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Blastaar wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
I don't play games to entertain my opponent, I play them for my own enjoyment. Claiming gaming is a "social contract" is a way of attempting to exert control over your opponent and prevent them from using units, cards, or tactics that one personally dislikes playing against, limiting their fun. Pre-game negotiating, outside of my or a buddy's home, too easily becomes an exercise in who can limit their opponent's enjoyment of the game before it even starts. I'm happy to socialize during games, but pre-game has no business going through committee.

There's a line between "negotiation of your opponent's models" and "trying to make some tool with a Knight Crusader understand that it's not very fun to play a 500-point game against him when all you've got is a couple of squads of Marines". And I mean, that's a line big enough that it might as well pass for a 4-lane highway, and you can't really miss it.

You play to have fun, okay- fine. Well, so does the other person, and if they're not having fun and you don't care about trying to have a somewhat-balanced challenge, well... I don't think you'd be that kind of guy, but I can tell you- that kind of guy is the one that usually sits in the corner, alone, ignored, on his big case of models that never get on the table because he comes off as a putz.

The thing is, the game should be balanced enough that these pre-game "hey, can you not take XYZ overpowered thing?" discussions aren't necessary. You want to blame the player for taking a strong list and. yes, some people are jerks and bring cheese to stomp people. But the crummy rules allow that to be an issue in the first place. Blaming players merely personalizes the issue and attempts to absolve one's responsibility in encouraging poor rules by financially supporting the company making them. If someone wants this to change they should not buy products from the company making the poor rules. Framing this as an issue of interpersonal player behavior distracts and solves nothing.

Did you know that in the Japanese Street Fighter community, there was a gentleman's agreement that nobody would play Akuma? There weren't any official rules forbidding it, but even top players just made the decision not to pick him in casual or competitive play because he ruined a game they otherwise enjoyed.

Basically every game who's tournament ruleset isn't dictated by the developers has some houserules to make it more fun for the players involved, and it's even more common for insular, casual communities to come up with their own ideas of what makes the game less fun if it's allowed (across any even remotely competitive game strategies that aren't effective against the best players can be miserably oppressive if no one involved is very good). This isn't a 40k problem, this is a pvp-games-more-complicated-than-chess problem.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
I don't play games to entertain my opponent, I play them for my own enjoyment. Claiming gaming is a "social contract" is a way of attempting to exert control over your opponent and prevent them from using units, cards, or tactics that one personally dislikes playing against, limiting their fun. Pre-game negotiating, outside of my or a buddy's home, too easily becomes an exercise in who can limit their opponent's enjoyment of the game before it even starts. I'm happy to socialize during games, but pre-game has no business going through committee.

There's a line between "negotiation of your opponent's models" and "trying to make some tool with a Knight Crusader understand that it's not very fun to play a 500-point game against him when all you've got is a couple of squads of Marines". And I mean, that's a line big enough that it might as well pass for a 4-lane highway, and you can't really miss it.

You play to have fun, okay- fine. Well, so does the other person, and if they're not having fun and you don't care about trying to have a somewhat-balanced challenge, well... I don't think you'd be that kind of guy, but I can tell you- that kind of guy is the one that usually sits in the corner, alone, ignored, on his big case of models that never get on the table because he comes off as a putz.

The thing is, the game should be balanced enough that these pre-game "hey, can you not take XYZ overpowered thing?" discussions aren't necessary. You want to blame the player for taking a strong list and. yes, some people are jerks and bring cheese to stomp people. But the crummy rules allow that to be an issue in the first place. Blaming players merely personalizes the issue and attempts to absolve one's responsibility in encouraging poor rules by financially supporting the company making them. If someone wants this to change they should not buy products from the company making the poor rules. Framing this as an issue of interpersonal player behavior distracts and solves nothing.

Did you know that in the Japanese Street Fighter community, there was a gentleman's agreement that nobody would play Akuma? There weren't any official rules forbidding it, but even top players just made the decision not to pick him in casual or competitive play because he ruined a game they otherwise enjoyed.

Basically every game who's tournament ruleset isn't dictated by the developers has some houserules to make it more fun for the players involved, and it's even more common for insular, casual communities to come up with their own ideas of what makes the game less fun if it's allowed (across any even remotely competitive game strategies that aren't effective against the best players can be miserably oppressive if no one involved is very good). This isn't a 40k problem, this is a pvp-games-more-complicated-than-chess problem.

Gentleman's agreements can be toxic in their own right sometimes. Sure, fixing developer errors with house rules is a good idea in theory but remember this is a game with way more emotional investment than a simple 2D video game.

My group back in 3rd edition let me ally Tau and Eldar because we frequently played large enough battles where both were insufficient, and I had no interest in expanding either one. This carried on through 5th edition. It was fun, felt fluffy and proper, nobody ever complained. Then all of a sudden it became part of the official rules and now new players would make snide little remarks about "Taudar cheese" even though one glance at my army lists would prove I was no power gamer. I quit for 3 years because I was a hair's breadth away from starting to punch faces.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

1- I stop treating it like something it isn't- 40k is only "competitive" because the people who are competitive pretend it is. There's not a whole lot of tactical depth or strategic nuance to 40k, no one is pulling off some cunning ploy. When you get down to it, it's more about putting things in the right spot at the right time and rolling the right dice, and knowing what other peoples' toys can do. I mean, 'netlisting' is popular because it works and it wins a lot of times. It's a game, it has rules, but let's not sit here and make the card game "Bullsh*t" out to be "Baccarat". When it comes down to it, I've watched "Skilled tournament-winners" from 40k end up sucking their thumb in a corner after getting slapped around in a game of Infinity.

Why is that not a skill? Of course it's about putting things in the right spot at the right time and rolling the right dice and knowing what other people's toys can do. That's not exactly easy though, now is it? There are dozens, probably hundreds of units in this game. Each has (usually) at least 1 or 2 possible configurations. Even uncommon units sometimes see play in tournament games. The guy who won the Warhammer GT used disembarking shield drones from a destroyed tau Piranha to block a smash captain from killing his broadsides... did you know you could do that? I didn't. Did his opponent? Maybe, maybe not. There are hundreds of possible permutations of a game based on the terrain, who deploys first, who goes first, and in ITC what objectives you choose for secondaries (if you're playing ITC). Knowing all this, picking the right things, is not trivial.

I played in an ITC tournament last weekend. I'm not overly experienced, but I was winning. I was in the lead going into round 2. My opponent was Space Wolves and Adeptus Mechanicus. I was playing Guard + Knights (not a Castellan list, I actually have 2 Questoris Knights). I figured I had this in the bag. I made some key deployment errors, my opponent exploited those ruthlessly, and won. I managed to smash my final opponent hard enough I came in second, but the point was I didn't know what my opponent could do and lost because of it. I'm not using a netlist I copy/pasted either, I'm using a variation I built from the ground up with trial and error over the past several months. I'm still making changes to my list, how I play, and evolving it based on tournament games and results. It's been a lot of fun.

When you come down to it, literally anything, no matter how simple, can be done for competition. There's plenty of nuance in 40k to use it as a competitive game. Is it as deep as other games? Probably not. But it combines my love of building models, painting models, reading books, and playing a tabletop game into something that's fairly unique, that other systems just don't offer in the same way.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Removed - BrookM

Well, you've certainly established yourself as the voice of reason in this conversation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Did you know that in the Japanese Street Fighter community, there was a gentleman's agreement that nobody would play Akuma? There weren't any official rules forbidding it, but even top players just made the decision not to pick him in casual or competitive play because he ruined a game they otherwise enjoyed.

It's important to note that this was from the era of games being hard-coded into a cartridge, so you couldn't patch a balance issue. It's not really comparable to modern games where egregious balance mistakes can be corrected after the game is released.

Goodness me, ten pages already? tl;dr

Anyway, I'd have to say I disagree with the sentiment that, "Warhammer 40,000 is in a pretty good place at the moment," because I believe it's overly euphemistic. I would assert that Warhammer 40,000 is in a great place at the moment, possibly the greatest place since it's inception. I'm really into the approach of taking a simplified core ruleset and expanding it through army books and campaign supplements. I'm entirely on board with updating the scale of Space Marines even if I have issues with some of the actual sculpts (Inceptors/Suppressors ). Most of all, I'm loving the communicative approach that the company has taken. Is it perfect? No. Was it ever? No. Will it ever be? No, but I've never been in a position to be into this hobby as much as I am now with as many people as there to enjoy it now. Prices are still rubbish though.

Counting soup, command point and detachment limitations as either a "balancing tweak" or a "seismic change" depends entirely on the execution.

Aelyn wrote:
So legal and reasonable are equivalent? Does that mean any list which is illegal is automatically unreasonable?

Yes, following the rules of the game is reasonable and an illegal list is not reasonable. I'm not sure what is confusing about this.

There are plenty of other examples I could name for some very well loved games which are generally considered balanced and fair and yet which frequently involve pre-game conversations (playing rugby / american football at a local field and agreeing to play touch-contact instead of full-contact, handicaps in go, bidding conventions in bridge...) My point is that "benefits from pre-game discussion" and "badly-designed" are not even close to the same thing, and that reaching an understanding before a game of what people are trying to get out of it is hardly unique to 40K.

None of that is equivalent to 40k. Playing touch football vs. tackle football is not a negotiation about what is "too powerful" or "not fun", it's just declaring which game you're playing. The 40k equivalent would be arguing that your opponent's best receiver is too good at catching footballs so they're only allowed to throw to that player once per possession or they're being WAAC TFGs and you're not going to play against them. Instead of just playing the game by the standard rules, once you have decided which game you are playing, you try to compensate for a perceived flaw in the rules by adding special exceptions for one player/team/whatever.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Did you know that in the Japanese Street Fighter community, there was a gentleman's agreement that nobody would play Akuma? There weren't any official rules forbidding it, but even top players just made the decision not to pick him in casual or competitive play because he ruined a game they otherwise enjoyed.

Basically every game who's tournament ruleset isn't dictated by the developers has some houserules to make it more fun for the players involved, and it's even more common for insular, casual communities to come up with their own ideas of what makes the game less fun if it's allowed (across any even remotely competitive game strategies that aren't effective against the best players can be miserably oppressive if no one involved is very good). This isn't a 40k problem, this is a pvp-games-more-complicated-than-chess problem.

Yeah, I think David Sirlin mentioned it, or something similar in his articles. I definitely agree on the pvp aspect- that makes it much trickier. If Akuma was that problematic, that sounds like a good solution, especially since that was before patching games was possible.

I don't know what's the problem for people to negotiate the game terms before the game, you do that in most card games. If you play Mau-Mau every family in germany has its own "house rules", just like with rommé, skat or poker.
And yes, sometimes that needs talking if you come together with others, but then you negotiate how to play. And it would be pretty idiotic to say: "Oh no, I have to draw two cards on a 9, not on a 7?! Madness, I won't play that crap!"

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I don't know what's the problem for people to negotiate the game terms before the game, you do that in most card games. If you play Mau-Mau every family in germany has its own "house rules", just like with rommé, skat or poker.
And yes, sometimes that needs talking if you come together with others, but then you negotiate how to play. And it would be pretty idiotic to say: "Oh no, I have to draw two cards on a 9, not on a 7?! Madness, I won't play that crap!"

Scenarios like that aren't an issue. It's that 40k is in a state where you must negotiate on how to play to have an enjoyable game due to the poor rules.

Did some cleaning, I would like to ask people to stay on topic, to remain polite and to leave everything else out of it, be it politics or riling people up for gaks and giggles and so on.

 Horst wrote:
Why is that not a skill?

I'd say it's a "skill" ... if you can say finding a recipe online, making a grocery list, then following the steps to that recipe to make dinner is "skill". So, sure- it's a skill, I guess. Just not much compared to other things. You're right, there are games out there that require a lot more skill and a lot more thought and tactics. Hell, I think even Necromunda is better in that respect- and that's a game you can easily break and exploit the rules as written- to a point where hosting a campaign flat-out requires everyone to get together and agree on the house-rules.

No, really- ask about the "just for fun" Necromunda tournament I hosted. Had I not immediately sat down and gone through the rules for 3 days, looking for ways to break the game and updating my tournament rules, I'd have had people showing up with a list of 30 Chaos Cultists with Autopistols- and if you know anything about Necromunda, you know that in a straight-up skirmish fight, the horde of cultists is going to win. And chances are, the guy that wanted to do this would have thought he was 'good' at Necromunda.

And like I said before, there's quite a few "Competitive" 40k players that will try other games and quickly find out that 'netlisting' is far less effective in other games, and end up sobbing in the corner because the game took actual thought, improvisation, resourcefulness, and tactics rather than crutching on a meme list.

Also you're not wrong about how anything can be competitive. But considering the way 40k's rules are, it's not really a game that's balanced enough for the 'competitive' nature to be taken seriously.

I mean, imagine a video game championship- let's just say it's an arcade fighting game and one player's buttons stuck and his joystick was bent. It'd be hard for his opponent to say he won 'fair and square' all due to his skill.

Blastaar wrote:
Scenarios like that aren't an issue. It's that 40k is in a state where you must negotiate on how to play to have an enjoyable game due to the poor rules.

That's true. And it shouldn't be, if we're going to try and pretend it's a competitive game. But, that's why I don't think it's really competitive.

I mean, it'd be hard to say that Boxing is 'competitive' if it matched Floyed Mayweather against some kid in the Special Olympics and said that it was 'balanced' because the kid's wheelchair puts him in the same weight class as Mayweather.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
I wouldn't even dream of ever attending a tournament with anything below an 80% representation of Castellans and mixed Aeldari, obviously.

I enjoy the competitive scene of this version of 40k about as much as I enjoyed the WHFB 7th edition post the Daemons release.

Well, they did say balance is one of the things that ISN'T in a good place.

Blastaar wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I don't know what's the problem for people to negotiate the game terms before the game, you do that in most card games. If you play Mau-Mau every family in germany has its own "house rules", just like with rommé, skat or poker.
And yes, sometimes that needs talking if you come together with others, but then you negotiate how to play. And it would be pretty idiotic to say: "Oh no, I have to draw two cards on a 9, not on a 7?! Madness, I won't play that crap!"

Scenarios like that aren't an issue. It's that 40k is in a state where you must negotiate on how to play to have an enjoyable game due to the poor rules.

I disagree. I had that experience in 7th, yes, because of formations and a huge power gap. In 8th it's not that bad aside from some outliers like Superheavies/knights in lower point games. But I'm also of the opinion it would be good to have some rules for higher point games, were you simplify what every model in a unit does and restrict superheavies to that epic mode/apocalypse or how you want to call it. In lotr they did that kind of with the war of the ring system.
Even without that 8th edition is still not breaking down because of superheavies since everything can hurt anything and you can concentrate on objectives if nothing else. If some units like a castellan are undercosted that's the easiest thing to solve.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Even without that 8th edition is still not breaking down because of superheavies since everything can hurt anything and you can concentrate on objectives if nothing else. If some units like a castellan are undercosted that's the easiest thing to solve.

I'm not really good at math-hammering percentiles out, but let's be real...

In a 500 point game, on a 4x4 table... if you're stomping around the table with a knight- sure, I "can" hurt you with bolters. On a 6. And you'll get your armor saves. So I don't know the exact percentage of those odds but let's just say "low enough that it's not going to be much fun".

And your knight is going to put out more firepower than my two squads of Marines by a long shot- so you can say 'concentrate on objectives' but that's not gonna be an option after turn 3 at most. I mean, once you're gorilla-stomping squad A after you've blasted squad B... my Lieutenant is standing there by himself in a building.

Yeah, superheavies or Primarchs etc... can cost 400-600 points but they aren't really manegable by armies lower than at minimun 1500-1750 points. The moment you go down to 1k points or even lower, is just not designed for that.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Even without that 8th edition is still not breaking down because of superheavies since everything can hurt anything and you can concentrate on objectives if nothing else. If some units like a castellan are undercosted that's the easiest thing to solve.

I'm not really good at math-hammering percentiles out, but let's be real...

In a 500 point game, on a 4x4 table... if you're stomping around the table with a knight- sure, I "can" hurt you with bolters. On a 6. And you'll get your armor saves. So I don't know the exact percentage of those odds but let's just say "low enough that it's not going to be much fun".

And your knight is going to put out more firepower than my two squads of Marines by a long shot- so you can say 'concentrate on objectives' but that's not gonna be an option after turn 3 at most. I mean, once you're gorilla-stomping squad A after you've blasted squad B... my Lieutenant is standing there by himself in a building.

I'm just putting this here so I remember to come back to it. I'm going to play this out with a firend of mine later. I'll take the Marines list (1 patrol, Lieutenant, 2 squads of Marines built as on the box (Missile Launcher and Plasma Gun) and an assault squad to get to 500) he'll take the knights (Crusader with Sainted Ion and Ion Bulwark). I'm not a marine player, but I am a tournament player, whilst may mate does play Knights, but only casual so it should be interesting. We'll be playing a random CA 2018 mission so I'll report back later.

Drager wrote:
I'm just putting this here so I remember to come back to it. I'm going to play this out with a firend of mine later. I'll take the Marines list (1 patrol, Lieutenant, 2 squads of Marines built as on the box (Missile Launcher and Plasma Gun) and an assault squad to get to 500) he'll take the knights (Crusader with Sainted Ion and Ion Bulwark). I'm not a marine player, but I am a tournament player, whilst may mate does play Knights, but only casual so it should be interesting. We'll be playing a random CA 2018 mission so I'll report back later.

I'm curious about the results.

I'll wager a sock without a match that it's over in turn 3.

I think a better analogy to Warhammer 40k if we're going to use Sirlin's discussion on SF2 is "Old Sagat" rather than Akuma. I'll post the quote below for source but basically, Old Sagat isn't "broken" like Akuma is, but there's also a gentleman's agreement to not use him because he invalidates a few other characters; the field of available characters has more diversity if you remove him. This is a better comparison to 40k because something like the Knight Castellan isn't "broken" in the sense it breaks the game, but it existing certainly means a lot of other things are nonviable to play (most any vehicle for example).

Actual Quote:

David Sirlin, Playing to Win, What Should be Banned? wrote:
The character in question is the mysteriously named "Old Sagat." Old Sagat is not a secret character like Akuma (or at least he's not as secret!). Old Sagat does not have any moves like Akuma's air fireball that the game was not designed to handle. Old Sagat is arguably the best character in the game (Akuma, of course, doesn't count), but even that is debated by top players! I think almost any expert player would rank him in the top three of all characters, but there isn't even universal agreement that he is the best! Why, then, would any reasonable person even consider banning him? Surely, it must be a group of scrubs who simply don't know how to beat him, and reflexively cry out for a ban.

But this is not the case. There seems to be a tacit agreement amongst top players in Japan--a soft ban--on playing Old Sagat. The reason is that many believe the game to have much more variety without Old Sagat. Even if he is only second best in the game by some measure, he flat out beats half the characters in the game with little effort. Half the cast can barely even fight him, let alone beat him. Other top characters in the game, good as they are, win by much more interaction and more "gameplay." Almost every character has a chance against the other best characters in the game. The result of allowing Old Sagat in tournaments is that several other characters, such as Chun Li and Ken, become basically unviable.

That seems way more appropriate to compare to 40k as there are a lot of units that by virtue of being allowed to use make several other things unviable to use

Also, in regards to the idea that it's okay to bring a Knight to a 500 point game because "it's legal", technically yes that's true. Peregrine, in particular, has been very vehement about their ideas that as long as something is legal, it doesn't matter. And has also been equally vehement that it's on the other person to "git gud" and bring a good list, rather than dare to ask the more competitive person to tone theirs down. I remember reading something once about someone who legit got angry at their opponent for NOT doing this, saying how they "wasted their time" and basically throwing a hissy fit because they brought a tryhard netlist and their opponent did not, and naturally they crushed the person. They actually insulted their opponent for not bringing a netlist. This is what Peregrine's attitude reminds me of; it might have even been something they said but I don't think so as they tend to not be as blunt in insulting people.

The other alternative is that if a Knight is not balanced at all in games at a 500 point limit, why does the game allow it to be taken in such a game?

GW could just put in a system whereby units are excluded from different levels of play through the Keyword system. So, give stuff like Knights and Superheavy vehicles a specific keyword and then put in a rule where units with those keywords are limited at different points levels.

For example let's say the keyword is SUPERHEAVY.
Then just have rules in the matched play army creation rules whereby the number of units with the SUPERHEAVY keyword is limited to:
0 in games =< 500pts
1 in 500pts < games <= 1000pts
etc.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The other alternative is that if a Knight is not balanced at all in games at a 500 point limit, why does the game allow it to be taken in such a game?

GW could just put in a system whereby units are excluded from different levels of play through the Keyword system. So, give stuff like Knights and Superheavy vehicles a specific keyword and then put in a rule where units with those keywords are limited at different points levels.

For example let's say the keyword is SUPERHEAVY.
Then just have rules in the matched play army creation rules whereby the number of units with the SUPERHEAVY keyword is limited to:
0 in games =< 500pts
1 in 500 < games <= 1000pts
etc.

That would be sensible but it goes against GW's philosophy of allowing essentially completely unrestricted list building. That's the main reason the game is as unbalanced as it is, IMO. With no real restrictions on what you can take in an army you lose one of the best tools a designer has for balancing the game. The other consequence of this is that armies stop looking like armies. Between free rein to soup whatever you want and all the different detachment options, armies now look like a random assortment of stuff rather than coherent forces.

Restrictions mean less sales.

auticus wrote:
Restrictions mean less sales.

Not if we are to actually believe GWs nonsense about Narrative and Open play (whilst at the same time not actually offering any guidance or suggestions for narrative campaigns beyond "play these missions we wrote back to back")

Everyone who wants to play with Knights against basic infantry is still free to do so, as they have been in every single edition.

Slipspace wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The other alternative is that if a Knight is not balanced at all in games at a 500 point limit, why does the game allow it to be taken in such a game?

GW could just put in a system whereby units are excluded from different levels of play through the Keyword system. So, give stuff like Knights and Superheavy vehicles a specific keyword and then put in a rule where units with those keywords are limited at different points levels.

For example let's say the keyword is SUPERHEAVY.
Then just have rules in the matched play army creation rules whereby the number of units with the SUPERHEAVY keyword is limited to:
0 in games =< 500pts
1 in 500 < games <= 1000pts
etc.

That would be sensible but it goes against GW's philosophy of allowing essentially completely unrestricted list building. That's the main reason the game is as unbalanced as it is, IMO. With no real restrictions on what you can take in an army you lose one of the best tools a designer has for balancing the game. The other consequence of this is that armies stop looking like armies. Between free rein to soup whatever you want and all the different detachment options, armies now look like a random assortment of stuff rather than coherent forces.

This. GW approach has always been to allow flexibility in list design. The drawback is they refuse to properly limit things, and put the onus on the players to police themselves which as we see rarely works. Yet GW seems to think everyone discussed the sort of game they want with their opponent beforehand as that is usually their go-to answer when this inevitably comes up.

The best way to do this would be the 25% points limit on superheavies, but then people would bitch that they can't field them.

when house rules and forced unit limitations is the only way to get a somewhat "fair" game in a club/store drop-in game, then the game is as far away from good as it can be.
they should look at AoS, that game is in a way better place then 40k, even tough that too is far from good.

40K works much better than other games in absence of a social agreement.

MTG is simply unplayable. I'm gonna say "Standard" you are gonna say "Ok, standard!", then i put a premade standard deck on the table and you put a competitive one. Guess who's not going to enjoy the game?

Warmahordes is even worse. The difference between bad lists and good lists is so huge that it is like playing fluffy chaos marines against Eldar scatspam in 7th. You have no chances of winning.

The same is true for popular pc games. Wanna try going against a Goat with a fun and random composition in overwatch?

Apart from some truly nightmare games like imperial soup against mono GK, any other game is at least enjoyable. Yes my fluffy mono SM will not win many games against an optimized IG, but out of 10 games i will win 2 or 3.

Spoletta wrote:
40K works much better than other games in absence of a social agreement.

MTG is simply unplayable. I'm gonna say "Standard" you are gonna say "Ok, standard!", then i put a premade standard deck on the table and you put a competitive one. Guess who's not going to enjoy the game?

Warmahordes is even worse. The difference between bad lists and good lists is so huge that it is like playing fluffy chaos marines against Eldar scatspam in 7th. You have no chances of winning.

The same is true for popular pc games. Wanna try going against a Goat with a fun and random composition in overwatch?

Apart from some truly nightmare games like imperial soup against mono GK, any other game is at least enjoyable. Yes my fluffy mono SM will not win many games against an optimized IG, but out of 10 games i will win 2 or 3.

This is an excellent post and anyone with experience in competitive gaming beyond tabletops, I'd imagine most people but I don't know, should be able to recognise the truth in this statement.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
40K works much better than other games in absence of a social agreement.

MTG is simply unplayable. I'm gonna say "Standard" you are gonna say "Ok, standard!", then i put a premade standard deck on the table and you put a competitive one. Guess who's not going to enjoy the game?

Warmahordes is even worse. The difference between bad lists and good lists is so huge that it is like playing fluffy chaos marines against Eldar scatspam in 7th. You have no chances of winning.

The same is true for popular pc games. Wanna try going against a Goat with a fun and random composition in overwatch?

Apart from some truly nightmare games like imperial soup against mono GK, any other game is at least enjoyable. Yes my fluffy mono SM will not win many games against an optimized IG, but out of 10 games i will win 2 or 3.

This is an excellent post and anyone with experience in competitive gaming beyond tabletops, I'd imagine most people but I don't know, should be able to recognise the truth in this statement.

In terms of video games I think people tend to not see it because it's so much faster and easier to switch over to the meta picks/strategies yourself, so you never really experience a "casual vs competitive" scenario. Also there generally tends to be an automatic system in place matching you against players with a similar attitude towards the game as your own - if you play competitively in a video game, matchmaker systems will pit you against similarly competitive players.

The "40k vs other tabletop games" divide though, that is something that has always boggled my mind. The fact people complain about book bloat in 40k when you have something like DnD/Pathfinder/Flames of War out there where you simply will not own every publication that exists for the game, it is impossible to do so, and they complain about miniature pricing and monoposed-ness in 40k when you have something out there like Malifaux where A) all the models are completely monopse and B ) you are very often paying more per piece of mass-produced plastic than you would be from GW...it's kind of nuts to me. The grass is always greener, I guess.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

auticus wrote:
Restrictions mean less sales.

Not if we are to actually believe GWs nonsense about Narrative and Open play (whilst at the same time not actually offering any guidance or suggestions for narrative campaigns beyond "play these missions we wrote back to back")

Everyone who wants to play with Knights against basic infantry is still free to do so, as they have been in every single edition.

Yeah but most of us know that 99% of the population are matched-play only. Very very very few people are going to shell money for a knight if they can't always use it. They learned that with trying to push super heavies on the game but those weren't for "real 40k" games, they were only for apoc. Lo after not being able to sell the superheavies, 6th comes out and says super heavies can be fielded, even in 500 point games.

Superheavies began selling.

auticus wrote:
Yeah but most of us know that 99% of the population are matched-play only.

Citation needed.

auticus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

auticus wrote:
Restrictions mean less sales.

Not if we are to actually believe GWs nonsense about Narrative and Open play (whilst at the same time not actually offering any guidance or suggestions for narrative campaigns beyond "play these missions we wrote back to back")

Everyone who wants to play with Knights against basic infantry is still free to do so, as they have been in every single edition.

Yeah but most of us know that 99% of the population are matched-play only. Very very very few people are going to shell money for a knight if they can't always use it. They learned that with trying to push super heavies on the game but those weren't for "real 40k" games, they were only for apoc. Lo after not being able to sell the superheavies, 6th comes out and says super heavies can be fielded, even in 500 point games.

Superheavies began selling.

Yep. Absolutely this. GW puts limits, and people buy 1 (or none) of something rather than 3. Why else do you think "rare" things like the Riptide and Stormsurge aren't restricted like they used to do? Back in my day you had things that were 0-1 restricted, or 1 per X (they still do this to some minor degree which makes it stranger they don't apply it more), or required 2000 points or more, or a percentage, or opponent's permission. Over time almost all of those went away because they realized if you had to ask permission to field Abaddon, your opponent might say NO and then you can't use that model you bought, so they removed it. Despite IMHO all of those things being good to help balance the game and keep things like special characters actually special (so you don't see Guilliman showing up in every skirmish in the universe).



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 Melissia wrote:

auticus wrote:
Yeah but most of us know that 99% of the population are matched-play only.

Citation needed.

There is no citation needed. The vast majority of games played are matched play games with points. I'd wager there is a much smaller amount of Narrative (way more than open, but much less than matched) and an extremely tiny minority of Open play games out there. Yet GW tries to cater to three styles when one (arguably the one they pay the least attention to) is vastly more popular and desired.