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 amanita wrote:
Our version is a 4th/5th hybrid with a touch of 6th. We might give 7th a try if GW really worked at cleaning up its rules, but that's not something I expect.

I dunno. We've seen this before. A complex edition with endless supplements and expansions, followed by a clean sterile one. The wheel of time turns....

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
Except competitive SSB players DO eliminate all the "casual" fun stuff and all random factors, but people still talk about keeping in formations or Escalation because they're "official" and "legal".

NO TERRAIN
ELDAR ONLY
FINAL DESTINATION

This made me laugh out loud. To contribute to the thread, seems like most people have made some sort of house rules since forever.

Even tournament missions are house rules aren't they? They aren't in the rule book. If tournaments want to start banning stuff, that is up to them. Everyone else should just try to have fun. Just make sure your version of "fun" is the same as your opponent!

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Noir Eternal wrote:
Well with any luck 7th editions problems won't rub people off as negatively as 6th edition has

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. I don't know of a single GW release that doesn't upset people for some reason.

Maybe so, but even with 5th edition problems my group played the game rules as written and enjoyed it.

I can attest to that. In 5th I could actually win games, and have a game done in under 3 hours.

Not I can't even get a 750 pts game down in that time due to rules arguments, and I get smashed by armies I used to stomp...

A 5th edition ruleset with 6th edition wound allocation, template rules, and fliers would make me happy as a pig in gak.

I agree with this, except for wound allocations. Wound allocations are ridiculous. You can only hit the closest model til he dies, and any special weapons from regular troops are lost, instead of the realistic outcome of a squadmate picking up the fallen weapon. Fantasy works this way, with a regular guy picking up the standard or instrument if said model dies. Wound allocation is what drove me from 6th.

You know, if everyone wants a copy that met with 95% love...use the Pancake rules.

What are the Pancake rules?

GW have always encouraged house rules.
The more rules they give us just gives more options.

GW do not focus on tournament play, so you can't blame GW if you are playing in a non-sanctioned GW tournament.

 Ailaros wrote:
I think that there has long been a truth about 40k that some people realise earlier than others: 40k isn't a serious game. You take it seriously at your own eventual peril.

Exactly, just have fun with it.

Played a casual game against Blood Angels last night at the games club. My Orks got tabled,does not happen that often, but I was in pain from laughing so much throughout the game. One of the best games ever. Two Meks blew themselves up, Zogsworts head exploded and my Big Mek with Shokk attack Gun fired himself across the battlefield into close combat with 6 Terminators with Thunder Hammers! And then a group of Assault Marines that wiped out a unit of 10 Flash Gitz in a turn got held in combat by a unit of 10 Gretchin.

At the end of the game I had a single Loota left running away. It was my turn and I got to take a single shot at a Dreadnought needing just a glance to take it out. Four or five people gathered and were cheering me on to take out the Dread.

THIS is how 40K is played.

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

It was never perfect but once upon a time it used to at least allow people to play that way, now the rules seem intent on squashing anything approaching competitive play in favour of 'Forging a Narrative'(tm).
The difference is what was once indifference that allowed people to play how they wanted to there is now an attitude of 'you're having fun wrong, stop it'.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

That's the point. If you try playing a non-competetive game competetively then your going to run into problems. The game is not at fault.

Pretty sure the game being non-competitive for no reason is definitely the games (makers) fault. Making it non-competitive adds nothing. You could greatly improve the competitiveness without sacrificing any "narrative", in fact imo it would improve it substantially.

 Yonan wrote:
Pretty sure the game being non-competitive for no reason is definitely the games (makers) fault. Making it non-competitive adds nothing. You could greatly improve the competitiveness without sacrificing any "narrative", in fact imo it would improve it substantially.

I disagree. The myth that it "would loose nothing" keeps coming up, but it's still bs.

You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

 Zweischneid wrote:
I disagree. The myth that it "would loose nothing" keeps coming up, but it's still bs.

You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

You don't need imbalance, you need asymmetrical gameplay and multiple viable options. Imbalance doesn't create an engaging meta game, it creates "net lists" that make certain things unusable and other things essential if you want to be competitive. It seriously detracts from competitive play by restricting unit selection and detracts from casual play by gimping players who don't understand which units are good or not.

Asymmetrical gameplay lets you play completely differently depending on the army you choose, and if it's balanced each army can fight in a number of ways depending on how they want to play, or how they need to play to fight the specific playstyle of the enemy.

Look at games like Starcraft 2 - while most units have mirrored roles they act completely differently in most cases and it results in different playstyles that overall have similar win rates for each army - far closer than the armies in 40k. *that* is what makes fun gameplay, being balanced and asymmetrical while still having lots of choice in how you can play.

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

Dang, I thought this was a game, not holy scriptures. Don't like something with the rules? change it. Talk to the people you play with and work out what works for all of you. If you play with a bunch of douches that just want to run all Riptides or whatever, then don't play them. Find other players. Just have fun and stop stressing out about extra rules that no one's forcing you to use. Personally, I think it'd be fun to play against a super heavy once in a while. Not all the time or even often, but once in a while could spice things up. I always use house rules because I usually only play with friends or family. A benefit of having a twin brother and a cool nephew and a great local meta that's really friendly. (Back in Utah. I haven't had time or opportunity to really do any gaming in Japan.)

 Ugavine wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Ugavine wrote:
THIS is how 40K is played.

You mean that is how YOU think it should be played and It is how GW want it to be played but the fact is there are a lot of people out there that want a more competitive game.

That's the point. If you try playing a non-competetive game competetively then your going to run into problems. The game is not at fault.

Except imbalanced units and codices DO cause problems. Grab two codices, let us use CSM and Tau as examples. CSm because they were the first official 6th edition codex and because in the starter box and Tau because they are the cremedelacra when it comes to being on the battlefield. Now, grab random units from every area. Assemble armies not based on what is effective but instead what looks awesome. What you will find is, more ofteh then not. The Tau player will be able to deploy something consistently better than the Chaos Space Marine player. Other imbalances, the csm codex earnestly sucks, it's imbalanced terribly, and worst of all, introduced the baledrake. It wasn't the thing that really nailed it in the coffin, but the S6 Ap3 flamer that is 360*, durable, and rips apart SM saves. SM are pricey, they don't really have the best guns nor the best assault. What they have is durability. Problem is that with the increase in AP2 weapons such lists are devestated. Riptides and heldrakes rip apart biker armies for breakfest and a boots on the floor SM force is going to weep tears of sorrow. The person that deploys CSM is going to have troops that, not only have a rule that hamstrings them and dooms them more than rescuing them, but, if deployed against the SM Codex inherently are at a disadvantage. Heck, the wolves are still better.

When I started this game I didn't know what the good units were nor the bad ones. I got a drake because I wanted to not knowing how mighty it was (at the time at least). I played it twice, realized what it did in a casual meta that had too little anti-air and shelved it forever or at least until 7th edition comes out, I get my fething legion special rules, Thousand Sons get fixed (to finally end GW's eternal undying hatred for them for once), and the heldrake brought back so that one less thing makes foot marine lists and biker lists suffer. Sure there are grav guns and riptides, but one step at a time.... one thing at a time. In a competitive environment the heldrake isn't scary. But in casuals? Just for fun? Quick games usually against sub-optimal lists? This thing can rip, shred, and gobble up enemies for breakfast. The person that wishes to build a CSM tzeentch army inherently is bringing themself down to such a point they are a laughable joke. So who should I punish? The people that stuck out years of no updates to play there army again? The eldar player that liked or owned wave serpents that suddenly just became drastically better? Should I scream at the Tau player that bought 1-2 riptides because they thought they were awesome and then built a crisis list? Should I insult the guy that is deploying drakes because in reality there book is so counter intuitive the army is trying to kill itself with every rule? No, I shouldn't have to blame the player. That doesn't mean that we humans won't find a way to exploit it. No matter how hard one tries to find balance, very few things can ever find it. Chess can reach it, but 40k? Too many codices that take too long to be produced. Heck, you also need somebody that actually cares about the army they are writing about and even that might just make them op. A balanced and competitive codex also benefits casuals because they don't unkowingly put themself at a disadvantage, the fluffy player, whilst not deploying the best list ever can still compete with there fluffy list of 343434 pyrovores that can, although not as good, still function and work completely fine.

If you're playing friendly games but one player constantly, and intentionally, keeps playing power lists then that person obviously has no idea what a friendly game is or isn't a friend.

Personally I never play the same list twice. I grab some boxes and make my list on the night once I've had a look at what I've picked up.

If someone plays this game and isn't having fun then it's obviously not the game for them. Agricola is one of the highest ranked games on BoardGameGeek but I don't like it, I don't enjoy playing it. Is that the fault of the game? Hardly.

I won tournaments with a Siren Daemon Prince that couldn't be attacked by anything and destroyed everything it touched, and played in GTs where the top25 had 20 CSM armies. I played with Daemons of Chaos in Warhammer GTs where the top10 consisted of 90% Daemons of Chaos armies and the winner was an army that was designed to counter itself. I remember when people raged about Bretonnian Royal Air Forces, max Oblits/Ordnance Iron Warriors, Necromancer lead VC summon hordes or much later regen bunkers. The list goes on and on. Even over fifteen years ago I remember playing in a tournament against a Space Wolf army with nothing but a single Terminator Librarian and Terminators with Assault Cannons and/or Cyclone Missile Launchers (everyone has heavy weapons). I remember getting tabled in one shooting phase.

The people who think balance has all of a sudden gone out of the window are either new or have memory problems. 40K or Fantasy Battle have never been balanced.

The more options in the game system the better. The more tournaments the better. Every community and every tournament organiser can decide which parts of the ruleset they allow. GW has always encouraged this. It'll take one or two A4 pages to explain what kind of tournament it is. This isn't a new phenomenon. This is common sense.

Finally, a thread just like this one has popped up hundreds of times already, and each time everyone thought something drastically new and earthshattering was happening. The history just repeats itself. The guy on the first page of this thread said it perfectly when he reminded everyone GW games aren't serious games. We just like the universe so much it is easily forgotten.

I'll remind people that a game being imbalanced doesn't mean it can't be played competitively. People have played 40K competitively since the dawn of the game at tournaments all over Europe atleast, and a lot of times the most imbalanced and strong armies came out on top. And it was fun.

 Zweischneid wrote:
You need (!) a certain level of imbalance to make a game interesting for different levels of skill and experience. It is only through imbalances, than an engaging meta-game can develop, evolve and keep the game changing and interesting in the long term.

Nonsense. Bad balance does NOT lead to an interesting metagame, it leads to a metagame where the overpowered choices are obvious and drive every other choice out of the metagame. Nor does bad balance help make the game interesting for non-competitive players, since for those players the metagame is much less important than the story and models. And the idea that bad balance can help with varying skill levels is just insane. Sure, in some ideal fantasy world the weaker player could use the better list to make the game more interesting, but in reality the weaker player probably makes bad list building decisions as well and loses by an even bigger margin.

Your problem is that once again you're confusing balance and symmetry. A well-balanced game can also have a diverse and interesting metagame as long as there are enough different strategies to pick from. For example, a fast aggressive strategy can have a very balanced 50/50 matchup against a static defensive strategy, but the two sides will have completely different gameplay experiences. Balance only leads to a boring game if your only method of balancing the game is making everything identical, but that's just bad game design.

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

And wrong again. Balance helps "casual" players because it increases the chance that they can show up for a random pickup game and have a fair chance of winning, even if they don't care about the game enough have a perfectly optimized tournament army. Balance helps "story" players because it allows them to have a fun and interesting game even when they choose their lists primarily for story reasons. In fact, tournament players probably get the least benefit from balance because the true WAAC types are happy to just take whatever is overpowered and win with it.

I played a 1v1v1, scenario driven game of dystopian wars yesterday and it was the most fun I have had in a while because we did, and I hate to use this term, forge a pretty kick ass narrative.

You know what we didn't have to do while racing for the pirate gold at the center of the table? Worry about overpowered units wiping the floor with our 'fluffy' armies. We were able to bring the units we thought fit the theme AND the units that we thought were good without once worrying if something would be too good or asking someone else to take something weaker because our list couldn't deal with it.


Balanced rules make everything better, you can't argue they don't without sounding like someone either happily sticking their fingers in their ears or someone who does nor understand what we mean when we say 'balance'.

 Selym wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

It's odd that you think it is limited to 6th edition.

Every 40k edition since 3rd has suffered from certain lists being repeated - especially 5th edition, the one they tried hardest to make competitive. And the only reason I exclude 1st and 2nd editions is the internet not being as prevalent then.

 Therion wrote:
I won tournaments with a Siren Daemon Prince that couldn't be attacked by anything and destroyed everything it touched, and played in GTs where the top25 had 20 CSM armies. I played with Daemons of Chaos in Warhammer GTs where the top10 consisted of 90% Daemons of Chaos armies and the winner was an army that was designed to counter itself. I remember when people raged about Bretonnian Royal Air Forces, max Oblits/Ordnance Iron Warriors, Necromancer lead VC summon hordes or much later regen bunkers. The list goes on and on. Even over fifteen years ago I remember playing in a tournament against a Space Wolf army with nothing but a single Terminator Librarian and Terminators with Assault Cannons and/or Cyclone Missile Launchers (everyone has heavy weapons). I remember getting tabled in one shooting phase.

The people who think balance has all of a sudden gone out of the window are either new or have memory problems. 40K or Fantasy Battle have never been balanced.

The more options in the game system the better. The more tournaments the better. Every community and every tournament organiser can decide which parts of the ruleset they allow. GW has always encouraged this. It'll take one or two A4 pages to explain what kind of tournament it is. This isn't a new phenomenon. This is common sense.

Finally, a thread just like this one has popped up hundreds of times already, and each time everyone thought something drastically new and earthshattering was happening. The history just repeats itself. The guy on the first page of this thread said it perfectly when he reminded everyone GW games aren't serious games. We just like the universe so much it is easily forgotten.

I'll remind people that a game being imbalanced doesn't mean it can't be played competitively. People have played 40K competitively since the dawn of the game at tournaments all over Europe atleast, and a lot of times the most imbalanced and strong armies came out on top. And it was fun.

Chin Chin, well said, +1.
The game is always changing, there is always something new to worry about or to change your list for.
I for one would be mighty pissed off if I went out and bought a new addition for my list to then find it banned in tournaments.
I would also be pissed off if I bought a counter unit for my list to counter the latest and greatest to then find out its been banned anyway.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Balanced rules make everything better, you can't argue they don't without sounding like someone either happily sticking their fingers in their ears or someone who does nor understand what we mean when we say 'balance'.

Agreed, it's a peculiar position to suggest imbalance is good. It has to be a misattribution based on the incorrect assumption that imbalance is needed as part of asymmetry. Asymmetry is harder/more time consuming to balance than symmetry definitely, but is a staple of good multi-faction games and has been done much better by most successful games than 40k does imo. Largely due to better updates to them after release I think. 40K certainly has asymmetry, it just doesn't apply enough balance changes to it when flaws come to light. GW could do so much better in this regard, it's frustrating that they don't.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Selym wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Warhammer 40K may or may not have hit the right "spot", but competitive balance serves nobody (except a tiny community of tournament players who, all taken together, probably don't spend enough money to keep a single GW store alive).

Because 40k's current version of competitive only validates roughly one list per army.
Each army gets an autotake unit, and then an auto take ally with an autotake allied unit.

The imbalance you suggest will not create any variation, it will only create stagnation (as we can clearly see in this version of 40k).

It's odd that you think it is limited to 6th edition.

Every 40k edition since 3rd has suffered from certain lists being repeated - especially 5th edition, the one they tried hardest to make competitive. And the only reason I exclude 1st and 2nd editions is the internet not being as prevalent then.

I refer to this edition as it's the one we're currently using. I do realise that previous editions were poorly written too, but we can't really do much about that now.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

Yes, that is correct. And you decided to draw conclusions from it, which I very much disagree with because we do not have the insight to draw those conclusions, while you stated them as fact.

 Psienesis wrote:
That's easily done, because by every metric, GW *is* a successful company. Unsuccessful companies don't remain in business for 25+ years.

This statistic is actually a little bogus in and of itself. Past success in no way proves or promises future success. GW has BEEN a successful company, but current financial trends and efforts by GW management are leading to a questionable future.

Skriker

 Purifier wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
I disagree with your breakdown.

It's not really my breakdown. My math (or use of a calculator) perhaps, but I only used the breakdown that was used in the investment information.

 Purifier wrote:
The question is how much of Operating Expenses that is big bonuses and salaries for the bigwigs in the company. You can easily make a company have 0 profit margin if you just take it all out for yourself, no matter how highly you cost the item. In fact, the only one of those four listings we know what it is, is the taxes. Your breakdown is MUCH too simplistic and doesn't give a true picture of anything really.

I'm sorry that I can't make it more specific, but that's the best look in we're going to get.

Operating expenses is vague, but without more information it's hard to really say how that's broken down further. Honestly my breakdown is limited by the information I have to make it. It's simplistic because the categories I have to work with are simplistic. If you really want better you'd need to be sitting in GW's accounting department.

Yes, that is correct. And you decided to draw conclusions from it, which I very much disagree with because we do not have the insight to draw those conclusions, while you stated them as fact.

My "conclusions" are nothing more than a simple breakdown of how the money is divided up based on the same percentages that their overall balance sheet is. I drew my own conclusions from this, sure but I did not claim them to be the only possible answer. Nor did I show how the breakdown really works where the money in is all pooled and then divided as needed with the remainder being profit.

This was a diagram, a simple device to show in smaller numbers the same split of the money in a way people could see and understand better. It is fact that the human brain has issues comprehending large numbers, but these small ones in a context people can understand is easier to process.

And you may disagree with the way I see things, but that doesn't make it wrong. Nor does the fact I can't tell you how sales and admin (aka operating costs) breaks down to the dollar, but with GW brick and mortars I bet the weight is more on sales than whatever Kirby got this last year.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: This is actually the only real conclusion I made in that post to boot:

Zion wrote: The amount of money they make on something is a lot lower than I've heard claims of in the past as this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up.

Which is true. The amount of money that actually goes above the level of what is being marked off as a cost (even if you don't agree with how it's marked off) is considerably lower than the claims of GW screwing your pocketbook lead one to believe. Heck, the 27% that is all "Cost of Goods" shows that the things we buy cost a lot more to make than people want to admit because the cost of a product isn't just the plastic in it.

My only "conclusion" is that the amount of money being made is less extreme that being claimed. Do I have a full pound by pound breakdown? No. But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

The part I had a problem with was:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim.

Which it doesn't prove at all. It actually doesn't prove anything at all.
In fact, I disagree that "this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up."

It's like saying "I eat 25% meat and 75% veggies, so that should give you a better picture of what kind of food I eat."
Well, I can tell you're not vegetarian, and that's about as far as that give me anything at all. I can hardly make the same food as you given that recipe.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

I agree, which really is no conclusion at all.

so after we finish building and painting all our plastic we can get to work on rewriting their crap excuse for a game!

DOUBLE THE FUN!!!!

40k is layer after layer of broken. you would have to go pretty deep if you actually want to fix everything.

i used to write tons and tons of stuff for D&D as the DM. rules writing can quickly turn into a full time job if taken seriously.

it's the game developers job (not yours) to fix their own game. if you feel like wasting your time trying to fix their mess then more power to you, personally i have little time or motivation for it.

Imbalance in a game is required. Please see youtube video "extra credits: Perfect Imbalance" for more. Some of us are talking about this and others aren't aware of it it would seem. Just to get everybody on the same page.

 Purifier wrote:
The part I had a problem with was:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So based on a comparative break down of what things are sold for vs the percentages of where it goes, GW really isn't running us through the ringer as much as people claim.

Which it doesn't prove at all. It actually doesn't prove anything at all.
In fact, I disagree that "this gives us a better picture of how the money from a product gets divided up."

It's like saying "I eat 25% meat and 75% veggies, so that should give you a better picture of what kind of food I eat."
Well, I can tell you're not vegetarian, and that's about as far as that give me anything at all. I can hardly make the same food as you given that recipe.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
But with what information we've got I've given the best conclusion I could draw from it.

I agree, which really is no conclusion at all.

Unless you.re sugesting that GW lie to investers, ClockworkZion is actually spot on.

I remember a while ago arguing with someone, who insisted that the only cost in a good was its physical ingredients. The plastic in 40k kits costs pennies, therefore box sets cost pennies to make and GW are shafting us. I tried explaining to him that there were also line workers, material distrobuters, goods in operatives, despatch operatives, payroll, HR, lorry drivers, warehouse pickers...and that's just to get it to leave the factory.

I ended up ignoring him. Some people are just happy to be the sheep in Animal Farm, bleeting "gw bhaaad", rather than accepting that GW only make a couple of pound profit on each box - even though this does not mean that you can't relentlessly and baseless bash GW for everything else.

KnuckleWolf wrote:
Imbalance in a game is required. Please see youtube video "extra credits: Perfect Imbalance" for more. Some of us are talking about this and others aren't aware of it it would seem. Just to get everybody on the same page.

Perfect imbalance is a concept that exists because chess can be damn boring from a non competitive point of view. It has no bearing on a discussion about 40k rules unless 7th edition somehow make the game amazingly well balanced, and even then the very nature of the codex release schedule would still push the meta around enough to keep it from getting stale.

@jonolikespie - I think you missed the point. Please elaborate on how chess specifically got brought into this and how it is "boring from a non-competitive view". Or more to the point, skip that and elaborate on the release schedule comment.