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So I saw this video and I have to admit, good effort with this. I hope more stuff like this gets organized.




The question is, how do you hedge against someone bringing a jacked up list like this MWG Youtube star? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the narrative campaign?

I did have one thought I'd like to share that I thought might address some of these issues.

The Campaign of Attrition:

It's a simple idea. Everyone comes in with a set PL list. (I.E. 50 PL). But everything on that list except for troops and your warlord are permadeath. That means if your best unit dies in game 1, you can't use it in game 2. Further, the only addition to the list you can make is to add more troops.

If that means you have to take an unbound army out on the field or come in with less PL, then that's your choice.

I'd be curious to see how something like that would play out. Would it change the way the games are played?

I think it could be very interesting. You could very well have players early on let the other player win a game just for a chance to take out a key unit in the other side's army and pave the way for success at the end.

While that idea is definitely in the right spirit, it sounds like a pretty poor choice in the current atmosphere.

Lethality being what it is in modern 40k, it's fairly common for one (or both) sides to be largely annihilated in the first couple of turns. I can see this very quickly making every game just be troops + Warlord, which could actually make for some very fun games, but isn't really the idea.

Also, I don't think it would discourage WAAC / power gamers from playing the way they want to. If anything it'd encourage it, as heavily a heavily optimized list would allow you to obliterate non-returning targets, while providing a better chance at ensuring your own 'important' guys survive.

What'll happen is this: In your perma-death event? After the 1st several games, as people lose their hard hitting non-troop assets? They'll get discouraged and quit. It'll be a short campaign.

 Dekskull wrote:


The question is, how do you hedge against someone bringing a jacked up list like this MWG Youtube star? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the narrative campaign?

Context for those who don't watch the video: the MWG guy realized his list was spicy after he'd already showed up and repeatedly comments that he didn't want to give his opponents a bad time. He wasn't intentionally trying to steamroll his opponents.

High concept, you can have a "rubber band" system in play where the more a player wins, the more of a bonus you give to their opponent. So if your opponent has gone 2-and-0 and you've gone 1-and-1 so far, you'd receive a minor advantage. If you'd gone 0-and-2 so far, you'd get a stronger advantage. If you and your opponent had both gone 2-and-0 so far, then neither of you would receive an advantage. The exact form that advantage takes would require some tinkering. It could be anything from bonus CP to campaign-specific or even mission-specific special rules.

All that said, my experience has been that the sorts of people who show up for narrative events tend to be pretty good at avoiding over-the-top lists or toning down their playstyle if they find they're winning too easily. (Provided there isn't prize support at stake.)

The Campaign of Attrition:

It's a simple idea. Everyone comes in with a set PL list. (I.E. 50 PL). But everything on that list except for troops and your warlord are permadeath. That means if your best unit dies in game 1, you can't use it in game 2. Further, the only addition to the list you can make is to add more troops.

If that means you have to take an unbound army out on the field or come in with less PL, then that's your choice.

I'd be curious to see how something like that would play out. Would it change the way the games are played?

I think it could be very interesting. You could very well have players early on let the other player win a game just for a chance to take out a key unit in the other side's army and pave the way for success at the end.

I strongly doubt that would fix the issue described above. As others have pointed out, this would risk creating a snowball effect where players who take heavy casualties early on become more likely to lose games and take even more casualties as the campaign goes on. Plus, this obviously favors durable armies and armies with good troops.

If you want to play an attrition campaign, try something like this:
* Make a Crusade roster. Start yourself off at something like 150 PL instead of 50.
* Replace the usual injury roll chart with something like: 1-3 = Permadead, 4-6 = out of action for d3 games.
* You may not spend RP to add new units to your roster.

Then you just play Crusade games. Over time, your choice of units will dwindle, but the units you do have will become badass veterans. Once your remaining roster is too small to create a reasonable or fun list, wrap up the crusade. Maybe consider doing a challenge mission (from one of the old Chapter Approved books) with your remaining units to see how long they can hold out against an endless tide or to see which units can break through and escape off the opponent's table edge and write up a fun epilogue based on the results.

Remember: Crusade doesn't have to be an escalation campaign or even a campaign at all.

 Dekskull wrote:

It's a simple idea. Everyone comes in with a set PL list. (I.E. 50 PL). But everything on that list except for troops and your warlord are permadeath. That means if your best unit dies in game 1, you can't use it in game 2. Further, the only addition to the list you can make is to add more troops.

So after game 1 one or both players are pretty much out of non-troops. After 2 games nobody has likely anything non-troops.

And heaven forbid somebody plays knights who can cripple others easily while every loss perma loss so bit of skew list. If they can cripple others before losing knights early they will curb stomp troop-only armies. Or they lose knight or two early and will get wiped off the game.

Game is just way, way, way too lethal for this to work.

The TOs should vet lists, which they probably did for this event as well.

It's not a competitive list, Mathew did nothing wrong, neither did the TOs when vetting his list. Some casual lists are terrible, others are just meh, you shouldn't have to go out of your way to build a terrible list to participate in a narrative event. Bringing units you love that fit together narratively into a list that doesn't look too much like a list that has gotten top 4 at a grand tournament should be enough. If this was pre-nerf transhuman Tyranids there'd be an issue.

The game is super lethal almost no matter what list you bring. There are some list concepts that just don't work and bringing those to pickup games or tournaments is a bad idea, like my last casual 2k game which ended up not really being a game because I brought a list that just didn't work. For me to get mad at my opponent or for my opponent to feel sorry would be wrong.

Good ideas folks.

Not that I'm going to organize anything anytime soon...ok maybe an event at my local library...someday, maybe when its 10th edition...or 11th lol.

In the meantime I hope to see more stuff like this popping up. I'll be interested to see what the TOs do about the balance issue in the future.

It’s just the risk you have to run.

If someone is intent on being a spoilsport, they’re gonna be a spoilsport. If their list is vetted, they can rules lawyer. If that doesn’t work, they can attempt slow play.

Every narrative campaign carries the risk of someone or other taking it all a bit too seriously. And there’s not a great deal you can do about it, other than (and this extreme) making it clear that anyone just powergaming will be ejected from the event.

More intensive solution is to craft your own missions, ideally where simply power gaming isn’t going to cut it.

You could issue your own FOC requirements, but then not all armies have equal choices or flexibility in Troops.

That's just the thing innit. I consider myself a Narrative player, and I don't give two flocks about balance.

If you are overly concerned with games being balanced, maybe just stick to matched play tournaments?

 Dekskull wrote:

The question is, how do you hedge against someone bringing a jacked up list like this MWG Youtube star? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the narrative campaign?

What we do is somewhere between 'open' and 'narrative'. What I've learned is for narrative to shine you have to game-build properly and collaborate on crafting a good scenario - we often have a third party involved aa qwll - the scenario comprises both the mission/objectives and the forces used. Imo 'blind' or independent list-building can be extremely hazardous for this kind of game.

Truth is, a proper narrative game is a lot of work and requires a good understanding of the game and more than a little bit of emotional maturity amd compromise to work well.

Definitely don't like the idea of perma-death for non-Troops - especially since one of the reasons people go to narrative events is to have a chance to play against a wide range of unusual or non-meta units.

Part of the role of the GM/referee/narrator is it introduce twists and events that challenge the players without just being a punishment for playing well.

If people are getting frustrated, that's a good queue to step in to keep the event engaging.

 tauist wrote:
That's just the thing innit. I consider myself a Narrative player, and I don't give two flocks about balance.

If you are overly concerned with games being balanced, maybe just stick to matched play tournaments?

I played a narrative game once where a small detachment of Elysians was supposed to hold an outpost against recycling Tyranid hordes until evac could arrive after six turns. Instead, all the Elysians were slaughtered by the end of the second turn. We spent more time on setup than the actual game.

Poor balance makes it harder to attain a satisfying narrative outcome. It forces you to take on the significant task of assessing the power of each army and adjusting as needed to ensure the intended power equivalence (or disparity), something that requires significant game knowledge. Even then, it can be pretty lame if the relative power between units is all wrong- there are units that should be scary and capable, but underperform on the tabletop and are hard to form any narrative around beyond 'getting jobbed by Guardsmen'.

Good points costs and balanced capabilities are an asset to constructing narrative scenarios. That the game requires narrative players to employ a lot of game knowledge to avoid making overpowered, not-fun-to-play-against lists reflects poor design.

 catbarf wrote:

 tauist wrote:
That's just the thing innit. I consider myself a Narrative player, and I don't give two flocks about balance.

If you are overly concerned with games being balanced, maybe just stick to matched play tournaments?

I played a narrative game once where a small detachment of Elysians was supposed to hold an outpost against recycling Tyranid hordes until evac could arrive after six turns. Instead, all the Elysians were slaughtered by the end of the second turn. We spent more time on setup than the actual game.

Poor balance makes it harder to attain a satisfying narrative outcome. It forces you to take on the significant task of assessing the power of each army and adjusting as needed to ensure the intended power equivalence (or disparity), something that requires significant game knowledge. Even then, it can be pretty lame if the relative power between units is all wrong- there are units that should be scary and capable, but underperform on the tabletop and are hard to form any narrative around beyond 'getting jobbed by Guardsmen'.

Good points costs and balanced capabilities are an asset to constructing narrative scenarios. That the game requires narrative players to employ a lot of game knowledge to avoid making overpowered, not-fun-to-play-against lists reflects poor design.

How many elysians against how many nids? I'm.curious. I'd love to do a scenario like this.

It can be do e. We've been doing kt21 'horde' games recently and they've been great fun. Took a krieg kill.team, and recently an intercessor kill team against waves (8 per wave) of poxwalkers. Every 3 turns 2 extra waves come on random table edges. And its been fantastic fun.

Game knowledge is absolutely crucial, I agree (and I.dont see that as a bad thing, truth be told) - but 'good points costs and balanced cababilities' can be a red herring for these kinds of games since the normal rules don't really apply. I think 'appropriate' list-matching counts for a lot more.

Deadnight wrote:
How many elysians against how many nids? I'm.curious. I'd love to do a scenario like this.

It can be do e. We've been doing kt21 'horde' games recently and they've been great fun. Took a krieg kill.team, and recently an intercessor kill team against waves (8 per wave) of poxwalkers. Every 3 turns 2 extra waves come on random table edges. And its been fantastic fun.

Game knowledge is absolutely crucial, I agree (and I.dont see that as a bad thing, truth be told) - but 'good points costs and balanced cababilities' can be a red herring for these kinds of games since the normal rules don't really apply. I think 'appropriate' list-matching counts for a lot more.

1500pts of Elysians in defensive terrain versus 1000pts of Tyranids, but the Tyranid units recycled each time they were removed. Elysians had to hold out for six turns to win. In theory, that meant the Elysians had a significant force advantage at the start, but would get bogged down by attrition. In practice, it turned out that 1000pts of 9th Ed Tyranids were pretty comparable to 1500pts of 8th Ed Astra Militarum, and with a few good rolls the Tyranids only had to recycle one unit (some Warriors) before wiping the Elysians off the table.

That's what I mean about accurate points costs being an asset- it's a real pain to have to work out the relative power of these armies independently of their points costs, relying on game knowledge that takes time and experience to build up. It's also not very fun when units that should be star centerpieces for the battle totally underwhelm, because GW has assigned them crappy capabilities (eg, my Stone-Crusher being pointless because it's strictly worse than a codex Carnifex).

Tight balance is obviously less critical to narrative play than competitive play, but good balance is still conducive to good narratives.

Edit: Oh and similarly, my group gave up on Spectre entirely- despite liking a lot of the core mechanics- because the lack of any balancing mechanism made it unreasonably difficult to construct appropriate scenarios. It's not like we were treating it as a competitive ruleset, it's just that games that wind up being one-sided stomps just aren't what we find fun to play and end up feeling like a waste of time.

Some "fluff" lists are straight up better than others. I mean, Deathwing was trash for YEARS and now they're propping Marine win rates up.

I don't think the balance as of right now is that far out of whack. 40k is certainly lethal - and the winning player is likely to table the losing player. If you are new and learning (or old and have just accepted you'll be bad) then you are going to be destroyed by a lot of good players.

But that's true in most games I can think of.

I think this is especially the case in narrative events - because everyone has a different bar on how much they want to win - or play narratively etc.

I mean when I was younger I used to like "winning". If I tabled you it meant I was a great player, you sucked, etc. But today, I tend to think we are playing together - and if you are having a bad time being wiped off the board, I feel bad. Just as I feel bad when it happens to me. So I'd likely start doing sub-optimal stuff. Trying to set up "good fights" so it feels there's something more to the game. You can argue this is silly - even disrespectful. But it comes into this idea of what is playing the game about.

Basically I don't think your attrition system would work. Its about getting people to play with the right mindset. Someone who comes with the aim of "winning" 40k will destroy someone who doesn't. I think that's true for every comparable game.

I mean for the example - if Tyranids overrun some Guard in 2 turns, there's the option to just place down some more guard. But at that point you have to realise you are essentially hitting two action figures together and rolling dice - rather than trying to win a game. Which I think is a bridge too far for many people. Hence the desire for fixed scenarios where you don't have to have such interventions.

I remember in 5th (or 6th?) there was an absolutely excellent, very flexible Swedish Comp system, that allowed players to tailor their experience (agreeing on a comp limit or handicaping the player with a more powerful army for example).

My group used it a lot in our casual gaming and it worked a treat! Is there anything like that for the current edition?

 catbarf wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
How many elysians against how many nids? I'm.curious. I'd love to do a scenario like this.

It can be do e. We've been doing kt21 'horde' games recently and they've been great fun. Took a krieg kill.team, and recently an intercessor kill team against waves (8 per wave) of poxwalkers. Every 3 turns 2 extra waves come on random table edges. And its been fantastic fun.

Game knowledge is absolutely crucial, I agree (and I.dont see that as a bad thing, truth be told) - but 'good points costs and balanced cababilities' can be a red herring for these kinds of games since the normal rules don't really apply. I think 'appropriate' list-matching counts for a lot more.

1500pts of Elysians in defensive terrain versus 1000pts of Tyranids, but the Tyranid units recycled each time they were removed. Elysians had to hold out for six turns to win. In theory, that meant the Elysians had a significant force advantage at the start, but would get bogged down by attrition. In practice, it turned out that 1000pts of 9th Ed Tyranids were pretty comparable to 1500pts of 8th Ed Astra Militarum, and with a few good rolls the Tyranids only had to recycle one unit (some Warriors) before wiping the Elysians off the table.

That's what I mean about accurate points costs being an asset- it's a real pain to have to work out the relative power of these armies independently of their points costs, relying on game knowledge that takes time and experience to build up. It's also not very fun when units that should be star centerpieces for the battle totally underwhelm, because GW has assigned them crappy capabilities (eg, my Stone-Crusher being pointless because it's strictly worse than a codex Carnifex).

Tight balance is obviously less critical to narrative play than competitive play, but good balance is still conducive to good narratives.

Edit: Oh and similarly, my group gave up on Spectre entirely- despite liking a lot of the core mechanics- because the lack of any balancing mechanism made it unreasonably difficult to construct appropriate scenarios. It's not like we were treating it as a competitive ruleset, it's just that games that wind up being one-sided stomps just aren't what we find fun to play and end up feeling like a waste of time.

This touches on something that I'm not sure we've addressed head-on in this thread: intentional asymmetry. When the priority is to tell a cool story and players are trying to win the *campaign* rather than the *battle*, you can use intentionally asymmetrical scenarios to help people shake off the notion of optimizing their lists and to cushion the sting of losing a battle.

So for instance, you could tweak the guard vs 'nids scenario such that 'nids are at more of a disadvantage and the guard are basically guaranteed to win (or at least have some survivors.) If this is part of a larger campaign, then you can frame this withdrawal as an example of one of many similar withdrawals happening across the planet. The more of your guard force that survives, the better off you'll be in the next campaign mission. With the 'nid player knowing that wiping you out and "winning" the scenario isn't a realistic goal, he can instead focus on taking out as much of your army as possible, basically focusing on weakening you for future games rather than worrying about stopping you from succeeding in this one.

So you're telling a story and having fun even though victory is a foregone conclusion for one side or the other.

I like how the Narrative Guys run their events. Each player brings a list of at least X points(can be over as long as it isn't under) that fits into a specific Detachment. They vet the lists to make sure they're legal for that Detachment, including Warlord and Relics. You're then grouped into teams of 3 and paired against another team. Each pairing has a specific campaign they're playing. Each round, one of the organizers gets with each Campaign and explains the mission, what the goals/objectives for each side are, how many CP each team has, and how many points you have to use. Each player then spends points on units from their overall list(so if the mission calls for 750 points per player, you take 750 points of your 2000+ army). Note, you can't change units from your master list, they're played how you originally bought them. Some games you play with your team mates, some alone.

Makes for some very interesting games where each game has unique campaign and army based rules and even if you designed a WAAC list, you probably won't have all the tools you built into the list.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
This touches on something that I'm not sure we've addressed head-on in this thread: intentional asymmetry. When the priority is to tell a cool story and players are trying to win the *campaign* rather than the *battle*, you can use intentionally asymmetrical scenarios to help people shake off the notion of optimizing their lists and to cushion the sting of losing a battle.

So for instance, you could tweak the guard vs 'nids scenario such that 'nids are at more of a disadvantage and the guard are basically guaranteed to win (or at least have some survivors.) If this is part of a larger campaign, then you can frame this withdrawal as an example of one of many similar withdrawals happening across the planet. The more of your guard force that survives, the better off you'll be in the next campaign mission. With the 'nid player knowing that wiping you out and "winning" the scenario isn't a realistic goal, he can instead focus on taking out as much of your army as possible, basically focusing on weakening you for future games rather than worrying about stopping you from succeeding in this one.

So you're telling a story and having fun even though victory is a foregone conclusion for one side or the other.

Yeah, we've done that too, but it still has the exact same problem. Without an effective balancing mechanism, it's too easy to wind up in a situation where the 'guaranteed win' becomes a Pyrrhic victory that cripples the winner, or in the other direction the weaker player gets obliterated before they have a chance to do anything and the whole battle was a waste of time. You can put your thumb on the scale and try to adjust things after the game or even midgame, but it's a pretty cumbersome solution.

Good balance isn't just about making every battle 'fair'. It's about being able to arrange a battle- be it evenly-matched or asymmetric- and trust that it's actually as evenly-matched or asymmetric as you think it is.