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With the fairly recent addition of allies, fliers, formations, titan's and all that other stuff, the tactical landscape of warhammer 40k has shifted.. a lot. Everyone is talking about D weapons of course, but I'm sure, in the next few months, we'll find a few more things that could utterly mess you up, unless you too ally in a titan, or a psyker that can posses enemy titans.

now, I'm recently getting back into the hobby, been gone for about a year now, and I was wondering if having more alternate formats (apocalypse is a format, for example) of gameplay. Mostly for tournaments, but also so that a person could say "I have a 'skirmisher' army and a 'standard' army" and people would know what that means, as opposed to that same person saying "please don't run titans, or superheavies, because I haven't had time/money/interest to buy and build a response to those threats". I'm not sure if this is making sense, so I'll try to explain via examples of what the different formats could be. (keep in mind, don't know all the new rules yet, so I might say something that plain doesn't work [which comes with the territory of the proposed rules section I feel], or something that's already been implemented [in which case, yay])

so... the formats could be something like this

skirmish, this is for more standard/old school games, no fliers, no super heavies, no forge world, etc. no allies, no formations

open conflict, like skirmish, but air support, and reinforcements have been called in. Fliers allowed, allies allowed, no super heavies, no forge world, no formations

total war, errythang goes. current rules are allowed in every capacity. Bring the cheese.



As someone who still doesn't understand the full extent of the changes that have been made, maybe I shouldn't be the one talking about this, but I've just seen complaints and concerns on the boards and felt that creating a concrete set of tiers would help both casual players and competitive ones find their niche.

If allies are allowed, FW should be as well. Allies are worse for game balance than anything FW has released.

It's not a terrible idea, but you've got two basic problems:

1) Your formats don't make much sense. Why are you only able to take FW units in the "everything" format where titans are included? What if I just want a nice simple game with one detachment but I also want to use my FW Barracuda? Why are flyers included in the list of "special" stuff when they're a core part of the game? Etc.

2) This kind of thing works for MTG because the basic structure of the game is designed to have rotating blocks of cards. Every deck archetype gets something in every new set to replace the stuff it loses, and you never feel like you're banned from playing your favorite type of deck just because the format changed. And on top of this building a new deck doesn't involve any commitment beyond buying new cards, so making decks for new formats is easy. In 40k, on the other hand, making a new army is a huge investment and people tend to be much more attached to a single list. If you restrict what is legal in a format then you're effectively banning people from attending that event.

If you want a more sensible set of formats you should break it down into which detachments are legal. Each format should allow rules from any appropriate source (codex/ibook/supplement/FW/whatever) as long as they fit into the FOC:

Skirmish: special "small game" format intended for 500 point games and smaller. Limited FOC (0-1 slots, etc) with unit restrictions (no vehicles, limit on vehicle AV, no flyers, no 2+ saves, etc) on stuff that breaks the game at such a low point level.
Standard: single detachment, no allies/fortifications/formations/superheavies/etc.
Expanded: allies and fortifications included, no special detachments like C:I/formations/superheavies.
Open: everything is included.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's not a terrible idea, but you've got two basic problems:

Only two? Way better than I expected

1) Your formats don't make much sense. Why are you only able to take FW units in the "everything" format where titans are included? What if I just want a nice simple game with one detachment but I also want to use my FW Barracuda? Why are flyers included in the list of "special" stuff when they're a core part of the game? Etc.

This is where more experienced gamers like you and, hopefully, tournament organizers would be helpful. I've been away from the game for a while and a lot has changed in the last year-year and a half

2) This kind of thing works for MTG because the basic structure of the game is designed to have rotating blocks of cards. Every deck archetype gets something in every new set to replace the stuff it loses, and you never feel like you're banned from playing your favorite type of deck just because the format changed. And on top of this building a new deck doesn't involve any commitment beyond buying new cards, so making decks for new formats is easy. In 40k, on the other hand, making a new army is a huge investment and people tend to be much more attached to a single list. If you restrict what is legal in a format then you're effectively banning people from attending that event.

I've only been to two tourneys for 40k, so I don't know if the game has the population to support something like this, but I was thinking that you'd have tournaments that are of different formats (not sure if that was made clear in my first post). So yes, people who want to field a titan could only play in tournaments of other people fielding titans (or however those who are better at this whole thing than I decide to break it down). But basically this would mean that players who don't want to include super heavies, or allies or detachments even, could still play competitive games.

If you want a more sensible set of formats you should break it down into which detachments are legal. Each format should allow rules from any appropriate source (codex/ibook/supplement/FW/whatever) as long as they fit into the FOC:

Skirmish: special "small game" format intended for 500 point games and smaller. Limited FOC (0-1 slots, etc) with unit restrictions (no vehicles, limit on vehicle AV, no flyers, no 2+ saves, etc) on stuff that breaks the game at such a low point level.
Standard: single detachment, no allies/fortifications/formations/superheavies/etc.
Expanded: allies and fortifications included, no special detachments like C:I/formations/superheavies.
Open: everything is included.

Thanks for the consideration. I'm curious to see how much or little others like this idea

From a long ago thread, I had this to say...

They release a "Core" rule book that is simple as dirt. Just move/shoot/assault, terrain, stats. Not these BRBs, that can be extra. Simultaneous with that release is a super balanced string of codexes for each army that ONLY contain the primary story Characters, a generic HQ, a basic troop, and then three other units of whatever type. All the rules for other models will be available on the website but are noted to not have much balancing work done. Only these 'Mini' codexes will be tourney legal as they have been fine tuned for balance. Every four months, they slide one more unit into each codex, this will allow them to evolve a campaign over the course of a few releases. Then much like magic, every year, after you've run through a full campaign series of expansions you take the core codex list and tweak it a little to start the next campaign by changing the original codex line up...

This would be your "Standard" format equivalent. I still feel almost a year after this post that this formatting would be worth exploration. Big time Magic player for many years before getting sucked into 40k and ending up with a bag of useless models for a game I can't enjoy. Oh well! They still work for sci-fi role playing! In my gamer middle age I'm almost more interested in exploring rules construction, successes and failures, and playing a few that I truly enjoy the play of, and the community around. I think formatting the environment would be a HUGE step forward for GW. Though the scope of that step may be beyond the company at this time.