There's been much made of the various price rises, but here's another interesting change that is mentioned, but rarely enumerated.
Points depreciation.

As the various editions have come, the number of points that a given model represents on the tabletop has decreased. Here's two blog posts covering 3 different armies and the depreciation in points from 1998 til today.

http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/ive-got-your-point-devaluation-right.html
http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/depreciating-value-round-two.html

The author compares army lists from GW's 1998 book "Collecting and Painting Wargames Armies" to the points values of armies today. Obviously some orgs and units don't quite line up, but for Space Marines, Dwarves, and Eldar he got points depreciations of 37, 17, and 47 percent respectively!

That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one. Phrased differently, it could be said that a given figure now costs more, is worth less, and you need more of them.

I see the depreciation of points as a good thing myself. The game seems to be moving into a more balanced area as points get lowered (standardized). I generally like fielding more units. I also think it's easier to balance a larger force than a smaller one.

The big conclusion to be drawn from this is how much the GW playerbase has shrunk over the years.

If the 'average' army has dropped in point values by ~1/3, and the 'average' game size has increased by 1/2 then players need twice as many models to play an average game now versus then (by the way I am making these numbers up, although they are loosely based upon a very good analysis that Killkrazy presented in a different thread).

This means that for GW to continue to declare very similar overall sales numbers, then half as many people are playing their game (with twice as many models) assuming prices stay the same.

That's a pretty scary thought for people who get into the GW hobby for the relative safety of the brand name and the perception that there will always be a big GW player base to find games within.

@sourclams it's a good point but you're missing some stuff.

First off sales figures are just that, sales of new stuff each year. It does not take into account old stuff still being used or old stuff being resold.

My IG army consists of Tallarn (picked up in a Hong Kong shop where they'd been warming the shelf since the 90s) and now Necromunda Redemptionists and Cawdor (picked up on ebay).

I added some Valkyries and Chimera in 2009 but not much since then.

If I'm still playing in 5 years I will probably be using this army and not have added anything to GWs sales figures.

So I don't think the number of players has shrunk, there's just a lot more inventory out there for players to use without buying.

The figures shown n the blog also do not take into account game related changes and the revision of the rules although GW are certainly trying to increase the number of models included in a given army. I would suggest that this is especially true of vehicles. In RT/2nd ed a Land Raider cost 500 points now its 250 (I think).

@sourclams - the sales figures also do not show the move from blisters to box-sets over time. GW store used to be wall to wall blisters with boxes on the bottom shelf, now its more expensive boxes everywhere and the odd line of blisters. One would expect unit sales to decrease with this sort of shift.

I would also suggest that the number of clubs and stores (+ internet outlets?) would be a better indicator of total number of players. I would guess that this has increased over the longer term and the player base with it.

This is very interesting. I only really got into WHFB in 6th and 40K in 3rd, so I didn't even really notice just how much the points values have deprecated. I don't see how this would indicate anything but a shrinking player base if you have to buy more models for more money, but profits remain more or less stagnant, although the rather large second-hand market certainly must be some sort of factor.

Anyone care to take into account relative price reduction of increased plastics from '98 to today?

Nope. Thought not....

Finding new hobbyists must be getting harder given alternate gaming platforms, ie LAN gaming.

IMO people are generally less interested in the work behind models, cleaning mould lines and painting.

The risk is that critical mass among youngsters, if everyone at school is gaming then that is a different proposition than if your friends are LAN gaming.

Mum, can I spend on computer games and models? Umm, no.

Comparing points from 2nd ed to 3rd+ is is unfair, since the whole point structure was changed.

frenrik wrote:Comparing points from 2nd ed to 3rd+ is is unfair, since the whole point structure was changed.

I think you're making my point for me. The point structure was changed to make it so you had to have more figs to have the same point battle.

It would only be unfair of me to make the comparison if GW had also adjusted downward the number of points for a recommended battle. They didn't, they kept the recommended points for a battle the same while adjusting downward the average points-per-model.

frenrik wrote:Comparing points from 2nd ed to 3rd+ is is unfair, since the whole point structure was changed.

It's true that the point structure changed, but the point is still valid; what was a 2000 point Space Marine in 2nd edition wasn't one in third and certainly isn't now; if it's still legal, it's going to require a few new units to get up to 2000 points.

I mean, barring the changes in Wargear, the Space Marine army in the example was 100% legal in 3rd edition. I wish I had my codecies here so I could do a more direct comparison, but I unfortunately do not. It does seem to generally be true, however, that points values go downward and require new purchases, though it's generally two or three new kits.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ah, I found 4th edition army builder files:

4th edition:

10 Tactical Marines with Lascannon, Plasma Gun, Frag and Krak Grenades, Sergeant with Terminator Honours (so he has two attacks) in a Rhino with Smoke Launchers and Extra Armour - 278pts

5th edition:

10 Tactical Marines with Lascannon, Plasma Gun, in a Rhino with Extra Armour (note that the Sergeant already has two attacks by default, the Tactical Marines already have Frag and Krak Grenades by default, and the Rhino has Smoke Launchers and Search Lights by default) - 240pts

That's a 38 point difference.

Give a 5th edition squad a meltagun and multi-melta instead of a plasma gun and lascannon, it costs ~225pts. The same squad would be ~260pts in 4th edition. 35 point difference.

So if you've got three such squads, suddenly in the switch from 4th to 5th, you're down ~105 points, and that's just from the Tactical Squads. Doing some math, if the rest of your army was, say:

a Master with Plasma Pistol and Power Weapon, Iron Halo, and Artificer Armour, (which would be a Chapter Master in 5th)
10 Scouts with a vet Sarge and 5 snipers
5 Assault Terminators
10 Assault Marines with a vet sarge with a Power Fist
Land Raider with Extra Armour

the difference between the two editions is around 90 points. So, combined with the above, your army is now 200 points less, which has to be replaced with something. IMO, not a huge deal, but even now there's a definite deprecation of points between editions. Note that I selected units at random with no thought as to how effective they'd be, but the principle is still the same; most units, overall, decreased in points.

From what I read, in WHFB, the core Ogre unit is something like 5 points less per model than it used to be, and considering the emphasis on big blocks of infantry in 8th, you're probably going to have to add a considerable number of Ogres to your army to remain viable, but I'm not entire sure as I'm unfamiliar with Ogres in general.

It's not like you've gotta buy a whole new army between editions (with the possible exception of the switch between 2nd and 3rd 40K and 5th and 6th Fantasy), but if you've been playing since 3rd/6th, assuming you owned only exactly what you needed to to field an army, you've had to part with a considerable chunk of change to keep up, for the most part. In a vacuum this doesn't really bother me, though.

Yes of course, since 1st edition to 5th there has been the gradual transformation of 40k from a skirmish game to a mass-battle game.

Obviously lowering points costs and the average game size (once upon a time 1500pts was the standard) will increase the amount of money needed to play the game.

It's for the same reason that specialist games (those where only a small monetary outlay is needed) were phased out of retail sales, and eventually even their use in game nights and are now only purchasable from a small and dark corner of the website.

This has been a strategy of the company going back at least 10-12 years, but has become more prominent I would say since Apocalypse and WFB 8th edition.

Personally I prefer Corvus Belli's (Infinity's) method of only needing a small outlay and army to play, but the models being so awesome that most people end up collecting more than one force even though they originally didn't intend to (Although the impetus is on the customer in this case).

sourclams wrote:If the 'average' army has dropped in point values by ~1/3, and the 'average' game size has increased by 1/2 ...

Where are you getting that game size has increased?

The 'standard' for 40K since 3rd editon was released has been 1500 points. The 'standard' in 2nd edition was 2000 points.

RatBot wrote:

frenrik wrote:Comparing points from 2nd ed to 3rd+ is is unfair, since the whole point structure was changed.

It's true that the point structure changed, but the point is still valid; what was a 2000 point Space Marine in 2nd edition wasn't one in third and certainly isn't now; if it's still legal, it's going to require a few new units to get up to 2000 points.

There's still a problem with this - the game was balanced for 2000 points in 2nd edition, and along with points restructuring, 3rd edition was rebalanced for 1500 points. While units got cheaper, the ideal size to play the game at dropped by a quarter as well.

Loki, are you sure? Because damn near every tournament I ever saw, and every game I played, was 1750 or 2000 points in 3rd ed.

RatBot wrote:Loki, are you sure? Because damn near every tournament I ever saw, and every game I played, was 1750 or 2000 points in 3rd ed.

That doesn't mean that's what GW balanced it for. Even they run tournaments still over 2000 points ('Ard Boyz, I'm looking at you). Since 3rd edition, 40k has been balanced towards 1500 points.

There's some blog post from an old playtester floating around where he talks about it, though I've lost the link.

-Loki- wrote:

RatBot wrote:Loki, are you sure? Because damn near every tournament I ever saw, and every game I played, was 1750 or 2000 points in 3rd ed.

That doesn't mean that's what GW balanced it for. Even they run tournaments still over 2000 points ('Ard Boyz, I'm looking at you). Since 3rd edition, 40k has been balanced towards 1500 points.

There's some blog post from an old playtester floating around where he talks about it, though I've lost the link.

Fine, but even taking that into account, the 2000 point 2nd edition army is notably less than 1500 points in 3rd, and a 1500 point army in 4th, according to my very rough calculations, is going to be closer to 1350 in 5th. Again, not a terribly big deal to me, but it still necessitates buying more models to get your army to where it once was. Not a big issue, except if they keep doing things this way the games in 8th or 9th edition are going to involve an unwieldy amount of miniatures, and woe betide the person who wants to start a new army.

It varies by armies. A 2nd edition 2000pt Space Marine army didn't need much to bring it up to a 1500pt 3rd edition army, though a 2nd edition Eldar army needed a few purchases to bring it up to 3rd edition.

And personally speaking, I have a Salamanders army from 3rd edition, which sat roughly at 1500pts. I was astonished to find myself hard pressed to fit it into a 1500pt Space Marine army in 5th edition (I got out of the hobby basically for all of 4th edition). I had to drop an entire tactical squad - I have no idea why, but it came out more pricey in 5th edition than it was in 3rd edition.

I've already seen this. Especially with some of the newer army books. And I haven't even been playing for a huge amount of time but I still remember how small some armies were. I remember when I first got into things the guy who taught me the ropes had a core army that was two tactical squads, some veterans, a captain, a command squad, and a land raider crusader. Maybe a Rhino or two on a good day.

But now that's 1500pts at most.

Interesting stuff. I mean codex creep is one thing but this is altogether different.

Just for a solid reference between 4th and 5th. This list wasn't really put together to be super-competitive, but I've run a similar army with quite a bit of success in friendly games:

Master
-Plasma Pistol
-Power Weapon
-Frag Grenades
-Krak Grenades
-Artificer Armour
-Iron Halo
153pts

5 Assault Terminators
-Land Raider Transport
--Extra Armour
455pts

608pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Missile Launcher
-Flamer
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Terminator Honours on Sargeant
-Rhino
--Search Lights
--Smoke Launchers
--Extra Armour
270pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Melta Gun
-Multi-Melta
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Terminator Honours on Sargeant
-Rhino
--Search Lights
--Smoke Launchers
--Extra Armour
--Hunter-Killer Missile
289pts

559pts
1167pts

10 Assault Marines
-Meltabombs
240pts
1392pts

Whirlwind
-Smoke Launchers
-Extra Armour
93pts
Total: 1500pts

5th:
Chapter Master
-Frag Grenades
-Krak Grenades
-Artificer Armour
-Iron Halo
-Plasma Pistol
-Power Weapon
170pts

5 Assault Terminators
-Land Raider
--Extra Armour
465pts
635pts



10 Tactical Marines
-Missile Launcher
-Flamer
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Rhino
--Search Lights
--Smoke Launchers
--Extra Armour
220pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Melta Gun
-Multi-Melta
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Rhino
--Search Lights
--Smoke Launchers
--Extra Armour
--Hunter-Killer Missile
235pts
1090pts

10 Assault Marines
190pts
1280pts

Whirlwind
-Extra Armour
100pts

1380pts

Note that Sergeants already have two attacks in 5th, so they don't have to spend 15 points on Terminator Honours as they did in 4th.


So again, even accepting 1500 as the standard points value, there's a difference for a lot of armies.

...I've completely forgotten what my point is in all this. It's late and I'm tired.

For comparison, here's the 2nd edition equivalent:

Space Marine Captain
-Plasma Pistol
-Power Weapon
-Frag Grenades
-Krak Grenades
110 pts

5 Terminators (4 LC, 1 TH)
-Land Raider Transport
541 pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Missile Launcher
-Flamer
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Veteran Sargeant
-Rhino
439 pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Melta Gun
-Multi-Melta
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Veteran Sargeant
-Rhino
458 pts

10 Assault Marines
-Meltabombs
400 pts

Whirlwind
150 pts

Total: 2,098 pts

I've left out the Artificer armour (doesn't exist), Iron Halo/Conversion Field and the vehicle upgrades to save myself the trouble of looking through the wargear and vehicle upgrade cards.

AlexHolker wrote:For comparison, here's the 2nd edition equivalent:

Space Marine Captain
-Plasma Pistol
-Power Weapon
-Frag Grenades
-Krak Grenades
110 pts

5 Terminators (4 LC, 1 TH)
-Land Raider Transport
541 pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Missile Launcher
-Flamer
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Veteran Sargeant
-Rhino
439 pts

10 Tactical Marines
-Melta Gun
-Multi-Melta
-Frag and Krak Grenades
-Veteran Sargeant
-Rhino
458 pts

10 Assault Marines
-Meltabombs
400 pts

Whirlwind
150 pts

Total: 2,098 pts

I've left out the Artificer armour (doesn't exist), Iron Halo/Conversion Field and the vehicle upgrades to save myself the trouble of looking through the wargear and vehicle upgrade cards.

I think the Terminator squad is a bit dodgy. Couldn't the sergeant only be equipped with Stormbolter and Power Sword? I'll have to dig out my Codex: Ultramarines. One thing not included that'd you'd definitely need would be a Psyker of a sort (with Inquisition powers, of course!), plus a smattering of wargear in there. In 2nd, I remember that having more than one MBT and one APC on the field was very unusual, even for Imperial Guard.

Eilif wrote:There's been much made of the various price rises, but here's another interesting change that is mentioned, but rarely enumerated.
Points depreciation.

As the various editions have come, the number of points that a given model represents on the tabletop has decreased. Here's two blog posts covering 3 different armies and the depreciation in points from 1998 til today.

http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/ive-got-your-point-devaluation-right.html
http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/depreciating-value-round-two.html

The author compares army lists from GW's 1998 book "Collecting and Painting Wargames Armies" to the points values of armies today. Obviously some orgs and units don't quite line up, but for Space Marines, Dwarves, and Eldar he got points depreciations of 37, 17, and 47 percent respectively!

That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one. Phrased differently, it could be said that a given figure now costs more, is worth less, and you need more of them.

Althought the point cost was usually higher in 2nd ed the model count wasnt neccacery any different that it is now for an average sized game, i would say having lower point cost for models is more of an ongoing design trend to simplify the game than trying to get people to buy more models.

zedmeister wrote:I think the Terminator squad is a bit dodgy. Couldn't the sergeant only be equipped with Stormbolter and Power Sword? I'll have to dig out my Codex: Ultramarines.

No. Only the Sergeant could replace his power fist with a power sword, but he didn't have to.

One thing not included that'd you'd definitely need would be a Psyker of a sort (with Inquisition powers, of course!), plus a smattering of wargear in there. In 2nd, I remember that having more than one MBT and one APC on the field was very unusual, even for Imperial Guard.

I think that's beyond the scope of the discussion. The thread is about points depreciation, after all, not changes to the metagame.

Surely Meta is closely associated to the points values?

RT/2nd points values for Armoured vehicles were prohibitively expensive (also tougher with more complicated rules) to the extent that games had unrealistically low numbers of vehicles in them (also not good for vehicle model sales ).

An example of this was the Imperial Guard Armoured Fist Squad in the first IG Codex. This would be virtually the only transport option available. The idea of a Mechanised infantry force was unheard of outsides of games involving many thousands of points.

You could buy all of these cool new models but on field one or two in the average game.

PV for vehicles have therefore been reduced over time.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should also add that the reason for vehicles being so expensive when 40k begun was that it was all based upon a characteristic based vehicle creation system that was included in RT.

This was way out of kilter with the infantry and weapon costs.

Well... the metagame is a bigger factor in points depreciation than you might think.

here's why: in 2nd edition, a TAC list would include 3-5 characters and maybe 1-3 vehicles. In 5th edition, that ratio is inverted. So, armies have fewer high points value character models, but more low points value transports.

notprop wrote:Surely Meta is closely associated to the points values?

RT/2nd points values for Armoured vehicles were prohibitively expensive (also tougher with more complicated rules) to the extent that games had unrealistically low numbers of vehicles in them (also not good for vehicle model sales ).

Prohibitive perhaps, and not good for model sales, but but not at all "unrealistic". What's unrealistic is the amount of vehicles that 40k squezes onto a 4x6 table. It's way overboard for 28mm scale.

Considering scale and table size, 2nd edition battles were more "realistic" than 5th edition if such a term can be allowed anywhere within 50 yards of 40k.

What's hugely noticeable is the change in elite/fast unit costs, especially in SM armies.

Anyone remember 32pt Assault Marines in 3E? 48pt Terminators with no invuls? Space marine Veterans whose only bonus was 1pt higher Ld and otherwise had identical options/rules/wargear to tac squads but cost an extra 30-40pts per unit.

Mr Mystery wrote:Anyone care to take into account relative price reduction of increased plastics from '98 to today?

Nope. Thought not....

If by price reduction you mean steadily increasing in price/model until they are almost at par with the cost of the metals they were supposed to be cheaper than. That's why Sternguard Veterans cost the same as the SM command squad right?

Eilif wrote:

notprop wrote:Surely Meta is closely associated to the points values?

RT/2nd points values for Armoured vehicles were prohibitively expensive (also tougher with more complicated rules) to the extent that games had unrealistically low numbers of vehicles in them (also not good for vehicle model sales ).

Prohibitive perhaps, and not good for model sales, but but not at all "unrealistic". What's unrealistic is the amount of vehicles that 40k squezes onto a 4x6 table. It's way overboard for 28mm scale.

I would suggest that if you only have 6x4 you shouldn't be playing more than 1500 point, if that. You really need to cut your cloth to the space you have, the 2000, 2500 and 3000 point games I read about are massively over sized for the game space that most have available, but this is not the fault of the game or indeed GW.

Eilif wrote:Considering scale and table size, 2nd edition battles were more "realistic" than 5th edition if such a term can be allowed anywhere within 50 yards of 40k.

True that, but one/two vehicles per force was quite limiting and had to change.

keezus wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:Anyone care to take into account relative price reduction of increased plastics from '98 to today?

Nope. Thought not....

If by price reduction you mean steadily increasing in price/model until they are almost at par with the cost of the metals they were supposed to be cheaper than. That's why Sternguard Veterans cost the same as the SM command squad right?

Nah, more the £2.50 for a metal Chaos Warrior around '98, and now paying £20 for 12. That's cheaper. Sure, some stuff has gone up, welcome to the wonderful world of real world, where stuff does get more expensive. £4 for 3 Empire Soldiers...currently £15 for 10. Not as big an increase over what, 13 years?

I'm not saying the Hobby is cheap, just pointing out factors many often fail to take into consideration when berating prices.

When the Chaos Warriors moved into plastic in 1998 they were 12 for £10.

Yup. And 13 years on, they are still a bit cheaper than their metal counterparts 13 years ago.

Overall, the cost of buying an army has gone up, but not as much as you might think. The greater number of plastic kits helps a lot. Sure, this isn't a universal affair, as my all-metal-I-went-mental-and-my-wallet-gently-wept Savage Orc army can attest to, and the like for like cost of plastic kits has shot up over the 13 years since the first 'modern' multiparter, but the increase is sometimes overstated.

Take EMpire, which was the first army to have all non-character choices in plastic. Flagellants are now half the price they used to be. Ergo whilst your state troops cost you more, the Flagellants cost you less. The Steam Tank went plastic and dropped £15 off it's metal equivalent price.

Yes, it depends almost entirely on your chosen units, but the fact remains the price of an army hasn't increased as far as many might think.

notprop wrote:I would suggest that if you only have 6x4 you shouldn't be playing more than 1500 point, if that. You really need to cut your cloth to the space you have, the 2000, 2500 and 3000 point games I read about are massively over sized for the game space that most have available, but this is not the fault of the game or indeed GW.

Eilif wrote:Considering scale and table size, 2nd edition battles were more "realistic" than 5th edition if such a term can be allowed anywhere within 50 yards of 40k.

True that, but one/two vehicles per force was quite limiting and had to change.

I see what you're saying and I agree that in the demented world of 40k, the simple equasion is that more vehicles often equals more fun. After all, if you've already got a world where a sword is as usefull as an assault rifle, why not have 12 tanks duking it out on a patch of land the size of a football pitch?

And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

Mr Mystery wrote:And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

I would say mostly to balance and a 'general' consensus of 'standard' play.

I never play in a tournament less that 1500 and not over 2500. It seems to be the 'best' state the game plays at, depending on what army you bring.

Now rules and meta affect this, but I'm speaking in generalities, not specifics.

imweasel wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

I would say mostly to balance and a 'general' consensus of 'standard' play.
I never play in a tournament less that 1500 and not over 2500. It seems to be the 'best' state the game plays at, depending on what army you bring.

Yep. Most people gravitate toward the consensus, and for tournament players, they will do what the tournament scene requires.

There are those who go outside the standard game sizes and codex limitations and even go outside the common games, but they pay a price in terms of finding opponents and like-minded people to game with.

Mr Mystery wrote:And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

That would be because you have cause and effect reversed.

2nd Edition was designed for 200 point games. What wound up happening as 2nd edition aged was that people started playing bigger and bigger games. By the end of 2nd edition, at least half of the games I was playing were 8-10000 points. Huge multi-player mega-games were fairly commonplace.

GW took onboard the fact that people wanted to play bigger games, and stripped the rules down to create 3rd edition, which gave bigger armies for the standard points level, and allowed for bigger games through the rules not being as complicated (close combat in big games in 2nd edition was just painful).

The cynics can claim that the push to smaller points per model is just a sales tactic, and to a certain extent it's probably right. But it was all started by the players asking for it.

insaniak wrote:The cynics can claim that the push to smaller points per model is just a sales tactic, and to a certain extent it's probably right. But it was all started by the players asking for it.

I've been the cynic in this particular argument for a long time, but I have to admit that I've heard from a couple different sources in cluding a FLGS owner that the players drove much of the progression of 40k from a skirmsh/RPG to the more streamlined (relatively speaking), model heavy, tournament focused ruleset that it is today.

The game also changed, from skirmish level with individual combats, to company level with squad based combats.

Aside from stats, turn structure, and the relative spread of weapon and armor, 2nd edition has little in common, rules wise, with 3rd edition.

I'll concur with the observation that the players (at least in part) drove the move to a company-level game with more stuff on the table. I joined in when 3rd was new, but everyone I knew who played 2nd played BIG games on a regular basis. Frequently 2000, 3000, or more. Then as now, guys collect more and more toys, and want to use their stuff.

Personally I don't enjoy the feel of skirmish-level games nearly as much, and I generally hate overpowered supercharacters, so 2nd ed entirely lacked appeal for me. 3rd suited me very well after I had tried out 5th ed WHFB (which was my first choice, preferring the setting), and found it too unbalanced as a competitive game.

Mannahnin wrote:I'll concur with the observation that the players (at least in part) drove the move to a company-level game with more stuff on the table. I joined in when 3rd was new, but everyone I knew who played 2nd played BIG games on a regular basis. Frequently 2000, 3000, or more. Then as now, guys collect more and more toys, and want to use their stuff.

Isn't this pretty much natural progression? I've heard couple of Warmachine players note/complain that gameplay has moved towards larger (50 points, or even more) matches. Dunno if it's true, though as I know next to nothing about WM/H scene.

I believe it's happened in that game too, yes.

sourclams wrote:The big conclusion to be drawn from this is how much the GW playerbase has shrunk over the years. ...

This means that for GW to continue to declare very similar overall sales numbers, then half as many people are playing their game (with twice as many models) assuming prices stay the same.

I don't know if that is true, but it bears consideration. Economics is full of irony, after all!

Signed,
Other Voices

For once I think that GW did the right thing. The appeal of 40K to me is about big numbers of troops running around the table, for a skirmish game I can play better games than 40K (e.g. Infinity).

Lower points means more miniatures and yeah the need to buy more stuff, but unless you are a hardcore tournament player, you can always play lower than the 1500 standard.

So, marketing ploy or not, the 5th ed IG codex with its lower points cost made me start a new army due to the seer number of figures that you could put on the table compared to the prior ed codex.

M .

Eilif wrote:I've been the cynic in this particular argument for a long time, but I have to admit that I've heard from a couple different sources in cluding a FLGS owner that the players drove much of the progression of 40k from a skirmsh/RPG to the more streamlined (relatively speaking), model heavy, tournament focused ruleset that it is today.

There is zero, and I do mean and stress zero, in anything that is tournament focused rule set in the current incarnation of 40k. Period.

imweasel wrote:

Eilif wrote:I've been the cynic in this particular argument for a long time, but I have to admit that I've heard from a couple different sources in cluding a FLGS owner that the players drove much of the progression of 40k from a skirmsh/RPG to the more streamlined (relatively speaking), model heavy, tournament focused ruleset that it is today.

There is zero, and I do mean and stress zero, in anything that is tournament focused rule set in the current incarnation of 40k. Period.

I think you're wrong about that, and I think most old-timers and folks who play more traditional senario based games will agree with me. It likely doesn't compare to other more games that were tournament focused from the beginning (Warmahordes, Magic, etc), but comparing RT and 2nd ed to 5th edition, 5th edition is far more tailored to tournaments in it's streamlined nature of the rules and especially in the limited way it constricts army choices, limits variation, and shortens game time.

As a positive note, this streamlining does make pick-up games easier and a bit more predicatable.

Eilif wrote:I think you're wrong about that, and I think most old-timers and folks who play more traditional senario based games will agree with me. It likely doesn't compare to other more games that were tournament focused from the beginning (Warmahordes, Magic, etc), but comparing RT and 2nd ed to 5th edition, 5th edition is far more tailored to tournaments in it's streamlined nature of the rules and especially in the limited way it constricts army choices, limits variation, and shortens game time.

As a positive note, this streamlining does make pick-up games easier and a bit more predicatable.

Comparing the state of 'tournament quality' 40k to itself from early on to today is like comparing an old rotten corpse to just a rotten corpse.

Of course it's 'probably' better.

It's still a corpse. 40k might have come some ways to making it more 'tournament ready'.

It's still got a long, long ways to go before anyone should consider it 'tournament ready'.

insaniak wrote:
2nd Edition was designed for 200 point games. What wound up happening as 2nd edition aged was that people started playing bigger and bigger games. By the end of 2nd edition, at least half of the games I was playing were 8-10000 points. Huge multi-player mega-games were fairly commonplace.

GW took onboard the fact that people wanted to play bigger games, and stripped the rules down to create 3rd edition, which gave bigger armies for the standard points level, and allowed for bigger games through the rules not being as complicated (close combat in big games in 2nd edition was just painful).

Forget close combat, the BLIND GRENADE phase alone must have taken all afternoon!

I think monthly tournaments with decent attendence show that the came is clearly capable of being played as a tournament game. It might not meet every person's standards as a competitive game, but the fact that it works is evidence that it can work.

Conversely, I think it's more reflective of the loyalty of fans to GW's setting and the IP and possibly models in general that people try so hard to sustain a tournament scene. Magic, Warmachine, Malifaux, game systems built with competition in mind from the ground up and with the support of the parent company don't need the multitudinous gyrations of an INAT FAQ, elaborate YMDC, comp scoring, and other complications that seem unique to GW.

sourclams wrote:Conversely, I think it's more reflective of the loyalty of fans to GW's setting and the IP and possibly models in general that people try so hard to sustain a tournament scene. Magic, Warmachine, Malifaux, game systems built with competition in mind from the ground up and with the support of the parent company don't need the multitudinous gyrations of an INAT FAQ, elaborate YMDC, comp scoring, and other complications that seem unique to GW.

Oh, 40k clearly isn't a great tournament game (it take too long, if nothing else).

But it's neither as bad as it was, nor as bad as people claim.

it's not like Magic doesn't have (or had, I'm out of the loop) extensive errata and FAQs, they just keep them official and timely updated.

Comp no longer exists as a pervasive element in all tournaments, and doesn't exist at all in many of them.

While I gladly agree that there are better competitive games, and games that are truly designed "from the ground up" for competitive play, it's a gross exaggeration to say that there is zero tournament focus in 5th edition 40k.

Polonius wrote:While I gladly agree that there are better competitive games, and games that are truly designed "from the ground up" for competitive play, it's a gross exaggeration to say that there is zero tournament focus in 5th edition 40k.

Not a gross exaggeration at all.

There are rules that simply don't work.
These have not and will not be addressed.
Some of the things that have been addressed are changed at a later date on a whim.
There is no precedent used in the rules/errata/faq.

All of this is easily achieved. It's not.

Why? There is zero tournament focus in 40k. This is not limited to 5th edition.

You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.

You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

Polonius wrote:You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.

You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

Missions that are balanced? Dawn of war is balanced? Decently balanced army books? Maybe ones that are space marines.

None of those are aspects that show focus on competitive play.

After support is critical to providiing a competitive environment. Internal construction has improved for space marine armies.

Tournament focus should be for all aspects of the game. There is no attempt at that. You don't have an ad hoc approach to providing tournaments.

You do or you don't. It is black and white.

-Loki- wrote:

RatBot wrote:Loki, are you sure? Because damn near every tournament I ever saw, and every game I played, was 1750 or 2000 points in 3rd ed.

That doesn't mean that's what GW balanced it for. Even they run tournaments still over 2000 points ('Ard Boyz, I'm looking at you). Since 3rd edition, 40k has been balanced towards 1500 points.

There's some blog post from an old playtester floating around where he talks about it, though I've lost the link.

I question the assertion that GW has ever attempted to "balance" any of their games for any point level.

Polonius wrote:You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

The lack of internal construction is evident in the laissez-faire gaming terminology and lack of technical writing in the rules. I just happened to look at YMDC earlier today and saw yet another thread asking if Gate of Infinity can be used to teleport out of combat. GW expects gamers to know how to play the game as GW intended the game to be played, and thus some rules require players to work together to reach a common consensus--which is not consistent with head-to-head adversarial play. In all other systems, rules exist to provide the framework for conflict. In GW games, players actually have to establish the framework for the framework for the conflict... sometimes with guidelines as broad as 'd6 it'.

The lack of support after the fact just reinforces that it's not a competitive system from the get-go.

imweasel wrote:

After support is critical to providiing a competitive environment. Internal construction has improved for space marine armies.

Tournament focus should be for all aspects of the game. There is no attempt at that. You don't have an ad hoc approach to providing tournaments.

You do or you don't. It is black and white.

Sez who?

Really, by your logic 40k is as useless as a tournament game as say, Descent. Which is completely absurd assertion.

imweasel wrote:

Polonius wrote:You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.

You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

Missions that are balanced? Dawn of war is balanced? Decently balanced army books? Maybe ones that are space marines.

And Orks. And IG. And Demons. And Dark Eldar.

And the missions are balanced among themselves.

There's a solid attempt.

None of those are aspects that show focus on competitive play.

After support is critical to providiing a competitive environment. Internal construction has improved for space marine armies.

Tournament focus should be for all aspects of the game. There is no attempt at that. You don't have an ad hoc approach to providing a tournaments.

You do or you don't. It is black and white.

So, out of curiosity, what is required to show focus on tournament play?

If it's back and white, than every game built for competitive play has every aspect of comepetive play. I'm curious to see what those requirements are, and if all games considered competitive posses all of those qualities.

I've never heard of a definative set of criteria, so I'm really excited to see one.

Backfire wrote:Sez who?

Really, by your logic 40k is as useless as a tournament game as say, Descent. Which is completely absurd assertion.

I would suggest you take a look at the YMDC forum for your answer. There are literally several ways to play a given rule.

How is this conductive to a 'tournament focus'? Sure you can play 40k in a tournament setting.

To say there is any 'focus' on tournaments is the absurd assertion.

It's like saying 'well duh, because there are tournaments should be proof enough of 'tournament focus'. That's like saying that tic-tac-toe is 'tournament focused' because there is a tic-tac-toe tournament.


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Eilif wrote:There's been much made of the various price rises, but here's another interesting change that is mentioned, but rarely enumerated.
Points depreciation.

As the various editions have come, the number of points that a given model represents on the tabletop has decreased. Here's two blog posts covering 3 different armies and the depreciation in points from 1998 til today.

http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/ive-got-your-point-devaluation-right.html
http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/depreciating-value-round-two.html

The author compares army lists from GW's 1998 book "Collecting and Painting Wargames Armies" to the points values of armies today. Obviously some orgs and units don't quite line up, but for Space Marines, Dwarves, and Eldar he got points depreciations of 37, 17, and 47 percent respectively!

That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one. Phrased differently, it could be said that a given figure now costs more, is worth less, and you need more of them.

Reason being becasue there was an unwritten urge to move 40K into the large scale combat game that you see today.

You rememeber the hoopla over Planetstrike, for a whole 5 minutes? Or the "Apocalipse" that was supposed to knock everyones socks off?

We had already been doing that, as well as the campaign play- 10 years or so ago in the second and 3d editions. We as players were hounding them to come up withthe large scale stuff, the flyers, airstrikes, and heavy artillery. To the tune of fighting over several tables, and even in some of the RT roving games, The "Hunt for the Fallen" one comes to mind.
You were encouraged to bring your 2000 pts and fight on a side.

The reduction in unit price was a natural selection sort of thing to get larger scales to the games, and fit the large scale armies into the rules sets.

In affirmation to the talk about the second and 3d edition games, 2nd was a platoon and small company level, and 3d was a company and battalion level game set.

If you were to try to play with 2d edtion rules with the size armies that people generally play with now, the 1750-1800 pt lvl, you would honestly not finish a game. ( each character, and squad was special, and they had more going for them point per point.)

That was one of the issues that the transition from 2d edition to 3d had- Units turned into generic meat shields for the squad leaders, special characters, and thereby made them less relevent.
Then there was the little factor with the "Template spam".

Back then, there were several turn lasting templates that tended ti slow the play of the whole game down if you ended up having too many, and as well- the "Vortex love" that came with that particular grenade had the chance of affecting more then just the random model.

It would run around for several turns doing its own thing sometimes,almost like a 3d character.


Another thing not discussed very much-

The different armies as well, the Eldar, for one, the Orks for anotehr- had special Jerrys kids weapons that had the potential of extending, or ruining the game for you. There effects alone ended some particular games I played on a low note.
That was off the top of my head, because there was as the game evolved, a metaplan from the GW higher ups to continue to push the envelope, and eitehr from an in house design plan, or an unintentional 3d order effect, ended up taking the tangent to a whole new level with the advent of the WYSIWYG weapons and vehicles.

imweasel wrote:Focus should be clear cut and not an after thought. The moves that gw has made had no tournament focus based decisions for the moves.

That's my criteria for focusing on tournaments. Purpose for tournaments. There is no purpose/focus on gw's part for tournaments.

So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

Polonius wrote:So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

It's not only a matter of intent, but actions as well.

Being inconsistent with no apparent dedication is not a 'focused attempt to make 40k a tournament focused' game. I have and am willingly stating that they don't make an effort.

The changes they make to the game are not 'tournament focused' at all and not even a faint spark in their reasoning to make changes to the game.

imweasel wrote:

Backfire wrote:Sez who?

Really, by your logic 40k is as useless as a tournament game as say, Descent. Which is completely absurd assertion.

I would suggest you take a look at the YMDC forum for your answer. There are literally several ways to play a given rule.

How is this conductive to a 'tournament focus'? Sure you can play 40k in a tournament setting.

To say there is any 'focus' on tournaments is the absurd assertion.

Just respond to my original point, please. If the issue is black/white, then it should be answerable with yes/no.

And really, I don't see what YMDC has to do with it. Do you suggest that "tournament focus" game should have NO unclear rules at all? As I understand it, even WM/H has unofficial FAQs done because PP ones don't provide answer for everything.

Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

I think that despite his black/white comment, imweasel is making the argument that GW does not make a serious attempt to design a tournament game. I'd agree with that to be sure.

But i think there are efforts made in a lot of ways that have improved tournament play. It's hard to say that there's no effort to make the game a tournament game when the ability to play it as a tournament game actually increases.

Backfire wrote:And really, I don't see what YMDC has to do with it. Do you suggest that "tournament focus" game should have NO unclear rules at all? As I understand it, even WM/H has unofficial FAQs done because PP ones don't provide answer for everything.

You apparently require evidence. Of which you certainly are not providing any. Go look in ymdc. There are literally dozens (if not scores) of questions to this game that don't have an answer or are simply waiting for one.

How is this 'focused' on the part of gw?

I don't expect perfection. I expect at least some modicum of effort on the part of gw. And please, while PP/warmahordes is not a perfect game, you cannot even begin to compare the rules for pp to gw ones. PP is far and away ahead of the game here.

Backfire wrote:Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

A terrible strawman argument. Need to come up with something that is worth replying to.

imweasel wrote:

Backfire wrote:Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

A terrible strawman argument. Need to come up with something that is worth replying to.

YOU were the one to claim that the issue is completely black and white. Are you now backpedaling?

Again, it's very simple. Yes or no?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:I think that despite his black/white comment, imweasel is making the argument that GW does not make a serious attempt to design a tournament game. I'd agree with that to be sure.

But i think there are efforts made in a lot of ways that have improved tournament play. It's hard to say that there's no effort to make the game a tournament game when the ability to play it as a tournament game actually increases.

I don't think there is any question that GW has always seen tournament play for their games as some sort of bonus, "yeah, you can play tournaments too if you want, I guess" rather than focus. That said, I also think that focus for competive play has increased: old Codexes used to have many pages dedicated to various narrative missions and some rules concerned campaign play. Some books even contained separate army lists for prospective enemy armies. You don't see anything like that in recent books. Also, whilst GW rules writing is hardly perfect, present FAQ policy is certainly an improvment over to what they had in the past.

Polonius wrote:

imweasel wrote:Focus should be clear cut and not an after thought. The moves that gw has made had no tournament focus based decisions for the moves.

That's my criteria for focusing on tournaments. Purpose for tournaments. There is no purpose/focus on gw's part for tournaments.

So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

I think so too, much to the chagrin of those who do like to play competitively it has been said time and time again, in both rule books and WD as well as with interviews with the designers themselves, that the game is intended for casual fun. It is aimed at being playable by young teenagers easily so that they have fun, pick up a couple of army boxes over a couple of years and hobby materials. That I think is GW's objective for their games, and their rules and system are written with that in mind. That the game has become obsessed over by a hardcore (or should I say 'elite'? ) on the internet, and pushed to it's limits, I think is one offshoot of the game's purpose rather than it's original design brief.

That being said, for a game that has remained practically unchanged for more than a decade, it should be no surprise that it has achieved some level of balance. There hasn't been a major alteration to the rules structure since 3rd edition, and each new codex has had a rather small remit to be designed within. The real potential for an upset will happen in the (admittedly unlikely) scenario that GW ever decides to re-work 40k from the ground up and give us something new to play with. At the same time however, it would give them an opportunity to introduce some fresh ideas and influences into a system that has been starting to feel a little arthritic, at least for some.

Backfire wrote:
YOU were the one to claim that the issue is completely black and white. Are you now backpedaling?

Again, it's very simple. Yes or no?

Yes. From a tournament stand point 40k is as useless as tic-tac-toe. At least in tic-tac-toe, you won't have the rules arguments or balance issues that 40k has.

While no game will be perfect, no game should take 25 years to get basic rules done for different factions/armies done correctly with a minimum of errors.

Backfire wrote:
I don't think there is any question that GW has always seen tournament play for their games as some sort of bonus, "yeah, you can play tournaments too if you want, I guess" rather than focus. That said, I also think that focus for competive play has increased: old Codexes used to have many pages dedicated to various narrative missions and some rules concerned campaign play. Some books even contained separate army lists for prospective enemy armies. You don't see anything like that in recent books. Also, whilst GW rules writing is hardly perfect, present FAQ policy is certainly an improvment over to what they had in the past.

And yet none of this is any proof to 'tournament focus'. Which is the claim that folks are maiking. GW is more 'tournament focused' than in the past.

Complete. Utter. BS.

You either get your act together and focus on the tournament aspect of the game, or you do what gw does and don't. At all. Period.

25 years. The game still has enough issues that if you tried to play by raw, you would cause the earth to fall into a black hole.

Twenty. Five. Years.

And it's still not done. And none of the changes gw has made is for 'tournament focus'. There certainly is no evidence of that from the product they make.

Polonius and Backfire are 100% right on this. The game can be used and is frequently used in enjoyable and competitive tournaments, and over every edition has gotten progressively clearer rules and better balance and become more and more functional within tournaments.

The existence of YMDC is a throwaway joke. Even PP games, which are manifestly better-written and use nice clear glossaries and consistent terminology (something I've been lobbying for from GW for over ten years), have frequently asked questions and confusion. Spend time on the PP forums and you'll see complaints from players about rules and balance over there too.

insaniak wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

That would be because you have cause and effect reversed.

2nd Edition was designed for 200 point games. What wound up happening as 2nd edition aged was that people started playing bigger and bigger games. By the end of 2nd edition, at least half of the games I was playing were 8-10000 points. Huge multi-player mega-games were fairly commonplace.

GW took onboard the fact that people wanted to play bigger games, and stripped the rules down to create 3rd edition, which gave bigger armies for the standard points level, and allowed for bigger games through the rules not being as complicated (close combat in big games in 2nd edition was just painful).

The cynics can claim that the push to smaller points per model is just a sales tactic, and to a certain extent it's probably right. But it was all started by the players asking for it.

Is this an unavoidable trait for established games? I'd wager yes. As you pointed out, the longer you play, the bigger your armies get. Some people will have lots of smaller armies for variety, some people will have a single massive army, others yet lie in the various shades in between. Sooner or later, you want to dump it all on the table and have a massive punch up. Sooner or later you'll want to play bigger average games, to use your toys in interesting combinations. But every game has a points ceiling where the rules get clunky (aforementioned Blind Grenade phase) and just don't cope. Whilst I think it's a sad thing that the old rules are usually done away with completely, the streamlining rejig is inevitable in my view, and most often necessary.

Although not exactly up on it, I understand Warmahordes has a 2nd Edition, which has rejigged things. Can someone confirm one way or the other if this has resulted in a larger model count in the average game? Likewise for other wargames?

I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.

Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.

I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Really, one only need look at the fact that armies are ridgedly defined by codicies with no real room for full-customization and a strict points focus to see the tournament/comp focus.

Games without tournament/comp focus (or less of one) tend to have more flexible army lists, unit creating mechanics, and often do away with points systems or give them less empahsis (5150, Stargrunt, Future War commander, Battletech, Tomorow's war, etc). These games aren't nearly as popular, but that's not surprising, since without a comp/tourney focus, it's hard to get a wargame into the small FLGS's that make up most gaming stores.

Hi Elif.
The desire to make 40k suitable for tournaments has come from a part of the player base.
GW plc have a prime demoghraphic of 11 to 16 year old boys who like to 'win.'(Win a rules argument-win small skirmish-win a battle, as long as they win something they get happy and buy more stuff...)

GW plc appear to have focused on making the rules easier to explain especialy for these customers.Also focusing heavily on strategic elements because 11 to 16 year olds can NOT deal with more complex tactical overviews.And it helps GW plc sell toy soldiers to children like Mr kirby told them to.

And in making the rules easier to explain , GW plc have simply put all the 'akward bits' into ever bloating seperate rules sections.(USRs , vehicle rules and special rules.)

It may have been a side effect the 'simple rules poorly explianed ,that go on forever' make competative play slightly easier for 40k.

There is a simple test to see if a game has been written for , and therfore suitable for ballanced compatative play.(Tournaments.)

Has it got a provable level of ballance?

If the answer is no, it is not suitable for ballanced competative play.

The new Titex adjustable wrench has a heavier forged grips and a non slip handle .It makes it easier to use it as a hammer.I dont think it was intended for this use, as my hammer does the job far better.
But because it has impoved in this function slightly some numpties in the workshop may use it INSTEAD of a hammer....

Lanrak wrote:Hi There is a simple test to see if a game has been written for , and therfore suitable for ballanced compatative play.(Tournaments.)

Has it got a provable level of ballance?

If the answer is no, it is not suitable for ballanced competative play.

The new Titex adjustable wrench has a heavier forged grips and a non slip handle .It makes it easier to use it as a hammer.I dont think it was intended for this use, as my hammer does the job far better.

I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

However, whether or not it is properly balanced, and whether or not you think it is "suitable" means little in the face of the reality that it has been intentionally adjusted to make it more tournament-friendly, and apparently it's worked as it is used for tournament play and likely as -or more- often than any other miniature game system.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

While true for Britain, that's NOT true for America, where the standard has gone from 1500 to 1750 to 1850 to 2000 and fluctuated from there.

Mannahnin wrote:The existence of YMDC is a throwaway joke. Even PP games, which are manifestly better-written and use nice clear glossaries and consistent terminology (something I've been lobbying for from GW for over ten years), have frequently asked questions and confusion. Spend time on the PP forums and you'll see complaints from players about rules and balance over there too.

Having spent quite a lot of time on both the PP MkII Rules forum and YMDC, I really don't see any similarities between the two other than that people ask questions.

90% of the PP rules questions are clearly answered within the rulebook, and answers are simply verbatim quotes from the rulebook. The complaints on the PP forum about balance have also been shown to be more-or-less untrue over time as literally every faction (save perhaps Trollbloods) consistently places in the highest levels in tourneys--largely within the same small player pool. The ability of individuals to go out and win with anything would suggest that the game is balanced, complaints and forum-rage as an aside.

And those are the ways in which I think that the two forums are similar.

The single, mind-boggling difference between PP and GW is that there is actually an official mouthpiece tied to the rules dev team that answers questions on the PP board. Imagine if the Deff Rolla, Doom of Malantai, God of War, and GoI questions had all been revised within 5 minutes of the original asking.

In short, I think questions get asked on the PP forums because the rules are so tight that players need to know how to get it 'just right'. I think that questions are asked in YMDC because the rules are so vague and loose and mind-blowingly impactful to a game (Deff Rollas, anyone?) that some sort of broader consensus between TOs is necessary to even play the game from inception.

On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.

Nobody argues that GW is as tournament focused as PP. Nobody argues that GW is very interested in putting out tight rules.

But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

Mr Mystery wrote:Although not exactly up on it, I understand Warmahordes has a 2nd Edition, which has rejigged things. Can someone confirm one way or the other if this has resulted in a larger model count in the average game? Likewise for other wargames?

Warmachine MkII had a complete overhaul of points. the old 500pts is roughly equal to the current 35pts, and 750pts close to 50pts.
This leads to most armies having mostly the same size force they would have had in MkI.

One key difference is that each Warcaster has "Jack points" that are only useable on warjacks for the caster.
In MkI you could run with no jacks whatsoever. Now you need to at least use up the jack points.
So I guess for some people having one jack more than MkI has occurred, while those who took jacks now have more points available.

I think in Warmachine the tournament rules pack creators determined that xx points takes a game yy minutes long to bring to a satisfactory conclusion, therefore we play xx point games.

Hi all.
I think most people can see slight improvment in the 40k rules when compared to previous ediditions.
But compared to other companies rule sets the improvments seem to be very slow and hap hazzard.

Considering that the "are drop pod doors part of the hull" question was never definitively answered - as in not in errata or FAQ - and the drop pod was introduced in the FIRST 5th edition codex, I'd say that GW is definitely not on the ball with respect to rules writing. I still see strange threads in YMDC like: gluing the doors shut should be illegal as it blocks more LOS, do the guts block LOS? and is it ok to glue the doors shut to avoid modelling the interior? and the classic: Can you walk over the doors of your opponent's drop pod.

slowed yes, but the RAW don't give any sort of guidance as to what the developers were thinking.

As long as issues like this - that is - situations which create varying interpretations in gameplay - continue to be introduced - AND left to persist... IMHO 40k does not have a mature enough ruleset for DEDICATED (i.e. hardcore) competitive play.

I realise you guys have pretty much just been going off marine forces, BUT -

Under the Old (1998) Dark Eldar Codex my current force came to a potential total of 4602 points.

Now - same models my army is a potential total of 5594 points.

Practically, this means I used to have a 4000pt force and now have a 5000pt army. So for the Dark Eldar at least, thats a significant increase in points cost (and an unholy increase in monetry cost but hey)

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

sourclams wrote:

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

Well, you've clearly made up your mind about your tournament experience, and that's fine.

If you really hate pistachio nuts that aren't open, going from 5% to 1% isn't relevant to you. If you enjoy pistachios, than that's a marked improvement, even if other nuts have closure rates of under 0.1%.

I dunno about points cost from 1998 to today - but from mid-summer to late summer my Ogre Kingdoms army dropped over 400 points!

Eilif wrote:I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.

Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.

I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Ok. This followed by this...

Eilif wrote:I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

Makes no sense. I mean, really, do you like talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time?

Eilif wrote:Really, one only need look at the fact that armies are ridgedly defined by codicies with no real room for full-customization and a strict points focus to see the tournament/comp focus.

And tic-tac-toe does this to the extreme. What you think qualifies as 'tournament focus/comp focus' doesn't actually work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:Hi all.
I think most people can see slight improvment in the 40k rules when compared to previous ediditions.
But compared to other companies rule sets the improvments seem to be very slow and hap hazzard.

I can agree to this, somewhat. But people are making claims that this is driven by a 'tournament focus' on the part of GW.

If there was a 'tournament focus' from GW, none of this would be very slow and hap hazzard as it has been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:

sourclams wrote:

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

Well, you've clearly made up your mind about your tournament experience, and that's fine.

If you really hate pistachio nuts that aren't open, going from 5% to 1% isn't relevant to you. If you enjoy pistachios, than that's a marked improvement, even if other nuts have closure rates of under 0.1%.

First of all, saying the rules improved by a factor of 5 is really pushing things.

But to say the rules are being improved upon due to tournament focus?!?!?

Where does anyone get the gumption to draw that conclusion?

imweasel wrote:

Eilif wrote:I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.
Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.
I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Ok. This followed by this...

Eilif wrote:I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

Makes no sense. I mean, really, do you like talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time?

Sorry, I don't see any contridition in my opinions regarding the following.

-40k is not a great rulest. My opinion, but I think there are lots of better rulests regardless of one's gaming focus.
-40k is not the ideal ruleset for comp gaming. Quite simply, there are better tourney oriented games out there.
-40k has become much more tournament focused over the past 20 years. We seem to be most at-loggerheads here, as it seems quite obvious to me when reading through RT, and 2nd-5th editions of the game (all of which I own) that 40k has become more streamlined (relative to its previous editions) and tourney/comp centric. You don't agree, and that's ok, but I think the evidence is on my side for this one and see no reason to adopt your point of view.

If you played a game larger than 2,000 points in 2nd edition you were crazy as the game would last a good 4 hours. Less models but the rules were much more intricate. You charged in the Movement Phase, Overwatch would interupt your movement phase, there were modifiers to hit each individual model, most shots were done one at a time and marines could all split fire, weapons jamming... HtH was horrible - you got 1 attack + your weapon skill. Then add +1 for all 6's (critical hits) and -1 for all 1's (fumbles). Then you compared your score to your enemy's score. The difference was how many hits your enemy got on you. Yes 1 round of combat with a hero could decimate an entire tactical squad since marines had the same profile but a character could have WS7+. Don't forget parries, shields, fields, wargear cards, psykers, etc. Vehicles were death traps! Yeah I remember 2nd Edition as being a great skirmish game but thats really what it was - a skirmish game. Heck my 2nd Edition Dark Angel Army was 2 Devastator squads, 2 ravenwing speeders, Company Commander, Interragator Chaplain, Librarian, and a Terminator Squad. This was ~2000 points. IF I were going over, I would drop the Company Commander. Base points for a Space Marine were 30 points in 2nd edition before wargear/wargear cards/upgrades.

The change between 2nd and 3rd edition was massive as a new phase was introduced (assault) and two phases were removed (Close Combat and Psychic). The assault phase allowed you to move again into HTH and allowed other units to shoot the unit before you charged it! It took the game from a skirmish game to a larger scale war game.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

Edit: I'm not sure If I read the above quotes correctly but I'll change my posting later if I got this line of thought wrong - Adam

Maybe in your region it is but it is mostly 2000 points in my region. Why? You can get your special character that unlocks the special abilities that enhances the army as well as your "special" units for your army. They do not want to play at 1500 and give me all of the excuses on the reason why not. Most people in my region do not even have a 1500 point list (or lower). This is no fun for me as I have to play my 2000 point list. I then play competitive which means now I play in a professional manner because my opponent is playing competitive against me. I want to play fluff. I really do but the mindset of most of the players of today (in my region) are different than the mindset of players of 5 years ago.

I'm a firm believer in a 500 point game (combat patrol preferred) as it is the best way to help you prepare to play larger games (starting at 750, 1000, 1250 then 1500), in a competitive manner, or to have some fun with your friends. You get to know how to play your army in all aspects.

No more 4x4 tables in my region. Now only 4x6. More models means more sales which means larger gaming area, so the depreciation aspect of the models as the topic states, in some fashion or another, to me is correct.

The more models you put on the table, the more time it takes to play the game. That is what I have seen going from average 1500 point game (less than 5 years ago) to 2000 points games of today.

On tournament focus:

Maybe I shouldn't be drawing parallels between gaming genres, but since I think I have a great example, I'll chime in. This weekend is the first tournament to feature the latest Magic expansion, innistrad. yesterday all the cards were spoiled, so you can take a look at the set, see how things will work, and get an idea for the feel. Its also the day they posted the sets faq, which has an outline of the sets mechanics and themes, and how they work within the rules, and then they go card by card to show you how corner cases affect things. Any question you can think of about the magic rules can be answered with one read through of the comprehensive rule book. There are specific rules about how 2 particular cards interact, even if there is no way to play them together in the same tournament. THAT is tourny focussed.

my experience with 40k is that it is best played within a club, because together you can write your own faq/ interpretations of the rules and have those always be the answer. Whenever a new person has joined our group, there is a 50/50 chance they will quit because our interpretation of the rules are different than the one they have. If we built and playtested our armies according to our rules interpretation, and then found out someone that left our group is a TO, we'd have a ton of problems with our lists.

It's funny I was writing up some 1,000pts 2nd Ed armies last night - I think 2nd Ed was great (but took an age and had obvious flaws) and it depends on what you have in your army to how points have depreciated over time. For example the Chaos army I wrote consists of:

Kharn - 217
3 Terminators - 151 + 40-45 for weapons
8 Khorne Berzerkers with Chainswords/Chainaxes - 297
8 Bloodletters - 280

The equivalent for those today would be around 650-700 - if you maxed them out. As an aside WD and Codex Books have gone up 100% and models from between 50-150% since the mid-90's - and the average Trooper has gone down by 20-50% in points costs on average - and you need more of them because the missions pretty much require it. I hate the objective system in 5th Ed with a passion - 2nd Ed had better missions for me. Personally I really like small games - 400-1,000pts are great as it cuts down on cheese and you can play within a 4x4 space pretty easily.

-Loki- wrote:

RatBot wrote:

frenrik wrote:Comparing points from 2nd ed to 3rd+ is is unfair, since the whole point structure was changed.

It's true that the point structure changed, but the point is still valid; what was a 2000 point Space Marine in 2nd edition wasn't one in third and certainly isn't now; if it's still legal, it's going to require a few new units to get up to 2000 points.

There's still a problem with this - the game was balanced for 2000 points in 2nd edition, and along with points restructuring, 3rd edition was rebalanced for 1500 points. While units got cheaper, the ideal size to play the game at dropped by a quarter as well.

Yup, you took the words right out of my mouth. I seem to remember in a WD when 3rd edition was releasing that Chambers and Thorpe co-authored an aritcle about the focus on the game was to simplify army selection, combat and shooting rules, streamline it, and in the midst of this, it was then re-developed for the 1500 point scope.

I know that GW has ran several tournaments a the 2000+ points level, but they are only doing that at the behest of the gamers. I can remember, and i think two of the griffons on my wall come from 1500 point RTTs. I have also played in several 1750+ point games, but even then, this point value is reserved for larger games an "bigger" tournament play. It isnt normally wasnt used for local tournaments and that point size was considered a big game in 40k in 3rd edition, and still kind of is today.

Polonius wrote:You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.

You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

No one constructs a game with tournament play in mind that includes a rule "Hey if it's not covered, roll a die."

People can argue all day about the quality of the rules, but if Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the other games with highly competitive tournament scenes had a rule that said "Flip a coin if you disagree with your opponent", I guarantee they'd not be as big as they are.

So... we're still trying to argue against the strawman that 40k is actually a good tournament game?

Well... keep up the fight on that. I'm sure someday you'll find somebody to actually make that argument.

Brother Gyoken wrote:

Polonius wrote:You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.

You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

No one constructs a game with tournament play in mind that includes a rule "Hey if it's not covered, roll a die."

People can argue all day about the quality of the rules, but if Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh or any of the other games with highly competitive tournament scenes had a rule that said "Flip a coin if you disagree with your opponent", I guarantee they'd not be as big as they are.

Which, to my mind, is exactly why warhammer 40k should never have a pro tour. Games like magic the gathering, and its younger off shoot bastard cousins, survive on a competitive environment because of a few reasons:

Tournaments are readily accessible. if you want to play in a game of warhammer, its take set up time. if you want to play in a warhammer tournament, its a two, and sometimes three day event, but if you want to play in a magic tournament, you can go play in one every Friday night, and most of the time on Saturdays or Sundays, or even both sometimes.

The comprehensive rules for Magic The Gathering are well over 200+ pages if you printed it out and indexed it. That doesn't even include the DCI rules, which determine everything else OUTSIDE of the game, like cheating, penalties, expectations of players, so on and so forth. Those rules are written to be as functional as possible, and maintain a professional decorum when playing the game on a competitive level.

and my last point: no where in the rule book for Magic that the most important point of any game is to make sure your opponent and yourself have fun. No where does it say that players should police themselves as to what is "beardy" and what isn't. Magic is not intended for both players to enjoy the game, its intended for the winner to enjoy the game, and that leads me to the final point that is directly related to this. Magic wasn't primarily designed to be a tournament game, but it has transformed itself to a tournament format because of the strict and rigidity rules for every step of the turn (i mean, 30+ layers for state based effects, REALLY??!!) and it translates well to tournaments. for that reason, most players today don't play unless their playing in a tournament. its just not worth it.

Its also for that reason that i have to kind of laugh at the concept of playing "competitive" 40k. In my mind, its min/maxing, and depending on the fluff for the army, its just downright beardy. I don't really have a problem with people that play stuff like that, either i win or i don't, but unlike magic, if i want to keep playing warhammer, i don't have to define my warhammer experience with winning tournaments, as the game mostly caters to a casual crowd. In magic, you almost have to.

as a DCI player that held and still holds a 1922 player rating (prior to switch over) i am no stranger to competitive magic, and i like the game for a competitive game, because of the clarity and that everything has a clear answer.

Warhammer is a miniatures game. it relies on human input to determine how stuff works, something magic doesnt do. magic cards will never ask the player to check line of sight, and they will never ask them if the range of a bolter is measured from the tip of the bolter, or the edge of the base. Rules in magic are very focused, and while humans do choose when and how to play the cards, every card will work like a computer program, it will respond in a well defined manner with little to no human based changes to how they play.

warhammer is a social game. pure and simple. to have the most fun out of warhammer, it requires two players playing a game and having fun with it. play only competitive, and people will stop playing you unless you have strictly a competitive list. i dont have to have friends that i can set up games for 2+ hours on a saturday to play warhammer, i can always go play in a tournament.

in short, magic is a great tournament game because its less social, not more. if that makes any sense.

Polonius wrote:So... we're still trying to argue against the strawman that 40k is actually a good tournament game?

Well... keep up the fight on that. I'm sure someday you'll find somebody to actually make that argument.

I never said anyone said that. I think you just double-strawmanned.

You said 40K was designed with a tournament focus. No one designs a game with a tournament focus that tells you to flip a coin whenever the rules don't cover something.

Well, i was responding to the thread in general, not just to you.

As for my statements:

Polonius wrote:
Oh, 40k clearly isn't a great tournament game (it take too long, if nothing else).

But it's neither as bad as it was, nor as bad as people claim.

it's not like Magic doesn't have (or had, I'm out of the loop) extensive errata and FAQs, they just keep them official and timely updated.

Comp no longer exists as a pervasive element in all tournaments, and doesn't exist at all in many of them.

While I gladly agree that there are better competitive games, and games that are truly designed "from the ground up" for competitive play, it's a gross exaggeration to say that there is zero tournament focus in 5th edition 40k.

Polonius wrote:You are confusing the words "no" with "not enough to my liking."

Missions that are balanced amongst each other. Missions that shape list construction. Decently balanced army books.

All of those are aspects of the game that show at least some focus on competitive play.
You seem to be fixating on after support, rather than internal construction.

I think show that I'm advocating the position that there is at least some awareness, by GW, that there is tournament play, and changes have been made in the game to accomdate it.

Your argument seems to be that because there are some rules ambiguity (a relatively small amount in practice, in fact), that shows zero tournament focus. Which ignores the possibility that a game could be poorly designed for tournament play.

The Kansas City Royals are a terrible Major League team... they do nearly everything wrong a clubshould do in constructing a team. That doesn't mean they're still not trying to focus on winning, even if only a little bit.

I think part of it is confusion over focus. I shouldn't have used that word. I should have said that GW clearly has at least made an effort to improve competitive play, in both the core rules and codexes. Focus does imply a main area of concern, and I'd agree that competitive play is not GW's main concern. But there is at least some effort and improvement attempted and shown.

Sc077y wrote:The comprehensive rules for Magic The Gathering are well over 200+ pages if you printed it out and indexed it. That doesn't even include the DCI rules, which determine everything else OUTSIDE of the game, like cheating, penalties, expectations of players, so on and so forth. Those rules are written to be as functional as possible, and maintain a professional decorum when playing the game on a competitive level.

This is true, but another thing to remember is that Magic (or really any CCG that is more than 1 or 2 expansions out) has a LOT more moving parts than Warhammer. In Magic we're up to 12,000 cards. A lot of them are vanilla, but there are also a lot of cards that do really bizarre effects. The nice thing about having 200+ pages of rules (most of which only need to be referenced very rarely) is that you always know how something plays out. It's not a guess, and it's certainly not a die roll.

If I can draw a comparison, the 40K rules are atrocious for clarity. They are not indexed well, things that should cross reference don't (Fearless and No Retreat, for example), and it feels like that "roll a die" clause is in their to cover them for it. I feel like you could add 10-20 pages to the 40K rules and cover most scenarios that could happen.

and my last point: no where in the rule book for Magic that the most important point of any game is to make sure your opponent and yourself have fun. No where does it say that players should police themselves as to what is "beardy" and what isn't. Magic is not intended for both players to enjoy the game, its intended for the winner to enjoy the game, and that leads me to the final point that is directly related to this. Magic wasn't primarily designed to be a tournament game, but it has transformed itself to a tournament format because of the strict and rigidity rules for every step of the turn (i mean, 30+ layers for state based effects, REALLY??!!) and it translates well to tournaments. for that reason, most players today don't play unless their playing in a tournament. its just not worth it.

This is wholly subjective. I played Magic back in the mid-late 90s pretty seriously. I played in tournaments often, along with the kitchen table. I quit around 99 and haven't touched the game until last year. Then one of my friends got me into the EDH/Commander format and I've been having a blast. I do not play tournaments. I win as often as I lose. But I have a really fun time doing it, and that is why I play it. And I have a whole 15+ strong playgroup at this point that feels the same. Just because a game has clear, concise rules does not mean it's not meant to be fun.

Its also for that reason that i have to kind of laugh at the concept of playing "competitive" 40k. In my mind, its min/maxing, and depending on the fluff for the army, its just downright beardy. I don't really have a problem with people that play stuff like that, either i win or i don't, but unlike magic, if i want to keep playing warhammer, i don't have to define my warhammer experience with winning tournaments, as the game mostly caters to a casual crowd. In magic, you almost have to.

I think any gaming experience is definied by what you want out of it. I play a lot of different CCGs along with both Warhammer games. I play every single one of these games for fun. While I do play tournaments for Warhammer and 40K, and also Legend of the Five Rings CCG, I don't do it to win prizes above enjoying myself. I just enjoy playing. Once you stop, it just becomes a job, and I already have one of those.

Warhammer is a miniatures game. it relies on human input to determine how stuff works, something magic doesnt do. magic cards will never ask the player to check line of sight, and they will never ask them if the range of a bolter is measured from the tip of the bolter, or the edge of the base. Rules in magic are very focused, and while humans do choose when and how to play the cards, every card will work like a computer program, it will respond in a well defined manner with little to no human based changes to how they play.

Warhammer COULD clarify these rules. It does not, which is again why it wasn't designed with any type of tournament focus.

warhammer is a social game. pure and simple. to have the most fun out of warhammer, it requires two players playing a game and having fun with it. play only competitive, and people will stop playing you unless you have strictly a competitive list. i dont have to have friends that i can set up games for 2+ hours on a saturday to play warhammer, i can always go play in a tournament.

in short, magic is a great tournament game because its less social, not more. if that makes any sense.

I know this is a broken record from me, but any game is what you get out of it. Whether you play to win, or play to socialize with friends, that is all you. (Not you specifically, just anyone.)

So now with all that out of the way, let me ask some questions of the forum:

1. Would Warhams (I'm just going to call them this, I'm referring to Fantasy and/or 40K) somehow be less fun if the rules were clearer?
2. Wouldn't it be easier to play and get new players to play if units had some sort of templating in their description rather than whatever word salad the author tossed out that day?
3. Do you feel Warhams are generally balanced by army? If not, would it make the games less fun to make an effort to balance power levels?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:Well, i was responding to the thread in general, not just to you.

As for my statements:

I think show that I'm advocating the position that there is at least some awareness, by GW, that there is tournament play, and changes have been made in the game to accomdate it.

Could you present some examples? I am genuinely curious because to me, Warhams looks wholly designed to be played with beer and pretzels and fans have shoehorned it into competition.

Your argument seems to be that because there are some rules ambiguity (a relatively small amount in practice, in fact), that shows zero tournament focus. Which ignores the possibility that a game could be poorly designed for tournament play.

Eh, I think we disagree on the amount of ambiguity. But whatevs.

The Kansas City Royals are a terrible Major League team... they do nearly everything wrong a clubshould do in constructing a team. That doesn't mean they're still not trying to focus on winning, even if only a little bit.

This is a bad analogy. A better one would be if MLB as an organization instituted a rule that said if a coach disagree with an umpire's call, he could coinflip the opposing coach for the call. I think this would make baseball as a whole less competitive. Which is still not a great analogy because Baseball has pretty tight rules.

I think part of it is confusion over focus. I shouldn't have used that word. I should have said that GW clearly has at least made an effort to improve competitive play, in both the core rules and codexes. Focus does imply a main area of concern, and I'd agree that competitive play is not GW's main concern. But there is at least some effort and improvement attempted and shown.

I'm not seeing it.

I think that if you're not willing to either see the improved nature of 40k tournament play, or accept the statements of those that see it... you simply can't or won't see it.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but it seems that a big chunk of this thread has an idea for what a competetive game requires. Nobody has articulated that idea, which makes it hard to argue that 40k meets or doesn't meet the standard.

I've given many examples of ways the game has improved (better missions, better codices, more dynamic rules) and the response has been "but the rules still suck."

Which makes me laugh everytime I watch NFL football and see the inherent subjectivity of many penalty calls. Or, even better, the fact that nobody can succinctly define a legal completion.

Airtight rules are only necessary in non-umpired competition. It's very easy to start defining "competitive" so that it only includes track and field, chess, and weightlifitng.

Polonius wrote:I think that if you're not willing to either see the improved nature of 40k tournament play, or accept the statements of those that see it... you simply can't or won't see it.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but it seems that a big chunk of this thread has an idea for what a competetive game requires. Nobody has articulated that idea, which makes it hard to argue that 40k meets or doesn't meet the standard.

I've articulated it: it requires rules that can be interpreted without rolling a die. You may complain about sporting event calls by referees, but they are FOLLOWING A SET OF RULES.

I've given many examples of ways the game has improved (better missions, better codices, more dynamic rules) and the response has been "but the rules still suck."

All three examples you gave are subjective. I personally think (using 40K) that of the 3 BRB missions, two are alright, though the one with several objectives can be cheesed pretty easily by certain armies, and the one with 2 objectives (is is Seize Ground? I always mix the two up) is atrocious. I did not attend 'ard Boyz this year, but I heard people bitching about those scenarios sucking also this year.

Better codices is objective also. The fact that each one is followed by a several page FAQ seems to dispute that opinion.

At the end of the day, if they really wanted to make it "competitive", they'd simply write a tight BRB, and balance codices against each other. Maybe they will do it for 6th, but I have a feeling we'll end up with the same "roll a d6 lololol" nonsense, coupled with 2 codices per year with drastic power differences.

Which makes me laugh everytime I watch NFL football and see the inherent subjectivity of many penalty calls. Or, even better, the fact that nobody can succinctly define a legal completion.

Airtight rules are only necessary in non-umpired competition. It's very easy to start defining "competitive" so that it only includes track and field, chess, and weightlifitng.

"Competitive" equals clear rules. Clear rules. There, I am saying it as plainly as possible. Clear. Rules.

Polonius wrote:I think that if you're not willing to either see the improved nature of 40k tournament play, or accept the statements of those that see it... you simply can't or won't see it.

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but it seems that a big chunk of this thread has an idea for what a competetive game requires. Nobody has articulated that idea, which makes it hard to argue that 40k meets or doesn't meet the standard.

I've given many examples of ways the game has improved (better missions, better codices, more dynamic rules) and the response has been "but the rules still suck."

Agreed.
I think the main difference is some folks don't realize that "the improved nature of 40k tournament play" and " the rules still suck." or more gently stated "40k is not the ideal tournament ruleset" are not mutually exclusive statements.

Regardless of how far (or not-far) a person feels 40k has advanced toward tournament-ability, the fact is that there has been intentional improvement.

Brother Gyoken wrote:"Competitive" equals clear rules. Clear rules. There, I am saying it as plainly as possible. Clear. Rules.

Fair enough.

If that's your standard, than wouldn't clearer rules show in improvement towards becoming competitive?

I think it's a very tough argument to make that 40k's rules are not improved, both in gameplay and quality of writing, over the last three editions.

Polonius wrote:

Brother Gyoken wrote:"Competitive" equals clear rules. Clear rules. There, I am saying it as plainly as possible. Clear. Rules.

Fair enough.

If that's your standard, than wouldn't clearer rules show in improvement towards becoming competitive?

I think it's a very tough argument to make that 40k's rules are not improved, both in gameplay and quality of writing, over the last three editions.

Since it's impossible to prove a negative, perhaps you can provide how they have improved?

I find that, though I prefer 2nd Ed rules, the game of 40k from 2nd to 5th has been streamlined and made better. The points costs of units within the codices point to this. Easier rules to follow and less grey areas=better.

Changes from 3rd edition to 5th edition:
Standardized Unit Types (jump troop, infantry, etc.)
Access Points/Fire Points
Clear Wargear (4th edition terminators didn't have TDA)
Set cover for terrain
Rules for buildings and ruins
Clearer deployment rules (how to deep strike, etc)
Standardized special rules (hit & run, furious charge, etc.)

They've also been a lot prompter with FAQs and errata.

We like to play 2 vs 2, usually 1000 points per player for a 2000 vs 2000 pt battle. These games usually last about 6 hours. Because we bring lots of models and because we break for lunch and because we love to socialize during the game and we love to look up every other rule.

And I like it that way.

However, the number of models required for a game HAS risen and the play time has also been extended. Personally, I like a long game. But when schedules are busy, it is harder and harder to drop half a day on a game.

Playing a game of 2nd Ed this weekend. 1000pts in 2nd Ed=small game. But I have not played a game of 2nd Ed for at least 7 years!
I have a huge soft spot for it. The ability to throw grenades that actually do damage is not to be underestimated! However, the current edition IS far more streamlined and games don't last as long. This is my observation, but obviously, it isn't everyone's cup o tea.....

Apologies for the drunken rambling.....

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Playing a game of 2nd Ed this weekend. 1000pts in 2nd Ed=small game. But I have not played a game of 2nd Ed for at least 7 years!
I have a huge soft spot for it. The ability to throw grenades that actually do damage is not to be underestimated! However, the current edition IS far more streamlined and games don't last as long. This is my observation, but obviously, it isn't everyone's cup o tea.....

Apologies for the drunken rambling.....

I would love to play 2nd again.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Playing a game of 2nd Ed this weekend. 1000pts in 2nd Ed=small game. But I have not played a game of 2nd Ed for at least 7 years!
I have a huge soft spot for it. The ability to throw grenades that actually do damage is not to be underestimated! However, the current edition IS far more streamlined and games don't last as long. This is my observation, but obviously, it isn't everyone's cup o tea.....

Apologies for the drunken rambling.....

I would love to play 2nd again.

Even with it's flaws I think it was a better ruleset overall as well.
While 3rd ed did away with the clunky CC system and long term effects like smoke clouds, randomly moving plasma etc it did away with vehicles being useful (later editions have gone some way to fixing that), a lot of customisation through the editions, and for me the thing which balanced the game:
Standard points costs for weapons and armour save modifiers.

If a weapons which is str 8 with x amount of armour penetration power is worth for example 20 points, then it should be 20 points across the board. For specific armies (IG in 2nd ed) these costs may be cheaper to reflect the armies style and perks. Not vary per squad.

Save modifiers, well, guardians used to have a save of a 6 vs bolters as an example, no auto killing. Marines however went down to a 5+ save vs shuriken weaponry. This little mechanic made investing in more powerful weapons useful vs MEQ for example. Right now I see not much use in upgrading shuriken cannons to scatter lasers across the board in and eldar army for example as most units will still have their save.

W40K is at heart a competitive game, and whenever there is one be it chess, poker, MTG, other CCG's or miniature wargame systems there will always be people who want to have a tournament of it. I agree there are better systems for having them, and some designers making systems specifically for it (KoW, after all the designer hates people stopping and thinking a while on what to do on their turn ) but 40k makes do.

6th edition I'd love to see the designers attempt to reintroduce the simple basic maths of save modifiers, just in the name of balance.
But on topic yes the trend in general is more models on the table, faster rules, quickly put together at minimal cost for greater profit.

3rd edition ruined it for me. I can see issues with 2nd ed, like having a damage chart for each bike was mad. Ravenwing were impossible.

"So um this squad, well these two move normally but have to slow down this turn, this one can only go at half speed and this one have to test to swerve while this guy doesn't ahve a bike and has to run on foot"

Yeah, ok.

And the grenades were mad. A squad of 10 marines throws some frag grenades. "Right, someone get the box of templates and give me a beer, we're pulling and all-nighter."

But really, 3rd edition removed grenades and bikes gave extra movement and toughness, it was so far the other way. I preferred the individual damage tables for each vehicle. And they got rid of almost all the psychology rules, I liked the mad boyz.

Ah the nostalgia of this thread. I remember when Dakka had one of these a WEEK! And back then we didn't pull our punches either, no one was as nice as Polonious is at telling you you are wrong (we had Triggerbaby calling you a "fatty hamfart" instead).

I've come to the realization that the GW game that I think has the absolute worst rules is 40k. It also happens to be the GW game I play the most by far...

Is 40k a great Tournament game? No and I don't think anyone has said that. Is the game better for tournaments now than it was 10 years ago? Of course it is, and 5th edition did a lot to move the game to that state (even if some of the codexes move it backward).

Well, played a game of 2nd Ed today. 1000pts of Khorne vs Space Wolves
And do you what? We had an absolute blast! Yes it's more complex, and yes the CC is quite ridiculous, but dammit it was more cinematic than 5th and I found it a lot more engaging as well. Ok, we had Kharn The Betrayor and Ragnar Blackmane as special characters and they did take up a huge portion of the points totals, but to be fair they did not do much. Kharn scored a total of 15 hits on a singular Grey Hunter and turned him into a pile of flesh noodles and wiped out a unit of scouts single handed...and Ragnar? Well, he made a complete hash of taking on 3 Bloodletters and lost a wound in the process.
We could see obvious drawbacks with the rules set of 2nd Ed, assaulting into buildings is stupid and having too many armour mods is a little daft but it was an engaging and fun game. Yes it took 2 hours, but the first hour was us reading through the rulebook and wargear book trying to reacquaint ourselves with the slighty esoteric rules!
All in all, good fun and more depth than 5th could ever hope to have....

Did Kharn go nuts and start attacking his own people? He had some rule (maybe still does?) where if he killed a character he would immediately attack another, and if no enemy was near then he would attack an ally. Had him kill three berserkers once before he stopped.

I'd love to play a 10,000pt game (Each side having 10k)
But that would be like a weekend thing that happens every once in a while.

Typical games though I'd love to just have 20 figs and go nuts. I would totally get back into it and play weekly if I didn't have to have 50ish miniatures just to field an army.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Did Kharn go nuts and start attacking his own people? He had some rule (maybe still does?) where if he killed a character he would immediately attack another, and if no enemy was near then he would attack an ally. Had him kill three berserkers once before he stopped.

Quite correct Howard, he did have that rule, sadly my bro was a little too cowardly to send him into combat with a unit of Berzerkers! He minced the scouts though. He was truly frightening in 2nd Ed, a real combat monster capable of dishing out up to 16 wounds per combat with a -3 armour save..... it's also possible to for him to have 8 attacks at WS 7/8 on the charge with a strength of 5. You also cannot parry his attacks, so ferocious are they!

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Quite correct Howard, he did have that rule, sadly my bro was a little too cowardly to send him into combat with a unit of Berzerkers!

That's not in the true spirit of Khorne!!

2nd ed grenades I preferred tbh, nothing like the look on someones face when they had str 6 damage and -3 armour saves when a few krak grenades went into their marines .
Also was the last edition swooping hawks actually did well and were a worry to the opponent :(.
Streamling the vehicles was a great idea, 3rd just did it over the top, and CC should have kept the WHFB style it is now .
My famous kharn moment was some guy going on about how great he was, how many wounds and so on. Then putting 18 wounds into him from an assault cannon the same turn abbadon took 10 from a krak missile

Howard A Treesong wrote:

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Quite correct Howard, he did have that rule, sadly my bro was a little too cowardly to send him into combat with a unit of Berzerkers!

That's not in the true spirit of Khorne!!

I was not a coward - Tzeentch manipulated me into doing it! To be fair he did have to charge the nearest guys, the cowardly scouts at the top of the building - who annoyed me and if I kept him with the Khorne Berzerkers we wouldn't have had that moment when the lone Grey Hunter took a pop shot at him and ended up completely chewed before Kharn bust open the door and butchered all the scouts, then leapt off the top with his follow up move, not being wounded in the process. One more turn and he would have have done the same to Ragnar!

On topic I think the points decrease for troops was one way to go to blunt the character influence, personally I think choice restrictions or a large scale points increase for special characters could have done a similar job - but players wanted bigger battles and GW wanted more sales *shrugs* I think these characters should be death-dealing mincing machines - same as Terminators should be proper hardcore - it's not right when they probably die thousands of times a week is it?

Polonius wrote:Changes from 3rd edition to 5th edition:
Standardized Unit Types (jump troop, infantry, etc.)
Access Points/Fire Points
Clear Wargear (4th edition terminators didn't have TDA)
Set cover for terrain
Rules for buildings and ruins
Clearer deployment rules (how to deep strike, etc)
Standardized special rules (hit & run, furious charge, etc.)

They've also been a lot prompter with FAQs and errata.

This. To anyone who's actually played 3rd + 5th, or 4th + 5th, or all three, competitively, it's as obvious as the nose on your face. The rules have gotten much clearer each edition. They've added more standardized terminology and keywords (although still not to the level of a proper glossary), they've made lots of rules easier and quicker and less subjective to resolve (cover saves as an example, fall back moves as another). If clarity is the criteria for a game designed with competition in mind, than the rules have obviously gotten substantially more suitable for competitive play over each edition.

You forgot about the change from transports "being nice" to "being required" as a trend and also vehicles going from "nerfed beyond usefulness" to "useable again, only just"
However include 2nd edition and you will see why certain changes aren't exactly great imo.

Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Standard Battle Sister squads with 3rd edition codex ran 215 points. Now I believe most will be running dual meltaguns in a rhino for 170 points.
21% drop


Same weapon set ups

3rd Edition Codex

Palatine
5 Battle Sister Squads /w Veteran Superior and 2 Meltaguns in Rhinos /w SLs
3 Dominion Squads /w 2 Meltaguns in TL MM Immolators /w SLs
3 Excorcists /w SLs

1995 points

5th Edition White Dwarf Codex

1880 points

6% drop is pretty minor, but basic Battle Sisters were extremely cheap under their 3e rules.

Other things in the dex dropped a lot. 5 Retributors /w 4 Heavy Bolters and a VSS went from 129 to 85...

Pacific wrote:Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Given the trend for ever bigger vehicles and battles, I doubt that.

I rather suspect that the only reason vehicles didn't play a larger part in 40K's early editions was that GW was so limited in what they could produce. These days, the sky is more or less the limit, and they're taking full advantage of that. And as long as people enjoy seeing masses of tanks on the table, I think that trend will continue.

insaniak wrote:

Pacific wrote:Although next time round, when 6th edition comes out, transports will again be nerfed because presumably everyone has them in their collection now - replaced by, I forsee, more effective infantry

Given the trend for ever bigger vehicles and battles, I doubt that.

I rather suspect that the only reason vehicles didn't play a larger part in 40K's early editions was that GW was so limited in what they could produce. These days, the sky is more or less the limit, and they're taking full advantage of that. And as long as people enjoy seeing masses of tanks on the table, I think that trend will continue.

I think it also had to do with sales forecasts at the time too. People would build a space marine army heavy on marines and dreadnaughts because they were cheap to play and cheap to buy. Landraiders were always "expensive" when you cost based them against 10 marines and a drop pod back in the day. Because there was smaller demand for games to be HEAVY in vehicle model counts, I suspect that this is why they were so expensive. Then you watched the price of infantry models creep up to be close to Tank models because of basic supply and demand effects. Imperial Guard armies really changed the demand on tank battles and that spilled out into the rest of the armies. Even now though, you still see higher sales ((by model, not cost)) in infantry because they're core units of course; unless you're a Guard army that already has 6-8 vet squads on hand and a couple other infantry units its ALL about vehicles, which Russ or Basilisk varients to take build this time etc. If you're building a Marine army, once you have 3-4 rhinos, pred, landraider and a couple dreads all you might want is a couple razorbacks and then its on to speeders, bikes, jump infantry. Ork armies tend to be the same, other than a couple tanks its truks and more boys, nobs, etc. Tau is the same, more infantry/suits... really ANY army except Guard once you've sorted out your transports there's few "need" for lots of different tanks on hand.
bit
Perfect example Tau Skyray, who would run 3 of them? I'm not saying you can't, but WHY would you? But Skyray SELLS over the devilfish because players realize they get LOTS more bitz for only $3-4 more, not to mention all the bits to build the Hammerhead as well. 2 tanks for $3-4 more...