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 BryllCream wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Right but simply skim-reading a codex before a battle really doesn't give you any idea of how the codex actually works. I don't think the average wargamer could memorize a complete set of weapons, armour and wargear before a battle. Many xeno lists would simply be unreadable without some sort of crib sheet.

Most FW units won't require you to read an entire book, just have them point out the units to you. In the case of an FW list, most of it will still be very similar to a codex (i.e. if facing an Armoured Battlegroup, if you know how the IG FA and HS slots work, you know 90% of that list).

The only reason you should be completely blindsided is if their rules weren't provided or one didn't read them thoroughly enough, and that's no different than anything else in the game.

You really think a gamer is capable of remembering an entire army's wargear, weapons and special rules, and more importantly remembering which of the units has them? What the stats are for the IC in that unit, what weapons he has, what special rules he has...then the unit itself, then the entire army. That's a huge amount of information to be processed, at the same time as thinking about your own army, the terrain, etc.

Its not alot of information actually, nor is it in of itself, too much to remember for example, I've remembered an entire army's wargear, weapons, special rules, which units have what AND their points costs on top of that.
I've done that for my:
Tau
Orkz
Dark Angels
Tau again (new codex)
Wood Elves
Vampire Counts
and essentially the entirety of the LotR range.

If you want to play in big competitive events, FW or no FW, the onus is on you to be prepared for anything you could possibly face.

I want to derail this and mention objective placement at Adepticon. Why not have a rule that states if you place an objective within 12" of your table edge, then the next objective you place has to be more than 12" from your table edge and 12" away from another objective. That way all the objectives are not camped in the backfield.

How about instead of de-railing the thread with something so far off - topic, you create a thread asking about it?

I can understand Allan bringing the army to WGC as an experiment. Much like Stelek bringing his Bolterbacks to NOVA was an experiment. In both cases, I don't think that the results were what either expected and in both cases, I don't think the results were nearly as clear cut as were hoped to be able to make a definitive statement as to the efficacy or non-efficacy of the units chosen. So, I have a question to clarify the issue - @Allan - How easy were your matches?

I guess the point that I'm trying to get to is - is FW an Easy Button?

With what we've seen, FW, in the hands of highly experienced players, can win or come close to winning a tournament. But let's say you gave that list to a mid-tier player. What would they do with it? Would it be an Easy Button for them? Would they (could they) achieve the same results? Or would they still be a mid-tier player with an expensive army?

Part of the tournament scene and part of the challenge of tournaments isn't just the challenge on the table-top at the tournament. Part of it is list-building. Part of it is recognizing the overpowered and undercosted units - and deciding whether or not to use them.

Some people will choose to bring a less-than-optimal list to a tournament knowing that it will be a challenge for them to succeed. I'd actually say that MOST players attending a tournament bring less-than-optimal lists and know that it will be a challenge. Granted, this is often for different reasons. For some players, this may be because they're running a theme list. For many players, they may know what an optimal list looks like, but they can't afford the models to make it so.

Is there anything wrong with the players that are most driven to win buying and playing with the most expensive models? These are the ones that are also investing the most time into the game as well.

In professional sports, it takes money to buy the best equipment and hire the best trainers. How different is this from the Yankees having the biggest budget in baseball? Just as we've seen that having the biggest budget doesn't guarantee winning you the World Series every year, we've also seen that using the most overpowered, underpriced, and expensive models won't consistently win you tournaments.

This is my problem with FW in tournaments:
1) GW doesn't have the best track record for playtesting and balancing its rules and its armies - thus some armies are better and some are worse, some units are better and some are worse.
2) FW's record for developing balanced rules is even worse than GW's. While most of their models have overpriced crap rules, some, as have been described, are underpriced and overpowered.
3) FW is, by its own business model, more difficult to obtain than GW. Can you get FW? Yes, but the cost and difficulty to obtain FW products are higher than getting GW products (SoB notwithstanding - and again, as previously discussed, are not a competitive army or else we would see them ranking in the tourneys).
4) Consequently, if you have the time and money to invest in FW, you have access to some of the more powerful units in the game which other players do not have access to. This puts you at a competitive advantage.

The question before us is: is this competitive advantage greater than should be allowed in tournaments?

With the dominance of Codex: Necrons, I would say that the competitive advantage allowed by FW is within the same range of competitive advantage allowed by Codex: Necrons or by Heldrakes in an otherwise mediocre Chaos Codex. While I don't have any hard data to back this up, I feel pretty comfortable making that analogy.

So, to get to Allan's point of FW being allowed to make up for underperforming armies in 6th Ed., I think this is less of an issue of tournaments and more of an issue of how GW has screwed itself with competitive gamers.

A few years ago, the MtG competitive scene had degenerated to variations on a few highly competitive decks. Folks started losing interest in the game. Wizards recognized this and made changes in newer sets and has successfully broadened things again. The problem with GW is that, despite "GAMES" being in their company name, they are, and have admitted to being, a miniature company first and foremost, and a gaming company second as the rules follow the design of the miniatures and not vice versa. They have also shown disregard to and regularly disenfranchised their competitive player base.

So, we rely on TO's to help balance GW's crappy, flawed system. Should FW be allowed in tournaments just because GW says they are "Chapter Approved"? I don't think that TO's should allow FW just because GW says they should. We've trusted GW to give us a balanced ruleset and look where that's gotten us. I think the TO's need to use their own judgment and discretion to decide whether FW is allowed. It's up to them to decide how that makes their tournament look - if they allow FW, will their tourney be seen as particularly WAAC and possibly dissuade lower- and mid-tier players from attending, while attracting top-tier players (and ones that will bring more internet publicity to the tourney). Or if they don't allow or restrict FW, will they be looked down upon by the competitive gamers the way comp has gone?

/Rant off
tl;dr

Point is this:
Seems to me that this is a similar issue to the direction taken with comp. Should you have comp? Shouldn't you? Same set of questions we're dealing with today. How has removing comp affected tourneys? Answer that and maybe that might provide some insight on the FW question.

 Death By Monkeys wrote:
With what we've seen, FW, in the hands of highly experienced players, can win or come close to winning a tournament.

Of course we've also seen that codex units, in the hands of highly experienced players, can win or come close to winning a tournament. FW doing the same is only a problem if you have an absurd double standard where FW rules are only acceptable as long as nobody would ever use them competitively.

3) FW is, by its own business model, more difficult to obtain than GW. Can you get FW? Yes, but the cost and difficulty to obtain FW products are higher than getting GW products (SoB notwithstanding - and again, as previously discussed, are not a competitive army or else we would see them ranking in the tourneys).

Difficulty is nonexistent. This is 2013, online shopping is part of life and buying from FW is no more difficult than ordering a book from amazon.com.

4) Consequently, if you have the time and money to invest in FW, you have access to some of the more powerful units in the game which other players do not have access to. This puts you at a competitive advantage.

The same is true for codex units. It's still "pay to win" when you have $80 Riptides, $100+ wraith-things, etc. If you're going to ban FW units over cost issues then you also need to start banning the most expensive codex kits and playing events at lower (and cheaper) point levels. Otherwise you aren't really taking the cost problem seriously.

Seems to me that this is a similar issue to the direction taken with comp. Should you have comp? Shouldn't you? Same set of questions we're dealing with today. How has removing comp affected tourneys? Answer that and maybe that might provide some insight on the FW question.

That's a very good comparison. The biggest problems with comp in 5th edition, outside of stubborn "we're the most hardcore competitive players ever" hatred of the entire concept, was bad comp. Instead of legitimate efforts at improving game balance we saw event after event with comp systems that were little more than an attempt by certain TOs to force people to play the game the way it "should" be played. And it was hated for good reason.

Meanwhile we see the same thing with FW bans. Instead of addressing the real problems of GW's unbelievable idiocy with the artillery and skyfire/interceptor rules in 6th edition we get event after event with comp systems involving blanket FW bans just to get rid of a few problem units. You could almost entirely fix the FW problem with two simple changes:

1) Replace the 6th edition artillery rules with the 5th edition rules (applied to all codex artillery units as well).

2) Replace the interceptor USR on all FW units with "whenever this unit shoots you may choose to give it skyfire until the end of the phase" like the Tau skyfire upgrade.

But that would be comp, and we can't have that...

That would not be comp it would be changing the rules of the game. If you blanket change those rules because you on't like them why not change, random charge distance, or the flyer rules...at which point why not rewrite the game. That also fixes some units which are not broken. Easier to just say...isn't bring these 5 units (or whatever the number) and call it a day, instead of saying "here let me hit your favorite unit with a nerf bat several times...ok now it's allowed."

 Death By Monkeys wrote:

(SoB notwithstanding - and again, as previously discussed, are not a competitive army or else we would see them ranking in the tourneys).

That's a nice bit of handwaving. The lack of Sisters at a tournament may well have everything to do with their availability, and nothing to do with their power level.

unless your argument extends back to the witch hunter days of that book it holds no water. I see no less sisters armies now then I did then. I'm not saying power level is the reason though (although were they the best army in the game I'm sure we'd at least see "counts as" sisters), they have just never been a super common army.

 Redbeard wrote:

 Death By Monkeys wrote:

(SoB notwithstanding - and again, as previously discussed, are not a competitive army or else we would see them ranking in the tourneys).

That's a nice bit of handwaving. The lack of Sisters at a tournament may well have everything to do with their availability, and nothing to do with their power level.

Handwaving, nothing. Doing a quick eBay search, I found both issues of White Dwarf with the SoB rules for under $2.00 each. If SoB were actually competitive, you'd see those going for a lot higher prices.

 Death By Monkeys wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:

 Death By Monkeys wrote:

(SoB notwithstanding - and again, as previously discussed, are not a competitive army or else we would see them ranking in the tourneys).

That's a nice bit of handwaving. The lack of Sisters at a tournament may well have everything to do with their availability, and nothing to do with their power level.

Handwaving, nothing. Doing a quick eBay search, I found both issues of White Dwarf with the SoB rules for under $2.00 each. If SoB were actually competitive, you'd see those going for a lot higher prices.

Again, I disagree. It's not hard to find their rules if you actually look, so eBay prices for the rules seems like a poor choice of tools for analysis. Not to mention, having the rules doesn't mean you have the models. I can think of a lot of armies that would benefit from a power-armoured scoring blob and an HQ who is considerably underpriced and able to ressurect herself. As allies for any imperial force, they've got value, and yet we don't see them in that role either. That doesn't tell me they're not competitive, it tells me they're not easily available.

With a cost approaching a point per dollar, they're one of the most expensive armies you could possibly field. That's why we don't see them. It has very little to do with how good they are.

Not saying they don't have value, but they are battle bros with almost no armies which down grades some of what would be nice with them, throw on top of that those T3 PA bodies lack and they shall know no fear, and have no way to get it. Maybe the value is not all that high combined with their availability and cost. But given how much Counts as takes place in this game, if they were great people would find cheaper alternate models.

 Redbeard wrote:


Again, I disagree. It's not hard to find their rules if you actually look, so eBay prices for the rules seems like a poor choice of tools for analysis. Not to mention, having the rules doesn't mean you have the models. I can think of a lot of armies that would benefit from a power-armoured scoring blob and an HQ who is considerably underpriced and able to ressurect herself. As allies for any imperial force, they've got value, and yet we don't see them in that role either. That doesn't tell me they're not competitive, it tells me they're not easily available.

With a cost approaching a point per dollar, they're one of the most expensive armies you could possibly field. That's why we don't see them. It has very little to do with how good they are.

A couple points to this:
1) While it's true that finding a PDF of the SoB rules isn't difficult, there are enough TOs that require you to have the books (so as not to abuse FW) that I think that if SoB were as powerful as you're claiming to be then we would see higher prices on the WDs.
2) There are plenty enough SoB models out there for folks to build an effective army. To paraphrase Peregrine above - this is 2013 and we have the Internet. It's not that difficult to get ahold of stuff, even if it is OOP. I used to have a 2000 point Adeptus Arbites army that I used as SM Scouts and Bike Scouts. And that was before the Necromunda Enforcers were out. If folks want to build an army, they will do it. Seriously, if SoBs were that powerful, you'd have folks converting them from SM power armor and female heads. But they're not, so you don't see them in play.

 Peregrine wrote:
Difficulty is nonexistent. This is 2013, online shopping is part of life and buying from FW is no more difficult than ordering a book from amazon.com.

Spoken like someone who has never actually tried to order anything from FW. They're notorious for canceling, rejecting, delaying, or simply screwing up orders.

To be fair Peregrine has probably placed many orders with FW. But as one of those people who finds it impossible to order from FW I support the gist of Danny's post above.

 Danny Internets wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Difficulty is nonexistent. This is 2013, online shopping is part of life and buying from FW is no more difficult than ordering a book from amazon.com.

Spoken like someone who has never actually tried to order anything from FW. They're notorious for canceling, rejecting, delaying, or simply screwing up orders.

I order from FW 3-4 times a year for the past two years and NEVER had any problems with cancelled, rejected, delaying or screwing up order. Even the huge orders always arrived with everything accounted for.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Death By Monkeys wrote:
Seems to me that this is a similar issue to the direction taken with comp. Should you have comp? Shouldn't you? Same set of questions we're dealing with today. How has removing comp affected tourneys? Answer that and maybe that might provide some insight on the FW question.

That's a very good comparison. The biggest problems with comp in 5th edition, outside of stubborn "we're the most hardcore competitive players ever" hatred of the entire concept, was bad comp. Instead of legitimate efforts at improving game balance we saw event after event with comp systems that were little more than an attempt by certain TOs to force people to play the game the way it "should" be played. And it was hated for good reason.

Meanwhile we see the same thing with FW bans. Instead of addressing the real problems of GW's unbelievable idiocy with the artillery and skyfire/interceptor rules in 6th edition we get event after event with comp systems involving blanket FW bans just to get rid of a few problem units. You could almost entirely fix the FW problem with two simple changes:

1) Replace the 6th edition artillery rules with the 5th edition rules (applied to all codex artillery units as well).

2) Replace the interceptor USR on all FW units with "whenever this unit shoots you may choose to give it skyfire until the end of the phase" like the Tau skyfire upgrade.

But that would be comp, and we can't have that...

As someone who is not deathly opposed to reasonable comp, something like this would likely also be acceptable to me. Basically, fixing anything that is out of whack with FW due to edition change, as artillery clearly is and we're what, a year out now? But then, I'm open to almost any fix to try seeing more FW . Any fix except that of doing nothing, and just allowing it all as-is, consequences be damned.

It's possible this will bring out the comp haters to shout down the above statement, but again I just don't get that line-in-the-sand mentality. If something is broken, and it's an easy fix, you fix it. Whether that's doing the broader things (which I know Peregrine doesn't like) such as 0-1 for each FW selection, a limited ban / restricted list, or adjusting artillery rules to bring them in line with 6th ed. Any of that works for me... take your pick

This is why i like hulk and he speaks from personal experiance.

 Hulksmash wrote:
. I'll happily punch people in the junk with FW if it's allowed. I just don't think it's the best thing for the tournament community at large as a universal blanket acceptance.

I think this statement was missed by a number of people and i think it says alot. I think it can be generalized that if a highly competitive player has an army he can enhance even more with the use of FW units hes going to do it. Does this make for a better tournament experiance...nope not IMHO.

GW includes enough broken units in the game that i dont see the need to add more.

I think we are well past the idea that Forgeworld is "necessary" to balance out other armies.

The above are the two main arguments i see in defending FW inclusion Tournaments.

Am I the only one who has never had a major issue with an order from FW other than the occasional miscast? Between probably a dozen orders (and more money than I care to think about) and over many years, I've never had an order take more than I think 10 days to arrive (in fact I had one order arrive on my doorstep in 42 hours) and never had an order cancelled or missing any items or anything like that.

 Hulksmash wrote:
To be fair Peregrine has probably placed many orders with FW. But as one of those people who finds it impossible to order from FW I support the gist of Danny's post above.

I agree that Peregrine has probably ordered from FW plenty. However I am with Hulk and Danny on this point, I have had 3 orders with FW go wrong. One was canceled for seemingly no reason, another I waited over 2 months for Inquisition Rhino Doors and hatches, and the third time I got sent half a Contemptor, torso but no leg joints, and had to wait another 2 months for the replacement. Luckily I have all the parts for my pre-heresy army now so I don't foresee the need to order much more from FW, I hope. It is truly a pain to do so.

As a slight counter point to Peregrine though, this is the day and age of internet retail, so you'd think ordering from FW wouldn't be nearly the hassle that it is. They could do a much better job.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Am I the only one who has never had a major issue with an order from FW other than the occasional miscast? Between probably a dozen orders (and more money than I care to think about) and over many years, I've never had an order take more than I think 10 days to arrive (in fact I had one order arrive on my doorstep in 42 hours) and never had an order cancelled or missing any items or anything like that.

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

I have very few issues ordering from Forge World and their customer support staff are awesome.

zedsdead wrote:This is why i like hulk and he speaks from personal experiance.

 Hulksmash wrote:
. I'll happily punch people in the junk with FW if it's allowed. I just don't think it's the best thing for the tournament community at large as a universal blanket acceptance.

I think this statement was missed by a number of people and i think it says alot. I think it can be generalized that if a highly competitive player has an army he can enhance even more with the use of FW units hes going to do it. Does this make for a better tournament experiance...nope not IMHO.

But it doesn't make it a worse experience either. Just a different one. And for every middle-of-the-roader who gets crushed by someone else's FW army, there's another who got crushed by GW units, and another who's happy to be allowed to play with his non-broken FW models.

GW includes enough broken units in the game that i dont see the need to add more.

I think we are well past the idea that Forgeworld is "necessary" to balance out other armies.

The above are the two main arguments i see in defending FW inclusion Tournaments.

You're not paying attention then. Neither of the above two are the main arguments for including FW in tournament, in fact, more of the pro-FW camp will also agree that FW is not necessary to balance existing armies. You're setting up a strawman here. The main argument for including FW is that people paid for models and want to be allowed to play with them, like the rules for those models say they can.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Am I the only one who has never had a major issue with an order from FW other than the occasional miscast? Between probably a dozen orders (and more money than I care to think about) and over many years, I've never had an order take more than I think 10 days to arrive (in fact I had one order arrive on my doorstep in 42 hours) and never had an order cancelled or missing any items or anything like that.

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

If you order enough, the 2-day shipping is free. I never order FW unless I hit that number, usually going in with others in my gaming group to do so.

Dozer Blades wrote:I have very few issues ordering from Forge World and their customer support staff are awesome.

I've had some CC issues that have been quickly resolved by calling my CC customer support. I've had some issues with defective models, which have always been replaced, no questions asked, by their customer support people. I don't think it's nearly as difficult to get FW models as people are making it out to be.

 Redbeard wrote:

zedsdead wrote:This is why i like hulk and he speaks from personal experiance.

 Hulksmash wrote:
. I'll happily punch people in the junk with FW if it's allowed. I just don't think it's the best thing for the tournament community at large as a universal blanket acceptance.

I think this statement was missed by a number of people and i think it says alot. I think it can be generalized that if a highly competitive player has an army he can enhance even more with the use of FW units hes going to do it. Does this make for a better tournament experiance...nope not IMHO.

But it doesn't make it a worse experience either. Just a different one. And for every middle-of-the-roader who gets crushed by someone else's FW army, there's another who got crushed by GW units, and another who's happy to be allowed to play with his non-broken FW models.

GW includes enough broken units in the game that i dont see the need to add more.

I think we are well past the idea that Forgeworld is "necessary" to balance out other armies.

The above are the two main arguments i see in defending FW inclusion Tournaments.

You're not paying attention then. Neither of the above two are the main arguments for including FW in tournament, in fact, more of the pro-FW camp will also agree that FW is not necessary to balance existing armies. You're setting up a strawman here. The main argument for including FW is that people paid for models and want to be allowed to play with them, like the rules for those models say they can.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Am I the only one who has never had a major issue with an order from FW other than the occasional miscast? Between probably a dozen orders (and more money than I care to think about) and over many years, I've never had an order take more than I think 10 days to arrive (in fact I had one order arrive on my doorstep in 42 hours) and never had an order cancelled or missing any items or anything like that.

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

If you order enough, the 2-day shipping is free. I never order FW unless I hit that number, usually going in with others in my gaming group to do so.

Dozer Blades wrote:I have very few issues ordering from Forge World and their customer support staff are awesome.

I've had some CC issues that have been quickly resolved by calling my CC customer support. I've had some issues with defective models, which have always been replaced, no questions asked, by their customer support people. I don't think it's nearly as difficult to get FW models as people are making it out to be.

1. I didn't know that, it's good to know.

2. He made it seem like he received just a regular old FW order in 48 hours because FW is so awesome.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

The order was large enough to qualify for free express shipping

But even that notwithstanding, the longest I ever had anything take was 10 days, almost everything is a week, never had an issue with them, and I've been ordering from them since 2006.

 Vaktathi wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

The order was large enough to qualify for free express shipping

But even that notwithstanding, the longest I ever had anything take was 10 days, almost everything is a week, never had an issue with them.

To be fair, and open, my orders that took longer than 10 days were all supply side problems with FW not actual shipping delays. So when they had the actual items I ordered it took about 10 days. It is the supply side problems that I have an issue with, should have been more clear in my OP.

Overwatch, if you do decide to order more FW, the DCMs tend to organize group orders to get to that free shipping level. I'm just about to get my part of it from whalemusic360, probably Friday. So that may help, too

(Same goes for Hulksmash)

Doesn't excuse all the problems etc etc, but does help get around them and they seem to be happy to try to fix problems when they arise. It's been a good experience for me so far!

@Rtides

Yeah, once in a while our local group gets together and puts in an order. It's how I get my FW books. We do it about once a year. Model wise I could do the same thing but I rarely feel like waiting for those events.

 RiTides wrote:
Overwatch, if you do decide to order more FW, the DCMs tend to organize group orders to get to that free shipping level. I'm just about to get my part of it from whalemusic360, probably Friday. So that may help, too

(Same goes for Hulksmash)

Doesn't excuse all the problems etc etc, but does help get around them and they seem to be happy to try to fix problems when they arise. It's been a good experience for me so far!

Well it seems from this thread that I may need to invest in some Sabre Platforms so I will keep that in mind. In all seriousness though I may hop on for some more HH stuff, I am converting my own Pre-Heresy Salamander Terminators from 3rd party bits companies, beads, and green stuff but I still need 10 or so MkIII and MkIV marines to load out with Special and Heavy weapons to gain versatility. I plan to use it as a replacement for my old Salamanders I sold and to use with the new SM codex whenever it comes out.

/Tangent, sorry.

 Redbeard wrote:

zedsdead wrote:This is why i like hulk and he speaks from personal experiance.

 Hulksmash wrote:
. I'll happily punch people in the junk with FW if it's allowed. I just don't think it's the best thing for the tournament community at large as a universal blanket acceptance.

I think this statement was missed by a number of people and i think it says alot. I think it can be generalized that if a highly competitive player has an army he can enhance even more with the use of FW units hes going to do it. Does this make for a better tournament experiance...nope not IMHO.

But it doesn't make it a worse experience either. Just a different one. And for every middle-of-the-roader who gets crushed by someone else's FW army, there's another who got crushed by GW units, and another who's happy to be allowed to play with his non-broken FW models.

Things get tricky for me here as a TO. I've not had anyone sign up for NOVA just because we have premier events in our offering that permit FW units. I have had people, MANY people, most of whom are NOT hardcore competitors, who said they would not come if we legalized it in the GT. MOST of our attendees are much more interested in fun games and decent looking armies (primarily b/c of the bracketing system, and the heavy weighting of appearance score on best overall), and these are the guys who are often uninterested in FW being there. If I've got a situation where the GT (which is presented as being fair and balanced) attracts many more people w/out FW than with ... and FW itself is not attracting more players by being legalized in some events ... and it is scaring away players who aren't even hardcore or hyper competitive in the GT setting ... what's the incentive when the OTHER things you acknowledge would still be true (average and casual gamers getting their teeth kicked in by armies buffed beyond even their normal expectations by undercosted, terrifyingly good FW units)?

Part of it also is opinion, as usual. Night scythes, Heldrakes, etc., are NOT overpowered, even a little bit (you see, this is my opinion, but I've got just as much anecdotal and personal evidence to back it up as anyone else has for their own view, making them all equally valid). These codex "bullies" are solid units, and every unit has internally powerful units that are more obvious takes than others within the dex, but they aren't helter skelter crushing everything. People are still winning or placing very highly at GT's with everything from Zoanthropes to Meganobz. The reality is good players win GT's regardless of what's legal or not, because they're not only GOOD, they're happy to spam whatever works best. FW gives them things that are better for them IF they play IG or are willing to sacrifice their army preference to shoehorn in IG via allies. Hulksmash is your simple example (I'm another) ... he's happy to punch people in the jimmy with WHATEVER you give him, and if you give him IG ... he's immediately going to take the nasty FW IG stuff, without any hesitation; this should tell you a lot about whether it's broken compared to the various other GW codex units. I don't really care about these guys directly. I care about the people they are curb-stomping *even worse* ... and I care about the people who would otherwise be playing fun games against their peers, but start curbstomping them with the aforementioned units.

This coming paragraph is just about MY event, to help share why we have a 50/50 offering, and why part of that 50/50 isn't the GT: we offer a variety of events all with different presentations and expectations. The GT is "choose your own adventure" while expecting things to be fair, and straightforward. You're going to get a premier prize, recognition, honor, acclaim, etc., whether you win Best Overall based on 50% appearance score, or Battle Master purely off Margin of Victory BP, or Tournament Champ w/ W-L. Adding FW units to this event doesn't make a lot of sense, because mass opinion, feedback (we presented it in our initial primer as an option, and got overwhelming feedback on the FW question), and the reality of the imbalances ADDED (not simply changed, it makes the game LESS balanced, not just imbalanced in a different way) made for its inclusion in the "fair and choose your own adventure" styled GT unreasonable.

BUT we've allowed even Horus Heresy lists in our DC Narrative (which receives the most organizer attention in terms of mission design, testing, etc.). When I get into a situation where the various FW lovers in this thread and elsewhere are actually coming out and showing interest in events like the Narrative (which is a GT in its own right attendance wise) where companies like Secret Weapon Miniatures design themed bases JUST for those players / that event, and all FW is legal, and the missions are balanced but still rocking fun, and tons of people participate ... I'll start to have to think more seriously about FW in the main event. But as long as there already is a wide presentation, and the vast majority of attendees and prospective attendees are voting via e-mail and their wallet for no FW in the GT ... well, it all comes back to different strokes for different folks, and each organizer offering something different.

What I WOULD suggest, is the big FW fans show up to the big FW-legal events ... the more of you there are actually coming out, the more impetus TO's will have to push in that direction. Anyone can post a preference on a forum, but honestly most of us are all about our attendees and giving them the best experience possible ... not foisting our own personal opinions on people from the TO's pulpit. We frankly form our opinions BASED on our attendees' opinions as a result. (And again, it's all about opinion in this discussion).

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:

How do you live in the US and have a FW order arrive in 42 hours? Did you pay for overnight?

The order was large enough to qualify for free express shipping

But even that notwithstanding, the longest I ever had anything take was 10 days, almost everything is a week, never had an issue with them.

To be fair, and open, my orders that took longer than 10 days were all supply side problems with FW not actual shipping delays. So when they had the actual items I ordered it took about 10 days. It is the supply side problems that I have an issue with, should have been more clear in my OP.

Ah, that would be different, I don't think I've ever ordered anything they were having production issues with. I think of late they've taken to just removing said kits from sale until the issues are fixed when they arise (as they have with one of the DKoK Infantry Squads currently) to address that issue.

While I repeatedly see some people refer to GW and FW as though they're interchangeable, nothing could be farther from the truth for your FLGS. Having an account with GW means nothing to FW. No FLGS carries FW because they'd pay full retail for it. This means a few things:

1. If a player wants to know what a new Eldar or Tau unit does they can look on the shelf or at a store copy. If that player wants to know what a hades breaching drill does, they're out of luck unless they order the book.
2.If the player lives in an area with a community of 20+ players, there's a pretty good chance of finding a practice game against someone with a 2000 pt. army from any core codex. If looking to practice against a particular build from a codex army, it is easy to proxy with easily accessible rules. The same can't be said for FW armies and units.
3. Your FLGS has no reason to encourage/support FW. Most tournaments are run/supported by local game stores since GW doesn't support them anymore. Why encourage players to spend their finite cash on a company that will have no partnership with you? That DKOK army might as well be GI Joe proxies for all the good it did any FLGS.

If GW wants FW to be a core part of the game, they should treat it as such on their website and in the stores they partner with. I allow FW in some our tournaments, but I will continue to treat it as outside the core ruleset as long as GW does.