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 Rysaer wrote:
Pray to Bro-sideon god of the Bro-cean for some better bros to play with. Bro.

I give this post five keg-stands out of seven.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
I give this post five keg-stands out of seven.

I do what I can in the name of the imperium, broses and broseph, and all bros everywhere.

Failing that drunken entertainment is as good a reason as any.

Dezstiny wrote:
I've been trying to get around to my LGS every saturday and the games (and while I know my store doesnt speak for everyones),
seem much more.... decisive earlier in game. It seems like whenever you see a match there's always a really
hard core death star unit or list of some kind on each side of the field. (which is fine) however, they seem so strong it becomes in a sense like
the one which out-performs the primaris death star unit on the otherside generally wins the game.

So far, from what I've seen, 6th has plenty of close games. I have mostly close games nowadays. The mismatches mostly are when one guy has a list that's much better suited to the new edition,. Either because he bothered to update and the other guy didn't, or because one guy just happens to be using units which got better or substantially worse in the new rules, and has lucked into either a stronger or weaker army compared to his opponent, where before they were pretty well balanced, because they had been playing 5th for a few years, and adjusted in the past into fairly good equilibrium. There are also mismatches when one guy understands the new rules a lot better than the other guy, so one player is making relatively basic tactical errors because they don't really understand the rules yet. Heck, I've played 23 games so far and am still figuring things out, experimenting and testing combinations with my Blood Angels.

Dezstiny wrote:
Hi guys I've been really squandering on this post for a about an 1hr and a half now, and am.... just pondering on how to make a decent game out of 6th edition.

It's a more than decent game. A few tweaks help, though.

1. Using the "narrative terrain" system (ie: make a fair and attractive table, with some LOS blocking stuff toward the middle of the table; around here we mostly have a neutral third party do this) instead of using alternating placement.
2. I recommend roll first and then pick a chart for Warlord traits. Less chance of getting something useless.
3. Definitely use Mysterious Objectives. They're fun, create an incentive to move Troops to grab them before the end of the game, and create useful things to fight over.
4. If you have an odd number of objectives, make a rule that the first one is placed in the center of the table.

I got a few ideas for you.
My friend PrometheusZero (dakka name) and I often plan army lists together the night before the game and get a bit of extra enjoyment out of the game that way. We tend to have an impartial third party to set up the terrain too Mannahnin and this usually works perfectly. I always try to set up a nice themed battlefield when it's my turn to set up and spectate. To be fair if there is only two of us we just stick a bunch of terrain pieces on the table and shuffle them around a bit until we're both happy with it.
Also just play objective based games. Our first three games of 6th edition were all that kill points scenario and we got bored of it. So now we always re-roll that result and have now played all six of the scenarios in the core rulebook.
We even played that Broken Alliance mission (3 player game) from the 5th edition rulebook using the 6th edition rules today and that was really fun. So I suggest playing 3 or 4 player games where it's every man for himself rather than allies.
And in a doubles game we played (while drinking whiskey) just after christmas last year (5th edition) we all set up in one corner of the table and then randomly determined who would be sided with who rather than deciding beforehand. That was a really fun game and I'd recommend trying that.
Anyway sorry to ramble on. lol
Enjoy yr games.

How do I have an enjoyable game of 6th? It sounds snobby, but the truth is that I have found that the best way to have fun in this hobby is to be EXTREMELY selective about who I will play with.

I won't play with randoms or people who live at the LGS or WAAC types. Period. I have a small group of people that I have met over the years that are on the same wavelength as I am about HAVING FUN and telling a story.

It means I don't get to play very often. But, quality over quantity in my book.

English Assassin wrote:
No, the epitome of a beer and pretzels game would be something like Fluxx or Munchkin; games which are cheap to buy, simple to learn (particularly for non-gamers) and quick to play. A game with a 400-page rulebook, requiring hundreds of pounds minimum investment to involve yourself, and hours to play (to say nothing of the time invested painting) that offers nothing more than a "beer and pretzels" depth of play has failed badly.

So true it was worth repeating.


We've tweaked the terrain setup to the following, with good results:

1) set up terrain, however you and your opponent want. Feel free to alternate placement like in the rules if it floats your boat.
2) Roll the mission and deployment type.

3) Roll off. Winner gets to pick either: Choose table side, or Choose to deploy and go first.

(This is kind of like the coin toss in American Football. You either get to pick to kick or receive the ball, or you get to decide which side of the field you defend.)

4) Player who is deploying first does so, and then the other, and play continues normally.


We've found that doing this not only prevents the terrain from being set up too biased to either side, as both players have a chance to end up there, but it also has a balancing effect, in that if the terrain does end up being biased, it is unlikely that the player who gets the better side will also get to go first.

 English Assassin wrote:
So in other words, give up any expectation of enjoying a challenging game; that's now the wrong sort of fun.

Basically, yes.

You wanted another answer? Sorry.

6th edition can be won by a dickish WAAC list. The example of scythwing earlier is a good one. But it's still all dependent on dice rolls - moreso than ever. Trying to play it at tournament level is going to end in tears unless you accept the fact that you're just going to have to live with things like failing a charge due to a bad dice roll, your opponent getting a better warlord trait or getting no useful psychic powers if you want to keep playing this edition.

 English Assassin wrote:
No, the epitome of a beer and pretzels game would be something like Fluxx or Munchkin; games which are cheap to buy, simple to learn (particularly for non-gamers) and quick to play. A game with a 400-page rulebook, requiring hundreds of pounds minimum investment to involve yourself, and hours to play (to say nothing of the time invested painting) that offers nothing more than a "beer and pretzels" depth of play has failed badly.

Cool, some casual games do it better. I retract 'epitome'.

That doesn't change the fact that 6th edition is made as a beer and pretzels game, not a serious competitive game. The designers outright stated this at that devlopers day thing.

 -Loki- wrote:

That doesn't change the fact that 6th edition is made as a beer and pretzels game, not a serious competitive game. The designers outright stated this at that devlopers day thing.

Just because the designers stated a goal does not mean they met it, or even that it was a reasonable goal to set.

It strikes me that it's an unrealistic goal to craft a game that will see players investing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in pieces and spending hundreds of hours painting these parts, only to expect those players to have no vested interest in actually winning the game. I guess there must be some masochistic people who enjoy pulling their pieces off the board after "hilarious" and "cinematic" dice rolls, but my experience is that most people want to win the games they play and want the results of those games to be based on what they choose to do, not random events.

Beer, pretzels, and chillaxing OR competitive contests of skill, tactics, and strategy? You people are all silly.

You play a good game of sixth by picking an army you love, crafting a force you love, learning how to tweak and play that list until it doesn't matter how cheesy the internet says the enemy's is, then you get some friends, some beer+pretzels AND stuff your brains with strategy-thought and whatnot. Then you and your opponent give it your all and learn something from it. Beer, pretzels, and competition are needed in equal measure. Beer perhaps a touch more.

It's come up once or twice but my opinion on how to have an enjoyable game of 40k is simple.

"Find people who want the same out of the game as you"

You want to carefully sculpt your army, tweaking and honing it to a fine edge, rotating in whatever troops bring optimum performance, find folks doing the same.

You want to run a fluff driven list, play naturally unbalanced scenarios and generally put that whole "winning/losing" thing in the back seat, find folks who want the same.

Want something in the grey area between or like to do both on different nights? Those folks are out there too, or you can be the bridge between the competitive and fluff worlds

Personally I play to the best of my ability but I do it with what would probably be considered a sub par list by tournement standards. However because we all wanted the same thing all those armies were "competitive" for the local meta because no-one was running a "tourney" list, we all took the troops we thought were cool. This isn't to say we ignored our armies weaknesses, and some of our troop choices were the squads you might see in a hard list but the armies all hovered in the same tier.

Thats just my take on it, both of the core camps have their fanatics and can't "get" the other, it's about how they approach the game. Look for the folks who share *your* vision and you can't go far wrong. It means occasionally turning round and declining a game because the list/setup is too comp/fluffy then thats the sacrifice you may need to make.

DeffDred wrote:But thats not having fun. That's competative play.

DeffDred wrote:

 English Assassin wrote:

Oh look, somebody else who can't comprehend the notion that a competitive game can be fun.

That's an assumption.

If you think that my conclusion was an unwarranted assumption from your statement, you really need to work on expressing yourself more clearly.

DeffDred wrote:I can comprehend such a notion. You can't seem to comprehend that there is infact a difference between competetive play and "fun" play.

Try, just try to get your head around the notion that while you might not do so, a good number of other people get their "fun" from a game that's a meaningful contest, and resent not only GW's diminution of that meaningful competition for the sake of "forging a narrative", but the attitude of "casual" players who insist that theirs is the only "right sort of fun".

We play the actual game?

Regardless we do have some fanciful campaigns and different scenario's from time to time, to add some flavor. (We also add some RPG stats and abilities into the mix, for leveling up IC's)

I do exactly what I've been doing since 4th. I play with armies I like against people I like. Hasn't failed me yet.

What do I do?

I agree on a point total with my opponent. All rules in the 6E book are legal. I've played 30-40 games of 6E so far and have yet to have one that wasn't fun. I don't personally use allies because I can't find a way to fit them into my army (Daemons) without watering down what I love about how they play. But I don't care if people I'm playing want to use them. The same with doubled FOC.

 English Assassin wrote:
Try, just try to get your head around the notion that while you might not do so, a good number of other people get their "fun" from a game that's a meaningful contest, and resent not only GW's diminution of that meaningful competition for the sake of "forging a narrative", but the attitude of "casual" players who insist that theirs is the only "right sort of fun".

Try, just, try to get off your high horse and wrap your head around the idea that a game of playing with plastic men is hardly a meaningful contest.

At no point did I claim that I play using the "right sort of fun". I said there's a difference between "fun" and competition. And fun was in quotations.

If you think that my conclusion was an unwarranted assumption from your statement, you really need to work on expressing yourself more clearly.

I thought I was pretty straight to the point. Guess you couldn't "wrap your head around it".

 DeffDred wrote:

 English Assassin wrote:
Try, just try to get your head around the notion that while you might not do so, a good number of other people get their "fun" from a game that's a meaningful contest, and resent not only GW's diminution of that meaningful competition for the sake of "forging a narrative", but the attitude of "casual" players who insist that theirs is the only "right sort of fun".

Try, just, try to get off your high horse and wrap your head around the idea that a game of playing with plastic men is hardly a meaningful contest.

In the same way playing with wooden chesspieces can;t be a meaningful comtest, right? Or little stones in Go, or cards with pictures on..? What the flying feth do you think the pieces a game uses has to do with tactical competition?

 DeffDred wrote:
At no point did I claim that I play using the "right sort of fun". I said there's a difference between "fun" and competition. And fun was in quotations.

What you said was: "But thats not having fun. That's competative play.". you're insisting that the two are mutually-exclusive. We all understand that you don't enjoy competition; it continues to baffle me that you just can't understand that for others, it is the competition that is fun. But then you claim to believe that aliens built the pyramids, so I suppose I'm expecting a bit much from you.

 English Assassin wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

 English Assassin wrote:
Try, just try to get your head around the notion that while you might not do so, a good number of other people get their "fun" from a game that's a meaningful contest, and resent not only GW's diminution of that meaningful competition for the sake of "forging a narrative", but the attitude of "casual" players who insist that theirs is the only "right sort of fun".

Try, just, try to get off your high horse and wrap your head around the idea that a game of playing with plastic men is hardly a meaningful contest.

In the same way playing with wooden chesspieces can;t be a meaningful comtest, right? Or little stones in Go, or cards with pictures on..? What the flying feth do you think the pieces a game uses has to do with tactical competition?

 DeffDred wrote:
At no point did I claim that I play using the "right sort of fun". I said there's a difference between "fun" and competition. And fun was in quotations.

What you said was: "But thats not having fun. That's competative play.". you're insisting that the two are mutually-exclusive. We all understand that you don't enjoy competition; it continues to baffle me that you just can't understand that for others, it is the competition that is fun. But then you claim to believe that aliens built the pyramids, so I suppose I'm expecting a bit much from you.

Actually I believe man built the pyramids, just with help from something greater. But that's something else entirely. Also it's a bit rude of you to attack my beliefs.

But since you want to make this personal (man, you're easy to offend) I'll just toss you in the ignore bin so this doesn't come up between us again.

Given that you've been deliberately obtuse in all of your responses in this thread thus far; quelle différence?

How do I have fun in games of 6th?

1. I do not play games against English Assassins's....

2. I play an army for humor's sake.. If I win Yay... If I lose it doesn't really matter.. Wanna play another?

It seems that 6th has become hinged upon moments in the game and the whole challenge thing adds a new depth to the game.

 DeffDred wrote:

 English Assassin wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

 English Assassin wrote:
Try, just try to get your head around the notion that while you might not do so, a good number of other people get their "fun" from a game that's a meaningful contest, and resent not only GW's diminution of that meaningful competition for the sake of "forging a narrative", but the attitude of "casual" players who insist that theirs is the only "right sort of fun".

Try, just, try to get off your high horse and wrap your head around the idea that a game of playing with plastic men is hardly a meaningful contest.

In the same way playing with wooden chesspieces can;t be a meaningful comtest, right? Or little stones in Go, or cards with pictures on..? What the flying feth do you think the pieces a game uses has to do with tactical competition?

 DeffDred wrote:
At no point did I claim that I play using the "right sort of fun". I said there's a difference between "fun" and competition. And fun was in quotations.

What you said was: "But thats not having fun. That's competative play.". you're insisting that the two are mutually-exclusive. We all understand that you don't enjoy competition; it continues to baffle me that you just can't understand that for others, it is the competition that is fun. But then you claim to believe that aliens built the pyramids, so I suppose I'm expecting a bit much from you.

Actually I believe man built the pyramids, just with help from something greater. But that's something else entirely. Also it's a bit rude of you to attack my beliefs.

But since you want to make this personal (man, you're easy to offend) I'll just toss you in the ignore bin so this doesn't come up between us
again.

As to the above:

Casual play can be fun

Competitive play can be fun.

Casual play can be competitive.

Competitive play can be casual.... (E=MC2)

It all depends on how tight ya bunghole is.,.. And how desperate you are to win at army mens... pew pew...

Truthfully though no competitive game on the planet has a notation in the rulebook about "house rules" or "agree with opponent" or "have fun"
Which has been there since 3rd...

And chess is a meaningful challenge... Because it does not require an FAQ or a subscription to a magazine to understand a constantly changing ruleset.. I'm pretty sure I can go play some random dude in Japan or Zimbabwe in a game of chess without needing to establish "house rules"

That's how you define a Competitive game.

I've seen some of those pro chess tournaments.. Doesn't look like they having much fun to me... IMO

So firstly, OP, you are certainly not alone when you say that games in 6th ed tend to be determined very quickly. 6th ed missions (including the addition of secondaries), make it very obvious to tell who is walking away with the game after turn 2, and all of the rules that make things die faster, especially to shooting, combined with said missions things and the now serious problems with assault makes it very, VERY difficult to pull things off later on.

40k is now much more of playing a couple of turns and the winner mops up, at least compared to previous editions where it was a lot easier to at least threaten a draw late into the game. Put another way, if you're looking for a game that provides you a few hours of challenge (things are tough but with luck and creativity you can overcome problems), that appears to rather be gone now. So, what do you do?

-Loki- wrote:6th edition is the epitome of 'beer and pretzels' play, and as that suggest, it works best when having a beer with friends and not taking the game so seriously.

-Loki- 4 wrote:

English Assassin wrote:So in other words, give up any expectation of enjoying a challenging game; that's now the wrong sort of fun.

Basically, yes.

You really can't take 40k as a serious competitive exercise. It's a dice game. Whatever pretense of seriousness people were bringing to the game in 5h is now even more challenged in 6th, and a few years of Matt Ward writing codices.

If you want a serious strategy game, go play chess or something. The only way you will survive 40k with your sanity in tact is to abandon any seriousness about it.

Xenocidal Maniac wrote:How do I have an enjoyable game of 6th? It sounds snobby, but the truth is that I have found that the best way to have fun in this hobby is to be EXTREMELY selective about who I will play with.

Unfortunately, I've also found this to be true.

There are certain kinds of lists that create boring games. Said lists almost universally got stronger in 6th. More competitive people, therefore, are now bringing lists that are more awful to play against (win or lose). In 5th, there were things you could bring to the table to force more interesting stuff, like bringing an assault army, or bring a foot horde, or whatever, but most of those antidotes have been killed off by 6th ed rules.

As such, I'm afraid I really have to agree here. In the end, if your opponent is hell-bent on bringing a boring list and playing a tedious game, there's not much you can do to stop them other than not to play them.

When 6th ed game out, there were a few rules that I had come to the conclusion that would not create WAAC and TFG behavior, but it would rather reveal this kind of character, as it stripped away constraints on abuse. It turns out that more or less the entirety of 6th ed is that way. All you'll probably need to do is to read a person's army list to figure out if there's any serious chance of anything interesting happening, as the kind of person you're not going to want to play against will make their attitude towards the game pretty clear by the time you read their list.

I'm also more inclined to take 40k as a "Beer and Pretzels" kind of game. I've played a few times in 6th, but so far it's been fun! The only problem now is that 6th Ed. games take much longer than 5th, but I blame this on the fact that my friends and I haven't mastered the rules yet and we're still figuring things out (me more so, as I've only been playing 40k for a year).

My 40k friends are drifting from 6th Ed. however. They've been in the game far longer than I have and don't see as much fun in it anymore. They're frustrated by how long the games are due to all the randomness and the tedious new missions in 6th.

The 40k crowd in our small city is fairly small, so having my friends not wanting to play so much is pretty disheartening. I'm still having fun with 6th however, so I'll keep playing. I make it worth my time by just having fun with the game and not taking it so seriously.

Redbeard wrote: I guess there must be some masochistic people who enjoy pulling their pieces off the board after "hilarious" and "cinematic" dice rolls

Guilty

Redbeard wrote:but my experience is that most people want to win the games they play and want the results of those games to be based on what they choose to do, not random events.

Muahahaha...... Yeah, Craps is a game of skill too....

I seem to be in the minority on this, but I find 6e games to play faster and easier.

I do agree the most reliable way to have fun is play with like minded people.

 Ailaros wrote:
You really can't take 40k as a serious competitive exercise. It's a dice game. Whatever pretense of seriousness people were bringing to the game in 5h is now even more challenged in 6th, and a few years of Matt Ward writing codices.

If you want a serious strategy game, go play chess or something. The only way you will survive 40k with your sanity in tact is to abandon any seriousness about it.

You've made this witless assertion before, and both your comparison with chess and your insistence that the presence of a random element precludes meaningful tactical competition are still a load of cobblers. I'm just going to quote what I said in reply last time you came out with it. Try reading this time, rather than blithely ignoring everything that doesn't suit your outlook.

English Assassin wrote:This, to be brutally frank, is nonsense. Ignoring the obvious fact that 40k is a tactical game anyway, which renders comparisons with games of abstract strategy like chess futile, the presence of an element of randomness does not preclude player skill from being the dominant factor. Obviously, this being 40k, the horrible lack of balance between army lists is also a significant factor, and indeed one which in particular cases overshadows player skill. However, a game does not need to be an abstract one of perfect information, like Chess (or Go, or Blokus) with no random component to still rely predominantly on player skill. If you don't believe me, next time you play 40k, use a scatter dice to move your units, and to chose their targets, and see how well you do. For that matter, poker, by your rationale, should be a matter of nothing but luck, and yet professional players continue to take the shirts off the backs of rubes who believe just that.

Moreover, you are wilfully ignoring the fact that not only are probabilities on a number of d6 laughably easy to compute in one's head, but that most of the time in 40k, the players will be rolling buckets of dice which - following the Law of large numbers - will pertain towards the average. This doesn't mean that startling failures or successes (Black swan events, if you want the mathematicians' term) are impossible, nor that they will not affect the game's outcome to some degree, but nonetheless most of the time, the numbers of dice rolled are sufficiently large that their results will match prediction to within an acceptable margin of error.

English Ass wrote:In the same way playing with wooden chesspieces can;t be a meaningful comtest, right? Or little stones in Go, or cards with pictures on..? What the flying feth do you think the pieces a game uses has to do with tactical competition?

You yourself created the parallel between Warhammer and Chess.




Edit : What the feth is Go?

 Big'Uns wrote:

English Ass wrote:In the same way playing with wooden chesspieces can;t be a meaningful comtest, right? Or little stones in Go, or cards with pictures on..? What the flying feth do you think the pieces a game uses has to do with tactical competition?

You yourself created the parallel between Warhammer and Chess.

In an entirely different context.

Big'Uns wrote:Edit : What the feth is Go?

Let me Google that for you...

English Ass wrote:In an entirely different context.

Um.... No... You directly compared warhammer to chess as a tactical game... Somehow you threw poker in there too. Cause yeah we didn't see a playmate come in third in last years 1,000,000 invite after never having played before.. British people play poker? Huh...



Edit: What the feth is google?

 Big'Uns wrote:

English Ass wrote:In an entirely different context.

Um.... No... You directly compared warhammer to chess as a tactical game.

No, I brought up chess to point out that playing pieces were irrelevant to the depth of a game, and poker to demonstrate that randomness and skill are not mutually exclusive. Do try to keep up.

Also, did you have a point to make or are you just here to get back at those rascally lobsterbacks?

 Ailaros wrote:

When 6th ed game out, there were a few rules that I had come to the conclusion that would not create WAAC and TFG behavior, but it would rather reveal this kind of character, as it stripped away constraints on abuse. It turns out that more or less the entirety of 6th ed is that way. All you'll probably need to do is to read a person's army list to figure out if there's any serious chance of anything interesting happening, as the kind of person you're not going to want to play against will make their attitude towards the game pretty clear by the time you read their list.

Dead on. I found that this was true really in any edition of the game, but it's particularly true now. 6th ed is so spectacularly "breakable" that it really is up to the community to police itself. You really only need to know what kind of list someone is taking to see where their head is at. If I see someone with a flying circus Necron list teamed up with some really implausible ally like Blood Angels for CC punch, then I know it's not someone who is on the same wavelength as I am and that it's just not going to be fun.

I've got a core group of about four or five guys that I can play fun games with. Problem is, it seems that most people who take the same laid-back approach to the game that I do tend to have busy schedules filled with activities and obligations outside of wargaming. I can always get a game in with a random at the LGS, but I find that the WAAC mentality seems to increase commensurate with the amount of time one spends in said LGS... hence, games with them tend not to be very much fun for me.

 English Touchhole wrote:

 Big'Uns wrote:

English Ass wrote:In an entirely different context.

Um.... No... You directly compared warhammer to chess as a tactical game.

No, I brought up chess to point out that playing pieces were irrelevant to the depth of a game, and poker to demonstrate that randomness and skill are not mutually exclusive. Do try to keep up.

Also, did you have a point to make or are you just here to get back at those rascally lobsterbacks?

My point is.... And I'll try to type real slow for you... Warhammer... is...not...a....competetive.....game.... I understand if you have low self-esteem probably no good at contact sports or had a bully or something.. If you need to convince yourself that a game of chance is competitive to keep from admitting to yourself that you play with with little plastic men for absolutely no reason than to go, pew...pew..pew... To call it "tactics" however is blasphemous.... Oh wait.. That's right you guys wear red in the woods and stand shoulder to shoulder.. Nevermind..



Edit: What the feth is a Lobsterback?