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From the launch of 8th there's been a solid focus on the matched play side of things (not that anything else has been neglected). And there have been some larger 40k tournaments. How widespread has the tournament approach become in the short time since 8th came out?

Whats your experience of the game been? What do you notice other player's doing? If something shows up in a winning list at a big tournament do your local opponents go out and buy it and paint it up as soon as possible? How much has the "tournament meta" impacted your local community?

If you were to take all the games of 40k you play and think about how many of them were against lists you would describe as tournament workhorse armies?

My own experience has been zero. I have a very casual play group and we are always very quick to try new narrative and open play scenarios and our default approach are Open War cards. We also pretty much do painted only so the stuff that sees the table is the stuff people are most excited to paint.

I'm lucky that I have a great group of lads to play with, so around half my games are tourney and others casual, so any kind of game I like I can get, one hold over from 30k though is we always let our opponent know if we will be using a super heavy or lord of war, friendly or otherwise.

I rarely play against tournament level lists. Most of my friends play casual or at least reasonable competitive lists.

There's about 3 players that chase the meta and I occasionally get matched up against one in a local tourney. Tourneys are a minority of my play, and they're a fraction of that.

My own personal group is great, we love playing oddball scenarios, fluff lists and have run many campaigns that force you to change it up. Sadly, the group is small, and our work schedules only meet up every blue moon or so.

My son and I have become accustomed to traveling up to 3 hours each way a couple times a month just to get games in. Usually for an event or league night where we are more likely to get games in. About 25% of the games we get are against the most recent top meta lists for their espective armies. Some armies are better than others for sure, a lot of the players are loyal to a specific faction and they are certainly trying to get the most out of them.

I would say 50% of the games are against armies either building to a specific meta list, or experimenting with modification of a meta list to improve it or adapt it to that player. The other 25% of games are either new players just happy to have stuff to put on the table, players who couldn't care less about meta lists, or those just trying new ideas out.

I would say that player skill really has nothing to do with the lists players use. Some top meta lists are taken by players who have no idea how to use them. Other players can make any random list with any army a tough nut to crack.

The biggest difference from previous editions did seem to be a shift away from just the same few armies showing up early on. The march of new dex releases has at least kept players guessing a bit longer. At least in my neck of the woods, you can definitely feel it after the big ITC tourneys and the like release their lists and results.

All in all, 8ed gets a big thumbs up from me.

A solid majority of my games are against lists that you'd find at tournaments.

Pretty much none - I have my own "ourhammer" group that plays with huge loads of "Blanchitsu" approach to 40K and tournament attitude of "break the game in the most gruesome way that is legal" doesn't really reach us nowadays. But this is a very small and pretty much closed group, as very, very few people are even slightly interested in treating 40K more like a "mass battle RPG" than a "competetive wargame".

Mine are a mix, with tournament-style stuff being the minority.

Funnily enough my local is an actual GW, with a manager that takes efforts to promote player-run narrative style events, and the local core player group is happy to occasionally acquire terrain that lives there (with a sheet in the back of who actually owns what)

The quality of tables and the helping push towards narrative makes for a great atmosphere and fun games focused more on hobby, conversions and army theme than whatever the flavor of the month is.

nou wrote:
Pretty much none - I have my own "ourhammer" group that plays with huge loads of "Blanchitsu" approach to 40K and tournament attitude of "break the game in the most gruesome way that is legal" doesn't really reach us nowadays. But this is a very small and pretty much closed group, as very, very few people are even slightly interested in treating 40K more like a "mass battle RPG" than a "competetive wargame".

I'm in a very similar situation. We actually use 8th with Age of Sigmar Skirmish some times and most of us have some small "Inquisimunda" type gang for that. The "Blanchitsu" style of painting though, largely hasn't caught on with anyone but me though.

"Mass battle RPG" is exactly how we approach things though. We have a monthly gaming day and invite a few new people from the larger 40k community each time and so far we only have maybe a 1 in 10 ratio of our approach clicking with people.

 Chamberlain wrote:

nou wrote:
Pretty much none - I have my own "ourhammer" group that plays with huge loads of "Blanchitsu" approach to 40K and tournament attitude of "break the game in the most gruesome way that is legal" doesn't really reach us nowadays. But this is a very small and pretty much closed group, as very, very few people are even slightly interested in treating 40K more like a "mass battle RPG" than a "competetive wargame".

I'm in a very similar situation. We actually use 8th with Age of Sigmar Skirmish some times and most of us have some small "Inquisimunda" type gang for that. The "Blanchitsu" style of painting though, largely hasn't caught on with anyone but me though.

"Mass battle RPG" is exactly how we approach things though. We have a monthly gaming day and invite a few new people from the larger 40k community each time and so far we only have maybe a 1 in 10 ratio of our approach clicking with people.

Just to straighten one thing up, as I might have use the term "Blanchitsu" in a misleading form - for me it's an attitude of "40K universe and GW model line is just a guideline, do what you wan't with it" and not recreating John Blanche style of painting or "brothers Quay in 40K" converting style (which I personally adore from the very early days of my 40K journey, but that wasn't my point).

But yes, 1 in 10 ratio is pretty the same here.

I'm about 50/50. The casual games are actually more enjoyable because you can play some sub optimal units that you don't get to use in tournament lists. However - you gotta get some competitive play in to test your mind.

A minority of all my games. Even owning huge collections most of those tournaments lists are so boring to play that not many players are interested in them. I hate playing footslogging orks for example.

Sometimes just for curiosity we try some ultracompetitive lists though. IMHO it's fundamental to change lists very often, I can't really play with the same list against the same list more than twice

When i play at tournaments at most. Outside narrative campaign all the wav

Almost never. Not interested. There are tournament players locally, and I enjoy watching a good hard fought game, but I much prefer narrative or chilled.

WindstormSCR wrote:
Funnily enough my local is an actual GW, with a manager that takes efforts to promote player-run narrative style events, and the local core player group is happy to occasionally acquire terrain that lives there (with a sheet in the back of who actually owns what)

The quality of tables and the helping push towards narrative makes for a great atmosphere and fun games focused more on hobby, conversions and army theme than whatever the flavor of the month is.

I am beginning to think that a good terrain collection has a major impact on things. A while ago a friend and I built a ton of industrial terrain and suddenly the talk about what we were doing just sort of shifted into story terms about the particular place we were fighting over and why our armies were there. Before we'd basically have a "what's the situation?" talk after we knew our scenario and then grab terrain to match what we came up with the best we could. Now we tend to interpret the scenario through the lens of the terrain we happen to pull out of the totes. Whether it's from someone wanting to see a particular piece on the table or sometimes just randomly.

I play at the local GW store where thankfully most tournament players don't practice, they have moved to a store that runs competitions usually once a month

I shifted my competitive self to AoS (and even there i cannot stand to use the same list twice). 8th is there for narrative events and friendly matches.

I rarely play against competitive lists. When I do, it's usually to help them practice for a tournament or to try out some new stuff, but that is a rare event.

I play in an almost exclusively competitive/tournament oriented group so I'd say 90+% of what I play is against tournament lists. That's a choice our group made and enjoys though.

I got into 40k playing against tournament regulars in 4th edition, that really forged a big part of my mindset about wargaming. I stopped caring as much about being as efficient as I possibly could pretty quickly since that involved switching armies on a rules whim, but when I play an army I have chosen I optimize as much as possible to keep up with the imperial/chaos soup and AM players I throw down with. It's rough right now since Tau don't have a codex yet, but I have usually held my own with less competitive armies, and I enjoy the challenge of taking on Goliath with a sling.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
I play in an almost exclusively competitive/tournament oriented group so I'd say 90+% of what I play is against tournament lists. That's a choice our group made and enjoys though.

Same thing here. I like my wargames that way.

Regardless of the style we're aiming for (scenario/fun or non-competitive) one or two of our local group will always pick tournament level lists and look to annihilate their opponent. I won't play these known people but they do still get the odd game in within our group.

I rarely see anything that's not a net-list/the new current hotness or some other "lol these rules are so broken look at my 15 assassins\47 dark reapers\30 shining spears..." list.

I usually only get out to play once a month at the local monthly FLGS tournament or a weekly pick-up game at the slightly less local other game store.

Actual GW models, majority of the army painted no proxy shenanigans. Mature, dedicated player base with thousands of points in multiple armies in a HCOL area means a couple hundred bucks to pick-up something new for your hobby doesn't cause anyone to blink an eye if you don't already have it.

The weird thing is the local FLGS has banned forgeworld and that has not improved balance at all (armies broken w/o forgeworld are just as broken and those that needed the FW crutch are un-playable).

bananathug wrote:

The weird thing is the local FLGS has banned forgeworld and that has not improved balance at all (armies broken w/o forgeworld are just as broken and those that needed the FW crutch are un-playable).

Yeah it's weird they have banned and no it's not weird it hasn't improved seeing it's GW codexes that are the source of most of broken stuff. You would have more balanced game(albeit with less variety) by having only FW rules as legal options!

There are a couple if players in my local group that play heavy tourney lists. I haven't been tabled yet and it is kinda fun messing with their plan/strategy. My current score is 50/50 and pretty much all games lasted until turn 5.

I know internet polls aren't scientific but I think the results so far are interesting. There really does seem to be a wide variety of approaches to play among Dakka posters.

I suppose it makes sense that the results might be weighted towards the majority being one way or another as people find like minded individuals and for those gaming at clubs and stores, it's easy to set a tone and everyone joins in with the approach.

 Chamberlain wrote:
I know internet polls aren't scientific but I think the results so far are interesting. There really does seem to be a wide variety of approaches to play among Dakka posters.

I suppose it makes sense that the results might be weighted towards the majority being one way or another as people find like minded individuals and for those gaming at clubs and stores, it's easy to set a tone and everyone joins in with the approach.

This is why I'm eagerly waiting for GW to publish their survey results. I'm really interested how the whole community is split between casual/tournament crowds.

I made this poll because I realized how out of touch I am with the larger community. Turns out there's a lot more people who have a similar approach to me than I thought. I thought the rest of the 40k worlds was like "I only do matched play tournament practice games" given what goes down at the local game store's weekly 40k night.

Majority of my games are in tournaments so Majority.

 Chamberlain wrote:
I made this poll because I realized how out of touch I am with the larger community. Turns out there's a lot more people who have a similar approach to me than I thought. I thought the rest of the 40k worlds was like "I only do matched play tournament practice games" given what goes down at the local game store's weekly 40k night.

The internet is different than reality my friend. People on the internet bark much louder than what they can bite.


My local doesnt play tournament lists... for the most part (we will sometimes for fun, to practice for one or to change it up) we all have units we like to play, but everyone is a good player. We really try to win on tactics and not tabling our opponents turn 1-2.

We see it like playing Chess, is a game good when someone messed up and you win in 4 turns? No thats never good. its a fun laugh once but you really are looking for a challenging thoughtful game.


Edit: Spelling.