auticus wrote:
Yeah I was still playing WM back then (and I played Cryx) and I got out because of that. That and no one wanted to do anything except for tournament play.

Well the latter part is another issue entirely, but the former is basically what I meant. You can have lists that are both fluffy and extremely good, lists that aren't fluffy at all that are extremely good, lists that are fluffy and near-worthless, and everything in between. So ultimately I think there isn't a real definition of when it's "too much", it's totally subjective. Which, incidentally, is a big reason why I think it's so hard to know when to tone it down because what constitutes it is often not easy to pinpoint.

I do, however, think the majority of cases have clear cut and dried "this should be toned down" attitudes, which again brings us back to the person not wanting to or even saying the other person needs to "git gud" and stop caring about the fluff/theme/etc. when picking a list. How many times have we seen people here say how they shouldn't have to tone down their list, but their opponent needs to pick better units so they can play with a "good" list too? That attitude is the one that's damning because it immediately comes off as hostile and puts you at odds with the overall design of the game when you are straight up told that you should be choosing an army and units based on everything *except* how good they are (judging from the vast majority of material put out by GW themselves).

I guess what it really boils down to is that competitive players only find enjoyment in competitive games; they are often unwilling to broaden their horizons to narrative or, god forbid, Open play. Now sometimes the reasons are valid if exaggerated (yes, open play lets you field whatever nonsense you want without limit but are you really that concerned about "winning" an open play game that you would do it just to be an ass? If not, then what's the issue as you can just exercise self-restraint and not rely on boogeymen to gak on the entire idea of that game style) but I do feel that your die-hard competitive people are missing out on the vast majority of the game by taking 1/3 and making it the whole game.

However, I also feel that there is no point in approaching a game to lose. In one way or another, any game you play whether it's open, narrative, matched, or cutthroat competitive is a player vs. player game, so you should be trying to win. It's the level of that attempt which casues the issue. I haven't talked to anyone who plays to lose; I've talked to plenty of people who aren't concerned with winning to min/max, but that's not the same as trying to lose. In most cases, the person just wants to pick what appeals to them and not get their teeth kicked in because someone brought an optimized LVO-style tournament list to a casual or fun game night. If you ask me, the person who brings an uber-optimized list to a non-tournament event is at fault because that's the outlier (in the majority of cases) so should be the thing with advance warning, even if it's a simple "I'm testing out my tournament list" or "I play a competitive list" sort of addendum to a Facebook post when you say you're going to be there for games.

It's apparently the lack of mutual respect for fellow gamers that is the issue, which is why we see so many "Power Level is garbage and anyone who uses it or even thinks its okay is a virtue-signaling CAAC dumbass" type of vitriol where there's absolutely no respect for other people who like a different style or even bothering to understand that there are 3 ways to play for a reason, that is the underlying issue here and in my experience that comes way more often and more broadly from the comp players. The complaints against comp players are often misattributed to your WAAC type that only gets fun when winning, doesn't care a lick about the game beyond a unit's stats, would prefer that books had zero fluff and just statlines, and in general are the sort of player who is only happy in a tournament environment but still goes to game night to wreck face. It's often too broad a label as the majority of tournament players don't behave that way and simply enjoy one aspect of the game. As I said earlier it seems to be mainly a US thing as Europe and Australia they tend to embrace more than just playing to min/max and win.

Wayniac wrote:
How many times have we seen people here say how they shouldn't have to tone down their list, but their opponent needs to pick better units so they can play with a "good" list too? That attitude is the one that's damning because it immediately comes off as hostile and puts you at odds with the overall design of the game when you are straight up told that you should be choosing an army and units based on everything *except* how good they are (judging from the vast majority of material put out by GW themselves).

It's worth pointing out that you have two people asking the same thing of the other. Both essentially come down to the idea that the other should buy more stuff and change what they play to conform to the other's expectations. Both come across as rather hostile to the other perspective. It's very easy to perceive a player asking someone not to use a tournament list is demanding the opponent let them win. The sense of "how much is too much" makes stepping down feel like a risky prospect, as its easy to step back, still win and make the opponent no less happy. I've certainly run some pretty silly and fun stuff that still gets labeled cheese, but that's just more down to certain people that are unwilling to accept their own failings and need to find something to blame. Personally, I side the other way, but mostly because I get a lot of joy out of the opportunity to learn and improve. Taking something that failed and getting it working is half the fun and I think its overall healthier to rise to the challenges you face then expect them to conform to the reality you're imposing on yourself.

I think where a lot of players get stuck is the idea that the only thing they can do is play whatever faction and list is currently on top. There's a lot of ways to improve lists without just copying the top and there's a lot of room to play suboptimal units as long as you're not insisting on spamming them. Having the humility to expect failure and coming in with an attitude seeking to improve has made me a lot happier compared to the days when I used to approach games seeking or expecting success.

So, I was listening to podcasts again today, and besides the usual suspects I tried a 'normal' 40k podcast as the guys listed their most under-rated units in 8th 40k.

The podcast was enjoyable, and the discussion intelligent enough, even good-hearted.

One thing that stood out were the dimensions brought to bear in analysis.

Each of these under-rated units were evaluated in terms of combo-buffing, shrink-wrapping, probability maximizing point cost efficiency, as well as the value of a standard model kit being small, and so easily hidden (so, modeling for advantage OEM style, let's call it shopping for modeled advantage...).

There is a language community that trades in terms of these dimensions of value. I believe that this is what these people see when they look at these models - bonuses, buffs, unlocked combos...

But that has me wondering - again - why bother with the models at all?

If - as I have read so often lately - Apoc is the new 9th edition that everyone wants, e.g. even faster gameplay! moar models! more abstraction, why bother with the models, at all?

Stack cards in rows, power them up with adjacent cards, burn command point cards to counter hard targets or save damaged units - why bother with the models when the desk/list building is the most important determinant. Terrain? Cover? There are cards for that.

See, this is the issue, for me. I liked listening to the podcast, sure, but I would not wan to play that game. I did enjoy some CCGs about 30 year ago. But Warhammer was different, and I liked that better. The tournaments valued sportsmanship and fair play, rules knowledge and modeling, themed armies and respect for the mythology all equally with winning. People didn't want to be "that guy" (the one with the 33 dark reapers behind a wall - spam). Sure, this is fun, once or twice, but the idea of collecting 33 dark reapers just to beat people made this person "that guy".

Now that it is a "competitive" CCG, it seems that everyone is supposed to line up to be that guy, next, I like the "game" a lot less.

So, maybe comp 40k is less 'off the rails' than 'the only train in town'.

And, this feeds the exclusionary attitudes in both directions, the "casuals" (if you can call 30yrs of hobby "casual") feeling excluded and the "competitive" players at least tacitly excluding these others simply through the use of a common evaluative framework and language.

That is something I notice. Everything now has this quasi-CCG language. Bubblewrap, Daisychain (both of which may have existed before but I certainly never recall seeing these ever used in White Dwarf's battle reports or games years ago), buff synergy, etc. It's like a different language that has bled into everything.

It used to be a running joke in Warmahordes that the models weren't really necessary and you might as well use the bases (everything went off the base size) with a portrait of the model in the middle; it would make moving them much easier. Seems like it's almost the same for Warhammer, although thankfully not at that extreme.

It seems the days of "do I like this model" or "Does this model fit my army background" being the major questions are long gone, and I seemingly missed the memo. There's too much emphasis even on the non-competitive (I think that word is better suited than "casual") side of things on the metagame, and less on the spectacle of the game.


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 jeff white wrote:
See, this is the issue, for me. I liked listening to the podcast, sure, but I would not wan to play that game. I did enjoy some CCGs about 30 year ago. But Warhammer was different, and I liked that better. The tournaments valued sportsmanship and fair play, rules knowledge and modeling, themed armies and respect for the mythology all equally with winning. People didn't want to be "that guy" (the one with the 33 dark reapers behind a wall - spam). Sure, this is fun, once or twice, but the idea of collecting 33 dark reapers just to beat people made this person "that guy".

This resonates with me since I too remember a time when tournaments rewarded themed armies and having respect for the background material and punished people who would gak on the lore for the sake of min/maxing a list to focus on winning all their games. And I remember when if you spammed plasma or took 33 dark reapers or 3 Wraithlords (back when they were really, really good) you weren't the sort of player most groups wanted around and it was clear that you were a "hardcore" tourney player who only cared about getting 1st place in events and probably were only playing 40k not because you really wanted to, but because there was a large community with regular tournaments.

Well, you're listening to a non-visual medium that somewhat limits what can be discussed in terms of visuals. I guess the question is what would you like them to talk about? Keep in mind, part of the problem is that there's not really a shortage of impressive looking models out there, and much of what draws people's attention is color scheme. You get quite a bit of "amazing looking model/paint job" comments in most podcasts, but it's hard to speak with substance and I think we all just kind of dismiss it after a while.

It's also worth noting that even when analyzing rules (which admittedly generally could be represented by a token base) there's an element of playing with cool toys that draws in even the most competitive players. In fact, a lot of the rules analysis comes down to the fact that the rules are kind of the features of the toy. Yeah, that Boba Fett is really cool, but how much cooler would it be if its backpack could shoot the missile?

At some point the quality of the features of a toy affect how much fun you can have with it. Boba Fett with missile backpack sounds cool, but if the missile spring is so weak it just barely gets past his helmet still doesn't live up to the description. Similarly, a lot of models have rules that sound really cool, but don't practically work unless your opponent gives you the perfect setup or chooses to ignore them long enough to trigger or it or chooses TO ignore them to avoid triggering it. A lot of rules analysis really comes down to "does this play as cool as it sounds?" and honestly, a lot of the disappointment people have comes from the reality that highly random abilities that sound fun aren't nearly as entertaining when the reality is they just don't actually happen.

If GW could come up with a more balanced rule-set then the questions of "do I like this model" or "does this model fit my army background" or even "does this model fit my preferred method of play or strategy" would be much more community wide accepted questions.

This is why the hate towards tournament players wanting a more tight and balanced rule set is so crazy to me. If the difference between a true to the fluff 2nd company UM list and a triple disco list + Morty wasn't an auto-lose in two rounds for the UM player EVERYONE would have a better time.

Stacking buffs, daisy chaining, character targeting, tri-pointing and a slew of other feels bad, immersion breaking in-game moments are not things that have to happen. They are a result of bad GW rules writing (which after 9 editions and 30+ years shouldn't be a thing). Better technical writing, more in-depth and harder play-testing and moving away from the idea of 40k as a gentlemen's game between friends where you are to house rule how the rules work and what is "cheesy" vs what is "allowed" would make the game better for all consumers of the game.

A tighter, more balanced rule set that focused on list building as putting together a tool-box for strategies you want to try to execute would help bring in the other elements of the game that a lot of players are finding missing (army themes, fluffy forces, faction identities). Instead finding the most broken combos/units to just brute force your way to victory is how a lot of armies are built and it ruins the game for people who don't want to make that sacrifice.

Encouraging things like theme'd armies, actual faction tactics/strengths/weaknesses and the narrative side of the game part through balanced rules/units is something that should be the goal and we shouldn't let GW wiggle out of their responsibility of providing rules that promote that. What we have now is a bad frame work of sloppy rules which only really work when you either agree to push them to the limits (tournaments) or house rule them to fit your group (narrative/open/casual within a close group).

Mind you, I really like going to tournaments and engaging in competitive play because the game does work when you push it to the limits and everyone has the same idea of what is going on. The community is bigger and more accepting, there isn't some weird gate-keeping where I have to prove my worth to join the secret club. No one cares if I can't play but once a month or can't spend hours painting/building terrain/units for the battle of Andraxas reenactment. I find tournament play more casual than a lot of what people call casual play.

Wayniac wrote:

It used to be a running joke in Warmahordes that the models weren't really necessary and you might as well use the bases (everything went off the base size) with a portrait of the model in the middle; it would make moving them much easier. Seems like it's almost the same for Warhammer, although thankfully not at that extreme.

Is it? Apoc is basically a CCG with two types of cards - those oddly shaped ones you move around the table and garrison predefined spaces with, and those you play from hand, which contain a vast majority of flavor mechanics and interactions this game has to offer. The last major difference is that you still measure distances from card to card with tape measure and not spaces, but actual minis do not really matter anymore - you don't even remove miniatures as a way of recording sustained damage so you can have the same overcrowded looking table with full, half or quarter of your initial force.

Haven't' played apoc to really know, honestly. Also while I'm not going to quote it 100% agree with bananathug about how the "immersion breaking" tactics exist due to overall poor rules writing. I don't think anyone is really hating competitive players wanting a better set of rules, it's the fear/thought that these "better rules" will eschew everything BUT those immersion breaking things and remove anything that's narrative from the game. That's the fear.

Warmahordes was like that. Amazing set of rules, extremely clear and concise and with no ambiguity. And the game was pure garbage for everything BUT competitive focused tournament play because it had all of those rules that encouraged that sort of incredible depth that tournament players loved (daisy chaining, laser precise movement, combo stacking that you could build up and hit at a moment's notice, etc.) but which made it feel totally unsuited for narrative play since the entire game felt so gamey that it made you not care about anything but the game. Besides that it had little to no customization and what amounted to special characters in every game, and the end result was an amazing tournament game that pushed that mindset above everything else, even if you wanted to play it narratively you still ended up playing suboptimal competitive just because of how the rules were written.

The rules didn't encourage narrative play because they weren't cinematic, they were mechanical. That's what people are afraid of when they seem to "argue" against wanting better rules, it's not wanting the game to lose everything that doesn't fit a competitive set of rules.

Everything now has this quasi-CCG language.

Starting with WM, wargames began intentionally moving towards hybridizing board games and CCGs for commercial reasons.

The language of CCGs and board games has become lexicon in wargames now as well.

When I say 40k seems like a CCG, its not just because I see the similarities in CCG mechanics and have played classical wargames since the 1980s. Its because as a game dev as well I attend conferences and I know for a fact from those conferences that it is intentional that wargame designers intentionally for commercial reasons moved away from wargame tropes and began taking from CCG and board games.

Because those things sell hot and wargames never really did until the CCG hybridization started. It was Warmachine that was the real first commercial success of the magic the gathering hybridization of models and ccg mechanics.

And its only getting more and more blatant.

Classic wargames and maneuvering and battlefield tactics on a table is hugely niche. It was niche in 1975 and chainmail, it was niche in the 80s and 90s, and is even more niche today as classic wargames have shrunk in sales and desirability. Table skill is quite simply not fun for most people. Losing because you can't figure a game out is frustrating and causes people to quit.

However, list building, combo chaining, board games and card games, those have some kind of draw that cannot be matched by traditional wargames, nor will they ever. There is an addiction mentality at work when it comes to those mechanics, similar to how we learned to monetize mobile apps through addiction mentality hooks.

Honestly, one of my favorite things about Apoc is that there's a lot fewer specific rules tied to things. Like, I can pick whatever power weapon I think looks the coolest and make my guys however I want. Things don't die until they get to do something cool for the most part, stuff like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

Because those things sell hot and wargames never really did until the CCG hybridization started. It was Warmachine that was the real first commercial success of the magic the gathering hybridization of models and ccg mechanics.

I think that's largely because those mechanics are engaging and rewarding. A lot of classic wargames are either really fiddly as a result of trying to simulate really complicated ideas with very limited tools or excuses to do something with your excellent diorama. Honestly, even in those rules, the concepts of resource management and meaningful decisions that drive modern gaming still exist; they're just not something the developers were aware of and therefore didn't use in ways they can control. Ultimately though, I don't really feel like classic wargames really made the models any more important than current games do; current games are just trying to do more with what is inherently a static, featureless toy.

I feel like where modern games have really stumbled is their attempts to broadly codify terrain into their rules without forcing construction requirements on their players. That element is easily the most DIY that remains in gaming and the sheer amount of potential variety that creates has lead developers to come up with increasingly non-impactful rules to limit unintended interactions. Its one of the genre's more unique features but one that I feel has rarely been leveraged properly.

 LunarSol wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

Because those things sell hot and wargames never really did until the CCG hybridization started. It was Warmachine that was the real first commercial success of the magic the gathering hybridization of models and ccg mechanics.

I think that's largely because those mechanics are engaging and rewarding.

As auticus said:

 auticus wrote:

There is an addiction mentality at work when it comes to those mechanics, similar to how we learned to monetize mobile apps through addiction mentality hooks.

Snugiraffe wrote:

But I'm that strange kind of person who believes that expecting two 2,000-pt 40k armies to both be worth exactly 2,000 points is laughable at best. Which points the finger back at GW and a lack of balance, I suppose.

I agree that it's often laughable to expect 2,000pts to be equal to 2,000pts. However, I disagree that it points the finger back to gw. Simply truth is it's often laughable to expect 75pts in warmachine to be equal to 75pts, or 300pts in infinity to be equal to 300 other points. It's true for pretty much all ttgs. Accurate points values, essentially is a unicorn.
No, it's fundamentally an issue with 'the system' itself. and by 'the system', I mean table top games themselves, in general. As systems, they're extremely limited in the amount of 'weight' they can carry, and what they can be expected to do.



And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

Deadnight wrote:


And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

This. So much this.

Deadnight wrote:


And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

This here is pure heresy in the eyes of the many who worship The Adequately Pointed Gods.

And The truth is there is only so much developers can do, and be expected to do. Personally, I put some of the responsibility on players as well. Do I blame them for the flaws in the system? No, but I don't hold them as faultless when they take the flaws, grab them with both hands, run with them, and beat their opponents over the head with them, while shrugging their shoulders and pretending there was nothing they could do or should do about it. On a point of principle, just because it's in the book doesn't make things 'right' or 'fair ' or that you have to do it. There is a reason 'we were just following orders' doesn't get much traction at The Hague.

This is probably the most accurate description of the issue ever seen on dakka.
Yes gw is doing questionable design rulewise.
Massively abusing the flaws are however the players.

Deadnight wrote:

And to compound this, to a very large extent, 'the system' itself is fundamentally unfixable. You cannot have any kind of a system that imposes flat, universal values to denote 'worth' on things with anything approaching even the vaguest sense of balance, or accuracy when the reality on the ground is that something's worth is entirely situational, and depends both on what it's fielded with, what it's fielded against, the terrain type, quantity, layout, objectives, player 'skill', and a dozen other variables. Unless you can create a self-correcting algorithm that can account for all of that, you will never have an accurate value system.

It helps to recognize that points are more just another stat on a model than something that can balance a model all on its own. The "points stat" being too good is no different than a model having too many wounds or attacks. For the most part, if two models fit a similar design space, points efficiency simply determines which one of them is viable, rather than give players any meaningful choice between the two. Sometimes the point stat is the problem, but you don't create real diversity by adjusting it. Games get in real trouble when designers believe in points as their balancing mechanic instead of focusing on ensuring that models have unique design space and compelling features.

I think it is a fair point that points will never balance exactly, but they can do a much better job than they do currently. The biggest problem is the release schedule being one faction at a time in my view, with favourite factions getting several updates before the red headed stepchild factions get one, resulting in factions designed for entirely different paradigms having very limited options to compete. A newbie does not know this and blunders into the problems after spending a large amount of time and money. That is the most compelling reason for balance to me. I thought GW were on the right path with the indices but it seems they veered into the ditch again before too long. No doubt some manchild at GW HQ got excited about his favourite toys and got carried away, AGAIN.

I find the "points will never be balanced so thats ok that 40k and AOS are not balanced because its impossible" to be mega cop outs.

It is true, points will never be perfectly balanced.

But they can damn sure well be 1000x better than what they are today, and the fan comps of AOS before it had points were proof of that.

 auticus wrote:
I find the "points will never be balanced so thats ok that 40k and AOS are not balanced because its impossible" to be mega cop outs.

It is true, points will never be perfectly balanced.

But they can damn sure well be 1000x better than what they are today, and the fan comps of AOS before it had points were proof of that.

This is what I find so amusing. "It can't be totally balanced, so mediocrity is acceptable" is fething bullgak, plain and simple. That doesn't excuse poor quality because you can't get it to be perfect (which nobody wants). There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

So why accept a half-assed job?

Because its the biggest game in town and your financial investment into it is secure and you know others will be found everywhere on the globe to play against is what I'm thinking.

Wayniac wrote:
There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way. If there's a small exploit that only 1 in 10,000 players will notice, it won't get noticed in Infinity but a half dozen will notice it in 40k, and that exploit will be posted to the internet and become common knowledge. The smaller games aren't better designed, they just have security through obscurity.

I mean, GW isn't trying to make airtight rules though, so somebody pointing out that the rules aren't airtight is just pointing out that they are working as intended. I really don't understand why people play GW games competitively then complain that they aren't competitive enough, when they were never intended to be.

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way. If there's a small exploit that only 1 in 10,000 players will notice, it won't get noticed in Infinity but a half dozen will notice it in 40k, and that exploit will be posted to the internet and become common knowledge. The smaller games aren't better designed, they just have security through obscurity.

I mean, GW isn't trying to make airtight rules though, so somebody pointing out that the rules aren't airtight is just pointing out that they are working as intended. I really don't understand why people play GW games competitively then complain that they aren't competitive enough, when they were never intended to be.

Err, no. You can't have it both ways. Either GW deserves credit for trying and only fails because the task is impossible, or GW is deliberately not intending to make competitive games.

 Peregrine wrote:

Err, no. You can't have it both ways. Either GW deserves credit for trying and only fails because the task is impossible, or GW is deliberately not intending to make competitive games.

Reality isn't black or white. Things can be somewhere on the spectrum between two extremes.

GW does not intend to make these games competitive games - primarily. They do pay lip service to competitive play and since the "three ways to play" and the General's Handbook making points a separate document, they have thrown competitive players a bone. But if you listen to ANY of the designers talk about the game, not a single one of them has a competitive mindset. Almost universally, they talk about the stories behind their characters and the fiction of the game universe over how to maximize competitive advantage. That's not to say that they don't care about competitive players (and their money), but the people making the game are explicitly not competitive players and are designing a game they enjoy playing.

That being said, the points they put out are about as good as it possibly could be, given that points are an extremely imperfect system for determining balance. They update them twice a year based on player response and tournament successes. GW does make an attempt to use them in a way for the betterment and health of the game. They are more successful at breaking up specific strategies than they are providing true balance though, but that's the nature of points.

The problem is, within a week of the points updates, there've been a few thousand games played and hundreds of forum posts applying every mathematical formula to the new balance, essentially breaking it before it even gets a chance to be used. This new understanding of balance informs people's purchases and within two weeks, entire armies built around these imbalances have been purchased. A less popular game, like Malifaux or Infinity - their balance is just as suspect, but mostly shows up in specific combinations of elements that someone might realize early on, but it might take months before this imbalance is so commonly known that it becomes a standard to build armies against.

Malifaux also has strong faction loyalty, to the point where I've seen people say that so-and-so master is overpowered and they won't play as them or against them, and will stick to the masters they enjoy. Balance is somewhat maintained simply by the fact that most people don't bother to use the exploits. Meanwhile, 40k has people who plop down hundreds of dollars to buy entire armies built around exploits that will undoubtedly be errata'd in a few months. Even one of these types of players, not even locally, but regionally, can force an arms race the spreads across a large territory.

If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

 Sqorgar wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.

It's because they are smaller that they can get away with it. If Infinity had as many people playing - and thus trying to break - the game as 40k does, its rules would collapse in exactly the same way.

No, and in the very biginning the guys in my club back than tried and those thing they found were FAQed after wards

We have also done those things with each Fantasy Army book when it came out. ~6 people with some who played the army and some who did not (to get a different point of view), played for 1 day and found everything that was broken

Not talking about a minor difference in power level or points, but things that made the army overpowered or rules that did not work at all

of course, the more games played the more issues are found and you get the way of eternal balancing if you want to change from 45:55 to 49:51
but broken rules or clearly overpowered compinations that are found by some players on day one making it more a 20:80 is a diffent issue


also the different experience here is while for Infinity it was changed and GW just did not cared and changed minor issues instead

GW changed that in between and for some time it looked like they would really care, but this somehow we ended up in the same situation that we always had at the end of the lifetime of the current edition. The other GW game is the better one although it was worse when it current edition started and we get Supplements which fix some of the major issues but are advertised as optional and/or use a different point frame so that it is for now use in standard games (would have been easy to say for everything between 1500-2500 points use the Apocalypse rules without the big stuff)

Peregrine wrote:If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

It’s my understanding that the people who make the rules and the people who make the points are different groups of people. I believe the points are largely outsourced to the tournament community. I don’t know about 40k, but AoS originally used a community comp system for points and the players who did that are still in charge - or at least consulted and involved in play testing. The points are created by the competitive players directly.

kodos wrote:For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

It’s worth pointing out that power levels are included on the data sheets, while the points require purchasing a second product (repeatedly). That says to me that power levels are what GW wants to be the default for the majority of their players.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is an absurd argument. PL is a point system, just one that has less accurate evaluations of unit strength. You use it the exact same way that you use the conventional point system. If you can't figure out how to use normal points then how exactly are you going to use PL? And honestly, how are you going to understand how to play the game at all if something as basic as "you have a budget of X points and each thing you add to your army spends some of those points" is a meaningful obstacle to overcome?

Can you flip through the book, including flipping to the points appendix and build a list in your head? Because you can do that with PL, it's a vastly simplified points system. Which no matter how much you dislike it has a point, you just refuse to acknowledge that. I mean hell, would you rather sit in a chair and count to 1000 or count to 50? That's literally the difference here.

The AOS team however ARE mainly tournament players, at least from what they've indicated. So on that front I'd say it's deliberate to reward finding those combos, a staple of game design now since CCGs dominated. It's only the 40k designers, they're different teams now, who are the "throw some models down with me mates over a pint" type.

Part of the issue, in general, is that GW has *made* their game so bloated it's become harder and harder, dare I say nearly impossible, to balance. It's a symptom of their lack of caring for so long (if they even do today) about having a good *game* versus having a lot of good *models* that just so happens to have something resembling a tabletop game along with it to let you do more than have your models sit in a display case. There's no reason for the huge amount of bloat in 40k; it serves no useful purpose and actually hurts more than it helps because of how unstable the game has become, even with a total revamp for 8th edition, as a result. There's what, 25 codexes? Or close to that? And, despite not actually needing all of those documents to play, now over 100 FAQ documents that each and every book needs to fix things that should either be caught in proofreading or caught with even a basic amount of testing beyond "Oh that sounds about right".


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 Sqorgar wrote:

Peregrine wrote:If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

It’s my understanding that the people who make the rules and the people who make the points are different groups of people. I believe the points are largely outsourced to the tournament community. I don’t know about 40k, but AoS originally used a community comp system for points and the players who did that are still in charge - or at least consulted and involved in play testing. The points are created by the competitive players directly.

kodos wrote:For just play and have fun we have power points which are made without a competitive mindset and just to play the narritive

It’s worth pointing out that power levels are included on the data sheets, while the points require purchasing a second product (repeatedly). That says to me that power levels are what GW wants to be the default for the majority of their players.

I think the outside testers are only for testing, GW still comes up with points and supposedly they have a spreadsheet with formulae although I question that since the way they price things seems like it has little rhyme or reason, and certainly not a formula grounded in probability and statistics since mathhammer that comes from fans consistently shows different results

Again let's not derail this into PL vs. Points as many threads do when Peregrine gets involved but it's clear the idea is that PL is for more quick and dirty games, likely asymmetrical, where you aren't too concerned about things. And, as stated many times, if you aren't the type of person like Peregrine clearly is, who will immediately look at "options cost no points" and think how that means you can take everything and anything, and only pick the best because it's all the same. The mindset instead is "I built this model with X so I'll use X" or "I envision this squad equipped with Y for my army theme" and basically everything EXCEPT considering raw output. Which seems to be an incredibly hard, if not impossible, thing for some people to even consider exists, let alone do.

nou wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


You might be using more models, but it is difficult to see how this game isn't just a simpler card game.
Miniatures, realism, so much less...
What you describe seems like a card game with fewer unique cards lined up in rows that get removed when card Ax can target card By and player A rolls high enough given some comparison between stats on Ax and By. On a D12.

What version of 40k was this not the case? It sounds like the issue is more that you've played enough to see the machinery behind the curtain. Is it having the statline on cards that breaks the illusion, because a card is just a summary of a unit profile. Realistically there's always been a "card" floating behind any unit on the table that determines how it interacts with the cards behind any other unit. I don't see how that's ever been different.

Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

Exactly.^^


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 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Try playing 2nd ed on Necromunda levels of terrain density with just bases, cards and paper tokens and then do the same with miniatures and tell me the experience was exactly the same and TLOS did not change anything...

So, using rules that are decades old and from a game that is completely different from 40k on terrain that hardly anyone has? Not exactly a convincing argument there.

That terrain is not unlike much available today - and the rules, well, these are sort of what is at issue here in this thread, no? I mean, limited variance implies more consistent expectations across gamers feeding the competitive scene with, well, more like-minded gamers... no?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
If GW's rule authors do not have a competitive mindset then the points aren't as good as they possibly could be, because the best balance comes from the competitive-style approach to the game and not from "just having fun" or "telling stories about their characters".

I disagree here, unless you intend to mean 'look out for the competitive mindset' as otherwise we get stripped down cardgames wherein the miniatures don't matter any more than the mythology or the sarcastic double-take on pc doublespeak that inspired the originals especially...


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 auticus wrote:
Because its the biggest game in town and your financial investment into it is secure and you know others will be found everywhere on the globe to play against is what I'm thinking.

So, who wants to buy 15000 points of mixed metal models collected for characteristic representation of available resources rather than uber optimized with the cutting edge rule-bending plastics that litter the side tables of today?

Wayniac wrote:
The AOS team however ARE mainly tournament players, at least from what they've indicated.

Huh? The AoS design lead is Jervis Johnson, who's very name causes competitive players to burst into fire like a vampire stepping into daylight. This is the guy who literally wrote the book on "you don't need points to have fun" and the reason why AoS 1.0 went over with competitive players about as well as sexual assault. I don't think I could name a designer who is LESS of a tournament player than JJ. He can't even beat his wife at backgammon. AoS's second in command, according to Stormcast, is Sam Pearson, who I know is not a competitive player from his posts in defense of AoS here.

Part of the issue, in general, is that GW has *made* their game so bloated it's become harder and harder, dare I say nearly impossible, to balance.

That's because their business is built around constantly expanding a game to continue selling you new product. That's what they care about and GW would literally die if their games stopped growing. GW is like a shark. If it stops moving, it dies. That's also the case for Warmachine, which is (was?) a completely competitive game that was starting to buckle under its own girth well before players started to abandon it. That's just what miniature games are. Even the competitive ones.

There's no reason for the huge amount of bloat in 40k; it serves no useful purpose and actually hurts more than it helps because of how unstable the game has become, even with a total revamp for 8th edition, as a result. There's what, 25 codexes? Or close to that? And, despite not actually needing all of those documents to play, now over 100 FAQ documents that each and every book needs to fix things that should either be caught in proofreading or caught with even a basic amount of testing beyond "Oh that sounds about right".

The amount of actual rules in a single codex is a minority of the book. The vast majority of the books are pictures of models and background fluff. I just got the Syvaneth battletome, so it is here right next to me, and the rules don't even start until page 64 and last just under 40 pages. When the GHB or Chapter Approved comes out, people only look at the 10 pages of matched play content, but there's TONs of non-matched player stuff in these books - some of which is absolute gold. GW sells rules, both intended for competitive play and decidedly lot, but it also sells novels and characters and settings. And this stuff is important to competitive players too, or else they'd go play actual competitive games like Chess or Go rather than a bunch of space marines fighting cenobites and xenomorphs.

if you aren't the type of person like Peregrine clearly is

A troll?

The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

So, the guy at the top - the guy who has written articles about how competitive gamers are bad for the hobby and how you don't need points - doesn't have any influence over the game? And I know bottle went to tournaments, but he wasn't (primarily) a competitive player. If you go back and read his posts here, and look at his accomplishments as a designer - heck, if you listen to interviews with him or go to his Twitter page, he's not a competitive player.

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

This, pretty much. Jervis is the head and clearly isn't a competitive player, but from everything that's been indicated the rest of the AOS team enjoy competitive play, and the people they consult with are also regulars on the UK tournament circuit or bigtime UK organizers (like the guys who run SCGT) so at the very least they seem to "get" what matters to competitive players. I'm not sure at what point the AOS team branched, but the original 1.0 team was I think the same as the 40k team (which explains that debacle) and post-GHB expanded to be different.

A couple of points from above posts..

1-Dice Masturbation. Great term But I don't think we come at it from the same angle.

Dice rolling is GOOD. It allows for the player's plants to work great, be super effective.. or fail spectacularly.

SKILL in a game should be encouraged and skill isn't doing the Mathhammer to be unbeatable. Skill is being able to handle what the dice give you.

Which leads to my divergence from Apoc being "good" new rules. Yes, it reduces unneeded dice rolling. That's good. But it also starts to remove so much that the game starts to get flat, stale, cardboard.

The problem in 8th and the bloat of dice is due to it's idiotic rules design.

Dice masturbation is rolling lots of dice when you 1-shouldn't and 2-it isn't adding to the game.. its dice for dice sake.. because dice. Which is 8th.

Why? Because it has so many mulligans built in that it's lame. Part of having skill is winning despite the dice. When the dice hand you a win no one says.. wow you so skilled! No, it's the dice gods that won the day, not the player.

But when a player with bad dice ends up winning through skill. then it is clearly the player who is laudable.

Re-rolls, roll more re-rolls, bubbles of re-rolls. There were a lot fewer re-rolls in 8th. Even with FNP being abused.. you didn't get bubbles of re-roll all misses in ranged and combat and also re-rolls of 1s plus every six is another roll.

Rolls rolls rolls. Let alone the rolls for "shots" by AOE weapons then rolling AGAIN to hit, then to wound.

So I get the perspective on excessive dice for dice sake. But Apoc is as tasteful as cardboard pizza.

Right now abusing -1 to hit is a huge thing and the WACs field it at all costs (-2 being even better, zero ork shooting possible!).

8th is bloaty with special rules that could have been handled in just a few pages in the main rule book.

2- Game Complexity-weapons
Nothing wrong with the games variety of weapons. The problem is the copy-paste job version of them. Weapons used to actually be DIFFERENT and MEANINGFUL. In today's game you could safely cut about 3/4 because they are just dupes of each other.

In the old days, weapons had short and long range stats. These variables made different weapons.. different. Auto-guns were different than lasguns and minus to hit at long range OR short range (for unwealdly things) was a thing.

So an Auto-pistol was not the same stat line as a Las Pistol which was different from a slug thrower (yeah there were three tiers of weapons back in RT/1st edition days.)

So from today's perspective flattening out the weapons isn't so bad since they kept stripping "features" from weapons and combat to "streamline" things which resulted in many weapons becoming superfluous

3- TLOS.. yeah it sucks. By far the best LOS system was that in Warmachine where BASE SIZED was a thing. It made everything straight forward. No arguments or wasted time on visible, not-visible, in-cover, not-in-cover.

GW should have gone to base size (cylender) LOS a long time ago. If you want to "streamline" without turning the game into boring gak.. that's how you do it.

If Warmachine can do templates in fast, clock controlled, play then removing the templates does not abjectly speed up the game.. but it does make it more boring.

Tournaments need CLEAR, SPEEDY, but rules that maintain randomness to limit the ability to Mathhammer to "total victory".

Complexity is GOOD if it limits tactical moves and makes bad moves COSTLY. Dice for dice sake sucks and wastes TIME. TLOS sucks use base-size LOS. Bring back templates (sorry horde guys, but as a long time ork guy I've lived with templates my entire 40k time and its not the end of the world.. you just have to be cunni'n brutal.. not just brutal.... use yer 'eads)

AoS has gotten a lot smoother over the years than 40k. A lot of their stuff is pretty streamlined and workable. Your AoS games are faster and more "time efficient" than your 40K games atm despite the rules copy-pasta from AoS into 8th.

But AoS will never be a "fantasy battle" game. It's a fantasy skirmish game. Totally different than the old battles which felt great... if they were time consuming.

I know people don't like to have to REALLY think.. or think REALLY HARD.... REALLY FAST (on the tourney clock) but hey.

Not everyone is a winner.

But I totally understand GWs goal of Race-to-the-bottom approach to modern wargamming as it hopefully will draw in more people to an otherwise fairly static or shrinking field of players.


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Wayniac wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

This, pretty much. Jervis is the head and clearly isn't a competitive player, but from everything that's been indicated the rest of the AOS team enjoy competitive play, and the people they consult with are also regulars on the UK tournament circuit or bigtime UK organizers (like the guys who run SCGT) so at the very least they seem to "get" what matters to competitive players. I'm not sure at what point the AOS team branched, but the original 1.0 team was I think the same as the 40k team (which explains that debacle).

Hah, well that explains it all doesn't it. Wow, no wonder 8th was such crap and now is a bloaty wonky system. Newer AoS is actually pretty lean and mean and functional. You could totally play it on a clock.

A lot of the problem is just development lag. Anything tied to physical medium is particularly problematic as its got to be designed sometimes a year out in an environment that can only guess at what environment it will actually release to. Digital is a lot more fluid, but still pretty heavily constrained by time.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

So, the guy at the top - the guy who has written articles about how competitive gamers are bad for the hobby and how you don't need points - doesn't have any influence over the game? And I know bottle went to tournaments, but he wasn't (primarily) a competitive player. If you go back and read his posts here, and look at his accomplishments as a designer - heck, if you listen to interviews with him or go to his Twitter page, he's not a competitive player.

Before he was a gw designer and was just Bottle, he and I talked about competitive players and he struck me as someone that, while not an uber espn competitive player, was still very very interested in min/max tourney play and coming up with the uber combos as that was fun.

I would say that the AOS design team minus Jervis are very much creating a game whose primary function is tournament play and the rest is being bolted on to appease everyone else.

 auticus wrote:

Before he was a gw designer and was just Bottle, he and I talked about competitive players and he struck me as someone that, while not an uber espn competitive player, was still very very interested in min/max tourney play and coming up with the uber combos as that was fun.

If I remember correctly, he talked about going to a tournament with a free guild army that was heavily converted and beautifully painted - what kind of competitive player goes to a tournament with an old, barely supported army that doesn't even have a battletome? I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but his interview on Stormcast had him talking about units that he named and had backstories for, that actually died in battle. And if you look at Hinterlands and Warcry, those are first and foremost narrative by a country mile. Heck, Warcry seems to have more Open Play content than Matched Play.

I would say that the AOS design team minus Jervis are very much creating a game whose primary function is tournament play and the rest is being bolted on to appease everyone else.

I could see how you would think that, if you never read any of the rules they wrote, listened to any of the podcasts, or read any of the White Dwarf articles and battle reports. The way these guys talk about Age of Sigmar is not from the perspective of a competitive player. Even when actually talking about competitive play. Like, here's what the GHB19 says for Matched Play:

GHB19 wrote:People play Warhammer Age of Sigmar for all kinds of reasons. Many want to play games that test their skill as the commander of an army, in as evenly balanced a competition as possible. If the thought of games like this appeals to you, then read through the matched play rules detailed on the following pages to learn more.

Even when talking about matched play, they still describe it in a narrative way as players being "the commander of an army". Competitive players would never talk this way. And doesn't it read a bit like a begrudging admission? Here's matched play, if you like that sort of thing. Lots of people do, I guess. Now here's how they describe Open Play, probably the most offensive idea in existence to competitive players:

GHB19 wrote:The best ideas are usually the simplest, and open play games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar epitomizes this philosophy. Open play is a style of gaming that allows you to take to the battlefield with any army, made up of any Citadel Miniatures from your collection - with no restrictions. It's as straightforward as wargaming gets.

I mean, they flat out say that AoS open play epitomizes the philosophy that the best ideas are usually the simplest. And just to drive the point home, here's Narrative Play:

GHB19 wrote:With a cast of indomitable heroes and fearsome villains, plots of conquest, zealous loyalty and ruthless betrayal, and a near-endless array of spectacular locations, Warhammer Age of Sigmar is replete with legendary stories. Narrative play is all about re-enacting these epic tales on your own battlefield.

Holy gak, I'm sold. That's exciting as feth!

And I think you are greatly underplaying how important Jervis is to the AoS team. Every interview, these guys are in awe of Jervis. He's the keeper of the big rule book that they all reference when writing rules. Saying everybody is competitive except Jervis is like saying that God's word is irrelevant to the sermons of the preachers.

The fact that GW's marketing department hypes up open play as a way to sell the new space marine kit to tyranid players does not change the fact that it's a ing stupid idea from a game design point of view.

I mean Ben Johnson is a pretty wel-known tournament player. Don't know about the other guys, or what his specific role on the team is, but he's one I am absolutely certain is a competitive player. He just also happens to not be the type of player who ONLY gives a feth about competitive play and is equally happy to throw down a bunch of models in an Open Play scenario or go all out naming models in a narrative campaign without using Matched Play rules at all.

You know, the ideal kind of competitive player instead of the type who only has one mode of play and can't ever deviate or even fathom not using points/matched play. The sort who knows when to bring out the facebusting GT-level list and when to bring something for fun and make suboptimal but cinematic choices during the game because winning isn't their only concern.

Convenient how the ideal competitive player is defined by how they do things other than competitive play, while nobody ever complains about how the ideal narrative player also plays in hardcore competitive tournaments and narrative-only players are somehow inferior.

I don't pay much attention to what they say in podcasts. I pay attention to their product. Their podcasts are marketing speak. Marketing speak does not reveal the truth of the person behind the speak. It is something that they say as a mouthpiece for the company that they work for. Their product and how they write rules often goes against what they say in podcasts and in interviews.

Yes Bottle wrote a narrative ruleset, primarily as a way to signal to GW that he wanted to write rules for them. His work was basically an early access app that he then used in conjunction with getting to know the devs to get a job there. He did a great job. His Hinterlands rules were ace, and I find them much more to my liking than his work in Warcry which I know was watered down by GW to appeal to more people. I would love to see a game where he was not restrained by GW.

We also went round and round on the subject of narrative vs competitive and he was of the mindset that the two weren't mutually exclusive and you could both love min/maxing and love narrative and he loved tournament play.

He also discussed how a lot of his collection didn't get much use because they weren't as optimal with the SCGT points but that that was part of the hobby and that he felt GW would make it so everything was viable.

Whatever we want to draw from that becomes personal conjecture.

I do agree Ben and Bottle both have shown that they can be both powergamers and narrative fluff players that will build a force on its visuals and story presence over its mathematical optimization, which is good. Most people cannot do both, they are one or the other.

Breng77 wrote:


TLOS is an abomination that made the game worse.

TLOS has been a thing since (at least) 2nd ed 40k. I'm not sure how you can think something that has been in the game for the last 25 years made the game worse. Or do you pine for the days of RT? Which I'm sure also used TLOS and exactly the same language that is in the 2nd ed rulebook.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Breng77 wrote:


TLOS is an abomination that made the game worse.

TLOS has been a thing since (at least) 2nd ed 40k. I'm not sure how you can think something that has been in the game for the last 25 years made the game worse. Or do you pine for the days of RT? Which I'm sure also used TLOS and exactly the same language that is in the 2nd ed rulebook.

I pine for the days of not having this horsegak where if you can see a tiny portion of a model sticking out from a wall, it's like the wall isn't even there and it provides absolutely zero benefit.

GW should have long ago gone to measure base to base, with models having "height" that indicated if they were blocked by something (e.g. a human sized model might be blocked by a high wall, but an ogor sized model would not). Warmahordes had this perfect IMHO, and it left zero ambiguity. Plus it differentiated between soft cover and hard cover so had much more tactical flexibility.

A lot of people miss the LoS abstraction from 4th edition. Those people are unfortunately off base.

Even though its come to be conventional, I'm nevertheless shocked at how rapidly people in the W40K community forget the past.

 Peregrine wrote:
The fact that GW's marketing department hypes up open play as a way to sell the new space marine kit to tyranid players does not change the fact that it's a ing stupid idea from a game design point of view.

Signature worthy statement there.


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Wayniac wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Breng77 wrote:


TLOS is an abomination that made the game worse.

TLOS has been a thing since (at least) 2nd ed 40k. I'm not sure how you can think something that has been in the game for the last 25 years made the game worse. Or do you pine for the days of RT? Which I'm sure also used TLOS and exactly the same language that is in the 2nd ed rulebook.

I pine for the days of not having this horsegak where if you can see a tiny portion of a model sticking out from a wall, it's like the wall isn't even there and it provides absolutely zero benefit.

GW should have long ago gone to measure base to base, with models having "height" that indicated if they were blocked by something (e.g. a human sized model might be blocked by a high wall, but an ogor sized model would not). Warmahordes had this perfect IMHO, and it left zero ambiguity. Plus it differentiated between soft cover and hard cover so had much more tactical flexibility.

Again, if you can see a wingtip, you might hit the tip of the wing.
Not enough to do 'damage'...
If a dude is moved into cover, and the model could adopt a different posture, and the player states that the model(s) in question is(are) in cover, then it is in cover even if you see the wingtip.
Or....
Sort it out with a sense of realism and with a running 'forged' narrative -
"My marines advance into cover behind the wall."
"I can see that one marine's bolter barrel."
"Are you going to dedicate that squad to firing at that marines bolter tip?"
"No."
"OK, then what do you want to shoot at?"
Or...


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 auticus wrote:
I don't pay much attention to what they say in podcasts. I pay attention to their product. Their podcasts are marketing speak. Marketing speak does not reveal the truth of the person behind the speak. It is something that they say as a mouthpiece for the company that they work for. Their product and how they write rules often goes against what they say in podcasts and in interviews.

Yes Bottle wrote a narrative ruleset, primarily as a way to signal to GW that he wanted to write rules for them. His work was basically an early access app that he then used in conjunction with getting to know the devs to get a job there. He did a great job. His Hinterlands rules were ace, and I find them much more to my liking than his work in Warcry which I know was watered down by GW to appeal to more people. I would love to see a game where he was not restrained by GW.

We also went round and round on the subject of narrative vs competitive and he was of the mindset that the two weren't mutually exclusive and you could both love min/maxing and love narrative and he loved tournament play.

He also discussed how a lot of his collection didn't get much use because they weren't as optimal with the SCGT points but that that was part of the hobby and that he felt GW would make it so everything was viable.

Whatever we want to draw from that becomes personal conjecture.

I do agree Ben and Bottle both have shown that they can be both powergamers and narrative fluff players that will build a force on its visuals and story presence over its mathematical optimization, which is good. Most people cannot do both, they are one or the other.

I like a stronger integration but admire the zeal nonetheless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The AOS lead is Ben Johnson. Jervis may sit over it all but Ben Johnson last I checked was the "lead" developer. Sam Pearson (bottle) is another active developer. Both were big into the tournament scene. The rules testers are a pool of tournament players in the UK involving guys like Ben Curry, and the folks that wrote the SCGT comp that turned into official points in 2016.

I'm not sure who the other devs are. However the AOS team and testers are primarily hardcore tournament guys.

So, the guy at the top - the guy who has written articles about how competitive gamers are bad for the hobby and how you don't need points - doesn't have any influence over the game? And I know bottle went to tournaments, but he wasn't (primarily) a competitive player. If you go back and read his posts here, and look at his accomplishments as a designer - heck, if you listen to interviews with him or go to his Twitter page, he's not a competitive player.

Before he was a gw designer and was just Bottle, he and I talked about competitive players and he struck me as someone that, while not an uber espn competitive player, was still very very interested in min/max tourney play and coming up with the uber combos as that was fun.

I would say that the AOS design team minus Jervis are very much creating a game whose primary function is tournament play and the rest is being bolted on to appease everyone else.

This is gold.

A bit more about my perspective on TLOS and whether or not it is game worsening garbage:

that heavily depends on typical terrain you play on. On a planet bowling ball or typical tournament table abstracted terrain interaction rules a'la 4th ed or Warmahordes can indeed work better than TLOS, because TLOS is an overkill in those cases, as those are fundamentally 2D games played with 3D tokens. But as soon as you want to play 40K on fully 3D dioramas TLOS with inclusion of area terrain obscuration is actually the most clean way of implementing LOS resolution and there is nothing else that can work as well. Old editions (except 4th) could accomodate dioramas, BRB 8th cannot, 8th with Cities of death can, Apoc cannot.

Infinity cylindrical model space based on size stat works fine in Infinity because a) it's a skirmish with so low model count that substituting actual model for it's envelope is not cumbersome and b) nearly all models are humanoid and come in just few sizes. But in 40K models based on the same base size can be drastically different in shape/size and non-based vechicles exist so again, TLOS paired with common sense is the most clean approach to LOS resolution. But the amount of common sense varied a lot from edition to edition and use of laser pointers is considered too much hustle for many.

And I simply must: "playing on Necromunda levels of terrain density" does not read as "playing on content of original Necromunda box". But apparently reading comprehension is hard for some people. GW now produces two modular terrain systems that can easily accommodate for very complex and very crowded tables - and many, many players do own such bought or scratch built magnificent tables in their garages or dedicated playrooms and need rulesets that can easily and intuitively provide ways of interacting with those. 2nd ed provided those but even in 8th ed Cities of death obscuration and height advantage rules provide those. Highly abstracted LOS rules do not.

LOS is tricky even in games built around 1 model attacking another. It gets really messy when you abstract it to groups attacking other groups. The focus on area terrain generally works better and I overall rather like how the cover mod works mechanically (models out of cover tend to die first). I generally don't like TLOS, but its not tremendously important to a game as abstracted as 40k. I think it demands larger terrain with either no or few holes in it, but its a functional way to get the job done. The primary issue is just that terrain people (including GW) intend to have block LOS is far too often not created tall or wide enough to actually obscure targets the size of 40k units or vehicles.

nou wrote:
A bit more about my perspective on TLOS and whether or not it is game worsening garbage:

that heavily depends on typical terrain you play on. On a planet bowling ball or typical tournament table abstracted terrain interaction rules a'la 4th ed or Warmahordes can indeed work better than TLOS, because TLOS is an overkill in those cases, as those are fundamentally 2D games played with 3D tokens. But as soon as you want to play 40K on fully 3D dioramas TLOS with inclusion of area terrain obscuration is actually the most clean way of implementing LOS resolution and there is nothing else that can work as well. Old editions (except 4th) could accomodate dioramas, BRB 8th cannot, 8th with Cities of death can, Apoc cannot.

Infinity cylindrical model space based on size stat works fine in Infinity because a) it's a skirmish with so low model count that substituting actual model for it's envelope is not cumbersome and b) nearly all models are humanoid and come in just few sizes. But in 40K models based on the same base size can be drastically different in shape/size and non-based vechicles exist so again, TLOS paired with common sense is the most clean approach to LOS resolution. But the amount of common sense varied a lot from edition to edition and use of laser pointers is considered too much hustle for many.

And I simply must: "playing on Necromunda levels of terrain density" does not read as "playing on content of original Necromunda box". But apparently reading comprehension is hard for some people. GW now produces two modular terrain systems that can easily accommodate for very complex and very crowded tables - and many, many players do own such bought or scratch built magnificent tables in their garages or dedicated playrooms and need rulesets that can easily and intuitively provide ways of interacting with those. 2nd ed provided those but even in 8th ed Cities of death obscuration and height advantage rules provide those. Highly abstracted LOS rules do not.

Though we are diverging a bit from the OE topic. You bring up a lot of points.. but cylindrical LOS abstraction is not that great of an abstraction as you portray. It does incorporate any level of terrain intricacy as you need. Its in the basic WMH rule book.. Page 38, LOS

A wall or structure will not block line of sight if it is less than 1.75", 1.75-2.25" block LOS to small bases, 2.25-2.75 block LOS small and medium bases2.75+ will block all but HUGE (gw superheavies,knight titans). That's very fast. No matter what the terrain is made of an intervening barrier will block LOS based on the above.

Next, LOS based on different levels of terrain. You draw LOS from the top edge of the "cylinder" closest to the target to the top edge of the "cylinder" of the target closest to the shooter. Again, it is fast, it is easy, it leaves no room for argument. It is straight forward. Also WMH has some pretty crazy models that have all sorts of gak sticking out at odd places.

As far as cover, that can get a little more complicated but again, the "Volumetric" system of LOS is fast, simple, and clear based on model base size. GW has never done it that way because it likes to play fast and free with base sizes in a totally nonsensical way. It even covers "looking over" other models in regards to shooting through models giving cover/blocking shot, etc.

The volumetric system works with as complex of terrain as you want. It covers elevation, elevation vs elevation, it covers models of different sizes, etc. I am hard pressed to see how it doesn't work with complex terrain as in essence you are using the volume of the base as the method of determining TLOS if you will. I recall TLOS in 40K being abused by placing all the models laying down and similar BS.

A nice hard firm rules set like volumetric LOS (VLOS?) works a lot better. As for small details such as cracks or whatever, it can be assumed the models are not exposing themselves in an undue fashion.

This makes terrain awesome, when you have hard rules that can adapt to any terrain you can come up with things become a lot more fun.

 meatybtz wrote:

nou wrote:
A bit more about my perspective on TLOS and whether or not it is game worsening garbage:

that heavily depends on typical terrain you play on. On a planet bowling ball or typical tournament table abstracted terrain interaction rules a'la 4th ed or Warmahordes can indeed work better than TLOS, because TLOS is an overkill in those cases, as those are fundamentally 2D games played with 3D tokens. But as soon as you want to play 40K on fully 3D dioramas TLOS with inclusion of area terrain obscuration is actually the most clean way of implementing LOS resolution and there is nothing else that can work as well. Old editions (except 4th) could accomodate dioramas, BRB 8th cannot, 8th with Cities of death can, Apoc cannot.

Infinity cylindrical model space based on size stat works fine in Infinity because a) it's a skirmish with so low model count that substituting actual model for it's envelope is not cumbersome and b) nearly all models are humanoid and come in just few sizes. But in 40K models based on the same base size can be drastically different in shape/size and non-based vechicles exist so again, TLOS paired with common sense is the most clean approach to LOS resolution. But the amount of common sense varied a lot from edition to edition and use of laser pointers is considered too much hustle for many.

And I simply must: "playing on Necromunda levels of terrain density" does not read as "playing on content of original Necromunda box". But apparently reading comprehension is hard for some people. GW now produces two modular terrain systems that can easily accommodate for very complex and very crowded tables - and many, many players do own such bought or scratch built magnificent tables in their garages or dedicated playrooms and need rulesets that can easily and intuitively provide ways of interacting with those. 2nd ed provided those but even in 8th ed Cities of death obscuration and height advantage rules provide those. Highly abstracted LOS rules do not.

Though we are diverging a bit from the OE topic. You bring up a lot of points.. but cylindrical LOS abstraction is not that great of an abstraction as you portray. It does incorporate any level of terrain intricacy as you need. Its in the basic WMH rule book.. Page 38, LOS

A wall or structure will not block line of sight if it is less than 1.75", 1.75-2.25" block LOS to small bases, 2.25-2.75 block LOS small and medium bases2.75+ will block all but HUGE (gw superheavies,knight titans). That's very fast. No matter what the terrain is made of an intervening barrier will block LOS based on the above.

Next, LOS based on different levels of terrain. You draw LOS from the top edge of the "cylinder" closest to the target to the top edge of the "cylinder" of the target closest to the shooter. Again, it is fast, it is easy, it leaves no room for argument. It is straight forward. Also WMH has some pretty crazy models that have all sorts of gak sticking out at odd places.

As far as cover, that can get a little more complicated but again, the "Volumetric" system of LOS is fast, simple, and clear based on model base size. GW has never done it that way because it likes to play fast and free with base sizes in a totally nonsensical way. It even covers "looking over" other models in regards to shooting through models giving cover/blocking shot, etc.

The volumetric system works with as complex of terrain as you want. It covers elevation, elevation vs elevation, it covers models of different sizes, etc. I am hard pressed to see how it doesn't work with complex terrain as in essence you are using the volume of the base as the method of determining TLOS if you will. I recall TLOS in 40K being abused by placing all the models laying down and similar BS.

A nice hard firm rules set like volumetric LOS (VLOS?) works a lot better. As for small details such as cracks or whatever, it can be assumed the models are not exposing themselves in an undue fashion.

This makes terrain awesome, when you have hard rules that can adapt to any terrain you can come up with things become a lot more fun.

Agreed on the part that VLOS works with any terrain - that is how Infinity does it. Where it fails with GW compared to TLOS is huge model variety - you can have tall Eldar Wraithguard or Primaris Marines on the same base sizes as crouchy GSC models and low and sleek vehicles on the same bases as AdMech Dragoons or baseless/flying bases vehicles of all shapes and sizes. You would have to introduce huge number of height classes for each base size at which point it is just more straightforward to play with TLOS. But of course, at the cost of arguments between more stubborn people. Personally I never had a problem with TLOS arguments, but I don't mind using laser pointers (laser levels to be exact, that produce a line instead of a dot) and tabletop periscopes and immersion is more important for me than an occasional LOS checking.

Edit: to emphasize - for me TLOS work better for cinematic immersion but I do unterstand why it can be perceived as a lesser way in the eyes of more competitively focussed players. Do read this post as a "not everything that makes game better for tournaments improves the game for narrative players and vice versa".

nou wrote:
You would have to introduce huge number of height classes for each base size at which point it is just more straightforward to play with TLOS.

You really don't. Is a primaris marine taller than a guardsman? Sure. Does that extra height make any meaningful gameplay difference? No. Considering them to be the same height works just fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:
immersion is more important for me than an occasional LOS checking.

Then why do you use TLOS, where a model built in a crouching pose is unable to stand up and shoot over a low wall?

Personally, I'm fond of a height stat in inches for models. Models never conform to exact heights in inches, but it gets the point across and more importantly, gives people good dimensions to work with when designing or defining terrain. This is 7.3" tall, so it blocks LOS for everything except that height 8 guy there. Being part of the statline makes design space and helps people be aware of how the rule works without needing to know what the table says.

 jeff white wrote:
"I can see that one marine's bolter barrel."
"Are you going to dedicate that squad to firing at that marines bolter tip?"
"No."
"OK, then what do you want to shoot at?"
Or...

So what you're saying is that TLOS works as long as you don't use TLOS and replace it with abstracted LOS rules?

nou wrote:

 meatybtz wrote:

nou wrote:
A bit more about my perspective on TLOS and whether or not it is game worsening garbage:

that heavily depends on typical terrain you play on. On a planet bowling ball or typical tournament table abstracted terrain interaction rules a'la 4th ed or Warmahordes can indeed work better than TLOS, because TLOS is an overkill in those cases, as those are fundamentally 2D games played with 3D tokens. But as soon as you want to play 40K on fully 3D dioramas TLOS with inclusion of area terrain obscuration is actually the most clean way of implementing LOS resolution and there is nothing else that can work as well. Old editions (except 4th) could accomodate dioramas, BRB 8th cannot, 8th with Cities of death can, Apoc cannot.

Infinity cylindrical model space based on size stat works fine in Infinity because a) it's a skirmish with so low model count that substituting actual model for it's envelope is not cumbersome and b) nearly all models are humanoid and come in just few sizes. But in 40K models based on the same base size can be drastically different in shape/size and non-based vechicles exist so again, TLOS paired with common sense is the most clean approach to LOS resolution. But the amount of common sense varied a lot from edition to edition and use of laser pointers is considered too much hustle for many.

And I simply must: "playing on Necromunda levels of terrain density" does not read as "playing on content of original Necromunda box". But apparently reading comprehension is hard for some people. GW now produces two modular terrain systems that can easily accommodate for very complex and very crowded tables - and many, many players do own such bought or scratch built magnificent tables in their garages or dedicated playrooms and need rulesets that can easily and intuitively provide ways of interacting with those. 2nd ed provided those but even in 8th ed Cities of death obscuration and height advantage rules provide those. Highly abstracted LOS rules do not.

Though we are diverging a bit from the OE topic. You bring up a lot of points.. but cylindrical LOS abstraction is not that great of an abstraction as you portray. It does incorporate any level of terrain intricacy as you need. Its in the basic WMH rule book.. Page 38, LOS

A wall or structure will not block line of sight if it is less than 1.75", 1.75-2.25" block LOS to small bases, 2.25-2.75 block LOS small and medium bases2.75+ will block all but HUGE (gw superheavies,knight titans). That's very fast. No matter what the terrain is made of an intervening barrier will block LOS based on the above.

Next, LOS based on different levels of terrain. You draw LOS from the top edge of the "cylinder" closest to the target to the top edge of the "cylinder" of the target closest to the shooter. Again, it is fast, it is easy, it leaves no room for argument. It is straight forward. Also WMH has some pretty crazy models that have all sorts of gak sticking out at odd places.

As far as cover, that can get a little more complicated but again, the "Volumetric" system of LOS is fast, simple, and clear based on model base size. GW has never done it that way because it likes to play fast and free with base sizes in a totally nonsensical way. It even covers "looking over" other models in regards to shooting through models giving cover/blocking shot, etc.

The volumetric system works with as complex of terrain as you want. It covers elevation, elevation vs elevation, it covers models of different sizes, etc. I am hard pressed to see how it doesn't work with complex terrain as in essence you are using the volume of the base as the method of determining TLOS if you will. I recall TLOS in 40K being abused by placing all the models laying down and similar BS.

A nice hard firm rules set like volumetric LOS (VLOS?) works a lot better. As for small details such as cracks or whatever, it can be assumed the models are not exposing themselves in an undue fashion.

This makes terrain awesome, when you have hard rules that can adapt to any terrain you can come up with things become a lot more fun.

Agreed on the part that VLOS works with any terrain - that is how Infinity does it. Where it fails with GW compared to TLOS is huge model variety - you can have tall Eldar Wraithguard or Primaris Marines on the same base sizes as crouchy GSC models and low and sleek vehicles on the same bases as AdMech Dragoons or baseless/flying bases vehicles of all shapes and sizes. You would have to introduce huge number of height classes for each base size at which point it is just more straightforward to play with TLOS. But of course, at the cost of arguments between more stubborn people. Personally I never had a problem with TLOS arguments, but I don't mind using laser pointers (laser levels to be exact, that produce a line instead of a dot) and tabletop periscopes and immersion is more important for me than an occasional LOS checking.

Indeed. I've never really had any issue with TLOS, but I did find VLOS to be hmm, faster? More reliable/consistent? I mentioned the base problem with GW who have always been more "artistic" in their base size choices rather than X-class of model = X sized base and Y-class model = Y sized base. Though that has begun to shift with their moves towards 32mm bases but GW still has a LOT of base sizes and even shapes. That does break VLOS but that would not be a major thing to change if they actually wanted to. They just don't want to be bound to anything like that. They want to play "fast and loose" with things that work better tight and solid. If anything that's been my complaint about much of GWs rules. Not outright bad but.. loose where they should be tight and tight where they should be loose. Arguably abstracting 40k to WMH rules isn't hard (FEX I love the idea of Chaos being a damage type, Fire being another, etc) There is some awesome things that 40K could implement that made armies both "thematic" and "unique" to each other by "damage types" and "resistances/invulns". Though WMH always seems to have been "logical" about it, I'd expect GW to be "silly" about it if they tried. HAHA. Kind of like their bases.. where no one seems to know what is going on or why a size is chosen except.. REASONS!

I always felt that the GW Tournament side of things would really benefit from a "tightening" up of rules and that would result in a more streamlined game without actually 'reducing rules' rather just take out the confusion and lack of focus.. bad wording.. or just nonsensical way in which a rule is implemented. I feel that current edition 2019 AoS seems to feel a lot "tighter" than 40k does in 8th at the moment and having done a few 2019 games of AoS I feel that it indeed works really well in tournament style play. Better than 8th at least.

 meatybtz wrote:

nou wrote:

 meatybtz wrote:

nou wrote:
A bit more about my perspective on TLOS and whether or not it is game worsening garbage:

that heavily depends on typical terrain you play on. On a planet bowling ball or typical tournament table abstracted terrain interaction rules a'la 4th ed or Warmahordes can indeed work better than TLOS, because TLOS is an overkill in those cases, as those are fundamentally 2D games played with 3D tokens. But as soon as you want to play 40K on fully 3D dioramas TLOS with inclusion of area terrain obscuration is actually the most clean way of implementing LOS resolution and there is nothing else that can work as well. Old editions (except 4th) could accomodate dioramas, BRB 8th cannot, 8th with Cities of death can, Apoc cannot.

Infinity cylindrical model space based on size stat works fine in Infinity because a) it's a skirmish with so low model count that substituting actual model for it's envelope is not cumbersome and b) nearly all models are humanoid and come in just few sizes. But in 40K models based on the same base size can be drastically different in shape/size and non-based vechicles exist so again, TLOS paired with common sense is the most clean approach to LOS resolution. But the amount of common sense varied a lot from edition to edition and use of laser pointers is considered too much hustle for many.

And I simply must: "playing on Necromunda levels of terrain density" does not read as "playing on content of original Necromunda box". But apparently reading comprehension is hard for some people. GW now produces two modular terrain systems that can easily accommodate for very complex and very crowded tables - and many, many players do own such bought or scratch built magnificent tables in their garages or dedicated playrooms and need rulesets that can easily and intuitively provide ways of interacting with those. 2nd ed provided those but even in 8th ed Cities of death obscuration and height advantage rules provide those. Highly abstracted LOS rules do not.

Though we are diverging a bit from the OE topic. You bring up a lot of points.. but cylindrical LOS abstraction is not that great of an abstraction as you portray. It does incorporate any level of terrain intricacy as you need. Its in the basic WMH rule book.. Page 38, LOS

A wall or structure will not block line of sight if it is less than 1.75", 1.75-2.25" block LOS to small bases, 2.25-2.75 block LOS small and medium bases2.75+ will block all but HUGE (gw superheavies,knight titans). That's very fast. No matter what the terrain is made of an intervening barrier will block LOS based on the above.

Next, LOS based on different levels of terrain. You draw LOS from the top edge of the "cylinder" closest to the target to the top edge of the "cylinder" of the target closest to the shooter. Again, it is fast, it is easy, it leaves no room for argument. It is straight forward. Also WMH has some pretty crazy models that have all sorts of gak sticking out at odd places.

As far as cover, that can get a little more complicated but again, the "Volumetric" system of LOS is fast, simple, and clear based on model base size. GW has never done it that way because it likes to play fast and free with base sizes in a totally nonsensical way. It even covers "looking over" other models in regards to shooting through models giving cover/blocking shot, etc.

The volumetric system works with as complex of terrain as you want. It covers elevation, elevation vs elevation, it covers models of different sizes, etc. I am hard pressed to see how it doesn't work with complex terrain as in essence you are using the volume of the base as the method of determining TLOS if you will. I recall TLOS in 40K being abused by placing all the models laying down and similar BS.

A nice hard firm rules set like volumetric LOS (VLOS?) works a lot better. As for small details such as cracks or whatever, it can be assumed the models are not exposing themselves in an undue fashion.

This makes terrain awesome, when you have hard rules that can adapt to any terrain you can come up with things become a lot more fun.

Agreed on the part that VLOS works with any terrain - that is how Infinity does it. Where it fails with GW compared to TLOS is huge model variety - you can have tall Eldar Wraithguard or Primaris Marines on the same base sizes as crouchy GSC models and low and sleek vehicles on the same bases as AdMech Dragoons or baseless/flying bases vehicles of all shapes and sizes. You would have to introduce huge number of height classes for each base size at which point it is just more straightforward to play with TLOS. But of course, at the cost of arguments between more stubborn people. Personally I never had a problem with TLOS arguments, but I don't mind using laser pointers (laser levels to be exact, that produce a line instead of a dot) and tabletop periscopes and immersion is more important for me than an occasional LOS checking.

Indeed. I've never really had any issue with TLOS, but I did find VLOS to be hmm, faster? More reliable/consistent? I mentioned the base problem with GW who have always been more "artistic" in their base size choices rather than X-class of model = X sized base and Y-class model = Y sized base. Though that has begun to shift with their moves towards 32mm bases but GW still has a LOT of base sizes and even shapes. That does break VLOS but that would not be a major thing to change if they actually wanted to. They just don't want to be bound to anything like that. They want to play "fast and loose" with things that work better tight and solid. If anything that's been my complaint about much of GWs rules. Not outright bad but.. loose where they should be tight and tight where they should be loose. Arguably abstracting 40k to WMH rules isn't hard (FEX I love the idea of Chaos being a damage type, Fire being another, etc) There is some awesome things that 40K could implement that made armies both "thematic" and "unique" to each other by "damage types" and "resistances/invulns". Though WMH always seems to have been "logical" about it, I'd expect GW to be "silly" about it if they tried. HAHA. Kind of like their bases.. where no one seems to know what is going on or why a size is chosen except.. REASONS!

I always felt that the GW Tournament side of things would really benefit from a "tightening" up of rules and that would result in a more streamlined game without actually 'reducing rules' rather just take out the confusion and lack of focus.. bad wording.. or just nonsensical way in which a rule is implemented. I feel that current edition 2019 AoS seems to feel a lot "tighter" than 40k does in 8th at the moment and having done a few 2019 games of AoS I feel that it indeed works really well in tournament style play. Better than 8th at least.

I have edited in one sentence to my previous post while you were typing, so I'll just repeat - please do read my posts only as "not everything that improves the game for competetive players improves it for the narrative and vice versa". I'm not stating, in any way, that what GW does is gospel. In fact, my group and I have run out of available design space in 3rd-7th iterations of core rules and since we don't like the turn that 8th made we work on our own ruleset. It will have TLOS and other cinematic features as this is the main focus of our playstyle, but there is indeed a lot to improve above what GW delivers.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
If Nu-Apoc is the better game (objectively, not subjectively in the eyes of a few ... every game has somebody who thinks that particular game ever is the bestest), people will gravitate towards it and GW certainly wont mind that the game that finally improves upon 40K after 30 years of non-GW companies producing nothing but pretentious garbage is one of their own.

That's not how gaming works. Inertia is a thing. Apoc has to not just be better. It has to be better enough to justify people switching away from guaranteed games, to a maybe game, and justify its own 100 dollar no models price tag. There is a tipping point where apoc could overtake 40k, but, like, Middle earth SBG is also strictly a superior rules system with flat out the best balance of GW games, and it has never overtaken 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 meatybtz wrote:
I still think GW has been on the support the Tourney train and the "yearly" updates because it makes them gak-tons of money.

Since tournament players have to be the leetest of the leet they as said above, churn and burn. That is any business' dream come true. It means they can nerf and buff and sell product that isn't moving by making it into a must have and those tournament players will gobble it up at ANY price.

This of course makes buying on the secondary market nice because the more they churn the more the value on the secondary market diminishes due to basic rules of supply and demand.

I see the future of 40K being what is currently Apoc. They've been watering down the rules over the years to make it faster and more simple. The goal being to boost the "leet" market. The.. ehem.. short attentionspan Death Match type.

GW has been searching for a way to make gains in those areas and its been hard since wargamming is so niche. They have to alter it to be more "common" compatible.. but also faster.. and also to have "leet" builds that attract the WAC mindset to blow money like it's water.

I still hate 8th. It's utter broken gak breaking rules set down in the RT era because of common sense and the nature of D6 and statistics.

It IS faster. It is "more simple". There are much fewer mechanics and many rules are just duplication that can be removed by making a core rule such as "6+FNP" instead of the flavor texted version same with "death to false emperor" is just "every six to hit in combat gives an additional attack". Orks have that as do other armies but they are fluff named for no reason making the game seem bloated when it isnt.

They have also been moving towards the "card game" kind of play for a while now. Selling cards is great. Esp if they go WoC and pull from MtG and make the cards used in battles of Apoc come from booster packs that have rares, commons, etc and the ultra-rares are the best moves and thus you have to buy tons of boosters to get that ONE card to WAC.

That's money money money to GW.

new Apoc is utter gak. But.. again.. it is a FAST playing game that is simple and straight foward.

I can see 9th being Apoc rule set. They've been trying special rules and trying to break out of D6 for a while now and Apoc fits that bill.

Wargamming to me will always be what is supposed to be.. a complex tactical and strategic game where a single misplay or bad roll can hurt and you have to be smart enough and capable enough to overcome it (mostly you can). I still miss weapon arcs and charge arcs and wheeling and more because you had to THINK ahead, plan, and movement was critical as well as facing (for vehicles).

Point being. I am a dinosaur. My age is long over. Today is MOBA. They've been moving that way for a while. So it will.

I loved BFG, Epic Armageddon (I played epic from when it was called Space Marine till it was shelved).

For the record my start in wargamming wasn't GW... it was FASA's products. So hex bases still have a special place in my heart.

I've done the tourney thing back in the 90s. So I understand WAC and LEET builds as well as broken game mechanics abused.

But remember I played 40k when a single battle took 3 DAYS. HAHA.. and "combat squading" required you to write down orders on a piece of paper and your unit was required to follow those orders till it got back with it's old squad again.
Fun stuff. Also Turn Rate Radius.. accell and decell.

We actually made special templates and tools for TRR and ACC/DEC and it wasn't that hard once you had the tools to simplify it. But boy did you have to think ahead about your vehicles or you'd smack into your own squads or terrain. HAHA.

But yeah. I may often feel superior to the plebeian squeakers but the reality and future (as well as the big money for GW) is Apoc, Tournies, and simplified rules for "everyone" (tm). I realize that my era is over. I am a triple webber side draft guy in the era of advanced computer controlled fuel injection. Injection today is plug and play. A caveman could do it. So many more people are "tuners" when I remember being a "builder".. big cams, nasty exhaust, and hot days at the track trying to fix whatever broke. Just as the era of custom crazy vehicle rules in 40k and deodorant hovercraft is over.. and in a way it's good.

You don't like good games. You like complicated games. They're not the same thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Except that, at least on the AOS side of things, there are rules designers on the team that were part of fan comp systems for AOS that did a really good job.

So if its true that GW rules authors are really bad at game design, there must be something special about walking through the door of the Ivory Tower that strips them of their mental facilities and renders them inept.

Or ... its intentional imbalance.

They need to get Jay Clare and Adam Troke to write all their rules obviously

nou wrote:
This here is pure heresy in the eyes of the many who worship The Adequately Pointed Gods.

Shrug. When it comes to believing in points, it's often a bit like a religion. You have the zealots and true believers who will never be swayed, and even those who are struggling to hold on to their faith in the 'god of the gaps'. Then there's me, and when it comes to 'faith' in points, I'm a bit of an atheist really.

Da Boss wrote:I think it is a fair point that points will never balance exactly, but they can do a much better job than they do currently.

It's all relative though. It will never actually be 'good enough' for a lot of people, regardless, who will still insist on being critical, come what may. And that will be the vibe that will be transmitted online. The sad truth is that accurate points costs, and even balance is a unicorn. Heck, chess has a something-like-a 60% win rate for white, and that is with identical armies and 'set' lists.

Now. Like I said earlier in my spoiler tags, there are things you can do that help. Sure. Absolutely. The question is are you (or gw) willing to pay the cost that implementing these will require? Bearing in mind as well you also need to maintain the 40k legacy items that currently exist, and allow for future 'waves' to be released, as this is a business, and most of your profits will come from the shiny new stuff, rather than what's already there (the humble tactical marines being a weird exception to this rule!)

It doesn't take long to find complaints towards any of these potential options in other games - google the complaints towards multiple win conditions/caster kill in WMH? Multiple lists? Or would you gut the entire range of 40k and file it down to guardsmen with lasguns, hellguns, flak armour and play it to the scale of infinity? Or do you implement 'formats' and chop up the player base into even smaller groups? For balance, Will you gut options, and streamline/homogenise the game to the point that a lot of the character and options that a lot of people love is removed? Hell, will you include a 'negotiation phase' like Aos where people are instructed to talk it out and game-built collaboratively? I like this myself, but I can't imagine lunarSol and his mates being too pleased!

There are no easy choices. So yes, they could maybe do a much better job depending on your perspective, but would it be worth the cost?

Da Boss wrote:I The biggest problem is the release schedule being one faction at a time in my view, with favourite factions getting several updates before the red headed stepchild factions get one, resulting in factions designed for entirely different paradigms having very limited options to compete. A newbie does not know this and blunders into the problems after spending a large amount of time and money. That is the most compelling reason for balance to

Sounds like an unfortunate convergence of staff turnover (which is ALWAYS going to happen) and the money makers getting more attention. You can't stop the former and you can't blame a business for making a business-focussed decision with regard to the latter.

auticus wrote:I find the "points will never be balanced so thats ok that 40k and AOS are not balanced because its impossible" to be mega cop outs.
It is true, points will never be perfectly balanced.
But they can damn sure well be 1000x better than what they are today, and the fan comps of AOS before it had points were proof of that.

It's not a cop out, it's calling it as it is.

Imean, for example, can you square the circle of, for example, having an exact cost, for, say, a dreadnought with a lascannon, that can both accurately state (to a standard of 95% accuracy) its value on planet bowling ball against an army of light armour, with the exact same value simultaneously accurate for the same dreadnought, with the same lascannon on an 80% forested board, against 300 grots.

If it can be 1000x better than what it is now, then this should be Solvable. and should be solvable, simultaneously, for all units across all situations. And I don't think it is, unless you can have a self correcting algorithm, that can account for a couple of dozen different factors like I said earlier.

But you are essentially correct auticus. There are options. The question is are they worth the price. Regarding the fan comps - I am not too familiar with them. But wasn't aos at the time a much smaller game?

Wayniac wrote:this is what I find so amusing. "It can't be totally balanced, so mediocrity is acceptable" is fething bullgak, plain and simple. That doesn't excuse poor quality because you can't get it to be perfect (which nobody wants). There are tons of smaller companies that manage to run circles around GW's rules with a fraction of the resources.
So why accept a half-assed job?

It's not about 'accepting mediocrity'. It's about accepting these are limited systems, and really, they can only be pushed so far. There is no god In the gaps Wayne.

Those smaller companies don't have the player base for the most part pushing those games to breaking. But let's be fair here. No one expects A ttg to be 'perfect', but when I see people talking about 'good enough' instead it is ultimately so functionally close to 'perfect' it might as well be identical. I mean, warmachine was a reasonably well balanced game, aside from some horrendous flaws. Mk2 cryx. Epic Haley? 'Good enough'? Or if this was gw doing it, would it be screamed at to the moon and back? Same with malifaux and infinity. Or any other game you care to name. Let's also point out these games often get a free pass from those who would criticise gw for doing the exact same thing.Those smaller games 'running rings' around gw also use a lot of the mechanism I outlined earlier, that, while they may help in some ways, create their own host of problems. I mean, can you imagine the hostility that would be generated by the 40k community if gw brought in 'caster-kill' as you see in WMH? Or the requirement for multiple lists? Or fully destroyed the concept of options in favour of 'set' wargear and set squad sizes? Or reduced the scale to a ten-man skirmish between guardsmen? those game are not necessarily 'better' and I say that as a long time player of warmachine, and I also hold infinity to probably be the most technically brilliant wargame out there with the best metals in the industry.

Wayniac wrote:
Part of the issue, in general, is that GW has *made* their game so bloated it's become harder and harder, dare I say nearly impossible, to balance. It's a symptom of their lack of caring for so long (if they even do today) about having a good *game* versus having a lot of good *models* that just so happens to have something resembling a tabletop game along with it to let you do more than have your models sit in a display case. There's no reason for the huge amount of bloat in 40k; it serves no useful purpose and actually hurts more than it helps because of how unstable the game has become, even with a total revamp for 8th edition, as a result. There's what, 25 codexes? Or close to that? And, despite not actually needing all of those documents to play, now over 100 FAQ documents that each and every book needs to fix things that should either be caught in proofreading or caught with even a basic amount of testing beyond "Oh that sounds about right".

Every game gets bloated over time. Happened I never warmachine twice. To be fair, these companies make their money on the 'new waves'. All those books, all those new releases - that's gw living and breathing. These games will always expand and bloat will always happen. And while I don't like it personally, I acknowledge it's gonna be there, come what may.

And the funny thing is some people like that. When you see a dude with a huge belly and unkempt beard, you might very well say 'bloat'. Someone else willing say 'bear'. Gw do care. They just care about other things.

Sqorgar wrote:
If I remember correctly, he talked about going to a tournament with a free guild army that was heavily converted and beautifully painted - what kind of competitive player goes to a tournament with an old, barely supported army that doesn't even have a battletome? I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but his interview on Stormcast had him talking about units that he named and had backstories for, that actually died in battle. And if you look at Hinterlands and Warcry, those are first and foremost narrative by a country mile. Heck, Warcry seems to have more Open Play content than Matched Play.
I could see how you would think that, if you never read any of the rules they wrote, listened to any of the podcasts, or read any of the White Dwarf articles and battle reports. The way these guys talk about Age of Sigmar is not from the perspective of a competitive player.
Competitive players would never talk this way.

With respect Sqorgar, while I am more and more sympathetic towards a lot of what you are looking for, you need to back down here. I've said this to you since you've started posting here, and you are as wrong now as you were then- you are completely out of line when you are talking about 'competitive players' like this and need to back up. Your view is warped and inaccurate and often more than a little bit condescending. And you never seem to want to take on or accept any perspectives or evidence to the contrary. And it does no one any favours, least of all yourself. Why is it so hard to believe someone could want to play tournaments, and still love painting converting and lore? its not zero/sum.xompetitive is a spectrum. And means different things to different people. Some of the best friends, coolest guys and best painters I know are frequent tournament goers. Heck, back when I wasn't a regular goer, I had 350 odd models for warmachine (khador, circle, mercs and retribution) and all armies were 100% painted and based. And me pointing this out to you goes back to when I was playing warmachine too as I have frequently pointed out to you. You have a go at others here in this thread for being toxic, but this view of yours towards competitively is equally toxic.

Deadnight wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:
If I remember correctly, he talked about going to a tournament with a free guild army that was heavily converted and beautifully painted - what kind of competitive player goes to a tournament with an old, barely supported army that doesn't even have a battletome? I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but his interview on Stormcast had him talking about units that he named and had backstories for, that actually died in battle. And if you look at Hinterlands and Warcry, those are first and foremost narrative by a country mile. Heck, Warcry seems to have more Open Play content than Matched Play.
I could see how you would think that, if you never read any of the rules they wrote, listened to any of the podcasts, or read any of the White Dwarf articles and battle reports. The way these guys talk about Age of Sigmar is not from the perspective of a competitive player.
Competitive players would never talk this way.

With respect Sqorgar, while I am more and more sympathetic towards a lot of what you are looking for, you need to back down here. I've said this to you since you've started posting here, and you are as wrong now as you were then- you are completely out of line when you are talking about 'competitive players' like this and need to back up. Your view is warped and inaccurate and often more than a little bit condescending. And you never seem to want to take on or accept any perspectives or evidence to the contrary. And it does no one any favours, least of all yourself. Why is it so hard to believe someone could want to play tournaments, and still love painting converting and lore? its not zero/sum.xompetitive is a spectrum. And means different things to different people. Some of the best friends, coolest guys and best painters I know are frequent tournament goers. Heck, back when I wasn't a regular goer, I had 350 odd models for warmachine (khador, circle, mercs and retribution) and all armies were 100% painted and based. And me pointing this out to you goes back to when I was playing warmachine too as I have frequently pointed out to you. You have a go at others here in this thread for being toxic, but this view of yours towards competitively is equally toxic.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but let's see if you can follow my thought process and see where I'm coming from.

A "competitive player" is not "a player who plays competitive games". They are "a competitive player that plays games". That is, their very character is categorized by being competitive. It is not that they want or need to win games, but that they feel compelled to compete. Like if you are sitting on a toilet in a public bathroom and the guy from the next stall asks how many pieces of toilet paper you used, and you say, I don't know. Maybe like a dozen. And he goes, "Ha! I did it in nine!" That's not a person being competitive. That's a competitive person.

Competition is like exercise. When done right, in an appropriate and healthy way, it can bring out the best in us. By constantly pushing what we think we can do, we end up growing and strengthening our abilities, becoming stronger as a result. But just like exercise, when done wrong, can be extremely unhealthy, so too can competition, when done wrong. That is, unhealthy competition is a thing that exists.

A player who is seeking healthy competition is willing to compromise in order to make the competition as healthy as possible. They know that competition is only healthy when the players have similar goals and similar means. When winning (or losing) is a foregone conclusion, the competition simply rewards or punishes us, without giving us the proper stress needed to push us to the next level of ability. Finding the right level of competition for you and for your opponent (who is really more of a partner in this exercise) is more important than the outcome of the competition. A marathon runner may not get any exercise out of jogging with a 400 pound man who can barely walk, but he can be the perfect partner for that heavy man to find the proper level of exercise so that he can grow stronger. The 400 pound man will likely not ever be a good partner for the marathon runner, but the marathon runner is the best partner for the 400 pound man, if he is supportive and generous with his time. With his help, the 400 pound man won't stay 400 pounds for long.

A competitive player is not looking for healthy competition though. He is just looking for competition, healthy or not. In the right circumstances, he can be part of healthy competition, bringing out the best of those around him, and elevating the game to exercise that builds you mind and body. The problem is, the pool of potential players being so small, and the diversity of players being so large, the opportunities for this healthy competition is slim - and not knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy competition, they become abusive, neither exercising themselves nor allowing any others around them to exercise.

In the wrong circumstances, these types of players, unable to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy exercise, turn the game from exercise into abuse. In the example of the marathon runner and the 400 pound man, it would be like them having a race and the marathon runner taking it seriously, yelling back, "get gud, fatty". Perhaps most insultingly, a lot of competitive players think they are marathon runners when, in fact, they are the 400 pound man. They use tricks to give off the appearance of being a marathon runner, but usually the only person they are fooling is themselves.

The ultimate goal for any game and any player, I would say, is to create the good (healthy) competition and do whatever it can to prevent the bad (unhealthy) competition. A competitive player is just one that can't tell the difference, or worse, wants all the rewards of being good without having to do all the work of building the skill necessary.

I've been a marathon running in a room of fat people, and I've been the fat guy in a room of marathon runners - and in no situation has it ever been appreciated to yell "get gud, fatty". I'm very much a believe in healthy competition and I think all participants should do their absolute most to create the healthiest competition possible.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:
If I remember correctly, he talked about going to a tournament with a free guild army that was heavily converted and beautifully painted - what kind of competitive player goes to a tournament with an old, barely supported army that doesn't even have a battletome? I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but his interview on Stormcast had him talking about units that he named and had backstories for, that actually died in battle. And if you look at Hinterlands and Warcry, those are first and foremost narrative by a country mile. Heck, Warcry seems to have more Open Play content than Matched Play.
I could see how you would think that, if you never read any of the rules they wrote, listened to any of the podcasts, or read any of the White Dwarf articles and battle reports. The way these guys talk about Age of Sigmar is not from the perspective of a competitive player.
Competitive players would never talk this way.

With respect Sqorgar, while I am more and more sympathetic towards a lot of what you are looking for, you need to back down here. I've said this to you since you've started posting here, and you are as wrong now as you were then- you are completely out of line when you are talking about 'competitive players' like this and need to back up. Your view is warped and inaccurate and often more than a little bit condescending. And you never seem to want to take on or accept any perspectives or evidence to the contrary. And it does no one any favours, least of all yourself. Why is it so hard to believe someone could want to play tournaments, and still love painting converting and lore? its not zero/sum.xompetitive is a spectrum. And means different things to different people. Some of the best friends, coolest guys and best painters I know are frequent tournament goers. Heck, back when I wasn't a regular goer, I had 350 odd models for warmachine (khador, circle, mercs and retribution) and all armies were 100% painted and based. And me pointing this out to you goes back to when I was playing warmachine too as I have frequently pointed out to you. You have a go at others here in this thread for being toxic, but this view of yours towards competitively is equally toxic.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but let's see if you can follow my thought process and see where I'm coming from.

A "competitive player" is not "a player who plays competitive games". They are "a competitive player that plays games". That is, their very character is categorized by being competitive. It is not that they want or need to win games, but that they feel compelled to compete. Like if you are sitting on a toilet in a public bathroom and the guy from the next stall asks how many pieces of toilet paper you used, and you say, I don't know. Maybe like a dozen. And he goes, "Ha! I did it in nine!" That's not a person being competitive. That's a competitive person.

Competition is like exercise. When done right, in an appropriate and healthy way, it can bring out the best in us. By constantly pushing what we think we can do, we end up growing and strengthening our abilities, becoming stronger as a result. But just like exercise, when done wrong, can be extremely unhealthy, so too can competition, when done wrong. That is, unhealthy competition is a thing that exists.

A player who is seeking healthy competition is willing to compromise in order to make the competition as healthy as possible. They know that competition is only healthy when the players have similar goals and similar means. When winning (or losing) is a foregone conclusion, the competition simply rewards or punishes us, without giving us the proper stress needed to push us to the next level of ability. Finding the right level of competition for you and for your opponent (who is really more of a partner in this exercise) is more important than the outcome of the competition. A marathon runner may not get any exercise out of jogging with a 400 pound man who can barely walk, but he can be the perfect partner for that heavy man to find the proper level of exercise so that he can grow stronger. The 400 pound man will likely not ever be a good partner for the marathon runner, but the marathon runner is the best partner for the 400 pound man, if he is supportive and generous with his time. With his help, the 400 pound man won't stay 400 pounds for long.

A competitive player is not looking for healthy competition though. He is just looking for competition, healthy or not. In the right circumstances, he can be part of healthy competition, bringing out the best of those around him, and elevating the game to exercise that builds you mind and body. The problem is, the pool of potential players being so small, and the diversity of players being so large, the opportunities for this healthy competition is slim - and not knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy competition, they become abusive, neither exercising themselves nor allowing any others around them to exercise.

In the wrong circumstances, these types of players, unable to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy exercise, turn the game from exercise into abuse. In the example of the marathon runner and the 400 pound man, it would be like them having a race and the marathon runner taking it seriously, yelling back, "get gud, fatty". Perhaps most insultingly, a lot of competitive players think they are marathon runners when, in fact, they are the 400 pound man. They use tricks to give off the appearance of being a marathon runner, but usually the only person they are fooling is themselves.

The ultimate goal for any game and any player, I would say, is to create the good (healthy) competition and do whatever it can to prevent the bad (unhealthy) competition. A competitive player is just one that can't tell the difference, or worse, wants all the rewards of being good without having to do all the work of building the skill necessary.

I've been a marathon running in a room of fat people, and I've been the fat guy in a room of marathon runners - and in no situation has it ever been appreciated to yell "get gud, fatty". I'm very much a believe in healthy competition and I think all participants should do their absolute most to create the healthiest competition possible.

That is very well put. There is in fact a difference between a healthy attitude and an unhealthy one that while the same two attitudes may on the surface appear to be the same when encountered.. they are in fact different. One being constructive and the other destructive.

We are not a "big" hobby, never will be. We should always seek the healthy side of things for that reason. That doesn't mean "easy" or even sometimes "gentle". I was part of the wargamming school of hard knocks. I learned by being beaten by my betters who didn't hold back on punishing a stupid move.. but they'd always point it out to me, discuss WHY it was foolish, show me alternatives. I would come out of the ass-kicking, better, smarter, and the next go round.. well it was up to me now to apply what I learned.

My best Martial Arts instructors were BRUTAL, but insightful, exacting, but precise in their teaching as well. A "healthy" tournament attitude or player attitude does require "kindness" or a "gentle touch", nut up snowflake, its going to hurt but you will learn best that way can be healthy. In fact you might find you learn better. But if you can't take the heat.. well "unhealthy" does not apply only to the Teacher, it also applies to the Student. A healthy dose of effort, willingness to learn, not taking offense at everything, and having a thick skin (if your Dad didn't tan your hide till you had a thick skin, now is the time to grow one). If one "teacher" style doesn't fit. Find another one. Just realize that the Unhealthy Attitude can be in both camps. Self Analysis is always a good thing.

 Sqorgar wrote:
A "competitive player" is not "a player who plays competitive games". They are "a competitive player that plays games".

That is a nonsense argument. By your standard someone who wins a major tournament is not a "competitive player" if they ever tone down a list to help a newbie or talk about how they enjoy painting. You might as well admit that you're defining "competitive player" as "anyone I don't like" and at least be honest about it.

 Peregrine wrote:

That is a nonsense argument. By your standard someone who wins a major tournament is not a "competitive player" if they ever tone down a list to help a newbie or talk about how they enjoy painting. You might as well admit that you're defining "competitive player" as "anyone I don't like" and at least be honest about it.

I just spent a lot of words to say that I use "competitive player" as shorthand for a player who creates an unhealthy, unfun game environment because they can not tell the difference between good competition and bad competition. I think it is fair to say that winning a tournament does not factor in one way or another. It's an attitude, not an achievement.

But that's an individual. A competitive community as a whole, I think, is largely unhealthy for a game and its players when it becomes a dominant mindset with the only voices being heard. I think this is partly because an echo chamber is created which reinforces a certain Spartan attitude towards competition that can be extremely unhealthy, but because there are a lack of dissenting voices, goes unnoticed.

My primary example of this would be Warmachine. That game is certainly not in a healthy state now, but the writing has been on the wall for years. It's just that nobody acknowledged it because the echo chamber reinforced bad behaviors. For WMH, I blame both the echo chamber and the unhealthy competitive attitude of its players. I'm not sure the two are separate, and may be related. You've got the guy who ruins every game night locally and you've got the community which ruins the game globally, and while they are both driven by a bad competitive mindset, they may be two different issues.

But there's a few other examples of games that have gotten like that. Netrunner is an example of a game that pushed the non-competitive players out (I've seen multiple testimonials to that affect). Some MMOs, like WoW, really went down the "raid" attitude rabbit hole (not sure, but I think WoW may have come back from that). More recently, I think Fortnite is hemorrhaging players for exactly this reason. It's why everyone I know stopped playing (well, it was a combination of the "lol. just build" attitudes, the video game homework, and FOMO fatigue).

I think it is possible that an overly casual echo chamber could be just as bad for the health of a game. Does anybody know of any games that were in an unhealthy state because they were too casual?

 Sqorgar wrote:
I just spent a lot of words to say that I use "competitive player" as shorthand for a player who creates an unhealthy, unfun game environment because they can not tell the difference between good competition and bad competition. I think it is fair to say that winning a tournament does not factor in one way or another. It's an attitude, not an achievement.

Yes, and that's exactly the problem! The vast majority of people would consider the winner of a major tournament to be a competitive player since, you know, they just successfully competed in a major competitive event (and probably one that requires a significant commitment of time and money to attend). Your definition is completely out of line with the one anyone else uses because you need to attach your moral judgement to the term.

But that's an individual. A competitive community as a whole, I think, is largely unhealthy for a game and its players when it becomes a dominant mindset with the only voices being heard. I think this is partly because an echo chamber is created which reinforces a certain Spartan attitude towards competition that can be extremely unhealthy, but because there are a lack of dissenting voices, goes unnoticed.

Just as long as you say the same thing about a "casual" or narrative mindset becoming dominant.

Does anybody know of any games that were in an unhealthy state because they were too casual?

40k and MTG are two obvious examples. The reason it took so long for me to get into 40k was seeing the local players and their obsession with making everyone follow their personal ideas about what is "fluffy" and judging anyone who took "unfluffy" choices because they're the best strategy. Some MTG groups I've seen have been a toxic mess of CAAC behavior, especially in multiplayer games where politics about who is "too competitive" dominate the game and decide who wins. In both of these cases the cliquishness and unwritten rules made the community incredibly unwelcoming to new players, and that can't possibly be good for the game.

 Togusa wrote:
Yesterday afternoon, I brought a list.

2 Captains with Bolters
2 Lieutenants with Bolters and Chainswords
30 Bolter Marines
4 Missile Launchers
4 Lascannons
4 Heavy Bolters
2 Dreadnoughts with assault cannons and stormbotlers
3 Centurions with Hurricane Bolters and Heavy Bolters
1 Land Raider
1 Laser Predator Tank

I ran them at Blood Ravens (Using the IF tactic for them).

The game was fun, enjoyable and excitable! It swung both ways until turn 4 when my opponent, playing ork boyz horde finally got the up on me. End score was 9-6.

Competitives will constantly moan about every model in my list. They'll tell you they suck, they're too many points, they're not enough firepower. But, I've learned that the competitive version of 40K isn't as "wonderful" as they'll have you believe, and playing with these "sucky" units can be loads more fun.

Don't listen to that community. It's not the only way to enjoy this hobby.

See this is it.
I might have taken one fewer captain,
and maybe run with a techmarine instead,
that or a unit of scouts, maybe a skimmer
... but that is the sort of "list" that screams "balance".

I do hate centurions and would personally feel compelled to assassinate them asap.
This already makes me want to play against the army, probably more than once.

This sort of "list" should score pretty high composition points,
add to the sportsmanship score,
and in general reinforce the idea that VPs do not equal win.

Plus, if vehicle rules weren't so ridiculously bad this edition,
the "list" should be pretty hard in the right situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Does anybody know of any games that were in an unhealthy state because they were too casual?

40k and MTG are two obvious examples. The reason it took so long for me to get into 40k was seeing the local players and their obsession with making everyone follow their personal ideas about what is "fluffy" and judging anyone who took "unfluffy" choices because they're the best strategy. Some MTG groups I've seen have been a toxic mess of CAAC behavior, especially in multiplayer games where politics about who is "too competitive" dominate the game and decide who wins. In both of these cases the cliquishness and unwritten rules made the community incredibly unwelcoming to new players, and that can't possibly be good for the game.

Really?
This is what you would call "unhealthy"?
I suppose WAAC = rational self-interest?

Sure, intolerance is, well, intolerable.
But, something tells me that you have struck on something important here.

The crested wave of MtG addicts lurking in the wings,
flooded into 40k out of apparent resentment
(likely due teasing from wargaming nerds likely also to be their older brothers,
and the unhappy looks of the people like myself who had to clean up after them
after they had filled the comic book shop with the smell of old sweat and cat urine
after spending all of 3dollars on a pack of cards,
and littering the shop tables with soda and floors with chip crumbs for 5 hours,
while the Warhammer and RPG set were typically older, better behaved,
and tended to spend more money.)
and since then have been able to correct for the mistakes of those early days
and deliver us into this current age of otherwise untapped potential
to be what it is, now...

A CCG with big cards.

Where you write: "especially in multiplayer games where politics about who is "too competitive" dominate the game and decide who wins. In both of these cases the cliquishness and unwritten rules made the community incredibly unwelcoming to new players, and that can't possibly be good for the game."

Most people have common assumptions about most things realistic, say gravity for example.
If the simulated battleffield retains these assumptions, reinforces them, and indeed reduces much of the complexity
(how many soldiers get thirsty or need to defecate or vomit during turn 2 in a game of 40K? If it were me out there, I probably would...)
but the point here is that it is this shared common sense that makes the game playable and the table inviting. When I started, I played with people who had military experience,
with people who were into guns of all sorts, with actual lawyers... And everyone learned something from each other about how to get things done.
Yeah, this experience and the home rulings may differ from group to group, but if core rules and core assumptions most importantly may stay the same for a while,
then a general mindset emerges, say, as it seems to have now with GW encouragement at the other end of the spectrum.

For instance, I had no trouble going from my relatively isolated little gaming group to GTs - had wonderful games, didn't win too many, but really wasn't there to be number 1, was there to be there...


Now, realism is out the window, as is the common sense that may have made my experiences possible,
but this makes sense for a generation of people who may have never seen actual stars unpolluted by city lights,
or who have since infancy spent most of their time staring at monitor raised in video simulations
wherein all things are made clear and are determined in a strong way inaccessible to reinterpretation.
Developing in this sort of environment,
it is understandable that people might also develop an intolerance for ambiguity,
for the smoke and haze of the smouldering battlefield and the uncertainty that accompanies it...
Sometimes, things aren't as they seem, and don't go as we intend, and indeed, sometimes there is compromise....

This sort of thing goes out the window along with the immersion afforded by the realism
once the hobby becomes a list building exercise with pretty buildings through which to parade said list to reliable victory
(by the gods of math-hammer, let it be so!).

Seriously, why not simply compile a database, compose lists, and compare probabilities.
Then do it again.
Whoever gets highest probabilities to win for three unique "lists" wins Warhammer 40K...!!!

Yeay!
No more trouble with LoS - that must be a good thing.
No more table to feel uninviting - must be a good thing.

May the best deckbuilder win...

See, it seems that what you have struck on is that
40K is not MtG,
and people should please stop evaluating the hobby in similar terms.

You want to build decks to reliably win short games so that you can demonstrate this reliability over the course of an afternoon?
Great.

That is not what Warhammer was all about, any more than it was what D&D or Traveller or Stalking the Night Fantasitc or Champions or Call of Cthulu were all about...
it is however what CCGs seem to be all about, except for where people are dissatisfied with the lack of depth even there, and from which some have apparently run to 40K for some relief
with the result being a tipping point - a saturation point - and the crux of the present thread,
seemingly different language communities
attempting to correlate fundamentally different understandings of the structure of a shared space of action, the 40K game table.

Yeay!
No more trouble with LoS - that must be a good thing.
No more table to feel uninviting - must be a good thing.

May the best deckbuilder win...

See, it seems that what you have struck on is that
40K is not MtG,
and people should please stop evaluating the hobby in similar terms.

You want to build decks to reliably win short games so that you can demonstrate this reliability over the course of an afternoon?
Great.

That is not what Warhammer was all about, any more than it was what D&D or Traveller or Stalking the Night Fantasitc or Champions or Call of Cthulu were all about...
it is however what CCGs seem to be all about, except for where people are dissatisfied with the lack of depth even there, and from which some have apparently run to 40K for some relief
with the result being a tipping point - a saturation point - and the crux of the present thread,
seemingly different language communities
attempting to correlate fundamentally different understandings of the structure of a shared space of action, the 40K game table.

When a random thread on 40k explains language philosophy better and group behaviour then your proffessor.

Have an exalt.

Man, you guys are way off topic. The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals? The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

 Horst wrote:
Man, you guys are way off topic. The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals? The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Yet most of the toxic horsegak here has been from the competitive side...

Wayniac wrote:

 Horst wrote:
Man, you guys are way off topic. The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals? The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Yet most of the toxic horsegak here has been from the competitive side...

Only if you ignore the toxic comments by "casual" players.

Peregrine wrote:Yes, and that's exactly the problem! The vast majority of people would consider the winner of a major tournament to be a competitive player since, you know, they just successfully competed in a major competitive event (and probably one that requires a significant commitment of time and money to attend). Your definition is completely out of line with the one anyone else uses because you need to attach your moral judgement to the term.

All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

Just as long as you say the same thing about a "casual" or narrative mindset becoming dominant.

I think any singular voice can create an exclusionary community that is unwelcoming to others. That's just sort of the nature of niche fandom. But I'm not convinced that a dominant casual or narrative mindset is unhealthy for the game - as a business, as a community, or as a game system. Like, I would think that a gang of narrative-only players would be able to support a single game system for decades without issue, but I think a competitive-only gang would be 10 minutes to midnight the entire time.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Does anybody know of any games that were in an unhealthy state because they were too casual?

40k and MTG are two obvious examples.

You literally just listed the two games with the most toxic competitive communities in gaming.

Horst wrote:The original question in the OP was why do competitive players hate on casuals?

I don't know. Let's ask your next three sentences...

The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

To show you how amazing this thing you just wrote is, I will give it the highest compliment I can give to a gak post - this looks like something Peregrine would write.

 Sqorgar wrote:
All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

So, exactly like I said: you don't like that "competitive" doesn't carry enough moral judgement for a trait you disapprove of, so you're changing the definition away from one that the vast majority of players would agree with.

But I'm not convinced that a dominant casual or narrative mindset is unhealthy for the game - as a business, as a community, or as a game system. Like, I would think that a gang of narrative-only players would be able to support a single game system for decades without issue, but I think a competitive-only gang would be 10 minutes to midnight the entire time.

Clearly you don't understand business or communities. That gang of narrative-only players often becomes cliquish and unwelcoming to new players, cutting off the supply of new revenue to replace older customers who finish buying their projects or drop out of the hobby. Narrative players often play at home or in private clubs, cutting off the free marketing provided by in-store gaming. And narrative players often have specific fluff concepts in mind when planning their collections, creating an end point to their spending instead of continuing to buy new armies as the game changes. And that's on top of throwing away all the potential revenue from competitive players who are turned away from the game because it doesn't support their interests.

You literally just listed the two games with the most toxic competitive communities in gaming.

They also have extremely toxic "casual" communities.

II was not trying to be toxic and if I came across as such in text I apologise.

What stood out for me was that the common language seems compy...

but I like mathhammer stuff because I think that
someday
it will be used to handicap certain models and
hopefully
help to tune a decent set of rules.

Until that time,
I'll go with common sense realism over GWs typists.

.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:
Personally, I'm fond of a height stat in inches for models. Models never conform to exact heights in inches, but it gets the point across and more importantly, gives people good dimensions to work with when designing or defining terrain. This is 7.3" tall, so it blocks LOS for everything except that height 8 guy there. Being part of the statline makes design space and helps people be aware of how the rule works without needing to know what the table says.

Almost missed this post.
Truth - man when we moved from SK
I shipped my terrain.
Still in the box - busy as @.

But, yup....

Sqorgar, thank you for giving more weight to my argument.

Have a nice day.

Sqorgar wrote:
I'm sorry you feel that way, but let's see if you can follow my thought process and see where I'm coming from.

A "competitive player" is not "a player who plays competitive games". They are "a competitive player that plays games". That is, their very character is categorized by being competitive. It is not that they want or need to win games, but that they feel compelled to compete. Like if you are sitting on a toilet in a public bathroom and the guy from the next stall asks how many pieces of toilet paper you used, and you say, I don't know. Maybe like a dozen. And he goes, "Ha! I did it in nine!" That's not a person being competitive. That's a competitive person.

This is bogus. It is not binary. 'Competitive' is a gradient, not an artificial divide between players you like and those you don't. 'Competitive' ranges from 'not competitive at all' to 'competitive at all costs'.

Sqorgar wrote:
I just spent a lot of words to say that I use "competitive player" as shorthand for a player who creates an unhealthy, unfun game environment because they can not tell the difference between good competition and bad competition. I think it is fair to say that winning a tournament does not factor in one way or another. It's an attitude, not an achievement.

Your words fail.

The second biggest problem is you use a generic, catch-all term, most frequently used to describe an entire subsection of the player base and range of play styles, load it with derogatory and negative intentions of its nasty fringe elements and use it in a derogatory way, specifically to target the 'nasty ones', but seem completely oblivious and almost happy that that term you so gleefully uses tar s everyone else with those sweeping assertions by proxy.

The biggest problem for me though isn't that you don't like competitive-at-all-costs gaming. I'm actually more On board with you there than you realise. It's the 'othering'. It's the dishonesty and ignorance in what you say. It's the construction of that artificial monster that you make of 'competitive players'. It's not enough that you're not into 'that sort of thing'. It's the other stuff. It's how you claim those competitives can't, and don't paint, they can't and won't hobby, they can't and won't socialise, they can't and won't lore. They just want to crush .all the time. And even when people point out you can do both, or that the crushing is often an exaggeration or just your own projections, simultaneously, you stare back in disbelief and incomprehension, and then just dismiss it and carry on with your original assertion that competitives are bad. like how it was shown that your Aos champions are also among the xompetitive players that you despise. Like how, for years now, I've pointed out how competitives in warmachine also paint and hobby - see my numbers of painted models above. Heck, I am far from the only one - I got recommended a warmachine painting group with almost 8,000 members on Facebook the other day. You don't want to believe in anything other that your ridiculous cartoon, no matter how often this is demonstrated to you. It is hugely frustrating to discuss things with you when you are so close minded about this stuff.

I can't for the life of me remember it's name,but there is a scientific term for how people will often have views, and will bury their heads in the sand when presented with evidence or anecdotes to the contrary, simply ignore or dismiss or refuse to accept other perspectives, and other points of view that conflict with their own predetermined judgements. As a man of science, as someone who values rational and objectives discussion, I loathe this attitude. And it's what you do here. Please, stop this, open your mind and change your attitude. You could be an excellent ambassador for our hobby, but your dogma and biases do you no favours at all.

Horst wrote:The numerous rants in this thread about how they are playing it wrong have adequately shown reason for that.... because live and let live is not enough for casuals, they must denigrate competitive players themselves. Question answered then. Competitive players hate on casuals because CAAC players are just as toxic as WAAC players.

Can we please not tar an entire community with one brush and be so dismissive of what the other side says?

And can we be clear on something: there's a difference between 'casuals' and 'casuals-at-all-costs'. Saying competitives hate on casuals because of the casual at all costs is not helpful. That's tarriñg an entire community, its not accurate or helpful and just as bad as what's sqorgar's doing.

There have been some 'rants', on both sides, and there has been plenty reasoned discussion on both too. With respect, calling what the other side says 'rants' is not helpful at all. And people are entitled to disagree with how others play, if they're not into that sort of thing. And explaining why someone has issues with x,y or z is not the same as claiming that person can't 'live and let live'. Let's not leap to conclusions or project.

Sqorgar wrote:
All these terms tend to be used differently by everybody, not just me. There's not really an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. WAAC describes someone who is willing to lie, cheat, and even steal in order to win a game - and while unhealthy, that's not really what I'm talking about. Tournament player describes a player who goes to tournaments, which isn't, itself, a problem. I've decided to load the term "competitive player" because it implies someone who is primarily competitive, above all else, and in general, being competitive is seen as a negative character trait in others. If I say Ted from marketing is competitive, it generally doesn't imply a healthy and helpful guy. Maybe I should just describe these players as "Teds from Marketing"?

Please, stop. You are wrong. You are the only one that uses competitive in this manner - every one else understands it's a gradient and is nuanced. Christ, you've put me on the same side asPeregrine here. Think about that! That's how out of kilter you are here. Being 'competitive' is not a negative trait for a start. Thats just you projecting your own bias in assuming this. I know plenty people who are competitive. In sports and in ttgs. They're fine people, shockingly. Ted from marketing being competitive doesn't imply anything about his helpfulness or health. Remember - competitive is a gradient.

Loading the term 'competitive'' is not cool. You're 'othering'. It's like saying 'all Irish are drunks'. You are knowingly making broad, inaccurate judgements and then tarring an entire community with it by proxy, and singlehandedly proving folks like Horst right when he talks about how casuals can't live and let live and must denigrate all the competitives. You are singlehandedly undoing the good work that posters like nou and notonline! frequently do to push a positive impression of casual/narrative gamers. And this is not your first time doing this. You've done it before when you used 'tournament player' as an insult, despite this being demonstrated to you how in the wrong you were and how inaccurate your viewpoint was. And you are doing it here,now.

And there is an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. And it isn't Waac. And It certainly isn't taking a generic term that everyone uses, then using it in a different way and loading it with your own negative bias- you know that It's inaccurate and that it's only good for grinding people's gears and winding them up. If you need a term to describe 'competitively inappropriately' then use the term I use - 'competitive-at-all-costs'. Its a perfectly adequate descriptor of competitive-that-cannot-be-turned-down-or-off, or everything must be sacrificed on the altar of competition and nothing else matters, only the win, and so long as it's legal (or not illegal) it's fair game - and as a mild bonus, itdoesn't actually tar everyone else who likes tournaments or competitive gaming and who also happens to be a decent chap (which Horst, is probably most folks on your side of the fence, so please don't go saying that we narratives and casuals are all about denigrating competitives and can't live and let live) and/or who likes other things in the hobby as well as competing hard.

Deadnight wrote:

This is bogus. It is not binary. 'Competitive' is a gradient, not an artificial divide between players you like and those you don't. 'Competitive' ranges from 'not competitive at all' to 'competitive at all costs'.

The problem is that we are using two different forms of the word "competitive". You see it as some who likes to compete. I'm using it as someone who is defined by it. When someone says Ted from Marketing is competitive, it is a pejorative, and that is the way I am using it here. Just because we are talking, more or less, about competition doesn't make that behavior more acceptable. Ted from Marketing doesn't become a great guy when you are playing Poker with him.

You don't want to believe in anything other that your ridiculous cartoon, no matter how often this is demonstrated to you. It is hugely frustrating to discuss things with you when you are so close minded about this stuff.

Don't confuse "lack of compelling counter evidence" for "closed minded". It's not that I can't be convinced. It's that you simply haven't convinced me. And I've got a lot of experiences to draw from personally, so it'll take more than "well, I paint my models so some competitive players must paint". The evidence you provide must be at least equally compelling to the experiences I've had that made me quit Warmachine forever. That's a high hurdle.

Let's be honest here. The Warmachine community was fething awful. I mean, it was just the worst thing ever. I can't count on my fingers and toes the number of new players that I personally saw get pushed away from the game, or the number of explicitly unpleasant experiences I've seen or experienced. It was a time bomb waiting to go off, and I don't think anybody was really surprised when it imploded with Mk3 - even the people who left the game out of rage. When people talk about "toxic communities", that is my go to example, every time. And I don't think you can separate the behavior of that community from the competitive nature of it. Maybe one led to the other, or vice versa, but in my mind, the two are inseparable. I would do anything to prevent the games I like and the communities I engage in from ever being even remotely like the cesspool that game because. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

Yes, that makes me biased. But what it also does is make me curious. How does it get that bad? What attitudes and behaviors lead down that path to ruin? These discussions are less about trying to label and attack these kinds of people than it is to simply work out what happened. I'm working backwards from Warmachine's worse time period, but I'm also comparing it to behaviors I see in 40k and other games. No matter what way I attack the problem, it always, always, always comes back to competitive behavior - and not always unhealthy competitive behavior, though that is a major part of it. I think that if we even just acknowledged the unhealthy competitive behavior, we'd only really get about halfway to solving the problem - but that's halfway closer than we are now.

I can't for the life of me remember it's name,but there is a scientific term for how people will often have views, and will bury their heads in the sand when presented with evidence or anecdotes to the contrary, simply ignore or dismiss or refuse to accept other perspectives, and other points of view that conflict with their own predetermined judgements.

It's called "confirmation bias". We all have it to some degree.

Loading the term 'competitive'' is not cool. You're 'othering'.

There's that 'othering' again. You must feel it is a particularly compelling argument that should shame me into changing my ways. I don't really give two gaks about people, only their behavior. So let me ask you this. What are your opinions on the following behaviors? Do they ever have a place in this hobby?

Refusing to play new players?

Refusing to play games with players that aren't tournament level games?

Curb stomping new or inexperienced players?

Telling new players to "nut up or shut up"?

Being a sore winner or sore loser?

Playing games in a professional (or demonstrative) setting (tournaments, YouTube battle reports) with unpainted or unassembled models?

Playing games with a large number of proxied models? Like using a beer can to stand in for a tank?

Playing a game with empty bases standing in for models?

These behaviors are not necessarily that of a competitive player, but because competitive players prioritize competition over all else, these represent behaviors that are chosen deliberately by competitive players. They curb stomp newbies because they are practicing for tournaments, not helping new players. They use proxy models because they are experimenting with army composition, not making the game easier for their opponent to follow. They refuse to play new players because they don't want to compromise the time they could be otherwise spend "training".

There are reasons why other players would engage in these behaviors. Someone with a limited budget might proxy models to try them out, for example. But these usually happen in small groups, and rarely against strangers and never against new players. And while a player may choose, in a limited fashion, to do some of this occasionally, Teds from Marketing often do ALL OF THEM. All the time. Not 100% of the time, but close to it.

And there is an acceptable term for someone who is competitive inappropriately. And it isn't Waac.

No, that's a different thing. I knew a WAAC player before. Not in miniatures, but with board games. He was a good friend, but we had to stop playing board games when he was around. Believe me, I have some choice words about that kind of person too, but there's a difference. For one thing, WAAC players don't tend to run in groups, though some groups may be more tolerant of them. I think they may blend more successfully in with the competitive groups, but their issues are their own.

There's that 'othering' again. You must feel it is a particularly compelling argument that should shame me into changing my ways. I don't really give two gaks about people, only their behavior. So let me ask you this. What are your opinions on the following behaviors? Do they ever have a place in this hobby?

Refusing to play new players?

Refusing to play games with players that aren't tournament level games?

Curb stomping new or inexperienced players?

Telling new players to "nut up or shut up"?

Being a sore winner or sore loser?

Playing games in a professional (or demonstrative) setting (tournaments, YouTube battle reports) with unpainted or unassembled models?

Playing games with a large number of proxied models? Like using a beer can to stand in for a tank?

Playing a game with empty bases standing in for models?

These behaviors are not necessarily that of a competitive player, but because competitive players prioritize competition over all else, these represent behaviors that are chosen deliberately by competitive players. They curb stomp newbies because they are practicing for tournaments, not helping new players. They use proxy models because they are experimenting with army composition, not making the game easier for their opponent to follow. They refuse to play new players because they don't want to compromise the time they could be otherwise spend "training".

There are reasons why other players would engage in these behaviors. Someone with a limited budget might proxy models to try them out, for example. But these usually happen in small groups, and rarely against strangers and never against new players. And while a player may choose, in a limited fashion, to do some of this occasionally, Teds from Marketing often do ALL OF THEM. All the time. Not 100% of the time, but close to it.

Not 100% but close too it.

So slippery slope and a non argument?

Also othering is a process, and frankly for what's worth, whilest the behaviour that you described ranges from unaceptable to unfortunate, associating it with competitive seems rather artificial and is where your whole argument breaks down.


I have seen plenty of times where veterans of the hobby turned their noses up at the new kid with the Starter box.
Just as I've seen the ultra competitive tryhard build a complete fluff list as a side project and proceeded to teach some newbies with that army.

And generally whilest i feel that the recent focus on competitive, especially the ITC branch, is unfortunate since it is in essence a whole subset of rules that doesn't stop me, a generally more laid back non tournament goer to demand a consice and decent ruleset.

We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Well you would certainly find toxic people in it, just like in any community.
Point beeing that every part of it has their fair share of morons.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Word.^^
Gonna raise a glass to this.

 jeff white wrote:

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Word.^^
Gonna raise a glass to this.

Lets add to his list of the "playerbase" maintaining the game...

Battle Fleet Gothic.. still alive and well.. you can buy even new and BETTER minis on shapeways and elsewhere that are more inclusive and diverse than the OE GW ones. The lists that were missing ships have been filled, etc.
Epic 40K Armageddon has been community served for years again, with more vehicles (including NEWER variants from newer GW 28mm being backported) available though non-GW sources that improve both on rules and general aesthetics of the OE base game.

Honestly, some of the "community rules" have been lightyears better than the GW Rules sets.

That can be said for WHFB (though I have not looked into see if the community is still gungho about it since AoS has really come into it's prime).
Kill Team (yes killteam was community supported for YEARS before GW brought it back.. and had some neat expansion rules you could set up campaigns with)
...

I am sure I am missing something here but I can't recall.

In some ways the Epic40K Armageddon has gotten better w/o GW mucking it up... like they did with Titanicus.. though I am 100% certain that Titanicus re-release is a pending roadmap (just as it was before) to the release of Epic 40k. Probably with shyte rules based on their current dynamic. Epic was pretty abstract though.. so they will probably mess it up when they get back to doing it.

That's kind of the problem. When as a game company you keep effing up and the community gets their hands on your abandonware and does it BETTER than you.. there can be some disgruntled backlash if you pick your IP back up and release garbage.

Mind you the new Kill Team and Newcromunda were pretty great. New Apoc,no. 8th, no...New AoS.. yes, Titanicus.. no.

So we will see. They've got some hits.. and some misses.

I'd love to see Gorka-Morka brought back. But w/o jam dice and brain injuries it just wouldn't be as much fun. Nothing like some squig juice fueled scrap over some scrap. HAR HAR HAR.. ya filthy grot.

nou wrote:
We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

Oldcromunda was mantained and expanded by „gang of narrative only players” community for what, 15 years without official support? Even with big, open to all, yearly event in the UK. And it was sooooo toxic, unwelcoming and baaaaad for business that GW decided to cash in on undying popularity of this game first by Shadow War and then year later by Newcromunda proper.

Then we have Inq28/Inquisimunda with very alive and very impressive conversion community and its own aesthetic explorations (it is NOT all Blanchitsu all the time).

And last but not least we have already discussed 30K earlier in this thread.

I would not call any of those communities toxic by any standards.

Counter-argument: those are all extreme niche-market games with so few players that it took GW 15 years to do a one-time Necromunda release with minimal ongoing support. It isn't really an accurate comparison to point to games with so few players because of course you only see the healthiest communities there, any group that isn't amazing disappears. And because the game is so tiny those failed communities are indistinguishable from the significant majority who never get into the game in the first place. It's not like, say, MTG being dead in an area, where the absence of a community is a giant red flag that something is probably wrong. So we'll never know how many of these games had toxic elements and failed because of it.

 meatybtz wrote:


That's kind of the problem. When as a game company you keep effing up and the community gets their hands on your abandonware and does it BETTER than you.. there can be some disgruntled backlash if you pick your IP back up and release garbage.

Mind you the new Kill Team and Newcromunda were pretty great. New Apoc,no. 8th, no...New AoS.. yes, Titanicus.. no.

So we will see. They've got some hits.. and some misses.

I'd love to see Gorka-Morka brought back. But w/o jam dice and brain injuries it just wouldn't be as much fun. Nothing like some squig juice fueled scrap over some scrap. HAR HAR HAR.. ya filthy grot.

Competitive GorkaMorka.is the future.

But absolutely this^^ re GW.
It is almost as if the hobby and player base is split
between loyalists,
who are actually traitors,
and traitors,
who are actually loyalists...

I know which side I am on.

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

Gatekeeping is a part of the process.
But he i am sure you know it all....

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

Well, about why I did not mentioned D&D - I live in a country that had none of it. In the years following our transformation in '89 we jumped straight in into Warhammers, MtG and pen and papers, without any hobby buildup or history whatsoever. We had scale modelers and some odd hex based strategy games here and there and a polish rip-off version of Talisman, but that's all, maybe some individuals playing lead historicals with custom primitive rulesets, but I know of not one club pre-dating 1990. And among pen&papers it was initally a split between WarhammerFRP and Vampire and soon everyone and their dog was writing their own systems and then storytelling approach emerged (my personal favourite). So for me, tabletop miniature games were always strategic and only recently D&D gained some traction here, mostly among board game players which have been gradually accustomed with the concept of elaborate miniatures instead of simple counters. But it is still a niche within a niche.

To illustrate how it was here: when polish version of Battletech was released in '93 it was distributed in toy shops and failed miserably because there was no market whatsoever yet for complex board games adressed to adults. I bought my copy solely because of cover illustration (I was 14 back then) and was completely stunned by contents and compexity of the rulebook, but had no one to play it with up until after complex gaming became somewhat popularised by WHFB and 40K.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:Also othering is a process

Is it though? Isn't it just a rebranding of "gatekeeping"? Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

nou wrote:We don’t have to imagine how „dominant narrative clique” would mantain a game, because we actually have three examples readily at hand:

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

Ironically, pen and paper RPGs are extremely toxic right now, but for completely different reasons. But that's a different discussion for a different time.

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

 meatybtz wrote:

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 meatybtz wrote:

You can PM me to prevent thread drift. But what do you mean? I've been out of PnP RPGs for a long time and honestly thought many died out.. some did and came back (Palladium.. too bad they lost the rights to TMNT.. that was fun). Just curious because I can imagine many possible toxic things but.. FFS it is a PnP RPG.. do we have divas or something now? Jeeze people whats with everything being toxic (MMO PVP! HAHA) anyways.. just that you made me curious since I don't follow any of that anymore and have not for the better part of almost two decades.

It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

Ahh. Thanks I understand. *sigh*

 Sqorgar wrote:
It’s the same gak that has been turning geeks against geeks for a few years now. Think Star Wars or Ghostbusters 2016. Paizo, in particular, seems to have no problems calling it’s customers nazis. Whatever side of the ideological line you fall on, the PnP environment is more battleground than community.

Lolwut. Criticizing poor behavior and people in the community is not the same thing as calling all of their customers Nazis. If you feel hurt by their comments perhaps you should reevaluate your life choices? Because I certainly don't feel criticized unfairly by any of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Why is it that when concepts get disproven and tired, people just come up with a new label so that we have to have the exact same arguments over and over again.

Because gatekeeping is a thing even if certain people try to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it doesn't happen.

I think you missed the big one... Dungeons and Dragons. The entire pen and paper RPG genre is almost entirely narrative now. It started out primarily crunchy dungeon crawls, but has almost universally moved away from this towards more a narrative bent. And that's when these games really started to get popular, and stay popular. I remember reading multiple articles in Dragon magazine about how GMs should deal with a minmaxer ruining the game.

That's not really a good comparison because RPGs have a completely different structure. Of course a cooperative game is going to have an easier time establishing a healthy narrative-focused community because the game structure makes playing "competitively" pointless. The whole competitive vs. narrative issue only matters in the context of games like MTG or 40k where you have a zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset and the narrative elements exist in conflict with that basic nature.

 Peregrine wrote:

That's not really a good comparison because RPGs have a completely different structure.

The genre was literally created out of Chainmail - literally the first commercially available fantasy miniatures game! PnP RPGs are what happens when the narrative players eschew competition in favor of cooperation and narrative. Like, there’s no middle man. There’s no progression. No evolution. It goes from Chainmail to D&D in ONE STEP.

Of course a cooperative game is going to have an easier time establishing a healthy narrative-focused community because the game structure makes playing "competitively" pointless. The whole competitive vs. narrative issue only matters in the context of games like MTG or 40k where you have a zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset and the narrative elements exist in conflict with that basic nature.

The fact that it is functionally impossible for you to see 40k as anything but a “zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset” (especially when it is the exact opposite) disappoints me greatly.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The genre was literally created out of Chainmail - literally the first commercially available fantasy miniatures game! PnP RPGs are what happens when the narrative players eschew competition in favor of cooperation and narrative. Like, there’s no middle man. There’s no progression. No evolution. It goes from Chainmail to D&D in ONE STEP.

I don't care what the history of the game was, that "one step" was a massive change in game concept and the game has only evolved since then. Modern D&D is not just players deciding to play Chainmail with a less-competitive attitude, it's an entirely different game that is superficially similar at best.

The fact that it is functionally impossible for you to see 40k as anything but a “zero-sum game structure that encourages a competitive mindset” (especially when it is the exact opposite) disappoints me greatly.

Then you'd better get used to disappointment because 40k being a zero-sum game is indisputable fact. You win the game by making your opponent lose, both at the tactical level (killing enemy units) and strategic level (the victory conditions for the scenario). Perhaps you are confusing a straightforward description of game mechanics with the idea that "zero-sum game" means that only one person can enjoy it?

 Sqorgar wrote:

Let's be honest here. The Warmachine community was fething awful. I mean, it was just the worst thing ever.

Yes, that makes me biased. But what it also does is make me curious. How does it get that bad? What attitudes and behaviors lead down that path to ruin?

It's funny, because for the longest time Warmachine had easily one of the best communities out there. I personally didn't think it got that bad until after MK3, but the year or two before certainly seemed to be where it started with that sense that the keyboard jockeys felt they were more important to the game than the company behind it that preludes all the toxic fanbases. I think a lot of it was definitely paved with good intentions as players worked to enforce the rules consistently and fairly, but it mostly increased the learning curve as some of the game's niche interactions became well known through experience rather than intuition. It didn't strike me as wildly toxic until MK3 though, where the online community reacted as poorly as possible at every given opportunity until it wasn't even worth trying to participate in.

Popular games often develop toxic communities because people end up investing so much of themselves into those games, to the point where the game becomes a not-insignificant portion of their personal identities. The game becomes an extension of who they are.

So super fans get really sensitive to changes or criticisms regarding the game, because at the point, a developer or community member isn't just messing with the game, they're messing directly with the identities of its biggest fans.

If you're a longtime 40k fan and GW tells you that you no longer represent the kind of audience they care about, you're going to be offended on some level. Likewise, if you're a die-hard competitive player and a bunch of narrative players tell you your style of play is no longer welcome, you're going to be pissed. And vice versa.

The more popular the game, the greater the number of 'super fans', and the higher the likelihood of toxicity when things don't change the way they want it to.

Peregrine wrote:I don't care what the history of the game was...

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Interestingly enough, the first thing which could be considered a narrative war game was Braunstein, which was a combination of Diplomacy and a war game. The players would take on the role of individuals who had specific objectives in the battle, and apparently, this was so much fun, the first game of Braunstein played never actually got to the war game part.

I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games. They never have been, even going back to HG Wells’ Little Wars. Even Kriegspeil, one of the earliest war games, had a game master who would move the units for the players according to how he thought the units would interpret the commands. If the umpire thought your units had low morale, he’d play them that way.

War games, and miniature games, have ALWAYS been narrative games! The idea that they are competitive is a recent invention, and completely at odds with the mechanical margin of error these games have. Did the unit move 6” or 6.02”? Does this unit have line of sight to this other unit? Does seeing a topknot stick up over a wall count? Can I fire on that unit? I’ll just hold this ruler 3” above the field because there are too many models in the way. This guy is 4.5” up the wall, not 4.62” that I technically should have.

Miniature games are, by their very existence, open to interpretation! Actions happen because the players agree on it, not because we have the accuracy to actually measure movement or line of sight! They are mechanically hazy. How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate? These games are literally built upon the fundamental principle of “close enough, I guess”..

LunarSol wrote:
It's funny, because for the longest time Warmachine had easily one of the best communities out there. I personally didn't think it got that bad until after MK3, but the year or two before certainly seemed to be where it started with that sense that the keyboard jockeys felt they were more important to the game than the company behind it that preludes all the toxic fanbases. I think a lot of it was definitely paved with good intentions as players worked to enforce the rules consistently and fairly, but it mostly increased the learning curve as some of the game's niche interactions became well known through experience rather than intuition. It didn't strike me as wildly toxic until MK3 though, where the online community reacted as poorly as possible at every given opportunity until it wasn't even worth trying to participate in.

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

isn't that imo just a attitude that manifested and turned new players away at a massive rate?
Considering that MK 1 and most of MK2 were doing ok and assuming we got the Veterans from there coldn't it be that either the Influx of new players at a rather insane rate has brought in rather strange fellows that lacked the general sportsmanship instead?


I feel that GW has a diffrent problem in regards to 40k, mostly that their lackluster rules lend themselves to insulated groups with subrules all over the place.
Basically i assume that the 40k community is far more splintered then what we assume.
I also think the vast majority of non competitive players have a problem with GW's focus on ITC because it is hardly confroming to the base ruleset.
In a way i feel like we wouldn't have that discussion if GW did a propper job on the rules from the start.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Warmachine was dying well before Mk3 ever came out, By the end of Mk2, there were basically no new players coming in. The one-two punch of 8th and mk3 took out the older players, but a game with less people coming in than going out is not sustainable for very long. It was on borrowed time. So why didn’t the new players stick around? It wasn’t because it was a bad game (it isn’t) and it wasn’t because the models were crap (they were, but they were crap before).

During mk2, WMH had an explosive growth. It became the second most popular miniature game and had one of the best reputations of any of the minis games out there (especially compared to old GW). By the end of mk2, the players were openly hostile to new players and had an attitude that you’ll lose your first dozen games (and that’s a good thing), only playing steamroller tournament lists. Somewhere, it went from new players are welcome to new players can feth off.

isn't that imo just a attitude that manifested and turned new players away at a massive rate?
Considering that MK 1 and most of MK2 were doing ok and assuming we got the Veterans from there coldn't it be that either the Influx of new players at a rather insane rate has brought in rather strange fellows that lacked the general sportsmanship instead?


I feel that GW has a diffrent problem in regards to 40k, mostly that their lackluster rules lend themselves to insulated groups with subrules all over the place.
Basically i assume that the 40k community is far more splintered then what we assume.
I also think the vast majority of non competitive players have a problem with GW's focus on ITC because it is hardly confroming to the base ruleset.
In a way i feel like we wouldn't have that discussion if GW did a propper job on the rules from the start.

RE: Warmachine the issue was a people one. For whatever reason, you had neckbeards who took "Page 5" to heart instead of as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying don't complain about something being "cheesy" learn to adapt (which was the direct opposite of Warhammer, 40k in particular, at the time). Instead what you got was cliques of "elite" players who took pleasure in curb-stomping newbs and then telling them to "git gud" because "the rules say to play like you have a pair". Of course not every community was like this and you also had communities with players who would help or give advice and, if they did do some wacky top of 2 caster kill combo, explain exactly how they did it, what you could have done to avoid it and what you need to watch out for next time. And, of course, you had the groups that were so narrow-mindedly focused on tournaments that they would never play anything but Steamroller games (although in this defense the regular scenarios were absolutely terrible), and be unhelpful to new players. That attitude also happened in Warhammer though, and a good indication of that is people who never want to play below 2k (or whatever tournament standard is at the time) because they only have a specific list for that goal or worse a community which tells new players to buy a 2k point army before they start to play because everyone only plays 2k points. That's a surefire sign of a community which doesn't "get" it and it was very prevalent in the Warmahordes communities since there was such a focus on competitive play.

GW's issue is that their rules are so wordy and non-instructive that you end up with houserules or even just agreements on how things work, when someone else can try to argue it works a different way. ITC itself isn't the issue, it's that A) ITC is the most popular "houserules" and B) Their houserules go so far as to define their own meta, different from the meta which doesn't use them, and yet have the nerve to act like their way is superior. It's been shown time and time and time again that the ITC missions favor certain armies and allow you to tailor more than you can without them, yet as long a ITC is held up to some sort of pedestal as being the "perfect" set of rules you'll find arguments because they are still house rules, just house rules that have been pimped out to seem like the norm. How does that saying go? Tell a lie long enough and it becomes truth?

The main issue I feel in general is that like we've said before, your competitive people tend to become narrow-minded. They can ONLY play competitive, and have no "off" button or even a desire to do something other than boring Matched Play, often ITC, missions with as symmetrical as possible situations so it's "fair". And, as we've seen from some folks here, often get very vehement at anything that isn't matched play with points to where they constantly go out of their way to "prove" why it's superior to everything else, irrespective of what someone else might enjoy. ITC is a symptom of a problem but has since become the problem itself.

You have the opposite ("CAAC") but IMHO it's extremely rare and is more a caricature cooked up to sling mud at the other side. Now to be fair "WAAC" is also used incorrectly the majority of the time and is a caricature of what it really is: A competitive player isn't automatically WAAC, it's only the most extreme rules-lawyering, nitpicking, obviously not playing in the spirit of the game because they want to win sort of player who is WAAC and typically even other competitive players don't care for a true WAAC player because it tars all of them with the same brush. My experience has been here and elsewhere over the past 15 or so years that you rarely find people like that. You have people who dislike playing the game competitively and often feel threatened by the almost-inevitable bringing competitive play into a non-competitive group and having it swiftly overtake and subsume everything else, but that's a reaction to having an outside force basically come in and usurp control and less just people who want to "virtue signal" about how they aren't competitive like certain people seem to toss around.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games.

Then you clearly don't understand what "zero sum game" is. Ambiguity in rules interpretation has nothing to do with the concept.

How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate?

How can football be competitive when nobody can measure exactly where the ball is, and the game is full of "good enough" calls?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games.

Then you clearly don't understand what "zero sum game" is. Ambiguity in rules interpretation has nothing to do with the concept.

Your answer would come across as far less arrogant and condescending if you deigned to offer a clarifying example.

How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate?

How can football be competitive when nobody can measure exactly where the ball is, and the game is full of "good enough" calls?

You have referees watching every move in your games of 40K?

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
I can’t believe you think these games are zero-sum, winner takes all games.

Then you clearly don't understand what "zero sum game" is. Ambiguity in rules interpretation has nothing to do with the concept.

Your answer would come across as far less arrogant and condescending if you deigned to offer a clarifying example.

How can they be competitive when the most fundamental parts of the game are completely inaccurate?

How can football be competitive when nobody can measure exactly where the ball is, and the game is full of "good enough" calls?

You have referees watching every move in your games of 40K?

There should be with the level of cheating that goes on at big tournaments

 Peregrine wrote:

Then you clearly don't understand what "zero sum game" is. Ambiguity in rules interpretation has nothing to do with the concept.

That’s a separate thing. I asked how the games could be competitive if they are largely guesstimates. The games not being zero sum is a different thing - a perception problem. But let me totally share this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking

When individuals think that a situation is zero-sum, they will be more likely to act competitively (or less cooperatively) towards others, because they will see others as a competitive threat. For example, when students think that they are being graded on a curve—a grading scheme that makes the allocation of grades zero-sum—they will be less likely to provide assistance to a peer who is proximate in status to themselves, because that peer's gain could be their own loss.

...

Actually read that whole page. A lot of it may seem particular familiar to you. Hell, you seem to think internet discussions are a zero sum game. That’s not healthy, dude.

How can football be competitive when nobody can measure exactly where the ball is, and the game is full of "good enough" calls?

I don’t know. Let’s ask their FOUR referees...

Snugiraffe wrote:
Your answer would come across as far less arrogant and condescending if you deigned to offer a clarifying example.

You assume that I care at all about not being condescending towards someone who started off with "I feel sorry for you because you don't agree with me". But, since you want a clarifying example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game

40k is indisputably a zero-sum game because all gains for one player come at the expense of the other player. If there are five objectives to claim both players are trying to divide them up in their favor to win the game. For me to claim three of the objectives requires preventing you from claiming more than two of them. At no point is it possible to cooperate and gain more than five objectives worth of value for the two players combined, allowing both players to "win" the game. And it's the same kind of situation at every level of game mechanics. The players are in direct opposition at all times and any time player A has a success it is a loss for player B.


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 Sqorgar wrote:
That’s a separate thing.

So, having failed to back up your claim that 40k is not a zero-sum game you just decided to move the goalposts to something else?

I asked how the games could be competitive if they are largely guesstimates.

And I answered: in the same way that other games are competitive despite having measurement inaccuracies. In a football game if the referee spots the ball at 4th and inches can you say beyond any doubt that the measurement is accurate and that the ball wasn't advanced a few inches farther, giving a first down? Of course not, and football games are full of controversial calls like that. And yet somehow football is a popular and obscenely profitable competitive sport. So why would you make the absurd assumption that the inability to measure with 0.00001mm precision in a tabletop game automatically makes the game non-competitive?

The games not being zero sum is a different thing - a perception problem. But let me totally share this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking

That has nothing to do with what a zero-sum game is. I'm talking about game mechanics, not attitudes towards players enjoying the hobby.

 Peregrine wrote:
The players are in direct opposition at all times and any time player A has a success it is a loss for player B.

That would only be the case if victory points were a limited resource. They aren’t. There’s an infinite amount such that one player getting a VP does not prevent another player from getting a VP. And there are potentially situations that can be both good or both bad for all players. For instance, if there was an objective that gave 1 VP for each model in range. Heat vents erupting, damaging all models, causing potential VPs to be erased for both players. You are competing to have MORE VPs. In a zero-sum game, the end score would be something like 10 to -10. Literally, the scores summed together are zero. Zero Sum. Right there in the name.

I don’t think you even read the Wiki page you linked to... You may play competitively, but with that eye for detail, I wonder how successful you are at it...

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The players are in direct opposition at all times and any time player A has a success it is a loss for player B.

That would only be the case if victory points were a limited resource. They aren’t. There’s an infinite amount such that one player getting a VP does not prevent another player from getting a VP. And there are potentially situations that can be both good or both bad for all players. For instance, if there was an objective that gave 1 VP for each model in range. Heat vents erupting, damaging all models, causing potential VPs to be erased for both players. You are competing to have MORE VPs. In a zero-sum game, the end score would be something like 10 to -10. Literally, the scores summed together are zero. Zero Sum. Right there in the name.

I don’t think you even read the Wiki page you linked to... You may play competitively, but with that eye for detail, I wonder how successful you are at it...

Oh FFS that's absurd nitpicking. The fact that you can come up with a scenario involving a custom objective (invented entirely by you) where the scoring doesn't technically add up to zero doesn't change the general point that 40k is conceptually a zero-sum game where the players are working in direct opposition at all times. Do you actually have an response to the substance of the argument or just nitpicking about whether it fits the strictest dictionary definition of the term?

I mean.... 40k is obviously not zero sum. Play ITC, and both opponents take Recon. Being in a table quarter does not prevent an opponent from also scoring. Or normal 40k, you scoring first strike does not prevent an opponent from scoring first strike.

Not sure what this has to do with competitive 40k though.

 Horst wrote:
I mean.... 40k is obviously not zero sum. Play ITC, and both opponents take Recon. Being in a table quarter does not prevent an opponent from also scoring. Or normal 40k, you scoring first strike does not prevent an opponent from scoring first strike.

But it becomes much more of a zero-sum game when you look at winning the game overall vs. the individual objective. You want to prevent your opponent from taking those table quarters, not merely sit passively and let them have VP. The more you control the game and accumulate VP the less VP they're going to score, because you're killing their units and pushing them out of table quarters. And in the end, regardless of how you get to a final VP total, one player wins and the other player loses. You don't have a situation where both players cooperate to score tons of VP and both win.

Contrast this with a non-zero-sum game like D&D or a cooperative board game, where the players do work together and one player's win is also a win for every other player.

Not sure what this has to do with competitive 40k though.

The point is that there's a fundamental tension between the zero-sum nature of the rules of 40k and the collaborative approach certain players want to take, and this is responsible for a lot of the toxicity in casual/narrative groups. Every part of the actual mechanics of the game puts the players in conflict with each other and requires them to win by making their opponent lose, but certain players want to use lists/strategies/etc that are very bad at winning the game without losing so much that they stop having fun. So you end up with a bunch of cliquish behavior and unwritten rules built up around the game, and anyone who doesn't play the game the "right way" has to immediately be shunned from the group before they can break that delicate balance of unwritten rules.

This fundamental tension doesn't exist in a game like D&D because there's no real incentive to try harder to win than everyone else. So what if you show up with some overpowered god of combat, you're just helping all of the other players win and if the party gets too good at winning the DM will increase the difficulty of the encounters to match the party's power level. Similarly, if the party plays a bunch of weaker characters the DM matches them up against weaker enemies. The fighter doesn't whine that the rogue is overpowered at lockpicking, the fighter celebrates that an obstacle to their collective victory has been removed and readies her sword because there's probably something on the other side that needs killing. And yes, there are still disruptive players who will ruin a game even when all of the mechanics are removing the incentive to do so, but it's mostly limited to a handful of TFGs rather than a large number of decent people who simply have conflicting goals and ideas about what is fun.

The conclusion of all this is that if you're going to talk about how successful casual/narrative communities are and compare them to "toxic" competitive play then you need to look at casual/narrative communities in zero-sum games like 40k or MTG where that tension exists, not at cooperative games like D&D where fundamentally different game concepts make it much easier to have a healthy casual/narrative community.

 Peregrine wrote:

Oh FFS that's absurd nitpicking. The fact that you can come up with a scenario involving a custom objective (invented entirely by you) where the scoring doesn't technically add up to zero doesn't change the general point that 40k is conceptually a zero-sum game where the players are working in direct opposition at all times. Do you actually have an response to the substance of the argument or just nitpicking about whether it fits the strictest dictionary definition of the term?

You fundamentally do not understand what a zero-sum game is. Like, there’s wrong and there’s fething wrong, and you are fething wrong. Like spend thirty seconds and read the Wikipedia article that you, yourself, linked to. You are confusing the victory (a player winning is another player losing) with the game mechanics themselves (which are non-zero-sum due to points not being a limited resource - gaining a point does not mean the other player loses a point).

What makes all of this hilarious is that “zero-sum thinking”, where one thinks things are zero-sum when they aren’t, creating unnecessary hostility and competitiveness, is an actual cognitive bias that exists. People study it. It’s a problem. Hell, it might be THE problem with Teds from Marketing. And you’ve got it, buddy. You might be the biggest Ted from Marketing there is.

Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that playing 40k does not begin and end with the game itself. Being a turd to your fellow players will result in fewer fellow players, ultimately destroying your opportunity to play the game. If you think participating in the community is zero-sum, then heaven help you.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Oh FFS that's absurd nitpicking. The fact that you can come up with a scenario involving a custom objective (invented entirely by you) where the scoring doesn't technically add up to zero doesn't change the general point that 40k is conceptually a zero-sum game where the players are working in direct opposition at all times. Do you actually have an response to the substance of the argument or just nitpicking about whether it fits the strictest dictionary definition of the term?

You fundamentally do not understand what a zero-sum game is. Like, there’s wrong and there’s fething wrong, and you are fething wrong. Like spend thirty seconds and read the Wikipedia article that you, yourself, linked to. You are confusing the victory (a player winning is another player losing) with the game mechanics themselves (which are non-zero-sum due to points not being a limited resource - gaining a point does not mean the other player loses a point).

What makes all of this hilarious is that “zero-sum thinking”, where one thinks thinks are zero-sum when they aren’t, creating unnecessary hostility and competitiveness, is an actual cognitive bias that exists. People study it. It’s a problem. Hell, it might be THE problem with Teds from Marketing. And you’ve got it, buddy. You might be the biggest Ted from Marketing there is.

So, like I said, just nitpicking that 40k technically has scores of 12-7 instead of +3 - -3 rather than addressing the substance of the argument (that in 40k everything you are trying to do is at the expense of the other player) and how that relates to toxic "casual" and narrative communities.


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 Sqorgar wrote:
Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that playing 40k does not begin and end with the game itself. Being a turd to your fellow players will result in fewer fellow players, ultimately destroying your opportunity to play the game. If you think participating in the community is zero-sum, then heaven help you.

That also has absolutely nothing to do with the game mechanics. But it says a lot of unfortunate things about you that you equate playing to win within the game mechanics with "being a turd to your fellow players".


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PS: from the point of view of game theory math "score +1 VP" and "score +0.5 VP and your opponent loses 0.5 VP" are identical. Likewise, multiplying all VP numbers by 10 gives you the exact same game. So yes, you are absolutely nitpicking an irrelevant point of how 40k presents its numbers and ignoring the fact that the underlying mechanics are very much a zero-sum game. Every action you take that adds positive value to your side subtracts value from your opponent's side. Kill a unit? Plus value to you, minus value to your opponent. Claim an objective and score VP? Plus value to you, minus value to your opponent. You never have a situation where you're collaborating and adding value to both sides at once*. Contrast this with, say, the prisoner's dilemma scenario, where there are strategies that result in both players winning by working together.

*With the amusing exception of collusion in tournaments, where you might deliberately manipulate the VP scored by each player to improve their overall tournament scores at the expense of some other player. But that's blatant cheating.

 Peregrine wrote:

So, like I said, just nitpicking that 40k technically has scores of 12-7 instead of +3 - -3 rather than addressing the substance of the argument (that in 40k everything you are trying to do is at the expense of the other player) and how that relates to toxic "casual" and narrative communities.

It’s not nitpicking, it is literally the definition. Look, zero-sum game is a game theory thing where they use math to “solve” a game. It’s been a while since college math covered game theory, but it ends up that in a two player game, if both players play optimally, then it should end in a tie (or the first player will win, in a first turn advantage). The fact that you compare scores at the end of the game has nothing to do with it. Zero sum games are mathematical constructs.

A non-zero-sum game is one where the resources are not limited. That is, a player can acquire a point without the other player losing anything. Like sitting in a corner and generating a VP just for existing. The fundamental difference here is that you do not necessarily have to impede the other player’s success in order to win. Imagine a game where two players sit in a corner, accruing VPs. One player acquires 1.5 VPs a turn instead of 1. That player will win, just by virtue of running down the clock. The optimal strategy for that player is to NOT engage the enemy at all, because doing so would remove the natural advantage he is currently enjoying. You win without your opponent losing. You are not taking territory from him, you are generating new territory.

That also has absolutely nothing to do with the game mechanics. But it says a lot of unfortunate things about you that you equate playing to win within the game mechanics with "being a turd to your fellow players".

I equated viewing the game as a zero-sum experience to being a turd. Again, zero-sum means that the scores sum up to zero. In order for you to have fun, your opponent has to not have fun. In order to “win”, the other player must “lose”. But if you view the concept of “winning” not in terms of toy soldiers and more in the social concept of hanging out with friends and having a pleasant time, then winning and losing individual games is less important than the experience of playing them. You “win” by having a good time, and it is non-zero-sum. Everybody can “win” the evening.

The best games I’ve ever played were done with the explicit goal of not winning. I’ve got family and friends who are not particularly good at games (like my kids when they were younger). If I played with the explicit purpose of winning the game, I’d “lose” the evening. Instead, I aim to create the most enjoyment for everybody involved, and if it means playing to lose, I’ll happily do it. If it means handicapping myself to give them a better chance, I’ll do it. My favorite games have been ones where my opponents play the game regularly, but I have a semi-impossible, but creative or fun task to accomplish. They’ll almost certainly win, but I’;l still have fun. For instance, when I used to play Hearts, I always tried to shoot the moon - it was strategically unwise, but when I’d succeed, I’d feel pretty great - but it means I either won or I came in last place. There was no middle ground. And it was great and many fun experiences came from that.

PS: from the point of view of game theory math "score +1 VP" and "score +0.5 VP and your opponent loses 0.5 VP" are identical.

Not really. It’s actually closer to I have 10 bananas and you have 9 apples, then we compare whether I have more fruit than you. The number of bananas I have does not affect the number of apples you have. I can lose a banana and you still have the same number of apples. Zero-sum literally means that if I gain an apple, you lose an apple. If I lose an apple you gain an apple.

Every action you take that adds positive value to your side subtracts value from your opponent's side.

Only in comparison, which is not how zero-sum works. For instance, gaining 1 VP when you are tied is worth more than 1 VP when you are ahead by 10. In fact, gaining a VP when your opponent can not practically catch up is essentially worthless to your opponent (he’s already lost, what does he care if you win by 1 VP or 100 VP?) - but it might have value to you (better tournament ranking, maybe. Adds positive value to you, does not subtract value from you opponent.

Kill a unit? Plus value to you, minus value to your opponent. Claim an objective and score VP? Plus value to you, minus value to your opponent. You never have a situation where you're collaborating and adding value to both sides at once

Non-zero-sum games are not necessarily cooperative. I have to go to AoS for this example, because I don’t play 40k. But let’ssay you kill your opponent’s unit. This benefits you because you get VPs based on enemy units destroyed. However, because the unit was destroyed, your opponent now has enough space to summon a group of skeletons that he otherwise couldn’t have. You both benefited from that action, but to different degrees and to different extents, but you both benefitted. In a zero sum game, all +1s come with a corresponding -1. Here, you got a +3 and he got a +2. The net difference is a +1 in your favor, which is where you are getting confused. But in a zero-sum game, you get a +3, he gets a -3. Always.

 Peregrine wrote:


40k is indisputably a zero-sum game because all gains for one player come at the expense of the other player. If there are five objectives to claim both players are trying to divide them up in their favor to win the game. For me to claim three of the objectives requires preventing you from claiming more than two of them. At no point is it possible to cooperate and gain more than five objectives worth of value for the two players combined, allowing both players to "win" the game. And it's the same kind of situation at every level of game mechanics. The players are in direct opposition at all times and any time player A has a success it is a loss for player B.


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 Sqorgar wrote:
That’s a separate thing.

So, having failed to back up your claim that 40k is not a zero-sum game you just decided to move the goalposts to something else?

I asked how the games could be competitive if they are largely guesstimates.

And I answered: in the same way that other games are competitive despite having measurement inaccuracies. In a football game if the referee spots the ball at 4th and inches can you say beyond any doubt that the measurement is accurate and that the ball wasn't advanced a few inches farther, giving a first down? Of course not, and football games are full of controversial calls like that. And yet somehow football is a popular and obscenely profitable competitive sport. So why would you make the absurd assumption that the inability to measure with 0.00001mm precision in a tabletop game automatically makes the game non-competitive?

The games not being zero sum is a different thing - a perception problem. But let me totally share this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking

That has nothing to do with what a zero-sum game is. I'm talking about game mechanics, not attitudes towards players enjoying the hobby.

See, but you are talking about attitudes.

With a different attitude,
40K is not zero sum any more than capitalism need be zero sum -
Adam Smith certainly didn't think that this competitive though also cooperative system should ever work
without prosocial virtue at its root.
Once this is gone, you might have zero sum,
and replayed systematically for a couple generations or
with enough corruption a couple of years as we have been seeing this past decade,
troubling imbalance results, indeed systemic overshoot reculting in systemic instability,
e.g. something like 60 people control as much wealth today as the lower 50% of the world's population,
this is the degree of imbalance.
.
Metaphor aside, I suppose ultimately,
if left to math-hammering for a while longer,
this is where "competitive"40K will be with their "builds" -
rocking that top 0.1%.

With a different attitude,
everybody wins an afternoon of 40k.

And, sure, drink a few beers.

+1 all around, no?




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 Sqorgar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Oh FFS that's absurd nitpicking. The fact that you can come up with a scenario involving a custom objective (invented entirely by you) where the scoring doesn't technically add up to zero doesn't change the general point that 40k is conceptually a zero-sum game where the players are working in direct opposition at all times. Do you actually have an response to the substance of the argument or just nitpicking about whether it fits the strictest dictionary definition of the term?

You fundamentally do not understand what a zero-sum game is. Like, there’s wrong and there’s fething wrong, and you are fething wrong. Like spend thirty seconds and read the Wikipedia article that you, yourself, linked to. You are confusing the victory (a player winning is another player losing) with the game mechanics themselves (which are non-zero-sum due to points not being a limited resource - gaining a point does not mean the other player loses a point).

What makes all of this hilarious is that “zero-sum thinking”, where one thinks things are zero-sum when they aren’t, creating unnecessary hostility and competitiveness, is an actual cognitive bias that exists. People study it. It’s a problem. Hell, it might be THE problem with Teds from Marketing. And you’ve got it, buddy. You might be the biggest Ted from Marketing there is.

Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that playing 40k does not begin and end with the game itself. Being a turd to your fellow players will result in fewer fellow players, ultimately destroying your opportunity to play the game. If you think participating in the community is zero-sum, then heaven help you.

I mean we have what seems to be the two Parade exemples of community failure here spouting that their position is superior.

Watch and learn how not to be dakka.
Be Fluid like water, manage your list strength and behaviour accordingly,.

While sqorgar does an excelent job in showing how 40K is non-zero sum game, there is one other, definitive example, that is not subjective and is directly rules math related, so should be understandable by all participants of this discussion:

In most tournaments, losing-winning 19-20 (-0.5 vs +0.5 as some claim) has a different value than losing-winning 0-1 (the same -0.5 vs +0.5 as some claim) and ending a game as close to 20-19 score is beneficial to both players, as VPs are used as a secondary sorting mechanism in case of the tied won-vs-lost primary score.

The more complex (but still not that all complex) version of that reasoning extends to single matches also, but I really don't think that some people in this thread are capable of understanding how a non-constant equilibrium point in a non-zero sum games makes all the mathematical difference between non-zero and zero sum games (even on fething definition level) and how this paragraph is not a "word salad".

maybe but its still win/loss each game, the secondary score keeping is an external requirement for torny purposes rather than part of the game as the winner will most likely be X-0 or X-1

Why would you want a close game? Isn't the point of competition to destroy your opponent and win by as large a margin as possible to ensure you are higher on the leaderboards? If you give them a chance to score more points that is one other adversary that could be potentially above you in later rounds. I can understand if you're playing at home and you want to have a fun casual game with friends or family but when you're at a tournament you should be bringing the most competitive army and strategy you can.

This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Why would you want a close game? Isn't the point of competition to destroy your opponent and win by as large a margin as possible to ensure you are higher on the leaderboards? If you give them a chance to score more points that is one other adversary that could be potentially above you in later rounds. I can understand if you're playing at home and you want to have a fun casual game with friends or family but when you're at a tournament you should be bringing the most competitive army and strategy you can.

This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

there is a difference between handing out participation trophies and wishing for a competitive match that went down to the wire.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:


This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

Unmmm, everyone should have fun at tournaments. If you aren’t going to have fun, why would you bother paying an entry fee and going to a tournament? If I am organizing a tournament and someone is t having fun, I would consider that to be a problem.

Fundamentally, I think this is what a “zero sum” game truly means. It has nothing to do with the details of how you score, but it has to do with the attitude that I’m only having fun if I am actively making the game unfun for my opponent. The more I make it unfun for them, the more fun I have. This sort of attitude is what is truly toxic.

crimsyn wrote:

Fundamentally, I think this is what a “zero sum” game truly means. It has nothing to do with the details of how you score, but it has to do with the attitude that I’m only having fun if I am actively making the game unfun for my opponent. The more I make it unfun for them, the more fun I have. This sort of attitude is what is truly toxic.

Peregrine is talking in terms of pure game mechanics. This is only true of that argument if winning = fun and losing = unfun. Mechanically, a game can be zero-sum without the experience of the game being zero-sum as long as players can find a way for losing = fun.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
maybe but its still win/loss each game, the secondary score keeping is an external requirement for torny purposes rather than part of the game as the winner will most likely be X-0 or X-1

Secondary score keeping is not merely an external requirement but a variable that can be utilized to gain an advantage and therefore a part of the game in tournament context (and actually a crucial one in ETC) and has been discussed on dakka numerous times in contexts of GW/ITC/ETC mission formats. And this discussion is not whether 40K is a win-loss game, which it is, but whether it is a zero sum game, which it isn't. Non-zero sum games can come in many varieties, ranging from competitive to fully co-op. It is only in Peregrine's head that non-zero sum games are always this cooperative CAAC nonsense. Zero sum games however are always strictly competitive and this flawed backwards reasoning leads him to believe that competitveness of a game (defined as having a winner and a loser) defines whether or not a game is or isn't a zero sum game. For the last time - zero sum game is a mathematical definition. Zero sum games can be analysed with a certain mathematical toolset that cannot be to same extent utilized to analyse non-zero sum games.

Sqorgar already presented some facts about why 1VP in 40K is not the same as -0.5 vs 0.5 in zero sum games but just to elaborate a bit on "different value of VP" - in most modern mission formats VPs are capped and connected to turn structure of the game. In other words, there is always a maximum number of VPs to be scored by each player before the game is over. If the advantage of the winning player equals the maximum number of VPs that losing player can still achieve, then 1VP for the winning player means certain victory, while 1VP for the losing player means only closing the gap by 1VP. This asymmetry goes directly against a definition of zero sum game, because this 1VP scored by a losing side does not in any way change the position of winning player - he does not go further from winning a game at all and still needs one, not two VPs to secure victory. So please, no more this false -0.5/+0.5 equivalent nonsense. As I hinted earlier - non-zero sum games have movable equilibrium point whlie zero sum games have static equilibrium point and this property is the key property in their definition. Not the property of having winner or loser.



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 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Why would you want a close game? Isn't the point of competition to destroy your opponent and win by as large a margin as possible to ensure you are higher on the leaderboards? If you give them a chance to score more points that is one other adversary that could be potentially above you in later rounds. I can understand if you're playing at home and you want to have a fun casual game with friends or family but when you're at a tournament you should be bringing the most competitive army and strategy you can.

This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

Reverse your line of thought - despite losing it is in the best interest of the losing side to pump up the partial score to 19-20. And it is commonly a strategic goal in some ETC matchups and players will go for scoring objectives rather than denying objectives.

crimsyn wrote:

 Jjohnso11 wrote:


This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

Unmmm, everyone should have fun at tournaments. If you aren’t going to have fun, why would you bother paying an entry fee and going to a tournament? If I am organizing a tournament and someone is t having fun, I would consider that to be a problem.

Fundamentally, I think this is what a “zero sum” game truly means. It has nothing to do with the details of how you score, but it has to do with the attitude that I’m only having fun if I am actively making the game unfun for my opponent. The more I make it unfun for them, the more fun I have. This sort of attitude is what is truly toxic.

Tournaments are based around getting the best players to compete against each other to see who is better. If I am organizing a tournament I'm celebrating the best players and hoping that the competitions are close because everyone is there to compete and win. How is wanting to bring the best army and destroy everyone I play toxic at a tournament? Should professional athletes tone down their skill so they don't win more games than other teams?

I'm not confusing that with casual games where you are playing with friends or family or having matches at your FLGS to play with people you know. If you think this whole thing is solely around having fun play more narrative games or go with PLs when you build your lists.


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Toxicity comes from either group, competitive or casual, trying to force its ideas and game play styles on other groups. Now for me that appears much more as a problem from the competitive side because certain elements in it are very vocal on the Internet, casual groups tend to be smaller, not cliques but natural a group of friends who play together and know each other socially and through gaming, and how match play seems to becoming the default for pick up games etc.

The reasons I don’t like competitive play are that I like the fluff and back ground and story telling during a game and that appears to not matter at all in a competitive game. And I don’t play war games to get my win fix.

Things like throwing to impose the rule of 3 etc on all play and criticising people for not playing “optimised” lists is what I consider toxic. Forcing things on one group from the other that detract from their enjoyment.

And peregrine you are a classic example of this. You insist on playing your way and making changes to the whole game to play your way better regardless of the impact on casual gaming. You fail to see anyone else’s point of view and have even called people liars when they explain they don’t care about winning or losing. You’ve done it to me.

Any toxicity you have encountered from the casual set is likely as a result of your attitude and behaviour. I certainly have no intention tolerating your outbursts. The rules you talk about casual groups having aren’t rules as much as manners or etiquette. They may be unwritten but aren’t unsaid. Communication is the key. Me and my mates discuss what we want from a given game before hand. That is how we know our unwritten rules. If you joined our group we would do the same with you, but if you didn’t play as we had discussed you wouldn’t be being included for long. That’s not us being toxic that is you not getting the point and being toxic. If everyone else is happy and you aren’t because no one wants to play your unfluffy net lists then the issue is you.

If I went to a tournament and complained that all the armies were wrong and you were doing it all wrong I would be the issue not the competitive players. So I don’t go to tournaments.

The two styles need to be separated as much as possible. An entirely different rules set would be best to me.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Should professional athletes tone down their skill so they don't win more games than other teams?

40k is not a sport and its players are not athletes. 40k is not a "fair" game, and it is not skill based, with the best way to win being to unbalance the game in your favor. The goal of competitive 40k is a gladiatorial match between untrained slaves - with the victor being the guy who brought the lions.


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Andykp wrote:
That’s not us being toxic that is you not getting the point and being toxic. If everyone else is happy and you aren’t because no one wants to play your unfluffy net lists then the issue is you.

To quote the tv show Justified, "if you meet an donkey-cave in the morning, then you've met an donkey-cave. But if you are meeting donkey-caves all day, then you're the donkey-cave".

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Should professional athletes tone down their skill so they don't win more games than other teams?

40k is not a sport and its players are not athletes. 40k is not a "fair" game, and it is not skill based, with the best way to win being to unbalance the game in your favor. The goal of competitive 40k is a gladiatorial match between untrained slaves - with the victor being the guy who brought the lions.

I drew the analogy because sports and 40k do have something in common -they are both competitions where one side wins and one side loses. There are a ton of examples in sport where it was not a fair game due to a player having a size or skill advantage over the other side. Does that remove the fun or enjoyment of the game from both sides? Maybe?

There is an entire thread on skill in 40k so I'm not going to discuss that.

I would counter argue that the goal of competitive 40k is to bring the correct pieces to ensure that you have countered all possible scenarios that your opponent may place before you in a game. Fun doesn't trump winning in tournaments.

 Sqorgar wrote:
40k is not a sport and its players are not athletes. 40k is not a "fair" game, and it is not skill based, with the best way to win being to unbalance the game in your favor. The goal of competitive 40k is a gladiatorial match between untrained slaves - with the victor being the guy who brought the lions.

And what makes you think that sports are any different? Do you honestly think that teams aren't trying to skew the game in their favor as much as possible by bringing better players than the opponent?

 Jjohnso11 wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Should professional athletes tone down their skill so they don't win more games than other teams?

40k is not a sport and its players are not athletes. 40k is not a "fair" game, and it is not skill based, with the best way to win being to unbalance the game in your favor. The goal of competitive 40k is a gladiatorial match between untrained slaves - with the victor being the guy who brought the lions.

I drew the analogy because sports and 40k do have something in common -they are both competitions where one side wins and one side loses. There are a ton of examples in sport where it was not a fair game due to a player having a size or skill advantage over the other side. Does that remove the fun or enjoyment of the game from both sides? Maybe?

There is an entire thread on skill in 40k so I'm not going to discuss that.

I would counter argue that the goal of competitive 40k is to bring the correct pieces to ensure that you have countered all possible scenarios that your opponent may place before you in a game. Fun doesn't trump winning in tournaments.

So you couldn't have a competitive event where the army lists are set by the organizers?

 Sqorgar wrote:
More nitpicking.

So, as I said, all you have is nitpicking about whether 40k's objective scoring technically meets the strictest definition of a zero-sum game, instead of addressing the actual point of the argument: that 40k's mechanics are in direct opposition to the goals of certain "casual" and narrative groups and this produces a lot of toxicity in those groups.

PS: "zero-sum game" and "fun is a zero-sum activity" are not the same thing. Both players can have lots of fun while playing a zero-sum game.

You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced. I suspect the TO would quickly find themselves spending more time trying to fix balance errors in their set lists than GW does trying to fix them across the game.

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

I was under the impression that building entire armies for tournaments was what people did if they wanted to compete with the meta. It certainly seems to be the case around where I live. Maybe I'm mistaken? Besides, I'd imagine most people would need to add only one or two units to existing armies.

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got - and even then, the major factor in winning would not be player skill, but in the outcome of the dice rolls. 40k rolls a lot of dice in order to flatten the distribution curve of results (law of really big numbers says the more data points you have, the closer the overall value will be to average - flip 3 coins and you can easily get all heads, but flip 300 and you'll have a rate closer to 50% heads), but there's a lot of results which are based on only one or two dice. For instance, if you do D6 mortal wounds - the difference between rolling a 1 and a 6 is pretty extreme, and equally possible. Doing psychic tests are 2D6. Running adds 1D6 (giving up your attacks to move only an extra 1" kind of sucks). Charges are 2D6 (and missing a charge can be devastating). 2D6 results do occur in a bell curve (a 7 is more likely to occur than a 2), but being only 2 dice, it is still going to be swingy (flip 3 coins and get 3 heads). In AoS, you've got initiative and double turns being decided by a single D6 roll, and double turns win games.

So in the most balanced situation 40k will ever be in, you can still lose the game because of a failed charge or a bad run roll, or win the game because of a particular good mortal wound roll. The STRATEGY of the game is to mitigate the randomness (I have a 77% chance of succeeding, is that good enough to attempt?) but the OUTCOME of the game is not random. You needed a 2 or higher, you rolled a 1. The majority of playing 40k is making actions that you assume will be successful, with one or more of these actions being unexpectedly unsuccessful (or hail marys where you assume it will not be successful and it unexpectedly is). Where those unexpected moments come can make or break a game.

For instance, let's say you do something which gives you D3 mortal wounds against a hero. A 1 will wound, but not kill a unit, but a 3 will kill the unit. There is an equal distribution curve of dice results meaning either opportunity is equally likely to occur. If you wound, but don't kill, the next turn, that hero will be able to inflict damage on one of your units and you'll need to waste a unit's actions fighting that hero again in order to finish it off, while defeating it makes your own units safe and allows you to take an extra action freed up by not defending/attacking against that hero. This could make a huge difference in the outcome of the game, but your strategy is essentially the same irregardless of this outcome.

I guess this is a really long way of pointing out that 40k is a terrible competitive game because the optimal strategy (that is, the thing the player has control over) can still lose due to things the player does not have control over. Even in a controlled situation where 40k is as balanced as it humanly can be, if you played four identical games between players making the absolute best decisions, you'd probably end up with four different outcomes. Player skill is entirely mitigated by dice rolls. The only way to play the game competitively would to remove the affects of swingy dice. Instead of doing D3 mortal wounds, you do 2. Instead of running MV + D6, you run MV + 3. Instead of charging 2D6, you charge 8".

However, if you approach 40k, not as a competitive game, but more as a cinematic experience, then the twists and turns of bad dice rolls create an exciting and captivating (but still extremely unfair) experience that you will remember for a long time. Winning is the goal that drives your decisions, but winning is not the goal of playing the game. You aim to win, but you play to enjoy the outcome (whatever it is).

 LunarSol wrote:

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced. I suspect the TO would quickly find themselves spending more time trying to fix balance errors in their set lists than GW does trying to fix them across the game.

That isn't a necessary assumption. One could, for example, have the format where there's an overall winner for the tournament, and then the best player of each list used in the tournament.

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

I was under the impression that building entire armies for tournaments was what people did if they wanted to compete with the meta. It certainly seems to be the case around where I live. Maybe I'm mistaken? Besides, I'd imagine most people would need to add only one or two units to existing armies.

Very few people build an entire army to compete in a single tournament, unless it's like the LVO or something with 800+ people at it.

Most people build an army to compete in multiple tournaments, across multiple formats. A player might have a list that he uses for ITC events, and tweaks he can make to use it for NOVA events, and maybe mono-codex tournaments or whatever other formats exist.

Adding another format, where it requires a 100% fixed list, means your army would be pretty useless for any of the other formats, so nobody would be willing to buy in.

 Horst wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

I was under the impression that building entire armies for tournaments was what people did if they wanted to compete with the meta. It certainly seems to be the case around where I live. Maybe I'm mistaken? Besides, I'd imagine most people would need to add only one or two units to existing armies.

Very few people build an entire army to compete in a single tournament, unless it's like the LVO or something with 800+ people at it.

Most people build an army to compete in multiple tournaments, across multiple formats. A player might have a list that he uses for ITC events, and tweaks he can make to use it for NOVA events, and maybe mono-codex tournaments or whatever other formats exist.

Adding another format, where it requires a 100% fixed list, means your army would be pretty useless for any of the other formats, so nobody would be willing to buy in.

That would only be the case if the army in question didn't share any units with any other tournament format. The fact is that it's easy to put together a list that uses common units nearly everyone has as part of their collections.

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

I was under the impression that building entire armies for tournaments was what people did if they wanted to compete with the meta. It certainly seems to be the case around where I live. Maybe I'm mistaken? Besides, I'd imagine most people would need to add only one or two units to existing armies.

Very few people build an entire army to compete in a single tournament, unless it's like the LVO or something with 800+ people at it.

Most people build an army to compete in multiple tournaments, across multiple formats. A player might have a list that he uses for ITC events, and tweaks he can make to use it for NOVA events, and maybe mono-codex tournaments or whatever other formats exist.

Adding another format, where it requires a 100% fixed list, means your army would be pretty useless for any of the other formats, so nobody would be willing to buy in.

That would only be the case if the army in question didn't share any units with any other tournament format. The fact is that it's easy to put together a list that uses common units nearly everyone has as part of their collections.

It's really not that easy though. Most people don't have chaos, imperial, and xenos armies just lying around. Suppose your army list for your tournament decides to make an Imperial list, with Guard, some blood angels, and maybe a Knight. Pretty standard Imperium list, but if you're a Chaos player you won't have any of those units just lying around. I personally do not like Eldar, and refuse to play them, even if they're the best competitive army in the game. I consider myself a competitive player, but I still play the faction I like the most for fluff reasons. So if your tournament used an Eldar list, I wouldn't participate.

 Horst wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

 Horst wrote:
You could (have a set list tournament), but nobody would play in that event. A 40k tournament with set lists would fail because very few people have the inclination to build an entire army for a single tournament.

I was under the impression that building entire armies for tournaments was what people did if they wanted to compete with the meta. It certainly seems to be the case around where I live. Maybe I'm mistaken? Besides, I'd imagine most people would need to add only one or two units to existing armies.

Very few people build an entire army to compete in a single tournament, unless it's like the LVO or something with 800+ people at it.

Most people build an army to compete in multiple tournaments, across multiple formats. A player might have a list that he uses for ITC events, and tweaks he can make to use it for NOVA events, and maybe mono-codex tournaments or whatever other formats exist.

Adding another format, where it requires a 100% fixed list, means your army would be pretty useless for any of the other formats, so nobody would be willing to buy in.

That would only be the case if the army in question didn't share any units with any other tournament format. The fact is that it's easy to put together a list that uses common units nearly everyone has as part of their collections.

It's really not that easy though. Most people don't have chaos, imperial, and xenos armies just lying around. Suppose your army list for your tournament decides to make an Imperial list, with Guard, some blood angels, and maybe a Knight. Pretty standard Imperium list, but if you're a Chaos player you won't have any of those units just lying around. I personally do not like Eldar, and refuse to play them, even if they're the best competitive army in the game. I consider myself a competitive player, but I still play the faction I like the most for fluff reasons. So if your tournament used an Eldar list, I wouldn't participate.

There's no reason why a Fixed Army Format would require everyone to use the same army list. There could be one list per faction option, for example. Or two lists per faction. The point is that list-building is taken out of the equation so the tournament can focus on the skill of the players.

Nurglitch wrote:

There's no reason why a Fixed Army Format would require everyone to use the same army list. There could be one list per faction option, for example. Or two lists per faction. The point is that list-building is taken out of the equation so the tournament can focus on the skill of the players.

Right, that was the assumption I was going on. One list per faction set. That still faces the issue of those lists needing to be perfectly balanced or else you're just shifting the blame of the problem off of GW and onto whoever made them. I think you'd find even set lists per faction extremely difficult to get just right.

 LunarSol wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

There's no reason why a Fixed Army Format would require everyone to use the same army list. There could be one list per faction option, for example. Or two lists per faction. The point is that list-building is taken out of the equation so the tournament can focus on the skill of the players.

Right, that was the assumption I was going on. One list per faction set. That still faces the issue of those lists needing to be perfectly balanced or else you're just shifting the blame of the problem off of GW and onto whoever made them. I think you'd find even set lists per faction extremely difficult to get just right.

As mentioned, we're not expecting the lists in open format tournaments to be balanced, so why expect the fixed list formats to be perfectly balanced? All they need to be is close enough. With a Fixed Army Format you have lots of opportunity as an organiser to put up the lists well ahead of time for feedback on their perceived strengths.

And if you might wonder why someone would decide to play in a tournament where they perceive themselves to be at a disadvantage, Horst points out plenty of people play in Open Format tournaments and voluntarily place themselves at a disadvantage even though they're there to compete.

Indeed, many many years ago as a competitive swimmer I would typically attend a swim-meet every month where entrants were seeded according to their best official time. The fact was that the people with the best times were going to win 9/10, but people still entered and competed even if they were very unlikely to win. Because they were there to compete and have fun, and hopefully make their own personal best. I know 40k isn't a sport, but there's plenty we can learn from the sporting perspective.

Nurglitch wrote:

As mentioned, we're not expecting the lists in open format tournaments to be balanced, so why expect the fixed list formats to be perfectly balanced?

Because if they're not, there's little reason to force your additional restrictions on players.

 LunarSol wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

As mentioned, we're not expecting the lists in open format tournaments to be balanced, so why expect the fixed list formats to be perfectly balanced?

Because if they're not, there's little reason to force your additional restrictions on players.

I'm not sure that offering players the option of a different format is forcing restrictions on players. Let's go back to swimming, because it's something I know about. There's four competitive races, and a combo-race; there's the breast stroke, the back stroke, butterfly, and freestyle. There's a number of restrictions involved in performing the first three, and breaking those restrictions can get you disqualified from a race. Interestingly some of the restrictions on breast stroke, for example, happened when a Japanese swimmer innovated a better arm recovery, which was split off into the butterfly. Yes, people have managed to min/max swimming. Neat huh? Anyhow, notice that last one: freestyle. There's no stroke called 'freestyle' but the fastest way of freestyle swimming is what we commonly call the front-crawl. But if you're swimming a freestyle race it's very permissive compared to the others. You could, for example, swim a freestyle race using butterfly. You'd put yourself at a distinct disadvantage presuming seeded heats and so on, but you could.

Notice the theme? Because of additional restrictions on how some strokes could be performed, we got more strokes, and the Medley races where people swam one of each, and the freestyle, open format. Swimming as a sport has benefitted from these restrictions for several reasons. The first is that some people are better at different strokes. I, for example, could not do the back-stroke to save my life. Don't know why, never figured out how, and never had a problem except where I attempted the Individual Medley events. But I was okay at breast stroke and good at butterfly. Other people were better at back stroke and terrible at breast stroke and butterfly. Some people were just lousy swimmers, but liked the fitness part and enjoyed the competition anyways. It made for a diverse range of competitors, and certainly made the IM events interesting.

There's an argument to be made about perhaps an over-proliferation of swimming events, usually at the Olympics where a good all-round swimmer can win far more medals than comparable competitors in other sports, but the fact is that having some formats with more restrictions than others broadens the range of competitors, competitions, and enriches the sport of swimming. Maybe I'm nostalgic for the days when I could weekends swimming, but as a former competitive swimmer that's my perspective on Warhammer; some people are terrible at it, some people want to compete at it, and there's lots of different ways for lots of different people to enjoy it.

What harm, exactly, do tournament players pose to the narrative folks? If you and your group play campaigns recreating your favourite Black Library book then what a tournament player thinks or does should not factor in. He's not breaking into your game and forcing you to play Matched Play with the Rule of Three and the latest hot list. Play your game your way and avoid looking down your nose at those who chose to do another way.

Now, I do think that the frame in which 40K was and continues to be designed is a game between two friends with shared expectations. That has not stopped it being a game played widely in competitive tournaments between strangers under Matched Play conditions (where the players do not agree on the terms - they just work within pre-arranged ones). That tournament players are having fun their way should not dismay anybody. They (we) are not doing it wrong. They are just enjoying the game in a different way than you (a hard-core Narrative player) do. The reverse, of course, is also true. Its just that the theme of this thread seems to be aimed against tournament players.

Let the market decide. LVO is growing each year - looks like a good format.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
What harm, exactly, do tournament players pose to the narrative folks? If you and your group play campaigns recreating your favourite Black Library book then what a tournament player thinks or does should not factor in. He's not breaking into your game and forcing you to play Matched Play with the Rule of Three and the latest hot list. Play your game your way and avoid looking down your nose at those who chose to do another way.

Now, I do think that the frame in which 40K was and continues to be designed is a game between two friends with shared expectations. That has not stopped it being a game played widely in competitive tournaments between strangers under Matched Play conditions (where the players do not agree on the terms - they just work within pre-arranged ones). That tournament players are having fun their way should not dismay anybody. They (we) are not doing it wrong. They are just enjoying the game in a different way than you (a hard-core Narrative player) do. The reverse, of course, is also true. Its just that the theme of this thread seems to be aimed against tournament players.

Let the market decide. LVO is growing each year - looks like a good format.

I agree with you, but from reading this thread, I think I understand where the narrative and more casual players are coming from... they see more and more people at their stores wanting to play with competitive rules and armies, so newer players are steered in that direction, and fewer and fewer people share their view on how the game is "meant" to be played. Essentially, the growth of competitive 40k is coming a the expense of casual 40k. I can certainly see the point of that, and to an extent agree... but I think it falls more on the individual clubs / stores to set expectations for their players than to blame competitive players for poisoning their groups. I'll use my group as an example... I'm a fairly competitive player, and this coming weekend I'm going to a narrative match that 10 of us have set up ahead of time, for a 6k vs 6k large scale battle with "fluffy" lists. The guy leading it coordinated it through facebook, and made his expectations of what an "appropriate" vs "not appropriate" army to bring would be, so everyone is on the same page. It takes a bit more effort on his part, true, but he's including me and at least one other tournament player into his decidedly not tournament game, because he's set up clear rules for who brings what. Since the game is leaning more and more towards competitive lately, it seems like this is the way to go if you want narrative games. You gotta set them up ahead of time and talk out with other players what is expected, instead of just bringing your fluffy army to a store and hoping for a like minded player.

 LunarSol wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

As mentioned, we're not expecting the lists in open format tournaments to be balanced, so why expect the fixed list formats to be perfectly balanced?

Because if they're not, there's little reason to force your additional restrictions on players.

I'm pretty sure it'll never happen, but just as a thought, what if the TO provided all the models?

Snugiraffe wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

As mentioned, we're not expecting the lists in open format tournaments to be balanced, so why expect the fixed list formats to be perfectly balanced?

Because if they're not, there's little reason to force your additional restrictions on players.

I'm pretty sure it'll never happen, but just as a thought, what if the TO provided all the models?

I think you lose a lot of the appeal of playing with your toys, though its worth noting that there's a big midwest Guild Ball event where the TO brings every model in the game and players draft their teams for the tournament breaking all factions lines, so its not exactly impossible.

The entire draw of the WH 40k experience is to be able to play with others than your close ring of friends.
It is nice to play a "pick-up" game at the local FLGS and play a stranger and be able to play a "common" game.

I LOVE playing new players because it is a chance to teach and discuss rules and the "fluff" and generally a game is all good.
I learned from a guy that was WAY out of my league in chess that with less knowledgeable players you just impose harder win conditions for yourself and do not say anything (kinda a handicap).

My friends and I take it to the max competitively with each other, it makes for some really brain melting games using everything we can (legally!) to win.
Heck, we model defeated warlords on occasion under the heel of our own (still trying to figure out how to do that in a modular way).

We like the occasional "fluff" but one of us very carefully prepare a balanced scenario with the understanding that either one of us can choose to play the other guy's army: it keeps us both honest.
We still talk about a scenario that forced a situation where joe-normal tactical squads were going into heavy melee with IG/AM... it was glorious.

So, "the hate".
When a tooled-up semi- or full-competitive player takes on a full fluff-casual.
I would make a suggestion for both groups:

Competitive player needs to work on figuring out a handicap for himself.

Casual player needs to try to "up" his game as best he can (make a show of looking up things in the BRB or Codex).

That would be considered playing nice and getting along.

What is always painful in these threads is confusing the WAAC player vs the competitive: there is one that follows few rules and one that strives to follow them always.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:

crimsyn wrote:

 Jjohnso11 wrote:


This is the millennial everyone should have fun at tournaments and it should be as close to a tie as possible so me and my opponent both win mindset.

Unmmm, everyone should have fun at tournaments. If you aren’t going to have fun, why would you bother paying an entry fee and going to a tournament? If I am organizing a tournament and someone is t having fun, I would consider that to be a problem.

Fundamentally, I think this is what a “zero sum” game truly means. It has nothing to do with the details of how you score, but it has to do with the attitude that I’m only having fun if I am actively making the game unfun for my opponent. The more I make it unfun for them, the more fun I have. This sort of attitude is what is truly toxic.

Tournaments are based around getting the best players to compete against each other to see who is better. If I am organizing a tournament I'm celebrating the best players and hoping that the competitions are close because everyone is there to compete and win. How is wanting to bring the best army and destroy everyone I play toxic at a tournament? Should professional athletes tone down their skill so they don't win more games than other teams?

I'm not confusing that with casual games where you are playing with friends or family or having matches at your FLGS to play with people you know. If you think this whole thing is solely around having fun play more narrative games or go with PLs when you build your lists.

You said that not everyone should have fun at a tournament because that is not what tournaments are about; they are about proving who is the best and you should be merciless and do what you can to win.

I don't disagree that in competitive play, you should give it your all and try to win. But this is where we get into the big difference between good competitive players and tryhards.

A good competitive player plays to develop their skills and explore the depth of the game. They understand that them getting better at the game is in some ways a community effort (as it is hard to get better if you have no one to play with), so they play with the utmost sportsmanship and are humble in victory and gracious in defeat. They seek out challenges and try new strategies, and try to win based on superior tactics rather than "gotcha" moments like the whole "Alex and Tony at the LVO" debacle. To a good competitive player, a hard-fought victory against an equal adversary, both at the top of their field, is the pinnacle of the game. But if you aren't at that level, then they are the sort of person who you can lose to but still have fun. They know when to turn it off and are generally respectful of their opponents.

A tryhard plays only to win. To them, they just want to rack up the highest W/L ratio, no matter if it is at a high level of competition or against someone who just bought his first models that afternoon. They don't have fun if they aren't winning, and the more thoroughly they crush the spirits of their opponent and make them never want to play again, the more fun they have. They want to express dominance on the game table (sometimes because they aren't satisfied with their real life), and that leads them down the path of all sorts of toxic behaviour. Unsportsmanlike conduct, noob-stomping, trash-talking, bullying, mind games, and even outright cheating.

I've seen a lot of people quit a game I love because of tryhards, and there were times when I was tempted to get rid of my nicely painted army because I was sick of it. That is why it is important for communities to keep competitive play somewhat in check and keep everything in perspective. Not all competitive players are bad people and the truly good competitive players who are at the top of their game and don't have anything to prove are often quite pleasant. I've had a good time losing to someone who was travelling around to win major tournaments, and a bad time winning against a wannabe. The problem is that too singular of a focus on competitive play attracts tryhards, and that can poison a community because these tryhards engage in this zero sum thinking -- "I'm only having fun if you aren't"

You said that not everyone should have fun at a tournament because that is not what tournaments are about; they are about proving who is the best. That is a profoundly negative attitude. I say not everyone is going to win a tournament and that's fine, but if not everyone is having fun, then there is a problem somewhere.

 Talizvar wrote:

Competitive player needs to work on figuring out a handicap for himself.

Casual player needs to try to "up" his game as best he can (make a show of looking up things in the BRB or Codex).

That would be considered playing nice and getting along.

What is always painful in these threads is confusing the WAAC player vs the competitive: there is one that follows few rules and one that strives to follow them always.

Lots of nice distinctions here. As someone who usually ends up on the competitive side of these arguments, I will say that there's a world of difference depending on the attitude of the opponent. When a casual player is interested in learning; I'm incredibly happy, probably more excited than playing a competitive game; to teach. What's frustrating is someone uninterested in learning that still expects to win. This is where some of the poor feelings about trying to hard and trying to figure out how hard is too hard come in.

I suppose the thing that's not super obvious to the casual player is that, at least for me, I LOVE losing. Games in which you win easily are always in your control. Games in which you lose slip out of your control and force you to adapt and learn to try and take it back. That's fundamentally what's missing when you play down. It's boring, because its losing without losing control. You remain in control of the game right up until you choose to lose. Teaching is fun because someday they surprise you. Playing against someone that wants you to let them win isn't because it feels like they don't really want to beat you; they just want to win.

Playing down in terms of playing a less optimal list is a different experience. There's fun in the challenge; and personally, I like trying new things too much to not do this to a degree all the time, but does kind of dull some of the excitement from a loss. I find it works better when you're familiar with just how experienced someone is. Where this can feel bad is when someone requests that you handicap yourself and you learn they really didn't need the advantage.

Really though, I find a good game is rarely about winning and losing. Some of the most competitive games I've ever played have also been the most casual because the latter is more about how you interact with your opponent than how hard to try to win.

crimsyn wrote:


I don't disagree that in competitive play, you should give it your all and try to win. But this is where we get into the big difference between good competitive players and tryhards.

I'm not arguing that there are subsets of the competitive players that ruin the gaming experience for everyone. That individual exists in every type of competition. I think there was an X-Wing player at a major tournament a couple years ago spinning their maneuver dial when their opponent was executing their movement and was busted by the camera. This is a type of person issue not a competitive 40k issue.

crimsyn wrote:
A tryhard plays only to win. To them, they just want to rack up the highest W/L ratio, no matter if it is at a high level of competition or against someone who just bought his first models that afternoon. They don't have fun if they aren't winning, and the more thoroughly they crush the spirits of their opponent and make them never want to play again, the more fun they have. They want to express dominance on the game table (sometimes because they aren't satisfied with their real life), and that leads them down the path of all sorts of toxic behaviour. Unsportsmanlike conduct, noob-stomping, trash-talking, bullying, mind games, and even outright cheating.

I've seen a lot of people quit a game I love because of tryhards, and there were times when I was tempted to get rid of my nicely painted army because I was sick of it. That is why it is important for communities to keep competitive play somewhat in check and keep everything in perspective. Not all competitive players are bad people and the truly good competitive players who are at the top of their game and don't have anything to prove are often quite pleasant. I've had a good time losing to someone who was travelling around to win major tournaments, and a bad time winning against a wannabe. The problem is that too singular of a focus on competitive play attracts tryhards, and that can poison a community because these tryhards engage in this zero sum thinking -- "I'm only having fun if you aren't"

You said that not everyone should have fun at a tournament because that is not what tournaments are about; they are about proving who is the best. That is a profoundly negative attitude. I say not everyone is going to win a tournament and that's fine, but if not everyone is having fun, then there is a problem somewhere.

I said that it wasn't the tournament organizers responsibility to ensure everyone is having fun and it isn't a tournament failure if everyone didn't have fun. How people enjoy the game is different person to person. People enjoy seeing painting minis on a table, people enjoy building lists, people enjoy winning by a blowout, and people enjoy winning closely contested games. You can enjoy one of those or all of those and a tournament organizer can't possibly ensure that all of those conditions will be met every single game. It would be impossible to ensure everyone is having fun at a competitive tournament. I don't believe people enjoy losing. They may enjoy playing the game and enjoy the competition but does the person who came in last place walk around talking about how much fun they had losing every game they played?

You are interpreting it as a profoundly negative attitude because you believe that the person who goes to the tournament to win/destroy their opponent/be the best is not a gracious loser or humble winner. How do you know that the person attending the tournament doesn't gain satisfaction(fun) out of being able to test their army and strategy against multiple different people and is having fun the entire tournament regardless of winning or losing? The issue with this thread is everyone is typecasting competitive players as try hards.

I find that these issues again only really manifest in GW games so strongly. I find a lot of that is also due to the balance issues.

Competitive tournament players know the balance is bad, and shell out for new forces every season to stay up with the meta and stay competitive.

Casual narrative players know the balance is bad, but don't want to shell out for new force every season because they are tied to the faction they enjoy. As such they also cannot have good games against the competitive players unless their faction just happens to be riding the OP for the moment.

Players that don't know any better that assume "hey I have 2,000 points, that means my force is reasonably balanced" and then get table stomped because their opponent was rocking a 4000 point force in the guise of a 2000 point force due to min/max hit a crossroads.

Some embrace it and sell off the garbage and churn and burn with the competitive guys, and some get mad and quit and post negative commentary on social media and forums.

But I notice a very distinct lack of this same issue in pretty much any other game that I play. I saw it a bit in xwing because xwing had the same problem. I saw it a bit in warmachine forums for same reasons.

My other games though, are mostly quiet in this topic because its simply not as bad. I feel largely because the balance issues are not as bad.

I think a lot of the fuel for toxicity comes from the fact that chasing the meta involves your models being nerfed to obsolescence every few months when points get updated.

The other half is the rules exploits from people finding weird loopholes between rules interacting with each other.

This problem isn't unique to 8th but I feel the constant updates we have nowadays accelerates this issue.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got -

This is perhaps the least accurate statement in the thread so far. I am surprised by the # of players still out there who don't yet realize player skill is a/the dominant factor in success.

MVBrandt wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got -

This is perhaps the least accurate statement in the thread so far. I am surprised by the # of players still out there who don't yet realize player skill is a/the dominant factor in success.

My hope for Fixed Army Format tournaments would be that it would help players realise it's player skill, what you do with your resources (including luck), rather than luck or army list.

Nurglitch wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got -

This is perhaps the least accurate statement in the thread so far. I am surprised by the # of players still out there who don't yet realize player skill is a/the dominant factor in success.

My hope for Fixed Army Format tournaments would be that it would help players realise it's player skill, what you do with your resources (including luck), rather than luck or army list.

I think it would. My point was the guy I quoted basically said fixed army tourneys would just come down to dice rolls, and that's ... very, very wrong.

Nurglitch wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got -

This is perhaps the least accurate statement in the thread so far. I am surprised by the # of players still out there who don't yet realize player skill is a/the dominant factor in success.

My hope for Fixed Army Format tournaments would be that it would help players realise it's player skill, what you do with your resources (including luck), rather than luck or army list.

Fixed army lists are easy - proxies are allowed!

Advertise the tourney as fixed list must be as close to WYSIWIG proxy army as possible,
with all entrants playing the same "list"
represented by different models.


TOs can give prizes for people who go all out,
and convert their armies to match the tourney them, and so on...

MVBrandt wrote:
I think it would. My point was the guy I quoted basically said fixed army tourneys would just come down to dice rolls, and that's ... very, very wrong.

No, I said it would come down to swingy dice rolls. The vast majority of rolls will occur in a bell curve with extremely good or extremely bad rolls generally being outliers because you roll a lot of dice. But in cases where you only roll one or two D6s, the chances of getting extremely good or extremely bad rolls increases quite a bit. They are also more likely to have consecutive extremes, like missing three charges in a row or doing max mortal damage multiple times. The basic strategy of the game is built around the bell curve of average rolls, but the extreme rolls can be decisive in the outcome of the battle.

I don't think 40k is a particularly skillful game (I reserve that designation for games like Go), but whatever strategy you use is susceptible to the will of the dice. If there are no extreme rolls, I agree that a good strategy can win. But there will be extreme rolls, and in some cases, many more of them than you can strategize around. Confirmation bias just convinces you that when you win or lose, it was entirely due to skill.

 jeff white wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Even then, the assumption is the set lists would be perfectly balanced.

This is slightly off topic from what you said, but... Two players playing the same list on symmetrical terrain would be about as balanced as 40k ever got -

This is perhaps the least accurate statement in the thread so far. I am surprised by the # of players still out there who don't yet realize player skill is a/the dominant factor in success.

My hope for Fixed Army Format tournaments would be that it would help players realise it's player skill, what you do with your resources (including luck), rather than luck or army list.

Fixed army lists are easy - proxies are allowed!

Advertise the tourney as fixed list must be as close to WYSIWIG proxy army as possible,
with all entrants playing the same "list"
represented by different models.


TOs can give prizes for people who go all out,
and convert their armies to match the tourney them, and so on...

That's a great idea!