Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Overread wrote:
Historical is almost a retirement hobby though and some elements are different. Eg for them the rules are more about simulation than in fantasy/scifi wargames.

Plus they endlessly tinker with the representative numbers. It's just based upon hew historical documents of past battles and wars.

Plus there are loads of firms making new models for historical games. There's always a new sherman or tiger tank

Sheesh. Way to stereotype historical wargamers.
In the same light I guess all 40k players are either greasy spotty smelly teenagers who are scared of girls, or single fat bearded middle-aged whales.

 Azreal13 wrote:

This seems to be a fault in the groupthink of fantasy/sci fi gamers specifically. We've a solid historical element at our local club and they just don't think like this at all. They're often playing systems that are decades old, sometimes patched to suit their preferences, often not.

This seems true. But I think it stems from the way these folks are bred in the GW environment. If there isn't a new set of rules and books every 2-3 years then the game is "dead". The problem is that other game companies now follow this awful GW methodology. Good for profit, maybe, but bad for gaming. A new edition should be to fix rules, bring in errata etc, not just change the game to re-sell it.

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

The 1st edition AoS rules are floating about if that’s what you’re after.

Is there anything in the board gaming space that is similar or has similar issues in writing and editing that GW written rules have?

Gloomhaven looks like expensive piece of kit. Are the rules playable out of the box? Well crafted and edited? (love or hate it the rules are easily followed?)

There are poor rules and poor editing but GW have made both a feature of their product. In the same space is there any other games maker who shows an equal disregard in their own printed materials?

I'm only 23 and I've played at least two games of Bolt Action. I would like to think I break the stereotype, but historical wargames have a broader base than just retirement age guys.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I'm only 23 and I've played at least two games of Bolt Action. I would like to think I break the stereotype, but historical wargames have a broader base than just retirement age guys.

Bolt Action and to a degree Flames of War do tend to buck the "only boomers play historicals" myth, although it still skews older than 40k.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

Come on, answer honestly. You just precieve that because you pay at all (which I aren't convinced you do), they should be perfect and immaculate. That's not entirely devoid of merit, yes they should be function to a level you consider value.

To emphasise the question, if you have the rules, you and your opponents both dislike rule A, why can you not agree to not use rule A or to modify it to a manner more pleasing to you both?

You're not alone on this forum but there's a nugget of people who seem to actively despise the rules and subject themselves to abject horror by playing something they hate as RAW almost to prove some weird point.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I'm only 23 and I've played at least two games of Bolt Action. I would like to think I break the stereotype, but historical wargames have a broader base than just retirement age guys.

Bolt Action and to a degree Flames of War do tend to buck the "only boomers play historicals" myth, although it still skews older than 40k.

I've worked in both a GW and FLGS (many years ago now). You did used to get a series of younger kids/teenagers that played GW games; If they didn't stop altogether when they hit early/mid-teens (due to other distractions) they sometimes moved over to historicals. As I worked in the FLGS after the GW, they were quite often the kids I recognised from coming into the GW from several years before, and then were getting into FoW (this was the most popular historicals game at the time, before Bolt Action really started to take off).

> Gloomhaven looks like expensive piece of kit. Are the rules playable out of the box? Well crafted and edited? (love or hate it the rules are easily followed?)

Yes, but GH is more of a hybrid boardgame, so playtested boardgamey mechanics are more important than thematic dakka dakka simulation.

> To emphasise the question, if you have the rules, you and your opponents both dislike rule A, why can you not agree to not use rule A or to modify it to a manner more pleasing to you both?

Actually, wrt GH (: many boardgamers who prefer simulation were positively apoplectic that you could not pick up the loot after killing all the bad guys. The reason is that, as a boardgame, the game is designed to force players into making "meaningful decisions", often the decision being whether or not to make an attack and help the party reach its objective, or grab loot to help yourself. Changing this rule makes the game easier, which reduces the challenge of the game.

That said, we pay game designers to design games. Changing a rule implies that the game designer hasn't done their job. I'm sure, though, what a "game" means to a player is subjective, and how far a game can deviate from their definition before not being bought is subjective as well. I'm usually more critical of boardgame design because I'm into that "balance" thing (: while with miniature games, I'm fine with changing rules (and don't get me started on terrain placement (: because sometimes an edge case will lead to odd behavior or results that break immersion.

Haven't played a GW game in years, so carry on.

 Overread wrote:

Then again they are also kids in school and, well, listening to authority figures is kinda drummed into you at school. Esp if its a good school were the kids are generally well behaved and such.

American colleges have a tradition of student rebellion. Occupy the dean's office. Protest on the square. Art schools have always been noted for in-your-face attacks on the status quo. Now they're all about conforming. So yeah, there's a generational component to it.

As for the rules churn, yes, that's absolutely a factor. When the 3rd ed. came out, GW promised that they had fixed the wild imbalances of 2nd ed. (see also, Space Wolves armies with nothing but terminators using assault cannon).

They had an org chart, and selections, and set scenarios and stuff. The idea was you could put any army against any other and somehow the points and the org chart would make it fair, but it didn't.

And that's pretty much still going on. I'm firmly in the "narrative/cooperative effort" camp of how to have a fun game. My group comes up with fun ideas for scenarios, throw out oddball armies that fit and then play for fun rather than victory at any cost.

But I don't think that's the mainstream of the "GW Hobby."

Dudeface wrote:
To emphasise the question, if you have the rules, you and your opponents both dislike rule A, why can you not agree to not use rule A or to modify it to a manner more pleasing to you both?

Because it's far more likely that one person likes rule A but the other person doesn't, or that rule A is also related to rules B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, and L such that changing A has a bunch of other effects that have to be accounted for and just putting up with A is easier than figuring out how to overhaul large sections of the game. Simple cases of "just don't use A" are relatively rare.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Is there anything in the board gaming space that is similar or has similar issues in writing and editing that GW written rules have?

Gloomhaven looks like expensive piece of kit. Are the rules playable out of the box? Well crafted and edited? (love or hate it the rules are easily followed?)

There are poor rules and poor editing but GW have made both a feature of their product. In the same space is there any other games maker who shows an equal disregard in their own printed materials?

There were some fairly significant balance changes between the first and second Gloomhaven printings. But then once they had it right they just stopped as there's no need to make further changes.

Nope, never mind, not worth the headache.

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

Come on, answer honestly. You just precieve that because you pay at all (which I aren't convinced you do), they should be perfect and immaculate. That's not entirely devoid of merit, yes they should be function to a level you consider value.

Should the Votaan codex been released as is, yes or no?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

Come on, answer honestly. You just precieve that because you pay at all (which I aren't convinced you do), they should be perfect and immaculate. That's not entirely devoid of merit, yes they should be function to a level you consider value.

Should the Votaan codex been released as is, yes or no?

Probably not, no. It would have been better to release it in the state its in now. Can you now answer the question instead of trying to deflect?

From observation, the poster in question has two settings - deflect, or attack.

"Engage in good faith" doesn't seem to be something they understand, unfortunately.

+ + +

I did see a topic around here somewhere, I think - has anyone heard any more about which regions this price increase is going to affect, or are we still waiting on further details?

When I started a box of 20 guardsmen was $50 AUD. That was from GW directly. They were much less from a discount retailer, from memory, I was paying about $37.50 AUD.

The old Cadian Battleforce box was $150 AUD. Which had 20 guardsmen, 3 heavy weapon teams, a leman russ, and terrain. I was paying about $112.50 AUD from the shop I went to.

Now-a-days they're $77 AUD for 10 models. So if I wanted to buy 100 guardsmen now, that's $770 AUD from GW or about $616 from a discount retailer. Back then it was $250 AUD from GW and $187.50 from the shop I went to. Which is pretty ridiculous and I would have never started this hobby at todays prices.

 Dysartes wrote:
From observation, the poster in question has two settings - deflect, or attack.

"Engage in good faith" doesn't seem to be something they understand, unfortunately.

+ + +

I did see a topic around here somewhere, I think - has anyone heard any more about which regions this price increase is going to affect, or are we still waiting on further details?

Think we are waiting on further details.

Stocking/supply issues are going to matter as well. My FLGS is having issues with getting the stock they want in and isn't offering a such a great discount as they previously did.

I would assume higher value/volume trade accounts could negotiate a staggered increase.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Is there anything in the board gaming space that is similar or has similar issues in writing and editing that GW written rules have?
Gloomhaven looks like expensive piece of kit. Are the rules playable out of the box? Well crafted and edited? (love or hate it the rules are easily followed?)
There are poor rules and poor editing but GW have made both a feature of their product. In the same space is there any other games maker who shows an equal disregard in their own printed materials?

I am not aware of any other game, be it a wargame or board game, with GW level of issues
most have some sort of problems with their first Edition, but those are either removed with FAQ/Errata or handled with a 2nd Edition, that a game has the same problems over several Editions and a simple "but the next time it will be solved" is enough to keep it running is pretty much unique to GW

 kodos wrote:
I am not aware of any other game, be it a wargame or board game, with GW level of issues

Then you're not aware of many games, I take. Either paper or computer ones. In almost everything you can find some sort of wombo combo, it's just that 40K not only has many more people looking, it has a lot of WAAAC types willing to pee all over fluff and fun of both sides to cherrypick whatever brainless "I win" netlist button they can find.

To give you one example, XCOM (the new PC skirmish game) is pretty well balanced, except for some reason level 2 medic is very competitively priced given his stats (better than any other operative at the same price point). This is pretty obscure because few players take one medic, let alone more or upgraded ones, so it's overlooked option (doubly so because people don't take medics for shooting skills and pay attention to his utility stuff first, which is probably why this slipped through playtesting)... But if you suddenly see a spam team of 5 upgraded medics without a single medkit, loaded up with plasma guns, you can be confident it's a netlister. If it's balanced team composition like it's supposed to be in fluff, I am strangely sure there is much smaller chance the opponent will be unpleasant tryhard and will instead try to win on skill merit, not on edge case abuse.

That said, GW has issue that inept writers grandfathered in because they joined 20 years ago and now they are way too senior and well connected to be fired because they can't write good fluff or rules on modern level (*cough* Cruddace *cough* Kelly *cough* Tau dude), sure. New companies on tabletop market have to hit at least okay quality from the get go or they go bankrupt. Still, GW used to have good rule writers - one was screeched out of company by 4chan level for a single line of fluff in his books he didn't even write despite making the best, most balanced, and frankly fun edition in 40K history, the 5th one. Go figure. This is the best proof rules quality, being friendly towards conversions, and having tons of ways of building balanced, varied army doesn't sell.

The other made some really fun, tight rules (Betrayal at Calth was excellent skirmish game) - cue clowns on forums smugly talking how they never tried it (and in fact gloating they instantly trashed the game having bought it for minis only). I still remember facepalming at this idiocy back then. He also left company because none of his systems got praise (and thus financial recognition) they deserved thanks to being side products and HH/40K players clinging to their main games and being unwilling to try something new. GW eventually did built some successful things based on his rules, even if no longer as good, tight and well balanced - but I am not sure if they still have anyone capable of repeating this. Maybe in AoS team, they seem to be much more capable and willing to write good army books and game systems than 40K side of company does...

so you consider 1 broken unit in a game that is 2 Editions old (there is no XCOM3 yet?) to be the same level of broken as 40k that is 9 Editions old and still suffer from Alpha Strike in General and not just 1 broken unit type?

than of course every single game out there has the very same issues as 40k
even Monopoly is just as badly written as 40k if you now get down that rabbit whole

I never bought the prospero box because of Calth. Specifically, because it wasn’t an extension of the Betrayal at Calth rules. I have no idea what they thought they were doing with that system. I tried it out in a store demo and bounced off hard. Calth was so much better as a game it’s scarcely credible.

 kodos wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Is there anything in the board gaming space that is similar or has similar issues in writing and editing that GW written rules have?
Gloomhaven looks like expensive piece of kit. Are the rules playable out of the box? Well crafted and edited? (love or hate it the rules are easily followed?)
There are poor rules and poor editing but GW have made both a feature of their product. In the same space is there any other games maker who shows an equal disregard in their own printed materials?

I am not aware of any other game, be it a wargame or board game, with GW level of issues
most have some sort of problems with their first Edition, but those are either removed with FAQ/Errata or handled with a 2nd Edition, that a game has the same problems over several Editions and a simple "but the next time it will be solved" is enough to keep it running is pretty much unique to GW

feature not a bug...

Underworlds was a pretty well designed, tight system that they seemed to then go break on purpose in various future seasons so they could then "fix" it - it's quite weird.

A tiny bit of me, admittedly it may have some tin foil involved, thinks that, in part, that historical games are seen as skewing slightly older maybe due to GW's success'

Many many moons ago when I was at Secondary School (11-16 for non UK dakkas) there was a wargaming club at the local RAF base, and even with the teenager tendency to label anyone over 30 as "old" it was a fair mix of ages, mostly Napoleonics and Ancients as best I recall

Fast forward to when my old FLGS opened (1994ish) and locally it was all about the 40k, with a splash of WHFB, given this was pre-internet there may well have been pockets of historical gamers but I don't recall any (the base also changed from RAF to Marines so the club stopped I think)

Given I'm lumbering towards the big 50 and GW games were till about a decade ago the only wargames I played, I'm guessing any of the players from the RAF club are of retirement and above age

remembering back of the old days, I and some others were the old guys in the store played 40k and the young ones (<20) all played Flames of War and Lord of the Rings, while the competitive gamers played Warhammer Fantasy

deano2099 wrote:
Underworlds was a pretty well designed, tight system that they seemed to then go break on purpose in various future seasons so they could then "fix" it - it's quite weird.

funny, the guy running the FLGS back in the days once said, for every other game it is wait for the 2nd Edition before you go big but for a GW game lets hope they never make one

and this is still kind of true, the best GW games are those that never saw a 2nd Edition with Blood Bowl being the exception but mostly because of the community LRB

Warcry 2nd edition is great, precisely because they changed almost nothing about the rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Irbis wrote:

 kodos wrote:
I am not aware of any other game, be it a wargame or board game, with GW level of issues

Then you're not aware of many games, I take.

To be fair, I can't think of another wargame that has simultaneously sustained such a burden of issues and widespread success for decades on end. GW's near-monopoly in the Sci-Fi wargaming sphere has insulated them from directly observable consequences; no one can say how much more success they could have had, if different decisions were made. Compared to Coke losing market share, it is directly observable via Pepsi's gain.

On the fantasy side of things the competition is small, but it does exist, and continues to do so with a decent degree of stability. AoS does better because it needs to do better; WHFB 8th and AoS 0.5 made it abundantly clear that if the game isn't good people will not play it.


To draw an entirely reasonable conclusion from the above: the reason 40k's game state so bad is the Ultramarine's fault for being so popular /s

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Warcry 2nd edition is great, precisely because they changed almost nothing about the rules.

Whereas 40k continues to suffer from people who are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel every chance they get, with new paradigms and forms of escalation coming into play, or popular solutions to problems they created themselves (a lot of the damage mitigation rules in 9th are continued attempts to patch the lethality of 8th/9th 40k) being tweaked from book to book. They only treat symptoms, which is why we get bizzare rules like the Daemon Save that isn't an Invulnerable Save, so can't be ignored by the weapons that (arbitrarily) ignore invul saves, a type of save you shouldn't be able to ignore in the first place.

Meanwhile, BattleTech is - technically - on it's, what 7th Edition? 8th? I think they've changed two major rules in that time.

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

Come on, answer honestly. You just precieve that because you pay at all (which I aren't convinced you do), they should be perfect and immaculate. That's not entirely devoid of merit, yes they should be function to a level you consider value.

Should the Votaan codex been released as is, yes or no?

Probably not, no. It would have been better to release it in the state its in now. Can you now answer the question instead of trying to deflect?

What question needs to be answered? That I don't buy GW rules because they're changed BY NECESSITY two weeks later and therefore invalidate their own printed material? Yeah you're right, I don't buy GW printed material, and I encourage other people to do the same.

That's why I pose the question regarding Votaan to you and how you, and others on the forum, did overall defend GW on what was clearly a lopsided release in terms of balance and quality. I do hope GW lost money on the Votaan release.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Spoiler:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Why do I or my opponent need to tailor for our preferences of a fair game when the books are $60?

Why do we NEED GW to write the rules in general if we're just supposed to talk for half an hour?

I guess this is the fundamental divide in mentality. I don't mean this to come off as condescending, but what if you and your opponent took ownership of your game experience and agreed upon some tweaks to ensure you both get the most out of the time? Why is that not just a thing that people do before engaging in a substantial investment of time with each other? GW gave you a common set of minis, lore, and ruleset to get you together, but there's no law that you have to use every word of their books as written forever.

Take ownership via paying $100+ for rules and having to modify them?

Why don't my opponent just roll dice and go pewpew, and decide who wins via the higher dice roll and best pewpew noise?

Come on, answer honestly. You just precieve that because you pay at all (which I aren't convinced you do), they should be perfect and immaculate. That's not entirely devoid of merit, yes they should be function to a level you consider value.

Should the Votaan codex been released as is, yes or no?

Probably not, no. It would have been better to release it in the state its in now. Can you now answer the question instead of trying to deflect?

What question needs to be answered? That I don't buy GW rules because they're changed BY NECESSITY two weeks later and therefore invalidate their own printed material? Yeah you're right, I don't buy GW printed material, and I encourage other people to do the same.

That's why I pose the question regarding Votaan to you and how you, and others on the forum, did overall defend GW on what was clearly a lopsided release in terms of balance and quality. I do hope GW lost money on the Votaan release.

This is the question, you handily cut it out of your response:

To emphasise the question, if you have the rules, you and your opponents both dislike rule A, why can you not agree to not use rule A or to modify it to a manner more pleasing to you both?

And has nothing to do with Votann. You also mistaking it by seeing people ad defending the state of the Votann book, when many were defending the integrity of their defined process. They made changes completely blind as to how much impact they'd have due to a lack of data. I don't see you and your buddies decrying other releases that are broken in the same way.