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Hi all. This is going to be a fairly lengthy post, and may get a bit ranty sometimes, so fair warning. This is something that's been lurking in the back of my head for a long time now, and I continually find myself battling the thought process, so wanted to pitch it to the larger community.

Let me state that I currently play two, technically three, games at the moment: Warmachine, Warhammer 40,000 (well, that is to say I've started it up again) and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. This has the benefit currently of letting me focus my competitive desires on Warmachine (IMHO a much better written game) and focus my Warhammer (both flavors) goals on casual, fluffy and narrative gaming which is where I firmly think the game is better suited. Also I mainly play Warhammer at a GW store where it's mainly casual or middle tier players; there are no high-end power lists that I've seen played.

However, lately I've had a nagging voice, a temptation if you will, in the back of my head saying to play Warhammer competitively. The reason being that I know if I end up losing too much, I'll just get frustrated and give up, and also there is that desire to "play to win" because from playing Warmachine, that's how you improve your gameplay. The downside is that I've seen what happens when even one person starts the "arms race" at a shop, and I've ranted about it previously here as well: Once somebody starts the ball rolling, eventually everything casual and laid back will end as people see the power list crushing people in games and will build their own lists to avoid being completely crushed, thus starting a chain reaction. Bringing a competitive list is therefore a sort of "red button" that starts launching the nukes and ends in Mutually Assured Destruction. Everyone (barring total newbies) brings power lists so they aren't the ones who get steamrolled, and it just kind of spirals out of control from there.

So as it stands right now I am constantly torn between wanting to encourage a casual and laid back approach to gaming, which I know will be (and has proven to be) an uphill battle as there is so few interest in doing it, or give in to the temptation to "play to win". I don't think there's a happy medium because of how 40k is built, either you are at one end of the curve or the other. As I said, most of the people I've seen play haven't been TOO bad with lists (I'm sure there are some though), so there's no serious tournament type lists (I'm also not aware of any 40k tournaments at all being run, so I'm not even sure if "competitive 40k" is a thing in this area; I was sure it would be since the Tampa area isn't exactly small, but I haven't heard of any tournaments in a decade).

How would you approach this? On one hand, playing casual "feels" better for Warhammer, but then you are open to being crushed by someone else (who may not have the same moral qualms as I have) and ending up either "forced" to up your game or quit in frustration (because let's face it, nobody wants to lose ALL the time, especially when it's usually a lopsided battle). On the other hand, there's giving in to the dark side and saying "This game is unbalanced, and I know it's unbalanced, so I'm going to build a strong list to push people into playing better" and being the one to cause the escalating arms race.

It sounds like it should not be that big of a problem, but it really is. At what point do you decide that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and give in? I doubt that anything will make the game balanced (it's been in varying degrees unbalanced since forever, although possibly not as bad as it is now), so to put this another way: Is it better to reign in Hell or serve in Heaven?

Are there any independents in your area? I'm sure you can find somewhere else to game, where running a powerful list won't break the meta.

Supposedly, my area is very... territorial. It's literally like various street gangs jealously defending their "turf" from outsiders/other gangs (read: other stores and their players). One of my new year's resolutions is to try to reach out and get a directory or something going (for more than just Warhammer) because I see people talk about the game on some Facebook groups, but never say where they play, so it'd be nice to know who is in what location to cross-pollinate. Either it will work or I'll get cussed out and banned from the groups for "discussing other stores" (even though the main "neutral" group is no longer associated with a particular store, it was but the store shut down like 3 years ago)

I'm not sure whether I understand your problem. You can play casual and still win a game. Playing casual doesn't mean to play an army of only mutilators or Crisis suits without weapons, quite the contrary...
I think 40K is best played with narrative scenarios or maelstrom games. You should be happy that the people in your region support that approach. 40K gets dumb fast in a competitive environment, at least that's my impression from reading Dakka, web lists and ITC reports.
However, if that's your thing you can still ask your opponent, that's rule #1 with everything in this hobby really.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'm not sure whether I understand your problem. You can play casual and still win a game. Playing casual doesn't mean to play an army of only mutilators or Crisis suits without weapons, quite the contrary...
I think 40K is best played with narrative scenarios or maelstrom games. You should be happy that the people in your region support that approach. 40K gets dumb fast in a competitive environment, at least that's my impression from reading Dakka, web lists and ITC reports.
However, if that's your thing you can still ask your opponent, that's rule #1 with everything in this hobby really.

That's basically it. It is great that people seem to not want to go the competitive approach, just have that nagging little "devil on my shoulder" saying go ahead and build a power list.

A bit off topic but where in Tampa are you located? I may be moving there sometime this year and was trying to figure out what the 40k scene is out there.

Personally, I realized today that my fun from WH40k comes pretty much entirely from building and occasionally painting models, and that the game hasn't been fun for years.

So I'm just gonna stick to building and painting models I like, and not worry about making a playable army. Because feth the game, the game sucks, I'm not gonna do it.

My friends and I play all levels of 40k.
To ensure balance we follow a few basic guidelines.
1) decide how competitive you want the game to be
2) let your opponent know which army/armies you are bringing
3) after lists are made we compare lists to ensure a fun, challenging game, and tweak the lists as needed. For example, we won't bring flyers if the opponent doesn't have the means to deal with them. Same goes for Superheavies/GMC's. Generally speaking, we try to make sure the game is as close, challenging, and fun for both players as it can be.
It turns out that you can still make and play incredibly competitive lists and still ensure a fun game for both sides with a little extra work.

Obviously, none of this applies in a tournament setting, but then I stopped playing tournaments a while ago. Not a very fun scene anymore. At least not around here.

Hope this helps.

I actually mostly ditched 40k for 30k but my advice would be to avoid "powergaming" but perhaps ramp up the power, little by little...

Resin Glazed Guardsman wrote:A bit off topic but where in Tampa are you located? I may be moving there sometime this year and was trying to figure out what the 40k scene is out there.

Sent you a PM to avoid cluttering the thread

Unit1126PLL wrote:I actually mostly ditched 40k for 30k but my advice would be to avoid "powergaming" but perhaps ramp up the power, little by little...

Yeah, it's something I need to sit down and think of. I wasn't even going to pick up 40k again (although I like AOS) but it's definitely more popular and my GW is doing an escalation league so it's an ideal time to give it a fair chance. After that though, I'm not sure. Part of me wants to encourage the type of games I think Warhammer is best suited to: Smaller points (I dislike ~2k points), casual and narrative/campaign play. It seems some people might be interested in that approach, and for a while now it's been the approach I've argued the most for (both in 40k and AOS). But then I have the nagging voice saying no, give in to the dark side, because I have the money where I could easily build a powerlist and be all "come and play, scrubs" and the like if I didn't want to lose. I kinda feel like Frodo being tempted by the One Ring.

If you're looking for a game, Send me a PM. I don't live very far from Tampa.

I play in a Meta that is ALL over the place. There are 3 to 4 competitive players, a few semi competitive and the rest are very casual and into fun and thematic battles. I just love to play the game in general so I alter my list building practices with whoever I play against.

My ITC loving best friend wants to bring his decurians? Well its War Convocation and Gorepack spam KDK for him.

The store employee wants to get a game in after work? We usually do CAD and one formation.

The thematic guy wants to do green tide? Ill do electro priests and go for a melee admech build.

The meta hasn't "ramped up" as you put it at all. I have fun playing all three types of players.

Once again this comes down to just talking to your opponent.

I'd be inclined to keep it casual. Going competitive often requires more games to be played, but doesn't guarantee you're win/loss ratio will improve any.

I've seen what "going competitive" does to people and how it ends up ruining their fun, either by pointing out the system's flaws - to the point you can't play without noticing it, fostering an arms race or just burning out from too much gaming too quickly.

don't put such a burden on yourself. Casual play will always exist. Just give them their space. Don't drop a tournament list on some kid. But hey, if you are gonna be the first, set the tone. Be a good sport, humble, and just keep having fun then other people will feed of that.

Anybody who uses competitive gaming as an excuse to turn into a shitlord was probably always like that, just waiting for any excuse.

 slip wrote:
don't put such a burden on yourself. Casual play will always exist. Just give them their space. Don't drop a tournament list on some kid. But hey, if you are gonna be the first, set the tone. Be a good sport, humble, and just keep having fun then other people will feed of that.

Anybody who uses competitive gaming as an excuse to turn into a shitlord was probably always like that, just waiting for any excuse.

This.

Wayniac wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'm not sure whether I understand your problem. You can play casual and still win a game. Playing casual doesn't mean to play an army of only mutilators or Crisis suits without weapons, quite the contrary...
I think 40K is best played with narrative scenarios or maelstrom games. You should be happy that the people in your region support that approach. 40K gets dumb fast in a competitive environment, at least that's my impression from reading Dakka, web lists and ITC reports.
However, if that's your thing you can still ask your opponent, that's rule #1 with everything in this hobby really.

That's basically it. It is great that people seem to not want to go the competitive approach, just have that nagging little "devil on my shoulder" saying go ahead and build a power list.

The issue is that 40k fundamentally is not a competitive game its not even really much of a game, it's basically a vaguely worded sandbox of random rolling.

Yes you can make power lists, but realize these dont last forever, and more to the point, if you're actively looking to get into "competitive" 40k, realize that's hamfisting a paradigm onto the game that it just doesnt support. The game basically wants to be "take whatever plastic army men you have and roll dice with a drunken pal against their plastic army men and dont bother caring about what happens" type game.

If you want to play a tabletop game competitively, 40k is about the worst possible choice to make.

 Vaktathi wrote:
...more to the point, if you're actively looking to get into "competitive" 40k, realize that's hamfisting a paradigm onto the game that it just doesnt support. The game basically wants to be "take whatever plastic army men you have and roll dice with a drunken pal against their plastic army men and dont bother caring about what happens" type game.

If you want to play a tabletop game competitively, 40k is about the worst possible choice to make.

QFT. People do play competitive 40k. However, as OP said, the game "feels better" in more casual games for a reason. What may be the best choice is to play a game that supports competitive play and tactics+strategy like Warmachine with the people who want to play games for the sake of winning, and play AOS and 40k to scratch that narrative game itch. What you can also do is carry around several army lists varying power use a similar "core" (so you aren't carrying around 6 different army cases) so you can match whatever your opponent brought with a similarly powerful list (admittedly this can be a problem given 40k's current state). If you do this you can avoid the "red button" scenario outlined by the OP if you explain that you brought a more competitive army to play one group of people but will still play other people with a weaker list (if you do tourneys then this won't really work, but on the other hand if you do tourneys then the goal is to win anyway).

This is going to sound somewhat tangential, but i'm seeing this a tad bit with my current group.

We're new to the game. None of us have the models to field a list over 1500 points, period.

So, how do you grow your army, in relation to your friends armies?

For instance, I am thinking of adding a storm talon to my army. But, no one has copius amounts of skyfire, or a flying unit. Meaning by adding this one thing, I have air superiority. Suddenly, my action requires all my friends to purchase something, or just let me run around blasting things (maybe not the worst thing in the world, but it's still incredibly frustrating to encounter something to which you have no answer. also 60" heavy 3 str 7 missiles are pretty cool). Then, even worse, would be if they asked me not to use it. (Why buy in the first place then?)

All this internal monologue and stuff, is me just trying to anticipate how others will react.

I want the storm talon.
I'm going to buy it.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...more to the point, if you're actively looking to get into "competitive" 40k, realize that's hamfisting a paradigm onto the game that it just doesnt support. The game basically wants to be "take whatever plastic army men you have and roll dice with a drunken pal against their plastic army men and dont bother caring about what happens" type game.

If you want to play a tabletop game competitively, 40k is about the worst possible choice to make.

QFT. People do play competitive 40k. However, as OP said, the game "feels better" in more casual games for a reason. What may be the best choice is to play a game that supports competitive play and tactics+strategy like Warmachine with the people who want to play games for the sake of winning, and play AOS and 40k to scratch that narrative game itch. What you can also do is carry around several army lists varying power use a similar "core" (so you aren't carrying around 6 different army cases) so you can match whatever your opponent brought with a similarly powerful list (admittedly this can be a problem given 40k's current state). If you do this you can avoid the "red button" scenario outlined by the OP if you explain that you brought a more competitive army to play one group of people but will still play other people with a weaker list (if you do tourneys then this won't really work, but on the other hand if you do tourneys then the goal is to win anyway).

This is what I do now, basically. Warmachine is my "competitive" game that I want to play to get better and "make a name for myself", 40k/AOS is what I play to indulge in the rich backstory and do narrative/fluffy/casual (which may or may not be strong depending) gaming. And there's a good chance it will stay like that, since I mainly play at a laid back GW store that doesn't even have tournaments (not that they could). It might be another story if I played at a shop that had a competitive group where I could laterally move from a casual group to a competitive one, but there's virtually no truly "competitive" group that I've seen at my GW (I'm sure they may exist but I've not seen them play).

Of course as Marmatag stated, part of the issue with 40k is that it's easy to inadvertently escalate things and then be "that guy" when you weren't trying. For example, if I decided I want to play Tau or Eldar or other high-end army, or even with my Necrons I have now if I wanted to use a Decurion and Wraiths (which are awesome models) there's a chance of inadvertently overpowering somebody else's army when I was just making a fluffy/thematic army that just so happens to be a strong list to boot, even if it's not the obvious tournament level filth that you see with 3-4 armies allied together and taken in a mishmash of units to maximize winning.

I'm not entirely sure how to approach that part either, because I can see it going the same way.

How we're handling it is playing with smaller armies.

1000 points is the current cap, for us.

So yeah, power creep could be a thing, but there's only so much power you can bring to the table staying under 1000. If we want big games we play teams, but still each list must stand on its own merit.