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Makumba wrote:

Against that one opponent. Or, you know, actually organise yourself a little better and use this thing called communication to help out. It isnt much of an excuse any longer to claim you will never have any way of knowing who will show up to play. It really isnt.

Yeah and then you wake up and the closest place where you can play against armies that are not good is in another country. That is like tripple win.

So you have noone who plays armies that are less than 100% optimised? I struggle to believe that is true.

Again. Communicate with people. Even hard core tourney playerrs enjoy mixing it up a little (generalisation here) - playing lopsided matches, handicapping themselves, etc. Again, low emotional intelligence is not the fault of the game (it has enough faults of its own)

Toofast wrote:
I don't think some of you realize how flawed your logic is when compared to other games. Saying "my 1500 points should be competitive with your 1500 points because that's all I own" is like saying (in MTG), "my 60 cards from random boosters should be as competitive as your 60 cards that you carefully selected to form a powerful deck". In what war game or TCG is there balance when one player can choose from multiple copies of everything available to him and the other player is just playing with everything they have? Go ahead and think about it, I'll wait...

Just think about what you've said there. I'll give you a hint, it's a well known phrase regarding comparing different types of fruit. To even insinuate 40k should be play to win disgusts me to my very core at what the remaining player base of this game has become.

Also, to answer your second question. WarmaHordes. That is all.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Against that one opponent. Or, you know, actually organise yourself a little better and use this thing called communication to help out. It isnt much of an excuse any longer to claim you will never have any way of knowing who will show up to play. It really isnt.

You seem to live in this magical land were there are still lots of 40k opponents to choose from. In my country the reality is that your lucky if you find someone willing to play 40k when you drop by the store any more.

On top of this, you still wan't to add further barriers to actually playing and enjoying the game, like everyone always carrying multiple lists worth of models, just in case you or your opponent think that they won't have fun playing their intended list or like Samurai_Eduh even suggests just outright refusing to play someone because you don't like their list...

Meanwhile in every other game, I just have to show up, plop my army down and have a reasonable expectation of having a fun game where each player has a reasonably equal chance to win.

In MTG you buy random cards.Dude beats me because he is using mox and BL in an Open match , against my deck. Good game, he paid a lot more for his deck. But if I spend 300$ on my deck and he spends 300$ on his , and he can't beat my army unless he buys the exactly same deck and gets better draw. Then something is wrong. And if it happens Wizard removes or errates cards from a cycle.

How can the game be good , if the only option to play it is to tailor , because you have infinite amount of cash or play one of the top 3 lists.

PhantomViper wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Against that one opponent. Or, you know, actually organise yourself a little better and use this thing called communication to help out. It isnt much of an excuse any longer to claim you will never have any way of knowing who will show up to play. It really isnt.

You seem to live in this magical land were there are still lots of 40k opponents to choose from. In my country the reality is that your lucky if you find someone willing to play 40k when you drop by the store any more.

On top of this, you still wan't to add further barriers to actually playing and enjoying the game, like everyone always carrying multiple lists worth of models, just in case you or your opponent think that they won't have fun playing their intended list or like Samurai_Eduh even suggests just outright refusing to play someone because you don't like their list...

Meanwhile in every other game, I just have to show up, plop my army down and have a reasonable expectation of having a fun game where each player has a reasonably equal chance to win.

Ah, so you DONT communicate with other players then? Proving my point rather exactly? How is having multiple lists a barrier? Have 2k worth of models, write 2 1500, 2 1750, 2 1850 lists. Done. People already come to PUGs with different sizes of list.

Again, what you call a barrier to play I call partly a sign of low emotional intelligence in the player base. It really, really isnt anywhere near as bad as your doom laden arguments make it, it really isnt a huge stretch to realise that there are different types of player out there - and that applies in EVERY game, e.g. MtG - and therefore to have the personal responsibility to achieve the social cointract these games are about.

And no, it ISNT a magical 40k land. If you lived in Reading, Berkshire, UK we have 3 clubs (2 privately run, 1 shop) with a large 40k following. Before our move to new premises and day, our club had 40 regular attendees, half of which (at least) played 40k. So take your "magical" gak elsewhere - seriously, make a good point, without hyperbolic bollocks, and it is a STRONGER point because of it.

So in warmahordes you can put down any combination of points of units, whatsoever, against a fully optimised list, and still have a reasonably equal chance of winning? Because the discussions I've seen suggest that really isnt the case. Now, is the disparity closer than the 40k case? possibly / probably, however continued hyerbole really doesnt help. Stop painting things so black and white, the reality is not that at all.

Makumba - yet I can spend $300 on a really badly synergistic deck in MtG. Absolutely I can put together a legal desk, fro 300$, that will lose against your optimised, planned deck. Youre actually proving that PAY to win (seriously, not PLAY to win) is possible ion both, but is actually MORE possible in MtG than in 40k.

That's the first time I've heard the UK referred to as a magical land

In Oxford there is one gaming club and our personal group, it's still enough to be able to be selective in your opponents. It's unfortunate that you live somewhere with so few 40k players Viper so you may have to adopt a different approach but that's not the games fault. It sounds like where you live may just struggle to keep a wargaming community alive or at the very least a 40k one which means you haqve to either move with the flow, try to build your own group or take a break from the game.

It sucks but such is life.

If you have nothing constructive and on topic to add then it's best you don't post.

This is all getting rather off the topic.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Ah, so you DONT communicate with other players then? Proving my point rather exactly? How is having multiple lists a barrier? Have 2k worth of models, write 2 1500, 2 1750, 2 1850 lists. Done. People already come to PUGs with different sizes of list.

How is having multiple lists a barrier? Seriously? You don't understand how having to pay for a larger collection or having to transport that collection around is an added barrier?

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Again, what you call a barrier to play I call partly a sign of low emotional intelligence in the player base. It really, really isnt anywhere near as bad as your doom laden arguments make it, it really isnt a huge stretch to realise that there are different types of player out there - and that applies in EVERY game, e.g. MtG - and therefore to have the personal responsibility to achieve the social cointract these games are about.

Yes, there are different types of player out there, and in every other miniature wargame (I couldn't care less about TCGs, go to a TCG forum if you wan't to discuss them), those different types of players coexist peacefully and play against each other without any problems. In 40k they are labelled WAAC's by people like you.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

And no, it ISNT a magical 40k land. If you lived in Reading, Berkshire, UK we have 3 clubs (2 privately run, 1 shop) with a large 40k following. Before our move to new premises and day, our club had 40 regular attendees, half of which (at least) played 40k. So take your "magical" gak elsewhere - seriously, make a good point, without hyperbolic bollocks, and it is a STRONGER point because of it.

What hyperbole, I'm talking about my reality. In Lisbon, Portugal that is the reality that the few remaining 40k players face. It used to also be like you describe with a much larger number of 40k players, but the added barriers to play introduced by 6th edition just drove the player base to other games that don't have those barriers in place.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

So in warmahordes you can put down any combination of points of units, whatsoever, against a fully optimised list, and still have a reasonably equal chance of winning? Because the discussions I've seen suggest that really isnt the case. Now, is the disparity closer than the 40k case? possibly / probably, however continued hyerbole really doesnt help. Stop painting things so black and white, the reality is not that at all.

In Warmahordes you have to really try to find a list that will be genuinely bad. There also are no such things as "fully optimised lists" like there are in 40k. There are better and worse matchups, but the skill of each player (and dice) will be the ultimate decider on who wins the game.

And that is not just Warmahordes: Infinity, X-Wing, Malifaux, FoW, every single other game out there doesn't require any discussion of list power or any other such nonsense between players before they sit down and play the game. That "innovation" is a complete GW exclusive, thankfully!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dunklezahn wrote:
That's the first time I've heard the UK referred to as a magical land

In Oxford there is one gaming club and our personal group, it's still enough to be able to be selective in your opponents. It's unfortunate that you live somewhere with so few 40k players Viper so you may have to adopt a different approach but that's not the games fault. It sounds like where you live may just struggle to keep a wargaming community alive or at the very least a 40k one which means you haqve to either move with the flow, try to build your own group or take a break from the game.

It sucks but such is life.

Oh, but it is a magical land. Ask around other places that don't have such a large concentration of GW exclusive stores and you'll find more and more anecdotes like my meta. Ever since 6th edition was launched, the number of 40k players has dwindled rapidly and there are more and more metas where they are becoming the minority.

And no, we are not struggling to keep a wargaming community alive, much to the contrary actually, we are experiencing a sort of resurgence in wargaming over here, its only that people are now playing FoW, WMH and X-Wing (with smaller followings for FoF, Malifaux and Infinity), instead of 40k and WHFB.

And it certainly doesn't suck (well, unless you only really wan't to play 40k or WHFB), with all the diversity out there, it is in fact a great time to be a miniature wargamer.

PhantomViper wrote:

Oh, but it is a magical land. Ask around other places that don't have such a large concentration of GW exclusive stores and you'll find more and more anecdotes like my meta. Ever since 6th edition was launched, the number of 40k players has dwindled rapidly and there are more and more metas where they are becoming the minority.

Ah, but for every person like yourself there's one like me with a healthy 40k community. The people in your meta don't like the balance and that's cool but it doesn't subjectively indicate a balance issue in the same way I can't claim it's subjectively balanced based on my own community.

And no, we are not struggling to keep a wargaming community alive, much to the contrary actually, we are experiencing a sort of resurgence in wargaming over here, its only that people are now playing FoW, WMH and X-Wing (with smaller followings for FoF, Malifaux and Infinity), instead of 40k and WHFB.

There you go, Lisbon has a population density twice that of Oxford yet we do have a 40k community implying it's your local meta that's the decider, they've chosen other games which is why you are having trouble finding a game.

And it certainly doesn't suck (well, unless you only really wan't to play 40k or WHFB), with all the diversity out there, it is in fact a great time to be a miniature wargamer.

But here we are in a 40k thread so that's what we are talking about and it's not a great place to play 40k by the sounds. The "It sucks" is in reference to that fact that if you want to play 40k it sounds like you are stuck taking what you get, nothing more.

Part of the fun for me in 40k IS the unbalance. With so many different factions playing off different concepts and their own unique rules, combined with GWs approach to writing rules without going the extra mile because "players should house rule", means the game never has been and never will be balanced.

I enjoy playing an army like Tyranid DE or CSM and still in the face of this imbalance, building lists that can potentially outplay a lot of the top tiers armies, and for me consistently do so. I put away my 4000 pts of Tau with the release of the new dex - I still love the aesthetics, but while beating Tau with Tyranids has me going home with a warm fuzzy feeling, doing it the other way around feels a little empty - at least to me. The versatility of this is that there is something for everyone, I love my Wave Serpent WK opponents for giving a challenging game and letting me test the lengths of my strategy in list building, and although I'd never enjoy playing their lists, I'm sure they love knowing they have a very strong army capable of going toe to toe with the strongest build someone can throw at it. The competitive side of the game is great to me, I love that people enjoy bringing their very best to the table, and it love trying (and often succeeding) to compete with them with one of the more underdog armies, built and played with the most strategy I can bring to the table.

40k doesnt have a massive competitive scene in comparison to other current dominating the strategy genre, such as MtG, DOta, Starcraft 2. There is no "professional 40k players". Largely due to the imbalanced nature of the game even though how popular it is, with a sizeable cash investment needed to switch armies or even strategies and when you see professional, sponsored, consistent winners of large prize pools, rage-quitting games like Starcraft and walking away from contracts due to a minor imbalance (google "NaNiwa Swarmhost"), it's not hard to see why 40k has never blossomed as a high level competitive strategy medium.
As such, the most popular competitive builds are the most obvious/well known ones, there's a lot of untread ground, and there is a lot of room for discovering more obscure competitive strategies and separating yourself from the pack while still competiting.



Sure, you'd be crazy to call 40k balanced, but the fact that's its unbalanced is what makes a lot of the things possible that I love.






All that being said, better written codex's would be nice. I don't mean make my underdog armies stronger, just fix some of the unplayable crap in them to the level of the other stuff in the dex.

The randomness of the mission in Maelstroms is pretty terrible IMO too.

Phantom - again, most people at PUGs come iwth 2 or 3 lists. Again, if all you have is one force, it gets dfull after a while, so over time you nturally end up with more models. And transporting 2k isnt really a chore, unless its IG infantry or a snotling army....

Retract your assertion. I have NOT labelled people WAAC (cite it otherwise) as to me that is basically cheating to win, which means you havent actually won. And the hyperbole is you described MY place as "magical", i.e. that it is unreal, imaginary, illusory. It isnt. It sucks that your place is bad for 40k, if youre into 40k, but the point is that it isnttrue everywhere. You instead went too broad - hence the comment. Less black and white, more acknowledgment that you are lucky /unlucky / the average etc, and the argument is a lot more persuasive.


Finaly, can you please pay more attention to what you are replying to? I never stated they were GW exclusive - in fact, I said over half was 40k, meaning th eother half isnt.

Youre using "the plural of anecdote is fact" fallacy.

PhantomViper wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Against that one opponent. Or, you know, actually organise yourself a little better and use this thing called communication to help out. It isnt much of an excuse any longer to claim you will never have any way of knowing who will show up to play. It really isnt.

You seem to live in this magical land were there are still lots of 40k opponents to choose from. In my country the reality is that your lucky if you find someone willing to play 40k when you drop by the store any more.

On top of this, you still wan't to add further barriers to actually playing and enjoying the game, like everyone always carrying multiple lists worth of models, just in case you or your opponent think that they won't have fun playing their intended list or like Samurai_Eduh even suggests just outright refusing to play someone because you don't like their list...

Why are you surprised that people would refuse to play against tournament lists where all they do is essentially unpack, then repack thier models? Who wants to take the time to drive (sometimes) great distances to thier "local" store to do that? A pre-planned game for tournament prep is one thing, but friendly pick-up games at the store? No thanks.

 Samurai_Eduh wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Against that one opponent. Or, you know, actually organise yourself a little better and use this thing called communication to help out. It isnt much of an excuse any longer to claim you will never have any way of knowing who will show up to play. It really isnt.

You seem to live in this magical land were there are still lots of 40k opponents to choose from. In my country the reality is that your lucky if you find someone willing to play 40k when you drop by the store any more.

On top of this, you still wan't to add further barriers to actually playing and enjoying the game, like everyone always carrying multiple lists worth of models, just in case you or your opponent think that they won't have fun playing their intended list or like Samurai_Eduh even suggests just outright refusing to play someone because you don't like their list...

Why are you surprised that people would refuse to play against tournament lists where all they do is essentially unpack, then repack thier models? Who wants to take the time to drive (sometimes) great distances to thier "local" store to do that? A pre-planned game for tournament prep is one thing, but friendly pick-up games at the store? No thanks.

This happened to me. I got tired of playing against tournament lists with my SOB. My army simply didn't have tournament lists that could compete. Once the new codex dropped my army actually became pretty good, but I saw the difference in power levels still affecting games. I rolled over a CSM army and I don't like that either.
In (a certain other game) I get close games where the winner is determined by skill and a little bit of luck and that's what I crave. I want both sides to have a good chance of winning and for it to be as close as possible. I don't have to bring four different armies or pay for 20,000pts worth of expensive guys. I just bring what army I have and have fun.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Again, what you call a barrier to play I call partly a sign of low emotional intelligence in the player base. It really, really isnt anywhere near as bad as your doom laden arguments make it, it really isnt a huge stretch to realise that there are different types of player out there - and that applies in EVERY game, e.g. MtG - and therefore to have the personal responsibility to achieve the social cointract these games are about.

I'd like to point out that your entire argument boils down to a direct insult - if EVERY game involves the same level of social contract as you claim, and people have problems with 40k specifically, it must be because 40k players have low emotional intelligence (but obviously you don't have low emotional intelligence, because you don't have these problems, and other games don't seem to have this issue, so their player bases must not have low emotional intelligence either). By extension, the people in this thread who are having issues with setting up games must have low emotional intelligence. You're pretty much outright saying, "It's not the game's fault, it's your fault, because you're probably especially rude or awkward."

Did i read that transporting a large army "2000 points" is very difficult? that its too hard to move that many models then allow me to point you in the direction of THIS bad boy

http://us.battlefoam.com/black-label-rj-16-space-marine-load-out/

now with basic marines it fits. 170 basic marines + so much more. i customed mine up and i fit over 13,000 (yep THIRTEEN THOUSAND) points in one of them (base models theres also a million (nearly haha) magnetized bits), and it has WHEELS and a handle.
Now imagine what you can do with a smaller one.... where you need 1/6 the space..

now i hate to say it transporting this stuff isnt too bad, 1500 points is a shoebox, if you like to keep nicely painted models shell out 40 bucks on some cheap foam pluck trays and a plastic box. and transport is sorted.

the bigger barrier is a 2k army, which if you magnetize the options in a kit up is much easier to do. or bitz things up, devastator boxes come with twice as many weapons as there is bodies or is it 3x? i cant remember. fleshing out options for your army isnt really that hard is it? because if you do that kind of thing your 1500pt base army is now customisable to an extent and saves you owning 50000000 models and is easier to transport. this is just to put ideas out there to those that say my 1500 pt force cant be touched up.

now as to not getting games, if you have a local store that you play at. set up a FB group or something for it so you can have LF games things to make organizing easier and while your at it you can discuss the options for the game, and this is how you can start your own clubs. and grow from there.

this doesnt sort internal ballances, but i see more complaining about getting games at a min. then it seems to be games that "you" approve of, rather than none at all.

for me though ill settle with BRB and go for it without adding in clauses as to what to bring, there is enough other rules discussions to have during the game

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 Sillycybin wrote:

Real life, which wargames are based on. At Vimmy Ridge the Canadian army didn't use anything different then the French or English who were not able to take the hill. All 3 used artillery and ground troops. The reason the Canadians took the hill was strategy. The use of the rolling barrage, indirect machinegun fire, and trench raids was essentially using the same units as the other two forces just in a different manner which achieved victory. This is what I would like to see in 40k. That its not about what units you choice its about how you use them because something like a point system determined that I should at least have an equal chance as my opponent.

I'll have to look this up, thanks for sharing. And I concur on how the game should be, but isn't.

And for people saying that in real warfare you get to choose what you're taking to the fight: that's a luxury that's seldom seen. The vast majority of the time, you use what you have on hand and adapt your strategy and tactics accordingly.

Calgar- no, only by an unwarranted reduction into absolutist terms could it be misconstrued as a direct insult. Just saying "some people have low EI " doesn't mean all players do, and it isn't the only cause of issues. But it is A cause, for sure,based on my non scientific study of around 600 gamers over the years (tournament and non tournament, pickup and organised games). Some people in this hobby are apparently incapable of communicating well, or just cannot empathise with others.

I'm not saying the game shouldn't do more to help this, but it is explicitly setup as a game between friends , or at least people who vaguely know each other. So trying to make it fit something it isn't designed to do brilliantly, and then complain about it, misses something.

Again. Not, by any stretch, saying the game is blameless. However the sheer hyperbole laden posts here are completely unpersuasive as arguments. Presenting balance, almost treating it as a business case, will win people over more reliably.

Silly - as long as you make the defiler not immune to s5 or less shots from the front or side, cannot fail morale, etc.

A heldrake is still well worth 170, it just isn't worth 200 points any longer.

nosferatu1001 wrote:


I'm not saying the game shouldn't do more to help this, but it is explicitly setup as a game between friends , or at least people who vaguely know each other. So trying to make it fit something it isn't designed to do brilliantly, and then complain about it, misses something.

While I don't disagree with what you've given, I say this is the hardest pill to swallow. While within GW's rights to do so, making a game that can be readily played with anyone universally means you can not only play a lot more, but make new friends. I would say they fail as a game at that point, as any other war game can and does support the idea of a pick-up game and there's no length, be it short or long, of pregame discussion to find out how we can play nice together.

So as a medium, a game, it fails. As a narrative device, without much hacking and editing by the players, it fails. It succeeds at nothing it aims to do without the player base forcing it either way.

Not a direct comparison, but I don't need a fundamental part of our communication, speech, to play a game of chess with someone. We can play the game readily. Other war games outside of 40k, could be played with someone with ever talking just by having a good knowledge of the units and models; a much larger task than chess pieces, but it can be done. With Warhammer 40k, it's a requirement. The rules are written so vaguely that even native English speakers can come up with two (or more) valid interpretations of the rules. We have to express known intent, intent not of the designer, but intent to make sure the game doesn't fall apart, to make the game work. This is where RAI and RAW stem from. These are very much Warhammer 40k terms, or should I say, Games Workshop terms, as every other company clarifies their intent readily.

Oh yes, it could be made better, for sure. It's just like complaining Ferrari don't make a car that can take a chest of drawers, faintly pointless.

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nosferatu1001 wrote:
Oh yes, it could be made better, for sure. It's just like complaining Ferrari don't make a car that can take a chest of drawers, faintly pointless.

I'm not sure where that metaphor is going. I was talking about apples to apples comparison of games and how gaming is a social construct. How good games can succeed by removing basic parts of human communication and still function. GW's products do not fall into that category and they fail as a narrative game, as well, because they are still opposition based (player vs. player) and the players require a large amount of modifications to rules to make games even remotely "close." A narrative driven assault squad marine army versus a Tau Gunline (fluffy) or Eldar Sam Hainn list (fluffy) is going to have, what we call in these parts... a bad time.

And if you're even close to equating GW to a "Ferrari" of the industry, outside of cost and poor maintenance, I'd fully disagree. They are much more like the British luxury cars; they look nice, are fun to talk about, but are basically good for leaving a big mess on your driveway and not much else.

Hey! Rolls Royce and Bentley make some of the best cars in the world!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Hey! Rolls Royce and Bentley make some of the best cars in the world!

You'd think so after at least 7 editions of them.

Depends on what army you are playing...

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
Did i read that transporting a large army "2000 points" is very difficult? that its too hard to move that many models then allow me to point you in the direction of THIS bad boy

http://us.battlefoam.com/black-label-rj-16-space-marine-load-out/

now with basic marines it fits. 170 basic marines + so much more. i customed mine up and i fit over 13,000 (yep THIRTEEN THOUSAND) points in one of them (base models theres also a million (nearly haha) magnetized bits), and it has WHEELS and a handle.
Now imagine what you can do with a smaller one.... where you need 1/6 the space..

That case is also $400.

So, they say a picture is worth 1000 words. Here's the state of 40k right now.




Riddle me this. How is that good for the health of a wargame?

Well, I think the analogy there falls flat, as everyone in 40K is a Paying User. Everyone who plays is playing using rulebooks and armies they (or someone they know) paid for at some point.

The issue is that, for the "free user" in that picture, that is roughly three-quarters of the available armies, and the "paid user" would be the three top-tier armies. The remaining armies fall somewhere in between, where, with luck and skill, you can force a draw from one of the "Paid User" armies, and might even win a game now and then.

But, in the end, regardless of the methods of illustration used, having even the concept of army "tiers" in a competitive game is fething stupid.