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What are people in your area like to play against? Do you find that they're really competitive, or do you find that they're by the Black Library casual? I'm going to be using my same rubric as before and ask if you to group people into two categories;

#1 - Procedural Competitive/Casual (Basically, do they try to cheese out their play ability and rules knowledge?)
#2 - Substantive Competitive/Casual (Basically, do they try and cheese out their lists?)

These things are on a spectrum, not just yes/no, but I'm asking you to pick which one best defines your area. For example, I find my area is generally Procedurally Competitive (they will gladly exploit the rules for an advantage, regardless of whether it's something the unit would actually try and do), but Substantivally Casual (for the most part, they bring what they like, not just what they think is strong). That makes them a Competitive-Casual crowd. There's always exceptions, but I find this to be the norm here.

How about you? What's your region like?

I think the key phrase around here is "oh my G-d, that's so dumb", followed by the sarcastic "fair and balanced". We have no illusions that 40k is even remotely balanced so the fun is mostly in seeing what dumb rule interactions we can find.

Competitive - Competitive.

Literally every game is a tournament or a practice game for a tournament.

And it's great, get in a group with like minded folks and there's no bad feelings.

You'll encounter that guy every now and then, but it's no different having pickup games with casual players. That guy plays all game types.

Competitive - Casual.

In our little group, we all play what we have and we play with matched play rules and with relevant beta rules.

None of us are overly competitive (because we don't spam, go ham on soup or other shenanigans) but we all like to go to local, small tournaments with the occasional visit to bigger ones so learning to play matched play is vital.

It's paid off too, in a big yearly tournament I came 32nd out of 64 players with pure Custodes with no jetbikes or FW units, not too shabby, but with more practice I'm hoping to do better next year!

Competitive Casual.
Even in our tournaments people bring chilled lists. Nothing bad, but stuff you have recently painted or tells an interesting story.

Not being rude but I thought there was already a thread and poll on this question recently?

I guess the closest I would come to is Competitive-Casual. I play by the rules and with all the matched/organised play gubbinz, but I like to experiment with my lists.

 Overread wrote:
Not being rude but I thought there was already a thread and poll on this question recently?

You saw through me! Sort of. The last one asked how you play. I was waiting a while for people to forget and the re-ask, but with the emphasis on how others play. I'm then going to compare the poll results to see how different they are.

I don't even know if anyone in my area plays.

Before I moved, I was one of the fluff guys at Black Knight Games, probably talking about the number six.

Most people play with the best stuff they can afford. I havent seen a single person that plays an army because of looks, unless the army was eldar, and it is mostly used as an argument to bully other people around in new player events etc.

My gaming group is playing a Ladder League campaign using 7.5 edition rules with both 30k and 40k units in a single CAD. It’s casual but competitive within those restrictions, as it’s intended to be a learning campaign. The group is dead set against 8th, though, so there’s that.

Personally, I just bring what I best and play the best I can.

SJ

I'm the newest player in my group, with not a full army yet, but the few people I played against/with seem to take lists they like but play them hard. Which personally I like, I'm free to buy the units I want knowing that I'll play against a fair but not too over tuned list. Maybe that'll change if they decide I'm no longer a Rookie but so far they don't seem to powergame against each other either.

My group plays the units we have/like/just finished painting/converted etc. Our lists change month to month, but whatever list we have we play at its best. So I guess the best summation is list build casual, play competitive. We have gone to local flgs tournaments and I did fine with my list. As a group we were middle to lower third. (In fact, I would have been 3-0 if I had realized the kid (Ok, I am old, he was a kid to me but probably 15ish) i was playing was cheating me with his IK stratagems...I did notice he was abusing the poorly marked GW dice he had to double the number of 6's..but hey, it wasn't worth arguing with him, his dad on next table, and brother one more over...just another example for me of why tournaments are less fun than my own tables.) Just an anecdote I guess to say my group is competitive on the table and play their army intelligently using tactics and forethought (we do have 1 place my models and roll dice guys who gets destroyed often and loves every minute of it), not to start the standard opinion argument about tournament vs casual.

Our local RTTs have been compared to "day 2 of an ITC Major tournament", and I agree with that sentiment. My local scene is mostly pretty hardcore competitive, although we do have a few casual players around. I like to play a bit of both, as I enjoy the balls-to-the-wall competitive kind of 40k, but I also like to get out the cool but crappy units (like Terminators) once in a while and just have a fun game.

I put Competitive-Competitive down as my poll answer, because the majority of games player around here are either tournament games or practice games for tournaments. The casuals are pretty much a separate group, although I interact with both groups.

I like playing narrative campaigns, so casual casual mostly. its fun to play competitive lists, as a refresher. But ultimately, sticking to the theme of a campaign and fostering love for your army is more important to me. Cause when you play a campaign, and your models make it through, you know they've been through some tough gak, and they have stories to tell.

Karol wrote:
Most people play with the best stuff they can afford. I havent seen a single person that plays an army because of looks, unless the army was eldar, and it is mostly used as an argument to bully other people around in new player events etc.

Jesus you must play in a grim area of the world.

My group picked their armies almost entirely on fluff and models. We play tough in game but we keep lists pretty relaxed and do our best to have our armies and board tell a story. We do a lot of campaigns and have been on a bit of a kill team kick lately.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Karol wrote:
Most people play with the best stuff they can afford. I havent seen a single person that plays an army because of looks, unless the army was eldar, and it is mostly used as an argument to bully other people around in new player events etc.

Jesus you must play in a grim area of the world.

My group picked their armies almost entirely on fluff and models. We play tough in game but we keep lists pretty relaxed and do our best to have our armies and board tell a story. We do a lot of campaigns and have been on a bit of a kill team kick lately.

he's from Poland

@Karol I ONLY play whatever looks good, sometimes they don't even have to look good. Sometimes I buy models just because I really like the lore.

Karol wrote:
Most people play with the best stuff they can afford. I havent seen a single person that plays an army because of looks, unless the army was eldar, and it is mostly used as an argument to bully other people around in new player events etc.

That's pretty sad man but it explains some of your posts on this forum.
In my gaming group I'm probably the only one who even knows which units are considered strong in a tournament sense. Everybody freaks out about my Plague marines being far too strong...

The place I play is pretty casual. When people play they are trying to win, but they bring whatever army they enjoy. One thing I noticed in my store is that people just haven't really picked up on how much the game runs on stratagems. Lots of them just reroll and then look wide-eyed when my Renegade Knights are rerolling, Slaneeshi Plasma is shooting twice, and a 40 man cultist squad just rapid fired in their backline.

I think some of that though is stratagem combos just seem more obvious and natural to people with a trading card background. That's just my observation though.

I'd say the local shop where I'll play 99% of my games is mostly competitive-casual.

It's matched play in that pts, detachments, CPs/stratagems etc are used. But not all of the players are up on all of the errata/faqs/CA. So exactly wich rules apply might shift week-to-week depending upon who shows up.
People are definitely playing things that they like. As well as playing things that you'd consider good/strong. And for the most part it's mono armies, though there are a few knights. But the knights don't get used every time & when they are I've yet to see any attempt to maximize the CP.

Local adversaries include:
Thousand Sons - with Magnus, Arhiman, a helldrake, & some large warp spawn thing with tentacles. Sometimes with a knight in tow.
Primaris Space Wolves with wulfin
Ultra-Marines - fairly generic selection of stuff accompanied by Guilliman. I've seen a knight with them once or twice.
Death Guard - with Motarion, a pair of plague crawlers, & other standard nurgly stuff.
Imperial Guard - this player has a decent collection & will rotate what he brings. Sometimes adds knight(s). Also owns a reaver titan (I greatly look forward to killing it).
Mono Knights - one or two large ones & then 2-4 of the little ones
Tyranids - I haven't seen this one yet, but I'm told there's a bio-titan included.
*:Grey Knights - coming soon. One of the other wargamers has begun a 40k army. I think he only has 4-5 models atm.
*: Dark Eldar - another of the vet wargamers has a huge DE force that hasn't seen action in years. He's pondered digging them out from time to time, and now that I & the soon-to-be GK player are entering the 40k freys that's becoming more likely.

My own forces for the moment are a vintage 2e SW force (re-pointed & re-organized for this edition) & an all Dreadnought force (Blood Angels + Salamanders)
These two forces are absolutely built using stuff I like vs what'd actually be most effective. Especially the SW. And so far? 3 games, 3 wins - though the Wolves suffered HEAVY casualties because of the mix I chose to run that day.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Most people play with the best stuff they can afford. I havent seen a single person that plays an army because of looks, unless the army was eldar, and it is mostly used as an argument to bully other people around in new player events etc.

I couldn't imagine playing that way.

BTW, what about you? You complain ALOT about your GK. Why did you choose them?
And I'm also curious as to A) what units you're using/have, B) what you're playing against.

Everyone else around me takes it way too seriously, plays every weekend (or more), plays like it's a tournament and tends to cheese their list to the nth degree with whatever the hottest list is. I've seen many a newcomer get devoured and quickly become one of the ravening horde, either caught up in the arms race or disgusted and selling off their 40K stuff in a couple months. It's unfortunately been that way since at least 2E 40K, so it's a big reason I generally don't play at the FLGS, as I'm lucky if I get a game in once every three months as it is.

Competitive Stupid.

It goes like this:

1) Casuals find a new game system and start enjoying it
2) Competitives move in, crush everyone and drive them out with constant "everything is ETC practice using ETC format, no room for narrative, no room for fun, no room for beginners"
3) Competitives complain they can't even get enough players to form an ETC team
4) The game dies

We've just reached stage 3 with 40k again in this cycle, and it happens to every single game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Competitive Stupid.

It goes like this:

1) Casuals find a new game system and start enjoying it
2) Competitives move in, crush everyone and drive them out with constant "everything is ETC practice using ETC format, no room for narrative, no room for fun, no room for beginners"
3) Competitives complain they can't even get enough players to form an ETC team
4) The game dies

We've just reached stage 3 with 40k again in this cycle, and it happens to every single game.

Why don't the casuals simply keep playing, refusing to game with the competitives?

No option for none of the above?

I think we break down into the guys who play with their edam balls practicing for their next cheeseboard tourny fest, the guys who like bringing along their nicely painted stuff or armies in progress for a friendly game and the weirdos like me who can't abide the odd card vp system and like battles with a clear point so spend ages sorting out specific scenarios with often customised terrain and models that get used perhaps once...

ccs wrote:
Why don't the casuals simply keep playing, refusing to game with the competitives?

Because we're not two clear cut groups, there's a gradient. And as soon as someone doesn't mind playing against the tryhards but adjusts their list so they can hold their own, there is a cascade effect down the line.

For example, many people who aren't interested in going to ETC still like to attend small local tourneys for the sake of socializing, but once the tryhards show up, this middle group starts bringing netlists so they don't get curbstomped every game. This then trickles down to leagues and normal game nights and then to pickup games, and eventually even the people who don't attend any sort of competitive event have to deal with tournament lists on a regular basis.

Super hardcore here. Kind of killed my interest in 40k when im fighting knights+IG cp batteries, min maxing the best units of each codex all while being *super* strict on rules "You moved 1/8th inch more! reee!"

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
Super hardcore here. Kind of killed my interest in 40k when im fighting knights+IG cp batteries, min maxing the best units of each codex all while being *super* strict on rules "You moved 1/8th inch more! reee!"

If I played in that area, my interest in 40k would be killed off pretty quickly too...

 lord_blackfang wrote:

ccs wrote:
Why don't the casuals simply keep playing, refusing to game with the competitives?

Because we're not two clear cut groups, there's a gradient. And as soon as someone doesn't mind playing against the tryhards but adjusts their list so they can hold their own, there is a cascade effect down the line.

For example, many people who aren't interested in going to ETC still like to attend small local tourneys for the sake of socializing, but once the tryhards show up, this middle group starts bringing netlists so they don't get curbstomped every game. This then trickles down to leagues and normal game nights and then to pickup games, and eventually even the people who don't attend any sort of competitive event have to deal with tournament lists on a regular basis.

Sadly, this sounds like my area.

Shortly after 8E dropped, the FLGS ran an escalation league, I forget the exact starting points, but a Start Collecting or the Starter would get you enough out of the gate. It had some 6 newcomers and at least 2 old guard (they tried to rope me in, but I knew better). The old guard players were long-time tournament players. By the third round of games, half the newcomers had dropped out as they got ROLFstomped by the old guard players*, who were delighted they'd been handed fresh meat. By the end of the league the only ones still playing were the two old guard players, who were by then using their lists to "practice" for a regional tournament. Two of the newcomers had switched to playing at each other's house, the remainder sold their collection off on e-bay or traded it for another game.

* I watched part of one of the early games, like in the second round. New player was playing against the one of the old guard players, the other old guard player was "coaching" the newbie. After 40 minutes of setup and in the second turn, the newbie walked away from the game table as the two old guard players got into a heated discussion about the legality of some action/trick the old guard player pulled (the store owner had to step in to get them to simmer down, it was something about a vehicle attack that turned out to be errata'ed to not be legal). When the newbie came back, he'd given up and let his "coach" just play the game out while he watched. Unsurprisingly, the newbie dropped out of the league before the next game and sold off his (Tau) army.

I wish there was an easier way to communicate the relative power level of an army, you know, like what power levels and points are supposed to do.

I find that even when agreeing in advance to play a more casual match, it's hard to know exactly what that means to the parties involved without straight up revealing your lists to each other beforehand (which ruins the fun IMO). So if one person ends up erring more on the side of competitive and one person just goes full casual with no unit synergy or only taking overcosted units... that ends up being no fun for anybody.

I almost feel inclined to refuse casual games altogether and play exclusively hardcore competitive games, if only because that ensures that expectations from all parties will always be met.

Casual armies are a bit like when work says "come dressed in smart casual"

As a term it is, on its own, meaningless because the variation in interpretation from person to person is huge. Plus when you try to define it based on skill a good player has a hard time because you're asking them to build a bad army or an army that - to them - doesn't make sense.

MTG shows it easier - I recall when I played a long while back and talking to one of the more experienced players in my area I said I wanted to build a slither deck (slithers being a creature type). That player couldn't get his head around "why" the slither was a "feature" for the deck. To his mind it was focusing on something that wasn't important for the game at all, he was thinking about combos and abilities that compliment and answer issues etc... It wasn't that he couldn't build a slitherdeck or a deck of that nature, its that the thought to build a deck like that just wouldn't occur to him.



In general when you've got a spread of skills its often good to sometimes let the experienced play on their own. Some are natural teachers, others are just experienced and not good natural teachers. Teaching is a skill and you have to learn how to do it and its a very different playing experience.
Just because a person knows the game really well doesn't mean they can teach it.