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Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:18:53


Post by: Crafter91


Before we get started, let me say that the below thread relates to friendly games only and not tournament play.

I'm a Craftworld Eldar player.

I know that I could win more games by playing mixed Aeldari, but I like the look and playstyle of Craftworld. Sue me!

I probably win 6 games out of 10 - Maybe 7, and that's enough for me.

I can't stand Facebook Eldar groups lately because it's nothing but whining about how Craftworld suck right now and they need a better codex.

Sure, their codex needs to be updated and brought inline with 9th edition (i.e. having D3+3 instead of D6 damage, etc) but other than that, it does not need 'updating'.

I understand that some codexes are in particular dire spots at the moment. Tau and GSC are probably the main two that spring to mind. Chaos is flirting with the line too. Those players have the right to complain about their codexes.

As for Imperial Guard, Eldar, Harlequins, Necrons (Yes Necrons with their 9th ed codex that still gets complaints) and others like them are in my humble opinion perfectly playable in a friendly gaming sense of the hobby.

I mean, come on, am I the only person that thinks a slightly better than 50/50 Win-Lose ratio is actually what the game should be promoting? Armies SHOULD NOT win 90+% of their games.

Final note: Please don't turn this into yet another thread about OP armies. Yes they exist. No they shouldn't.

My point here is simply that I'm just sick of people only having fun when they're winning games - like if you can't shoot your opponent off the table in two turns or less, the army is weak.
Some of the best games I have enjoyed were losses, and as it's a dice game, if you're not losing occasionally then something is off.

Rant over. Cue the pandemonium.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:32:47


Post by: Sunny Side Up


Well, if you win 6-7 out of 10 games with Craftworld, you're vastly overperforming for whatever reason.

Yes. You said no tournament, fair enough. But it does seem like your group/community/surroundings are fairly favourable to you, either playing armies matching well into you or being mostly weaker players then yourself or whatever.

Few people would complain winning 6-7 games, but that isn't the norm for Craftworld players at the moment. Winning 3-4 out of 10 is the global average for the data we have, and wanting to get the army to the 50/50 ratio you yourself promote doesn't seem like an unreasonable wish, no?


There is a logical fallacy in your argument where you have a highly unusual experience with Craftworlds and assume it to be the "norm", while simultaneously claiming other Craftworld players hoping/wishing for changes to promote a win rate BELOW the one you experience in your own, highly unusual local environment, are making unreasonable requests to perfom better then the outlier-performance you yourself experience.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:33:34


Post by: the_scotsman


I care less about winning every game and more about whether my units authentically feel like they play like theyre supposed to in the lore of the game world, and eldar do not.

supposedly lightning-fast ninja space elf warriors who trained in the blade while you dated make fewer attacks in melee than a lumbering monkeigh astartes holding a gigantic melta cannon.

Mono-molecular chainswords that cut effortlessly through steel have the same stats as lead pipes held by chaos cultists.

the mighty avatar of the bloody handed god loses in close combat to every no-name astartes captain OK that's pretty canon-accurate I'll admit it.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:34:47


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


I really kind of agree. A problem I think has popped up is that in their list for a powerful army, people have forgotten to ask for fun armies. Orks 9e dex might be more powerful, but the 8th one was 20 times more fun to run.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:39:42


Post by: Twilight Pathways


I don't understand the complaint. No one has ever advocated for 90% win-rates (?!) - people who 'care about winning', i.e. are upset about their army's overall place in the meta, are generally using factions with a much lower than 50% win-rate, which means their army is weak or can't function properly in the 9th edition ruleset. What's wrong with wanting your army to be properly balanced against others? Now, we all know that GW are terrible at balance and there's also the neverending carousel of 'new hotness' combined with codex creep, but that doesn't mean weaker factions' complaints are unjustified.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:48:17


Post by: the_scotsman


Twilight Pathways wrote:
I don't understand the complaint. No one has ever advocated for 90% win-rates (?!) - people who 'care about winning', i.e. are upset about their army's overall place in the meta, are generally using factions with a much lower than 50% win-rate, which means their army is weak or can't function properly in the 9th edition ruleset. What's wrong with wanting your army to be properly balanced against others? Now, we all know that GW are terrible at balance and there's also the neverending carousel of 'new hotness' combined with codex creep, but that doesn't mean weaker factions' complaints are unjustified.


Hey, maybe in closed eldar-player-only groups they advocate for 90% winrates being fair and the desired state you dont know.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:50:57


Post by: Nurglitch


I want to know that I can win, if I'm clever enough, be able to identify mistakes I made if I lose, and be able to improve with practice.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:56:22


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 the_scotsman wrote:
I care less about winning every game and more about whether my units authentically feel like they play like theyre supposed to in the lore of the game world, and eldar do not.

supposedly lightning-fast ninja space elf warriors who trained in the blade while you dated make fewer attacks in melee than a lumbering monkeigh astartes holding a gigantic melta cannon.

Mono-molecular chainswords that cut effortlessly through steel have the same stats as lead pipes held by chaos cultists.

the mighty avatar of the bloody handed god loses in close combat to every no-name astartes captain OK that's pretty canon-accurate I'll admit it.


This post hits the nail on the head.

Honestly, I'd take a RETROGRADE for Guard (in terms of some design choices; e.g. I'd like to see a return to Platoons), and I don't even really care if they're winning (I'm building an Armageddon Steel Legion force right now, surely the most competitive list ever to grace the tables! )

But some of the changes they could put in the 9th edition codex would be super neat just from a narrative play perspective.

Regiment Types aren't a thing like they were back in the day (e.g. Mechanized, Armored, Artillery, Infantry, Siege) with all the boons and drawbacks thereof.

Regiment Homeworld matters too much imho (it used to be a kinda neat background thing while you played with Your Dudes, now it's the only way to differentiate). A Cadian Mechanized Infantry Company should be more different than a Cadian Artillery Company than it should be from a Valhallan Mechanized Company.

I could go on, but yeah.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 15:57:31


Post by: vict0988


 Crafter91 wrote:
I probably win 6 games out of 10 - Maybe 7, and that's enough for me.

I can't stand Facebook Eldar groups lately because it's nothing but whining about how Craftworld suck right now and they need a better codex.

Do you think if you were winning 1 game out of 10 it'd be enough for you? The people that are complaining about Craftworlds being too weak are not winning over 50% of their games and are asking to get close to 50% win rate and not 90% win rate. Nobody wants Craftworlds to have a 90% win rate, you are arguing with a strawman, it's a logical fallacy. Try arguing against "Craftworlds should have a 50% win rate in competitive and casual play", not just for you, but on average for everyone. It's not about winning every game, it's about not having a 3-game losing streak too often and never having a 6-game losing streak.

One person doing well with Craftworlds does not prove anything, just like one player doing badly with Drukhari wouldn't prove a thing either. It might be your lists, luck or skills are superior to that of other Craftworlds players. The fact is that Craftworlds are doing poorly in competitive play, that's a better indication of the army's health in casual play than one person's experience.

I don't believe your next 100 games with the current Craftworlds codex will have over 60 wins, I don't even think you will play 100 more games with the current Craftworlds codex. What is your win rate based on? 20 games? How do you keep track of wins and losses? The original post is about as far from science as you can get. Do you think maybe it might set someone off just as much when you come through with your 70% win rate and tell the people with a 30% win rate that everything is fine just like it sets you off when people want Craftworlds to improve when you are already doing well with Craftworlds? If you're not just lucky or using relatively stronger lists than your opponents then maybe you could flood the Eldar pages with the tactics you are using to win battles instead of venting on Dakka about people venting on Facebook.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:03:54


Post by: oni


It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:05:30


Post by: the_scotsman


again, a few things that have nothing to do with winrate:

-an ancient race with hyper-advanced technology whose species is actively dying and who are desperate to preserve themselves has the exact same defenses as the cheapest shoddiest slapped-together "armor" the imperium puts on their raw conscripts.

-each weapon used by that hyper-advanced high tech race is individually worse at its job than the equivalent weaponry used by the trillions-strong blunt force war machine of the imperium. A bright lance is a weaker lascannon. A starcannon is a weaker plasma cannon. A shuriken cannon is a MUCH weaker heavy bolter.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:13:18


Post by: Nurglitch


You forget that the advances of the aeldari are mainly in fashion and poetry.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:13:19


Post by: the_scotsman


-All the hyper-specialized monastic aspect warriors who train in the perfection of the art of a single form of combat over multiple human lifespans are just gakky versions of a thing that either the adeptus astartes or the adeptus mechanicus have.

Swooping Hawks are gakky Pteraxii Skystalkers (which themselves are just gakky Pteraxii Sterylyzors lol)

Fire Dragons are gakky Eradicators

Howling Banshees are gakky Ruststalkers

Dire Avengers are gakky Skitarii Vanguard

Crimson Hunters are gakky Archaeopters

Striking Scorpions are gakky...god, Assault marines? Holy cow theyre bad lol. Ork Kommandos make them look like a JOKE model-for-model.

The only aspects that don't have a "this is them but better at their thing in every way" equivalent among the imperial forces are Shining Spears because the imperium doesnt have a dedicated fast-moving melee jetbike unit outside of like, custodes, and Warp Spiders because whoever designed codex SM and codex Admech wasn't brain damaged enough to think that a low rate of fire S6 AP- D1 unit had a "Role" to play in a game of 40k.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:15:50


Post by: gibbindefs


 the_scotsman wrote:
again, a few things that have nothing to do with winrate:

-an ancient race with hyper-advanced technology whose species is actively dying and who are desperate to preserve themselves has the exact same defenses as the cheapest shoddiest slapped-together "armor" the imperium puts on their raw conscripts.

-each weapon used by that hyper-advanced high tech race is individually worse at its job than the equivalent weaponry used by the trillions-strong blunt force war machine of the imperium. A bright lance is a weaker lascannon. A starcannon is a weaker plasma cannon. A shuriken cannon is a MUCH weaker heavy bolter.



This is why the current CSM rules make me mad. Ancient Chaos Space Marines, veterans of the Horus Heresy, living in the eye of terror, and infused with the powers of the dark gods are still 1 wound. 9th has been out for over a year now and it makes me not even want to take my CSM off the shelf seeing how pathetic their stats are. In the lore they should be just as good as any loyalist, but on the tabletop they are useless. All of the CSM lists that do decently in a tournament don't even take any marines, if they can help it.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:18:24


Post by: Nurglitch


What, would you be afraid of a bunch of pensioners muttering through their false teeth about how the gov't screwed their pensions, armed and armoured with antiques and jugaad tat, or hotshot young punks armed and armoured in the best of His Majesty's Armoury?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:27:24


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 Nurglitch wrote:
What, would you be afraid of a bunch of pensioners muttering through their false teeth about how the gov't screwed their pensions, armed and armoured with antiques and jugaad tat, or hotshot young punks armed and armoured in the best of His Majesty's Armoury?


the former, if they were also followers of lovecraftian gods beyond space and time who bore bulging eyes, tentacles, and a hatred for the living.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:29:38


Post by: Sunny Side Up


 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Not really.

By and large, 40K-community has grown MUCH more relaxed about this sort of thing.

10-odd years ago, people lost their goddamn mind at Mat Ward Grey Knights having an unprecedented, unholy 55%-win rate, predicting the imminent bankruptcy of GW.

These days, armies with 60-ish% win-rates barely get a shrug and 70-ish% win rates get some raised eyebrows and "GW better hurry up with the next update" at best.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:31:52


Post by: Grimtuff


 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.

Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 16:40:32


Post by: the_scotsman


Sunny Side Up wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Not really.

By and large, 40K-community has grown MUCH more relaxed about this sort of thing.

10-odd years ago, people lost their goddamn mind at Mat Ward Grey Knights having an unprecedented, unholy 55%-win rate, predicting the imminent bankruptcy of GW.


Yeah, and you know what the army-by-army play stats were for that tournament where GK 'only' had a 55% winrate?

GK, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Dark Eldar made up NINETY-TWO percent of the play meta combined. 38% of players at the tournament were playing Grey Knights.

EVERY OTHER ARMY COMBINED had 8% of the play meta.

Win % isnt the only thing that measures game health my dude. Remember how when space marines were super OP they had way lower win pct than Drukhari do now? It's because 66% of people were playing space marines at the tournament....Youre gonna get a lower winrate if literally everyone is bringing the game army, lol.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:09:37


Post by: Sim-Life


 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed.


Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:29:34


Post by: the_scotsman


 Sim-Life wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed.


Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


...which is funny because I, as an american, am frequently just shaking my head and laughing when I hear about how miserable the state of play is in various other countries like to throw out a random example I dont know poland.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:40:02


Post by: Sim-Life


 the_scotsman wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed.


Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


...which is funny because I, as an american, am frequently just shaking my head and laughing when I hear about how miserable the state of play is in various other countries like to throw out a random example I dont know poland.


Karol isn't here anymore though.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:41:38


Post by: Gene St. Ealer


 Sim-Life wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed.


Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


...which is funny because I, as an american, am frequently just shaking my head and laughing when I hear about how miserable the state of play is in various other countries like to throw out a random example I dont know poland.


Karol isn't here anymore though.


Do we know what happened? Is he going to come back?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:42:30


Post by: Daedalus81


 Sim-Life wrote:

Karol isn't here anymore though.


What did I miss?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:47:56


Post by: Racerguy180


I could honestly give two gaks about winning or losing. All I care about is does army play the way I want it to & is cinematic gak happening on the table.
Let the dice tell the story.




oni wrote:It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Cancer would be an improvement...it's more like a highly dangerous virus that preys on the inadequacies of self-thought vs group-think.

40k is a terrible competitive game so playing it competitively leads to terrible experiences. I.E. complaining about not winning enuff, needing X # of unit Y so they can crush their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women, etc...


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:55:59


Post by: Daedalus81


I think people like erecting this paper tiger about competitive players. There's a difference between "Competitive" players and "competitive" players. The latter exists in every group. The former are people who go to tournaments. People can be gakky regardless of how they play, but all of my 6 opponents this past weekend were great.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 17:56:44


Post by: Sim-Life


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:

Karol isn't here anymore though.


What did I miss?


Dunno. I just noticed he's stopped posting. Maybe he finally quit the game?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:05:11


Post by: Voss


Racerguy180 wrote:
I could honestly give two gaks about winning or losing. All I care about is does army play the way I want it to & is cinematic gak happening on the table.
Let the dice tell the story.




oni wrote:It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Cancer would be an improvement...it's more like a highly dangerous virus that preys on the inadequacies of self-thought vs group-think.

40k is a terrible competitive game so playing it competitively leads to terrible experiences. I.E. complaining about not winning enuff, needing X # of unit Y so they can crush their enemies and hear the lamentations of their women, etc...


Feh. I think the group-think is the 'competitive players are terrible people who ruin everything.'
Its infesting a lot of discussion lately with only the most tangential relationship to the actual topics- and a rant about what some players are saying on a random Facebook group isn't a good one.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:08:54


Post by: Canadian 5th


Would people apply these same ideas to a game like Chess? How about something like Starcraft?

40k should be a robust enough game to allow for competitive play. If it isn't that's not the fault of the players but of GW.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:12:03


Post by: JNAProductions


 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Maybe in your area, but not mine. We've got a few tournament players, and they're still great people. If they play someone who's not tournament level, they'll tone down their lists, or make it clear "I want to practice for a tournament, so I'm gonna bring a hard list and do my damndest."

Most of us just play for fun.

To the OP:

You're winning more than half your games. You're already doing far better than Eldar in tournaments. For the vast majority of people, it's not "I want to win every single game, and if I can't, I quit!" it's "I'm gonna try to win every game, and I'd like to win a decent chunk, but having fun is what matters most."

For me, the biggest thing is not losing-it's feeling like I had no chance to win. If I play a game and I make a mistake, or the dice go cold, or whatever, and I get my tuckus handed to me... That's okay. I can see what I could've done better, or I can know that if I had made that one 5" charge I'd've probably won. It's only when I look at the game and think "I played as well as I could've. The dice were fine. And I still lost, and lost bad," that I get discouraged.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:17:23


Post by: VladimirHerzog


 Canadian 5th wrote:
Would people apply these same ideas to a game like Chess? How about something like Starcraft?

40k should be a robust enough game to allow for competitive play. If it isn't that's not the fault of the players but of GW.


Well, yeah.

But it doesn't have that robust framework for competitive play, so forcing it creates a lot of bad beats. 40k to me is best when played 100% for fun.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:22:44


Post by: AnomanderRake


I don't care whether I win or lose. I care why I win or lose. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "You did (x), (y), and (z) during the game" I feel like there was some point to playing the game. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "Oh, you bought the wrong minis" I feel like I might as well have not bothered wasting the last 2-3 hours if we could have known what the outcome of the game was going to be from the beginning.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 18:23:31


Post by: JNAProductions


 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't care whether I win or lose. I care why I win or lose. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "You did (x), (y), and (z) during the game" I feel like there was some point to playing the game. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "Oh, you bought the wrong minis" I feel like I might as well have not bothered wasting the last 2-3 hours if we could have known what the outcome of the game was going to be from the beginning.
Succinct and true.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 19:10:53


Post by: oni


 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly...


Ironically, it is Games Workshop themselves who metastasized this cancer.

The turning point... The cancellation of Games Day.

A short synopsis: After the cancellation of Games Day the Warhammer community, in its hunger for a large scale Warhammer event, turned to the fledgling tournament scene to fill the gap. Within time, small scale Warhammer tournaments swelled in size as the fans flocked to them in greater and greater numbers - they had nowhere else to go. The problem however, was that these events were not (are not) a "celebration of the Warhammer hobby" as GW used to say in their Games Day tag line. Rather their sole purpose was (is) to cater to competitive play / players (e.g. Adepticon, NOVA and the various Frontline events). So... "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This unfortunately and very rapidly caused a cultural shift in the Warhammer community to be overly competitive. Today GW has sadly given validity to this competitive culture by officially supporting these competitive events.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 19:16:33


Post by: Jidmah


To me, any close game is a good game, win or loss. I also value my opponent's enjoyment over my victory, so I would rather skip a tactic that makes my opponent feel bad than win.

On the flip side, I do not value my opponent's enjoyment over my own. I want to have fun when playing as well.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 19:52:21


Post by: Daedalus81


 Canadian 5th wrote:
Would people apply these same ideas to a game like Chess? How about something like Starcraft?


Yes and yes.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 20:28:47


Post by: bullyboy


Issue with most Eldar players is that too few units feel like they should in game
I want a strong, but balanced, codex where I know I'm not gimped if I take a unit. I'm truly curious what 9th will bring for them but still play now and have fun with the army.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 20:56:07


Post by: Gene St. Ealer


 Sim-Life wrote:


Dunno. I just noticed he's stopped posting. Maybe he finally quit the game?


He was picking up AoS and having a good time with that. I hope that enjoyment will improve his 40k experience (and that he returns to Dakka!)


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 21:17:02


Post by: Tyel


For the OP - I think there is a tendency online especially to assume that if something doesn't seem to work in the highest level tournaments, it can never ever work anywhere. And a tendency to want a full re-write rather than some points and rules tweaks.

But equally I think if you play in a fairly friendly environment (even if people care about winning) there's often massive skill gaps between players. So if you take a good player with an Eldar list they'll still tend to do okay versus a new/clueless player with a theoretically better faction. Whereas if you swap factions it seems to create an impossible mountain to climb and you might see 90% win rates.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/12 21:42:23


Post by: the_scotsman


 Canadian 5th wrote:
Would people apply these same ideas to a game like Chess? How about something like Starcraft?

40k should be a robust enough game to allow for competitive play. If it isn't that's not the fault of the players but of GW.


the frantic pace and jerky, unrealistic movements and formations of things in starcraft don't exactly lend to it being a particularly 'cinematic/narrative' experience, and it was clearly designed with competitive play in mind, particularly the sequel, even compared to other RTS games you can tell that things like 'your units respond instantaneously to any command you issue' is massively prioritized over any kind of realism. The closest tabletop experience to something like Starcraft for a video game would be something like Magic the Gathering. Sure, there is some sort of loose narrative framework of like...wizards summoning random fantasy creatures to do a fight and cast a spell, and there are images on the cards as well as names, but it is very very clearly designed from the ground up to be a quick strategic contest between players - you build your deck, you make very simple optimization decisions during the course of the game so it feels somewhat tactical, and you try to make your opponent go down to zero life points using your cards.


Chess is completely symbolic. There is no semblance of a narrative at play, at all, other than the extremely abstracted image of a battle with a shield-wall of infantry and...I guess some sort of super-ninja anime protagonist waifu queen?

The priority of the game has always been to capture the feeling of the game world over perfect, strict competitive balance. Having expansive unit options and expansive wargear choices and customization options is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE idea for a balanced, tight competitive game, yet that's the route 40k has always gone.

40k has never before attempted to be a tournament game first. It has always been 'a system by which to make your model collection engage in mock battles using an agreed-upon third party as the arbiter of the rules' first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Tyel wrote:
For the OP - I think there is a tendency online especially to assume that if something doesn't seem to work in the highest level tournaments, it can never ever work anywhere. And a tendency to want a full re-write rather than some points and rules tweaks.

But equally I think if you play in a fairly friendly environment (even if people care about winning) there's often massive skill gaps between players. So if you take a good player with an Eldar list they'll still tend to do okay versus a new/clueless player with a theoretically better faction. Whereas if you swap factions it seems to create an impossible mountain to climb and you might see 90% win rates.


^this. I actually end up winning surprisingly about 50% of the games I play with my "3x8 storm guardians, avatar of khaine, 1x of each aspect warrior squad and then see what's left" super duper goofy eldar list. the problem is the eldar just don't play like eldar, they play like a lumbering horde of disposable mooks who get mowed down by even the most basic weaponry.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 02:23:54


Post by: PenitentJake


With ya OP; I don't give a damn about winning if the story is good. Some of my best battles and moral victories came from games I lost because the stories those games told were AMAZING. This is baked into the game via lore. The Order of Our Martyred Lady changed their Order's name when the Witch Cult of Mnestteus martyred their saint; they changed the colour of their armour after they were sacrificed in droves at Armageddon and they were wiped out to the Sister at Sanctuary 101.

I picture all of these as actual games that inspired the lore- the way Bigby of the crushing hand fame from D&D was one of Ed Greenwood's characters in an actual game who invented the spell.

I play Crusade pretty much exclusively, and Id' rather fulfil agendas (which doesn't give you victory points), gain territories (DE specific), or complete a trial of sainthood than win any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

At the same time, while I dislike the tendency of some competitive players who post to assume it's the only part of the game that matters, I also don't want to alienate them or be rude to them. I think they are important to the health of the game as a whole, and I think that the expertise they bring to the discussion when genuinely critiquing mechanics in a constructive way is incredibly valuable. This is true even when i happen to disagree (which is FREQUENTLY).

Those disagreements often aren't about the actual mechanics though- they tend to be about the state of the game, or me responding to a suggestion that may work for Matched, but would unduly impact Crusade of the change was implemented as suggested.

I cannot wait for CWE Crusade! I only have a small handful of CWE- their half of Blood of the Phoenix, plus a box of Dire Avengers so that I can field it as a Patrol Detachment, plus Amallyn Shadowguide from BSF. But I think it works as a 25 PL Crusade force. I will buy any eldar Kill team products to grow it.

Finally, I also can't wait til the dex cycle is complete so that we can start making honest comparisons between forces. Every time I see comparisons between an 8th dex and a 9th, I want to scream (including many of the comparisons in this very thread). I don't, because the complaints are usually valid- it's just that 9th isn't the actual problem; edition churn is the true enemy. Advocating for solving these problems via a tenth edition will just lead to the exact same issue. The only time it doesn't is when the game is changed so radically that everything from the previous edition is blown up... And then you STILL end up with a slightly different version of the same problem when Codexes start to replace the stop-gap indexes or BRB lists.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 02:50:42


Post by: TangoTwoBravo


 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.

Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.


I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.

I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 05:16:06


Post by: Apple fox


People so quick to blame the players when this is a deliberate design by GW.

Hell some codexes have units that barely function, and when fun is subjective.
Losing every game since you buy the wrong units can be very draining.

It’s entirely by design players gravitate towards trying to make there army perform, not all players find fun in random.
Some actuly like being able to direct an army that functions.
Should not be the players fault.

I remember the way some players reacted to my playing eldar, during the broke bikes. Players who I had never even seen with my Eldar bikes on the table from before they where even good.

This attitude towards competive minded players is just toxic.
Get GW to make a good game if you want it to change.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 07:57:55


Post by: tneva82


 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


No it isn't. You cannot have competive esport from game that isn't competive.

Anybody who thinks 40k is competive esport is just kidding themselves. To put it politely.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 08:30:14


Post by: ccs


 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:

Karol isn't here anymore though.


What did I miss?


Dunno. I just noticed he's stopped posting. Maybe he finally quit the game?


While ago he was posting about playing some Sigmar. Sounded positive about it.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 09:03:37


Post by: Blackie


tneva82 wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


No it isn't. You cannot have competive esport from game that isn't competive.

Anybody who thinks 40k is competive esport is just kidding themselves. To put it politely.


100% this.

Although GW is certainlty trying to make its games more appealing to competitive gamers, none of them is actually suitable for a real "competition" and never will. GW doesn't make games, it sells miniatures. It also provides a context to make them sell more minitaures, and this context is the game. But the ultimate goal is to sell more, not to have a perfectly balanced game and become the new big thing in the e-sport environment.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 09:15:42


Post by: Mad Doc Grotsnik


Well, we all have different motivations. In my younger days, I could be quite rabid about such a topic. But I’m more mellowed these days, and genuinely respect those different motivations.

Me? I play for fun. Sure I want to win my games, but it’s not the sole driving factor. I’m more interested in being a good sport than a great player. And I can adjust to my opponent.

For instance. Many years ago, when Portent was a thing, I got entirely disgruntled by someone who was known to be WAACy claimed that if we played a game, and I didn’t go WAACy, I would be disrespecting him.

Now I still do not agree with that dude - but it’s less of a binary disagreement of “me right, you wrong”. It largely depends upon the environment of the game.

At a tournament? I’ll genuinely try my best. I won’t necessarily try to Listhammer, because that doesn’t tickle my pickle. But I will play to the best of my and my chosen army’s ability. But equally, he’d need to realise that WAAC is not the sole purpose of a Tournament. For many, a Tournament is a chance to challenge themselves, and play against new people.

In a friendly game? You….shouldn’t demand someone meet you on your level and your level alone. Meet somewhere in the middle. Bit of give and take.

If it’s my preference of a heavily narrative campaign, where the aim is to tell a story and determine the outcome? You really need to think if a WAAC approach is going to add value to that effort.

But I can’t see anyone not playing to win to some degree. Just be a good sport and gracious whether you win or lose.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 09:25:20


Post by: Sim-Life


Apple fox wrote:
People so quick to blame the players when this is a deliberate design by GW.

Hell some codexes have units that barely function, and when fun is subjective.
Losing every game since you buy the wrong units can be very draining.

It’s entirely by design players gravitate towards trying to make there army perform, not all players find fun in random.
Some actuly like being able to direct an army that functions.
Should not be the players fault.

I remember the way some players reacted to my playing eldar, during the broke bikes. Players who I had never even seen with my Eldar bikes on the table from before they where even good.

This attitude towards competive minded players is just toxic.
Get GW to make a good game if you want it to change.

While I'm quite quick to level the blame at GW, you can't deny the players play a role.
When you start an army and people ask online where to get started most people will rattle off a list of what the best units are, and by best they don't mean "most fun to use", they mean "most optimal". When a codex is released within hours people have mathhammered it to figure out the best combinations and all of this filters through the online communities and becomes common knowledge, so whenever anyone asks for advice the response is "take X over Y because they're just better for the points". And the source of this, meaning the people doing the mathhammering and optimisation are the WAAC tournament players. So yes, by repeating information sourced from WAAC players then it's the players fault.

This isn't even getting into the players who defend GW, with "It's the most balanced edition ever", neglecting to mention that the most balanced edition of 40k is still probably the least balanced war game on the market or that you need to play a certain way for that to be true, or you need to have a friendly group willing to change their army lists/rules/house rule to accommodate the opponents garbage balanced army. As long as those players are also defending GW while putting a bunch of asterisks under their argument, they too are to blame.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 09:39:28


Post by: Crimson


 the_scotsman wrote:
I care less about winning every game and more about whether my units authentically feel like they play like theyre supposed to in the lore of the game world, and eldar do not.

supposedly lightning-fast ninja space elf warriors who trained in the blade while you dated make fewer attacks in melee than a lumbering monkeigh astartes holding a gigantic melta cannon.

Mono-molecular chainswords that cut effortlessly through steel have the same stats as lead pipes held by chaos cultists.

the mighty avatar of the bloody handed god loses in close combat to every no-name astartes captain OK that's pretty canon-accurate I'll admit it.


Yep, this. The state of the Eldar and Chaos compared to Imperium is just pathetic. It is not about winning, it is about emulating the lore. Make them as powerful as they should and then increase the points appropriately.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 11:51:44


Post by: Da Boss


Well, I would agree with you, but the background most people follow is black library fiction where chaos exists to be skeletor to the Imperium's He Man and get beaten every time to retreat shaking their fist, and the Xenos exist purely as punching bags to express the Space Marine power fantasy.

So from a certain perspective, Eldar being mowed down in droves by a normal space marine squad is perfectly fluffy and the game working as intended. Your own fault for playing an NPC faction if you didn't want to play by the background [/s].


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 11:52:00


Post by: the_scotsman


TangoTwoBravo wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.

Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.


I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.

I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.


it's kind of difficult to when its all down to this weird at-the-table negotiation between you and your opponent.

40k with all the bells and whistles engaged just...is not fun for narrative scenarios, even if you try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to set up fairly tame lists. The game just naturally follows about a three-turn tempo where most units get to take one significant action before being destroyed or decimated.

You can try as hard as you want to to really personalize your list and come up with a cool story for your individual models, why they have what they have for wargear and abilities, but most likely the most satisfying story you're going to get out of them is about how that one time they moved up out of obscuring cover, charged something, killed it in one swing, and then got wiped out by the following opponent's turn.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 13:39:24


Post by: TangoTwoBravo


 the_scotsman wrote:
Spoiler:
TangoTwoBravo wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.

Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.


I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.

I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.


it's kind of difficult to when its all down to this weird at-the-table negotiation between you and your opponent.

40k with all the bells and whistles engaged just...is not fun for narrative scenarios, even if you try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to set up fairly tame lists. The game just naturally follows about a three-turn tempo where most units get to take one significant action before being destroyed or decimated.

You can try as hard as you want to to really personalize your list and come up with a cool story for your individual models, why they have what they have for wargear and abilities, but most likely the most satisfying story you're going to get out of them is about how that one time they moved up out of obscuring cover, charged something, killed it in one swing, and then got wiped out by the following opponent's turn.


True. I suppose there are different types of "narrative" play. If someone wants to "recreate" their favourite battle from the Badaab War then they are going to be disappointed going to the FLGS on 40K Saturday for a pickup game. You need to work those out in advance with like-minded people, or run it as a demo.

If by narrative we mean that models on the table behave in a manner that we imagine they do in the lore then we don't need as much pre-game negotiation and we are indeed somewhat held to the rules. I think it is fair to want the game to feel right. I may have missed some moments when they shone, but Terminators were quite bad from 3rd to 8th Edition. They died too easily - didn't feel right. On the other hand, I remember my despair when someone's Howling Banshees got into melee with my Hellblasters in 8th Ed. My despair turned to bemusement when the Banshee's attacks killed one Hellblaster and my squad punched them to death in response. Have to admit it didn't feel quite right. It's like when a Land Raider gets wiped on turn 1.

Where pre-game communication is important, in my experience, is setting the parameters for the game. Is this going to be a tourney prep game or is my opponent looking for their third game of 40K? I think that's on us as players. My assumption at a pick-up game is Matched Play at 70% list optimization (I pulled 70% out of the air) unless otherwise requested/inferred. I played a fellow last weekend for his third game of 40K and he stated that he does not like tourneys etc. I saw his list and quietly left two of my "killy" units in my miniatures case that he would not have had a real answer for. Proceeded to have a fun, engaging game.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 14:32:44


Post by: The_Real_Chris


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Nurglitch wrote:
What, would you be afraid of a bunch of pensioners muttering through their false teeth about how the gov't screwed their pensions, armed and armoured with antiques and jugaad tat, or hotshot young punks armed and armoured in the best of His Majesty's Armoury?


the former, if they were also followers of lovecraftian gods beyond space and time who bore bulging eyes, tentacles, and a hatred for the living.


These are a couple of wonderful posts in terms of imagery


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 14:51:38


Post by: Nurglitch


 Da Boss wrote:
Well, I would agree with you, but the background most people follow is black library fiction where chaos exists to be skeletor to the Imperium's He Man and get beaten every time to retreat shaking their fist, and the Xenos exist purely as punching bags to express the Space Marine power fantasy.

So from a certain perspective, Eldar being mowed down in droves by a normal space marine squad is perfectly fluffy and the game working as intended. Your own fault for playing an NPC faction if you didn't want to play by the background [/s].

It would be kind of handy if you could adjust your Warhammer army depending on whether they were protagonists, antagonists, or mooks.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 14:58:26


Post by: Insectum7


TangoTwoBravo wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 oni wrote:
It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.

W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!


Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.

Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.


I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.

I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.
I think the obvious counterpoint that's relevant to the thread here is that Loyalist Marines have 2w while CSM are still on 1w. That's not the fault of tournies and it's not the fault of players, it's the fault of GW plain and simple. This slow-roll into a new balance paradigm sucks, and I feel like it's the sort of thing that would have been addressed much faster during the earlier days of GW.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 14:59:14


Post by: BlackoCatto


I would like win more than once in an edition for starters.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 15:35:56


Post by: TangoTwoBravo


The lack of a "get you by" update for Chaos Space Marines is, indeed, a head-scratcher given how long 9th has been out without a new CSM Codex. Updating them to 2W might not necessarily have been as simple as matching them in points to Loyalist equivalents due to associated changes to auras, Core and Stratagems etc, but it would seem they could have used Death Guard as an azimuth check for a CSM Index? I just play the game - not a game designer!

Its not good for the game - they should have been before any Campaign supplements etc.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 16:49:15


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 16:52:45


Post by: Daedalus81


 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.


DDD was heavy dice rolling. Not sure how that is less fluff than what we have now. You're totally free to play an asymmetric game where you can bring in more points than your opponent - just don't expect them to like it.

And for the record - Thousand Sons are now way more unique than they've ever been as it has been with all the new codexes.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 16:58:18


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.


DDD was heavy dice rolling. Not sure how that is less fluff than what we have now. You're totally free to play an asymmetric game where you can bring in more points than your opponent - just don't expect them to like it.

And for the record - Thousand Sons are now way more unique than they've ever been as it has been with all the new codexes.

Heavy dice rolling really only affects comp stuff with chess clocks. And it’s random and wacky, way more fitting of orks than gakky rapidfire. Now thousand sons may be unique, but I bet you I could do some way more fun things with em in previous editions. Competitive balance just makes games blander, it’s a given. I used to enjoy playing Mordhau but comp centric balance has really brought it down.

Honestly I think 40k should take more influence from gorkamorka, you can’t really even feasibly do that competitively, which makes it a blast to play since you don’t get the gitz you find in tourneys.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 17:07:53


Post by: Daedalus81


Heavy dice rolling with little outcome is boring. It has little to do with competitiveness.

This is the pinnacle for Thousand Sons, in my opinion. CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 17:15:35


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


It usually did amount to quite a bit. I do think that tsons being seperate is a little silly, I think just having them be part of standard cam makes more sense.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 17:34:20


Post by: VladimirHerzog


 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

Heavy dice rolling really only affects comp stuff with chess clocks. And it’s random and wacky, way more fitting of orks than gakky rapidfire. Now thousand sons may be unique, but I bet you I could do some way more fun things with em in previous editions. Competitive balance just makes games blander, it’s a given. I used to enjoy playing Mordhau but comp centric balance has really brought it down.

Honestly I think 40k should take more influence from gorkamorka, you can’t really even feasibly do that competitively, which makes it a blast to play since you don’t get the gitz you find in tourneys.


I'm saying this with a purely casual opinion : feth the old DDD. It made games drag on for so long for marginal benefits. If 40k was Alternating activations so i could actually do something between the volleys of DDD shooting it would be more bearable, but making my opponent's turns even longer than they already are just made me feel miserable. (doesnt help that orks have pretty active Movement, shooting AND fight phases).

And i didnt play pre-8th but Thousand sons now feel much more fun and unique than they did before. The new codex is a blast to play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
Heavy dice rolling with little outcome is boring. It has little to do with competitiveness.

This is the pinnacle for Thousand Sons, in my opinion. CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.


Agreed, Thousand sons now finally feel like an actual cabal of sorcerers controlling their dusty brothers. The codex is also pretty simple compared to stuff like Admech/Drukhari/Sisters, right now its the complexity i think GW should keep aiming for.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 17:52:04


Post by: Daedalus81


 VladimirHerzog wrote:
The codex is also pretty simple compared to stuff like Admech/Drukhari/Sisters, right now its the complexity i think GW should keep aiming for.


I would agree with this though I think those layers are sort of what helps make T3 armies work. Admech just went way over the top with it.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 17:58:44


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


Old dakka had some pretty non marginal benefits. Sluggas n the like did get a pretty good boost, they’re just bad to begin with. Dakka on something like a kmb or rokkit though turned battles in my favor many times. Why the desire to go so fast too, I usually liked to take those times when I’m picking out my fives to chat with my opponent or joke around.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 18:30:48


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:
Heavy dice rolling with little outcome is boring. It has little to do with competitiveness.

This is the pinnacle for Thousand Sons, in my opinion. CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.


See, I'm of two minds here.

On one hand, it is cool that I can finally customize my Exalted Sorcerors enough to make the amazingly diverse kit worth it. Is it annoying that I have to do it by loading weird, vague adjectives onto the unit to alter their stats instead of a straightforward method? Yes. Am I going to begrude the poor sap laboring under GW's asinine legal department rules that? No, its ok, hes working with what hes got.

what gets frustrating is when I organize a game with a friend who I know isn't going super hard in terms of competitive craziness, and we want to have an old-school grudge match Thousand Sons vs Space Wolves battle, we put down our gorgeous 100% painted armies, we set up a snow world table, we decide on a custom mission where the Thousand Sons are trying to open up portals to the warp and the Space Wolves are trying to stop them, and then when we sit down to actually play the game, it plays out like this:

-the space wolves roll to go first. A long fang squad drop pods in with a super-super casual Heavy Bolter/Multi-melta/Lascannon/Missile Launcher configuration, the squad sergeant hands +1 to hit to the single multi-melta, they pop a stratagem to ignore to-hit mods so they can move and shoot heavy weapons (rendering any usage of the Smokescreen stratagem also pointless) and they instantly one-round the most expensive vehicle on the board, my lone Predator, first shooting attack of the game. The rest of the space wolves move up, nothing else much happens because both of us are using mostly oldschool rhino-rush list setups.

- One squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino, gets prescience'd and easily blows away both the devastator squad and 3/5 of the members of a blood claw squad that came in on the same pod but had nothing to charge at. My heldrake drops into hover, shoots across no mans land and kills 1 minor character (a lieutenant, or equivalent I think) and then charges a librarian, instantly wipes him out too to secure an objective.

-Thunderwolves roll into the exposed rubric squad, killing them all. The two remaining blood claws swing around a building and get to some cultists hanging on an objective, killing like 7/10 of them after morale. A dreadnought charges the heldrake, kills it. A squad of blood claws hops out, kills a rhino, can't swing around enough to insta-kill the squad though so they get out.

-The squad whose rhino got destroyed gets buffed, kills the blood claws, two of my sorcerors drop all the mortal wound powers into the dreadnought, kill it, my terminators drop in, leave one thunderwolf alive

top of turn 3, my opponent is working with 1 thunderwolf, 2 blood claws, a jump pack chaplain, a drop pod, and two rhinos. Game's done! we basically just had him use the dregs to kill whatever he could which IIRC was basically the two sorcerors. What about the mission we wrote up? Eh, didnt matter, everything just fething died, like it always does, by turn 3.

Now, I understand that there are actions I could have taken to, for example, set my cultist squad up carefully screening out the tank so the one multi-melta would have not basically insta-killed it and it might have escaped that single shooting attack with 2-3 wounds. My opponent could have not blown his blood claw squad killing a rhino, or he could have made sure to keep the dreadnought near the two HQs in his territory so that the dread could have intervened on the helldrake and avenged the two HQs right then, instead of on his following turn.

But here's the thing: In a casual, narrative game, the stakes being set to 'if you make one single bad move, if you misposition by a fething MILLIMETER so your opponent can draw LOS, or get a deep striker in unscreened, or sneak a multi-melta into melta range, or you miscalculate the movement required to fully wrap a transport with your pile-in and consolidate, you will IMMEDIATELY lose whatever 150-250 points of models you made the mistake with' sucks. It sucks so, so much ass, because even if youre very very purposefully trying to bring soft, friendly units, and construct a fun scenario, once you get into the game you just cant. You can't decide "oh, what if this character fought that character, won't this make an exciting matchup?" because you know, going in, if your character is charging? The target is probably just gonna die. Between buffed offensive stats, stratagems, auras, and various and sundry bonuses, it is so trivial to stack up buffs onto a unit to turn it into just an absolute damage hose - a simple 10-squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino and goes 'OK, here's 19 shots, hitting on 2s rerollable, wounding on 2s because we got the buffed strength from the infernal master and we used the strat for +1 to wound, AP-2 so youre saving on 5s oh and also the now 5 shots at S6 Ap-3 from our soulreaper cannon that's another 2 dead, your unit is basically smoking boots now.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 18:49:29


Post by: JNAProductions


 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
Old dakka had some pretty non marginal benefits. Sluggas n the like did get a pretty good boost, they’re just bad to begin with. Dakka on something like a kmb or rokkit though turned battles in my favor many times. Why the desire to go so fast too, I usually liked to take those times when I’m picking out my fives to chat with my opponent or joke around.
Old Dakka had a 1/18 chance (assuming a 5+ to-hit) of doing anything on any given shot.

It was a lot of dice rolling for not much happening.

Wasting time is not fun-for me, at least.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 18:58:13


Post by: Gert


I'm all for time saving. Don't get me wrong, having a big pile of dice and drowning the table in it is fun but then you have to sort those dice and that isn't fun. Events (comp or not) also have to run on a clock so the less time wasted is better and reduces the chance of running out of time to play a game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 19:31:07


Post by: the_scotsman


Yeah im on team 'old DDD was a cute concept that failed in execution.'

My personal take was 'make it cause 2 hits on a 6 to reduce the booty-blasting orks get from -1 to hit effects' but they went the route of 'just make every ork shooting weapon stronger' which is...fine. I do really really hate the way new dakka type plays tho, it makes ork shooting units which should be the faction sprinting forward firing with wild abandon into the most conservative, careful shooting army in the game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 22:14:19


Post by: Daedalus81


Spoiler:
 the_scotsman wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
Heavy dice rolling with little outcome is boring. It has little to do with competitiveness.

This is the pinnacle for Thousand Sons, in my opinion. CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.


See, I'm of two minds here.

On one hand, it is cool that I can finally customize my Exalted Sorcerors enough to make the amazingly diverse kit worth it. Is it annoying that I have to do it by loading weird, vague adjectives onto the unit to alter their stats instead of a straightforward method? Yes. Am I going to begrude the poor sap laboring under GW's asinine legal department rules that? No, its ok, hes working with what hes got.

what gets frustrating is when I organize a game with a friend who I know isn't going super hard in terms of competitive craziness, and we want to have an old-school grudge match Thousand Sons vs Space Wolves battle, we put down our gorgeous 100% painted armies, we set up a snow world table, we decide on a custom mission where the Thousand Sons are trying to open up portals to the warp and the Space Wolves are trying to stop them, and then when we sit down to actually play the game, it plays out like this:

-the space wolves roll to go first. A long fang squad drop pods in with a super-super casual Heavy Bolter/Multi-melta/Lascannon/Missile Launcher configuration, the squad sergeant hands +1 to hit to the single multi-melta, they pop a stratagem to ignore to-hit mods so they can move and shoot heavy weapons (rendering any usage of the Smokescreen stratagem also pointless) and they instantly one-round the most expensive vehicle on the board, my lone Predator, first shooting attack of the game. The rest of the space wolves move up, nothing else much happens because both of us are using mostly oldschool rhino-rush list setups.

- One squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino, gets prescience'd and easily blows away both the devastator squad and 3/5 of the members of a blood claw squad that came in on the same pod but had nothing to charge at. My heldrake drops into hover, shoots across no mans land and kills 1 minor character (a lieutenant, or equivalent I think) and then charges a librarian, instantly wipes him out too to secure an objective.

-Thunderwolves roll into the exposed rubric squad, killing them all. The two remaining blood claws swing around a building and get to some cultists hanging on an objective, killing like 7/10 of them after morale. A dreadnought charges the heldrake, kills it. A squad of blood claws hops out, kills a rhino, can't swing around enough to insta-kill the squad though so they get out.

-The squad whose rhino got destroyed gets buffed, kills the blood claws, two of my sorcerors drop all the mortal wound powers into the dreadnought, kill it, my terminators drop in, leave one thunderwolf alive

top of turn 3, my opponent is working with 1 thunderwolf, 2 blood claws, a jump pack chaplain, a drop pod, and two rhinos. Game's done! we basically just had him use the dregs to kill whatever he could which IIRC was basically the two sorcerors. What about the mission we wrote up? Eh, didnt matter, everything just fething died, like it always does, by turn 3.

Now, I understand that there are actions I could have taken to, for example, set my cultist squad up carefully screening out the tank so the one multi-melta would have not basically insta-killed it and it might have escaped that single shooting attack with 2-3 wounds. My opponent could have not blown his blood claw squad killing a rhino, or he could have made sure to keep the dreadnought near the two HQs in his territory so that the dread could have intervened on the helldrake and avenged the two HQs right then, instead of on his following turn.

But here's the thing: In a casual, narrative game, the stakes being set to 'if you make one single bad move, if you misposition by a fething MILLIMETER so your opponent can draw LOS, or get a deep striker in unscreened, or sneak a multi-melta into melta range, or you miscalculate the movement required to fully wrap a transport with your pile-in and consolidate, you will IMMEDIATELY lose whatever 150-250 points of models you made the mistake with' sucks. It sucks so, so much ass, because even if youre very very purposefully trying to bring soft, friendly units, and construct a fun scenario, once you get into the game you just cant. You can't decide "oh, what if this character fought that character, won't this make an exciting matchup?" because you know, going in, if your character is charging? The target is probably just gonna die. Between buffed offensive stats, stratagems, auras, and various and sundry bonuses, it is so trivial to stack up buffs onto a unit to turn it into just an absolute damage hose - a simple 10-squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino and goes 'OK, here's 19 shots, hitting on 2s rerollable, wounding on 2s because we got the buffed strength from the infernal master and we used the strat for +1 to wound, AP-2 so youre saving on 5s oh and also the now 5 shots at S6 Ap-3 from our soulreaper cannon that's another 2 dead, your unit is basically smoking boots now.


You created a mission where the only incentive for the SW player was to kill you.

Sending a model in to challenge another isn't a realistic scenario, because you don't fight fair in war. Maybe if we had the old challenge rules, but those were kind of gak.

These rubrics:
a simple 10-squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino and goes 'OK, here's 19 shots, hitting on 2s rerollable, wounding on 2s because we got the buffed strength from the infernal master and we used the strat for +1 to wound, AP-2 so youre saving on 5s oh and also the now 5 shots at S6 Ap-3 from our soulreaper cannon that's another 2 dead, your unit is basically smoking boots now.


Aren't "a simple squad of rubrics".

You have a squad @ 220, a rhino @ 90+ points, an Infernal Master @ 90 points, and at least an exalted @ 100 points. So, 490 points and 2 CP to deliver and kill 140. And that's a problem?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 23:13:16


Post by: NinthMusketeer


In one round, not including any damage those other units do with their shooting, and next turn he can do it again. So yes, it IS a problem.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/13 23:34:28


Post by: Daedalus81


 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In one round, not including any damage those other units do with their shooting, and next turn he can do it again. So yes, it IS a problem.


The other player gets a turn before then and the rubrics are out of their shell.

It absolutely is not a problem to spend 3x the points to kill something. These expectations are so unrealistic it borders on the absurd.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 00:03:25


Post by: H.B.M.C.


It's surprising the lengths you'll go to in order to pretend that lethality isn't through the fething roof in 9th.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.
And, as it turned out, an army with 2 wounds each really did have something going for it.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 00:54:06


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In one round, not including any damage those other units do with their shooting, and next turn he can do it again. So yes, it IS a problem.


The other player gets a turn before then and the rubrics are out of their shell.

It absolutely is not a problem to spend 3x the points to kill something. These expectations are so unrealistic it borders on the absurd.


first off, no, we actually didnt, we specifically designed the mission to attempt to NOT do that because we built the whole thing around scoring points by opening and closing portals via Actions in an attempt to limit lethality, only problem was it completely didnt work, because god forbid we didnt think the planet fenris would have the terrain density of a hive city and we just had a couple obscuring pieces to work with, not enough to hide 100% of our armies from 100% of opposing firepower turn one, which is apparently a perfectly fine and dandy requirement for this casual funsy beer-and-pretzels game (hope you didnt want to finish more than half a beer or eat more than one pretzel) to need in order to tell the most basic story possible.

it becomes a problem when there are NO meaningful barriers in 9th between you and doing that with all your units, besides one single all-or-nothing terrain trait that can be negated by sighting a single square micrometer of the target unit around the side of a terrain piece.

Units having 33% lethality in most wargames at optimal range in optimal sighting condition is absolutely no problem, because other wargames HAVE ANY KIND OF SYSTEM FOR THAT TO MATTER. 9th just hands it to you, like, here you go, your guys who can see .001% of one single opposing model in the target unit at the barest edge of your optimal range, enjoy shooting them with the same exact effectiveness as if they were 2" away completely in the open.

What happens when you do that? Well, the game lasts, juuust about 3 turns before one player's forces are totally decimated and there's little reason to continue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Daedalus81 wrote:

The other player gets a turn before then and the rubrics are out of their shell.


Ah yes, foolishly I have EXPOSED my extremely vulnerable, famously easily destroyed rubric marines to the enemy, and it is 100% in accordance with the lore of the game that they should INSTANTLY EVAPORATE after exiting their rhino and firing one single devastating volley that deletes an opposing target.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee, it's just like im there, in the lore of the game world of warhammer 40,000! Me and my opponent's power-armored warriors, melting like wax at the slightest provocation, 10,000 year old veterans snuffed out six hyper-violent seconds of destruction.

My favorite part of the warhammer 40,000 background fiction is when any time two characters close in to have a duel, they never ever ever ever last more than one single swing and whichever one got to the fight first effortlessly eviscerates their opponent with 5-7 blows .


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 02:13:15


Post by: Nurglitch


In fairness that narrative back and forth is really hard to design and develop as a commercial product.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 03:10:15


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness that narrative back and forth is really hard to design and develop as a commercial product.


If only there weren't tons of other games (Chain of Command) where the rules support (MESBG) the universe they are (Stargrunt) set in.

We can write our own stories, but the rules have to have SOME semblance of adherence to the setting (other than just name).


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 06:39:00


Post by: Blackie


Dakka dakka dakka was heavy useless dice rolling. As an ork player I'm glad it's gone. Same for the goffs' counterpart ability in melee, which now grants double hits on 6s instead of more dice rolling.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 07:11:10


Post by: Jidmah


 Blackie wrote:
Dakka dakka dakka was heavy useless dice rolling. As an ork player I'm glad it's gone. Same for the goffs' counterpart ability in melee, which now grants double hits on 6s instead of more dice rolling.


It's also worth noting that rokkits and KMB, which are most commonly remembered kindly when DDD felt like it did something, now get d3 attacks instead of 1. So that part of the "feel" remained.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 08:02:54


Post by: Blackie


Pretty much everything got more shots in the new codex. Among the most common stuff I think just sluggas, snazzguns and artillery weapons kept the same number of shots they had in 8th.

Which is not really a good thing since dice rolling is still high this way, although a necessary thing considering the state of other codexes, and at least that dice rolling is mostly condensed in a single "batch" now.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 08:09:59


Post by: Jidmah


 Blackie wrote:
Pretty much everything got more shots in the new codex. Among the most common stuff I think just sluggas, snazzguns and artillery weapons kept the same number of shots they had in 8th.

Which is not really a good thing since dice rolling is still high this way, although a necessary thing considering the state of other codexes, and at least that dice rolling is mostly condensed in a single "batch" now.


Not really though? Dakka weapons got more shots at half range, but at full range almost all those weapons stayed the same. Out of the heavy and assault weapons only the rokkit variants and the KMB (but not its variants) got more shots.

I can create a full list if you are interested in a detailed comparison.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 08:12:42


Post by: Slipspace


 Daedalus81 wrote:


You have a squad @ 220, a rhino @ 90+ points, an Infernal Master @ 90 points, and at least an exalted @ 100 points. So, 490 points and 2 CP to deliver and kill 140. And that's a problem?


It's not exactly accurate to include all those character points in the cost of the unit. Yes, they provided buffs, but they are also making other contributions outside of boosting those Rubrics. They could, for example, easily run off after shooting and charge another unit or the Rhino could move block or tie up something in close combat. Unsurprisingly you've missed the point, or are wilfully ignoring it. The problem is twofold. If you remove those buffs the Rubrics kill about 3 SW and get the chance to charge to do a bit more damage. That seems OK and more or less inline with most other wargames in terms of lethality. It shouldn't be possible to buff a unit so much that it goes from doing decent but not catastrophic damage to their target to wiping them out. There's also no counterplay to this beyond "don't get shot". The SW player just has to sit there and take it.

As the_scotsman said, it's about the gameplay reflecting the lore and at the moment it fails pretty hard as units simply evaporate the moment they're targeted. There's very little ability to gradually grind the opponent down, incrementally improve your position and eliminate units through better positioning and superior in-game decisions. It's just endless trades between units.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 09:04:11


Post by: Kitane


I'd rather play against the old "dakka dakka dakka" army fishing for hits with rerolls than against any army with generous access to hit rolls of 2+ with rerolls of 1.

The former was at least fun to watch.

The latter is just pure waste of time.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 10:38:11


Post by: Blackie


 Jidmah wrote:
 Blackie wrote:
Pretty much everything got more shots in the new codex. Among the most common stuff I think just sluggas, snazzguns and artillery weapons kept the same number of shots they had in 8th.

Which is not really a good thing since dice rolling is still high this way, although a necessary thing considering the state of other codexes, and at least that dice rolling is mostly condensed in a single "batch" now.


Not really though? Dakka weapons got more shots at half range, but at full range almost all those weapons stayed the same. Out of the heavy and assault weapons only the rokkit variants and the KMB (but not its variants) got more shots.

I can create a full list if you are interested in a detailed comparison.


Getting within half range with units like bikes, planes, buggies or lootas in trukks is trivial though, typically it's guaranteed. We also have a stratagem, quite expensive though, that allows a unit to fire max shots, as if it was within half range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kitane wrote:
I'd rather play against the old "dakka dakka dakka" army fishing for hits with rerolls than against any army with generous access to hit rolls of 2+ with rerolls of 1.

The former was at least fun to watch.

The latter is just pure waste of time.


Disagree about the former, 100% agree about the latter.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 11:33:55


Post by: Unit1126PLL


Dakka Dakka Dakka for me is almost the quintessential version of rules bloat. Orks like to shoot more?

So let their guns shoot more! We don't need a special rule or whatnot, just more bullets.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 11:40:29


Post by: the_scotsman


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Dakka Dakka Dakka for me is almost the quintessential version of rules bloat. Orks like to shoot more?

So let their guns shoot more! We don't need a special rule or whatnot, just more bullets.


Yeah, and unusually for GW they actually made an attempt to fix it the correct way - by adding more shots...because Ork shooting has always felt silly since the removal of templates.

they didnt actually SUCCEED, shootas are still utter garbage (they're about where I'd want every unit to be in the game damage output-wise, but compared to so, so many other things theyre unusable trash because they wont get the 5 turns of shooting required to make their points back) but they at least tried in the right way?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Slipspace wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:


You have a squad @ 220, a rhino @ 90+ points, an Infernal Master @ 90 points, and at least an exalted @ 100 points. So, 490 points and 2 CP to deliver and kill 140. And that's a problem?


It's not exactly accurate to include all those character points in the cost of the unit. Yes, they provided buffs, but they are also making other contributions outside of boosting those Rubrics. They could, for example, easily run off after shooting and charge another unit or the Rhino could move block or tie up something in close combat. Unsurprisingly you've missed the point, or are wilfully ignoring it. The problem is twofold. If you remove those buffs the Rubrics kill about 3 SW and get the chance to charge to do a bit more damage. That seems OK and more or less inline with most other wargames in terms of lethality. It shouldn't be possible to buff a unit so much that it goes from doing decent but not catastrophic damage to their target to wiping them out. There's also no counterplay to this beyond "don't get shot". The SW player just has to sit there and take it.

As the_scotsman said, it's about the gameplay reflecting the lore and at the moment it fails pretty hard as units simply evaporate the moment they're targeted. There's very little ability to gradually grind the opponent down, incrementally improve your position and eliminate units through better positioning and superior in-game decisions. It's just endless trades between units.


If the narrative you want to tell with your game is anything other than "two armies set up entirely hidden behind LOS-blocking terrain, and they take turns popping out of that cover to run up the board, kill one thing, and then immediately get mowed down in response" then 9th is an extremely bad system to try and model that in.

If you remove strats, traits, relics, doctrines and subfactions its a lot better, at least its just a barebones framework that lets you tell a semblance of an interesting story about whats happening, but it's still not great.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 11:46:52


Post by: Togusa


When I first began this hobby I would frequently become frustrated at my losses. Many friends would tell me things like "It takes 50 games before you start winning" or "To learn your army you need to lose 30 times" and so on. When I would lose a game, it was always hard. My losses would be things like me having 2 victory points and my opponent have 17. Once I lost 70 out of 72 models in my list on the first turn of shooting against my friends Ad Mech, basically it was a 40 minute game that comprised 30 minutes of set up, 1 second of him rolling to seize and 9 minutes 59 seconds of him raking me over the coals.

As time went on I improved my skills, but still continued to lose over and over and over. People I played with in those days switched their armies the second a new hot list came in, where I continued to play my same old list of Salamanders filled with Tactical Marines, Predator Tanks, Dreadnoughts and Drop Pods, and a Landraider.

What I learned during those earlier years is that I was doing it all wrong. I wanted fun, lasting narrative games. That's how I built my lists, but my opponents were only playing for competition, with honed net lists and min/maxed WAAC playstyles. Once I figured this all out, and changed who I played with, my games got better and so too did the hobby for me.

I remember after every game my friends wanted to sit there and analyze every die roll. One friend in particular always had a pad and paper would would be calculating something. "See" He'd say. "If you'd taken this upgrade, for these points, on this unit you could have increased it's effectiveness 2.16% which is much better than what you took." He would say.

I hated that. I really didn't want to analyze ever mistake, missed rule, or unit percentage effectiveness.

Today, I'm super selective in who I play with. My group of current players is much, much more friendly and interested in trying unorthodox things. More open to house rules or requests for units to not use, or not to min/max. It's a better hobby for me that way.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 11:56:14


Post by: PaddyMick


Spoiler:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
I care less about winning every game and more about whether my units authentically feel like they play like theyre supposed to in the lore of the game world, and eldar do not.

supposedly lightning-fast ninja space elf warriors who trained in the blade while you dated make fewer attacks in melee than a lumbering monkeigh astartes holding a gigantic melta cannon.

Mono-molecular chainswords that cut effortlessly through steel have the same stats as lead pipes held by chaos cultists.

the mighty avatar of the bloody handed god loses in close combat to every no-name astartes captain OK that's pretty canon-accurate I'll admit it.


This post hits the nail on the head.

Honestly, I'd take a RETROGRADE for Guard (in terms of some design choices; e.g. I'd like to see a return to Platoons), and I don't even really care if they're winning (I'm building an Armageddon Steel Legion force right now, surely the most competitive list ever to grace the tables! )

But some of the changes they could put in the 9th edition codex would be super neat just from a narrative play perspective.

Regiment Types aren't a thing like they were back in the day (e.g. Mechanized, Armored, Artillery, Infantry, Siege) with all the boons and drawbacks thereof.

Regiment Homeworld matters too much imho (it used to be a kinda neat background thing while you played with Your Dudes, now it's the only way to differentiate). A Cadian Mechanized Infantry Company should be more different than a Cadian Artillery Company than it should be from a Valhallan Mechanized Company.

I could go on, but yeah.


^^^^ great posts scotsman and unit

Having missed some editions, what you are saying about guard an eldar is interesting. Let's hope the design team for the new codexes are secretly reading this.

Re: OP
Nothing wrong with wanting to win, and discussing the best ways to do it on the internets. Glad you could rant though, helps to get it out eh?



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 14:53:10


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah im on team 'old DDD was a cute concept that failed in execution.'

My personal take was 'make it cause 2 hits on a 6 to reduce the booty-blasting orks get from -1 to hit effects' but they went the route of 'just make every ork shooting weapon stronger' which is...fine. I do really really hate the way new dakka type plays tho, it makes ork shooting units which should be the faction sprinting forward firing with wild abandon into the most conservative, careful shooting army in the game.


The big mistake is that everyone thinks dakka helped with high firerate stuff. Dakka was extremely impactful on the low shot high damage weapons. I don’t know if it’s my luck or whatever but I never feel like dakka wasted any time for me. What they should have done is keep old dakka, combine it with new dakka, and make those guns count as assault. Maybe then we’d see balance between our punchy stuff and the actual dakka.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 15:52:24


Post by: Nurglitch


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness that narrative back and forth is really hard to design and develop as a commercial product.


If only there weren't tons of other games (Chain of Command) where the rules support (MESBG) the universe they are (Stargrunt) set in.

We can write our own stories, but the rules have to have SOME semblance of adherence to the setting (other than just name).

I don't think they do, at least not for GW products. I mean, it's clearly not something that's affecting their bottom line. I don't think the majority of GW customers care either.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 16:15:48


Post by: VladimirHerzog


 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah im on team 'old DDD was a cute concept that failed in execution.'

My personal take was 'make it cause 2 hits on a 6 to reduce the booty-blasting orks get from -1 to hit effects' but they went the route of 'just make every ork shooting weapon stronger' which is...fine. I do really really hate the way new dakka type plays tho, it makes ork shooting units which should be the faction sprinting forward firing with wild abandon into the most conservative, careful shooting army in the game.


The big mistake is that everyone thinks dakka helped with high firerate stuff. Dakka was extremely impactful on the low shot high damage weapons. I don’t know if it’s my luck or whatever but I never feel like dakka wasted any time for me. What they should have done is keep old dakka, combine it with new dakka, and make those guns count as assault. Maybe then we’d see balance between our punchy stuff and the actual dakka.


rolling more dice automatically mean that you're taking more time. And sure, on low rate of fire it doesnt add that much time, but surprise surprise, shoota boys had it. Making DDD into a tesla kind of thing wouldve been a way better change than the current one.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 16:59:29


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


To be fair, it didn’t really waste much time on shoota boyz cause who took shoota boyz?

I think just having it be 2 auto hits on bullet weapons would’ve been a good change, makes shootas maybe effective, keeps the big powerful shots swingy.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 18:48:14


Post by: Daedalus81


Slipspace wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:


You have a squad @ 220, a rhino @ 90+ points, an Infernal Master @ 90 points, and at least an exalted @ 100 points. So, 490 points and 2 CP to deliver and kill 140. And that's a problem?


It's not exactly accurate to include all those character points in the cost of the unit. Yes, they provided buffs, but they are also making other contributions outside of boosting those Rubrics. They could, for example, easily run off after shooting and charge another unit or the Rhino could move block or tie up something in close combat. Unsurprisingly you've missed the point, or are wilfully ignoring it. The problem is twofold. If you remove those buffs the Rubrics kill about 3 SW and get the chance to charge to do a bit more damage. That seems OK and more or less inline with most other wargames in terms of lethality. It shouldn't be possible to buff a unit so much that it goes from doing decent but not catastrophic damage to their target to wiping them out. There's also no counterplay to this beyond "don't get shot". The SW player just has to sit there and take it.

As the_scotsman said, it's about the gameplay reflecting the lore and at the moment it fails pretty hard as units simply evaporate the moment they're targeted. There's very little ability to gradually grind the opponent down, incrementally improve your position and eliminate units through better positioning and superior in-game decisions. It's just endless trades between units.


Even if you were to count just the rubrics and the IF you're still solidly using 300+ points, which is well more than was killed.

On the buffs - one of them was a spell and the other was effectively a spell. Are we getting rid of spells now? One of them was a small reroll. Should characters do nothing for units?

Should everything psykers do just be mind bullets so people don't get upset that a certain unit got stronger? VotLW ( +1 to wound ) results in ONE additional model dying in that scenario. That's for two CP. That's our boogeyman.

SW doesn't just "sit there and take it". They moved there. They knew what was in the rhino. They decided to move close enough to be in the hop out and RF range. Either it was worth the move ( like denying an objective, because all the obsec was in a rhino ) or it was a bad choice.

It just feels like no one wants to deal with adversity and would just prefer that nothing bad happens instead of accepting that they might have made a bad calculation. But "40K has no depth and everything is super simple".



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 19:05:51


Post by: PenitentJake


@Scotsman

Your scenario sounds supercool and thanks for essentially writing out a full batrep. Really enjoyed reading it.

I totally relate to the Fenris lack of terrain is fluffy issue. I get most White Dwarfs, and I bought hard into PA... I know not everyone did, and I also agree that it's not fair to players to have to do that... BUT-

This is exactly where I would have used a Snowstorm Theatre of War rule that limits LOS. It would be balanced by the lack of obscuring terrain so as not to be over the top oppressive, as some theatre of war options are.

Since you are writing the scenario anyway, you're also free to write the Theatre of War snowstorm rules yourself, eliminating the need to find one in a WD or PA... I only mention the official sources for such things because I know sometimes players need to use as much "official" content as possible in order to secure buy-in from their opponents- though your crew sounds pretty cool about this sort of thing.

I think (but could be mistaken) there were some snowstorm ToW rules in one of the recent Octarius Flashpoints.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/14 20:31:58


Post by: jeff white


 the_scotsman wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
Heavy dice rolling with little outcome is boring. It has little to do with competitiveness.

This is the pinnacle for Thousand Sons, in my opinion. CSM 3.5 was the only other "interesting" book, because you could take a LoC and spend a gakload of points of sorcerers.


See, I'm of two minds here.

On one hand, it is cool that I can finally customize my Exalted Sorcerors enough to make the amazingly diverse kit worth it. Is it annoying that I have to do it by loading weird, vague adjectives onto the unit to alter their stats instead of a straightforward method? Yes. Am I going to begrude the poor sap laboring under GW's asinine legal department rules that? No, its ok, hes working with what hes got.

what gets frustrating is when I organize a game with a friend who I know isn't going super hard in terms of competitive craziness, and we want to have an old-school grudge match Thousand Sons vs Space Wolves battle, we put down our gorgeous 100% painted armies, we set up a snow world table, we decide on a custom mission where the Thousand Sons are trying to open up portals to the warp and the Space Wolves are trying to stop them, and then when we sit down to actually play the game, it plays out like this:
Spoiler:

-the space wolves roll to go first. A long fang squad drop pods in with a super-super casual Heavy Bolter/Multi-melta/Lascannon/Missile Launcher configuration, the squad sergeant hands +1 to hit to the single multi-melta, they pop a stratagem to ignore to-hit mods so they can move and shoot heavy weapons (rendering any usage of the Smokescreen stratagem also pointless) and they instantly one-round the most expensive vehicle on the board, my lone Predator, first shooting attack of the game. The rest of the space wolves move up, nothing else much happens because both of us are using mostly oldschool rhino-rush list setups.

- One squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino, gets prescience'd and easily blows away both the devastator squad and 3/5 of the members of a blood claw squad that came in on the same pod but had nothing to charge at. My heldrake drops into hover, shoots across no mans land and kills 1 minor character (a lieutenant, or equivalent I think) and then charges a librarian, instantly wipes him out too to secure an objective.

-Thunderwolves roll into the exposed rubric squad, killing them all. The two remaining blood claws swing around a building and get to some cultists hanging on an objective, killing like 7/10 of them after morale. A dreadnought charges the heldrake, kills it. A squad of blood claws hops out, kills a rhino, can't swing around enough to insta-kill the squad though so they get out.

-The squad whose rhino got destroyed gets buffed, kills the blood claws, two of my sorcerors drop all the mortal wound powers into the dreadnought, kill it, my terminators drop in, leave one thunderwolf alive

top of turn 3, my opponent is working with 1 thunderwolf, 2 blood claws, a jump pack chaplain, a drop pod, and two rhinos. Game's done! we basically just had him use the dregs to kill whatever he could which IIRC was basically the two sorcerors. What about the mission we wrote up? Eh, didnt matter, everything just fething died, like it always does, by turn 3.

Now, I understand that there are actions I could have taken to, for example, set my cultist squad up carefully screening out the tank so the one multi-melta would have not basically insta-killed it and it might have escaped that single shooting attack with 2-3 wounds. My opponent could have not blown his blood claw squad killing a rhino, or he could have made sure to keep the dreadnought near the two HQs in his territory so that the dread could have intervened on the helldrake and avenged the two HQs right then, instead of on his following turn.

But here's the thing: In a casual, narrative game, the stakes being set to 'if you make one single bad move, if you misposition by a fething MILLIMETER so your opponent can draw LOS, or get a deep striker in unscreened, or sneak a multi-melta into melta range, or you miscalculate the movement required to fully wrap a transport with your pile-in and consolidate, you will IMMEDIATELY lose whatever 150-250 points of models you made the mistake with' sucks. It sucks so, so much ass, because even if youre very very purposefully trying to bring soft, friendly units, and construct a fun scenario, once you get into the game you just cant. You can't decide "oh, what if this character fought that character, won't this make an exciting matchup?" because you know, going in, if your character is charging? The target is probably just gonna die.
Between buffed offensive stats, stratagems, auras, and various and sundry bonuses, it is so trivial to stack up buffs onto a unit to turn it into just an absolute damage hose - a simple 10-squad of rubrics hops out of a rhino and goes 'OK, here's 19 shots, hitting on 2s rerollable, wounding on 2s because we got the buffed strength from the infernal master and we used the strat for +1 to wound, AP-2 so youre saving on 5s oh and also the now 5 shots at S6 Ap-3 from our soulreaper cannon that's another 2 dead, your unit is basically smoking boots now.

Too much awesome in this post for words alone. My exalt button muscle is still twitching, eyes rolling, … brilliant.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 06:40:39


Post by: Blackie


 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
To be fair, it didn’t really waste much time on shoota boyz cause who took shoota boyz?

I think just having it be 2 auto hits on bullet weapons would’ve been a good change, makes shootas maybe effective, keeps the big powerful shots swingy.


Shoota boyz were actually pretty common in 8th greentides. Since only 10ish bodies could fight, many players used to mix their 30 man mobs with sluggas and shootas. Those shootas had better shooting than sluggas, didn't matter if they had one less attack in combat since they were in the last rows and couldn't fight but they did matter for the +1A for the whole squad which was triggered by the number of the mob, not by the equipment.

10-15 shootas in a 30 man mob was pretty much the way to go.

6s to hit generating double hits could have been a legit way to update DDD, especially if GW didn't increase the base number of shots of many weapons.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 08:29:29


Post by: Slipspace


 Daedalus81 wrote:


Even if you were to count just the rubrics and the IF you're still solidly using 300+ points, which is well more than was killed.

On the buffs - one of them was a spell and the other was effectively a spell. Are we getting rid of spells now? One of them was a small reroll. Should characters do nothing for units?

Should everything psykers do just be mind bullets so people don't get upset that a certain unit got stronger? VotLW ( +1 to wound ) results in ONE additional model dying in that scenario. That's for two CP. That's our boogeyman.

SW doesn't just "sit there and take it". They moved there. They knew what was in the rhino. They decided to move close enough to be in the hop out and RF range. Either it was worth the move ( like denying an objective, because all the obsec was in a rhino ) or it was a bad choice.

It just feels like no one wants to deal with adversity and would just prefer that nothing bad happens instead of accepting that they might have made a bad calculation. But "40K has no depth and everything is super simple".



You're really good at missing the point. Effectively doubling the damage output of a unit, using any source, just shouldn't be a thing. There are way more things you can do with psychic powers or characters than just increase the damage output of a unit, especially if the system had more depth through things like morale or suppression or an expanded utility for actions (a mechanic that is really interesting but massively underused by GW). The problem is most buffs are relatively innocuous on their own. Then you stack them and you go from killing 2-3 guys to nearly wiping a unit. If GW would tone down the offensive buffs available in general it would be a good start to making the game a little more engaging.

The specific complaint here is about how fast units die and I can completely understand that. Previous versions of 40k had units taking 1-2 casualties from another unit's fire. Other wargames tend to operate around needing roughly 3 times the points of units to destroy a given unit and even then it's often more a case of severely damaging rather than destroying. Nothing you've said really addresses the reality the_scotsman put forward - units effectively do a thing then get removed from the board. How is that desirable? Why is it a good thing that unless I hide a unit at deployment there's pretty much a 90% chance it gets removed before it does anything?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 11:04:43


Post by: stonehorse


 Sim-Life wrote:

Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


While this is sadly very true, or at least seems to be what is going on. It isn't limited to the Web 2.0. Magic the Gathering, WARMACHINE/HORDES were all very popular prior to Web 2.0 and they not only encouraged WAAC mentality, but championed it as the only way to play.

What is sad is that it is infecting most types of tabletop gaming, which is why things like Oathmark, and Dragon Rampant are such gems. The days of 'gentleman's agreement' seem to be long gone. In the ranks of GW I think Rick Priestley was the last bastion of that mindset. Hence why his games still seem more about the spirit of the game.

One point that always struck me as odd was the removing of designer's notes in the back of rule books. Looking through my older editions of WFB and 40K the rule books and Codexes/Army books all have the designer writing about what they aimed to achieve with the game and the spirit the game should be approached in.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 11:41:19


Post by: vict0988


 stonehorse wrote:
One point that always struck me as odd was the removing of designer's notes in the back of rule books. Looking through my older editions of WFB and 40K the rule books and Codexes/Army books all have the designer writing about what they aimed to achieve with the game and the spirit the game should be approached in.

It's online now.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 12:01:17


Post by: stonehorse


 vict0988 wrote:
 stonehorse wrote:
One point that always struck me as odd was the removing of designer's notes in the back of rule books. Looking through my older editions of WFB and 40K the rule books and Codexes/Army books all have the designer writing about what they aimed to achieve with the game and the spirit the game should be approached in.

It's online now.


Which isn't good.

Having it in a separate place in a totally different format just makes it feel that it isn't part of the game, plus unless someone knows about them, they are not going to go looking for them.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 12:07:52


Post by: Gert


I know for sure that AoS has "rules" for etiquette and stuff and I'm fairly certain there's something similar in a 40k book somewhere, even if it's just "the most important rule is having fun".


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 13:19:44


Post by: Grimtuff


 Gert wrote:
I know for sure that AoS has "rules" for etiquette and stuff and I'm fairly certain there's something similar in a 40k book somewhere, even if it's just "the most important rule is having fun".


There aren’t. Remember when AoS 3rd dropped and this subforum got its jimmies rustled by it?

I member.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 14:07:57


Post by: Catulle


 Grimtuff wrote:
 Gert wrote:
I know for sure that AoS has "rules" for etiquette and stuff and I'm fairly certain there's something similar in a 40k book somewhere, even if it's just "the most important rule is having fun".


There aren’t. Remember when AoS 3rd dropped and this subforum got its jimmies rustled by it?

I member.


Oh, lordy, lordy, this.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 14:51:20


Post by: vict0988


THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE
...apply the solution that makes the most sense to both of you (or seems the most fun!)...

It's still alive and well in 40k
 Grimtuff wrote:
Remember when AoS 3rd dropped and this subforum got its jimmies rustled by it?

As far as I remember, there were some questionable inclusions in that document, like never complain about dice rolls, which is an extreme version of don't complain about dice rolls in a way that ruins the game for your opponent. Discussing things on a forum doesn't seem like such a bad thing.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 15:05:15


Post by: Apple fox


 stonehorse wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:

Web 2.0 made the setting more popular in the U.S. and they brought their over-competitiveness with them. The U.S has the biggest tournaments with the biggest prizes with the biggest attendance and is the biggest market for the game. America is so hugely the prevalent culture online that it inevitably consumes everything it takes part in and whether they like it or not America as a culture is VERY competitive.


While this is sadly very true, or at least seems to be what is going on. It isn't limited to the Web 2.0. Magic the Gathering, WARMACHINE/HORDES were all very popular prior to Web 2.0 and they not only encouraged WAAC mentality, but championed it as the only way to play.

What is sad is that it is infecting most types of tabletop gaming, which is why things like Oathmark, and Dragon Rampant are such gems. The days of 'gentleman's agreement' seem to be long gone. In the ranks of GW I think Rick Priestley was the last bastion of that mindset. Hence why his games still seem more about the spirit of the game.

One point that always struck me as odd was the removing of designer's notes in the back of rule books. Looking through my older editions of WFB and 40K the rule books and Codexes/Army books all have the designer writing about what they aimed to achieve with the game and the spirit the game should be approached in.


When I read this I do find it interesting, when I first was getting into warmachine I didn’t really encounter WAAC additudes at all. Not online, not at events and not local.
What I did find was a competitive community driven game that was home to a lot of narrative driven players as well.
Boards, rules and support where great.
This all as 40k was stripping that all away, I come here to read about units and find that lots of units I would have liked to use where essential useless as they wouldn’t really function against players putting in some effort.
Where I could often find useful info on any unit I wanted in warmachine, often the worst was people pointing at lists and units that lacked support or didn’t support each other as well and would be found lacking against a more cohesive list.

I would say the worst, warmachine had such a bad community is here, on the 40k board. Even other 40k places seem to never bring it up when warmachine does come up.
Off corse, this is my own opinion here.

But I often find the same with magic, which has a massive casual player base and possibly one of its most popular formats is a casual one.

WAAC players exist everywhere, but it’s 40k that though design more than any other table top that leans into it so much. It’s been a huge issue swinging back and forth for a long while now, and it’s not any better now.
How much is design driven, and how much is the player base itself driving that is probably too much for me to know


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 15:14:05


Post by: Some_Call_Me_Tim


 Blackie wrote:
 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
To be fair, it didn’t really waste much time on shoota boyz cause who took shoota boyz?

I think just having it be 2 auto hits on bullet weapons would’ve been a good change, makes shootas maybe effective, keeps the big powerful shots swingy.


Shoota boyz were actually pretty common in 8th greentides. Since only 10ish bodies could fight, many players used to mix their 30 man mobs with sluggas and shootas. Those shootas had better shooting than sluggas, didn't matter if they had one less attack in combat since they were in the last rows and couldn't fight but they did matter for the +1A for the whole squad which was triggered by the number of the mob, not by the equipment.

10-15 shootas in a 30 man mob was pretty much the way to go.

6s to hit generating double hits could have been a legit way to update DDD, especially if GW didn't increase the base number of shots of many weapons.


Dakka weapons as they are now would I think maybe start to become effective if they got 2 hits on a six, the new extra shots, and were kept as assault. Flat ap s4 is just kinda bad.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 16:30:57


Post by: Daedalus81


Slipspace wrote:

You're really good at missing the point. Effectively doubling the damage output of a unit, using any source, just shouldn't be a thing. There are way more things you can do with psychic powers or characters than just increase the damage output of a unit, especially if the system had more depth through things like morale or suppression or an expanded utility for actions (a mechanic that is really interesting but massively underused by GW). The problem is most buffs are relatively innocuous on their own. Then you stack them and you go from killing 2-3 guys to nearly wiping a unit. If GW would tone down the offensive buffs available in general it would be a good start to making the game a little more engaging.

The specific complaint here is about how fast units die and I can completely understand that. Previous versions of 40k had units taking 1-2 casualties from another unit's fire. Other wargames tend to operate around needing roughly 3 times the points of units to destroy a given unit and even then it's often more a case of severely damaging rather than destroying. Nothing you've said really addresses the reality the_scotsman put forward - units effectively do a thing then get removed from the board. How is that desirable? Why is it a good thing that unless I hide a unit at deployment there's pretty much a 90% chance it gets removed before it does anything?


I don't think I'm missing the point.

People are putting on rose tinted glasses and pretending that because marines didn't shoot as much that things didn't die fast. gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009. No one here has any real idea how effective armies could be back in earlier editions, because no one was around to discuss it. People playing oldhammer are like-minded individuals that don't care to bring the best lists. If we really wanted to go back to that time now people would find the best army and break the game.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to 5th edition:
It was also more of a joke, that a GK player (and the vast majority are bandwagoners) would call something else "overpowered" with all the heat they're taking right now.

Maybe some some Jokaeros?
Inquisitor Coteaz

50 Jokaero

1850 points exactly. Monkey shooting army of death that can be anywhere from 5 to 16 claiming units of 60" lascannons, 36" multi-meltas (so is that 2d6 pen at 18"), and rending heavy flamers. Possibly a way to dust off my AT-43 Karmans and make a Charlton Heston inquisitor.

People don't seem happy!
This is the cancer thats killing 40k

Who could forget old MW?
It's lists like this that really make me despise Matt Ward


There are way more things you can do with psychic powers or characters than just increase the damage output of a unit, especially if the system had more depth through things like morale or suppression or an expanded utility for actions

Thousand Sons have that. Mortal wounds every time a unit moves / resurrect a model / reduce strength / prevent a unit shooting past 24" / strip invuln / reduce attacks / miracle dice / half movement.

You didn't address the question. Should psychic buffs not exist? Everyone talks about strats and rerolls, but those played a minor roll here. Why are we looking to make these invalid, too? Am I no longer allowed agency, because someone decided tossing 5 to 10 marines near me was a good idea?

What exactly should have happened to those marines? Should only 3 of them died using the same effort? Should the psykers have reduced their movement instead even though they were probably in charge range already? Should he have done the reroll ability instead of +1S? Should he have avoided smiting them at all just so we don't accidentally kill too many models? It's absurd.

Some examples for this edition on what it takes to kill models --

In this game Nanavanti killed 380 points of Wazboms with his entire army and a lot of 5++ saves were failed. Both planes exploded, which crippled his army, but that's just bad luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg3R2P6lBIc

In my tournament 18 warbikes did a WAAAGH and charged me turn 1. They killed a Mutalith ( Goff Explodes strat ) and a couple Scarabs. That's 470 points, 2 CP, and a once per game ability killing 225. Then it took the entirety of my remaining army to kill 11 bikes ( no thanks to bad decisions and bad dice ).

The worst was 10+5 RG VV w/ LC&SS ( 270 ) spending 3 CP to move and go assault doctrine and wiping out terminators, but that's a melee dedicated unit. It SHOULD kill things when it gets there, because it doesn't always get the chance. And then I spent 900 or so points trying to kill them and got 10 out of 15. That's with 16 MW in the psychic phase.

If everything is average an entire unit of Scarabs w/ RR1s ( 230 ) kills 3 SS marines ( 81 ). If I decide to give them +1 to hit instead of smiting I kill an extra model - so basically a wash.

To me it feels like people would prefer that everything is just so milquetoast that decisions don't actually matter. Moved to a bad spot? No problem - nothing dies anyway!

There's issues with the game. Admech are ballbusters that need a 10% hit. DE need boats and lances hit. But outside of that you don't see this hyper efficiency unless someone rolls a tank in front of eradicators ( that almost no one takes ). Everything you do has some innate cost whether it be CP, a spell slot, or an ability and choices can have consequences.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 16:49:20


Post by: Las


 Daedalus81 wrote:

I don't think I'm missing the point.

People are putting on rose tinted glasses and pretending that because marines didn't shoot as much that things didn't die fast. gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009. No one here has any real idea how effective armies could be back in earlier editions, because no one was around to discuss it. People playing oldhammer are like-minded individuals that don't care to bring the best lists. If we really wanted to go back to that time now people would find the best army and break the game.


Emphasis mine.

This is a really important point that isn't focused on enough. There's a great recent example that's applicable here in the form of World of Warcraft Classic's release. For those who don't know, a few years ago Blizzard released a version of World of Warcraft as it had existed (more or less) on launch day back in 2004. The general sentiment going into the game's launch was that the difficulty and purity of the old systems would mean that those used to the more modern mechanics would struggle with the game. There was a real sense that "skill" in this classic game would be more important than "the right internet-sourced rotation or character build."

People absolutely cake-walked through it.

The truth was that the way people play games had changed drastically over the last 20 years because of the internet, and there was no going back. People looking to get better at games can draw on the huge, diffused, gestalt supercomputer of human problem solving and processing that is the internet to play competitive games hyper-efficiently.

The elephant in the room is that any game popular enough to draw the attention of the internet is going to produce the kind of efficiency armament that anyone can pick up and apply to a game. These kinds of "how do you want to play?" discussions and/or sub-rulesets of restrictions to counter the intellectual problem-solving arms race are a factor in all modern gaming from the tabletop to the computer screen. Map sets and weapon restrictions in games like Halo or CoD are an example of just this type of thing. When these restrictions aren't in-place by the rulesets in the form of "types of play" for users to opt into, they will attempt to enforce them themselves through things as simple as lobby names. There really is no avoiding it, but there are ways that rulesets can help users find their way to the type of play that they're looking for.

40k doesn't do a great job of the latter today.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 16:55:13


Post by: Nurglitch


 Daedalus81 wrote:
gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009.

I'm reasonably sure this is false.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 16:56:39


Post by: Unit1126PLL


The difference though is in what type of optimization is being done.

Is the optimization at the pre-engagement step or during the battle?

To use your Warcraft 2004 example (or any MMO really), how much your "build" (in terms of gear, chosen skills, and damage rotation) affects the outcome is DRASTICALLY GREATER than being skilled at the game.

To push the MMO example further:
a game where a naked character could beat a fully decked out character probably leans too much into "skill based play" (which damages roleplay for the people who are unskilled) OTOH a game where a fully decked out character can defeat the most skilled player in the game with a single button press (to start a macro) probably leans too much into the "skill doesn't matter enough" category.

Right now, (and always with 40k to some extent), 40k seems to be a game where the decisions made BEFORE the game actually have a disproportionate impact on how the game actually goes.

I will admit it is also possible to go too far the other direction (though 40k has never been there), where decisions made DURING THE GAME are too important and relegate any pregame decisions made to irrelevancy.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 17:03:42


Post by: Grimtuff


 Nurglitch wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009.

I'm reasonably sure this is false.


You- joined this forum in 2007. Me- joined this forum in 2005. Yup. It's right there next to our user names, funny that...


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 17:03:50


Post by: Daedalus81


 Nurglitch wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009.

I'm reasonably sure this is false.


I should say - this particular forum on Dakka. I think the other parts existed first. I see tactics out to 2006.

Here's an ancient tactics discussion:

Mahu, you might also PM Agustus. He has taken a 6 dread list to two larger RTT's (GhengisCon in denver and Adepticon). He also had a swarm of speeders.

I know that it did well in winning battles but got lots of cries of cheese, lots and lots of cries.




Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 17:04:21


Post by: Las


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The difference though is in what type of optimization is being done.

Is the optimization at the pre-engagement step or during the battle?

To use your Warcraft 2004 example (or any MMO really), how much your "build" (in terms of gear, chosen skills, and damage rotation) affects the outcome is DRASTICALLY GREATER than being skilled at the game.

To push the MMO example further:
a game where a naked character could beat a fully decked out character probably leans too much into "skill based play" (which damages roleplay for the people who are unskilled) OTOH a game where a fully decked out character can defeat the most skilled player in the game with a single button press (to start a macro) probably leans too much into the "skill doesn't matter enough" category.

Right now, (and always with 40k to some extent), 40k seems to be a game where the decisions made BEFORE the game actually have a disproportionate impact on how the game actually goes.

I will admit it is also possible to go too far the other direction, where decisions made DURING THE GAME are too important and relegate any pregame decisions made to second string.


I think there's a lot of truth to this, but I'd say that that is largely a result of how hyper-educated people are about what the precise, hyper-efficient combinations in armies are, and what strategems to use with them to maximize lethality. I, for example, am not a skilled min-maxer. When looking at a ruleset, I struggle to decipher force multiplying combinations, but I can do about 45 minutes of research online and easily come out with a killy list. To return to my WoW example, in 2004 when this wasn't an option the game FELT harder to any given person, despite the fact that that same person playing in 2021 would likely have found it to be much less difficult. I have a very strong feeling that if the internet didn't exist, 40k would FEEL more balanced to the average gamer, as it may have in 1999.

That is a problem that exists in every reasonably popular wargame I've ever played. The intricacies of complex competitive rules systems means that there will always be some measure of this problem. 40k does have balance issues that stem from its core mechanics, but I think a far better and more effective application of resourcing would be to further define the "ways of play" to ensure less of the onus of a "pre game conversation" rests on the end user. Seems infinitely more possible to do at this point than retooling the balance across the board, imo.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 17:29:00


Post by: Nurglitch


The concept of pre-game planning is pretty appealing, although it's kind of in tension with the notion of equal points-worth of armies being a fair match-up.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 18:13:57


Post by: NinthMusketeer


In US culture people will say "I am very competitive" as if it is a positive character trait, or at least not a negative one. There is a lot that goes into the mentality and why it exists that is outside the bounds of this discussion, but at the end of the day it does. And it will infiltrate any game that US gets it's hands on, if allowed to do so.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 19:16:06


Post by: Daedalus81


I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 20:08:06


Post by: Sim-Life


 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 20:23:27


Post by: Gert


It's not an American thing, I've met plenty of WAAC players in the UK. Although I have noticed that most people tend to grow out of it and instead go for painting, converting, or gaming as a chill time.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 20:53:16


Post by: waefre_1


No, no, he's right - it's all part of a grand conspiracy on our part to make you all sick to death of the things you enjoy so that we can have them for ourselves forever. After all, who would expect such a subtle plan from such a boisterous, impatient people?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 20:55:13


Post by: NinthMusketeer


 Gert wrote:
It's not an American thing, I've met plenty of WAAC players in the UK. Although I have noticed that most people tend to grow out of it and instead go for painting, converting, or gaming as a chill time.
Did someone claim WAAC are exclusively US?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/15 23:05:08


Post by: Daedalus81


 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Ameritrash is a term coined by people who like to thumb their noses at stuff they think is beneath them....sounds British.

It was coined in 2006 by an American and has nothing to do with competitiveness of a game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 03:47:29


Post by: Togusa


 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In US culture people will say "I am very competitive" as if it is a positive character trait, or at least not a negative one. There is a lot that goes into the mentality and why it exists that is outside the bounds of this discussion, but at the end of the day it does. And it will infiltrate any game that US gets it's hands on, if allowed to do so.


So much of the television I watched as a child in the 90s was filled to the bring with competition and pitting groups against each other. The one show that I loved that did not always do that was Star Trek. But pretty much everything else did. Hell, I remember my uncle loved to watch the show Coach. Which was literally about a sports ball Coach.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 05:24:07


Post by: ccs


 Daedalus81 wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

You're really good at missing the point. Effectively doubling the damage output of a unit, using any source, just shouldn't be a thing. There are way more things you can do with psychic powers or characters than just increase the damage output of a unit, especially if the system had more depth through things like morale or suppression or an expanded utility for actions (a mechanic that is really interesting but massively underused by GW). The problem is most buffs are relatively innocuous on their own. Then you stack them and you go from killing 2-3 guys to nearly wiping a unit. If GW would tone down the offensive buffs available in general it would be a good start to making the game a little more engaging.

The specific complaint here is about how fast units die and I can completely understand that. Previous versions of 40k had units taking 1-2 casualties from another unit's fire. Other wargames tend to operate around needing roughly 3 times the points of units to destroy a given unit and even then it's often more a case of severely damaging rather than destroying. Nothing you've said really addresses the reality the_scotsman put forward - units effectively do a thing then get removed from the board. How is that desirable? Why is it a good thing that unless I hide a unit at deployment there's pretty much a 90% chance it gets removed before it does anything?


I don't think I'm missing the point.

People are putting on rose tinted glasses and pretending that because marines didn't shoot as much that things didn't die fast. gak...this forum wasn't even alive until 2009.
No one here has any real idea how effective armies could be back in earlier editions, because no one was around to discuss it.


Hey, genius, I'm going to let you in on a secret. It'll blow your mind.
And that is.....
Spoiler:
That the internet - complete with gaming/minis-wargaming/40k forums & all the same type of useless gak debates found on modern Dakka - well & truly predates 2009.
We thoroughly discussed, debated, & argued every aspect of 2e, 3e, 4e, & then 5e in those days.
And prior to that? In the prehistoric days of on-line? We covered RT.



 Daedalus81 wrote:
People playing oldhammer are like-minded individuals that don't care to bring the best lists. If we really wanted to go back to that time now people would find the best army and break the game.


LoL.
I've been breaking this game since the days of RT. As have others. And I was late to the party (because I was busy breaking WHFB 3e). My official entry into the 41M? Was to abuse the RT rules to dominate a local tourney & deliver a friend a loss that he remembered for the rest of his life (he died last year ).

As for not bringing "the best lists"? I don't need to. I'm already 100% certain of my ability to win. But I realized a long time ago that winning? That's not actually what brings me enjoyment game-wise. So be it in 40k or otherwise, I bring forces built to my own tastes.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 08:20:27


Post by: Sim-Life


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Ameritrash is a term coined by people who like to thumb their noses at stuff they think is beneath them....sounds British.

It was coined in 2006 by an American and has nothing to do with competitiveness of a game.


All games are competitive. Ameritrash refers to a specific kind of competitive. 2006 was 15 years ago and the board game community is much different now from then and the word is now accepted as a definition of a certain type of game (usually one with a combat phase and dice).


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 08:46:21


Post by: stonehorse


 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Ameritrash is a term coined by people who like to thumb their noses at stuff they think is beneath them....sounds British.

It was coined in 2006 by an American and has nothing to do with competitiveness of a game.


All games are competitive. Ameritrash refers to a specific kind of competitive. 2006 was 15 years ago and the board game community is much different now from then and the word is now accepted as a definition of a certain type of game (usually one with a combat phase and dice).


Ameritrash is usually where a game is theme over mechanics, where as a Euro game is usually mechanic over theme. Ameritrash games also tend to have player conflict, or ways that players can disrupt a rival. Euro games tend to be less about player rivalry and more to do with your actions alone determine your success, hence why in Euro games the tendency is for all players to have the same start, or as close as possible where the game permits.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 10:52:02


Post by: Apple fox


 stonehorse wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Ameritrash is a term coined by people who like to thumb their noses at stuff they think is beneath them....sounds British.

It was coined in 2006 by an American and has nothing to do with competitiveness of a game.


All games are competitive. Ameritrash refers to a specific kind of competitive. 2006 was 15 years ago and the board game community is much different now from then and the word is now accepted as a definition of a certain type of game (usually one with a combat phase and dice).


Ameritrash is usually where a game is theme over mechanics, where as a Euro game is usually mechanic over theme. Ameritrash games also tend to have player conflict, or ways that players can disrupt a rival. Euro games tend to be less about player rivalry and more to do with your actions alone determine your success, hence why in Euro games the tendency is for all players to have the same start, or as close as possible where the game permits.


What are some games in the two seperate genre, we play a lot of euro games here. And only a few more American ones. I just Curious about it now, since really I don’t think I have really hear the term itself defined well.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 11:22:51


Post by: Sim-Life


 stonehorse wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think it'd be quite something to prove other cultures are any less competitive. Makes for good scape goats though...


Well, board games with high levels of direct player interaction don't get refered to as "Ameritrash" because its catchy.


Ameritrash is a term coined by people who like to thumb their noses at stuff they think is beneath them....sounds British.

It was coined in 2006 by an American and has nothing to do with competitiveness of a game.


All games are competitive. Ameritrash refers to a specific kind of competitive. 2006 was 15 years ago and the board game community is much different now from then and the word is now accepted as a definition of a certain type of game (usually one with a combat phase and dice).

Ameritrash games also tend to have player conflict, or ways that players can disrupt a rival.


Which was my point.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 11:49:34


Post by: BlackoCatto


If we are calling games Ameritrash we get to call European games Eurotrash, only fitting.

Also, if it is further East I can assume we can call it Slavtrash.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 15:35:47


Post by: Grimtuff


 BlackoCatto wrote:
If we are calling games Ameritrash we get to call European games Eurotrash, only fitting.

Also, if it is further East I can assume we can call it Slavtrash.


Eurotrash is already a thing, as people in the uk of a certain age will know.

“Bonjour my Breeteesh chums!”


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 15:55:36


Post by: stonehorse


 Grimtuff wrote:
 BlackoCatto wrote:
If we are calling games Ameritrash we get to call European games Eurotrash, only fitting.

Also, if it is further East I can assume we can call it Slavtrash.


Eurotrash is already a thing, as people in the uk of a certain age will know.

“Bonjour my Breeteesh chums!”


God I miss that show, how channel 4 got away with some of the stuff on it I'll never know.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 15:57:56


Post by: Sim-Life


 stonehorse wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 BlackoCatto wrote:
If we are calling games Ameritrash we get to call European games Eurotrash, only fitting.

Also, if it is further East I can assume we can call it Slavtrash.


Eurotrash is already a thing, as people in the uk of a certain age will know.

“Bonjour my Breeteesh chums!”


God I miss that show, how channel 4 got away with some of the stuff on it I'll never know.


It was a different time. I really wish they'd re-air it just to see the complaints it would get.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 16:26:25


Post by: stonehorse


 Sim-Life wrote:
 stonehorse wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 BlackoCatto wrote:
If we are calling games Ameritrash we get to call European games Eurotrash, only fitting.

Also, if it is further East I can assume we can call it Slavtrash.


Eurotrash is already a thing, as people in the uk of a certain age will know.

“Bonjour my Breeteesh chums!”


God I miss that show, how channel 4 got away with some of the stuff on it I'll never know.


It was a different time. I really wish they'd re-air it just to see the complaints it would get.


Even for the time it was very risky, think any repeats would cause so many complaints that it'd more than likely summon Mary Whitehouse to rise from her grave... Best keep that one in the ground.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 18:24:36


Post by: Ferryman


To the original question: since my last win in matched play must have been 2 to 3 years ago. In 40k, switched to AoS this february and won a game in April or so. I'm not that great player and I accept that when playing once or twice a month I don't have much routine but still. It gets depressing to show up against people who really seem to appreciate someone playing fun lists. Then they proceed to smash the fun list hundred to nil. Seem to be the name of the game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 22:50:30


Post by: Daedalus81


To me Ameritrash is the game where you say, "hey remember when...?".

I have tons of fun in power grid and wingspan, but absolutely none of those games produce the same memories.

Using the term negatively seems misguided.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
ccs wrote:


LoL.
I've been breaking this game since the days of RT.


Good. Then we can stop pretending there's some holy grail of 40k and maybe recognize somewhere along the way that the game is currently far less breakable than it has ever been.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/16 23:06:33


Post by: Nurglitch


Well, 'breakable.' The experience has changed, even if the mode of optimizing to win an ostensibly fair game has remained a perennial favorite.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 04:25:50


Post by: AnomanderRake


 Daedalus81 wrote:
...Good. Then we can stop pretending there's some holy grail of 40k and maybe recognize somewhere along the way that the game is currently far less breakable than it has ever been.



I don't get the jump from "40k has never been perfect" to "it's currently better than it's ever been before." I'm not going to argue that there was ever a golden time when the game worked perfectly at all times, but it's at least as breakable as it's ever been right now.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 09:32:54


Post by: Sim-Life


 Daedalus81 wrote:


Using the term negatively seems misguided.



No one did.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 10:12:42


Post by: Turnip Jedi


 AnomanderRake wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
...Good. Then we can stop pretending there's some holy grail of 40k and maybe recognize somewhere along the way that the game is currently far less breakable than it has ever been.



I don't get the jump from "40k has never been perfect" to "it's currently better than it's ever been before." I'm not going to argue that there was ever a golden time when the game worked perfectly at all times, but it's at least as breakable as it's ever been right now.


I suspect it's some kind of Temporal Distortion...


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 14:36:04


Post by: Sunny Side Up


 AnomanderRake wrote:

I don't get the jump from "40k has never been perfect" to "it's currently better than it's ever been before." I'm not going to argue that there was ever a golden time when the game worked perfectly at all times, but it's at least as breakable as it's ever been right now.


Not even close.

While the game is, as said, not perfect, the worst "breaks" of the current game don't come to be within 0.1% of past atrocities like Chaos 3.5, Screamer-Stars with re-rollable 2++ invuls, etc.., etc.. Or even the age of Iron Hands. The game is in a much, much, much, much better state then just 18-24 months ago.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 15:49:37


Post by: Unit1126PLL


I don't think anyone ever forfeit top of turn 1 after losing a third of their army in one shooting phase against Chaos 3.5.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 15:53:19


Post by: JNAProductions


I would like to ask a question:

If you don't care about winning, why play a competitive game? In 40k, without houseruling it to be some kind of co-op, vs. AI experience; there's a winner and a loser. Winning isn't everything, of course, but you should be trying your best to succeed. (Excepting stuff like tutorial games or similar.)

There's plenty of co-op board games and such, or you could work on some sort of AI system for 40k to play together, but I don't see why you'd WANT to lose a game of 40k.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 15:57:15


Post by: Voss


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't think anyone ever forfeit top of turn 1 after losing a third of their army in one shooting phase against Chaos 3.5.


Yeah, I'm not a fan of Chaos 3.5 and don't get the nostalgia for it, but the game is currently far, far more broken than it ever was.

There simply is no way around the statistical tyranny of some armies being built to roll hundreds of dice per turn. Its a bugbear that's been growing for several editions, but they're not doing much (if anything) to dial it back.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 16:04:06


Post by: AnomanderRake


Voss wrote:
...Yeah, I'm not a fan of Chaos 3.5 and don't get the nostalgia for it...


It may not have been particularly well-balanced, but it had thoroughly done rules for all nine Legions that managed to make them play very differently from each other with far fewer models and rules than the current run of CSM books, and it was the last time that CSM weren't "loyalists, but worse".


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 16:10:15


Post by: Deadnight


 JNAProductions wrote:
I would like to ask a question:

If you don't care about winning, why play a competitive game? In 40k, without houseruling it to be some kind of co-op, vs. AI experience; there's a winner and a loser. Winning isn't everything, of course, but you should be trying your best to succeed. (Excepting stuff like tutorial games or similar.)

There's plenty of co-op board games and such, or you could work on some sort of AI system for 40k to play together, but I don't see why you'd WANT to lose a game of 40k.


Maybe I'm misunderstanding this?

Define 'trying your best to succeed'. What does that look like in the real world? There's a lot of things that can be sacrificed on that altar to help you 'succeed' that for a lot of people, frankly, the cost is not worth it.some people make the mistake of thinking that unless you're bleeding edge competitive-at-all-cost, you're 'not trying to win' or don't care about winning at all.

There's a difference between a co-op game and a collaborative approach to a competitive game.

Remember, warhammers dna comes from a primarily roleplaying/storytelling background rather than cutthroat competitive-at-all-costs play. RT had an umpire and the historical gaming scene a lot of the writers come from, and which a lot of people still play - the pre game negotiation, the collaboration, the accommodation and 'negotiation phase' - this approach is simply 'given'.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 16:45:59


Post by: Platuan4th


 JNAProductions wrote:
I would like to ask a question:

If you don't care about winning, why play a competitive game? In 40k, without houseruling it to be some kind of co-op, vs. AI experience; there's a winner and a loser. Winning isn't everything, of course, but you should be trying your best to succeed. (Excepting stuff like tutorial games or similar.)

There's plenty of co-op board games and such, or you could work on some sort of AI system for 40k to play together, but I don't see why you'd WANT to lose a game of 40k.


I think the issue you're having is a misconception as to the contextual meaning of the word "competitive". "Competitive" does not always mean "player vs player" or "win/lose". You can still play "competitive" games like 40K in a collaborative manner, that's literally what the Crusade system and Narrative Play is for. Think asymmetrical games and last stands where you know the inevitable results. In other words, sometimes 40K means playing the game itself is more important than the results.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 17:41:20


Post by: NinthMusketeer


...because the fun is in the attempt, regardless of the result? I'm not sure I understand what he's asking. If a person doesn't care about winning they can't enjoy a game involving a play losing? Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here, I would be very interested to hear further elaboration on the perspective.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 17:54:04


Post by: JNAProductions


 NinthMusketeer wrote:
...because the fun is in the attempt, regardless of the result? I'm not sure I understand what he's asking. If a person doesn't care about winning they can't enjoy a game involving a play losing? Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here, I would be very interested to hear further elaboration on the perspective.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly-I've seen an attitude here from some that I'll try my best to explain, and that might help.

I've seen posts where people are derided for even so much as trying to win-labeled WAAC or TFG for wanting victory. Heck, the first post of this thread is like that. But, when you get right down to it, 40k is a game (by default, at least) with a winner and a loser. There's no shame in wanting to be the winner, and I'd be actually a bit upset if someone was sandbagging against me in a game, outside of a tutorial or something.

I'm not saying WAAC. I'm definitely not saying to cheat. I'm not saying you should ever be upset at a loss either-losing happens, and it's fine. But I don't see "I don't want to want to win" as a mark of honor. It's just kinda... Zuh? Why play a game with a winner and a loser then?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 18:14:37


Post by: Gert


Just because a game tends to have a winner and a loser, doesn't mean that is the sole motivation in playing the game. A team will usually win Team Slayer in Halo 3 but I don't really care if I win, I just want to play Halo with my friends. Losing all the time does get annoying but it is a very broad spectrum to define what some people see as a loss. Is your opponent winning by a single point a loss? Technically yes but you played a very close game that you likely both enjoyed. Are you getting stomped flat every single game and have never won a single game? If so then that is both a technical loss and what I would call a morale/emotional loss.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 18:17:53


Post by: Deadnight


To be fair JNA, there is usually negative associations with the contrasting phrase 'I play to win'. I mean there's a lot of things often regarded as underhanded, or that can be termed 'negative play experiences' that fall under that umbrella. There is also the association that 'playing to win' has an associated costs to it (I don't mean £££) that some see as detrimental to the greater hobby experience and community health.

To be fair, i've seen only a handful of posters in my years here who I can truly say seemed to champion the notion that one should never ever do anything to their own advantage in a game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 18:17:54


Post by: Racerguy180


 JNAProductions wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
...because the fun is in the attempt, regardless of the result? I'm not sure I understand what he's asking. If a person doesn't care about winning they can't enjoy a game involving a play losing? Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here, I would be very interested to hear further elaboration on the perspective.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly-I've seen an attitude here from some that I'll try my best to explain, and that might help.

I've seen posts where people are derided for even so much as trying to win-labeled WAAC or TFG for wanting victory. Heck, the first post of this thread is like that. But, when you get right down to it, 40k is a game (by default, at least) with a winner and a loser. There's no shame in wanting to be the winner, and I'd be actually a bit upset if someone was sandbagging against me in a game, outside of a tutorial or something.

I'm not saying WAAC. I'm definitely not saying to cheat. I'm not saying you should ever be upset at a loss either-losing happens, and it's fine. But I don't see "I don't want to want to win" as a mark of honor. It's just kinda... Zuh? Why play a game with a winner and a loser then?


It's actually pretty easy to understand;
I WANT to win and do my best, but I don't NEED to win the game to get something out of it.
I play for cinematic and cool gak happening with my fully painted models reasons. that's it, No other reason.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 18:23:42


Post by: Sim-Life


 JNAProductions wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
...because the fun is in the attempt, regardless of the result? I'm not sure I understand what he's asking. If a person doesn't care about winning they can't enjoy a game involving a play losing? Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here, I would be very interested to hear further elaboration on the perspective.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly-I've seen an attitude here from some that I'll try my best to explain, and that might help.

I've seen posts where people are derided for even so much as trying to win-labeled WAAC or TFG for wanting victory. Heck, the first post of this thread is like that. But, when you get right down to it, 40k is a game (by default, at least) with a winner and a loser. There's no shame in wanting to be the winner, and I'd be actually a bit upset if someone was sandbagging against me in a game, outside of a tutorial or something.

I'm not saying WAAC. I'm definitely not saying to cheat. I'm not saying you should ever be upset at a loss either-losing happens, and it's fine. But I don't see "I don't want to want to win" as a mark of honor. It's just kinda... Zuh? Why play a game with a winner and a loser then?


The objective is to win, the aim is to have fun.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 18:29:25


Post by: JNAProductions


 Sim-Life wrote:
 JNAProductions wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
...because the fun is in the attempt, regardless of the result? I'm not sure I understand what he's asking. If a person doesn't care about winning they can't enjoy a game involving a play losing? Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here, I would be very interested to hear further elaboration on the perspective.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly-I've seen an attitude here from some that I'll try my best to explain, and that might help.

I've seen posts where people are derided for even so much as trying to win-labeled WAAC or TFG for wanting victory. Heck, the first post of this thread is like that. But, when you get right down to it, 40k is a game (by default, at least) with a winner and a loser. There's no shame in wanting to be the winner, and I'd be actually a bit upset if someone was sandbagging against me in a game, outside of a tutorial or something.

I'm not saying WAAC. I'm definitely not saying to cheat. I'm not saying you should ever be upset at a loss either-losing happens, and it's fine. But I don't see "I don't want to want to win" as a mark of honor. It's just kinda... Zuh? Why play a game with a winner and a loser then?


The objective is to win, the aim is to have fun.
That’s a good way to phrase it. Better than I’ve managed, obviously


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/17 23:34:09


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:


To me it feels like people would prefer that everything is just so milquetoast that decisions don't actually matter. Moved to a bad spot? No problem - nothing dies anyway!

There's issues with the game. Admech are ballbusters that need a 10% hit. DE need boats and lances hit. But outside of that you don't see this hyper efficiency unless someone rolls a tank in front of eradicators ( that almost no one takes ). Everything you do has some innate cost whether it be CP, a spell slot, or an ability and choices can have consequences.



the problem is, in 9th edition, there's almost NO SUCH THING AS A BAD SPOT VS A GOOD SPOT.

The game is played on a fething NAPKIN with terrain rules so permissive that sighting 1% of one single enemy model in a unit with 1% of your model's left toe allows you to fire all of your weapons at 100% accuracy with no penalties from range and you can then even kill all the models in the unit that you CANT see as well!

If you want a system that utterly permissive, and you want the game to last more than 2 turns, then...yeah, it needs to be really really difficult for me to kill 50% of my points value with my unit. It's just a question of how long you want the game to be able to go. Currently, the game is supposed to go 5 battle rounds, and if you're on the board, you're basically firing at full effectiveness, so, 20% damage output should be the norm. That's just the math. If you want a unit firing at full effectiveness to be more exciting, you HAVE TO MAKE IT HARDER TO DO THAT THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW.

You're saying my opponent's blood claws were "Out of position" because they were standing right in front of the squad of rubrics. let's change that, shall we? Let's place them exactly on the edge of my range - 24" away, and let's cluster them behind a building. but, oops! Looks like I can sight one, single, tip of a chainsword from one, single, blood claw.

BRAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKADAKKA, exactly the same firepower hits you as before, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay you're all dead anyway, good thing there's no penalties for anything!

obscuring terrain now exists in official 40k, that's fantastic, great step in the right direction, it's too bad 9th edition massively increased firepower for everything across the board to compensate for the ability to maybe, every once in a blue moon, possibly hide one or two of your units from being shot at by 100% of your opponent's army 100% of the time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I want positioning on the board to matter more, not less. The level of firepower is perfectly fine right now IF that's the level you're taking when you're completely caught out, out of position or making a suicidal charge into enemy lines - but it's absolutely bonkers for the kind of firepower you take if you're just barely exposed.

What I want (to stop you hyperbolizing about "ShOulD BuFfS nOt ExIsT???" is, brief list:

-I want to decouple Modifiers and Conditions.

Conditions: Changes to your stats originating from psychic powers, stratagems, datasheet abilities, auras, prayers, army bonuses, etc. Conditions are capped at +1/-1.

Modifiers: Changes to your stats originating from Cover, Armor Piercing, Obscuring, Range, Weapon Type, units with variable statlines, and battlefield rules. Modifiers are uncapped.

Retain the current "6s always succeed, 1s always fail" to reduce edge cases

-I want to introduce a simple long-range to hit penalty. Say, -1 if over 1/2 maximum range.

-I want the shooting sequence to immediately end (and if fast-rolling, all additional saves to not have to be taken) if models from the target are removed such that the attacker no longer has line of sight, range, or Engagement Range if in melee. Removes the old issue of "rhino sniping" because as the target player I can choose to save my, say, special weapon or squad leader if I wish by taking out models you can't see, but re-introduces the common sense 'cant see 'em, can't shoot 'em' setup that used to exist.

-I want Cover (+1sv) to be a universal rule on all terrain that applies EITHER if a model is wholly on or in a terrain piece, OR if a target model of a shooting attack is 50% or more obscured by terrain further than 1" from a firing model or models not in the firing or target unit. Dense and Obscuring still exist, but see below WRT Obscuring. Also, cover from >50% obscurement applies to all unit types.

-I want a player to be able to place a "Taking Cover"/"Conceal"/"Hiding" token next to a unit either during deployment or at the end of their movement phase (hiding tokens are also removed at the end of the movement phase). Units with a Hiding token may not shoot in the shooting phase and may not declare charges in the charge phase. Hiding models that are at all obscured by Obscuring terrain are fully out of LOS, models that are not Hiding treat Obscuring as Dense instead.

-I want morale to be reworked into a system that is more likely to occur with lower numbers of casualties (2d6 roll based worked great) and that rather than adding casualties, reduces or removes offensive output from a unit. the new 'Hiding" system would be a perfect lever to use here.

-I want the Command Ability system lifted directly from Age of Sigmar and, much like "Warscroll Battalions" the stratagem system aborted or greatly greatly cut down. Character auras become more powerful stratagems granted by that character and CP becomes a turn-by-turn resource you either use during the battle round or lose, with stratagems having a much greater focus on acting during your opponent's turn rather than creating super-wombo-combos on your turn.

-And for crying out loud I want my 1/3 of the frickin' board area back why we got a game with 48" ranges being super common played on a 44" wide table???


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 00:28:30


Post by: Daedalus81


Your experience with positioning, terrain, and damage is totally different from mine. Positioning has mattered so much in every single game.

In one my opponent had two redemptors and two volcons. Hardly something I could take head on with a medium ranged army. So I hunkered down and held objectives and let him move to the middle. Then I hopped / breached / circled those ruins to put most of my whole army into his face the next turn allowing me to bring 3 dreadnoughts down.

If you have competent terrain it's really hard to draw line of sight to units unless you decide to expose them.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
 the_scotsman wrote:

-I want to decouple Modifiers and Conditions.

Conditions: Changes to your stats originating from psychic powers, stratagems, datasheet abilities, auras, prayers, army bonuses, etc. Conditions are capped at +1/-1.

Modifiers: Changes to your stats originating from Cover, Armor Piercing, Obscuring, Range, Weapon Type, units with variable statlines, and battlefield rules. Modifiers are uncapped.


Retain the current "6s always succeed, 1s always fail" to reduce edge cases

-I want to introduce a simple long-range to hit penalty. Say, -1 if over 1/2 maximum range.

-I want the shooting sequence to immediately end (and if fast-rolling, all additional saves to not have to be taken) if models from the target are removed such that the attacker no longer has line of sight, range, or Engagement Range if in melee. Removes the old issue of "rhino sniping" because as the target player I can choose to save my, say, special weapon or squad leader if I wish by taking out models you can't see, but re-introduces the common sense 'cant see 'em, can't shoot 'em' setup that used to exist.

-I want Cover (+1sv) to be a universal rule on all terrain that applies EITHER if a model is wholly on or in a terrain piece, OR if a target model of a shooting attack is 50% or more obscured by terrain further than 1" from a firing model or models not in the firing or target unit. Dense and Obscuring still exist, but see below WRT Obscuring. Also, cover from >50% obscurement applies to all unit types.

-I want a player to be able to place a "Taking Cover"/"Conceal"/"Hiding" token next to a unit either during deployment or at the end of their movement phase (hiding tokens are also removed at the end of the movement phase). Units with a Hiding token may not shoot in the shooting phase and may not declare charges in the charge phase. Hiding models that are at all obscured by Obscuring terrain are fully out of LOS, models that are not Hiding treat Obscuring as Dense instead.

-I want morale to be reworked into a system that is more likely to occur with lower numbers of casualties (2d6 roll based worked great) and that rather than adding casualties, reduces or removes offensive output from a unit. the new 'Hiding" system would be a perfect lever to use here.

-I want the Command Ability system lifted directly from Age of Sigmar and, much like "Warscroll Battalions" the stratagem system aborted or greatly greatly cut down. Character auras become more powerful stratagems granted by that character and CP becomes a turn-by-turn resource you either use during the battle round or lose, with stratagems having a much greater focus on acting during your opponent's turn rather than creating super-wombo-combos on your turn.

-And for crying out loud I want my 1/3 of the frickin' board area back why we got a game with 48" ranges being super common played on a 44" wide table???


I don't disagree with most of that, really. Especially the stuff in red. Maybe not the morale thing since I think it's pretty low casualties at present.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 05:47:50


Post by: Sunny Side Up


 AnomanderRake wrote:
Voss wrote:
...Yeah, I'm not a fan of Chaos 3.5 and don't get the nostalgia for it...


It may not have been particularly well-balanced, but it had thoroughly done rules for all nine Legions that managed to make them play very differently from each other with far fewer models and rules than the current run of CSM books, and it was the last time that CSM weren't "loyalists, but worse".


"Not particularly well-balanced" is like describing an amputated head as minor cut.

It was the nadir of 40K. Period. Nothing in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, etc.. comes close.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 06:33:45


Post by: Not Online!!!


Sunny Side Up wrote:
 AnomanderRake wrote:
Voss wrote:
...Yeah, I'm not a fan of Chaos 3.5 and don't get the nostalgia for it...


It may not have been particularly well-balanced, but it had thoroughly done rules for all nine Legions that managed to make them play very differently from each other with far fewer models and rules than the current run of CSM books, and it was the last time that CSM weren't "loyalists, but worse".


"Not particularly well-balanced" is like describing an amputated head as minor cut.

It was the nadir of 40K. Period. Nothing in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, etc.. comes close.


4th was worse, manipulation lash wings.
Hellturkey Spam at it's hight was worse excess.

Sure 3.5 has massive problems , but conceptually it actually worked for csm.
Something that can't be said for anything afterwards except maybee the DG and TS dex.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 06:57:10


Post by: Blackie


 JNAProductions wrote:
I would like to ask a question:

If you don't care about winning, why play a competitive game? In 40k, without houseruling it to be some kind of co-op, vs. AI experience; there's a winner and a loser. Winning isn't everything, of course, but you should be trying your best to succeed. (Excepting stuff like tutorial games or similar.)

There's plenty of co-op board games and such, or you could work on some sort of AI system for 40k to play together, but I don't see why you'd WANT to lose a game of 40k.


The point is 40k isn't a competitive game. GW games are meant to be fun garage games between family or friends. It can try to be and I think these days it's good enough to work decently even as a competitive game, but competitive games are based around some sort of balance in the rules which in GW games can't exist.

It's not about not wanting to win, it's about seeking the most balanced game possible. There's no fun when a game is one sided. So I may purposefully field non optimized list if my opponent is a noob or doesn't have the models to compete with my optimized collections. It doesn't mean that after deployment I make mistakes on purpose to avoid winning, after deployment I play at my very best. So in the end I never want to lose a game, but sometimes (very often actually) I don't even want to win. I just want a game that is as close as possible. When the game begins I play to win but I never set up my game in order to maximize my chances to win.

I mostly play against opponents I know, and we know in advance which factions are going to fight against, typically lists are undisclosed but we know each other collections of course and sometimes even play with fully pre-fixed lists, not pick up games against strangers, that's something that maybe should be clarified. I never considered good that kind of play, just a necessary evil when you don't have a community with people that share the same attitude towards the game.

Another example: if an army isn't in a good state but has one or more builds that are actually competitive and they're the opposite of what I'd like to play I simply avoid those builds. I don't want to lose, but playing something I don't like isn't fun and it's worse than losing.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 12:22:33


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:
Your experience with positioning, terrain, and damage is totally different from mine. Positioning has mattered so much in every single game.

In one my opponent had two redemptors and two volcons. Hardly something I could take head on with a medium ranged army. So I hunkered down and held objectives and let him move to the middle. Then I hopped / breached / circled those ruins to put most of my whole army into his face the next turn allowing me to bring 3 dreadnoughts down.

If you have competent terrain it's really hard to draw line of sight to units unless you decide to expose them.




Spoiler:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
 the_scotsman wrote:

-I want to decouple Modifiers and Conditions.

Conditions: Changes to your stats originating from psychic powers, stratagems, datasheet abilities, auras, prayers, army bonuses, etc. Conditions are capped at +1/-1.

Modifiers: Changes to your stats originating from Cover, Armor Piercing, Obscuring, Range, Weapon Type, units with variable statlines, and battlefield rules. Modifiers are uncapped.


Retain the current "6s always succeed, 1s always fail" to reduce edge cases

-I want to introduce a simple long-range to hit penalty. Say, -1 if over 1/2 maximum range.

-I want the shooting sequence to immediately end (and if fast-rolling, all additional saves to not have to be taken) if models from the target are removed such that the attacker no longer has line of sight, range, or Engagement Range if in melee. Removes the old issue of "rhino sniping" because as the target player I can choose to save my, say, special weapon or squad leader if I wish by taking out models you can't see, but re-introduces the common sense 'cant see 'em, can't shoot 'em' setup that used to exist.

-I want Cover (+1sv) to be a universal rule on all terrain that applies EITHER if a model is wholly on or in a terrain piece, OR if a target model of a shooting attack is 50% or more obscured by terrain further than 1" from a firing model or models not in the firing or target unit. Dense and Obscuring still exist, but see below WRT Obscuring. Also, cover from >50% obscurement applies to all unit types.

-I want a player to be able to place a "Taking Cover"/"Conceal"/"Hiding" token next to a unit either during deployment or at the end of their movement phase (hiding tokens are also removed at the end of the movement phase). Units with a Hiding token may not shoot in the shooting phase and may not declare charges in the charge phase. Hiding models that are at all obscured by Obscuring terrain are fully out of LOS, models that are not Hiding treat Obscuring as Dense instead.

-I want morale to be reworked into a system that is more likely to occur with lower numbers of casualties (2d6 roll based worked great) and that rather than adding casualties, reduces or removes offensive output from a unit. the new 'Hiding" system would be a perfect lever to use here.

-I want the Command Ability system lifted directly from Age of Sigmar and, much like "Warscroll Battalions" the stratagem system aborted or greatly greatly cut down. Character auras become more powerful stratagems granted by that character and CP becomes a turn-by-turn resource you either use during the battle round or lose, with stratagems having a much greater focus on acting during your opponent's turn rather than creating super-wombo-combos on your turn.

-And for crying out loud I want my 1/3 of the frickin' board area back why we got a game with 48" ranges being super common played on a 44" wide table???


I don't disagree with most of that, really. Especially the stuff in red. Maybe not the morale thing since I think it's pretty low casualties at present.



there are two ways 40k can go at present. Either, you load the table up with so much obscuring terrain that basically you can choose to hide your whole army no problem - which creates the setup you showed there, where basically the game is going to last 2 critical turns but you have the option to choose whether that's bottom of 1/top of 2, top of 2/bottom of 2, or even if youre really dedicated to hiding bottom of 2/top of 3

or, you have not enough terrain to fully hide your armies, in which case the game is decided top of 1/bottom of 1, bottom of 1/top of 2, or top of 2/bottom of 2 depending on how long ranged/fast the armies are, and the players dont really have much of a choice in the matter.

Fast/longrange army vs Fast/longrange army will always be top of 1/bottom of 1 if there isnt sufficient terrain coverage, unless one player is trying to prove a point or something and purposefully sets up a loss by spending 6cp outflanking half his army and cedes total board control until round 2.

So, sure, i'm perfectly happy to concede the point that positioning can matter in 40k with enough obscuring terrain to entirely hide one or both players' armies. the main issues I'd raise would be:

-for a game that seems to want people to engage with it casually, the fact that 'anything not 100% hidden on turn 1 is probably toast' is pretty unintuitive to said casual players who might have come into the 40k setting thinking somehow that some sort of 'heavily armored tough space warriors' feature as a large part of the setting.

-Having a single meaningful terrain interaction that is a binary "on/off" of all damage that a unit can suffer appears to lead to balance issues where ignore-LOS and glass cannon damage dealer units are disproportionately powerful

-"when do I jump all my stuff out from behind all the buildings and murder 1/3 of my opponent's army in a single big combo" can only provide so compelling of a narrative.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 12:39:32


Post by: Nurglitch


 Blackie wrote:
Another example: if an army isn't in a good state but has one or more builds that are actually competitive and they're the opposite of what I'd like to play I simply avoid those builds. I don't want to lose, but playing something I don't like isn't fun and it's worse than losing.

You know, it's kind of fascinating how the points can be used to ballpark a fair game with the players dialing it in using their model collections, terrain, and common sense (i.e., what is sensible in common), but tend to be used competitively to do the opposite.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 14:21:49


Post by: VladimirHerzog


40k NEEDS to start using Alternating Activation. Right now its a game of "who will expose himself first". Hiding behind obscuring terrain doesnt feel meaningfully tactical.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:15:37


Post by: Gert


Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:17:29


Post by: Sim-Life


 Gert wrote:
Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


Activation dice? Bag? What are you talking about?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:22:11


Post by: Dysartes


Given the reference to BA, one would assume he's referring to the activation approach used in Bolt Action


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:24:39


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 Gert wrote:
Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


Yeah, I mean, it's not like 40k's ever done a huge readdress of both the game and the ranges. I mean, certainly not recently, like 2017 or so.

Such a thing would be absolutely unthinkable.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:25:25


Post by: VladimirHerzog


 Gert wrote:
Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


you dont need to make the activations random. You can add something like Malifaux does where you get "pass tokens" for every unit your opponent has more than you.

There is plenty of different ways to implement it, when i tried it out in the past, we did a phase by phase AA, and had charging in the movement phase. It worked decently well without even changing the rules much.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 15:27:45


Post by: the_scotsman


 Gert wrote:
Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


Damage being resolved at the end of the turn is the big balancing factor that's at play with Apoc, as well as the way apoc introduces diminishing returns for damage (for those unaware, every other wound you stack onto a unit in Apoc isn't actually a second wound, it's just a wound that's more likely to occur (because you have to make your save roll on a D6 instead of on a D10 versus a 'big damage marker').

There is a whole host of different ways to design the activation of a game between 'full IGOUGO' and 'full AA.' 40k is not, at present, full IGOUGO, though it is mighty mighty close becuase of how the practicalities of the combat phase work out and how few stratagems are useful in the opponent's turn.

Age of Sigmar on paper uses almost the same exact structure, BUT there's no 'fight first' effect for charging, and any unit within 3" of any enemy units can be selected to fight, and the stratagem-equivalents you can use on your opponent's turn are more impactful - "overwatch" can be done with a -1 to hit penalty instead of only hitting on 6s, and you also have one that lets you move D6" if an enemy unit ends its move within 9", so you can tactically kite away from a charge.

What that creates is a situation where you still get the grand, strategic plays that IGOUGO systems allow for, but you also arent' JUST trying to survive the things your opponent is doing to you, most of the time. Some armies, partiuclarly the armies that have everything loading into shooting, can still make the game feel unsatisfyingly uninteractive, but I would hazard to say it's a generally less problematic system than you have in 40k.

It also helps that, generally, sigmar is less of a "Cover-Based Shooter" than 40k when it comes to its general gameplay. Its board state is much more determined by where units are in relation to each other, than in relation to the terrain. If you had an AI randomly construct AOS armies from the various books available, most of the time those armies could have a decent game on a totally empty board. A totally empty board with similar random armies in 40k would basically always result in a miserable trainwreck of an experience.

This is not 'AOS perfectly good, 40k always bad' - AOS' terrain system has some seriously annoying issues and could REALLY use beefing up. But the game does tend to be more interactive despite having on paper a worse terrain system than 40k purely by nature of the increased level of restraint when it comes to how much damage stuff can easily do to other stuff.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:02:02


Post by: Nurglitch


I figured that reducing the 40k turn sequence back to Move-Psychic-Attack and follow the sequence in the current Fight phase would work with some development.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:32:16


Post by: Grimtuff


 Sim-Life wrote:
 Gert wrote:
Honestly, AA wouldn't help IMO due to the variety of 40k armies.
For BA it sort of works because the armies are all roughly the same size and "toughness". However, picking activation dice out of a bag can leave you in the exact same situation as regular 40k where one player essentially gets all of their units to go first.
AA might be fine if you've got two similar-sized armies like Space Marines and Death Guard but not when it's something like Imperial Knights and Orks.
Similarly for Apocalypse the AA system sort of works because damage is resolved at the end of the turn but that doesn't make the game faster or more balanced IMO because again 40k armies vary wildly in size. A player with 3 detachments is going to expose themselves first compared to a player with 6.
And before I get the whole "you always say don't try anything new" spiel shoved my way again, I'm simply saying that just throwing AA into 40k and claiming it will "fix" it isn't going to work. There would need to be a huge readdress of both the game and honestly the range would need to be massively axed, which I don't think anyone wants.


Activation dice? Bag? What are you talking about?


A feature used in Bolt Action for determining which unit activates next which would send several posters on here into a rage unseen before due to how random it is. You have a bunch of tokens in a bag and you blindly pick out which one you are going to use in that activation. Gates of Antares and the Batman game use a similar system IIRC.

I say do it, just because I want to walk down that particular sociopath.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:37:51


Post by: Sim-Life


Oh okay. So why would GW have to just wholesale copy a AA system from another game instead of just making their own system balanced for 40k's unique ecosystem?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:38:35


Post by: the_scotsman


 Nurglitch wrote:
I figured that reducing the 40k turn sequence back to Move-Psychic-Attack and follow the sequence in the current Fight phase would work with some development.


it might, but you do have to figure out where you're going to put charge moves in there, and I still think the game would end up feeling overly deadly with no other changes. It'd make the game at least somewhat more interactive, but I do think you actually lose something of the 'grand sweeping army maneuver' feeling with that kind of aa, which is why most non-skirmish games tend to go for it a bit less.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Sim-Life wrote:
Oh okay. So why would GW have to just wholesale copy a AA system from another game instead of just making their own system balanced for 40k's unique ecosystem?


Everyone thinks AA and IGOUGO are two different rule systems that are always implemented the same and aren't actually just a massive range of disparate rulesets that are almost always distinct but which feature two vague, general similarities to eachother?

Your core activation system for your wargame should be deisgned to reflect the type of narrative that you're trying to allow the players to create.

Infinity, to pull an example that is neither wholly IGOUGO nor wholly AA, is designed to create the narratives of cyberpunk action combat. Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Deus Ex, various anime - generally speaking, in one of those action scenes in a movie or TV show, you'll have an individual heroic character do some cool badass gak like kick down a door, a guard lifts his gun up to shoot back but the protagonist guns him down, second guard swings a bat but the protagonist ducks and stabs him, then the protagonist does a sick flip down to a ledge, then they hack into a computer mainframe.

So in Infinity, youve got a system where on your turn you can issue a number of orders, and the same model can be issued multiple orders in the same turn to create those 'cool protagonist sequences' but any offensive action your opponent takes you get a reaction from your model. Also, the number of orders you get is based on the models you have, so there's a reason to take super cheap, gakky 'guard' type characters who are primarily there to allow your opponent's cooler models to kick their teeth in.

Necromunda uses a system very close to pure AA, as it's intended to be chaotic gang combat with a bunch of loosely-organized criminals having it out, but, your beefier leader figures can grab a couple of nearby mooks and shout "come with me!"

most army games, like 40k, stick with a system closer to IGOUGO because the fantasy of the game is the ARMY, acting in consort, taking on an opposing army using these grand strategic moves.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:49:46


Post by: Daedalus81


 the_scotsman wrote:


there are two ways 40k can go at present. Either, you load the table up with so much obscuring terrain that basically you can choose to hide your whole army no problem - which creates the setup you showed there, where basically the game is going to last 2 critical turns but you have the option to choose whether that's bottom of 1/top of 2, top of 2/bottom of 2, or even if youre really dedicated to hiding bottom of 2/top of 3

or, you have not enough terrain to fully hide your armies, in which case the game is decided top of 1/bottom of 1, bottom of 1/top of 2, or top of 2/bottom of 2 depending on how long ranged/fast the armies are, and the players dont really have much of a choice in the matter.

Fast/longrange army vs Fast/longrange army will always be top of 1/bottom of 1 if there isnt sufficient terrain coverage, unless one player is trying to prove a point or something and purposefully sets up a loss by spending 6cp outflanking half his army and cedes total board control until round 2.

So, sure, i'm perfectly happy to concede the point that positioning can matter in 40k with enough obscuring terrain to entirely hide one or both players' armies. the main issues I'd raise would be:

-for a game that seems to want people to engage with it casually, the fact that 'anything not 100% hidden on turn 1 is probably toast' is pretty unintuitive to said casual players who might have come into the 40k setting thinking somehow that some sort of 'heavily armored tough space warriors' feature as a large part of the setting.

-Having a single meaningful terrain interaction that is a binary "on/off" of all damage that a unit can suffer appears to lead to balance issues where ignore-LOS and glass cannon damage dealer units are disproportionately powerful

-"when do I jump all my stuff out from behind all the buildings and murder 1/3 of my opponent's army in a single big combo" can only provide so compelling of a narrative.


This notion that the game decided doesn't ring true in my experience. I went to a 6 rounder with 3 other guys. In one particular round three of us finished early and we visited the fourth. To him, and to us, it seemed he had the game well in the bag and it swung in rounds 4 and 5.

Maybe if you're playing Admech / DE and they're just all over the table and it's a Domination map, which makes it a ton harder to recover, but it's doable.

Never in any of my games did I come away thinking it was hopeless - especially if I had made better decisions throughout.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 the_scotsman wrote:
most army games, like 40k, stick with a system closer to IGOUGO because the fantasy of the game is the ARMY, acting in consort, taking on an opposing army using these grand strategic moves.


The easiest path 40K could take is to steal the damage phase from Apoc, but then I would think the game would play wildly differently since people can fling their units out to do damage before they die. IGOUGO is almost beneficial, because you can't react and have to be more careful.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 16:52:42


Post by: Grimtuff


 Sim-Life wrote:
Oh okay. So why would GW have to just wholesale copy a AA system from another game instead of just making their own system balanced for 40k's unique ecosystem?


They wouldn't. Me saying GW should adopt it was a joke as to how much said system would truly boil the piss of several individuals on this site with how random it is.

Though if we still had some of the old guard in charge at GW, then that is the system 40k would probably adopt. Remember you have people like Rick Priestley, John Stallard, even Fat Bloke himself- Paul Sawyer all working in and around Warlord, all of which took over the mindset of "past GW" with them. It's quite an odd thing, like many things Warlord has in their games are like the paths not taken for 40k for whatever reason.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 17:01:06


Post by: Nurglitch


 the_scotsman wrote:
 Nurglitch wrote:
I figured that reducing the 40k turn sequence back to Move-Psychic-Attack and follow the sequence in the current Fight phase would work with some development.


it might, but you do have to figure out where you're going to put charge moves in there, and I still think the game would end up feeling overly deadly with no other changes. It'd make the game at least somewhat more interactive, but I do think you actually lose something of the 'grand sweeping army maneuver' feeling with that kind of aa, which is why most non-skirmish games tend to go for it a bit less.

As I understand it, the charge moves go first in 2nd edition and in Kill Team (last I check, haven't read the new one). Plus there's the bit where the player whose player turn it is does their charges altogether, then chooses one unit to move, then the other player chooses a unit to move, and so on. That's why I think it would be a good idea for 40k, as it's a decent enough hybrid between AA and IGOUGO. The player whose turn it is gets the grand, sweeping army maneuver, and the other player gets to game the AA for defense (and lay up for their own charges, etc).


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 17:14:20


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:


there are two ways 40k can go at present. Either, you load the table up with so much obscuring terrain that basically you can choose to hide your whole army no problem - which creates the setup you showed there, where basically the game is going to last 2 critical turns but you have the option to choose whether that's bottom of 1/top of 2, top of 2/bottom of 2, or even if youre really dedicated to hiding bottom of 2/top of 3

or, you have not enough terrain to fully hide your armies, in which case the game is decided top of 1/bottom of 1, bottom of 1/top of 2, or top of 2/bottom of 2 depending on how long ranged/fast the armies are, and the players dont really have much of a choice in the matter.

Fast/longrange army vs Fast/longrange army will always be top of 1/bottom of 1 if there isnt sufficient terrain coverage, unless one player is trying to prove a point or something and purposefully sets up a loss by spending 6cp outflanking half his army and cedes total board control until round 2.

So, sure, i'm perfectly happy to concede the point that positioning can matter in 40k with enough obscuring terrain to entirely hide one or both players' armies. the main issues I'd raise would be:

-for a game that seems to want people to engage with it casually, the fact that 'anything not 100% hidden on turn 1 is probably toast' is pretty unintuitive to said casual players who might have come into the 40k setting thinking somehow that some sort of 'heavily armored tough space warriors' feature as a large part of the setting.

-Having a single meaningful terrain interaction that is a binary "on/off" of all damage that a unit can suffer appears to lead to balance issues where ignore-LOS and glass cannon damage dealer units are disproportionately powerful

-"when do I jump all my stuff out from behind all the buildings and murder 1/3 of my opponent's army in a single big combo" can only provide so compelling of a narrative.


This notion that the game decided doesn't ring true in my experience. I went to a 6 rounder with 3 other guys. In one particular round three of us finished early and we visited the fourth. To him, and to us, it seemed he had the game well in the bag and it swung in rounds 4 and 5.

Maybe if you're playing Admech / DE and they're just all over the table and it's a Domination map, which makes it a ton harder to recover, but it's doable.

Never in any of my games did I come away thinking it was hopeless - especially if I had made better decisions throughout.


The game can come down to decision making and the game can occasionally swing in later turns due to how the scoring works while still being unsatisfyingly deadly.

Like, come on, be realistic: How many games do you ACTUALLY see where both players are going into round 4 with over 1/4 of their army intact? regardless of whether in a close game where both players have had their armies nearly obliterated, a couple of limping transports or lone survivors might turn the game in one player's favor, it still remains a problem with the supposed narrative conceit of warhammer 40,000 that it is normal and expected for a player to lose 800-1000pts of their 2000pt army in one single opposing player's turn at some point during the game.

And also, again, you're drawing purely from a tournament perspective, presumably with standard tournament terrain layout where there are ZERO sight lines across the board available turn 1. surely you get that that being necessary isn't going to be a player's expectation going in? That that's not how people expect a board of warhammer to look, and 'entire army clustered around their deployment zone's pieces of obscuring terrain' isn't how people like to imagine their armies setting up on the field of battle?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 17:25:16


Post by: Daedalus81


 the_scotsman wrote:


The game can come down to decision making and the game can occasionally swing in later turns due to how the scoring works while still being unsatisfyingly deadly.

Like, come on, be realistic: How many games do you ACTUALLY see where both players are going into round 4 with over 1/4 of their army intact? regardless of whether in a close game where both players have had their armies nearly obliterated, a couple of limping transports or lone survivors might turn the game in one player's favor, it still remains a problem with the supposed narrative conceit of warhammer 40,000 that it is normal and expected for a player to lose 800-1000pts of their 2000pt army in one single opposing player's turn at some point during the game.

And also, again, you're drawing purely from a tournament perspective, presumably with standard tournament terrain layout where there are ZERO sight lines across the board available turn 1. surely you get that that being necessary isn't going to be a player's expectation going in? That that's not how people expect a board of warhammer to look, and 'entire army clustered around their deployment zone's pieces of obscuring terrain' isn't how people like to imagine their armies setting up on the field of battle?


Well, 1/4 is only 500 points. Looking at pictures...last round in one game my opponent had Ghaz, 5 Squighogs, Squigboss, 5 Kommandoz, Weirdboy, and a few warbikes. I had two 5 man terminator squads and an exalted because I really goosed up that game, but not a small amount of points, either. Another was Bobby, Whirldwind, Vindicator Laser Destroyer, Contemptor, and a handful marines against all my infantry. The games against DE weren't as pretty.

However, I will concede the point

But I can't help but enjoy the game. Is that problematic for the future of 40K? I don't know.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 17:33:08


Post by: the_scotsman


 Daedalus81 wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:


The game can come down to decision making and the game can occasionally swing in later turns due to how the scoring works while still being unsatisfyingly deadly.

Like, come on, be realistic: How many games do you ACTUALLY see where both players are going into round 4 with over 1/4 of their army intact? regardless of whether in a close game where both players have had their armies nearly obliterated, a couple of limping transports or lone survivors might turn the game in one player's favor, it still remains a problem with the supposed narrative conceit of warhammer 40,000 that it is normal and expected for a player to lose 800-1000pts of their 2000pt army in one single opposing player's turn at some point during the game.

And also, again, you're drawing purely from a tournament perspective, presumably with standard tournament terrain layout where there are ZERO sight lines across the board available turn 1. surely you get that that being necessary isn't going to be a player's expectation going in? That that's not how people expect a board of warhammer to look, and 'entire army clustered around their deployment zone's pieces of obscuring terrain' isn't how people like to imagine their armies setting up on the field of battle?



But I can't help but enjoy the game. Is that problematic for the future of 40K? I don't know.


No, neither you nor I matter one bit for the future of 40k, and I'm not accusing you of being bad for it. I think we're both looking to enjoy the game and to help others enjoy it, and our primary disagreement comes from what modifications we think should or should not be allowable to create that enjoyment.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 17:40:32


Post by: Daedalus81


I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 20:29:12


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


What would ruin your enjoyment if, at the end of Turn 4, 50% of an army was left instead of 25%?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/18 23:03:19


Post by: Daedalus81


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


What would ruin your enjoyment if, at the end of Turn 4, 50% of an army was left instead of 25%?


I mean with smoothing of the edges now you'd still have a good portion of your army left in most games, but that requires some acceptance of the terrain as it is.

Pandora's box is opened. We won't be going back to the old system. Maybe we'll pick up bits and pieces down the line, but it won't ever truly be that way again. And honestly a lot of things from this system don't work under the old dynamics.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 07:34:19


Post by: Blackie


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


What would ruin your enjoyment if, at the end of Turn 4, 50% of an army was left instead of 25%?


I'd also prefer to reduce lethality but that has nothing to do with AA vs IGOUGO. Lethality would be the same under AA system. It's a problem of too powerful datasheets and tools to enhance weapons/units, not a core mechanics' problem.

Those who want AA think the game favour the player who is going first (which is actually false) and/or like that game system more than IGOUGO. Typically they don't like doing nothing than rolling for saves or launching defensive stratagems for a whole turn.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 07:52:44


Post by: Slipspace


 Blackie wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


What would ruin your enjoyment if, at the end of Turn 4, 50% of an army was left instead of 25%?


I'd also prefer to reduce lethality but that has nothing to do with AA vs IGOUGO. Lethality would be the same under AA system. It's a problem of too powerful datasheets and tools to enhance weapons/units, not a core mechanics' problem.


I'm not sure I agree lethality would be the same under an AA system, though it would depend on the specifics of the system. One of the problems at the moment is that even when the alpha strike goes a bit wrong from your first unit, the lenient split fire rules mean you can usually pick off any survivors with your other units at some point in the same phase. You see this a lot with DE and their anti-infantry shooting where they get so many small units they can often pick off the last wound from a monster that their Dark Lances failed to kill without losing any real firepower because all the splinter fire is fairly incidental in the early game. AA also makes exposing your units or rushing up into the enemy's face much less advisable because of the possibility of retaliation. AA also changes target priority because a unit that's activated is much less of a threat than one yet to activate so sometimes the best play is to target the overall less powerful unit because it hasn't yet acted this turn, which often leads to damage being a bit more spread out. It's also an interesting decision in its own right that doesn't have any analogue in the current system.

I definitely agree the core problem is with the datasheets and especially the strats and various other buffs that can more than double a unit's damage output. I think a lot of that is a knock-on effect of the shallow core mechanics.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 12:00:37


Post by: the_scotsman


 Blackie wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
I know you aren't. It's just that my enjoyment and that of like-minded individuals could fuel the progression of rules that others do not enjoy and I genuinely want some sort of middle ground that makes sense for everyone.


What would ruin your enjoyment if, at the end of Turn 4, 50% of an army was left instead of 25%?


I'd also prefer to reduce lethality but that has nothing to do with AA vs IGOUGO. Lethality would be the same under AA system. It's a problem of too powerful datasheets and tools to enhance weapons/units, not a core mechanics' problem.

Those who want AA think the game favour the player who is going first (which is actually false) and/or like that game system more than IGOUGO. Typically they don't like doing nothing than rolling for saves or launching defensive stratagems for a whole turn.


To me though I can get more out of a deadlier game if there is AA allowing me to act with a unit in the turn it is destroyed most of the time.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 13:52:57


Post by: oni


W40K has too many units and units of multiple models for AA to be effective. AA would waste far too much time to go through the motions. AA would turn the battlefield into a swamp of tokens to indicate what's doing what. AA does not work, will not work for W40K. People need to let it go.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 13:57:25


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 oni wrote:
W40K has too many units and units of multiple models for AA to be effective. AA would waste far too much time to go through the motions. AA would turn the battlefield into a swamp of tokens to indicate what's doing what. AA does not work, will not work for W40K. People need to let it go.


I don't disagree, but there are other activation systems besides AA and IGOUGO (impulse system, for example). The point is that the utility of IGOUGO should be examined.

I personally have been enjoying games with different impulse activation systems (or WEGO but that is difficult without a computer).


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 13:58:18


Post by: the_scotsman


 oni wrote:
W40K has too many units and units of multiple models for AA to be effective. AA would waste far too much time to go through the motions. AA would turn the battlefield into a swamp of tokens to indicate what's doing what. AA does not work, will not work for W40K. People need to let it go.


again I love the assumption that there is one system that is AA which always works the same and never changes.

AA could mean Apoc/Epic style 'activation by detachments

AA could mean warmahordes/kill team style 'unit by unit activation'

AA could mean AOS/Kill Team 2017 style 'IGOUGO movement followed by alternating combat"

AA could even mean a loose Necromunda style 'if you select a character they can rally all units within X" to activate with them"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I love that this is fine:

my 100pt techpriest manipulus can repair one friendly VEHICLE or MONSTER within 3" D3 wounds, he can select 1 friendly unit within 9" and grant them +6" range and -1AP for the turn, he can reduce the CP cost of a strategic ploy stratagem by 1cp once per game so I need to track that, he allows all friendly units to ignore AP-1 and AP-2 within 6" until I have him perform an action to switch that to granting all friendly CORE units and Kataphron servitors within 6" the ability to ignore cover. He's got a warlord trait that allows me to select 1 friendly unit within 6" in the command phase and let it fall back and still shoot, and he's got a relic that allows him to select 1 enemy unit in the charge phase within 3" and cause that enemy unit to fight last. I'm using the custom rad-saturated forgeworld as well, so enemy units within 3" are always -1 strength and -1 toughness, and if an attacker targets him from over 12" away they subtract 1 from the strength characteristic of their attack. Additionally, this turn I've declared the Litany of the Electromancer, so any melee attack made against my CULT MECHANICUS keyword units (not to be confused with my SKITARII keyword units, which are currently +1WS -1BS except for the one I've selected with my Skitarii Marshal which ignores the debuff part of the rule) is -1 to hit.

^THIS IS FINE

But if I had to have a little stack of tokens, and i put down a token if I had acted with a unit, that would DEFINITELY make my head explode.

Please, feel free to "prove me wrong" here by finding one of those rules I got slightly wrong, yelling 'HA GOTCHA' and derailing the point.





Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/19 14:26:39


Post by: Nurglitch


There's a rule of thumb in technical writing, that people can only retain about 7-9 items in their short-term memory. Additionally, that by the time they bother to check the manual they're pissed off about some third thing, and so if your instructions require them to remember more than 3-4 items, your instructions will fail to assist them.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 09:52:30


Post by: Platuan4th


 oni wrote:
W40K has too many units and units of multiple models for AA to be effective. AA would waste far too much time to go through the motions. AA would turn the battlefield into a swamp of tokens to indicate what's doing what. AA does not work, will not work for W40K. People need to let it go.


AT-43 used AA with near the same amount of units of multiple models as 40K and the only tokens used were for special actions. AA isn't the same for every game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 11:45:44


Post by: Sunny Side Up


 Platuan4th wrote:

AT-43 used AA with near the same amount of units of multiple models as 40K and the only tokens used were for special actions. AA isn't the same for every game.


Well, why not just play AT-43 then, if you prefer that method?


I came to 40K from Infinity, etc., precisely because 40K ditched that horrible mechanic.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 11:49:00


Post by: Sim-Life


Sunny Side Up wrote:
 Platuan4th wrote:

AT-43 used AA with near the same amount of units of multiple models as 40K and the only tokens used were for special actions. AA isn't the same for every game.


Well, why not just play AT-43 then, if you prefer that method?


I came to 40K from Infinity, etc., precisely because 40K ditched that horrible mechanic.


Maybe he wants to play games in the Warhammer universe? Just a crazy thought. Or maybe no one around him plays AT-43 which is likely considering it's a dead game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 13:07:45


Post by: Platuan4th


Both of which are beside the point, which was saying "AA = tons of tokens therefore bad" shows a distinct ignorance of the variety of AA rules out there.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 13:18:25


Post by: VladimirHerzog


 Platuan4th wrote:
Both of which are beside the point, which was saying "AA = tons of tokens therefore bad" shows a distinct ignorance of the variety of AA rules out there.


yeah, i don't get their logic. Just place a marker by every squad as you activate them to mark that they activated then remove them at the next round of activation. its the same as tracking wounds or which units are doing actions.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 20:12:22


Post by: Dysartes


Sunny Side Up wrote:
I came to 40K from Infinity, etc., precisely because 40K ditched that horrible mechanic.

Hang on - SSU, what mechanic are you saying that 40k ditched here?


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/20 21:14:31


Post by: Sherrypie


 oni wrote:
W40K has too many units and units of multiple models for AA to be effective. AA would waste far too much time to go through the motions. AA would turn the battlefield into a swamp of tokens to indicate what's doing what. AA does not work, will not work for W40K. People need to let it go.


Funny, when it definitely does work and I've played various versions of it without any tokens like that on the board. Almost like there are many ways to do activation systems and consider the rules chassis as a whole while doing so.



Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 00:05:27


Post by: the_scotsman


but...infinity isnt aa...


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 01:45:59


Post by: gibbindefs


 the_scotsman wrote:
but...infinity isnt aa...




Infinity is about as far removed from AA as it gets. It's UGOIGO + units can activate over and over as long as you have orders and your opponents can react with AROs.

Hatred towards AA because you dislike Infinity makes absolutely no sense.

People are acting like putting a glass bead or a token that says "Activated" next to a unit is hard. You could literally do that in half a second and have a handful in your pocket or on the table.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 01:54:28


Post by: catbarf


If you can handle remembering, in your shooting phase, both which units have already shot and which units moved or stayed stationary in the preceding movement phase, you can handle remembering which units have activated.

If not, like gibbindefs said you can use a token and it's really not a big deal. There are valid reasons to dislike AA- though general trends in the industry are overwhelmingly moving away from 40K's 90s-style pure IGOUGO- but having to keep track of what units have activated really isn't one.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 02:37:16


Post by: the_scotsman


primarily the issue with AA (at least in my opinion) is that it breaks up the flow of the game and makes it feel less about a large army acting in consort. That's easily solveable with a simple group activation type system with either limits on or drawbacks to trying to create super-groups.

However, it's worth noting that in a game like Titanicus, which is pure AA, large units like warlord titans are considered somewhat at a natural disadvantage purely due to the size and space they take up in your list, because an opponent can use cheap units to force the big titan to commit to a move - then move their critical units out of the big titan's arcs.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 08:01:24


Post by: Sim-Life


 the_scotsman wrote:
primarily the issue with AA (at least in my opinion) is that it breaks up the flow of the game and makes it feel less about a large army acting in consort. That's easily solveable with a simple group activation type system with either limits on or drawbacks to trying to create super-groups.


You mean like some kind of COMMAND system that lets you activate a few units in a row if you really need to? Like if you had a certain amount of POINTS during the game that let you break the sequence? And the points could be determined by how you build your army so more thematic cohesion gives you more points?

They could be called...order tokens!


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 08:51:31


Post by: Jidmah


The primary issue with AA in my opinion is that GW would be the ones to implement it who both have no experience in doing so and also aren't exactly the kind of company to get stuff right on their first few tries.

AA 40k would probably be somewhat decent by 15th edition, in 2030.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 09:02:14


Post by: Sherrypie


 Jidmah wrote:
The primary issue with AA in my opinion is that GW would be the ones to implement it who both have no experience in doing so and also aren't exactly the kind of company to get stuff right on their first few tries.

AA 40k would probably be somewhat decent by 15th edition, in 2030.


40k Studio as chained by the suits above them, you mean? GW has produced plenty of well working AA games and do so currently as well.

the_scotsman wrote:However, it's worth noting that in a game like Titanicus, which is pure AA, large units like warlord titans are considered somewhat at a natural disadvantage purely due to the size and space they take up in your list, because an opponent can use cheap units to force the big titan to commit to a move - then move their critical units out of the big titan's arcs.


Mh, it's not necessarily pure one to one AA, given the amount of activation shenanigans you can do with Squadroned engines (Warhounds in particular) as well as legio and maniple powers that allow extra activations on certain triggers. The base system is pretty direct and the activation economy is a big part of strategy in the game, yeah.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 11:54:53


Post by: Unit1126PLL


Chain of Command's impulse system is pretty fantastic for AA/IGOUGO compromise.

It's a group activation system with a twist.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 12:56:17


Post by: the_scotsman


 Sim-Life wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
primarily the issue with AA (at least in my opinion) is that it breaks up the flow of the game and makes it feel less about a large army acting in consort. That's easily solveable with a simple group activation type system with either limits on or drawbacks to trying to create super-groups.


You mean like some kind of COMMAND system that lets you activate a few units in a row if you really need to? Like if you had a certain amount of POINTS during the game that let you break the sequence? And the points could be determined by how you build your army so more thematic cohesion gives you more points?

They could be called...order tokens!


Sure, you could do that, or you could do IGOUGO movement with alt combat ala age of sigmar but with alt ranged and melee combat instead of just alt melee. Or you could do apoc style detachment activation where each detachment has a command radius (which would mean you could lump your whole army into one detachment but then you'd automatically struggle super hard with area control)


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 12:58:24


Post by: Rihgu


I like the way Warcry handles monsters in its AA system.

Basically, a monster, being a huge, big, scary threat, gets more Actions than a small fighter (3 vs 2) but those 3 must be spread into different activations.

So while Bob the Iron Golem can walk and throw a bola... add a monster and it looks like this
1. Manticore moves into range of Bob.
2. Bob fights twice.
3. Manticore fights.
4. Jack moves into range and fights.
5. Manticore fights again.

Which does well for including "out of scale" things (knights/titans?) but doesn't help evoke the sweeping maneuvers of an army.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 13:35:11


Post by: Nurglitch


That's where the weird hybrid of the 40k Fight Phase exists as a model to AA in 40k. Extend that across three phases (Movement phase, Psychic Phase, Fight Phase) and you can fold it back into the 2nd edition rules (so charges in the movement phase - charges are movement +2D6, advances are movement +1D6, regular movement, fall backs, actions), regular psychic phase with player whose turn it is going first. Charging units attack first (barring overwatch), using both ranged and close combat weapons, then advancing units, and finally units that stood still.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 17:19:03


Post by: Sim-Life


Rihgu wrote:

doesn't help evoke the sweeping maneuvers of an army.


Does 40k feel that way now? I don't think I ever felt 40k felt that way to me. It feels more like a bunch of units acting independently of each other because GW writes rules for support models in a very limited way (stat buffs/rerolls because the boss is nearby).

40k currently does not really give the feeling of anything being a "sweeping manoeuvre" because there's almost no need to manoeuvre at all. You don't get bonuses for firing/charging at a flank or rear of a unit, line of sight is binary, objectives are generally a point rather than a zone etc. I've never coordinated my whole army to achieve a goal, I just shoot my best guns at the most optimal targets and move troops to the nearest objective.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 17:54:53


Post by: PenitentJake


 Sim-Life wrote:


40k currently does not really give the feeling of anything being a "sweeping manoeuvre" because there's almost no need to manoeuvre at all. You don't get bonuses for firing/charging at a flank or rear of a unit, line of sight is binary, objectives are generally a point rather than a zone etc. I've never coordinated my whole army to achieve a goal, I just shoot my best guns at the most optimal targets and move troops to the nearest objective.


This is not to say that your experience is wrong, or that you are playing wrong- your concerns are valid, and yes the game could be improved.

However, for me, any strat/ ability that allows advance and charge, fall back and charge, or fall back and shoot does feel like a manoeuvre. I feel like reserves are manoeuvres, and while they don't allow bonuses for flank attacks, they do offer the benefit of protecting units from fire until they arrive.

As a sisters player, deadly descent and angelic ascent feel like manouvres; I use the former frequently, though the latter is highly situational.
With DE, the drive-by attack strat feels like a manoeuvre.
Oh, and the various redeploy strats also feel like manouevres too.

Certainly, I think you're correct that there are mechanics in other games, or even other editions of this game that might have felt MORE like manoeuvres- but for me, the above achieve a good enough sense of the concept that my own personal experience of the game hasn't felt empty. Your Mileage may vary.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 17:56:38


Post by: JohnnyHell


I’ve not played a game of 9th where terrain hasn’t been meaningful and armies haven’t had to manoeuvre. Just can’t relate to those takes.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 18:02:24


Post by: the_scotsman


 JohnnyHell wrote:
I’ve not played a game of 9th where terrain hasn’t been meaningful and armies haven’t had to manoeuvre. Just can’t relate to those takes.


I find that my armies do have to maneuver (TAKE YOUR BRITISH SPELLING AND SHOVE IT WHERE THE SOUEUN DOESNT SHEOUN! I FOUGHT FOR MUH FREEDOMS!) but that its basically just determined by what my gameplan is going into the game.

Fast unit is going to move directly forwards to try and engage. Slow unit is going to start as near an objective as possible, move towards if it needs, and then sit until killed. deep strike unit is going to deep strike within 9" of something it wants to kill.

I decide what the tempo of the list im going to play is going to be, and generally, i just execute. Nothing really deviates from plan mostly.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 18:26:35


Post by: Sim-Life


PenitentJake wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:


40k currently does not really give the feeling of anything being a "sweeping manoeuvre" because there's almost no need to manoeuvre at all. You don't get bonuses for firing/charging at a flank or rear of a unit, line of sight is binary, objectives are generally a point rather than a zone etc. I've never coordinated my whole army to achieve a goal, I just shoot my best guns at the most optimal targets and move troops to the nearest objective.


This is not to say that your experience is wrong, or that you are playing wrong- your concerns are valid, and yes the game could be improved.

However, for me, any strat/ ability that allows advance and charge, fall back and charge, or fall back and shoot does feel like a manoeuvre. I feel like reserves are manoeuvres, and while they don't allow bonuses for flank attacks, they do offer the benefit of protecting units from fire until they arrive.

As a sisters player, deadly descent and angelic ascent feel like manouvres; I use the former frequently, though the latter is highly situational.
With DE, the drive-by attack strat feels like a manoeuvre.
Oh, and the various redeploy strats also feel like manouevres too.

Certainly, I think you're correct that there are mechanics in other games, or even other editions of this game that might have felt MORE like manoeuvres- but for me, the above achieve a good enough sense of the concept that my own personal experience of the game hasn't felt empty. Your Mileage may vary.


Okay. So?
If you weren't so quick to leap to the maiden GWs defence you'd have not leap entirely over the point.

Yes, there are individual movements units can do that can be considered manoeuvres which I never denied, quite the opposite, I said that's ALL the game feels like. Individuals doing their own thing. I and the person that I was responding to were talking about armies working in concert to feel like a single entity enacting a plan.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/21 19:24:39


Post by: Daedalus81


 the_scotsman wrote:
 JohnnyHell wrote:
I’ve not played a game of 9th where terrain hasn’t been meaningful and armies haven’t had to manoeuvre. Just can’t relate to those takes.


I find that my armies do have to maneuver (TAKE YOUR BRITISH SPELLING AND SHOVE IT WHERE THE SOUEUN DOESNT SHEOUN! I FOUGHT FOR MUH FREEDOMS!) but that its basically just determined by what my gameplan is going into the game.

Fast unit is going to move directly forwards to try and engage. Slow unit is going to start as near an objective as possible, move towards if it needs, and then sit until killed. deep strike unit is going to deep strike within 9" of something it wants to kill.

I decide what the tempo of the list im going to play is going to be, and generally, i just execute. Nothing really deviates from plan mostly.


I've made decisions to not engage models, abandon objectives, sacrifice the shooting of a unit with an advance, preserved units instead of fighting, and position units that make my opponent move their counters in a way that lets me gang up on them later on.

I change what I'm doing frequently - especially to exploit bad movement by my opponent.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/22 04:44:32


Post by: Jidmah


 JohnnyHell wrote:
I’ve not played a game of 9th where terrain hasn’t been meaningful and armies haven’t had to manoeuvre. Just can’t relate to those takes.


Same here.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/24 05:00:25


Post by: NinthMusketeer


I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/25 17:53:43


Post by: the_scotsman


 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .

I know that's a feature for some, and the old "but muh realism" tends to get thrown about for why assault troops really SHOULD be bad in a game where guns exist... but if you came to 40k for realism you took a wrong turn somewhere and should probably figure out if some spooky scooby-doo villain spun a road sign around on you.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/25 20:32:08


Post by: Sim-Life


 the_scotsman wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .


Why? They shouldn't be standing in the open and if they're in melee they can't be targeted. If your assault troops are standing out in the open thats the players fault.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/25 20:37:12


Post by: Las


 the_scotsman wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .

I know that's a feature for some, and the old "but muh realism" tends to get thrown about for why assault troops really SHOULD be bad in a game where guns exist... but if you came to 40k for realism you took a wrong turn somewhere and should probably figure out if some spooky scooby-doo villain spun a road sign around on you.


If we used 40k's turn segmentation to the letter. But there's no reason you couldn't have close quarters engagement happen - and even fully resolve - as part of your movement allowance with that unit before your opponent gets to move or shoot.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 01:25:30


Post by: macluvin


You could also apply ideas like suppression to apply negative modifiers or additional wounds to cover the advance of the assault troops into assault. Or what las said because it’s a simpler and requires less complexity which is probably a good thing.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 01:44:15


Post by: Unit1126PLL


I mean, Lord of the Rings has a "charge" as a special kind of regular move, so there's no "charge phase" per se.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 02:41:35


Post by: the_scotsman


 Sim-Life wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .


Why? They shouldn't be standing in the open and if they're in melee they can't be targeted. If your assault troops are standing out in the open thats the players fault.


thats kind of a persistent problem across all 40k editions - GW loves to put temporal space between assault troops and arrival at the enemy where logically there would be no more space than there is between shooting units doing a similar thing.

I'm mostly commenting on the idea here of if we did alternating activations with the current phase order.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 02:56:59


Post by: Unit1126PLL


What 40k really needs to do is have "engagement range" be like 4" and just have melee be short and decisive.

4" is where the commander (you) loses control of your men as they fight for their lives.

You can choose to shoot (as if the enemy were at 4") or make melee attacks (whichever is strongest). Make melee troops get some bonus here (like free extra movement to position on objectives or better morale odds at the end or just straight up better punchination).

Resolve the melee then-and-there, fighting as many rounds as necessary until the end (with morale rules to make it not a huge PITA - like a side is basically guaranteed to break after 1 or 2 rounds). Notice I said in the morale rules "Break" rather than "wiped out". They should flee (like, physically on the table, not just removed-as-casualties) and leave their positions to the opponent... something like that.

Anyways, it's always been a source of great bemusement to me that combat in Chain of Command (a world war II game that doesn't emphasize melee) is short, sharp, and utterly decisive, while combat in 40k (where melee is AWESOME *rock riff*) feels like a terrible slog where Orks roll 1e52 dice against Khorne Berzerker's 1e50 better-quality dice, and then they just kinda sit there for like 4 rounds rolling progressively smaller numbers of dice. It's ESPECIALLY BAD in 9th, where morale is basically irrelevant. Lost 6 men in your Guardsmen Squad? No worries, you'll probably still have like 2 left to keep the enemy locked in combat while you feed the eternal meatgrinder of the slowest, least decisive melee resolution in wargaming.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 03:42:21


Post by: Spoletta


Are we playing the same game? If anything, an issue right now is 90% of the melee fights are resolved in the same turn you charge in, which makes a lot of rules irrelevant and the game too lethal.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 03:45:56


Post by: Unit1126PLL


Spoletta wrote:
Are we playing the same game? If anything, an issue right now is 90% of the melee fights are resolved in the same turn you charge in, which makes a lot of rules irrelevant and the game too lethal.


Well, yes, but that's just short-ranged shooting since the enemy doesn't get to reply.

I was thinking of the real melee combats, but you're right, there are plenty where a unit goes "I charge. I attack. You are dead." But that's essentially just the same interactivity as "I am in range. I shoot. You are dead." so I guess what I was saying in general is:

"Make melee not just absurdly short-ranged shooting, AND ALSO make it decisive (rather than having units be pillowfisted because that isn't the solution)"


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 10:59:04


Post by: Sim-Life


 the_scotsman wrote:
 Sim-Life wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .


Why? They shouldn't be standing in the open and if they're in melee they can't be targeted. If your assault troops are standing out in the open thats the players fault.


I'm mostly commenting on the idea here of if we did alternating activations with the current phase order.


Then you're making your own problems. I mean I don't expect much from GW but if they shifted to alternating anything I'd assume they were competent enough to structure the game in such a way that melee units that charge not be allowed to be shot at before they got to attack.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/26 16:21:50


Post by: NinthMusketeer


I feel like if troops need to charge across open ground towards a gun line then yeah, that's gunna suck.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/27 00:28:28


Post by: Charistoph


 the_scotsman wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've found alternate-by-phase systems to be a nice hybrid between IGUG and AA myself.


The only issue I have with them is the way that assault troops tend to get handled in situations like that - they move forward, jumping out of cover to assault the foe...and then time stops, and they get dunked on as if they were standing around in the open .

I thought that was what Overwatch largely did.

And if we're going that far, moving the Charge declaration to the Movement Phase isn't unheard of in Warhammer. It's what is done in Battletech, only there it carries a caveat that such movement/attacks can only be declared against units that have already moved.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/27 06:56:46


Post by: Apple fox


Good terrain mechanics help close combat a lot, especially where infantry can enter and reinforce buildings and the best engagement is to send in close combat units.

Charging onto movement I think would be great, since can do a lot with simple rules there.

And possibly using a combat phase instead, where you pick ether your close combat attacks or shooting.
With close engagement hindering shooting rather than pulling players into a strict close combat.
Would need a rework, but I think it would be a start in this game where close combat has mostly felt like a dice rolling fetish.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/27 12:39:35


Post by: Nurglitch


The Apocalypse rules have some handy terrain ideas.

So compound the game into:

Movement Phase
Player whose turn it is goes first with All charging units, then picks the first advancing unit, and alternates with the other player advancing, moving, and falling back. Tau Crisis suits can be activated twice, etc.
-Move
-Advance (move + 1D6)
-Charge (move + 2D6)
-Fall Back (move, limitations)
-Actions

Psychic Phase
Player whose turn it is casts first, players then alternate. Models that can cast multiple powers can activate multiple times.

Fight Phase
Player whose turn it is resolves charging units first, and then nominates an advancing unit to attack, and alternates activations with the other player. Players activate all advancing units, then all moving units, and then stationary units. Overwatch and similar (Supporting Fire) allows units to be activated like a charging unit.

So you alternate player turns, two for each round of the game, so that the big charges and so on are carried off and the essential structure is preserved. Then compress the phases into the essential three, and have alternating action within the phases with priority going to the player whose turn it is.

In combat models within an 1" can use close combat weapons, and models outside of 1" can use ranged weapons. Pistols still do both. Usual stuff applies, like heavy can't be used if you advance or charge, etc.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/28 10:45:48


Post by: AngryAngel80


Does everyone want the need to win every game ? I'd say to that no. Does every player want to feel like they have a good chance to win regardless of army and opponent skill not withstanding ? I think yes.

People don't like one sided beat downs in a game for fun, they don't feel good on either side of it unless you love to punish and humiliate your opponent. The issue is some forces currently are so bad they feel more like a near auto loss against some match ups. No army should ever feel that way to run in the game.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/28 12:27:13


Post by: Nurglitch


A close game with some back-and-forth is my holy grail of gaming, something that feels like it could have gone either way, and only after the fact and some discussion can you see what you should have done to win.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/28 12:38:41


Post by: Sim-Life


 Nurglitch wrote:
A close game with some back-and-forth is my holy grail of gaming, something that feels like it could have gone either way, and only after the fact and some discussion can you see what you should have done to win.


This is why I switched to board games I think. They tend to be much closer feeling games and almost all games based on points have some kind of catch up mechanic that allows players falling behind to gain extra bonuses to help them and those that don't have great balance. Whenever my group reports on 40k games there is usually at least a 20-30pts difference in scores in "close" game (though most are more like 30-40vp in the difference) as opposed to something like War Of The Ring where even novice players will end up with only a few turns/moves from winning behind the other. When I taught a friend we both met our win conditions on the same round, despite me having enough games to give me an advantage in terms of strategy and the Shadow player having a bad start. I'm just lucky that Frodo dunking the ring takes presence over every other victory condition.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/28 13:02:07


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 Nurglitch wrote:
A close game with some back-and-forth is my holy grail of gaming, something that feels like it could have gone either way, and only after the fact and some discussion can you see what you should have done to win.


I've been playing both 4th edition games and 9th edition games lately.

My last 9th edition game was a stomp where every turn past turn 3 was executed only to score Agenda points (gotta get dat XP!) and were rather quite torturous.

My last 4th edition game (last night) was literally a draw with only about 50% of each army destroyed by the end of Turn 6. (we were within 150 VP of each other)


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/29 13:43:22


Post by: catbarf


 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I've been playing both 4th edition games and 9th edition games lately.

My last 9th edition game was a stomp where every turn past turn 3 was executed only to score Agenda points (gotta get dat XP!) and were rather quite torturous.

My last 4th edition game (last night) was literally a draw with only about 50% of each army destroyed by the end of Turn 6. (we were within 150 VP of each other)


I'm not sure you can generalize older editions as being better in this regard. My last older-edition game was 5th Ed Tyranids vs Elysians, and the 'Nids were eventually tabled on turn 5 with over half the Elysians remaining. As with anything else it depends on the matchup and the dice; and 40K in particular has always had an issue with snowballing.


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/29 15:12:50


Post by: Unit1126PLL


 catbarf wrote:
 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I've been playing both 4th edition games and 9th edition games lately.

My last 9th edition game was a stomp where every turn past turn 3 was executed only to score Agenda points (gotta get dat XP!) and were rather quite torturous.

My last 4th edition game (last night) was literally a draw with only about 50% of each army destroyed by the end of Turn 6. (we were within 150 VP of each other)


I'm not sure you can generalize older editions as being better in this regard. My last older-edition game was 5th Ed Tyranids vs Elysians, and the 'Nids were eventually tabled on turn 5 with over half the Elysians remaining. As with anything else it depends on the matchup and the dice; and 40K in particular has always had an issue with snowballing.


The reason my group and I picked 4th is we all agree the lethality escalation started with IG in 5th edition, ironically. It's also really hard to snowball in 4th, since moving cripples your firepower unless you're a tank (in which case it reduces your firepower but does not eliminate it). But even a tank moving more than 6" could do nothing

It's telling that the problem army in 4th was the Eldar fast-skimmer spam because it was TOO DURABLE

The problem armies in 5th varied with the release schedule but tended to be things like Leafblower Guard (too lethal rather than too durable) or GK (same same with a weird durability bonus on Paladins due to 5th's inexplicable wound allocation changes)


Why the desperate need to win? @ 2021/10/31 22:24:47


Post by: Nurglitch


It would be nice to have some ability to make up for a deficit of points. I really like the Without Number rule as a way to make up hordes, as opposed to having to buy 3x as many boxes as a SM player, for example, and a way to encourage a style of play that does not involve focusing down individual units.