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Im a little annoyed about ultasmurfs fighting other ultrasmurfs, or necrons vs necrons, or imperium vs imperium. Or worse, nids and BA allying against orks and GK, and other battles that dont makes sense. I dislike this because i like the background of a battle, and if that isnt good the battle isn good. What do you think?

The only 2 on 2 game I got with 40k was Chaos Marines and Chaos Daemons vs Ultramarines and Necrons. No bro-fisting was allowed, as chaos ran rampant over the two. The teams almost made sense...much more than Crons and BA beating Nids and Bro-fisting. If the Nids had won, I'm sure everyone would have been fine with the fluff.

It annoys me, but I won't deny a game in my game starved state.

If its at a story based campaign or tournament, then wtf?

Yeah it kind of annoys me when this happens, tho i normally just make something up, like my guys have turned traitor or something similar

No problem at all with it. The game should lead the story, not the other way round.

Pretty much any team up or clash is either possible or explainable.
Ultra vs ultra? A strikeforce of Ultramarines have been corrupted by an ancient daemonic artifact. Though they haven't fallen to chaos they must be cleansed to stop a further spread.

Imperium vs Imperium? A miscommunication of orders has resulted in 2 guard regiments clashing. Not knowing the true reason they have both assumed the other has turned traitor and are preparing to wipe each other out.

Necrons vs Necrons?A badly damaged tombworld is sending out forces to attack targets regardless of whether they are friend or foe, they have arrived on another tombworld and have begn attacking straight away.

Nids and BA vs Orks and GK? A BA strike force has been assisting a rogue inquisitor with his experiments on controlling Tyranid swarms when they are seperated from their hive mind. A strikeforce of GK have been assembled by a triumverate of Inquisitors to stop him. Days before the attack is launched ork raiders under the command of the notorious psychic warlord Brainbusta attacks the BA, his forces ignore the GK totally leaving the GK and Orks as somewhat unlikely allies. To combat both these new threats the Inquisitor send in his Swarm of Tyranids hoping that they will be enough to turn the tide.

Training exercises. Just like today's armies train with MILES gear (or similar), in the 41st Millennium training still happens.

My usual opponent plays Space Marine, I play space marines. The Fluff behind my chapter is that half of it turned to chaos, and they are in the middle of a civil war to purge the chaos (or purge the order!) . So whenever we play we say his guys are the chaos side and mine are loyal. Sometimes, when he plays with Vulkan, we play that my guys are trying to protect and relic of the chapter and his guys are being dicks and trying to steal it saying its some stupid Vulkan relic or something or other. Stupid Vulkan.....

I dont like it. Thats why I always brind two armies one non imperial and one imperial.

I just dont like all this Loyal Space Marines fight loyal Space Marines.
Its fine sometimes. But not so often as it happens.

I'm Eldar, I fight everyone.

Iranna.

When it's SM vs SM, we usually say "It's a paintball match in the 41st millenium" or something on the equivalent.

I've run into that issue many times. Though it's easy to explain it away as being just a training exercise, after the 10th training exercise in 11 games - My opponent usually plays Space Marines, and I play Sisters a lot these days - it gets a little old and seems pointless from a background perspective. I know forces need to train, but if there's nothing at stake... It takes something away from it.

Which is why my next game will be loyalist Inquisitorial forces - including an Inquisitor, Imperial Guardsmen, and Sisters of Battle in a mish-mash of 3 different Codices - against renegade Space Marines.

The Space Marines were renegades before, but my Sisters were also renegade and on the same faction as the Space Marines. (Neither Space Marines nor Sisters went to Chaos, and the Sisters still worship and are loyal to the Emperor, but thanks to some mind-altering technology, most of them came to believe that the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperium in its current state were not worth staying in alleigance to. Some were protected and managed to purge the technology from their bodies through their prayers, of course.)

I wrote up some fluff on why the Space Marines and Inquisitorial forces are fighting THIS time. Basically the renegade Space Marines are launching a raid to replenish their numbers by turning yet more Imperial forces. As such, the Space Marines are light on Troops and heavy on other stuff, representing a smaller, more elite attack force. In contrast, the Inquisitorial Forces went quite heavy on Troops choices, representing a base or camp full of soldiers. The Inquisition's been looking for that technology for a while, so of course they want prisoners to extract information from, and also samples of the technology being used.

I'm gonna use the Slave Raid scenario for it. Both sides want prisoners, and the fluff really fell into place when I started writing it up.

I don't care since you can normally pull a reason out of thin air like for example, ultramarines vs ultramarines - wargames using paint rounds, you have to keep match fit somehow, also works for all loyalists.

I just think up some half-assed fluff justification in my head and roll from there.

I play Traitor guard, so its a free for all everytime I get to gigth someone, "allied" or not

Why would the fluff, which has no bearing on the actual gameplay, affect your games?

I have blood angels and I play against ultras and sisters all the time, and never think twice about it.

Do not gimp yourself for roleplay.

I'm ok with it so long as both sides are Space Marines because I always say they are playing paintball and using rubber chainswords. Other than that though it does get kind of ridiculous to see any SM or IG army with Orks or Nids. It just makes no sense.

DeathReaper wrote:Why would the fluff, which has no bearing on the actual gameplay, affect your games?

I have blood angels and I play against ultras and sisters all the time, and never think twice about it.

Do not gimp yourself for roleplay.

You play the game to represent something that happens in 40k (at least I do)

Actually the fluff affects gameplay a lot, since all codex books are written to pepresent an armys fluff.

Well, it's a game of armies and factions so that kind of thing happens.

Not so much of a bother when I'm playing 40k, but when I play Flames of War and see germans fighting germans my skin starts to crawl a little bit.

I have a degree in history so I think that reaction is to be expected.

We ameliorate this by playing lots of campaign games at my local club.

Matters what army I am playing.
If it is the Crusaders its a training exercise using paintball weaponry or laser tag.
If its the wanderers the wanderers hate everyone and will kill people that have found the chapters dark secret.

The only time I am bothered by unfluffy games is when we run campaigns and just let the teams a freeforall....because campaigns are all about narrative play so when the narrative makes no sense over a protracted series its rather bothersome.

As to a regular in store game...i play to match wits with the other player....to throw down whatever combination of units i have on hand against whatever they feel like bringing and see what happens. If the other player really wants a fluff match for the game, I can usually come up with something....but I play dark eldar and space wolves...so its also not really a problem.

As to fluff affecting gameplay (i dont want to start a huge argument here, I just want to speak my peace)
The game comes first...fluff exists because the game exists...not the other way around. If you want to apply fluff to your games go for it....but i think its a bit of a stretch to show up at the club/store/whatever and refuse to play someone because you brought Ultramarines and they brought Cadians.

MrMerlin wrote:You play the game to represent something that happens in 40k (at least I do)

Actually the fluff affects gameplay a lot, since all codex books are written to pepresent an armys fluff.

You play games to represent something that happens in 40k, I play games because I like playing the war game that is 40K

The fluff Does not affect the gameplay (Rules)

The codexes are not written to present the fluff, they are written to give us the rules and points costs of an army.

Its just like playing pathfinder or D&D, do not gimp yourself in combat for roleplay reasons.

Usually it's either 'SM vs SM because one's Chaos durr' or 'target practice'. Can't say I like either.
Then again, I play DE so we fight everyone, and I mean everyone.

Wow, a lot of people really care about tabletop background fluff. Group I game with really doesn't.

Like DeathReaper, I also play 40k to enjoy the gameplay. It's a table-top strategy game first and foremost for me, if there's fluff that fits then it's fun to play along, but when battles don't make sense it's also very easy to ignore.

It annoys me but where I play everyone plays SM, other then me with my IG, so if we didn't play games like this then we wouldn't play at all so I just accept it and go on.

Sleepysloth wrote:It's a table-top strategy game first and foremost for me, if there's fluff that fits then it's fun to play along, but when battles don't make sense it's also very easy to ignore.

That about sums it up for me. My regular opponents and I are interested in the fluff generally but when it's time for an actual game the game comes first. If it's an unlikely confronatation (eg loyalists vs loyalists) we are only likely to come up with a fluff reason if someone asctually asks why the fight would be happening, and it usually only takes us about 30 seconds.

Training exercise.

Who's to say that when the Imperial Guard battles itself that it's not a training exercise? Or possibly the beginning of a Chaos conversion? Maybe two Tyranid hive fleets are battling over which gets to eat the planet? Chaos is always fighting itself, so that's a no-brainer. And, like the much maligned Blood Angel/Necron alliance, there are times when discretion is the better part of valor, and a battlefield alliance must be made. Surprised that no one has whined about the Iyanden/Dark Eldar alliance story...

There are plausible explanations for pretty much any matchup. It's a big galaxy out there. ^_^

When you can't think of a good reason, the obligatory training exercise is a good fallback position.



I remember the old Witch Hunters Codex had a section about, "Witch Hunters would fight X army because..."

They had plausible explanations for fighting every faction that GW has made playable armies for - with all the Space Marines together of course.