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The thing with 8th is it is a great rule set for open/narrative play. It works great if you play with a like minded group of mates who all have the same objective, an enjoyable game. The core rules work, the extra rules can be made to work, picked and chosen to best effect. Power levels are great. It’s only when people get competitive about the game, either in a tournament or just in manner that problems arise. It’s not about balance it’s more often about wording of a rule or grammar.

“Competitive” players who are most vocal on the Internet May well not be representative of the wider tournament community but you can see why anyone would be put off going to an event that has the potential to meet more than one of these types. They tend not to appreciate that people enjoy different aspects of the game from them. I’ve had them on here telling me I’m lying when I say it doesn’t matter who wins a game of 40k to me. It MUST matter! Apparently.

I think GW are doing very well at the minute maintaining the three ways to play and making “rules” that are match play only or suggestion like the rule of three. In the other modes it isn’t needed. In my group having 3 identical units is boring as hell and if anyone was bringing such a force it would be explained by a narrative and discussed before hand.

When tournaments first started they were a celebration of the hobby, people took pride in their armies and reports of the events were full of pictures of gorgeous armies lovingly built and described. I have never seen a phot of a winning army. It’s all about the list. It’s only the HH scene where people seem to take pride in bringing out a gorgeous army at an event. They are more like classic sports car races. A move back to that style of event at some times would encourage less competing players to attend events. Points for best army or story. As it stands I would avoid a tournament so as to minimise the risk of meeting who are the vocal superior competitive minority that poison the whole hobby. Spending a day with one of those would be bad, going to an event where there could be a dozen would be hell on Earth.

Well, part of the thing though is some of those AREN'T matched play rules. The "rule of three" for example isn't for Matched Play, it's for organized events (i.e. tournaments) just somehow everyone thinks it's a global matched play rule and applies it.

That's the sort of thing that's a problem because it's where tournament mentality seeps into all types of games instead of "staying in its lane" as the case may be.

Andykp wrote:
When tournaments first started they were a celebration of the hobby, people took pride in their armies and reports of the events were full of pictures of gorgeous armies lovingly built and described. I have never seen a phot of a winning army. It’s all about the list. It’s only the HH scene where people seem to take pride in bringing out a gorgeous army at an event. They are more like classic sports car races. A move back to that style of event at some times would encourage less competing players to attend events. Points for best army or story. As it stands I would avoid a tournament so as to minimise the risk of meeting who are the vocal superior competitive minority that poison the whole hobby. Spending a day with one of those would be bad, going to an event where there could be a dozen would be hell on Earth.

Agreed with all that post. The thing I find so sad about the way people sometimes talk about tournaments is that they're STILL mostly a hobby celebration. The vast majority of people at a big tournament aren't there with any serious intention to win or 'place' - they are there for a weekend away with friends and some fun games against new people. It's sad that the competitive aspect seems to be the only one that matters, or that the fact that hundreds of people turn up is somehow indicative of 'competitive 40k'. If 400 people turn up, my guess is that maaayyybeeee 100 are there to 'compete'. And that's being generous.

Regarding Heresy, I think the opportunity to show off armies is taken much more seriously. However, I think I've come up against just as many beatface ultra-competitive style players in Heresy as I have in 40k - in Heresy they just tend to pretend they aren't!

In 7th, basically any casual/fluffy/unoptimized CWE or Tau list would have destroyed most Ork or Tyranid lists, which meant many people couldn't play non-competitive games with the factions they enjoyed.
In 8th, there aren't such dramatic unbalance between codices. It's a lot more enjoyable at the narrative/casual end of the spectrum.

 Red Corsair wrote:

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This is a really good discussion about competitive 40k BTW guys. Good feedback on both sides.

Quite enjoyed it and would love to really debate the "do points matter" concept Ash baits throughout the whole thing.

It's something I've found more and more interesting as I've played a variety of game systems. I feel like players often put too much faith in points as an ultimate decider of balance, largely because that's how the idea is sold to players, but realistically there are too many secondary hidden currencies in game systems for points to ever be right. Even in AOS where there's less tactical application of DPP and Durability math, those kind of concepts can make relying on points for perfect math problematic at best (see Rend vs Ghosts).

I've come to appreciate that the biggest issue with points is just that the idea of paying for everything in a complex game system with the same currency leads to too many instances of overlapping design space. Game systems seem to get more varied as they introduce layers of structure to put fewer things in less direct competition. Things like Infinity's SWC or Warmachine's upcoming Requisition points are easy examples. Even Guild Ball sneaks it in by making list building a matter of getting 4 squaddy points, 1 captain point, and 1 mascot point. I even find 40k's current detatchment system produces a fair amount of variety, though somewhat in reverse by rewarding players for constructing their army out of 3 smaller groups. I do often think that separating out the points spent on models and their equipment would be overall good for the game.

Overall, I just see points as another stat that can be adjusted for balance and have somewhat let go of them as a complete arbiter for balance. They still matter. Ash regular spends about a quarter of his points on a pair of Blackstars that are just.... not worth over 200 a piece.... but getting all the points exactly right, bumping up your granularity to 1 million points games to do so, isn't going to actually balance the game the way people think unless you remove more or less all of the factors that make decisions on the table matter.

I've been far less interested in making constructs around lists that incentivize different styles of lists overall. Warmachine's recent trek into themes is probably a little restrictive, but does a good job making space for most of its stuff and I'm really happy with how Malifaux is doing the same. I think 40k could really benefit from the idea of specialist detachments taken a little further, making reasons to take a set of Terminators or something similar and breaking codexes up into separate detachment styles. I just find this trend away from adjusting points as a balancer and more towards designing smaller forces that are balanced against each other rather positive overall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wayniac wrote:
Well, part of the thing though is some of those AREN'T matched play rules. The "rule of three" for example isn't for Matched Play, it's for organized events (i.e. tournaments) just somehow everyone thinks it's a global matched play rule and applies it.

That's the sort of thing that's a problem because it's where tournament mentality seeps into all types of games instead of "staying in its lane" as the case may be.

Most of the time if a rule is good enough for tournaments, its almost certainly worth including in my casual games. They're pretty much the definition of rules that make a fairer game regardless of the effort players are putting in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Andykp wrote:

When tournaments first started they were a celebration of the hobby, people took pride in their armies and reports of the events were full of pictures of gorgeous armies lovingly built and described. I have never seen a phot of a winning army. It’s all about the list. It’s only the HH scene where people seem to take pride in bringing out a gorgeous army at an event. They are more like classic sports car races. A move back to that style of event at some times would encourage less competing players to attend events. Points for best army or story. As it stands I would avoid a tournament so as to minimise the risk of meeting who are the vocal superior competitive minority that poison the whole hobby. Spending a day with one of those would be bad, going to an event where there could be a dozen would be hell on Earth.

There's a little bit of rose colored glasses here. When tournaments first started it wasn't nearly as easy to share anything about them as it is now; there wasn't really any way to make them part of a global community either. I think some of this also comes from the difference in experiences more tournaments second hand via the internet and fewer in person. I get where the impression comes from, but part of that is just that lists are the easiest thing for players not at an event to connect with and learn from and on the internet, the audience is mostly people who were not at the event.

When you're actually at events, there's tons of celebration of the hobby going on still. A well painted army gets a ton of buzz and word of mouth sends players over to whatever table they can see it in action. Players joke about their favorite units and ask to see really cool conversions and paint jobs as they set up and nights are often spent regaling tales of improbable dice results over a round of drinks. A thing I've discovered over the years is that much of the banter you see on forums is between people that largely aren't winning or even going to many tournaments and the players that do don't bother to wade into the forums very often. It creates a situation where what you read about online is mostly a hollow echo of the actual event.

But you know what? We DO need to see some photos of the winning army. Most players invested enough to win a major tournament actually have gorgeous armies. Some of the best really. I'd love to see them get more attention. That's definitely a great point.

Part of the issue too is the armies have changed. Back in my day (2nd/3rd edition) you almost never saw a mixed army. Now? Almost every winning list (there are occasional "dark horse" exceptions) look like a hodgepodge of units without much, if any, coherence because they aren't built for looks, they're built to win. They boil the game down to numbers only, and screw the rest. I've seen things that push the hobby aspects lambasted as being useless in a tournament because in a tournament only winning should matter. If you ask me, that's not the sort of ecosystem that this hobby wants or needs. This isn't League of Legends or Magic the Gathering (although with the combo stacking it may as well be), the entire spectacle needs to be rewarded not just whoever comes up with (read: takes from someone else) the most broken list.

The game is too hard to balance and make "fair" do to the sheer size. I feel like had GW put the same effort that they are currently into the game back in 3rd edition, we would have had our best edition. Not talking about the actual game design, but the scale. 500 point Detachments are basically the size of an entire army at 1500 points back in 3rd. Now an army can be made up of 3-4 of those. All from different factions and sometimes with specialist detachments applied. THEN you look at strats and traits. It's just way too much. I feel like this is what kills the competitive scene currently for me, I really liked playing competitively again when the indexes were out, but by the fall we already were seeing the bloat reintroduced.

For competitive sake I hope 9th does 3 things.

1. Actually bothers with writing terrain rules

2. Penalizes soup rather then encouraging it

3. Cleans up this mess we have detachments and with CP's and using them as currency.

It's ironic that we are basically playing 7th ed unbound now, which people flipped over then, but now are OK since it's called something else and been over complicated.

If players were okay with terrible balance, what happened to 7th?

Well here, the same that happened in 5th when Draigo and company were stomping around, the same in 6th as well... they ate it up and kept on going.

My community has been the same size for about 20 years.

Wayniac wrote:
Part of the issue too is the armies have changed. Back in my day (2nd/3rd edition) you almost never saw a mixed army. Now? Almost every winning list (there are occasional "dark horse" exceptions) look like a hodgepodge of units without much, if any, coherence because they aren't built for looks, they're built to win. They boil the game down to numbers only, and screw the rest. I've seen things that push the hobby aspects lambasted as being useless in a tournament because in a tournament only winning should matter. If you ask me, that's not the sort of ecosystem that this hobby wants or needs. This isn't League of Legends or Magic the Gathering (although with the combo stacking it may as well be), the entire spectacle needs to be rewarded not just whoever comes up with (read: takes from someone else) the most broken list.

I don't really see this. Everything that mixes is pretty aesthetically coherent unless the players are intentionally going on out of their way to make incongruit paint schemes out of it. I get the complaints of prior ally systems, but everything now feels pretty much in line with the way 40k has always been depicted to me.

 Red Corsair wrote:


2. Penalizes soup rather then encouraging it

3. Cleans up this mess we have detachments and with CP's and using them as currency.

Yeah.

I like 8th overall, but CPs need a fix. GW tells us that command points exist to -- for instance -- allow Blood Angels to do Blood Angel-y things. But the best way to get the points to do Blood Angel-y things is to add cheap detachments from other factions...which also open up more stratagems!

The whole thing is backwards. Purer, more representative armies should receive more stratagem benefits. Soup armies should receive fewer, just because their nature allows them to find power in combos and compensate for weaknesses.

Of course, the reality is that GW is never going to discourage soup. It's too good for their bottom line.

If I were king, I'd put strict painting requirements on tournament entry and make best overall the real first place instead of most battle points. Then I'd bring back Ard Boys events as a way to contain everyone else like the old days.

 gorgon wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:


2. Penalizes soup rather then encouraging it

3. Cleans up this mess we have detachments and with CP's and using them as currency.

Yeah.

I like 8th overall, but CPs need a fix. GW tells us that command points exist to -- for instance -- allow Blood Angels to do Blood Angel-y things. But the best way to get the points to do Blood Angel-y things is to add cheap detachments from other factions...which also open up more stratagems!

The whole thing is backwards. Purer, more representative armies should receive more stratagem benefits. Soup armies should receive fewer, just because their nature allows them to find power in combos and compensate for weaknesses.

Of course, the reality is that GW is never going to discourage soup. It's too good for their bottom line.

I strongly prefer the way it is, but that's mostly because I think there's far too many factions at the codex level and the current system does a good job consolidating them into something more coherent. The old style of making each new model type its own faction that needs to be spammed to 2000 points is miserable to me. A few points spent on a large number of Guard backed up by a lot of points spent on a few marines is the Imperium to me. Chaos is spikey marines fighting along side their daemonic corruptors. The... 8? Factions we have now with a good diversity in sub themes is far more interesting than the 20ish factions of the past.

 auticus wrote:

If players were okay with terrible balance, what happened to 7th?

Well here, the same that happened in 5th when Draigo and company were stomping around, the same in 6th as well... they ate it up and kept on going.

My community has been the same size for about 20 years.

7th was the first time gw really managed to push it's community out here.

In a way i belive the community as a whole is too accepting torwards the often shoddy Jobs gw rules are.
However that's relative on a scale, which Disaster 7th is the point of danger for gw and anything less anything's fine.

 Irkjoe wrote:
If I were king, I'd put strict painting requirements on tournament entry and make best overall the real first place instead of most battle points. Then I'd bring back Ard Boys events as a way to contain everyone else like the old days.

I’ve often thought about this, given that the majority of people at a big tournament are there for the trip rather than there to see how ‘good’ they are at 40k.

Big tournament, make the main publicised 40k event a big narrative campaign. Teams, 1500pt armies, a big projected map, team leaders deploy forces, etc etc. No prizes for winning, etc.

Then do a side event for ‘really competitive’. No holds barred open 40k. Way fewer places, polystyrene terrain and no painting requirement.

 Irkjoe wrote:
If I were king, I'd put strict painting requirements on tournament entry and make best overall the real first place instead of most battle points. Then I'd bring back Ard Boys events as a way to contain everyone else like the old days.

I believe its mostly an American culture problem and not a GW problem.

Tournaments here in the NL (and from what I see, most of Europe) do have normal painting requirements and the winner is best overall which includes painting points (in the past also sportsmanship but that has slowly dissapeared because its a lot harder to score fairly).

What other people have said reads very true to me, on the internet you see the top X lists and that's it. so its easy to get the picture that its a no fun allowed cheese competition but your seeing 8 lists out of 100 and your not experiencing the joy of gaming that is felt even at the very top tables.
Yes some donkey-caves always exist but thats because your dealing with people and no amount of tournament setup is going to change that.

 Ordana wrote:

 Irkjoe wrote:
If I were king, I'd put strict painting requirements on tournament entry and make best overall the real first place instead of most battle points. Then I'd bring back Ard Boys events as a way to contain everyone else like the old days.

I believe its mostly an American culture problem and not a GW problem.

Tournaments here in the NL (and from what I see, most of Europe) do have normal painting requirements and the winner is best overall which includes painting points (in the past also sportsmanship but that has slowly dissapeared because its a lot harder to score fairly).

What other people have said reads very true to me, on the internet you see the top X lists and that's it. so its easy to get the picture that its a no fun allowed cheese competition but your seeing 8 lists out of 100 and your not experiencing the joy of gaming that is felt even at the very top tables.
Yes some donkey-caves always exist but thats because your dealing with people and no amount of tournament setup is going to change that.

That rings true to me too, based purely on the internet so no way indicative of all of US attitude but some of the worst offenders I’ve seen showing off the toxic side of the competetive scene donhail from the US. That’s not to say there are some prime douches from other countries too, I’m not going to name names they know who they are!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

“When you're actually at events, there's tons of celebration of the hobby going on still. A well painted army gets a ton of buzz and word of mouth sends players over to whatever table they can see it in action. Players joke about their favorite units and ask to see really cool conversions and paint jobs as they set up and nights are often spent regaling tales of improbable dice results over a round of drinks. A thing I've discovered over the years is that much of the banter you see on forums is between people that largely aren't winning or even going to many tournaments and the players that do don't bother to wade into the forums very often. It creates a situation where what you read about online is mostly a hollow echo of the actual event”

And this is why it’s sad, the idiots mouthing off on line about competition being the be all and end all put many reasonable people like me off ever going near an event.

Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

Very much the truth.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

That’s not alien at all. It is in fact far more common for a competitive player to go “here’s what I could do that would completely destroy you, but in the idea of fun, here’s what I will do”. Now a number of more competitive players play almost exclusively other competitive players, and the dudes who are in the regular top 10 are in constant prep mode. There’s rarely a stretch of more then 2 months where they aren’t going to a major or gt. Like some of these guys are pro 40kers. They make, if not a living, at least a fairly good supplement based off their skills at the game. And I know it is funny to think about, but would, say, Geoff Robinson be as great a caster as he is if he wasn’t also an extremely good competitive player (and this applies to more than just his 40k commentary)? I don’t think so

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

This is it. US culture is just a lot more intensely competitive than EU and the 40k crowd reflects it. GW is a British company but for better or worse they cannot ignore their US customers.

 barboggo wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

This is it. US culture is just a lot more intensely competitive than EU and the 40k crowd reflects it. GW is a British company but for better or worse they cannot ignore their US customers.

But they shouldn’t listen to only their ultra competitive customers and alienate the rest of the player base. And the vocal minority on here and other sites want them too. I firmly believe we need a paired down simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play.

Andykp wrote:

 barboggo wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

This is it. US culture is just a lot more intensely competitive than EU and the 40k crowd reflects it. GW is a British company but for better or worse they cannot ignore their US customers.

But they shouldn’t listen to only their ultra competitive customers and alienate the rest of the player base. And the vocal minority on here and other sites want them too. I firmly believe we need a paired down simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play.

This.

It's like a cancer that has infected the game. 40k's rule have never, ever been great for tournaments (well not like these so-called "pros" are wanting (lol, remind me again of when people got paid for attending 40k tourneys?)) as the rules are just not up to scratch. It's not a eSport. It never will be. Stop trying to make this game into something it is not and take your horrible incoherent soup lists away from this game I have loved for over 20 years and let the game go back to normality so we can stop having people think this is the normal way to play the game.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Andykp wrote:

 barboggo wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Obviously there will always be variation between individuals but US culture is very competitive starting at an early age. The idea of intentionally holding back for no other reason than to be more evenly matched is pretty alien to many people. I've even had people not believe me when talking about doing so; they found it more plausible I was making it up to cover for losing. That says quite a lot, I feel.

This is it. US culture is just a lot more intensely competitive than EU and the 40k crowd reflects it. GW is a British company but for better or worse they cannot ignore their US customers.

But they shouldn’t listen to only their ultra competitive customers and alienate the rest of the player base. And the vocal minority on here and other sites want them too. I firmly believe we need a paired down simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play.

This.

It's like a cancer that has infected the game. 40k's rule have never, ever been great for tournaments (well not like these so-called "pros" are wanting (lol, remind me again of when people got paid for attending 40k tourneys?)) as the rules are just not up to scratch. It's not a eSport. It never will be. Stop trying to make this game into something it is not and take your horrible incoherent soup lists away from this game I have loved for over 20 years and let the game go back to normality so we can stop having people think this is the normal way to play the game.

Not this. Incoherent soup lists are a product of the 'Forge the Narrative' push by GW and GW alone. The so called 'competitive' crowd didn't want anything to do with that until it was forced into the game and they had to deal with it anyway.

Voss wrote:

Not this. Incoherent soup lists are a product of the 'Forge the Narrative' push by GW and GW alone. The so called 'competitive' crowd didn't want anything to do with that until it was forced into the game and they had to deal with it anyway.

No. Both are equally guilty. Gw saw an opportunity to sell more stuff (why sell someone one army when you can sell them ALL of them. They were just giving people what they wanted, since folks have wanted allies since third ed. 'Forge the narrative' was just a catch-all term to folks to shrug their shoulders, visualise what the dice were saying was happening, and carry on.

And while gw pushed allies and broken soup, let's be clear - gamers are still the other side of the very same coin, and there were more than a minority of gamers who were more than happy to take said broken soup. And take eight of everything, run with it, smiling with glee and then inflict it on any guy/girl opposite them.

I think "soup" makes more sense than the Imperium having all these separate armies. It would be rare that any Imperial force fights completely on their own.

The problem seems to be with implementation where there are no restrictions (or few enough that they do not matter) that allow people to cherry pick all the best stuff. Not to mention the fact that so much of what is available is Imperials.

Would be cool to have a list where it was just "armies of the imperium" and gave a more limited and balanced selection of units to make a cohesive "soup" army, but limited more specialist units to the "pure" faction armies so that faction identity is maintained. Kind of like what Mantic did with Forces of Nature as the "soup" list but then making lists for Trident Realms, Salamanders and the Herd as the "faction lists" with the specialist units and so on.

Andykp wrote:
But they shouldn’t listen to only their ultra competitive customers and alienate the rest of the player base.

Andy, what makes you think that GW has not done so? "Listened" to the 'rest of the player base'? I myself don't have an answer for this question, but what makes you think the 'rest of the player base' has been ignored?

Given that, for more than a year, GW has been back on message boards, the FaceBoook forum, and has a more active email/inquiry mechanism (their community page), I'd say there's plenty of opportunity for them to get input from the casual players to tourney going players. And the evidence that GW listens, is their twice a year BIG FAQ, adjusting parts of the game (nerfing Smite Spam for example).

It does make sense that organized groups, like the ITC, are going to get more attention, because they're representing such a large base of players and these groups have big tourneys that draw a lot of attention.

But that doesn't invalidate the input from *anyone*, everyone, casual players, from getting to tell GW what's up.

And I ask you, 'How are the [my words] 'casual players' being alienated?'

Andy, if you're not satisfied with the state of 'competitive play', let's call it tournament play or GW's term, "Matched" play, if you're not happy with it, what steps have you taken, besides posting here? Have you got a few like minded players to have your own league? House rules? Banned Forge World? Painting requirements? Have you been posting on GW's FB? Emails to them?

Andykp wrote:
And the vocal minority on here and other sites want them too. I firmly believe we need a paired down simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play.

Didn't we get it? The 7e rule book, its actual rules, is 205 pages of game mechanics, and then 8e got paired to 8 pages of 'Core Rules'. And, there are 'Matched' rules versus Open and Narrative. I must be overlooking something. Would you please give an example or be more specific? (no sarcasm) Do you mean game mechanics? Missions?

What would you have as for a "simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play"? I'm asking nicely.

 Brothererekose wrote:

Andykp wrote:
But they shouldn’t listen to only their ultra competitive customers and alienate the rest of the player base.

Andy, what makes you think that GW has not done so? "Listened" to the 'rest of the player base'? I myself don't have an answer for this question, but what makes you think the 'rest of the player base' has been ignored?

Given that, for more than a year, GW has been back on message boards, the FaceBoook forum, and has a more active email/inquiry mechanism (their community page), I'd say there's plenty of opportunity for them to get input from the casual players to tourney going players. And the evidence that GW listens, is their twice a year BIG FAQ, adjusting parts of the game (nerfing Smite Spam for example).

It does make sense that organized groups, like the ITC, are going to get more attention, because they're representing such a large base of players and these groups have big tourneys that draw a lot of attention.

But that doesn't invalidate the input from *anyone*, everyone, casual players, from getting to tell GW what's up.

And I ask you, 'How are the [my words] 'casual players' being alienated?'

Andy, if you're not satisfied with the state of 'competitive play', let's call it tournament play or GW's term, "Matched" play, if you're not happy with it, what steps have you taken, besides posting here? Have you got a few like minded players to have your own league? House rules? Banned Forge World? Painting requirements? Have you been posting on GW's FB? Emails to them?

Andykp wrote:
And the vocal minority on here and other sites want them too. I firmly believe we need a paired down simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play.

Didn't we get it? The 7e rule book, its actual rules, is 205 pages of game mechanics, and then 8e got paired to 8 pages of 'Core Rules'. And, there are 'Matched' rules versus Open and Narrative. I must be overlooking something. Would you please give an example or be more specific? (no sarcasm) Do you mean game mechanics? Missions?

What would you have as for a "simple rule set like epic 40000 just for competitive play"? I'm asking nicely.

Firstly I don’t think we have been ignored but this very vocal minority that don’t represent all tournament players shout very loudly for changes to the whole game to make “balance” better for their style of play. The danger is GW will be overly swayed by them as they lobby very hard. So far they haven’t and all the books and add ins to 40k so far have catered very nicely to narrative and “casual” players as you call us. I prefer more hobby minded players. Maintaining the three ways to play is vital to that so that changes can be made that don’t impact the casual player adversely. I’m very lucky that I play ina very small but very like minded group and play the way we like with an ongoing narrative behind all our games if not campaigns. Other than that I partake in the staff surveys and interact with gw on social media. The danger is I hear from players who aren’t lucky enough to have a group like me and who have to tiptoe around a minefield of pick up games where match play is the standard and tournament “rules” are enforced, see rule of three for an example. All this call for banning soup is another example. Soup and CP farming and all that work fine if you don’t abuse it. It isn’t broken. It’s inky when you look for a competetive edge that it goes from a nice narrative tool to being a game changer. And my group and many players like me don’t abuse it because we don’t want to win. We want a fun narrative exciting game. So ban soup for tournaments fine, but keep match play there. I’m told time and time again the balance is better for everyone, and I’m sure it could be but the game is balanced fine the way we play. Best it has been ever.

For your last point I guess you aren’t familiar with the epic 40000 rules or I wasn’t clear. Epic 40000 had rules for units where units provided fire power to attacks and they had set stats for units regardless of options. So balance was easier to achieve. The game flowed quickly and felt very tactical because the way attacks both damaged units and added blast markers to them. Hindering them in coming turns. It wasn’t I go you go. It alternated phases. List building was efficient and could provide characterful detachments that behaved tactically as you expect. It would fix all the things tournament players go on about wanting. It doesn’t just mean a small core rule book but stripped down rules for very model. And best of all it worked. It was a great game to play it just lacked a bit of character and detail, but tournament lists are as dull and uncharacterful as it gets anyway. So that is fine.

I’ve played every edition of 40k and epic and have seen the change the rise of the tournaments have had, just look on here at the you make the call section or the tactics threads. You can’t have a normal conversation about the game on there. 8th is the best of both, a good game for casuals and a thriving tournament scene. The two are like oil and water. The only way to improve one without damaging the other is to keep them separate.

 Grimtuff wrote:
This.

It's like a cancer that has infected the game. 40k's rule have never, ever been great for tournaments

What is the 'cancer'? Is it tourney play? If so, you seem to be over looking Rogue Trader Tournaments, that is, the tourneys that existed as far back as 1e, starting in the year 1987.

"Great"? That's subjective, as given massive tourney growth and popularity in the last 7 years, things must be at least 'good'. For all of 4e, when I started, there weren't tourneys that I could find (GW sponsored Games Days now and then, "T'anksGiving" were events, but certainly not tourneys). I am a tourney regular for 7+ years now. I attend 14 or so RTTs a year, and 4 to 6 GTs, leagues, too. And I think the rules are 'good enough' with some room for improvement (though that gap gets slimmer and slimmer every year).

 Grimtuff wrote:
Stop trying to make this game into something it is not and take your horrible incoherent soup lists away from this game I have loved for over 20 years and let the game go back to normality so we can stop having people think this is the normal way to play the game.

If you don't like, 'horrible incoherent soup lists', then ban them from your local scene. It's not hard. Get your group of players together, discuss and agree to ban multi-codex lists. Do have some dissenters? No problem, start a league, post your league rules (e.g. like having bans on FW and soup). Those who don't like your fixes don't have to sign up.

Done.

Maybe host an Apoc game a few times a year, so that players *can* field their models from multiple codices.

Now, as for 'normality'? What do you call normal 40k?

When I look at normal, there were always bad things in 40k:
Rhino Rush. Squats. Allies in 6e. 5e/6e Jaws of the World Wolf.
Bad & confusing game mechanics like "consolidate into a new combat" from 3e and 4e. Skimmers versus AP1.
Broken units: GK Rifleman dreadnaughts from 5e. 5e & 6e Mephiston. 29" assault range of 5e wyches. What's the assault range on hormagaunts now, with ... krakken? 32" 40"?

There's *always* been honked up stuff in 40k. That said, I still love this game, as one person's loved unit is another's bane. That's what I call 'normal' 40k. And now, twice a year, broken units and mechanics get nerfed. Usually.

There were tourneys in 2e & 3e. They largely disappeared from 4e to 5e (at least in California). That was the hay-day for the number of GW retail stores in the states, and they hosted tourneys once in a while. Towards 5e's waning years, tourneys came back and have showed no slowing down since.

When I think something is wrong, I talk to my local peeps, our RTT/FLGS TO, and I get to vote on things within the ITC, and I easily get to give input to the ITC organizers, frequently enough that we know each other by name.

Grimtuff, what do you do to fix 40k to how you like it?

 Brothererekose wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
This.

It's like a cancer that has infected the game. 40k's rule have never, ever been great for tournaments

What is the 'cancer'? Is it tourney play? If so, you seem to be over looking Rogue Trader Tournaments, that is, the tourneys that existed as far back as 1e, starting in the year 1987.

It's not tourney play per se, as that has always existed. It's this fairly recent push by certain individuals (possibly the same ones trying to "balance" the game to their whim) to try an make 40k an eSport. It's never going to be. The game simply ins't built for it, yet these hardcore "pros" come muscling in trying to make the game into something it is clearly not and frustratingly some people listen and think this is how the game, whose rules are frankly not up to scratch for this sort of thing; is supposed to be played. 40k is NOT LoL or whatever. If you want a game more suited for this then there are loads of others out there that are far more appropriate and stop trying to hamfistedly make 40k into something it is not because that is the only way some people can get validation in their little lives.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Brothererekose wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
This.

It's like a cancer that has infected the game. 40k's rule have never, ever been great for tournaments

What is the 'cancer'? Is it tourney play? If so, you seem to be over looking Rogue Trader Tournaments, that is, the tourneys that existed as far back as 1e, starting in the year 1987.

It's not tourney play per se, as that has always existed. It's this fairly recent push by certain individuals (possibly the same ones trying to "balance" the game to their whim) to try an make 40k an eSport.

Oh, video games? Did I miss something in the thread, on say pages 3 and 4? It's a bit off topic, eh? (again, my tone is intended to be nice, not snotty)

But wouldn't a 40k video game be something that GW puts out (and has already done so) having little to do with table top game mechanics and just much more of a FirstPersonShooter format, like Fortnight & M.U.D. games?

And who are these guys? Got names?

 Grimtuff wrote:
It's never going to be. The game simply ins't built for it, yet these hardcore "pros" come muscling in trying to make the game into something it is clearly not and frustratingly some people listen and think this is how the game, whose rules are frankly not up to scratch for this sort of thing; is supposed to be played. 40k is NOT LoL or whatever. If you want a game more suited for this then there are loads of others out there that are far more appropriate and stop trying to hamfistedly make 40k into something it is not because that is the only way some people can get validation in their little lives.

This is all too general.
Who are the 'pros' that are muscling in? Nick Nanavati? Sean Nayden? Reece Robbins?
And if it is Reece and crew (who have done more modifying than anyone else to make the game more tourney playable) then, I would disagree with the 'hamfisted' approach. More depending on who you mean.