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Kdash wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
There actually IS evidence that different missions have different results. GW's own Grand Tournaments, which currently used CA 2017 missions I believe, have VERY different armies performing well compared to the ITC missions. Therefore, the conclusion is the ITC missions is what favors the current armies we see doing well in ITC events.

You believe? how about you share some evidence you have confidence in. Are you talking about the tournament won by the slow playing ork player?

Top 37 "factions" at Heat 3.



Bear in mind this was 1750 points and the only highlighted players "deliberately" slow playing didn't feature in the top 20.

Okay, so I'm sympathetic to a lot of the points people NOT Marmatag are making but GW's 'Heats' are an absolute fething joke. Including them in the discussion of competitive balance is like including mascot races in the final score of a Major League Baseball game.

First Blood is a terrible mechanic that awards whoever wins the first turn rolloff.

They're finally waking up and going with the ITC created secondary (from Old School), First Strike, which is you get the point if you kill on *your* first turn, even if someone else already has it.

And it looks like this is capped early in the tournament? Because most of the scores are the same.

ERJAK wrote:

Spoiler:

Kdash wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
There actually IS evidence that different missions have different results. GW's own Grand Tournaments, which currently used CA 2017 missions I believe, have VERY different armies performing well compared to the ITC missions. Therefore, the conclusion is the ITC missions is what favors the current armies we see doing well in ITC events.

You believe? how about you share some evidence you have confidence in. Are you talking about the tournament won by the slow playing ork player?

Top 37 "factions" at Heat 3.



Bear in mind this was 1750 points and the only highlighted players "deliberately" slow playing didn't feature in the top 20.

Okay, so I'm sympathetic to a lot of the points people NOT Marmatag are making but GW's 'Heats' are an absolute fething joke. Including them in the discussion of competitive balance is like including mascot races in the final score of a Major League Baseball game.

Cool, you mind explaining why that is or are you just going to grandstand?

ERJAK wrote:

Okay, so I'm sympathetic to a lot of the points people NOT Marmatag are making but GW's 'Heats' are an absolute fething joke. Including them in the discussion of competitive balance is like including mascot races in the final score of a Major League Baseball game.

No sympathy for me! Although we agree here.

 Marmatag wrote:
First Blood is a terrible mechanic that awards whoever wins the first turn rolloff.

They're finally waking up and going with the ITC created secondary (from Old School), First Strike, which is you get the point if you kill on *your* first turn, even if someone else already has it.

And it looks like this is capped early in the tournament? Because most of the scores are the same.

The new missions have first strike. As for a cap, there doesn't appear to be one. Assuming 5 matches at 3 secondaries each, nets you 15 total possible points. Since everyone can't get first strike every match (unless incredibly lucky), its plain to see the math.

Honestly, I love that the GW official tournaments have comp/sportsmanship back in a way. The champion of a Warhammer tournament should embrace all aspects of the hobby, not just the person who wins all their games. Maybe it's just because I'm oldschool so I remember when they were part of tournaments, but I think that's how it should be.

ERJAK wrote:

Spoiler:

Kdash wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
There actually IS evidence that different missions have different results. GW's own Grand Tournaments, which currently used CA 2017 missions I believe, have VERY different armies performing well compared to the ITC missions. Therefore, the conclusion is the ITC missions is what favors the current armies we see doing well in ITC events.

You believe? how about you share some evidence you have confidence in. Are you talking about the tournament won by the slow playing ork player?

Top 37 "factions" at Heat 3.



Bear in mind this was 1750 points and the only highlighted players "deliberately" slow playing didn't feature in the top 20.

Okay, so I'm sympathetic to a lot of the points people NOT Marmatag are making but GW's 'Heats' are an absolute fething joke. Including them in the discussion of competitive balance is like including mascot races in the final score of a Major League Baseball game.

If we ignore the favourite player and army votes, we can still see which armies are performing better than the others at the events. Each victory awarded 6 "primary" points, each FB/LB/WL awarded 1 secondary point. Exactly the same as ITC missions having primary and secondary. Sure, the missions are different, therefore the listbuilding is different, but, i posted that image in response to a remark about army variety at current GW events.

In terms of them being used for "competitive analysis" i agree that they should be thrown out of the window simply because of the nature of the missions used at this event - BUT, it does give a little insight in regards to ETC "power rankings" as ETC uses CA missions. It is just comparing apples to oranges.
ITC is seen as the more competitive side of the game right now, because of the missions. The argument is now, going forward, these new missions -might- challenge that point of view and how that may, or may not, have an impact on the ITC. If heat 4 in Feb uses the new CA missions, then we might have a better comparison point - BUT we will still have the same old arguments regardless of ITC being "trash" because of this, or GW missions being "trash" because of that.

The next few months will give us some insight into how balanced these new missions are, but, we need to get out of our heads, right now, that games played with these missions can't be "competitive". If it turns out all you need to win is 150 Ork Boyz/Guard/Nids/etc then sure, we can all light our GW pitchforks again and preach about ITC, but, noone can categorically say they are trash just because reading internet comments or looking at a couple of reveals.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
Honestly, I love that the GW official tournaments have comp/sportsmanship back in a way. The champion of a Warhammer tournament should embrace all aspects of the hobby, not just the person who wins all their games. Maybe it's just because I'm oldschool so I remember when they were part of tournaments, but I think that's how it should be.

While i agree the Champion of the Event should include sporting aspects, "Best General" and tournament winner should be based on game performance alone.

Lets face it, if you play 1 opponent and they then go on to play a youtuber, the youtuber is way more likely to get the favourite votes than just simply because of general bias. Obv it's not going to always impact on a winner, but, it does happen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 mokoshkana wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
First Blood is a terrible mechanic that awards whoever wins the first turn rolloff.

They're finally waking up and going with the ITC created secondary (from Old School), First Strike, which is you get the point if you kill on *your* first turn, even if someone else already has it.

And it looks like this is capped early in the tournament? Because most of the scores are the same.

The new missions have first strike. As for a cap, there doesn't appear to be one. Assuming 5 matches at 3 secondaries each, nets you 15 total possible points. Since everyone can't get first strike every match (unless incredibly lucky), its plain to see the math.

Yes, natural cap is at 15 points, due to there only being 5 games and the max per game was 3 - which included you picking up first blood.

First strike in the new missions is a much needed and welcomed change.

LMAO... I fething love this thread.

Wayniac wrote:
Honestly, I love that the GW official tournaments have comp/sportsmanship back in a way. The champion of a Warhammer tournament should embrace all aspects of the hobby, not just the person who wins all their games. Maybe it's just because I'm oldschool so I remember when they were part of tournaments, but I think that's how it should be.

You're welcome to believe that it's okay to include anti-competition mechanics into a competition, just have the self-awareness to realize that you are, therefore, anti-competition.

The point of a competition, especially when money is on the line, is to win.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Honestly, I love that the GW official tournaments have comp/sportsmanship back in a way. The champion of a Warhammer tournament should embrace all aspects of the hobby, not just the person who wins all their games. Maybe it's just because I'm oldschool so I remember when they were part of tournaments, but I think that's how it should be.

You're welcome to believe that it's okay to include anti-competition mechanics into a competition, just have the self-awareness to realize that you are, therefore, anti-competition.

The point of a competition, especially when money is on the line, is to win.

And the rules of the competition determine the winner. If theme, paint and sportsmanship are part of the competition then they are required to win.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
ITC is run by arrogant nonsense. They'll always think that their ideas are better.

I may disagree with some of their decisions, but let's be fair, competitive 40k in its current format more or less exists because of the efforts of ITC and FLG. They've been good for the hobby, and are doing what they do out of a genuine affection for the hobby. As for not taking feedback, perhaps if we were a little less histrionic in expressing our concerns, they wouldn't have to tune out so much of the feedback directed at them. It must suck to open their inboxes day in and day out and have neckbeards ranting at them about how they ruined the hobby. They seem to have taken the stance that the noise to signal ratio of general public discourse makes it mildly useless, and instead rely on a small inner circle of TOs as a feedback mechanism. The problem is that TOs are much more hardcore than average players, so a lot of the decisions we see and wonder what they were thinking probably come from a lack of moderating forces.

On the bright side, they did just announce a change to one of the dumbest rules GW put out in a FAQ, which was the change to wobbly models in the fall FAQ:

This will include a clarification that if you assault infantry into a building and the guy inside placed his models just so that you can't quite fit your models inside the walls, you can still assault him (just place your models on the outside of the walls and wobbly model that they are basically in the wall, in melee range). The packet will be ready prior to LVO (which now will also require you to submit your list sometime in January in the ETC format for easy data reading in their new software).

So they are making changes that need to be made.

The real problem people have with ITC is the attitude of ITC players.

GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.
You could say that ITC removes a bit of randomness from the game, but this game is still based on dices and matchups, so if a game goes from 40% luck based to 36% luck based, means that the first one is for amateurs?

So you aren't less of a big shot tournament player just cause you don't happen to use an house rule from oversea, this is what a lot of ITC players refuse to perceive and irks a lot of canon game players.

GW missions have faults sure, but ITC has its own, and they aren't less than GW's, just different.

Also, what i really don't like about ITC tables is the extremely narrow use of terrain. Not in the sense that they don't use enough of it, but in the sense that everything is labeled as a ruin. Where are craters? Where are barricades? Where are forests? Statues? Promethum pipes? I never see these on the ITC tables, but they are part of the game. Just because someone thinks that everything non ruin isn't "fair", doesn't mean that it isn't part of the game. I could tell you that i don't feel that Ynnari are fair, but we don't remove them from the game just cause of that, right?

 Grimgold wrote:

Spoiler:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
ITC is run by arrogant nonsense. They'll always think that their ideas are better.

I may disagree with some of their decisions, but let's be fair, competitive 40k in its current format more or less exists because of the efforts of ITC and FLG. They've been good for the hobby, and are doing what they do out of a genuine affection for the hobby. As for not taking feedback, perhaps if we were a little less histrionic in expressing our concerns, they wouldn't have to tune out so much of the feedback directed at them. It must suck to open their inboxes day in and day out and have neckbeards ranting at them about how they ruined the hobby. They seem to have taken the stance that the noise to signal ratio of general public discourse makes it mildly useless, and instead rely on a small inner circle of TOs as a feedback mechanism. The problem is that TOs are much more hardcore than average players, so a lot of the decisions we see and wonder what they were thinking probably come from a lack of moderating forces.

On the bright side, they did just announce a change to one of the dumbest rules GW put out in a FAQ, which was the change to wobbly models in the fall FAQ:

This will include a clarification that if you assault infantry into a building and the guy inside placed his models just so that you can't quite fit your models inside the walls, you can still assault him (just place your models on the outside of the walls and wobbly model that they are basically in the wall, in melee range). The packet will be ready prior to LVO (which now will also require you to submit your list sometime in January in the ETC format for easy data reading in their new software).

So they are making changes that need to be made.

So, I personally hate this. Not being able to fit a model into base to base because of a wall has nothing to do with “wobbly model”. It’s a fix that is needed, sure, but, to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place, and only exists because of how ITC uses “enclosed buildings” (“enclosed because… well… you can still fire mortars out through the “solid” roof and walls...).

Yes, it is thematic to have the odd “complete” building on some battlefields, not every building is going to have been blasted to pieces, but, I also feel like this is a problem they’ve caused themselves by not really thinking through how things should work. Yes, GW are also subject to this.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
The real problem people have with ITC is the attitude of ITC players.

GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.
You could say that ITC removes a bit of randomness from the game, but this game is still based on dices and matchups, so if a game goes from 40% luck based to 36% luck based, means that the first one is for amateurs?

So you aren't less of a big shot tournament player just cause you don't happen to use an house rule from oversea, this is what a lot of ITC players refuse to perceive and irks a lot of canon game players.

GW missions have faults sure, but ITC has its own, and they aren't less than GW's, just different.

I do agree with this. There is a such a

Also, what i really don't like about ITC tables is the extremely narrow use of terrain. Not in the sense that they don't use enough of it, but in the sense that everything is labeled as a ruin. Where are craters? Where are barricades? Where are forests? Statues? Promethum pipes? I never see these on the ITC tables, but they are part of the game. Just because someone thinks that everything non ruin isn't "fair", doesn't mean that it isn't part of the game. I could tell you that i don't feel that Ynnari are fair, but we don't remove them from the game just cause of that, right?

In regards to terrain, CA18 has rules for terrain at least in Cities of Death (according to the latest White Dwarf).

This includes soft cover (woods, crates, non-dedicated barricades) giving +1 to saves, hard cover (ruins, buildings) giving +2 and the main change, being 50% or more obscured visually gives the shooter -1 to hit. Combine this with height advantage of -1 AP extra if the shooter is 3" higher than the target. Plus 20something stratagems for extra giggles in such games, including more reliable charges, deep strikes, more AP while firing from above, grappling hooks to scale vertical distances with infantry, hunkering down in your spot for extra armour and so forth.

CA18 has 6 pages of terrain elements, but they have just consolidated all the special terrain datasheets, there is nothing new. Not like we need more terrain elements, they are already a lot, reason why using only ruins is quite narrow minded.

Spoletta wrote:
The real problem people have with ITC is the attitude of ITC players.

GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.
You could say that ITC removes a bit of randomness from the game, but this game is still based on dices and matchups, so if a game goes from 40% luck based to 36% luck based, means that the first one is for amateurs?

So you aren't less of a big shot tournament player just cause you don't happen to use an house rule from oversea, this is what a lot of ITC players refuse to perceive and irks a lot of canon game players.

GW missions have faults sure, but ITC has its own, and they aren't less than GW's, just different.

Also, what i really don't like about ITC tables is the extremely narrow use of terrain. Not in the sense that they don't use enough of it, but in the sense that everything is labeled as a ruin. Where are craters? Where are barricades? Where are forests? Statues? Promethum pipes? I never see these on the ITC tables, but they are part of the game. Just because someone thinks that everything non ruin isn't "fair", doesn't mean that it isn't part of the game. I could tell you that i don't feel that Ynnari are fair, but we don't remove them from the game just cause of that, right?

GW missions are competive in a sense that buying lottery tickets is competive. Now if you actually are interested in playing game about skill then GW scenarios are lol bad.

ITC might not be perfect but it's lightyears ahead in terms of competiveness. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's equal to worthless crap.

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The real problem people have with ITC is the attitude of ITC players.

GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.
You could say that ITC removes a bit of randomness from the game, but this game is still based on dices and matchups, so if a game goes from 40% luck based to 36% luck based, means that the first one is for amateurs?

So you aren't less of a big shot tournament player just cause you don't happen to use an house rule from oversea, this is what a lot of ITC players refuse to perceive and irks a lot of canon game players.

GW missions have faults sure, but ITC has its own, and they aren't less than GW's, just different.

Also, what i really don't like about ITC tables is the extremely narrow use of terrain. Not in the sense that they don't use enough of it, but in the sense that everything is labeled as a ruin. Where are craters? Where are barricades? Where are forests? Statues? Promethum pipes? I never see these on the ITC tables, but they are part of the game. Just because someone thinks that everything non ruin isn't "fair", doesn't mean that it isn't part of the game. I could tell you that i don't feel that Ynnari are fair, but we don't remove them from the game just cause of that, right?

GW missions are competive in a sense that buying lottery tickets is competive. Now if you actually are interested in playing game about skill then GW scenarios are lol bad.

ITC might not be perfect but it's lightyears ahead in terms of competiveness. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's equal to worthless crap.

Thank you for confirming my point, much appreciated.

 Sherrypie wrote:
In regards to terrain, CA18 has rules for terrain at least in Cities of Death (according to the latest White Dwarf).

This includes soft cover (woods, crates, non-dedicated barricades) giving +1 to saves, hard cover (ruins, buildings) giving +2 and the main change, being 50% or more obscured visually gives the shooter -1 to hit. Combine this with height advantage of -1 AP extra if the shooter is 3" higher than the target. Plus 20something stratagems for extra giggles in such games, including more reliable charges, deep strikes, more AP while firing from above, grappling hooks to scale vertical distances with infantry, hunkering down in your spot for extra armour and so forth.

Those cover rules absolutely should be adopted for tournament play - although I suspect the change-averse and highly conservative tournament crowd will not adopt them. Then people will continue to complain about poor terrain rules in 40K

I am not so sure about all the stratagems - although there is an extent to which they might level the playing field between factions that have great stratagems already and factions that are short of decent stratagems to spend their CP on.

Spoletta wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The real problem people have with ITC is the attitude of ITC players.

GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.
You could say that ITC removes a bit of randomness from the game, but this game is still based on dices and matchups, so if a game goes from 40% luck based to 36% luck based, means that the first one is for amateurs?

So you aren't less of a big shot tournament player just cause you don't happen to use an house rule from oversea, this is what a lot of ITC players refuse to perceive and irks a lot of canon game players.

GW missions have faults sure, but ITC has its own, and they aren't less than GW's, just different.

Also, what i really don't like about ITC tables is the extremely narrow use of terrain. Not in the sense that they don't use enough of it, but in the sense that everything is labeled as a ruin. Where are craters? Where are barricades? Where are forests? Statues? Promethum pipes? I never see these on the ITC tables, but they are part of the game. Just because someone thinks that everything non ruin isn't "fair", doesn't mean that it isn't part of the game. I could tell you that i don't feel that Ynnari are fair, but we don't remove them from the game just cause of that, right?

GW missions are competive in a sense that buying lottery tickets is competive. Now if you actually are interested in playing game about skill then GW scenarios are lol bad.

ITC might not be perfect but it's lightyears ahead in terms of competiveness. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's equal to worthless crap.

Thank you for confirming my point, much appreciated.

Well, I have a big response typed out, but dunno if it’s worth it.

 Grimgold wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
ITC is run by arrogant nonsense. They'll always think that their ideas are better.

I may disagree with some of their decisions, but let's be fair, competitive 40k in its current format more or less exists because of the efforts of ITC and FLG. They've been good for the hobby, and are doing what they do out of a genuine affection for the hobby. As for not taking feedback, perhaps if we were a little less histrionic in expressing our concerns, they wouldn't have to tune out so much of the feedback directed at them. It must suck to open their inboxes day in and day out and have neckbeards ranting at them about how they ruined the hobby. They seem to have taken the stance that the noise to signal ratio of general public discourse makes it mildly useless, and instead rely on a small inner circle of TOs as a feedback mechanism. The problem is that TOs are much more hardcore than average players, so a lot of the decisions we see and wonder what they were thinking probably come from a lack of moderating forces.

On the bright side, they did just announce a change to one of the dumbest rules GW put out in a FAQ, which was the change to wobbly models in the fall FAQ:

This will include a clarification that if you assault infantry into a building and the guy inside placed his models just so that you can't quite fit your models inside the walls, you can still assault him (just place your models on the outside of the walls and wobbly model that they are basically in the wall, in melee range). The packet will be ready prior to LVO (which now will also require you to submit your list sometime in January in the ETC format for easy data reading in their new software).

So they are making changes that need to be made.

Competitive 40k outside the US did and still does perfectly fine without the ITC. There is a world outside of America.

 Ordana wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
ITC is run by arrogant nonsense. They'll always think that their ideas are better.

I may disagree with some of their decisions, but let's be fair, competitive 40k in its current format more or less exists because of the efforts of ITC and FLG. They've been good for the hobby, and are doing what they do out of a genuine affection for the hobby. As for not taking feedback, perhaps if we were a little less histrionic in expressing our concerns, they wouldn't have to tune out so much of the feedback directed at them. It must suck to open their inboxes day in and day out and have neckbeards ranting at them about how they ruined the hobby. They seem to have taken the stance that the noise to signal ratio of general public discourse makes it mildly useless, and instead rely on a small inner circle of TOs as a feedback mechanism. The problem is that TOs are much more hardcore than average players, so a lot of the decisions we see and wonder what they were thinking probably come from a lack of moderating forces.

On the bright side, they did just announce a change to one of the dumbest rules GW put out in a FAQ, which was the change to wobbly models in the fall FAQ:

This will include a clarification that if you assault infantry into a building and the guy inside placed his models just so that you can't quite fit your models inside the walls, you can still assault him (just place your models on the outside of the walls and wobbly model that they are basically in the wall, in melee range). The packet will be ready prior to LVO (which now will also require you to submit your list sometime in January in the ETC format for easy data reading in their new software).

So they are making changes that need to be made.

Competitive 40k outside the US did and still does perfectly fine without the ITC. There is a world outside of America.

While it exists outside of America, I do believe that ITC and it’s visibility has been one of the biggest driving factors behind the growth of “competitive” 40k.

Let's be clear here, no one is complaining about the existence of ITC as a competitive circuit. In some ways, it saved 40K from it's darkest hour (7th).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The problem is the attitude of some ITC players who think they are the only ones allowed to speak about competitive 40K (even though they are by definition less entitled to do so compared to a canon player), and the fact that it simply no longer needed in its form.

ITC 40K is a house ruled version of 40K that had a meaning during 7th and during the index era of 8th. Now there is no longer a reason for this separation between the 2 formats, ITC should just endorse the canonic rules and missions like it did for Aos.

Since CA17 the game was 100% good for competitive tournaments, even more so with CA18. Some can prefer ITC missions, sure that's a matter of personal preferences, but creating a scisma in the community due to a matter of personal preferences is not justified. There is no longer a true need for ITC to adopt a different packet than the canonic one, and it is creating a lot of issues with balancing.

It is time to remove this (lifesaving) bandaid that is the ITC format, we are grateful for it, but at a certain point you have to remove bandaids.

From a harlequin's perspective (not daemons, we don't have those numbers) that mission is an almost auto lose, based on the scoring, You don't have the number of models to win with obsec most likely (and then your harlies will be on foot too), you can't get within 12" (granted the first few turns you gan stay at 18" and 15" respectively) unless you can absolutely guarantee that you can trap an enemy unit and not kill it to avoid being shot.

Sure you can play the run around the outside game, killing stuff, but that's not what wins these missions. You will need to get first strike, warlord (opponent should put warlord within 12" of objective) and linebreaker, but your opponent is going to get +1 at the end of every battle round. It's literally playing the game on hard mode. I'd rather play a Tactical marine based SM force than harlequins for this mission.

Spoletta wrote:
Let's be clear here, no one is complaining about the existence of ITC as a competitive circuit. In some ways, it saved 40K from it's darkest hour (7th).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The problem is the attitude of some ITC players who think they are the only ones allowed to speak about competitive 40K (even though they are by definition less entitled to do so compared to a canon player), and the fact that it simply no longer needed in its form.

ITC 40K is a house ruled version of 40K that had a meaning during 7th and during the index era of 8th. Now there is no longer a reason for this separation between the 2 formats, ITC should just endorse the canonic rules and missions like it did for Aos.

Since CA17 the game was 100% good for competitive tournaments, even more so with CA18. Some can prefer ITC missions, sure that's a matter of personal preferences, but creating a scisma in the community due to a matter of personal preferences is not justified. There is no longer a true need for ITC to adopt a different packet than the canonic one, and it is creating a lot of issues with balancing.

It is time to remove this (lifesaving) bandaid that is the ITC format, we are grateful for it, but at a certain point you have to remove bandaids.

I don't think GW missions are there yet. I really like the strategy of picking secondary missions each game. It creates an actual small downside for guardsmen. GW hasn't figured out how to do that yet.

Also, I refuse to use maelstrom cards of any kind. They are just too swingy and random and invalidate player choices.

Maelstrom I agree is super wonky; it can be fun, but it's weird. The EW missions though I think are in a really good spot, enough where I think they could slowly supplant ITC if people would look at the potential imbalance of them as part of what makes the whole thing balanced (as you have to prepare for the potential of selecting a mission that puts your skew list at a disadvantage).

Whether the community at large can accept that is a different story. It seems the mindset has grossly changed from the days of 3rd edition where you had a variety of missions with different scenarios, some even attacker/defender, that was perfectly acceptable for tournaments at that point in time.

Something shifted over the years where that suddenly became a bad thing rather than part of the overall balance. I am not sure what, specifically, but it seems the mentality shifted more to putting the emphasis of play on list building and combo-building and anything that introduces variation that could cause list building to become less impactful is seen as something to be eliminated rather than accepted.

Incidentally, I agree with Spoletta above: We can be thankful that the ITC gave GW the kick in the butt it needed to start to care about competitive play again, but it's time to stop having a civil war (a heresy, if you will) in the game.

Maelstrom missions are only for fun games, that's for sure. GW tournaments use only EW.

Spoletta wrote:


GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.

Okay Go ahead and prove this point, and I think you have an argument.

(This should be good)

Reemule wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


GW missions are as a competitive as ITC missions by definition.

Okay Go ahead and prove this point, and I think you have an argument.

(This should be good)

Isn't the proof of this:

A) GW has made Matched Play for competitive games, and EW/Maelstrom missions are Matched Play missions, ergo they are acceptable for competitive play. There isn't a separate set of missions for tournaments from GW.
B) GW's own GTs use their Eternal War missions

Not sure what other proof you'd want. You can think they aren't, but GW uses them for tournaments, and they are part of the game system intended to be used for tournament games.

I don't think so. The comment wasn't that GW missions are competitive, but they are as competitive as ITC missions.

While some of the ITC missions are repetitive and boring, overall, there isn't any force that is locked out of the game by them.

But I'm judging competitive the definition of as good as or better than others.

Due to the fact that the ITC mission are not screwwing over armies, (they let their own codex do that) but the GW is, I can't say the GW missions are better or Good as.

Wayniac wrote:
It is pretty clear that ITC rewards certain builds and lists. Just look at the results of GW's "official" GTs and you'll find their meta way different than ITC where it's all similar types of armies across different factions.

That's the problem. People think ITC is the standard when ITC missions are designed to cater to a specific style and meta, while the GW missions are in a different way. I even recall someone saying that the GW Grand Tournament "didn't count" because it wasn't ITC. ITC is far from perfect. It rewards a specific type of list building/combo-building that competitive players seem to think should be the main factor of the game. I am pretty sure that's WHY GW's Eternal War and Maelstrom missions vary as much as they do: So you actually have to bring a BALANCED army to a tournament instead of a gimmicky skew list (which is what dominates ITC events). ITC missions encourage the skewy type of lists we see, which is why that's mostly what we see in ITC events and nowhere else.

The idea may be noble, but the execution has just caused the entire problem.

That's because GW's GTs average about 3 turns.

Maelstrom and Eternal War ain't balanced anywhere near as well as ITC missions. They all have their time and place - bar maybe Eternal War. I love Maelstrom for some silly drawing of cards and casual gaming, while ITC is much better balanced, ref Marmatag's post.

And you definitely list build for Maelstrom and Eternal War. Anything fast and durable (Wave Serpents) is great for Maelstrom, whereas anything durable/killy is great for Eternal War (Knights).

 Marmatag wrote:
12 points of out secondaries is huge. The ability to choose to score based on position if you can't kill your opponents triple super-heavy list is really important. Without ITC this game is a one dimensional kill fest. And seriously, being able to get the bonus is a huge deal.

Also being able to score on objectives with more control if you go second is a big balancing factor in going first, versus going second. Without ITC missions this game is HEAVILY decided by who goes first. With ITC missions you actually see people choosing to go second quite frequently.