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PhantomViper wrote:
Got any numbers to back up those claims

No, and niether do you to prove the contrary.

20 years of playing, 5 gaming shops, and no one I have ever encountered discussed tournaments beyond what they were playing, or what meta was popular at the big tournaments.

White Dwarf never discussed tournament lists, like a CCG magazine would. Other than seeing a picture of who won, and photo of his army, they never really covered tournaments anyways.

To be honest with you, if White Dwarf had printed winnning torunament lists and dicussed meta, then it would be a completely different story. Unfortunately White Dwarf is basically a weekly ad for whatever GW releases next week.

That doesn't mean it was or is a good idea, or the right idea.

They should streamline the rules because it will benefit everyone, despite the people who constantly cite lack of options as some boogeyman reason why balanced rules conducive to tournament play is somehow a bad thing for the casual hobbyists.

 adamsouza wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Got any numbers to back up those claims

No, and niether do you to prove the contrary.

20 years of playing, 5 gaming shops, and no one I have ever encountered discussed tournaments beyond what they were playing, or what meta was popular at the big tournaments.

That is not how discussion works, if you make a claim its your job to provide the facts to substantiate your claim.

Trying to make an appeal to authority by stating how much time you've been playing also doesn't magically give any extra weight to something that is just a personal anecdote. I've also been playing for 18 years and have covered allot more than 5 different gaming shops and like I said, when the game had a sanctioned international competitive scene, there was a genuine interest in that type of article.

 adamsouza wrote:

White Dwarf never discussed tournament lists, like a CCG magazine would. Other than seeing a picture of who won, and photo of his army, they never really covered tournaments anyways.

To be honest with you, if White Dwarf had printed winnning torunament lists and dicussed meta, then it would be a completely different story. Unfortunately White Dwarf is basically a weekly ad for whatever GW releases next week.

Now it is just a glorified catalogue that the customers have to pay for, but back in the old days they used to print the winning tournament list AFAICR and like you said they usually printed the names of the winners and photos of their armies which while not being much, at least helped served as a little extra incentive to take part in those events and also gave an extra layer of "legitimacy" to them.

I gotta go with Phantomviper on this one. I've been playing for over 20 years and I remember when competitions were a big thing that influenced how people used their armies.
Anecdotal, yes.

Over on PP's forums, tournaments and the winners are discussed quite regularly and their army lists are discussed in detail....how I used to remember it being with 40k.

 MWHistorian wrote:
I gotta go with Phantomviper on this one. I've been playing for over 20 years and I remember when competitions were a big thing that influenced how people used their armies.
Anecdotal, yes.

Over on PP's forums, tournaments and the winners are discussed quite regularly and their army lists are discussed in detail....how I used to remember it being with 40k.

I recall quite a few highlights of the Grand Tournaments, it was never a list breakdown or battle reports, but I do recall them acknowledging how the tournament scene would be affected. Alessio IIRC was the Italian WHFB Grand Champion a few times, which is why he was hired. There was a few battlereports also where tournament winners were invited to the Studio to play a game; I cannot remember names but I recall one that had two tournament winners facing each other, and another time had someone playing the then-new Chaos (5th edition, large black book) against Jervis playing Dark Elves.

PhantomViper wrote:
That is not how discussion works,

People talking back and forth is pretty much the definition of discussion.This is a forum, not a court of law. I can make assertions with out a sceintific evidence to back up my claims.

White Dwarf never(1) focussed on the Tournament scene other than to show us pretty pictures, and occasionally to post the names and sometimes photos of winners.
I agree, that it indeed served as a form of validation for the people involved, but I disagree that it was ever important to the majority of 40K player base.
Can I prove that with hard numbers ? Of course not, that would involve some sort of database of information that even GW doesn't have.

IF tournament results in White Dwarf pushed White Dwarf sales in significant numbers, one would imagine that GW corporate would choose to include them.

For that matter, IF GW thought sanctioned tournaments drove sales and were significantly important to the hobby as a whole, one would imagine they would have them, and include information about them in the White Dwarf Magazine

(1) DISCLAIMER - I have not personally read every issue of White Dwarf ever published





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I gotta go with Phantomviper on this one. I've been playing for over 20 years and I remember when competitions were a big thing that influenced how people used their armies.
Anecdotal, yes.

Successful Tournament lists and Meta always influence how people play their armies. No one is arguing that. This informatin is usually disseminated via the interwebs.
White Dwarf has historically been devoid of stimulating articles on such topics.

Having recently gone through a bunch of WD's from the mid to late 1990s (my FLGS has a collection going back to 1992), there isn't much reference to tournaments, but the Golden Daemon stuff is pretty well covered. The old rags are about 100-110 pages with sections devoted to each product available at the times, ranging from Epic, BFG, 40k, Necromunda, plenty of painting stuff, fluff sections for new/upcoming units or factions, battle report or two, licensed products and so on. Tourney's don't really seem to come up in detail, but are referenced, and tactical implementations of certain units are covered reasonably well, with diagrams, examples and so on.

There was certainly more coverage of the "gaming" side of things in the old magazines, but they're still mostly hobby fodder (but actually half decent hobby fodder, with more interesting pages than current codexes....)

Two things.

First, the tournament scene isn't focused on by this community because the game is laughable as far as competition goes. "Oh look, Eldar won again." People playing Warmahordes can often cite several top competitive players, because the game is built for such play. Even people who aren't hardcore or competitive appreciate the balance that is achieved in the game. Perfect it is not, but competitive it most certainly is.

The simple truth is that a game that is built to be competitive can be played casually OR competitively. A game built like crap cannot.

The second point is that GW already has a success story of a rules re-write and re-balancing, also in the form of Warmahordes (and it is continuing on to Malifaux and Infinity with companies that are trying to tighten rules for the betterment of their games). W/H took 10 years of hiding in the shadows as a fringe game before they had a full re-balance, and released the rules and army books rapidly. Now, those same army books are STILL VALID 4 years later, with additions being put out as expansion books that bring EVERYONE up, instead of a codex that just changes one army at a time (and ignores overall balance).

Some companies get it, and they will grow. GW can very much do the same thing in the next few years. It would be a LOT of work, and I believe it is laziness and shortsightedness that will lead to their demise.

If GW fixes these issues, the current competition will have some SERIOUS problems, if only because there are so many 40k players that would be willing to keep playing 40K *IF* they have clean rules.

GW is blind, and feel as if they have no competition. When challenged they fall back on the "we are a miniatures company" line. The problem is, there aren't that many people out there who ONLY collect miniatures.

I still have my 10-15k in 40k points, and I honestly hope to be proven wrong. But the fact is... I have more Trollbloods to collect, so something is going to have to give

 adamsouza wrote:
IF tournament results in White Dwarf pushed White Dwarf sales in significant numbers, one would imagine that GW corporate would choose to include them.

For that matter, IF GW thought sanctioned tournaments drove sales and were significantly important to the hobby as a whole, one would imagine they would have them, and include information about them in the White Dwarf Magazine

I wouldn't exactly take GW's actions as the definitive guide of what is good for the hobby...
The tournament scene drives WM/H, and that game is growing rapidly. The tournament scene drives X-Wing, which is also growing rapidly.

Successful Tournament lists and Meta always influence how people play their armies. No one is arguing that. This informatin is usually disseminated via the interwebs.
White Dwarf has historically been devoid of stimulating articles on such topics.

Even when I didn't play in tournaments or directly know tournament players, my games were still affected by the local tournament scene. Someone I knew played someone else who played in tournaments, who wanted to practice for X000pt games, and so it trickled back to me.

 adamsouza wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Got any numbers to back up those claims

No, and niether do you to prove the contrary.

And we are all ruled by space lizards. You do not have any evidence to prove contrary and neither do I have evidence to prove it. Baseless statements are non-arguments.

20 years of playing, 5 gaming shops, and no one I have ever encountered discussed tournaments beyond what they were playing, or what meta was popular at the big tournaments.

White Dwarf never discussed tournament lists, like a CCG magazine would. Other than seeing a picture of who won, and photo of his army, they never really covered tournaments anyways.

To be honest with you, if White Dwarf had printed winnning torunament lists and dicussed meta, then it would be a completely different story. Unfortunately White Dwarf is basically a weekly ad for whatever GW releases next week.

That actually provides evidence towards the tourney point. Discussing the meta and talking about your participation are a stones throw away from talking to a tournament winner or about a tourney winner. Often I've heard statements such as "X was the most common army but the guy who won brought Y." Meta discussions are usually the most common tourney chatter and still very relevant to people interested in such. I've talked about GD winners and about tourney metas and I don't frequent tourneys. There is some interest to be had here, but GW doesn't exploit it and certainly doesn't recognize it, otherwise they would have seen the problems they keep creating in a game environment.

The original complaint was that tournament winnners were no longer recognized in White Dwarf and this lead to a substantial drop in quality in White Dwarf, and I disagreed.
Followed by other people demanding an impossible standard of proof from me, rebutting my ancedotal evidence with acedotal evidence of their own, and the usual GW bashing.

The winning lists and meta are more important than the names of the winners.
The winning lists and meta were never featured in White Dwarf.

This entire debate is ENTIRELY OFF TOPIC at this point. If you would like to continue to discuss it, take it to PMs or start a new thread.