range, positioning, terrain and movement have not mean less than any edition I've played in and GW continue to prune units and options kills any idea of this being a narrative game were I can tell stories with in the framework of the official rules.
I'd argue the bit I bolded described competetive40k. To be fair, that's generally how all competetive games go: who can get their win condition out the most efficiently.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
I have something I enjoy playing and am already spending money on, so I should stop playing it and take the money I'm setting aside for those hobby purchases just to go play something else? Not a friggin chance. I get -why- people are arguing this, but I don't think I'm the only one who is resistant to blowing my hobby budget on something I don't care about just to see how other games work.
Miniature wargame conventions are a low cost way to try other systems without buying in. Someone else brings the terrain and minis and runs the game for other players. Admittance is usually $15 or less for a whole day ticket. Most post an events list online beforehand, so you can decide if it's even worth the time and/or money. Secondary is that many also offer flea market tables, so that attendees can unload their projects that they've lost interest in.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
I have something I enjoy playing and am already spending money on, so I should stop playing it and take the money I'm setting aside for those hobby purchases just to go play something else? Not a friggin chance. I get -why- people are arguing this, but I don't think I'm the only one who is resistant to blowing my hobby budget on something I don't care about just to see how other games work.
Easy- it was merely a suggestion. Many games have rules online for free, as well, if you found yourself so inclined.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...That said, I don't want people assuming I don't think the rules should be tighter, I just think that there is a level of expectation people keep setting themselves up for that can never be met.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
I tried to get into Warmachine, but the density of stuff to memorize just to play the game was too much of a wall. I know people really loved in in 2nd, but between that and the models being metal or plastic resin just killed it for me. I don't have an interest in historicals, and the only other game I've seen make a dent here (X-wing) dried up almost as fast as it popped up, which is a shame because I did like that, though I barely managed to get any games in.
Because some of those expectations (namely Peregrine and Catbug) are for there to be 0% errors ever, and any issue is immediately a sign that the rules team is better off being fired and replaced, ect, ect, ect.
There is definitely a vocal minority who demand a level of perfection no product ever reaches and then complain about how bad something is because it's not perfect.
I just observe a false dichotomy at work here when you claim I'm demanding an unachievable level of perfection from GW when all I'm doing is demanding it reach the level of any other miniatures wargame I've played (Warmachine, Infinity, X-Wing) in terms of not casually rendering peoples' armies invalid. You lose games of 40k because you bought the wrong models; you don't lose games in any other system I've ever played just because you bought the wrong models, there's always something you can do other than switch sub-factions and get the OP special characters/switch factions/throw everything out and start over because all the stuff you had is unplayable sh**.
Bharring wrote: I came from WMH actually. It was too crunch-before-feel for me. I liked the more narrative approach that 40k offered.
Although one of the big motivators was I was sick of superheavies in every single game...
This is kinda sad :( Since WMH is a lot of feels to the narrative when you get stuck into there rules, and i do not feel its really any less crunch than 40k is.
RIght now i think 40k is a way bloated mess, that is not even left fit for its casual use.
We use a lot of rules for narrative, and used to use 40k a lot, but not really anymore.
Bharring wrote: I came from WMH actually. It was too crunch-before-feel for me. I liked the more narrative approach that 40k offered.
Although one of the big motivators was I was sick of superheavies in every single game...
This is kinda sad :( Since WMH is a lot of feels to the narrative when you get stuck into there rules, and i do not feel its really any less crunch than 40k is.
RIght now i think 40k is a way bloated mess, that is not even left fit for its casual use.
We use a lot of rules for narrative, and used to use 40k a lot, but not really anymore.
No, unfortunately i'm with him on this. I left WMH for about the same reason. Too much crunch, not enough fluff.
Rules on units didn't make much sense, they had the "tacked on" feel of MtG cards. In 40k rules at least try to represent something that the model should be able to do in the fluff.
Also, the game was "balanced" in the sense that every faction had something equally broken. People here complain about 8th where 2 reasonably put together tac armies can have unbalanced results depending on the faction, but in WMH if you brought a tac list you had already forfeited the game. You selected the 1 or 2 casters competitive in your faction and then the list would write itself out of autoincludes for about 70% of the list.
External balance was somehow present, but the internal balance was nowhere to be seen, and that was what killed it for me.
When internal balance is THAT bad, you have no chance to make "your" list. The grand majority of 40k players plays good and optimized lists, but always founded on concepts like "I like that model" "I like this playstyle "I like this theme", and you can put together a reasonably good list usually, while following your taste. In WMH you couldn't, so in the end it lost interest to me, even if i seriously liked its fluff.
Bharring wrote: I came from WMH actually. It was too crunch-before-feel for me. I liked the more narrative approach that 40k offered.
Although one of the big motivators was I was sick of superheavies in every single game...
This is kinda sad :( Since WMH is a lot of feels to the narrative when you get stuck into there rules, and i do not feel its really any less crunch than 40k is.
RIght now i think 40k is a way bloated mess, that is not even left fit for its casual use.
We use a lot of rules for narrative, and used to use 40k a lot, but not really anymore.
No, unfortunately i'm with him on this. I left WMH for about the same reason. Too much crunch, not enough fluff.
Rules on units didn't make much sense, they had the "tacked on" feel of MtG cards. In 40k rules at least try to represent something that the model should be able to do in the fluff.
Also, the game was "balanced" in the sense that every faction had something equally broken. People here complain about 8th where 2 reasonably put together tac armies can have unbalanced results depending on the faction, but in WMH if you brought a tac list you had already forfeited the game. You selected the 1 or 2 casters competitive in your faction and then the list would write itself out of autoincludes for about 70% of the list.
External balance was somehow present, but the internal balance was nowhere to be seen, and that was what killed it for me.
When internal balance is THAT bad, you have no chance to make "your" list. The grand majority of 40k players plays good and optimized lists, but always founded on concepts like "I like that model" "I like this playstyle "I like this theme", and you can put together a reasonably good list usually, while following your taste. In WMH you couldn't, so in the end it lost interest to me, even if i seriously liked its fluff.
Warmachine is full of fluff and abilitys that make sense, Not liking it is fine. And i was saying its sad that they could not get into it. Its a great system for narrative games, since it has a great balance. And it was importent to think about what you bring, your meta and how things function together.
Its funny to see things like swamp gobbers being the unit i lend out the most as when used well, they where a fantastic unit. Despite really only doing one little thing.
"Your" list is great, if you have an army that even supports that in 40k, but even then that tends to fail a lot in practice in 40k :( with the right thing being the only realistic choice.
I see way more variety to WMH list than 40k, Even watching batreps i find they are all blending into each other with a bland as anything ruleset that barely holds up as a narrative set.
Also, a funny thing i always find. Since discussions come up often enough to 40k like this.
Its just funny that 40k is always far less complicated, and then when it comes to why people have trouble with the rules and getting things wrong. Suddenly its since 40k is such a more complicated game.
Only last week i had watch something about how 40k was such a expancive game, and there was no way to balance it like other games. Even specified war machine.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
I have something I enjoy playing and am already spending money on, so I should stop playing it and take the money I'm setting aside for those hobby purchases just to go play something else? Not a friggin chance. I get -why- people are arguing this, but I don't think I'm the only one who is resistant to blowing my hobby budget on something I don't care about just to see how other games work.
Yeah thats just what I said, but for I didn't say that at all. I said, very clearly, don't spend money on it I'm sure other people out there have things from these systems to try for FREE in fact. I never said stop playing warhammer, I play warhammer and all these other games too. Variety, is a good thing and often experience with many systems can help critical analysis of even a beloved game system. I've played 40k since 3rd ed, and no amount of my issues has made me stop playing it. Just you know expand your horizons some, then if you just love warhammer that much, stay there but at least you experienced the other offerings more fully. That is all and not only is that a reasonable thing for any of us to do, it's something that enriches your gaming experiences all around. Even if it makes you appreciate warhammer all the more at the end of it.
Life, for instance, I played and most of these I have things for Malifaux, Attack wing, X wing, Armada, 40k, WH Fantasy , Bolt Action, Infinity. I've played many more, like Flames of war, some historicals, many many board games. I'd like to try but don't have Wild west exodus and a few other mini games, like Legion. I just personally think variety is good even when I'm so invested into 40k.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
No thanks.
Nope not asking that at all. However you have chimed in quite a bit about how 40k is just fine balance wise with no context to any other games beside it for any basis of comparison and have alluded that it is unrealistic to want better balance when in fact better balance exists in other places.
I think its fine for you to say "look everyone in my area really only plays 40k, I don't know how other games operate or how they are balanced, but I really don't care about wonky balance so much as long as I have people to play against." Because thats pretty much the default stance for most 40k players that I know personally.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
You could always bring stuff into the store, or invite buddies over, and introduce people to a new game. People won't necessarily pick it up, but not trying guarantees Warhammer will remain the only game in town.
Nice assption of how my FLGS operates. They try to branch out a fair bit but my local area has two pillars: Mtg and Warhammer. Everything else, even WHM is more like dust in the wind.
We have one guy trying to get Flames of War started but it doesn't seem like it's catching on.
We have a playerbase of maybe 15-20 people of various levels of competetiveness and actually showing up.
EDIT: Basically stop telling me to blow my money on IPs I don't even care about to try and get other people hooked on them.
The point isn't to say you should spend your money on other stuff. The point I think was just some game systems are cheaper, more fun and just over all better than GW systems. Now, don't get me wrong I love Warhammer, despite the things they do amazingly wrong imo. It's a shame others don't expand out a bit more there. Flamers of war is pretty nice, but then I've played a ton of different games so I've seen the good and the bad with all of them. I would say unless you spread your gaming wings though, you won't ever fly and settling down with just one system does tend to have someone overlook the errors and accept far more than they should from that one company.
No judgement from me on that, as I said I still have enjoyed every game of warhammer I played, and I hated they got rid of fantasy as I enjoyed it and even enjoyed my games in the dark days of 7th ed. I just won't keep my peace if they are doing things I dislike.
I have something I enjoy playing and am already spending money on, so I should stop playing it and take the money I'm setting aside for those hobby purchases just to go play something else? Not a friggin chance. I get -why- people are arguing this, but I don't think I'm the only one who is resistant to blowing my hobby budget on something I don't care about just to see how other games work.
Are you opposed to trying another game if someone can provide enough stuff for two players?
An anecdote I've noticed with the general issues of GW rules is that people will come to other games with the "apply intent" attitude from GW, and then end up missing rule interactions or playing them wrong since the rules are clear but a long history of GW games means that you try to read into every rule because in Warhammer you have to.
I've seen that happen (and been guilty of it myself) in various other games I've played just because of my experience with Warhammer. It will come up as the rules say X but do they really mean X, because in Warhammer X doesn't always mean X.
That's a huge problem, and probably the most egregious since GW can't seem to write clear rules to save their life.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
No thanks.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Andy, I admit my comparison was quite daring, but the point is that one can appreciate some nice work only if some the most essential elements are well done.
I cannot appreciate my clean pores if i am dying of melanoma. I cannot appreciate many design choices if some unit is cannot been deployed or terrain rules are a joke. I just cannot enjoy that part of the game.
And no. My friend could not enjoy the orks because they were unplayable in that period. The system made them non enjoyable for him.
"If you don’t like the game don’t play it." It's exactly what happened with him. When I go back to the old country I always talk with him, have a beer or go and listen him playing. But for sure we never played Warhammer anymore, he occasionally built and painted what he already had.
We were all very casual players in that group, but there should be a minimum of playability. Such playability should allow you to field a decent list without forcing other players to cripple themselves or to make too many sacrifices about which models could be fielded in order to win. To have an interesting game.
And that did not happen, especially when other players had 7th edition tau to field.
You cannot just dismiss other people's claim about balance and rule writing outright. There is no way is all "baseless" if this is a returning topic, am I right?
I put things so bluntly as that is what is done by those overly vocal advocates for a more competitive ruleset. They just assume that everyone feels the game lacks in the respect as they do. That is not the case. The things they and you are calling for would make the game worse for me. The loose open nature of the rules at present work brilliantly for me and my group. So I use their style and yours to demonstrate how disingenuous it is to demand more balance because it’s better for everyone.
Your comparison wasn’t daring, it was silly. (And I’m being polite). As I said, I played ORKS that entire period and loved them as much as I do now, a lot. But then again I’m playing against like minded people who want to have fun telling stories with their games not trying to best one and other to prove how awesome we are. So this is your hyperbole again. ORKS were unplayable. Not true. Maybe the issues is his opponents not the rules. The sooner all you lot accept that the game is designed to be fun and relaxed not competitive the better. Play it competitively fine be realise what you are doing is imperfect.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
No thanks.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Yep. I always find it funny to have people whose only experience has been GW games come out and say how it's balanced or hey cut GW some slack they're trying, etc. etc. when GW is seemingly the only company to have problems on this scale (not to say other games are perfect, they aren't, but they have nowhere near the issues GW constantly has). The point remains if you've only been a part of the GW ecosystem, you haven't seem what a GOOD game (by which I mean clear and consise rules at least legitimate attempts at balance) looks like to properly compare why what GW is doing isn't considered good.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
No thanks.
Nope not asking that at all. However you have chimed in quite a bit about how 40k is just fine balance wise with no context to any other games beside it for any basis of comparison and have alluded that it is unrealistic to want better balance when in fact better balance exists in other places.
I think its fine for you to say "look everyone in my area really only plays 40k, I don't know how other games operate or how they are balanced, but I really don't care about wonky balance so much as long as I have people to play against." Because thats pretty much the default stance for most 40k players that I know personally.
agreed that whole 'only game in town' thing 40k has going is a major hurdle in getting other stuff off the ground, and being a fat lazy hobbit I've long stopped trying, I can get games of wmh, guildball or gaslands with a little advance planning so dont feel the urge to convert the GW heathens
Your comparison wasn’t daring, it was silly. (And I’m being polite). As I said, I played ORKS that entire period and loved them as much as I do now, a lot. But then again I’m playing against like minded people who want to have fun telling stories with their games not trying to best one and other to prove how awesome we are. So this is your hyperbole again. ORKS were unplayable. Not true. Maybe the issues is his opponents not the rules. The sooner all you lot accept that the game is designed to be fun and relaxed not competitive the better. Play it competitively fine be realise what you are doing is imperfect.
I am quite confident of the fact that the experience of my friend is far from being unique. I would just repeat myself quoting people ITT again, as an example. My hyperbole stands on its basis: the framework was not solid enough. It's useless to have bells and whistles if the basic engine is faulty. There are bugs that simply CANNOT be ignored by professionals. Human errors exists, but when it happens consistently we are just facing incompetence. Now it improved from 6th-7th I think, but GW's attitude is still quite worrying. I really struggle to understand your attitude frankly. If the game is a challenge between 2 players in order to win the battle, there will ALWAYS be competition. There should also always be sportmanship, but this has nothing to do with how well the rules help the players set up an interesting match.
auticus wrote: The thing is until you play other games and get a feel for what other games can do in terms of balance, and just rely on 40k and say 40k is just fine balance wise, you don't have a real argument to stand by because 40k is far down the balanced fun ladder in the hierarchy.
It survives because everyone plays it, and because everyone plays it it survives. It is a nuclear reactor that feeds itself. People like to play games that everyone else plays, rules quality be damned.
Again, you're asking me to take -my- money to go buy a game I've never even played for just to what? Try out games with IPs that don't interest me just so I can learn about how other games play so I can argue about them on the internet?
No thanks.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Yep. I always find it funny to have people whose only experience has been GW games come out and say how it's balanced or hey cut GW some slack they're trying, etc. etc. when GW is seemingly the only company to have problems on this scale (not to say other games are perfect, they aren't, but they have nowhere near the issues GW constantly has). The point remains if you've only been a part of the GW ecosystem, you haven't seem what a GOOD game (by which I mean clear and consise rules at least legitimate attempts at balance) looks like to properly compare why what GW is doing isn't considered good.
That kind of attitude is a direct result from GW's sloppy writing. Compare it to MTG which has an incredibly tight ruleset. You can play it competitively or casually and the main difference between the two is strength of the deck. Formats can change the decks, but there are competitive and casual forms of legacy, standard, edh, etc etc. You are still a jerk if you play an optimized competitive deck against a casual "kitchen magic" style deck regardless of format. 40k on the other hand also has a "try to figure out what GW meant and don't be a jerk about it" aspect to the rules which is entirely arbitrary.
GW has consistently shown that they don't use consistent language across multiple books. GW has shown that they don't playtest worth anything if things like a non-functional gun on the Tigershark can make it to print or an errata will make exploding 6s go infinite. Until GW tightens up the language so the RAI vs RAW debate is no longer a thing, BCB is the hero that 40k deserves even if Dakka doesn't think its one it needs.
I just observe a false dichotomy at work here when you claim I'm demanding an unachievable level of perfection from GW when all I'm doing is demanding it reach the level of any other miniatures wargame I've played (Warmachine, Infinity, X-Wing) in terms of not casually rendering peoples' armies invalid. You lose games of 40k because you bought the wrong models; you don't lose games in any other system I've ever played just because you bought the wrong models, there's always something you can do other than switch sub-factions and get the OP special characters/switch factions/throw everything out and start over because all the stuff you had is unplayable sh**.
I said "some" not all. Nice job building a strawman out of my point that we have a vocal minority that drowns put real shortcomings the game has with hyperbole and unreasonable demands. Is that everyone with a complaint? Of course not. But we have a few of them on this board and they've hijacked threads to slay on GW with made up nonsense and hyperbole while acting like they're the a martyr just because people call them out for their nonsense.
"True competitive" players will cry and moan when their OP units get nerfed. Then they will go on to find the next broken unit comp to play with.
"Competitive" casual players will jump for joy when TFGs army get nerfed at their FLGS, then cry and moan when the same TFG comes along with the next broken comp.
Casual players will continue to tailor their list for maximum funness amongst the group he/she plays with.
The fact of the matter is, as everyone here agrees, there is no such thing as a "perfect" balance. As long as there is even the slightest room for exploit, people who make it their job to exploit such exploit will exploit it anyways.
As for the inconsistencies, typos, and awkward usage of language, yes it can be done better, but it's not something two sensible players can't work around.
Nope not asking that at all. However you have chimed in quite a bit about how 40k is just fine balance wise with no context to any other games beside it for any basis of comparison and have alluded that it is unrealistic to want better balance when in fact better balance exists in other places.
I think its fine for you to say "look everyone in my area really only plays 40k, I don't know how other games operate or how they are balanced, but I really don't care about wonky balance so much as long as I have people to play against." Because thats pretty much the default stance for most 40k players that I know personally.
It serves its purpose for the most part in more casual games despite some hyperbole about it being utterly broken. That isn't to say I don't have opinions on how I'd change the game if given a chance, but I have fun in most of my games so it works for me.
Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
Your comparison wasn’t daring, it was silly. (And I’m being polite). As I said, I played ORKS that entire period and loved them as much as I do now, a lot. But then again I’m playing against like minded people who want to have fun telling stories with their games not trying to best one and other to prove how awesome we are. So this is your hyperbole again. ORKS were unplayable. Not true. Maybe the issues is his opponents not the rules. The sooner all you lot accept that the game is designed to be fun and relaxed not competitive the better. Play it competitively fine be realise what you are doing is imperfect.
I am quite confident of the fact that the experience of my friend is far from being unique. I would just repeat myself quoting people ITT again, as an example.
My hyperbole stands on its basis: the framework was not solid enough. It's useless to have bells and whistles if the basic engine is faulty. There are bugs that simply CANNOT be ignored by professionals.
Human errors exists, but when it happens consistently we are just facing incompetence.
Now it improved from 6th-7th I think, but GW's attitude is still quite worrying. I really struggle to understand your attitude frankly. If the game is a challenge between 2 players in order to win the battle, there will ALWAYS be competition. There should also always be sportmanship, but this has nothing to do with how well the rules help the players set up an interesting match.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience. Players like yourself seem to struggle to even accept that that can be the case. Peregrine has even called me a liar for saying it, like somehow I’m covering up for being a mad payer and losing by saying I don’t care. It’s bonkers. And in the respect of playing the game the way I do the engine runs just perfectly.
So in answer, their will not ALWAYS be competition. The out come of games is about the overall story and fantastic narrative moments that come from them. I have enjoyed games where I have been slaughtered as much as ones where I have been doing the slaughtering. It’s about the one guy who holds out against all odds or the desperate charge to try and turn the tide. I enjoy seeing units perform the way they do in the fluff, be they mine or my opponents. If we keep track of who wins it’s for narrative purposes only. You might not agree with my attitude but as long as you stay ignorant of it you will always be part of the problem. It does seem to be a cultural issue as much as anything, most going on the way you do about ALWAYS being competition tend to have Stars and Stripes next to their names. To me and many others, and the designers, the game is a large scale role playing game. It even used to be in the rules that the warlord you chose represented you on the battlefield.
So with the designers saying the game is supposed to be the way it is, you can keep playing it which ever way you want but don’t expect it to become something else.
To use your analogy before, it’s like you have gone to a beauty therapist for skin cancer treatment. Enjoy your open pores and go see a doctor for the cancer.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
Yes they do.It's called undercosting their new OP unit.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Nice strawman. To play those games I'd need to special order them in because no one plays them and the FLGS doesn't sell them I am quite literally being told to go spend money to try games that never got my interest in the first place.
And quit trying to take my criticism of a minority of playser (ones like Catbug and Peregrine) and applying it to every complaint ever. Even I, as someome who generally likes 40k, has feelings and opinions regarding things that fall short. Acting like I'm talking about every complaint is hyperbole at best and slander at worst.
Bharring wrote: I came from WMH actually. It was too crunch-before-feel for me. I liked the more narrative approach that 40k offered.
Although one of the big motivators was I was sick of superheavies in every single game...
This is kinda sad :( Since WMH is a lot of feels to the narrative when you get stuck into there rules, and i do not feel its really any less crunch than 40k is.
RIght now i think 40k is a way bloated mess, that is not even left fit for its casual use.
We use a lot of rules for narrative, and used to use 40k a lot, but not really anymore.
No, unfortunately i'm with him on this. I left WMH for about the same reason. Too much crunch, not enough fluff.
Rules on units didn't make much sense, they had the "tacked on" feel of MtG cards. In 40k rules at least try to represent something that the model should be able to do in the fluff.
Also, the game was "balanced" in the sense that every faction had something equally broken. People here complain about 8th where 2 reasonably put together tac armies can have unbalanced results depending on the faction, but in WMH if you brought a tac list you had already forfeited the game. You selected the 1 or 2 casters competitive in your faction and then the list would write itself out of autoincludes for about 70% of the list.
External balance was somehow present, but the internal balance was nowhere to be seen, and that was what killed it for me.
When internal balance is THAT bad, you have no chance to make "your" list. The grand majority of 40k players plays good and optimized lists, but always founded on concepts like "I like that model" "I like this playstyle "I like this theme", and you can put together a reasonably good list usually, while following your taste. In WMH you couldn't, so in the end it lost interest to me, even if i seriously liked its fluff.
PP has a tendency to do that in general I've found.
One of my favorite games was Monsterpocalypse, when it came out, which had a very cool core concept and some very awesome mechanics to it, but at the end of the day everything could just do too much stuff. Everything had too many abilities, and not all the abilities made sense thematically. It was nigh-on impossible to explain the rules to someone, which for a setting that naturally attracted younger people - giant monster godzilla fights - was definitely bad.
Same deal with WMH, in my opinion. i turned up at my local group ready to play after building and painting my basic list, which was 5 big dragon monsters and a few support characters, and I found every other person was just playing with unpainted, unassembled lower halves of models with flat felt terrain.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Which is what I said earlier. But apparent such a thing is not a "problem".
Now, full disclosure- I often say "You don't need to eat dog gak to know it is going to taste bad.". There's the caveat. Anyone can see real bad stinkers of things, anywhere, without needing the relevant qualifications. However, it's the idea of "good enough" that trips a lot of people up. OP needs to have that universal perspective to see why GW's rules are unnecessarily complex in places for no reason.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...unreasonable demands. Is that everyone with a complaint? Of course not. But we have a few of them on this board and they've hijacked threads to slay on GW with made up nonsense and hyperbole while acting like they're the a martyr just because people call them out for their nonsense.
Back up a step.
I'm asking GW to stop printing shibboleth options that exist solely so people who know how the game works can laugh at people who bought them.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
I think your framng here is rather misleading. Magic does, generally, "allow" pretty much "any" combination but indeed, does, intrinsically, restrict "quantity" either to 4-of or 1-of, depending on the format in question.
But many combinations would be purely nonsensical. Mostly because the formal structure of resources in the game dictate, in some way, what could be achieved in game terms. A pile of Red cards with nothing but Green-producing lands is as legal as a deck can get and, at the same time, non-sensical to play, since you could not take any meaningful, in the long run, game actions.
40k is not really much different though. While the old FOC was more "explicitly formal" in detailing what could be taken and what could not, the new system of detachments functions much the same way. While "quantity" is less bounded, you are still, in terms of making "sensible game decisions" to adhere to some formal structure. This is exactly what the detachment structure is seemingly there to do, bound one to some structure to access the benefits of CP. So, while the formal restriction on "quantity" is lessened, comparatively, it is just "enforced" at a different level, the level of a sort of rewarding an adherence to a given formal structure. That is, increased access to "meaningful game actions."
But all of this is kind of a total aside, because MTG was brought up more in the context of the "tightness" of it's core rule set, not really it's formal deckbuilding structure. That structure is the realm of each format and each one, while usually similar, is seeking a different sort of aim, to some degree or other. I don't think the point of contrasting 40k and MTG is to highlight the relative benefit of list/deck building structure vis-a-vis balance, but rather the "tightness" or "looseness" of the games core rules with respect to "general playability."
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Which is what I said earlier. But apparent such a thing is not a "problem".
Now, full disclosure- I often say "You don't need to eat dog gak to know it is going to taste bad.". There's the caveat. Anyone can see real bad stinkers of things, anywhere, without needing the relevant qualifications. However, it's the idea of "good enough" that trips a lot of people up. OP needs to have that universal perspective to see why GW's rules are unnecessarily complex in places for no reason.
Also, many games out there have free rules. You could download the rules for infinity, grab a load of household items of varying sizes (cereal boxes, tissue boxes, shoes, etc.) and your existing 40K model collection and play a game of infinity with absolutely no need to spend a single penny.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Which is what I said earlier. But apparent such a thing is not a "problem".
Now, full disclosure- I often say "You don't need to eat dog gak to know it is going to taste bad.". There's the caveat. Anyone can see real bad stinkers of things, anywhere, without needing the relevant qualifications. However, it's the idea of "good enough" that trips a lot of people up. OP needs to have that universal perspective to see why GW's rules are unnecessarily complex in places for no reason.
Do I need to keep amlist of complaints in my signature to make it clear that I also have things I feel the game falls short on?
Let me run down a few before someone else tries to claim I don't understand the rules have short comings:
Core terrain rules are lacking, wrecked vehicles should remain on the table like they did in old editions instead of magically vanishong into the warp, cover should provide a variety of BS modifiers instead of inproving armour saves (especially since most 40k weapons laugh at things like concrete), AP 0/- weapons in older editions should have been AP+1, Leadership should be more important, with the reintroduction of movement trays relative position behind a unit should be more important, the ability to go to ground should come back, the statline needs to be broken up further, saves for wounds should be taken at the end of the turn like they are in Apoc, there should be ways to boost BS (say by not moving, or spending CP), turn priority should be rolled for, CP should generate in the game and not when you build your list, invulnerable saves should be replaced by extra wounds or toughness on more models.
I can probably dig into it more, but that's just -some- of the things I feel like the game could change to make it better.
ClockworkZion wrote: ...unreasonable demands. Is that everyone with a complaint? Of course not. But we have a few of them on this board and they've hijacked threads to slay on GW with made up nonsense and hyperbole while acting like they're the a martyr just because people call them out for their nonsense.
Back up a step.
I'm asking GW to stop printing shibboleth options that exist solely so people who know how the game works can laugh at people who bought them.
What about that is unreasonable?
If it isn't aimed at you why are you taking offense? I said people like Catbug and Peregrine. If you don't fall into that level of vitriolic hyperbole then I'm not saying you're the problem.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Which is what I said earlier. But apparent such a thing is not a "problem".
Now, full disclosure- I often say "You don't need to eat dog gak to know it is going to taste bad.". There's the caveat. Anyone can see real bad stinkers of things, anywhere, without needing the relevant qualifications. However, it's the idea of "good enough" that trips a lot of people up. OP needs to have that universal perspective to see why GW's rules are unnecessarily complex in places for no reason.
Also, many games out there have free rules. You could download the rules for infinity, grab a load of household items of varying sizes (cereal boxes, tissue boxes, shoes, etc.) and your existing 40K model collection and play a game of infinity with absolutely no need to spend a single penny.
No one was recommending Infinity earlier when they listed games I should be trying.
Wouldn't that mean double turn possibility. Am not sure I would want to do nothing turn 1, get drop pod assaulted, and shot at, and next turn my opponent going before me, droping in more stuff, and shoting and assaulting me again, giving him two turns back to back without me being able to do a thing in game.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience. Players like yourself seem to struggle to even accept that that can be the case. Peregrine has even called me a liar for saying it, like somehow I’m covering up for being a mad payer and losing by saying I don’t care. It’s bonkers. And in the respect of playing the game the way I do the engine runs just perfectly.
So in answer, their will not ALWAYS be competition. The out come of games is about the overall story and fantastic narrative moments that come from them. I have enjoyed games where I have been slaughtered as much as ones where I have been doing the slaughtering. It’s about the one guy who holds out against all odds or the desperate charge to try and turn the tide. I enjoy seeing units perform the way they do in the fluff, be they mine or my opponents. If we keep track of who wins it’s for narrative purposes only. You might not agree with my attitude but as long as you stay ignorant of it you will always be part of the problem. It does seem to be a cultural issue as much as anything, most going on the way you do about ALWAYS being competition tend to have Stars and Stripes next to their names. To me and many others, and the designers, the game is a large scale role playing game. It even used to be in the rules that the warlord you chose represented you on the battlefield.
So with the designers saying the game is supposed to be the way it is, you can keep playing it which ever way you want but don’t expect it to become something else.
To use your analogy before, it’s like you have gone to a beauty therapist for skin cancer treatment. Enjoy your open pores and go see a doctor for the cancer.
I think that I appreciate where you are coming from and I am sure that I would prefer to play 100 times with you than 1 time with an obnoxious WAAC, Andy. Nonetheless, I think that if the game is with points and objective IS competitive. There are no ways around it so a good setup is a good way to make it fun for different type of people. If GW wanted an RPG, they would have not streamlined rules, removed options and so on. Really, the reality of the ruleset does not add up with the statements from the designers. Exciting epic moments happen all the time with well written rulesets, in no way those hamper epic scenes of battle. But a tight ruleset can avoid frustration. Seriously, is a win-win if such thing is implemented. The rest is the design team hiding behind a fig leaf.
Also, reading that from a native speaker I am very flattered by the "star and stripes" comment, because I am Italian and only in US since few years. I lived elsewhere in Europe before, included my native country. It appears that my English (not the Queen's English I suppose) improved a bit if this confusion happened, albeit I am aware of the many mistakes I still make, and I thank Dakka for bothering to read my posts... but you know, if you have to change country every 3 years it happens to every time adjust to new languages.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
I tried to get into Warmachine, but the density of stuff to memorize just to play the game was too much of a wall. I know people really loved in in 2nd, but between that and the models being metal or plastic resin just killed it for me. I don't have an interest in historicals, and the only other game I've seen make a dent here (X-wing) dried up almost as fast as it popped up, which is a shame because I did like that, though I barely managed to get any games in.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
Yes they do.It's called undercosting their new OP unit.
That does not always happen to be honest. Think about the Ork Buggies. I don't know anymore.
Wouldn't that mean double turn possibility. Am not sure I would want to do nothing turn 1, get drop pod assaulted, and shot at, and next turn my opponent going before me, droping in more stuff, and shoting and assaulting me again, giving him two turns back to back without me being able to do a thing in game.
Double turn is a possibility for the person going second on a given turn. Which means if you go first on a turn you play with thst in mind, and neither player can play super defensively. It works well in AoS despite MWG whining about it (not that they play AoS correctly anyways).
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
Just out of curiosity, have you ever played any wargames not made by GW?
I tried to get into Warmachine, but the density of stuff to memorize just to play the game was too much of a wall. I know people really loved in in 2nd, but between that and the models being metal or plastic resin just killed it for me. I don't have an interest in historicals, and the only other game I've seen make a dent here (X-wing) dried up almost as fast as it popped up, which is a shame because I did like that, though I barely managed to get any games in.
So thats a no.. He hasn't.
I got a few games in, but not enough to claim a mastery of the rules in either game, and at least I have tried stepping out of my comfort zone.
My FLGS has a twitch channel and is trying to partner with PP so it looks like they'll be pushing WMH more which means I'll probably give it another go, but I make no promises.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
A gamer plays games. Why they play games is irrelevant to the discussion and trying to other people into a "not a real gamer" camp is elitist bs that is bad enough among video gamers, we don't need to bring it into wargaming too.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
I think your framng here is rather misleading. Magic does, generally, "allow" pretty much "any" combination but indeed, does, intrinsically, restrict "quantity" either to 4-of or 1-of, depending on the format in question.
Right, but they also restrict what sets can be played. You can't show up to a Type 2 standard event with a Black Lotus or Emrakul for example (unless they rereleased those recently that I'm unaware of). If I'm playing EDH, I can bring these things, but there are dramatically more restrictions and changes to the deck involved there. In 40k, I can take whatever I want within the bounds of the points limits while the detachment/faction systems are open enough that they don't do anywhere near as much to curb and shape things, and often do much the opposite.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
Yes they do.It's called undercosting their new OP unit.
That does not always happen to be honest. Think about the Ork Buggies. I don't know anymore.
James even made a point of saying they don't intentionally do that.
Under Kirby that could have been a thing, but the directives the studio is under now seem to let the studio focus more on trying to capture the lore and feel of the model in the rules.
Now if they can just adjust how they value certain attributes we'd be doing so much better.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
A gamer plays games. Why they play games is irrelevant to the discussion and trying to other people into a "not a real gamer" camp is elitist bs that is bad enough among video gamers, we don't need to bring it into wargaming too.
Absolutely. Who the hell does this guy think he is with this gatekeeping bs?
Kaiyanwang wrote: I genuinely think that if it happened it's rare or unique. I critique the design team where I think is due but I don't think this is a thing.
Yeah. They don't overpower the new releases consistently, they just kinda... Throw darts and hope for the best, it seems like.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I genuinely think that if it happened it's rare or unique. I critique the design team where I think is due but I don't think this is a thing.
I think it used to be more of a thing under Kirby with his ideas like "we sell minatures, not games". Nothing sells minis like constant escalation in the rules.
Roundtree reportibly actually plays the game so he would be more interested in a game that's fun to play than one that sells the newest mini, so this seems to have been fixed under him.
That said, we still have a ways to go, but we're a far cry from where we used to be.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I genuinely think that if it happened it's rare or unique. I critique the design team where I think is due but I don't think this is a thing.
I think it used to be more of a thing under Kirby with his ideas like "we sell minatures, not games". Nothing sells minis like constant escalation in the rules.
Roundtree reportibly actually plays the game so he would be more interested in a game that's fun to play than one that sells the newest mini, so this seems to have been fixed under him.
That said, we still have a ways to go, but we're a far cry from where we used to be.
I'll agree it's better. I don't agree it's good enough.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
Seeing as you seemed to have missed my comment, I'll repost it. After all, you sounded so sure in your conviction, I'm curious to hear your response to it.
Reemule wrote:THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
Why the quote marks on "gamers"? Are you implying that they're not "true gamers"?
Furthermore, how is how they play a "problem"? Are they not l33t enough for you? Not on the cutting edge of the meta and strictly following chess clocks?
They're gamers as much as anyone else.
If you don't actually finish a game.. are you a gamer? If you just go and spar at the gym, are you a boxer? How far do you want to go Sarge?
Yes to both of the above. You don't need to finish a game to be a gamer. You only need to play it.
You don't need to win boxing matches to be a boxer, as long as you're putting in effort. Sparring is effort.
Your point?
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
A gamer plays games. Why they play games is irrelevant to the discussion and trying to other people into a "not a real gamer" camp is elitist bs that is bad enough among video gamers, we don't need to bring it into wargaming too.
Cause he doesn't play games... Game is a defined term.
a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Certainly it has other definitions but this is the one for this discussion.
So you have person A saying well its a game, so do X. And he is saying "Well I call my self a gamer, but I don't actually play a game. I buy models and have social hour with my pals, and call it a game, and interject with sillyness when balance discussion comes up, but we don't play games..."
How is that making it easy?
Nothing wrong with not being a gamer. Just be clear what your doing.
Just imagining this guy telling himself what a cool dude he is for taking his gaming super-seriously, not like all those other losers who do it for *fun*. Mate, get over yourself. You’re a big nerd just like everyone else who’s into playing games with little toy spacemen. Stop trying to be the toy spacemen police and telling people their experiences are invalid.
At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I genuinely think that if it happened it's rare or unique. I critique the design team where I think is due but I don't think this is a thing.
I think it used to be more of a thing under Kirby with his ideas like "we sell minatures, not games". Nothing sells minis like constant escalation in the rules.
Roundtree reportibly actually plays the game so he would be more interested in a game that's fun to play than one that sells the newest mini, so this seems to have been fixed under him.
That said, we still have a ways to go, but we're a far cry from where we used to be.
I'll agree it's better. I don't agree it's good enough.
Hence why we "have a long ways to go". I freely admit the game could be better, I just.don't want to dismiss the improvements made as they did a lot to improve the mess we had before.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
A gamer plays games. Why they play games is irrelevant to the discussion and trying to other people into a "not a real gamer" camp is elitist bs that is bad enough among video gamers, we don't need to bring it into wargaming too.
Cause he doesn't play games... Game is a defined term.
a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Certainly it has other definitions but this is the one for this discussion.
So you have person A saying well its a game, so do X. And he is saying "Well I call my self a gamer, but I don't actually play a game. I buy models and have social hour with my pals, and call it a game, and interject with sillyness when balance discussion comes up, but we don't play games..."
How is that making it easy?
Nothing wrong with not being a gamer. Just be clear what your doing.
Reemule wrote: At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
Clear Sarge?
Again, do you need to finish games for that? What about draws.
Atleast if you deem your opinions oh so worthy make a consequent Definition.
Reemule wrote: At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
Clear Sarge?
You just described open play which is outlined in the rules as a valid means of pkaying 40k, so it's still playing the game as intended and thus still counts as being a gamer.
You can play the elitist card all you want but at the end of the day a gamer is just a person who plays games. Nowhere in the definition is completion even mentioned.
Not Online!!! wrote: I like how you deem your Definition and opinion superior to others.
Newsflash, even at tournaments matches aren't finished, are they also not "gAmErS"?
What tourney are you speaking of? Be more clear.
Nearly every tourney I know of, if you reach time, the match is declared over. Defacto by the end of the time, the match is over. THis was seen as a problem.. so here comes Chess Clocks.
Reemule wrote: At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
Clear Sarge?
You just described open play which is outlined in the rules as a valid means of pkaying 40k, so it's still playing the game as intended and thus still counts as being a gamer.
You can play the elitist card all you want but at the end of the day a gamer is just a person who plays games. Nowhere in the definition is completion even mentioned.
So your making a new definition. I do something vaguely resembling something else, I'm now the original? No doubt your driving a car makes you a pilot? You plugged in your Fan your a electrician?
And your implying being a gamer is better than not being a gamer. Stop that elitist crap son.
Vaktathi wrote: Right, but they also restrict what sets can be played. You can't show up to a Type 2 standard event with a Black Lotus or Emrakul for example (unless they rereleased those recently that I'm unaware of). If I'm playing EDH, I can bring these things, but there are dramatically more restrictions and changes to the deck involved there. In 40k, I can take whatever I want within the bounds of the points limits while the detachment/faction systems are open enough that they don't do anywhere near as much to curb and shape things, and often do much the opposite.
Again, I think this framing is misleading. Formats do constrain choice, to some degree (although, no, you cannot run Black Lotus in EDH, unless you are playing by house rules) but, that is not really the point. However, since we are there, 40K does to thing like this, although not as "formally." Within the format of 40: 8th Edition, I cannot run Necron Pariah as Necron Pariah, because there simply are no rules for them. This is not an explicit banning (like Black Lotus is in EDH) but an implicit one, since there are just no rules for such. What other MTG formats have is a formal rules of inclusion (like Standard), that is, say the latest X number of sets.
So, in some ways, 40K does operate in vaguely similar ways with respect to "legality" it is just that MTG has a much more explicitly formal system of it.
But, I would contest that 40K's detachment system has no effect in shaping the way people build lists or how the games play out. Just like you can make a Magic deck that has or needs no lands, you could make a 40K list that has or needs no CPs. But that doesn't mean it is sensical or winning strategy. It doesn't mean it is not. However, given the general "utility" of abilities that use CPs, it rarely would make sense to not access them. So, while there are almost a vast quantity of 40K lists possible in a given point range, given the fact of the way the game plays, there is a much smaller subset of plausible, sensible lists. In this way, the rules system, from detachments and on, do "force" the game in some direction.
What I object to is what seems like you trying to draw a categorical difference, where I can see only minor differences in degrees. But maybe I am just biased here.
Man the last two pages of this thread took a turn. At least you guys managed to keep me entertained through 3/4 of my work shift today.
My opinion: coming from X-wing before this. My local community had two types of game nights. Tournament prep (bring the best list you can and see what happens) and "Jank night" (bring the list that you feel will be the most fun to play, don't expect an even match, your jank list might turn out to be the next meta-list)
40k doesn't even have the possibility of that happening. Sure we have an established meta and people can choose not to bring those lists. But there are still armies that have to bring their best tournament list, to beat another armies Jank list.
Nearly every tourney I know of, if you reach time, the match is declared over. Defacto by the end of the time, the match is over. THis was seen as a problem.. so here comes Chess Clocks.
yeah except all the tourneys at the start of 8th and before wouldnt count in your definition.
And your definition wouldn't even cover draws as a result.
40k doesn't even have the possibility of that happening. Sure we have an established meta and people can choose not to bring those lists. But there are still armies that have to bring their best tournament list, to beat another armies Jank list.
Essentially this. Also, I agree that the gamer-gatekeeping etc should be its own thread, albeit I fully understand where Reemule was coming from.
And yet I've seen plenty of people who like it who are both casual and competetive players because they plan for being double turned.
Hence the part of my post where I said for every person that I see that likes it, I know of another person that hates it.
I feel like a lot of that comes from not planning to deal with a double turn. Plus a lot of the feel bads of losing units to a double turn (or even an alpha strike) would be mitigated if casualties were taken at the end of the game turn like Apoc since you'd be able to use that unit for at least your half the game turn before potentially losing it.
Seriously? Nobody's telling you what to buy. They're saying if you've never played a game outside of GW, you lack the perspective of seeing what is attainable by a capable writing team.
You're saying that people have unreasonable expectations for balance, when all most of us are expecting is the kind of balance and writing quality we can readily get outside the GW sphere. If you have no familiarity with what we're talking about, you're not in a position to comment, let alone defend GW on this.
Which is what I said earlier. But apparent such a thing is not a "problem".
Now, full disclosure- I often say "You don't need to eat dog gak to know it is going to taste bad.". There's the caveat. Anyone can see real bad stinkers of things, anywhere, without needing the relevant qualifications. However, it's the idea of "good enough" that trips a lot of people up. OP needs to have that universal perspective to see why GW's rules are unnecessarily complex in places for no reason.
Also, many games out there have free rules. You could download the rules for infinity, grab a load of household items of varying sizes (cereal boxes, tissue boxes, shoes, etc.) and your existing 40K model collection and play a game of infinity with absolutely no need to spend a single penny.
No one was recommending Infinity earlier when they listed games I should be trying.
Ah yes, because of course I was not using Infinity as an example but instead posting a complete list of games with free access to their rules.
But since you mention it, here's a couple other wargames with free rules: Warmachine/Hordes Beyond the Gates of Antares has free rules resources here
Reemule wrote:Cause he doesn't play games... Game is a defined term.
a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Certainly it has other definitions but this is the one for this discussion.
Emphasis mine. On what authority was it decided what definition of "game" we were using? Yours, in all your l33t gam3r gl0ry? I think not.
So you have person A saying well its a game, so do X. And he is saying "Well I call my self a gamer, but I don't actually play a game. I buy models and have social hour with my pals, and call it a game, and interject with sillyness when balance discussion comes up, but we don't play games..."
But no-one is saying "I don't actually play a game". The only problem here is you, saying "reeeeeeeeeeee you're not allowed to call throwing dice and casually moving models while engaging in social activity a game HOW DARE you sully the name of GAMERS everywhere".
That's just as much gaming as whatever you call it. Stop pretending like your way is the One True Way.
Reemule wrote:At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
So you can't have a draw in a game? You're telling me there's no such thing as a draw result in any games, because CLEARLY that wouldn't make them games? And if we decide to finish the game on turn two because we've got something else happening which we want to do, and mutually agree on that, that's not "finishing the match", despite it patently being over?
That's ridiculous.
I wouldn't exactly call you competent to express your opinions over what a "game" is, if you lack this level of awareness over what other people deign to do.
Clear Sarge?
No, not really. You seem fixated on proclaiming some weird elitist view of what a True Gamer is, but it's complete nonsense.
Please, elaborate. Why is playing with 40k models purely for the express purpose of social enjoyment, as opposed to tactical achievement, not classed as gaming? I suppose someone playing Call of Duty purely for entertainment instead of trying to get a sweet K/D ratio isn't a true gamer either? Nonsense.
And yet I've seen plenty of people who like it who are both casual and competetive players because they plan for being double turned.
Hence the part of my post where I said for every person that I see that likes it, I know of another person that hates it.
I feel like a lot of that comes from not planning to deal with a double turn. Plus a lot of the feel bads of losing units to a double turn (or even an alpha strike) would be mitigated if casualties were taken at the end of the game turn like Apoc since you'd be able to use that unit for at least your half the game turn before potentially losing it.
There have been many threads on this topic. Needless to say, it has a lot to do with a lot of issues that have nothing to do with someone not planning on dealing with it. That is kind of the equivalent of saying "git gud", which doesn't really negate the negative play experience.
Its standing there for two whole turns doing nothing for up to an hour or more while your opponent removes your models and you can't respond.
Its being forced to have screens to mitigate alpha striking (which is essentially what the double turn is emulating) and if you don't have screens, don't bother. Really screens are the only way to mitigate double turn melee units because in AOS things can literally cross the table and charge in one turn, so you can't even distance yourself properly in a lot of cases and terrain is largely irrelevant in managing movements like it would be on an actual battlefield.
Against shooty heavy lists its just taking models off the table twice.
IGO UGO is a negative by itself. Double turn takes that to the next level. For a lot of people, its a game killer and it has nothing to do with not being prepared for the double turn, because after you have played the game four or five times, you know it can be coming. Not being prepared for the double turn is valid for brand new players.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Emphasis mine. On what authority was it decided what definition of "game" we were using? Yours, in all your l33t gam3r gl0ry?
I think not.
Ohh no.. you didn't do your homework!
The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
VoxCast – the official Warhammer 40,000 Podcast.
Warhammer 40,000 is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop.
A wargame is a game type.
So naturally it should follow the established mean of game no?
And yet I've seen plenty of people who like it who are both casual and competetive players because they plan for being double turned.
Hence the part of my post where I said for every person that I see that likes it, I know of another person that hates it.
I feel like a lot of that comes from not planning to deal with a double turn. Plus a lot of the feel bads of losing units to a double turn (or even an alpha strike) would be mitigated if casualties were taken at the end of the game turn like Apoc since you'd be able to use that unit for at least your half the game turn before potentially losing it.
There have been many threads on this topic. Needless to say, it has a lot to do with a lot of issues that have nothing to do with someone not planning on dealing with it. That is kind of the equivalent of saying "git gud", which doesn't really negate the negative play experience.
Its standing there for two whole turns doing nothing for up to an hour or more while your opponent removes your models and you can't respond.
Its being forced to have screens to mitigate alpha striking (which is essentially what the double turn is emulating) and if you don't have screens, don't bother. Really screens are the only way to mitigate double turn melee units because in AOS things can literally cross the table and charge in one turn, so you can't even distance yourself properly in a lot of cases and terrain is largely irrelevant in managing movements like it would be on an actual battlefield.
Against shooty heavy lists its just taking models off the table twice.
IGO UGO is a negative by itself. Double turn takes that to the next level. For a lot of people, its a game killer and it has nothing to do with not being prepared for the double turn, because after you have played the game four or five times, you know it can be coming. Not being prepared for the double turn is valid for brand new players.
If two player turns from the same person take an hour, there is an issue greater than just the double turn at play there. And I presented a second factor that would mitigate the shooting casualty issue: saves and removal at the end of the game turn, meaning that you don't lose anything before you've had a chance to use it that game turn. Or are we skipping that point just to keep telling me that double turns can't work?
And I thought 40k already pushed screens. Did we just abandon those and I didn't get the memo? I mean I don't play the tournament circuit so I could have missed that, but I thought screening was very much still a major part of the game.
I never said double turns "can't work". I said they are a negative play experience for a great many people for several reasons beyond them all not liking it because they didn't prepare properly for it.
Double turn makes screens 100% vital and required. No double turn makes screens very useful but not required since not every army can alpha strike.
Or are we skipping that point just to keep telling me that double turns can't work?
You suggested a house rule to alleviate the double turn, which I did not respond to because its not relevant to AOS anymore than my alternate activation houserules are relevant to the conversation.
Ah yes, because of course I was not using Infinity as an example but instead posting a complete list of games with free access to their rules.
No, it's because in the list of "better games you should try" that wasn't listed, which made me question bringing it up.
A Town Called Malus wrote: But since you mention it, here's a couple other wargames with free rules:
Warmachine/Hordes
Beyond the Gates of Antares has free rules resources here
As I commented before, I have WMH a try in 2nd edition and found that its rules were more like a technical manual than a game. It was a barrier to entry I couldn't get past to get comfortable with the game or its mechanics and to me that's not good game design, regardless how balanced the end result is. With my store picking up 3rd ed for streaming on its channel (among other things they're streaming), I'll likely give the 3rd ed a fair shake but let's not pretend I didn't mention WMH several times already and that I had an issue with the rules density.
Never heard of the second one you mentioned there, so let me give it a peek as I write this reply...."Accessing Imtel"...So yeah, first impression: I'm not really into the models.
So why the hell do I need to go through checkout just to download a free PDF? I don't want to fill out billing information just to get a free download that could (and should) be a download on the website proper. That was a stupid and cumbersome process just to look at the rules. Already got to say it's sad when GW does it better.
So actual rules: the need to keep units at least 1" apart probably exists to keep similar units from being easily mixed up, and I can applaud that. The use of D10s isn't bad either since it means there is more room in the basic statline. That said the free basic rules don't really let me play a pick up game like 40k's (and the order dice mean I need to make chits or something to fill in if I want to walk through the free PDF's scenario to get a feel for the game) and honestly I feel like it's one of those games I'd need to play a few times to really get comfortable with, especially since I haven't even seen the statlines or rules for the units.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: I never said double turns "can't work". I said they are a negative play experience for a great many people for several reasons beyond them all not liking it because they didn't prepare properly for it.
Double turn makes screens 100% vital and required. No double turn makes screens very useful but not required since not every army can alpha strike.
Or are we skipping that point just to keep telling me that double turns can't work?
You suggested a house rule to alleviate the double turn, which I did not respond to because its not relevant to AOS anymore than my alternate activation houserules are relevant to the conversation.
It's not a house rule, it's an Apoc rule that I said 40k would be better with in my list that the double turn was cherry picked out of.
Vaktathi wrote: Magic also generally doesn't allow one to take anything in whatever combination or quantity one wants. There are various formats with relatively strict rules on what can be included in a deck, and in what numbers, Wizards actively and intentionally shapes their metagame. 40k does almost none of this.
Yes they do.It's called undercosting their new OP unit.
That does not always happen to be honest. Think about the Ork Buggies. I don't know anymore.
The magic excuse for "New thing comes out, isn't broken" is almost always "Ohhhhhh but they KNEW those would sell, so they didn't need to make them OP!"
Take a realistic look at the last few things that have come out, and you'll see that - shockingly, the competitive crowd uses about 33% of the units in the game in their tournament lists, and about 33% of what GW puts out is suitable for the tournament crowd.
New Primaris:
-Invictus Warsuit - Good
-Infiltrator primaris troops - Good
-Phobos Librarian - Bad
-Phobos Lieutenants - Bad
-Phobos Captain - Bad
-Suppressors - Bad
-Eliminators - Mixed? I dunno haven't heard much about these.
-New flying brickboxtank - Good
-New Repulsor - Bad
Well that's weird, you'd think either the new space marines would be a sure-fire investment GW wouldn't have to push or they'd make the new stuff all OP?
Ok, how about new GSC stuff then?
Nexos - Good
Kelermorph - Good
Biophagus - Bad
Locus - Bad
Abominant - Bad
Aberrants - Good
Jackals - Bad
Jackal Alphus - Bad
Achilles - Bad
The "Gw is a bad evil conspiracy just trying to make all new things OP to push their plastic crack" crowd has never actually cared about truth, just about what feels true. The new thing comes out, they lost to it, darn you evil GW!
Forget all the times some super old cruddy kit (COUGH COUGH IMPERIAL fething GUARDSMEN ANYONE) dominates a whole edition...that's because GW...had old stock they needed to clear out? Oh wait, sometimes when that happens like with Dark Reapers, Grotesques, Talos, Ravagers, etc the thing just goes instantly out of stock and stays that way for months.
That's...huh. How does that fit into the conspiracy....maybe...they're trying to create...artificial scarcity to make people think the...minis are more valuable?
Sorry for going this technical perhaps but if you take an official rule for another version of the game of or another system used with the same models, you are houseruling anyway. You are not using something written for that system. Just copying a rule someone else used instead of making it up completely.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Sorry for going this technical perhaps but if you take an official rule for another version of the game of or another system used with the same models, you are houseruling anyway. You are not using something written for that system. Just copying a rule someone else used instead of making it up completely.
It was a list of things I feel the game either does poorly or things it should implement to make it better. FFS now you're just making up bs to try and argue.
It's not a house rule, it's an Apoc rule that I said 40k would be better with in my list that the double turn was cherry picked out of.
Sorry. I was speaking in the context of AOS.
In 40k it would be a houserule until it got moved into 40k out of apocalypse. Anything not an actual rule of the game and a rule of an expansion ported over into the main game is still technically a houserule.
I'm sure we can split hairs on that forever and tomorrow, but if you are argumentative on that, simply post a poll and see how the community feels.
Regardless, I see it as houseruling and houseruling works in the context of the group the houserule is running under. It may help the double turn, but if its not an official rule, it doesn't really exist for the rest of us unless we adopt that rules alteration into our own game. Which is why I did not respond to it at all as a fix, since it is a houserule fix currently.
Okay, let's narrow it down to my interests then, how many that are sci fi or fantasy themed are better than 40k (and aren't just 9th Age or 40k homebrews) and worth looking into?
It's not a house rule, it's an Apoc rule that I said 40k would be better with in my list that the double turn was cherry picked out of.
Sorry. I was speaking in the context of AOS.
In 40k it would be a houserule until it got moved into 40k out of apocalypse. Anything not an actual rule of the game and a rule of an expansion ported over into the main game is still technically a houserule.
I'm sure we can split hairs on that forever and tomorrow, but if you are argumentative on that, simply post a poll and see how the community feels.
Regardless, I see it as houseruling and houseruling works in the context of the group the houserule is running under. It may help the double turn, but if its not an official rule, it doesn't really exist for the rest of us unless we adopt that rules alteration into our own game.
In the context of the discussion both the double turn and the end of turn wound mechanic were presented as things I think 40k should adopt to make the game better, unless they adopt them officially they'd both be houserules, but I wasn't arguing about using them as houserules I was presenting a list of things I feel the game falls short on since people keep trying to strawman my position into "40k is perfect".
FFS Dakka, if you're going to cherry pick my arguements at least read the entire post they come from so you can get the context right.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
The fact you outright said you wouldn't look at redone 40k or 9th says a lot about how bad you want to move those goalposts.
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
GW seems to be trying to apply the nerfs in small steps, possibly to not outright ruin the playability of models for people. I agree we need more, but more than nerfs we need a lot more stuff made viable. There are a lot of options that just don't outweigh their counterparts competitively leading to Scouts over Tacticals being a common sight, much less Cultists over Chaos Marines. It feels like they're getting a better handle how to handle elite versus horde builds but we're obviously not where the game needs to be and that's a problem I think everyone can agree needs addressing.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
The fact you outright said you wouldn't look at redone 40k or 9th says a lot about how bad you want to move those goalposts.
If the point is to look at games outside of GW's works, then looking at homebrewed 40k or a dying version of WFB (a game I played in 7th and 8th) is pointless. It's just a retooled version of an existing thing and still has to fall into the same design constraints the original did to appeal to people who played the original version.
If you want to point out better games I'm all for it, but I'm not rehashing GW's greatest hits covered by the Kids Bop when the point was that I look outside of GW's realm and look at better original IP.
Reemule wrote:At minimum, if you haven't set a point limit, created a list, played the games using all relevant rules to the criteria your playing, finished the match, and have a winner, I don't believe your competent to express opinions on balance in the game.
Clear Sarge?
This is single handedly the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard and that's sayin somethin.
Would you like some keys to go along with that gate?
Reemule wrote:Ohh no.. you didn't do your homework!
The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
VoxCast – the official Warhammer 40,000 Podcast.
Warhammer 40,000 is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop.
A wargame is a game type.
So naturally it should follow the established mean of game no?
Agreed with all of the above. No quarrel there.
What you're missing is that a wargame can be played exactly as described earlier - a relaxed, casually rolling social affair, with the core objective being enjoyment over tactical superiority. That's still just as much playing a game as meticulously moving units, striving to win and achieve victory. (Note that both are fine, and I'm not meaning to elevate one's validity over the other - both are equally valid ways to play the game).
So, heavy handed condescension aside, I ask again - why are we using your definition of what a "game" is to determine who is, or is not, a gamer?
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I think this is a great example of why we need to be more clear on our bias.
You think the nerf to the Castellan was good. Maybe it was to the Narrative players. I don't know of stats or information on narrative play to judge this.
It wasn't "good" for competitive play. We know this because it dropped it from nearly every list, to virtually no lists. Talking knights, currently we have (ignoring FW) 8 knight sheets, Gallant, Preceptor, Warden, Crusader, Errant, Paladin, Valiant and Castellan. Good balance between them would be if you get to some silly high number of lists with knights, they would even out to where each of the 8 designs appears about 12.5% of the time.
A Good nerf would have moved things in the direction of the 12.5%. It didn't. A better nerf would have been to the Raven Strat, and to mass CP in knights. Mass CP in knights was nerfed to an extent, (why you now see Krast over Raven) And something where you hopefully saw more equal numbers of different knights on the table. All this nerf did was move people to Krast Crusaders. Congrats?
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I think this is a great example of why we need to be more clear on our bias.
You think the nerf to the Castellan was good. Maybe it was to the Narrative players. I don't know of stats or information on narrative play to judge this.
It wasn't "good" for competitive play. We know this because it dropped it from nearly every list, to virtually no lists. Talking knights, currently we have (ignoring FW) 8 knight sheets, Gallant, Preceptor, Warden, Crusader, Errant, Paladin, Valiant and Castellan. Good balance between them would be if you get to some silly high number of lists with knights, they would even out to where each of the 8 designs appears about 12.5% of the time.
A Good nerf would have moved things in the direction of the 12.5%. It didn't. A better nerf would have been to the Raven Strat, and to mass CP in knights. Mass CP in knights was nerfed to an extent, (why you now see Krast over Raven) And something where you hopefully saw more equal numbers of different knights on the table. All this nerf did was move people to Krast Crusaders. Congrats?
In defense of the nerf we need to remember that competetive 40k doesn't operate at what is the most balanced part of the rules but on those edge cases that push the win percentages up by even an additional 1%. The lists are largely worked out by a few big names and then trickle down to a lot of imitators as well who don't try to find their own playstyle and combos that work best for them.
Reemule wrote:Ohh no.. you didn't do your homework!
The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
VoxCast – the official Warhammer 40,000 Podcast.
Warhammer 40,000 is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop.
A wargame is a game type.
So naturally it should follow the established mean of game no?
Agreed with all of the above. No quarrel there.
What you're missing is that a wargame can be played exactly as described earlier - a relaxed, casually rolling social affair, with the core objective being enjoyment over tactical superiority. That's still just as much playing a game as meticulously moving units, striving to win and achieve victory. (Note that both are fine, and I'm not meaning to elevate one's validity over the other - both are equally valid ways to play the game).
So, heavy handed condescension aside, I ask again - why are we using your definition of what a "game" is to determine who is, or is not, a gamer?
What criteria would you use? What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I think this is a great example of why we need to be more clear on our bias.
You think the nerf to the Castellan was good. Maybe it was to the Narrative players. I don't know of stats or information on narrative play to judge this.
It wasn't "good" for competitive play. We know this because it dropped it from nearly every list, to virtually no lists. Talking knights, currently we have (ignoring FW) 8 knight sheets, Gallant, Preceptor, Warden, Crusader, Errant, Paladin, Valiant and Castellan. Good balance between them would be if you get to some silly high number of lists with knights, they would even out to where each of the 8 designs appears about 12.5% of the time.
A Good nerf would have moved things in the direction of the 12.5%. It didn't. A better nerf would have been to the Raven Strat, and to mass CP in knights. Mass CP in knights was nerfed to an extent, (why you now see Krast over Raven) And something where you hopefully saw more equal numbers of different knights on the table. All this nerf did was move people to Krast Crusaders. Congrats?
In defense of the nerf we need to remember that competetive 40k doesn't operate at what is the most balanced part of the rules but on those edge cases that push the win percentages up by even an additional 1%. The lists are largely worked out by a few big names and then trickle down to a lot of imitators as well who don't try to find their own playstyle and combos that work best for them.
And see your bias of not knowing anything of the Tournament scene, or players is now super clear.
Reemule wrote:Ohh no.. you didn't do your homework!
The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
VoxCast – the official Warhammer 40,000 Podcast.
Warhammer 40,000 is a miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop.
A wargame is a game type.
So naturally it should follow the established mean of game no?
Agreed with all of the above. No quarrel there.
What you're missing is that a wargame can be played exactly as described earlier - a relaxed, casually rolling social affair, with the core objective being enjoyment over tactical superiority. That's still just as much playing a game as meticulously moving units, striving to win and achieve victory. (Note that both are fine, and I'm not meaning to elevate one's validity over the other - both are equally valid ways to play the game).
So, heavy handed condescension aside, I ask again - why are we using your definition of what a "game" is to determine who is, or is not, a gamer?
What criteria would you use? What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
Considering this thread isn't about that but started as a discussion of the studio's perspective of the rules and how they can be used by players I fail to see how trying to gatekeep the term "gamer" to be topical when the discussion is regarding all levels of play.
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Reemule wrote: And see your bias of not knowing anything of the Tournament scene, or players is now super clear.
I've played enough RTs and looked into enough big tournaments over the years to know that generally speaking that competitive play revolves around chasing the most powerful combos and that usually means shelving anything that is reasonably balanced in favor for anything they can squeeze even a single extra point on the win condition with. It also revolves around building around mission packs that you don't see in more casual games.
Okay, let's narrow it down to my interests then, how many that are sci fi or fantasy themed are better than 40k (and aren't just 9th Age or 40k homebrews) and worth looking into?
Haven't played most of them, but I can definitely say that Konflikt '47 (Bolt Action variant, weird WWII with mechs and Nazi super-biotech, has models), Warmachine (large skirmish, wizards and robots, has models), Godslayer (large skirmish, strange high-fantasy setting, has models), and Infinity (small cyberpunk skirmish, has models) off that list are better than 40k/Sigmar and have no direct connection to GW.
Are they playing a game? If yes, then they're a gamer. Simple.
What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
I don't know what this has to do with this thread, or your comment, seeing as Narrative Play Jim isn't turning round to Competitive Play Tim and calling him a fake gamer just because he plays the game in a different way.
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Reemule wrote: ...when you can't resist saying something in competitive play threads...
Mate, ClockworkZion STARTED this thread. You can't exactly complain at him for "commenting in a competive play thread" when he created it.
Okay, let's narrow it down to my interests then, how many that are sci fi or fantasy themed are better than 40k (and aren't just 9th Age or 40k homebrews) and worth looking into?
Haven't played most of them, but I can definitely say that Konflikt '47 (Bolt Action variant, weird WWII with mechs and Nazi super-biotech, has models), Warmachine (large skirmish, wizards and robots, has models), Godslayer (large skirmish, strange high-fantasy setting, has models), and Infinity (small cyberpunk skirmish, has models) off that list are better than 40k/Sigmar and have no direct connection to GW.
Warmachine keeps getting brought up and I'll say the same thing I said before: I was not a fan of the brick that they ask you to try and eat to get the rules down just to play the game. Maybe 3rd is better. I haven't looked yet, but 2nd had too many moving parts in its USRs and that kept me from really getting into it. My FLGS is slowly getting back into WHM though so I'll likely at least give it a look in the future.
Konflikt and Godslayer I'll take a look at, though I'm not much for Infinity. As much as I like GiTS and cyberpunk in general I can't seem to buy into the game. Don't know why.
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I think this is a great example of why we need to be more clear on our bias.
You think the nerf to the Castellan was good. Maybe it was to the Narrative players. I don't know of stats or information on narrative play to judge this.
It wasn't "good" for competitive play. We know this because it dropped it from nearly every list, to virtually no lists. Talking knights, currently we have (ignoring FW) 8 knight sheets, Gallant, Preceptor, Warden, Crusader, Errant, Paladin, Valiant and Castellan. Good balance between them would be if you get to some silly high number of lists with knights, they would even out to where each of the 8 designs appears about 12.5% of the time.
A Good nerf would have moved things in the direction of the 12.5%. It didn't. A better nerf would have been to the Raven Strat, and to mass CP in knights. Mass CP in knights was nerfed to an extent, (why you now see Krast over Raven) And something where you hopefully saw more equal numbers of different knights on the table. All this nerf did was move people to Krast Crusaders. Congrats?
Exactly. There's nothing "competitive" about competitive (i.e. major tournaments) 40k. It's all about finding the most broken units and exploiting it. There is no contest of skills or luck, but only how much money you've spent on matching up to the "competitive" meta.
To you, competition = exploitation. Many of us don't see eye to eye on that stance.
And please don't rebut with "but it wasn't knights that were broken, it's soup and CP batteries" argument.
Reemule wrote: The original post is about warhamme r40K discussion on the Voxcast.
The issue is that the designers (as per the vox-cast) feel that the game is at a good place in terms of competitive scene.
While we defer that perfect balance is unattainable, the current power scale of min-maxed lists we see at major tournament scene are obscenely powerful - and these lists repeated feature common units that have indisputably become "auto-takes" (or pseudo-auto-takes), leaving much of the available model range (if not an entire army) we own on the shelves if we want to play competitively.
More often than not, we (the ones being called "narrative players") are toning down on the optimization to make the game more enjoyable for both players.
The nerf to castellan was a good move - what we need is more of this.
I think this is a great example of why we need to be more clear on our bias.
You think the nerf to the Castellan was good. Maybe it was to the Narrative players. I don't know of stats or information on narrative play to judge this.
It wasn't "good" for competitive play. We know this because it dropped it from nearly every list, to virtually no lists. Talking knights, currently we have (ignoring FW) 8 knight sheets, Gallant, Preceptor, Warden, Crusader, Errant, Paladin, Valiant and Castellan. Good balance between them would be if you get to some silly high number of lists with knights, they would even out to where each of the 8 designs appears about 12.5% of the time.
A Good nerf would have moved things in the direction of the 12.5%. It didn't. A better nerf would have been to the Raven Strat, and to mass CP in knights. Mass CP in knights was nerfed to an extent, (why you now see Krast over Raven) And something where you hopefully saw more equal numbers of different knights on the table. All this nerf did was move people to Krast Crusaders. Congrats?
Exactly. There's nothing "competitive" about competitive (i.e. major tournaments) 40k. It's all about finding the most broken units and exploiting it. There is no contest of skills or luck, but only how much money you've spent on matching up to the "competitive" meta.
To you, competitive = exploitative. And please don't rebut with "but it wasn't knights that were broken, it's soup and CP batteries" argument.
Many of us don't see eye to eye on that stance.
So the only people who are any good in america at "exploitative play" are the same 20 odd people that keep ending up at the top tables? Year after year? No one else is good at it?
skchsan wrote: Exactly. There's nothing "competitive" about competitive (i.e. major tournaments) 40k. It's all about finding the most broken units and exploiting it. There is no contest of skills or luck, but only how much money you've spent on matching up to the "competitive" meta.
To you, competitive = exploitative. And please don't rebut with "but it wasn't knights that were broken, it's soup and CP batteries" argument.
Many of us don't see eye to eye on that stance.
CP batteries are why I say AoS does CP better. Generating it on a turn by turn basis (with some small bonuses for fluffy builds that cost bonus points for extra rules) is a better mechanic in my book than building it in the list building phase. Then again I had a similar mechanic with C:WH and Faith Points and wasn't really into it then either.
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Reemule wrote: So the only people who are any good in america at "exploitative play" are the same 20 odd people that keep ending up at the top tables? Year after year? No one else is good at it?
Not everyone can play at that level, or approach the game with the right mindset to come up with things like 0" charges, the loyal 32, ect, ect. These things are generally pioneered by a small percentage of players and copied by the rest.
Are they playing a game? If yes, then they're a gamer. Simple.
What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
I don't know what this has to do with this thread, or your comment, seeing as Narrative Play Jim isn't turning round to Competitive Play Tim and calling him a fake gamer just because he plays the game in a different way.
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Reemule wrote: ...when you can't resist saying something in competitive play threads...
Mate, ClockworkZion STARTED this thread. You can't exactly complain at him for "commenting in a competive play thread" when he created it.
You might have missed the context. Reread? I'm aware he started the thread.
Are they playing a game? If yes, then they're a gamer. Simple.
What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
I don't know what this has to do with this thread, or your comment, seeing as Narrative Play Jim isn't turning round to Competitive Play Tim and calling him a fake gamer just because he plays the game in a different way.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reemule wrote: ...when you can't resist saying something in competitive play threads...
Mate, ClockworkZion STARTED this thread. You can't exactly complain at him for "commenting in a competive play thread" when he created it.
You might have missed the context. Reread? I'm aware he started the thread.
I did reread it, and it was just as flawed, as was your first post on this thread, gatekeeping who is and is not a "gamer".
Are they playing a game? If yes, then they're a gamer. Simple.
What is the preferred method of when narrative play Jim jumps in and says something stupid on Competitive play Tim's thread about how he lost to X at a Tournament?
I don't know what this has to do with this thread, or your comment, seeing as Narrative Play Jim isn't turning round to Competitive Play Tim and calling him a fake gamer just because he plays the game in a different way.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reemule wrote: ...when you can't resist saying something in competitive play threads...
Mate, ClockworkZion STARTED this thread. You can't exactly complain at him for "commenting in a competive play thread" when he created it.
You might have missed the context. Reread? I'm aware he started the thread.
The context is I started the discussion and you're trying to kick me out of it just because I don't play ITC level tournaments.
I'm not jumping into other people's discussions, you jumped into one I started and have been a part of since the beginning and are now trying to tell me to go away because you want to gate keep the term "gamer" while claiming competitive play was the entire reason I started this discussion.
Reemule wrote: So the only people who are any good in america at "exploitative play" are the same 20 odd people that keep ending up at the top tables? Year after year? No one else is good at it?
There are two types of winning lists in tournaments:
1. The unbeatable list 2. The counter to the unbeatable list
Tactics & strategy is so one-dimensional in this so called "wargame". Shoot, or be shot (or smash captained).
I may not be cultured enough in the competitive scene - can you provide me some links to any tournament coverage where a player outwitted and outmaneuvered another player with an inferior list for a win? Because all of the coverage I've read and watched talked about who brought what list and why/how nothing could be done to it.
Now, I get it - you've spent time and money to attend these major events. Of course, you;d want to walk away with a big trophy, and this means having to maximize one's chance of winning. But the chances of winning aren't determined by how good of a strategist you are and how well you can outwit the other player, but nearly 100% at list building.
Look at how many variants of knights/IG/imperium flavor of the month there were prior to the castellan nerf. Look at how many variants of knights/IG/Imperium flavor of the month there are now. A single change made so many other lists viable & top tier competitive. This is what we're asking for - bridging the power gap as to open the doors for other non-cookie cutter builds.
This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
flandarz wrote: This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
I feel like most of us are, but the problem is what we feel balanced to actually feel like is the problem. You ask four different people you're likely to get five different answers.
I applaud the studio for trying to capture the feeling of the lore and the models in the rules. It's a good design feature, but the way they value certain rules and stats (like anything to do with melee) over others is part of the problem. It doesn't look like they plan to kill 8th edition anytime soon so it'll be a while before we see core parts of the rules reworked to improve the game, so all we can really hope for is something to come out in CA to patch the core mechanics, while the codexes improve in quality as they get updated.
flandarz wrote: This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
I feel like most of us are, but the problem is what we feel balanced to actually feel like is the problem. You ask four different people you're likely to get five different answers.
.
Most folks, including myself, actually, will be on board with the 'idea' of balance-of a balanced game- or at least, a game that has tighter/cleaner/tidier rules, and rightly so, more or less, but whilst folks might agree with the idea of wanting this, I wonder how many are willing to go ahead and actually pay the price to acheive it, or really, what that price should be.
As an example of a solution, and it's consequences, someone, much earlier in the thread pointed out gw's games are generally quite bloated in terms of content (fair point) and posed the question - 'would you rather a hundred choices, where ten percent are 'at a level', or twenty choices where three quarters are 'at a level'.
Now, fair point. Fewer choices are easier to balance. So let's run with this. What twenty choices are we saving from the pit for the 'new balanced' game (while we kill off everything else). What are we cutting? and can we square that circle without screwing over a huge amount of people by deleting their armies? Is this a business model thst can sustain a company?
Spoiler:
I've played a lot of different Wargames - some good, some bad, most interesting. And some, like warmachine implemented a lot of features to balance the game - for example with WMH, the game I am most familiar with - played it from mk1- you had multiple win conditions (scenario, kill the caster) and multi-list formats as general features of the game, character limitations, the killing power versus survivability was ridiculous, to the point where while it empowered you by letting you be Able to kill stuff, the flip side was stats like armour was irrelevant a lot of the time, especially for single wound infantry. These features for the most part, went a long way towards making a more balanced game, though while generally, but not always 'good enough', it still had its howlers. Infinity is, essentially if modelled with 40k terms, flak armoured, or carapace armoured guardsmen or veteran guardsmen with Lasguns, autoguns and them ocasional heavy stubbers. It's a small scale skirmish game where the biggest thing is a crisis suit. It is, in my opinion, the most technically brilliant wargame out there (but a headache to play) with the best metal models. But tell the 40k community at large that crisis suits are the biggest things in the game from now on. The outrage will be tsunami-like.
That said, these features stirred up a huge amount of negativity amongst people who didn't like them ('I hate kill the king! Killing a warcaster shouldn't end the game!' And 'why should I have to buy TWO armies for this'?! Would be two frequently seen responses, amongst many more) so it's no time so simple as saying 'these companies do it. Why can't gw?' The truth is, if they did, they'd cop flak for whatever decision they'd make. There isn't no magic lever to pull. And regardless of what you do, there is a price to be paid, and I don't think a lot of people, for all the talk actually want to pay that tab or want the responsibility. And I suspect, that while some folks claim not to be looking for 'perfect' balance, and that this is a strawman, but will be happy for 'better' balance, I don't think you will see any let up in the criticisms, as I suspect 'better' will never actually be 'good enough'.
flandarz wrote: This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
I feel like most of us are, but the problem is what we feel balanced to actually feel like is the problem. You ask four different people you're likely to get five different answers.
.
Most folks, including myself, actually, will be on board with the 'idea' of balance-of a balanced game- or at least, a game that has tighter/cleaner/tidier rules, and rightly so, more or less, but whilst folks might agree with the idea of wanting this, I wonder how many are willing to go ahead and actually pay the price to acheive it, or really, what that price should be.
As an example of a solution, and it's consequences, someone, much earlier in the thread pointed out gw's games are generally quite bloated in terms of content (fair point) and posed the question - 'would you rather a hundred choices, where ten percent are 'at a level', or twenty choices where three quarters are 'at a level'.
Now, fair point. Fewer choices are easier to balance. So let's run with this. What twenty choices are we saving from the pit for the 'new balanced' game (while we kill off everything else). What are we cutting? and can we square that circle without screwing over a huge amount of people by deleting their armies? Is this a business model thst can sustain a company?
Spoiler:
I've played a lot of different Wargames - some good, some bad, most interesting. And some, like warmachine implemented a lot of features to balance the game - for example with WMH, the game I am most familiar with - played it from mk1- you had multiple win conditions (scenario, kill the caster) and multi-list formats as general features of the game, character limitations, the killing power versus survivability was ridiculous, to the point where while it empowered you by letting you be Able to kill stuff, the flip side was stats like armour was irrelevant a lot of the time, especially for single wound infantry. These features for the most part, went a long way towards making a more balanced game, though while generally, but not always 'good enough', it still had its howlers. Infinity is, essentially if modelled with 40k terms, flak armoured, or carapace armoured guardsmen or veteran guardsmen with Lasguns, autoguns and them ocasional heavy stubbers. It's a small scale skirmish game where the biggest thing is a crisis suit. It is, in my opinion, the most technically brilliant wargame out there (but a headache to play) with the best metal models. But tell the 40k community at large that crisis suits are the biggest things in the game from now on. The outrage will be tsunami-like.
That said, these features stirred up a huge amount of negativity amongst people who didn't like them ('I hate kill the king! Killing a warcaster shouldn't end the game!' And 'why should I have to buy TWO armies for this'?! Would be two frequently seen responses, amongst many more) so it's no time so simple as saying 'these companies do it. Why can't gw?' The truth is, if they did, they'd cop flak for whatever decision they'd make. There isn't no magic lever to pull. And regardless of what you do, there is a price to be paid, and I don't think a lot of people, for all the talk actually want to pay that tab or want the responsibility. And I suspect, that while some folks claim not to be looking for 'perfect' balance, and that this is a strawman, but will be happy for 'better' balance, I don't think you will see any let up in the criticisms, as I suspect 'better' will never actually be 'good enough'.
How many of those 100 choices are that much different though that they need a separate entry though? That's part of the reason why Deathwing sucks but regular Terminators suck but less so.
flandarz wrote: This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
I feel like most of us are, but the problem is what we feel balanced to actually feel like is the problem. You ask four different people you're likely to get five different answers.
.
Most folks, including myself, actually, will be on board with the 'idea' of balance-of a balanced game- or at least, a game that has tighter/cleaner/tidier rules, and rightly so, more or less, but whilst folks might agree with the idea of wanting this, I wonder how many are willing to go ahead and actually pay the price to acheive it, or really, what that price should be.
As an example of a solution, and it's consequences, someone, much earlier in the thread pointed out gw's games are generally quite bloated in terms of content (fair point) and posed the question - 'would you rather a hundred choices, where ten percent are 'at a level', or twenty choices where three quarters are 'at a level'.
Now, fair point. Fewer choices are easier to balance. So let's run with this. What twenty choices are we saving from the pit for the 'new balanced' game (while we kill off everything else). What are we cutting? and can we square that circle without screwing over a huge amount of people by deleting their armies? Is this a business model thst can sustain a company?
Spoiler:
I've played a lot of different Wargames - some good, some bad, most interesting. And some, like warmachine implemented a lot of features to balance the game - for example with WMH, the game I am most familiar with - played it from mk1- you had multiple win conditions (scenario, kill the caster) and multi-list formats as general features of the game, character limitations, the killing power versus survivability was ridiculous, to the point where while it empowered you by letting you be Able to kill stuff, the flip side was stats like armour was irrelevant a lot of the time, especially for single wound infantry. These features for the most part, went a long way towards making a more balanced game, though while generally, but not always 'good enough', it still had its howlers. Infinity is, essentially if modelled with 40k terms, flak armoured, or carapace armoured guardsmen or veteran guardsmen with Lasguns, autoguns and them ocasional heavy stubbers. It's a small scale skirmish game where the biggest thing is a crisis suit. It is, in my opinion, the most technically brilliant wargame out there (but a headache to play) with the best metal models. But tell the 40k community at large that crisis suits are the biggest things in the game from now on. The outrage will be tsunami-like.
That said, these features stirred up a huge amount of negativity amongst people who didn't like them ('I hate kill the king! Killing a warcaster shouldn't end the game!' And 'why should I have to buy TWO armies for this'?! Would be two frequently seen responses, amongst many more) so it's no time so simple as saying 'these companies do it. Why can't gw?' The truth is, if they did, they'd cop flak for whatever decision they'd make. There isn't no magic lever to pull. And regardless of what you do, there is a price to be paid, and I don't think a lot of people, for all the talk actually want to pay that tab or want the responsibility. And I suspect, that while some folks claim not to be looking for 'perfect' balance, and that this is a strawman, but will be happy for 'better' balance, I don't think you will see any let up in the criticisms, as I suspect 'better' will never actually be 'good enough'.
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
In regards to the 100 vs 20 comment, I'd probably pick the latter, honestly. Because that one gives me far more viable options for play. In "apple" terms, would you rather have 100 apples, but 90 of them are rotten, or 20 apples, but only 5 of them are rotten? The former givea you 10 "good apples" and the latter 15. I'll choose the latter every day of the week.
Of course, this would only be one possible solution. I'm a fan of options myself, so I'd be happier with a solution that keeps them all, but makes the ones that are "bad" better, while reining in the "OP" options. I don't think it would be easy to do, or would happen quickly, but I DO think it's possible and I think it should be a priority for GW, if their goal is to allow their players to run these awesome armies.
flandarz wrote: This kinda makes me wonder why, when balance is brought up, not everyone is "on board" with building a more balanced game. At the end of the day, everyone benefits when the units and models they love are balanced well with the other options. I'm in the (likely majority) group of folks who fit into the "competitively casual" description. I just want to be able to field Killa Kanz, or Burna Boyz, or even a Stompa and for my opponent to also be able to field all the units they want to, and for us both to play to the best of our ability while doing so. Don't think this is too outrageous of a desire.
For me the game is as balanced as it needs to be. The narrative and the players balance it themselves. That’s the way we play and it isn’t difficult. We are a group who all know each other. The suggestions I see for achieving “balance” would make the game worse for me and my mates. We enjoy a looser rule set and the opportunities that come with that. At the minute I think GW is getting the balance right regarding matched and casual/narrative play. All the nerds and changes to matched play and faqs haven’t changed the game for me as I ignore most of them and house rule things anyway. What we do have is a good depth of optional rules that make the game as immersive or as fast and fluid as you like.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience.
What if you stopped calling yourself a gamer.. as your not, and started calling your self something else, like a experincers or social hour person with purpose? It would stop confusing people no?
Wow, you go for a 12 hour night shift and come back to three pages of “gate keeping” talk.
1. Oxford English dictionary definition of a game.
an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.
"the kids were playing a game with their balloons"
Also.
a form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules.
You clearly see 40k as option 2. I see it as option one. Both are games.
You can chose to ignore all the definitions that don’t support your argument but that is just stupid so please don’t.
2. I never called myself a “gamer”. At least I hope I didn’t. To me a gamer is a specific thing. It is someone who plays electronic games. I may on occasion call my self a “wargamer”. But not often.
I play 40k. It’s a game. As in something I do for fun. End of.
This here is the difference. I understand your attitude but disagree with it strongly. It isn’t how I approach it. But can appreciate that you see a game as a competitive thing. I, and many others don’t view the game as competitive, it genuinely doesn’t matter at all to me who wins or loses. Its about the experience. Players like yourself seem to struggle to even accept that that can be the case. Peregrine has even called me a liar for saying it, like somehow I’m covering up for being a mad payer and losing by saying I don’t care. It’s bonkers. And in the respect of playing the game the way I do the engine runs just perfectly.
So in answer, their will not ALWAYS be competition. The out come of games is about the overall story and fantastic narrative moments that come from them. I have enjoyed games where I have been slaughtered as much as ones where I have been doing the slaughtering. It’s about the one guy who holds out against all odds or the desperate charge to try and turn the tide. I enjoy seeing units perform the way they do in the fluff, be they mine or my opponents. If we keep track of who wins it’s for narrative purposes only. You might not agree with my attitude but as long as you stay ignorant of it you will always be part of the problem. It does seem to be a cultural issue as much as anything, most going on the way you do about ALWAYS being competition tend to have Stars and Stripes next to their names. To me and many others, and the designers, the game is a large scale role playing game. It even used to be in the rules that the warlord you chose represented you on the battlefield.
So with the designers saying the game is supposed to be the way it is, you can keep playing it which ever way you want but don’t expect it to become something else.
To use your analogy before, it’s like you have gone to a beauty therapist for skin cancer treatment. Enjoy your open pores and go see a doctor for the cancer.
I think that I appreciate where you are coming from and I am sure that I would prefer to play 100 times with you than 1 time with an obnoxious WAAC, Andy.
Nonetheless, I think that if the game is with points and objective IS competitive. There are no ways around it so a good setup is a good way to make it fun for different type of people. If GW wanted an RPG, they would have not streamlined rules, removed options and so on. Really, the reality of the ruleset does not add up with the statements from the designers.
Exciting epic moments happen all the time with well written rulesets, in no way those hamper epic scenes of battle. But a tight ruleset can avoid frustration. Seriously, is a win-win if such thing is implemented. The rest is the design team hiding behind a fig leaf.
Also, reading that from a native speaker I am very flattered by the "star and stripes" comment, because I am Italian and only in US since few years. I lived elsewhere in Europe before, included my native country. It appears that my English (not the Queen's English I suppose) improved a bit if this confusion happened, albeit I am aware of the many mistakes I still make, and I thank Dakka for bothering to read my posts... but you know, if you have to change country every 3 years it happens to every time adjust to new languages.
Cheers for the reply. Your English is good mate, prob better than mine. I think the stream lining and the like comes from 2 things, one is trying to please all people and secondly that all the rules bloat in 6th and 7th didn’t actually make the game more immersive. Quite the opposite. It felt like an exercise in book keeping and policy management. To me 2nd edition had the fog/wargame balance just right but I accept 8th is more fun to play. And thanks to all the option rules printed about it can be quite in depth and is very immersive. Best of both.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
skchsan wrote: Exactly. There's nothing "competitive" about competitive (i.e. major tournaments) 40k. It's all about finding the most broken units and exploiting it. There is no contest of skills or luck, but only how much money you've spent on matching up to the "competitive" meta.
To you, competitive = exploitative. And please don't rebut with "but it wasn't knights that were broken, it's soup and CP batteries" argument.
Many of us don't see eye to eye on that stance.
CP batteries are why I say AoS does CP better. Generating it on a turn by turn basis (with some small bonuses for fluffy builds that cost bonus points for extra rules) is a better mechanic in my book than building it in the list building phase. Then again I had a similar mechanic with C:WH and Faith Points and wasn't really into it then either.
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Reemule wrote: So the only people who are any good in america at "exploitative play" are the same 20 odd people that keep ending up at the top tables? Year after year? No one else is good at it?
Not everyone can play at that level, or approach the game with the right mindset to come up with things like 0" charges, the loyal 32, ect, ect. These things are generally pioneered by a small percentage of players and copied by the rest.
I don't know if I'd say the loyal 32 was some kind of genius only thought of in the mind of a few players. Any imperial player who knew the cost of guard and the useful state of CPs jumped on the soup ship and understood after maybe one match the importance of spacing and chaff units. All the 32 came from was nerfing the conscripts and needing to find the next best way. If there is skill in this game understanding basic math and how to abuse CP generation with cheap spammable troops isn't one of them.
I would say as well not every very good player wants to play in tournaments I'd imagine there are some amazing players who just don't care to partake in it.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
So I'm not allowed to have a life and have to spend my free time trying to go through nearly 2k different games to find ones that are outside of GW's wheel house and I'd actually like to play? I'm trying to meet people halfway by actually trying to look at other games, trying to narrow down a massive list to something reasonable to sort through.
Gates of Antares is probably the closest comparison to 40k in size of game as well as genre.
My standards for a game are that it be reasonably balanced so don't have to buy/sell armies regularly to be able to have good games, and have rules that are somewhat immersive and make sense and operate as a battle would operate.
When I played Antares, that was the sci fi game that I enjoyed most for those things that I'm looking for.
People even came up with a way to use 40k models using Antares rules instead.
Reemule wrote: So the only people who are any good in america at "exploitative play" are the same 20 odd people that keep ending up at the top tables? Year after year? No one else is good at it?
There are two types of winning lists in tournaments:
1. The unbeatable list
2. The counter to the unbeatable list
Tactics & strategy is so one-dimensional in this so called "wargame". Shoot, or be shot (or smash captained).
I may not be cultured enough in the competitive scene - can you provide me some links to any tournament coverage where a player outwitted and outmaneuvered another player with an inferior list for a win? Because all of the coverage I've read and watched talked about who brought what list and why/how nothing could be done to it.
Now, I get it - you've spent time and money to attend these major events. Of course, you;d want to walk away with a big trophy, and this means having to maximize one's chance of winning. But the chances of winning aren't determined by how good of a strategist you are and how well you can outwit the other player, but nearly 100% at list building.
Look at how many variants of knights/IG/imperium flavor of the month there were prior to the castellan nerf. Look at how many variants of knights/IG/Imperium flavor of the month there are now. A single change made so many other lists viable & top tier competitive. This is what we're asking for - bridging the power gap as to open the doors for other non-cookie cutter builds.
The "talk" is generally wrong. The bulk of the talk is not from the actual good players but from the larger mass of players who do not really understand why games were won or lost. Mediocre players think it is the list when in reality the big victories are player-led and they build a list to support their tactics and strategy. It takes almost no time to read a list and post half-baked comments about it online. It takes real time and effort to watch the game, analyse the moves and comment on the strategy and tactics on the tabletop. Guess which dominates online discussion?
The winning Nova list is functionally very similar to most of the Tau lists at Nova - the archetype of 3 riptides and a bunch of shield drones is easily the most common tournament Tau list right now. In other hands that list archetype had a poor record at Nova and its win/loss when you take out the record of that one outstanding player was right down there with Grey Knights. The difference was exactly what you say is not covered in tournament coverage - the clever ways in which the player used those models to outwit or outmanoeuvre opponents. Sure you might see the usual clickbait article on BOLS about the Unbeatable List but it was not the list that won all those games, it was the player.
The "talk" is generally wrong. The bulk of the talk is not from the actual good players but from the larger mass of players who do not really understand why games were won or lost. Mediocre players think it is the list when in reality the big victories are player-led and they build a list to support their tactics and strategy. It takes almost no time to read a list and post half-baked comments about it online. It takes real time and effort to watch the game, analyse the moves and comment on the strategy and tactics on the tabletop. Guess which dominates online discussion?
The winning Nova list is functionally very similar to most of the Tau lists at Nova - the archetype of 3 riptides and a bunch of shield drones is easily the most common tournament Tau list right now. In other hands that list archetype had a poor record at Nova and its win/loss when you take out the record of that one outstanding player was right down there with Grey Knights. The difference was exactly what you say is not covered in tournament coverage - the clever ways in which the player used those models to outwit or outmanoeuvre opponents. Sure you might see the usual clickbait article on BOLS about the Unbeatable List but it was not the list that won all those games, it was the player.
A fair point, but it doesn't account for one problem: net listing is a major thing in the game (well in a lot of games) which leads to a sort of ripple effect whenever a new game breaker is found.
It may not get them to the top tables, but it can push mid or bottom table players up a few notches. In the end while net listing doesn't make people into the top tables alone, it has lead to a lot of people exploiting certain combinations in the name of trying to win more games.
And before anyone tries to make any claims: I am not against people wanting to win or getting their enjoyment from winning games, I am merely stating that the abuse of certain mechanics is rather common because of the commonality of net listing.
happy_inquisitor wrote: The "talk" is generally wrong. The bulk of the talk is not from the actual good players but from the larger mass of players who do not really understand why games were won or lost. Mediocre players think it is the list when in reality the big victories are player-led and they build a list to support their tactics and strategy. It takes almost no time to read a list and post half-baked comments about it online. It takes real time and effort to watch the game, analyse the moves and comment on the strategy and tactics on the tabletop. Guess which dominates online discussion?
The winning Nova list is functionally very similar to most of the Tau lists at Nova - the archetype of 3 riptides and a bunch of shield drones is easily the most common tournament Tau list right now. In other hands that list archetype had a poor record at Nova and its win/loss when you take out the record of that one outstanding player was right down there with Grey Knights. The difference was exactly what you say is not covered in tournament coverage - the clever ways in which the player used those models to outwit or outmanoeuvre opponents. Sure you might see the usual clickbait article on BOLS about the Unbeatable List but it was not the list that won all those games, it was the player.
Sure, a seasoned player is able to utilize and squeeze the most juice out of a broken list. A lot of play testing and adjusting positioning to minimize liability while maximizing on return.
Even the best sword in the world is just a chunk of metal in the hands of a novice.
I see your concern, but what I'm more interested in is whether an inferior list came out top over min-maxed meta list. There has not been a single tournament event where an underdog has won with luck and skill using less than optimal-most list.
Say, you're playing a fighting game with an opponent of same level of skills. Does picking a better character always guarantee victory?
GW's rule intent is to make the most money possible for the least amount of effort.
So release gak rules and say fix them yourselves or buy the annual paid for patches. Spread the rules among as as many books possible and if it is pointed out for example that your rules for scenery are gak release an expensive boxset to add less gak
but still mostly gak rules.
I mean ultimately they now have no incentive to actually make good functioning rules. Between record sales of the now near infinite book releases(at this point outside marines and sigmarines they release more books than minatures) which seem to be increasing in pace if every sub sub faction is getting a codex.
Not to mention the shiny new annual revenue stream of paying for fixes, do you imagine that the designers at GW would be allowed to produce a fully functional rule set and dent the record profits the gak rules produce by not needing the annualized fixes
You have effectively got a company that has policies that mean if they provided a functioning product to customers they would lose money. So anyone honestly believe 40k or AoS will get better or be permanently 1 step forward 2 steps back.
Were all ready seeing them reintroducing rules that they removed previously as broken.
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
So I'm not allowed to have a life and have to spend my free time trying to go through nearly 2k different games to find ones that are outside of GW's wheel house and I'd actually like to play? I'm trying to meet people halfway by actually trying to look at other games, trying to narrow down a massive list to something reasonable to sort through.
You're *allowed* to do anything that you want.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference. Its like hearing someone claim that microwave pizza is the best food in the world - and then hearing that they've never eaten anything else. Even in the popular, sold-at-FLGS games there are a dozen alternate wargames, and there are hundreds or even thousands of rules sets available online.
You don't *have* to read or play any of them... but doing so gives a great perspective in to what GW gets wrong with its games and how those things can easily be done better.
Well they aren't always the embodiment of satan on earth. For example a lot of space marine players at my store are very happy, that instead of buying 3 boxs of eliminators, they can buy one and two easy to build reavers, and get two units with snipers and one with AA las weapons.
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The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference.
But you can compare their own rules to their other rules. If you read the marine codex and the csm codex, then there seem to be a big difference in what GW design team wanted to give each faction. And those are mostly copy factions, with a lot of overlaping unit types. And it doesn't have to be some fringe stuff like comparing WB rules and codex sm +ultramarines supplement.
skchsan wrote: I see your concern, but what I'm more interested in is whether an inferior list came out top over min-maxed meta list. There has not been a single tournament event where an underdog has won with luck and skill using less than optimal-most list.
This is a "no true Scotsman" kind of argument.
Quite regularly there will be a tournament winner who takes an odd choice in the list, and people will spend ages talking about the supposedly suboptimal choice and why it worked well.
A well known example is the "Lictorshame" army from 7th (I think?) - so named because it was shameful to lose against an army featuring such trash units as Lictors. More recent examples, 2018 LVO Winner featured a big unit of Blightlord Terminators which were widely considered pretty bad. Just this week a CSM army with triple Kytans got to the podium.
These obviously aren't *bad* armies. There's only so far a bad army can take you, because even if you trash a bad player with a good army in round 1/2 eventually you end up fighting good players with good armies... But these are armies which were considered bad, and good players did well with them.
I do think its funny how much people downplay skill in the game. The tournament winners are the same few dozen people all the time.
Trasvi wrote: More recent examples, 2018 LVO Winner featured a big unit of Blightlord Terminators which were widely considered pretty bad. Just this week a CSM army with triple Kytans got to the podium.
These obviously aren't *bad* armies. There's only so far a bad army can take you, because even if you trash a bad player with a good army in round 1/2 eventually you end up fighting good players with good armies... But these are armies which were considered bad, and good players did well with them.
I do think its funny how much people downplay skill in the game. The tournament winners are the same few dozen people all the time.
Which is exactly our point. When were these "sub-optimal" lists made viable or had success with them? Was it pre or post castellan nerf?
Less OP the OP units get, more and more skill comes to light, because smaller the gap in power level, more of these "off-lists" can surface!
Also, how many people attend LVO and other major tournaments? Last year's bracket hit the 512 mark. So a "dozen" players out of 512... roughly 2%. How many of these LVO attendees do you think are "regulars"? Do you believe these "regulars" represent the top level players across the entire world? Or do you think there are other great players out there that just can't be made available to attend these events due to differing circumstances? Do you think maybe you're making a very off assumption based on small fraction of the 40k community?
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
So I'm not allowed to have a life and have to spend my free time trying to go through nearly 2k different games to find ones that are outside of GW's wheel house and I'd actually like to play? I'm trying to meet people halfway by actually trying to look at other games, trying to narrow down a massive list to something reasonable to sort through.
You're *allowed* to do anything that you want.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference. Its like hearing someone claim that microwave pizza is the best food in the world - and then hearing that they've never eaten anything else. Even in the popular, sold-at-FLGS games there are a dozen alternate wargames, and there are hundreds or even thousands of rules sets available online.
You don't *have* to read or play any of them... but doing so gives a great perspective in to what GW gets wrong with its games and how those things can easily be done better.
My local FLGS has GW games, Mtg, X Wing (which no one is currently playing at the store at least) and WMH which is only recently seeing anything played in the store. That's it.
And I know I don't have to, but I am trying to show some good faith and go outside of my comfort zone, so I was askijg to be met half way and given some help to reduce a rather unwieldly list of games into something I can reasonably read through. Calling me out for trying to be reasonable while not wasting all my free time seems a bit silly honestly.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference.
But you can compare their own rules to their other rules. If you read the marine codex and the csm codex, then there seem to be a big difference in what GW design team wanted to give each faction. And those are mostly copy factions, with a lot of overlaping unit types. And it doesn't have to be some fringe stuff like comparing WB rules and codex sm +ultramarines supplement.
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
SeanDrake wrote: GW's rule intent is to make the most money possible for the least amount of effort.
So release gak rules and say fix them yourselves or buy the annual paid for patches. Spread the rules among as as many books possible and if it is pointed out for example that your rules for scenery are gak release an expensive boxset to add less gak
but still mostly gak rules.
I mean ultimately they now have no incentive to actually make good functioning rules. Between record sales of the now near infinite book releases(at this point outside marines and sigmarines they release more books than minatures) which seem to be increasing in pace if every sub sub faction is getting a codex.
Not to mention the shiny new annual revenue stream of paying for fixes, do you imagine that the designers at GW would be allowed to produce a fully functional rule set and dent the record profits the gak rules produce by not needing the annualized fixes
You have effectively got a company that has policies that mean if they provided a functioning product to customers they would lose money. So anyone honestly believe 40k or AoS will get better or be permanently 1 step forward 2 steps back.
Were all ready seeing them reintroducing rules that they removed previously as broken.
I see a lot of unfounded bias on what the dev intent is. While the company wants to make money as a whole, James lays out his job rather clearly: to capture the feel of the lore and the models in the rules. Now we can argue how well they actually do that, but their intent is to the the gameplay to the lore and feel of the models.
If the sole goal was to make money we'd see the new stuff continually creep up in power, but that is mixed bag of stuff that is good and bad for competetive play.
Trasvi wrote: More recent examples, 2018 LVO Winner featured a big unit of Blightlord Terminators which were widely considered pretty bad. Just this week a CSM army with triple Kytans got to the podium.
These obviously aren't *bad* armies. There's only so far a bad army can take you, because even if you trash a bad player with a good army in round 1/2 eventually you end up fighting good players with good armies... But these are armies which were considered bad, and good players did well with them.
I do think its funny how much people downplay skill in the game. The tournament winners are the same few dozen people all the time.
Which is exactly our point. When were these "sub-optimal" lists made viable or had success with them? Was it pre or post castellan nerf?
Less OP the OP units get, more and more skill comes to light, because smaller the gap in power level, more of these "off-lists" can surface!
I'm in complete agreement that the smaller the gap between the most powerful and least powerful lists, the better.
I would LOVE to be able to pick a few models that I like the look of, build an army around them, and know that its within a few percentage points of optimal. I don't think every unit should be viable in every army, but there should be a viable build that features every unit. I think that casual and competitive players alike would benefit greatly - competitive because there is more variety and less trap units, casual because you don't have to do GW's job for them and handicap yourself to play fair games.
GW is doing a much better job of keeping balance up to date than they used to - which was not at all. They'll keep adjusting points up and down. There is a bit of "tall poppy syndrome" going on, but at the same time there are units that get brought up - see all the underused Slaanesh Daemon units last CA. I think the community could probably cope with points updates every 6 months instead of every year though.
Blightlord list was pre-castellan nerf. Although to be honest I think it might have just been pre-castellan. Lol. They were still considered a bad unit at the time.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference.
But you can compare their own rules to their other rules. If you read the marine codex and the csm codex, then there seem to be a big difference in what GW design team wanted to give each faction. And those are mostly copy factions, with a lot of overlaping unit types. And it doesn't have to be some fringe stuff like comparing WB rules and codex sm +ultramarines supplement.
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
I feel like you're over shooting my position. I'd argue the game is functional and reasonably fun as long as both players aren't trying to break the game. The game doesn't really hold up competively, and I have made several posts about how there are things I feel the game could improve on.
So functional, reasonably fun, but far from perfect but equally far from "broken".
ClockworkZion wrote: I see a lot of unfounded bias on what the dev intent is. While the company wants to make money as a whole, James lays out his job rather clearly: to capture the feel of the lore and the models in the rules. Now we can argue how well they actually do that, but their intent is to the the gameplay to the lore and feel of the models.
If the sole goal was to make money we'd see the new stuff continually creep up in power, but that is mixed bag of stuff that is good and bad for competetive play.
If GW is trying to make new units overpowered they're even more incompetent than I thought. As it is its about random chance whether a new unit is hot (Lord Discordant) or not (Master of Executions).
Honestly its a bit sad now, that with nearly 40 years of game design under their belt, that 40k is still changing *so* rapidly and the balance is *so* bad.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Sure bud, tell that to Valkyries at introduction, or knights
Trasvi 780073 10568770 wrote:
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
Oh I fully agree on that. I think if any other gaming company would put up a new gaming system, and then went LoL guys forge the narrative, because there is no point system for our game, it would be more or less dead on arrival. But GW has a ton of dedicted fans, nothing wrong with that, that seem to be in their 30s or older, which means stable income, and it seems to me, although I could be wrong, that they can buy more or less in to anything GW sells. Card board cut outs for a fringe new game, costing more then some armies for other games? No problem. To have a good army buy one every 6 months, and updated yours every 2-4weeks with new buys. No problem. Want to have a WS and IH army with primaris, well I guess this means your buying 12 boxs of intercessors.
ClockworkZion wrote: I see a lot of unfounded bias on what the dev intent is. While the company wants to make money as a whole, James lays out his job rather clearly: to capture the feel of the lore and the models in the rules. Now we can argue how well they actually do that, but their intent is to the the gameplay to the lore and feel of the models.
If the sole goal was to make money we'd see the new stuff continually creep up in power, but that is mixed bag of stuff that is good and bad for competetive play.
If GW is trying to make new units overpowered they're even more incompetent than I thought. As it is its about random chance whether a new unit is hot (Lord Discordant) or not (Master of Executions).
Honestly its a bit sad now, that with nearly 40 years of game design under their belt, that 40k is still changing *so* rapidly and the balance is *so* bad.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
A fair point, but it doesn't account for one problem: net listing is a major thing in the game (well in a lot of games) which leads to a sort of ripple effect whenever a new game breaker is found.
It may not get them to the top tables, but it can push mid or bottom table players up a few notches. In the end while net listing doesn't make people into the top tables alone, it has lead to a lot of people exploiting certain combinations in the name of trying to win more games.
And before anyone tries to make any claims: I am not against people wanting to win or getting their enjoyment from winning games, I am merely stating that the abuse of certain mechanics is rather common because of the commonality of net listing.
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
A fair point, but it doesn't account for one problem: net listing is a major thing in the game (well in a lot of games) which leads to a sort of ripple effect whenever a new game breaker is found.
It may not get them to the top tables, but it can push mid or bottom table players up a few notches. In the end while net listing doesn't make people into the top tables alone, it has lead to a lot of people exploiting certain combinations in the name of trying to win more games.
And before anyone tries to make any claims: I am not against people wanting to win or getting their enjoyment from winning games, I am merely stating that the abuse of certain mechanics is rather common because of the commonality of net listing.
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
This I agree with. GW's done far better job at curtailing the prevailing meta than it has in the past editions. We were at a pretty dark place when castellans weren't nerfed though. I actually respect the guy that started the smash captain list just to wipe the smirk on castellan + ig brigade list players.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Sure bud, tell that to Valkyries at introduction, or knights
Still doesn't mean the devs are the ones who make things expensive. The design studio tries to make cool things for the game, that's their only goal, while the games team tries to take the model design and the design boards that come out of the design team and figure out how it fits into the setting and then writes rules to try and capture that.
And I'll honestly take what the dev's say what they think their job is over what the internet says what they think the devs do.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
That is not true, they very much do give stuff weak rules on puropose or make it underpowered. In the GK codex article they clearly said that they did exactly that. They gave GK a weaker smite, then they should get based on being psykers. The articles said it clearly that they made the rules underpowered to balanced GK power, now what they maybe didn't know was that after a few changes to some core game rules, GK power was gone, but the under powering stuff survived, all the FAQs and CA changes.
And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference.
But you can compare their own rules to their other rules. If you read the marine codex and the csm codex, then there seem to be a big difference in what GW design team wanted to give each faction. And those are mostly copy factions, with a lot of overlaping unit types. And it doesn't have to be some fringe stuff like comparing WB rules and codex sm +ultramarines supplement.
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
I feel like you're over shooting my position. I'd argue the game is functional and reasonably fun as long as both players aren't trying to break the game. The game doesn't really hold up competively, and I have made several posts about how there are things I feel the game could improve on.
So functional, reasonably fun, but far from perfect but equally far from "broken".
I guess the problem is how to define "trying to break the game". All too often it seems to get defined as "when my opponent builds an army more powerful than mine". One of the big reasons I play competitively is that it does away with all of that - we accept that both are trying to break the game, roll with it, and from that meta with a huge variety has opened up. I think the game does much better competitively (where despite its flaws, everyone can reach the same level playing field) rather than casually (where you get bogged down in the muck of trying to do GW's job and balance their game through handicaps or mission design).
And as for what you need to do to break the game... for all the hate it gets, building a competitive list in 40k is a very simple task. Its not some single genius that comes up with the Loyal32, or Triptide or Smashcaptains or Chainlords or <insert witty meta term here>. These things arise independently everywhere because the books guide you in those directions and anyone with high school level math can figure out which units are high performers. Tweaking the list is something that requires experience and knowledge of the local meta, but you can get 95% of the way there with a basic knowledge of the game.
happy_inquisitor wrote: [
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
I have seen more netlists used for pick up games than fluff lists. I tend to play a bit counter meta since Sisters always sat in a weird place overall, but I remember a lot of a lot of popular netlists dropped on the other side of the table because for a lot of players they build on main list and only iterate on it as the game changes leading to a lot of them building net lists that give the impression that they'll win more games.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
That is not true, they very much do give stuff weak rules on puropose or make it underpowered. In the GK codex article they clearly said that they did exactly that. They gave GK a weaker smite, then they should get based on being psykers. The articles said it clearly that they made the rules underpowered to balanced GK power, now what they maybe didn't know was that after a few changes to some core game rules, GK power was gone, but the under powering stuff survived, all the FAQs and CA changes.
And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
They were likely swinging the pendulum too far from where GK used to sit in 5th assuming while curtailing a smite spam build they didn't want the army to fall into (while strangely letting the Thousand Sons do that same build, so perhaps they wanted it to be a core tenant of the Thousands Sons army and not the GK).
Karol wrote: And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
Grey Knights are in a tough game design spot vs daemons.
Lets say the ultimate goal is that 2000pts of army A is equal to 2000pts of army B in matched play.
If army A is Grey Knights and army B is daemons, the GK simply can't be allowed to have some advantage over daemons. Otherwise its literally a Rock vs Scissors match. We have enough of those with army build styles without baking it in to the rules.
I honestly think that the current way is actually pretty good. GK are better vs Daemons than they are vs other armies. But to compensate, Daemons get an additional narrative rule that makes them stronger vs GK - to reflect the idea that GKs should only be deployed when there is actually a daemonic incursion going on.
It could quite possibly be balanced by upping the cost of the respawn stratagem to 3CP, or limiting it to once per turn/round.
IIRC the rule Daemons have used to be in the old Daemonhunters book to buff Daemons so they weren't being hard countered by daid Daemonhunters while representing that GK only deploy to the worst daemon incursions.
I think what someone said earlier rings true: GW would lose money if they actually wrote good rules. So they write barely functional gak that can sort of work, and people eat it up. Ergo they don't need to care about improving, because their customers show that good rules aren't as big a concern as pretty models.
Every new release I see hundreds of people on social media gushing about how amazing the models are, how it's the best model(s) GW has made yet, GW is the best company ever and how they can't wait to buy a box (or more) to paint up. Most (not all) of the time, these people are either lifelong GW players (they have only ever played Warhammer, and have never looked at anything outside of Warhammer) or are more painter/collector who once in a while plays a game rather than gamers. There are exceptions of course, but usually, this is due to the popularity of Warhammer rather than it being a good game. I would wager most of the tournament players play Warhammer due to its ubiquity, and if it was another game that afforded the same level of play would probably jump ship. Either that or they stick with Warhammer due to its relatively shallow rules and ability to focus on lists rather than gameplay, while with a different game they would have to focus more on gameplay rather than creating combos.
There is few if any, discussion on the merits of the unit, how it will perform, how it fits into the army, etc. (granted while this might not be known when the figure is shown, there can be speculation an discussion on what it could do). You often see people who show their painted models refer to them strangely: "Such an enjoyable model to paint" and similar statements that are odd for a tabletop game. It's rarely how the rules really fit the fluff or they can see a great combo or use for the model, it's "a fantastic bit of kit" or "loved painting this model" or similar stuff about everything except how the model performs.
That's a big issue to me, but at the same time, it shows that people are not so interested in performance but how "kewl" the model looks. So this tells GW that they don't need to care about design, because having gakky design has made them incredibly profitable in spite of it.
Wayniac wrote: I think what someone said earlier rings true: GW would lose money if they actually wrote good rules. So they write barely functional gak that can sort of work, and people eat it up. Ergo they don't need to care about improving, because their customers show that good rules aren't as big a concern as pretty models.
Every new release I see hundreds of people on social media gushing about how amazing the models are, how it's the best model(s) GW has made yet, GW is the best company ever and how they can't wait to buy a box (or more) to paint up. Most (not all) of the time, these people are either lifelong GW players (they have only ever played Warhammer, and have never looked at anything outside of Warhammer) or are more painter/collector who once in a while plays a game rather than gamers. There are exceptions of course, but usually, this is due to the popularity of Warhammer rather than it being a good game. I would wager most of the tournament players play Warhammer due to its ubiquity, and if it was another game that afforded the same level of play would probably jump ship. Either that or they stick with Warhammer due to its relatively shallow rules and ability to focus on lists rather than gameplay, while with a different game they would have to focus more on gameplay rather than creating combos.
There is few if any, discussion on the merits of the unit, how it will perform, how it fits into the army, etc. (granted while this might not be known when the figure is shown, there can be speculation an discussion on what it could do). You often see people who show their painted models refer to them strangely: "Such an enjoyable model to paint" and similar statements that are odd for a tabletop game. It's rarely how the rules really fit the fluff or they can see a great combo or use for the model, it's "a fantastic bit of kit" or "loved painting this model" or similar stuff about everything except how the model performs.
That's a big issue to me, but at the same time, it shows that people are not so interested in performance but how "kewl" the model looks. So this tells GW that they don't need to care about design, because having gakky design has made them incredibly profitable in spite of it.
I don't think that's completely true, but before I get into why I feel I should point out that more of your time is spent building and painting a model than actually playing it, so it's not a big shock that people think about that first when talking about stuff.
That aside, GW does care about design, but not in the way you think: they care about making the models "feel" like their lore counter parts. It's no 1:1 representation, no ruleset ever will be, but they've shown (and just outright stated) that their design goal is to make the units "feel" like they do in the lore.
With playtesters throttling them back a bit this has lead to less outright broken gak as we've seen in the past, but between drastically shaking up the rules (meaning they need more time to nail down how to design for the new ruleset versus the twenty plus years of experience built up for the old set) and the fact that the studio still doesn't have a standardized metric for points costing things (much less a universal design document on how to word key rules, something AoS has adopted, not to mention their overcosting of melee in general like it's still bleeding 4th edition) and the game still has a lot of room to grow and improve.
Yes, the design will never move away from that goal of trying to carry the lore onto the table (something that I'd argue is one of the strengths of IP), it has shown that it can and is improving and tightening up it's design. I mean look at how poorly the 8.0 codex for C:SM played versuses the playability of the 8.5 version. If they can keep these up we'll be looking at one of the better balanced editions with more varied builds worth taking for players of all types.
A game that I think does fairly well at translating lore to gameplay, despite not having had a chance to actually play myself yet, is Malifaux. It has a heavy narrative element, with lots of lore, as well as flavorful rules for the models, and each crew must be lead by a named character. (free rules, and a couple decks of playing cards and you're good to go with your existing minis, too) I would LOVE it if GW could represent the fluff on the table that well.
Blastaar wrote: A game that I think does fairly well at translating lore to gameplay, despite not having had a chance to actually play myself yet, is Malifaux. It has a heavy narrative element, with lots of lore, as well as flavorful rules for the models, and each crew must be lead by a named character. (free rules, and a couple decks of playing cards and you're good to go with your existing minis, too) I would LOVE it if GW could represent the fluff on the table that well.
I feel like we're getting there again for the first time in -years-. CSM 3.5 and 4th ed C:SM were a good start, but it never quite went far enough. 8th has finally been adding more into the game so every army feels like the sub-faction they're supposed to represent.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
How many of those 100 choices are that much different though that they need a separate entry though? That's part of the reason why Deathwing sucks but regular Terminators suck but less so.
Depends on your (and my!) perspective. I remember back in third when 'space marine veterans' was the unit type. Now it's retconned as sternguard, vanguard, honour guard, champions, and a couple of dozen more elite and elitier elite units. It makes me roll my eyes. I remember the third ed blood angels, dark angels and space wolves supplements (still have them beauties!) and they didn't need a whole codex of blood/wolf/dark-nouns to make the unique chapters unique.
That's my perspective. It's not everyone's. And I'm sure, when I seize power and gut warmachine/hordes and 40k of 80% of what I see as redundant Bloat, you and I will probably cheer, but I'm sure there'll be plenty people screaming away online about me ruining the game.
Which was my point. Balance has a cost. Not everyone realises, or even wants to realise the actual, physical consequences of the balance feature should they want to implement. There's no magic lever to pull.
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!)
flandarz wrote:In regards to the 100 vs 20 comment, I'd probably pick the latter, honestly. Because that one gives me far more viable options for play. In "apple" terms, would you rather have 100 apples, but 90 of them are rotten, or 20 apples, but only 5 of them are rotten? The former givea you 10 "good apples" and the latter 15. I'll choose the latter every day of the week.
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That's all well and good, but you've answered a question I didn't ask. What 80 options are you removing is what I asked. And how do you reconcile this with not pissing off the entire community that happens to like the 80 options you dont.
Andykp wrote:
For me the game is as balanced as it needs to be. The narrative and the players balance it themselves. That’s the way we play and it isn’t difficult. We are a group who all know each other. The suggestions I see for achieving “balance” would make the game worse for me and my mates. We enjoy a looser rule set and the opportunities that come with that. At the minute I think GW is getting the balance right regarding matched and casual/narrative play. All the nerds and changes to matched play and faqs haven’t changed the game for me as I ignore most of them and house rule things anyway. What we do have is a good depth of optional rules that make the game as immersive or as fast and fluid as you like.
Here's a beer! I think you are a little bit wrong, but I think you are wrong for all the right reasons. context: I played tournaments for years, but for the last five, I have been more of a narrative player than a tournament player - truth be told, I much can't prefer the freedom of the 'garage scene' rather than 'organised play'.
The most important thing, as you say, is that the narrative and the players balance it themselves. I am completely, one hundred percent in agreement with you here. I also agree with you that gw are providing a good amount of support for both casual/narrative and matched play.
I disagree that a 'looser' rules set provides better opportunities for narrative play, I find gw rules often vague and poorly written. This doesn't help. I like it when rules say what they mean, and where there aren't conflicting interpretations or lopsided interactions (and this is true for all games). Now, they could complexity remove points costs and I wouldn't bat an eyelid - as to you say, the players and the narrative will balance it - I call it 'gamebuilding', and i see it as a feature, not a bug. They could clean up and tidy up the wording, and this would make a better game, if you ask me. What you want isn't a 'looser' game, or maybe what you call 'loose' is different to what I would call 'loose'? What I think is needed is the magic formula of a simpler, yet less technically demanding game which opens things up. I said earlier that I regard infinity as probably the most technically brilliant game out there. I love it, but I don't want to play it all that seriously. It's a headache! If you were to ask me my other most favourite game, the answer might surprise you - gw's lotr sbg. Avoid the movie characters, and it's a brilliant, yet simple, intuitive, and elegant game which has a lot of narrative support through the years. I Seriously regard it as gw's hidden gem.
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!).
Thank you. So it looks like 40K is already at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than it's most direct competition in terms of total interactions volume and it is growing by the day. Even I, a sworn narrative player must admit, that perspective of having ~50 unique Exarch powers after Psychic Awakening is a bit of an overkill
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
So I'm not allowed to have a life and have to spend my free time trying to go through nearly 2k different games to find ones that are outside of GW's wheel house and I'd actually like to play? I'm trying to meet people halfway by actually trying to look at other games, trying to narrow down a massive list to something reasonable to sort through.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
Checking out other games is definitely worth it. I used to hang out at a GW "Hobby Center," and my only non-video game was 40k. Once I'd finally had it with the rules and prices and walked away, I found many other great games out there.
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!).
Thank you. So it looks like 40K is already at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than it's most direct competition in terms of total interactions volume and it is growing by the day. Even I, a sworn narrative player must admit, that perspective of having ~50 unique Exarch powers after Psychic Awakening is a bit of an overkill
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
I can get that, but all this topic was going to do is prove what most of us already knew. That the gulf between designers and consumers was pretty vast. Part of that reason is that GW themselves talk out of both sides of their mouth. They say how they love narrative and don't really look at balance the same as we do, yet keep trying to feed the tournament scene all the same because they want that money. They saw from the AoS first launch just how wrong they were on people just want to buy models and toss them around with no competitive element to it, had they stayed on that I have no doubt AoS would have died and stayed pretty dead.
A lot of what they say just is so silly, you'd think they may have accidentally figured out what their customers want by now. Instead they laugh off balance concerns and then prop up narrative as a kind of empty shield from being called out. It ultimately feels a bit like a well known lie and leaves a bad taste in some peoples mouth, mine included. I wasn't surprised at all to know the designers have no real clue what the players think, they prove pretty easily and often how oddly disconnected they are while at the same time having more feedback from the community than ever before.
It would be easier to have positive view on them if they were clear to their intent and intentions. clear beyond just that like maybe drop it in a community round up on their page for everyone to read. They made a fair share of mistakes in the past but at least in some regard I felt they were honest with the AoS release in saying they didn't give a crap what we wanted, it was about what they wanted. Also with 7th edition it was a train wreck but they they stayed true to forging the narrative as their push and not really caring at all what tournaments did.
Now it feels like they want to make it competitive but do so poorly and when they screw up laugh it off as it wasn't what they were driving for the whole time. It gives a confused story and makes them look either like they lie, or they are terrible at what they do. I feel like they never really tell us the truth and just keep feeding us lines. Which makes sense as they want to milk us as long as possible but hey, I'd even respect it if they said they do all this to get as much money from us as they can. I doubt they'll ever be that honest with us though but I can dream and on the day they do give us that brutal honesty, I'd respect them. As is, it feels like most of the time they are trying poorly to play us for fools but with a really nice smile.
dreadnight. That is one of the most sensible and more rounded response I’ve seen on dakka. Thank you. My “fear” of balance does come from, I think, all the wild ideas thrown around on here.
I like 8th. It plays well to me. And gives us what we need. I don’t know enough about maths and game design to start suggesting what needs fixing to improve it. I’m very keen to give apocalypse a go. See how that behaves.
Arguably they may be trying to backpedal on how casual the game is, but since 8th wasn't written from the ground up for competetive play (rather bring written for ease of access with a shorter set of basic rules and the devs taking a lore heavy approach to rules writing) I don't know if any amount of patches will fix the game as well as a full on reboot would.
Karol wrote: And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
Grey Knights are in a tough game design spot vs daemons.
Lets say the ultimate goal is that 2000pts of army A is equal to 2000pts of army B in matched play.
If army A is Grey Knights and army B is daemons, the GK simply can't be allowed to have some advantage over daemons. Otherwise its literally a Rock vs Scissors match. We have enough of those with army build styles without baking it in to the rules.
I honestly think that the current way is actually pretty good. GK are better vs Daemons than they are vs other armies. But to compensate, Daemons get an additional narrative rule that makes them stronger vs GK - to reflect the idea that GKs should only be deployed when there is actually a daemonic incursion going on.
It could quite possibly be balanced by upping the cost of the respawn stratagem to 3CP, or limiting it to once per turn/round.
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But they aren't better vs demons, then vs other armies. Demons bring back 20 man unit of Plaguebearers on objectives over and over again, making the game unwinable, and the buffs are to stuff which don't really matter, as a GK army is not going to win a smite vs demons, not when GK troops costs more then demons and do not come back for 2CP. Now we could of course say that GK should just soup in stuff, but then demons can soup in stuff too. And if the chaos demon player turns in to a chaos player with a chaos soup, the GK will not win. So it is not only not even, but skewed in favour of demons. Who aren't in a good spot themselfs, which only make it more fun. Also GK do not just deploy when demons are there, they cull whole planets, if it can stop the rise or resuraction or a demon, or to recover an important artefact.
Arguably they may be trying to backpedal on how casual the game is, but since 8th wasn't written from the ground up for competetive play (rather bring written for ease of access with a shorter set of basic rules and the devs taking a lore heavy approach to rules writing) I don't know if any amount of patches will fix the game as well as a full on reboot would.
Wasn't the first codex in 8th ed space marines, that right out of the gate gave people gulliman and razorbacks with stormravens, which ended with everyone geting their nerfed, even if they had no access to gulliman? If yes, then I don't think 8th ed was ever casual. And if there is any back padling then it is up the power curve. It is just that GW does not fix stuff, they break stuff. I don't know if there was a way to make Inari not broken and fun to play at the same time. Maybe they was, but what they did to the army was brutal. Thankfuly the whole faction consisted of one model, and stuff which is okey to good in other armies, so people weren't hurt too much.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
Tbf moff tarkin reduced unemployment to 0% on alderaan.
Additionally he whiped out a bunch of Monarchists.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
I was responding to complexity of the games, as well as cleaning up the rules. Consistency and interactions that rarely if ever result in incompatible rules.
But interestingly, 40k is probably fairly dead here. Players are almost entirely shifted over to kill team, or left never to return the last few years :(
But having a good laugh, I would say it’s mostly whoosh over your head then.
In any game where you have choices, there will inevitably be units that take advantage of that, this is what give choices.
Even the devs have stated that some units, just based on how they function will inevitably be more desirable or for some factions a must take.
When taken to 40k, it’s the devs going Gman can change and effect how a entire army is built, we have to account for this and how the marines can work without him. And how to point such units.
I think you are a little bit wrong, but I think you are wrong for all the right reasons.