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In the packet provided with the "Tank Shock" Organized Play box came a sheet for how to run a single day tournament according to GW.

http://www.captureandcontrol.com/2016/03/breaking-games-workshop-releases.html

What do you think? Is this good or bad for tournament 40k?

I like that is seems GW is becoming more engaged, and at the very least we now know they think competitive games of 40k should be played at 1750 with 2.5 hour rounds.

I like the idea I'm cool with the non competitive friendly style tournamentish setup.
But holy hell this kit is way overpriced. It's a $40 kit tops and even that is a stretch because vehicle tokens are cardboard and not plastic. $500 is a joke and beyond GW stores I don't know why any independent would want it.

Wait, what do you get for that price again? Surely that cant be right.

But hey, at least they're trying. Better than nothing I guess.

I mean, I am more than happy they want to put out their own Tournament Packs. More power to them for it. But first thing's first they need to realize their book missions, especially maelstrom, need a ton of work for tournament play.

Hopefully someone in the sky reads this and takes it to heart, because I'd love for them to get their act in gear on tournaments. Right now what they're proposing in this scan of yours is just pathetic compared to Adepticon or Nova missions. Much less ITC which are pretty weak compared to Adepticon and Nova.

9:00 am the game starts?
BULL

baby steps

GreyDragoon wrote:
I mean, I am more than happy they want to put out their own Tournament Packs. More power to them for it. But first thing's first they need to realize their book missions, especially maelstrom, need a ton of work for tournament play.

Hopefully someone in the sky reads this and takes it to heart, because I'd love for them to get their act in gear on tournaments. Right now what they're proposing in this scan of yours is just pathetic compared to Adepticon or Nova missions. Much less ITC which are pretty weak compared to Adepticon and Nova.

First your In the wrong format this isn't aimed at adepticon or nova or ITC or etc. this is casual as can be organized play not conpetitive tournament. This has more points going to building and painting than playing.

Secondly the missions on this leaflet which really have nothing to do with what you stated are predetermined and mostly follow a king of the hill Type event except for the one final event at the end and even then you can still use the older eternal war missions which are completely fine.

A competitive tourney Is just one type of many organized play games. There is also a reason why nova, adepticon and ITC constantly change thier missions and maelstrom. They are not perfect either. Nova heavily favors deathstars, ITC favors msu, adepticon I have nfc I don't play there.

1750???? Don't they even research what the tournament standards are? 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850. Dolts.

Edited by RiTides - Language

General Hobbs wrote:


1750???? Don't they even research what the tournament standards are? 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850. Dolts.

1750 was the norm for a while. With some people struggling to finish 1850 games in under 3 hours, it's not shocking that a 2.5 hour event would be 1750. Personally, I think it's a good number

I'll say what my Grandmaw would say back in the Ozarks:

"God bless their little hearts."

At least this adds some legitimacy to people wanting lower points limits at tournaments.

1750 is just as legitimate as 1850. The problem is that because GW has been absent from the competitive scene for so long that other groups have stepped in, and they have set 1850 as the default for most large events here in the US.

The ruleset is a step in the right direction, but woefully inadequate and massively overpriced. FFG has a much better packet available for the low price of free, and it is much more comprehensive and organized than what GW have put together.

Where does the price of $500 come from?

Is that the price for the tournament package? That does seem exorbitant for sure.

gungo wrote:

GreyDragoon wrote:
I mean, I am more than happy they want to put out their own Tournament Packs. More power to them for it. But first thing's first they need to realize their book missions, especially maelstrom, need a ton of work for tournament play.

Hopefully someone in the sky reads this and takes it to heart, because I'd love for them to get their act in gear on tournaments. Right now what they're proposing in this scan of yours is just pathetic compared to Adepticon or Nova missions. Much less ITC which are pretty weak compared to Adepticon and Nova.

First your In the wrong format this isn't aimed at adepticon or nova or ITC or etc. this is casual as can be organized play not conpetitive tournament. This has more points going to building and painting than playing.

Secondly the missions on this leaflet which really have nothing to do with what you stated are predetermined and mostly follow a king of the hill Type event except for the one final event at the end and even then you can still use the older eternal war missions which are completely fine.

A competitive tourney Is just one type of many organized play games. There is also a reason why nova, adepticon and ITC constantly change thier missions and maelstrom. They are not perfect either. Nova heavily favors deathstars, ITC favors msu, adepticon I have nfc I don't play there.

*shrug* Hey if you think the book missions make for a fun experience in any sort of tournament play, I guess good for you. I find them to be lopsided affairs with weak and randomly defined goals due to the maelstrom missions. More importantly, those maelstrom cards are wildly imbalanced. A lucky draw can easily gift you the entire match.

For even 200$ (if that was the cost for this tournament package) you could easily hold a small RTT with your own shop's tables/terrain/rules and probably have enough leftover for a fun little 16 person bbq to have lunch on premises/outdoors during the break. It costs nothing to use the better developed missions of other formats which have had a LOT more play testing/tweaking than the GW missions. And if you want the focus to be on the hobby/painting aspects, just weight the painting scores appropriately. At $500 (if that is the real cost) this is a tremendous rip off to store owners unless it comes with some unique prize support for the players.

Metrically, NOVA actually favors MSU more than deathstars, slightly. It is fairly difficult to argue, however, that GW's book missions are anything more than amateur compared to other games' book missions, while Malifaux probably has the most evolved set.

I'm disappointed they continue with a line that poor, imbalanced, over-simplified missions do anything other than offer a lesser experience compared to alternatives for most player types. There is no direct corollary between a good, fair, engaging mission that enhances balance ... and competitiveness. If you're playing a casual friendly game and the rules and missions are better and more balanced, it will be more casual and friendly than if bad mission design and balance creates unfun, unfair, or totally ridiculous outcomes. Never understood how "friendly" somehow equated to "unbalanced and crappy" in a positive way. It's like an affordable car breaks down and the response by the owner is that they didn't want a fancy car anyway. One's got nothing to do with the other. It represents a failure of basic logic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically, pay money so you can host a tournament with missions that are MORE likely to create NPEs than if you used free, superior options like nova, itc, etc, etcetera.

This entire organized play package isn't a competitve tournament. You can build and paint and lose every match and still win the entire organized play event.

Furthermore the eternal war missions have been around since 3rd edition and are widely used in every single tournament.
They are actually pretty good. The maelstrom missions worse part is they are random but even those are used well to some extent with some modified rules based on thier acquisition.

I don't know how else to say it's got nothing to do with competitive, or winning, or losing.

And no, other than name, your third edition and every tournament question isn't super spot on.

Sorry Gungo but I don't think you understand where we're coming from. I don't care if I'm playing in a tournament or in a friendly afternoon match. The book missions are just inferior in every way to even the ITC missions. Which are in my mind nowhere near as well refined as the NOVA or Adepticon ones.

The shame of this package isn't the cost of it, I assume (hope) that there is something more to this than just a restating of the rules and some GW finery that you get for that cost as a store owner/tournament runner. It's that they haven't done anything to look at the wide variety of mission rules out there and come up with improved mission sets for tournaments. Whether you want that tournament to be competitive, friendly, or narrative - in all three cases the book missions are woefully inadequate, and the basic maelstrom cards straight up tend to ruin games.

If they'd like to perhaps make a really robust offering in a tournament/mission book, my suggestion would be 6-12 missions each for Competitive (uber balanced) Friendly (balanced but not at an army selection level) and Narrative (3 mission story arcs) that they could easily sell at a premium for people to enjoy in tournaments. Also they should bring back and repolish the planet-wide campaigns they used to have and really get that setup nicely so they could do regional/seasonal narratives.

All things I'd happily pay some very real money for, and would be extremely healthy to our game.

Houserule is houserule, even if it is from GW. Personally, I don't take their format seriously until they can clean up the mess that are their own rules. Give me good FAQ's/Erratas and then I'll pay more attention to what they have to say in the tournament scene. Otherwise, it is just a joke.

So I was giving them benefit of the doubt on that one JY2 considering all of the rumblings of a ressurected FaQ council/ what we see on their new Facebook page.

But completely agreed, if their own FAQs are also not being properly updated/currated then I'd simply skip events attempting to run off just the book rules/gw faq. ETC is about as close to book rules as possible and even they have a tomb of additional FAQs

@JY2 - igoring the FAQ situation, what are your thoughts on necessary changes to their missions for usage in tournaments? I also feel like any effort to bring their missions along should really include some new deployment options from the 3 they have.

Maybe some stirrings from GW could help move things a bit - such as the aforementioned 1750 usage. I think GW doing this is a step in the right direction, at least!

Edit: Regarding FAQs, they just asked for questions on their Facebook page and said they'd provide FAQs with answers within a week or so, I believe.

Considering the sheer number of requests they got, that 1 week turnaround is probably looking pretty fanciful at the moment unless they pull off 1 or 2 game designers to assist the interns.

As I said at first, none of this is bad news. I'm overjoyed to see them start taking an active hand again. I just don't think they realize how much work their missions (eternal and maelstrom) need to be bought up to snuff.

Oh and Happy Easter all!

GreyDragoon wrote:
So I was giving them benefit of the doubt on that one JY2 considering all of the rumblings of a ressurected FaQ council/ what we see on their new Facebook page.

But completely agreed, if their own FAQs are also not being properly updated/currated then I'd simply skip events attempting to run off just the book rules/gw faq. ETC is about as close to book rules as possible and even they have a tomb of additional FAQs

@JY2 - igoring the FAQ situation, what are your thoughts on necessary changes to their missions for usage in tournaments? I also feel like any effort to bring their missions along should really include some new deployment options from the 3 they have.

IMO they are going about it the wrong way. They should be "giving" us their tournament packet for Free-ish, either on White Dwarf or on their website, not by charging an arm and a leg for it. The 2 key ingredients to wide-spread adoptability is:

1) Simple but balanced.

2) Free and/or minimal costs for TO setup.

Pure Maelstrom is a horrible tournament format. Eternal War slightly better but still not great by a long shot. They need to tweak their missions to be more balanced for competitive play. They are already behind 3rd party formats like ITC, ETC, Nova, Adepticon, etc. And now they want us to pay for a much more flawed product (their tournament packet) when we can get a much better product (any of the 3rd party systems) for free? That makes no long-term business sense at all, at least not to me.

But first and foremost, they need to fix their own rules if they are serious about tournament play at all.

Given GW's usual way of running things, even when they were supporting tournaments, imo they won't be emulating any of the independent circuit formats. I think this is OK in some ways (it's their game, after all!) but they will need a bit more fleshing out (and obviously, very few independents tournies are going to pay to use something like this).

Looking forward to seeing some more positive steps, though

 luke1705 wrote:

General Hobbs wrote:


1750???? Don't they even research what the tournament standards are? 1000, 1250, 1500, 1850. Dolts.

1750 was the norm for a while. With some people struggling to finish 1850 games in under 3 hours, it's not shocking that a 2.5 hour event would be 1750. Personally, I think it's a good number

It was never the norm. The GT guys did 1 round of GT's in the early 2000's and it was so reviled they went back to 1850.

I don't see how 1750 could be "reviled" when 1850 was so accepted. The fact is if you're comparing to the early 2000s, with how points have changed since we should all be playing 1500 to have a similar experience.

Although I could be wrong, I think people here & basically everywhere are probably overreacting to the price of the kit. I forget where I saw it, but somebody on a forum somewhere said that the $500--1000 includes the stock a store would purchase to go along with this campaign, namely a bunch of tanks for each faction. I haven't seen confirmation of that, but it makes a lot of sense to me. As little faith as I have in GW, I can't see even them trying to push that kind of price for just a bunch of cardboard tokens, printed certificates, and a half-assed event packet.

I will say, to the missions, I think there's probably an audience for really simple scenarios more or less straight from the BRB. For the past year and a half I've been using really structured, sophisticated missions in my events, with multiple alternative paths to victory, several points of strategic decision making, lots of ways for players to differentiate in scoring beyond just winning, etc.. You can check out a good example from our event last month here (they vary every month in the specifics). The format and style have worked really well, I and our more competitive guys love them. But lately I've been thinking that they're a bit of a drag to the more casual contingent of our community, even if they don't realize it. I could believe there's a solid group that don't want to deal with all these options and mission rules, and just want to get on with it in scenarios as simple as those in the BRB. So I'm thinking about experimenting a bit this summer with much simpler missions, essentially just balanced versions off the BRB and really simple and coarse scoring, and seeing how people react.

It's not "are boys, but a better start back to how things used to be.

Or we can continue the "we hate GW but can't seem to get enough of their models" thread.

I'm sure the bigger organizers will find a way to adapt.

I think everyone is waiting to see what they do with AoS.

Don't bring AoS into this. That steaming pile of crap better not influence their choices on 40k/30k or we're all boned.


@Tjk: As far as the price I'm assuming it involves an equiv amount of store product to give away/sell. Otherwise this is a super bad deal for indies. We have better ways of holding tournies without it unless that money brings a equal or better amount of product for prize rewards.

 Uriels_Flame wrote:

I think everyone is waiting to see what they do with AoS.

I hear in AoS tournaments everyone gets a trophy.

Sweet. Millennial thinking! Bring back 'are boys and let's get things moving.