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Peregrine wrote:40k is a two (or more) player game. The challenge is from the person across the table, who is doing everything they can to beat you. The game is already challenging

Certainly, and having it be a multiplayer game is one of the things that keeps the challenge fresh (hence why there are still people playing counterstrike after like a decade, while basically nobody plays its host game of Halflife).

However, saying that there IS a challenge does not imply that it's a HARD challenge. If you play against a new player with a crummy list and you're a good player and bring a draigowing, there's not much of a challenge there. Then bring it up to two good players with two good lists, obviously that's a challenge at a higher level of difficulty. But what happens when you reach this rather easy to reach point? How do you make the game harder?

Because there is a low, easily achievable ceiling for player skill and especially list building (say hello, netlist), then either you need to play worse, or you need to bring a worse list in order to create that same relative gap in order to make the game more challenging.

Whether this takes the form of playing an army whose power level is capped lower, or whether it's purposely taking less competitive stuff, handicapping one's self is really the only way of making the game more challenging.

Now, if you don't understand why having more of a challenge is better than winning at a lower challenge level, then my video game analogy is rather apt here. If you place winning at all above winning with more difficulty or with more challenge, then you're the kind of person who is only ever going to play games on the easiest level, as that's the way to ensure that you're going to have the highest chances of victory. Anybody who has ever played a harder challenge level on a video game instinctively knows that winning isn't as fun if there isn't a serious chance of losing, and that winning on a harder level of difficulty (in this case, with a worse army), is more prestigious than simply winning at all.

Jayden63 wrote:The short answer being that anyone who says they don't want to win is lying and those saying that they enjoy a challenge are telling the truth, but will still tell you that loosing ultimately sucks.

I still don't follow. Losing is bad. Whether or not you win is ultimately determined randomly. Therefore you should try as hard as you can to win. That's a non-sequitur.

The correct conclusion is to do something to affect the random factor itself, not merely the odds you play.

Jayden63 wrote:The short answer being that anyone who says they don't want to win is lying and those saying that they enjoy a challenge are telling the truth, but will still tell you that loosing ultimately sucks. As such, everybody will hope that their chosen army (for whatever reason the army is chosen) will ultimately be strong and with all things being equal give them the win. Sadly, not all of us will get what we want.

In order to have dialogue, you have to be able to listen. Starting out with a blanket statement that everyone who disagrees with your point of view is a liar is going to be disruptive to communication.

For you, what is important is the win, and that's the ONLY thing that's important (at least, it seems to me by what you're saying). If avoiding a loss is what should be the only focus of your efforts, then it goes to say that you think that you should do whatever it takes to win. Put another way, you want to win at all costs.

Know two things, firstly, there are people such as myself who feel genuine compassion and pity for you, as that kind of an attitude writ large in life will ultimately lead to a great deal of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in all aspects of one's life. Secondly, winning is not the point of 40k. To see what the game designers wrote explicitly as the reason they set up the rules the way they did can be found on page 8 of the BRB:

Above all, it's important to remember that the rules are just the framework to support and enjoyable game. Whether a battle ends in victory or defeat, your goal should always be to enjoy the journey.

Put another way, the rules designers have, on purpose, created a game with the intent of the outcome of the game to be irrelevant. If what you really want out of a game is something where winning is important, I would like to gently pressure you to look towards playing some other game, as 40k doesn't seem to be very congruous with what you're looking for.

Makumba wrote:
Yeah and what is next participation is as fun as being the first ?

You were totally bat-gak crazy and tried ridiculous things like death starring with Kharne and a Daemon Weapon Khorne lord in a land raider with four terminator champions armed with double lightning claws and a MOK

and you didnt get instant disqualification for having 12[or 13 depands if the lord was a termi] in a 10 man sized transport?

Four termiesx 2 bodies each= 8 bodies
Kharne- One body
Lord- One body

 Ailaros wrote:

Peregrine wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:The short answer being that anyone who says they don't want to win is lying and those saying that they enjoy a challenge are telling the truth, but will still tell you that loosing ultimately sucks.

I still don't follow. Losing is bad. Whether or not you win is ultimately determined randomly. Therefore you should try as hard as you can to win. That's a non-sequitur.

The correct conclusion is to do something to affect the random factor itself, not merely the odds you play.

Jayden63 wrote:The short answer being that anyone who says they don't want to win is lying and those saying that they enjoy a challenge are telling the truth, but will still tell you that loosing ultimately sucks. As such, everybody will hope that their chosen army (for whatever reason the army is chosen) will ultimately be strong and with all things being equal give them the win. Sadly, not all of us will get what we want.

In order to have dialogue, you have to be able to listen. Starting out with a blanket statement that everyone who disagrees with your point of view is a liar is going to be disruptive to communication.

For you, what is important is the win, and that's the ONLY thing that's important (at least, it seems to me by what you're saying). If avoiding a loss is what should be the only focus of your efforts, then it goes to say that you think that you should do whatever it takes to win. Put another way, you want to win at all costs.

Know two things, firstly, there are people such as myself who feel genuine compassion and pity for you, as that kind of an attitude writ large in life will ultimately lead to a great deal of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in all aspects of one's life. Secondly, winning is not the point of 40k. To see what the game designers wrote explicitly as the reason they set up the rules the way they did can be found on page 8 of the BRB:

I clearly have failed to get my point across. I understand that there are 100s of reasons to play the game. I personally take much more pride in playing with a fully painted army than my win/loss total. However, the point that I think has not been conveyed well is that if all things are being equal. The challenge, the risk, the reward, the dialogue, the beer flavor, etc. one would rather walk away with a win than a loss. Now there are some people out there that genuinly do not care if they win or loose. However, psychologiest and studies of human behavior show that for the vast majority of people winning is good, loosing not so much. It all depends on ones personal stake in the game.

Now 40K is a game. This is the huge part. The stakes of winning or loosing are negligable. Its not like if you win you get a cash prize or if you loose someone really dies. As such ones win/loss ratio only really matters to those who care about those things. However, having said that if you never ever won a game of 40K or maybe just had a loosing streak of say 50 games in a row, can anyone truely tell me that they are having fun. How tempting would it be to try and pick up a different game at that point?

Myself, I don't actually participate in this hobby to play the game. I play maybe 12 times a year total. But I have over 10,000 points of fully painted figures from 5 different armies. I am a modeler first and a player second. However, and I'll be honest, on those 12 games a year that I do play, pulling a win usually feels better than flopping a loss.

Jayden63 wrote:However, the point that I think has not been conveyed well is that if all things are being equal. The challenge, the risk, the reward, the dialogue, the beer flavor, etc. one would rather walk away with a win than a loss.

Sure. Controlling for literally everything else, a win is going to be better than a loss.

I fail to see how this means that people should always try their hardest to win. As you say, there are hundreds of things that make a good game, and winning is only one small part of it. It seems like winning is rather down on that list (behind, say, having nice looking terrain and having both armies painted and having beer at all, etc.) that it doesnt' make as much sense to focus on a third tier issue when there are more important things to get right first.

If not going for a win is required in order to satisfy a higher-order goal, then going for the win should rightly be considered secondary to whatever else is required to make the game fun.

 Eidolon wrote:
But, if it already exists to some degree in the fluff than it is fluffy. And even if there wasnt a precedent, one of the nice things about the warhammer universe is the incredibly large scope of it. It makes it very easy to come up with your own fluff, and the game designers encourage this.

Key words; to some degree. Orks like to charge their enemies, shooting from the hip. They like to jury-rig their own machines to increase both their firepower and their mobility. They like dakka, yes, lots and lots of dakka. However, at their core, they like to bash stuff, it's what they enjoy most. It makes them warm and fuzzy inside to get hold of a squishy 'oomie and tear them apart in the most brutal, savage and inventive ways open to them. It's just in their nature. They like their trukks and their bikes and their shootas... but everyone knows deep down that those things are a means for them to get to the nitty gritty in the quickest and most efficient way possible on the modern (future) battlefield. You are right, of course, the beauty of the hobby is each player can make it their own. But, even if one chooses to have all-shooty and no-melee Orks, they must acknowledge that their list goes against one of the strongest, most fundamental aspects of the Orks established fluff, and that their list is only, therefore, fluffy to some degree.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Yes, but remember, the only thing orkz find funnier than stomping in the face of some git who can't fight, is gunning down some gitz who didn't bring enuf dakka and thought they could krump orks (silly oomies)

To be perfectly honest, I don't see it that unfluffy.

Once more, our views are not mutually exclusive. I'm not saying it's unfluffy to have shooty Orks, I'm saying it's unfluffy to have exclusively shooty Orks.

But the fun thing about orkz is that they're so crazy, odds are, somewhere in the universe, there probably is in fact an army running whatever rediculous list you can come up with.

However, I'm getting REALLY off topic, just felt like arguing that one just for the fun of it. Cool thing about orkz is that we're both wrong and right at the same time

Agreed. Unfluffy lists can certainly be lots of fun, particularly with Orks. But, as you say, we're veering slightly. Besides, more fool us for trying to comprehend the perplexing and bizarre mind of the Ork in the first place - we're only silly 'oomies, afterall...

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
How is that a WAAC army? Furthermore, the Black Templars prefer orbital assaults and armoured spearheads. A Razorback-heavy list would actually be fluffy.

Sorry for the confusion, my examples weren't for waac lists, just legally possible yet unfluffy ones. I know it wasn't that clear from my sentence structure as I look at it now, as both aspects of my point were kinda rolled into one. My bad. As for the Razorback-heavy Templars... ummmm, yeah I just don't see it, but that's me. With Templars I see Drop Pods, LRCs, and Black Tides. I guess they could be fluffy-er if they were loaded with mixed Initiate/Neophyte close combat squads, but, again, my example was a specific way someone could be unfluffy with Templars. MSU vs. waves, all-bolter vs. close combat, and the exclusions I mentioned all build an unfluffy Templar list. That was my example in it's entirety, picking out just Razorbacks is kinda void and defeats the purpose of my original comment in its original context.

 Ailaros wrote:
Because there is a low, easily achievable ceiling for player skill and especially list building (say hello, netlist), then either you need to play worse, or you need to bring a worse list in order to create that same relative gap in order to make the game more challenging.

See, that makes absolutely no sense. You've said over and over again how 40k is a game of luck, not skill, but here you're saying that it's possible to modify your list precisely enough that the game becomes more challenging but you're still able to win? If 40k is as random as you say it is, shouldn't the random factors negate any attempt at "setting your own difficulty level"?

This is not a 40k thing, this is a cultural thing in all avenues of gaming. You see this in MMO's all the time.

That said, I am the complete opposite. I gravitate towards whatever army is the weakest or the units which most people think is useless.
I have more fun in trying to find interesting ways to use them and make them effective, then I would in simply spamming the latest greatest thing. Plus that also lets me feild the cool models I want, and saves me money from chasing the dragon.

Sisters of battle are a great example, but even with my Space Marines there are many units that don't get a look-in in most lists.

 Peregrine wrote:
Winning is fun. Enough said.

sadly the truth, true a close game once in a while in which you lose isn't bad, but playing an army that loses 95% of the time isnt fun. Setting up takes a while in this game, I don't want to waste knowing that I have almost no realistic chance of winning. I prefer if armies are on even grounds but sadly with different book writers this isnt the case. This particularly affects me as a chaos player whose new book is anything but broken infact it got worse in some places and probably wont be competitive, its pretty much 5.5 edition....