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“Ivory Tower design” and the Citidel logo have gone hand-in-hand since the 90’s. There’s a reason a lot of people buy their “games” and throw away the cardboard, just to keep the minis. Their rules have always and always will be rubbish for anything more than a “a lark with friends”.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...

This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.

That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better while in other games you'll get meaningful advice that isn't throw out 90% of your army and take whatever spammy bullgak du jour is making its rounds. I recall very fondly a good example in MkII Warmahordes when Man-o-War Shocktroopers (a really cool looking unit that often got people's eye) wasn't that great but you would frequently see people offer suggestions on how to make them work with other options. You rarely, if ever, saw "They suck don't take them" as a response. Compare that to 40k and something like Terminators (those still suck right?) where you'll likely be told to replace your cool Terminator list with something else rather than be offered useful advice on how you can run a Terminator list.

nou wrote:
Math.

You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.

Yeah. Discussion of tactics in 40K is severely limited by the lack of genuine tactical choices in the game, which is due to the rules.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Yeah. Discussion of tactics in 40K is severely limited by the lack of genuine tactical choices in the game, which is due to the rules.

Exactly. So instead of a discussion on how to make the most of unit X because the OP really wants to use Unit X, it's constant "Drop that and take Unit Y". I've seen list advice discussions, here and like on Facebook, where the advice is basically throw away 90% of your list and take all this other stuff; rarely if ever is it actual advice how to use what the person suggested.

It's ridiculous.

Wayniac wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...

This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.

That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better while in other games you'll get meaningful advice that isn't throw out 90% of your army and take whatever spammy bullgak du jour is making its rounds. I recall very fondly a good example in MkII Warmahordes when Man-o-War Shocktroopers (a really cool looking unit that often got people's eye) wasn't that great but you would frequently see people offer suggestions on how to make them work with other options. You rarely, if ever, saw "They suck don't take them" as a response. Compare that to 40k and something like Terminators (those still suck right?) where you'll likely be told to replace your cool Terminator list with something else rather than be offered useful advice on how you can run a Terminator list.

That’s not quite true. Most of the units are playable in relaxed/casual games (where GW lives), but they are rubbish when viewed competitively. If tournaments were earthquakes, GWs flimsy rules would start to badly wobble at .5, and utterly crash at 3 on the Richter scale. Yet most tournaments I’ve witness try to play at 8.5 or higher end of the scale and you end up with replacing the entire structure with something far more sturdy.

Wayniac wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Yeah. Discussion of tactics in 40K is severely limited by the lack of genuine tactical choices in the game, which is due to the rules.

Exactly. So instead of a discussion on how to make the most of unit X because the OP really wants to use Unit X, it's constant "Drop that and take Unit Y". I've seen list advice discussions, here and like on Facebook, where the advice is basically throw away 90% of your list and take all this other stuff; rarely if ever is it actual advice how to use what the person suggested.

It's ridiculous.

Mhmmm. I mean look at the removal of vehicle facings. There is now zero reason to flank a vehicle as it doesn't make a difference. The player gains no advantage for doing so.

This then affects what weapons are most efficient for taking out vehicles. Weapons which need to be mobile and get into range, such as meltaguns, are now much less desirable as mobility is much less important. Why take a meltagun which requires you to forego shooting for a turn or two whilst you close the gap to your target and remove the chaff around it when you could take a lascannon which can shoot from turn 1 without needing to worry about getting into range or the chaff?

Why move your infantry squads to flank or encircle your opponent when doing so takes them out of the aura range of your commander and that encirclement doesn't actually make the enemy any easier to kill?

They did that intentionally because having to perform maneuvers made the game more difficult and not fun to a lot of people.

They wholly embrace the no risk all reward extreme edge of game design.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.

It's a long standing theme when GW are asked about sloppy balancing.

Of course if someone were to write and distribute more balanced 40k codex/rulesets they would get slapped down faster than you could say 'forge the narrative'

Wayniac wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...

This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.

That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better.

See, I totally disagree with that. Only squads are literally unplayable.
(and maybe corsairs? But I'm not familiar with their rules, just repeating what I read from some dakka-posters). For everything else there is a use, even it's sometimes a situational one. Or a scenario-specific one. You aren't content with your terminators deep striking on planet bowling ball? Well then, make up a Space Hulk mission for them. The game is there for players to have fun with their painted plastic toys. The advice: "Well, simply use other plastic toys" doesn't make sense in my view.
So far I didn't meet "trash units". My Plague hulk comes closest probably, but he at least works as distraction carnifex or objective blocker because the model is huge and it won't die. One time I killed a riptide with it but that's anecdotical. I killed ghost arcs with mutilators in 7th edition when the internet told me "this unit will never do anything".
It simply depends on the opponent's army, scenario rules, supporting elements in your list and last but not least what you're actually doing with your unit on the battlefield.
A typical dakka phrase is: "Don't use x, it will never reach the enemy/ it will get shot off the board turn 1" When reading stuff like that I'm always wondering: Do people never meet any Daemon players? Or CSM? Or Orks? Or Space Wolves? etc. Do people only play against Tau, Imperial Guard and Knights? Do people not use terrain?
There are tactics in 40K, and it's always hilarious when some people on dakka are surprised about tournament winning lists using units that "should not be playable" in their view.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Math.

You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.

You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.

This is still a game. And games are meant to be balanced. For 30 years, GW has failed to provide that. Let players provide the limitations they want for themselves, but don't just make crap rules and try and explain it away.

They don't need to make rules that necessarily make every list work. Iyanden players specifically set limitations on themselves to play to the background. Deathwing players are capable of putting limitations on themselves to play to the background. Aside from FO swaps, GW didn't need to worry about trying to make these lists competitive. Just make units themselves competetive and let the players worry about the rest.

GW is a model company first and often don't remember/care that those models are meant to be a part of a game. That's the problem and has been for as long as I've been playing.

nou wrote:
It simply doesn’t add up that competitive crowd is a main bulk of GWs playerbase. Every poll, dakka, independent or GW’s leaks from interviews place competitive crowd at about 10% of total players, with major bulk of customers being mainly collectors playing single digit games a year if any at all.

That is an interesting way of looking at it, thank you. Perhaps there's some hope after all.

From my experience, most folks posting lists and asking for advice say: "is this good/competitive?". In which case, it's perfectly reasonable to tell them "yes" or "no" and offer suggestions on replacements. Very rarely do I see anyone ask for advice on how to USE a unit or army, and when I do, most folks will give em that advice (though I'll admit they'll preface with "that's not a very good unit/list").

There are only so many ways you can abstractly discuss target prioritization and screening, the two primary tactical strategies you employ in 40k other than min/max the odds via list building.

Nvs wrote:
This is still a game. And games are meant to be balanced. For 30 years, GW has failed to provide that. Let players provide the limitations they want for themselves, but don't just make crap rules and try and explain it away.

No Game; not even Checkers, Chess, and Backgammon, has ever been perfectly balanced. The game became impossible to balance once they passed about 20 different datasheets and now that there are hundreds of different datasheets and thier permutations it pretty much is impossible. The best any game at that scale can hope for is a spread in which most models are at least playable and about a dozen models are overpowered(and targeted for the next round of nerfs) with another dozen being underpowered (and targeted for the next round of buffs). The fact that so many players keep trying to force WH and WH40k into this tight competitive pigeonhole instead of playing an actually tournament focused game just makes it worse.

It's true that the balance is a lot better than it used to be, but that's been at the expense of rules stability - like those in the Video Games realm, designers have largely stopped paring the rules down for easier balance (which players seem to hate) and instead focus on constantly tuning and re-tuning the rules (which generates tons of buzz and is generally liked by players).

Infinity and Warmachine have also gone down this same path, despite being far more tournament focused that WH(40k). Its inevitable.

Because of the effects of terrain, ad the fact that terrain should matter, it means that some units will inherently be better than other units on some boards, but not others, and vice versa.

It's good that tanks be more valuable on open ground than infantry, and it's good that infantry be better than tanks in built up areas.

pardon the crossover to another market here in this comparison... but i call complete and utter bs.

It is like in the electric bike world. Often you have the ebike that comes with a switch , a button, or a set of modes on a digital control panel and/or app to a connected phone. You have the "on road use" mode often limiting top speed to a pretty low amount like 15-19 MPH . They often also have an "economy" setting for maximum battery life but have a much lower top speed, thin 9-12 MPH. FInally you have "off road use and/or performance" which is exactly what almost everybody out there sets things to.

In the Ebike case the performance mode is what really should post for all stats, range, top speed etc should be measured as this is what the users are actually doing.

In the case of GW they know exactly how thier audience plays. They know they can try and be the "narrative guys" and thus explain poor rules balance. "guys its that we plan you to not play hyper competative/competative" despite knowing for a fact most people will only ever consider using the matched play rules.

put another way "we know you bought that old models and we are the good guys letting you use that old model in narrative... its too bad for all practical purposes you now will never be able to use your now discontinued model as they are not recommended for matched play, it really is unfortunate for you, but the blame for your problem as our customer resides in our other customers."

 ChargerIIC wrote:
No Game; not even Checkers, Chess, and Backgammon, has ever been perfectly balanced.

This comes up every time GW balance is discussed.

Nobody is asking for perfect.

nou wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Math.

You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.

You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.

But that's an absurd comparison. You're ignoring all of GW's non-40k revenue, along with things like milking the cash cow of whiny kids demanding a box of space marines to ignore 15 minutes later.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:
Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!

If you watched the video they talk about conversions in the video and the studio being for them. It looks like they just don't give the keys to that toy box to the tournament crowd though (either because it makes it easier to balance, or because they don't want another Chapter House incident or both).

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:
Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!

If you watched the video they talk about conversions in the video and the studio being for them. It looks like they just don't give the keys to that toy box to the tournament crowd though (either because it makes it easier to balance, or because they don't want another Chapter House incident or both).

The tournament crowd does not interest gw compared to their IP and therefore bottom line.

It certainly seems like any discussion on the "fairness" of points values is more a symptom where the rules decide what abilities of a unit are ideal or have value.

I find the main focus seems to appeal to our Magic the Gathering generation: we pay/play various stratagems to buff units in various situations (which needs to be fueled by Detachment CP's gained).
So this becomes a strong consideration in the army list sub-game in getting the most point effective units that are the least affected by chance.

Everything else below are the "details" of actual play mechanics:(spoiler for text we have probably read before) Blah...

The only rather complex "plan" is to leverage units for what they are good at (shooting/melee) and knowing your strategems well so you can spend them to maximum effect.

I'd honestly be surprised if a fair portion of GW's revenue wasn't generated by the competitive crowd "chasing the meta". Buying the best units (only to do it again when something gets nerfed or buffed). Getting paints and glue. Buying all the latest rulebooks. And, really, an unbalanced ruleset favors a business model that sells to those types.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Math.

You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.

You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.

But that's an absurd comparison. You're ignoring all of GW's non-40k revenue, along with things like milking the cash cow of whiny kids demanding a box of space marines to ignore 15 minutes later.

I am curious how much of their revenue is just paint. I am in a lot of 3d printing facbook groups and communities and am surprised how often tutorials and paint guides use Citadel paints. also when people post models they painted after printing they often include paints used and basically everything uses gw washes and paints in thier list. and these are often DND players and other RPG players (though i imagine there is a lot of wargamign crossover tehre)

probably conveniently consistent.

Also their colours aren't bad.
There are just some outliers

Well, if nothing else, opening this can of worms has made it pretty clear who doesn't bother to actually check to see what GW is saying and jumps in solely with their loaded nonsense to start bashing GW right out of the gate. Stay classy Dakka.

So let's break this down since people can't be trusted to do any research instead of stuffing their feet into their mouths:

James did not say the studio doesn't care about balance. He was saying that players over rely on a mythical idea of balance (which no one really agrees on based on what I've seen from the proposed rules section over the years, much less more casual commentary about rules or points costs) to have fun. If you got all wound up about how GW doesn't care about balance at all congrats, you can collect your No Prize™ at the door for your nonsense.

Furthermore, more than half the video was talking about conversions and how you can use them with points costs. An example given by name was taking the Laser Destroyer from the Chaos Knight Kit and giving it to a Loyalist Knight and pay the points for it. Want your Salamanders Primaris Captain to have a Thunderhammer? 40pts and jobs a goodun.

There was talk about homebrewing your own characters as well, but for most of us opening up the wargear options like this is what we wanted permission to do (I was the idiot trying to talk people to take five minutes to send the 40kfaq email a message about wanting conversion options for Primaris characters from the upgrade kits after all). This was that permission.

He also talked about how they decided to leave Marks off Chaos Knights because there wasn't a way to mark them in the kit to really set them apart as true representatives of their gods. The option for that to be added in later with an upgrade sprue made more sense to them as they want those god aligned knights to feel more like they represent their gods than just a paint job.

I am not someone who uniformly bashes GW. But I do not really care what some bloke on a podcast says about how the rules work. I am not gonna be bringing that podcast to games or letting people listen to it.

The way to promote conversions is to allow stuff in the rules for which there is no specific kit. Explicitly. In the printed rules.

Not handwaved in some podcast somewhere to provide cover for the fact that GW does not really support conversions or creativity to the same extent that they used to.

If I want to use stuff outside the written rules, I am gonna do that regardless of what some bloke who works for GW says. I do not need permission. But that requires negotiation and discussion and some people are difficult about that. So I like it when they provide that stuff in the core, written rules.

 Da Boss wrote:
I am not someone who uniformly bashes GW. But I do not really care what some bloke on a podcast says about how the rules work. I am not gonna be bringing that podcast to games or letting people listen to it.

The way to promote conversions is to allow stuff in the rules for which there is no specific kit. Explicitly. In the printed rules.

Not handwaved in some podcast somewhere to provide cover for the fact that GW does not really support conversions or creativity to the same extent that they used to.

If I want to use stuff outside the written rules, I am gonna do that regardless of what some bloke who works for GW says. I do not need permission. But that requires negotiation and discussion and some people are difficult about that. So I like it when they provide that stuff in the core, written rules.

While I agree, actual rules would be nice, I can also understand why they don't do it in the rules when they don't have dedicated kits for a given option. Looking at the mess that was the Chapter House lawsuit, the rise of 3rd party companies who make bits and replacement models the company isn't going to print rules unless they can support them in some way. As frustrating as it is, the company can't intentionally leave gaps in it's line like that if it expects to protect the IP. Knowing that is why I was asking them to let us use the upgrade sprue options on Primaris characters instead of asking for a bunch of options that don't exist anymore.

And just for the record, that "some bloke" is one of the 40k team's rules writers whose written a large chunk of the codexes we've got right now.

I suppose that is the reason for it, though I wonder why other industries can allow for after market parts but not Games Workshop in particular.