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 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
They're special because they're the only faction that has been written like this.

But why does this matter? Why is it so important that it's a one-model "faction" instead of just an entry in the Escalation book? Will Baneblades suddenly get their own special snowflake exception if GW publishes Codex: Baneblade and copy/pastes the Escalation rules for it into a separate $50 book? If they'd be ok in that situation then why do they need to be banned/restricted now?

They ITC crew aren't giving special privileges to Imperial Knight players - they're letting them retain the special privileges they have in their book which allow them to play their army.

That book has no special privileges. Nothing in it says "this is more official than other rules", it's just another book for 40k just like all the other ones. An army with 2+ knights is no different from an army with 2+ Baneblades from GW's perspective.

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.
Until that point, an army of 2+ Knights IS a unique occurrence because it is a faction of its own, a battleforged army of its own, which ARE 'magic' things under the rules.

The second, because the premise of the first is that multiple LOW are unfair. If you genuinely believe that multiple LOW are unfair then knights are an unfair army and need to be banned regardless of whether or not their rules have the magic "codex" word attached. What option #2 essentially says is "I know this breaks the game and is completely unfair to play against, but I'm going to allow it anyway".

While that may be an admirable stance to be completely consistent, it runs in to significant issues of player adoption.
If people know their Factions may begin being completely banned based on balance issues, people will stop using the restrictions (or not go to tournaments with the restrictions). At that point you're faced with a choice: do we be 100% consistent in our restrictions and either ban entire factions or have no restrictions; or do we relax the restrictions in certain places where there would be significant player resistance.

Choosing the path with maximum in game effect for minimum player resistance seems to be the best choice to me. The no-compromise approach just ends up with the ITC rules being useless and abandoned.

40k turned into the Wild West when IKs and SHs and GCs in general hit the table. It's a modify the rules as needed situation. Either you modify the rules to balance Superheavies and fix the bad ones, or you man them in a consistent manner. The only distasteful thing is having a ban in place and giving a special exception just because.

Events can have different formats, and that is ok, but when the Limited or Banned SH/GC format gives a special exception for IKs just because, that's the problem.

 Brothererekose wrote:
Two snarky replies don't make a polite.

If you guys want the thread closed, citing a dictionary often does just that, as well as the "numbers are hard for people .... " kind of comments.
.

Quite.

Anymore nonsense akin to what we witnessed on the previous page and this thread will be over and several posters will be on vacation.

gungo wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's not my fault gungo started a battle of wits while armed with such dull weapons. If you're going to go out of your way to specifically sarcastically "correct" someone, it is wise to make damn sure you actually are correct.

kiddo you said one turn and then immediately went on to say it took two turns in your example. It's not our fault you can't read what you wrote.

And no several was the correct word to use when I wrote it since it requires two or more turns of movement for an assault. If I said a couple that would be incorrect since it means two. The only thing dull here is your humour and how quickly you got hurt when you try to point out someone is wrong and you completely messed it up. Instead of admitting your mistake you continued to show everyone how you messed up so easily in the first place And no it's not because of your stunning wit, no matter what your mom tells you.

redacted.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

gungo wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's not my fault gungo started a battle of wits while armed with such dull weapons. If you're going to go out of your way to specifically sarcastically "correct" someone, it is wise to make damn sure you actually are correct.

kiddo you said one turn and then immediately went on to say it took two turns in your example. It's not our fault you can't read what you wrote.

And no several was the correct word to use when I wrote it since it requires two or more turns of movement for an assault. If I said a couple that would be incorrect since it means two. The only thing dull here is your humour and how quickly you got hurt when you try to point out someone is wrong and you completely messed it up. Instead of admitting your mistake you continued to show everyone how you messed up so easily in the first place And no it's not because of your stunning wit, no matter what your mom tells you.

Seriously, you're arguing that "several" = 2?



In normal English:
- "a" = 1;
- "a couple" = 2;
- "a few" = 3 or 4, 2 by exception; and
- "several" = 5 or more; never 2 or 3.

Please try to keep your English quantity words straight. Thanks.

Nevermind.

Trasvi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
They're special because they're the only faction that has been written like this.

But why does this matter? Why is it so important that it's a one-model "faction" instead of just an entry in the Escalation book? Will Baneblades suddenly get their own special snowflake exception if GW publishes Codex: Baneblade and copy/pastes the Escalation rules for it into a separate $50 book? If they'd be ok in that situation then why do they need to be banned/restricted now?

They ITC crew aren't giving special privileges to Imperial Knight players - they're letting them retain the special privileges they have in their book which allow them to play their army.

That book has no special privileges. Nothing in it says "this is more official than other rules", it's just another book for 40k just like all the other ones. An army with 2+ knights is no different from an army with 2+ Baneblades from GW's perspective.

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.

I am assuming that the next IG Codex will include the $125+ Baneblade (with all 7 variants), just as the next Ork Codex will include the $125+ Stompa. It's clearly in GW's best interest to force these kinds of units into the Codex precisely to remove the specialness of Knights.

On the flip side, it's also in GW's best interest to fold Knights and Ad Mech together, so that they can force Knight players to buy Ad Mech models, and vice versa.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

gungo wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's not my fault gungo started a battle of wits while armed with such dull weapons. If you're going to go out of your way to specifically sarcastically "correct" someone, it is wise to make damn sure you actually are correct.

kiddo you said one turn and then immediately went on to say it took two turns in your example. It's not our fault you can't read what you wrote.

And no several was the correct word to use when I wrote it since it requires two or more turns of movement for an assault. If I said a couple that would be incorrect since it means two. The only thing dull here is your humour and how quickly you got hurt when you try to point out someone is wrong and you completely messed it up. Instead of admitting your mistake you continued to show everyone how you messed up so easily in the first place And no it's not because of your stunning wit, no matter what your mom tells you.

(redacted)

Nevermind.

Dude, I *just* redacted that!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
They're special because they're the only faction that has been written like this.

But why does this matter? Why is it so important that it's a one-model "faction" instead of just an entry in the Escalation book? Will Baneblades suddenly get their own special snowflake exception if GW publishes Codex: Baneblade and copy/pastes the Escalation rules for it into a separate $50 book? If they'd be ok in that situation then why do they need to be banned/restricted now?

They ITC crew aren't giving special privileges to Imperial Knight players - they're letting them retain the special privileges they have in their book which allow them to play their army.

That book has no special privileges. Nothing in it says "this is more official than other rules", it's just another book for 40k just like all the other ones. An army with 2+ knights is no different from an army with 2+ Baneblades from GW's perspective.

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.

I am assuming that the next IG Codex will include the $125+ Baneblade (with all 7 variants), just as the next Ork Codex will include the $125+ Stompa. It's clearly in GW's best interest to force these kinds of units into the Codex precisely to remove the specialness of Knights.

On the flip side, it's also in GW's best interest to fold Knights and Ad Mech together, so that they can force Knight players to buy Ad Mech models, and vice versa.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

gungo wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's not my fault gungo started a battle of wits while armed with such dull weapons. If you're going to go out of your way to specifically sarcastically "correct" someone, it is wise to make damn sure you actually are correct.

kiddo you said one turn and then immediately went on to say it took two turns in your example. It's not our fault you can't read what you wrote.

And no several was the correct word to use when I wrote it since it requires two or more turns of movement for an assault. If I said a couple that would be incorrect since it means two. The only thing dull here is your humour and how quickly you got hurt when you try to point out someone is wrong and you completely messed it up. Instead of admitting your mistake you continued to show everyone how you messed up so easily in the first place And no it's not because of your stunning wit, no matter what your mom tells you.

(redacted)

Nevermind.

Dude, I *just* redacted that!

I know, you you.

Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

What about Multi-shot Ranged D BLAST?

A la Warhound Titan?

I can't wait for GW to put that bad boy in a Codex.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

What about Multi-shot Ranged D BLAST?

A la Warhound Titan?

I can't wait for GW to put that bad boy in a Codex.

I'm ready! (For Apocalypse!)

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

What about Multi-shot Ranged D BLAST?

The Lynx is a multi-shot (2 Large Blasts) platform. So: Multi-shot ranged D has not won a major tournament. The justification for nerfing it cannot be based on its overwhelming the tournament scene, because it hasn't.

 kronk wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

What about Multi-shot Ranged D BLAST?

A la Warhound Titan?

I can't wait for GW to put that bad boy in a Codex.

I'm ready! (For Apocalypse!)

Looks like the next legal and totally balanced addition to small friendly fluff filled games of 750pts in 8th edition next year. Of course, the real joy will be modelling the 6ft ships that will occupy the new 1 per detachment BFG slot (or even more fair 1-5 detachment in Codex: Imperial Navy ). I'm sure the planet killer will forge one heck of a balanced narrative versus, say, an IG infantry list. We will of course have to grant cruisers a special snowflake exception as well at that point.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.

I am assuming that the next IG Codex will include the $125+ Baneblade (with all 7 variants), just as the next Ork Codex will include the $125+ Stompa. It's clearly in GW's best interest to force these kinds of units into the Codex precisely to remove the specialness of Knights.

On the flip side, it's also in GW's best interest to fold Knights and Ad Mech together, so that they can force Knight players to buy Ad Mech models, and vice versa.

... and until that point in time, Imperial Knights are a unique faction in Warhammer 40k that require unique rules to allow them to be playable.
If a formation/faction of solely baneblade chassis vehicles eventuates and becomes legal, we can revisit decisions; just like we're having to revisit decisions on ranged D now that it is available on non-LOW platforms.

Lets deal with what we actually have on the table to deal with, rather than some hypothetical future army that may or may not ever occur. GW recently passed over some very easy opportunities to add the Baneblade to the AM codex and Stompa to the Ork codex and Knights to the Skitaari Codex, if that is what they really wanted to do.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

And considering that 75% of players are on the middle tables, don't you think it is worth doing something for them?

The major tournament winners are going to be major tournament winners regardless of the current meta. Nick Nanavati would probably make top bracket with single CAD Dark Angels. That doesn't make Dark Angels a good army.
If you look back I think you'll also see that Wave Serpent spam never won a major tourney either; that doesn't mean it was balanced.
TOs SHOULD be catering based on what happens on the middle tables; the top players are going to be unaffected, and balance for the middle tables makes things more fun for everyone involved.

The funny thing is it seems like it's a bit of a question of "what's in a name?"

The core rules haven't changed at all (please correct me if I'm wrong); but they are now called Lords of War. To prevent other Gargantuans/Superheavies already designated Lords of War, tournaments had in place bans and limits, but (even presumably OP's store) allowed all knight armies before they were so labeled.

The rules are the same (I know, certain wargear additions, but structurally): if you allowed it without the label, allow it with the label. Treat the other units you judged necessary to ban in the presence of all knight armies as you will.

I mean, if you ban the same units when they get the label, you must have really wanted to ban them in the first place.

Trasvi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.

I am assuming that the next IG Codex will include the $125+ Baneblade (with all 7 variants), just as the next Ork Codex will include the $125+ Stompa. It's clearly in GW's best interest to force these kinds of units into the Codex precisely to remove the specialness of Knights.

On the flip side, it's also in GW's best interest to fold Knights and Ad Mech together, so that they can force Knight players to buy Ad Mech models, and vice versa.

... and until that point in time, Imperial Knights are a unique faction in Warhammer 40k that require unique rules to allow them to be playable.
If a formation/faction of solely baneblade chassis vehicles eventuates and becomes legal, we can revisit decisions; just like we're having to revisit decisions on ranged D now that it is available on non-LOW platforms.

Lets deal with what we actually have on the table to deal with, rather than some hypothetical future army that may or may not ever occur. GW recently passed over some very easy opportunities to add the Baneblade to the AM codex and Stompa to the Ork codex and Knights to the Skitaari Codex, if that is what they really wanted to do.

(I'm of the opinion that perhaps GW rules writers are a little Machiavellian; they're paying attention to the tournament circuits and deliberately designing codexes and rules which invalidate any attempts to curb the game. First it was flyers in normal codexes; then Lords of War; moving all fortifications to Stronghold Assault; entire codices of Super Heavies with D weapons; ranged D-weapons on non-super-heavies...)
This may be crediting too much to the rules team, but I like to think that they're evil rather than incompetent, despite what Hanlon's Razor would have you assume

"Machiavellian" and "evil" aren't the right words. GW has been very clear since late 3E / 4E that they want players to buy things to play with. All the things. They have been trying to push this forward ever since Forgeworld was created as a thing. WRT the old IG and Orks, it wasn't GW's time to push the BB and Stompa, as Apoc was still a concept. Now that what used to be Apoc is clearly part of regular 40k, IG getting the BB is the same as everybody getting Flyers.

Trasvi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

I guess we'll cross the issue of Codex:Baneblade if it ever does occur.

I am assuming that the next IG Codex will include the $125+ Baneblade (with all 7 variants), just as the next Ork Codex will include the $125+ Stompa. It's clearly in GW's best interest to force these kinds of units into the Codex precisely to remove the specialness of Knights.

On the flip side, it's also in GW's best interest to fold Knights and Ad Mech together, so that they can force Knight players to buy Ad Mech models, and vice versa.

... and until that point in time, Imperial Knights are a unique faction in Warhammer 40k that require unique rules to allow them to be playable.
If a formation/faction of solely baneblade chassis vehicles eventuates and becomes legal, we can revisit decisions; just like we're having to revisit decisions on ranged D now that it is available on non-LOW platforms.

Lets deal with what we actually have on the table to deal with, rather than some hypothetical future army that may or may not ever occur. GW recently passed over some very easy opportunities to add the Baneblade to the AM codex and Stompa to the Ork codex and Knights to the Skitaari Codex, if that is what they really wanted to do.

Spoiler:

(I'm of the opinion that perhaps GW rules writers are a little Machiavellian; they're paying attention to the tournament circuits and deliberately designing codexes and rules which invalidate any attempts to curb the game. First it was flyers in normal codexes; then Lords of War; moving all fortifications to Stronghold Assault; entire codices of Super Heavies with D weapons; ranged D-weapons on non-super-heavies...)
This may be crediting too much to the rules team, but I like to think that they're evil rather than incompetent, despite what Hanlon's Razor would have you assume

Automatically Appended Next Post:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Data fails to support the notion that Ranged D breaks the game either; Ranged D (even in the form of the Invisible, Fortuned, Lynx on a Skyshield) has not won a major tournament. What it has done is EXACTLY what Imperial Knights have done: Really, really, really annoyed players on the middle tables. /shrug

I remain happy to play in a part of the world where D is D, the 2++ are re-rollable, and Invisibility is played RaW. It's not a fun world--pretty grimdark (and grumpy)--but it's a world I understand.

And considering that 75% of players are on the middle tables, don't you think it is worth doing something for them?

The major tournament winners are going to be major tournament winners regardless of the current meta. Nick Nanavati would probably make top bracket with single CAD Dark Angels. That doesn't make Dark Angels a good army.
If you look back I think you'll also see that Wave Serpent spam never won a major tourney either; that doesn't mean it was balanced.
TOs SHOULD be catering based on what happens on the middle tables; the top players are going to be unaffected, and balance for the middle tables makes things more fun for everyone involved.

How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Wow, a whole 5? That must be terrible for that 12.5% of players to have to face. If you expand to top 64 you still have only 5 adlance in top 25%. How many events have 256 participants? How many of those 256 played adlance? What's the make up of the armies in the middle group? Without those numbers little else matters.

Edit: how many of those events had exit polls where participants indicated they had a bad time or negative experience? Is there any actual evidence the current format isn't what those who participated want or evidence they found it not fun?

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Wow, a whole 5? That must be terrible for that 12.5% of players to have to face. If you expand to top 64 you still have only 5 adlance in top 25%. How many events have 256 participants? How many of those 256 played adlance? What's the make up of the armies in the middle group? Without those numbers little else matters.

Edit: how many of those events had exit polls where participants indicated they had a bad time or negative experience? Is there any actual evidence the current format isn't what those who participated want or evidence they found it not fun?

Those numbers are around for some of the major tournaments if you care to look them up, on TorrentOfFire or FrontlingGaming.
All I'm trying to say here is that declaring the balance of the game based upon the winner of a tournament is a very bad idea. The best generals will be the best no matter what - and in many case because they specifically chose a hard counter to the current meta-dominating lists. The middle tables are where you'll find the mediocre-to-bad players with netlists beating better skilled people with worse lists, or the fluff players getting trounced by pentaflyrants or waveserpents. The middle ground is where you'll find the discontent breeding and people leaving the tournament/game over balance issues. Fluff players will keep being happy with fluff and top players will keep being happy regardless of what restrictions are around. So the middle ground is where you need to look to find the issues, rather than the finalists.


I don't know what kind of 'evidence' you'll accept, but there is a clear feeling from a lot of players that there are a number of things 'bad' about the current 40k metagame in a distinctly different and worse way than in the past; else we wouldn't be having this conversation. Organisers of NOVA and BAO have said on multiple occasions that there was a general feel of negativity towards the Adamantine Lance (amongst other dominant builds).

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Wow, a whole 5? That must be terrible for that 12.5% of players to have to face. If you expand to top 64 you still have only 5 adlance in top 25%. How many events have 256 participants? How many of those 256 played adlance? What's the make up of the armies in the middle group? Without those numbers little else matters.

Edit: how many of those events had exit polls where participants indicated they had a bad time or negative experience? Is there any actual evidence the current format isn't what those who participated want or evidence they found it not fun?

Those numbers are around for some of the major tournaments if you care to look them up, on TorrentOfFire or FrontlingGaming.
All I'm trying to say here is that declaring the balance of the game based upon the winner of a tournament is a very bad idea. The best generals will be the best no matter what - and in many case because they specifically chose a hard counter to the current meta-dominating lists. The middle tables are where you'll find the mediocre-to-bad players with netlists beating better skilled people with worse lists, or the fluff players getting trounced by pentaflyrants or waveserpents. The middle ground is where you'll find the discontent breeding and people leaving the tournament/game over balance issues. Fluff players will keep being happy with fluff and top players will keep being happy regardless of what restrictions are around. So the middle ground is where you need to look to find the issues, rather than the finalists.


I don't know what kind of 'evidence' you'll accept, but there is a clear feeling from a lot of players that there are a number of things 'bad' about the current 40k metagame in a distinctly different and worse way than in the past; else we wouldn't be having this conversation. Organisers of NOVA and BAO have said on multiple occasions that there was a general feel of negativity towards the Adamantine Lance (amongst other dominant builds).

All of that has been true at any stage of 40k just substitute adlance with any number of former meta net lists. 3rd ed Rhino Rush, 4th ed fish of fury or Eldar skimmer spam, 5th Ed missile spam and GK, 6th Ed Death Stars and flying MC circus'. All of those were bemoaned and decried at the time, the difference now is the scope of the whining. Which has less to do with the potency of any meta net build and more to do with the online community as a whole and the shift of its role in competitive gaming. At every stage outlined above the best players made lists to beat the current net build meta and said meta was dominant in the middle pack. WargamesCon 2012 is a perfect example where GK, the super unfun edition breaking list decried to the ends of the earth online, were beaten out of the top spots and an Ork horde and biker list piloted by Alan Bajmorovich took it all by a huge margin.

Adlance and Knights are just the new meta net list to beat up on.

Edit. The kind of evidence I would accept certainly isn't the kind of generic, sweeping, lots of people think/feel/say sort of rhetoric that isn't actually evidence of anything.

Second Edit: looking back through the thread you and I seem to agree on the basics around IKs. Is it possible I missed something along the way? Are you saying Knights and Adlance should or should not be banned because they are a snowflake. The ciclical nature of this thread has gotten me confused it seems.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

All of that has been true at any stage of 40k just substitute adlance with any number of former meta net lists. 3rd ed Rhino Rush, 4th ed fish of fury or Eldar skimmer spam, 5th Ed missile spam and GK, 6th Ed Death Stars and flying MC circus'. All of those were bemoaned and decried at the time, the difference now is the scope of the whining. Which has less to do with the potency of any meta net build and more to do with the online community as a whole and the shift of its role in competitive gaming. At every stage outlined above the best players made lists to beat the current net build meta and said meta was dominant in the middle pack. WargamesCon 2012 is a perfect example where GK, the super unfun edition breaking list decried to the ends of the earth online, were beaten out of the top spots and an Ork horde and biker list piloted by Alan Bajmorovich took it all by a huge margin.

Adlance and Knights are just the new meta net list to beat up on.

Sure, there have always been balance issues; but we can still rank the balance issues against each other to find the worst ones, and (in my opinion) the balance issues of this edition are far greater than they were in 5th or 4th. We simply have far more extreme models to deal with now. AV15, Flyers, Superheavies, SD, formations with free +50% durability to your army for no cost, didn't exist back then; that should be an obvious indicator that 6th and 7th have at least more potential for wider balance swings than the previous 3 editions did.

Major tournament organisers never seriously pursued any kind of bans or restrictions (beyond 'no forge world') in those editions, yet you won't find a tournament today without some kind of additional limitations. That should be an obvious indicator that balance is in a worse place today than 3 years ago.

Yet your opinion is that people are whining more now because the internet is somehow different than it was 3 years ago?

Yes the best players shift and the middle players get dominated by the meta. I'm agreeing with you on that point. I'm saying that the domination of the middle players is worse than it has been before; I'm saying that you can't look at the Ork list taking podium place and say 'Obviously Grey Knights are balanced'.

And bringing this back full circle: Knights/Adlance is more than just 'a new meta list' in the same way that Fish of Fury was. It is a style of list that was not in any way supported by the rules of past editions (whereas all the mechanics of Fish of Fury are relatively unchanged from 3rd until 7th). Superheavies with D-Weapons and stomps are a relatively new thing in the game; they are an extreme above and beyond 5th edition simply because the core rules changed to allow them to exist. And they are a unique thing even within the confines of the rules today: no other force can be legally be entirely comprised of Super-Heavy Lords Of War. They ARE a special snowflake and should be treated as such, regardless of whether that is to allow or to ban them.

Trasvi wrote:
And they are a unique thing even within the confines of the rules today: no other force can be legally be entirely comprised of Super-Heavy Lords Of War.

Not true. I can take an army of nothing but Baneblades if I want.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Trasvi wrote:
Until that point, an army of 2+ Knights IS a unique occurrence because it is a faction of its own, a battleforged army of its own, which ARE 'magic' things under the rules.

But they really aren't. Battle-forged is no more official/legitimate/whatever than unbound, and nothing in the rules GW has published says "you can ban units from a faction, but each faction must be allowed to have a legal army under your rules".

If people know their Factions may begin being completely banned based on balance issues, people will stop using the restrictions (or not go to tournaments with the restrictions).

How is that any different from having my army banned because it has a Baneblade in it? You can't use your knights, I can't use my Baneblade. The only difference is that there are more knight owners than Baneblade owners, so if we're letting people vote to give themselves a special snowflake exception (with the threat of not attending an event as the vote) knight owners have more power to get them while Baneblade owners are easier to ignore.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
And they are a unique thing even within the confines of the rules today: no other force can be legally be entirely comprised of Super-Heavy Lords Of War.

Not true. I can take an army of nothing but Baneblades if I want.

Battleforged? I shouldn't really need to add that caveat in as it is an almost universal rule for tournaments. Is there a particular formation or Forgeworld army that lets you do this?

Trasvi wrote:
Battleforged?

No, but if we're talking about the rules as published by GW then whether or not it is battle-forged is irrelevant. Your argument is that GW has somehow created a unique set of rules that require special treatment, and tournament house rules are not part of that. If you want to limit the discussion to battle-forged armies only then you're going to have to concede that the special status of knights is the result of those tournament house rules, not the rules published by GW.

 Peregrine wrote:

Trasvi wrote:
Battleforged?

No, but if we're talking about the rules as published by GW then whether or not it is battle-forged is irrelevant. Your argument is that GW has somehow created a unique set of rules that require special treatment, and tournament house rules are not part of that. If you want to limit the discussion to battle-forged armies only then you're going to have to concede that the special status of knights is the result of those tournament house rules, not the rules published by GW.

Ok, sure. I concede that.
Now what?

We're talking in the context of adding additional restrictions to GW's rules. We're talking about adding special cases to those house rules. So its pretty asinine to say 'you MUST NOT have special restrictions to your rules, even to cover special situations that arise because of your rules'.

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

All of that has been true at any stage of 40k just substitute adlance with any number of former meta net lists. 3rd ed Rhino Rush, 4th ed fish of fury or Eldar skimmer spam, 5th Ed missile spam and GK, 6th Ed Death Stars and flying MC circus'. All of those were bemoaned and decried at the time, the difference now is the scope of the whining. Which has less to do with the potency of any meta net build and more to do with the online community as a whole and the shift of its role in competitive gaming. At every stage outlined above the best players made lists to beat the current net build meta and said meta was dominant in the middle pack. WargamesCon 2012 is a perfect example where GK, the super unfun edition breaking list decried to the ends of the earth online, were beaten out of the top spots and an Ork horde and biker list piloted by Alan Bajmorovich took it all by a huge margin.

Adlance and Knights are just the new meta net list to beat up on.

Sure, there have always been balance issues; but we can still rank the balance issues against each other to find the worst ones, and (in my opinion) the balance issues of this edition are far greater than they were in 5th or 4th. We simply have far more extreme models to deal with now. AV15, Flyers, Superheavies, SD, formations with free +50% durability to your army for no cost, didn't exist back then; that should be an obvious indicator that 6th and 7th have at least more potential for wider balance swings than the previous 3 editions did.

Major tournament organisers never seriously pursued any kind of bans or restrictions (beyond 'no forge world') in those editions, yet you won't find a tournament today without some kind of additional limitations. That should be an obvious indicator that balance is in a worse place today than 3 years ago.

Yet your opinion is that people are whining more now because the internet is somehow different than it was 3 years ago?

Yes the best players shift and the middle players get dominated by the meta. I'm agreeing with you on that point. I'm saying that the domination of the middle players is worse than it has been before; I'm saying that you can't look at the Ork list taking podium place and say 'Obviously Grey Knights are balanced'.

And bringing this back full circle: Knights/Adlance is more than just 'a new meta list' in the same way that Fish of Fury was. It is a style of list that was not in any way supported by the rules of past editions (whereas all the mechanics of Fish of Fury are relatively unchanged from 3rd until 7th). Superheavies with D-Weapons and stomps are a relatively new thing in the game; they are an extreme above and beyond 5th edition simply because the core rules changed to allow them to exist. And they are a unique thing even within the confines of the rules today: no other force can be legally be entirely comprised of Super-Heavy Lords Of War. They ARE a special snowflake and should be treated as such, regardless of whether that is to allow or to ban them.

Spoiler:

I think that the only way true balance would be achieved is for people who care about balance to re-write codices from the ground up. There is nothing inherent in being a Super Heavy Lord of War that makes you unbalanced; just like there was nothing inherently unbalanced in any of the multiple elements that added up to a wave serpent to make them unbalanced. So we should tackle things at the individual unit level, at the intra codex level, in order to remake balance.
However, that is never going to happen while GW still draws breath. The ubiquity of 40k as a ruleset is one of its few redeeming qualities, and people are going to react adversely to individual clubs or tournaments rewriting the rules. We need to be more practical, which (unfortunately) involves more sweeping changes that are targetted at a few units but catch others in the crossfire. The Community Comp system in Australia is a half-way measure, but it is definitely not without glaring issues and its own brand of re-writing.

My personal opinion is that Knights, and Superheavies/GMCs in general, are bad for the game. I think that battle brother allies are bad for the game too; and that D-Weapons (and more generally any remove-from-play attack), and free-special-rules-at-no-cost-formations are bad for the game.
But if we're going to operate in an environment where those things are allowed or unavoidable (as it seems we have to with the direct GW is heading) then things should be deal with on a case by case basis where at all possible. Knights stick out because they ARE unique (faction entirely comprised of Superheavies with D weapons that are now Lords of War). Whether that requires an explicit exception for them, an explicit admission that they are to be banned along with all other SH LOW, or whatever... but they are unique in the game and that needs to be dealt with.

Ok, I see better what you're getting at now. While I don't fully agree, I see your point.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Wow, a whole 5? That must be terrible for that 12.5% of players to have to face. If you expand to top 64 you still have only 5 adlance in top 25%. How many events have 256 participants? How many of those 256 played adlance? What's the make up of the armies in the middle group? Without those numbers little else matters.

Edit: how many of those events had exit polls where participants indicated they had a bad time or negative experience? Is there any actual evidence the current format isn't what those who participated want or evidence they found it not fun?

Umm... How about at NOVA, where there were no Adlance in the top Bracket but one Dual IK player got 3rd, but there were five armies with IKs in Bracket 2, three more in Bracket 3. Oh, and NOVA does an exit survey of which there was overwhelming negative feedback towards SH/GCs in both the Open and the Narrative. Imperial Knights also have a 65% win rate on Torrent of Fire.

I was there, I did well despite the IKs, but I didn't like seeing Adlances, Pacific Rim, and all the IKs, nor was I alone. There was a lot of negative sentiment floating around. Hell, even Reece felt just a little bad for bringing the "Easy Button" army.

They may not be winning, but there is massive negative sentiment towards them especially among those in the Middle tables who are getting stomped by them.


So there is at least one event supplying the "evidence" you are looking for backed up by Torrent of Fire data having IKs as the most winning army by a massive margin, even beyond the old 6th Ed Eldar. Mike Brandt has commented on the negative feedback multiple times on the forums and his Blog.

 Zagman wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Wow, a whole 5? That must be terrible for that 12.5% of players to have to face. If you expand to top 64 you still have only 5 adlance in top 25%. How many events have 256 participants? How many of those 256 played adlance? What's the make up of the armies in the middle group? Without those numbers little else matters.

Edit: how many of those events had exit polls where participants indicated they had a bad time or negative experience? Is there any actual evidence the current format isn't what those who participated want or evidence they found it not fun?

Umm... How about at NOVA, where there were no Adlance in the top Bracket but one Dual IK player got 3rd, but there were five armies with IKs in Bracket 2, three more in Bracket 3. Oh, and NOVA does an exit survey of which there was overwhelming negative feedback towards SH/GCs in both the Open and the Narrative. Imperial Knights also have a 65% win rate on Torrent of Fire.

I was there, I did well despite the IKs, but I didn't like seeing Adlances, Pacific Rim, and all the IKs, nor was I alone. There was a lot of negative sentiment floating around. Hell, even Reece felt just a little bad for bringing the "Easy Button" army.

They may not be winning, but there is massive negative sentiment towards them especially among those in the Middle tables who are getting stomped by them.


So there is at least one event supplying the "evidence" you are looking for backed up by Torrent of Fire data having IKs as the most winning army by a massive margin, even beyond the old 6th Ed Eldar. Mike Brandt has commented on the negative feedback multiple times on the forums and his Blog.

Perfect. NOVA is outside my realm of play which is probably why I haven't paid much attention to those results. I'll need to check it out more closely. I am looking at this through the lens of the West Coast where Knights, Adlance, SH, and GC have seen much less backlash and are accepted and viewed in a far more positive light.

Trasvi wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
How do you get 75% of players are at the middle tables? At most 33.3% would be middle. Top, middle, lowest tables split evenly.

It depends what you count as top, right? Is 'top tables' literally only the finalists, or is it arbitrarily split in to exact thirds?
I would count for the largest tournaments which split in to 8 brackets, bracket 1 as top and bracket 8 as bottom, with 2-6 as the middle.
32 players in top bracket
32 players in bottom bracket
192 players in 'the middle tables'. (75%)


If you want to literally say 'top / middle / bottom = 33% splits' then you really start seeing the netlists like Adlance or Waveserpents appearing in the top 33%. I believe that NOVA, while it had no Adlance in the top 32, featured 5 in the second 32.

Guys, if you need to split hairs like this, maybe that reinforces the point that this isn't a big deal.

Trasvi wrote:
We're talking in the context of adding additional restrictions to GW's rules. We're talking about adding special cases to those house rules. So its pretty asinine to say 'you MUST NOT have special restrictions to your rules, even to cover special situations that arise because of your rules'.

The point is that once you start saying "we can change stuff" you can't keep using "we must not change this no matter what" as a reason. The only argument presented so far for giving a special snowflake exception to knights has been based on an assumption that certain changes can not be made and we have to play it by RAW. By RAW knights don't have any special status, they only get that status once you create house rules to give it to them. So your argument essentially becomes "we've made house rules that make knights special, so we must have house rules that make knights special".