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Mentality definitely changed in the last 20 years. The funny part is how competitiveness is praised as the end goal and liberator of our gaming woes only that such way of playing is simply not sustainable in a small environment and leads to the decline of it, something that was proven time and time again.

I don't think we'd rate high on the competitive scale, but it's a trend and doctrine that's observable and promoted in every branch of the society.

Once Magic the Gathering was put on ESPN, that was the shift in mentality. That was when tournament play became such a driving force.

Fast forward 20 years and esports are a huge thing as well.

It does contribute highly to player burnout, but it also highly contributes to enticing interest in the first place as well.

Gone are the days of narrative RPG / storytelling being the focus. Thats true even in RPGs themselves, where a lot of D&D nights are approached competitively, at least in the weekly open game nights we have in my city for D&D.

Or it could just be thats what is publicly visible and the narrative gaming is reserved to Joe's garage.

 auticus wrote:


Or it could just be thats what is publicly visible and the narrative gaming is reserved to Joe's garage.

I think this is a big aspect. It's like how you could argue football is mostly professionally played because that's basically all you see on the TV and yet local clubs have LOADS of casual games going on all over the world. There's even walking football for older generations etc... And taht's without touching on the myriad of custom rules/ideas/themes that get used at the club level.


Competitive games are easier for viewers to get into because the rules are the rules. It's a straight forward known easy to display package. Heck go talk about open play games and within a few posts its quickly apparent that everyone is doin their own variations and there is little common ground.

I think it's a combination of people always wanting to be competitive and show that they are better than their peers and that the tournaments get a lot of publicity so it looks to be way bigger than it is. Look at how popular ITC is claimed to be despite being a real minority because it has a lot of visibility.

The problem is that tournament/competitive play infests (I'm purposely using this word) everything it touches, as you well know. All it takes is for a handful of people to start playing competitively in a meta, and it will often infect everyone over time and eventually, you only have competitive play going on. I have a fictional story I like to tell to illustrate this:

One day, Bob shows up to his local game store, that has a casual and laid-back meta, with a competitive netlist army because he wants to start playing more competitively (note: nothing wrong with this in and of itself). He plays Jim, a casual player, and crushes him in full view of a few others playing that evening. A few weeks later, Jim has reworked his army to be more competitive so he won't get crushed against Bob. As time goes on, the casual players move to more competitive armies so they don't get curb stomped when playing as more and more players swap to competitive lists. Tournaments start being run, which increases the competitive play and brings in other people from other, more competitive metas.

A couple of years later, long after Bob and Jim and many others have moved on, you only see competitive play going on at the store because nobody still playing can remember a time before that fateful day when Bob started the arms race by bringing a competitive list. A new player looking to get started only sees competitive lists and monthly tournaments and gets pointed towards that, so that's all everyone knows and casual play has all but stopped happening at the store. All because one day one person decided to start the domino effect.

Now that story is exaggerated a little bit but that's what often happens. One guy starts the chain reaction and soon everyone is jumping onto the competitive scene so they aren't the one getting crushed.

I think the issue is also that FLGS usually try to generate interest in the game by having tournaments. People then get excited for the tournaments and want to do well increasing the likelihood of people becoming ever more competitive.

I see this currently at my FLGS. It's been having a very active tourneys this year and more and more people are interested in participating and in turn I see more and more people playing at the store, but also more competitive. These tourneys have done wonders in generating interests and having a more pool of people and factions to play against, but at the same time I must be willing to engage in a competitive mindset to play with them.

Ultimately casual and narrative games tend to be played at home where people can relax with a beer and some snacks and often those people don't engage with the local playerbase in such a manner that it makes a dent in the competitive mentality. Add on this that we now have WCP scoring and people being able to travel for tourneys so people are actually more incentivized in being competitive than ever before.

The tournament circuit offers a shared language to play with, but it comes with the baggage that people want to win.

Those are both (responses) pretty accurate from my perspective as well.

Stores run tournaments because they are easy to run and generate interest. Tournaments are about competitive play. This breeds a group of competitive players.

New players want to join. New player joins and gets hammered by competitive list. New player typically doesn't like that so new player gets a competitive list.

The cycle continues.

Casual play and narrative play requires a group that supports that which requires events of some sort that support that. This is why I run annual campaign events with full awards and rules that dictate what I expect from a narrative list / event.

The arms race is real. Even in a casual group that doesn't play tournaments, once Bob or Jim go to youtube and see the latest meta smasher and decide they want that and then go to their game night and pwn the living hell out of their opponents, their opponents will respond by either quitting the game or escalating the power of their lists as well.

If there is no reason to scale power back, people will by and large not do so in what most consider to be a competitive game.

One of the features of my leagues is an endurance award; one random player who showed up every week gets a prize. That's it. Just show up and play every week, you can win something.

Tournaments don't just drum up interest fast they are also dead easy to run for a store. You just organise a day, advertise it and everyone comes and plays a series of games against each other and you structure them to play in tiered groups so that in the end you've got a winner of the event.

Simple, easy and the only complicating or required elements are the same no matter what kind of game you are running.

Plus they are easily open to as many people as you have table space for. So you don't have to scale much up to take more and more players. Plus its easy for new people to pick up and take part in, even if they lose. They just need their legal army as written in the rules of the game and meeting the points requirement for the event.


Easy to run, works with small or big numbers, scales up very easily and doesn't really need anything special.



Open and Narrative are more the kind of thing you'd get once you've got a group going. Narrative is long running so you need to base it around your regular players and having people drop in and out is trickier; whilst open is a catch all and might just mean one or two house rules or a whole rafter of changes. It requires a degree of trust and understanding between the players that's beyond the "hey want a 2K point game?" that matched/tournament play can achieve.





Endurance awards are a neat idea - simple and not really open to abuse and just rewards people for taking part in a positive way.




On the subject of newbies and tournament/competitive environments my experience is that it can work fine so long as you get newbies in batches. If you gain 6 new players all around the same time they will scale up against each other at a generally similarish rate (assuming similar levels of prior game experience). Plus they've got each other to play with rather than only going against the "pros" of the club. The issue is more when you've got newbies going up against 10 year experienced gamers all the time. Both groups have to take some degree of give and take to make the experience fun for them unless the experienced player only wants to "newbie bash".
IT is an issue, made worse if there's also a generation gap going on (both if you've a young newbie against old experienced players and an old newbie who ends up trapped with young newbies all the time).

that's beyond the "hey want a 2K point game?" that matched/tournament play can achieve

That right there is the keystone.

I have helped with organizing two campaigns. One as Path to Glory and one Escalation League.

The Path to Glory was fun, but swung so wildly that some enjoyed it while others hated it. Also, as time went on, we lost players.

The escalation league was a bit more straightforward, but there we had a few tryhards among a group of people interested in having fun. The same happened here though and we saw numbers dwindle as time passed. One of the issues was also that the game doesn't really fit well into sub-1000 points and the Nagash player dominated that league, only facing challenge when we got past 1000 points.

 Overread wrote:

Open and Narrative are more the kind of thing you'd get once you've got a group going. Narrative is long running so you need to base it around your regular players and having people drop in and out is trickier; whilst open is a catch all and might just mean one or two house rules or a whole rafter of changes. It requires a degree of trust and understanding between the players that's beyond the "hey want a 2K point game?" that matched/tournament play can achieve.

100% agree with this.

I've run a handful of Narrative nights at my club - using Triumph and Treachery rules, or the Siege rules from last GHB, etc. Not even a campaign, just one night is organizing, you're telling people to shape specific lists, and then you're spending a good chunk of time before playing just explaining the differences between this and regular AoS. It's fun, especially when everyone is into it, but at the end of the day most people want to roll dice and push their dudes at another player's dudes, and Matched does that just as well as any other format with little to no time investment.

 Eldarsif wrote:
I have helped with organizing two campaigns. One as Path to Glory and one Escalation League.

The Path to Glory was fun, but swung so wildly that some enjoyed it while others hated it. Also, as time went on, we lost players.

The escalation league was a bit more straightforward, but there we had a few tryhards among a group of people interested in having fun. The same happened here though and we saw numbers dwindle as time passed. One of the issues was also that the game doesn't really fit well into sub-1000 points and the Nagash player dominated that league, only facing challenge when we got past 1000 points.

I'm working on a full update for the Path to Glory rules that should make it less swingy, may be what you're looking for.

Gotta say, I'd jump at the chance of a narrative campaign. Round my way though it's 2k pts of matched play or nothing.

I'm working on a full update for the Path to Glory rules that should make it less swingy, may be what you're looking for.

Looking forward to it.

I'd be interested to see your path to glory changes.

My fall narrative campaign the first two chapters are path to glory and then it moves into a hybrid of open and matched where there are random restrictions on what you can take beyond battleline that has 2 or 1 wound. Inspired by the open war generator.

I love the idea of Path to Glory. I don't trust most people in my area (possibly even myself!) to not abuse it, assuming anyone even wanted to give it a chance because it doesn't have points and relies on people not being donkey caves.

My campaign lets you pick your initial force, but no monstrous heroes to start. And then you roll the forces randomly after that as you upgrade. You don't ever get to pick. This way there is no way to intentionally powergame and break the campaign. Additionally my open war hybrid mixes up lists in normal 2000 pt games. And if you don't have the stuff to field an army because you only bought 2000 points of evilness and the generator says "sorry you can only take 1 monster this game" and you are 20% or more below your opponent in points, you get sudden death conditions instead or get to choose meeting engagements.

I’ve generally only had like five or six pieces of terrain on tables I set up, but they’re usually larger pieces, or a couple/few smaller pieces set up touching to form a larger piece. Gives stuff that better blocks avenues of movement and LoS. Should be fine setting up most of the faction terrains on them, though my sprawling Wyldwoods will have issues.

Differing opinion than the rest here, but I think the primary increase in competitiveness is twofold:

1. Most importantly. how insanely easy it is to find, discuss, and analyze competitive aspects with like minded people in an environment devoted to it. We've had the internet for a while, but the distillation of groups to their most extreme is so easy now.

2. Prior games, editions, etc didn't push competitive play and it wasn't pursued because everyone kinda knew the game was incapable of it. It is only within the last 10 years that we've started seeing miniature games with a tight enough design and ruleset that competitive play is not only possible, but actually fun. People are more interested in competitive play now because it is starting to become actually possible. Obviously, games like Magic are capable of having good enough design that competitiveness taken to the most extreme still cannot completely solve a meta before new additions are made. Wargaming hasn't reached this level yet, but it isn't *that* far off now.

WMH took a gigantic leap in this direction, and Xwing took it even further. We're starting to see games like Infinity where even at the most competitive levels there is a plethora of options and wide debate about whether X or Y is really better.

GW has only recently tried getting their games at level that support true competitive play. AoS and 40k still have a ways to go. Underworlds was their best work so far in this regard. I hope they can get there soon with their flagship products.

The new FAQs are up.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/?orderby=title&order=asc&fbclid=IwAR1DDXXcYZR2iG2Vf0quBfxokGVNMfhw2oW6fA4zBMKpW4tLfjN4miopxeA#items-warhammer-age-of-sigmar

Slaanesh is a very interesting read - probably - if you can read Japanese

My favorite is how those clowns put the japanese version of the slaanesh faq up. Unfortunately I cannot read japanese.


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Though slaanesh indeed had NO points changes from their battletome. So the Keeper of Busted remains busted for a year.

Rejoice and celebrate my min/max brethren.

I think the issue is GW wants us to buy Keepers and players want to put multiple keepers on the table at once. If anything needs a point reduction its fiends just so you can squeeze them in alongside all those leaders.

So have FEC, Skaven or Hedonites been reeled in at all?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
So have FEC, Skaven or Hedonites been reeled in at all?

Somewhat. Savage Strike has been reeled in. Arch-Regent got a 40 point increase, Ghoul King and Terrogheist Ghoul King got a 20 point increase.

Crypt Horrors went down 10 points, and all the endless spells went up 10 points.

Those changes wont stop fec from teabagging the rest of the game.

It did little to address the root of their lmao.

Only time will tell.

Yeah. We shall see. My gut instinct is that FeC will still be a special powergamer vintage that we will all get to enjoy. But summer 2020 will ultimately tell us how 2019 went.

The forbidden spell boat doesn’t allow movement after anymore. Takes out some shenanigans. My Slaanesh stuff is still awesome though.

I want quotes from Auticus' competitive community. Since I have no local competitive WAAC guys I feed upon the tears of his ones by proxy.