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A flgs is having a tournament soon. But they have banned FW outright. Apparently the player base has a consensus that they don't want FW allowed. Why do you think that is? My only thought is that flyer army with Dante and malific lord spam. Other than that I can't think of anything. But the flyer army is moot after CA since they can't get obsec. Also this tournament has a Max of 1 on nonstandard attachment such as supreme command, vanguard, etc.

I'm not sure why some people ban FW from tournaments either. Maybe it's because some people aren't as wary of FW units and don't like having models they've never heard of sprung on them all of a sudden. Other than that I have no idea.

 chimeara wrote:
A flgs is having a tournament soon. But they have banned FW outright. Apparently the player base has a consensus that they don't want FW allowed. Why do you think that is? My only thought is that flyer army with Dante and malific lord spam. Other than that I can't think of anything. But the flyer army is moot after CA since they can't get obsec. Also this tournament has a Max of 1 on nonstandard attachment such as supreme command, vanguard, etc.

Most of it is tradition and inertia, people just seem to think FW=Broken. FW stuff has never really been any less unbalanced than anything else (which is not to say they haven't had overpowered units, just not any more or worse than the main studio, usually FW units have awful rules), especially in the last six or seven years, when allowed in Tournaments it certainly has never dominated the scene really.

A lot of it comes from someone bringing something from FW or claiming it's from FW, not having the appropriate rules or not playing it right or otherwise just making them up, something usually gets painted as being broken (especially when the money aspect comes into play which then gets associated as "pay2win"), and then FW stuff is tainted forever. People also often think FW = ALL TITANS ALL THE TIME, which, if they knew the rules for such, is certainly not true (not to mention that for 6th and 7th, the Titan rules were the main GW Studio's baby).

Some if it is a desire to reduce the number of rules sources, but given the last several editions of GW's business model, it doesn't really make sense.

With Chapter Approved nerf to Malefic Lords theres no reason to ban FW really.

 Vaktathi wrote:
FW stuff has never really been any less unbalanced than anything else (which is not to say they haven't had overpowered units, just not any more or worse than the main studio, usually FW units have awful rules), especially in the last six or seven years, when allowed in Tournaments it certainly has never dominated the scene really.

I can't speak for recent editions, but in 3/4e, just about every FW selection for Guard was a terrible waste of points.

M.

There's a long-standing dislike of FW models in a competitive setting in 40k, this is much older than Malefic Lords or anything else that's currently a problem. I think it's partly that you can't buy FW models at your LGS, partly that they're expensive and require more of the hobbyist to build than most kits.

Another factor is that lots of people only see the best and most broken FW models played, and get the impression that FW models are generally a lot more broken and powerful than normal GW ones. While not necessarily true, it's easy to see how you could get that impression after being stomped by some players with much more money and hobby experience than you using the best models money can buy, FW or not.

Also, the rules aren't as widely available or known, and the faction imbalance numbers wise is even worse if you include FW.

In the end, it's another restriction you can put in a tournament to mix it up. Another tournament may not allow named characters, a third allows no flyers or lords of war. TOs aren't required to let you play everything every time.

My area doesn't allow forgeworld for a few reasons.

1. The store doesn't sell it, so it doesn't benefit them to advertise it by allowing it in their tournaments.

2. The models are significantly more expensive and the playerbase in the area doesn't want to feel like they need to spend more money to be competitive.

3. The new rules means that their's more to be familiar with and be aware of when designing your list.

4. They don't add enough to the tournament experience to offset the three costs above.

FW bans are TFG behavior. They come in three categories:

1) People who will accept any level of broken rules as long as it has the magic "codex" word on it, but if any FW unit is ever overpowered it's an excuse for a blanket ban on the whole category. This is usually accompanied by various lies about how FW is a "separate company" or "requires permission" or whatever.

2) Bad tournament players who are afraid of allowing FW units to change the meta and create lists they aren't prepared to beat. Why risk your chances of winning when you can just ban the potential threat? Why spend time playtesting against FW units/lists and trying to figure out how to beat them if you don't have to? These players are usually nowhere near as skilled as they want to believe, but the whole "big fish in a small pond" thing often feeds their ego.

3) TFG store owners (and GW employees) who ban anything they can't personally profit from. They can't sell FW kits, they don't allow them. Who cares about the good of the community, it's all about their personal profit numbers.

None of these reasons are acceptable, and none deserve any respect or sympathy.

Based on conversation I've had in the past with them about it, it seems like they ban it because"if I don't have it you can't use it" mentality. Lots of people at this shop can't afford the stuff so they feel they are at a disadvantage because they don't have the cool shiney thing from FW. They don't realize that the cool shiney things cost more but aren't much if at all better than the normal stuff. They just have more flavor.

The more I think about it, the more I realize thast most of warhammer 40k players... suck. Myself included.

Yeah, let me explain: To be a profesional gamer, people need to spend hours, and hours, and hours, and hours. Heck, even to enter a mid-tier ranking in some FPS, Moba, or something, like gold, etc... you need to play a LOT.

Other example, the number of hours a runner needs to put to end in the first third or the first half of a medium-sized marathon? Is insane.
And then you see all those Warhammer40k players, that play 1 game a week if not less, and the very idea that they can be actually bad at the game is unthinkable to them, and that many things that they thing are broken, is just that they don't know how to actually play the strenghts of their armies... and this applies to all kinds of wargames, really.

I have always been a opponent to the "git gud" mentality. But the more I go to tournaments, FLGS, clubs, and the more people I meet in person that play wargames, the more I see the CAAC people that just don't want to recognize that they just suck at the game, and not because they can't be better, is just that they don't play enough to become good.

Oh my god... I'm becoming... Peregrine?

 chimeara wrote:
Based on conversation I've had in the past with them about it, it seems like they ban it because"if I don't have it you can't use it" mentality. Lots of people at this shop can't afford the stuff so they feel they are at a disadvantage because they don't have the cool shiney thing from FW. They don't realize that the cool shiney things cost more but aren't much if at all better than the normal stuff. They just have more flavor.

At tournaments specifically the only things you'll see are the broken bits. Why bother bringing something balanced when you can bring something broken in half is one of the central tenets of all tournaments, and no matter how well balanced in general the outliers will always be the things present in a tournament setting. This increases the cost of competition for very little gain tactically, and keeping costs down is important to keep people interested in what's an expensive hobby. This is especially disheartening for new players who don't even know what forge world is until they get stomped by it, a group that usually makes up about a quarter of our monthly eight edition tournaments.

That said I think forgeworld is usually cool and flavorful, but it adds another monetary cost to the tournament scene that people in the area aren't prepared to pay. Almost anyone will gladly play against forgeworld in a casual game.

Wow, that's a perspective shift....mind blown.

Lord Ruby34 wrote:
At tournaments specifically the only things you'll see are the broken bits. Why bother bringing something balanced when you can bring something broken in half is one of the central tenets of all tournaments, and no matter how well balanced in general the outliers will always be the things present in a tournament setting. This increases the cost of competition for very little gain tactically, and keeping costs down is important to keep people interested in what's an expensive hobby.

Those same arguments apply to banning tons of codex rules too. Why allow SoB to exist at all? It increases the cost of competition for very little gain. If keeping costs down is legitimately a priority then we would see a lot more bans, but we don't.

This is especially disheartening for new players who don't even know what forge world is until they get stomped by it, a group that usually makes up about a quarter of our monthly eight edition tournaments.

Wait, I thought all you see in tournaments is the broken bits. Newbies don't bring nothing but the broken bits, because they don't know what the broken bits are yet. You can't simultaneously claim that people are playing nothing but the most broken lists, and people are such hopeless newbies that they don't even know that FW rules exist. And, honestly, a person who is such a newbie that they don't know FW exists is going to get seal-clubbed every game no matter what they're facing. If it isn't a FW unit it's "wait, I didn't know that Tyranids even existed!!!!!" or "WTF, Ultramarines get a primarch!?!?!?".

That said I think forgeworld is usually cool and flavorful, but it adds another monetary cost to the tournament scene that people in the area aren't prepared to pay. Almost anyone will gladly play against forgeworld in a casual game.

IOW, it's all about tournament players being afraid to lose. If you'll play against FW in a casual game, where enjoyment of the experience is the only thing to gain, but not in a tournament game then it's a clear concession that your sole reason is that you don't want to allow anything that might hurt your chances of winning. And I believe we have an acronym for the sort of person who would ban their opponent's army just to improve their own chances of winning...

 Vallhund wrote:
I'm not sure why some people ban FW from tournaments either. Maybe it's because some people aren't as wary of FW units and don't like having models they've never heard of sprung on them all of a sudden. Other than that I have no idea.

90% of the time you see something FW, it's something that's pretty nuts or being abused in most areas. Think about how many IG players you see bringing earthshaker carriages and searchlights right now. Now check how many of them are taking something like Stygies Vanquishers or a Thunderer. This leads to a bit of confirmation bias. "The only time I saw a FW unit it was OP as all get out, therefore all FW is OP." In addition, most people won't bother buying or converting suboptimal units. After all its a game and players want to win. Throw in FW's high cost and it means you're usually not going to see much but the best of the best from all but the most committed of hobbyist.

You also have a nasty tendency for people to not buy the books for FW units, which means there's no way to see what the rules for these units are. You then have to take the opponent's word for it. This doesn't sound like a big deal but this can be a common issue, both intentionally and accidentally. As much as I love programs like Battlescribe, they cause a massive amount of issues with people not reading their rules. Not just for FW, but even just general codexes too. I cannot count the amount of times I've had to correct new players on their own armies, armies I don't even play, because they only looked at the rules on battlescribe and haven't hardly even cracked open their codex. Tau players who never realized their jump suits fly because Battlescribe doesn't do keywords, Guard players not knowing their orders because they didn't see it on the battlescribe roster, tyranid players not knowing psychic abilities because it doesn't show up directly under the main statline. It's a bit ridiculous, and naturally with FW's books costing so much this makes it even more rare someone actually has their forgeworld book on them than someone just bringing their standard codex.

Back in the day, when codexes were a lot cheaper and a person could reasonably be expected to own all of them, the other primary reason that people hated FW was there was no way to "know" what this kind of stuff did before you saw it across from you. There were a good amount of tourney players who bought literally every codex that came out. After all they were $30 and only came out every few months, with less factions in existence to book. Tournament players could sit down with every codex and research it so they could know what they were in for at tournaments. This is back in say 5th, where formations didn't exist, supplements didn't exist, superheavies were these mystical things you only ever saw at 3,000pts, and in general you could pick any book up off the shelf and flip through it, as books weren't shrink wrapped back then, at least in my area. This meant that if say the local IG player was being a bit shady, your average ork player could just walk over to the shelf, pick an IG codex up off the rack, and call him out on it. But with FW, there are no books on the shelves, and with some people refusing to buy the books (or even more sketchy, refusing to let you check theirs) this leads to a lot of distrust. And unless you were absolutely insane, no person was going to buy all of forgeworld's book catalogue, some of which were two or 3 editions old and over $50 a pop, just in the off chance someone brought a weird looking dreadnaught. I think this honestly is one of the biggest factors in why there was so much FW hate and why it has carried on so long.

Finally, there has been a long standing viewpoint that Forgeworld is not "official". It doesn't matter that they're a licensed branch of GW, that they clearly have rights to the property, that their rules are clearly meant to tie into the game, even the massive "APPROVED FOR 40K" Stamp some units had, none of it mattered. There were people who would argue day in and day out that these were not official models, these were not official rules, and that you may as well have walked into the store with a completely homebrewed army of green dollar store army men. It got a bit ridiculous tail end of 5th through 6th and 7th, used to be just mentioning FW could get a thread nuked by mods. Obviously some of these players are still around and as older players go on to take over groups and raise new communities, it only makes sense that their viewpoints will be passed down and reinforced among newer players. And since FW is so rare, and these communities naturally forbid FW in the first place, it means that these new players will never be exposed to FW models in a favorable light, leaving little chance for their opinion to be changed.

 Peregrine wrote:

Those same arguments apply to banning tons of codex rules too. Why allow SoB to exist at all? It increases the cost of competition for very little gain. If keeping costs down is legitimately a priority then we would see a lot more bans, but we don't.

Wait, I thought all you see in tournaments is the broken bits. Newbies don't bring nothing but the broken bits, because they don't know what the broken bits are yet. You can't simultaneously claim that people are playing nothing but the most broken lists, and people are such hopeless newbies that they don't even know that FW rules exist. And, honestly, a person who is such a newbie that they don't know FW exists is going to get seal-clubbed every game no matter what they're facing. If it isn't a FW unit it's "wait, I didn't know that Tyranids even existed!!!!!" or "WTF, Ultramarines get a primarch!?!?!?".

IOW, it's all about tournament players being afraid to lose. If you'll play against FW in a casual game, where enjoyment of the experience is the only thing to gain, but not in a tournament game then it's a clear concession that your sole reason is that you don't want to allow anything that might hurt your chances of winning. And I believe we have an acronym for the sort of person who would ban their opponent's army just to improve their own chances of winning...

You're making your points in a rather inflammatory way, you realize? You're also ascribing motivations to me, personally, that I've stated about my store, not myself. While I don't have the money to purchase Forgeworld I'd be fine playing against it if I went to a large tournament. It's just something that my store doesn't allow, for all the reasons I stated.

To address your points.

1. It doesn't increase the cost unless you play Sisters of Battle. If adding Forge World makes every army that uses it even 5% better than to adequately compete then if you want to win you should include it in your army, and the cost increase will be large for the players in our area, none of whom own FW models because they aren't allowed in tournaments in our area.

2. Again, this isn't something that comes up in our area. I might have been a little hyperbolic earlier when I said that they don't know forgeworld existed, but most of them have never seen a forgeworld model in person. I've only seen three and I've been playing for three years or so. And yes, new players tend to lose. Ideally they lose in ways that make them want to keep coming back to the hobby and the store specifically, rather than in ways that are either out or their price range or send them to buy models outside the store, although the last bit is hard to avoid with Ebay and similar websites in existence.

3. My own tournament performance has been middling at best lately. If I was afraid to lose I wouldn't attend. The reasons are primarily economic. I could just as easily say that people who won't play in tournaments that don't use forgeworld are only interested in games where they can win by virtue of their wallets. But I won't, because the reasons are more complex than that, but the comparison is similar to your rather unjust one.

Lord Ruby34 wrote:
You're also ascribing motivations to me, personally, that I've stated about my store, not myself.

Nope. The "you" in question is the general, not the personal.

1. It doesn't increase the cost unless you play Sisters of Battle. If adding Forge World makes every army that uses it even 5% better than to adequately compete then if you want to win you should include it in your army, and the cost increase will be large for the players in our area, none of whom own FW models because they aren't allowed in tournaments in our area.

Except it does, because allowing SoB potentially changes the meta because tournament players have to prepare for SoB. Or Tyranids. Or DE. Or whatever other army you can think of. If you want to win you have to buy additional models every time the meta changes. So why allow rare armies? Why allow new codex releases? It would be cheaper to just ban all that stuff.

2. Again, this isn't something that comes up in our area. I might have been a little hyperbolic earlier when I said that they don't know forgeworld existed, but most of them have never seen a forgeworld model in person. I've only seen three and I've been playing for three years or so. And yes, new players tend to lose. Ideally they lose in ways that make them want to keep coming back to the hobby and the store specifically, rather than in ways that are either out or their price range or send them to buy models outside the store, although the last bit is hard to avoid with Ebay and similar websites in existence.

I strongly suspect that game experience is way more important than +/- $20 in cost in determining if a newbie comes back. Getting seal-clubbed is likely to drive them out no matter how much money the seal-clubbing list cost to buy. FW bans accomplish very little here compared to bans on top-tier competitive armies in general, aimed at bringing the power level down.

I could just as easily say that people who won't play in tournaments that don't use forgeworld are only interested in games where they can win by virtue of their wallets. But I won't, because the reasons are more complex than that, but the comparison is similar to your rather unjust one.

No, it's not at all similar. People like me own FW-heavy armies and can't play in no-FW events because we don't have enough points left if all of our key units are banned. And even people who could technically assemble a no-FW army are hurt by having their enjoyment of the "build your own list" part of the game destroyed by arbitrary rules on what is and isn't legal. A dedicated Tyranid player isn't going to be happy about having their army banned, even if they have an old space marine army gathering dust in the closet that they could theoretically play. No such equivalent exists for the no-FW player. They have literally nothing to gain besides win/loss ratio, they can continue playing the exact same army.

Largely from what I've seen is the really, really stupid idea that FW shouldn't be allowed because its more expensive, other than that there is no actual real reason for banning it when broken gak like rowboat lists are in 'vanilla' GW.

Forgeworld has a long history of publishing half-assed rule-sets filled with errors and broken rules. Much, much worse than the codex rules. Thankfully GW seems to have included the Forgeworld stuff in the Chapter Approved update which is surprising and exciting. You might even get the impression, that Forgeworld and Games Workshop is in fact one and the same company. Waddayouknow.

The TO just told me that their problem units are: the drop pods, decimator, scorpion, lynx, chaos fire raptor, Elysians, giant spawn, cobra, the big marine tanks, and "super chicken" whatever that is. Claiming it's a power and balance issue with said units.

Are Searchlights even still A Thing?

M.

 chimeara wrote:
The TO just told me that their problem units are: the drop pods, decimator, scorpion, lynx, chaos fire raptor, Elysians, giant spawn, cobra, the big marine tanks, and "super chicken" whatever that is. Claiming it's a power and balance issue with said units.

Superchicken is Aetaos'rau'keres, the FW Lord of Change. And... yeah, he's a balance problem.

 chimeara wrote:
The TO just told me that their problem units are: the drop pods, decimator, scorpion, lynx, chaos fire raptor, Elysians, giant spawn, cobra, the big marine tanks, and "super chicken" whatever that is. Claiming it's a power and balance issue with said units.

Interesting that he left out the only truly broken FW model; the Malefic Lord. Sure, the Kharybdis and the Lynx are mean, but literally every other unit you mentioned is either outside the power level cap for ITC, or really not that good in the first place; upper middle tier/low top tier choices at best.

I'd counter that there are PLENTY of abusive things in GW proper such as: Stormravens, Guilliman, Primaris psykers, Tau Commanders and drones, to name a few.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 chimeara wrote:
The TO just told me that their problem units are: the drop pods, decimator, scorpion, lynx, chaos fire raptor, Elysians, giant spawn, cobra, the big marine tanks, and "super chicken" whatever that is. Claiming it's a power and balance issue with said units.

Superchicken is Aetaos'rau'keres, the FW Lord of Change. And... yeah, he's a balance problem.

He's just hard to kill and pays a premium for that benefit. Best thing to do is treat him like Guilliman; kill the rest of the army around him and just play the objective game. He's only going to kill a few units at best, and unless you have a big juicy target for him he won't come even close to making his points back.

Yeah it kinda just sounds like a lot of salt on the players part....

Yes, I imagine that the reason is what someone else already said: since FW isn't that common the only FW stuff they've seen is the super broken things which leads them to erroneously believe it's all broken.

There's a few old crotchety fellows around my FLGS that have the same belief, but fortunately I'm super lucky and am part of a wonderful gaming group that allows FW.

Pretty much every list you see around here is hyper competitive though, so no one is worried about someone else bring abusive or broken things, because we're all doing it.

I think everyone can agree that 40k has balance issues. Without FW is the same as with it.

Every FW ban I have ever seen does absolutely nothing to address the OP codex currently blowing up that edition. I was told I couldnt bring any of my Repressors to a tournament back when the WD update for Tzeentch Daemons (end of 5ed?) had screamers and flamers wrecking everything. I signed up for my Sisters anyways. Showed up with my Daemons (9 screamers and 6 flamers amidst a four god daemon army) and won the entire thing.

Would rather have played my Sisters.

Were the 8ed FW index books really so hard to get?

 Peregrine wrote:

Except it does, because allowing SoB potentially changes the meta because tournament players have to prepare for SoB. Or Tyranids. Or DE. Or whatever other army you can think of. If you want to win you have to buy additional models every time the meta changes. So why allow rare armies? Why allow new codex releases? It would be cheaper to just ban all that stuff.

Accept that doesn't intrinsically increase the cost of your own army, like needing forge world to compete on equal footing does. Other armies existing does not make your army's own options weaker, having additional options from forge world can. If the Y'vahra exists that makes the riptide worse at it's role compared to something in your own force, just to use a random example. I'm not actually sure the that's true in this edition, but take it as a theoretical example. Either way, you can take my point. Your own army having more models that are competitive increases the cost of a competitive army.

 Peregrine wrote:
I strongly suspect that game experience is way more important than +/- $20 in cost in determining if a newbie comes back. Getting seal-clubbed is likely to drive them out no matter how much money the seal-clubbing list cost to buy. FW bans accomplish very little here compared to bans on top-tier competitive armies in general, aimed at bringing the power level down.

If the cost of FW was twenty dollars I might agree with you. It's not, and I don't.

 Peregrine wrote:
No, it's not at all similar. People like me own FW-heavy armies and can't play in no-FW events because we don't have enough points left if all of our key units are banned. And even people who could technically assemble a no-FW army are hurt by having their enjoyment of the "build your own list" part of the game destroyed by arbitrary rules on what is and isn't legal. A dedicated Tyranid player isn't going to be happy about having their army banned, even if they have an old space marine army gathering dust in the closet that they could theoretically play. No such equivalent exists for the no-FW player. They have literally nothing to gain besides win/loss ratio, they can continue playing the exact same army.

I understand that it isn't fun to be told your army doesn't conform to the rules of the tournament, and that does suck for someone playing Renegades and Heretics. But in almost all other cases it's a non-factor. You can still play your army, with your models, minus one or two that aren't produced by the same company, at the same price point, and that the majority of players don't have access to. The few people who've asked to play FW in our tournies still showed up after being denied, and I hope the tournament was still fun for them. I wasn't able to talk to everyone, considering I was busy with my own games at the time.

One thing that my store has considered and may implement is allowing forge world rules, but with proxy models allowed. I'm personally in support of that option, but the Store Owner isn't a fan. It seems like a good way to keep the price down while still allowing those who want to play with their forge world models and rules able to do so. It's my personal preferred solution, although I'm aware that it isn't a perfect one.

Lord Ruby34 wrote:
One thing that my store has considered and may implement is allowing forge world rules, but with proxy models allowed. I'm personally in support of that option, but the Store Owner isn't a fan. It seems like a good way to keep the price down while still allowing those who want to play with their forge world models and rules able to do so. It's my personal preferred solution, although I'm aware that it isn't a perfect one.

Why would the store owner complain if conversions of FW models is allowed at their events? Your player base would still be buying models from the store. The store could buy the index as well to cover the 8ed units and sell it on their shelves. Seems like a fine solution to the supposed desire of the store owner to keep the price of playing down. IMO the more threats a player has to plan for in a given meta the less likely they are to be able to focus on one specific gimmick to unbalance their games in their favor.

pismakron wrote:
Forgeworld has a long history of publishing half-assed rule-sets filled with errors and broken rules.

Just like everything else GW publishes.

I once had a guy say that people that buy FW products are just paying to win.


However, this guy also had the opinion that scratch-builds shouldn't be allowed in the store because if you can't afford the game you shouldn't play it.

I guess he didn't like poor people, or rich people.

Simple answer: don't play in tournaments that don't allow FW. Tell the tournament organizer why.

I don't play tournaments anymore, don't really feel like they prove anything. It's supposed to be about building great TAAC lists and being the best player you can be, but that's warped over the years.

If it's getting to the point where you can't play the army you want, then don't participate.