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.

ian wrote:
Arnt you missing the point that open play is an rpg style the fun is in the events of the game not the winning

Except open play does very little, if anything, to support an RPG-style narrative, character progression, etc. Open play is a zero-sum competitive-style game, except with poor balance and a deliberate removal of fluff-driven army construction rules.

I dont think its a byproduct i think its the whole point if you go into open play not worrying about wining any inblance can be sorted on the fly, ie 3+ and a random patrol turns up.

I do agree open play is much easyier to break which is why it needs to be played like an rpg

Matched play is harder to break but it can be done which is why i think the competive edge should be razor sharp

If you take alook at other competive sports or games that are big they have much stricter rules than 40k could ever have.

It reminds me of glitchs in computer games i always think do people have fun knowing there going to win that way

ian wrote:
I dont think its a byproduct i think its the whole point if you go into open play not worrying about wining any inblance can be sorted on the fly, ie 3+ and a random patrol turns up.

earlier:

ian wrote:

Then dark reapers happened so im now facing 20 of them in 2 wave serpents and 2 fireprism with linked fire and the host has houseruled use as many physics powers as you have physics so now all the dark reapers are rerolling and 5+ fnp

Your issue here is twofold:

1. Your opponent discovered a good unit. When you are losing you go looking for answers, and he found one.

2. You are feeling "gutted" from 40k because you abandoned matched play restrictions allowing him to cheese out and cast the same power multiple times.

It sounds like you're already worried about winning based on this post i've quoted. So you dropped matched play, and you're still concerned about having a good game, and the lack of matched play psychic restrictions is directly damaging your enjoyment.

Mybe rpg is the wrong phase i think its more about the events that happen so a story can be told or created , ie do you rember when my grot killed that knight on that last wound, its like a kick about on the beach bags for goals loose rules and you rember when the ball went flyinv into that kid instead of who won

ian wrote:
I currently feeling pretty gutted by 40k ive been playing in a group for quite a few years now and its been fun somtimes

it started in 6th with tau suit spam abusing the look out sir rolls and i left after being steam rolled time after time .i join again and his new army was eldar the same thing happened. Hornets warp hunters wraith knight and scatter spam.

We played in teams so it wasnt as bad when i was on his team however i felt bad for the other players

so i got an eldar army and things where more balanced and one sided so didnt help over all

8th came and all of a sudden the host was no longer auto wining things where looking good i played a game with my new raptor and it was really good so next week i brought a diffrent list and it all seemed more fun

Then dark reapers happened so im now facing 20 of them in 2 wave serpents and 2 fireprism with linked fire and the host has houseruled use as many physics powers as you have physics so now all the dark reapers are rerolling and 5+ fnp

i honestly dont think that he understands that the game can be really unblanced and when i bring it up i think he thinks im just a sore loser.

Its gutting because i have 4 fully painted and converted armys ive invested 100s of hours into

I just dont see the point in playing a game where i can tell whos going to win before the game has started, this is in an enviroment where its been played as game rather than an rpg

Sorry for the rant just need to get it off my chest

This is why I HATE house rules that are not formed by committee. You often wind up playing by the rules of the person with the most forceful personality.

 Chamberlain wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It seems like you're having a singular experience and trying to draw general conclusions from that.

Nah, I think it's far more likely that the typical new player doing open play has an experience like mine. Just think of a new customer recruited at a GW store that gets some sort of starter set and starts playing through the rulebook. They're simply not going to have the problems you fear in open and narrative play until they come up against someone who is intentionally trying to break the game on those points of difference. It's going to take "that guy" who actually does the things you are afraid of to cause a problem.

I get the desire to justify your concerns by minimizing the validity of my experience. I think it's better though to consider the possibility that your concerns about the way open play might break down are really about feeling like you need to be protected from what some bad other player might do to you. Just think about what some theoretical horrible person might do without the matched play restrictions!! It'll be awful!

You're the one who made the distinction between the mindset and the way to play, remember?

You remind me that we have a acronym in the Fire Emblem community.

It's PEDM. Otherwise known as, "Personal Experience Doesn't Matter".
This happens when someone goes to a forum asking why everyone hates Character X, as Character X turned out super good for them. Math shows that the character's growth rates lead to terrible averages. The phrase was super popular in threads where someone asked about Meg in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Nowadays with the games being piss easy with grinding (which is why Conquest is the best Fates path: it was punishing you for being a bad player and essentially NO grinding), you may not hear it as much outside us Insanity players, but the phrase does crop up a good amount still.

Not really there is nothing stopping me from buying some dark reapers and ynari and shining spears and i am pretty sure that i will beat him alot .

ian wrote:
I currently feeling pretty gutted by 40k ive been playing in a group for quite a few years now and its been fun somtimes

it started in 6th with tau suit spam abusing the look out sir rolls and i left after being steam rolled time after time .i join again and his new army was eldar the same thing happened. Hornets warp hunters wraith knight and scatter spam.

We played in teams so it wasnt as bad when i was on his team however i felt bad for the other players

so i got an eldar army and things where more balanced and one sided so didnt help over all

8th came and all of a sudden the host was no longer auto wining things where looking good i played a game with my new raptor and it was really good so next week i brought a diffrent list and it all seemed more fun

Then dark reapers happened so im now facing 20 of them in 2 wave serpents and 2 fireprism with linked fire and the host has houseruled use as many physics powers as you have physics so now all the dark reapers are rerolling and 5+ fnp

i honestly dont think that he understands that the game can be really unblanced and when i bring it up i think he thinks im just a sore loser.

Its gutting because i have 4 fully painted and converted armys ive invested 100s of hours into

I just dont see the point in playing a game where i can tell whos going to win before the game has started, this is in an enviroment where its been played as game rather than an rpg

Sorry for the rant just need to get it off my chest

Can you play against other people?
Your facing someone bringing competitive netlists while you desire a casual game. And to top it off hes bending the rules to favor him.
Your facing 'that guy'. Unless you can find a way to convince him to stop being 'that guy' your option is to simply stop playing against him. ignore his whining and have fun playing against people who think as you do.

 Marmatag wrote:
It seems like you're having a singular experience and trying to draw general conclusions from that.

Just to add a little support to otherwise self-defending and great discussion by Chamberlain - he is not having a singular experience. I play custom/narrative scenarios exclusively and in abundance and voices like mine or his have been present in this very thread from the start. But it is true that people like us are in a minority in "commonly visited places" like interwebz or FLGSs - I haven't played a game at any for nearly two years now, despite having played more than 50 games last year alone. So even if we were living next door to one another you wouldn't even know about my existence if I weren't active on dakka. And I'm not alone in this. We are still waiting for GW data survey results, but I'm very much interested how the actual distribution of open-narrative-matched attitudes amongst 100.000 replies looks like.

One thing I want to add to what both Deadnight and Chamberlain are illustrating here is that "relative listbuilding" requires at least the same amount of knowledge about 40K as competetive "build to win" listbuilding (I would even say that it requires more, as there are no "casual netlists", so there is less people to actually help you accuire apropriate knowledge). It is just that "ballanced 40k experience" goal in such environment is completely different than "ballanced and fair field for skill testing/development" goal of matched/competetive mindset. You can desing a "ballanced experience" for a matchup of experienced player against a relatively "fresh meat", which will be satisfying to both. At the same time, providing those same two players with just a "fair field" will produce one-sided results, often leading to disapointment by the less experienced player and may lead to droping 40K altogether.

It is also a commonly repeated misconception, that "CAAC" or "NAAC" or "fluffy casual" players could as well don't bother with the rules or point costs at all because they dismiss "build to win is a part of the game" approach and are so far removed from ballanced games it doesn't matter. We do play by the rules (even in an RPG world only few people go diceless storytelling because human psychology likes an effort of solving puzzles created by arbitrary rulesets) and point costs/PL are a necessary accessory during game preparation to make informed decisions and ballanced games of desired killyness/flow. And from what I can see in multitude of discussions it is that narrative leaning players are usually better aware of limitations of point systems in sandbox environment while most competetive minded players seek and advocate some unachievable holy grail of adequate point costs in an ever shifting meta...

Cheers i think its proberly time to move on.

 Marmatag wrote:
So if competitive 40k is ruining 40k for you

Competitive 40k is in no way ruining 40k for me.

I just prefer a different subset of the 40k experience and make sure that any potential opponent and I come to an understanding before we play.

Personally I feel that the competitive scene is actually quite toxic, with people spamming certain combinations and 'soup' lists which combine multiple aspects from multiple armies.
However this is only part of the problem. Shoddy rules, poor balancing and a notable lack of playtesting, not to mention the awful kneejerk FAQ's which arbitrarily nerf and buff units in a vacuum without considering the reasons these are so powerful in the first place, and do so in an extremely heavy handed way.

So, yes, competitiveness is a problem, but it is only a small part of a larger sum.

ian wrote:
I dont think its a byproduct i think its the whole point if you go into open play not worrying about wining any inblance can be sorted on the fly, ie 3+ and a random patrol turns up.

So why even bother with a game at that point, if you're just making up rules as you go along and doing whatever seems cool? Why roll to see if a patrol turns up on a 3+? You already decided that it would be cool for a patrol to turn up, so just declare that one did and tell a story about how awesome it was.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ian wrote:
Mybe rpg is the wrong phase i think its more about the events that happen so a story can be told or created , ie do you rember when my grot killed that knight on that last wound, its like a kick about on the beach bags for goals loose rules and you rember when the ball went flyinv into that kid instead of who won

I would be more convinced by the idea of 40k being that kind of game if playing it didn't require spending thousands of dollars buying models, hundreds of hours painting them, and then 3+ hours per game once you're finally able to play. 40k is not a casual investment, it's a hobby that requires an immense amount of effort. And I don't know how people can invest that kind of effort and only want "just kick the ball around" as a return on that investment.

nou wrote:
Just to add a little support to otherwise self-defending and great discussion by Chamberlain - he is not having a singular experience. ... So even if we were living next door to one another you wouldn't even know about my existence if I weren't active on dakka. And I'm not alone in this.

We play in someone's basement each week and then once a month rent a multipurpose room at a condo development. There are 7 of us in our core group and then about another 10 who show up for events but don't necessarily organize anything. The largest local 40k group is entirely tournament focused. Even their narrative events are competitive matched play events with prizing for the winner and all that (they just happen to play narrative or custom scenarios using the ITC tournament rules). A handful of them know we exist because we post some pictures of games to a facebook group every now and again, but I doubt they understand just how much open play and narrative we do. They probably think we play the same way they do, but just at people's houses or whatever.

There's another group of five or six guys who play at eachother's places each week. I'm on their mailing list but my schedule rarely lines up with them. The host for the night picks the scenario and sets up the terrain and tells people what size army to bring and then they do a multiplayer game. From the times I've been there and from reading their emails, it seems they always all play on the same table. I don't think the local tournament players know about this group at all. They never share pictures or stories with the larger community as they have their email list.

We are still waiting for GW data survey results, but I'm very much interested how the actual distribution of open-narrative-matched attitudes amongst 100.000 replies looks like.

Whatever the results are their Warhammer Community site certainly doesn't just concentrate on matched play. The recent article about doing Devastation of Baal narrative games even specifically recommended not playing with equal power levels. So GW must believe some sufficiently large portion of their customer base would like an article like that.

And from what I can see in multitude of discussions it is that narrative leaning players are usually better aware of limitations of point systems in sandbox environment while most competitive minded players seek and advocate some unachievable holy grail of adequate point costs in an ever shifting meta...

Absolutely. Part of the advantage of starting a 40k journey (or refreshing one's take on it) by playing through the scenarios in the Open Play section of the main rulebook is that it will expose you to games when the points values don't match in terms of army strength. By having them be intentionally mismatched. Some scenarios even recommend one side having double the power level as the other.

I consider it the first step for anyone who really wants to understand the game the way the people making it understand it*. Play in a way where you think (or fear) that things might fall apart and see what's really going on. See if maybe there's something more to 40k than just doing equal points matched play over and over.

But only do so f you actually want to. If your approach is working for you, then don't bother. But if there's a problem, then maybe there's a solution to be found in a wider view of what the game could be. Maybe those units don't have to set on the shelf unused.

* A good example of this is the recent Legion of Nagash interview on WarhammerTV. The rules guy comes on and nothing he says has anything to do with matched play concerns. It's all about how the rules are evocative of the fictional concept. Pretty much every big release has some sort of rules writer interview and there's a consistent trend.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
(e.g. Peregrine, who seems to believe that if you're not being competitive you're wrong or deserving of ridicule).

I don't find people deserving of ridicule because they don't play competitively. I've made this clear many times in the past, people like you just keep jumping to the conclusion that anyone who defends competitive play must exclusively defend competitive play. The people I find deserving of ridicule are:

1) CAAC TFGs who scream at you about how you aren't being "casual" enough, despite their level of obsession with the game and insanely strict rules about what lists are acceptable in their personal version of it having absolutely nothing to do with the term "casual" as it is defined in any other context. And CAAC TFGs are inevitably smug s about how "casual" is the one morally acceptable way to play the game, and everyone else is TFG and ruining the hobby.

2) People who make "casual strategy" posts where they propose an idea with a claim that it is good, encounter criticism from people who understand the game better and point out that it isn't an effective strategy, and then fall back on "BUT IT IS CASUAL WHY CANT YOU CASUAL" rather than admit that they were simply wrong about it being a good strategy. IOW, people who don't care about whether or not their strategy advice is good or leads to a better understanding of the game, and post threads for the sole purpose of getting people to agree with them and feed their narcissism.

3) People who assume that if they aren't playing competitively they must be "fluffy" or "casual", even when their lists don't match the fluff well at all. A list with a bunch of random units with random upgrades is seldom a fluffy list, but because it isn't good at winning games people will insist on defending it as "fluffy" and object to any criticism of its choices.

In your case I find you immensely frustrating and wrong because you get stuck on questionable fluff ideas like "I must have exactly X tanks, no more, no less" or making which sponsons your tanks are equipped with an essential part of your fluff, and refuse to change anything about your list no matter how much it hinders your or your opponent's enjoyment of the game. I mean, you're complaining about how your tanks are not fair in a power level system because your fluff does not permit sponsons on them FFS. It's an absurd zero-compromise position to take, especially when half your posts seem to be about how your choices are not working out well for you.

Exactly. I even made a suggestion or two in his list to at least get Plasma Scions so that he had more bite in the list and offered to help find ways to get Conscript shields but probably wouldn't have listened.

I'd like to take the other side of this argument that competitive 40k has made my experience of the game much better.

I don't have a close group of friends to play 40k with so I rely on pick-up games at the local. Most of the guys that play there are really competitive guys with tournament experience/goals. But the community is great. My first night I showed up with my army I just unboxed from 5th edition and got destroyed. But during and after several of the guys gathered around the table and gave me all kinds of suggestions from army construction to tactical maneuvers, explained what their army did, why it did it and how to counter it.

Now months later we have a robust super competitive group of guys who hang out and talk tactics, what the current meta is. We take turns playing the eldar guys with the shining spears and reaper spam to see what we can do to beat them. We lend each other models if someone wants to try before you buy. The owner of the FLGS will make the most broken list he can dream of (7 flyrants was the last I played but 30 dark reapers got rid of that one) and torment us with it until someone beats it.

No one gets pissed. Everyone is mature and supportive. Hell I played a dude in a MAGA hat while I was wearing my Black Panthers shirt and we both had a great time (okay maybe we weren't wearing those exact outfits but it was pretty obvious we come from different sides of the political spectrum.)

I can't play as much as I did when 8th first came out but I try to stop by when I can to just "talk shop" keep up with the local, west coast and national meta. There are some really competitive painters/converters (I'm pretty sure a couple have entered golden deamons) as well around that are always willing to offer advice or critique.

TFG at the shop was the super fluffy guy who refused to change his list and threw mantrums when he lost, gloated when he rolled well and was just a jerk. He was a terrible opponent the first time I played him.

I wish 40k were more balanced so we could move on from identifying the best units (done) and more into crazy anti-meta lists and tactics instead of the current rock, paper, bazooka that it seems 40k has turned into but without the competitive side of the hobby I don't think I would enjoy it as much.

I am just wondering how you would have felt if every game you played was againts the eldar guys. And after weeks of losing you all figured out that the only way to beat it was a very small number of ways.

That world would seem to limit the point in building and painting your own army because at this point its not about the models you like and the hobby part. its about stats of what works

I do agree that it can be fun figuring out how to beat a really strong list but it feels like a big restriction on the variaty of the hobby

Competiveness ultimatly leads to a focus on a few ways to play unless the rules change , that is when you start getting to players skill vs skill which will get honed down to the point where the gap between the top players skill is so small that the game is decided by who got the best rolls.

However because the rules change its much more about the race to find the best combo rather than honing skills or the other aspects of the hobby. ( the top players are very good but have to use the best unit combos to compete )

On a side note to build skill your go in stages as you grow. Going against the best with out the right tools just leads to injury

After a few weeks GW will bring down the nerf hammer on dark reapers because dozens of competitive events were dominated by that OP list and they finally stopped looking away from such problems.

Then the meta changes and everyone will be trying different models again, either bringing back retired stuff or buying and painting other stuff.

Competitive gaming does not make a good game bad. It just makes bad games show their true, ugly face.

 Jidmah wrote:
After a few weeks GW will bring down the nerf hammer on dark reapers because dozens of competitive events were dominated by that OP list and they finally stopped looking away from such problems.

Then the meta changes and everyone will be trying different models again, either bringing back retired stuff or buying and painting other stuff.

Competitive gaming does not make a good game bad. It just makes bad games show their true, ugly face.

How have they been 'looking away from such problem"?
GW has been entirely open with when they are making changes to the game, March and September. Plus a faq 2 weeks after a codex comes.

They aren't 'looking away' they are doing exactly what they said they would.
(this can ofc all change depending on what they do in the March update).

ian wrote:
That world would seem to limit the point in building and painting your own army because at this point its not about the models you like and the hobby part. its about stats of what works

Alternatively, if building and painting is your highest priority, just build and paint the models you like even if you never use them in a game. Plenty of people build and paint models that have no gaming purpose whatsoever, and don't seem to have any problem with the fact that they're producing awesome display pieces.

However because the rules change its much more about the race to find the best combo rather than honing skills or the other aspects of the hobby. ( the top players are very good but have to use the best unit combos to compete )

Why are you making the ridiculous assumption that racing to find the best combo is not a matter of honing skills? Identifying winning strategies faster than everyone else so that you can stay ahead of the meta and turn the advantage into wins is a skill, and one you can work to improve.

 Peregrine wrote:

ian wrote:
That world would seem to limit the point in building and painting your own army because at this point its not about the models you like and the hobby part. its about stats of what works

Alternatively, if building and painting is your highest priority, just build and paint the models you like even if you never use them in a game. Plenty of people build and paint models that have no gaming purpose whatsoever, and don't seem to have any problem with the fact that they're producing awesome display pieces.

Shock horror some people actually enjoy painting and would like to use in game what they paint. Now imagine that. What a novel concept isn't it?

tneva82 wrote:
Shock horror some people actually enjoy painting and would like to use in game what they paint. Now imagine that. What a novel concept isn't it?

There's a difference between "painting matters most, and hey I guess that game is cool" and "painting matters most but it's also extremely important that I win games and have an effective list". If playing and winning is so important then it isn't fair to consider that person a painting-focused hobbyist who can not be happy unless they are painting exactly the models they want to paint.

 Chamberlain wrote:

nou wrote:
Just to add a little support to otherwise self-defending and great discussion by Chamberlain - he is not having a singular experience. ... So even if we were living next door to one another you wouldn't even know about my existence if I weren't active on dakka. And I'm not alone in this.

We play in someone's basement each week and then once a month rent a multipurpose room at a condo development. There are 7 of us in our core group and then about another 10 who show up for events but don't necessarily organize anything. The largest local 40k group is entirely tournament focused. Even their narrative events are competitive matched play events with prizing for the winner and all that (they just happen to play narrative or custom scenarios using the ITC tournament rules). A handful of them know we exist because we post some pictures of games to a facebook group every now and again, but I doubt they understand just how much open play and narrative we do. They probably think we play the same way they do, but just at people's houses or whatever.

There's another group of five or six guys who play at eachother's places each week. I'm on their mailing list but my schedule rarely lines up with them. The host for the night picks the scenario and sets up the terrain and tells people what size army to bring and then they do a multiplayer game. From the times I've been there and from reading their emails, it seems they always all play on the same table. I don't think the local tournament players know about this group at all. They never share pictures or stories with the larger community as they have their email list.

We are still waiting for GW data survey results, but I'm very much interested how the actual distribution of open-narrative-matched attitudes amongst 100.000 replies looks like.

Whatever the results are their Warhammer Community site certainly doesn't just concentrate on matched play. The recent article about doing Devastation of Baal narrative games even specifically recommended not playing with equal power levels. So GW must believe some sufficiently large portion of their customer base would like an article like that.

And from what I can see in multitude of discussions it is that narrative leaning players are usually better aware of limitations of point systems in sandbox environment while most competitive minded players seek and advocate some unachievable holy grail of adequate point costs in an ever shifting meta...

Absolutely. Part of the advantage of starting a 40k journey (or refreshing one's take on it) by playing through the scenarios in the Open Play section of the main rulebook is that it will expose you to games when the points values don't match in terms of army strength. By having them be intentionally mismatched. Some scenarios even recommend one side having double the power level as the other.

I consider it the first step for anyone who really wants to understand the game the way the people making it understand it*. Play in a way where you think (or fear) that things might fall apart and see what's really going on. See if maybe there's something more to 40k than just doing equal points matched play over and over.

But only do so f you actually want to. If your approach is working for you, then don't bother. But if there's a problem, then maybe there's a solution to be found in a wider view of what the game could be. Maybe those units don't have to set on the shelf unused.

* A good example of this is the recent Legion of Nagash interview on WarhammerTV. The rules guy comes on and nothing he says has anything to do with matched play concerns. It's all about how the rules are evocative of the fictional concept. Pretty much every big release has some sort of rules writer interview and there's a consistent trend.

I must admit, you seem to have won a lottery and live in a worldwide centre of "out of the rut" players. To date I considered myself lucky by having a four (now sadly just three) person group and there are people like Wayniac here, that struggle to find anyone open enough to even try our route. The "host prepares the table and scenario" approach is very much what we do, including giving a brief description of such location and overall goal prior to list construction representing "vaguely reliable intel data".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

bananathug wrote:
I'd like to take the other side of this argument that competitive 40k has made my experience of the game much better.

I don't have a close group of friends to play 40k with so I rely on pick-up games at the local. Most of the guys that play there are really competitive guys with tournament experience/goals. But the community is great. My first night I showed up with my army I just unboxed from 5th edition and got destroyed. But during and after several of the guys gathered around the table and gave me all kinds of suggestions from army construction to tactical maneuvers, explained what their army did, why it did it and how to counter it.

Now months later we have a robust super competitive group of guys who hang out and talk tactics, what the current meta is. We take turns playing the eldar guys with the shining spears and reaper spam to see what we can do to beat them. We lend each other models if someone wants to try before you buy. The owner of the FLGS will make the most broken list he can dream of (7 flyrants was the last I played but 30 dark reapers got rid of that one) and torment us with it until someone beats it.

No one gets pissed. Everyone is mature and supportive. Hell I played a dude in a MAGA hat while I was wearing my Black Panthers shirt and we both had a great time (okay maybe we weren't wearing those exact outfits but it was pretty obvious we come from different sides of the political spectrum.)

I can't play as much as I did when 8th first came out but I try to stop by when I can to just "talk shop" keep up with the local, west coast and national meta. There are some really competitive painters/converters (I'm pretty sure a couple have entered golden deamons) as well around that are always willing to offer advice or critique.

TFG at the shop was the super fluffy guy who refused to change his list and threw mantrums when he lost, gloated when he rolled well and was just a jerk. He was a terrible opponent the first time I played him.

I wish 40k were more balanced so we could move on from identifying the best units (done) and more into crazy anti-meta lists and tactics instead of the current rock, paper, bazooka that it seems 40k has turned into but without the competitive side of the hobby I don't think I would enjoy it as much.

And you are a happy person, which happen to enjoy 40K in exactly the way local group enjoys 40K. The problem of "competetive attitude ruining 40K" or "casual attitude ruining 40K" is a problem of coexisting. Try to impersonate a guy like me or Chamberlain here trying to blend in with your group - that is pretty much impossible task, resulting either with frustration (probably the case of your fluffy player) or abandoning one's preferred playstyle for the sake of having actual games and community to hang out with and socialise (I've been in that position during early 3rd ed, leading to my quitting 40K for 15 years). Your group also seems to not have such condescending people like Peregrine and instead of ridicule or irritate you teach and inspire. And that is a very healthy for the group, but not all that common and definitely not "default".

Ordana wrote:
How have they been 'looking away from such problem"?
GW has been entirely open with when they are making changes to the game, March and September. Plus a faq 2 weeks after a codex comes.

They aren't 'looking away' they are doing exactly what they said they would.
(this can ofc all change depending on what they do in the March update).

Yeah, they have stopped looking away last June. Which isn't even a whole year yet - so yes, they have been looking away from problems that were obvious in competitive environments for at least the other 8 years I've been involved in this hobby.

Your right list building is a skill that can provide lists that are so effective it dominates other lists

This same list are copyed really easily and played by others

But i dont think it takes a lot of skill to look at the eldar codex and see that spaming dark reapers will be very effective<<< not much skill here

 Peregrine wrote:

ian wrote:
That world would seem to limit the point in building and painting your own army because at this point its not about the models you like and the hobby part. its about stats of what works

Alternatively, if building and painting is your highest priority, just build and paint the models you like even if you never use them in a game. Plenty of people build and paint models that have no gaming purpose whatsoever, and don't seem to have any problem with the fact that they're producing awesome display pieces.

However because the rules change its much more about the race to find the best combo rather than honing skills or the other aspects of the hobby. ( the top players are very good but have to use the best unit combos to compete )

Why are you making the ridiculous assumption that racing to find the best combo is not a matter of honing skills? Identifying winning strategies faster than everyone else so that you can stay ahead of the meta and turn the advantage into wins is a skill, and one you can work to improve.

^This is exactly the reason why I chose Tau. I chose my army because what I enjoy most is being able to fine tune my highly magnetized units and play around with lists. Sure I like the way most of my units look (Not you Vespids), but for players like me it is about being able to sit down after a stressful day and just play with ideas on Battlescribe. Meanwhile the most common thing I hear is "ugh Tau players just want to cheese wins" or "Tau takes no skill all you do is stand still and shoot." I enjoy trying to come up with a good battleplan, what's wrong with that?

Again, my main issue with competitive play in 40k is that it ignores 2/3 of the game and lord knows how many potential options because it breaks everything down to "the best", so anything which is not "the best" doesn't see play because it's "not good list building". that is a fundamental issue, and if GW won't fix it (which let's face it they won't) it's on the players to fix it among themselves. But for every group that does that, you have ones like mine usually is that are almost 100% pickup games, with no deviation and people who are afraid of just Open/Narrative play because they are too afraid that somebody might break it, to take the steps to prevent someone from breaking it (from house rules to outright shunning of someone who breaks the social contract). Nobody seems to want to do that despite that being the main approach GW advocates.

ian wrote:
Your right list building is a skill that can provide lists that are so effective it dominates other lists

This same list are copyed really easily and played by others

But i dont think it takes a lot of skill to look at the eldar codex and see that spaming dark reapers will be very effective<<< not much skill here

But how many do you bring?
How many psykers do you bring? How many rangers, guardians for chaff? Flyers? which and how many?

Identifying a good unit is one thing. Building an optimal list around it has a lot of nuance.

Wayniac wrote:
Again, my main issue with competitive play in 40k is that it ignores 2/3 of the game

Please don't buy into GW's marketing hype of "three ways to play". What GW really offers is one way to play, with two different point systems: one of them more accurate (though not perfect), one of them that loses accuracy in exchange for nothing and therefore has no purpose. There's a second way to play, narrative-driven scenario games, which is kind of vaguely hinted at by GW but is mostly a third-party creation built on the base 40k game so it can't really be counted in playing 40k.

and lord knows how many potential options because it breaks everything down to "the best", so anything which is not "the best" doesn't see play because it's "not good list building".

Just like every other style does. "That's not fluffy". "That's too powerful for our group". Etc. The only difference is which specific units/upgrades are pushed out of the game.