Hey guys, I have plans to start up a private league/community for players who are on the same page as being casual and semi-competitive and I was wondering as to how would you enforce or encourage people to stick to the idea rather than going ham and bringing crazy combos for the sake of winning? The problem I see with similar groups is it's a rule of mouth, but there's no formal boundaries and a list's competitiveness is subjective to each person.

Some ideas I proposed were:

- Have ranked and unranked matches
- Have a competitive rating system for your opponent's list which you can fill out at the end of the game. It'd read something like this and then reward points based on the differential:




What would you guys propose to your group or my group to keep things more laid back?

Define clear balance rules/errata/etc so that the lists you don't think are balanced are not legal and there is no ambiguity about what is "casual" and what isn't. Expecting people to agree on what is "casual" is almost guaranteed to produce arguments.

So what if my list is both fluffy AND competitive?

Which is part of the frustration of current 40k is formations let you do that. You COULD argue that the tau riptide wing and saim-hann warhost with scatbikes and a wraithknight, and a piranha wing are allied together to defeat a common cause. It's more or less a judgement call on how the units synergize together and whether or not you took them for the buffs or you took them because you like them and you think they're cool. You could also factor in how did you build those units individually? Did you min/max a battle company to be 5 man squads in a rhino with a grav cannon or did you actually stay codex compliant with 10 man squads and mix up the weapons?

 Peregrine wrote:
Define clear balance rules/errata/etc so that the lists you don't think are balanced are not legal and there is no ambiguity about what is "casual" and what isn't. Expecting people to agree on what is "casual" is almost guaranteed to produce arguments.

^^This. Be open and clear about exactly what you want. "Unwritten" or "unspoken" rules are anathema to community building. If there is something specific you want banned, then ban it. Be upfront with all your players that you are imposing certain house-rules, and as the league proceeds forward, take feedback from players about what is working and what isn't, then adjust your house-rules and ban-lists accordingly.

Do NOT just say "Hey don't bring mean lists guys!" and expect everything to work out.

/2cents

There are two major forces at play here as I see it.

Balanced game play isn't enforced by most tournament rules at all. Rules like no LOW, only 1 detachment etc will only give the power gamers a framework to min max their army in. They will not change the mindset of those players. Just look at tournaments. They all try to keep things "fair" with a ton of house rules and we can all agree that most of them are won by out of control not casual at all lists, even if the restrictions are draconic. This is the obvious one.

The other is that what is "competitive" isn't clear cut for some players. A large portion of the players tend to be biased towards their own army. The same player who thinks grav spam to be fluffy could scream hell and damnation when their allied riptide gets forced axed.A general " try to match your opponents power lv" rule or the system you came up with might work with a healthy community. But do expect some powercreep and hurt players from time to time when you introduce a ranking system or when the community isn't as homogeneous in what kind of games they like to play.

I honestly feel that soft unwritten rules do a better job at keeping things fun than extensive limiting rule sets. The alternative if your community isn't able to just regulate it themselves would be to create a system in where the competitiveness of your list directly affects the game results. Such as directly subtracting the difference in community comp credit score from the victory points gained in a mission.

This is what my group does, works well, and is exactly as your groups mindset.

First and foremost, let people run what they want, but also:

- Have an 'Ard Boyz event every couple of months to partially cleanse the urge to bring cheddar

- Different people have different ideas of fun. Some enjoy competition/winning, others like fluffy games, others like to play for poos and giggles (like myself)

- Run most of the games as maelstrom. It IMO really helps level out the have and have-nots dexes.

- come up with your own set of house rules so people know what not to stress about and how every game will play (really helps fix rules gaps). * you can take this one step further to houser Ile stupidity in codices if it's unanimously agreed

- hate to say it, but ban certain formations outside of the competitive events (Skyhammer, Riptidewing eyc).

- allow people to bring multiple lists so it's more fun, more fair and less TAC in which Eldar, SM and Necrons are king.

- Also, my buddies are discussing this right now, but if the match is a high top-tier army vs a really bad, gak- tier army, give the player running the have not army a points handicap.

Hope this helps. For what it is worth, my group consists of 38 people across 3 stores. It should probably help yours. Glad to see more like-minded groups on dakka!

 oldzoggy wrote:


A general " try to match your opponents power lv" rule or the system you came up with might work with a healthy community. But do expect some powercreep and hurt players from time to time when you introduce a ranking system or when the community isn't as homogeneous in what kind of games they like to play. The alternative if your community isn't able to just regulate it themselves would be to create a system in where the competitiveness of your list directly affects the game results. Such as directly subtracting the difference in community comp credit score from the victory points gained in a mission.

That's basically what I had in mind with the rating system where you get points if there's a differential.

On the topic of comps, could anyone point me in the right direction for a good system to follow?

Dantes_Baals wrote:


- Run most of the games as maelstrom. It IMO really helps level out the have and have-nots dexes.

This inst balancing at all. Some players will like it others will not, forcing them to use it seems strange. And no one can deny that it favours the already quite competitive fast armies.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want some guidlines you might want to take a look at
http://www.communitycomp.org/

It is quite a heavy set of rules, that will require some book keeping. They are however quite successfully at pointing out all the more powerfull options. So you might not want to use it if it isn't necessary, but it would be a great guidline if you do need a tool in balancing it out.

 oldzoggy wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:


- Run most of the games as maelstrom. It IMO really helps level out the have and have-nots dexes.

This inst balancing at all. Some players will like it others will not, forcing them to use it seems strange. And no one can deny that it favours the already quite competitive fast armies.

First pff, I didn't say force. If they want to play purge the alien, let em play purge the alien. But seriously, other than AdMech what army does not have the mobility to compete in maelstrom? Seriously . Worst case scenario, when in doubt, go for a tabling.

Dantes_Baals wrote:

If they want to play purge the alien,

Pugre the alien is the worst mission ever made in my opinion. Not playing Mealstorm doesn't mean that you should play that abomination.
But I do think that mealstorm is almost as bad.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Did you min/max a battle company to be 5 man squads in a rhino with a grav cannon or did you actually stay codex compliant with 10 man squads and mix up the weapons?

This has nothing to do with fluff or "what is cool". A marine army with mixed weapons is not "fluffy" or "cool", it's just poorly optimized. You're never going to have a working system if you insist on treating "casual" and "weak lists with poor strategic choices" as synonyms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oldzoggy wrote:
If you want some guidlines you might want to take a look at
http://www.communitycomp.org/

Do not use this system, ever. It's complete garbage and seems to be based on the premise that every army, no matter how good it is, must have at least X units that have a comp penalty. Lots of things that aren't a problem get massively penalized, and all it really does is change what the best list is. It's a horrible failure of a system and the people who created it should be embarrassed about their work.

 Peregrine wrote:

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Did you min/max a battle company to be 5 man squads in a rhino with a grav cannon or did you actually stay codex compliant with 10 man squads and mix up the weapons?

This has nothing to do with fluff or "what is cool". A marine army with mixed weapons is not "fluffy" or "cool", it's just poorly optimized. You're never going to have a working system if you insist on treating "casual" and "weak lists with poor strategic choices" as synonyms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oldzoggy wrote:
If you want some guidlines you might want to take a look at
http://www.communitycomp.org/

Do not use this system, ever. It's complete garbage and seems to be based on the premise that every army, no matter how good it is, must have at least X units that have a comp penalty. Lots of things that aren't a problem get massively penalized, and all it really does is change what the best list is. It's a horrible failure of a system and the people who created it should be embarrassed about their work.

Well, that's some pretty harsh critiques so I'm interested in what you would suggest in its place, Mr. Trump .

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Well, that's some pretty harsh critiques so I'm interested in what you would suggest in its place.

Change the rules, preferably through adjusting point costs where possible (which should be pretty much everything besides formations and multiple-LoW armies). If unit X is overpowered then change its point cost to match its value. Don't leave its rules in their overpowered state and say "you can take this, but you're a bad person if you do and you should feel bad about it". This is the fundamental problem with comp systems, they acknowledge that unit rules need to be changed but instead of changing the rules they impose this whole shame-driven system for telling you how bad you should feel about playing competitively.

De-emphasise the importance of winning, perhaps add 'narrative achievements' for players to unlock during the league to help remove that focus on winning?

Dantes_Baals wrote:

- Run most of the games as maelstrom. It IMO really helps level out the have and have-nots dexes.

If a system has winning conditions that are such an incoherent mess to give a chance of victory even to the underdogs, does not mean such system is a good one, or even a fun one. Some players hate being denied agency, and Maelstrom is another layer to the game's current randumbness.

As much as I personally like Maelstrom, do not make it mandatory. It rewards already powerful and mobile armies while punishing others.

Disclaimer: I'm all about casual gaming.

How does an organized league with argument-stirring grading scales to penalize your opponent even remotely approach a casual setting?

My problem is I do not know if my opponent is playing casual and I am horrible at 40k, or that they say it is non competitive, and I am horrible at 40k. I havent won a game in 2 years, I get stomped by Khorne D strength blood thirsters, constantly regenerating nurgle greater demons, Dark Eldar tricks, Eldar D weapons, Riptide spam. But each of these people swear that they are playing casual lists. So in the end I do not know whether I am just horrible at the game or what.

I have honestly gave up on playing 40k. I just paint now. I miss my old game group.

My personal take on missions/game structure in order to try and prevent some sides from having a huge advantage is to borrow the mission card system from Risk. So setting up the game would go something like this:

1) Deploy scenery.
2) Each player alternates putting numbered objective markers on the table. Only one objective may start in each deployment zone and must be a minimum distance from each other.
3) Players roll off to decide deployment zone, winner will start deployment first.
4) Each Player draws a mission card which will tell them which objectives they are to hold at the end of the game. Have different cards for different sized games, with different numbers of objectives which need to be held. These cards are only seen by the drawing player.
5) Players deploy forces, alternating putting units down.
6) Player who finished deploying first gets first turn, no seizing.
7) Game lasts 6 turns.

So, each player has two or more objectives which they need to hold at the end of turn 6 in order to complete their mission. If one player completes their mission and the other player doesn't then the player who did complete their mission wins, no matter how many casualties they took, or other objectives held etc.

If both players complete their mission then the winner is determined by how many extra objectives are held by each player. If it is still a tie after that then the game is a draw.

If neither player completes their mission then the winner is determined by awarding 2 points for each mission objective held and one point for each non-mission objective. Player with most points wins. If it is a tie on points then the game is a draw.

Throw in some rules about what units can hold objectives (Infantry/Jump/Jetpack only, for example) to prevent last turn jetbike/vehicle shenanigans and I think it is good to go.

I think this is good for several reasons:

1) Each player has a definite mission to complete before they even begin deploying their models, which allows for them to deploy in such a way as to maximise their chance to complete their mission. So the Imperial Guard player will know before they put any models down whether or not they are going to need to storm their opponents deployment area or whether they will only need to push up to the midfield and be able to deploy accordingly.

2) It allows for tactical and strategic thinking and uncertainty. If you are heading towards an objective then it could be because you need that objective for your mission, or it could be that you are trying to draw your opponent away from another objective by making them think that you need that objective for your mission. Is the opponent sitting on that objective because they need it for their mission or is it in case of a tiebreak?

3) Not knowing which objectives you will need before deploying them, or even which side of the board you will be deploying on, means that each player will be less likely to try and place objectives in positions clearly advantageous to one side or the other. You haven't done yourself any good placing them all close to the left side of the table if you end up deploying on the right.

You tell her you're not interested in meeting her parents, yet. Also, don't call her 4 times a day. Keep chill, brah.

For 40k, dunno. With my group of close friends, it was a simple "Keep it casual, guys." We knew what the\at meant, as a group. We could all dial it up to hardcore competitive, or dial it down to more casual play.

Yes, fluffy and competitive can be the same army. Looking at you, Eldar! Also, Space Marines with free transports. My Chaos pays retail, fethers!

Anyway, with people you don't know well, this can be a bit harder, if not impossible. I don't know a good answer.

Treat it like you are coaching a new employee. Instead of "Don't say anything you wouldn't tell your great grandmother" make it "Don't bring an army that you wouldn't use against your great grandmother."

But not mine. Mine taught me naughty jokes. Bad example, maybe.

Outside of overhauling the rules/points yourself, you'll just have to roll with the punches. There's no easy way to try and bring together a group of people and have everyone on the same page for something as much of a mess as 40k. People with poor lists will have to up their game, while the top lists will have to tune down. How much, and in what ways, is impossible to tell until you're there.

Casual isn't really a defined level of gameplay/lists in the context of gaming circles. Everyone operates at different levels, and indeed, may enjoy and operate at a variety of levels.

 Peregrine wrote:

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Well, that's some pretty harsh critiques so I'm interested in what you would suggest in its place.

Change the rules, preferably through adjusting point costs where possible (which should be pretty much everything besides formations and multiple-LoW armies). If unit X is overpowered then change its point cost to match its value. Don't leave its rules in their overpowered state and say "you can take this, but you're a bad person if you do and you should feel bad about it". This is the fundamental problem with comp systems, they acknowledge that unit rules need to be changed but instead of changing the rules they impose this whole shame-driven system for telling you how bad you should feel about playing competitively.

Is it true they have something against Bullgryns in this system?

People want to face new things. Just switch your army up every game and they wont really care how strong your list is or not. Make a few sub-optimal choices.

Intead of a riptide - take longstrike in a hammer head. Make a few choices like that and your list will instantly be casual.

Yes, it is. Bullgryns are comped, as are Vectored Retro-Thrusters.

Yes they are kinda biased against them. Not sure what to make of that anti orge stance but it will not really limit your game. You will pay 1 of your 20 credits or all the thrusters in your army and you will run out of points before you run out of credits for spamming ogryns.

They do however hugely tax things like spamming, grav, jetbikes, knights, invisipility, etc. I would gladly trade a limit on those for a slight bias against the one unit no one even owns.

It's not about that. It's that it's clear evidence that they have no idea what they're talking about. The fact that things like VRT and Bullgryns are comped compromises the entire system.

Pick both lists together over a beer

In my experience sticking to the CAD and limiting/removing LOW and limiting allies (I find no BB helps, all BB is convenience) does help a lot in keeping games simple. The alternative CADs should be allowed (like the greentide or the DE realspace raiders) because they remove ObSec and improve the armies flavor, and in the case of Skittarii, are the only way it can be played. Eldar still have an advantage on this front with their scat bikes but it removes a lot of shenanigans.

Also try out the ITC, they aren't perfect but they do put a stop to things like rerollable 2+ and invisibility shenanigans.

So its a fine line to walk, "keeping it casual" that is. When you implement rules, you stop keeping it casual. Everyone has their own definition of casual play, some people like high tier competitive games, but play them casually. Others like what you call fluffy lists, and play them. Then there are fluffy competitive lists. Look at say, Blackmanes Great Company for a Space Wolf Strike force. Its a bunch of drop pods, has blood claws, grey hunters, and wolf guard. Very fluffy for Space Wolves, but also pretty potent as all pods are free and arrive turn 1, plus, counter charge is beefy.

What I am trying to get at here, is that instead of putting in rules to force your version of fluffy, talk to people and see if they would be interested in a less competitive and more relaxed environment. Personally, I think some of the "less competitive" formations are super cool and fluffy, like Arjacs shield brothers, its just a bunch of TH/SS terminators, but some new players in my area thing TH/SS terminators are cheesier than pizza. So if I brought this +500pt formation alongside a cad, no deathstars or any power units. They might think I am being super competitive when I am just trying to have some fun.

There are a lot of good ideas in the thread, mainly, CAD. Sticking to CAD is always a good idea. Removing LoW can be too, it brings the game back down to earth in a sense. Most importantly though, I think that stating your intentions clearly is the most important thing. It's been working for me very well so far, I tell people I want a casual game, I am not looking to table anyone or be tabled, and I get what I am looking for. I was recently in a narrative where "Casual fluffy" was understood, but army imbalance can throw a nut into that. I brought a chaos knight to a 3000pt team game, it was the only big nasty I had. I didn't know my opponent had nothing that could easily handle it and we had a massive imbalance. They felt that I was playing to win, when I had a narrative I was following for my army.

 gwarsh41 wrote:
So its a fine line to walk, "keeping it casual" that is. When you implement rules, you stop keeping it casual. Everyone has their own definition of casual play, some people like high tier competitive games, but play them casually. Others like what you call fluffy lists, and play them. Then there are fluffy competitive lists. Look at say, Blackmanes Great Company for a Space Wolf Strike force. Its a bunch of drop pods, has blood claws, grey hunters, and wolf guard. Very fluffy for Space Wolves, but also pretty potent as all pods are free and arrive turn 1, plus, counter charge is beefy.

What I am trying to get at here, is that instead of putting in rules to force your version of fluffy, talk to people and see if they would be interested in a less competitive and more relaxed environment. Personally, I think some of the "less competitive" formations are super cool and fluffy, like Arjacs shield brothers, its just a bunch of TH/SS terminators, but some new players in my area thing TH/SS terminators are cheesier than pizza. So if I brought this +500pt formation alongside a cad, no deathstars or any power units. They might think I am being super competitive when I am just trying to have some fun.

There are a lot of good ideas in the thread, mainly, CAD. Sticking to CAD is always a good idea. Removing LoW can be too, it brings the game back down to earth in a sense. Most importantly though, I think that stating your intentions clearly is the most important thing. It's been working for me very well so far, I tell people I want a casual game, I am not looking to table anyone or be tabled, and I get what I am looking for. I was recently in a narrative where "Casual fluffy" was understood, but army imbalance can throw a nut into that. I brought a chaos knight to a 3000pt team game, it was the only big nasty I had. I didn't know my opponent had nothing that could easily handle it and we had a massive imbalance. They felt that I was playing to win, when I had a narrative I was following for my army.

I think competitive casual can only really work when there is some sort of trusted arbiter who can say "fluffy but fine", "nice but no one here can handle it" type decisions. As in this case you had taken something that is understood to be a regular part of the game but no one was was prepared for knights so it really killed the vibe, maybe someone could have reviewed it before hand and said "nah" or let the other team add in something last minute to allow them the ability to deal with it.

Another idea is that everyone can post and vote on your lists ahead of time (or list ideas, maybe not exact points or unit sizes so there is no list tailoring) on a forum or better yet google forms, maybe have choices like Fluffy to Average to Competitive and if you get X competitive votes you go up for review. (once again this can be abused but if you notice only one guy is voting that way to ruin other lists then you can ignore him)

I think keeping an ongoing conversation going about what people want to play is something. If people really want to play pick-up games, keep talking about how it's important that you both have fun, and if people talk about set-piece battles they want to try or whatever, or challenge-matches, then manage expectations accordingly.

 oldzoggy wrote:
I would gladly trade a limit on those for a slight bias against the one unit no one even owns.

This is a gak attitude. Lots of people own gakky units.

Talk. actually talk to people about what you want to do.

house rule out obvious nonsense between your selves.

talk out the wonky stuff that doesn't work or is too vague.

and have fun.

You shouldn't have to do anything beyond that.

Alright so maybe calling it a league is a bad idea. I think "community" fits a bit more on what I'm trying to go for.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
I would gladly trade a limit on those for a slight bias against the one unit no one even owns.

This is a gak attitude. Lots of people own gakky units.

I have to disagree with you on this one. This is what making your own balancing house rules is all about. All limiting rule sets are trade-offs.
You try to find the best rule that prevents the unwanted stuff from happening while keeping the unwanted side effects to a minimum.
Lets take the 1x CAD and no LOW house rule for example.
It kills off super friends, OP low and all other allies shenanigans at the cost of killing off inquisition, Harlequins, Skitatii, Knights and assasins and severely crippling tyranids and orks who need at least multiple cads in order to compensate for their abysmal internal codex balance. But it still allows things like screamer stars and Wulfy wulf madness.
The Community comp is no exception in it. It is however a lot more precise. It kills off no armies to start with, and allows nearly all casual lists to be build even those who include Ogryn. It does however require quite a lot of book keeping and severely cripples all popular competitive builds and punishes competitive builds with Ogryn in them for some reason even more.

I would gladly choose the trade off that eliminates nearly all death stars and spam lists at the costs of no longer being able to field a traditional competitive builds that also includes Ogryn's.
It seems for me the least bad trade off since the least amount of casual players are hurt wile at the same time addressing the most problematic lists.
Is this an ideal solution probably not but its the best one I have seen so far (outside just solving it with unwritten rules). Feel free to suggest a better one, I will switch sides in an instant if it does a better job at killing off all the dull top tier builds while at the same time sparing most of the casual builds.

nareik wrote:
De-emphasise the importance of winning, perhaps add 'narrative achievements' for players to unlock during the league to help remove that focus on winning?

One of our guys (a really good player) sometimes takes a "narrative challenge" on himself just to make the game more interesting. He can win or has a good chance against almost anything so a little something makes it more challenging for him. Like the time he played a borrowed list with an Inquisitor as HQ at one of our small tournaments and decided the legendary Inquisitor Weasel must survive every game. He even sacrificed units to give the inky time to evacuate and still won.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
On the topic of comps, could anyone point me in the right direction for a good system to follow?

I don't think one has been developed that is both effective (meaning it doesn't just lead to a different form of broken) and user friendly. Most aren't either.

I think if you try to create comp rules, you end up either down a rabbit hole of complexity, or instead you trade rigid rules for more of a code of conduct. Here are some examples:
- the goal of the game is for both players to have fun, so make sure your army presents both a challenge, but also a realistic match up to your opponent.
- Diversity, especially of elites, Fast, and Heavy, is almost always more interesting than spam.
- When in doubt, units of generalist infantry are a good thing to add for casual play.
- You're army should look like an army, not a random collection of models.
- Allies are for narrative games and tournaments. Stand on your own when you can.
- Avoid army skew. Don't just include 2+ saves, or AV13+, or hordes. Include a wide variety of targets for your opponent.
- Be honest about what units are most efficient, points wise, and use them in moderation.


These are vague, at times, and none are 100% applicable (Deathwing can, and should, overwhelm your oppoenent with 2+ saves; while some generalist infantry is super good (Grey Hunters)

Peregrine wrote:This has nothing to do with fluff or "what is cool". A marine army with mixed weapons is not "fluffy" or "cool", it's just poorly optimized. You're never going to have a working system if you insist on treating "casual" and "weak lists with poor strategic choices" as synonyms.

This is what GW markets, and I think that this is one reason why GW is doing so poorly as a company relative, say, to how it was doing in 5th edition.

If I want to play the game competitive with a marine army, I need all of the models required for a battle company, a ton of white paint, and I need somewhere in the ballpark of at least...no fewer than 10 grav cannons. Probably more, but no fewer.

But GW doesn't sell and market grav cannon devastator squads. They market and sell mixed weapon devastator squads.

So to win, you need optimized, specialized squads. But that's not what they sell, and what they do sell, they sell at a ridiculous premium.

There's a huge disparity between game play and marketing, and I think that this is really hurting GW.

"Casual play", I tend to side with more competitive play BUT my definition of casual is to get a bit more into the narrative "fluff".
The only way I can see that working is design scenarios.
It plays into my hands anyway because ideally I want a close game.
So the "balance" can be built into the parameters of the scenario.
Heck, a scenario can give a complete excuse to be unfair and try to delay and survive to a given point (make sure if you designed it you are the disadvantaged one).
This is why many people play historical games: to see if they can "do better" not necessarily win.
Plus it would be nice to select some objectives that make sense to the scenario but still can be a random selection.

Something with a bit of a plot I think would make the "casual play" more engaging.
40k these days is seems like a glorified version of Pachinko works for some and others, like watching paint dry.

Let me ask this how would you rank an Eldar list, consisting of Farseers, Warlocks, guardians, vauls wrath support batteries, jetbikes, war walkers, Vypers and maybe an Avatar?

 Traditio wrote:

Peregrine wrote:This has nothing to do with fluff or "what is cool". A marine army with mixed weapons is not "fluffy" or "cool", it's just poorly optimized. You're never going to have a working system if you insist on treating "casual" and "weak lists with poor strategic choices" as synonyms.

This is what GW markets, and I think that this is one reason why GW is doing so poorly as a company relative, say, to how it was doing in 5th edition.

If I want to play the game competitive with a marine army, I need all of the models required for a battle company, a ton of white paint, and I need somewhere in the ballpark of at least...no fewer than 10 grav cannons. Probably more, but no fewer.

But GW doesn't sell and market grav cannon devastator squads. They market and sell mixed weapon devastator squads.

So to win, you need optimized, specialized squads. But that's not what they sell, and what they do sell, they sell at a ridiculous premium.

There's a huge disparity between game play and marketing, and I think that this is really hurting GW.

GW do not appear to realise the imbalances they create, or actively encourage power creep (case in point - the Riptide, which they deliberately made an MC because they knew the Walker rules were toilet paper).

They test the game using combos to have a friendly game - not actively trying to test the limits and work out what actually is broken. As a result, you end up with horribly OP units and combinations because the tester didn't actually test the OP units.

For example, tester Bob brings Space Marines and took Raven Guard Centurions with lascannons and a Libarian (to represent his own company of the RG - not testing the stronger Chapter Tactics and fitting his aspect of the Centurions as snipers - not using the grav weapons to test them) and rolling on Pyromancy for the Libby (because he felt like using fire instead of actually trialling the broken combos such as Gate of Infinity Grav Centurions).

According to them, you should take mixed weapon Devastator Squads, because they need to have a flexible battlefield role, despite them all having to shoot the same target.

 Desubot wrote:
Talk. actually talk to people about what you want to do.

This. So much this.

Systems which involve trying to rate armies [players] based on what their opponents judge they were thinking; or systems which try to fix wonky points costs by adding a whole extra layer of wonky points costs; or hard restrictions which invalidate entire factions don't work.

If you don't want Mr Tau Player to field triple Riptides every game, how about just saying 'yo Mr Tau dude. How about not taking triple Riptides every game, because the rest of us can't handle it. Please'?


(on the other side of the coin, if everyone says 'yo Mr organiser dude, we all want to take triple Ripdides and Wraithknights, and invisible Centurian deathstars every game', well, you might have to shift).

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Talk. actually talk to people about what you want to do.

This. So much this.

Systems which involve trying to rate armies [players] based on what their opponents judge they were thinking; or systems which try to fix wonky points costs by adding a whole extra layer of wonky points costs; or hard restrictions which invalidate entire factions don't work.

If you don't want Mr Tau Player to field triple Riptides every game, how about just saying 'yo Mr Tau dude. How about not taking triple Riptides every game, because the rest of us can't handle it. Please'?


(on the other side of the coin, if everyone says 'yo Mr organiser dude, we all want to take triple Ripdides and Wraithknights, and invisible Centurian deathstars every game', well, you might have to shift).

Yepppppp, this. If people spent as much time talking to the people they play with about how they want to play, rather than grumbling about it on the internet, I imagine there'd be a lot less bother.

No Formations, no Super Heavies, no Battle Brothers. Nearly any codex can compete with the other with these guidelines.

 necrontyrOG wrote:
No Formations, no Super Heavies, no Battle Brothers. Nearly any codex can compete with the other with these guidelines.

That still leaves scatter bikes, warp spiders, grav spam...

 Traditio wrote:

 necrontyrOG wrote:
No Formations, no Super Heavies, no Battle Brothers. Nearly any codex can compete with the other with these guidelines.

That still leaves scatter bikes, warp spiders, grav spam...

It does, but they're much more manageable when limited by the force org chart and no special rules from Formations. Except for scat bikes, those things are dumb. Maybe limit them to one heavy per 3 models like they used to be?

Rule #1- At each get together, the player who is deemed to have brought the beardiest list has to buy the drinks.
/thread

 dracpanzer wrote:
Rule #1- At each get together, the player who is deemed to have brought the beardiest list has to buy the drinks.
/thread

WE HAVE A WINNER!

 NInjatactiks wrote:

 dracpanzer wrote:
Rule #1- At each get together, the player who is deemed to have brought the beardiest list has to buy the drinks.
/thread

WE HAVE A WINNER!

I actually have a decent idea:

1. Forbid formations and GMCs and SHVs

2. Ban codex specific options on a case by case basis. (Example: no grav, no bikes as troops, etc.)

3. After you've done those two things:

Allow each player a certain maximum number of vetos. At the end of the tournament, each player may "veto" up to x number of players in the tournament (whether or not he's played against him). Any player who receives more than x number of vetos is disqualified from the tournament and all of his wins go to his opponents instead. Specify in advance that "vetos" should only be used on players who brought perceived cheesy or OP lists.

 Traditio wrote:
Specify in advance that "vetos" should only be used on players who brought perceived cheesy or OP lists.

"Here's this perfect opportunity to be a TFG and ruin someone's day, but please don't use it on anyone who isn't a TFG." Sounds like a great idea to me...

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Specify in advance that "vetos" should only be used on players who brought perceived cheesy or OP lists.

"Here's this perfect opportunity to be a TFG and ruin someone's day, but please don't use it on anyone who isn't a TFG." Sounds like a great idea to me...

I don't think that you're fully thinking this one out. Presumably, a TFG is going to use his vetos on his own opponents. But if the TO is sufficiently shrewd about this, what will end up happening, if EVERYONE is a TFG, is that nobody will accumulate enough vetos to be disqualified.

The second most likely occurrence is that people are going to use their veto on the player with the strongest army. But this is the intended effect.

The other possible thing that could happen is that people will veto whoever it is that is winning towards the end. But this is a matter of timing.

So, I have a revised proposal:

All lists must be submitted and posted without the name of the person who brought the list. Each player, before the tournament begins, may "veto" up to x number of those lists. Those vetos are cast secretively and the results of the vetos are not revealed until the end of the tournament.

 Traditio wrote:
Presumably, a TFG is going to use his vetos on his own opponents.

Only if the TFG is concerned primarily about winning, rather than being a and ruining someone's day. What you are more likely to get is TFGs who vote to kick out people they don't like, cliques who vote to kick out anyone who doesn't regularly play at "their" store, etc. It makes the tournament a popularity contest, not a game.

All lists must be submitted and posted without the name of the person who brought the list. Each player, before the tournament begins, may "veto" up to x number of those lists. Those vetos are cast secretively and the results of the vetos are not revealed until the end of the tournament.

Which, assuming a big enough community that you can't identify a person simply by what army they have, fixes the problem of TFG voting to ruin the day of someone they don't like. But it doesn't at all fix the problem of ruining someone's day with "well, you fought hard and thought you win, but surprise, you lose because we don't like your list".

Best way, honestly call people on their cheese.

If your objective is to avoid conflict you wont be able to do it forever. Eventually someone is going to show up with an all warp spider army and say its totally not OP.

The best way to go about it, is if you have a TFG come in with waithknights, get him to at least admit its OP then play him.

Being honest an confrontational about cheese is not a bad or taboo thing.

Also, push for people to run fluffy armies, run what they think is cool and fun.

For example, i run DW RW, the RW side is OP but its balanced because the DW side is gimmped, and honestly i wont change it no matter if the rules make it better or worse for me because its my fluff army.

Also run narrative campaigns.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also, push for people to run fluffy armies, run what they think is cool and fun.

The problem is that many things which are "fluffy" or "cool and fun" are also very powerful. A list of nothing but knights is 100% fluffy, but also a list that can be very difficult to fight against for many "casual" armies. Riptides/Wraithknights/etc are blatantly overpowered, but many people think they're really cool models. And of course people have widely diverging ideas about what "fluffy" or "cool" are, making them rather useless concepts in general. Appealing to such hopelessly vague terms with an implicit threat of shunning from the community almost guarantees awkward conflicts.

Peregrine wrote:Only if the TFG is concerned primarily about winning, rather than being a and ruining someone's day.

Is that actually a thing?

If I were the kind of person who plays in tournaments, and I were playing according to the rules I've proposed, I wouldn't vote against Joe the Outsider (who brought an army of only chaos cultists). I don't care how "outside" of my clique he is. I'm voting against the dude who brought scatter bikes. I'm voting against the dude who brought white scars bike spam and grav spam.

What you are more likely to get is TFGs who vote to kick out people they don't like, cliques who vote to kick out anyone who doesn't regularly play at "their" store, etc. It makes the tournament a popularity contest, not a game.

I feel like making it a secret ballot at least partly would mitigate against this. If the rest of your clique didn't know who you voted against, then you're less likely to side with your clique, no?

In addition, this may or may not even be a concern at the OP's venue.

Which, assuming a big enough community that you can't identify a person simply by what army they have, fixes the problem of TFG voting to ruin the day of someone they don't like. But it doesn't at all fix the problem of ruining someone's day with "well, you fought hard and thought you win, but surprise, you lose because we don't like your list".

That's not a problem. That's the intended result. And you can't claim that it's unfair, because if the OP were to impose that rule, then that's what his players will have signed up for. Don't want to be disqualified? Then don't bring a list that will [censored] people off.

And note, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to play. You brought white scars biker spam? Fine. I'll play you. You can play your games. You just can't win the tournament if enough people agree with me.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also, push for people to run fluffy armies, run what they think is cool and fun.

The problem is that many things which are "fluffy" or "cool and fun" are also very powerful. A list of nothing but knights is 100% fluffy, but also a list that can be very difficult to fight against for many "casual" armies. Riptides/Wraithknights/etc are blatantly overpowered, but many people think they're really cool models. And of course people have widely diverging ideas about what "fluffy" or "cool" are, making them rather useless concepts in general. Appealing to such hopelessly vague terms with an implicit threat of shunning from the community almost guarantees awkward conflicts.

Ill give you that one my friend.

My stance on any army, even if it was all knights, is ill fight it, as long as said player does not try and pretend their army is not fluffy, ill play it.

Another good way is to push cad maybe.

 Traditio wrote:
Is that actually a thing?

If I were the kind of person who plays in tournaments, and I were playing according to the rules I've proposed, I wouldn't vote against Joe the Outsider (who brought an army of only chaos cultists). I don't care how "outside" of my clique he is. I'm voting against the dude who brought scatter bikes. I'm voting against the dude who brought white scars bike spam and grav spam.

Of course it's a thing. Have you honestly never seen cliquish behavior, trolls who just want to get other people angry, etc? I would have thought from the number of times you've blamed "trolls" for voting the wrong way in your polls that you would understand very well how people might vote for the "make this person angry" option rather than the self-interested one.

I feel like making it a secret ballot at least partly would mitigate against this. If the rest of your clique didn't know who you voted against, then you're less likely to side with your clique, no?

No, because a clique doesn't rely on explicit agreements to vote a particular way. It's more like Bob is from out of town, but Alice is one of my friends. I'm not going to vote against my friend, so Bob gets the vote. And I probably don't like Bob all that much since he hasn't made an effort to be part of my group, so that vote is really easy.

(And of course if your clique does arrange a vote explicitly it's not like you have any incentive to break the agreement, since it's targeting someone you don't care about. The secret ballot doesn't change anything.)

That's not a problem. That's the intended result. And you can't claim that it's unfair, because if the OP were to impose that rule, then that's what his players will have signed up for. Don't want to be disqualified? Then don't bring a list that will [censored] people off.

I didn't say that it's unfair, I said that it ruins someone's day. It's perfectly fair because it's announced up front and you can always decline to participate. But that doesn't mean it's not going to suck to find out that you lost all of your games because people didn't approve of your list. It's a terrible idea that almost guarantees that people will be unhappy, regardless of how "fair" it is.

And note, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to play. You brought white scars biker spam? Fine. I'll play you. You can play your games. You just can't win the tournament if enough people agree with me.

Which is why your proposal, like most comp systems, is a terrible idea. If White Scars biker spam creates a bad enough experience that people are justified in voting to disqualify it then it shouldn't be allowed in the first place! Voting to disqualify the player after the tournament is over doesn't change the fact that people had that bad experience playing against it. It's just an opportunity for a smug "I'm so casual and you're a TFG" lecture after the game is over, except with the added punishment of taking away any prize the player earned.

Peregrine wrote:Which is why your proposal, like most comp systems, is a terrible idea. If White Scars biker spam creates a bad enough experience that people are justified in voting to disqualify it then it shouldn't be allowed in the first place! Voting to disqualify the player after the tournament is over doesn't change the fact that people had that bad experience playing against it. It's just an opportunity for a smug "I'm so casual and you're a TFG" lecture after the game is over, except with the added punishment of taking away any prize the player earned.

Your previous points are duly noted. It's this particular point that I want to address.

Here's my problem with what you are saying:

Power gamers are going to power game regardless of the restrictions. If you just say "You can't do x," then power gamers are going to bring the next most OP thing that they can come up with. Unless the TO carefully goes through each and every single codex and writes an exhaustive list of the units, combinations, etc. that can't be taken, he's not going to come up with anything like a list which can be deemed as "sufficient" to stop people from power gaming. And even then, power gamers will still probably find a work around and succeed in [censored] people off.

Presumably, what the OP is going for is a mindset. My system encourages a mindset. "Don't power game. Period. If you power game, you stand a good chance of being disqualified."

Of course, this will make power gamers very unhappy. But then, if the OP wants to create a casual-friendly environment, then OF COURSE he's going to have to make the power gamers unhappy. That's part of the trade off.

You tell me that this just encourages the "I'm so casual and you're a TFG."

Well if you just set up a list of rules without what I've proposed, then you've just encouraged power gamers to try to break the game within the context of your limitations.

My recommendation sends a clear message: "No breaking the game. Don't even try. Or else."

Recost the miscosted units. Most problems go away.

Martel732 wrote:
Recost the miscosted units. Most problems go away.

I think that works up to an extent. If everyone agrees to run CAD then doing so is fine, but it's wonky when formations and detachments are considered. No one thought piranhas were anything special at first glance and now they're OP thanks to the piranha wing.

Give formations costs as well.

Martel732 wrote:
Give formations costs as well.

While i like this idea, just kinda bandaiding problems at that point.

one thing you can also do to help balance games and keep it friendly and tone down power lists, is make agreements with your opponant. Like no flyers if your oponant does not have a flyer or AA. Or if you really insist on bringing it, let your opponents missile launchers get sky fire. Things like that. Like i let eldar players that have howling banshees assault outta their transport, because other wise they are worthless and it makes no scenes fluff wise. So tailoring rules from match to match really helps.

Also, bringing booze into the mix, get a cock tail in your hand and get buzzed and you have a grand ol time when rolling dice lol

I definitely would if the FLGS's we go to had liquor licenses. >_<

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Like no flyers if your oponant does not have a flyer or AA.

But why should the player with the flyer have to agree to conditions on the model they want to use? Why shouldn't the rule be "mandatory AA units in all armies unless you agree to do a no-flyer game"?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Like no flyers if your oponant does not have a flyer or AA.

But why should the player with the flyer have to agree to conditions on the model they want to use? Why shouldn't the rule be "mandatory AA units in all armies unless you agree to do a no-flyer game"?

Exactly. If you don't want to prepare for fliers (which aren't even bad in the first place), that's your own damn fault.

 Traditio wrote:
Power gamers are going to power game regardless of the restrictions. If you just say "You can't do x," then power gamers are going to bring the next most OP thing that they can come up with. Unless the TO carefully goes through each and every single codex and writes an exhaustive list of the units, combinations, etc. that can't be taken, he's not going to come up with anything like a list which can be deemed as "sufficient" to stop people from power gaming. And even then, power gamers will still probably find a work around and succeed in [censored] people off.

Yes, balancing is hard and takes some work. Do the work if you want to run a good tournament.

Presumably, what the OP is going for is a mindset. My system encourages a mindset. "Don't power game. Period. If you power game, you stand a good chance of being disqualified."

No, what your system encourages is a mindset of "don't play here, the local clique kicks you out of the tournament if they don't like your list" where you quickly find that the only people playing in your events are the 3-4 people who started the clique.

Of course, this will make power gamers very unhappy. But then, if the OP wants to create a casual-friendly environment, then OF COURSE he's going to have to make the power gamers unhappy. That's part of the trade off.

No, it makes everyone unhappy. In fact, power games are probably the least likely to be unhappy because they know they're playing the top-tier lists and trying to win, and accepting "well, someone is going to say some stupid thing about how I didn't win after the games are over, but I still won all of my games" as the price of playing in the event. The person it hurts is the "casual" player who builds a strong list they like, finally manages to win, and has their triumph deflated by someone saying "you don't win after all, don't be so WAAC".

The problem with ranking lists is that everyone has their own arbitrary and silly ideas of what is OP, We have someone here who Swears anything tau bring is OP. Anything. He also thinks GK are OP. So he would rate everything as a 5.
Really, just go for free for all. Dont let anyone out.
Tell your players to talk to eachother.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Like no flyers if your oponant does not have a flyer or AA.

But why should the player with the flyer have to agree to conditions on the model they want to use? Why shouldn't the rule be "mandatory AA units in all armies unless you agree to do a no-flyer game"?

Now i agree you can make that argument, again may vary for store to store, but generally no one in my area plays flyers, and the only time it comes into question is when one kid brings in a hemlocks with D on it and acts like its totally fair and balanced.

I don't think I've yet to play a game without one. But then again, my flyers have transport capabilities and I love being able to drop units off where they need to go. They often ninja'd warlords and super-heavies.

Going back on topic, I might introduce some alternate missions besides "Hold X objectives". I was thinking of letting players choose from a list how they want to approach a game. It could be something as standard as "kill more than your opponent" or something as wacky as "Maim, but don't kill more units than your opponent" or "Sacrifice as many units as you can. Each unit counts as a victory point, but don't let your opponent suspect it."

 NInjatactiks wrote:
I don't think I've yet to play a game without one. But then again, my flyers have transport capabilities and I love being able to drop units off where they need to go. They often ninja'd warlords and super-heavies.

Going back on topic, I might introduce some alternate missions besides "Hold X objectives". I was thinking of letting players choose from a list how they want to approach a game. It could be something as standard as "kill more than your opponent" or something as wacky as "Maim, but don't kill more units than your opponent" or "Sacrifice as many units as you can. Each unit counts as a victory point, but don't let your opponent suspect it."

Really? huh, almost no one runs them here, but we digress.

Oh run a movie marine game! those are always fun to play

Peregrine wrote:Define clear balance rules/errata/etc so that the lists you don't think are balanced are not legal and there is no ambiguity about what is "casual" and what isn't. Expecting people to agree on what is "casual" is almost guaranteed to produce arguments.

 Peregrine wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
If you want some guidlines you might want to take a look at
http://www.communitycomp.org/

Do not use this system, ever. It's complete garbage and seems to be based on the premise that every army, no matter how good it is, must have at least X units that have a comp penalty. Lots of things that aren't a problem get massively penalized, and all it really does is change what the best list is. It's a horrible failure of a system and the people who created it should be embarrassed about their work.

 Peregrine wrote:

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Well, that's some pretty harsh critiques so I'm interested in what you would suggest in its place.

Change the rules, preferably through adjusting point costs where possible (which should be pretty much everything besides formations and multiple-LoW armies). If unit X is overpowered then change its point cost to match its value. Don't leave its rules in their overpowered state and say "you can take this, but you're a bad person if you do and you should feel bad about it". This is the fundamental problem with comp systems, they acknowledge that unit rules need to be changed but instead of changing the rules they impose this whole shame-driven system for telling you how bad you should feel about playing competitively.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
Power gamers are going to power game regardless of the restrictions. If you just say "You can't do x," then power gamers are going to bring the next most OP thing that they can come up with. Unless the TO carefully goes through each and every single codex and writes an exhaustive list of the units, combinations, etc. that can't be taken, he's not going to come up with anything like a list which can be deemed as "sufficient" to stop people from power gaming. And even then, power gamers will still probably find a work around and succeed in [censored] people off.

Yes, balancing is hard and takes some work. Do the work if you want to run a good tournament.

I don't understand you.
The community comp system is one of the systems, perhaps the only system, where people HAVE created a clear errata that unambiguously defines what is and isn't legal. People like myself have put in the hard work and hours creating this system.

And you take a glance at it, see a unit that you don't perceive as an issue, and dismiss it?

CommunityComp (or something very similar to it) is as close to what you're wanting that we can get while we're still playing a game that can be called 40k. I guess we could go and re-write the rules, re-do all the points costs.... but we may as well just go play another game at that point. Adding 'comp points' seems to be the most viable alternative to actually recosting everything.

You talk about creating 'cliques' that only play with a particular style and can't get anyone else to play with them: yet that same problem will only be worse when said clique creates their entire own game system! Even with amendments to the existing ruleset it's hard.


No points system is going to be perfect. You're never going to create a game where there isn't a 'most powerful' list if you want to have any kind of differentiation or synergy between units. But the idea of restrictions on army building, and comp systems in particular, is to reduce the disparity between the highs and the lows so that more army builds are viable. The most recent comp tournament I went to had its fair share of Riptides and Scatterbikes - but it also had armies featuring Gorkanauts, Dreadnoughts, Sisters of Battle and Vespids which were in the top bracket.

The moment anyone is interested in winning you no longer have a 'casual' community you have a gaming community.

A fluffy casual league should probably have an enforced narrative with who is supposed to win the day and who should lose decided at list building and their should be narrative goals in the game to make it cinematic and entertaining. To think of it as a movie, each turn is an act and scene, and the winner here should be who does his takes correctly and have nothing to do with victory points. You should have scenario's with heroes brought to cinematic skirmishes that advance the narrative... At least if you can imagine on this brand of thinking you could have something resembling casual 40k.

Anything else is mostly breaking the public meta and enforcing one that you will eventually find among yourselves with your newfound 'balanced' ruleset.

You could also do any sort of results based comp system, give people with army's losing in your league some more points every week and taking points away from winners. Kinda works out a bit on it's own, you get the winner crowd gloating about being able to win while fighting a handicap, and fluffyhammer guys get more points to be fluffy with. I could get along with it.

Trasvi wrote:
The community comp system is one of the systems, perhaps the only system, where people HAVE created a clear errata that unambiguously defines what is and isn't legal. People like myself have put in the hard work and hours creating this system.

Working hard on something doesn't mean that the product is good. If a lot of work has gone into community comp then it just means that a lot of work has been wasted on a terrible system.

And you take a glance at it, see a unit that you don't perceive as an issue, and dismiss it?

No, I dismiss it because I've seen it before and it's a terrible system. It's not just one unit, the entire concept is broken on a fundamental level.

CommunityComp (or something very similar to it) is as close to what you're wanting that we can get while we're still playing a game that can be called 40k. I guess we could go and re-write the rules, re-do all the points costs.... but we may as well just go play another game at that point. Adding 'comp points' seems to be the most viable alternative to actually recosting everything.

It's not viable, and it's nothing like what I want. And why is re-doing the points such a problem? You've already essentially done that by listing which units need point adjustments and roughly how much they need to be adjusted by (proportional to their comp penalty), and your game has much less to do with normal 40k than a variant that fixes some point costs but otherwise doesn't change the rules.

You talk about creating 'cliques' that only play with a particular style and can't get anyone else to play with them: yet that same problem will only be worse when said clique creates their entire own game system! Even with amendments to the existing ruleset it's hard.

The difference is that a fixed rule system has no more of the "you can use this overpowered thing that is so awful that it needs to be punished, but we'll call you TFG and shun you from the community if you do" problem that comp has. And that's the cliquish behavior that is a problem, not the fact that a variant rule set is in use.

You're never going to create a game where there isn't a 'most powerful' list if you want to have any kind of differentiation or synergy between units.

No, of course not, but that's a straw man argument. The goal is to improve 40k balance to the point that tournaments are fun, not to magically create a perfect game that is mathematically proven to have 100% perfect balance. Adjusting point costs and rules can get to at least the same level of balance that your comp system does, it just does it in a much better way.

Community comp is really just a shame driven attempt at balancing the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

The difference is that a fixed rule system has no more of the "you can use this overpowered thing that is so awful that it needs to be punished, but we'll call you TFG and shun you from the community if you do" problem that comp has. And that's the cliquish behavior that is a problem, not the fact that a variant rule set is in use.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Community comp is really just a shame driven attempt at balancing the game.

This isn't at all in the rules. Its in the community. The CComp just lets you play with maxed out credits in the same way a CAD lets you play with maxed out heavy support slots. No questioned asked.
I wonder what nightmarish experiences you guys have had with a comp system.

 oldzoggy wrote:
This isn't at all in the rules. Its in the community. The CComp just lets you play with maxed out credits in the same way a CAD lets you play with maxed out heavy support slots. No questioned asked.

From the community comp document:

With 20 credits to spend we suggest spending
between 8 and 12 credits.

Between that and the score penalty for using all 20 points it's pretty clear that you're not supposed to go that high. And let's not overlook the fact that the system seems deliberately designed to ensure that all but the weakest possible lists (deliberately designed to be as weak as possible) get at least ~10 points, so it's not like we're talking about top-tier tournament lists getting up to 8-12 credits.

 Peregrine wrote:

Between that and the score penalty for using all 20 points it's pretty clear that you're not supposed to go that high. And let's not overlook the fact that the system seems deliberately designed to ensure that all but the weakest possible lists (deliberately designed to be as weak as possible) get at least ~10 points, so it's not like we're talking about top-tier tournament lists getting up to 8-12 credits.

How much credits you are allowed to spend is just the power lv dial that you the community or the TO can fiddle with. The event could just say this is a max 16 cc event. In the same way as how many Heavy slots ( in 5th enviroments) or LOW slots (in 7th enviroments) you are allowed to max bring. I do agree with you that it is totally impossible to create a top-tier tournament list or even strong competitive lists in low credit ratings, but that was the entire purpose of a ruleset tasket with ceeping it casual in mind.
Don't get me wrong I am not suggesting that this system would be suited to balance current tournament scene. You guys all have expensive maxed out ITC style armies and enjoy playing those. Suggesting to all dump those armies and start again is madness. This is a tool to keep those lists out of an environment that doesn't enjoy them and it seems to do a better job at it than most alternatives.

 Peregrine wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
This isn't at all in the rules. Its in the community. The CComp just lets you play with maxed out credits in the same way a CAD lets you play with maxed out heavy support slots. No questioned asked.

From the community comp document:

With 20 credits to spend we suggest spending
between 8 and 12 credits.

Between that and the score penalty for using all 20 points it's pretty clear that you're not supposed to go that high. And let's not overlook the fact that the system seems deliberately designed to ensure that all but the weakest possible lists (deliberately designed to be as weak as possible) get at least ~10 points, so it's not like we're talking about top-tier tournament lists getting up to 8-12 credits.

The system is designed so that 8-12 credits gives you the best 'bang for your buck' in that your overall penalty is minimized while still taking a relatively strong army. The sliding penalty scale means that there is relatively little impact to your overall score by going <10 CC, and every point over that is supposed to be a decision.
The sliding scale of overall penalty actually creates interesting situations where the good players who are chasing after the Overall prize are incentivized to bring less powerful lists; They need to make the decision whether the extra 2 comp point penalty is going to eg turn an expected draw in to a win.

Trasvi wrote:
The sliding penalty scale means that there is relatively little impact to your overall score by going <10 CC, and every point over that is supposed to be a decision.

Then why not set the standard at zero comp points and take away all the ridiculous +1 point penalties for things that aren't overpowered. If there's little impact up to 10 points and you're not expected to have to make tough decisions until after that point then why are so many things penalized?

 Peregrine wrote:
Working hard on something doesn't mean that the product is good. If a lot of work has gone into community comp then it just means that a lot of work has been wasted on a terrible system.
No, I dismiss it because I've seen it before and it's a terrible system. It's not just one unit, the entire concept is broken on a fundamental level.

Maybe you could elaborate on what the broken concept is, in your opinion?

This is the community acting together in a way to create a clear, unambiguous set of rules about what is considered 'too powerful'. Exactly what you said you wanted. I get that you don't agree with the particular implementation or assigning of points costs, but what more could be better?

It's not viable, and it's nothing like what I want. And why is re-doing the points such a problem? You've already essentially done that by listing which units need point adjustments and roughly how much they need to be adjusted by (proportional to their comp penalty), and your game has much less to do with normal 40k than a variant that fixes some point costs but otherwise doesn't change the rules.

All rules are balanced at the correct points costs.

Moreover, the community comp system is the only points system I've used that takes inter-unit interactions or target saturation in to play when assigning points costs. In that way I think it is superior to any other points system I've come across. A significant amount of 40k's balance issues come from stacking multiplicative buffs together, something that cannot be accounted for with the standard fixed-cost systems.

The difference is that a fixed rule system has no more of the "you can use this overpowered thing that is so awful that it needs to be punished, but we'll call you TFG and shun you from the community if you do" problem that comp has. And that's the cliquish behavior that is a problem, not the fact that a variant rule set is in use.

I don't know where you're getting that idea from. It's certainly not how people use the system. Perhaps you should try it before trying to ascribe such behaviour to people?
The idea that people are 'punished and shunned' for taking legal high comp models is like saying that people would be punished and shunned for taking high point cost models. Yes, a particularly powerful combo might take up 8 comp points. It's no different than a powerful big unit taking up 800 points of your army. It might be powerful, but now you've got less resources to work with for the rest of your force. It's up to you to decide whether a unit is powerful enough to justify its points cost.

No, of course not, but that's a straw man argument. The goal is to improve 40k balance to the point that tournaments are fun, not to magically create a perfect game that is mathematically proven to have 100% perfect balance. Adjusting point costs and rules can get to at least the same level of balance that your comp system does, it just does it in a much better way.

We've found that it is much, much, much simpler to get people to use the community comp system to adjust points costs than it is to use even the most basic of rules changes. You see the resistance that the ITC has to changing things like Invisibility or D-Weapons - imagine the pushback if they decided to publish ITC home-dexes.
And again, I think the ability for CC to deal with multiplicative buffs, cross-codex interactions and spam creates a system that can much more accurately reflect balance than simply adding points to models.

Another advantage of tacking on the extra points system is that it allows you to move to tournaments and communities that *don't* use a modified version of the rules. I can take my 2000pt 14 comp point army to any gamestore, tournament or country, play it against anyone else, and be using the same rule set as they are even if I'm playing on a slightly different level. If you decide to go modifying points and rules, then my 2000pt army might be 2100pts in 'real' 40k, and our modified rules might be cheating against other players. Yes, it's possibly hard for them to move in, but its trivial to move out.



At my gaming club we use the community comp system to arrange pretty much every game. I'll say "Who wants to play 40k on Friday? 1850pts, 15 comp max" and people will get the idea about the level of competitiveness that I'm expecting. If I want a more casual game then I'll say 8 CC and people get the idea of the power level. That's how we keep things casual.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
The sliding penalty scale means that there is relatively little impact to your overall score by going <10 CC, and every point over that is supposed to be a decision.

Then why not set the standard at zero comp points and take away all the ridiculous +1 point penalties for things that aren't overpowered. If there's little impact up to 10 points and you're not expected to have to make tough decisions until after that point then why are so many things penalized?

Because it's easier to set the baseline to 'underpowered units = 0 comp points' and have an 'on curve' army at 10 CC, than it is to assign negative comp points to underpowered units and deal with the potential system gaming that could come from that.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Like no flyers if your oponant does not have a flyer or AA.

But why should the player with the flyer have to agree to conditions on the model they want to use? Why shouldn't the rule be "mandatory AA units in all armies unless you agree to do a no-flyer game"?

Now i agree you can make that argument, again may vary for store to store, but generally no one in my area plays flyers, and the only time it comes into question is when one kid brings in a hemlocks with D on it and acts like its totally fair and balanced.

You mean an AV10 vehicle that fires template weapons? Have you ever heard of jinking?

I don't believe in shaming. I do believe in making things that are really good really expensive in game points. Really simple.

Trasvi wrote:
Maybe you could elaborate on what the broken concept is, in your opinion?

The broken concept is the idea of allowing overpowered units/lists but imposing a penalty (whether by a comp score or social pressure) for doing so. If you recognize that a unit/list is a problem and can assign it a comp penalty then you are able to adjust its point cost and/or rules so that it is no longer a problem. This is the correct way to do it because it removes the unpleasant game experience entirely instead of penalizing it after the damage is done.

This comp system specifically is also broken in how many penalties it assigns. Units/lists that are not a balance problem are penalized way too frequently. When an "average" list has 50% of the maximum comp points it's a very clear sign that you're over-penalizing a lot of stuff that isn't a problem. Even assuming that comp is a good thing (it isn't, see above) a "fair" list should have a score of zero because it doesn't have any units that are a balance problem.

Moreover, the community comp system is the only points system I've used that takes inter-unit interactions or target saturation in to play when assigning points costs. In that way I think it is superior to any other points system I've come across. A significant amount of 40k's balance issues come from stacking multiplicative buffs together, something that cannot be accounted for with the standard fixed-cost systems.

But why do things like target saturation need to be penalized in the first place? Target saturation is a valid strategy to use and isn't necessarily overpowered. A comp system should not start from the premise of "any effective strategy should be penalized", it should only remove the most serious balance issues.

And fixed-cost systems can deal with stacking buffs just fine, by setting the cost for a buff at its typical effectiveness level and putting limits on how many things you can add together. Remember that most of the stacking problems come from allies, multiple HQ ICs, etc. These aren't "normal" units that are difficult to deal with without having a lot of collateral damage to stuff that doesn't need to be nerfed.

I don't know where you're getting that idea from. It's certainly not how people use the system. Perhaps you should try it before trying to ascribe such behaviour to people?

I'm not going to try it because it's a garbage system, but I will concede that perhaps the people in your area who use the system don't have the same toxic "casual at all costs" that comp advocates often seem to have. Thankfully none of the communities I've ever been a part of offline have used a terrible system like this, so my impression of how it is used is based entirely on the online behavior of comp advocates.

We've found that it is much, much, much simpler to get people to use the community comp system to adjust points costs than it is to use even the most basic of rules changes. You see the resistance that the ITC has to changing things like Invisibility or D-Weapons - imagine the pushback if they decided to publish ITC home-dexes.

Sorry, but this makes no sense at all. The people who dislike the ITC rules (or similar systems) aren't going to like your system either. Both point/rule adjustments and comp scoring are significant rule changes, if you're willing to accept comp then you should have no problem with a superior approach to balance fixes.

Another advantage of tacking on the extra points system is that it allows you to move to tournaments and communities that *don't* use a modified version of the rules. I can take my 2000pt 14 comp point army to any gamestore, tournament or country, play it against anyone else, and be using the same rule set as they are even if I'm playing on a slightly different level. If you decide to go modifying points and rules, then my 2000pt army might be 2100pts in 'real' 40k, and our modified rules might be cheating against other players. Yes, it's possibly hard for them to move in, but its trivial to move out.

Sure, but because your army is built to a significantly lower power level under the comp system you're going to have no hope of winning under RAW 40k. Dropping 100 points from an army built under point cost adjustments is going to be much easier than replacing whole sections of your army to get it up to a level where you have any hope of competing. For example, under a point adjustment system my LRBTs might be less than the RAW of 150 points. If I want to play RAW 40k all I have to do is drop a unit or trim some upgrades. Under a comp system like yours I probably didn't buy as many LRBTs in the first place because of the comp penalty attached to them. If I want to (successfully) play RAW 40k I have to dump those squads of ratlings/rough riders/etc that I had to take because I was out of comp points and replace them with the LRBTs I wanted to take. That's a whole lot more money and painting time to spend on changing my army.

At my gaming club we use the community comp system to arrange pretty much every game. I'll say "Who wants to play 40k on Friday? 1850pts, 15 comp max" and people will get the idea about the level of competitiveness that I'm expecting. If I want a more casual game then I'll say 8 CC and people get the idea of the power level. That's how we keep things casual.

You have a very strange definition of "casual". Playing under strict list construction rules in addition to the standard game is not really casual, it's playing seriously with a lower power level. And "lower power level" and "casual" are not synonyms. A true "casual" game would be "take whatever you like" because you don't really care if you win or lose.

Because it's easier to set the baseline to 'underpowered units = 0 comp points' and have an 'on curve' army at 10 CC, than it is to assign negative comp points to underpowered units and deal with the potential system gaming that could come from that.

Why do you need to have negative comp points for underpowered units? If you're going to start from a premise of "people don't like changes" and reject point/rule adjustments because they're "too many changes" then the goal of your system should be to make the minimum possible changes to remove the biggest balance issues. If you're getting into buffing weaker units then you're making comprehensive rule changes and should be doing it the right way: through changing point costs and rules to make a better game that doesn't need comp scoring.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't believe in shaming. I do believe in making things that are really good really expensive in game points. Really simple.

That's probably the single biggest starting point.
But how do you cost things that are "ok" in isolation, but powerful when taken together?

Lets take the Grimoire of True Names in the Daemons codex. It has a 1/3 chance of debuffing the target friendly unit and halving its durability, and a 2/3 chance of increase its durability by 100%. Lets say it is balanced at 30pts.

Lets take Cursed Earth. It gives Daemons +1 invulnerable save, which is usually +33% durability. Pretty decent for a 1 WC power.

But when you combine Cursed Earth with Grimoire of True Names, you're going from a 5++ to a 2++, which represents a 300% increase.

Then look at Screamers of Tzeentch. At 25pts they're pretty balanced I think. Add in Cursed Earth and the Grimoire though and they become effectively invincible - the buffs that represent a 300% increase in durability for a unit of Flesh Hounds now represent a 2100% increase for screamers!!

Is it possible to price buffs correctly if they are only "really good" in certain combinations?
Or do we just remove what very little inter-unit synergy there is in 40k from the game entirely?

Those kinds of swings are difficult to price. The absolute best fix is to reduce all such swings by moving to D10. Otherwise, I'd probably just get rid of the Grimoire, and let cursed earth stack twice. Or keep the Grimoire, but let it count as a single casting of cursed earth. At any rate, I'd cap invuln saves at 3++ in general in the current system.

Trasvi wrote:
Is it possible to price buffs correctly if they are only "really good" in certain combinations?

Yes, by assuming the best-case scenario. Nobody is going to be taking those powers to buff weak units when you can make a 2++, so you price it on the assumption that you get a 2++ as the final result. Yeah, it means you're overpaying if you take a stupid list that doesn't get a 2++, but bad strategies being ineffective is fine.

And, as I said earlier, situations like this are the exception to the rule with buffs. There are few cases where you're getting "my unit is impossible to kill" levels of durability, so dealing with them is pretty straightforward. Even a rule as harsh as "Grimoire of True Names is banned" solves the one specific problem without hurting anything else, and there's a pretty solid argument that the upgrade is just plain bad design that should be removed from the next codex. But normally you aren't getting that kind of absurd percentage buff, and it's probably not worth obsessing over the difference between a 40% buff and a 50% buff when neither of them are causing major balance problems.

Or by not allowing 2++ saves.

As an example of a "normal" buff and how it scales consider prescience (or whatever the "twin-link a unit's weapons" power is called). Obviously casting it on a 500 point Baneblade gives you more of a return than casting it on a 30 point Sentinel, but how much of a problem is this in real games? It's very difficult to imagine a situation where the Sentinel is your best choice of unit to buff, so we can discard that case entirely. If it happens it happens, but it doesn't have any meaningful effect on balance. So, under realistic assumptions, a 1-200 point unit (LRBT, infantry blob, etc) is the smallest unit you're likely to put the buff on, and you're probably going to aim for at least the 2-300 point range (LRBT squadron, full-size blob, etc). If we price the twin-linked buff appropriately for a 250 point unit that leaves it a bit too expensive for a 100-150 point unit, but not by much, and a bit too cheap by a similarly small amount on a 350 point unit. It seems, on paper, to be too cheap by a more significant amount on the Baneblade, but LoW-class units tend to have huge blast weapons that gain much less benefit from twin-linking than weapons that roll to hit on BS.

Now, is the final point cost based on buffing a 250 point unit perfect for every situation? Of course not. But it's probably good enough to have the game be reasonably balanced and put the too-efficient cases into the "good strategy" category rather than "breaks the game and isn't fun to play against".

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
Maybe you could elaborate on what the broken concept is, in your opinion?

The broken concept is the idea of allowing overpowered units/lists but imposing a penalty (whether by a comp score or social pressure) for doing so. If you recognize that a unit/list is a problem and can assign it a comp penalty then you are able to adjust its point cost and/or rules so that it is no longer a problem. This is the correct way to do it because it removes the unpleasant game experience entirely instead of penalizing it after the damage is done.

I don't see this as any different than points costs on units.

An Imperial Knight has a certain power level. It gets assigned a certain penalty points cost reflective of that power level. You make up the rest of your army by taking units that fit in to your remaining points.
An Imperial Knight has a certain power level. It gets assigned a certain penalty comp score reflective of that power level. You make up the rest of your army by taking units that fit in to your remaining points.

Comp points are just another points system - an Imperial Knight costing 375pts is just as much a penalty or social pressure as it costing 5CC.

This comp system specifically is also broken in how many penalties it assigns. Units/lists that are not a balance problem are penalized way too frequently. When an "average" list has 50% of the maximum comp points it's a very clear sign that you're over-penalizing a lot of stuff that isn't a problem. Even assuming that comp is a good thing (it isn't, see above) a "fair" list should have a score of zero because it doesn't have any units that are a balance problem.

I think you're bringing a preconceived notion of how you think the points system is supposed to work. An average army gets an average comp score. Is that so hard to accept?

But why do things like target saturation need to be penalized in the first place? Target saturation is a valid strategy to use and isn't necessarily overpowered. A comp system should not start from the premise of "any effective strategy should be penalized", it should only remove the most serious balance issues.

Sure, as long as you can come up with an objective definition of a "serious balance issue".

And fixed-cost systems can deal with stacking buffs just fine, by setting the cost for a buff at its typical effectiveness level and putting limits on how many things you can add together. Remember that most of the stacking problems come from allies, multiple HQ ICs, etc. These aren't "normal" units that are difficult to deal with without having a lot of collateral damage to stuff that doesn't need to be nerfed.

See my post about the Grimoire. Or psychic powers, or 'X and his unit' abilities. How do you determine the 'typical' use case of an ability when there are a hundred different use cases for it, many of which haven't been printed at the time the item is costed?

Sorry, but this makes no sense at all. The people who dislike the ITC rules (or similar systems) aren't going to like your system either. Both point/rule adjustments and comp scoring are significant rule changes, if you're willing to accept comp then you should have no problem with a superior approach to balance fixes.

Strangely enough, the people in our area are vehemently opposed to using ITC restrictions but happily use community comp. People interpret the additional cost system very differently to attempts to change the printed Word of God.

Sure, but because your army is built to a significantly lower power level under the comp system you're going to have no hope of winning under RAW 40k. Dropping 100 points from an army built under point cost adjustments is going to be much easier than replacing whole sections of your army to get it up to a level where you have any hope of competing. For example, under a point adjustment system my LRBTs might be less than the RAW of 150 points. If I want to play RAW 40k all I have to do is drop a unit or trim some upgrades. Under a comp system like yours I probably didn't buy as many LRBTs in the first place because of the comp penalty attached to them. If I want to (successfully) play RAW 40k I have to dump those squads of ratlings/rough riders/etc that I had to take because I was out of comp points and replace them with the LRBTs I wanted to take. That's a whole lot more money and painting time to spend on changing my army.

Or your Windrider jetbikes in PeregrineHammer might be more than the RAW cost of 35pts, so if you go try to play RAWHammer then you have less models than you're supposed to and need to go paint more. Your adjustments work both ways; a community comp army might not be super powerful (though you might be surprised) but it is at least transferable.

You have a very strange definition of "casual". Playing under strict list construction rules in addition to the standard game is not really casual, it's playing seriously with a lower power level. And "lower power level" and "casual" are not synonyms. A true "casual" game would be "take whatever you like" because you don't really care if you win or lose.

If that's how you define casual then what is the point in this discussion? My 10000pts of unbound Daemons vs your 100pts of Rough Riders is a true casual game under your definition. 40k is a perfect casual game and doesn't need any kind of pre-arrangement.

I tend to see 'casual' as 'both players have competitive fun'. We're both trying to win, but to journey of playing the game is more important than the outcome. My experience is that the closer two armies are on comp score, the more likely you are to have a long, close-fought game where both players rack up points and there's still models hanging around at the end. The further disparity you get between army power levels, the more likely it is that one player gets tabled by turn 2 or 3, and in my experience that isn't really fun.
The community comp system allows you to fairly well determine the objective power level of your army, make sure your opponent is expecting the same kind of game as you are, and both players can have an enjoyable experience.

Trasvi wrote:
Comp points are just another points system - an Imperial Knight costing 375pts is just as much a penalty or social pressure as it costing 5CC.

Except it isn't, because editing the point cost to 375 removes any ambiguity about it. There's no "you used too many comp points" factor, which is what comp tends to encourage. Nor is it just another point system. Imagine this scenario: a player says " your stupid balance rules, I'm going to win all my games and call you an idiot for telling me that I didn't win the tournament" and shows up with the nastiest possible (legal) list. Under a proper balance system the knight costs 375 points, representing its actual power, and there's nothing to exploit. The knight-spam guy's list is balanced and everyone has a fun game. Under a comp system the knight player is free to spend 20/20 comp points on taking overpowered knights, and show up with a list that is clearly more powerful than the 10-point lists most people brought. Sure, they take a score penalty at the end and probably don't get the trophy, but the people who played against them still suffer the miserable experience of playing against a 20/20 list.

I think you're bringing a preconceived notion of how you think the points system is supposed to work. An average army gets an average comp score. Is that so hard to accept?

An average army should get a score of zero because an average army should not suffer a comp penalty. "This is more powerful than the worst possible lists" should not have any penalty in the final scoring.

Strangely enough, the people in our area are vehemently opposed to using ITC restrictions but happily use community comp. People interpret the additional cost system very differently to attempts to change the printed Word of God.

Sorry, but that makes no sense at all. A comp system is an attempt to change the printed Word of God, just like ITC, new point costs, etc. Maybe people in your area truly are in denial about the fact that they're changing the rules of the game, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable belief to hold.

Or your Windrider jetbikes in PeregrineHammer might be more than the RAW cost of 35pts, so if you go try to play RAWHammer then you have less models than you're supposed to and need to go paint more. Your adjustments work both ways; a community comp army might not be super powerful (though you might be surprised) but it is at least transferable.

Yes, in that case I do have to buy more models. But I'm not throwing whole units in the trash can because they're not viable anymore. Under your comp system that's exactly what happens, I have to take tons of weak "filler" units because I've run out of comp points and could easily end up with half my army being garbage in RAW 40k. That's not at all the same as having to buy another unit of jetbikes because I can spam a few more at 35 points each.

And no, it isn't transferable. With all of the ridiculous penalties you assign to things that aren't overpowered at all a ~10 point comp army is going to look nothing like a normal 40k army. It might be legal, but it isn't going to be effective.

I tend to see 'casual' as 'both players have competitive fun'. We're both trying to win, but to journey of playing the game is more important than the outcome. My experience is that the closer two armies are on comp score, the more likely you are to have a long, close-fought game where both players rack up points and there's still models hanging around at the end. The further disparity you get between army power levels, the more likely it is that one player gets tabled by turn 2 or 3, and in my experience that isn't really fun.
The community comp system allows you to fairly well determine the objective power level of your army, make sure your opponent is expecting the same kind of game as you are, and both players can have an enjoyable experience.

"Casual" and "fun" are not synonyms. What "casual" means is that you make a relatively low investment of effort in the game (or any other activity). You build and paint some models, you spend a few minutes writing a list, and you play the game. Adding a complex comp system makes the game less casual because now you're spending more time carefully arranging balanced lists instead of just throwing some models on the table and rolling dice. And you openly admit this when you talk about optimizing how many comp points you're willing to spend and whether a unit is worth the extra comp penalty it imposes. That's exactly the kind of careful list building that serious tournament players invest tons of effort on!

If you wipe away the spittle from Peregrine's posting, I think there's a point in there somewhere, which is that when we talk about "playing casual" we really mean playing in a way that allows low investment players to compete. At some point, it requires more skilled or more savvy players to either self restrict, or for the group to push the guy out.

Either you have a group of guys that can read a room, and bring lists that everybody else is comfortable with, or you don't. If you have a guy that only wants to win, no set of restrictions will really stand in his way.

The question becomes: do you have the stones to stop playing with a guy that doesn't play the way the group likes?

I think that's impossible with the current state of 40K and human mindset in general. Our group was pretty causal, but then we brought a couple of new guys, one with Tau and 2 x Riptides and the other with a crazy Fist of Medusa combo and everyone lost their head. Now it's WAAC or bust, as everyone is bringing the strongest possible build, because "he's playing an OP force and my army can't be weaker" and other such crap...

TL;DR The Community Comp is a garbage system because it encourages gakky one-of-everything armies and things like Devastators with all different weapons. And if you don't you aren't a good person.

Man. You guys must play with a bunch of dicks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
TL;DR The Community Comp is a garbage system because it encourages gakky one-of-everything armies and things like Devastators with all different weapons. And if you don't you aren't a good person.

Hey, I've run a dev squad with a Heavy Bolter, Lascannon, and combi-melta on the Sgt.

Shut up!

 kronk wrote:
Man. You guys must play with a bunch of dicks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
TL;DR The Community Comp is a garbage system because it encourages gakky one-of-everything armies and things like Devastators with all different weapons. And if you don't you aren't a good person.

Hey, I've run a dev squad with a Heavy Bolter, Lascannon, and combi-melta on the Sgt.

Shut up!

My heart weeps reading that loadout.

 Polonius wrote:
which is that when we talk about "playing casual" we really mean playing in a way that allows low investment players to compete.

No we don't or at least I don't. The amount of money I invest in a list has noting to do with the casualness of it.
My lack of knights or deathstars in my lists isn't a result of me not having the money to field them nor with my lack of knowledge of "the good stuff".
It is that I don't like them.

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's impossible with the current state of 40K and human mindset in general. Our group was pretty causal, but then we brought a couple of new guys, one with Tau and 2 x Riptides and the other with a crazy Fist of Medusa combo and everyone lost their head. Now it's WAAC or bust, as everyone is bringing the strongest possible build, because "he's playing an OP force and my army can't be weaker" and other such crap...

Now I don't suppose you asked that *gasp* they tone down their lists, speaking to them in private? If they really affected your community in such a way, why haven't you pointed this out to them?

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
which is that when we talk about "playing casual" we really mean playing in a way that allows low investment players to compete.

No we don't or at least I don't. The amount of money I invest in a list has noting to do with the casualness of it.
My lack of knights or deathstars in my lists isn't a result of me not having the money to field them nor with my lack of knowledge of "the good stuff".
It is that I don't like them.

Investment also includes time, and energy. I can buy whatever I want, but I dn't have the time or energy to figure out what the best armies are.

What really takes every last bit of meaning out of this "casual play" discussion is changing the rules on what someone can play.

I spend a lot of time making my models characterful.
I base them nice and add lots of detail to make them each something.

Then I paint the gosh-darn things, grit my teeth through the block painting and enjoy the detailing a whole lot more.

So then going to a game all happy I have something good to look at, someone will determine it may or may not be OP and I may have to come back with something else?

To quote Kharn "Burn! Maim! Kill!" all internal voice but still, it would be a gakky thing to pee all over that effort.

Warning ahead of time and having posted house rules are the only way to go, because otherwise, I go by the BRB and the Codex(s) and if you impose things on me after the fact... I would feel good reason to get upset.

Especially when the "casual player" with the half assembled models that are dumped into a bin between games easily demonstrates how casual the game is to them.

Excuse me if I am a bit more intense about the whole thing.

Peregrine's points are very good from a "discerning" perspective that I agree to: clear rules that make sense make for a better game. If the game allows for army lists that upset you, the problem is either with the game rules or with you.
If you play 40k you are agreeing to it's rules.

If you ignore/change the rules, you are playing something else that needs to be agreed to by your opponent or they walk away. Your sense of what you think is right does not allow you to label people as TFG if they run contrary to your opinion but within the RAW game.

The biggest issue here is that 40k NEEDS stuff like this to keep people from wrecking the game, since GW wants to include things that don't belong in the game. So you have to piss SOMEONE off, either the people who aren't taking OP gak or trying to game the system, or the people who are.

I'm sort of leaning against a comp system too. Less because I find players might feel punished, but more because it adds a thick layer of complexity when it comes to list writing. I would probably be more ok with it if the process was automated through an app or something, but it's a lot to go through manually. I have been working on repointing some armies, though, but as a lot of people have pointed out, the issue isn't so much in the individual unit/wargear as much as the potential for them to be combined into a crushing combo.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
I'm sort of leaning against a comp system too. Less because I find players might feel punished, but more because it adds a thick layer of complexity when it comes to list writing. I would probably be more ok with it if the process was automated through an app or something, but it's a lot to go through manually. I have been working on repointing some armies, though, but as a lot of people have pointed out, the issue isn't so much in the individual unit/wargear as much as the potential for them to be combined into a crushing combo.

This is the crux of why I find 40k 6th/7th a bit difficult to have any hope of balance.
With the large allies list, any disadvantages can be mitigated by their allies.
The combinations are too vast to control.
Allowing for only abilities and powers to only work within the detachment, formation or codex may be the only way to go.

 Talizvar wrote:

 NInjatactiks wrote:
I'm sort of leaning against a comp system too. Less because I find players might feel punished, but more because it adds a thick layer of complexity when it comes to list writing. I would probably be more ok with it if the process was automated through an app or something, but it's a lot to go through manually. I have been working on repointing some armies, though, but as a lot of people have pointed out, the issue isn't so much in the individual unit/wargear as much as the potential for them to be combined into a crushing combo.

This is the crux of why I find 40k 6th/7th a bit difficult to have any hope of balance.
With the large allies list, any disadvantages can be mitigated by their allies.
The combinations are too vast to control.
Allowing for only abilities and powers to only work within the detachment, formation or codex may be the only way to go.

The combinations are certainly much better if everything is appropriately costed to begin with.

Well on that note, I'll be posting up a series of excel spreadsheets on another thread that recosts everything, even unit upgrades. It'll be community driven so everyone can leave their two cents in. Although I doubt it, it'd be awesome to see it as big as ITC.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Well on that note, I'll be posting up a series of excel spreadsheets on another thread that recosts everything, even unit upgrades. It'll be community driven so everyone can leave their two cents in. Although I doubt it, it'd be awesome to see it as big as ITC.

I don't mean to be rude but... that leads you to the multitude of fan-dexes that you can find in "Proposed Rules". You could glance through there and pick up a half dozen re-pointed codexes for every faction in the game.

The one thing 40k has going for it as a game system is the number of people who play it. As you start introducing re-written rules, you remove that one good point.
The reason fan-dexes and rules-rewrites don't catch on (despite the vast number of ones that are decent) is that they require the permission of both players to propagate.

By the time you've re-written core rules and re-costed every unit in every codex, you're not playing 40k anymore. You may as well just pick up Warpath or Future Combat or anything else... and we can see from reality the lack of support those have in the wider community.

Make sure you ban anyone and anything you don't like. That's a surefire way to get new players involved and keep things casual.

Trasvi wrote:
I don't mean to be rude but... that leads you to the multitude of fan-dexes that you can find in "Proposed Rules". You could glance through there and pick up a half dozen re-pointed codexes for every faction in the game.

The one thing 40k has going for it as a game system is the number of people who play it. As you start introducing re-written rules, you remove that one good point.
The reason fan-dexes and rules-rewrites don't catch on (despite the vast number of ones that are decent) is that they require the permission of both players to propagate.

By the time you've re-written core rules and re-costed every unit in every codex, you're not playing 40k anymore. You may as well just pick up Warpath or Future Combat or anything else... and we can see from reality the lack of support those have in the wider community.

All of this applies just as well to the comp system you advocate.

Anyway, the real problem with having open feedback is that you're going to get a ton of garbage that should be filtered out. Some of it will be from people trolling you and/or trying to make their army more powerful so they can win more, some of it will be from people who just don't understand the game very well and have bad ideas about balance. You're better off working with a closed group of people who you trust to have good ideas and taking any public polling with extreme skepticism.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
I don't mean to be rude but... that leads you to the multitude of fan-dexes that you can find in "Proposed Rules". You could glance through there and pick up a half dozen re-pointed codexes for every faction in the game.

The one thing 40k has going for it as a game system is the number of people who play it. As you start introducing re-written rules, you remove that one good point.
The reason fan-dexes and rules-rewrites don't catch on (despite the vast number of ones that are decent) is that they require the permission of both players to propagate.

By the time you've re-written core rules and re-costed every unit in every codex, you're not playing 40k anymore. You may as well just pick up Warpath or Future Combat or anything else... and we can see from reality the lack of support those have in the wider community.

All of this applies just as well to the comp system you advocate.

Anyway, the real problem with having open feedback is that you're going to get a ton of garbage that should be filtered out. Some of it will be from people trolling you and/or trying to make their army more powerful so they can win more, some of it will be from people who just don't understand the game very well and have bad ideas about balance. You're better off working with a closed group of people who you trust to have good ideas and taking any public polling with extreme skepticism.

No it doesn't. Because as I've said: I can play a comped list against your 'normal' list, with the core 40k rules, and you'd never know. I can't play a fan-codex and fan-rules against your normal rules.

And before you say again how 'terrible' my list must be: I've been using an Infernal Tetrad list that is almost identical to the one that placed 10th at BAO; and a Daemonkin list that also places highly in non-comped events. The lists that can't make it in under 20 CC are the kind of cancer lists that you would term as 'serious balance issues'.

 Gamgee wrote:
Make sure you ban anyone and anything you don't like. That's a surefire way to get new players involved and keep things casual.

This is actually a very good point.

OP: if you want to keep things casual, you have to ban Imperial Knights, Eldar and the Tau up front.

It's a harsh measure, but it will pay off in the end.

 Traditio wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
Make sure you ban anyone and anything you don't like. That's a surefire way to get new players involved and keep things casual.

This is actually a very good point.

OP: if you want to keep things casual, you have to ban Imperial Knights, Eldar and the Tau up front.

It's a harsh measure, but it will pay off in the end.

Gamgee was being sarcastic, you know?

Trasvi wrote:
No it doesn't. Because as I've said: I can play a comped list against your 'normal' list, with the core 40k rules, and you'd never know. I can't play a fan-codex and fan-rules against your normal rules.

This is not true at all. I can play my "fan rules" list against a RAW list just fine, we may be playing at a non-standard point level but there's no rule in RAW 40k that you must play 1850 point games. You don't know what point value my list would have under the "fan rules" of point adjustments, just like I don't know what comp score your list would have under the "fan rules" of community comp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Traditio wrote:
OP: if you want to keep things casual, you have to ban Imperial Knights, Eldar and the Tau up front.

Yes, because nothing says "casual" like being told that you aren't welcome in a group because you play the wrong faction.

 Peregrine wrote:
"Casual" and "fun" are not synonyms. What "casual" means is that you make a relatively low investment of effort in the game (or any other activity). You build and paint some models, you spend a few minutes writing a list, and you play the game. Adding a complex comp system makes the game less casual because now you're spending more time carefully arranging balanced lists instead of just throwing some models on the table and rolling dice. And you openly admit this when you talk about optimizing how many comp points you're willing to spend and whether a unit is worth the extra comp penalty it imposes. That's exactly the kind of careful list building that serious tournament players invest tons of effort on!

The crux of the OP, of your replies, and from other people, is that a games' "casualness" is inversely related to the power level of armies.

If you want to just build and paint models and put them on the table, then 40k already lets you do that. Job done! Close thread, let's go home. I'll show up to my next casual game with 50 scatter bikes and 2 wraithknights because that's the models I've built and painted, and we'll see how "casual" you consider the game to be.

If "casualness" is related to list power (as everyone who talks about this seems to think it is) then "just play whatever you want" doesn't automatically make it casual.

Yes, the ideal solution is that GW goes and republishes all of their books and makes them decently balanced such that all armies are much closer to equal. This is not going to happen. Nor are any significant number of people going to start playing PeregrineHammer with your fan-dexes and re-writes.
In my experience trying to take your advice in your first post - to come up with a set of balance/rules erratas that unambiguously define what is and isn't casual - a comp system on top of the actual rules is the closest you're going to get.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
No it doesn't. Because as I've said: I can play a comped list against your 'normal' list, with the core 40k rules, and you'd never know. I can't play a fan-codex and fan-rules against your normal rules.

This is not true at all. I can play my "fan rules" list against a RAW list just fine, we may be playing at a non-standard point level but there's no rule in RAW 40k that you must play 1850 point games. You don't know what point value my list would have under the "fan rules" of point adjustments, just like I don't know what comp score your list would have under the "fan rules" of community comp.

If you and I agree to an 2000pt game of 40k, and I bring along my community comp list, and you bring along your PeregrineHammer guard list where Leman Russ cost 30pts less, then one of us is cheating.
Yes, technically you don't have to agree to a points level... but technically we can re-write all the rules in the book on a roll of a 4+. so its pretty asinine.

 Traditio wrote:
OP: if you want to keep things casual, you have to ban Imperial Knights, Eldar and the Tau up front.

Yes, because nothing says "casual" like being told that you aren't welcome in a group because you play the wrong faction.

That is effectively the other solution that people are offering. "Discuss armies with people and tell them what you are and aren't comfortable playing; tell people you don't want to play them / don't like their play style / don't want to play their army" is the other solution being offered. Which is effectively "shaming people" in to not bringing certain models or factions, it's just outright explicit about it.

I joined a gaming group about a year back that has 2 of these WAAC players out of about 6-7. It varies as people come and go. When I joined everyone was playing the hardest combos they could find to try to stand a chance vs 3 riptides, scatterbike spam, etc. Riptides and bikes were actually 1 guy.

So a year later....and the group is still going fine, however, the WAAC players are met with silence when asking for games on their free time.

One of the WAACs recently came around after participating in a group Apoc game. To keep it short, I basically DMed the setup by asking each player their preference in units, then giving them the appropriate pre-chosen formations. I was called a dictator and worse because I provided guidelines. The WAAC player fought me every step of the way and I eventually gave in. He was GK and knew Daemons were an opponent, brought every possible daemon killing weapon imaginable, encouraged his team to stretch the boundaries of the guidelines, and still rolled psychics and others off table and out of sight. The Daemon player got bent out of shape, rightfully so, and at the end of the game we talked about it for 30 minutes. What we liked, didn't, highlights, low points. The WAAC player actually straight out said I think you guys would have had more fun without me. Hasn't been so bad since, just have to talk to him about expectations.

Now what i would recommend:
1. Keep it simple.
2. Have a community chat.
3. Play your early games with like-minded players and share the results/highlights. This helps build the expectation, also be prepared for a few losses to help tone the worse culprits down.
4. Don't emphasize winning so no prizes or overall score.
5. Share opponents factions and formations beforehand, actual loadouts don't matter so much.
6. Have game days that are non-40k related. It helps to keep moral up, laugh, and have a good time with people you can't fing STAND TO BE ACROSS THE 40K TABLE FROM DANNY!

You know keep it chill.

Trasvi wrote:
The crux of the OP, of your replies, and from other people, is that a games' "casualness" is inversely related to the power level of armies.

And that is not what "casual" means. Consider a person who buys the box set of knights because they think giant walkers are cool, never bothers painting them because painting takes a lot of work, and only occasionally plays because what kind of loser shows up every weekend at a game store instead of doing more interesting things. This is clearly a casual player, but their list is fairly powerful. Now consider a person who plays under your comp system, spends countless hours optimizing lists for the perfect balance between list power and comp penalty, paints every model to the highest standard to ensure they get a good painting score, etc. This is clearly not a casual player, even though their list probably isn't all that powerful.

Nor are any significant number of people going to start playing PeregrineHammer with your fan-dexes and re-writes.

Nor will any significant number of people start playing TrasviHammer with your fan-dexes and re-writes. Calling them "comp" does not change the fact that you're proposing rules changes on the same level as any other balance proposal.

If you and I agree to an 2000pt game of 40k, and I bring along my community comp list, and you bring along your PeregrineHammer guard list where Leman Russ cost 30pts less, then one of us is cheating.
Yes, technically you don't have to agree to a points level... but technically we can re-write all the rules in the book on a roll of a 4+. so its pretty asinine.

So what? This is like arguing that you aren't playing the same army anymore because you agree to play a 1750 point game even though you normally play 1850 point games and built your list for that level. You're either playing with house rules or you aren't playing with them. Any army that is used with "PeregrineHammer" can be used under RAW 40k with the same adjustments that people make all the time when playing at different point levels.

That is effectively the other solution that people are offering. "Discuss armies with people and tell them what you are and aren't comfortable playing; tell people you don't want to play them / don't like their play style / don't want to play their army" is the other solution being offered. Which is effectively "shaming people" in to not bringing certain models or factions, it's just outright explicit about it.

Why are we wasting time considering a ridiculous false dilemma between "ban Tau and Eldar" and "shame people into not bringing those models/factions"? There's an obvious third option: change the game rules (for example, by increasing the point cost of Wraithknights and limiting jetbikes to one weapon upgrade per three models) so that there are no more balance issues and people can play Tau and Eldar without any problems.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
The crux of the OP, of your replies, and from other people, is that a games' "casualness" is inversely related to the power level of armies.

And that is not what "casual" means. Consider a person who buys the box set of knights because they think giant walkers are cool, never bothers painting them because painting takes a lot of work, and only occasionally plays because what kind of loser shows up every weekend at a game store instead of doing more interesting things. This is clearly a casual player, but their list is fairly powerful. Now consider a person who plays under your comp system, spends countless hours optimizing lists for the perfect balance between list power and comp penalty, paints every model to the highest standard to ensure they get a good painting score, etc. This is clearly not a casual player, even though their list probably isn't all that powerful.

People in this thread, starting with the OP and continuing with the first reply by yourself, interpret "casual" games to mean "not overly competitive" or at least "well balanced".

The OP didn't say "What mindset did my opponent have in mind when they put their army together?": it was about competitiveness of the force. If we're trying to encourage "keeping it casual", according to your logic perhaps we should ban painted armies because obviously that person is putting too much effort in to be considered a casual player?

One meaning of casual certainly could be "amount of time & effort invested". But in this situation, and pretty much every situation talking about 40k, when people are talking about "keeping it casual" they mean keeping the screamerstars and riptide wings and whatever out of the game. It may be that a 'casual' player 'accidentally' creates a knight spam army; but I seriously doubt that is a usable excuse to a group that wants to keep things casual.

If you and I agree to an 2000pt game of 40k, and I bring along my community comp list, and you bring along your PeregrineHammer guard list where Leman Russ cost 30pts less, then one of us is cheating.
Yes, technically you don't have to agree to a points level... but technically we can re-write all the rules in the book on a roll of a 4+. so its pretty asinine.

So what? This is like arguing that you aren't playing the same army anymore because you agree to play a 1750 point game even though you normally play 1850 point games and built your list for that level. You're either playing with house rules or you aren't playing with them. Any army that is used with "PeregrineHammer" can be used under RAW 40k with the same adjustments that people make all the time when playing at different point levels.

My argument is that I can pick up a 1850pt list built under community comp rules and legally transplant it without any changes in to any other game of 40k. The same cannot be said regarding a list created with actually changed point values.
Further, the skills and knowledge of the rules I have from comped 40k again can be transplanted to any other 40k game without any change; but considering that you keep saying that core rules need to be changed for true balance, that could mean re-writing entire phases and playing those in very different ways (At least, I imagine that if you were doing a balance re-write the psychic phase would be severely changed)

Why are we wasting time considering a ridiculous false dilemma between "ban Tau and Eldar" and "shame people into not bringing those models/factions"? There's an obvious third option: change the game rules (for example, by increasing the point cost of Wraithknights and limiting jetbikes to one weapon upgrade per three models) so that there are no more balance issues and people can play Tau and Eldar without any problems.

In my experience actually trying those things, changing the rules as you suggest is a much less palatable option to people than using a comp system. You might not see the difference between the two, but people actually using the system do.

Trasvi wrote:
People in this thread, starting with the OP and continuing with the first reply by yourself, interpret "casual" games to mean "not overly competitive" or at least "well balanced".

"Balanced" and "not overly competitive" are not the same as "all lists at a low power level".

One meaning of casual certainly could be "amount of time & effort invested". But in this situation, and pretty much every situation talking about 40k, when people are talking about "keeping it casual" they mean keeping the screamerstars and riptide wings and whatever out of the game. It may be that a 'casual' player 'accidentally' creates a knight spam army; but I seriously doubt that is a usable excuse to a group that wants to keep things casual.

And this is a terrible definition of "casual" that has nothing to do with the conventional meaning of the word. A casual game is one where people invest a relatively low amount of time and effort and don't care all that much about it.What you are describing is a serious game where players put a lot of effort into carefully negotiating power levels and maintaining balance, and happen to play armies with a low power level. That is a valid thing to want to do, but "casual" is an inappropriate description that seeks to add a moral high ground of "we're not those WAAC TFGs" to a choice that has nothing to do with casual vs. dedicated players.

My argument is that I can pick up a 1850pt list built under community comp rules and legally transplant it without any changes in to any other game of 40k. The same cannot be said regarding a list created with actually changed point values.

So what? Why does this matter? People make new lists for games all the time, being able to keep the exact same list is a marginal benefit at most. If you're playing a normal game of 40k there's no need to care about what would be legal under your comp system or use the comp rules in constructing your list, just like there's no need to care about what would be legal under "PeregrineHammer" rules.

Further, the skills and knowledge of the rules I have from comped 40k again can be transplanted to any other 40k game without any change; but considering that you keep saying that core rules need to be changed for true balance, that could mean re-writing entire phases and playing those in very different ways (At least, I imagine that if you were doing a balance re-write the psychic phase would be severely changed)

You're assuming way more changes than I ever mentioned, please don't do that. Balance could be greatly improved without making any significant changes to the core rules. And your comp system also requires learning a whole new set of rules, knowledge which can't be transplanted to a normal 40k game.

Peregrine:

I understand most of the points that you are making, I think, but I don't fully understand this point:

What do you have against comp scoring per se?

If I'm understanding you, you're saying that it's just an excuse to shame people who bring armies that have too high of a comp score.

But I think that Trasvi's point is that, just like a points limit, you can agree to a comp points limit score.

So in effect, a comps points limit would just be an additional agreed upon points limit.

So 1850 points
10 comp points

I am failing to grasp why you think that this is a bad idea.

I agree with you that if a tournament says that they're going to use comp scoring, and the more points people use, the less chance they have of winning, that at least sounds like an excuse to shame people.

But what if the tournament just imposes a comps points limit? "You must have an army of no more than 1850 points and 15 comp points. Any more and you may not enter."

 Traditio wrote:
What do you have against comp scoring per se?

The fact that, rather than fixing a broken rule so that it is no longer a problem, comp allows you to play with the broken thing, hurt your opponent's enjoyment of the game, and then penalizes you after the damage is already done. If you're able to identify a problem clearly enough to create a comp system to punish it then you can change the rule so that the problem never happens in the first place.

The secondary problem I have with it is that the execution of comp systems is almost always awful. Things that are not balance problems are often penalized because they aren't "playing the game the right way" or because the author of the comp system doesn't understand the game very well. And things that are too powerful often slip through, reducing comp to changing what the best tournament list is (and possibly forcing you to buy some new models to exploit it) rather than improving game balance in any meaningful way. In theory a comp system could avoid these problems, but it's something that pretty consistently happens.

But what if the tournament just imposes a comps points limit? "You must have an army of no more than 1850 points and 15 comp points. Any more and you may not enter."

You can do this, but in practice what comp often means is "casual at all costs" players getting upset if you go anywhere near the maximum comp score. Perhaps this does not happen in Trasvi's area, but I've certainly seen enough of that attitude from comp advocates online. And then you go right back to the problem of comp being the wrong approach: if you can make a comp system that works well for a tournament like this you can fix the rules directly.

Peregrine wrote:The fact that, rather than fixing a broken rule so that it is no longer a problem, comp allows you to play with the broken thing, hurt your opponent's enjoyment of the game, and then penalizes you after the damage is already done.

http://www.communitycomp.org/files/CommunityComp.pdf

If you actually examine the community comp document, it's not just about "fixing" OP things. It also takes into account things that are not necessarily strong individually, but become "strong" when taken in large numbers (e.g., fliers and landraiders). It also takes into account the relative strength of things that aren't broken, but are still good for their points.

If anyone's interested, I ran the CAD version of my crimson fists list through the comp standards and got a 5. I think.

6 rhinos = 2 points
2 Imp. Fist dev squads = 2 points
Orbital strike on Pedro Kantor = 1 point

I don't know. I guess this is my inclination: if you want to use a comp system as the exclusive way of fixing in-game imbalances, then I agree with you that it's not enough by a long shot. Saying "Ok, your wraithknight is worth 5 of my imp fist devastator squads" still allows the wraithknight to be taken, and it allows it to be taken at its by-the-book points cost and ruleset.

But what if the goal is simply to ensure that the persons have armies of roughly equivalent power levels, even if all of the points costs are fair?

For example:

"No superheavies allowed. No tau allowed. No eldar allowed. No formations allowed. Limit of 1850 points and 10 comp points."

If you're able to identify a problem clearly enough to create a comp system to punish it then you can change the rule so that the problem never happens in the first place.

I think that the comp system is just right about this. Is 1 drop pod as problematic as 10 of them?

The secondary problem I have with it is that the execution of comp systems is almost always awful. Things that are not balance problems are often penalized because they aren't "playing the game the right way" or because the author of the comp system doesn't understand the game very well.

That's not the impression I got from what I saw of the pdf I linked above.

You can do this, but in practice what comp often means is "casual at all costs" players getting upset if you go anywhere near the maximum comp score.

Yeah, that's just crazy. At that point, they should just have set a lower comp score.

I am afraid that a rule set can't really make things casual. It is more of an attitude among the players. Different groups are going to have different ideas of what "casual" is too. Even different subcultures within a group will have different ways they want to play the game. The key is getting the different styles to play well together. I have a Dark Angels army that is getting pretty decent. I can run a full battle company in larger points games and take some free razorbacks that go with the formation, as well as Ravenwing, deathwing and three flyers. When I go up against Kirk's Tau or Robert's Chaos formations, I load my army up to the gills and we have a total slug fest. Our lists may be a bit tougher than the average player in our group wants to play against, but they are single faction, straight codex and supplement with no allies, no unbound stuff, no special secret rules that we got by buying some overpowered Forgeworld book or unit, and no goofy spam. We all have some stuff capable of shooting heavies, we all have some speed, a way to deal with flyers and reasonable balance to our armies. We play with flyers, and we're all okay with it. (We also don't SPAM our lists with an unstoppable number of one unit type, like the guy on you tube who brought out 9 Heldrakes in a standard game) All of our lists would also get tabled by a real OP tournament list in short order. They are still a bit tougher than what the local meta wants to deal with, so we keep it to each other. We have a couple of guys who love having unbound Knights, Forgeworld superheavies and flyers all bashing away at each other. It's the way they like to play, and who are we to stop them? The problem occurs when the guy with the unbound list with all riptides, or the guy with $5,000 worth of Forgeworld wants to take on the new guy who is still fleshing out his first army and rip him to shreds, just to prove he can. We had one guy who got mad because we wouldn't set up organized games to GW rules so that he could bring in an unbound list and beat everybody with it. He showed up a couple of times, called us a bunch of wusses for not playing up to his WAAC style and left. Last I heard, he is still terrorizing the Seventh Graders down at the local gaming store and giving the owner migraines.

Our idea of casual play is as follows. We do not keep track of wins and losses. We don't have standings or prizes of any type. There is nothing to be gained by winning all of your battles. (We will be doing some Kill Team meets this Winter, but they will be separate from our casual gameplay. They also won't have prizes, just pride) You never have to face a certain player or army. There is no set schedule of who must play whom. Sometimes people will agree to play each other in advance, or challenge two or three others to a group of battles with certain sized armies, but our general style is to see who shows up and pair off against guys who have an army that looks like it would be a fun match for ours. The players with the bigger armies and stronger lists are also pretty good about looking at their opponent's army and setting aside units they can't handle and creating a good, fair fight.

We generally encourage a fun attitude We don't care what other people play. If two guys want to whip out Riptide armies, more power to them. If Kirk and Robert want to bring the full armies and flood the table with nasty stuff and slug it out, they are welcome to do that. If I want to toss my slightly less powerful Dark Angels up against them,Knowing I am outmatched, I am welcome to do so, (I have played against both of them and had a good time, even though I was a bit outmatched. One of my big thrills was bringing Kirk down when I had a perfect night, and he didn't.) I am working hard to bring my DA army up to the level of those two, but I am still having fun along the way. It's the attitude that seems to make the play casual, not the rules and lists. If I am going to play the new guy's Ultrasmurfs, I am not going to whip out the three flyer formation, knowing that he doesn't have a lot of AA. I am not out to destroy him. I will play him hard, and my army will be well planned out, but I will also make sure we are both having a lot of fun in the game. One of our saving graces is that we don't have any total jerks in our group. A couple of our guys get a little wound up and competitive, but they can keep it toned down, and we don't ever seem to offend each other. We all seem to like kicking back after a game and laughing about it with our opponent. Even the trash talk is all done with a big grin. We also have all loaned opponents a unit or two to help them out, we have all loaned an army to somebody for a game, and we have all set up for a match against a newer player with a weaker army, and looked at the table and said, "Hey let's switch sides this game and you can play my army while I play yours". We have some good players, but we also are good at playing for fun.

If you are going to start organizing tournaments, keeping standings, or trying to figure out who's ahead, then you will need to set up rules and stick to them. If you want to keep people from outspending each other, then you need to set price limits on units, dictate list contents, ban certain units and limit the size and scope of the armies. This is no longer casual play. This is competition, and the person who works the hardest, reads the rules and figures out what is the best list within the rules will be the winner. No rule can keep the WAAC player from figuring out the best mousetrap and implementing it. The casual player will take a "Close enough" attitude, and "That Guy" will have the perfectly optimized list, no matter what rules you implement. He will also play totally cutthroat on the table and still end up winning more than the other players. It's the nature of competition.

It happens in Dirt track racing. I have raced for about thirty years before a medical situation forced me to hang up my helmet. No matter how restrictive the rules get regarding motors, some people will research a combination, build right up to the outer limits of the rules and spend ten thousand dollars more than the other guy to get the slightly better motor. They will build three or four different combinations, test them all on the dyno at a thousand dollars a pop, and pick the best one to run with. Most of the rest of the guys just build up a motor to the basic specs and run it with the parts they can afford. Guess who usually wins all of the races? The same guy that spams the riptides! If we ban riptides, he will show up with the next best combination. If we ban that list, he will find the next best remaining list. He will always build the most powerful list he can within the rules.

If you are going to have actual competition, (In Warhammer or racing) then that guy will almost always end up winning. (Usually there are a few of them, so there is still some good battling at the front of the pack while the rest of us fight amongst ourselves and enjoy the battle for eighth place.) It is the nature of the beast, and any attempts to rule out advantages will just narrow the gap a little bit. They won't keep the ultra competitive guy from winning a lot. Luckily, the tracks I raced at had good guys up and down the field, and we only had a couple of real jerks. We would usually finish in the top ten, and if we had a really good night, we could sneak into the top five. I always congratulated the winner and the guys I was running with at the finish. The fact that there were a few guys with more resources than I had, and that were more WAAC, never stopped me from going out and having a good time racing. I did engineering related work on the pro circuits for several seasons too, where we all spent millions worth of others people's money to make our driver faster. We were the ultra competitive guys there. (Our paycheck and whether or not we had a job next Month depended upon where we finished our races.) We won some big ones, but it never had the thrill that driving my own car on a local dirt track did, even if I just finished in the middle of the pack.

Trying to totally randomize the game to make the luck of the dice more important than the performance of the armies on the table, and trying to rig the game so that advantages of a powerful army can be nullified by luck is just a crutch. Taking away the power of certain units just makes others more powerful. That guy will still manage to come up with a list that optimizes itself under the new rules. The fact that 40K is about as well balanced as an all Twinkie diet doesn't help either. Some factions will always be better than others. Competitive man will always be playing one of those factions. Get used to it. Casual play and competitive play are almost mutually exclusive by definition. If I don't care about the composition and loadout of my army, and I am playing against somebody who does, I will be at a disadvantage. The only thing that additional rules can do is get the cheesy units that seem to unbalance the players removed or limited.

The only other real solution would be to split the players up by ranking. The top third or quarter of the players would be ranked as "Expert" and would play WAAC Cheese amongst themselves, the middle half would be "Intermediate" and the bottom bunch would be "Novice". Players who won too much would move up into the next class. I can't see this happening with most local gaming metas. If there was a tournament circuit and structure like MTG has, I could see it, but that really seems to go against casual play.

 Verviedi wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:
I think that's impossible with the current state of 40K and human mindset in general. Our group was pretty causal, but then we brought a couple of new guys, one with Tau and 2 x Riptides and the other with a crazy Fist of Medusa combo and everyone lost their head. Now it's WAAC or bust, as everyone is bringing the strongest possible build, because "he's playing an OP force and my army can't be weaker" and other such crap...

Now I don't suppose you asked that *gasp* they tone down their lists, speaking to them in private? If they really affected your community in such a way, why haven't you pointed this out to them?

I did. Have a three guesses at the answer. Altough to be fair, we've decided that our next campaign (if there will be one) is going to be a non-SM factions only. IG, Orks, DE and Tau, altough the Ork player, the one that escalated things, already whines about Orks being gak and thinks about getting some Necrons, which in turn pissess off two other guys, who min-maxed their lists because of him in the current game.

It's like a never ending cycle of t**ts.

I play chaos nurgle themed army so I am always casual lol.

I just moved to a new area and the local gaming group has about 4-5 guys that show up on Saturdays and all are very relaxed. we agree on anything we don't wanna play against. (for me I wont play elder at all lol) but other then that we all just have fun and laugh and stuff that happens.

I've almost finished my KDK army and look forward to playing that. but the guy I play the most is GK so ive come to hate force with so much passion lol.

army's I play against are:

grey knights
blood angels
ultra marines
dark elder (poison spam is annoying)
tau (luckily he's casual and only brings 1 riptide)
other chaos nurgle player
necrons.

Ban the player, not the game? If casual is your goal anyways. Other than that, d-bag buys drinks. They'll go broke or figure it out.

 Traditio wrote:

Peregrine wrote:The fact that, rather than fixing a broken rule so that it is no longer a problem, comp allows you to play with the broken thing, hurt your opponent's enjoyment of the game, and then penalizes you after the damage is already done.

http://www.communitycomp.org/files/CommunityComp.pdf

If you actually examine the community comp document, it's not just about "fixing" OP things. It also takes into account things that are not necessarily strong individually, but become "strong" when taken in large numbers (e.g., fliers and landraiders). It also takes into account the relative strength of things that aren't broken, but are still good for their points.

If anyone's interested, I ran the CAD version of my crimson fists list through the comp standards and got a 5. I think.

6 rhinos = 2 points
2 Imp. Fist dev squads = 2 points
Orbital strike on Pedro Kantor = 1 point

I don't know. I guess this is my inclination: if you want to use a comp system as the exclusive way of fixing in-game imbalances, then I agree with you that it's not enough by a long shot. Saying "Ok, your wraithknight is worth 5 of my imp fist devastator squads" still allows the wraithknight to be taken, and it allows it to be taken at its by-the-book points cost and ruleset.

But what if the goal is simply to ensure that the persons have armies of roughly equivalent power levels, even if all of the points costs are fair?

For example:

"No superheavies allowed. No tau allowed. No eldar allowed. No formations allowed. Limit of 1850 points and 10 comp points."

If you're able to identify a problem clearly enough to create a comp system to punish it then you can change the rule so that the problem never happens in the first place.

I think that the comp system is just right about this. Is 1 drop pod as problematic as 10 of them?

The secondary problem I have with it is that the execution of comp systems is almost always awful. Things that are not balance problems are often penalized because they aren't "playing the game the right way" or because the author of the comp system doesn't understand the game very well.

That's not the impression I got from what I saw of the pdf I linked above.

You can do this, but in practice what comp often means is "casual at all costs" players getting upset if you go anywhere near the maximum comp score.

Yeah, that's just crazy. At that point, they should just have set a lower comp score.

You literally lost ALL credit saying Land Raiders are effective at any number.

And really? Orbital Bombardment isn't even an issue. On top of the company list hating on Bullgryns. Seriously, how can you defend this gak?

I don't really expect him to listen to anything I say, which is why I keep it short with him.

Two drink minimum.

Alright, I'm starting to think making a casual group is more or less a lost cause with the state of 40k as it is. Tournaments and competitive leagues sure have it easy since you can bring whatever you want and no one should complain.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Alright, I'm starting to think making a casual group is more or less a lost cause with the state of 40k as it is. Tournaments and competitive leagues sure have it easy since you can bring whatever you want and no one should complain.

Not a complete lost cause.
See if anyone is willing to "craft" a scenario based on some 40k lore.
Get the players that are willing to give a list of what they have and see if the forces can be "balanced" powerlevel-wise.
I usually throw in extra "freebie" kit for the each player to use (distracts them and gives more fun) like more Skyfire weapons on a defending wall / fortification, orbital lance strikes or some special siege weapon model (while keeping it even).
There were for Apocalypse some perk/ability cards that were worth some 100 points each that could be bought/used for a battle to help balance things if the hordes of stuff was a mismatch, they would be worth looking at.

Heck, making surviving the environment can add a level of fun on it's own:
- Zombies... the "plague of disbelief" or something that can use rules like the old (or new) kill team rules or the tyranid out of synapse range rules to operate some third faction on the table.
- I had an objective that was some special daemonic artefact so when a group grabbed the item, a Grey Knight squad and a Daemon squad would work their way toward the team with the objective (that is attached to them until the squad dies) the panic for all concerned was impressive.
- Random meteor shower / space warfare debris impacting onto the ground or spontaneous lava flows coming up.
- Earthquakes causing pinning.
- Strange planetary magnetic fields causing 50/50 chance of energy weapons for that squad becoming "gets hot" but +1S and +1AP.
- City of Death started the trend of taking various objectives, automatically confer some bonus (that make sense!).

Casual, is beer and pretzels.
There is little casual with 40k I find.
A strong attempt at making it MOAR fun is a whole different matter.
If I say "I designed a scenario." it is gratifying that my friends ask how soon we can get together?
Because we had fun, because they tend to be close games, insane things happen and all our carefully planned methods of play get thrown out the window and they get talked about like a funny D&D campaign that went terribly wrong.
Because with friends, if it all goes wrong equally, it is good.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Alright, I'm starting to think making a casual group is more or less a lost cause with the state of 40k as it is. Tournaments and competitive leagues sure have it easy since you can bring whatever you want and no one should complain.

A casual group isn't a lot cause but your initial premise was completely bipolar-
A non-competitive competition (why do people try and do this? You're supposed to try and win but not too hard?) where you allow players to penalize each other after the game (because people are always totally fair right after they've been beaten) based a scale that assumes that fluffy and effective are opposites (clearly not the case) and that fluffy involves taking a random selection of units. (another unfounded assumption) It also requires players to somehow judge the other players intent in their unit selection.

If you want to encourage people to be less competitive then have an organized play event which does not revolve around winning.

Asymmetric missions are also good for this - where both the points and victory conditions are different for the two sides (especially where they're secret). It forces people to think and leads to some really interesting games as well as shaking up the competitive players who are used to playing a specific mission set at specific points.

Have a look at the old GW Battlegrounds events and at the Epic40K fog of war mission for ideas.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Alright, I'm starting to think making a casual group is more or less a lost cause with the state of 40k as it is. Tournaments and competitive leagues sure have it easy since you can bring whatever you want and no one should complain.

It completely depends on the group that is the problem. All it takes is one tool who wants to show up with three riptides or a bunch of Forgeworld crap and steamroll people and then it collapses. the problem is that these people tend to love 40k because of exactly that reason; if they were truly competitive people they would be playing a game that had much better competitive rules but they don'. they play 40k because it's so skewed they can bring a bazooka to a knife fight and it's still allowed. Even worse than that all the random stuff in the game can cause things to be extremely nonfun through nobody's fault. I played my first game of 40K in 15 years last week and while it wasn't terrible it was not fun because my opponent was scoring every turn from his own area where I had no chance to get because random objectives. My opponent was a great guy but it really made the game seem like a pile of crap because of that.

Even if you have a narrative campaign there will always be that person that wants to bring something to powerful because they want to win whether it's for an actual prize or whether it's for something in the campaign such as taking over a key planet. anytime there is something at stake tangible or not you will get these kind of people that will care more about their own enjoyment then the enjoyment of themselves and their opponent