Wow. With a meta that changes daily, D weapons, broken tau formations, and 2++ with rerolls, I'm throwing in the towel on the game with RAW. Seriously, who can compete with maxxed out Tide/side spam? The games just stupid now when dealing with WAAC lists. Tau FireSpam, seer-star, screamer-star, and serpent spam are just sad. It's like Greyknights all over again.

I don't think I'll attend tourneys anymore that run the game as given by GW. Only narrative events for this guy. How do you guys feel about the current state of the game?

PS: please don't move this to house rules, this is about meta not proposed rules.

NZ is exploding with reactions like this. A lot of us are going as far as not buying GW products etc anymore (except books). Fantasy included. People are leaving GW in droves its crazy. Is it a growing trend in other countries i wonder? We simply just play the rule book and non allied codices for fun narratives. GW is getting pretty bad very quickly compared to the usual speed at which things used to change.

This is interesting. I was just thinking of joining a league at my FLGS. I've never had to face these kinds of lists, my friends and I just play casually, tinkering with our own ideas of cool/fun lists. Are the competitive lists really that bad? Should I even mess around with competitive players?

I think the game has gotten to the point where it's not fun in a competitive environment if played by RAW. For the tournament scene house rules are going to be necessary. That is unless you like playing against SideTide and Revenants with Pulsars.

It's possible GW even saw these imbalances. However since they don't care to make a tournament viable game the designers probably just think, "yes someone could bring all those riptides and broadsides, or a revenant with pulsars to every game, but who hates their friends that much?"

I think the US's Feast of Blades tournament is on the right track with their rules addendums.

Pfft, half the time I play 40K like it's 2004 again. I don't think I've ever played RAW.

Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

I think that there has long been a truth about 40k that some people realise earlier than others: 40k isn't a serious game. You take it seriously at your own eventual peril.

The only difference now is that GW is making moves that make this fact more obvious, so more people are realising it more quickly with all this new stuff.

Ironically enough, though, most of the problems we've been seeing over the last year and a half are because GW pandering to user demand. People demand fliers? Here, have fliers. People demand allies? Here, have allies. People want supplements and a faster development cycle? Here, choke on them. People demand more monstrous creatures, eldar "fixed" to be more like they were in 4th edition with invincible fliers, and for tau to be "fixed" by having the firepower they "deserve"? Done, and done. People want to play with their baneblades in regular 40k? Have I got a book for you.

As Goethe said, be careful what you wish for...

The irony, of course, is that the only way to fix people's idiotic game design fantasies that GW allowed is to rely on those same people's game design abilities to make house rules. You know there are already people fawning over themselves to field be'lakor and baneblades and revenant titans all around you, whether they're being obvious or less obvious about it...

What I do find interesting, though, is that there are threads like this. Normally if you didn't like 40k, you'd just drop out for the rest of the edition and come back in a few years. No probs. The fact that there is the desire to fix 40k implies two things - the first being that trust in GW to fix the problems it created is at a new kind of low, and the second is the idea that people are actually starting to take ownership of the game and the experience playing it themselves. At least in a way that seems new to me.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think that there has long been a truth about 40k that some people realise earlier than others: 40k isn't a serious game. You take it seriously at your own eventual peril.

The only difference now is that GW is making moves that make this fact more obvious, so more people are realising it more quickly with all this new stuff.

Ironically enough, though, most of the problems we've been seeing over the last year and a half are because GW pandering to user demand. People demand fliers? Here, have fliers. People demand allies? Here, have allies. People want supplements and a faster development cycle? Here, choke on them. People demand more monstrous creatures, eldar "fixed" to be more like they were in 4th edition with invincible fliers, and for tau to be "fixed" by having the firepower they "deserve"? Done, and done. People want to play with their baneblades in regular 40k? Have I got a book for you.

As Goethe said, be careful what you wish for...

The irony, of course, is that the only way to fix people's idiotic game design fantasies that GW allowed is to rely on those same people's game design abilities to make house rules. You know there are already people fawning over themselves to field be'lakor and baneblades and revenant titans all around you, whether they're being obvious or less obvious about it...

What I do find interesting, though, is that there are threads like this. Normally if you didn't like 40k, you'd just drop out for the rest of the edition and come back in a few years. No probs. The fact that there is the desire to fix 40k implies two things - the first being that trust in GW to fix the problems it created is at a new kind of low, and the second is the idea that people are actually starting to take ownership of the game and the experience playing it themselves. At least in a way that seems new to me.

I think its because the game has a little something for everyone army and tactics wise, its also easily obtained (price aside) and generally easy to get a game. Gameplay wise it has huge potential to be great from the get go. But it just seems GW is content doing the bare minimum and getting the maximum they can for it. We ask for things to happen and they either go way over board or way under, they just seem to miss the mark. I think its getting to the stage where people are questioning them all the time due to seemingly poor decisions. People will complain but i have only been around with wargames for 5 years and i have seen changes i dont and do like, but one is outweighing the other (changes for the worse). People want to play GW in any way they feel like, just like they can with other game systems. But the system is full of add ons and rules that make it so hard to have a almost 90% guaranteed fair game no matter play style or list.

People are just getting sick of waiting and trying to guess whats coming next. Change is fine and it has potential but people are just getting sick of it now and are either putting up with it, are blessed with great players to game with (like me, so can enjoy the good bits), on the verge of leaving or just given up. I have seen all these happen in just this year alone. My club has decreased in numbers because of it.

I know of a couple of guys that are basically just keeping the core tenants of the rules and are basically redesigning the rest of the rules and such. I like there enthusiasm, but it should never have come to this.
GW is constantly missing the mark as has been mentioned previously

Tourneys have had "house rules" for years.

Everthing from the old adeptacon faq's to the more recent "1999+1" points lists. (them houseruling no double FOC's).

We also had comp back in the day (which in a way, is coming back).

Finally, there have always been power lists - razor spam, GK halbred spam, leaf blower, etc. Now its xenos OP lists...and people are not happy.

if I may use a video game analogy, 40k is kind of like the Super Smash Brothers of wargames. Very popular, not really built for competitive play, and (by the standards of other games of its type) horribly balanced. Now, some people are going to insist on playing competitive. In order to facilitate that they either accept all the randomness and acknowledge that other factors besides player skill "at the tabletop/with the controller" is a major contributing factor (random chance in the case of Super Smash Brothers, List building for 40k. Let's be honest, it doesn't take much player skill to look up the cheesy list), or else they severely limit and restrict the core functions of the game in order to enforce fair and balanced play (feast of blades style house rules for 40k, banning items and 90% of stages for super smash brothers).

That's how I see it anyway.

P.S. Just want to add, that isn't in any way a criticism of 40k. Super Smash Brothers is probably the most played fighting game out there, and tons of drunk college age guys have had a lot of fun with it while not playing super competitively in a tournament likewise 40k can be a very fun game when played in the right mindset, or when played competitively if proper restrictions are enforced. Heck, the Fantasy people hav been awarding "army points handicaps" for years now. Show up with the old book, get a few hundred extra points. Modifying the core rules for tournament play is in no way a bad thing (unless you assert that they shouldn't need modified in the first place).

Personally in my own gaming group 6th edition was the first edition where we actually started using house rules for not only codexes but the main rulebook itself.

I actually liked going to tournaments in 5th edition but as of 6th, I have only been to 1 tournament and don't plan on going to anymore in the future unless there is something done to change the current state of things.

Around my local community, everything seems pretty much the same.

That is to say, everyone complaining loudly and incessantly that the newest codexes are broken, Games Workshop is greedy, Games Workshop is stupid, Games Workshop hates their customers, the game isn't playtested and never was, if our zits don't clear up then Bobby Thompson is never going to ask us to the prom, and the rest of the litany of 'the-sky-is-falling' rhetoric. Nothing different than what I've been hearing since I started playing back in 3rd.

Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I don't particularly feel the need for house rules. I'm excited by the new possibilities. If my opponents want to drop a lot of money on Escalation, and then spend 1/4 to 1/2 of their army points on superheavies, then more power to them. I think I can learn to win against lists like that, even if I take some losses at first.

If someone consistently fields armies I don't want to play against, I'll just stop playing against that person. In competitive games, I relish the opportunity to face new and exciting combinations.

That's just my opinion, of course.

Reading the threads in the Tournament Thread area here on Dakka, I don't think you'll have to worry about Escalation in many tournaments.

First, is this really an issue in your meta? Do the players actually play 3-4 Riptides, or 2-3 Heldrakes, or nothing but Screamerstars? Are you seeing such convoluted armies with a Primary detachment, allied detachment, and whatever detachment of the Inquisition that you don't know if it's legal or not?

Secondly, with Escalation and Strongpoint dropping, are all your players bringing out Titans and Baneblades in 1500-2000 point games?

Until that starts happening, it's all "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

If this starts happening on a regular basis, then sure. Start making up house rules. Or be more choosey about your opponents, and don't attend the tournaments with Escalation or Strongpoint.

Myself, I have too much invested in 40K to just walk away from it now. It's still a fun game when I don't care about winning or losing and playing opponents that don't care about winning or losing either.

Not trying to be harsh or an ass here. GW has made it very, very clear on numerous occasions that Warhammer 40K is our game (as in the player's game), feel free to play it the way we want.

Personally, I find all these new rules and such refreshing, though complicated and sometimes bothersome. It's hard to understand where the play balance is, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't any. And in that very lack of balance, is balance, if you know what I mean.

Play the game to have fun! If you are not having fun, find new opponents or find a new game. A game of little toy soldiers should not bother anyone so much that they want to quit the game- especially if they have a lot invested in the game!

 Tamwulf wrote:
First, is this really an issue in your meta? Do the players actually play 3-4 Riptides, or 2-3 Heldrakes, or nothing but Screamerstars? Are you seeing such convoluted armies with a Primary detachment, allied detachment, and whatever detachment of the Inquisition that you don't know if it's legal or not?

Secondly, with Escalation and Strongpoint dropping, are all your players bringing out Titans and Baneblades in 1500-2000 point games?

Until that starts happening, it's all "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

If this starts happening on a regular basis, then sure. Start making up house rules. Or be more choosey about your opponents, and don't attend the tournaments with Escalation or Strongpoint.

Myself, I have too much invested in 40K to just walk away from it now. It's still a fun game when I don't care about winning or losing and playing opponents that don't care about winning or losing either.

Not trying to be harsh or an ass here. GW has made it very, very clear on numerous occasions that Warhammer 40K is our game (as in the player's game), feel free to play it the way we want.

Personally, I find all these new rules and such refreshing, though complicated and sometimes bothersome. It's hard to understand where the play balance is, and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't any. And in that very lack of balance, is balance, if you know what I mean.

Play the game to have fun! If you are not having fun, find new opponents or find a new game. A game of little toy soldiers should not bother anyone so much that they want to quit the game- especially if they have a lot invested in the game!

Sigh.....

OK so my friend plays grey knights. He rolls his psycik powers for a squad. His list isnt optimized and so on. Guess what it turns out he can do? Shoot through terrain, ignore cover and reroll his misses on an almost impossible to fail roll. He didnt choose to do this by the way. It just happened to happen to one of his units. They slaughtered so much. and lost a couple of models. People are using your examples of OP as examples of what can happen, but truth is so much more can happen to so many units that seem fun to use. Its easy to have fun but like parents always tell their kids... being fair is being fun.

I havent met someone with more than 1 riptide or use allies. But examples like that arent the only ones.

"First, is this really an issue in your meta?". ummmm people dont kidnap kids in my town and send them to diamond mines until death, but it happens. Thats a very annoying statement to make.

The point is people shouldnt have to make house rules to balance it. Im not saying its GW fault, i think players who exploit the game are just as bad. But its still a problem and the easy solution is GW to fix it so the exploiters cant exploit as much. 2 birds with one stone.

 dementedwombat wrote:
if I may use a video game analogy, 40k is kind of like the Super Smash Brothers of wargames. Very popular, not really built for competitive play, and (by the standards of other games of its type) horribly balanced. Now, some people are going to insist on playing competitive. In order to facilitate that they either accept all the randomness and acknowledge that other factors besides player skill "at the tabletop/with the controller" is a major contributing factor (random chance in the case of Super Smash Brothers, List building for 40k. Let's be honest, it doesn't take much player skill to look up the cheesy list), or else they severely limit and restrict the core functions of the game in order to enforce fair and balanced play (feast of blades style house rules for 40k, banning items and 90% of stages for super smash brothers).

That's how I see it anyway.

P.S. Just want to add, that isn't in any way a criticism of 40k. Super Smash Brothers is probably the most played fighting game out there, and tons of drunk college age guys have had a lot of fun with it while not playing super competitively in a tournament likewise 40k can be a very fun game when played in the right mindset, or when played competitively if proper restrictions are enforced. Heck, the Fantasy people hav been awarding "army points handicaps" for years now. Show up with the old book, get a few hundred extra points. Modifying the core rules for tournament play is in no way a bad thing (unless you assert that they shouldn't need modified in the first place).

Except competitive SSB players DO eliminate all the "casual" fun stuff and all random factors, but people still talk about keeping in formations or Escalation because they're "official" and "legal".

NO TERRAIN
ELDAR ONLY
FINAL DESTINATION

 Swastakowey wrote:

Sigh.....

OK so my friend plays grey knights. He rolls his psycik powers for a squad. His list isnt optimized and so on. Guess what it turns out he can do? Shoot through terrain, ignore cover and reroll his misses on an almost impossible to fail roll. He didnt choose to do this by the way. It just happened to happen to one of his units. They slaughtered so much. and lost a couple of models. People are using your examples of OP as examples of what can happen, but truth is so much more can happen to so many units that seem fun to use. Its easy to have fun but like parents always tell their kids... being fair is being fun.

I havent met someone with more than 1 riptide or use allies. But examples like that arent the only ones.

"First, is this really an issue in your meta?". ummmm people dont kidnap kids in my town and send them to diamond mines until death, but it happens. Thats a very annoying statement to make.

The point is people shouldnt have to make house rules to balance it. Im not saying its GW fault, i think players who exploit the game are just as bad. But its still a problem and the easy solution is GW to fix it so the exploiters cant exploit as much. 2 birds with one stone.

1 - Im always amused (OK, not the right word) by people not communicating. In all games Im used to friendly agreement. "Hey, man, i get you can build great combo, but it isnt fun. Take something else or its useless, I can spend my time hitting head into wall instead". It usually works, in non-tournament games its about playing for fun. Tournament is dfferent case, but I guess you are not playing just tourneys.

2 - GW clearly states that people should make house rules. They give you big bunch of possibilities. When SA and escalation came out, its just another possibility. Nobody can force you to play against it and in tournament is about decision od TO. Which was a long time ago, nothing new.

Honestly, the "sky is falling" is beginning to be tedious. Its highly modifiable game. In purpose. So modify it and dont say that someone else should do it and you wont buy models (I mean it in common sense, not to you personally, mate and its pay to win, because before, GW gave you every model for free and it definetly wasnt pay to play

 dementedwombat wrote:
if I may use a video game analogy, 40k is kind of like the Super Smash Brothers of wargames. Very popular, not really built for competitive play, and (by the standards of other games of its type) horribly balanced. Now, some people are going to insist on playing competitive. In order to facilitate that they either accept all the randomness and acknowledge that other factors besides player skill "at the tabletop/with the controller" is a major contributing factor (random chance in the case of Super Smash Brothers, List building for 40k. Let's be honest, it doesn't take much player skill to look up the cheesy list), or else they severely limit and restrict the core functions of the game in order to enforce fair and balanced play (feast of blades style house rules for 40k, banning items and 90% of stages for super smash brothers).

That's how I see it anyway.

P.S. Just want to add, that isn't in any way a criticism of 40k. Super Smash Brothers is probably the most played fighting game out there, and tons of drunk college age guys have had a lot of fun with it while not playing super competitively in a tournament likewise 40k can be a very fun game when played in the right mindset, or when played competitively if proper restrictions are enforced. Heck, the Fantasy people hav been awarding "army points handicaps" for years now. Show up with the old book, get a few hundred extra points. Modifying the core rules for tournament play is in no way a bad thing (unless you assert that they shouldn't need modified in the first place).

QUOTED! FOR! TRUTH!
So glad to be vindicated on the thing I've been saying since I entered the game. "Warhammer 40,000 is not a suitable platform to host competitive play in any viable fashion as it stands or has stood for some time" It is however a rather intriguing sandbox to prepare and play a 3 hour game with awesome models and tables with a little bit of work beforehand preparing the rules for it.

A Space Marine yells at a Tau Shas'ui on the battlefield, his shouts muffled by the titantillation of war.
Next to him a Shas'la hits his helm-com and relays to the Shas'ui "Sir, that marine is trying to speak to you!". He is ignored.
The marine furiously charges the Tau foxhole where the Shas'ui and 'la are posted, "Face me in single combat! Xenos Scum!"
The Shas'la, now frantic, grabs his leaders shoulder and points to the Power Armor thundering towards them.
Seemingly annoyed, the Shas'ui turns his rifle and draws bead on the noble threat that comes to face him, still 100 ft off.
Slowly, steadily, the trigger is pulled. One pocket of super heated plasma bursts from the rifles end, on way to its destiny.
Unerring the burst hits the imminent sergeant in his left eye, his helmet not present, it extinguished the life now only fifty feet distant.
Stunned, the Shas'la stares at his unflappable leader. The com clicks in on his helm.
"We don't accept or decline challenges, we meet them. Keep firing Shas'la."

 UlrikDecado wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

Sigh.....

OK so my friend plays grey knights. He rolls his psycik powers for a squad. His list isnt optimized and so on. Guess what it turns out he can do? Shoot through terrain, ignore cover and reroll his misses on an almost impossible to fail roll. He didnt choose to do this by the way. It just happened to happen to one of his units. They slaughtered so much. and lost a couple of models. People are using your examples of OP as examples of what can happen, but truth is so much more can happen to so many units that seem fun to use. Its easy to have fun but like parents always tell their kids... being fair is being fun.

I havent met someone with more than 1 riptide or use allies. But examples like that arent the only ones.

"First, is this really an issue in your meta?". ummmm people dont kidnap kids in my town and send them to diamond mines until death, but it happens. Thats a very annoying statement to make.

The point is people shouldnt have to make house rules to balance it. Im not saying its GW fault, i think players who exploit the game are just as bad. But its still a problem and the easy solution is GW to fix it so the exploiters cant exploit as much. 2 birds with one stone.

1 - Im always amused (OK, not the right word) by people not communicating. In all games Im used to friendly agreement. "Hey, man, i get you can build great combo, but it isnt fun. Take something else or its useless, I can spend my time hitting head into wall instead". It usually works, in non-tournament games its about playing for fun. Tournament is dfferent case, but I guess you are not playing just tourneys.

2 - GW clearly states that people should make house rules. They give you big bunch of possibilities. When SA and escalation came out, its just another possibility. Nobody can force you to play against it and in tournament is about decision od TO. Which was a long time ago, nothing new.

Honestly, the "sky is falling" is beginning to be tedious. Its highly modifiable game. In purpose. So modify it and dont say that someone else should do it and you wont buy models (I mean it in common sense, not to you personally, mate and its pay to win, because before, GW gave you every model for free and it definetly wasnt pay to play

Yes but its also common sense to make a fair game. Its also reasonable to expect to play a game with a stranger without a discussion. And im mot complaining about escalation as we won't be playing it. But most people would agree they shouldn't make someone re roll powers because its too powerful. As s group of laid back friends who don't exploit the game we still come across some ludicrous stuff and its getting annoying.

A site like dakka could get the momentum behind it to push a "patch" to substantially improve the balance of 40k. The site owners/mods organize a group of people to push out a regularly updated patch to fix all GWs obvious blunders.

- Vendetta: +20 ppm, no transport capacity
- Night Scythe: +20ppm
- Lychegarde -10ppm
- Ogryn: -10ppm
- etc.

It'll be homebrew rules, but it'll have a very large organisation and playerbase supporting it so it will be quasi-officlal. Dakka does it, uses it substantial playerbase to playtest it etc. and voila, much more balanced 40k. You'll have a bad game system with semi-balanced rules, but it won't be a bad game system with absolutely horribly balanced rules. A substantial improvement imo.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

Have to agree with Peregrine about dropping sales volume and greatly increased competition. GWs much faster release rate lately is good for them, and should be for us but as he also says, quality especially for the non-dexes is definitely subpar. You could easily argue that the dexes are being intentionally crippled to push fixes int he form of the smaller supplements that gets them more sales. imo, it's just leaving openings for new big players in the market.

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:


Except competitive SSB players DO eliminate all the "casual" fun stuff and all random factors, but people still talk about keeping in formations or Escalation because they're "official" and "legal".

Every. Single. Time.

Someone always has to have this dig. No one anywhere is saying you HAVE to play against anyone. That doesn't change the fact that escalation or formations are a legal part of the game. You don't have to play against Gray Knights, or someone who plays a deathstar, or against a spam list. That dose not make them any less legal or official. It is just the same. The only reason people keep bringing it up is that people keep pushing this thing of trying to stop other people playing and making arguments about why they don't have to play against them to push some imagined moral high ground for refusing from. Play against who you want, how you want, as long as you both agree.

There has always been house rules, just like any game. SSB is having to be house ruled to use it competitively. Most sports and games end up with house rules at some level or other. As long as everyone is ok and aware of them then you are good. If not you have a choice between agreeing to play by the base rules or not playing.

Tournaments house rule already, and give advance notice as to what will be allowed. If you can't prepare for a possible threat then maybe don't enter this entirely voluntary super serious tournament.

Casual games are all about house rules and have been since the game's inception. You're encouraged by the rulebook to do whatever you want with the rules. You are entirely within your right to never play anything but the same six missions in the BRB and no allies or fliers or specific clumps of models or orks painted blue. You're also allowed to complain about how boring the game is.

This thread could have been on dozens of forums over the last 15 years. The sky is falling! All my friends have stopped buying 40k! Gw are doomed!

Dooooooooooomed!

But, no. 40k is a casual ruleset, if you don't like super heavies or riptides, don't play them.

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that any 'breaking' of the game is intended or encouraged by GW, and nor is it their fault. It is simply a case of how people approach the game.

Every gamer I know plays very casually, using units because they like the look/fluff of them rather than sheer optimisation. And in all the time I've played (started early 5th) we have never really encountered an issue with balance at all. The game does not get broken because none of us try to break it. We have players that win a lot, but that's mostly down to player skill rather than any attempt at power-list-building or utilising cheese combos.

Looking at the wider meta, there seems to be a very interesting and slightly odd paradox. You have people complaining that Riptides/fliers/screamerstars are OP and are ruining the game, and then whenever anyone asks for advice for an army, you are almost certain to find 'you should go and buy -insert OP unit here- as it's the best' within the first few replies. I do wonder how people expect the game to change to a more balanced meta when everyone is being recommended the powerlist combos. I have nothing at all against anyone who enjoys playing competitively, but when you have people that simultaneously demand balance, mock the poor implementation of fliers/MCs/gunlines ect and then exploit these balance issues to the max, something doesn't add up. If every new player is told to but Screamerstars/Dettaspam/Triptides then of course the meta is going to be skewed towards them.

It seems obvious to me that causal games are the games GW really intend to be played. Their official batreps usually include custom scenarios and house rules, their rulebooks positively encourage you to change the rules however you want to make the game more cool/cinematic/watever you want to call it. They've stopped running tournaments for a reason, and it seems that that reasons is the fact that they aren't really bothered with catering to the competitive crowd.

Complaining about balance in a GW game that seems designed for casual games (where balances is notably less of an issue) is like buying a Formula One car and then complaining about its lack of off-road capabilities. If you're looking for a balanced and tourney-centric game, there are plenty out there, but it appears GW games are not what you're after. Rather than rewriting a game that clearly isn't meant to tournaments, you're better off going for a different game.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:


Except competitive SSB players DO eliminate all the "casual" fun stuff and all random factors, but people still talk about keeping in formations or Escalation because they're "official" and "legal".

Every. Single. Time.

Someone always has to have this dig. No one anywhere is saying you HAVE to play against anyone. That doesn't change the fact that escalation or formations are a legal part of the game. You don't have to play against Gray Knights, or someone who plays a deathstar, or against a spam list. That dose not make them any less legal or official. It is just the same. The only reason people keep bringing it up is that people keep pushing this thing of trying to stop other people playing and making arguments about why they don't have to play against them to push some imagined moral high ground for refusing from. Play against who you want, how you want, as long as you both agree.

There has always been house rules, just like any game. SSB is having to be house ruled to use it competitively. Most sports and games end up with house rules at some level or other. As long as everyone is ok and aware of them then you are good. If not you have a choice between agreeing to play by the base rules or not playing.

I don't think you understand the way tournaments work.

We've had house rules for a long time at my place (our usual location for 40k games).

We literally drink beer, eat pretzels, and play 40k. With that being said we have votes to pass rules and make the game more enjoyable.

NO SPAM! We have a Tau player, a Daemons (me), a Chaos, and a Salamanders player. No more than 1 riptide, no more than 1 Helldrake, and I have agreed never to run the stupid screamer-star list.

Its just more fun this way, plus we all try to run fun fluffy lists! We can all take a loss, the worst thing that happens when you lose is you to have to chug your beer... Oh well


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and no expansions, supplements, or "formations". You bring 2 books, your BrB and your Codex. Period.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 UlrikDecado wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

Sigh.....

OK so my friend plays grey knights. He rolls his psycik powers for a squad. His list isnt optimized and so on. Guess what it turns out he can do? Shoot through terrain, ignore cover and reroll his misses on an almost impossible to fail roll. He didnt choose to do this by the way. It just happened to happen to one of his units. They slaughtered so much. and lost a couple of models. People are using your examples of OP as examples of what can happen, but truth is so much more can happen to so many units that seem fun to use. Its easy to have fun but like parents always tell their kids... being fair is being fun.

I havent met someone with more than 1 riptide or use allies. But examples like that arent the only ones.

"First, is this really an issue in your meta?". ummmm people dont kidnap kids in my town and send them to diamond mines until death, but it happens. Thats a very annoying statement to make.

The point is people shouldnt have to make house rules to balance it. Im not saying its GW fault, i think players who exploit the game are just as bad. But its still a problem and the easy solution is GW to fix it so the exploiters cant exploit as much. 2 birds with one stone.

1 - Im always amused (OK, not the right word) by people not communicating. In all games Im used to friendly agreement. "Hey, man, i get you can build great combo, but it isnt fun. Take something else or its useless, I can spend my time hitting head into wall instead". It usually works, in non-tournament games its about playing for fun. Tournament is dfferent case, but I guess you are not playing just tourneys.

2 - GW clearly states that people should make house rules. They give you big bunch of possibilities. When SA and escalation came out, its just another possibility. Nobody can force you to play against it and in tournament is about decision od TO. Which was a long time ago, nothing new.

Honestly, the "sky is falling" is beginning to be tedious. Its highly modifiable game. In purpose. So modify it and dont say that someone else should do it and you wont buy models (I mean it in common sense, not to you personally, mate and its pay to win, because before, GW gave you every model for free and it definetly wasnt pay to play

Yes but its also common sense to make a fair game. Its also reasonable to expect to play a game with a stranger without a discussion. And im mot complaining about escalation as we won't be playing it. But most people would agree they shouldn't make someone re roll powers because its too powerful. As s group of laid back friends who don't exploit the game we still come across some ludicrous stuff and its getting annoying.

40K armies are rarely "fair". May I point out to you the Grey Knights and their Warp Quake shenanigans of last edition, which could prevent an entire army from deploying onto the table, giving the GK an automatic, Turn-1-hasn't-even-started win?

Playing a 2K point game and dude drops a Baneblade? There's half his points. Field twenty dudes in squads of 5 packing Melta. Eat his lunch.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Their earnings report would suggest otherwise, and suggests a company that is quite aware of its industry position, the marketplace challenges it faces, and has plans that may prove viable in place to ensure continued growth in the future. Given that this is a company centered on a product that relies wholly on discretionary spending, during a financial crisis that rivals the Great Depression, that they make *any* money is kind of amazing.

 namiel wrote:
Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

I'm just curious who is going to buy it? In this economy what company is showing such a keen interest in such a niche target market?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

lordwellingstone wrote:
I think the US's Feast of Blades tournament is on the right track with their rules addendums.

QFT

 namiel wrote:
Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

strange statement, if you buy escalation units they cost less per point then the other models gw produces.

Ie I can buy a 900 point escalation unit for 240 USD or I can buy 900 points of models for about 400 USD...

 Swastakowey wrote:
NZ is exploding with reactions like this. A lot of us are going as far as not buying GW products etc anymore (except books). Fantasy included. People are leaving GW in droves its crazy. Is it a growing trend in other countries i wonder? We simply just play the rule book and non allied codices for fun narratives. GW is getting pretty bad very quickly compared to the usual speed at which things used to change.

In my little nook of the US, almost all the youth are either playing Warmachine or Star Wars whenever I go to the local hobby shop. I think that has more to do with price than anything, as all the 40k players seem to love that they can use their big toys in a regular game. But alot of the veteran gamers seem to think Warmachine is just a better game. I don't know as I've never played it.

Well, I guess it's good to see that I'm not the only one strongly dissatisfied with their purchases. If I had any hope at all of selling my CSMs I would just do that and pick up another game, but man... it's like owning a time share or something! I feel like I wasted my money and now it's all tied up on my shelf. If I could get rid of it for even a fraction of the cost I'd be laughing, because lets face it, for that small fraction you can get into pretty much ANY other wargame.

But I can't get rid of my GW crap because no-one wants to play it except for the die-hards who already have their Riptide spam lists, so here I am in the same boat as the OP. Wishing I was playing something else. Yet with a boatload of minis and the books to match, it's hard to justify spending on another system. Might as well put in the effort to fix it myself.

If anyone would care to get together and round table this stuff, I am down. I'll play kill team with my mates but until I can fix these broken rules myself, then that's all the action my minis will see.

Seriously, anyone interested in helping make GW more balanced and playable. Sign up here. We'll come up with some rules to make our models have value again!

edit: not a thinly veiled advertisement!

 Lobukia wrote:
Wow. With a meta that changes daily, D weapons, broken tau formations, and 2++ with rerolls, I'm throwing in the towel on the game with RAW. Seriously, who can compete with maxxed out Tide/side spam? The games just stupid now when dealing with WAAC lists. Tau FireSpam, seer-star, screamer-star, and serpent spam are just sad. It's like Greyknights all over again.

I don't think I'll attend tourneys anymore that run the game as given by GW. Only narrative events for this guy. How do you guys feel about the current state of the game?

PS: please don't move this to house rules, this is about meta not proposed rules.

All you need to do is find like minded players and play with them. That is the key. If you are a fluff player in a netlist meta you will forever be unhappy playing there because it just isn't the way you want to the game to be, and vice versa. I am happy to have a group that is made up of players with a similar approach to the game as I have, so we have no 4 riptide lists, screamerstar or any other stupid spam lists. Makes things much more enjoyable because we are all on the same page. Of course once you have such a group you need to make sure when you add new bodies to the group that they fit the dynamic as well.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
All you need to do is find like minded players and play with them. That is the key. If you are a fluff player in a netlist meta you will forever be unhappy playing there because it just isn't the way you want to the game to be, and vice versa. I am happy to have a group that is made up of players with a similar approach to the game as I have, so we have no 4 riptide lists, screamerstar or any other stupid spam lists. Makes things much more enjoyable because we are all on the same page. Of course once you have such a group you need to make sure when you add new bodies to the group that they fit the dynamic as well.

Preach!

Psienesis wrote:http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

 Ailaros wrote:

Psienesis wrote:http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

The uptick in their turnover ratio marries up well with that then. Basically GW is selling off a little over the cost of their inventory each quarter.

 Psienesis wrote:
Their earnings report would suggest otherwise, and suggests a company that is quite aware of its industry position, the marketplace challenges it faces, and has plans that may prove viable in place to ensure continued growth in the future. Given that this is a company centered on a product that relies wholly on discretionary spending, during a financial crisis that rivals the Great Depression, that they make *any* money is kind of amazing.

That's because their earnings report is propaganda aimed at reassuring the investors that GW stock is still a good thing to own and buy. A self-published earnings report is always going to present things as favorably as possible and ignore any potential problems, unless those problems are so bad that even a casual observer can see them. In this case that means emphasizing GW's total revenue and profit numbers and ignoring the fact that their profit is the result of unsustainable cost cutting and using price increases to compensate for declining sales volume. GW can brag all they want about getting a bit more profit (after inflation), but making lots of money off a small number of purchases is a suicidal plan in an industry where there's such a strong social component and the most popular game tends to get even more popular while games that don't have a critical mass of players die no matter how good the profit margin is on each box.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

Do you understand the difference between profit and revenue? Do you understand the difference between revenue and sales volume?

If GW increases profits by cutting things like development time for each new release (giving us zero-content "books" with no playtesting like Escalation) then they make more profit right now, but at the cost of damaging the brand image by associating it with low-quality products. If GW increases profits by cutting their stores to a single employee each they make more profit right now, but at the cost of making their retail stores even less appealing and turning away potential customers who happen to arrive when the one employee isn't there. And of course things like this are unsustainable. Once you've dumped all playtesting to save money you can't cut even more playtesting next year to keep profits increasing at the same rate, and even if you somehow could quality would continue to drop.

Meanwhile if you look at inflation-adjusted revenue the increase isn't very much, especially in a year where GW raised prices. Not only does this tell us that GW is making most of their gains in profit by being more efficient at extracting profit from their existing customers rather than through legitimate growth, it tells us that GW is making more profit per box but selling fewer boxes. This is bad because market share is vital in a social hobby like wargames. Lose too much market share and you get the death spiral where people stop buying because all their friends are playing something else, which causes even more people to stop buying. Eventually GW is left with kids buying boxes of space marines in official GW™ Hobby™ Centers™, and that isn't going to keep the company alive and profitable.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

It never ceases to amaze me that people can look at GW's ongoing trainwreck and somehow say that it's a successful company.

That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

Could argue it was successful. I work in a power boat retailer that sells luxery boats. The place has been here since before the second world war. BUT back then they sold huge boats at huge margin with less staff. Now days even though, when i do the money side of things there is huge dollars being moved, the margin just isnt there like it used to be. Less money is being made and less boats are moving. We live in a place where fishing is huge and so many people are doing it, but no one wants to pay 30 grand for a 5 metre boat with no extras, so they make do with what they have got. Unlike models though boats havent got much competition so this buisness will stay a lot longer.

In my area its a similar thing. People continue to make do with the GW models they have despite really enjoying the hobby. Unlike the boats though a lot of those upset customers move onto alternatives that are readily available.

If we increased our margin then other boating centres will get our customers, it may work for a little while (we have the biggest range of boats in NZ) but the benefits will quickly dissapear and our competition will flourish. I see it happening to GW, i cant know for sure, but from my perspective GW has greatly helped their competitors get bigger in the buisness.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

We're talking about the current state of GW, not its past success.

I don´t know... most of GW´s actions seem insane, yet they have been doomed to fail for decades, and they are still here.

I think the setting is ace, and it keeps them alive regardless of what they do. In good hands, this universe could go beyond Star Wars, Star Trek, The Avengers or Lord of the Rings.The way they operate, they manage to survive.

On topic: YES: house rules are fun. Try it. Write something new. Be creative. The craziest GW turns the game, the better for me, because it is easier to create new stuff.

Except the only way it could would likely incur the wrath of a thousand lawsuits

I won't bother, I'll just skip playing against the compositions that are impossible to beat. It's no diffrent from 3rd/4th edition. Remember Alaitoc? Yeah have fun playing without an army.

Or, whatever, sure, I'll play your loldar with a Stompa in my army but that's about it, and if you bring a Revenant we're back to square one - I autolose.

Against a Riptide spam yeah still no, they have a 2+ save.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

I don't know if it's really the latter. Yes they dropped a number of metal models, but how often were they actually making those anyways? They have increased their plastic model count by a large amount in the last year and likely are having issues meeting demand. It's arguable that they may finally be at the point where expanding production isn't a money sink like it was in the past (there are a lot of factors in this, and I don't want to go down that road but basically there are limits to how big a company can get, and they likely went too big and scaled production back to fix the issue. This may change due to product demand as there is a fixed limit to the maximum number of models they can produce at any one time, and if they are exceeding that in terms of order volume production will need to increase to compensate).

Without seeing their exact cost of goods from year to year, not to mention production volume numbers it's hard to pin down these things to the correct factors when you don't have all the pieces.

For those who are wondering (and anyone who isn't can just skip this), the turnover ratio is a ratio to measure how much a company is selling based on it's cost. It takes the average inventory (based on it's cost, and yes, someone gets paid to figure that out, just like they get paid to set prices. This is done by factoring all the costs built into the product in its development, plus materials and labor, then divided by a number of units they want to sell at a certain amount (likely the 60% that is used to sell to their stores and FLGS) to determine how much they need to charge for it to be paid off. That or that gives them the upper price, then they work backwards for the discounted price. Either way the goal of their pricing is to play off the developmental costs by the time a certain number of units are sold so that they can then invest that money into other things, such as new models for other armies.) , which is the calculation of how much the have in inventory (in money, so GBP for this) plus the inventory (again, represented by a monetary amount) and divided in half. This number is then divided by the Cost of Goods Sold, or the cost of the total accumulated product sold in the last year based on how much it cost Games Workshop. The number that comes out shows roughly how many times they've sold their inventory. You can break this down into smaller chunks such as quarters, months, weeks or even days, but generally it's done based on the fiscal year. Because it's amounts are based on how much it cost the company, not how much they sold it for, it's a good metric to determine how much is actually being sold. 4.1 was based off of GW's fiscal year that ended in May '13, before the Marines came out, meaning that we haven't even seen the ripples they've caused yet.

Actually, I've just looked, GW's Cost of Goods has gone up to 36.2m GBP from 34.8 in '12. For those who don't know, that means in the fiscal year that ended in the end of May '13, they sold 36.2M (or 36,200,000 GBP) of product (that's what it cost them) and netted a gross on it of 98.4M (that's the revenue minus the cost of the product they sold). Their final net, as you can see, was 16.3M, which is up from 14.3 in '12.

With numbers like that it's hard to say they aren't selling more stuff, but I will freely admit that there is room there for them to be making less but it costing them more (which seems doubtful with all the cost cutting they've been doing).

 Peregrine wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Meanwhile, sales seem to be doing okay. Games Workshop doesn't look like it's in trouble, so I'll still have a game for the foreseeable future, and my local game store seems to be doing okay, so I'll still have a place to play it. Honestly, everything's coming up roses.

I disagree. GW is in a lot of trouble right now. Despite price increases and aggressive cost-cutting GW's revenue and profits are barely above inflation, which pretty strongly suggests that sales volume is dropping. And in a market where other games are growing this means that GW's market share is also dropping. Meanwhile the quality of new releases like Escalation (especially the content vs. price ratio) isn't looking very impressive, which suggest a rush to get things done and sold as fast as possible without spending money on playtesting/better fluff and art/etc. The overall picture is a company that will probably remain profitable by milking the cash cow a while longer, but that is completely unable to do anything to grow or innovate and has to settle for trying to extract the maximum profit from what they already have.

In addition to what you have already stated, I also believe that 3D printers pose a greater threat to GW then they let on. I recall seeing a quote in past few months from someone inside GW claiming (Paraphrasing) :

"If we thought 3D printers were the future we would have invested in it."

I've seen the quality of stuff coming off 3D printers & while it is still lacking, I can easily see it causing huge issues for GW in 5-10 years time. I'm concerned that the massive increase in miniatures, updates & volume that GW has produced lately is a means of getting as much money out of the industry as possible before the miniature bubble bursts.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Their earnings report would suggest otherwise, and suggests a company that is quite aware of its industry position, the marketplace challenges it faces, and has plans that may prove viable in place to ensure continued growth in the future. Given that this is a company centered on a product that relies wholly on discretionary spending, during a financial crisis that rivals the Great Depression, that they make *any* money is kind of amazing.

That's because their earnings report is propaganda aimed at reassuring the investors that GW stock is still a good thing to own and buy. A self-published earnings report is always going to present things as favorably as possible and ignore any potential problems, unless those problems are so bad that even a casual observer can see them. In this case that means emphasizing GW's total revenue and profit numbers and ignoring the fact that their profit is the result of unsustainable cost cutting and using price increases to compensate for declining sales volume. GW can brag all they want about getting a bit more profit (after inflation), but making lots of money off a small number of purchases is a suicidal plan in an industry where there's such a strong social component and the most popular game tends to get even more popular while games that don't have a critical mass of players die no matter how good the profit margin is on each box.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
[Actually their sales volume seems to have gone up based on their turn over percentage (was ~3.8 is now 4.1). That or they're making less stuff to sell which has other issues.

It's more likely the latter, given what we've seen with production shortages for their new releases. The sign of declining sales volume is that prices have gone up while revenue hasn't. If you increase prices by 20% and increase revenue by 10% that means you've sold fewer items.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, their profits increased 33% even while the amount of money they made from royalties dropped by nearly 75%. And an increase in revenue. That means GW is experiencing sales growth, not decline.

Do you understand the difference between profit and revenue? Do you understand the difference between revenue and sales volume?

If GW increases profits by cutting things like development time for each new release (giving us zero-content "books" with no playtesting like Escalation) then they make more profit right now, but at the cost of damaging the brand image by associating it with low-quality products. If GW increases profits by cutting their stores to a single employee each they make more profit right now, but at the cost of making their retail stores even less appealing and turning away potential customers who happen to arrive when the one employee isn't there. And of course things like this are unsustainable. Once you've dumped all playtesting to save money you can't cut even more playtesting next year to keep profits increasing at the same rate, and even if you somehow could quality would continue to drop.

Meanwhile if you look at inflation-adjusted revenue the increase isn't very much, especially in a year where GW raised prices. Not only does this tell us that GW is making most of their gains in profit by being more efficient at extracting profit from their existing customers rather than through legitimate growth, it tells us that GW is making more profit per box but selling fewer boxes. This is bad because market share is vital in a social hobby like wargames. Lose too much market share and you get the death spiral where people stop buying because all their friends are playing something else, which causes even more people to stop buying. Eventually GW is left with kids buying boxes of space marines in official GW™ Hobby™ Centers™, and that isn't going to keep the company alive and profitable.

It never ceases to amaze me just how badly people project their negative opinions on 40k's balance or on the prices of the miniatures onto GW itself, and thus assume that they're doing poorly. Then again, facts hurt feelings, so...

It never ceases to amaze me that people can look at GW's ongoing trainwreck and somehow say that it's a successful company.

it also never ceases to amaze me that things like legal obligations and corporate governance are just blatently ignored by members looking to push their point

If they release an earnings report it has to be acurate and audited before being annouced, its a legal duty in the uk for a PLC, they cannot just make up figures and go yeah were amazing invest in us. It doesnt work that way over in the UK. i dont know the laws in the US so i wouldnt speculate on them, however the PLC is registed in the uk and on the London Stock Exchange so even costs/profits revenue from the US feeds back into there.

The company is making profit (its legal obligation) so in that respect it is sucessfull. Is it a great company, clearly not, but there is a lot of speculation which is purely founded on personal opionin

cammy wrote:
If they release an earnings report it has to be acurate and audited before being annouced, its a legal duty in the uk for a PLC, they cannot just make up figures and go yeah were amazing invest in us. It doesnt work that way over in the UK. i dont know the laws in the US so i wouldnt speculate on them, however the PLC is registed in the uk and on the London Stock Exchange so even costs/profits revenue from the US feeds back into there.

You do realize there's a difference between fraud and emphasizing the positive data while minimizing the importance of the bad data, right? Nobody is claiming that the financial report numbers are fake, the point is that GW gives a lot of priority to emphasizing the profit numbers (which suggest good things to investors) everywhere they can in size 255 bold while only briefly mentioning the facts and numbers that hint at how GW makes that profit: increased prices and cost cutting to compensate for declining sales volume. If you think you're getting an honest assessment of a company's weaknesses in their own financial reports then you're delusional.

The company is making profit (its legal obligation) so in that respect it is sucessfull. Is it a great company, clearly not, but there is a lot of speculation which is purely founded on personal opionin

That's a terrible standard for defining success. Is a company that makes 1% profit a success even though the only thing preventing them from making 10% profit is their own stupid decisions? Is a company that makes 10% profit instead of 5% this year at the cost of going bankrupt within a year instead of surviving to make that 5% year after year a success? Of course not. And that's the situation GW is in: their immediate profit is fine, but the long-term future is not good.

Commissar Benny wrote:
I've seen the quality of stuff coming off 3D printers & while it is still lacking, I can easily see it causing huge issues for GW in 5-10 years time.

I doubt it. 3d printing is unlikely to match high volume injection-molded plastic in either per-unit manufacturing cost or speed any time in the foreseeable future, and will likely have similar problems competing with other conventional manufacturing methods. It's probably going to remain a hobbyist toy, and most of GW's customers aren't dedicated hobbyists. The biggest impact on miniatures will probably the ease of creating small production runs of customized models, and that's something only a very small minority is interested in.

GW's investors report outright says that it was a mixed year.
Admitting it was a mixed year is not a good sign, especially since it was a year that released both the Hobbit line and 6th Ed of 40k.

Meanwhile in the wider hobby we're hearing 15% growth last year.

So because I found that investment information breakdown I wanted to do a little comparison to the price of something and see how much GW is really making off of something they sold in their previous fiscal year.

So first I calculated what percentage of the a given thing went where:
Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): 27%
Operating Expenses(Sales, Admin, ect): 57%
Taxes: 4%
Profit: 12%

And then I applied those same percentages to a something GW sells: a box of Dark Eldar Kalibites. Honestly anything could work, as long as it hasn't changed price, or as long as you're using the old price it had during the 2012 fiscal year.

So in the UK a box of Kalibites costs 18GBP. While currency doesn't matter because GW reports no losses or gains on currency exchange, so we can look at whatever, I felt sticking to the Pound would keep people from yelling at me later. So we take that number and multiply it by our percentages and sees what comes out:

CoGS: 4.86
Operating Expenses: 10.26
Taxes: .72
Profit: 2.16

And here we can see that GW only made a little over 2 quid in actual profits off that box of Kalibites if they sell it for full price. Now as FLGS don't pay as much let's take 60% of that original price (what an FLGS typically pays on non-direct only items), which is 10.80GBP, and see what comes out next:

CoGS: 2.916
Operating Expenses: 6.156
Taxes: .423
Profit: 1.20

Now I know that there is a fixed cost on each item, and on their operating expenses, but remember, this is just how much of the item is being paid into covering that cost, not how much that item is actually costing them to make. And yes, we can clearly see that GW only makes 1.20 quid on a box of Kalibites when they sell it to your FLGS.

So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim. The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

Back to the topic at hand (really another argument on whether or not GW is a "bad" business?! Let's throw in some Matt Ward hate and pick on the helldrake to round out the cliché arguments)... Frontline is running a pretty tight set of rules and making all 2+ rerolls 4+ on the second roll... period.

My group decided today to basically add a max of one formation and then run with LVO's list creation rules. I think we'll stay there for awhile.

My group is kinda going beyond house ruling allied formations, and just outright boycotting it. Our last big house ruling ban was for the Skyshield after some big to-do about putting barrage units underneath the pad and having them still able to fire. We have a tournament coming up this Saturday and in light of all this influx of extra rules and formations, FW is banned, the Skyshield and Fortress of Redemption (which no one has anyway) are banned, Escalation and Stronghold Assault are banned, and all these micro digital dataslates are banned all pending further analysis for future tournaments considering we planned this date before GW began releasing all this gak.

@Wilytank, why not just ban the ability to put units underneath to prevent that abuse instead of removing the option of taking it completely?

Also all those bans. Ugh. Sorry, but I get why you may do it, but that still lets all the silly nonsense that comes out of codexes to run around with no issues. Screamerstars, Jetseercouncils, Tripdrakes and Triptides don't need allies to do what they do after all.

The big thing about that is that that's too much stuff released on such short notice that the TO doesn't have time/money/patience to sift through it all.

And anyway, nobody here likes the Skyshield regardless. Plus we're the kind of group that doesn't run that stuff regularly. Looking at who's going, I'm expecting at least one or two IG armies, two marine armies (one of them might be GK), one Eldar player using Serpents, and possibly one Necron Airforce and one Tau player. I'm the only one playing Daemons and I'm not playing Screamerstar because I want to prove that I do not need them to win.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So because I found that investment information breakdown I wanted to do a little comparison to the price of something and see how much GW is really making off of something they sold in their previous fiscal year.

So first I calculated what percentage of the a given thing went where:
Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): 27%
Operating Expenses(Sales, Admin, ect): 57%
Taxes: 4%
Profit: 12%

And then I applied those same percentages to a something GW sells: a box of Dark Eldar Kalibites. Honestly anything could work, as long as it hasn't changed price, or as long as you're using the old price it had during the 2012 fiscal year.

So in the UK a box of Kalibites costs 18GBP. While currency doesn't matter because GW reports no losses or gains on currency exchange, so we can look at whatever, I felt sticking to the Pound would keep people from yelling at me later. So we take that number and multiply it by our percentages and sees what comes out:

CoGS: 4.86
Operating Expenses: 10.26
Taxes: .72
Profit: 2.16

And here we can see that GW only made a little over 2 quid in actual profits off that box of Kalibites if they sell it for full price. Now as FLGS don't pay as much let's take 60% of that original price (what an FLGS typically pays on non-direct only items), which is 10.80GBP, and see what comes out next:

CoGS: 2.916
Operating Expenses: 6.156
Taxes: .423
Profit: 1.20

Now I know that there is a fixed cost on each item, and on their operating expenses, but remember, this is just how much of the item is being paid into covering that cost, not how much that item is actually costing them to make. And yes, we can clearly see that GW only makes 1.20 quid on a box of Kalibites when they sell it to your FLGS.

So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim. The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

I disagree with your breakdown.
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

 Lobukia wrote:
How do you guys feel about the current state of the game?

I'm starting to make a better ruleset for 40k.


I think that answers your question.

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

It's kind of strange to think about how a larger community might go about house ruling things. I don't know if a mob-rule version of 40k would necessarily be better, for example. On the other hand, how would you even structure it? How would they come to a consensus?

It seems like, at best, it would be sort of like the Jesus Commission casting votes for what they think Jesus actually said.

Nothing is changing unless your local meta accepts the changes.

If you only ever played with friends, then it as simply as - no one buys the new books.

Alternatively, if all you ever do is play random people while jumping from store to store, yeah your experience is going to veryyyy different with all these new products.

 Ailaros wrote:
It's kind of strange to think about how a larger community might go about house ruling things. I don't know if a mob-rule version of 40k would necessarily be better, for example. On the other hand, how would you even structure it? How would they come to a consensus?

It seems like, at best, it would be sort of like the Jesus Commission casting votes for what they think Jesus actually said.

Isn't that the premise of certain christian denominations?

Anyways, as for how the community would come to an agreement, I've been thinking on that. The best thing I can see happening is:

Someone posts up a ruleset on Dakka, having put in research and playtesting.
Dakkanoughts debate the rules until favourable results have made it into the final version, with all rules conflicts/problems sorted.
Dakkanoughts spread this ruleset.
Ruleset becomes common consensus.
GW releases new minis.
Back to dakka to give them rules.

And by ruleset, I mean Rulebook and Codexes.

That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.

Yeah I don't see how that would be possible. That's a ton of effort from the community. Its just much easier to change rules with your local group. My group has made full FAQs for each codex with rule changes and that's how we have coped with 6th edition so far. But I wouldnt be the first in line to even attempt a community wide house version of 40k

 Psienesis wrote:
That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.

And it is.

The whole thing will be too disorganised, and due to differing opinions, nobody will really be able to agree to the thing in its entirety.

It wouldn't realistically create a standardised set, rather a whole family of similar-looking rulesets, each with variations that many different groups may or may not use.

And it would then die out as a "fad" by 7th ed, where the cycle will begin anew.

Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

The Iron Hands supplement? Haven't heard much about that either negatively or postively.

As for the thread, it's always been time to house rule. WH40k isn't and hasn't been the most well written game. I guess it's just getting worse.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

Maybe so, but even with 5th edition problems my group played the game rules as written and enjoyed it.

 Noir Eternal wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

Maybe so, but even with 5th edition problems my group played the game rules as written and enjoyed it.

I can attest to that. In 5th I could actually win games, and have a game done in under 3 hours.

Not I can't even get a 750 pts game down in that time due to rules arguments, and I get smashed by armies I used to stomp...

 Ailaros wrote:
It's kind of strange to think about how a larger community might go about house ruling things. I don't know if a mob-rule version of 40k would necessarily be better, for example. On the other hand, how would you even structure it? How would they come to a consensus?

It seems like, at best, it would be sort of like the Jesus Commission casting votes for what they think Jesus actually said.

I envision more of an admin organised selection of a few level headed, experienced volunteers to bash it out together. Mob rule would be a bad idea, however input can't hurt.

I don't even mind having to change up army lists so much to win or other people lists all of a sudden being much more deadly.

But I agree, I've also had much more rules arguments, and a lot of the new rules are heavily unbalanced to be too strong or too weak. And so far I have had a lot less fun playing the game in general with the new way GW has forced armies to fight


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I see those sort of rules coming out in tournaments with rule changes or comp and being used by local groups before any sort of round table of rule admins here on dakka

 Yonan wrote:

I envision more of an admin organised selection of a few level headed, experienced volunteers to bash it out together. Mob rule would be a bad idea, however input can't hurt.

Wouldn't accomplish much. Put just two soldiers together and within five minutes, you'll have three rumours. It's the same with 40k players. No one will come to a consensus because everyone wants to push it in a different direction. Besides, who would you get to do it? What community-decided 'experts' will be chosen? Who decides who these people will be? Or will we argue over this as much as the game?

Will the community follow what a handful of level headed people say? Nope. It'll be too casual for some, and too competitive for others, it will affect too many peoples favourite builds. On top of that, the mob will all want their own little tweaks. End result is what you'll have now with pages upon pages of discussions, whines, moaning and in my opinion, it will accomplish nothing.

And this is from someone who would dearly love to see a 'better' 40k released. But I'm too cynical to ever believe the 40k community will ever accomplish such a thing.

Agreed, and honestly what does it matter if everyone all over the country is playing the same house rules. If players want house rules, which my group does, its much better to just make your own and have your group play with that.

I know that's not the answer for people who still try to play this game competitively with random people. But that's also why I stopped playing this game competitively all together and moved onto other games with much better rule sets

Deadnight wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

I envision more of an admin organised selection of a few level headed, experienced volunteers to bash it out together. Mob rule would be a bad idea, however input can't hurt.

Will the community follow what a handful of level headed people say? Nope. It'll be too casual for some, and too competitive for others, it will affect too many peoples favourite builds. On top of that, the mob will all want their own little tweaks. End result is what you'll have now with pages upon pages of discussions, whines, moaning and in my opinion, it will accomplish nothing.

They won't be following the level headed people, they'll be following "The official Dakka sponsored 40k patch", even better if the admins from the other large forums promote it. It has nothing to do with casual or competitive, and a (more) balanced ruleset benefits both equally. Casuals will be able to play their fluffier lists with less of a disadvantage, and more competitive units would allow a great variety of lists for the competitive players which won't boil down to spamming the same few strong units every time.

That's where the whole "big community" thing comes in. Once it's done and to a level deemed acceptable, dakka admins could push it. It wouldn't be hard to make the game substantially better with a relatively simple list of changes that is updated when necessary. Even if everyone each disagreed with some of the changes, most would agree with the majority which would be enough to make the game better for most people imo.

You know the Dakka mods aren't paid to run the site, right? They aren't employees of GW. Why should they have to take the time out of their lives to come up with a ruleset for everyone else, when every local play-group is perfectly capable of coming up with that on their own?

Because fun?

 Psienesis wrote:
You know the Dakka mods aren't paid to run the site, right? They aren't employees of GW. Why should they have to take the time out of their lives to come up with a ruleset for everyone else, when every local play-group is perfectly capable of coming up with that on their own?

Did you miss the part where I suggested they delegate all the work?

Delegate it to... who?

Me? You want me (and people like me) to determine how you're going to play 40k?

MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

 Yonan wrote:
following "The official Dakka sponsored 40k patch", even better if the admins from the other large forums promote it. It has nothing to do with casual or competitive, and a (more) balanced ruleset benefits both equally. Casuals will be able to play their fluffier lists with less of a disadvantage, and more competitive units would allow a great variety of lists for the competitive players which won't boil down to spamming the same few strong units every time.

That's where the whole "big community" thing comes in. Once it's done and to a level deemed acceptable, dakka admins could push it. It wouldn't be hard to make the game substantially better with a relatively simple list of changes that is updated when necessary. Even if everyone each disagreed with some of the changes, most would agree with the majority which would be enough to make the game better for most people imo.

Again, you're assuming people will support dakka because... Stuff.

Dakka does not head this community. It is not our leader. I know plenty folks who don't follow Internet forums. I'm getting less and less interested in them myself. The official dakka sponsored patch means very little to me personally, and a lot less to other people.

Finally the issue is even getting such a project started, let alone 'done to a level deemed acceptable'. Having folks disagree with some of the changes goes directly against the idea of having a universally supported fandex. Heck, people already disagree on some of the most fundamental features of the game!
Similarly, assuming the majority will agree... How? Why? What simple list of changes gets everyone on board? Is it done with Magic? You can talk about better balanced rules sets all you want (and i play these) but everyone and their dog has a different idea of how to achieve this.

I think you're being naive. I applaud the idealism behind your thinking but it won't work. You'll end up with too many captains shouting directions, one very confused helmsman, and frankly, everyone else just not bothering and doing their own thing. I've sen too many community sponsored projects that couldn't even get consensus going from a dozen contributors (I remember the old todex on tau online a few years back). What started as a fun intellectual exercise ended up very quickly turning into a quagmire of frustration and resentment. Everyone wanted something different. Everyone wanted their ideas included. Too many people had wildly contradicting views that were utterly irreconcilable. In the end it spluttered and died as everyone lost interest because it would go nowhere. And this was a small little project on a small forum amongst a handful of people about a theoretical new codex! You're talking about a full game. A dozen codices. Or more. Not one. And supplements. And every thing else included.

No my friend. What you'll get is a thread where you talk about what you'll like to do. A bunch of folks will put down the usual 'this is what I'd do' statements. And No one will play test. And then people will argue. At best, you'll get a few people who will like your suggestions. And a few people who will prefer the other guys suggestions. And everyone else won't bother reading, or won't go on dakka. Which is as far from what 'the official dakka 40k mod' which unites everyone as you can hope to get.

Prove me wrong though. I'd like to see it. But if you ask me, it won't happen.

I don't think it will happen either, but I do think it would work if it did. I'm not talking a rewrite of the game if that's what you were thinking, I'm talking a simple list of chances to address the greatest imbalances, ie:
- Vendetta +20 points, removal of transport capacity
- Ogryn -5-10 points
- Night scythe +20 points
- Lychgarde -10 points.
For a very rough, un-playtested idea.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
Delegate it to... who?

Me? You want me (and people like me) to determine how you're going to play 40k?

MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

 Yonan wrote:
I envision more of an admin organised selection of a few level headed, experienced volunteers to bash it out together. Mob rule would be a bad idea, however input can't hurt.

You'll end up with too many captains shouting directions, one very confused helmsman, and frankly, everyone else just not bothering and doing their own thing. I've sen too many community sponsored projects that couldn't even get consensus going from a dozen contributors (I remember the old todex on tau online a few years back). What started as a fun intellectual exercise ended up very quickly turning into a quagmire of frustration and resentment. Everyone wanted something different. Everyone wanted their ideas included. Too many people had wildly contradicting views that were utterly irreconcilable. In the end it spluttered and died as everyone lost interest because it would go nowhere. And this was a small little project on a small forum amongst a handful of people about a theoretical new codex! You're talking about a full game. A dozen codices. Or more. Not one. And supplements. And every thing else included.

^ This right here. There is no organized selection of level-headed, experienced volunteers here on Dakka that can agree on what to have for lunch, let alone what should be the manner in which 40K is played.

And even if there were, why would Warseer, or Bolter and Chainsword, or TauTactica or any of the hundred other 40K forums on the internet agree to what we come up with here? What if they had the same idea, did the same thing, but came up with a radically different set of rules? Who, then, has the "right" ruleset?

Build it and they will come, it's very possible. I'm still more of a PC gamer than tabletop, so seeing a game in such a horrible state of balance irks me immensely. Players have the ability to make patches for PC games, many of which are successful and get wide community acceptance to the extent that they can login to the online match making system and be guaranteed to get games. There's no reason it can't be done for the tabletop community too. All they need is to reach critical mass to take off widely - that's where the help of a large figure in the community (ie. Dakka) comes in. "Hey guys, we think this greatly improves 40k, give it a try!" Even if it only gets 10% acceptance imo it's worthwhile as that's a lot of players getting what they think is a better game and you always have the opportunity for it to be a lot more. And just like with PC games, maybe the company (ie. GW) will absorb some of the best ideas.

This is because there does not need to be a national or global patching system for 40K. The only group that needs to agree on how a patch should work is your local gaming group.

Maybe this group over here loves the idea of playing standard-40K armies with Titans and super-heavies. Maybe a group the next town over plays *only* with core codex factions, precluding any usage of supplements, expansions or similar publications. A few states over, the gamers in one town just *love* tanks and mechanized infantry is *huge* in their meta, so they quintupled Hull Points on all vehicles, and gave Skyfire to a bunch of different vehicles to have crazy land/air battles between all kinds of vehicles while their infantry forces slug it out on the ground.

None of these people are "doing it wrong", but the way these people play is probably not going to be accepted by the people from the next town over.

And that's fine and can continue to happen? I don't see how they come into conflict. People who want a pre-made, updated, semi respectable balance patch will have one available (if done well, I stand by a lot of people choosing to use it). Those who don't continue with their house rules as before. Others will house rule on top of the balance patch.

Well, good luck.

Oh I'm not doing it. I said in another thread the 40k ruleset is too broken to really be worth fixing. Despite considering doing what I mentioned here, I decided to make army lists for 40k in Deadzone instead, a much better ruleset to work with.

I stand by a community patch being the best way to fix 40k, other than GW sorting it themselves though as there isn't much else that can be done to improve the situation imo.

 Selym wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

Maybe so, but even with 5th edition problems my group played the game rules as written and enjoyed it.

I can attest to that. In 5th I could actually win games, and have a game done in under 3 hours.

Not I can't even get a 750 pts game down in that time due to rules arguments, and I get smashed by armies I used to stomp...

A 5th edition ruleset with 6th edition wound allocation, template rules, and fliers would make me happy as a pig in gak.

We also use many of the 5th edition rules in addition to codex FAQs that we made.
Not being able to assault out of a transport that hasn't moved is total nonsense.

Our version is a 4th/5th hybrid with a touch of 6th. We might give 7th a try if GW really worked at cleaning up its rules, but that's not something I expect.

 amanita wrote:
Our version is a 4th/5th hybrid with a touch of 6th. We might give 7th a try if GW really worked at cleaning up its rules, but that's not something I expect.

I dunno. We've seen this before. A complex edition with endless supplements and expansions, followed by a clean sterile one. The wheel of time turns....

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
Except competitive SSB players DO eliminate all the "casual" fun stuff and all random factors, but people still talk about keeping in formations or Escalation because they're "official" and "legal".

NO TERRAIN
ELDAR ONLY
FINAL DESTINATION

This made me laugh out loud. To contribute to the thread, seems like most people have made some sort of house rules since forever.

Even tournament missions are house rules aren't they? They aren't in the rule book. If tournaments want to start banning stuff, that is up to them. Everyone else should just try to have fun. Just make sure your version of "fun" is the same as your opponent!

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

Maybe so, but even with 5th edition problems my group played the game rules as written and enjoyed it.

I can attest to that. In 5th I could actually win games, and have a game done in under 3 hours.

Not I can't even get a 750 pts game down in that time due to rules arguments, and I get smashed by armies I used to stomp...

A 5th edition ruleset with 6th edition wound allocation, template rules, and fliers would make me happy as a pig in gak.

I agree with this, except for wound allocations. Wound allocations are ridiculous. You can only hit the closest model til he dies, and any special weapons from regular troops are lost, instead of the realistic outcome of a squadmate picking up the fallen weapon. Fantasy works this way, with a regular guy picking up the standard or instrument if said model dies. Wound allocation is what drove me from 6th.

You know, if everyone wants a copy that met with 95% love...use the Pancake rules.

What are the Pancake rules?

GW have always encouraged house rules.
The more rules they give us just gives more options.

GW do not focus on tournament play, so you can't blame GW if you are playing in a non-sanctioned GW tournament.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think that there has long been a truth about 40k that some people realise earlier than others: 40k isn't a serious game. You take it seriously at your own eventual peril.

Exactly, just have fun with it.

Played a casual game against Blood Angels last night at the games club. My Orks got tabled,does not happen that often, but I was in pain from laughing so much throughout the game. One of the best games ever. Two Meks blew themselves up, Zogsworts head exploded and my Big Mek with Shokk attack Gun fired himself across the battlefield into close combat with 6 Terminators with Thunder Hammers! And then a group of Assault Marines that wiped out a unit of 10 Flash Gitz in a turn got held in combat by a unit of 10 Gretchin.

At the end of the game I had a single Loota left running away. It was my turn and I got to take a single shot at a Dreadnought needing just a glance to take it out. Four or five people gathered and were cheering me on to take out the Dread.

THIS is how 40K is played.

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

It was never perfect but once upon a time it used to at least allow people to play that way, now the rules seem intent on squashing anything approaching competitive play in favour of 'Forging a Narrative'(tm).
The difference is what was once indifference that allowed people to play how they wanted to there is now an attitude of 'you're having fun wrong, stop it'.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

That's the point. If you try playing a non-competetive game competetively then your going to run into problems. The game is not at fault.

Pretty sure the game being non-competitive for no reason is definitely the games (makers) fault. Making it non-competitive adds nothing. You could greatly improve the competitiveness without sacrificing any "narrative", in fact imo it would improve it substantially.

 Yonan wrote:
Pretty sure the game being non-competitive for no reason is definitely the games (makers) fault. Making it non-competitive adds nothing. You could greatly improve the competitiveness without sacrificing any "narrative", in fact imo it would improve it substantially.

I disagree. The myth that it "would loose nothing" keeps coming up, but it's still bs.

You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

 Zweischneid wrote:
I disagree. The myth that it "would loose nothing" keeps coming up, but it's still bs.

You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

You don't need imbalance, you need asymmetrical gameplay and multiple viable options. Imbalance doesn't create an engaging meta game, it creates "net lists" that make certain things unusable and other things essential if you want to be competitive. It seriously detracts from competitive play by restricting unit selection and detracts from casual play by gimping players who don't understand which units are good or not.

Asymmetrical gameplay lets you play completely differently depending on the army you choose, and if it's balanced each army can fight in a number of ways depending on how they want to play, or how they need to play to fight the specific playstyle of the enemy.

Look at games like Starcraft 2 - while most units have mirrored roles they act completely differently in most cases and it results in different playstyles that overall have similar win rates for each army - far closer than the armies in 40k. *that* is what makes fun gameplay, being balanced and asymmetrical while still having lots of choice in how you can play.

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

Dang, I thought this was a game, not holy scriptures. Don't like something with the rules? change it. Talk to the people you play with and work out what works for all of you. If you play with a bunch of douches that just want to run all Riptides or whatever, then don't play them. Find other players. Just have fun and stop stressing out about extra rules that no one's forcing you to use. Personally, I think it'd be fun to play against a super heavy once in a while. Not all the time or even often, but once in a while could spice things up. I always use house rules because I usually only play with friends or family. A benefit of having a twin brother and a cool nephew and a great local meta that's really friendly. (Back in Utah. I haven't had time or opportunity to really do any gaming in Japan.)

 Ugavine wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

That's the point. If you try playing a non-competetive game competetively then your going to run into problems. The game is not at fault.

Except imbalanced units and codices DO cause problems. Grab two codices, let us use CSM and Tau as examples. CSm because they were the first official 6th edition codex and because in the starter box and Tau because they are the cremedelacra when it comes to being on the battlefield. Now, grab random units from every area. Assemble armies not based on what is effective but instead what looks awesome. What you will find is, more ofteh then not. The Tau player will be able to deploy something consistently better than the Chaos Space Marine player. Other imbalances, the csm codex earnestly sucks, it's imbalanced terribly, and worst of all, introduced the baledrake. It wasn't the thing that really nailed it in the coffin, but the S6 Ap3 flamer that is 360*, durable, and rips apart SM saves. SM are pricey, they don't really have the best guns nor the best assault. What they have is durability. Problem is that with the increase in AP2 weapons such lists are devestated. Riptides and heldrakes rip apart biker armies for breakfest and a boots on the floor SM force is going to weep tears of sorrow. The person that deploys CSM is going to have troops that, not only have a rule that hamstrings them and dooms them more than rescuing them, but, if deployed against the SM Codex inherently are at a disadvantage. Heck, the wolves are still better.

When I started this game I didn't know what the good units were nor the bad ones. I got a drake because I wanted to not knowing how mighty it was (at the time at least). I played it twice, realized what it did in a casual meta that had too little anti-air and shelved it forever or at least until 7th edition comes out, I get my fething legion special rules, Thousand Sons get fixed (to finally end GW's eternal undying hatred for them for once), and the heldrake brought back so that one less thing makes foot marine lists and biker lists suffer. Sure there are grav guns and riptides, but one step at a time.... one thing at a time. In a competitive environment the heldrake isn't scary. But in casuals? Just for fun? Quick games usually against sub-optimal lists? This thing can rip, shred, and gobble up enemies for breakfast. The person that wishes to build a CSM tzeentch army inherently is bringing themself down to such a point they are a laughable joke. So who should I punish? The people that stuck out years of no updates to play there army again? The eldar player that liked or owned wave serpents that suddenly just became drastically better? Should I scream at the Tau player that bought 1-2 riptides because they thought they were awesome and then built a crisis list? Should I insult the guy that is deploying drakes because in reality there book is so counter intuitive the army is trying to kill itself with every rule? No, I shouldn't have to blame the player. That doesn't mean that we humans won't find a way to exploit it. No matter how hard one tries to find balance, very few things can ever find it. Chess can reach it, but 40k? Too many codices that take too long to be produced. Heck, you also need somebody that actually cares about the army they are writing about and even that might just make them op. A balanced and competitive codex also benefits casuals because they don't unkowingly put themself at a disadvantage, the fluffy player, whilst not deploying the best list ever can still compete with there fluffy list of 343434 pyrovores that can, although not as good, still function and work completely fine.

If you're playing friendly games but one player constantly, and intentionally, keeps playing power lists then that person obviously has no idea what a friendly game is or isn't a friend.

Personally I never play the same list twice. I grab some boxes and make my list on the night once I've had a look at what I've picked up.

If someone plays this game and isn't having fun then it's obviously not the game for them. Agricola is one of the highest ranked games on BoardGameGeek but I don't like it, I don't enjoy playing it. Is that the fault of the game? Hardly.

I won tournaments with a Siren Daemon Prince that couldn't be attacked by anything and destroyed everything it touched, and played in GTs where the top25 had 20 CSM armies. I played with Daemons of Chaos in Warhammer GTs where the top10 consisted of 90% Daemons of Chaos armies and the winner was an army that was designed to counter itself. I remember when people raged about Bretonnian Royal Air Forces, max Oblits/Ordnance Iron Warriors, Necromancer lead VC summon hordes or much later regen bunkers. The list goes on and on. Even over fifteen years ago I remember playing in a tournament against a Space Wolf army with nothing but a single Terminator Librarian and Terminators with Assault Cannons and/or Cyclone Missile Launchers (everyone has heavy weapons). I remember getting tabled in one shooting phase.

The people who think balance has all of a sudden gone out of the window are either new or have memory problems. 40K or Fantasy Battle have never been balanced.

The more options in the game system the better. The more tournaments the better. Every community and every tournament organiser can decide which parts of the ruleset they allow. GW has always encouraged this. It'll take one or two A4 pages to explain what kind of tournament it is. This isn't a new phenomenon. This is common sense.

Finally, a thread just like this one has popped up hundreds of times already, and each time everyone thought something drastically new and earthshattering was happening. The history just repeats itself. The guy on the first page of this thread said it perfectly when he reminded everyone GW games aren't serious games. We just like the universe so much it is easily forgotten.

I'll remind people that a game being imbalanced doesn't mean it can't be played competitively. People have played 40K competitively since the dawn of the game at tournaments all over Europe atleast, and a lot of times the most imbalanced and strong armies came out on top. And it was fun.

 Zweischneid wrote:
You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Nonsense. Bad balance does NOT lead to an interesting metagame, it leads to a metagame where the overpowered choices are obvious and drive every other choice out of the metagame. Nor does bad balance help make the game interesting for non-competitive players, since for those players the metagame is much less important than the story and models. And the idea that bad balance can help with varying skill levels is just insane. Sure, in some ideal fantasy world the weaker player could use the better list to make the game more interesting, but in reality the weaker player probably makes bad list building decisions as well and loses by an even bigger margin.

Your problem is that once again you're confusing balance and symmetry. A well-balanced game can also have a diverse and interesting metagame as long as there are enough different strategies to pick from. For example, a fast aggressive strategy can have a very balanced 50/50 matchup against a static defensive strategy, but the two sides will have completely different gameplay experiences. Balance only leads to a boring game if your only method of balancing the game is making everything identical, but that's just bad game design.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

And wrong again. Balance helps "casual" players because it increases the chance that they can show up for a random pickup game and have a fair chance of winning, even if they don't care about the game enough have a perfectly optimized tournament army. Balance helps "story" players because it allows them to have a fun and interesting game even when they choose their lists primarily for story reasons. In fact, tournament players probably get the least benefit from balance because the true WAAC types are happy to just take whatever is overpowered and win with it.

I played a 1v1v1, scenario driven game of dystopian wars yesterday and it was the most fun I have had in a while because we did, and I hate to use this term, forge a pretty kick ass narrative.

You know what we didn't have to do while racing for the pirate gold at the center of the table? Worry about overpowered units wiping the floor with our 'fluffy' armies. We were able to bring the units we thought fit the theme AND the units that we thought were good without once worrying if something would be too good or asking someone else to take something weaker because our list couldn't deal with it.


Balanced rules make everything better, you can't argue they don't without sounding like someone either happily sticking their fingers in their ears or someone who does nor understand what we mean when we say 'balance'.

 Selym wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

It's odd that you think it is limited to 6th edition.

Every 40k edition since 3rd has suffered from certain lists being repeated - especially 5th edition, the one they tried hardest to make competitive. And the only reason I exclude 1st and 2nd editions is the internet not being as prevalent then.

 Therion wrote:
I won tournaments with a Siren Daemon Prince that couldn't be attacked by anything and destroyed everything it touched, and played in GTs where the top25 had 20 CSM armies. I played with Daemons of Chaos in Warhammer GTs where the top10 consisted of 90% Daemons of Chaos armies and the winner was an army that was designed to counter itself. I remember when people raged about Bretonnian Royal Air Forces, max Oblits/Ordnance Iron Warriors, Necromancer lead VC summon hordes or much later regen bunkers. The list goes on and on. Even over fifteen years ago I remember playing in a tournament against a Space Wolf army with nothing but a single Terminator Librarian and Terminators with Assault Cannons and/or Cyclone Missile Launchers (everyone has heavy weapons). I remember getting tabled in one shooting phase.

The people who think balance has all of a sudden gone out of the window are either new or have memory problems. 40K or Fantasy Battle have never been balanced.

The more options in the game system the better. The more tournaments the better. Every community and every tournament organiser can decide which parts of the ruleset they allow. GW has always encouraged this. It'll take one or two A4 pages to explain what kind of tournament it is. This isn't a new phenomenon. This is common sense.

Finally, a thread just like this one has popped up hundreds of times already, and each time everyone thought something drastically new and earthshattering was happening. The history just repeats itself. The guy on the first page of this thread said it perfectly when he reminded everyone GW games aren't serious games. We just like the universe so much it is easily forgotten.

I'll remind people that a game being imbalanced doesn't mean it can't be played competitively. People have played 40K competitively since the dawn of the game at tournaments all over Europe atleast, and a lot of times the most imbalanced and strong armies came out on top. And it was fun.

Chin Chin, well said, +1.
The game is always changing, there is always something new to worry about or to change your list for.
I for one would be mighty pissed off if I went out and bought a new addition for my list to then find it banned in tournaments.
I would also be pissed off if I bought a counter unit for my list to counter the latest and greatest to then find out its been banned anyway.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Balanced rules make everything better, you can't argue they don't without sounding like someone either happily sticking their fingers in their ears or someone who does nor understand what we mean when we say 'balance'.

Agreed, it's a peculiar position to suggest imbalance is good. It has to be a misattribution based on the incorrect assumption that imbalance is needed as part of asymmetry. Asymmetry is harder/more time consuming to balance than symmetry definitely, but is a staple of good multi-faction games and has been done much better by most successful games than 40k does imo. Largely due to better updates to them after release I think. 40K certainly has asymmetry, it just doesn't apply enough balance changes to it when flaws come to light. GW could do so much better in this regard, it's frustrating that they don't.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

It's odd that you think it is limited to 6th edition.

Every 40k edition since 3rd has suffered from certain lists being repeated - especially 5th edition, the one they tried hardest to make competitive. And the only reason I exclude 1st and 2nd editions is the internet not being as prevalent then.

I refer to this edition as it's the one we're currently using. I do realise that previous editions were poorly written too, but we can't really do much about that now.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

Yes, that is correct. And you decided to draw conclusions from it, which I very much disagree with because we do not have the insight to draw those conclusions, while you stated them as fact.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

This statistic is actually a little bogus in and of itself. Past success in no way proves or promises future success. GW has BEEN a successful company, but current financial trends and efforts by GW management are leading to a questionable future.

Skriker

 Purifier wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

Yes, that is correct. And you decided to draw conclusions from it, which I very much disagree with because we do not have the insight to draw those conclusions, while you stated them as fact.

My "conclusions" are nothing more than a simple breakdown of how the money is divided up based on the same percentages that their overall balance sheet is. I drew my own conclusions from this, sure but I did not claim them to be the only possible answer. Nor did I show how the breakdown really works where the money in is all pooled and then divided as needed with the remainder being profit.

This was a diagram, a simple device to show in smaller numbers the same split of the money in a way people could see and understand better. It is fact that the human brain has issues comprehending large numbers, but these small ones in a context people can understand is easier to process.

And you may disagree with the way I see things, but that doesn't make it wrong. Nor does the fact I can't tell you how sales and admin (aka operating costs) breaks down to the dollar, but with GW brick and mortars I bet the weight is more on sales than whatever Kirby got this last year.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: This is actually the only real conclusion I made in that post to boot:

Zion wrote: The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

Which is true. The amount of money that actually goes above the level of what is being marked off as a cost (even if you don't agree with how it's marked off) is considerably lower than the claims of GW screwing your pocketbook lead one to believe. Heck, the 27% that is all "Cost of Goods" shows that the things we buy cost a lot more to make than people want to admit because the cost of a product isn't just the plastic in it.

My only "conclusion" is that the amount of money being made is less extreme that being claimed. Do I have a full pound by pound breakdown? No. But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

The part I had a problem with was:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim.

Which it doesn't prove at all. It actually doesn't prove anything at all.
In fact, I disagree that "this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up."

It's like saying "I eat 25% meat and 75% veggies, so that should give you a better picture of what kind of food I eat."
Well, I can tell you're not vegetarian, and that's about as far as that give me anything at all. I can hardly make the same food as you given that recipe.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

I agree, which really is no conclusion at all.

so after we finish building and painting all our plastic we can get to work on rewriting their crap excuse for a game!

DOUBLE THE FUN!!!!

40k is layer after layer of broken. you would have to go pretty deep if you actually want to fix everything.

i used to write tons and tons of stuff for D&D as the DM. rules writing can quickly turn into a full time job if taken seriously.

it's the game developers job (not yours) to fix their own game. if you feel like wasting your time trying to fix their mess then more power to you, personally i have little time or motivation for it.

Imbalance in a game is required. Please see youtube video "extra credits: Perfect Imbalance" for more. Some of us are talking about this and others aren't aware of it it would seem. Just to get everybody on the same page.

 Purifier wrote:
The part I had a problem with was:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim.

Which it doesn't prove at all. It actually doesn't prove anything at all.
In fact, I disagree that "this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up."

It's like saying "I eat 25% meat and 75% veggies, so that should give you a better picture of what kind of food I eat."
Well, I can tell you're not vegetarian, and that's about as far as that give me anything at all. I can hardly make the same food as you given that recipe.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

I agree, which really is no conclusion at all.

Unless you.re sugesting that GW lie to investers, ClockworkZion is actually spot on.

I remember a while ago arguing with someone, who insisted that the only cost in a good was its physical ingredients. The plastic in 40k kits costs pennies, therefore box sets cost pennies to make and GW are shafting us. I tried explaining to him that there were also line workers, material distrobuters, goods in operatives, despatch operatives, payroll, HR, lorry drivers, warehouse pickers...and that's just to get it to leave the factory.

I ended up ignoring him. Some people are just happy to be the sheep in Animal Farm, bleeting "gw bhaaad", rather than accepting that GW only make a couple of pound profit on each box - even though this does not mean that you can't relentlessly and baseless bash GW for everything else.

KnuckleWolf wrote:
Imbalance in a game is required. Please see youtube video "extra credits: Perfect Imbalance" for more. Some of us are talking about this and others aren't aware of it it would seem. Just to get everybody on the same page.

Perfect imbalance is a concept that exists because chess can be damn boring from a non competitive point of view. It has no bearing on a discussion about 40k rules unless 7th edition somehow make the game amazingly well balanced, and even then the very nature of the codex release schedule would still push the meta around enough to keep it from getting stale.

@jonolikespie - I think you missed the point. Please elaborate on how chess specifically got brought into this and how it is "boring from a non-competitive view". Or more to the point, skip that and elaborate on the release schedule comment.

xruslanx wrote:

Unless you.re sugesting that GW lie to investers, ClockworkZion is actually spot on.

I remember a while ago arguing with someone, who insisted that the only cost in a good was its physical ingredients. The plastic in 40k kits costs pennies, therefore box sets cost pennies to make and GW are shafting us. I tried explaining to him that there were also line workers, material distrobuters, goods in operatives, despatch operatives, payroll, HR, lorry drivers, warehouse pickers...and that's just to get it to leave the factory.

I ended up ignoring him. Some people are just happy to be the sheep in Animal Farm, bleeting "gw bhaaad", rather than accepting that GW only make a couple of pound profit on each box - even though this does not mean that you can't relentlessly and baseless bash GW for everything else.

Would that be a guy who claimed to know what he was talking about because he worked in business and that is how you account for stuff (Because he was misapplying accounting principles and making facile arguments to do with the separation of costing?).

Unfortunately some people will insist that GW lie to investors, and that there auditors lie. Unfortunately the only facts we have are the ones presented. People are very fast to draw conclusions from it, often contrary and bizarre conclusions, like insisting GW is in trouble because it has modest growth and every year arguing that it is "Just down to X and won't last next year".

Well, i dont play 40K much.
But i do like the sounds of this "you can use super heavys in regular games now". I may finally have a use for my Super Heavy SPG, X18 Vanguards might.....

Given the popularity of 40k combined with the long running rubbish ruleset, I am surprised more people haven't attempted to write a superior ruleset. Then again, it is a lot of work. It would be an interesting project though.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Unfortunately some people will insist that GW lie to investors, and that there auditors lie.

Nobody is suggesting that GW lies to investors. What we're suggesting is that GW, like every company, presents the truth in a way that emphasizes the best parts and minimizes the worst parts.

like insisting GW is in trouble because it has modest growth and every year arguing that it is "Just down to X and won't last next year".

But that's not really the argument. Obviously GW is not going to die next year, we're talking about long-term success. And what we see is that GW doesn't really have a long-term plan for growth. All they're doing is "growing" by using a combination of cost cutting and price increases to get more profit out of their existing customer base. And those aren't sustainable approaches. Once you've cut all of your stores down to one employee in a random strip mall closet five days a week for limited hours you can't really improve profits by cutting retail expenses. Once you cut your rulebook expenses (playtesting, art design, etc) to a certain point you can't really cut anything else without sacrificing quality. And arguably we've reached that point with new minimal-content releases like C:I and Escalation or the new microtransaction "books". So it's entirely reasonable to ask how long GW can continue to make a profit with their current strategy and remain the industry leader.

And yes, a company can grow (especially at the barely-above-inflation rates GW is "growing") while still being in serious trouble. Consider, for example, a company that sells all of their manufacturing equipment and fires all of their employees (except a few warehouse and mail employees to handle the last remaining inventory) at the end of the year. Their profit numbers are going to be pretty good, but that's obviously a one-time thing and the company is dead as soon as the last inventory is gone. So you can't just look at how much profit changes each year, you have to look at WHY those numbers change.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Phanixis wrote:
Given the popularity of 40k combined with the long running rubbish ruleset, I am surprised more people haven't attempted to write a superior ruleset. Then again, it is a lot of work. It would be an interesting project though.

The problem is getting anyone to agree on the new rules. 40k's biggest strength is that it's the game everyone plays, and you can always show up at a random store on 40k night and expect to play a game. A hypothetical new game isn't going to have that advantage, so people tend to decide that finding interested players is just not worth the effort and go back to playing the game they can find opponents for.

KnuckleWolf wrote:
@jonolikespie - I think you missed the point. Please elaborate on how chess specifically got brought into this and how it is "boring from a non-competitive view". Or more to the point, skip that and elaborate on the release schedule comment.

Chess is as close to perfectly balanced as a game is ever likely to get, but ever game is the same number of pawns, rooks, knights,etc versus the exact same number of pawns, rooks, knights, etc. They are always deployed in the same way and there is no variation whatsoever between games other than how the players act and react.

The very nature of tabletop wargaming removes a lot of this as all of a sudden you have multiple factions with hundreds or even thousands of list variations. GWs codex release system goes even further here by introducing an update for a single army every couple of months or so. That alone is enough to push the meta along in a similar fashion to how imperfect balance would in a video game that's only reviving minor patches.



My point was that imperfect balance, as the Penny Arcade video explains, is a concept that exists to keep games from becoming stale. It introduces a Meta to what would otherwise be a system that is stagnant and become stale after a while. It is a concept that exists at the top end of the spectrum, to keep perfectly balanced games from becoming the same game over and over again. 40k is so far away from obtaining that that defending it in it's current ruleset by throwing around the words 'perfect imbalance' is laughable.

 Purifier wrote:
The part I had a problem with was:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim.

Which it doesn't prove at all. It actually doesn't prove anything at all.
In fact, I disagree that "this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up."

It's like saying "I eat 25% meat and 75% veggies, so that should give you a better picture of what kind of food I eat."
Well, I can tell you're not vegetarian, and that's about as far as that give me anything at all. I can hardly make the same food as you given that recipe.

Actually it's more like making something, selling it then breaking down how much I paid into what based on the revenue I got. Your example doesn't even fit what I was saying.

And just because you don't agree with how it's broken down (those categories being limited to what I could pull off an investor's page between classes) doesn't make it wrong. If you want to disprove me why not do more research, try and find a better breakdown and prove me wrong instead of getting up in arms because you don't agree with me and instead provide evidence why I'm wrong? I'm more than willing to be proven wrong with evidence but saying "I don't like the breakdown because it's not detailed enough" is a pants argument. You're not attacking the facts, you're trying to discredit what was posted based on your feelings about it instead, which is easier, but also a fallacy.

 Purifier wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

I agree, which really is no conclusion at all.

Actually it's a better one than what we usually get, especially when it comes to how much things cost GW to make on average (some kits obviously cost more or less, but without the exact breakdown per kit on what it costs them to make we can't really get that detailed, so instead we must suffer with the average, which is still more fair to both sides of the fence than the "plastic costs pennies so it should be cheaper" argument that pops up now and then, typically in pricing threads.)

 Steve steveson wrote:
Would that be a guy who claimed to know what he was talking about because he worked in business and that is how you account for stuff (Because he was misapplying accounting principles and making facile arguments to do with the separation of costing?).

I don't know if you're talking about me (I assume you aren't as I did HR and am only now starting to round myself out in other business releated areas and am not an expert of pretty much anything), but I'm going to guess that you aren't because the facts don't fit. As for my brief breakdown way back on page 2 and how it's far less than the best thing ever (which I admit, I just think that if someone wants to tell me it's bad or wrong they should honestly prove that it's bad or wrong instead of claiming it is so because of anything short of actual facts) I was trying to make it easier to see how the money breaks down much like how we get these nice diagrams that break down things like taxes into smaller amounts people can comprehend. Kind of like this:



Both what I posted, and that, are simplified models as budgets really don't breakdown that way (as I'm sure most people are likely aware the money isn't separated by the dollar like that image, or my simplistic breakdown gives, but works in allocations and other fun (okay, not really that fun to deal with) sorts of things) but it serves a purpose of making it clearer how is actually labeled as a "profit" and how much gets parted off to different things. It was a tool that was created in the period between classes, not a full analysis of GW's portfolio and a professional analysis of how they're doing.

Why not a real, serious and in-depth analysis? For one, I don't have the know how to do such a thing and if I were to try I'd spend more than 30-45 minutes on pulling some info up, crunching some basic numbers and then applying those percentages to a model kit to make it easier to see. And two, if I was doing such a thing I'd probably use pictures, and charge people money for it. And lastly, there are plenty of similar things you can find analyzing GW in a much higher capacity than I could at this point in time and you can find them with an easy Google search. Like this one: http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-and-risk-within

I honestly don't get paid for this and am just a voice in the internet who just looks at some of what they're doing and goes "huh, that's interesting" and honestly, some of it makes a lot more sense than the internet claims once you start getting into things like inelastic demand combined with elastic demand curves as well as "menu price" and even looking at their financials. Am I qualified to give more than my opinion about such things though? Nope! And I never intend to either.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Unfortunately some people will insist that GW lie to investors, and that there auditors lie. Unfortunately the only facts we have are the ones presented. People are very fast to draw conclusions from it, often contrary and bizarre conclusions, like insisting GW is in trouble because it has modest growth and every year arguing that it is "Just down to X and won't last next year".

I agree, much like how people insist the US Government is capable of covering up aliens for 70+ years. Having been in a branch of the Government it's amazing they can keep anything under wraps, especially with things like Facebook around anymore (seriously, have you seen the news on the people who get busted of the illegal things they've done and then posted about online? It's a bit silly).

The only conclusion I've had with GW is that they're not screwing us as much as the internet claims, and I'm betting that profit margin they're maintaining (or "Retained Earnings" to make my Accounting 201 class pay for itself a little. Maybe I should amortize it everytime I actually use something from it?) is to keep a buffer so if they have a dry month, or the economy tanks again, or they suffer another bubble burst they don't end up needing to run to the bank for a loan or generally end up shooting themselves in the foot. But that's just my guess (as if I don't label it as such someone might try to claim I'm saying that it's a fact).

EDIT: If any of the above isn't that clear I apologize. Just ask and I'll clarify when it's not 0130 and right after I've finished reviewing a semester's worth of math.

@jono: I think I'm starting to understand what your angle is now. So we're clear, I by no means want to claim the WH40k core rules or supplements are 'perfectly imbalanced' or that its even 'balanced'. In all honesty it's the must worthless pile of rules rubbish and game piece(stat entry, not models) that I have come across. All being tabletop gamers I'm sure you can imagine how many we've been through too. Indeed to say that calling it laughable is untrue as its so bad you cant even laugh at it. XD

I wouldn't say that the codex release schedule is the greatest at accomplishing meta change either, indeed I don't think I would call what 40k has a 'meta' in the strictest sense at all. It just doesn't have that feel. Feels kinda fake, its difficult to describe really.

Lastly, I would like to say Go is about as close to a balanced game as your ever going to get. Maybe Mancalla.

It's funny. I was just at a friendly tournament the other weekend, and I was running my wolves against a flying circus with the grimoire of course. I ended up losing because the match ended early but he said that I would have won if the game had even gone 1 more turn. The only thing that helped me even get that match close to a win was my rune priests runic weapon. It's one of two things left in the game that can stop blessings, both of which seem to be heading towards nerfville. My opponent said he would be happy when shadow in the warp and tunic weapons go as runes of warding did, but I disagreed for one reason. My army isn't top-tier anymore, but it's one of the few remedies of balance left in this wacky game these days. Honestly, to me, it looks as if, at the end of 6th edition when all of the codecices are released, that there will be and obvious rock-paper-scissors arrangement of power; it's just too early to see it, so we end up with bad balance.

 namiel wrote:
Its just truly become a game of pay to win. They want their sales numbers to show nothing but green until they sell it. Then after that you can get space marines at Walmart.

It was always a pay to win game, just now you can pay to win with just about any army instead of just 1 or 2.

Welp. I think I'll probably stick to the old Spearhead expansion in my game group. You get to take a SH, but it takes an automatic pen. And your opponent can get a group of vehicles buffed with Tank Hunter to help him win.

I've thought the game was lame for a while. I'm working on converting the "Bolt Action" WW2 rules to use for 40K. I'll call them "Bolter Action."

 Paradigm wrote:
To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that any 'breaking' of the game is intended or encouraged by GW, and nor is it their fault. It is simply a case of how people approach the game.

Every gamer I know plays very casually, using units because they like the look/fluff of them rather than sheer optimisation. And in all the time I've played (started early 5th) we have never really encountered an issue with balance at all. The game does not get broken because none of us try to break it. We have players that win a lot, but that's mostly down to player skill rather than any attempt at power-list-building or utilising cheese combos.

Looking at the wider meta, there seems to be a very interesting and slightly odd paradox. You have people complaining that Riptides/fliers/screamerstars are OP and are ruining the game, and then whenever anyone asks for advice for an army, you are almost certain to find 'you should go and buy -insert OP unit here- as it's the best' within the first few replies. I do wonder how people expect the game to change to a more balanced meta when everyone is being recommended the powerlist combos. I have nothing at all against anyone who enjoys playing competitively, but when you have people that simultaneously demand balance, mock the poor implementation of fliers/MCs/gunlines ect and then exploit these balance issues to the max, something doesn't add up. If every new player is told to but Screamerstars/Dettaspam/Triptides then of course the meta is going to be skewed towards them.

It seems obvious to me that causal games are the games GW really intend to be played. Their official batreps usually include custom scenarios and house rules, their rulebooks positively encourage you to change the rules however you want to make the game more cool/cinematic/watever you want to call it. They've stopped running tournaments for a reason, and it seems that that reasons is the fact that they aren't really bothered with catering to the competitive crowd.

Complaining about balance in a GW game that seems designed for casual games (where balances is notably less of an issue) is like buying a Formula One car and then complaining about its lack of off-road capabilities. If you're looking for a balanced and tourney-centric game, there are plenty out there, but it appears GW games are not what you're after. Rather than rewriting a game that clearly isn't meant to tournaments, you're better off going for a different game.

You have summed it up perfectly.

Actually pretty darn hard to make a game like 40k totally balanced AND interesting. So many evolving races and units. If it was totally balanced and static it would be boring. FoW seems pretty balanced with more generic units, frankly I found it dull.

I guess the real issue is that sadly there are fair number of Eldar players out there with 1500 point unpainted armies who are WAAC. Instead of complaining, we need not play them, problem solved. Furthermore, these type of players tend to get annoyed whilst playing if things don't go their way. Personally I play to have a bit of a laugh, try some new strats, throw some dice, winning is nice too!

" Instead of complaining, we need not play them, problem solved. "

Why should we punish the player for what GW wrote? If I were an Eldar player, I'd do the same thing. People wanting to field the best list they can is *not* a bad thing.

The whole mess is GW's fault.

 scommy wrote:
Instead of complaining, we need not play them, problem solved.

Yeah, why expect the game to have good rules when you can just shun people for not playing the "right" army. Let's make sure the community is as divided as possible, until we're all sitting at our own tables refusing to play all of the other TFGs in the store.

Personally I play to have a bit of a laugh, try some new strats, throw some dice, winning is nice too!

So why even bother playing at all then? Why not just line up your toy soldiers and make gun noises for a while, then put them away?

EDIT- Removed