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 Kriswall wrote:

Spoiler:

Davor wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
I tend to think of this as a "path of least resistance" sort of thing. In many communities, setting up a matched play game involves two questions... "do you want to play" and "how many points". All other potential questions are covered by the rules. Setting up an open play game involves much more negotiation. This negotiation takes time and almost requires both players to have a similar outlook on the game.

Matched play is just quicker and easier to work with. Open play feels more suitable for small groups of friends who have the time and familiarity with each other to negotiate all of the extra house rules they'll need to make the games work.

I have some counter to these arguments. I just love a good debate which I think this is.

There is 86 400 seconds in a day. So what was that you said about time?

Even if doing the "want to play? How many points" as your only negotiating you still need "requires both players to have a similar outlook on the game" other wise it can just go as bad without points. Just read the many threads on Dakka alone on bad or horrible game experiences. All of them if not then most of them with points. Let me please add to that. Maybe about taking some of those few thousands of seconds in a day and discuss with your opponent you will not be adding more horror stories on Dakka in the future and actually Wasting More Time playing a game with points than you would have been with discussing with your opponent or as you said "negotiations".

Come on, lets say it for what it is. It's talking to someone. Negotiating, like come on, really man? These are plastic toy soldiers after all. This is not a hostage situation (unless you are saying we are holding those few precious seconds as hostage), we are not negotiating a peace treaty among countries, we are all just smuchks who play with plastic to soldiers. What is wrong with talking with other smuchks, or spankers, or blokes, or hell fellow like minded people who have the same interests as yourself and just talk to them like humans instead of lawyers like we claim GW to do and be.

As for quicker and easier. Two words that are not associated with 40K at all. Same for Fantasy. Ironically quicker and easier two words associated with Age of Sigmar. How Ironic you said that for an Age of Sigmar game.

Any more excuses? I am sure I can find if not me, others will have an answer for your excuse. What can be said about "not having points" can be said for "having points".

Ball is back in your court.

86,400 seconds in a day... the overwhelming majority of which are already spoken for. On an average weekday, I wake up around 6:30AM to get ready for work. I finish work around 5:00PM and drive home (~1hr) to change/eat dinner with my family. Assuming it's a gaming night, I'll head back out and get to the store around 7:00PM. The store closes at 9:00PM. So... your 86,400 seconds has been pared down to 7,200 seconds. Playing a matched play game can eat up most of that time. Adding in an element of negotiation before every game and we usually run out of time. Heck, we sometimes run out of time as it is. Not everyone has all day free to devote to gaming. In the rare instance where I have a lot of time, I'm more than happy to negotiate and play an open play game. Rarely happens. On an average night, the choice is usually between playing a game with as many predefined expectations as possible (matched play) or not playing due to lack of time. MOST of the people I play with have the same sort of schedule and real life time commitments.

Please forgive me. I am not sure what I was thinking of. I guess I was just trying to being an arse when reading the comment. I don't know why, but when I saw the time, I was thinking of my collage teacher when he said that to us when we used excuses why we were busy in the day. I guess the point I was trying to be but being an arse the point didn't come across, speaking to someone for a few minutes is not that difficult or time consuming. I guess that is what I should have said in the begining.

Again, please forgive me.

Time is the big killer I think. Yes its easy to go up and talk to a complete stranger about a game ( we are as a general rule a bunch of introverts who turn extrovert at the mere mention of our favorite hobbies) but the trick is, getting to a place to play, and having time to play, and then getting to meet someone. With points you can show up and have a good idea whats what. AoS can be a lot of fun, but it can also suck hard when its a tabling match in 2 turns due to gross imbalance, and with it being as new as it is, it is very easy to make one of these OP armies completely unintentionally. My duardin have fought and won battles we certainly should not have, and have lost a good number the same. Scenarios really do nothing for balance (I am sure that opened a sh** storm, but from my experience thats just the facts) so I look at it this way,. I have to drive about 70 miles to get in a game, that aint happening on a weekday. So I have maybe 2, usually 1 partial day to do it. I would rather build up a force (granted I do not use points, but after playing the same folks it doesnt matter anymore) and be able to get right to biznizz.

The vast majority of commercially successful wargames use points or some sort list composition system. It just makes it easier to facilitate pick up play between strangers at your FLGS. If you and your gaming group have the time and of like mind to the point where you can do pointless, scenario gaming then good on you! But not everyone has the time or group to do that. Besides that, OP, what does it matter what other people are playing? Just let them have fun with the game.

Hell, there are several people that have decided to give AoS a try just because they introduced Matched Play. Isn't the growth of the community a good thing?

The growth of the game is a good thing, but not in my opinion at the cost of losing everything that made it good and turning it into another X many points only pick from these scenarios thing. That is mainly what I am talking about not points themselves but the fact that anything without points now might as well not exist and anything that isn't a pitched battle scenario might as well not even be in the game.

what does it matter what other people are playing?

The answer should be that it doesn't.

The real answer though is that in regards to this topic, what other people are playing is largely going to also have to be what you end up playing as deviating from the standard in gamer-speak is seen to many as a very bad thing.

Not a problem if standard matched play is your thing (as it seems to be with the mass bulk of players). A big problem if you want to see more of the game than matched play unless you are ok with playing with yourself in your garage.

 auticus wrote:

what does it matter what other people are playing?

The answer should be that it doesn't.

The real answer though is that in regards to this topic, what other people are playing is largely going to also have to be what you end up playing as deviating from the standard in gamer-speak is seen to many as a very bad thing.

Not a problem if standard matched play is your thing (as it seems to be with the mass bulk of players). A big problem if you want to see more of the game than matched play unless you are ok with playing with yourself in your garage.

This sums it up nicely. It's not Matched Play itself. It's Matched Play subsuming all other ways as "the one and only way" to play, with nobody ever wanting to deviate or accept anything but.

And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

Exalted.

I'd like to start off by answering the "How do I set up a Narrative game/event that will appeal to Matched Play regulars" question with an idea. Come up with an event where the players aren't necessarily matching off against one another. That way, they can participate without feeling the need to min/max and win. Here are a few spit balled ideas that I ran for 40k back in the day and could easily be converted to AoS.

1. Pumpkin Smashing... put a bunch (A BUNCH!) of pumpkins or similar tokens all over the board. They have 1 wound and a 5+ armor save, 4+ against shooting since they're so low to the ground. Each player brings up to 5 models. The winner is the one who is able to smash the most pumpkins over a 5 round period. Attacking your opponent is a valid strategy, but keeps you from smashing pumpkins. We used to run this around Halloween/Thanksgiving. The pumpkins could just as easily be skeletons or rats or anything.

2. Gladiator Fights... each player brings one non-Monster model with the Hero, Priest or Wizard keyword. All players deploy at even intervals around a 4" square map and then take turns in clockwise order. Last man standing wins. The fights go super quick, so you run it a few times and people realize they can gang up on the meaner models early. Run follow up events where your "Gladiator" can bring 1-2 support units and in no time you've tricked people into playing narrative AoS.

In other words... start small and work up from there. Trying to get a matched play only person to play full army sized games of open play is an uphill battle.

OR...

Just call a duck a duck and tell people to show up with a 3000 matched play point "sideboard" and then just have them deploy using the open play rules, with sudden death objectives in play for outnumbered armies. Put a limit on the number of units that can be deployed to ensure that they don't field the whole 3000 points. That way, they'll both have relatively the same amount of stuff to choose from, but won't be deploying everything. Summoned units can only be pulled from whatever you didn't deploy.

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

You can try to encourage people to play narratively all you want. Unless you can motivate players to actually frigging talk to one another outside of "Moan,moan,moan I don't want to play narratively because soandso might do this gamebreaking thing so I only want to play points where they can still do this gamebreaking thing but it's balanced because points."

Matched Play is a ridiculous thing that never should have been added because some people are terrified of interacting with other people socially.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

You can try to encourage people to play narratively all you want. Unless you can motivate players to actually frigging talk to one another outside of "Moan,moan,moan I don't want to play narratively because soandso might do this gamebreaking thing so I only want to play points where they can still do this gamebreaking thing but it's balanced because points."

Matched Play is a ridiculous thing that never should have been added because some people are terrified of interacting with other people socially.

Oh, here we go. More shaming from the open play crowd. "You're not having fun the same way I'm having fun! You're all just socially awkward and the way you're having fun is bad!"

Because there is no other plausible reason why people don't want to have a lengthy negotiation on what is balanced before playing a wargame.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

You can try to encourage people to play narratively all you want. Unless you can motivate players to actually frigging talk to one another outside of "Moan,moan,moan I don't want to play narratively because soandso might do this gamebreaking thing so I only want to play points where they can still do this gamebreaking thing but it's balanced because points."

Matched Play is a ridiculous thing that never should have been added because some people are terrified of interacting with other people socially.

Oh, here we go. More shaming from the open play crowd. "You're not having fun the same way I'm having fun! You're all just socially awkward and the way you're having fun is bad!"

Sorry, did Matched Play actually fix anything?

It added points on some things and altered the core mechanics of the game to basically go in line with how most people(barring TFGs) agreed they worked.


Since people are now behaving as though Matched Play is the Greatest Thing Ever to Happen to Age of Sigmar, it's not unreasonable to conclude that part of the reason that is being received as such is because it lets people not have to interact with others.

I mean, we're talking about a community that has members who get upset when they walk into shops and the employee (gasp) tries to sell them things.

Because there is no other plausible reason why people don't want to have a lengthy negotiation on what is balanced before playing a wargame.

It takes five minutes at the longest for me to set up a relatively balanced match. If you play pickup games regularly enough with someone, take a few moments after the game to exchange some contact information.


Who knows, maybe you might even make a friend!

Matched Play gave people who had reservations about AoS's lack of points a reason to play the game. A points composition system is conducive to pick up play with strangers. Should it be the end all be all to AoS gaming? No. Absolutely not. But it has it's place. If people want to encourage narrative gaming they could do better than shaming the community.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Matched Play gave people who had reservations about AoS's lack of points a reason to play the game. A points composition system is conducive to pick up play with strangers. Should it be the end all be all to AoS gaming? No. Absolutely not. But it has it's place. If people want to encourage narrative gaming they could do better than shaming the community.

But therein lies the crux of the issue.
Many of the people who had "reservations about AoS' lack of points" didn't even bother giving it a try.Most of the people that I, personally, interacted with did crap like watch videos online and complain about armies of multiple Nagashes or Archaons or whatever places like BoLS and Naftka were talking about in the comments sections.

Were there people who took advantage of the lack of points? Sure. But there's also people who make those same kinds of ridiculous lists using Matched Play rules instead.

You can pretend that the community is undeserving of the shaming, but honestly?
A bit of shaming is necessary when so many of the complaints were just unfounded ranting or any excuse to avoid playing a system where some of these people realized they weren't top dogs anymore because of their "listbuilding skills".

Addendum:
I realize there were certainly people with valid complaints or concerns about the mechanics of the system and things like that. That's fine. What I take issue with is the fact that there was such a vocal group of people who refused to even try playing Open/Narrative Play and now that there's points...they come flocking back and (IMO) have "taken over", forcing those of us who enjoyed Narrative/Open Play to have to start playing things their way.

Have you tried finding like minded players and forming a Facebook community? I find that helps a lot with growing niche groups.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

Exalted.

I'd like to start off by answering the "How do I set up a Narrative game/event that will appeal to Matched Play regulars" question with an idea. Come up with an event where the players aren't necessarily matching off against one another. That way, they can participate without feeling the need to min/max and win. Here are a few spit balled ideas that I ran for 40k back in the day and could easily be converted to AoS.

1. Pumpkin Smashing... put a bunch (A BUNCH!) of pumpkins or similar tokens all over the board. They have 1 wound and a 5+ armor save, 4+ against shooting since they're so low to the ground. Each player brings up to 5 models. The winner is the one who is able to smash the most pumpkins over a 5 round period. Attacking your opponent is a valid strategy, but keeps you from smashing pumpkins. We used to run this around Halloween/Thanksgiving. The pumpkins could just as easily be skeletons or rats or anything.

2. Gladiator Fights... each player brings one non-Monster model with the Hero, Priest or Wizard keyword. All players deploy at even intervals around a 4" square map and then take turns in clockwise order. Last man standing wins. The fights go super quick, so you run it a few times and people realize they can gang up on the meaner models early. Run follow up events where your "Gladiator" can bring 1-2 support units and in no time you've tricked people into playing narrative AoS.

In other words... start small and work up from there. Trying to get a matched play only person to play full army sized games of open play is an uphill battle.

OR...

Just call a duck a duck and tell people to show up with a 3000 matched play point "sideboard" and then just have them deploy using the open play rules, with sudden death objectives in play for outnumbered armies. Put a limit on the number of units that can be deployed to ensure that they don't field the whole 3000 points. That way, they'll both have relatively the same amount of stuff to choose from, but won't be deploying everything. Summoned units can only be pulled from whatever you didn't deploy.

FWIW, there's really no reason you can't apply the matched play points system to these kinds of things in other kinds of play.

Who is shaming? I seen this mentioned from 2 different people now, maybe 3. Who is shaming who in here? Nobody is shaming anyone so why is this being brought up?

Also no one is complaining in this thread either. Who is complaining? When did someone thinks differently than most people become complaining?

A lot of well said thoughts on both sides of the fence were well said. Nobody is complaining or shaming at all.

With any game, if you enjoy the competitive aspect, you'll want a tighter ruleset to be able to cleanly and clearly make tactical decisions in your game. If you prefer "open" play, or "loosey goosey" or whatever you want to call it, you can always pull back from clearly defined rules with your opponent's consent. You can't necessarily build a tighter ruleset with your opponent.

Open play exists wherever two like minded people [or more] want it to. 40k has no open play system, yet I've played scenarios with my gaming group, held campaigns, seen how many gribblies a handful of movie Marines could handle... but I wouldn't want to have to go through the setup for that every time.

I was interested in starting a Lizardman army at the end of 8th, before AOS hit. The seemingly slapdash rules turned me completely off. I have literally created a simple slap-dash game I can play with my [7 and 5 year-old] kids using a handful of d6's and their Bionicle models. We socially decide which guys we want to be, the enemies we'll face, and the rules for each dude. I don't want to do that with a miniature wargame. A roleplaying game, like D&D? Sure, but not a wargame.

Anyhow, the GHB has gotten me interested in the Lizardman army idea again, so at the very least, the possibility of a game with structure has piqued my interest.

PS: I'm a pretty social guy, when it comes to gaming. I want to "play" with my opponent. I get excited, I boo at his good rolls, I declare that my tanks "duck" when they're shot at. I just like having a more structured game to play while I'm doing that.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

You can try to encourage people to play narratively all you want. Unless you can motivate players to actually frigging talk to one another outside of "Moan,moan,moan I don't want to play narratively because soandso might do this gamebreaking thing so I only want to play points where they can still do this gamebreaking thing but it's balanced because points."

Matched Play is a ridiculous thing that never should have been added because some people are terrified of interacting with other people socially.

Kan, are you interested in having a proper discussion or are you just here to try to trigger people? Please drop lines like the last one. I have played AoS from the start and have lots of experience with both open play (chatting to the opponent to agree the parameters) and matched play. And for me, matched play is just hands down more fun. Simple as that. Matched play has led me to having greater social interaction because it enables me to go to tournaments and play against other like-minded hobbyists.

So once again, I will politely ask you to refrain from those sorts of flame bait comments, and instead ask you to bring some more thought-out arguments to the table please.

And there are some great examples of narrative events that the matched play crowd throughly enjoy. RAW16 in the UK and Holy Hammer in the US (along with their other events, Holy Havok I think it was called). If you are willing to put in the effort you can get the tournament crowd to embrace the narrative and have a great time. It doesn't have to be a massive event either - looks at Kriswalls fantastic suggestions above - or any of Mongoose Matt's battle reports - or Discoking's battle reports - or that first comment on TGA in Wayniac's blog post. All fantastic examples of how to be positive about narrative play and get others enthused with that positivity. Matched play has rapidly grown the player base and that can only be great because it means there will be more people keen to get involved in the other sides of the hobby than ever before. Be positive - put some effort it - people will play.

 Bottle wrote:
And in that case, I say it would be more worthwhile to make threads such as "How do I encourage others to play Narratively?" or "How do I set up a Narrative game/event" that will appeal to Matched Play regulars?" rather than "Moan, moan, moan, everyone is playing nothing but Matched Play, moan, moan, moan"

Hypocrite much?

Maybe. But if you read all my comments in here you will hopefully get the message that I am just wanting people to have fun with Warhammer and AoS - and I see this thread as being too much doom and gloom when we could be talking about exploring fun ideas to get people hooked on Narrative play. I don't want people to get hung up on others enjoying Matched play. I want people who like playing narrative games to keep trying to get others involved and to never give up.

 Bottle wrote:
Maybe. But if you read all my comments in here you will hopefully get the message that I am just wanting people to have fun with Warhammer and AoS - and I see this thread as being too much doom and gloom when we could be talking about exploring fun ideas to get people hooked on Narrative play. I don't want people to get hung up on others enjoying Matched play. I want people who like playing narrative games to keep trying to get others involved and to never give up.

Clearly you don't, if you post such dismissive nonsense and then play the "flamebait" card when someone replies to your post in kind about the system you've been touting.

Matched Play should never have been introduced. Period. End of story.

It was unnecessary to reintroduce points and it was unnecessary to reintroduce a pseudo-Force Organization System. Anything that took the "social interaction" out of a social game was a terrible idea, and it did nothing but cater to the crowd who want to just show up at a store with their armies and get into a game with no effort and refuse to waver from whatever list they read online or saw in a Tournament.
It did nothing but cater to the crowd who are the antithesis of what Age of Sigmar was about, a game where even a Goblin can be a hero and take down a mighty beast...if he got lucky, because it has gone back to people talking about what is or is not "efficient".

Matched Play and the players who flaunt its virtues("It's balanced!", "It's easier to get games!", "I don't have to experiment with different things to find out what does or doesn't work! Points let me know this!") are woefully counter to the system and what made the game fun at the start.

If I want to play a restrictive, points balanced game I'll play 40k.

We've argued many times in the past Kan. I think you are overly negative and pessimistic personally. I don't think calling people out for (in my opinion) moaning and not doing anything about it, is the same league as you trying to make out all matched play players are social retards. But hey-ho, you can keep making belittling comments of us if you want (whereas all I want to see is Wayniac be a little more upbeat and proactive). You also seem hell bent on dragging me into another argument but I've not got any time for you so on my block list you go. Bye bye

You did literally the same thing I did. You attempted to paint it as though Wayniac(and by extension other Open/Narrative players, since his thread is just sharing his thoughts on the dilemma faced by said players because of the fact that some people believe "Matched Play should be the default" for whatever reasons they might have) has done nothing but whine.

Matched Play has attracted a certain element who believe they should not have to do anything beyond plop models down and play.

While there's a certain attractiveness to that prospect, it also has downsides in the fact that points are not actually a good measure of balance. If I brought a Wanderer army consisting of the Waystone Pathfinders, paying the appropriate points and whatnot, with as many Glade Guard, Sisters of the Watch, Waywatchers, Wayfinders, and Waystriders as I could fit in against a person bringing a purely melee army...

I am going to win, unless I have bad rolls. That many ranged shots are going to make the game unfun for the other player.

Can points prevent that from happening? Nope!
Can talking to someone prevent that from happening? Yup!

 Kanluwen wrote:
You did literally the same thing I did. You attempted to paint it as though Wayniac(and by extension other Open/Narrative players, since his thread is just sharing his thoughts on the dilemma faced by said players because of the fact that some people believe "Matched Play should be the default" for whatever reasons they might have) has done nothing but whine.

But the difference for me is I tried to give as much positive advice following that - I have given examples of successful narrative events and tried to be encouraging and positive. And, yes, I have accused of Wayniac of moaning. But I'll say it now in case it hasn't been clear - I wish Wayniac and anyone else the best of luck with getting people to play narrative games and I think it can be easily achieved with the right frame of mind. I only accuse you of moaning as I see it being fruitless. What's it going to solve? Whereas on the other hand looking at succesful narrative games and events and discussing why they worked and why they got Matched Play players interested (RAW16 was very much made up of lots of UK tournament regulars) is going to be much more beneficial it enabling him to play the sort of games he wants to play.

If I have labelled all narrative players as whining as you say. I apologise. My expereince of posters like Wayniac is only from these sorts of threads and I acknowledge that may give me a warped perspective of you. I just want you to look on the bright side and start talking positively about how to promote narrative play rather than dwelling on the lack of it in your local area.

A proverb I like: "Don't try fixing the blame, try fixing the problem." So people are more into Matched Play than Narrative play around you - what are some good ideas on how to get them to enjoy the narrative side? (Maybe you have some good ideas too Kan?) I first suggest trying to run a game where you are the GM like the first one in the TGA blog post.

I also want to shout out Kriswall's suggestions again. They sound great!

 Kanluwen wrote:
You did literally the same thing I did. You attempted to paint it as though Wayniac(and by extension other Open/Narrative players, since his thread is just sharing his thoughts on the dilemma faced by said players because of the fact that some people believe "Matched Play should be the default" for whatever reasons they might have) has done nothing but whine.

Matched Play has attracted a certain element who believe they should not have to do anything beyond plop models down and play.

While there's a certain attractiveness to that prospect, it also has downsides in the fact that points are not actually a good measure of balance. If I brought a Wanderer army consisting of the Waystone Pathfinders, paying the appropriate points and whatnot, with as many Glade Guard, Sisters of the Watch, Waywatchers, Wayfinders, and Waystriders as I could fit in against a person bringing a purely melee army...

I am going to win, unless I have bad rolls. That many ranged shots are going to make the game unfun for the other player.

Can points prevent that from happening? Nope!
Can talking to someone prevent that from happening? Yup!

Yeah... so... the melee player could also just out deploy you by a LOT and then bum rush you, not really worrying about the comparatively small percentage of his army he loses to shooting before rolling into you like an angry, jagged tide. I know my Ironjawz absolutely crushes heavy shooting armies when I get into range and with all the movement enhancement, getting into range usually happens either turn 1 or 2, depending who goes first and where armies deployed.

Open Play is fine, but it requires a lot of trial and error to make balanced as you learn other players' armies, play styles and relative skill levels. This is great if you have the time. Lots of people either don't have the time or have it and choose to use it on other things. Matched Play flat out eliminates the need to haggle about balance and lets you simply get down to playing. If I have 2 hours per week to game, which is about average for me, I'd rather be playing for 2 hours per week from week 1 and NOT spending weeks/months slowly building up to a comfortable level of balance. I have no interest in having to play several games before coming to an agreement that maybe unit XYZ is a little strong and that you should take fewer to make for a more balanced game. It's so much easier to say unit XYZ is worth 100 points and then have the community as a whole debate on whether or not 100 is appropriate. That's one reason I like PPC. It takes the "people should talk to each other about what balance looks like" and expands it to an entire global community where everyone can take part in the conversation. It's like Open Play on steroids.

Matched Play should never have been introduced. Period. End of story.

Wouldn't have played, nor anyone I know, so I'm rather glad they did believed and added it in.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Matched Play should never have been introduced. Period. End of story.

Wouldn't have played, nor anyone I know, so I'm rather glad they did believed and added it in.

Yeah. Pretty much this. None of my friends would be playing at all without Matched Play. There are other gaming options that are just quicker and easier to pick up.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You did literally the same thing I did. You attempted to paint it as though Wayniac(and by extension other Open/Narrative players, since his thread is just sharing his thoughts on the dilemma faced by said players because of the fact that some people believe "Matched Play should be the default" for whatever reasons they might have) has done nothing but whine.

Matched Play has attracted a certain element who believe they should not have to do anything beyond plop models down and play.

While there's a certain attractiveness to that prospect, it also has downsides in the fact that points are not actually a good measure of balance. If I brought a Wanderer army consisting of the Waystone Pathfinders, paying the appropriate points and whatnot, with as many Glade Guard, Sisters of the Watch, Waywatchers, Wayfinders, and Waystriders as I could fit in against a person bringing a purely melee army...

I am going to win, unless I have bad rolls. That many ranged shots are going to make the game unfun for the other player.

Can points prevent that from happening? Nope!
Can talking to someone prevent that from happening? Yup!

Yeah... so... the melee player could also just out deploy you by a LOT and then bum rush you, not really worrying about the comparatively small percentage of his army he loses to shooting before rolling into you like an angry, jagged tide.

Do you actually know what Waystone Pathfinders do? Serious question.

Realm Wanderers: Waystone Pathfinders have travelled the realms for countless years and know many hidden paths. Instead of setting up the units in this battalion on the battlefield, you can place them to one side. In your first movement phase, set up all of these units wholly within 6" of the edges of the battlefield, and more than 9" from any enemy models. This is each unit's move for that movement phase.

So. How do you outdeploy that?

I know my Ironjawz absolutely crushes heavy shooting armies when I get into range and with all the movement enhancement, getting into range usually happens either turn 1 or 2, depending who goes first and where armies deployed.

Protective Volley: Perhaps the greatest weapon of the Waystone Pathfinders lies in their ability to cut down any foes that draw close enough to threaten their leader with devastatingly effective volleys of bow-fire. In your hero phase, pick one enemy unit within 12" of the battalion's Nomad Prince. All other Waystone Pathfinder units can immediately make a shooting attack against that unit as if it were the shooting phase.

And then let's not forget that if someone really wanted to be a twerp about it, they can take nothing but Sisters of the Watch(any 4 units from Eternal Guard, Glade Guard, Wildwood Rangers, and Sisters of the Watch) so that they can fire shots at you as you charge in("Loose Until the Last" special rule).

Open Play is fine, but it requires a lot of trial and error to make balanced as you learn other players' armies, play styles and relative skill levels. This is great if you have the time. Lots of people either don't have the time or have it and choose to use it on other things. Matched Play flat out eliminates the need to haggle about balance and lets you simply get down to playing. If I have 2 hours per week to game, which is about average for me, I'd rather be playing for 2 hours per week from week 1 and NOT spending weeks/months slowly building up to a comfortable level of balance. I have no interest in having to play several games before coming to an agreement that maybe unit XYZ is a little strong and that you should take fewer to make for a more balanced game. It's so much easier to say unit XYZ is worth 100 points and then have the community as a whole debate on whether or not 100 is appropriate. That's one reason I like PPC. It takes the "people should talk to each other about what balance looks like" and expands it to an entire global community where everyone can take part in the conversation. It's like Open Play on steroids.

Except for the whole part where you've randomly assigned a value to the unit, rather than limiting the number of said unit you can take of course...

Yeah, just like Open Play.

Once again, my issue is not Matched Play as an option. I'm glad they added it as well. My problem is that it has, for all intents and purposes, taken over. If I want an Open Play/Narrative game, there's a good chance nobody else will be interested in it because, presumably, they're too afraid of something "unbalanced" coming up. So I'm in a similar position to people like auticus, where I'd rather have the option to use Open Play if I wanted to, or Matched Play if I wanted that. But as it stands, it's basically one of two options:

1) Play Matched Play
2) Don't get to play at all

That's a really bad situation to make because it puts Matched Play from being an option to being, as stated before, the "one true way" where it's you conform to the rest of the herd, or you are forced to leave. I don't hate Matched Play at all, I think it was a good option to add because you need some structure for tournament games to avoid having bloated comp systems. However, I don't think that Open Play was that bad for pickup games; maybe 20 years ago in the early days of the internet but now, at least from what I've seen, shops and/or groups have Facebook groups or Meetup groups or a variety of ways to coordinate things before going to the store to play, so IMHO there should be no excuse for lack of communication. For example, there are constantly posts on my GW's facebook group about if anyone will be down for a game; it would be easy to iron out all of the discussion about how many units/heroes/etc. to bring on that page. Yet for some reason people don't, and I honestly cannot fathom why because it seems trivially easy to me if you post a response to someone asking for a game by saying well I want a small game so how about 5 units, up to two heroes, and one behemoth, and of course the implied "don't be a dick" which should never have to be stated.

For me really, the biggest blow to having Matched Play as the default is it goes right back to "Must have X to play". The appeal of AOS was that you could build things up as you go, and only play with a few units as you built up your army. Matched Play kicks that in the face and goes back to "Bring 2k points or you don't get a game" which is bad overall because it ignores the fact AOS was meant to lower the barrier to entry.

The argument has always been that without Matched Play, you could break the game, but I think that was an exaggeration since you can still "break the game" with Matched Play.

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
You did literally the same thing I did. You attempted to paint it as though Wayniac(and by extension other Open/Narrative players, since his thread is just sharing his thoughts on the dilemma faced by said players because of the fact that some people believe "Matched Play should be the default" for whatever reasons they might have) has done nothing but whine.

But the difference for me is I tried to give as much positive advice following that - I have given examples of successful narrative events and tried to be encouraging and positive. And, yes, I have accused of Wayniac of moaning. But I'll say it now in case it hasn't been clear - I wish Wayniac and anyone else the best of luck with getting people to play narrative games and I think it can be easily achieved with the right frame of mind. I only accuse you of moaning as I see it being fruitless. What's it going to solve? Whereas on the other hand looking at succesful narrative games and events and discussing why they worked and why they got Matched Play players interested (RAW16 was very much made up of lots of UK tournament regulars) is going to be much more beneficial it enabling him to play the sort of games he wants to play.

Do you not understand the difference between an openly advertised "Narrative Play weekend" and people just trying to get games running without having to worry about having the General's Handbook and a premade list with points on it?

Part of the thing that brought me back into regularly playing with Age of Sigmar was that I could pack my case up with models from whatever army I wanted to run, go to the shop and usually find a game(except on Saturdays because that's generally a 40k day--we made Sundays into "Sigmar Sundays" instead after a few months) with no effort.

That's not really the case anymore. The more toxic individuals who left because of a lack of points have been returning and generally taking up the table space, insisting upon anyone coming in "playing points" and generally being toxic to the community that got fostered into being with the pre-GHB environment.

If I have labelled all narrative players as whining as you say. I apologise. My expereince of posters like Wayniac is only from these sorts of threads and I acknowledge that may give me a warped perspective of you. I just want you to look on the bright side and start talking positively about how to promote narrative play rather than dwelling on the lack of it in your local area.

I can't talk positively about anything that brought toxic players who insist that their army is "balanced" because of points, despite it being nothing but cheesemongering nonsense designed to crush any prospective new players and unfun for anyone barring themselves to play against--or just a copy/paste from a tournament and when they lose they do nothing but whine about how the list should have won since it was a tournament list.

I don't mind losing games. I do mind having my time wasted with a game that we could have just as effectively rolled a single dice for and decided to see "Did my list win or did your list win? On a 1-3 I won, 4-6 you won..." because that's the level of fun had.

A proverb I like: "Don't try fixing the blame, try fixing the problem." So people are more into Matched Play than Narrative play around you - what are some good ideas on how to get them to enjoy the narrative side? (Maybe you have some good ideas too Kan?) I first suggest trying to run a game where you are the GM like the first one in the TGA blog post.

Lol yeah, okay. That'll totally bring players into narrative games...
"Derp let's play smash the pumpkins!".

The people who I've encountered who are into Matched Play are into it strictly for the competitive aspect. We've had narrative events cancelled because of the whining from one or two people and the event organizers just deciding it wasn't worth the bother.