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I am not casting shade because i dont think open play is bad. Again, YOU are defining open as being wholly without boundries. Open, in fact, is about setting your own boundaries. When itc set their boundries as being different from matched in the book they started playing open. Its not a bad thing. Its just what it is. Nothing about open precludes any rule. The opposite infact. Its all inclusive. Including all the added rules and minutia and structure of matched if you so choose.

ITC is trying to be competitive
And they are doing it using the freedom allotted by the open format.


Again, not bad. Just what it is.

Lance845 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

- "Bring what you have and plop it on the table" doesn't really need rules. If you want to do that, just do it? Even if you need rules, the "battleforged" rule pretty much handles all our needs, not getting CP already makes sure that some random pile of models will not be breaking any games.
- Sadly, open play is not just the removal of army building restrictions, but also removes a bunch of other restrictions that will ruin your game if someone chooses to exploit them, like limits on stratagems, psychic powers or understrength units. Just because of that reason, Open Play is not a game mode many people are willing to play.

I have said this before, what people actually play is almost exclusively Open Play.

You know ITC? Well nowhere in any officially published materials are those terrain rules and missions. So you are just playing some gak that somebody made up and that is very specifically Open Play. Open Play is not defined by a lack of army building rules or whatever. It's defined by it's openness to any and all rules. You can be playing 99.9% matched play with a slight tweak for your preference and in doing so you are actually playing Open. Open does not remove restrictions. Open leaves it open for YOU to remove restrictions, or add them, if you and your opponent agree to it.

The crazy misconception that just because you CAN play with no rules that suddenly Open is exclusively playing with no rules is so pervasive and 100% wrong. Because I bet the vast majority of every person who ever played in 8th has barely ever played Matched at all.

Um, sorry, but ITC rules are official for events running ITC rules. There are officially published materials produced by the ITC creators for them. They just aren't official for GW events.

Playing outside of GW's sandbox doesn't make them "unofficial" any more than NCAA rules are less official than NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB/FIFA/etc. rules. They are different events so what is official is what the event organizers stipulate.

 Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

- "Bring what you have and plop it on the table" doesn't really need rules. If you want to do that, just do it? Even if you need rules, the "battleforged" rule pretty much handles all our needs, not getting CP already makes sure that some random pile of models will not be breaking any games.
- Sadly, open play is not just the removal of army building restrictions, but also removes a bunch of other restrictions that will ruin your game if someone chooses to exploit them, like limits on stratagems, psychic powers or understrength units. Just because of that reason, Open Play is not a game mode many people are willing to play.

I have said this before, what people actually play is almost exclusively Open Play.

You know ITC? Well nowhere in any officially published materials are those terrain rules and missions. So you are just playing some gak that somebody made up and that is very specifically Open Play. Open Play is not defined by a lack of army building rules or whatever. It's defined by it's openness to any and all rules. You can be playing 99.9% matched play with a slight tweak for your preference and in doing so you are actually playing Open. Open does not remove restrictions. Open leaves it open for YOU to remove restrictions, or add them, if you and your opponent agree to it.

The crazy misconception that just because you CAN play with no rules that suddenly Open is exclusively playing with no rules is so pervasive and 100% wrong. Because I bet the vast majority of every person who ever played in 8th has barely ever played Matched at all.

Um, sorry, but ITC rules are official for events running ITC rules. There are officially published materials produced by the ITC creators for them. They just aren't official for GW events.

Playing outside of GW's sandbox doesn't make them "unofficial" any more than NCAA rules are less official than NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB/FIFA/etc. rules. They are different events so what is official is what the event organizers stipulate.

Hey if you come to my house to play i have a print out of beyond the gates of 40k. Il laminate it too. Its official that when you play at my house you are playing, officially, matched play 40k with my own special format. Officially.

Of course ITC rules unofficial! If I publish my houserules on the Internet they do not become official rules.

They do if enough people use them.

Martel732 wrote:
They do if enough people use them.

No they dont. They become common. They become popular. They dont become official until gw officially sanctions them.

Lance845 wrote:Hey if you come to my house to play i have a print out of beyond the gates of 40k. Il laminate it too. Its official that when you play at my house you are playing, officially, matched play 40k with my own special format. Officially.

If you are having an event at your house, then it is official for that event. If you have an organized club regularly meeting at your house, it is official for that club.

Crimson wrote:Of course ITC rules unofficial! If I publish my houserules on the Internet they do not become official rules.

Then I guess olympic, college, high school, and little league rules are unofficial, too, aren't they, since they aren't from professional ball organizations, right?

Publishing rules isn't what makes them official. What makes them official is their recognized use for events with a group of players, be it a small club, an intercity organization, an interstate organization, or international one. If it is used for a convention, it is official for that convention. Is this too difficult a concept to grasp?

 Lance845 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They do if enough people use them.

No they dont. They become common. They become popular. They dont become official until gw officially sanctions them.

GW is not a law agency. They don't sanction anything. They make plastic toys. Popular is more important than the whims of GW.

No they just own the copywrite, trademark, ip for the game we are discussing and nobody is allowed to produce official materials for it without their go ahead.

Unlike the irrelevent sports examples being given, the game 8th ed 40k isnt in the public domain where anyone can do whatever the hell they want.

On topic and relevant. 40k doesnt have 3 ways to play. It has 1 way to play and 3 ways to make missions. And mostly people play open, even though they think thats bad for some reason.

IP protections for a game are meaningless if no one plays that version of the game. I don't think GW can stop an ITC-style league even if they wanted to. ITC isn't claiming any IP rights, and exhaustion and fair use comes into play.

Anyone is free to come up with a game that uses GW's models. The protection on the models ends when you buy them.

While you are technically correct, naming is arbitrary and most people recognize organized play as matched play, not open play.

 Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:Hey if you come to my house to play i have a print out of beyond the gates of 40k. Il laminate it too. Its official that when you play at my house you are playing, officially, matched play 40k with my own special format. Officially.

If you are having an event at your house, then it is official for that event. If you have an organized club regularly meeting at your house, it is official for that club.

Crimson wrote:Of course ITC rules unofficial! If I publish my houserules on the Internet they do not become official rules.

Then I guess olympic, college, high school, and little league rules are unofficial, too, aren't they, since they aren't from professional ball organizations, right?

Publishing rules isn't what makes them official. What makes them official is their recognized use for events with a group of players, be it a small club, an intercity organization, an interstate organization, or international one. If it is used for a convention, it is official for that convention. Is this too difficult a concept to grasp?

Publishing rules is literally what makes them official. The official games workshop rules are published inside their books.

ITC uses a tournament pack for people to modify the official rules to run in their format. ITC official is something running their tournament packs.

But GW has no authority. We are free to use whatever rules we like.

Martel732 wrote:
But GW has no authority. We are free to use whatever rules we like.

You are
But being free to do whatever the hell you want with your toy soldiers doesnt make it "official".

Also technically correct is the best kind of correct.

You will lose a lot of court cases that way, but sure.

I'm not claiming anything about being official. I'm claiming that being "official" has no meaning in this scenario. GW has no method or desire to do any kind of enforcement, so therefore, officiality is toothless.

ITC will die when people no longer enjoy it. Maybe another league develops better systems to fix GW's fuckups. Who knows? What's clear going back to 1992, is that GW is never going to take the game end of their product seriously.

Martel732 wrote:
You will lose a lot of court cases that way, but sure.

I'm not claiming anything about being official. I'm claiming that being "official" has no meaning in this scenario. GW has no method or desire to do any kind of enforcement, so therefore, officiality is toothless.

ITC will die when people no longer enjoy it. Maybe another league develops better systems to fix GW's fuckups. Who knows? What's clear going back to 1992, is that GW is never going to take the game end of their product seriously.

Whilst true. ITC is still not matched play as per the rules, which was the entire point of the thought exercise.

It's considered matched play, though. It uses all of the matched play conventions such as psyker limitations. Again, naming schemes are arbitrary. I've never met anyone IRL that considers ITC open play.

Martel732 wrote:
It's considered matched play, though. It uses all of the matched play conventions such as psyker limitations. Again, naming schemes are arbitrary. I've never met anyone IRL that considers ITC open play.

You probably never will and on closer inspection pg 213 validates ITC, it outlines the definition of matched play and even caveats that some match play events may alter rules.

I genuinely thought the matched play rules were limited to their missions but apparently not.

I didn't have to read GW's book to know that that was the reality.

Lance845 wrote:No they just own the copywrite, trademark, ip for the game we are discussing and nobody is allowed to produce official materials for it without their go ahead.

Unlike the irrelevent sports examples being given, the game 8th ed 40k isnt in the public domain where anyone can do whatever the hell they want.

On topic and relevant. 40k doesnt have 3 ways to play. It has 1 way to play and 3 ways to make missions. And mostly people play open, even though they think thats bad for some reason.

The sports examples are not irrelevant because every single one of those games have many different levels of play, including in your backyard. Each of those levels of play have rules that are official for those levels of play and for the environs they play in. Citing the NBA rules at your local park will get you laughed at, while conversely, expecting college rules to be followed at the Olympics is equally laughable.

Dudeface wrote:Publishing rules is literally what makes them official. The official games workshop rules are published inside their books.

ITC uses a tournament pack for people to modify the official rules to run in their format. ITC official is something running their tournament packs.

Not entirely true. Publishing something means absolutely nothing if nobody uses them. It is the groups of people that use them that make them official. That is why I cited specific groups which have some authority to declare something official for the sports examples.

Lance845 wrote:Also technically correct is the best kind of correct.

I'm so glad you said that because "official means "authoritative, authorized, or recognized as authorized" by Merriam-Webster, the official dictionary of our country. Oxford Dictionaries, the official dictionary for the entire English language who passes online duties to Lexico, defines it as, "Relating to an authority or public body and its activities and responsibilties" or "having the approval or authorization of an authority or public body".

So long as a ruleset is being use by a public body, it is official, and ITC rather fits in to that description as it is a public body and their rules are used by public bodies for events. That is a technically correct definition.

If you hold a tournament and you use "most of the rules" and then publish your "house rules" it is conditional for use within that tournament, it is official enough.
"Official" is of course from the developer and publisher of the game BUT they do not hold and host the majority of the tournaments out there and do not seem to have a system to "force" them to adhere to the letter of the rules.
Most of these tournaments do the same thing as we do with our friends picking what scenarios we will play and scoring criteria.
Plus anything to help the look of the game along may be applied.
Harassment and competition with your friends is changed to bribery and competition in tournaments (maybe even bragging rights).

So yeah, maybe 8th or 9th could stand to have an update and ACTUALLY have clear tournament rules so we can be as official as we can be.
Some prize support or GW sanctioned local events would be wonderful as well.

 Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:No they just own the copywrite, trademark, ip for the game we are discussing and nobody is allowed to produce official materials for it without their go ahead.

Unlike the irrelevent sports examples being given, the game 8th ed 40k isnt in the public domain where anyone can do whatever the hell they want.

On topic and relevant. 40k doesnt have 3 ways to play. It has 1 way to play and 3 ways to make missions. And mostly people play open, even though they think thats bad for some reason.

The sports examples are not irrelevant because every single one of those games have many different levels of play, including in your backyard. Each of those levels of play have rules that are official for those levels of play and for the environs they play in. Citing the NBA rules at your local park will get you laughed at, while conversely, expecting college rules to be followed at the Olympics is equally laughable.

Dudeface wrote:Publishing rules is literally what makes them official. The official games workshop rules are published inside their books.

ITC uses a tournament pack for people to modify the official rules to run in their format. ITC official is something running their tournament packs.

Not entirely true. Publishing something means absolutely nothing if nobody uses them. It is the groups of people that use them that make them official. That is why I cited specific groups which have some authority to declare something official for the sports examples.

Lance845 wrote:Also technically correct is the best kind of correct.

I'm so glad you said that because "official means "authoritative, authorized, or recognized as authorized" by Merriam-Webster, the official dictionary of our country. Oxford Dictionaries, the official dictionary for the entire English language who passes online duties to Lexico, defines it as, "Relating to an authority or public body and its activities and responsibilties" or "having the approval or authorization of an authority or public body".

So long as a ruleset is being use by a public body, it is official, and ITC rather fits in to that description as it is a public body and their rules are used by public bodies for events. That is a technically correct definition.

Way more effort than i was willing to put in; props to you.

 Charistoph wrote:

Dudeface wrote:Publishing rules is literally what makes them official. The official games workshop rules are published inside their books.

ITC uses a tournament pack for people to modify the official rules to run in their format. ITC official is something running their tournament packs.

Not entirely true. Publishing something means absolutely nothing if nobody uses them. It is the groups of people that use them that make them official. That is why I cited specific groups which have some authority to declare something official for the sports examples.

Which is all good and well, but again that just makes them "the official ITC rules". Which is irrelevant at the end of the day, just play what you want where you want.

Dudeface wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Dudeface wrote:Publishing rules is literally what makes them official. The official games workshop rules are published inside their books.

ITC uses a tournament pack for people to modify the official rules to run in their format. ITC official is something running their tournament packs.

Not entirely true. Publishing something means absolutely nothing if nobody uses them. It is the groups of people that use them that make them official. That is why I cited specific groups which have some authority to declare something official for the sports examples.

Which is all good and well, but again that just makes them "the official ITC rules". Which is irrelevant at the end of the day, just play what you want where you want.

I wish it was "irrelevant". Remember how a group makes the rules official? If your local meta is the "tournament-only" type and all the tournaments they go to use ITC rules, then that makes it official for your local group. Guess what happens if someone who comes from the ETC crowd is visiting for the night, but no one bothers to mention it, either way? What if you're a new player and not ready to be facing off against the tournament crowd, but the only game you can get is with a tournament-only guy, and he doesn't bother going over the ITC rules with you? It's those situations which make it relevant.

And yes, some "heated discussions" have arisen at my meta at times because one person had an ITC expectation, the other hadn't, and they hadn't bothered talking about it first.

Much of this last page looks like a lot of butthurt that ITC is house rules ?

It doesn't matter if many people play ITC, it's still not the official GW rules.

Sure, GW can't kick open the door and tell them not to use those rules, they can choose not use them in house though. They can say the core rules aren't designed around ITC and they can if they really wanted to say they don't endorse them.

People could keep playing what they play but GWs say does hold much weight with a great many players and if they did take a firm stand against the favored house rules for matched play formats, many would listen.

They can't force people to not use them, but they aren't official GW rules and if GW closed tomorrow, those house rules wouldn't mean anything in pretty short order. If GW actively railed against them they would probably suffer a similar fate.

To claim the company that makes the game has no impact on how the game they make is played is really a bit daft. Just accept these tournaments run on house rules, take a breath and move on. They aren't the official GW rules, missions, scoring, etc, etc.

Just because more people like it more doesn't make it the standard, it can only make it the local standard.

Arguing how that wouldn't fly in court or whatever is equal stupid as we aren't talking about a legal case, we're talking about a company owned IP that many play with house rules and not following the GW standard. If you can't handle that, best get a cup life comes at you hard I guess.

That's fine, I think most of us played GW in various stages of house rules since we've played the game, I know I have.

The GW official rules are different from the ITC rules or the ETC, or any other house rules no matter how popular they become until they get published in the GW rule books as the ways to play, they are at best refined house rules. I can't imagine why some take that so personally aside from not liking the implication they aren't being " Official " sorry though, you aren't.

Just because GW have a certain shill relationship with the folks who put out those tournament house rules doesn't mean they can't change their mind at any time, nor does it make them official, it just makes them for now accepted by GW.

The tournament house rules are Lando, and GW is Vader, and if they wanted to, that deal could keep getting worse if they choose to alter their agreement. All the power here resides in the game makers hands, they would be good with or without the shills as new ones would be eager to spring up in their place who will follow the company line if they lay it down.

I don't care that much. Just describing itc as open play is silly to me.

I don't know I'd call it open play, just house rules seems to fit better.

ITC is a MAJOR change in play compare to GW rules, they not only changed missions but core rules.

Its for sure is a form of match play, but you can make open play like that too, to me its House rules using Open play to be match play.

Well as the OP only mentioned GW and CA2019, and did not mention ITC, I presume all of this ITC discussion is off topic, no?

I think that open play should be removed

Open Play isn't just those four pages, there are also quite a few rules which reference open play(Open War deck, for example), plus some things (like build your own landraider or looted vehicles) are only available for open play unless you are playing a narrative mission.

I can never play a looted vehicle or certain FW units in a matched game because GW didn't give them point values - just because open play exists.

I think I get your point. Are you saying that you wish you could use the Open War deck and build-your-own rules in matched play too? Because I totally agree there. Those things absolutely should have Matched Play points, but I don't think the existence of Open Play is to blame for their absence. I have the inverse view, I believe that were it not for existence of Open Play, those things wouldn't be available for anyone.

AngryAngel80 wrote:Much of this last page looks like a lot of butthurt that ITC is house rules ?

It doesn't matter if many people play ITC, it's still not the official GW rules.

Nobody has called them official GW rules, just official rules. They are the official rules for many of the events here in America, and that makes them the official rules that many of the people work from. It's that simple. Again, Olympic rules are official in the Olympics, but the NBA will operate by their own rules for their events. Sometimes they will work off each other.

Ginjitzu wrote:Well as the OP only mentioned GW and CA2019, and did not mention ITC, I presume all of this ITC discussion is off topic, no?

Actually, since ITC will update along with CA2019 and/or 9th Edition and (as I pointed out above) a considerable number of American metas use ITC as their official ruleset, it rather is on topic, no matter how dismissive people are of them.

 Charistoph wrote:

Ginjitzu wrote:Well as the OP only mentioned GW and CA2019, and did not mention ITC, I presume all of this ITC discussion is off topic, no?

Actually, since ITC will update along with CA2019 and/or 9th Edition and (as I pointed out above) a considerable number of American metas use ITC as their official ruleset, it rather is on topic, no matter how dismissive people are of them.

I'm not dismissing the ITC; merely pointing out the the OP didn't ask about it.