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Generally I think it tends to mean "not caring about anything but winning" so everything is on the table. Multiple detachments to gain the most CP, soup lists that cherry-pick only the best options (as opposed to a fluffy combined arms list), ignoring the fluff and background (e.g. taking brimstone horrors with a death guard force just because they are the most points-efficient), spamming of the most points efficient units regardless of anything else.
Basically, I think most people mean the true definition of "WAAC": Somebody who only cares about winning within the framework of the game, and to hell with everything else about 40k beyond how it functions as a game. "Legal within the rules" is the only criteria.
2 comments:
1) Multiple detachments to gain the most CP isn't WAAC, I don't think. It's sensible. There's no reason to run a battalion with an extra HQ and 3 extra elites when it could be a Battalion and a Vanguard for +1 CP. Not doing so is just dumb for no reason.
2) Not all fluffy lists are combined arms. Imperial Guard Armoured Regiments, for example, are explicitly forbidden to have much, if any, infantry component, and Khorne Daemons won't bring any psykers.
Just speaking on #1, I think it's probably referring to always "needing" a specific detachment. For example if you wanted to play a pure SM list, competitively some would say "you can add a battalion or a brigade of AM for cheap" to squeeze your options for the most benefit. I can understand why that would appeal to some but I can imagine for a lot of players, they don't want to be forced to buy models and books for things they have no real interest in to be competitive. Like if I want to play Space Marines, I want to play pure Space Marines and at least be somewhat competitive, not imperial soup or basically AM but with only 5 models of the units I'm actually interested in. Same idea can be applied for units that are considered an "auto-include".
... but I also kind of don't. Maybe it's been beaten out of me by playing RTS games, but I have learned to recognize that what I want (an army of all-Teutonic Knights in AOE 2, or all Siege-Tanks in Starcraft, or all surface-to-air missiles in World in Conflict, or all T-64BVs in Wargame: AirLand Battle) isn't always what's very good, and that one must either decide to not be competitive, or shape up and change what they want.
I find detachment shenanigans largely go away when you stick to the "recommended" limit of three detachments. And I have always made a point of doing so.
I mean, that's technically as much guidance as we get for point limits and we're pretty good about sticking to 2000. I do agree the limit of 3 is needed to provide some interesting tradeoffs in which faction buffs you get out of your detachments and which ones you're willing to give up.
That could be an issue, perhaps. I've always always always stuck to the 3 detachment limits for all my armies regardless of size, and oftentimes it forces me to make hard decisions.
Maybe that's a place where the rules could be improved.
3 detachments still seems like too much for most people. Maybe it's different if you always start with a superheavy to fit in your 3 baneblades, but 3 detachments still means a lot of "Why would I take this in one, let me take multiple" kinda things. I have heard the UK has some limitations where you can't take a detachment more than once, so no taking 2 spearheads to max out on heavy support, as an example.
Unit1126PLL wrote: That could be an issue, perhaps. I've always always always stuck to the 3 detachment limits for all my armies regardless of size, and oftentimes it forces me to make hard decisions.
Maybe that's a place where the rules could be improved.
In general, having a standard play format is pretty important for giving designers something to shoot for. Another thread mentioned costing of buff auras and the like and that stuff very much breaks down how well points system scales (but so do IGYG mechanics, so that ship has long sailed). I think an official tourney packet developed with help from the TOs of some of the major cons is probably the last big thing GW needs to do to prove they're serious about supporting the game competitively at this point.
... but I also kind of don't. Maybe it's been beaten out of me by playing RTS games, but I have learned to recognize that what I want (an army of all-Teutonic Knights in AOE 2, or all Siege-Tanks in Starcraft, or all surface-to-air missiles in World in Conflict, or all T-64BVs in Wargame: AirLand Battle) isn't always what's very good, and that one must either decide to not be competitive, or shape up and change what they want.
Maybe it says more about GW balancing and rule writing more than anything, but to me trying to balance competitiveness and fluffiness is ideal. I guess at this point I'm just being an optimist
LunarSol wrote: I mean, that's technically as much guidance as we get for point limits and we're pretty good about sticking to 2000. I do agree the limit of 3 is needed to provide some interesting tradeoffs in which faction buffs you get out of your detachments and which ones you're willing to give up.
Honestly, I'm pretty loose when it comes to fluff in my army construction, I typically go where the math (points/detachments/time limits) takes me, or I just go for fun and don't really care about the rest (my definition of fun perhaps differing from some).
But I play in a pretty competitive group and we treat 3 detachments like the word of god, you bring anything more to a table, you will be asked to re-write and return.
Although, to be fair, I find 3 detachments provides more than enough variety to keep the soup spicy, anything more than that really is going to start seeing your CP spread very thinly.
"In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement in this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative."
... but I also kind of don't. Maybe it's been beaten out of me by playing RTS games, but I have learned to recognize that what I want (an army of all-Teutonic Knights in AOE 2, or all Siege-Tanks in Starcraft, or all surface-to-air missiles in World in Conflict, or all T-64BVs in Wargame: AirLand Battle) isn't always what's very good, and that one must either decide to not be competitive, or shape up and change what they want.
Maybe it says more about GW balancing and rule writing more than anything, but to me trying to balance competitiveness and fluffiness is ideal. I guess at this point I'm just being an optimist
I've accepted that being truly fluffy sometimes means being uncompetitive. Which is funny, and kind of like the fluff. In 5th edition, no tanks could score, and it was unfluffy for a fresh armoured company to have less than 10 tanks, so I lost damn near every game. You can even look in my post history from "Back in the day" and watch me argue with peregrine who said "take fewer tanks you'll win more" and me saying "no, armoured companies have 3 squadrons of 3 and 1 command tank just like the fluff!!!!!"
Competitiveness doesn't ruin games. People wanting to win at any cost ruins games. Every game and every sport suffers from it; there will always be some who will bend or break the rules, even if it does hollow the victory.
Plus some competitive people are just jerks who take it way too far and try and cheat to win. Then there are people who just actively seek out the most broken thing to play like scatbike spam.
You're playing it fast and loose with the competitive term there. Do you think narrative players don't cheat?
Of course they can't really be singled out as the sole issue because someone wrote the broken rules in the first place.
It's a game that pits player vs. player. It's the very definition of competitive, since each player is "competing" to win.
So no, competitiveness is not ruining the game. Poor sportsmanship, however, can possibly ruin it for some players if they deal with that a lot. Thankfully for me, the people I play with play competitively, but for fun, and they don't get hung up on losing. We have our intense moments of frustration from bad dice rolls, but nothing that strains our sportsmanship.
I don't really know if it is ruining the game in this edition. In my opinion i think that it ruined the 3.5 CSM codex. It allowed a lot of personalization and much more fluffy armies than right now in 8th edition with their own codexes... But people then only took the best units and gak from that codex, abusing the system and indirectly doing that GW scrapped all those cool concepts and released the dull 4th edition CSM codex...
I always have thought that the people ruined that codex, but it is true that a big part of that was due to GW's inability to make proper restrictive rules. They wrote a fluffy codex that enabled the player to make a nice chaos legion army list, but instead of enforcing the restrictions to make the codex balanced, they just let to choose everything from the codex and mix and match all, so one would find abominations like the siren DP lists or things like those...
In this edition i think the problem is a bit similar to what happened in the 3.5 chaos codex. GW has tried to make a very loose system, to allow the player to make the lists as fluffy as possible... But they forgot that there are people who really do not give a gak about the fluff or the story or the universe of 40k and only want to smash someone in a game, so the at-first-glance good system of keywords and detachments has became an abusive pile of crap, with people really doing things and making lists that GW never thought about... Probably with the IMPERIUM in one only faction GW was thinking in a fluffy and nice list of some IG regiment with an inquisitor and an astropath, but people instead comes up with gak like Guilliman and hundreds of imperial assasins and mortars or whatever the insanity lists are right now...
I think that is the problem. People thinks that 40k is a competitive game when it is not. Warhammer 40k is a universe, a fantasy-future world. The game is supposedly the representation of the many battles and wars of that universe. But then it fails loudly, when one start to see abomination lists that in no way can represent anything from the universe.
So yes, in a way the competitiveness is ruining the game, because GW are bad game designers, they cannot figure out with all their resources the same things that some players think in 5 minutes, and when they try to fix the things they cut all the tree, instead of removing the rotten fruits...
Why is it ruining 40k/ what really is ruining 40k?
It is destroying its essence. Before anyone says it again. No. Codex: Daemonhunters et al. are not the same as the current situation by orders of magnitude. So, no, it was not a thing the "random accumulation of similar things" to make an army list. From my experience, in 3rd or 4th edition there were not "pick the best" multi-faction armies, an army was done with a codex... I think i have read that in 6th or 7th things were even worse... well, that is really sad and that would mean that 40k is really a pile of garbage that is not possible to save.
The "3 ways of play" and all that is very nice if all the people that you play with agreed to play one less competitive game. If not and all the people come with an experience with points and a balanced game = having point cost, then the people will play with point cost. In practice the others "way of play" are not really good the very moment one player decides that he wants to win...
And how would you fix it/ how would you stop people complaining?
The problem is not the people as GW. People will always try to break the game and make everything they can to win, destroying its essence if it is necessary...
GW nowadays is trying to sell as many models as possible, and they make the rules according to this, upgrading or nerfing each unit accordingly. That way is impossible to have a balanced game. The drift of GW seems to be carrying us to a very dark time of "everything is valid".
In a perfect world, to fix the game and make it a bit more balanced and above all that, make it a proper representation of the 40k universe, the solution would be to go back to the restrictions and do them a lot of more rigid. That would mean 1 codex = 1 army. 1 army = 1 detachment. Go back to the Force Organization Chart. Go back to restrict too powerful units to 0-1 in an army. Restrict some other powerful units or combination of units with only one for every X points. Stop the "soups" nonsense and go back to a better way of portraying the 40k on the tabletop.
open your eyes, and swallow the red pill of truth. The matrix has you.
GW is a miniature company NOT A GAMING COMPANY.
They already stated in the past that they are in the business to sell miniatures not table top gaming.
They used formation detachments to push new lines of miniatures in 7th ed. nothing new has changed. they are pushing new miniatures through their manipulation of their published rules.
this is nothing new. GW has been doing this the entire time.
"Do not try and bend the spoon (meta balance), that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no spoon (meta balance). Then you'll see that it is not the spoon (meta balance) that bends, it is only yourself." Spoon boy The matrix
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/06 21:43:40
In the Grimdark future of DerpHammer40k, there are only dank memes!
CadianGateTroll wrote: open your eyes, and swallow the red pill of truth. The matrix has you.
GW is a miniature company NOT A GAMING COMPANY. They already stated in the past that they are in the business to sell miniatures not table top gaming.
They used formation detachments to push new lines of miniatures in 7th ed. nothing new has changed. they are pushing new miniatures through their manipulation of their published rules.
this is nothing new. GW has been doing this the entire time.
"Do not try and bend the spoon (meta balance), that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no spoon (meta balance). Then you'll see that it is not the spoon (meta balance) that bends, it is only yourself." Spoon boy The matrix
They can repeat that until the cows come home, it won't make it true. I doubt many people would buy the models if not for the game, at least nowhere near as many people play the game. They are a game company that doesn't want to devote the effort to making a good game, so they claim they aren't a gaming company to justify it. That's been the case since probably around 5th edition, the time when all their good designers left for greener pastures.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/06 21:46:09
CadianGateTroll wrote: open your eyes, and swallow the red pill of truth. The matrix has you.
GW is a miniature company NOT A GAMING COMPANY.
They already stated in the past that they are in the business to sell miniatures not table top gaming.
They used formation detachments to push new lines of miniatures in 7th ed. nothing new has changed. they are pushing new miniatures through their manipulation of their published rules.
this is nothing new. GW has been doing this the entire time.
"Do not try and bend the spoon (meta balance), that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no spoon (meta balance). Then you'll see that it is not the spoon (meta balance) that bends, it is only yourself." Spoon boy The matrix
I wonder how many times people are going to pull out that quote from before Kirby left.
Surely now as I scan the horizon nothing has changed. Nothing, I say!
We have a thriving 40K community here with local tourneys every couple of months. Local tourneys are a great way to keep the scene going. At the FLGS we play Matched Play and the odd Narrative. On my basement gaming table we play narrative. I'm not seeing any ruining of the game.
If you go to high-level tournaments then you have to go in with your eyes open and check your ego at the door - its probably going to get bruised.
All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand
I don't really know if it is ruining the game in this edition. In my opinion i think that it ruined the 3.5 CSM codex. It allowed a lot of personalization and much more fluffy armies than right now in 8th edition with their own codexes... But people then only took the best units and gak from that codex, abusing the system and indirectly doing that GW scrapped all those cool concepts and released the dull 4th edition CSM codex...
I always have thought that the people ruined that codex, but it is true that a big part of that was due to GW's inability to make proper restrictive rules. They wrote a fluffy codex that enabled the player to make a nice chaos legion army list, but instead of enforcing the restrictions to make the codex balanced, they just let to choose everything from the codex and mix and match all, so one would find abominations like the siren DP lists or things like those...
In this edition i think the problem is a bit similar to what happened in the 3.5 chaos codex. GW has tried to make a very loose system, to allow the player to make the lists as fluffy as possible... But they forgot that there are people who really do not give a gak about the fluff or the story or the universe of 40k and only want to smash someone in a game, so the at-first-glance good system of keywords and detachments has became an abusive pile of crap, with people really doing things and making lists that GW never thought about... Probably with the IMPERIUM in one only faction GW was thinking in a fluffy and nice list of some IG regiment with an inquisitor and an astropath, but people instead comes up with gak like Guilliman and hundreds of imperial assasins and mortars or whatever the insanity lists are right now...
I think that is the problem. People thinks that 40k is a competitive game when it is not. Warhammer 40k is a universe, a fantasy-future world. The game is supposedly the representation of the many battles and wars of that universe. But then it fails loudly, when one start to see abomination lists that in no way can represent anything from the universe.
So yes, in a way the competitiveness is ruining the game, because GW are bad game designers, they cannot figure out with all their resources the same things that some players think in 5 minutes, and when they try to fix the things they cut all the tree, instead of removing the rotten fruits...
Why is it ruining 40k/ what really is ruining 40k?
It is destroying its essence. Before anyone says it again. No. Codex: Daemonhunters et al. are not the same as the current situation by orders of magnitude. So, no, it was not a thing the "random accumulation of similar things" to make an army list. From my experience, in 3rd or 4th edition there were not "pick the best" multi-faction armies, an army was done with a codex... I think i have read that in 6th or 7th things were even worse... well, that is really sad and that would mean that 40k is really a pile of garbage that is not possible to save.
The "3 ways of play" and all that is very nice if all the people that you play with agreed to play one less competitive game. If not and all the people come with an experience with points and a balanced game = having point cost, then the people will play with point cost. In practice the others "way of play" are not really good the very moment one player decides that he wants to win...
And how would you fix it/ how would you stop people complaining?
The problem is not the people as GW. People will always try to break the game and make everything they can to win, destroying its essence if it is necessary...
GW nowadays is trying to sell as many models as possible, and they make the rules according to this, upgrading or nerfing each unit accordingly. That way is impossible to have a balanced game. The drift of GW seems to be carrying us to a very dark time of "everything is valid".
In a perfect world, to fix the game and make it a bit more balanced and above all that, make it a proper representation of the 40k universe, the solution would be to go back to the restrictions and do them a lot of more rigid. That would mean 1 codex = 1 army. 1 army = 1 detachment. Go back to the Force Organization Chart. Go back to restrict too powerful units to 0-1 in an army. Restrict some other powerful units or combination of units with only one for every X points. Stop the "soups" nonsense and go back to a better way of portraying the 40k on the tabletop.
I pretty much agree with this but still with there was a middle point where I could have inquisitors fighting along side marines and ig, or have different types of demons fighting along side each other... maybe limit named characters to only brigades. No idea... the best way to solve the problem seems to be to make two games. A narrative dnd game and a competitive tournament.
Btw, to me competitive means to win at all costs (super cheese and abuse) and to be a super sore loser.
I think the problem is that 40k is a game which tries to be all things to all people. This works fine if you have a group of like minded people to play with regularly. That said, I think 40k has been having something of an identity crisis since the latter part of 5th when GW started trying to shoehorn in units that should never really have been part of this scale. I miss the less abstract sandbox style of 2nd ed or the streamlined simplicity of 3rd/4th. 8th doesn't seem to be a bad system all things considered but it seems to have abstracted things to the point where the models are really just window dressing. You could almost turn it into a card game.
Personally, my current interest is in more detailed, less abstract smaller scale games such Necromunda and Shadow War. I'd love to see rules for a "combat patrol" style game based on the SW ruleset.
Competitiveness in itself isn't a bad thing at all. Poor unit balancing and/or cyclical deliberate overpowering / underpowering as a marketing tool are the core of the problem. Players not wanting to use units that are cruddy, and wanting to use units that are effective is only to be expected.
If you were going to rewrite 40k as a tight competitive ruleset you would probably start by throwing at least half of the available tabletop options on the bonfire. There would be far less redundancy/excess fat and there would be distinct advantages to playing one faction over another.
This doesn't really fit GW's business model of releasing new shiny stuff all the time. The only way they could do it effectively would be to release a tournament ruleset, which isn't a terrible idea. Perhaps they could start up a separate company or division purely for hardcore gamers.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/06 23:42:33
The complaints you hear here is not even a grain of sand compared to the silent majority that are enjoying the game in the way they want to be competitive or not.
a lot of the competitive vs casual can be fixed with a little bit of social interactions and talking out a game before committing time and effort into something.
but sure some things could be better if GW spends the time and actually fixes things this time around with their new biannual update scheme.
100% this ^^^
If someone needs balance, go play chess. What other game is as diverse as warhammer? It is a game of comic book action science fiction, it is supposed to be ridiculous and fun. It is as competitive as you make it.
Standing with my enemies, hung on my horns. With haste and reverie, killing with charm. I play, I'm sick and tame, drawing the hordes. I wait, and show the lame, the meaning of harm. The skulls beneath my feet, like feathers in sand. I graze among the graves, a feeling of peace.
In my time of playing 40k I have not attended a "major tournament" so the types of players I game with tends to not include the mythical donkey cave WAAC hyper competitive players (which do exist). I find alot of players are like me, or shades of it. And I would refer to myself as a "min/maxer".
A min/maxer wants to win, but wont go against the idea of what he wants to play to do so. For instance, when I play DnD, I pick a class that I am interested in playing and that compliments the roleplay of the char I am making. One the class is picked I will then do my best to make the most out of it rules wise as possible. I do not pick due to power level but on what I find interesting.
For instance. When I got into 40k from 8th edition fantasy I picked necrons simply because I liked the new models that had just been released. It turned out that they were the top dog WAAC faction for some time due to flyer spam and decurion. The more I played them the less I liked them. The playstyle was not my cup of tea. And worse, when I won a game it seemed to be due to list power rather than luck/tactical choices during play. So I sold my Necrons and started my black legion list because I was getting into the lore of chaos. At the time chaos marines were bottom barrel. I did not care. I went to making the best lists I could with what I had to work with. And I very much enjoyed every win because it was from a position of being a underdog. When I switched from BL to Thousand Sons I did not mimic the Magnus + DP spam lists that were taking tournaments.
To make a long story short. I think it is a call to lump players into groups. More often than not players exhibit a wide range of thoughts and wants from the hobby. How that relates to this thread is that I think it is dangerous to label players as competitive only. Some may be competitive but play narrative.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Enigma of the Absolute wrote: If you were going to rewrite 40k as a tight competitive ruleset you would probably start by throwing at least half of the available tabletop options on the bonfire. There would be far less redundancy/excess fat and there would be distinct advantages to playing one faction over another.
This doesn't really fit GW's business model of releasing new shiny stuff all the time. The only way they could do it effectively would be to release a tournament ruleset, which isn't a terrible idea. Perhaps they could start up a separate company or division purely for hardcore gamers.
Id have to disagree a bit. Alot can be done better by GW while not throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are particularly bad at point cost. Alot of the time that is driven by sales and marketing (custodes currently) and some is just sheer idiocy (888 point lord of skulls). If they stopped intentionally under costing the new hotness to push sales and did a better job 40k would be much more balanced.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/07 01:21:15
Does competitive play ruin 40K? Yes, in my opinion, somewhat. War games by their very nature are meant to be competitive exercises. The problem is that Warhammer 40K is a game that generally draws two sorts of people - competitive players who play the mechanical side of the game and casual / narrative players who (usually) want to play less competitively but are more interested in playing because of the fluff side of the game. In my experience, the two sides rarely enjoy a game together because they want different things out of it.
Competitive play is about winning, although not necessarily WAAC. It's turning up with a perfect list and playing it to achieve victory. That is fine when it is competitive versus competitive. More often than not though I see competitive players using that same style against less competitive players and casual players, usually to detriment of the opponent's enjoyment of the game. It is almost as if some competitive players cannot tone their play style down to accommodate the play style of their opponent. That however is not the fault of the game but the problem of having two different play styles. I sometimes wonder whether traditional historical war gaming has the same issue?
Some may disagree with me here but I have found that the 8th edition rules do not support a competitive style of play very well. It is too easy to break the mechanics. However, if played for a fun and casual format that isn't built around using and abusing the mechanics of a much simpler system that we have had before, it works fantastically. It is a war game so it is going to have tournaments and competitive events but I don't feel that that is where the heart and soul of 8th edition lies.
Table wrote: Id have to disagree a bit. Alot can be done better by GW while not throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are particularly bad at point cost. Alot of the time that is driven by sales and marketing (custodes currently) and some is just sheer idiocy (888 point lord of skulls). If they stopped intentionally under costing the new hotness to push sales and did a better job 40k would be much more balanced.
Sure, but I've been in the hobby for over 20 years now and people say the same thing every year. It's like the guy who says "I'm going to get in shape this year, I just need to cut out the junk food and start exercising" and then does neither of those things. When there's a will there's a way and GW simply doesn't have the motivation to balance their games to that degree. That's why my proposal is to have a team dedicated to competitive and tournament play. This would hopefully result in fewer unhappy match ups between hyper competitive and casual/fluff players as it would be agreed from the outset which ruleset would be used.
I was a former hardcore competitive player and honestly I'll always be competitive. I am interested in the narrative now more, but the real reason behind me not wanting to play competitively are basically two pointers:
* I got burnt out on having to play TFG on a regular basis at the GTs.
* I got burnt out on having to chase the meta and constantly buy new stuff, assemble new stuff, and paint new stuff that I had no interest in but was broken powerful to stay competitive on a regular basis (usually yearly, sometimes twice a year having to re-calibrate my entire list or faction)
I got bored of seeing the same armies and burnt on playing models that had no interest for me other than they were the mathematical coefficient to my sweet winning.
I'd also disagree that the "new hotness" IS always under priced. people like to claim it is, but we've seen plenty of cases where a new unit comes out and is a turd right from the start as well. Custodes IMHO aren't under costed so much as "more realisticly costed for what an elite unit SHOULD be" the units are good but people aren't talking about them as uber great for the points. in fact the only unit that seems to be captuing peoples minds are the bikes.
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
auticus wrote: I was a former hardcore competitive player and honestly I'll always be competitive. I am interested in the narrative now more, but the real reason behind me not wanting to play competitively are basically two pointers:
* I got burnt out on having to play TFG on a regular basis at the GTs.
* I got burnt out on having to chase the meta and constantly buy new stuff, assemble new stuff, and paint new stuff that I had no interest in but was broken powerful to stay competitive on a regular basis (usually yearly, sometimes twice a year having to re-calibrate my entire list or faction)
I got bored of seeing the same armies and burnt on playing models that had no interest for me other than they were the mathematical coefficient to my sweet winning.
I lost interest in the competitive scene for the same reasons. You can still soldier on with a single faction and sometimes it's more fun to try to eke out something competitive from an army that isn't top tier. But the tournament scene seemed to become more extreme from the late 00s onwards to the point at which if you weren't taking a top tier list is was hardly worth showing up.
Mordian Iron Guard - Major Overhaul in Progress 
Space Marines (Rift Wardens) - 8050pts.
Vampire Covenants 2060pts. 