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My thought is that they distinguish competitive 40k from normal 40k.

And they do this by only offering a set of detachments you can use for each army, and that tournaments are defined by their detachment size - a 3 detachment tournament vs a 5 detachment tournament.

What this does is reduce the combination options and increase the ability to balance the armies. If they only have to playtest detachments they can do it easier and more accurately.

Then they can also, a bit like magic, run tournaments around themes etc with unique releases if detachments. And they can all be tested against one another to ensure that in isolation, those specific detachments are balanced.

They get to control what models appear in armies and can even deliberately run underpowered tournaments with non optimised detachments for every army.


Normal 40k is basically left alone.

What this will do is provide competitive players less options but more sense of skill over gimmick for victory.

And it will keep the competitive mindsets out of normal 40k because they aren't comparable.

Let's see as red corsairs you can bring 28 cp into a game with 1000 points off of a triple battalion, so yeah I would treat it as a bit different lol!

Your problem with better balance is what? Your opponent's unusable units suddenly hurt you?

There's literally no reason the game couldn't be better balanced outside people giving GW money for their garbage printed material and not fighting the injustice that is terrible external balance. Or are you saying it's fine Orks and Tyranids are in the state they're in to be fodder for Marines to shoot at?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Your problem with better balance is what? Your opponent's unusable units suddenly hurt you?

There's literally no reason the game couldn't be better balanced outside people giving GW money for their garbage printed material and not fighting the injustice that is terrible external balance. Or are you saying it's fine Orks and Tyranids are in the state they're in to be fodder for Marines to shoot at?

I'm not sure what you're driving at here.

What I'm suggesting is that they balance a narrow selection of detachments for competitive play, rather than trying to balance every single unit in every single combination against Evey army and their combinations.

If that means in the case of armies that haven't been revised they maximize some army detachments and minimise others then so be it.

The point of the exercise is to create tournament balanced detachments

Competitive 40K = Normal 40K already.

Whatever competitive 40K is named or becomes it = normal 40K.

The tournament player base has officially destroyed the game for everyone who isn't one of them.

I'm all for treating "competitive" 40k as a distinct mode of play from open/narrative/matched play.

Open = you're new and want to use the mismatched jumble of units you thought looked cool.

Narrative = actually requires more pre-game prep than matched play and self-imposed limits to avoid doing anything more powerful than is desirable for the scenario/matchup.

Matched = you want something better balanced and easier to set up than narrative, but you're not necessarily all that concerned with fine-tuning balance.

Competitive = More emphasis on balance than matched play including removing options that detract from overall game balance. So Legends would be a thing in matched play, but not in competitive play. Certain strats or army building options might not be allowed in competitive play. Competitive play could be designed with a relatively static set of missions in mind rather than being meant to be compatible with something like the open war cards. Strategems could have higher costs in matched play because the assumption that you're optimizing around those stratagems is a safe one. Maybe allies aren't a thing or have additional restrictions in competitive play.

That said, I'm not sure your proposed detachment changes are necessarily the sort of thing I'd want to see in "Competitive Play." A batallion or brigade will still be easier for a guard army to fill out than a GK army. Ideally, unit selection and CP generation should be mostly divorced.

Well I was trying to balance player choice with balance.

Ie you could literally just give everyone 1 list at 2000pts or what ever for each codex and say 'thats it, these lists are balanced against each other and therefore the only ones accepted at tournies'.

Which means zero choice within the army you want.

I figured if you broke it up into chunks of choice, you'd have some variation with better structure.

Hellebore wrote:
Well I was trying to balance player choice with balance.

Ie you could literally just give everyone 1 list at 2000pts or what ever for each codex and say 'thats it, these lists are balanced against each other and therefore the only ones accepted at tournies'.

Which means zero choice within the army you want.

I figured if you broke it up into chunks of choice, you'd have some variation with better structure.

"Choice" and "balance" aren't mutually exclusive. Just because chess is more balanced than 40k doesn't mean balance requires absolute symmetry.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm all for treating "competitive" 40k as a distinct mode of play from open/narrative/matched play.

Open = you're new and want to use the mismatched jumble of units you thought looked cool.

Narrative = actually requires more pre-game prep than matched play and self-imposed limits to avoid doing anything more powerful than is desirable for the scenario/matchup.

Matched = you want something better balanced and easier to set up than narrative, but you're not necessarily all that concerned with fine-tuning balance.

Competitive = More emphasis on balance than matched play including removing options that detract from overall game balance. So Legends would be a thing in matched play, but not in competitive play. Certain strats or army building options might not be allowed in competitive play. Competitive play could be designed with a relatively static set of missions in mind rather than being meant to be compatible with something like the open war cards. Strategems could have higher costs in matched play because the assumption that you're optimizing around those stratagems is a safe one. Maybe allies aren't a thing or have additional restrictions in competitive play.

That said, I'm not sure your proposed detachment changes are necessarily the sort of thing I'd want to see in "Competitive Play." A batallion or brigade will still be easier for a guard army to fill out than a GK army. Ideally, unit selection and CP generation should be mostly divorced.

???

This is exactly what already exists.

What you're calling "Competitive" is currently called "Organized Events". It's just that no one comprehends that Matched Play and Organized Events rules are separate and very different things.

Again...

It doesn't matter if we have 100 'modes' of play, it will not matter one iota. Whatever the competitive 'mode' of play is will become the default way to play.

When I posted some time ago about how/why GW should have made Vigilus and Psychic Awakening Narrative Play only; the overwhelming response was "If it cannot be used for Matched Play / Organized Play GW might as well not even print it."

So what does this tell us? It's tournament-hammer or nothing.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
Well I was trying to balance player choice with balance.

Ie you could literally just give everyone 1 list at 2000pts or what ever for each codex and say 'thats it, these lists are balanced against each other and therefore the only ones accepted at tournies'.

Which means zero choice within the army you want.

I figured if you broke it up into chunks of choice, you'd have some variation with better structure.

"Choice" and "balance" aren't mutually exclusive. Just because chess is more balanced than 40k doesn't mean balance requires absolute symmetry.

True, but the probability of balance gets closer to 1, the closer to symmetry you get. It's a direct link. It's not the only one (if you could invert army lists you could technically have the possibility of balance with symmetry at 0) but the likely hood is much higher in practice the closer to identical the lists are.

Hellebore wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
Well I was trying to balance player choice with balance.

Ie you could literally just give everyone 1 list at 2000pts or what ever for each codex and say 'thats it, these lists are balanced against each other and therefore the only ones accepted at tournies'.

Which means zero choice within the army you want.

I figured if you broke it up into chunks of choice, you'd have some variation with better structure.

"Choice" and "balance" aren't mutually exclusive. Just because chess is more balanced than 40k doesn't mean balance requires absolute symmetry.

True, but the probability of balance gets closer to 1, the closer to symmetry you get. It's a direct link. It's not the only one (if you could invert army lists you could technically have the possibility of balance with symmetry at 0) but the likely hood is much higher in practice the closer to identical the lists are.

A more symmetrical game is more balanced. A more balanced game isn't necessarily more symmetrical.

Wrong, a symmetrical game is not necessarily more balanced. Tic Tac Toe is symmetrical, but the second player can never win. Compare this to Rock Paper Sizzors where it is asymmetrical, but is perfectly balanced. There are many more such examples if you keep looking.

How is Rock Paper Scissors asymmetrical? In any way?

Edit: Also, assuming competent players, the first player can’t win Tic-Tac-Toe either. It’s a tie game.

How is it not? What definition of symmetric and asymmetric are you using?

Also, fair enough on Toc Tac Toe, but Connect Four is another example of a symmetrical game. The first player can force a win.

Both players have the exact same options in Rock Paper Scissors. Under what definition does it not have symmetry?

Chess and Connect 4 are mildly asymmetrical because one player goes first. Rock Paper Scissors is symmetrical because both players take actions simultaneously and have the same options available at all times.


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 oni wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm all for treating "competitive" 40k as a distinct mode of play from open/narrative/matched play.

Open = you're new and want to use the mismatched jumble of units you thought looked cool.

Narrative = actually requires more pre-game prep than matched play and self-imposed limits to avoid doing anything more powerful than is desirable for the scenario/matchup.

Matched = you want something better balanced and easier to set up than narrative, but you're not necessarily all that concerned with fine-tuning balance.

Competitive = More emphasis on balance than matched play including removing options that detract from overall game balance. So Legends would be a thing in matched play, but not in competitive play. Certain strats or army building options might not be allowed in competitive play. Competitive play could be designed with a relatively static set of missions in mind rather than being meant to be compatible with something like the open war cards. Strategems could have higher costs in matched play because the assumption that you're optimizing around those stratagems is a safe one. Maybe allies aren't a thing or have additional restrictions in competitive play.

That said, I'm not sure your proposed detachment changes are necessarily the sort of thing I'd want to see in "Competitive Play." A batallion or brigade will still be easier for a guard army to fill out than a GK army. Ideally, unit selection and CP generation should be mostly divorced.

...

What you're calling "Competitive" is currently called "Organized Events". It's just that no one comprehends that Matched Play and Organized Events rules are separate and very different things.

...Yes? Exactly. Between Matched, Narrative, and Open, Matched play is the most competitive/balanced. However, not everyone who wants to use matched play rules wants to play a tournament style game, and tournaments should not feel compelled to include/allow matched play rules if they aren't conducive to the type of experience they're trying to create.

For instance, I might want to use matched play rules (because they're easy to use for pick up games and typically are more balanced than narrative or open play rules), but I might not want to observe a 3 detachment limit or feel compelled to use ITC missions. Conversely, I wouldn't be opposed to tournaments having ban lists for overly powerful units, using their own missions (like ITC's) rather than the matched play missions found in chapter approved, or placing additional restrictions on list building (detachment limits for instance) in an effort to create a better tournament experience.

Basically, not all matched lay is tournament play, and tournament matched play can look very different from non-tournament matched play. The Open War cards can be used in matched play. So acknowledging that there's a difference between tournament games and casual-but-not-narrative-or-open games means you can make rules that support each of those styles of play.

Again...

It doesn't matter if we have 100 'modes' of play, it will not matter one iota. Whatever the competitive 'mode' of play is will become the default way to play.

When I posted some time ago about how/why GW should have made Vigilus and Psychic Awakening Narrative Play only; the overwhelming response was "If it cannot be used for Matched Play / Organized Play GW might as well not even print it."

So what does this tell us? It's tournament-hammer or nothing.

Your anecdotal experiences do not match my own. Most of my games these days are at weekly league nights at the FLGS. With rare exceptions, people bring lists that would not do well at tournaments and play games using matched play rules.

Open = you're new and want to use the mismatched jumble of units you thought looked cool.

I have been playing 40K now for nearly 20 years, and this is still how i play!

 oni wrote:

Your anecdotal experiences do not match my own. Most of my games these days are at weekly league nights at the FLGS. With rare exceptions, people bring lists that would not do well at tournaments and play games using matched play rules.

OMG... Anecdotal... Everyone's favorite word here on Dakka.

You're the odd man out on this one if your group truly does Open and/or Narrative Play games, but I'm betting that you're being horribly disingenuous and that your group sticks to Matched Play and even uses the Organized Events rules for Unit & Detachment limitations.

You... you literally quoted me saying that we do, in fact, generally use Matched Play rules. Which was my whole point. We DO use Matched Play rules more often than not, but our style of play is NOT very similar to tournament-style games. Some games we treat first floor windows as being boarded up, sometimes we don't. Generally people don't run more than 3 detachments (mostly because our usual game size is 1500 points), but I've never seen anyone say no on the rare occassions that their opponent wants to field more detachments.

Matched Play does seem to be the norm, but not all Matched Play games look like tournament games. Organized events already frequently use even-specific restrictions/FAQs/house rules to encourage games of a certain nature. So if we acknowledge that not all MP games look like tournament games and break Tournament Play off into its own thing, we'd just have a more formal approach to recognizing the differences between these two playstyles.

Imperial Knights can be just fine in casual matched play, but I'd argue that there might be merit to not allowing them in tournament play. Free form terrain placement is fine in casual games, but I'd argue there might be a place for more explicit terrain placement rules in tournament play. A 3 detachment limit isn't really necessary in casual matched play, but it's probably good to set an official limit during tournament play.

I think requiring people to have one specific list for your tournament format is going to cause most people to shy away from your tournament. Some people go out and buy the newest hottest thing, but lots of people don't. Having to go out and buy a specific unit that is trash in regular matched play because your TO wants to organize a low-power event is a no-go for almost everyone. Going to a low-power event where the TO checks armies to make sure they are low-power is much more feasible, I think most people have trash units laying around. If you want to see more tournaments like this you might have to start organizing them, when these are the events people want to do well at those are the events they train for and that means you get games against that caliber of army in your store/hobby club. What we really need is a language of how competitive a list is and an understanding of how good different lists are in different formats.

Something like the EDH terminology used for different tiers of decks with jank, casual, focussed, optimized and competitive. Right now we just have casual and competitive. What is competitive boils down to what does well in tournaments, casual is a list that can win but is pretty bad at it. But we're missing the language for jank, the lists that are intentionally very bad because you are building with some other goal in mind, like observing fluff or something. Focussed might be an army that doesn't use the best units but tries to make a janky or casual theme work as best as possible. Optimized lists are those that cannot be made better without scrapping the whole list and starting over, you wouldn't just be replacing one Elites or Troops unit with another Elites or Troops unit, you're scrapping everything and taking two flyer wings and a Battalion or whatever is winning tournaments in your format which is what a truly hyper-competitive army is.

I don't think it's competitive hammer or nothing, the alternative just needs to be good enough. Playing a 2000 vs 1000 pt game or a game with the possibility of no terrain on random pieces of the board is not good enough for me and that's some of what GW have been pushing with their less competitive missions, it sounds too unbalanced and unfun, over T1 most likely. Playing a game with a funky mission, fan rules or bonus rules for both armies? I'd be down for that. I'd be down to play with a bazillion stratagems and subfaction bonus and bonus bonus rules (what we currently have) once in a while even if the default was 5 Stratagems and no subfaction rules (which is my desire for both simple fun and competitive balance).

Drop in games, where you just show up and drop models on to the first open table, will always have an element of getting matched with a player who plays a different style than you do. The solution to that is to plan your games ahead of time or to ask what style your opponent usually plays and try to find some balance in the pregame setup phase.

You literally can't codify casual play. Even in the EDH example you're talking about a format that is notorious for unbalanced matchups at FNM.

This would be tournament lists created by GW, not by TOs.

Tournament lists that was considered impeccably balanced and tested to be. Any tournament run by GW sanction would use them. Everyone would know what they were ahead of time.

The point being that tournaments focus on winning competitive games first.

Variety in lists using the new hotness is a casual play thing.

I'm talking about changing the perception of what competitive 40k and separating it completely from casual.

There would be tournament meta to infiltrate casual games if they always use the same of lists/detachment combinations.

Hellebore wrote:
This would be tournament lists created by GW, not by TOs.

Tournament lists that was considered impeccably balanced and tested to be. Any tournament run by GW sanction would use them. Everyone would know what they were ahead of time.

The point being that tournaments focus on winning competitive games first.

Variety in lists using the new hotness is a casual play thing.

I'm talking about changing the perception of what competitive 40k and separating it completely from casual.

There would be tournament meta to infiltrate casual games if they always use the same of lists/detachment combinations.

If they are created by GW they won't be balanced. Everyone would find out which faction has the best list and either bring that list or another available list in the format which counters that list. GW is creating lists by proxy when they print pts costs, the most underpriced units in each faction will be included in competitive matched play lists. If you wanted to make sure people winning tournaments has as little to do with cheese lists as possible then TOs not allowing lists they deem to be cheese is the only option.