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Eilif wrote:There's been much made of the various price rises, but here's another interesting change that is mentioned, but rarely enumerated.
Points depreciation.

As the various editions have come, the number of points that a given model represents on the tabletop has decreased. Here's two blog posts covering 3 different armies and the depreciation in points from 1998 til today.

http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/ive-got-your-point-devaluation-right.html
http://thearmycollector.blogspot.com/2011/09/depreciating-value-round-two.html

The author compares army lists from GW's 1998 book "Collecting and Painting Wargames Armies" to the points values of armies today. Obviously some orgs and units don't quite line up, but for Space Marines, Dwarves, and Eldar he got points depreciations of 37, 17, and 47 percent respectively!

That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one. Phrased differently, it could be said that a given figure now costs more, is worth less, and you need more of them.

Reason being becasue there was an unwritten urge to move 40K into the large scale combat game that you see today.

You rememeber the hoopla over Planetstrike, for a whole 5 minutes? Or the "Apocalipse" that was supposed to knock everyones socks off?

We had already been doing that, as well as the campaign play- 10 years or so ago in the second and 3d editions. We as players were hounding them to come up withthe large scale stuff, the flyers, airstrikes, and heavy artillery. To the tune of fighting over several tables, and even in some of the RT roving games, The "Hunt for the Fallen" one comes to mind.
You were encouraged to bring your 2000 pts and fight on a side.

The reduction in unit price was a natural selection sort of thing to get larger scales to the games, and fit the large scale armies into the rules sets.

In affirmation to the talk about the second and 3d edition games, 2nd was a platoon and small company level, and 3d was a company and battalion level game set.

If you were to try to play with 2d edtion rules with the size armies that people generally play with now, the 1750-1800 pt lvl, you would honestly not finish a game. ( each character, and squad was special, and they had more going for them point per point.)

That was one of the issues that the transition from 2d edition to 3d had- Units turned into generic meat shields for the squad leaders, special characters, and thereby made them less relevent.
Then there was the little factor with the "Template spam".

Back then, there were several turn lasting templates that tended ti slow the play of the whole game down if you ended up having too many, and as well- the "Vortex love" that came with that particular grenade had the chance of affecting more then just the random model.

It would run around for several turns doing its own thing sometimes,almost like a 3d character.


Another thing not discussed very much-

The different armies as well, the Eldar, for one, the Orks for anotehr- had special Jerrys kids weapons that had the potential of extending, or ruining the game for you. There effects alone ended some particular games I played on a low note.
That was off the top of my head, because there was as the game evolved, a metaplan from the GW higher ups to continue to push the envelope, and eitehr from an in house design plan, or an unintentional 3d order effect, ended up taking the tangent to a whole new level with the advent of the WYSIWYG weapons and vehicles.

imweasel wrote:Focus should be clear cut and not an after thought. The moves that gw has made had no tournament focus based decisions for the moves.

That's my criteria for focusing on tournaments. Purpose for tournaments. There is no purpose/focus on gw's part for tournaments.

So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

Polonius wrote:So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

It's not only a matter of intent, but actions as well.

Being inconsistent with no apparent dedication is not a 'focused attempt to make 40k a tournament focused' game. I have and am willingly stating that they don't make an effort.

The changes they make to the game are not 'tournament focused' at all and not even a faint spark in their reasoning to make changes to the game.

imweasel wrote:

Backfire wrote:Sez who?

Really, by your logic 40k is as useless as a tournament game as say, Descent. Which is completely absurd assertion.

I would suggest you take a look at the YMDC forum for your answer. There are literally several ways to play a given rule.

How is this conductive to a 'tournament focus'? Sure you can play 40k in a tournament setting.

To say there is any 'focus' on tournaments is the absurd assertion.

Just respond to my original point, please. If the issue is black/white, then it should be answerable with yes/no.

And really, I don't see what YMDC has to do with it. Do you suggest that "tournament focus" game should have NO unclear rules at all? As I understand it, even WM/H has unofficial FAQs done because PP ones don't provide answer for everything.

Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

I think that despite his black/white comment, imweasel is making the argument that GW does not make a serious attempt to design a tournament game. I'd agree with that to be sure.

But i think there are efforts made in a lot of ways that have improved tournament play. It's hard to say that there's no effort to make the game a tournament game when the ability to play it as a tournament game actually increases.

Backfire wrote:And really, I don't see what YMDC has to do with it. Do you suggest that "tournament focus" game should have NO unclear rules at all? As I understand it, even WM/H has unofficial FAQs done because PP ones don't provide answer for everything.

You apparently require evidence. Of which you certainly are not providing any. Go look in ymdc. There are literally dozens (if not scores) of questions to this game that don't have an answer or are simply waiting for one.

How is this 'focused' on the part of gw?

I don't expect perfection. I expect at least some modicum of effort on the part of gw. And please, while PP/warmahordes is not a perfect game, you cannot even begin to compare the rules for pp to gw ones. PP is far and away ahead of the game here.

Backfire wrote:Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

A terrible strawman argument. Need to come up with something that is worth replying to.

imweasel wrote:

Backfire wrote:Besides, if you want to be really strict about it, NO wargame with free movement (ie. not tied to game tiles) is "tournament focused" because measurements etc. are imprecise and always up to interpretation and require degree of fair play from the competitors. This in comparison to games like chess, where there is no such uncertainities.

A terrible strawman argument. Need to come up with something that is worth replying to.

YOU were the one to claim that the issue is completely black and white. Are you now backpedaling?

Again, it's very simple. Yes or no?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:I think that despite his black/white comment, imweasel is making the argument that GW does not make a serious attempt to design a tournament game. I'd agree with that to be sure.

But i think there are efforts made in a lot of ways that have improved tournament play. It's hard to say that there's no effort to make the game a tournament game when the ability to play it as a tournament game actually increases.

I don't think there is any question that GW has always seen tournament play for their games as some sort of bonus, "yeah, you can play tournaments too if you want, I guess" rather than focus. That said, I also think that focus for competive play has increased: old Codexes used to have many pages dedicated to various narrative missions and some rules concerned campaign play. Some books even contained separate army lists for prospective enemy armies. You don't see anything like that in recent books. Also, whilst GW rules writing is hardly perfect, present FAQ policy is certainly an improvment over to what they had in the past.

Polonius wrote:

imweasel wrote:Focus should be clear cut and not an after thought. The moves that gw has made had no tournament focus based decisions for the moves.

That's my criteria for focusing on tournaments. Purpose for tournaments. There is no purpose/focus on gw's part for tournaments.

So it's purely a matter of intent? Basically, because it isn't clear that GW intends for 40k to be, from the ground up, a tournament game, that shows no focus on tournament play?

I mean, I guess that's fine for a definition of "Focus" that's singular. I think I see you're point, in that (it seems to me) you are saying that the focus of 40k is clearly not tournament play. I'll concede that, I think that 40k is meant to be played casually.

I was interpreting focus to mean a concentrated effort to enable. So, while the primary focus of 40k is casual play, I think there are discernable attempts by GW to improve and enable tournament play.

I think so too, much to the chagrin of those who do like to play competitively it has been said time and time again, in both rule books and WD as well as with interviews with the designers themselves, that the game is intended for casual fun. It is aimed at being playable by young teenagers easily so that they have fun, pick up a couple of army boxes over a couple of years and hobby materials. That I think is GW's objective for their games, and their rules and system are written with that in mind. That the game has become obsessed over by a hardcore (or should I say 'elite'? ) on the internet, and pushed to it's limits, I think is one offshoot of the game's purpose rather than it's original design brief.

That being said, for a game that has remained practically unchanged for more than a decade, it should be no surprise that it has achieved some level of balance. There hasn't been a major alteration to the rules structure since 3rd edition, and each new codex has had a rather small remit to be designed within. The real potential for an upset will happen in the (admittedly unlikely) scenario that GW ever decides to re-work 40k from the ground up and give us something new to play with. At the same time however, it would give them an opportunity to introduce some fresh ideas and influences into a system that has been starting to feel a little arthritic, at least for some.

Backfire wrote:
YOU were the one to claim that the issue is completely black and white. Are you now backpedaling?

Again, it's very simple. Yes or no?

Yes. From a tournament stand point 40k is as useless as tic-tac-toe. At least in tic-tac-toe, you won't have the rules arguments or balance issues that 40k has.

While no game will be perfect, no game should take 25 years to get basic rules done for different factions/armies done correctly with a minimum of errors.

Backfire wrote:
I don't think there is any question that GW has always seen tournament play for their games as some sort of bonus, "yeah, you can play tournaments too if you want, I guess" rather than focus. That said, I also think that focus for competive play has increased: old Codexes used to have many pages dedicated to various narrative missions and some rules concerned campaign play. Some books even contained separate army lists for prospective enemy armies. You don't see anything like that in recent books. Also, whilst GW rules writing is hardly perfect, present FAQ policy is certainly an improvment over to what they had in the past.

And yet none of this is any proof to 'tournament focus'. Which is the claim that folks are maiking. GW is more 'tournament focused' than in the past.

Complete. Utter. BS.

You either get your act together and focus on the tournament aspect of the game, or you do what gw does and don't. At all. Period.

25 years. The game still has enough issues that if you tried to play by raw, you would cause the earth to fall into a black hole.

Twenty. Five. Years.

And it's still not done. And none of the changes gw has made is for 'tournament focus'. There certainly is no evidence of that from the product they make.

Polonius and Backfire are 100% right on this. The game can be used and is frequently used in enjoyable and competitive tournaments, and over every edition has gotten progressively clearer rules and better balance and become more and more functional within tournaments.

The existence of YMDC is a throwaway joke. Even PP games, which are manifestly better-written and use nice clear glossaries and consistent terminology (something I've been lobbying for from GW for over ten years), have frequently asked questions and confusion. Spend time on the PP forums and you'll see complaints from players about rules and balance over there too.

insaniak wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:And now for a genuine aside....

As the points have decreased, game sizes have increased. But why? Sure, after a few renditions and reductions, you will need to adjust your army to make everything fit, but why do gamers often feel compelled to fit the size of game a company dictates?

That would be because you have cause and effect reversed.

2nd Edition was designed for 200 point games. What wound up happening as 2nd edition aged was that people started playing bigger and bigger games. By the end of 2nd edition, at least half of the games I was playing were 8-10000 points. Huge multi-player mega-games were fairly commonplace.

GW took onboard the fact that people wanted to play bigger games, and stripped the rules down to create 3rd edition, which gave bigger armies for the standard points level, and allowed for bigger games through the rules not being as complicated (close combat in big games in 2nd edition was just painful).

The cynics can claim that the push to smaller points per model is just a sales tactic, and to a certain extent it's probably right. But it was all started by the players asking for it.

Is this an unavoidable trait for established games? I'd wager yes. As you pointed out, the longer you play, the bigger your armies get. Some people will have lots of smaller armies for variety, some people will have a single massive army, others yet lie in the various shades in between. Sooner or later, you want to dump it all on the table and have a massive punch up. Sooner or later you'll want to play bigger average games, to use your toys in interesting combinations. But every game has a points ceiling where the rules get clunky (aforementioned Blind Grenade phase) and just don't cope. Whilst I think it's a sad thing that the old rules are usually done away with completely, the streamlining rejig is inevitable in my view, and most often necessary.

Although not exactly up on it, I understand Warmahordes has a 2nd Edition, which has rejigged things. Can someone confirm one way or the other if this has resulted in a larger model count in the average game? Likewise for other wargames?

I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.

Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.

I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Really, one only need look at the fact that armies are ridgedly defined by codicies with no real room for full-customization and a strict points focus to see the tournament/comp focus.

Games without tournament/comp focus (or less of one) tend to have more flexible army lists, unit creating mechanics, and often do away with points systems or give them less empahsis (5150, Stargrunt, Future War commander, Battletech, Tomorow's war, etc). These games aren't nearly as popular, but that's not surprising, since without a comp/tourney focus, it's hard to get a wargame into the small FLGS's that make up most gaming stores.

Hi Elif.
The desire to make 40k suitable for tournaments has come from a part of the player base.
GW plc have a prime demoghraphic of 11 to 16 year old boys who like to 'win.'(Win a rules argument-win small skirmish-win a battle, as long as they win something they get happy and buy more stuff...)

GW plc appear to have focused on making the rules easier to explain especialy for these customers.Also focusing heavily on strategic elements because 11 to 16 year olds can NOT deal with more complex tactical overviews.And it helps GW plc sell toy soldiers to children like Mr kirby told them to.

And in making the rules easier to explain , GW plc have simply put all the 'akward bits' into ever bloating seperate rules sections.(USRs , vehicle rules and special rules.)

It may have been a side effect the 'simple rules poorly explianed ,that go on forever' make competative play slightly easier for 40k.

There is a simple test to see if a game has been written for , and therfore suitable for ballanced compatative play.(Tournaments.)

Has it got a provable level of ballance?

If the answer is no, it is not suitable for ballanced competative play.

The new Titex adjustable wrench has a heavier forged grips and a non slip handle .It makes it easier to use it as a hammer.I dont think it was intended for this use, as my hammer does the job far better.
But because it has impoved in this function slightly some numpties in the workshop may use it INSTEAD of a hammer....

Lanrak wrote:Hi There is a simple test to see if a game has been written for , and therfore suitable for ballanced compatative play.(Tournaments.)

Has it got a provable level of ballance?

If the answer is no, it is not suitable for ballanced competative play.

The new Titex adjustable wrench has a heavier forged grips and a non slip handle .It makes it easier to use it as a hammer.I dont think it was intended for this use, as my hammer does the job far better.

I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

However, whether or not it is properly balanced, and whether or not you think it is "suitable" means little in the face of the reality that it has been intentionally adjusted to make it more tournament-friendly, and apparently it's worked as it is used for tournament play and likely as -or more- often than any other miniature game system.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

While true for Britain, that's NOT true for America, where the standard has gone from 1500 to 1750 to 1850 to 2000 and fluctuated from there.

Mannahnin wrote:The existence of YMDC is a throwaway joke. Even PP games, which are manifestly better-written and use nice clear glossaries and consistent terminology (something I've been lobbying for from GW for over ten years), have frequently asked questions and confusion. Spend time on the PP forums and you'll see complaints from players about rules and balance over there too.

Having spent quite a lot of time on both the PP MkII Rules forum and YMDC, I really don't see any similarities between the two other than that people ask questions.

90% of the PP rules questions are clearly answered within the rulebook, and answers are simply verbatim quotes from the rulebook. The complaints on the PP forum about balance have also been shown to be more-or-less untrue over time as literally every faction (save perhaps Trollbloods) consistently places in the highest levels in tourneys--largely within the same small player pool. The ability of individuals to go out and win with anything would suggest that the game is balanced, complaints and forum-rage as an aside.

And those are the ways in which I think that the two forums are similar.

The single, mind-boggling difference between PP and GW is that there is actually an official mouthpiece tied to the rules dev team that answers questions on the PP board. Imagine if the Deff Rolla, Doom of Malantai, God of War, and GoI questions had all been revised within 5 minutes of the original asking.

In short, I think questions get asked on the PP forums because the rules are so tight that players need to know how to get it 'just right'. I think that questions are asked in YMDC because the rules are so vague and loose and mind-blowingly impactful to a game (Deff Rollas, anyone?) that some sort of broader consensus between TOs is necessary to even play the game from inception.

On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.

Nobody argues that GW is as tournament focused as PP. Nobody argues that GW is very interested in putting out tight rules.

But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

Mr Mystery wrote:Although not exactly up on it, I understand Warmahordes has a 2nd Edition, which has rejigged things. Can someone confirm one way or the other if this has resulted in a larger model count in the average game? Likewise for other wargames?

Warmachine MkII had a complete overhaul of points. the old 500pts is roughly equal to the current 35pts, and 750pts close to 50pts.
This leads to most armies having mostly the same size force they would have had in MkI.

One key difference is that each Warcaster has "Jack points" that are only useable on warjacks for the caster.
In MkI you could run with no jacks whatsoever. Now you need to at least use up the jack points.
So I guess for some people having one jack more than MkI has occurred, while those who took jacks now have more points available.

I think in Warmachine the tournament rules pack creators determined that xx points takes a game yy minutes long to bring to a satisfactory conclusion, therefore we play xx point games.

Hi all.
I think most people can see slight improvment in the 40k rules when compared to previous ediditions.
But compared to other companies rule sets the improvments seem to be very slow and hap hazzard.

Considering that the "are drop pod doors part of the hull" question was never definitively answered - as in not in errata or FAQ - and the drop pod was introduced in the FIRST 5th edition codex, I'd say that GW is definitely not on the ball with respect to rules writing. I still see strange threads in YMDC like: gluing the doors shut should be illegal as it blocks more LOS, do the guts block LOS? and is it ok to glue the doors shut to avoid modelling the interior? and the classic: Can you walk over the doors of your opponent's drop pod.

slowed yes, but the RAW don't give any sort of guidance as to what the developers were thinking.

As long as issues like this - that is - situations which create varying interpretations in gameplay - continue to be introduced - AND left to persist... IMHO 40k does not have a mature enough ruleset for DEDICATED (i.e. hardcore) competitive play.

I realise you guys have pretty much just been going off marine forces, BUT -

Under the Old (1998) Dark Eldar Codex my current force came to a potential total of 4602 points.

Now - same models my army is a potential total of 5594 points.

Practically, this means I used to have a 4000pt force and now have a 5000pt army. So for the Dark Eldar at least, thats a significant increase in points cost (and an unholy increase in monetry cost but hey)

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

sourclams wrote:

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

Well, you've clearly made up your mind about your tournament experience, and that's fine.

If you really hate pistachio nuts that aren't open, going from 5% to 1% isn't relevant to you. If you enjoy pistachios, than that's a marked improvement, even if other nuts have closure rates of under 0.1%.

I dunno about points cost from 1998 to today - but from mid-summer to late summer my Ogre Kingdoms army dropped over 400 points!

Eilif wrote:I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.

Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.

I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Ok. This followed by this...

Eilif wrote:I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

Makes no sense. I mean, really, do you like talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time?

Eilif wrote:Really, one only need look at the fact that armies are ridgedly defined by codicies with no real room for full-customization and a strict points focus to see the tournament/comp focus.

And tic-tac-toe does this to the extreme. What you think qualifies as 'tournament focus/comp focus' doesn't actually work.


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Lanrak wrote:Hi all.
I think most people can see slight improvment in the 40k rules when compared to previous ediditions.
But compared to other companies rule sets the improvments seem to be very slow and hap hazzard.

I can agree to this, somewhat. But people are making claims that this is driven by a 'tournament focus' on the part of GW.

If there was a 'tournament focus' from GW, none of this would be very slow and hap hazzard as it has been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:

sourclams wrote:

Polonius wrote:On the other hand, the fact that the four examples you cited all date from at least a year and a half ago shows that the rules are doing what we say they are: improving.
...
But... we are arguing that the rules are improving, and so is the tournament experience.

There is a Gate of Infinity thread in the YMDC forums right now, being actively argued.

I personally find it difficult to argue that the tournament experience is improving. The tournament experience, from the perspective of an ex-GW player, looks identical to what it always have; innumerable workarounds and 'at TO's discretion' rulings that make a tournament scene possible.

Well, you've clearly made up your mind about your tournament experience, and that's fine.

If you really hate pistachio nuts that aren't open, going from 5% to 1% isn't relevant to you. If you enjoy pistachios, than that's a marked improvement, even if other nuts have closure rates of under 0.1%.

First of all, saying the rules improved by a factor of 5 is really pushing things.

But to say the rules are being improved upon due to tournament focus?!?!?

Where does anyone get the gumption to draw that conclusion?

imweasel wrote:

Eilif wrote:I'd advise you folks to not bother replyingto imweasel. He's already made up his mind.
Whether or not 40k meets his personal standards for tournament readiness, it's pretty clear to most of us that over the past 20 years 40k has become a more tournament-focused game than most existing wargames.
I've heard as much from old-timers, and FLGS owners who have observed the trend. Interestingly over at TMP, it's one of the oft-cited reasons for old-timers having abandoned 40k, with folks saying they didn't like the competative, limited, tournament focused nature of the game.

Ok. This followed by this...

Eilif wrote:I agree that regardless of what GW has done to the game, it's not the ideal candidate for tournament play. IMHO, 40k is not the ideal ruleset for any kind of game. Whether your focus is tournaments, senarios, narrative-games, quick-play games, or tactical games, there are far better rulesets avaialble.

Makes no sense. I mean, really, do you like talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time?

Sorry, I don't see any contridition in my opinions regarding the following.

-40k is not a great rulest. My opinion, but I think there are lots of better rulests regardless of one's gaming focus.
-40k is not the ideal ruleset for comp gaming. Quite simply, there are better tourney oriented games out there.
-40k has become much more tournament focused over the past 20 years. We seem to be most at-loggerheads here, as it seems quite obvious to me when reading through RT, and 2nd-5th editions of the game (all of which I own) that 40k has become more streamlined (relative to its previous editions) and tourney/comp centric. You don't agree, and that's ok, but I think the evidence is on my side for this one and see no reason to adopt your point of view.

If you played a game larger than 2,000 points in 2nd edition you were crazy as the game would last a good 4 hours. Less models but the rules were much more intricate. You charged in the Movement Phase, Overwatch would interupt your movement phase, there were modifiers to hit each individual model, most shots were done one at a time and marines could all split fire, weapons jamming... HtH was horrible - you got 1 attack + your weapon skill. Then add +1 for all 6's (critical hits) and -1 for all 1's (fumbles). Then you compared your score to your enemy's score. The difference was how many hits your enemy got on you. Yes 1 round of combat with a hero could decimate an entire tactical squad since marines had the same profile but a character could have WS7+. Don't forget parries, shields, fields, wargear cards, psykers, etc. Vehicles were death traps! Yeah I remember 2nd Edition as being a great skirmish game but thats really what it was - a skirmish game. Heck my 2nd Edition Dark Angel Army was 2 Devastator squads, 2 ravenwing speeders, Company Commander, Interragator Chaplain, Librarian, and a Terminator Squad. This was ~2000 points. IF I were going over, I would drop the Company Commander. Base points for a Space Marine were 30 points in 2nd edition before wargear/wargear cards/upgrades.

The change between 2nd and 3rd edition was massive as a new phase was introduced (assault) and two phases were removed (Close Combat and Psychic). The assault phase allowed you to move again into HTH and allowed other units to shoot the unit before you charged it! It took the game from a skirmish game to a larger scale war game.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Eilif wrote:That's a rather large amount, and paired with rising prices and the prevailing view that 1500 points is now the standard army size and it's easy to see how getting into the hobby is a bigger undertaking and a more expensive one.

Except that 2000 points used to be the defacto standard (1st and 2nd edition) and it's now reduced to 1500 points.

A 1991 point marine army (in 2nd edition) is now 1265 points. Given that game sizes have gone from 2000 points to 1500 points it's not a massive change.

Edit: I'm not sure If I read the above quotes correctly but I'll change my posting later if I got this line of thought wrong - Adam

Maybe in your region it is but it is mostly 2000 points in my region. Why? You can get your special character that unlocks the special abilities that enhances the army as well as your "special" units for your army. They do not want to play at 1500 and give me all of the excuses on the reason why not. Most people in my region do not even have a 1500 point list (or lower). This is no fun for me as I have to play my 2000 point list. I then play competitive which means now I play in a professional manner because my opponent is playing competitive against me. I want to play fluff. I really do but the mindset of most of the players of today (in my region) are different than the mindset of players of 5 years ago.

I'm a firm believer in a 500 point game (combat patrol preferred) as it is the best way to help you prepare to play larger games (starting at 750, 1000, 1250 then 1500), in a competitive manner, or to have some fun with your friends. You get to know how to play your army in all aspects.

No more 4x4 tables in my region. Now only 4x6. More models means more sales which means larger gaming area, so the depreciation aspect of the models as the topic states, in some fashion or another, to me is correct.

The more models you put on the table, the more time it takes to play the game. That is what I have seen going from average 1500 point game (less than 5 years ago) to 2000 points games of today.

On tournament focus:

Maybe I shouldn't be drawing parallels between gaming genres, but since I think I have a great example, I'll chime in. This weekend is the first tournament to feature the latest Magic expansion, innistrad. yesterday all the cards were spoiled, so you can take a look at the set, see how things will work, and get an idea for the feel. Its also the day they posted the sets faq, which has an outline of the sets mechanics and themes, and how they work within the rules, and then they go card by card to show you how corner cases affect things. Any question you can think of about the magic rules can be answered with one read through of the comprehensive rule book. There are specific rules about how 2 particular cards interact, even if there is no way to play them together in the same tournament. THAT is tourny focussed.

my experience with 40k is that it is best played within a club, because together you can write your own faq/ interpretations of the rules and have those always be the answer. Whenever a new person has joined our group, there is a 50/50 chance they will quit because our interpretation of the rules are different than the one they have. If we built and playtested our armies according to our rules interpretation, and then found out someone that left our group is a TO, we'd have a ton of problems with our lists.