The terrain layouts are great for competitive games. They're not very pretty or thematic, but they are really balanced. This kind of discussion has come up in a lot of other topics, and people often show boards they'd been using for years but they look barren. In the old days, you could put craters and ruined walls everywhere, but those don't do enough now. 9th is all about big obscuring ruins and buildings obstructing the middle of the board. You should have to work to get line of sight on the first turn, because the game is extremely lethal. And that's a good thing, because it makes maneuvering in the first couple turns really important. You can set up and execute more complicated strategies because more of the game is decided by the deterministic movement.
I disagree that "this is the way GW wants the game to be played". I think it's an example of a fair board, but GW also supports narrative games. You can certainly take ideas about balancing the terrain layout from the competitive examples, but symmetrical boards don't work well in the typically asymmetrical narrative missions anyway. You'll always have to build boards to fit your mission and the armies playing it.
Boards in 9th are ugly, cramped, and small. No room to array your forces and maneuver them properly. I like terrain- including LOS blocking terrain, but not as much as GW seems to like.
I like a mix of buildings, trees, hills, etc. Preferred boards represent fighitng OUTSIDE of cities. City fights are awful and no one wants to do it in real life. You fight outside the city your home or your prize isn't ruined.
Honestly not a huge fan. I'm all for lots of LOS blocking, but it's taken a bit far here. Also, they really don't use any other terrain like craters or barricades.
They REALLY don't want non flying tanks to work it seems to me.
If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. The table top tactic guys played a game with this layout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcE0IKCU48) and you can see how the terrain actually mattered in this game. Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. I would never use this set up for a narrative game, nor even just a casual game. But in both of those situations, there is an expectation that neither player is going to bring over the top lists. If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.
So you think the entire base of the big terrain pieces of supposed to be obscuring?
I think as far as being boring, competition boards are generally boring and symmetrical. I don't think GW are trying to tell everybody that this is the only way to play. Anybody playing a more narrative oriented game isn't going to set up like this.
This is for standardised, level playing field tournament games.
I really like boards with dense terrain if you're primarily fighting with infantry units ala Cities of Death. I don't like dense terrain if you and your opponent want to have vehicles and room to maneuver them.
Obscuring terrain is a good concept. But I worry that GW is using it as a crutch to make up for the fact that everything is very fast and super killy.
It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.
Heafstaag wrote: Boards in 9th are ugly, cramped, and small. No room to array your forces and maneuver them properly. I like terrain- including LOS blocking terrain, but not as much as GW seems to like.
I like a mix of buildings, trees, hills, etc. Preferred boards represent fighitng OUTSIDE of cities. City fights are awful and no one wants to do it in real life. You fight outside the city your home or your prize isn't ruined.
You can. Nothing stopping you. In fact, you can assign whatever riles you want to the terrain as you see fit.
DarkHound wrote: It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.
The difficulty with terrain and vehicles is that it's often easy to inadvertently create situations where a little bit of terrain becomes a huge road block for vehicles, to the point where it's impossible to go around the terrain in a feasible manner. If you end up deploying your vehicle somewhere that it won't ever be able to maneuver out of, that's less maneuvering happening.
DarkHound wrote: It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.
There's a reason people call vehicle heavy lists "parking lots". I've played against enough Tau/Guard/etc shooting galleries to know there are some ulterior motives to these complaints about vehicles needing less terrain on the table.
Quasistellar wrote:Honestly not a huge fan. I'm all for lots of LOS blocking, but it's taken a bit far here. Also, they really don't use any other terrain like craters or barricades.
They REALLY don't want non flying tanks to work it seems to me.
Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.
xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. The table top tactic guys played a game with this layout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcE0IKCU48) and you can see how the terrain actually mattered in this game. Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. I would never use this set up for a narrative game, nor even just a casual game. But in both of those situations, there is an expectation that neither player is going to bring over the top lists. If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.
How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?
DarkHound wrote: It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering.
The difficulty with terrain and vehicles is that it's often easy to inadvertently create situations where a little bit of terrain becomes a huge road block for vehicles, to the point where it's impossible to go around the terrain in a feasible manner. If you end up deploying your vehicle somewhere that it won't ever be able to maneuver out of, that's less maneuvering happening.
I play with Dunecrawlers on their full, dinner-plate bases, and I just push the model around the table to make sure it fits when we're setting up terrain. Also remember, models can freely move over terrain features 1" tall, which is a chest-high wall for most infantry. You'd have to really try to box them in. If you set up terrain without enough room to move, and then deploy your vehicles where they can't move, that's entirely on you.
Arachnofiend wrote: There's a reason people call vehicle heavy lists "parking lots". I've played against enough Tau/Guard/etc shooting galleries to know there are some ulterior motives to these complaints about vehicles needing less terrain on the table.
I was there, in 5th edition, when that codex first appeared. Chimera chasis left not patch of field uncovered. It was just artillery for 4 turns, and then a mad dash to claim objectives. Good luck actually reaching their objective behind 12" of metal boxes, especially when they wrecked into new terrain features.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.
xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. ... Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. ... If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.
How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?
Don't be obtuse: it's balanced between factions and common playstyles, not between the specific unit types in the abstract. I play Knights on boards like these and it isn't a big deal. You can still walk into the ruins to melee if you need it, and you can shoot models in the terrain pretty much freely.
28mm as a scale just doesn't jive too well for anything above the platoon level. If anything the boards should be bigger than they used to be. Smaller tables just don't work.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.
xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. ... Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. ... If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.
How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?
Don't be obtuse: it's balanced between factions and common playstyles, not between the specific unit types in the abstract. I play Knights on boards like these and it isn't a big deal. You can still walk into the ruins to melee if you need it, and you can shoot models in the terrain pretty much freely.
I was responding to Xeen's comment that this would favor infantry (and especially heavy and assault infantry), and I agree with them on that.
And I apologize, I meant that gw doesn't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or isn't a knight to work. Knights have relatively small footprints compared to things like Baneblades and Fellblades, so will be able to get around better. Watching TT's report (just the start of it so far), I'm seeing most lanes barely big enough for Beard's Repulsor. A SHT without FLY will either be stuck moving around the outside of the board or the main thoroughfares, where it will be a sitting duck for AT infantry sitting in cover. I enjoy a good city fight myself, but every fight shouldn't be one.
Ah, I'm sorry for my rudeness. I agree that Baneblades are screwed in this format. It's a small shame, but it's probably good for competitive play that Baneblades aren't strong enough. Personally I don't think Knights should be a stand-alone faction either; I don't like allowing skew armies to exist, but that's another topic.
These layouts are super bland and boring. If you design 9 standard terrain pieces and only use two of them for your game, you did something very, very wrong.
The "how to build a good table" video from table top titans is still one of the best guides for making enjoyable tables - both for narrative and tournament games. GW should watch that.
Essentially there are four important categories of terrain - ruins, forest/industrial/craters, barricades and containers/rocks(natural LoS blockers). If your table doesn't have all four of these, you have already tossed balance out the window.
DarkHound wrote:Ah, I'm sorry for my rudeness. I agree that Baneblades are screwed in this format. It's a small shame, but it's probably good for competitive play that Baneblades aren't strong enough. Personally I don't think Knights should be a stand-alone faction either; I don't like allowing skew armies to exist, but that's another topic.
No matter what your stance on super-heavies is, ork Morkanauts and buggies face the same issue, as do large vehicles like landraiders, defilers or monoliths who have been part of the game for what feels like forever.
As a rule of thumb, our tables either have to have two pathes where a large vehicle can fit through and one which can fit smaller ones like dreads or rhinos OR two pathes wide enough to fit three medium vehicles next to each other. The later is more difficult to without turning the board into a shooting gallery though, but possible.
I might be a complete idiot, but could anyone tell me where I could find pictures or a detailed description of what this layout would be? I can't seem to find anything beyond what's in the rulebook and I wouldn't exactly call that dense.
Spoletta wrote: Note that those big obscuring elements are for the most part traversable for vehicles, so you can actually actually maneuver decently.
The issue is that you can't drive through walls with vehicles. In terrain setup 2 a single unit of nurglings or infiltrators can essentially make an entire ork buggy list lose their first turn because they can lock most of the army in their deployment zone.
Aside from them being symmetrical I find it to be a pretty typical layout of our tables.
Edit after watching the example tables: they're rather empty compared to what we usually do
Few things then we normally use, but does look like an avarge kind of a table. It is good that GW didn't decide to make asymetrical tables the norm for regular games.
Not impressed either... Seems pretty empty while at the same time not really engaging.
I prefer asymmetrical layout distributed around a diagonal, with a blocking center element in the table and more elements near the table edge, but some fire line in between.
Especially since the game is being in the middle, being able to charge from a objective to the other without line of sight or retaliation seems... Wrong?
I like slightly asymmetrical tables, but I guess I'm in the minority.
By the way, what I'm noticing is that they use a total of 10 terrain elements in total for the map and calling it a day. Which considering how big they are, it is actually possible.
This reminds me that there is an obscure book that has never been used, that told us how to play by bringing 6(?) terrain elements per player and placing them before the battle.
At the time we laughed at it because 12 terrain elements in total were too few, but if those are the intended sizes, then it starts making quite a bit more sense.
Could it be time to give a try to Tactical Deployment? Even only to finally have a way to play faction fortifications without getting to the table and discovering that you can't possibly deploy them.
I think people would have to get faction foritification first, for that to work. Even if someone could plop the sm bunker inside a building people still wouldn't do it, without it having LoS ingoring shoting.
I enjoy these layouts on a tournament level. It means you get to pit your skills against your opponent while minimizing the danger of ridiculous terrain layout.
However, if I am playing Narrative(Crusade) I will set up the table to reflect the conflict me and my partner are playing out.
Jidmah wrote: These layouts are super bland and boring. If you design 9 standard terrain pieces and only use two of them for your game, you did something very, very wrong.
Absolutely agree. Where's the Dense terrain? Where's the impassable LoS blockers? Where are the barricades, hills etc? This seems really bland and quite empty. One of the issues is that while a lot of the table is covered with terrain, a large amount of the surface area is taken up by relatively few pieces of terrain.
LOLGW, keep trying to turn your game into some kind of Fortnite-esq arena game that it is clearly not. Keep pushing those tiny boards and having people refer to games as “matches”….
Spoletta wrote: There are dense terrains in those layouts.
I agree on the lack of barricades and heavy cover in general. It is sorely needed.
You're right, there is Dense- my bad. It's all pushed right to the outside of the board, though, which makes it functionally useless for anything other than shooting armies.
Another important question is how many windows and openings the Obscuring terrain will have. If it's essentially completely open LoS then you're either Obscured or completely visible depending whether you're in the terrain or not. If it's got more closed-off sections on it that allows units to be in the terrain but still out of LoS from certain angles, which is often better IMO.
I don't know how terrain affects gaming nowadays because I haven't played 40k after 4th edition. But I can still say that the example boards look stupid. Terrain is supposed to represent battlefield even in competitive gaming and I can't think of an battlefield that has diagonal buildings in the middle of the crossroads. Or perfect symmetry for that matter.
I don't mind pre-set maps per se. On the contrary, I think they are an excellent idea, especially four tournaments. I just think that this effort is super lame and they could have a lot better.
Grimtuff wrote: LOLGW, keep trying to turn your game into some kind of Fortnite-esq arena game that it is clearly not. Keep pushing those tiny boards and having people refer to games as “matches”….
Dafuq has become of this hobby?
It turned into what the customer asked for.
We wanted GW to separate narrative play from matched play.
8th comes and those 2 kind of games have different rules.
We wanted better terrain rules and the tournament play and regular matched play separated.
9th comes and matched play and tournament play have different rules, also terrain is much more influential on the result of the game.
Since terrain is now so important, we don't accept that there are no strict guidelines for the amount of type of that.
GW provides strict guidelines on terrain placement.
...
GW is literally chasing after the customer's demands. Even on this board, I could provide you multiple threads where those things have been requested.
Luckily the rules are now split between the game types, and those terrain guidelines are intended ONLY FOR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT LEVEL EVENTS. Ok? They are not guidelines for the garage game between me and my pal. They are not "The hobby". It is a specific guidelines for a specific way to play the game, which we players have requested.
Grimtuff wrote: LOLGW, keep trying to turn your game into some kind of Fortnite-esq arena game that it is clearly not. Keep pushing those tiny boards and having people refer to games as “matches”….
Dafuq has become of this hobby?
It turned into what the customer asked for.
We wanted GW to separate narrative play from matched play.
8th comes and those 2 kind of games have different rules.
We wanted better terrain rules and the tournament play and regular matched play separated.
9th comes and matched play and tournament play have different rules, also terrain is much more influential on the result of the game.
Since terrain is now so important, we don't accept that there are no strict guidelines for the amount of type of that.
GW provides strict guidelines on terrain placement.
...
GW is literally chasing after the customer's demands. Even on this board, I could provide you multiple threads where those things have been requested.
Luckily the rules are now split between the game types, and those terrain guidelines are intended ONLY FOR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT LEVEL EVENTS. Ok? They are not guidelines for the garage game between me and my pal. They are not "The hobby". It is a specific guidelines for a specific way to play the game, which we players have requested.
You mean it turned into what the vocal minority demanded
Diagrams look full. Photos look sparse. No terrain in DZ is a problem. I get why they’re doing it for ease/speed/“fairness” in a tourney setting but it’s nothing I’ll adopt.
Grimtuff wrote: LOLGW, keep trying to turn your game into some kind of Fortnite-esq arena game that it is clearly not. Keep pushing those tiny boards and having people refer to games as “matches”….
Dafuq has become of this hobby?
It turned into what the customer asked for.
We wanted GW to separate narrative play from matched play.
8th comes and those 2 kind of games have different rules.
We wanted better terrain rules and the tournament play and regular matched play separated.
9th comes and matched play and tournament play have different rules, also terrain is much more influential on the result of the game.
Since terrain is now so important, we don't accept that there are no strict guidelines for the amount of type of that.
GW provides strict guidelines on terrain placement.
...
GW is literally chasing after the customer's demands. Even on this board, I could provide you multiple threads where those things have been requested.
Luckily the rules are now split between the game types, and those terrain guidelines are intended ONLY FOR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT LEVEL EVENTS. Ok? They are not guidelines for the garage game between me and my pal. They are not "The hobby". It is a specific guidelines for a specific way to play the game, which we players have requested.
You mean it turned into what the vocal minority demanded
Considering that it is made for a minority and it is openly stated so, then.... yes?
It's funny that people think this is considered too much terrain. In 9th most competitive players would consider this less terrain than usual. In most ITC events there's massive LOS blocking in the middle which might've been the cause of shooting armies like Tau and AM to struggle.
I've tested the terrain layout recently and overall I think it's pretty well balanced, it give enough LOS blocking so you won't get shot off the board before you get the chance to move but also gives big fire lanes after both players get a chance at their first turn. The only thing I would change is the "forest" or dense terrain and the smaller terrains on the sides, often they make little impact to the game and will put you in more danger by sitting in it then just sitting behind the ruins.
Wow they are really sparse. They have less than the example tables GW showed with the launch of 9th (is there one in the rulebook?). Also I deploy int he open? Where is the cover in the deployment zones?
And note they aren't 40k standard terrain but independent tournament terrain layout.
Got to say I prefer asymmetrical tables so there is a choice to make around table edge to use.
I don't really think that it's "too much" or "not enough" when we're talking about rawquantity of terrain features.
I DO think it's "not enough" when referring to variety of terrain. Barricades, craters, dense (in the middle and not just on the far corners) could have all been used more, or at all.
For tournament play it's 100% fine and even probably ideal to have symmetrical terrain, and after seeing the actual physical terrain it doesn't look terrible for actually moving vehicles. But, it pretty much renders any shooting tank without ignire-LoS or FLY or some other trick more useless than they already were (they were already bottom tier units).
Its so balanced...as in it has equal terrain features on both sides.
It is not balanced in any other sense. It is mandatory 6 ruins in the middle of the table. Within range for flying models to jump to. Humm...wonder what kind of army that favors.
Those example boards in the article do look a bit sparse. I was basing my opinion on Tabletop Tactic's board in their battle report, which was WAY denser. I could make a SHT work on the gw boards, especially with a handy-dandy Sorcerer. They definitely need some barricades marked as Difficult Ground to slow down infantry. They'll just be waltzing in and out of all of those Breachable ruins.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Those example boards in the article do look a bit sparse. I was basing my opinion on Tabletop Tactic's board in their battle report, which was WAY denser. I could make a SHT work on the gw boards, especially with a handy-dandy Sorcerer. They definitely need some barricades marked as Difficult Ground to slow down infantry. They'll just be waltzing in and out of all of those Breachable ruins.
Welcome to 40k. Where the only thing terrain does is stop shooting and give you bonus against shooting attacks. The only thing people think terrain should do.
How about this crater? Nah don't put that there - that'll slow things down and don't block shooting.
GW: "Hi everybody, we at GW want to give you a little preview of how we're setting up up our tournament tables for our upcoming tournament. The layouts are intended to work with the Grand Tournament 2021 missions so that tournament players can know what to expect and practice their tournament lists in games that emulate what it will be like playing in an official GW tournament."
Dakka: "Aaargh this is bsGW are forcing all the narrative players to play tournament style games. This layout will never suit the way i like to play my narrative games with my friends. I refuse to use this table layout."
Okay.
So yeh, if, as WarCom state the entire base of the terrain is obscuring then there's a pretty large amount of line of sight blocking terrain. And if the actual ruin walls are solid, true LOS blocking then I think you can hide a fair amount in your deployment zone for both layouts, especially set up 2 which is presumably meant for hammer and anvil?
DarkHound wrote: It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver".
Oh I didn't mean less terrain, I meant less density of terrain. When the terrain is too tightly packed together you can't maneuver wide vehicles. I'm all for lots of terrain blocking firing angles from vehicles but I don't like it when they have trouble moving through the map.
It didn't look like too much of an issue from the pictures in the Warhammer Community article. I just don't care for boards that only allow for alleyways, unless you and your opponent wanted a cities of death game.
I had a little play around with what could be shot at from your opponents deployments zone and actually a surpisingly large amount of your deployment zone is either obscured or getting -1 to hit. I think I've done this right anyway...
Yellow is obscured and green is -1 to hit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: wait the central terrain pieces are obscuring not dense so the entire green space in the middle is obscured too!
Abaddon303 wrote: GW: "Hi everybody, we at GW want to give you a little preview of how we're setting up up our tournament tables for our upcoming tournament. The layouts are intended to work with the Grand Tournament 2021 missions so that tournament players can know what to expect and practice their tournament lists in games that emulate what it will be like playing in an official GW tournament."
Dakka: "Aaargh this is bsGW are forcing all the narrative players to play tournament style games. This layout will never suit the way i like to play my narrative games with my friends. I refuse to use this table layout."
Okay.
Yeah... that's a intentional and wilful misrepresentation of what's being said. In other words, you're being dishonest.
I mean, somebody literally said they are forcing the game to be some kind of fortnite game and another said they were changing the game to please a vocal minority?
Abaddon303 wrote: I mean, somebody literally said they are forcing the game to be some kind of fortnite game and another said they were changing the game to please a vocal minority?
what is wrong with fortnite? fairly balanced, everybody has the same tools and mechanics, a little RNG on what weapons you can find but also have upgrades available and using the mechanics of the game (building) better than opponents can be a huge advantage. its basically a modern unreal tournament with a build mechanic. is it my fav game? nope but i still jump on sometimes for my twitch shooter needs.
Abaddon303 wrote: I mean, somebody literally said they are forcing the game to be some kind of fortnite game and another said they were changing the game to please a vocal minority?
what is wrong with fortnite? fairly balanced, everybody has the same tools and mechanics, a little RNG on what weapons you can find but also have upgrades available and using the mechanics of the game (building) better than opponents can be a huge advantage. its basically a modern unreal tournament with a build mechanic. is it my fav game? nope but i still jump on sometimes for my twitch shooter needs.
He was referring to someone earlier in the thread saying GW is making 40k into fortnite. I'm assuming he's implying that 40k is becoming more "gamey" which I don't see anything wrong with.
It's weird that narrative and casual players have so much vitriol against competitive minded players in 40k when it's clear that GW wants to support all parts of the hobby.
People seem to forget how badly 40k was suffering when the rules were getting worse and worse when competitive play and crisp rules were in the backburner and "we're a model company" was in full effect.
Anyone saying this is a typical table...You have a very weird way of playing the game. The terrain is way to close...and that is because the pieces are all large...
No desire to play this game. You wonder why DE and quins have such high winrates...this is why.
Abaddon303 wrote: GW: "Hi everybody, we at GW want to give you a little preview of how we're setting up up our tournament tables for our upcoming tournament. The layouts are intended to work with the Grand Tournament 2021 missions so that tournament players can know what to expect and practice their tournament lists in games that emulate what it will be like playing in an official GW tournament."
Dakka: "Aaargh this is bsGW are forcing all the narrative players to play tournament style games. This layout will never suit the way i like to play my narrative games with my friends. I refuse to use this table layout."
Okay.
Yeah... that's a intentional and wilful misrepresentation of what's being said. In other words, you're being dishonest.
I mean, all one has to do is look back at the whole board size thing to see that it might as well now be the standard.
Yeah, no GW. You can take my 6x4 board from my cold, dead hands. Same goes for these dull as dishwater terrain setups. If GW wants to make a tabletop MMO, then they should bloody make one instead of corrupting 40k into something it is not.
Abaddon303 wrote: I mean, somebody literally said they are forcing the game to be some kind of fortnite game and another said they were changing the game to please a vocal minority?
what is wrong with fortnite? fairly balanced, everybody has the same tools and mechanics, a little RNG on what weapons you can find but also have upgrades available and using the mechanics of the game (building) better than opponents can be a huge advantage. its basically a modern unreal tournament with a build mechanic. is it my fav game? nope but i still jump on sometimes for my twitch shooter needs.
Abaddon303 wrote: I mean, somebody literally said they are forcing the game to be some kind of fortnite game and another said they were changing the game to please a vocal minority?
what is wrong with fortnite? fairly balanced, everybody has the same tools and mechanics, a little RNG on what weapons you can find but also have upgrades available and using the mechanics of the game (building) better than opponents can be a huge advantage. its basically a modern unreal tournament with a build mechanic. is it my fav game? nope but i still jump on sometimes for my twitch shooter needs.
He was referring to someone earlier in the thread saying GW is making 40k into fortnite. I'm assuming he's implying that 40k is becoming more "gamey" which I don't see anything wrong with.
It's weird that narrative and casual players have so much vitriol against competitive minded players in 40k when it's clear that GW wants to support all parts of the hobby.
People seem to forget how badly 40k was suffering when the rules were getting worse and worse when competitive play and crisp rules were in the backburner and "we're a model company" was in full effect.
i like 40k as a ciompetative game, and a like narrative stuff. That said they are very different things and I know many people who cannot separate the two.
I face off against great tournament players who have never read a 40k book and total fluffbunnies who read every book, know the lore back and forth with highlighted and marked up pages... that do not grasp most of the tabletop game. The fluff players can get really excited to see their custom space marine chapter master fight a ork warboss after a small campaign spanning 4 games where they write up mini novels about the ramifications for said game (an actual player locally i had a blast playing with actually did this) and i highly recommend this type of play at least a few times. I am admittedly more in the hobbyist side where i more than anything model and paint while listening to battle reports and 40k audiobooks than actual games (by virtue of only playing 1-3 games a week vs nightly hobbying) but i think i enjoy the game of 40k more in general
as for the model company day... yea i remember that also how just plain bad 6th was that we got an immediate 7th so fast they didn't even do a separate starter box, i have the dark vengence versions of both. they took my beloved orks from upper part of the lower 3rd army to the worst one in the game for 2 editions... fun times
Xenomancers wrote: Anyone saying this is a typical table...You have a very weird way of playing the game. The terrain is way to close...and that is because the pieces are all large...
No desire to play this game. You wonder why DE and quins have such high winrates...this is why.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with Drukhari's ridiculously low point cost, free cp (pre errata), 2 damage flamers (pre errata) and Harlequins having a good matchup against the most played faction in the game.
Does terrain also explain why admech and sisters were so dominant?
Maybe it is a thing that it should be. More of a sport, leave the narrative to the narrative minority, and turn w40k in to what it should be a real game like MtG.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with Drukhari's ridiculously low point cost, free cp (pre errata), 2 damage flamers (pre errata) and Harlequins having a good matchup against the most played faction in the game.
Does terrain also explain why admech and sisters were so dominant?
In case of ad mecha yes, in case of sob it is more a combination of miracle dice and how cheap they are. Harlis and DE win rates benefit from the rules they have, but the game play of both of the armies is based around the fact, that they can fly over terrain park their transports in a such a way that no matter if the opponent went first or second they are always at an adventage. And they can't only perform those feats, because the core rules of w40k in 9th, and after the expiriance of 8th require a ton of LoS blocking terrain. If you want to check how good DE do, play them on a board without LoS, and see what happens. specially vs an army which is shoty and goes first.
Maybe it is a thing that it should be. More of a sport, leave the narrative to the narrative minority, and turn w40k in to what it should be a real game like MtG.
.
O sweet summer child....you are speaking of things you have no comprehension about.
MTG is not something 40k should ever aspire to be.
Maybe it is a thing that it should be. More of a sport, leave the narrative to the narrative minority, and turn w40k in to what it should be a real game like MtG.
.
O sweet summer child....you are speaking of things you have no comprehension about.
MTG is not something 40k should ever aspire to be.
I mean... Clear, concise rules that have answers seems like something to strive for.
I mean as long as I have been playing 40k it has always attracted most people at the FLGS to actually jump in and play the game. generally they ask abotu how each faction plays and wanting to play demo games to try a few factions before buying models to... play the game. very few players I run into were introduced via narrative side. One guy locally was reading the books then realized there was a game but that is the honest only one i know of. Some like playing narrative scenario games once they get used to things but locally they are the minority
Maybe it is a thing that it should be. More of a sport, leave the narrative to the narrative minority, and turn w40k in to what it should be a real game like MtG.
.
O sweet summer child....you are speaking of things you have no comprehension about.
MTG is not something 40k should ever aspire to be.
Who are you to decide what 40k should aspire to? I understand people can be attached to something that isn't anymore but GWs profits are up and as far as I'm aware more people are playing 40k than they ever have...
Eldarsif wrote: I enjoy these layouts on a tournament level. It means you get to pit your skills against your opponent while minimizing the danger of ridiculous terrain layout.
Knowing how to deploy and maneuver in order to minimize an opponents terrain advantage and maximize your own is a skill.
This thread is full of weird gatekeeping. 'No, you can't have fun this way. That's not the way the game used to be, and it's not the way I want the game to be. People having fun are wrong and that makes me have less fun.' Look, you can play any way you want, and so can everyone else. If you aren't at a tournament, this literally doesn't affect you.
Even if you think this sets a precedent that you're going to have to conform to against your will, it doesn't. If you're playing a pick-up game at your local store, just talk to your opponent about how you want to set up the board. Befriend some people who aren't interested in competitive play and do your own thing.
If you're playing narrative games, this explicitly doesn't affect you. Play whatever you want, GW puts way more support into campaign books and supplements than it does competitive. My local Crusade league plays a variety of 4x5' boards at 1000pts, using a combination of a White Dwarf campaign ruleset, Beyond the Veil and Crusade missions, and some homebrew rules about an overarching mystery. You can do whatever you want. Next league we'll probably do the Book of Rust campaign.
Now, if you do have complaints from a purely competitive perspective, that's fair. I'd, however, point to the top player's opinions like Seigler, Lennon, and Nanavati who've been very positive.
Without a strong narrative that is prioritized over all else... W40K will cease to be W40K.
Without a strong narrative that is prioritized over all else... The game will fail; like Warmachine, Hoards, Malifaux, Infinity, Drop Fleet and all of the other games that sought to prioritize competitive play and failed.
I don't think I agree with "prioritized over all else", but I agree with the sentiment. However, that's not at issue. Like I said, competitive gets one tournament pack a year, and now a small tournament guidance packet. Narrative gets multiple supplement books per year, and tons of additional content in White Dwarf campaigns and army rules.
I'm finding it hard to picture Infinity and Malifaux as failed games when I haven't really seen any indication that their base is shrinking? But I guess if you have evidence otherwise I'd be interested in seeing it.
DarkHound wrote: This thread is full of weird gatekeeping. 'No, you can't have fun this way. That's not the way the game used to be, and it's not the way I want the game to be. People having fun are wrong and that makes me have less fun.' Look, you can play any way you want, and so can everyone else. If you aren't at a tournament, this literally doesn't affect you.
Even if you think this sets a precedent that you're going to have to conform to against your will, it doesn't. If you're playing a pick-up game at your local store, just talk to your opponent about how you want to set up the board. Befriend some people who aren't interested in competitive play and do your own thing.
If you're playing narrative games, this explicitly doesn't affect you. Play whatever you want, GW puts way more support into campaign books and supplements than it does competitive. My local Crusade league plays a variety of 4x5' boards at 1000pts, using a combination of a White Dwarf campaign ruleset, Beyond the Veil and Crusade missions, and some homebrew rules about an overarching mystery. You can do whatever you want. Next league we'll probably do the Book of Rust campaign.
Now, if you do have complaints from a purely competitive perspective, that's fair. I'd, however, point to the top player's opinions like Seigler, Lennon, and Nanavati who've been very positive.
LOL - you know those top players...
They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
Eldarsif wrote: I enjoy these layouts on a tournament level. It means you get to pit your skills against your opponent while minimizing the danger of ridiculous terrain layout.
Knowing how to deploy and maneuver in order to minimize an opponents terrain advantage and maximize your own is a skill.
For armies that can do it. which are very few. For armies that can not, it just creates games where you lose before deployment, because your opponent picked the side that has all the adventages.
DarkHound wrote: Now, if you do have complaints from a purely competitive perspective, that's fair. I'd, however, point to the top player's opinions like Seigler, Lennon, and Nanavati who've been very positive.
LOL - you know those top players...
They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
That's not a problem, that's how an intelligent organization creates a healthy competitive environment: they listen to the top players. They were among the top players before working with GW directly. It's not a conspiracy where they bend the rules to make themselves personally better at the game (obviously they couldn't even if they wanted)
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The game they want limits variables. Are you implying you'd want a competitive scene with more uncontrollable variables? You can already have any non-competitive format to be anything you want, to be clear.
I mean, they went to competitive players to advise on how to set up their competitive games.
I really don't understand how you have so many people who are massively into the narrative fluff aspect of 40k that are so uncomfortable stepping outside of the restrictions of GT tournament rules.
You can literally do anything you want. You can play on a 1ft by 14ft table, you can play 500pts Vs 1500 pts. You can use legends units, you can give CSM 3 wounds. It's a sandbox.
But if you want to play in a tournament then you are probably gonna play GT 2021 with the recommended table size and terrain layouts.
GW have brought out I think two narrative supplements already this edition, I've not really seen much of a buzz around them. Crusade seems popular but again it doesn't seem to be as discussed as GT on the internet.
I think it's disingenuous to claim that nobody wants this, or lament GWs focus on tournament play.
I love both competitive and narrative but I'd much rather GW focus on tightening up the competitive side of the game because I need them to do that in order for it to be enjoyable. Tournament play needs to be solid and balanced otherwise it falls apart.
Narrative I can do what I want I don't need GW to balance it, I can do that amongst my play group...
Eldarsif wrote: I enjoy these layouts on a tournament level. It means you get to pit your skills against your opponent while minimizing the danger of ridiculous terrain layout.
Knowing how to deploy and maneuver in order to minimize an opponents terrain advantage and maximize your own is a skill.
Sure, but with how books are balanced it is an extra factor that can snowball and is utterly pointless in a tournament setting.
I think people are making a mountain out of a molehill. Tournaments have been running pretty standardized layouts for some time now and only thing GW is just iterating what tourneys are already doing on the tournament floor. If you aren't playing tournaments none of this will ever affect you. I mean, ITC events will stick to ITC layouts which tourney players tend to prefer over the current GW layout(even if it is a decent layout tourney-wise).
Yeah, no GW. You can take my 6x4 board from my cold, dead hands. Same goes for these dull as dishwater terrain setups. If GW wants to make a tabletop MMO, then they should bloody make one instead of corrupting 40k into something it is not.
GW isn't sending its team of designers to break into your apartment/house and break your boards and terrains. If you are adults you are literally free to play as you want as long as you can find a consenting partner.
So find likeminded people, have fun, and enjoy life.
I get the feeling a lot of people who claim they are into narrative play aren't really into narrative play. Have people bought the Crusade books or Warzone Charadon? Because those books are literally made for, and have a lot of rules for, narrative players(a fun campaign in Book of Rust) who want to have fun without the tourney stuff screwing with their day. Hell, even White Dwarf provides missions and scenarios for narrative players.
I get the feeling a lot of people who claim they are into narrative play aren't really into narrative play. Have people bought the Crusade books or Warzone Charadon? Because those books are literally made for, and have a lot of rules for, narrative players(a fun campaign in Book of Rust) who want to have fun without the tourney stuff screwing with their day. Hell, even White Dwarf provides missions and scenarios for narrative players.
Plastering rules onto more rules does not a narrative make. 9th is anti-narrative at its core because all the special rules are a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls and options within units are becoming increasingly restricted.
Xenomancers wrote: They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
I mean that's why I've been calling 9th "Tournament Edition" since they started talking about who was involved in the "extensive" playtesting.
Everything about this edition has been done to make it more like ITC/NOVA and so on. Is it any wonder we get gak articles like this terrain one which show off symmetrical tournament boards on GW's idiotic minimum/standard/recommended board size.
DarkHound wrote:If you're playing narrative games, this explicitly doesn't affect you.
And as we keep saying, this isn't strictly true. Look at the board size thing. GW didn't mandate that, but it has become the standard. Every tournament scrambled to introduce that smaller board size. The various mat making companies all fell over one another to be first to market with smaller mats. There's even a mat maker local to Australia, something unheard of given that most of them are in Europe, that exclusively only makes mats in GW's smaller size.
Tournaments inform the rest of the game, and what becomes standard for them spreads out and becomes standard for everyone else. Of course there will be people who never get on that bandwagon, either by choice, disinterest in tournaments, or simply because they have no desire of changing things that they've spent a lot of time and/or money on, but to ignore the influence that these sort of high-level structural changes have to the game is naive.
Honestly GW makes for the worst looking boards, I looked at the post they made and it just looks bad for even tournament play.
They need new terrain, but it’s too late being they have put the size up for both models and how big army’s should be.
Why lowering the size of the boards, even if they don’t think they did.
I was rather concerned about it. But after watching Tabletop tactics actually play a game using that terrain layout I am coming round to it.
Let's put it this way. If Lawrence can play a world eaters army with 4 Rhinos packed with berserkers, 3 venomcrawlers and a Lord of DIscordant and those 8 vehicles manage to make it up the board without major problems. Then I think the 2D layout doesn't show properly the width of the lanes actually available for vehicles to move through. From that game, I think even knights and vehicles like baneblades and Lord of skulls should be able to move up the board from one end to the other.
I think its good to have a discussion with your opponent before the game starts anyway. Where you agree on whether vehicles can or cannot move through a "narrow" passageway. If you brought vehicles or a big superheavy like a knight or Lord of skulls, I am sure if you bring it up before the game, your opponent would be willing to say "ok this path is wide enough for your vehicles to pass through".
It would take a real dick to insist the terrain blocks all vehicles from moving up the board even before the game even starts, and if that's the case, then its perfectly possible to adjust the terrain slightly so that there is enough space for the vehicles to move through.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
Eldenfirefly wrote: I was rather concerned about it. But after watching Tabletop tactics actually play a game using that terrain layout I am coming round to it.
Let's put it this way. If Lawrence can play a world eaters army with 4 Rhinos packed with berserkers, 3 venomcrawlers and a Lord of DIscordant and those 8 vehicles manage to make it up the board without major problems. Then I think the 2D layout doesn't show properly the width of the lanes actually available for vehicles to move through. From that game, I think even knights and vehicles like baneblades and Lord of skulls should be able to move up the board from one end to the other.
I think its good to have a discussion with your opponent before the game starts anyway. Where you agree on whether vehicles can or cannot move through a "narrow" passageway. If you brought vehicles or a big superheavy like a knight or Lord of skulls, I am sure if you bring it up before the game, your opponent would be willing to say "ok this path is wide enough for your vehicles to pass through".
It would take a real dick to insist the terrain blocks all vehicles from moving up the board even before the game even starts, and if that's the case, then its perfectly possible to adjust the terrain slightly so that there is enough space for the vehicles to move through.
I think that the idea that a standard layout would restrict vehicles designed for the game to be able to move reasonably to support other units and factions existing is a bit of a design failure.
The game design has allways been avg, but honestly just seems like no one cares enough about 40k to fix anything at GW.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
I used to have a post from Dakka saved about this. I can't find it now but the gist was something like this:
If you set up your super sneaky sniper stealth savant Eldar Pathfinders in a concealed position in some terrain vs a Custodes army, the Custodes could jump about about with heavy weapons trying to 720 noscope the Pathfinders and still have the same chance to hit as if they'd just stayed still.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
Some things should be really hard to hit.
Just like it shouldn't be possible to wound some stuff with some weapons.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
This also. When the tyranid PA came out and had monster specific strats that very blatantly should have been special rules I think thats when I gave up on the game. Its dumb and not at all narritive that toxicrenes randomly have extra long tendrils for a few minutes or tyranid warrior carapace varies in thickness from turn-to-turn.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
This also. When the tyranid PA came out and had monster specific strats that very blatantly should have been special rules I think thats when I gave up on the game. Its dumb and not at all narritive that toxicrenes randomly have extra long tendrils for a few minutes or tyranid warrior carapace varies in thickness from turn-to-turn.
Agree on that.
Luckily 9th has been putting those abilities back where they belong, so I have good hopes in that regard.
Eldarsif wrote: I enjoy these layouts on a tournament level. It means you get to pit your skills against your opponent while minimizing the danger of ridiculous terrain layout.
Knowing how to deploy and maneuver in order to minimize an opponents terrain advantage and maximize your own is a skill.
For armies that can do it. which are very few. For armies that can not, it just creates games where you lose before deployment, because your opponent picked the side that has all the advantages.
Odds are that whoever you're watching lose like this lacks the afore mentioned skill.
Xenomancers wrote: They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
I mean that's why I've been calling 9th "Tournament Edition" since they started talking about who was involved in the "extensive" playtesting.
Everything about this edition has been done to make it more like ITC/NOVA and so on. Is it any wonder we get gak articles like this terrain one which show off symmetrical tournament boards on GW's idiotic minimum/standard/recommended board size.
DarkHound wrote:If you're playing narrative games, this explicitly doesn't affect you.
And as we keep saying, this isn't strictly true. Look at the board size thing. GW didn't mandate that, but it has become the standard. Every tournament scrambled to introduce that smaller board size. The various mat making companies all fell over one another to be first to market with smaller mats. There's even a mat maker local to Australia, something unheard of given that most of them are in Europe, that exclusively only makes mats in GW's smaller size.
Tournaments inform the rest of the game, and what becomes standard for them spreads out and becomes standard for everyone else. Of course there will be people who never get on that bandwagon, either by choice, disinterest in tournaments, or simply because they have no desire of changing things that they've spent a lot of time and/or money on, but to ignore the influence that these sort of high-level structural changes have to the game is naive.
Why are you always excluding the possibility that people adopted the smaller boards because they actually liked the change? Our group did multiple test games to see which one worked better and we unanimously agreed on smaller boards - and we rarely unanimously agree on anything because we are a rather diverse group.
This is the very same argument that was made back when the rule of 3 was introduced as tournament only rule - it wasn't adopted into regular games because everyone wanted to feel as if they were playing at the LVO, but because people felt like it made their games more enjoyable. Other tournament rules at that time were not adopted into regular games at all, of even completely ignored.
It will be the same here - a lot of people like the smaller boards, that's why they became the standard. From what I gather from this thread, the response to these tables varies between "good enough" and "boring", so I doubt that they will be finding their way into daily 40k any time soon.
Xenomancers wrote: They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
I mean that's why I've been calling 9th "Tournament Edition" since they started talking about who was involved in the "extensive" playtesting.
Everything about this edition has been done to make it more like ITC/NOVA and so on. Is it any wonder we get gak articles like this terrain one which show off symmetrical tournament boards on GW's idiotic minimum/standard/recommended board size.
DarkHound wrote:If you're playing narrative games, this explicitly doesn't affect you.
And as we keep saying, this isn't strictly true. Look at the board size thing. GW didn't mandate that, but it has become the standard. Every tournament scrambled to introduce that smaller board size. The various mat making companies all fell over one another to be first to market with smaller mats. There's even a mat maker local to Australia, something unheard of given that most of them are in Europe, that exclusively only makes mats in GW's smaller size.
Tournaments inform the rest of the game, and what becomes standard for them spreads out and becomes standard for everyone else. Of course there will be people who never get on that bandwagon, either by choice, disinterest in tournaments, or simply because they have no desire of changing things that they've spent a lot of time and/or money on, but to ignore the influence that these sort of high-level structural changes have to the game is naive.
Why are you always excluding the possibility that people adopted the smaller boards because they actually liked the change? Our group did multiple test games to see which one worked better and we unanimously agreed on smaller boards - and we rarely unanimously agree on anything because we are a rather diverse group.
This is the very same argument that was made back when the rule of 3 was introduced as tournament only rule - it wasn't adopted into regular games because everyone wanted to feel as if they were playing at the LVO, but because people felt like it made their games more enjoyable. Other tournament rules at that time were not adopted into regular games at all, of even completely ignored.
It will be the same here - a lot of people like the smaller boards, that's why they became the standard. From what I gather from this thread, the response to these tables varies between "good enough" and "boring", so I doubt that they will be finding their way into daily 40k any time soon.
People act like the smaller boards are this big huge deal that limits your tictacs or whatever but the truth is, most boards ended up with massive deadzones around the edges that served no purpose but to accomodate deepstrike charges.
You don't start any closer to your opponent and just about every meaingful gun in 40k can hit the back board edge turn 1 from most deployments so neither of those are affected. Most relevant movement happens around objectives which are almost never in the corners or edges.
The only thing the board change really effects is deepstriking/outflanking and it makes coming in from reserves much more difficult and screening much more doable. You end up sacrificing almost nothing to make dropping in your bomb units much more interesting for both sides of the table.
I get the feeling a lot of people who claim they are into narrative play aren't really into narrative play. Have people bought the Crusade books or Warzone Charadon? Because those books are literally made for, and have a lot of rules for, narrative players(a fun campaign in Book of Rust) who want to have fun without the tourney stuff screwing with their day. Hell, even White Dwarf provides missions and scenarios for narrative players.
Plastering rules onto more rules does not a narrative make. 9th is anti-narrative at its core because all the special rules are a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls and options within units are becoming increasingly restricted.
If you are restricting your choices to the matched play system then you are not playing narrative. I am having no problem with playing narrative and all this discussion shows is that narrative is such a personal and subjective experience that there are no goal posts available. GW could try their best to please everybody who plays narrative and almost everybody who plays narrative would still complain.
Why are you always excluding the possibility that people adopted the smaller boards because they actually liked the change? Our group did multiple test games to see which one worked better and we unanimously agreed on smaller boards - and we rarely unanimously agree on anything because we are a rather diverse group.
Exactly. My 40k groups love the new mat sizes and the AoS groups were exhilarated to learn that AoS would follow suit. A lot of people love the new mat sizes.
The various mat making companies all fell over one another to be first to market with smaller mats.
That's just smart business. If people want different sizes then there will always be a provider to make them. Even then most of these mat makers also make every other size as there are multiple games out there with different mats. The one in Australia just sounds very targeted at a singular crowd which may or may not be caused by various factors such as scale and what not.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
Some things should be really hard to hit.
Just like it shouldn't be possible to wound some stuff with some weapons.
...or you could, you know, just ignore the hit cap limit in your narrative games and have all the fun.
ERJAK wrote: The only thing the board change really effects is deepstriking/outflanking and it makes coming in from reserves much more difficult and screening much more doable. You end up sacrificing almost nothing to make dropping in your bomb units much more interesting for both sides of the table.
I agree with you, but I guess we just have different tastes. Our group just found that the game is more interesting when you specifically can't drop your deep strikers or reserves without clearing a path first.
The one other thing it affects (though in much less games) is the ability of slow armies to threaten artillery. On a 6x4 board an ork boy will never be able to touch a fire prism tank, on a 60"x44" the eldar player at least needs to invest some effort to keep it safe.
I get the feeling a lot of people who claim they are into narrative play aren't really into narrative play. Have people bought the Crusade books or Warzone Charadon? Because those books are literally made for, and have a lot of rules for, narrative players(a fun campaign in Book of Rust) who want to have fun without the tourney stuff screwing with their day. Hell, even White Dwarf provides missions and scenarios for narrative players.
Plastering rules onto more rules does not a narrative make. 9th is anti-narrative at its core because all the special rules are a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls and options within units are becoming increasingly restricted.
If you are restricting your choices to the matched play system then you are not playing narrative. I am having no problem with playing narrative and all this discussion shows is that narrative is such a personal and subjective experience that there are no goal posts available. GW could try their best to please everybody who plays narrative and almost everybody who plays narrative would still complain.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
Some things should be really hard to hit.
Just like it shouldn't be possible to wound some stuff with some weapons.
...or you could, you know, just ignore the hit cap limit in your narrative games and have all the fun.
Narrative battles is not carte blanche to just make up whatever rules you want under the excuse that "it's thematic to the narrative". People who want narrative games don't want to have to write the entire games themselves. They want a framework with which to enact scenarios and build thematic lists and they want the units in those lists to feel like they represent how the fluff describes them.
ERJAK wrote: The only thing the board change really effects is deepstriking/outflanking and it makes coming in from reserves much more difficult and screening much more doable. You end up sacrificing almost nothing to make dropping in your bomb units much more interesting for both sides of the table.
I agree with you, but I guess we just have different tastes. Our group just found that the game is more interesting when you specifically can't drop your deep strikers or reserves without clearing a path first.
The one other thing it affects (though in much less games) is the ability of slow armies to threaten artillery. On a 6x4 board an ork boy will never be able to touch a fire prism tank, on a 60"x44" the eldar player at least needs to invest some effort to keep it safe.
It's almost like it's artillery and it's SUPPOSED to be far away from where the footsloggers can get to it.
You don't start any closer to your opponent and just about every meaingful gun in 40k can hit the back board edge turn 1 from most deployments so neither of those are affected. Most relevant movement happens around objectives which are almost never in the corners or edges.
Oh but you do.
You were always going to deploy as far forward as possible. Right up on the line. It doesn't make any difference to YOU how far back your DZ extends. But you have the choice to use that space if you want.
Me? I often like to deploy things as far back in my DZ as humanly possible. Now, no matter what I do, my back line is 2" closer to you. I don't get a choice. :(
Why are you always excluding the possibility that people adopted the smaller boards because they actually liked the change? Our group did multiple test games to see which one worked better and we unanimously agreed on smaller boards - and we rarely unanimously agree on anything because we are a rather diverse group.
This is the very same argument that was made back when the rule of 3 was introduced as tournament only rule - it wasn't adopted into regular games because everyone wanted to feel as if they were playing at the LVO, but because people felt like it made their games more enjoyable. Other tournament rules at that time were not adopted into regular games at all, of even completely ignored.
It will be the same here - a lot of people like the smaller boards, that's why they became the standard. From what I gather from this thread, the response to these tables varies between "good enough" and "boring", so I doubt that they will be finding their way into daily 40k any time soon.
I can imagine many tau, tyranid or GK players in 8th ed, who were happy about the rule of 3. People like the smaller boards, because they favour their army, and if they favour the majority of armies, then the rule to use the boards are enforced. It is like point costs. Could people play, theoretically 1250pts games? yes. Will they, of course not, because the majority of people entering the edition have 2000pts or more points, and they have zero entice to play smaller point games.
And as we saw in another recent thread, there are quite a lot of hobbyists (myself included) who like to play with less points.
And it might be shocking news to some people, but you can like or dislike changes / rules / policies independently from wether you yourself benefit from it, or not.
a_typical_hero wrote: And as we saw in another recent thread, there are quite a lot of hobbyists (myself included) who like to play with less points.
And it might be shocking news to some people, but you can like or dislike changes / rules / policies independently from wether you yourself benefit from it, or not.
Totally. And it's worth pointing out that our group agreed on the smaller boards unanimously and only single person was opposed to the rule of 3, which was also the same person spamming 4+ units of ynnari shining spears and dark reapers at that time.
Outside of AdMech, Custodes and Drukhari we have at least two players for every codex.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
I used to have a post from Dakka saved about this. I can't find it now but the gist was something like this:
If you set up your super sneaky sniper stealth savant Eldar Pathfinders in a concealed position in some terrain vs a Custodes army, the Custodes could jump about about with heavy weapons trying to 720 noscope the Pathfinders and still have the same chance to hit as if they'd just stayed still.
That isn't "less narrative", it's just bad game design. Allowing someone to avoid a penalty that they caused themselves is bad for both narrative and competitive games.
DarkHound wrote: This thread is full of weird gatekeeping. 'No, you can't have fun this way. That's not the way the game used to be, and it's not the way I want the game to be. People having fun are wrong and that makes me have less fun.' Look, you can play any way you want, and so can everyone else. If you aren't at a tournament, this literally doesn't affect you.
My experience of Warmachine suggests otherwise - the tournament restrictions bleed out, and almost overnight any variety in games vanishes. Personally, they don't affect me, but that's because I don't have to settle for playing strangers in a shop.
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
I used to have a post from Dakka saved about this. I can't find it now but the gist was something like this:
If you set up your super sneaky sniper stealth savant Eldar Pathfinders in a concealed position in some terrain vs a Custodes army, the Custodes could jump about about with heavy weapons trying to 720 noscope the Pathfinders and still have the same chance to hit as if they'd just stayed still.
That isn't "less narrative", it's just bad game design. Allowing someone to avoid a penalty that they caused themselves is bad for both narrative and competitive games.
Thats a weird way of agreeing with me but I'll take it.
I get the feeling a lot of people who claim they are into narrative play aren't really into narrative play. Have people bought the Crusade books or Warzone Charadon? Because those books are literally made for, and have a lot of rules for, narrative players(a fun campaign in Book of Rust) who want to have fun without the tourney stuff screwing with their day. Hell, even White Dwarf provides missions and scenarios for narrative players.
Plastering rules onto more rules does not a narrative make. 9th is anti-narrative at its core because all the special rules are a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls and options within units are becoming increasingly restricted.
I'm playing the Behind the Veil missions at the moment, and they absolutely are narrative. We began with an Imperium player (me) and a Necron player (my friend). The Uncover the Answers agenda from that booklet represented my Inquisitor's investigation of Necron ruins coming under attack very well, and the 2nd mission, Anomalous Readings, was likewise a good fit for the Space Wolves arriving in response to their distress call.
None of the special rules provided (all of which are optional anyway) are " a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls". Have you actually looked at either of these booklets?
Racerguy180 wrote: Yup, after reading this, anti-narrative is how I'd describe the rules.
Stripping away rules from dataslates and making them strats is one of the most anti of them all.
The limits on +/- stuff is boring,
Serious question, how is a limit on dice roll modifiers 'less narrative?'
Especially the way multiple modifiers stack to render certain armies useless.
I used to have a post from Dakka saved about this. I can't find it now but the gist was something like this:
If you set up your super sneaky sniper stealth savant Eldar Pathfinders in a concealed position in some terrain vs a Custodes army, the Custodes could jump about about with heavy weapons trying to 720 noscope the Pathfinders and still have the same chance to hit as if they'd just stayed still.
That isn't "less narrative", it's just bad game design. Allowing someone to avoid a penalty that they caused themselves is bad for both narrative and competitive games.
Thats a weird way of agreeing with me but I'll take it.
Well I agree with you as well, poor design tends to effect narrative play the worst. I still shudder at the challenge rules, hurts my narrative soul.
None of the special rules provided (all of which are optional anyway) are " a generic mish-mash of +1s and rerolls". Have you actually looked at either of these booklets?
I didn't say they were. I said the special rules at the core of 9th are a generic mish-mash and lumping more rules from scenarios onto them won't fix that.
Abaddon303 wrote: I had a little play around with what could be shot at from your opponents deployments zone and actually a surpisingly large amount of your deployment zone is either obscured or getting -1 to hit. I think I've done this right anyway...
Yellow is obscured and green is -1 to hit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: wait the central terrain pieces are obscuring not dense so the entire green space in the middle is obscured too!
Probably the most useful and insightful post in the thread. Really hitting me with a reals not feels vibe compared to the rest of it.
You would in reality have to take into account movement on turn one, which does narrow some of the angles, but you can see some real safe zones in each deployment area to reduce the first turn advantage.
Oh I missed that the middle section is also obscuring. I like obscuring a lot as a terrain rule, but I dislike how much of a crutch it's becoming with game design.
"Weapons are too killy for you? Make every single piece on the board obscuring terrain then so your deployment zone doesn't get shot to pieces. Problem solved."
Again, not opposed to obscuring terrain just wish there was a middle ground available.
Narrative battles is not carte blanche to just make up whatever rules you want under the excuse that "it's thematic to the narrative". People who want narrative games don't want to have to write the entire games themselves. They want a framework with which to enact scenarios and build thematic lists and they want the units in those lists to feel like they represent how the fluff describes them.
Narrative is a carte blanche technically. You are free to modify things as you see fit and everyone in your friend group agrees. It's modification to the existing system why tournament Warhammer exists because a group of players got together and made their own missions and scoring to fill in the holes of a rather broken system that existed before. It's why we have ITC.
So if tournament players were able to modify the existing system why can't narrative players? Hell, ITC events will most likely even ignore the GW terrain layout and use their own, which by some here is a modification to the existing system.
Narrative battles is not carte blanche to just make up whatever rules you want under the excuse that "it's thematic to the narrative". People who want narrative games don't want to have to write the entire games themselves. They want a framework with which to enact scenarios and build thematic lists and they want the units in those lists to feel like they represent how the fluff describes them.
Narrative is a carte blanche technically. You are free to modify things as you see fit and everyone in your friend group agrees. It's modification to the existing system why tournament Warhammer exists because a group of players got together and made their own missions and scoring to fill in the holes of a rather broken system that existed before. It's why we have ITC.
So if tournament players were able to modify the existing system why can't narrative players? Hell, ITC events will most likely even ignore the GW terrain layout and use their own, which by some here is a modification to the existing system.
Tournaments are optional. No one has only the option to play in tournaments because most are run in an established community and when they run one everyone agrees to the conditions of entry. People don't approach narrative play in the same way. Let's take Karol's group as an example. It's pretty clear it's VERY cut-throat and competitive. Say Karol decided he wants to play more narrative games, there is no way on Earth they would let him alter the rules, yet it's his only option for games at all, so he's stuck with the rules as they are. You're approaching this from the usual standpoint of assuming everyone has easy access to multiple, regular, friendly groups where you can test rules to iron out kinks and easily all agree to something.
Even my group is pretty friendly with each other and back when Isabella Von Carstein became a daemon prince during the End Times GW neglected to give her the Daemon rule, making her crap because she couldn't join daemon units or benefit from LoS making her very easy to kill. The guy I regularly played against was obviously not sure about it so even though he agreed I never did try it out because in the event that it would have been over-powered I didn't want him thinking I was trying to be cheesy as he'd be too polite to retract his permission for me to use Isabella because I'd gone to the effort of repainting her to look more Nurgley. Which is another issue with altering the rules, players just aren't good at it, and if someone rocks up with custom rules that turn out to be OP then it sours the group on granting permission again.
There's no reason GW can't design rules that are narratively thematic and somewhat balanced (because let's be honest, 40k will never be well balanced). Dozens of games already do that and have just a fraction of the resources available that GW has, some designers do it in their free time. There's nothing stopping GW from actually improving the game by hiring actually talented designers and dedicated playtester beyond they simply don't want to spend the money to do so. I don't understand why you would have an issue with this as you don't actually lose anything from more thematic rules. If anything you gain a more interesting game.
Narrative battles is not carte blanche to just make up whatever rules you want under the excuse that "it's thematic to the narrative". People who want narrative games don't want to have to write the entire games themselves. They want a framework with which to enact scenarios and build thematic lists and they want the units in those lists to feel like they represent how the fluff describes them.
Narrative is a carte blanche technically. You are free to modify things as you see fit and everyone in your friend group agrees. It's modification to the existing system why tournament Warhammer exists because a group of players got together and made their own missions and scoring to fill in the holes of a rather broken system that existed before. It's why we have ITC.
So if tournament players were able to modify the existing system why can't narrative players? Hell, ITC events will most likely even ignore the GW terrain layout and use their own, which by some here is a modification to the existing system.
Tournaments are optional. No one has only the option to play in tournaments because most are run in an established community and when they run one everyone agrees to the conditions of entry. People don't approach narrative play in the same way. Let's take Karol's group as an example. It's pretty clear it's VERY cut-throat and competitive. Say Karol decided he wants to play more narrative games, there is no way on Earth they would let him alter the rules, yet it's his only option for games at all, so he's stuck with the rules as they are. You're approaching this from the usual standpoint of assuming everyone has easy access to multiple, regular, friendly groups where you can test rules to iron out kinks and easily all agree to something.
Even my group is pretty friendly with each other and back when Isabella Von Carstein became a daemon prince during the End Times GW neglected to give her the Daemon rule, making her crap because she couldn't join daemon units or benefit from LoS making her very easy to kill. The guy I regularly played against was obviously not sure about it so even though he agreed I never did try it out because in the event that it would have been over-powered I didn't want him thinking I was trying to be cheesy as he'd be too polite to retract his permission for me to use Isabella because I'd gone to the effort of repainting her to look more Nurgley. Which is another issue with altering the rules, players just aren't good at it, and if someone rocks up with custom rules that turn out to be OP then it sours the group on granting permission again.
There's no reason GW can't design rules that are narratively thematic and somewhat balanced (because let's be honest, 40k will never be well balanced). Dozens of games already do that and have just a fraction of the resources available that GW has, some designers do it in their free time. There's nothing stopping GW from actually improving the game by hiring actually talented designers and dedicated playtester beyond they simply don't want to spend the money to do so. I don't understand why you would have an issue with this as you don't actually lose anything from more thematic rules. If anything you gain a more interesting game.
Even if the "narrative" rules were better - which is btw highly subjective to each and everyone's DNA - it wouldn't change Karol's group. If 40k was super casual ruleset Karol's group would still probably use ITC rulesets and whatnot ruining Karol's enjoyment of the game. Hell, a lot of players in my FLGS went hard into ITC in 7th despite what the ruleset offered and that included casual games. So I doubt the ruleset could have appeased anybody who wanted different as majority of people will shift towards what they enjoy, which at this moment is recommended Match Play offerings and ITC before that.
I do offer my condolences to people who can't get friends or a group of friendly people to enjoy the game with. It appears to be very regional and it appears some zones are friend deserts with not a friendly face in sight. That is what Tolle would prescribe as the pain body of each and every nation, one that must be faced and fought in time. Only time can heal troubled wounds of lonely souls, lest we repeat old atrocities.
I will however say that I am enjoying the narrative content immensely in 9th as well as many others. Again, it's subjective and I am blessed with a great many friendly people who are diverse and fantastic in almost every aspect, and that's saying much considering I come from a small island in the North Atlantic that a US preacher condemned as a feminist hellhole. Which is why I am always flabbergasted by the relatively inhospitable environment elsewhere. Almost everything GW has done in 9th(and 3.0 for AoS) has been an immense boon for us narrative players who are local to me. Hell, even the tourney players are happy so GW has done a lot of good in my neck of the woods except for the usual price hikes that hit us harder every year. Could also do with Aeldari resculpts, but that is the greedy part of me.
I'll be honest. I have seen many complaints about smaller boards and caps on hits, but no argument for why it is more flavorful or better, or even more narrative. Especially considering the fact that me and mine are enjoying the hell out of narrative more now than ever. So whatever arguments I will ultimately make are against a highly volatile and moving goalpost that will never be satisfied, much like the appetite of a great devourer that threatens to consume the sun much like Fenris did in the days of old. This is also perhaps why the gatekeeping argument stems from as this does end up a lot of time being narrative players arguing the "one true narrative playstyle" which is an argument perpetually doomed in infancy as we all have different and varied playstyles.
So my case from this point onwards is simply this: 9th is the best narrative system since I started in 2nd edition.
Narrative battles is not carte blanche to just make up whatever rules you want under the excuse that "it's thematic to the narrative". People who want narrative games don't want to have to write the entire games themselves. They want a framework with which to enact scenarios and build thematic lists and they want the units in those lists to feel like they represent how the fluff describes them.
Narrative is a carte blanche technically. You are free to modify things as you see fit and everyone in your friend group agrees. It's modification to the existing system why tournament Warhammer exists because a group of players got together and made their own missions and scoring to fill in the holes of a rather broken system that existed before. It's why we have ITC.
So if tournament players were able to modify the existing system why can't narrative players? Hell, ITC events will most likely even ignore the GW terrain layout and use their own, which by some here is a modification to the existing system.
Tournaments are optional. No one has only the option to play in tournaments because most are run in an established community and when they run one everyone agrees to the conditions of entry. People don't approach narrative play in the same way. Let's take Karol's group as an example. It's pretty clear it's VERY cut-throat and competitive. Say Karol decided he wants to play more narrative games, there is no way on Earth they would let him alter the rules, yet it's his only option for games at all, so he's stuck with the rules as they are. You're approaching this from the usual standpoint of assuming everyone has easy access to multiple, regular, friendly groups where you can test rules to iron out kinks and easily all agree to something.
Even my group is pretty friendly with each other and back when Isabella Von Carstein became a daemon prince during the End Times GW neglected to give her the Daemon rule, making her crap because she couldn't join daemon units or benefit from LoS making her very easy to kill. The guy I regularly played against was obviously not sure about it so even though he agreed I never did try it out because in the event that it would have been over-powered I didn't want him thinking I was trying to be cheesy as he'd be too polite to retract his permission for me to use Isabella because I'd gone to the effort of repainting her to look more Nurgley. Which is another issue with altering the rules, players just aren't good at it, and if someone rocks up with custom rules that turn out to be OP then it sours the group on granting permission again.
There's no reason GW can't design rules that are narratively thematic and somewhat balanced (because let's be honest, 40k will never be well balanced). Dozens of games already do that and have just a fraction of the resources available that GW has, some designers do it in their free time. There's nothing stopping GW from actually improving the game by hiring actually talented designers and dedicated playtester beyond they simply don't want to spend the money to do so. I don't understand why you would have an issue with this as you don't actually lose anything from more thematic rules. If anything you gain a more interesting game.
Even if the "narrative" rules were better - which is btw highly subjective to each and everyone's DNA - it wouldn't change Karol's group. If 40k was super casual ruleset Karol's group would still probably use ITC rulesets and whatnot ruining Karol's enjoyment of the game. Hell, a lot of players in my FLGS went hard into ITC in 7th despite what the ruleset offered and that included casual games. So I doubt the ruleset could have appeased anybody who wanted different as majority of people will shift towards what they enjoy, which at this moment is recommended Match Play offerings and ITC before that.
I do offer my condolences to people who can't get friends or a group of friendly people to enjoy the game with. It appears to be very regional and it appears some zones are friend deserts with not a friendly face in sight. That is what Tolle would prescribe as the pain body of each and every nation, one that must be faced and fought in time. Only time can heal troubled wounds of lonely souls, lest we repeat old atrocities.
I will however say that I am enjoying the narrative content immensely in 9th as well as many others. Again, it's subjective and I am blessed with a great many friendly people who are diverse and fantastic in almost every aspect, and that's saying much considering I come from a small island in the North Atlantic that a US preacher condemned as a feminist hellhole. Which is why I am always flabbergasted by the relatively inhospitable environment elsewhere. Almost everything GW has done in 9th(and 3.0 for AoS) has been an immense boon for us narrative players who are local to me. Hell, even the tourney players are happy so GW has done a lot of good in my neck of the woods except for the usual price hikes that hit us harder every year. Could also do with Aeldari resculpts, but that is the greedy part of me.
I'll be honest. I have seen many complaints about smaller boards and caps on hits, but no argument for why it is more flavorful or better, or even more narrative. Especially considering the fact that me and mine are enjoying the hell out of narrative more now than ever. So whatever arguments I will ultimately make are against a highly volatile and moving goalpost that will never be satisfied, much like the appetite of a great devourer that threatens to consume the sun much like Fenris did in the days of old. This is also perhaps why the gatekeeping argument stems from as this does end up a lot of time being narrative players arguing the "one true narrative playstyle" which is an argument perpetually doomed in infancy as we all have different and varied playstyles.
So my case from this point onwards is simply this: 9th is the best narrative system since I started in 2nd edition.
Thats a lot of words to effectively handwave everything I said by saying "It's subjective", accuse me of moving goal posts (which I don't believe I have) and then deciding that from here on your argument will be "I'm having fun so feth you guys, not my problem".
Thats a lot of words to effectively handwave everything I said by saying "It's subjective", accuse me of moving goal posts (which I don't believe I have) and then deciding that from here on your argument will be "I'm having fun so feth you guys, not my problem".
I am also handwaving my opinion as mine is very subjective due to the nature of the very game we play. Regarding goalposts I am not necessarily referring to you, but the goalposts are highly volatile targets in narrative gaming which I have learned through the entirety of this thread. You are of course free to agree or disagree based on your own terms and there is nothing I can do about that. I think the only goalpost that hasn't really moved is the rose-tinted glasses a lot of individuals have for previous editions, most of which people started when they were bright-eyed and full of wonder for a grimdark world that offered solace in the all too chaotic real world. I mean, I have especially fond memories of second edition - both AD&D and Warhammer - but accept that when I revisit those editions the wonder my childhood held for the property has long since withered and has to get its fix elsewhere.
Regarding my argument from here on now is just accepting the fact that there is no discussion I can make without being in the wrong due to the personal nature of the subject. Whether you read that as a "feth you guys" is a highly subjective take and one I can't prevent due to how personal everyone takes their hobby around here. At the same time, due to me being in the wrong about things, also means I can do the same unto others as subjective takes are after all subjective. So when somebody claims I am in the wrong about narrative gaming being fine - and most of all fun - I can claim at the same time that the same individuals are wrong. Because that's the problem with subjective takes: they lead to a perfect impasse and in the end we are all at the mercy which take GW accepts as the true true.
I mean, do you really believe that I or anyone else is going to change your opinion on a GW property or that your arguments are going change mine? In the end we can only argue into the void and vainly hope that our patron saint we call GW hears the loudest voice, to which my answer would probably be: They probably don't care.
DarkHound wrote: Now, if you do have complaints from a purely competitive perspective, that's fair. I'd, however, point to the top player's opinions like Seigler, Lennon, and Nanavati who've been very positive.
LOL - you know those top players...
They invented this type of play right? GW went directly to the ITC circuit for "advise" on how to set up the game in the next edition. OFC they are positive. It is the game they wanted. As few variables as possible.
That's not a problem, that's how an intelligent organization creates a healthy competitive environment: they listen to the top players. They were among the top players before working with GW directly. It's not a conspiracy where they bend the rules to make themselves personally better at the game (obviously they couldn't even if they wanted)
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The game they want limits variables. Are you implying you'd want a competitive scene with more uncontrollable variables? You can already have any non-competitive format to be anything you want, to be clear.
The battlefield should be a variable. The objective of tournament play is not to make it easier for "top players" to win every game at an event. If anything. The idea should be to make it harder. This game is already in the 2/3s of the outcome is decided by the list - that goes up dramatically when you can design the list to an unchanging battlefield.
The point I am making is they are just making it easier for top lists to win. On that GW board that they just posted. You literally can not win without jetpack/fast melee units - massive indirect fire - or ignore terrain abilities. It is not hard for good players to figure that out.
Xenomancers wrote: The point I am making is they are just making it easier for top lists to win. On that GW board that they just posted. You literally can not win without jetpack/fast melee units - massive indirect fire - or ignore terrain abilities. It is not hard for good players to figure that out.
I am far from a tournament player, but the idea of needing to consider things like engaging targets in cover, engaging without LOS, or taking objectives on a cluttered battlefield sounds a lot more interesting than just optimizing for sheer killiness and durability.
Maybe it'll help out armies that have access to effective units that tick all those boxes, but I don't think devaluing the board is ever the right answer.
Edit: To be clear, I 100% agree that having a mix of boards is better, and the game is more interesting when you have to design for and react to a variety of layouts. It's a staple of online gaming and for good reason.
The different types of terrain benefit different types of units and armies.
Ruins primarily just benefit melee infantry and those units that ignore ruins, so if your entire board is just covered in ruins, the meta is going to tilt heavily towards units like terminators, blade guard and similar stuff. If you have no ruins but all dense terrain, heavy shooting units will reign supreme.
Xeno's worries about tournament games being too easily trained could easily be alienated by creating a pool of 12-18 boards and not telling people which ones they are playing before the event starts.
Jidmah wrote: The different types of terrain benefit different types of units and armies.
Ruins primarily just benefit melee infantry and those units that ignore ruins, so if your entire board is just covered in ruins, the meta is going to tilt heavily towards units like terminators, blade guard and similar stuff. If you have no ruins but all dense terrain, heavy shooting units will reign supreme.
With how terrain is currently implemented, this is unavoidable to a degree. An army with BS3+ and 3+ saves across the board is going to benefit more from save-boosting cover and be hurt less by -1 to hit than an army that's BS4+ and 5+ saves.
So the quantity of terrain can skew how two armies stack up, in addition to the type.
A set of 'official maps' would be a good way to ensure variety in a regulated competitive environment. Vary the types and quantity of terrain per map. 12-18 might be a burden for TOs to build, but if you had six different types, then in a typical six-round tournament each player would be playing on each map once.
Jidmah wrote: Xeno's worries about tournament games being too easily trained could easily be alienated by creating a pool of 12-18 boards and not telling people which ones they are playing before the event starts.
Alright, but that just creates a different, worse problem: your tournament run becomes dictated by luck of the draw for board layouts. It's already an issue that a player can get a streak of easy opponents/army match-ups. You can't realistically accommodate for every possible board. The same way that making a "take all comers" army is a nooby mistake; the best armies pose a problem to their opponent, and don't try to react to every issue. Some factions best strategies are just not going to work on some board layouts.
When you standardize the layout, then the designers can balance the faction toward that layout and the players can plan their strategy toward it. So maybe certain builds of certain factions get shut-out by the standardized board, but ideally that's temporary until they get a balance pass. The alternative, that you get a random draw for the board layout and a random draw for the army match-up, is going to create wild swings in tournament results. The game will become less about player skill and performance.
There is always going to be a metagame. Even if you make a random board layout system, you know what will happen? Tournament armies will skew heavily toward a few builds that can basically ignore terrain layout (like Deathguard and Dark Angels).
Xenomancers wrote: The point I am making is they are just making it easier for top lists to win. On that GW board that they just posted. You literally can not win without jetpack/fast melee units - massive indirect fire - or ignore terrain abilities. It is not hard for good players to figure that out.
I am far from a tournament player, but the idea of needing to consider things like engaging targets in cover, engaging without LOS, or taking objectives on a cluttered battlefield sounds a lot more interesting than just optimizing for sheer killiness and durability.
Maybe it'll help out armies that have access to effective units that tick all those boxes, but I don't think devaluing the board is ever the right answer.
Edit: To be clear, I 100% agree that having a mix of boards is better, and the game is more interesting when you have to design for and react to a variety of layouts. It's a staple of online gaming and for good reason.
For sure - these are great abilities to have on any battlefield. Their value on a table like that though...is overbearing. Which is why terrain should be random. Or people just spam that type of unit because it will always be overbearing.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jidmah wrote: The different types of terrain benefit different types of units and armies.
Ruins primarily just benefit melee infantry and those units that ignore ruins, so if your entire board is just covered in ruins, the meta is going to tilt heavily towards units like terminators, blade guard and similar stuff. If you have no ruins but all dense terrain, heavy shooting units will reign supreme.
Xeno's worries about tournament games being too easily trained could easily be alienated by creating a pool of 12-18 boards and not telling people which ones they are playing before the event starts.
I totally agree. Maybe not 12-18 but as others have stated. If there were 6-8 different set ups. With a variety of density - some industrial - some jungle - some city fight. That is what I would call fair.
Jidmah wrote: The different types of terrain benefit different types of units and armies.
Ruins primarily just benefit melee infantry and those units that ignore ruins, so if your entire board is just covered in ruins, the meta is going to tilt heavily towards units like terminators, blade guard and similar stuff. If you have no ruins but all dense terrain, heavy shooting units will reign supreme.
With how terrain is currently implemented, this is unavoidable to a degree. An army with BS3+ and 3+ saves across the board is going to benefit more from save-boosting cover and be hurt less by -1 to hit than an army that's BS4+ and 5+ saves.
So the quantity of terrain can skew how two armies stack up, in addition to the type.
The difference between the terrain types is mostly how well they can protect from shooting and how easy it is to move across them.
Ruins are easy to move across for infantry and terrible to move across for vehicles and give great protection from shooting.
Craters/Forests/Industrial mediocre to move across for everyone, and give mediocre at protecting from shooting.
Crates/Rocks are terrible to move across for everyone and give good protection from shooting.
Barricades/pipes are difficult to move across for everyone, and give a little protection from shooting.
The trick is bringing an equal mix of all four, allowing players to use the parts of the battlefield that benefits their units most.
You don't need indirect fire when you can maneuver a tank to shoot objective campers through a forest. On the other hand, indirect fire isn't worthless because your opponent can still utilize ruins to hide valuable units behind them.
You are also free to move your melee troops through forests and ruins, but some ranged units protected by barricades and containers are not easily reached.
If everything is ruins, every player will place their units in the same spot, and infantry will never move
A set of 'official maps' would be a good way to ensure variety in a regulated competitive environment. Vary the types and quantity of terrain per map. 12-18 might be a burden for TOs to build, but if you had six different types, then in a typical six-round tournament each player would be playing on each map once.
Yeah 12-18 is probably a bit much when your average tournament only goes for 4-5 rounds, but there should definitely be at least one more map than turns - just so a TO can know one out of the rotation if it proves to be too unbalanced.
As for the burden on TOs - currently GW essentially requires 4 large ruins, 4 small ruins and 4 dense terrain features. Add an ADL (or barricade of similar length) and four containers and you're already in a position where you can just shuffle around those terrain pieces into multiple interesting boards.
If you want to go wild, you could even create "slots" for faction terrain pieces which get auto-filled with a large rock when unused.
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Xenomancers wrote: I totally agree. Maybe not 12-18 but as others have stated. If there were 6-8 different set ups. With a variety of density - some industrial - some jungle - some city fight. That is what I would call fair.
True, though you could just theme boards irrespective of the terrain set-up. A ruin in a jungle setting could just be an ancient ruin that has the same base size as the one used in the industrial board next to them.
The terrain I bought for games at my home is half ork themed and half imperial themed - even if we set up the sides to mirror each other boards, the ork side is never truely symmetric to the imperial side, simply because the ruins, industrial structures and barricades have different shapes, heights and sizes.
This is the problem with the current game design. Units have specific roles dictated by their datasheets and stat line. It's not like I can pin units down with artillery and then send in a squad of infantry to clear them out. My unit is either good or not in any given situation universally based on their stats / special rules and there is little I can do as a player to change that.
You take the units not the player.
If you don't have the tools, you can't win.
What can I do as a guard player on a board like that? Take Ogryn and basilisks? It's not like guardsmen are getting a lot of kills.
Furthermore this might not become the norm for narrative 40k games, but as seen with the board sizes the more organized and explicit formats for a game system are always going to inform the standard for the less organized iterations. It also creates a perception of there being a "right" way to play the game, especially when endorsed by the central rules body.
Sledgehammer wrote: This is the problem with the current game design. Units have specific roles dictated by their datasheets and stat line. It's not like I can pin units down with artillery and then send in a squad of infantry to clear them out. My unit is either good or not in any given situation universally based on their stats / special rules and there is little I can do as a player to change that.
And "current game design" means "(at least) since 3rd edition in 1998". This is not a game with interactions like these and I doubt it ever will be. Critisizing a game for something it doesn't try to be is a moot point.
Coming from a few months of infinity playing, i have really grown fond of asymetric boards. It makes chosing Deployment actually important over Turn order.
Having lots of obscuring terrain also makes a lot of sense IMO not all your weapons should be able to shoot the whole board without navigating. Sure it gives a bonus to melee units but you can still navigate around them (unless they get stuff that allows them to charge you on turn 1 but then terrain doesnt really matter considering its all breachable anyway)
Sledgehammer wrote: This is the problem with the current game design. Units have specific roles dictated by their datasheets and stat line. It's not like I can pin units down with artillery and then send in a squad of infantry to clear them out. My unit is either good or not in any given situation universally based on their stats / special rules and there is little I can do as a player to change that.
And "current game design" means "(at least) since 3rd edition in 1998". This is not a game with interactions like these and I doubt it ever will be. Critisizing a game for something it doesn't try to be is a moot point.
I can't advocate for that? I mean, its not like vehicle facing wasn't a toe dip into that department either.....
Sledgehammer wrote: This is the problem with the current game design. Units have specific roles dictated by their datasheets and stat line. It's not like I can pin units down with artillery and then send in a squad of infantry to clear them out. My unit is either good or not in any given situation universally based on their stats / special rules and there is little I can do as a player to change that.
And "current game design" means "(at least) since 3rd edition in 1998". This is not a game with interactions like these and I doubt it ever will be. Critisizing a game for something it doesn't try to be is a moot point.
I can't advocate for that? I mean, its not like vehicle facing wasn't a toe dip into that department either.....
Your original comment makes sense to me, i didnt play pre-8th but from what i've heard vehicle facings did encourage positioning and the pinning weapons also were a step in a more tactical game than what we have now
Dude...in this game flamethrowers can hit airplanes...
Armor facings has no role in a game like this.
Personally I wish the game was more complicated. Sadly it's not. Marines only have transhuman philology when you pay CP for it -without their philology ever changing.
Xenomancers wrote: Dude...in this game flamethrowers can hit airplanes...
Armor facings has no role in a game like this.
Personally I wish the game was more complicated. Sadly it's not. Marines only have transhuman philology when you pay CP for it -without their philology ever changing.
Why am i not allowed to say i wish we had more actual depth? Just because flamers can hit airplanes doesnt mean i can't ask for true tactical options.
(and while you're at it, just make aiplanes add 12" to the range of weapons shooting at them)
Xenomancers wrote: Dude...in this game flamethrowers can hit airplanes...
Armor facings has no role in a game like this.
Personally I wish the game was more complicated. Sadly it's not. Marines only have transhuman philology when you pay CP for it -without their philology ever changing.
Sigh.... Let's not get into that..... I already derailed the tank thread.
With that being said I think this change will have some small implications on narrative players, and will be more or less neutral to competitive play. It just creates a new environment for new metas to come about.
It's time for the game to make meaningful changes to make the game better for everyone.
Every type of play benefits from balanced rules. We should start there. (Too bad GW is moving away from this - current admech is the most busted crap to ever exist - expect 70% WR)
Every type of army has a preferred terrain setup - So the tables terrain should be variable as to not give preference to any type of army.
If there are 6 terrain set-ups, A, B, C, D, E, F and I play against 5 armies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I will benefit more or less than my opponent from the table we are playing on. How much I or my opponent benefit in any given game is based on luck that is decided before deployment has finished. Make boards and/or missions too beneficial and you risk deciding a game before it has even begun.
I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
One thing that would be okay is coupling missions with terrain, mission xy is beneficial for gunlines so it needs more terrain, mission zz starts with armies close to each other so gunlines need better sight-lines so they can sit further back and draw lines of sight, etc. etc. But this is not possible under normal tournament formats, so every table and mission needs to be more or less the same in terms of which units it benefits to ensure games are not decided almost entirely by a combination of mission, matchup and terrain.
"Every type of army has a preferred terrain setup - So the tables terrain should be variable as to not give preference to any type of army." If Space Marines lose every game against Tyranids and win every game against Daemons is that balanced?
VladimirHerzog wrote: Sure it gives a bonus to melee units but you can still navigate around them (unless they get stuff that allows them to charge you on turn 1 but then terrain doesnt really matter considering its all breachable anyway)
Craters and forests exist, they can slow down melee units without FLY.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Sure it gives a bonus to melee units but you can still navigate around them (unless they get stuff that allows them to charge you on turn 1 but then terrain doesnt really matter considering its all breachable anyway)
Craters and forests exist, they can slow down melee units without FLY.
i know, i meant for the suggested layouts specifically
vict0988 wrote: If there are 6 terrain set-ups, A, B, C, D, E, F and I play against 5 armies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I will benefit more or less than my opponent from the table we are playing on. How much I or my opponent benefit in any given game is based on luck that is decided before deployment has finished. Make boards and/or missions too beneficial and you risk deciding a game before it has even begun.
I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
One thing that would be okay is coupling missions with terrain, mission xy is beneficial for gunlines so it needs more terrain, mission zz starts with armies close to each other so gunlines need better sight-lines so they can sit further back and draw lines of sight, etc. etc. But this is not possible under normal tournament formats, so every table and mission needs to be more or less the same in terms of which units it benefits to ensure games are not decided almost entirely by a combination of mission, matchup and terrain.
"Every type of army has a preferred terrain setup - So the tables terrain should be variable as to not give preference to any type of army."
If Space Marines lose every game against Tyranids and win every game against Daemons is that balanced?
VladimirHerzog wrote: Sure it gives a bonus to melee units but you can still navigate around them (unless they get stuff that allows them to charge you on turn 1 but then terrain doesnt really matter considering its all breachable anyway)
Craters and forests exist, they can slow down melee units without FLY.
"Every type of army has a preferred terrain setup - So the tables terrain should be variable as to not give preference to any type of army."
If Space Marines lose every game against Tyranids and win every game against Daemons is that balanced?
What does that have to do with variable terrain? Seems to me this has nothing to do with terrain. I am pretty sure different terrain setups would influence those battles though - if the terrain is the same every battle or close to it - the result will be the same more often.
"I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain."
Monolith is Titanic. So essentially the more terrain on the table the worse it gets. GW terrain setup has mandated that this unit see 0 play. That alone makes the setup bad. Full stop. Not that Monoliths would be incredibly good on a table with less terrain ether. It's a bad example because the unit just isn't that great for it's points. Just too easy to kill In my experience (played 2 of them last Sat) and they just die too easy.
A better example would be a shooting unit that doesn't want to be in CC. Why would you take a unit like this on a GW offical terrain setup ever? I mean that is even dumber than in previous version of the game when people would floot slog melee armies - because that actually has a chance of success because melee has huge upside. Taking shooting units that will inevitably end up locked in combat and likely destroyed in 1 round of combat while never having a chance to shoot...that is entirely unwinnable. Unless like you are admech...and you can just get every rule in the game in bundles and stacks and not pay points for it.
vict0988 wrote: I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
Monolith is Titanic. So essentially the more terrain on the table the worse it gets. GW terrain setup has mandated that this unit see 0 play. That alone makes the setup bad. Full stop. Not that Monoliths would be incredibly good on a table with less terrain ether. It's a bad example because the unit just isn't that great for it's points. Just too easy to kill In my experience (played 2 of them last Sat) and they just die too easy.
Agree with everything you are saying here, what I am saying that I don't want every fifth game to be played on an open table to give Monoliths a chance to shine once in a while, I want them to be equally worth it in every game based on the terrain the TO has let the players know will be in effect before they submit their lists. So either, every game should be on tables where the Monolith isn't totally kneecapped or none of them should be. None is the best answer, but I don't want competitive games being decided by whether you play on table 1 in a jungle or table 2 on a savannah. In a casual game you can be more open and then negotiate with your opponent, try a hard table once in a while to test your army's mettle and let it run rampant on a more open battlefield if the opponent is up to the challenge.
vict0988 wrote: If there are 6 terrain set-ups, A, B, C, D, E, F and I play against 5 armies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I will benefit more or less than my opponent from the table we are playing on. How much I or my opponent benefit in any given game is based on luck that is decided before deployment has finished. Make boards and/or missions too beneficial and you risk deciding a game before it has even begun.
I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
One thing that would be okay is coupling missions with terrain, mission xy is beneficial for gunlines so it needs more terrain, mission zz starts with armies close to each other so gunlines need better sight-lines so they can sit further back and draw lines of sight, etc. etc. But this is not possible under normal tournament formats, so every table and mission needs to be more or less the same in terms of which units it benefits to ensure games are not decided almost entirely by a combination of mission, matchup and terrain.
"Every type of army has a preferred terrain setup - So the tables terrain should be variable as to not give preference to any type of army."
If Space Marines lose every game against Tyranids and win every game against Daemons is that balanced?
I think you got it all wrong. All six terrain setups should not massively benefit one or another army. Of course, every kind of map is probably going to be slightly better for some armies than for others, but no more than the current missions are.
vict0988 wrote: I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
Monolith is Titanic. So essentially the more terrain on the table the worse it gets. GW terrain setup has mandated that this unit see 0 play. That alone makes the setup bad. Full stop. Not that Monoliths would be incredibly good on a table with less terrain ether. It's a bad example because the unit just isn't that great for it's points. Just too easy to kill In my experience (played 2 of them last Sat) and they just die too easy.
Agree with everything you are saying here, what I am saying that I don't want every fifth game to be played on an open table to give Monoliths a chance to shine once in a while, I want them to be equally worth it in every game based on the terrain the TO has let the players know will be in effect before they submit their lists. So either, every game should be on tables where the Monolith isn't totally kneecapped or none of them should be. None is the best answer, but I don't want competitive games being decided by whether you play on table 1 in a jungle or table 2 on a savannah. In a casual game you can be more open and then negotiate with your opponent, try a hard table once in a while to test your army's mettle and let it run rampant on a more open battlefield if the opponent is up to the challenge.
This is more of a problem with aberrant unit types than it is with the terrain setups though. They need to figure out a way to balance titanic units around not having obscuring without making them so indestructible that they can just walk into your backlines and kill everything.
Jidmah wrote: All six terrain setups should not massively benefit one or another army. Of course, every kind of map is probably going to be slightly better for some armies than for others, but no more than the current missions are.
Agree 100%, but some do want "melee terrain" on table 1 and "gunline terrain" on table 2, bad idea outside team tournaments. GW only coming up with 2 is probably logistics-related, not even following the objective placement rules is just lazy.
Jidmah wrote: All six terrain setups should not massively benefit one or another army. Of course, every kind of map is probably going to be slightly better for some armies than for others, but no more than the current missions are.
Agree 100%, but some do want "melee terrain" on table 1 and "gunline terrain" on table 2, bad idea outside team tournaments.
Well that sound a lot like "each player gains 2d6VP" to me. Anything replacing player skill with luck is a terrible idea for tournaments.
Jidmah wrote: All six terrain setups should not massively benefit one or another army. Of course, every kind of map is probably going to be slightly better for some armies than for others, but no more than the current missions are.
Agree 100%, but some do want "melee terrain" on table 1 and "gunline terrain" on table 2, bad idea outside team tournaments.
Well that sound a lot like "each player gains 2d6VP" to me. Anything replacing player skill with luck is a terrible idea for tournaments.
Exactly, in team tournaments it's different as you can have players defend their ideal terrain and the attacker might struggle despite having a counter army.
People think that everyone will be making balanced lists, but I don't think we've seen more balanced lists than in 9th, people aren't even straining that much under Ro3 most of the time and the missions are all samey.
vict0988 wrote: I might take a Monolith going to a tournament knowing there is a 17% chance in each game that I will be at a severe disadvantage, probably that'll come up once in 5 games, but it could be twice or never, frankly I'd rather know that it's a 100% chance (with GW's terrible terrain) and just pick units I know won't be completely screwed by terrain.
Monolith is Titanic. So essentially the more terrain on the table the worse it gets. GW terrain setup has mandated that this unit see 0 play. That alone makes the setup bad. Full stop. Not that Monoliths would be incredibly good on a table with less terrain ether. It's a bad example because the unit just isn't that great for it's points. Just too easy to kill In my experience (played 2 of them last Sat) and they just die too easy.
Agree with everything you are saying here, what I am saying that I don't want every fifth game to be played on an open table to give Monoliths a chance to shine once in a while, I want them to be equally worth it in every game based on the terrain the TO has let the players know will be in effect before they submit their lists. So either, every game should be on tables where the Monolith isn't totally kneecapped or none of them should be. None is the best answer, but I don't want competitive games being decided by whether you play on table 1 in a jungle or table 2 on a savannah. In a casual game you can be more open and then negotiate with your opponent, try a hard table once in a while to test your army's mettle and let it run rampant on a more open battlefield if the opponent is up to the challenge.
This is more of a problem with aberrant unit types than it is with the terrain setups though. They need to figure out a way to balance titanic units around not having obscuring without making them so indestructible that they can just walk into your backlines and kill everything.
Or maybe, for competitive, organized tournament play, you don't. To give a quick example from a game I played previously - Monsterpocalypse had a mechanic whereby players would build the city they were going to be playing on by bringing a collection of buildings that synergized with their list of little minions. So for example the UFO faction, which was immune to radiation damage, would bring tons of Nuclear Power Plants to throw the opposing monster into and the city would end up looking like a 12 year old's Sim City setup.
One of the expansions introduced 'faction buildings' which were like bases dedicated to the various factions, which compared to the benefits of every other building in the game were HUGELY powerful. If someone could roll up as the UFO faction with an entire building list just full of the martian laser-towers they'd have a massive advantage, it just broke that aspect of the game.
So TOs just didnt play with them, they were ruled 'for casual play only' when it was supremely unlikely that a player just buying random booster packs would wind up with more than 1 or 2 of the faction building.
Of the wargames I've played competitively over the years, 40k is the only one where TO's regardless of the balance of a feature will basically tie themselves in knots to try and accommodate any scrap of rules that the company that produces the game puts out. Other games are far more apt to take a feature and label it 'not for tournament play, sorry.'
I think the fundamental problem with terrain in 9th, is its mixture with the missions, the secondaries, strong melee units, and the infantry keyword.
Specifically, if you happen to have strong melee units, access to secondaries which allow you to hold off on taking and holding the central points, then all you have to do is advance into threat range of the central points, and force your opponent into a no win situation. Strong melee units behind breachable solid walls in the mid field create, in my opinion an oppressive game state.
secretForge wrote: I think the fundamental problem with terrain in 9th, is its mixture with the missions, the secondaries, strong melee units, and the infantry keyword.
Specifically, if you happen to have strong melee units, access to secondaries which allow you to hold off on taking and holding the central points, then all you have to do is advance into threat range of the central points, and force your opponent into a no win situation. Strong melee units behind breachable solid walls in the mid field create, in my opinion an oppressive game state.
Yeah, I think 9th could have done with a few terrain keywords that were bad for infantry but benefitted non-infantry units in some way.
I'm not really a fan of fixed terrain layouts, but I understand them from a TO point of view as it's so much easier to do it that way than come up with fair, balanced set-ups across every table while making all of them different. However, I do think such a small selection of terrain types and layouts just pushes 40k further away from skill on the tabletop as yet another variable is accounted for before a single model is placed on the table.
Or maybe, for competitive, organized tournament play, you don't. To give a quick example from a game I played previously - Monsterpocalypse had a mechanic whereby players would build the city they were going to be playing on by bringing a collection of buildings that synergized with their list of little minions. So for example the UFO faction, which was immune to radiation damage, would bring tons of Nuclear Power Plants to throw the opposing monster into and the city would end up looking like a 12 year old's Sim City setup.
One of the expansions introduced 'faction buildings' which were like bases dedicated to the various factions, which compared to the benefits of every other building in the game were HUGELY powerful. If someone could roll up as the UFO faction with an entire building list just full of the martian laser-towers they'd have a massive advantage, it just broke that aspect of the game.
So TOs just didnt play with them, they were ruled 'for casual play only' when it was supremely unlikely that a player just buying random booster packs would wind up with more than 1 or 2 of the faction building.
Of the wargames I've played competitively over the years, 40k is the only one where TO's regardless of the balance of a feature will basically tie themselves in knots to try and accommodate any scrap of rules that the company that produces the game puts out. Other games are far more apt to take a feature and label it 'not for tournament play, sorry.'
I'm not sure your group or TOs were reading the rules properly if that was happening since the original MonPoc with the blind Boosters had a limit on how many of each building you could take(which IIRC was even lower for the Faction buildings). Yes, you could skew your building pool, but not to such an extent you needed to ban the Faction Buildings(which were legal in official events).
