Rainbow Dash wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:40k has already been Sigmar'd over the last decade, but it was so gradual that most people only caught on when Unbound dropped. There's nothing there worth saving, just like there wasn't in
WHFB.
I wanted to believe in
AoS but alas, I made the official jump to Warmahordes today. Lots of fun.
I was once like you - I got fed up with
40k and made the transition to Warmachine. I was bright-eyed and enthusiastic about a new game that the internet kept telling me was far superior, better balanced, had a better community, tighter rules system etc.
For the first few weeks, that was true. I was pleasantly surprised by how little it cost to set up an average size force, I was impressed by the evident focus on inter-model synergy, and my games against a friend were close-run things in which neither of us felt that we were playing at a disadvantage.
But then we decided to go to the
FLGS to start playing other people, and my positive perception was utterly shattered.
Firstly, Warmachine isn't balanced - there are clearly superior options that anyone can identify, and if you don't take them you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Secondly (and this may just be the local scene) the game seems to actively promote this really bizarre puerile competitiveness. When we had our first few games, no one wanted to help us learn, and our questions about how certain rules interacted or how to get the best out of our units were met with apathy at best and bald derision at worst. We were told we had to 'get good' or 'play better', but we weren't given any advice as to how to do that. Upon our inevitable defeat, our opponents would openly gloat and criticise our lack of capability as they saw it.
Thirdly, there's almost no creative input aside from how you paint your models, and heaven forfend you paint them in anything other than the official colours displayed on the box! My friend was playing Cygnar and decided to paint his models green instead of the usual blue - he was constantly mocked and criticised for 'painting them the wrong colour', accused of being colourblind, and the
FLGS owner even suggested (jokingly, I hope, but I'm not sure) not allowing him to play with the army until they were 'the proper colour'.
Needless to say, we never went back, although our tentative forays into other communities elsewhere have given us similar impressions, although not quite as extreme. I don't know quite what it is about the game that seems to generate this kind of behaviour, but I never experienced quite the same level of animosity when I was playing
40k.
40k is unbalanced, woefully so, I don't think anyone can really argue against that point. There are blatantly overcosted and undercosted units, the ruleset is fairly sloppy with confusing or unclear rules, and it can be very difficult to understand why
GW write the things they do. But, for whatever reason, its communities seem to be more welcoming.
I suppose that's the takeaway from all this:
the game doesn't matter, only the community in which you play. If you can find a Warmachine community that's welcoming and supportive and above all enhances your play experience, go for it. That's fantastic, and I hope the community sticks around forever. But if you can't find decent people to play with, don't keep playing Warmachine just because it's a tighter ruleset.
TL;DR: Rules and game don't matter, only the people you play with.
