Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 blackmage wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 blackmage wrote:
about all this talking about rule of 3... do you think they will fix rule of 3 for Dp's too or they intentionally left play more than 3 of them?

You mean, by taking a Chaos Space Marines detachment with 3 and by taking a Chaos Daemons detachment with 3, to have 6 Daemon Princes total?

you can have more than 6 , chaos space marines, death guard, thousand sons, 9 at least, so i wonder if Gw will fix that or not

Not this edition I would say. The best way to handle it would be to give every unit a new type of keyword, a Unit Keyword. Then the rule would be that you can only take up to 3 units with the same Unit Keyword. Give all types of Daemon Prince the DAEMON PRINCE Unit Keyword, and voilà.

The issue is that it's not just Daemon Princes that allow this kind of thing, there's tons of examples! Which I why I don't think it will happen this edition.

GW has been pretty quick on shutting down things that were unintended. So I could see them doing a massive commander-style errata for the next CA or FAQ.

Then again, the problem does not seem like a big one, so they could also chose to just ignore it. Could go either way, really.

The scrub attitude in 40k is absolutely rampant in 40k. Any kind of game that involves both balance by a team of developers and random dice is going to attract people who will blame anything but their own mistakes on a loss.

What I disagree with is the attitude that there is no reason to want to play a less competitive game besides scrubbiness.

A game of Street fighter, or StarCraft, or LoL doesn't take several hours to play, each game piece doesn't cost 30$ and 2 hours to paint. The most competitive matches of 40k involve many more extreme skew lists with which the game is essentially decided turn 1 or before the game. If you can make a list that wins every time it gets first turn, and wins 25% of the time it gets second turn, you have a highly competitive list and it probably requires zero tactical ability to play as or against.

Less competitive lists tend to deal less damage, meaning they lead to a longer game night, with both players interacting and getting to use a much wider range of their model collections.

There is no scrub attitude there. There is no reason any of that requires you to complain and call things "cheap" if you try to set a game like this up and a player turns up with a super skew list anyway.

Where people like peregrine get mad though is this part: while I will not refuse that game, or complain while I play it, I will not play that player again. I get to play one game a week, if it's a half hour or an hour and the game is decided the second we set up the pieces....I'm just going to play someone I know will give me a solid 3-4 hour game we can laugh about at the pub afterwards.

There is nothing there relating to winning and losing, and I know I'm going to get Peregrine or Slayer or whoever else wondering how DARE I, how DARE I discriminate against poor oppressed gamers who just want to win! But I don't give a gak. And honestly neither should anyone else. Time is money. If someone makes my game time for the week crappy, whether by cheating, or whining the whole game, or plopping down a totally binary "roll for turn 1 then pack up" list, they'll only get to waste my time once.

the_scotsman wrote:
The scrub attitude in 40k is absolutely rampant in 40k. Any kind of game that involves both balance by a team of developers and random dice is going to attract people who will blame anything but their own mistakes on a loss.

What I disagree with is the attitude that there is no reason to want to play a less competitive game besides scrubbiness.

A game of Street fighter, or StarCraft, or LoL doesn't take several hours to play, each game piece doesn't cost 30$ and 2 hours to paint. The most competitive matches of 40k involve many more extreme skew lists with which the game is essentially decided turn 1 or before the game. If you can make a list that wins every time it gets first turn, and wins 25% of the time it gets second turn, you have a highly competitive list and it probably requires zero tactical ability to play as or against.

Less competitive lists tend to deal less damage, meaning they lead to a longer game night, with both players interacting and getting to use a much wider range of their model collections.

There is no scrub attitude there. There is no reason any of that requires you to complain and call things "cheap" if you try to set a game like this up and a player turns up with a super skew list anyway.

Where people like peregrine get mad though is this part: while I will not refuse that game, or complain while I play it, I will not play that player again. I get to play one game a week, if it's a half hour or an hour and the game is decided the second we set up the pieces....I'm just going to play someone I know will give me a solid 3-4 hour game we can laugh about at the pub afterwards.

There is nothing there relating to winning and losing, and I know I'm going to get Peregrine or Slayer or whoever else wondering how DARE I, how DARE I discriminate against poor oppressed gamers who just want to win! But I don't give a gak. And honestly neither should anyone else. Time is money. If someone makes my game time for the week crappy, whether by cheating, or whining the whole game, or plopping down a totally binary "roll for turn 1 then pack up" list, they'll only get to waste my time once.

Agree wholeheartedly. I have a short list of players I won't play against anymore. I'm in the same boat. At best, I get 2-4 games per month. I want to have fun playing the game. I've lost some of the most fun games I've ever played. I generally don't have fun playing against min/maxed lists that remove a lot of the tactical and strategic game play from the game.

 Kriswall wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The scrub attitude in 40k is absolutely rampant in 40k. Any kind of game that involves both balance by a team of developers and random dice is going to attract people who will blame anything but their own mistakes on a loss.

What I disagree with is the attitude that there is no reason to want to play a less competitive game besides scrubbiness.

A game of Street fighter, or StarCraft, or LoL doesn't take several hours to play, each game piece doesn't cost 30$ and 2 hours to paint. The most competitive matches of 40k involve many more extreme skew lists with which the game is essentially decided turn 1 or before the game. If you can make a list that wins every time it gets first turn, and wins 25% of the time it gets second turn, you have a highly competitive list and it probably requires zero tactical ability to play as or against.

Less competitive lists tend to deal less damage, meaning they lead to a longer game night, with both players interacting and getting to use a much wider range of their model collections.

There is no scrub attitude there. There is no reason any of that requires you to complain and call things "cheap" if you try to set a game like this up and a player turns up with a super skew list anyway.

Where people like peregrine get mad though is this part: while I will not refuse that game, or complain while I play it, I will not play that player again. I get to play one game a week, if it's a half hour or an hour and the game is decided the second we set up the pieces....I'm just going to play someone I know will give me a solid 3-4 hour game we can laugh about at the pub afterwards.

There is nothing there relating to winning and losing, and I know I'm going to get Peregrine or Slayer or whoever else wondering how DARE I, how DARE I discriminate against poor oppressed gamers who just want to win! But I don't give a gak. And honestly neither should anyone else. Time is money. If someone makes my game time for the week crappy, whether by cheating, or whining the whole game, or plopping down a totally binary "roll for turn 1 then pack up" list, they'll only get to waste my time once.

Agree wholeheartedly. I have a short list of players I won't play against anymore. I'm in the same boat. At best, I get 2-4 games per month. I want to have fun playing the game. I've lost some of the most fun games I've ever played. I generally don't have fun playing against min/maxed lists that remove a lot of the tactical and strategic game play from the game.

It doesn't even have to be particularly min-maxed. a list with just one or two units in it, whether or not it's competitive, is going to only be interesting to play once or twice. Ditto for any list that basically decides the game on a couple of rolls.

There's no requirement that "a competitive player must dumb down their list" or "a fluffy player who wants to play a theme list spamming just one thing' needs to change their list, they're just not likely to play against me more than once. If other players make that call as well, they're likely to have trouble finding opponents.

the_scotsman wrote:
The scrub attitude in 40k is absolutely rampant in 40k. Any kind of game that involves both balance by a team of developers and random dice is going to attract people who will blame anything but their own mistakes on a loss.

What I disagree with is the attitude that there is no reason to want to play a less competitive game besides scrubbiness.

A game of Street fighter, or StarCraft, or LoL doesn't take several hours to play, each game piece doesn't cost 30$ and 2 hours to paint. The most competitive matches of 40k involve many more extreme skew lists with which the game is essentially decided turn 1 or before the game. If you can make a list that wins every time it gets first turn, and wins 25% of the time it gets second turn, you have a highly competitive list and it probably requires zero tactical ability to play as or against.

Less competitive lists tend to deal less damage, meaning they lead to a longer game night, with both players interacting and getting to use a much wider range of their model collections.

There is no scrub attitude there. There is no reason any of that requires you to complain and call things "cheap" if you try to set a game like this up and a player turns up with a super skew list anyway.

Where people like peregrine get mad though is this part: while I will not refuse that game, or complain while I play it, I will not play that player again. I get to play one game a week, if it's a half hour or an hour and the game is decided the second we set up the pieces....I'm just going to play someone I know will give me a solid 3-4 hour game we can laugh about at the pub afterwards.

There is nothing there relating to winning and losing, and I know I'm going to get Peregrine or Slayer or whoever else wondering how DARE I, how DARE I discriminate against poor oppressed gamers who just want to win! But I don't give a gak. And honestly neither should anyone else. Time is money. If someone makes my game time for the week crappy, whether by cheating, or whining the whole game, or plopping down a totally binary "roll for turn 1 then pack up" list, they'll only get to waste my time once.

I'm a competitive player who plays to win, and yet I fully agree with everything you said. And you aren't forced to take games against anyone, and why should you be? Hell, why do they even want those games? I'd have a much better time playing and replaying the one guy who takes the game seriously, than stomping casual lists.

The one thing I disagree with is the part I bolded. And while it holds true for competitive players vs casual players, it is not the case in competitive level games, simply because you're playing against other equally as strong lists, and this is where games are not decided by turn 1, and it gets very strategical, and very in depth. I don't recommend it for everyone but I love it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:


It doesn't even have to be particularly min-maxed. a list with just one or two units in it, whether or not it's competitive, is going to only be interesting to play once or twice. Ditto for any list that basically decides the game on a couple of rolls.

There's no requirement that "a competitive player must dumb down their list" or "a fluffy player who wants to play a theme list spamming just one thing' needs to change their list, they're just not likely to play against me more than once. If other players make that call as well, they're likely to have trouble finding opponents.

If this is what you were referring to, then I retract my last post, because you are right. Which is why the rule of 3 is so good. Things like Flyrant spam, there is zero strategy behind both building the list and playing it, you are just maxing out on a list of the strongest model in your dex that borderline plays itself. Truly competitive players who actually understand this game agree, Chapter Tactics mentions it a few times, I see the same thing stated by some of the best players - you might get results but you'll never get good at playing the game by taking one of these lists that maxes out on a single versatile unit with a niche profile attached to a very nice cost ratio, known to dominate tables at high level. I actually think that's where a lot of this salt comes from. With this option removed, players who considered themselves "good" and "competitive" players find they can no longer compete without such a crutch, but this level of self awareness isn't possible so they chalk it up to a bunch of other excuses, and blame GW for ruining their game with the removal of Rule of 3.

 SHUPPET wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The scrub attitude in 40k is absolutely rampant in 40k. Any kind of game that involves both balance by a team of developers and random dice is going to attract people who will blame anything but their own mistakes on a loss.

What I disagree with is the attitude that there is no reason to want to play a less competitive game besides scrubbiness.

A game of Street fighter, or StarCraft, or LoL doesn't take several hours to play, each game piece doesn't cost 30$ and 2 hours to paint. The most competitive matches of 40k involve many more extreme skew lists with which the game is essentially decided turn 1 or before the game. If you can make a list that wins every time it gets first turn, and wins 25% of the time it gets second turn, you have a highly competitive list and it probably requires zero tactical ability to play as or against.

Less competitive lists tend to deal less damage, meaning they lead to a longer game night, with both players interacting and getting to use a much wider range of their model collections.

There is no scrub attitude there. There is no reason any of that requires you to complain and call things "cheap" if you try to set a game like this up and a player turns up with a super skew list anyway.

Where people like peregrine get mad though is this part: while I will not refuse that game, or complain while I play it, I will not play that player again. I get to play one game a week, if it's a half hour or an hour and the game is decided the second we set up the pieces....I'm just going to play someone I know will give me a solid 3-4 hour game we can laugh about at the pub afterwards.

There is nothing there relating to winning and losing, and I know I'm going to get Peregrine or Slayer or whoever else wondering how DARE I, how DARE I discriminate against poor oppressed gamers who just want to win! But I don't give a gak. And honestly neither should anyone else. Time is money. If someone makes my game time for the week crappy, whether by cheating, or whining the whole game, or plopping down a totally binary "roll for turn 1 then pack up" list, they'll only get to waste my time once.

I'm a competitive player who plays to win, and yet I fully agree with everything you said. And you aren't forced to take games against anyone, and why should you be? Hell, why do they even want those games? I'd have a much better time playing and replaying the one guy who takes the game seriously, than stomping casual lists.

The one thing I disagree with is the part I bolded. And while it holds true for competitive players vs casual players, it is not the case in competitive level games, simply because you're playing against other equally as strong lists, and this is where games are not decided by turn 1, and it gets very strategical, and very in depth. I don't recommend it for everyone but I love it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:


It doesn't even have to be particularly min-maxed. a list with just one or two units in it, whether or not it's competitive, is going to only be interesting to play once or twice. Ditto for any list that basically decides the game on a couple of rolls.

There's no requirement that "a competitive player must dumb down their list" or "a fluffy player who wants to play a theme list spamming just one thing' needs to change their list, they're just not likely to play against me more than once. If other players make that call as well, they're likely to have trouble finding opponents.

If this is what you were referring to, then I retract my last post, because you are right. Which is why the rule of 3 is so good. Things like Flyrant spam, there is zero strategy behind both building the list and playing it, you are just maxing out on a list of the strongest model in your dex that borderline plays itself. Truly competitive players who actually understand this game agree, Chapter Tactics mentions it a few times, I see the same thing stated by some of the best players - you might get results but you'll never get good at playing the game by taking one of these lists that maxes out on a single versatile unit with a niche profile attached to a very nice cost ratio, known to dominate tables at high level. I actually think that's where a lot of this salt comes from. With this option removed, players who considered themselves "good" and "competitive" players find they can no longer compete without such a crutch, but this level of self awareness isn't possible so they chalk it up to a bunch of other excuses, and blame GW for ruining their game with the removal of Rule of 3.

I play in tournaments pretty regularly as well. when I say "involve many more extreme skew lists" what I'm basically referring to is the fact that a large percentage of the attendees to any tournament are "mid table warriors" who like you describe, blindly spam units they know to be competitive and hope to run into more "I almost always win" matchups than "I almost always lose" matchups.

When you see these oddball results like "Hey, a guy just won a tournament playing with 12 hellhounds?" what I see there is someone who might normally be a mid-table warrior getting lucky with his matchups (with a list like that, I'd say his lucky matchup is probably -to hit lists like Eldar and Drukhari venomspam, and he happened to run into 3 or 4 of those armies).

Because the actual top-tier tournament players tend to just play basement matches with each other as any game they play outside a GT is likely to be pretty much a practice game and they don't want to risk wasting their time by setting up with a random, and because they make up a small fraction of the general tournament scene, if you're playing against a self-described tournament player, they're highly likely to be a mid-table warrior. You're going to be getting that 12-hellhound list, or a shadowsword, four basilisks, and 120 infantry.You're not going to be seeing any kind of astounding tactical display.

This post is very true. I have many models that I love how they look and how they play, like terminators, but they aren't compettiive to make the cut for tournaments. So what If I try to use them in less competitive enviroments, because I refuse to have them sit in a cabinet for 5 years because they aren't "good enough" competitively? I paid and painted those models and I want to use them. Does that make me a scrub?

Then theres the fact that nobody has the same level of hability. Speaking about fighting games, as somebody that has been playing videogames for decades, whenever I go to a party with friends and we end up playing videogames... I normally facestomp everybody of them. Just because I play better. At that point I have 3 options:
-Keep destroying every single one of them, even if thats a relaxed enviroment in a party, with the hope that those scrubs will get gud
-Stop playing alltogether because people does not have fun playing with me
-Use less powerfull characters and don't use the stronger combos that I know my opponents just don't know how to stop.

And thats talking about a videogame where people has 0 investment in time and money and you can change characters as you wish. Apply that to Warhammer, where many people just doesn't has the option to change their list becuase they literally have no more models, and thats why I absolutely oppose to this "git gud" mentality. If you want to be competitive, OK, in competitive tournaments or games pre-arranged as competitive beforehand, thats absolutely okey, go as competitive as you want.

But as the_scotsman noted, thats not the problem for Peregrine or Slayer. They know nobody (Or nearly nobody) oppose with the idea of ultra-competitive players being competitive in tournaments, thats expected and acepted. Their grievance comes down from the fact that people in casual nights or afternoons in FLGS just don't like to play agaisnt that kind of list (In general, theres many FLGS with a very competitive community that enjoy always playing like that, and thats absolutely fine) normally, and of course that means everybody is just names and other offensive things and should get better because its morally represible to expect for the competitive player to toned down his list of his style of play.

But thats not what is expected, what is expected is for the outlier to adapt to his enviroment, or it will have a misserable experience. If you are a nooby casual into a ultra competitive community, normally people will go easy on you wile you are building your army, but they will expect and help you to make strong lists, because normally, competitive players don't enjoy just destroying noobs. The opposite happens too, if you are a competitive player that enters a relaxed community that play with what models they like, with house rules, etc... you will be expected to respect that enviroment. Is with this second situation where Peregrine and Slayer-Fan become angry and start shouting their tantrums about how thats absolutely unfair.

Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

It's probably mostly unintentional. I think GW tries to, but whether it's incompetence, playtesting the wrong way, the left-hand not communicating with the right, or shifting gears in planned development between codex runs. Could be something else.

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

They simply don't understand the game well enough to make the powerlevel of factions and units consistent.

See the new ForgeShrine model for a good example of this - it has a buff to shooting which is actually worse than not using it.

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

Don't assume malicious intent when ignorance is a perfectly good explanation.

Certainly, GW has made balance decisions in the past to drive people towards new models. This has happened, particularly commonly when they release a new model that competes for role with an existing kit, the existing kit tends to get the shaft.

But I'd bet that's the vast minority of cases. Take the current imbalance in 8th: Almost all the poorly performing codexes at the moment were the books we know to have been written and sent to the printers before the indexes in 8th were even released.

"Why is the grav-cannon 28pts while a disintegrator is 15" another poster asked earlier in the thread. The reason for that is because the Codex: Space Marines rules for the grav cannon were written when the Disintegrator (an obviously comparable weapon) was THIRTY points. The disintegrator only dropped to 15 when data came back from people playing 8th and GW said "oh, crap, that's super overpriced, we should drop it down."

Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Admech, Deathguard, and Grey Knights were all written before there was any actual play data from 8th. And if you look at competitive play objectively, for all the complaints from Marine players, the codexes released after that (Eldar, Guard, Drukhari, Tyranids, Blood Angels, Custodes, Thousand Sons, etc) all seem to have relatively good balance against one another overall. The worst factions released after the first five were...factions that share significant rules with those first five. Space Marine base costs are out of whack and a bunch of their stratagems are terrible? Well guess what, Dark Angels, who share many of those point costs and stratagems, are highly likely to be among the worst factions after the first five.

Across different factions, 40k is more diverse now than it ever has been in a competitive setting. Complain all you like about marines, the game has never seen this many factions coming up in top lists. An across-the-board buff to space marines and chaos marines as a whole would create pretty much unprecedented faction parity, and I hope that it's the first order of business as soon as all the codexes are finished.

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

It's mostly that they were not playing the same game as their customers and are pretty much on the level of someone that started WH40k some time in 8th.

Sprinkle in some actual malice from previous management that forced rule designers to over-tune certain models to make them sell better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

Don't assume malicious intent when ignorance is a perfectly good explanation.

Certainly, GW has made balance decisions in the past to drive people towards new models. This has happened, particularly commonly when they release a new model that competes for role with an existing kit, the existing kit tends to get the shaft.

But I'd bet that's the vast minority of cases. Take the current imbalance in 8th: Almost all the poorly performing codexes at the moment were the books we know to have been written and sent to the printers before the indexes in 8th were even released.

"Why is the grav-cannon 28pts while a disintegrator is 15" another poster asked earlier in the thread. The reason for that is because the Codex: Space Marines rules for the grav cannon were written when the Disintegrator (an obviously comparable weapon) was THIRTY points. The disintegrator only dropped to 15 when data came back from people playing 8th and GW said "oh, crap, that's super overpriced, we should drop it down."

Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Admech, Deathguard, and Grey Knights were all written before there was any actual play data from 8th. And if you look at competitive play objectively, for all the complaints from Marine players, the codexes released after that (Eldar, Guard, Drukhari, Tyranids, Blood Angels, Custodes, Thousand Sons, etc) all seem to have relatively good balance against one another overall. The worst factions released after the first five were...factions that share significant rules with those first five. Space Marine base costs are out of whack and a bunch of their stratagems are terrible? Well guess what, Dark Angels, who share many of those point costs and stratagems, are highly likely to be among the worst factions after the first five.

Across different factions, 40k is more diverse now than it ever has been in a competitive setting. Complain all you like about marines, the game has never seen this many factions coming up in top lists. An across-the-board buff to space marines and chaos marines as a whole would create pretty much unprecedented faction parity, and I hope that it's the first order of business as soon as all the codexes are finished.

Is Death Guard really that bad? In my perception it's a pretty solid army, and I'm not even souping in anything.

Death Guard are in a good ish spot, but they loose hard to certain factions. They are probably also still being propped up by some of their most powerful stuff, while what should be a core unit in the deathguard codex are rarely seen.

 Jidmah wrote:

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

It's mostly that they were not playing the same game as their customers and are pretty much on the level of someone that started WH40k some time in 8th.

Sprinkle in some actual malice from previous management that forced rule designers to over-tune certain models to make them sell better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
Could someone explain to me why GW makes some factions very good and fun to play, and others just plain bad? Am assuming they do want to sell no matter what it is. Only explanation I can think of is, IMO, stupid that they make bad factions so people buy in to them get burned, buy some more trying to fix them, get ally that are good, then get even more ally and finaly playing a good list, meaning each person that starts with a bad list and doesn't auto quit buys 2 lists, unlike someone who got lucky and started with a good list from the start. But it seems too stupid to be true.

Don't assume malicious intent when ignorance is a perfectly good explanation.

Certainly, GW has made balance decisions in the past to drive people towards new models. This has happened, particularly commonly when they release a new model that competes for role with an existing kit, the existing kit tends to get the shaft.

But I'd bet that's the vast minority of cases. Take the current imbalance in 8th: Almost all the poorly performing codexes at the moment were the books we know to have been written and sent to the printers before the indexes in 8th were even released.

"Why is the grav-cannon 28pts while a disintegrator is 15" another poster asked earlier in the thread. The reason for that is because the Codex: Space Marines rules for the grav cannon were written when the Disintegrator (an obviously comparable weapon) was THIRTY points. The disintegrator only dropped to 15 when data came back from people playing 8th and GW said "oh, crap, that's super overpriced, we should drop it down."

Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Admech, Deathguard, and Grey Knights were all written before there was any actual play data from 8th. And if you look at competitive play objectively, for all the complaints from Marine players, the codexes released after that (Eldar, Guard, Drukhari, Tyranids, Blood Angels, Custodes, Thousand Sons, etc) all seem to have relatively good balance against one another overall. The worst factions released after the first five were...factions that share significant rules with those first five. Space Marine base costs are out of whack and a bunch of their stratagems are terrible? Well guess what, Dark Angels, who share many of those point costs and stratagems, are highly likely to be among the worst factions after the first five.

Across different factions, 40k is more diverse now than it ever has been in a competitive setting. Complain all you like about marines, the game has never seen this many factions coming up in top lists. An across-the-board buff to space marines and chaos marines as a whole would create pretty much unprecedented faction parity, and I hope that it's the first order of business as soon as all the codexes are finished.

Is Death Guard really that bad? In my perception it's a pretty solid army, and I'm not even souping in anything.

In terms of tournament appearances and rankings Death Guard is hitting the mark fairly low.

The amount of complaining you're going to hear about any given faction being bad is a complex equation that typically follows the form

((How the faction feels to play*people's favorite units being competitively viable^Number of people who play the faction)*5 if the faction in question is Tau, Space Marines, Sisters of Battle or Eldar) + (.00000000001*actual competitive performance of the faction)

Ice_can wrote:
Death Guard are in a good ish spot, but they loose hard to certain factions. They are probably also still being propped up by some of their most powerful stuff, while what should be a core unit in the deathguard codex are rarely seen.

DG I feel are in a great spot, but like others alluded to... its because of the great (some might say "OP") models that work with the Demons faction, which for nurgle has some of the best troops in the game (PB's/Nurglings).

As a pure faction, though, DG are extremely weak. Plague Marines are meh, Blightlords are terribly expensive and have low kill potential, things like Deathshroud are awful for the cost.... which is why all you see anymore is demon princes and the demon engines. DG has some of the best Chaos Vehicles around.

I don't know if scrub behaviour is that common in 40k. The idea isn't that people are sore losers - but that they justify playing the game in a highly limited way.

So something like this:
Forum user 1: Flyers are pretty good. I like them.
Scrub: Flyers are cheap and overpowered. I recently went to a tournament and lost 5 games to them.
Forum User 1: I don't think they are that good.
Scrub: No. Flyers are cheap. Its dishonourable to use them. Only bad players use flyers.
Forum User 2: Have you thought about taking more anti-air options in your list?
Scrub: No. Flyers are dishonourable. Playing against dishonourable people is bad. I shouldn't have to change my behaviour/learn anything new to play dishonourable people. Full stop. The end. Tactical Marine Gunlines Forever!

I'd guess the main example in current 40k is whether you soup or not - and whether you consider soup "dishonourable" even if its the obvious answer to a problem. (I think saying "Army book X sucks, just buy a whole new army" is going a bit far - but if you want to win a reasonably attended GT its probably the answer.)

I don't think however its scrub behaviour to observe that rock/paper/scissor matchups are not fun.

the_scotsman wrote:

Across different factions, 40k is more diverse now than it ever has been in a competitive setting. Complain all you like about marines, the game has never seen this many factions coming up in top lists. An across-the-board buff to space marines and chaos marines as a whole would create pretty much unprecedented faction parity, and I hope that it's the first order of business as soon as all the codexes are finished.

As I’m going to continue beating this drum until either my hands bleed or GW listens, might as well bring it up here. Remove the Primaris/non-Primaris distinction, give every Space Marine Infantry model the Primaris +1 Attack, +1 Wound, -1 AP to Bolters/Bolt Pistols/Chainswords/Combat Blades, a small points increase and remove the restrictions on Primaris using transports. Slight tweaks to things like Berserkers to stop them being crazy OP.

Then I would genuinely say we would be in a golden era of balance.

kombatwombat wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

I don't want to go the route of "it's a game", but when you're putting stock in honor in a game...that is silly. Just play the game do what you can to win.

I don’t want to go the route of “it’s a game”, but when you’re putting stock in winning in a game of toy soldiers... that is silly.

Different world views, mate.


Take another gaming example - if I’m playing Counterstrike and there’s only me and one other guy left who’s run out of ammo, I’ll pull my knife out and go skin the bastard rather than just sniping him from across the map.

Which is a silly self-imposed rule for literally no reason at all. Just end the match sniping them and get the next game going. That's stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
As a big fighting game player, tbh many of us actually always found that quote from that SFII dev really dumb. It implies anyone who isn't picking the toppest tier character is playing poorly, or that self imposed rules are scrubby, or that winning with a low tier somehow makes you a scrub.

No, you aren't a scrub for character/race/army/hero/whatever you select. Scrubbiness is blaming your character or race for those losses. Also, there's something immensely more satisfying about beating top tier characters with lower or mid tier or just swag characters, than there is about doing the opposite. In a fighter, I'm very much aware every loss is my own fault, and attributing your choice in character for your loss at any level seems much more scrubby than just admitting your own play was responsible for your loss, 99% of the time.

If you really followed fighting games like you claimed you would say the quote was legit, actually.

Yeah... I only mod two of the official discords for three of the biggest fighting games in the world, have literally thousands upon thousands of hours invested in competitive fighting games, a custom Hitbox controller that I built myself from scratch, wins against some very high profile players in my country, and high level tech/combo videos with thousands of views on youtube... but hey, what would I know about following fighting games. You're probably right.


The fact that you're mindless enough to think that everyone to ever play fighting games competitively just mindlessly agrees with someones quote because they developed SFII shows you don't, have, a, clue, what you're speaking on lmao

If you REALLY that high profile you would know that people actually think the opposite of you.

Also saying you mod a discord literally means nothing.

So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

Or perhaps one of the largest problems with 40k is that there isn't a single way to play even within matched play. If the game were, I don't know, balanced, maybe we could avoid these arguments entirely. Instead of "40k is great if you play it the way I do" or "playing with the intent to win is wrongbadfun, I play to tell stories with my minis, and I am vehemently unwilling to consider that anything that happens during the game is part of the story."

Oh, David Sirlin. He's a smart man, and he's right in so many ways in his articles, but in terms of actually winning over the non-believers, he only preaches to the choir. To everyone that stands to benefit from understanding what he's trying to say, the articles are so condescending that it simply causes entrenchment.

I so wish there was a resource as well thought through and written that took the ideas of "scrub logic" and actually helped people understand the inward appraisal needed for self improvement. His articles are written in a way that weaponizes "scrub logic" against others, but the real value in his work is understanding the way we bind ourselves in self defeating ways.

There is 100% value in Sirlin's articles if you use them to reflect on yourself and use them as a ladder to better yourself. I think what they ultimately lack is a perspective beyond the goal of winning a world championship. There are definitely goals in gaming beyond winning, but all too often we let "scrub logic" get in the way of reaching even the most casual of play goals. Seeking to understand what we can actually control and using that knowledge to find the best route to achieve our goals, regardless of how "competitive" they are, is ultimately what these articles should help us with.

Blastaar wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

Or perhaps one of the largest problems with 40k is that there isn't a single way to play even within matched play. If the game were, I don't know, balanced, maybe we could avoid these arguments entirely. Instead of "40k is great if you play it the way I do" or "playing with the intent to win is wrongbadfun, I play to tell stories with my minis, and I am vehemently unwilling to consider that anything that happens during the game is part of the story."

Not really because even if the game is perfectly balanced people with different mindsets will have an horrible experience if they play together, thats why most (If not all) competitive videogames have casual/quickmatch mode and competitive mode.

With this I'm not saying that Warhammer couldn't be more balanced. It could, and that would benefit everybody. But that wouldn't magically solve all the problems that happens when a casual/relaxed player goes agaisnt a competitive one.

I take no horse in this race because I play both competitively and in more relaxed enviroments. I just aknowledge the fact that you can't have a good experience when one person with one of those two attidues faces other with the opposite one. No matter how balanced the game is.
And no, a more relaxed player is not a scrub, just like a competitive player is not a WAAC. Both are legitimate ways to play the game.

And this is talking in the context of a videogame where changing from a weak option to a strong one can be made normally without any consequence in a couple of minutes. Warhammer is very different, with hundreds of € and tenths of hours invested in your army because you like how it looks, and to then find it sucks. If that player tries to do is best with what he/her has, but don't want to buy the "OP" stuff because he does not like it, maybe aesthetically, maybe how it plays, does that make him a scrub? In the context of the arcitle of David Sirling, it would.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

They simply don't understand the game well enough to make the powerlevel of factions and units consistent.

But it can't be so. If you look something like eldar or IG, you can clearly see that there was in depth thoughts when they designed it. I would even say that when they made all the eldar books, they were thinking about them being stand alone armies, mixed in Inari or used as ally detachments. If GW was bad at making books, then all of their would be bad. Why can they make something like a fun tier 2 codex like deathwatch, or nice codex like custodes, but when they write something else it feels as if they did a copy pasta of the index.

. If that player tries to do is best with what he/her has, but don't want to buy the "OP" stuff because he does not like it, maybe aesthetically, maybe how it plays, does that make him a scrub? In the context of the arcitle of David Sirling, it would.

What if the army doesn't have any "OP" stuff? Out of the people I play against, only one person plays in tournaments. Most started a few months ago, so it is not like they have a huge edge over me as skill goes. Yet when I play my friends Inari or Chaos I am not just getting tabled. I don't get to do stuff. I try to take objectives, my units gets killed with shoting in one turn. I try to do melee, my units have no buffs to charge out of deep strike. the closest games I had was against a dude whose army was made out of starter sets with primaris, till he switched to deathwatch and got a baneblade, not it is just as unfun to play vs him as other people.

Karol wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

They simply don't understand the game well enough to make the powerlevel of factions and units consistent.

But it can't be so. If you look something like eldar or IG, you can clearly see that there was in depth thoughts when they designed it. I would even say that when they made all the eldar books, they were thinking about them being stand alone armies, mixed in Inari or used as ally detachments. If GW was bad at making books, then all of their would be bad. Why can they make something like a fun tier 2 codex like deathwatch, or nice codex like custodes, but when they write something else it feels as if they did a copy pasta of the index.

. If that player tries to do is best with what he/her has, but don't want to buy the "OP" stuff because he does not like it, maybe aesthetically, maybe how it plays, does that make him a scrub? In the context of the arcitle of David Sirling, it would.

What if the army doesn't have any "OP" stuff? Out of the people I play against, only one person plays in tournaments. Most started a few months ago, so it is not like they have a huge edge over me as skill goes. Yet when I play my friends Inari or Chaos I am not just getting tabled. I don't get to do stuff. I try to take objectives, my units gets killed with shoting in one turn. I try to do melee, my units have no buffs to charge out of deep strike. the closest games I had was against a dude whose army was made out of starter sets with primaris, till he switched to deathwatch and got a baneblade, not it is just as unfun to play vs him as other people.

If you are having bad games due to balancing you need to communicate with the people you are playing with. You need to talk about what kind of games you want to have. If they are more competitive (or their armies are) you need to work towards a resolution. Having a crappy army sucks, but if you want to play you need to take steps. Try talk with the others and asking if they can tone down their lists or even think of employing a points handicap to give you a fighting chance. Point handi-caps are very muddy as it can be VERY hard to agree on what is appropriate and it only works with friends, but the option is there. I did that a fair bit back in 7th when I played my marines versus my friend's Chaos. He played me with a 200 point advantage and we had much better games because of it.

Karol wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

They simply don't understand the game well enough to make the powerlevel of factions and units consistent.

But it can't be so. If you look something like eldar or IG, you can clearly see that there was in depth thoughts when they designed it. I would even say that when they made all the eldar books, they were thinking about them being stand alone armies, mixed in Inari or used as ally detachments. If GW was bad at making books, then all of their would be bad. Why can they make something like a fun tier 2 codex like deathwatch, or nice codex like custodes, but when they write something else it feels as if they did a copy pasta of the index.

. If that player tries to do is best with what he/her has, but don't want to buy the "OP" stuff because he does not like it, maybe aesthetically, maybe how it plays, does that make him a scrub? In the context of the arcitle of David Sirling, it would.

What if the army doesn't have any "OP" stuff? Out of the people I play against, only one person plays in tournaments. Most started a few months ago, so it is not like they have a huge edge over me as skill goes. Yet when I play my friends Inari or Chaos I am not just getting tabled. I don't get to do stuff. I try to take objectives, my units gets killed with shoting in one turn. I try to do melee, my units have no buffs to charge out of deep strike. the closest games I had was against a dude whose army was made out of starter sets with primaris, till he switched to deathwatch and got a baneblade, not it is just as unfun to play vs him as other people.

As I've said: A lot of the codexes that feel like copy/pastes of the index are in fact mostly copy/pastes from the index. Games Workshop had precisely the same amount of playtest data to look at when they designed the marine Index as when they designed the marine Codex: Whatever they'd done in the house.

If you look objectively at, for example, the Eldar codex, and the difference between what they got and what Marines got, there's no question that the Eldar stuff included a lot more high-quality stuff. but when it comes to Depth...eh? I don't actually think there's evidence that there was more "care and thought" involved - just that they had some data that certain units were priced too conservatively in the index and could use a bump.

three out of the five craftworld attributes are the same as marine chapter tactics (with the small addition of 2 units getting to move and fire a couple different heavy weapon options in the case of Saim-Hann) and the stratagems are all similar in idea to marine stratagems: A particular unit does some kind of special thing. If you take a particular combination of units, they do a special thing. A unit gets a boost in close combat. The signature unit of <subfaction> or unit type does something special.

The difference is that for some stratagems they'd learned how to make the stratagem a little more difficult for your opponent to evade (auspex scan and forewarned) and for several others, the units named in the stratagem aren't crap. The farseer/Warlock stratagem for example would be a lot less good if, like Librarians, taking multiples of them was stupid because they're crazy overcosted. The Linked Fire stratagem would be a lot less good if like Whirlwinds and Land Speeders Fire Prisms were terrible.

None of the traits, stratagems or relics showed any more depth or care taken than the ones out of the marine book. What Eldar did get was big fat points rebalances, and a few units got special rules swapped around or tweaked. That's the big difference: The balance pass. Vindicators would be a damn sight better if they got a "fire twice if they move half" rule. Land Speeders would be decent if their price got slashed by half. And as a consequence the stratagems surrounding them would seem a lot less lame in comparison.

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

No, you're missing the point a bit.

Competitive players use every tool available in the game to help them win because winning is the point.

Scrubs limit themselves by some internal rules that hinder them winning and tell themselves that those limits they made up makes them somehow better than the person without those limits that's beating them.

That does not mean that playing fluffy campaigns is wrong, it means that going to a tournament and complaining about people taking lists that are cheesy/OP/unfluffy/etc. is wrong.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

No, you're missing the point a bit.

Competitive players use every tool available in the game to help them win because winning is the point.

Scrubs limit themselves by some internal rules that hinder them winning and tell themselves that those limits they made up makes them somehow better than the person without those limits that's beating them.

That does not mean that playing fluffy campaigns is wrong, it means that going to a tournament and complaining about people taking lists that are cheesy/OP/unfluffy/etc. is wrong.

Which makes perfect black and white sense in certain games. But in 40k that gets muddled, by the big limit that exists on every player in the form of time and money. By this definition, anyone who doesn't have the income to keep up with the competitive meta is a scrub because they let that get in the way of winning (the only objective of the game.) Also, anyone who doesn't just spray-prime their models to a 3 color minimum is a scrub, because they let that aesthetic thing get in the way of winning.

Is a grey tide that you ebay every month seriously the thing we want to aspire to in this hobby?

the_scotsman wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

No, you're missing the point a bit.

Competitive players use every tool available in the game to help them win because winning is the point.

Scrubs limit themselves by some internal rules that hinder them winning and tell themselves that those limits they made up makes them somehow better than the person without those limits that's beating them.

That does not mean that playing fluffy campaigns is wrong, it means that going to a tournament and complaining about people taking lists that are cheesy/OP/unfluffy/etc. is wrong.

Which makes perfect black and white sense in certain games. But in 40k that gets muddled, by the big limit that exists on every player in the form of time and money. By this definition, anyone who doesn't have the income to keep up with the competitive meta is a scrub because they let that get in the way of winning (the only objective of the game.) Also, anyone who doesn't just spray-prime their models to a 3 color minimum is a scrub, because they let that aesthetic thing get in the way of winning.

Is a grey tide that you ebay every month seriously the thing we want to aspire to in this hobby?

No, that is not what it is saying at all. If you aren't taking your best because you haven't been able to buy or paint them yet that doesn't make you a scrub.

If you come away from a loss thinking "I really need to get those two units built and painted, not having them hurt me but I probably could have played better around their absence." then your head is in the right place.

On that subject, most player at national level are building or substantially expanding an army a couple of times of a year. That is just part of keeping up at that level.

If you refuse to take your best because of rules you've made up (like no soup or never taking three of something or every squad must have different equipment) and then telling yourself that you are better than the people beating you because you follow those rules and they don't then that makes you a scrub.

Just look at the people we get posting on here who go to a tournament, get soundly beaten and then instead of asking what they should do differently instead cry "These mean tournament players with their cheesy lists! I could totally beat all of them but I am too pure to take a cheesy list like that."

Or I'm sure you know some players who take a weak list with no plan and when they lose instead of looking at themselves blame the dice or their codex or your army, etc. Scrubs.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So "high end competitive players" believe the true way to play the game its how they play it, and anybody that doesn't play like them is either a noob that don't know how to play or a scrub that plays the game the "wrong way"... hmmm...

Yeah, same dog, different collar.

No, you're missing the point a bit.

Competitive players use every tool available in the game to help them win because winning is the point.

Scrubs limit themselves by some internal rules that hinder them winning and tell themselves that those limits they made up makes them somehow better than the person without those limits that's beating them.

That does not mean that playing fluffy campaigns is wrong, it means that going to a tournament and complaining about people taking lists that are cheesy/OP/unfluffy/etc. is wrong.

Which makes perfect black and white sense in certain games. But in 40k that gets muddled, by the big limit that exists on every player in the form of time and money. By this definition, anyone who doesn't have the income to keep up with the competitive meta is a scrub because they let that get in the way of winning (the only objective of the game.) Also, anyone who doesn't just spray-prime their models to a 3 color minimum is a scrub, because they let that aesthetic thing get in the way of winning.

Is a grey tide that you ebay every month seriously the thing we want to aspire to in this hobby?

No, that is not what it is saying at all. If you aren't taking your best because you haven't been able to buy or paint them yet that doesn't make you a scrub.

If you refuse to take your best because of rules you've made up (like no soup or never taking three of something or every squad must have different equipment) and then telling yourself that you are better than the people beating you because you follow those rules and they don't then that makes you a scrub.

Just look at the people we get posting on here who go to a tournament, get soundly beaten and then instead of asking what they should do differently instead cry "These mean tournament players with their cheesy lists! I could totally beat all of the but I too pure to take a cheesy list like that."

Or I'm sure you know some players who take a weak list with no plan and when they lose instead of looking at themselves blame the dice or their codex or your army, etc. Scrubs.

Yep. Scrubs definitely exist and are a consistent annoyance in 40k. You'll notice I said that in my first post in this thread. But when you make statements like

"Scrubs limit themselves by some internal rules that hinder them winning and tell themselves that those limits they made up makes them somehow better than the person without those limits that's beating them. "

or, in a more longwinded format, like the linked post to the Street Fighter Dev put it (his thesis statement is a similar "anyone who doesn't use all tools available to them to win games is a scrub").

If you apply that logic, you don't just EVENTUALLY get to "anyone who doesn't swap armies every couple of months is a scrub, with all the monetary and time commitments that come along with that", you get to that INSTANTLY. A couple of armies in a game that has over a dozen armies are always better than the rest at any given time, and all those armies bare minimum cost 500$US to get 2000 points of. Very, very often, it's more (guard meta anyone?)

You must accept some kind of limit external to wanting to win the game unless you have the time and money to ebayswap your armies very frequently.

Compared to that level of scrubbiness? Straight up just playing the wrong army? That guy refusing to take all plasma guns on his marines and instead having one flamer squad one grav squad one plasma squad is small potatoes.