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That’s a fair point, and kind of the subject of this thread.

I mean, we can currently play lots of different detachment types, such as one stuffed with Fast Attacks slots.

But. That by no means equates to the resulting army being any cop on the board. No, not “super duper efficient tournament win button point and click”. Just…being a bit rubbish. Lacking hitting power, struggling to claim objectives etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait, sorry. Not the subject of this thread! Got meself confused.

There are many problems with 40k; I don't think tournament play is the biggest or even a very significant part of it. The idea that balancing for tournament play is hard and therefore the game would be better balanced if we all lowered our standards is...sort of logical, I guess? But by far the bigger problems with balancing the game are the homogenization of offense/defense profiles (turning list building into an exercise in finding the most efficient thing to spam), updates in big chunks instead of small incremental updates (which utterly kills any idea of having a cohesive overall design theory for the whole game and leads to Codexes being written without knowledge of the other Codexes they'll be playing against), content bloat (which complicates the process of testing since you need to test against a lot more stuff), and general poor design (trying to balance a "shooting army" against a "melee army" is actually a lot harder than if you made all armies able to participate in all phases of the game).

The narrative casual tournament divide in wargaming is one of the sillier things about the hobby (despite occasionally getting drawn in myself).

Its mostly fully grown adults saying "no you are playing a game in the wrong spirit so i am superior). Absurd for people who love the same thing to be mouthing off at each other, though maybe fascinating for a sociologist

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Man he whined and moaned my artillery was OP, and completely unfair. Never mind he positioned himself so badly. It’s all just My Toys Am OP.

To be fair - the no pre-measure made it hard to properly avoid a HBVG if you were newish.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The idea that balancing for tournament play is hard and therefore the game would be better balanced if we all lowered our standards is...sort of logical, I guess?

Generally, I think the complaint is more that when balancing for tournament play, there is a temptation to strip out options and capabilities that are fun for narrative/casual players but difficult to balance for competitive use.

If there's any resentment from narrative players towards tournament play, I suspect it's less 'you're playing it wrong' and more 'GW catering to you reduces my enjoyment of the game'. Which isn't strictly the competitive players' fault.

There are some valid arguments though.

For instance, the concept of tank squaring, and how it can affect spam.

A given unit, on its own in a list, won’t necessarily be too much. But, if spammed? It may become greater than the sum of its parts, and receive an adjustment which unfairly impacts lists with just a single example.

Also as discussed, tournaments are a more natural topic of conversation online, as it’s kind of a more standardised environment. This leads to folks looking to hone and tweak their list having a preponderance of threads and topics about that, giving the false impression that’s the way Most People Play.

And sure, it can be a pain when you want to discuss a themed list, and how others might approach it, only for the topic to descend into bickering about what is and isn’t suited to winning a tournament. But as with many problems, tournaments aren’t in fact the issue - it’s folk not being able to discern that not everyone is into or wants a super optimised list.

Let’s also be honest. We’re all prone to confirmation bias. We have a natural tendency to see Things We Don’t Enjoy in the worst possible light. As such, we won’t remember or even necessarily read threads about how much fun a group had at an organised event, but we will happily read a thread complaining about a poor sportsman and what an absolute Richard they were.

We might find the thread of a blowhard, claiming to be “elite” and the best there’ll ever be, only for the community to point out “dude. What you’re doing is cheating”.

As an example of such behaviour, and the fact I still remember it to this day as an example of confirmation bias? Quite a few years ago, and I think it was here on Dakka, there was a self-proclaimed group of “Elite 40K Gamers”. One of them was caught cheating, and spent pages and pages and pages defending them selves and trying to paint everyone else as a Poor Sport.

What had happened is they’d fielded “Proxy” Bloodcrushers - Bloodletters mounted on Juggernauts. This was a genuine unit, and wouldn’t receive a proper kit for a while after. But being powerful, the chap “Proxied”. By using Bloodletters (no problem there) plonked on Lord of the Rings Rohan Horses.

The horses, and the bases they came on, were a problem. See, whilst the unit didn’t have official models, there was a character model version. And the Juggernaut was considerably larger and chunkier than a Rohan Horse - and came on a much larger base.

This of course gave the self proclaimed “Elite” player a massive advantage. With TLOS, the proxies were much, much smaller than they should’ve been. Not only did this make them easier to entirely obscure behind cover, but you could pack more into a smaller area. And with the base size being noticeably different, you could reliably pile more into Base To Base.

When called out? No apology made for clearly modelling for advantage with their chosen “proxy”, but claimed the base size wasn’t actually cheating actually, because he’d had the appropriate sized bases in his case the whole time, so clearly, actually, the issue was actually his opponents not insisting he actually use the correct sized bases, actually, so they’d actually agreed to his proxies, actually, it wasn’t actually cheating, actually.

I think another member of his group had converged up Orky Trukks (prior to the current model), and had equipped each with a massive billboard, expressly for blocking LoS. I know someone did that, the think is whether it was a member of the same squad of “Elite” players.

Suffice to say he and his goon squad got a lot of heat, and he may be the poster mentioned earlier that was booted off Dakka in the end.

Going way, way, way back. To the days of Portent way back? Some tit wrote an article about the “psychology” of 40k. No, not the psychology rules, dear reader. But how to get a “psychological advantage” over your opponent. Including refusing to speak during the game, except to say “your turn”, deliberately procrastinating during your own turn, not declaring what you’re shooting at or what you’re rolling - including rolling handfuls of dice, and only choosing “oh that was my shooting” when the roll was favourable. Now that article may well have been a satire - and I bloody hope it was!

But there you go. Two tales dredged up from my mind, serving solely as an example of what I’m talking about, and not a claim “therefore all tournament players are cheats and social imbeciles”.

hunterac20@gmail.com wrote:
I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

Timmy Johnny and Spike are mtg player archtypes, and they do not really traslate that well. Also you forgot You coul also use Bartle suits of players. But a better system would be the MDA framework by Hunicke, LeBlanc And Zubek. (Links bellow.)

But to awnser your question I do not think that tournament play is bad for most of the players. I actually think it is very good. What is bad is the way they are implemented.

For Timmy good game balance is exciting, because his pet monster/unit is not bottom of the barrel trash. It might not be super competetive but it is much better then it would be. Spike of course likes to play to winn. And over all they will have a better gaming experience if that is not to easy and is more diversefied. (However, there are some spikes that probably just would prefer easy winns.) Johhny likes solving puzzles, and they would certanly enjoy 'solving the meta' until the point where it needs rebalancing. If they only do it lokaly and it dies not spread then their solutions might not et adressed. But the more balanced the game is, the more toys they get to play with. (8th edition armies of only flying hive tyrants and ripper swarms comes to mind.)

To use Batles taxonomy the killers and achievers fall within the Spike framwork. The Explorers fall within the Johnny framework. And that leaves the socializers, who I would argue are potensially worse players then Timmy. And the socialisers benefit hugly from a more balanced game.

I suppose we have mostly talked about the 8th edifferent players in the MDA framework already. But games workshop does this weard things where they group the sensation, fantasy, narative and fellowship players in with the challenge (and people who like to play to defeat their opponents, Batles assasssins) players and these two do not mix at all! Having a better game balance makes it much better for all involved. Especially the cassual players. I can not state enough how bizzare it is that warhammer draws from these two bizzarly polarized demographics.

However, the implementations of it is very bad. Codexes that are so outdated wahapedia is more reliable. I do not think I have done list math by hand since I played in 6th edtion. Aps and readaly available infomation and a communaty that informs people of stuff (dakkadakka, youtube, facebook groups) are important to keep up with the rules updates. This can be hard on the cassual players.

https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Player_type

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework

Not really, no

And as much as I like putting the slap on GW rules I suspect that a lot of meddling goes on at above design level, well that or the "good enough" thinking means nothing will really change when the money hose is a flowing, or that the constant meddling is a smoke and mirrors effort to hide just how wonky it is

I also think the Interwebs has massively increased the math-hammer / meta game to the point the line between "serious" 40k and "casual" is more or less non-existent its just a tribal label to allow trash talking the "other" side

I'll have a look at 10th but suspect it'll be a mix of nu-30k and AOS but fingers crossed

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Not really, no

And as much as I like putting the slap on GW rules I suspect that a lot of meddling goes on at above design level, well that or the "good enough" thinking means nothing will really change when the money hose is a flowing, or that the constant meddling is a smoke and mirrors effort to hide just how wonky it is

I also think the Interwebs has massively increased the math-hammer / meta game to the point the line between "serious" 40k and "casual" is more or less non-existent its just a tribal label to allow trash talking the "other" side

I'll have a look at 10th but suspect it'll be a mix of nu-30k and AOS but fingers crossed

The only meaningful difference between a casual and a competitive player is whether they blame 'cheese' or 'dice' for when they lose.

 catbarf wrote:
The question of where the limits are on a fluff-accurate army is rather beside the point.

It may be perfectly reasonable for a White Scars army to be composed entirely of footsloggers, but if taking an archetypical bike-heavy army is a guaranteed loss, then the rules aren't doing a good job of representing White Scars. A good game would be one where you can look at how White Scars are set up in the lore, copy their composition, and have a reasonably effective force on the tabletop. If step #1 of building an effective, competitive White Scars army is ditching the bikes, then clearly something is wrong.

In historicals, it's pretty straightforward- if the most effective tactic is to take force compositions that never existed and use tactics that would be suicide IRL, then the game isn't doing a very good job of modeling the conflict it's trying to portray. Obviously in a wholly fictional sci-fi-fantasy future that's less critical, but the disconnect between 'fluffy' and 'competitive' is entirely a product of the lore not aligning to the rules. Historical accuracy may not be a goal, but verisimilitude, internal consistency, and intuitive design always are.

This is very relatable to Total War were balance is going to be affected by the map and the number of units you can field. It's essentially the same with competitive, versus house rules matches.

As much as I despise "competitive to 11" tournament mentality, I actually think tourney play benefits GW rules designers an awful lot.

Taking KT21 as an example, CanYouRollACrit is a competitive gamer who has veru good insight into what sort of changes would improve game balance, and lo and behold, many of his ideas about blanace tweaks end up being exactly same or very close to the kind of balance changes that actually do get implemented in GW's updates. I'd never want to play this guy, but his insight into the game is on point.

I can imagine the same applying for other GW games.

I don't agree that "GW catering to tournament players gives less leeway for casual/narrative players". In our gaming group, houserules and slight bending of rules happens all the time, and as long as all participants agree, the games go on. Nothing prevents lazy casuals from dipping their toes into "open play" whenever it creates something fun everyone involved is up for. Let tourney players have their rigid RAW/RAI if that's what they need for doing their thing.

I will never attend a tourney in my life nor play with strangers though

Generally speaking, I'm of the mindset that balanced gameplay at a tournament level is good for casual play as well. That said, chasing balance can often result in an environment where change occurs too rapidly for casual players who aren't playing weekly to keep up with, resulting in a fresh learning curve each session that bogs things down. Worse still, frequent points changes often result in armies that just cannot be played session to session.

I think, rather, what competitive play tends to do is flush out problems quickly and create demand for change. Finding a way to properly respond is what determines whether the game remains casual friendly or if it demands a more full time commitment to keep up with changes.

I think modern games just need more flexible design to be able to adapt to rigorous play while remaining casual friendly. Highly granular points are just too rigid for one. The environment changes faster than the perfect value can be dialed in. The core win conditions themselves are also a big part of how a game can tune itself in such a way that eases off of how much the game is defined by raw statistical efficiency.

I think the danger with 40k is that modern game design often leans away from attrition and with that, the removal of enemy pieces that's kind of antithetical to 40k's love of mass slaughter. I think there's probably a fantastic modern redesign that leans into this with reinforcement mechanics or something similar, but GW has little reason to rock the boat to a significant degree at the moment.

In any case, I think the point is that tournament play isn't really the source of the problem, but makes for an easy messager to blame. GW is likely to keep treating symptoms instead of underlying issues, but to a degree its a working system and just because its not for you doesn't mean its not popular or enjoyed by others. Its by far not my favorite game but I'm happy to play when someone really wants to.

Tournament play 100% is the source of the problem. It's a blight that has infested the game at all levels. It has created a mindset where people just look for the top performing lists and go from there and anything outside of the cookie cutter is discouraged.

As hypocritical as it might sound, that's one of the things I'm hoping the new Combat Patrol setup will highlight. Just how cripplingly blinded players have become to what is or isn't critical thinking when actually building lists.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Tournament play 100% is the source of the problem. It's a blight that has infested the game at all levels. It has created a mindset where people just look for the top performing lists and go from there and anything outside of the cookie cutter is discouraged.

As hypocritical as it might sound, that's one of the things I'm hoping the new Combat Patrol setup will highlight. Just how cripplingly blinded players have become to what is or isn't critical thinking when actually building lists.

What is the opposite? No regulations? Or rather the same regulations that was during 5th edition to beginning of 8th edition? The problem with that level of balance is that it is not very balanced. In particular weak codexes are very unfunn for more casual players. Either they loose everything, or they play very competetive lists. None witch appeal to cassual players. It is worth noting that very competetive players mix very badly with them under such circumstances. As there often are conflicts about what 'should be played'. And the competetive players early enjoy face stomping "newbies". (They are not newbie, they just enjoy other aesthetics.)

I’ve not met a tourney player who looks to stomp inexperienced or less competitive players.
In my experience, they want a hard-fought battle.

You sample size is very small I would assume compared to a lager academic survey. However, Bartle talks about how players who enjoy winning over other players often find cassual players a bit booring. But there are some very few who do enjoy it.

I think a more realistic senario are two low to mid level skill players (who often play for other reasons the winning) play together. But they have very imbalanced codexes. And that leads to bad experience, but the players are to inexperienced to overcome it in a good way.

To make things worse warhammer i very expensive and it takes very long time to make new models and paint them. (Compare to mtg where you sell your old deck and buy a new within a week.)

 catbarf wrote:
The question of where the limits are on a fluff-accurate army is rather beside the point.

It may be perfectly reasonable for a White Scars army to be composed entirely of footsloggers, but if taking an archetypical bike-heavy army is a guaranteed loss, then the rules aren't doing a good job of representing White Scars. A good game would be one where you can look at how White Scars are set up in the lore, copy their composition, and have a reasonably effective force on the tabletop. If step #1 of building an effective, competitive White Scars army is ditching the bikes, then clearly something is wrong.

In historicals, it's pretty straightforward- if the most effective tactic is to take force compositions that never existed and use tactics that would be suicide IRL, then the game isn't doing a very good job of modeling the conflict it's trying to portray. Obviously in a wholly fictional sci-fi-fantasy future that's less critical, but the disconnect between 'fluffy' and 'competitive' is entirely a product of the lore not aligning to the rules. Historical accuracy may not be a goal, but verisimilitude, internal consistency, and intuitive design always are.

White Scars are a poor example of this, because Flanderization aside, fluff-wise they are a fully codex compliant chapter with the standard number of tactical assault and devastator squads. Despite what people have decided to believe, they _are not_ actually bike, bike, bike guys.

It also rather begs the question if taking all bikes actually is a bad army composition for tournaments.

The better example is the old saw that space marines taking tactical squads is shooting yourself in the foot, and scouts and elites (or whatever) were the 'only way' to build armies.
But that always struck me more as a GW created problem than a tournament problem.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Tournament play 100% is the source of the problem. It's a blight that has infested the game at all levels. It has created a mindset where people just look for the top performing lists and go from there and anything outside of the cookie cutter is discouraged.

As hypocritical as it might sound, that's one of the things I'm hoping the new Combat Patrol setup will highlight. Just how cripplingly blinded players have become to what is or isn't critical thinking when actually building lists.

The solution to that is to not have points or anything that is there to balance the game.

We also had it.
In Age of Sigmar 0.0.
Nobody liked it.

Plus I'd argue that people who complain about tournament play really don't go to tournaments. Most tournament goers where I live(me and my friends run the tourney circuit in my country) are super chill people who often want to showcase their army/paintjob and are not expecting to get to the top players. Also, the best players usually want to play against other good players. Most people don't like curb stomping people except for the occasional bully and those would still appear in your casual game. How do I know? Because I have run narrative games where some players did just that, and no, those players were not tournament players, because players who like curb stomping rarely want to get beaten themselves and will avoid battles where they might face resistance.

Age of signar 0,0 also had rules that you had massive bonuses if you acted like you where riding an invisible Horze. A lot of characters had rules like that.

Also, no models had points. So just show up with everything you had. I do believe AoS 0,0 might have been one of the worst games ever depending on public opinion at launch.

I find a lot of the cookie cutter problems come down to how difficult it is to build a list in the first place. Like 9/10 when I'm building my own thing I'll get the bread and butter in place and then look at the points I have remaining. 2 Redempters would be nice, but they don't quite fit. Maybe if I changed this unit? Now I've got points left over? I guess if I change this? Sure I guess I could throw in some filler plasma pistols, but the list would be better if I overhauled it and took this instead. The number of times I've realized what makes a tourney list better than my own is just that they're taking the right combination of units that happen to fit into 2000 is kind of demoralizing.

A lot of people have fun with the idea of list building, but really don't have the time to properly test and iterate on their design. People don't play the 5+ games a week that's really needed. Experimentation isn't terribly rewarding. It's hard to make adjustments without breaking the rest of the list and its punishing to deviate from the standard.

catbarf wrote:
Generally, I think the complaint is more that when balancing for tournament play, there is a temptation to strip out options and capabilities that are fun for narrative/casual players but difficult to balance for competitive use.

If there's any resentment from narrative players towards tournament play, I suspect it's less 'you're playing it wrong' and more 'GW catering to you reduces my enjoyment of the game'. Which isn't strictly the competitive players' fault.

The whole problem is that those options and diversity are what allow you to make "your (whatever)'s".

Every. Single. Rule/interaction/restriction. That they've pulled out of their ass due to the tournament crowd is just one more rule that I need to ignore.

The more 40k is warGAME!!!!!!! and less WARgame just loses my interest. When there is no benefit in trapping/maneuvering to get behind stuff, real world tactics matter less. Stuff like smoke launchers and crap that's limited to one per phase where it was once just on the datasheet is especially irksome.

I have zero interest in playing my Salamanders currently(2 games whole edition) and its due to the fact that I might as well be playing Ultras(which I despise). So my favorite army is not being used for 40k. Luckily 30k is a thing and requires basically zero adjustment in the house rules department.

I have 3 other armies that haven't seen the table the whole of 9th; Metallica, Ynarri & Orks. So I've basically decided that if they don't have interesting thematic rules(& not pigeon-hole into 1 way) I'm more than down for 10th. But I'm the opposite of hopeful.

my astartes(both sides) fix will be in 30k. Worst case scenario I just teach my friends/family Rogue Trader

 Niiai wrote:
Timmy Johnny and Spike are mtg player archtypes, and they do not really traslate that well. Also you forgot You coul also use Bartle suits of players. But a better system would be the MDA framework by Hunicke, LeBlanc And Zubek. (Links bellow.)

This may be going way off-topic but I disagree. The MTG Archetypes are about "how you build your deck". Which rather cleanly applies to "how you build your list" in say 40k.
I think you have to really push the Bartle Suit to make any sense in that area.

By contrast you can easily see "Timmy players" picking a big model and going "that's it, that's the army for me". Results are secondary. The fun is having that model running about the battlefield. The negative of 9th for Timmy has been that lots of big models just get insta-nuked and removed.

Johnnys are clear too. If your reaction to someone saying "this faction sucks" is "I bet if I scrounge through all the rules I can make it work" - you are probably a Johnny. If your faction suddenly becomes meta and you are looking for a "different way" to run it, then again, that's a sign of being a Johnny. Its these guys I think who are worried not so much about balance - but "simplified not simple" in 10th. If everything is "obvious" its harder to put your own stamp on an army.

And then you have Spikes who are results oriented. Run the current meta lists because they work. If it stops working that's a shame, but they are going to have to change their list.

I think if you wanted to push the Bartle Suit, its probably a better way of classifying "why players go to a tournament". (Although the difference between killers and achievers in a strictly PVP game is harder to seperate.) There's this assumption that all tournament players are "play to win" to the max. In reality probably much less than half have that mentality. The bulk of people going to even 30ish person tournaments - never mind 100+ - don't expect to win the whole thing. They are there to play some 40k and typically socialise. Which is in turn why this idea "tournaments are the problem" is hard to take overly seriously.

Tyel wrote:

Johnnys are clear too. If your reaction to someone saying "this faction sucks" is "I bet if I scrounge through all the rules I can make it work" - you are probably a Johnny. If your faction suddenly becomes meta and you are looking for a "different way" to run it, then again, that's a sign of being a Johnny. Its these guys I think who are worried not so much about balance - but "simplified not simple" in 10th. If everything is "obvious" its harder to put your own stamp on an army.

Not exactly. There isn't a lot of Johnny design in 40k in general but it would be more focused around making a specific Relic or Psychic power really work or stuff like the all deep strike armies. Johnny thrives on Rube Goldberg designs.

 Niiai wrote:
Age of signar 0,0 also had rules that you had massive bonuses if you acted like you where riding an invisible Horze. A lot of characters had rules like that.

Also, no models had points. So just show up with everything you had. I do believe AoS 0,0 might have been one of the worst games ever depending on public opinion at launch.

It was a crazy system, but also fully narrative, wild, and casual. Which is also why people didn't really play it. Really cool models.

Also, unrelated to you. People have these fantasies about tactical maneuvers and whatnot, and the only time I ever truly experienced those was in X-Wing because both players put down their movement dials at once. 40k was never - and I have played since 2nd edition - much about maneuvering around a tank. If you were able to flank a tank it was because people were curb stomping inexperienced players. Otherwise people just charged the front of the tank and got to melee it through the behind regardless of facing. Because people tend to forget: The Real World is not an IGOUGO system.

I also think people have just made these boogey men of tournaments that exists nowhere except in people's heads. If you are not aiming for the top 5 of a tournament you are most likely going to have fun regardless of your list. I have seen crazy lists in my time and the players just had fun(Hell, one time a guy brought an Eldar titan and it was amazing). If your fun is only measured by the fact that you got to the top 5 or not then you are most likely not playing 40k for the fun of it.

The wild thing is that I see a lot of experimentation in tournament lists because people like having fun regardless of the outcome, and surprisingly some of those lists win. I feel there is more experimentation going on in the tournament scene than most of the narrative ones I've been playing, as narrative players tend to Flanderize more than not in my experience.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Tournament play 100% is the source of the problem. It's a blight that has infested the game at all levels. It has created a mindset where people just look for the top performing lists and go from there and anything outside of the cookie cutter is discouraged.

As hypocritical as it might sound, that's one of the things I'm hoping the new Combat Patrol setup will highlight. Just how cripplingly blinded players have become to what is or isn't critical thinking when actually building lists.

Honestly, this just tells me that you don't know anything about competitive 40k. Innovation is constant and necessary outside of 70% winrate formats like when Nids first dropped.

Even Sisters of Battle, who have had one of the blandest 12 month periods in their 9th edition existance, have had to innovate multiple times. The core of: Repentia+Morven+Zephyrim+Retributors didn't change much but Paragon warsuits shuffled in and out as the meta changed. Sacresants had a renaissance and then another drop off. People toyed with Dominions and Mortifiers. Heavy Flamer retributors were good for a while and then were gone.

Hell, the Castigator was a top tier pick for a couple of months despite being dogshit on paper simply because it dealt efficiently with spore mines. Now, as long range shooting is at an UBER premium, Sisters lists are dipping into Knight allies for the first time all edition and finding renewed success.

You've been skimming lists and seeing the same 3-4 units over and over and started to roll your eyes and feel smug despite the fact that those common units usually only make up about 50-60% of a force. Truth is, you see cookie cutter netlisting because you don't want to believe that when someone looks at your idea and goes 'wow, that's a really bad idea' it's because the idea's really fething bad an NOT because they're a 'meta sheep.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
Age of signar 0,0 also had rules that you had massive bonuses if you acted like you where riding an invisible Horze. A lot of characters had rules like that.

Also, no models had points. So just show up with everything you had. I do believe AoS 0,0 might have been one of the worst games ever depending on public opinion at launch.

It was a crazy system, but also fully narrative, wild, and casual. Which is also why people didn't really play it. Really cool models.

Also, unrelated to you. People have these fantasies about tactical maneuvers and whatnot, and the only time I ever truly experienced those was in X-Wing because both players put down their movement dials at once. 40k was never - and I have played since 2nd edition - much about maneuvering around a tank. If you were able to flank a tank it was because people were curb stomping inexperienced players. Otherwise people just charged the front of the tank and got to melee it through the behind regardless of facing. Because people tend to forget: The Real World is not an IGOUGO system.

I also think people have just made these boogey men of tournaments that exists nowhere except in people's heads. If you are not aiming for the top 5 of a tournament you are most likely going to have fun regardless of your list. I have seen crazy lists in my time and the players just had fun(Hell, one time a guy brought an Eldar titan and it was amazing). If your fun is only measured by the fact that you got to the top 5 or not then you are most likely not playing 40k for the fun of it.

The wild thing is that I see a lot of experimentation in tournament lists because people like having fun regardless of the outcome, and surprisingly some of those lists win. I feel there is more experimentation going on in the tournament scene than most of the narrative ones I've been playing, as narrative players tend to Flanderize more than not in my experience.

90% of the time you don't have fun, it's a format issue. Tier 0 Nid format wasn't fun. Adepticon format has been garbage the past 2 years. But those are system level problems that are GW's fault, not the playerbase's.

 catbarf wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The idea that balancing for tournament play is hard and therefore the game would be better balanced if we all lowered our standards is...sort of logical, I guess?

Generally, I think the complaint is more that when balancing for tournament play, there is a temptation to strip out options and capabilities that are fun for narrative/casual players but difficult to balance for competitive use.

If there's any resentment from narrative players towards tournament play, I suspect it's less 'you're playing it wrong' and more 'GW catering to you reduces my enjoyment of the game'. Which isn't strictly the competitive players' fault.

I'm going to be kind of reductionist here, but at a core level I don't think the things competitive players and casual players want are all that different. Sure, there are the "lol git gud n00b" folks and the "tournament players are scum and should face the guillotine" folks running about screaming on the Internet, but what reasonably people all want is to be able to put our armies on the table and have a reasonably close game.

We want this for different reasons, sure; competitive players are more concerned about how having a wider variety of lists on competitive tables makes for more interesting games and lowers the barrier to entry to give them more opponents, while casual players are more worried about having a robust framework to build narrative rules on and whether or not they can buy models they like without having to worry about whether they're "good", but the fact remains that the greater the divide between good and bad armies/models/options the worse the game is for everyone. In that sense I think that making the game more competitively balanced also makes it a better casual game; it is easier to make up narrative rules without worrying about what units are good or bad and how a narrative scenario that favors some units over others is going to send everything out of whack, and it is much easier for two new players to buy the models they like and have a good time when one army isn't going to steamroll over the other one because the writers liked it more.

I think the reason I'm rolling my eyes here is because the whole premise of the discussion is treating narrative/competitive like a zero-sum game when it really shouldn't be. If the core rules and army books were easy to use, well-balanced, and made for interesting tournament gameplay that doesn't stop GW or players from making more whimsical additions, like the Crusade rules, that exist for casual narrative play. The existence of whimsical rules anywhere doesn't force competitive players to use them, the people who want Warhammer to be a game about math and efficiency can have their game about math and efficiency without them preventing other people from doing funny voices and having "unbalanced" narrative rules/missions that aren't tournament-legal.

tl;dr: "Balanced for tournament play" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, a game that is more "balanced for tournament play" is more balanced for everyone, and you shouldn't need a rulebook that says "you are allowed to do a funny voice and get a stat buff for doing so" to do a funny voice.

Tournament play is not the biggest problem with 40k. The biggest problem with 40k is GW's reliance on tournament data to make changes that impact everyone. If they see a 45%-55% win rate, they assume that jobs a good 'un, and they give it no further look. If they see something ticking over 55%, then they get their mighty pendulum swinging gloves on and go to work overbalancing things.

Essentially the emphasis on tournament play - especially in 9th - has meant that GW can abdicate their responsibility towards rules writing and game balance. I mean, if the win rates are correct, how could anything be wrong?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Tournament play is not the biggest problem with 40k. The biggest problem with 40k is GW's reliance on tournament data to make changes that impact everyone.

That's not necessarily the problem. The problem is GW itself in that:
1. As you've pointed out before, they're a pendulum swing of balance fixes. That would happen using tournament results or not.
2. GW can't even use their own statistics they collect correctly. This was proven with their overall mathhammer, stating "oh just new people bring Marines to tournaments", etc.

Reliance is fine, the problem is the people relying on it.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm going to be kind of reductionist here, but at a core level I don't think the things competitive players and casual players want are all that different. Sure, there are the "lol git gud n00b" folks and the "tournament players are scum and should face the guillotine" folks running about screaming on the Internet, but what reasonably people all want is to be able to put our armies on the table and have a reasonably close game.

We want this for different reasons, sure; competitive players are more concerned about how having a wider variety of lists on competitive tables makes for more interesting games and lowers the barrier to entry to give them more opponents, while casual players are more worried about having a robust framework to build narrative rules on and whether or not they can buy models they like without having to worry about whether they're "good", but the fact remains that the greater the divide between good and bad armies/models/options the worse the game is for everyone. In that sense I think that making the game more competitively balanced also makes it a better casual game; it is easier to make up narrative rules without worrying about what units are good or bad and how a narrative scenario that favors some units over others is going to send everything out of whack, and it is much easier for two new players to buy the models they like and have a good time when one army isn't going to steamroll over the other one because the writers liked it more.

I think the reason I'm rolling my eyes here is because the whole premise of the discussion is treating narrative/competitive like a zero-sum game when it really shouldn't be. If the core rules and army books were easy to use, well-balanced, and made for interesting tournament gameplay that doesn't stop GW or players from making more whimsical additions, like the Crusade rules, that exist for casual narrative play. The existence of whimsical rules anywhere doesn't force competitive players to use them, the people who want Warhammer to be a game about math and efficiency can have their game about math and efficiency without them preventing other people from doing funny voices and having "unbalanced" narrative rules/missions that aren't tournament-legal.

tl;dr: "Balanced for tournament play" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, a game that is more "balanced for tournament play" is more balanced for everyone, and you shouldn't need a rulebook that says "you are allowed to do a funny voice and get a stat buff for doing so" to do a funny voice.

I didn't mean 'balancing for tournament play' in the sense that there is balance specifically for tournament play that doesn't apply to casual play. I meant 'balancing with the intent of improving tournament play', because tournament players are more likely to find imbalances, and require a greater degree of balance to have a good experience. It's nice for casual play to not be hamstrung by having a bad army, but casual players can ignore the existence of one weird overperforming netlist and tournament players cannot.

The collateral damage along the way isn't funny voices. For one thing, it's flavorful options that may be detrimental to balance. Remember when Iron Warriors could take Basilisks, and Aspiring Champions had a two-page spread of upgrades to choose from? Remember when Tyranids could make up their own species, Guard could design their own regiments with combinations of traits, and Orks could assemble vehicles with weird and unique assortments of equipment? There are other reasons GW has gotten rid of that degree of freedom (ie, NMNR), but you'd never see that kind of unhinged flexibility in a modern 40K simply because it would be a nightmare to balance. There's also been a general trend towards reducing randomness in mechanics, and reducing diversity of missions and terrain setups, pushing towards homogenous and consistent play experiences. That's great for tournaments where you don't want a randomly-rolled mission to result in an unfair matchup; it's stale and repetitive for casual play.

And sure, maybe it isn't a totally zero-sum game. GW could make one Ork army list with the boring homogenous vehicles, and then an Open Play specific pack of zany upgrades to layer on top, along with a more diverse set of narrative missions, optional rules for random Deep Strike or whatever, and more opportunity to customize Your Dudes. But developer effort is a finite resource; time spent making that content is time not spent playtesting or fine-tuning points adjustments. Realistically, we get one approach to the game codified in the rules (ie Matched Play, since Open and Narrative are just Matched with fewer restrictions, not more content), and then add-on rules like Crusade can only do so much to add the missing flavor back in.

I 100% agree with you that good balance benefits everyone. But the desires and expectations of competitive players and narrative players are not perfectly aligned, and achieving better competitive play sometimes does come at the cost of things narrative players value.

Or to put it another way: If it isn't a zero-sum game, why should it be a competitive-focused core ruleset that narrative players can add on to? Why not a narrative-focused core ruleset that competitive players can selectively ignore or modify? There are design implications to how GW chooses to structure the game and accommodate the different demographics.

It's much easier to unbalance a balanced system than it is to balance an unbalanced one.