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Okay. We all know GW is at fault for not being able to produce codexes with perfect internal balance, where each unit is worth considering. But we all know blaming GW will get us nowhere. If we, as a community want to do our part in fixing 40k, aka actually changing stuff, we need to really change our mentality. Because if we dont start with ourselves, how can we expect our opponents to?

When I look at armylists, I realize 4 out of 5 times that people see it as an exercise of putting their grey cells to work in how to maximize damage while not exceeding the points value, rather than seeing it as a framework that allows you to bring some of your collection to the table and show off your modeling and painting progress to your friend you'll be playing against. People tend to forget 40k is a 2 person game, not a 3D equivalent of playing a video game where you develop the mentality of slaughtering all your enemies. Saying that in 40k, both players want to win isnt far from the truth. But more importantly, both players want to have fun. How many of us give thought to that when we spend hours modifying our armylists?

It seems only 3 out of 10 people play games of 40k as an opportunity to see each other's collection. It seems only 3 out of 10 people have "favorite units" in their army based on the way they look, or their background, rather than the amount of damage they inflict on the battlefield.

The reason why you see the same units over and over again in the meta is not (only) because GW sucks at writing balanced codexes, but because we as a community have done our part in powergaming. When we build lists, we think about what causes maximum distruction for its points rather than what unit looks cool/stylish/awesome lorewise and thus include it in our army. When a player starts a new army, he ends up getting advice of what units are must haves based on their battlefield performance rather than what units have the most aesthetically pleasing sculpts. And so, he ends up buying the former and does his part in creating the situation we have today. Advice like "one is none, two is one" subliminally influences people to spend their money more on acquiring an effective armylist than a varied collection. And then they act all surprised and get angry when their codex gets updated and good units become meh and meh units become good (case in point: the Dark Eldar update). We are the reason we see Riptides and Wraithknights, Tigurius and Centurions, Flyrants and Night Scythes instead of Sniper Drones and Harlequins, Cassius and Scout Bikers, Genestealers and Lychguard. We are part of the problem, and part of the reason why the battlefields of 40k dont get to see most of the variety of miniatures in the GW catalogue.

It's kinda like in a traffic jam - everyone hates how he is stuck in a traffic jam, views it as a foreign, blockading entity ruining his day, but doesnt realize he is part of the traffic jam.

Sounds like you just don't like competitive players period. Well guess what some players have fun playing competitively.

What you are complaining about is how competitive gaming is done. There are objectively better units so you take the better units as they increase your chance of winning more. The problem 40k has is that the power difference between units is so great that a casual list has no real chance of winning against competitive lists. That is all GW's fault because they have written the rules very poorly to make such a polarizing power difference happen. What you are complaining about is missing the big picture.

What a bizarre line of thought.

If the game was well made, it would be suitable for any kind of play. If its unsuitable for competitive play, it seems to me like the problem lies with the game.

GW is ruining 40k. People playing the game they want to with the models they want to isn't what's ruining it.

All games that have a winner and a loser are competitive in some way. The key goal for any good company is to cater to both with solid, balanced rules that enable fair and even tournament play as well as fair casual play with people who might not care beyond look/feel of a unit.

GW fails at both for 40k. The rules are too abusive to allow balanced competitive play, and the same rules make narrative play hard because you can have unbalanced forces in what should be a balanced scenario.

Take for example a hypothetical narrative campaign involving Space Marines and Eldar. The Marines are assaulting and Eldar controlled world and need to destroy an objective that is key to the battle (maybe some kind of shield generator or weapon that is preventing the Imperial fleet from landing). For this game, the Marine player takes a lot of Terminators because he feels that something this important would go only to the bravest of his Marines, the 1st Company, and he likes Terminators more than Sternguard/Vanguard. So his force has a lot of Terminator squads, maybe some Dreadnaughts in Drop Pods or whatnot.

The Eldar respond to this by sending a fast moving contingent of warriors to intercept the Terminators before they can destroy the objective - the Eldar player thinks this can be done best by an entirely mobilized army with Jetbikes and troops in Wave Serpents, as the Eldar need to arrive fast. So he takes an Autarch on Jetbike, some Jetbike squads, maybe some Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents, or Falcons or any of the tanks, basically anything that would be highly mobile.

Is this scenario balanced? Will both players have a good time in this game?

That's the issue. There is too much of a gap between everything in 40k that it hurts casual/narrative gamers just as much if not more than the competitive players. A competitive player can and will take the "best" units, fluff be damned in most cases. A narrative player will rarely take a unit that doesn't fit the theme or concept of their force, even if that unit is better than on the tabletop. Who do you think bad rules hurt more, the person who doesn't care as long as the unit is good, or the person who doesn't care if the unit is good?

Apparently, 7/10 people enjoy playing competitively. No idea where you've got those statistics wrong.

Surely if the majority of people play competitively, the 'fluff players' should change their mindset, going by your logic?

Nothing is "Ruining 40k" in particular, honestly. There'll always be a few holes in a ruleset this huge no matter how long it runs for.

My biggest beef with GW themselves is that they don't market. At all. Would they have to gouge prices quite so much if they ran adverts instead of relying on word of mouth, fancy shop windows and guys required by their job to jump down your throat about starting an army if you so much as come in to browse their fiction section? Probably not.

That said, this thread does have a degree of a point: Every time I hear about a big tournament, it's always the spamming netlists with no personality I hear about. I've never had any inclination to compete in those events because frankly, that sounds like it would suck all the joy out of the affair for everyone else. I'd take a strong list, but not one with no coherent theme picked purely by trying to balance the ratios of each of the "best units" in the codex.

The idea that a game which has a winner and a loser should not be played competitively is just absurd to me. Not unless it's really a casual game (which 40k is not, it has a fething huge rulebook, costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investment from a player and then a game itself takes several hours... billiards can be a casual game, 40k can not).

My only problem with 40k is ther only one right way to build any army because if you dont you doing it wrong my first ig army was all infantry no tanks and people laughed at told me that a stupid way to play ic when i switched to mec vets and tanks i got called a waac so what bs

This thread is stupid.

Competitive play is not what is ruining 40k. Incompetent games design is what is ruining 40k. And selfish prats with an over-developed sense of self-entitlement are making it worse.

If you want to play 40k competitively, play against other competitive players.

If you want to play narrative games, play against other narrative gamers.

If you want to play competitive games with your favourite units (read: have a chance of winning with crap armies), play against people with the same attitude, or talk to your opponent about what kind of game you want, or try out a different format (such as Highlander etc).


If you want a casual game, don't go to a tournament and whine and moan about how cheesy everyone else are.

If you go for a pick-up game at a store or a club, don't demand that everyone else conform to your idea of what fun 40k is. You can ask for it, but you have to be a special kind of dick to expect that your way is the only way.

In short; act like a goddamned adult.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The idea that a game which has a winner and a loser should not be played competitively is just absurd to me. Not unless it's really a casual game (which 40k is not, it has a fething huge rulebook, costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investment from a player and then a game itself takes several hours... billiards can be a casual game, 40k can not).

To be fair here, you're completely right.

But the problem is that the word "competitive" has been a little tainted in this context so that it can mean the sort of person who builds a themeless power list that doesn't take his opponent's fun into account. (Which really, is the only underlying problem with doing so. Sure, it's not the "wrong way to have fun", but it's a two player game so you'd better find people who don't mind it)

You should absolutely be competitive during play unless you're walking a new player through it.

"You're having fun wrong!"
No. Some people enjoy the thrill of a competitive game where both players do their best. I don't view the game as an excuse to view our collections. I view the game as a game. I'm there to play and have fun. Unfortunately, in order for me to have fun, I need a fair fight. I don't need to win, but I need to think I can win.
I'm a very fluffy player and this lack of balance drove me away. Showing up with my fluffy armies with no chance of winning was very un-fun for me.

changemod wrote:


That said, this thread does have a degree of a point: Every time I hear about a big tournament, it's always the spamming netlists with no personality I hear about. I've never had any inclination to compete in those events because frankly, that sounds like it would suck all the joy out of the affair for everyone else. I'd take a strong list, but not one with no coherent theme picked purely by trying to balance the ratios of each of the "best units" in the codex.

It sounds like we have a similar approach to the game, I'm not in the least interested in the competitive side of things, and I infinitely prefer a varied list over a spammed list. My mantra when putting together is "competitive units, not competitive lists." Which is not to say I don't try and win, at least putting up a fight in defeat is important for both players to enjoy a game IMO, but it more reflects that while I would take 20 Flesh Houmds with a Herald in my Daemons list, I would never field 60.

However, the reason you always hear about spammed net lists winning and placing in tourneys is solely, 100% down to the design of the game. Tournaments, by their very nature, take a game which is already adversarial and focused on deciding a winner and a loser, and focuses that down into a laser beam, removing all other considerations. 40K, as it is now, suffers so badly in terms of the relative efficiency of it's units that all but a handful of options in most codexes become an effective handicap in that environment. Couple that with the apparent desire of GW to replace any sort of player involvement with random dice rolls, removing player skill further and further from deciding he outcome, and that's why you get spam lists - the most efficient choices with the flattest probability curves for their damage output.

You wait for 10th Ed, on the current trajectory it'll be the "on a 4+ I win edition." Both players continually roll off until one rolls 4+ and the other doesn't, that player is then considered the winner - both players then spend the ensuing 5 turns telling the story of how it happened.

But if one fluff player spends extra cash and buys those extra sniper drones or lych guard and he plays against another fluff player that plays let say eldar his ass will be wooped twice. He will lose the game and he will be spending more cash the the eldar player for an army that doesn't work.

The only moment when this wouldn't be a problem is , if w40k was either very cheap to play or somehow all player had unlimited cash to spend on armies.

changemod wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The idea that a game which has a winner and a loser should not be played competitively is just absurd to me. Not unless it's really a casual game (which 40k is not, it has a fething huge rulebook, costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investment from a player and then a game itself takes several hours... billiards can be a casual game, 40k can not).

To be fair here, you're completely right.

But the problem is that the word "competitive" has been a little tainted in this context so that it can mean the sort of person who builds a themeless power list that doesn't take his opponent's fun into account. (Which really, is the only underlying problem with doing so. Sure, it's not the "wrong way to have fun", but it's a two player game so you'd better find people who don't mind it)

You should absolutely be competitive during play unless you're walking a new player through it.

But building a list is part of the game, if I'm playing competitively, then I'm building a competitive list. It seems odd to me that I should be trying to guess what my opponent will find fun while building my own list. The only time I would do that is when my opponent and myself get together before playing and write our lists together in a way we think will be balanced (which I have sometimes done with mates, but really is not practical most the time).

I'd consider taking a bad list the same as taking a bad gun or load out in a video game... I might do it for a laugh or when I know I'm so much better than my opponents that it won't matter, but as a matter of course I won't do it.

I do actually identify more as a fluffy player than a competitive player, the problem I have is that, for me, the fluff gets completely and utterly destroyed by the terrible rules. For me, the fluff is tied to the rules, I can't avoid looking at the stats and comparing them in my mind, I'd have to actively block my mind to avoid math hammering things

It's also a problem when many people (at least people I know) simply play with the collections they have painted. If they want to change around units, they'd have to actually paint the new unit to field it. Maybe that's an oddity, but it seems most my mates only build an army up to the points level that most people play.

Though I do definitely agree we corrupt the word "competitive" in 40k. By the common usage of the word "competitive" I think 99% of people would identify as being competitive, we've just warped the meaning so that competitive only means "those people who take it more seriously than me".

Makumba wrote:
But if one fluff player spends extra cash and buys those extra sniper drones or lych guard and he plays against another fluff player that plays let say eldar his ass will be wooped twice. He will lose the game and he will be spending more cash the the eldar player for an army that doesn't work.

The only moment when this wouldn't be a problem is , if w40k was either very cheap to play or somehow all player had unlimited cash to spend on armies.

Yeah, except that fluffy Eldar lists aren't the same as competitive ones, there are plenty of units in the Eldar codex that a fluffy player may take that a competitive one absolutely would not touch.

Two fluffy players are probably more concerned with the story of the game rather than the outcome, also, so I'm afraid your point is based on some rather tenuous suppositions.

Besides, Sniper Drones are pretty effective against a Wraith list...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

changemod wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The idea that a game which has a winner and a loser should not be played competitively is just absurd to me. Not unless it's really a casual game (which 40k is not, it has a fething huge rulebook, costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours investment from a player and then a game itself takes several hours... billiards can be a casual game, 40k can not).

To be fair here, you're completely right.

But the problem is that the word "competitive" has been a little tainted in this context so that it can mean the sort of person who builds a themeless power list that doesn't take his opponent's fun into account. (Which really, is the only underlying problem with doing so. Sure, it's not the "wrong way to have fun", but it's a two player game so you'd better find people who don't mind it)

You should absolutely be competitive during play unless you're walking a new player through it.

But building a list is part of the game, if I'm playing competitively, then I'm building a competitive list. It seems odd to me that I should be trying to guess what my opponent will find fun while building my own list. The only time I would do that is when my opponent and myself get together before playing and write our lists together in a way we think will be balanced (which I have sometimes done with mates, but really is not practical most the time).

I'd consider taking a bad list the same as taking a bad gun or load out in a video game... I might do it for a laugh or when I know I'm so much better than my opponents that it won't matter, but as a matter of course I won't do it.

I do actually identify more as a fluffy player than a competitive player, the problem I have is that, for me, the fluff gets completely and utterly destroyed by the terrible rules. For me, the fluff is tied to the rules, I can't avoid looking at the stats and comparing them in my mind, I'd have to actively block my mind to avoid math hammering things

I'm hardly going to tell someone to take a bad list, but there's a difference between a good list and a netlist spam list. The former is fun to play against, but say... Three annihilation barges, two Command Barges and an entire sky full of Night Scythes that carry only the useless 5 warrior tax to get them on the board is obviously going to be as much a chore as a challenge for anyone who hasn't taken the same attitude.

So, what would be your argument against a "net list" that was, in fact, the player spending hours refining their list on the tabletop, only to end up with the same list because of the imbalances in the codex and therefore a certain inevitability?

That player has put long hours into developing their list, is it fair to paint them in a negative light for making good choices?

 Azreal13 wrote:
So, what would be your argument against a "net list" that was, in fact, the player spending hours refining their list on the tabletop, only to end up with the same list because of the imbalances in the codex and therefore a certain inevitability?

That player has put long hours into developing their list, is it fair to paint them in a negative light for making good choices?

Having done the research himself doesn't make much difference, though certainly he'll be better at playing the units to their strengths and synergies than someone who used google as a shortcut to the same place. They're called netlists because you can get them by googling "Best (faction) Army", not because you necessarily did so.

The question here though, is are his choices actually good? If he's playing that list against people with the same attitude and both are having fun, yep.

If his choices lead to him having difficulty getting a game after a while because he's putting his opponents off, then that's probably a good indication his list isn't as "optimum" to the situation as he thought. If he's causing multiple people to consider it a chore to take hours out of their day to play him, likely the only game they'll get this week in a lot of cases, then it's not me who's painting him in a bad light.

Well, you've certainly illustrated exactly why the rules being the way they are do nothing to promote a positive gaming community.

Are his choices good?

If the game were better written, his choices would be nearly redundant and how he used them on the table would be the chief determinant of if he won and how he treated his opponent would be the main factor in if the game was enjoyable.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are his choices good?

If the game were better written, his choices would be nearly redundant and how he used them on the table would be the chief determinant of if he won and how he treated his opponent would be the main factor in if the game was enjoyable.

Well, that's honestly pretty much entirely unrealistic.

Even a faction with limited choices ought to have about 30 non-named character choices, once you take both their codex and the inevitable forgeworld expansion into account.

Multiply that by a substantial number of factions and take into account that's more or less the minimum, and you expect perfect balance whilst still striving to make everything unique? It's almost a miracle they've stayed on top of it as well as they have, frankly.

Not perfect balance.

Just balanced enough to not be an issue.

Other games have already done this. Its provably possible. Don't confuse being hard for being impossible.

The problem is with the way "Competitive" is used.

Consider if both players had the exact same armies, down to the same models. So that the skill of each player is what determines the outcome. That is "competitive."
That is also Chess.

However, Loading an army with the best units and manipulating the rules so that you have nearly zero chance of losing..... that is not "competitive."
That is WAAC.

changemod wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are his choices good?

If the game were better written, his choices would be nearly redundant and how he used them on the table would be the chief determinant of if he won and how he treated his opponent would be the main factor in if the game was enjoyable.

Well, that's honestly pretty much entirely unrealistic.

Even a faction with limited choices ought to have about 30 non-named character choices, once you take both their codex and the inevitable forgeworld expansion into account.

Multiply that by a substantial number of factions and take into account that's more or less the minimum, and you expect perfect balance whilst still striving to make everything unique? It's almost a miracle they've stayed on top of it as well as they have, frankly.

No one is expecting perfect balance. GW get no where near it though.

But the huge number of options isn't as daunting as you think once you start breaking it down in to modifications of base stats. You start by figuring out what different abilities are worth, then when you start running in to combinations that make things stronger, you make them more expensive, when you have combinations that don't stack, you make them cheaper (like realising powerfists aren't worth as many points to a guardsman as they are to a thunderwolf riding space wolf). Then you start playing games and adjusting as necessary, then you let a wider community start playing it and get some feedback to implement changes.

As edition changes start rolling around you can then identify specific rules that lead to imbalance (things which can't simply be balanced by points values but are actually unbalanced at their core... like the AP system). You then change those things with new editions.

Is it easy? No. But if you paid me a decent full time wage I'm pretty sure I could nut out a system sufficiently balanced and certainly more balanced than GW's in an edition or two, not 27 fething years.

Perfect balance isn't necessary. Writing units to where one isn't the obvious choice to take and others are ridiculously less useful isn't hard at all. You just have to care about more than your customers' wallet.

When it is common for people to snigger at people using certain units from a codex because they "suck" compared to the optimal choice, there's something wrong with the game.

Perfect balance?

Pretty much impossible.

Better balance?

Achievable. Eminently achievable.

Wouldn't even take a lot of effort.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

changemod wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are his choices good?

If the game were better written, his choices would be nearly redundant and how he used them on the table would be the chief determinant of if he won and how he treated his opponent would be the main factor in if the game was enjoyable.

Well, that's honestly pretty much entirely unrealistic.

Even a faction with limited choices ought to have about 30 non-named character choices, once you take both their codex and the inevitable forgeworld expansion into account.

Multiply that by a substantial number of factions and take into account that's more or less the minimum, and you expect perfect balance whilst still striving to make everything unique? It's almost a miracle they've stayed on top of it as well as they have, frankly.

All of these points would be valid, if there weren't copious other games that did a lot better than GW do. One could cut them some slack for perhaps offering more factions and options than most other games, but how hard would it be, considering they're a multi million pound, publicly traded, global company, to spend 40 grand a year on a couple of guys whose job it was to monitor the incoming emails (they wouldn't even have to engage and reply, just keep an eye on the inbox) and produce a monthly, or even quarterly, FAQ document in an effort to moderate any unintentional problems that real world play testing throws up?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Perfect balance?

Pretty much impossible.

Better balance?

Achievable. Eminently achievable.

Wouldn't even take a lot of effort.

To achieve better balance wouldn't be hard at all really. To achieve an acceptable level of balance I think would be a decent amount of work... but then that's why you pay game designers. What initially might seem difficult suddenly doesn't look so bad when you actually have someone whose job it is to make it happen.

What I do as my day to day job would sound really difficult for someone who's not being paid to do it... for me it's just a matter of course.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Perfect balance isn't necessary. Writing units to where one isn't the obvious choice to take and others are ridiculously less useful isn't hard at all. You just have to care about more than your customers' wallet.

When it is common for people to snigger at people using certain units from a codex because they "suck" compared to the optimal choice, there's something wrong with the game.

Isn't hard at all? Sure. A good idea to lazily do so? Nope.

Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition had six million players, and was horrendously unbalanced between magical and non-magical characrers.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition was very finely balanced by comparison... And lost over 80% of the customer base. It was a complete disaster that threw out everything that came before in the pursuit of "balance", and the results were catastrophic.

I always point to Magic: The Gathering as an example of a game that is similarly very open-ended, while supporting very fun competitive AND casual play. I very much enjoy the competitive circuit of Magic, and it's a very demanding game (requiring impeccable deck building and play if you want to stand a chance).

But importantly, Magic has good support for just thrown-together amateur decks - it's fun to just slap-dash a couple of decks together, or to build a weird silly concept deck, and then have at it. More often than not, these un-optimized decks are workable and there's room for interesting play against each other.

40k by comparison just falls down on it's face when it comes to both competitive and casual play. Just last night I was watching two new players play, and one dude was just unwittingly dominating the game, and eventually tabled his opponent with minimal losses. When I was talking to them post-game, neither really understood why that had happened - and that's really symptomatic of bad game design.

changemod wrote:


Isn't hard at all? Sure. A good idea to lazily do so? Nope.

Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition had six million players, and was horrendously unbalanced between magical and non-magical characrers.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition was very finely balanced by comparison... And lost over 80% of the customer base. It was a complete disaster that threw out everything that came before in the pursuit of "balance", and the results were catastrophic.

And what about all these wargames on the market growing by leaps and bounds that are far more balanced than 40k?