Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Salt donkey wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Uh, no. That is one of the issues with 40k for awhile now. There is no such things as real 40k. If there was to be such a thing GW would need to really put some effort into making one tuned good rule set. Then they could let tournaments do what they want but say " This is 40k and all the other off shoots are great too, but this is what we balance things on " That would also mean they need to actually balance things and well..that's a story for another time.

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, Man!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wanted to also ask one last question as well, To those saying that ITC isn’t “real 40k” what exactly stops it from being so? Is it because It was created by an entity that isn’t GW? Is it because it of the mission structure being radically different from enteral war/ malestorm missions? Is because of bottom floors of ruins blocking LOS? Is there another rules change I’m missing? Is it a combination of all this?

Just curious to your thoughts.

Houserules, seperate missions which are not balanced around the designer of the game itself, seperate terrain rulings.

Yeah for a tournament format, that is used for data generation for balance it certainly is the wrong set of parameters to go from, beyond the fact that it also is a seperate entity.

Salt donkey wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Uh, no. That is one of the issues with 40k for awhile now. There is no such things as real 40k. If there was to be such a thing GW would need to really put some effort into making one tuned good rule set. Then they could let tournaments do what they want but say " This is 40k and all the other off shoots are great too, but this is what we balance things on " That would also mean they need to actually balance things and well..that's a story for another time.

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, Man!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wanted to also ask one last question as well, To those saying that ITC isn’t “real 40k” what exactly stops it from being so? Is it because It was created by an entity that isn’t GW? Is it because it of the mission structure being radically different from enteral war/ malestorm missions? Is because of bottom floors of ruins blocking LOS? Is there another rules change I’m missing? Is it a combination of all this?

Just curious to your thoughts.

It's all of this in a part but the biggest issue is it's a single third party mission that's going a way to defining the static Meta. There's a lot of different missions and the living nature of the modern 40k ruleset mean that things constantly change or need to be reconsidered.

It's also played with a set terrain that many of us regard as insufficient to play the game as intended. The 1st floor rule was, frankly a lazy fix. But this is an understandable challenge for large scale tournaments.

Salt donkey wrote:

I wanted to also ask one last question as well, To those saying that ITC isn’t “real 40k” what exactly stops it from being so? Is it because It was created by an entity that isn’t GW? Is it because it of the mission structure being radically different from enteral war/ malestorm missions? Is because of bottom floors of ruins blocking LOS? Is there another rules change I’m missing? Is it a combination of all this?

Just curious to your thoughts.

Why a heavily houseruled version of the game is not 'real 40K' isn't a difficult question. Houserules are houserules, not 'real' rules. I really can't understand why so many people do not seem to understand this very elementary definition.

Salt donkey wrote:I wanted to also ask one last question as well, To those saying that ITC isn’t “real 40k” what exactly stops it from being so? Is it because It was created by an entity that isn’t GW? Is it because it of the mission structure being radically different from enteral war/ malestorm missions? Is because of bottom floors of ruins blocking LOS? Is there another rules change I’m missing? Is it a combination of all this?

Just curious to your thoughts.

They're house rules. It's as simple as that - if GW were the ones to make ITC and have published the same ruleset, I'd be regarding it as official. Probably still wouldn't play it, but I'd at least recognise it as part of the intended way to play 40k, and that GW have a responsibility to balance to it.
As it is, it's a popular third party house rule set, which somehow inexplicably means GW are responsible for rebalancing their game because of an unofficial ruleset?

However, I do want to make it clear - it being a set of unofficial house rules, no matter how popular or not, doesn't make it an invalid way to play 40k. I don't believe a definition of "real", as described in the title, as been properly given, and as a result I think people have not been working from the same understanding of what "real" means.
For me, it being "real" would just mean that it's official, something that GW have a responsibility to develop themselves, and balanced to that degree.
Real =/= Valid though, it doesn't matter how you play with your models, as long as you and your opponent enjoy it.

Crimson wrote:Why a heavily houseruled version of the game is not 'real 40K' isn't a difficult question. Houserules are houserules, not 'real' rules. I really can't understand why so many people do not seem to understand this very elementary definition.

Agreed, with the addendum that houserules are still a valid way to play, even if they're not "real".

Well the wording of the question ist terrible what's real? 40k.

So no answer to that.
Itc is a House ruled playstyle if 40k.
No problem with it. It's not the rules set that gw build to play the game, there can't be a discussion about that.

But hell itc is by far far far not the most way how 40k is played. Dunno wy people still think that.
Itc is a freaking minor part of 40k.
It's a house ruled tournament style mostly played in US.
The big part of players playing narrativ, gw rules, other house rules. I can't get in my mind wy people think itc is anything important. For something outside these format

T1nk4bell wrote:

But hell itc is by far far far not the most way how 40k is played. Dunno wy people still think that.

Mostly because many Americans have a hard time grasping that the world outside USA exists.

Nothing to do with that I think .
Even all tunament rule sets and play styles together are a the minor part of playing 40k.

 Crimson wrote:

T1nk4bell wrote:

But hell itc is by far far far not the most way how 40k is played. Dunno wy people still think that.

Mostly because many Americans have a hard time grasping that the world outside USA exists.

I think its more because the tournament crowd are more vocal about rules imbalances than most. Stuff like Rule of 3 make no difference to Garagehammer players because it rarely happens that someone is that much of an ass amongst friends and if it does its not usually with particularly broken units.

Wy people think that garage hammer can't be same as competetiv as tournament?
I know a lot people at my player base the only play hard style competetiv garage hammer.
The fault is that some people think a tournemnt is the only competetiv way to play.
It's just the only public way to play competetiv nothing else.
There are more players out there who play competetiv than players that play tournament I bet!

I mean there are million players out there around the world how naiv can someone be to think that something like lvo with less than 0,1% of all players is representing anything? That's a self made illusion

I remember GW coming out and stating that ANY tournament rules were house rules, so calling ITC house rules would be redundant.

However, keep in mind that when you play in their house, i.e. their tournaments, that is the real 40K in those environs. Outside of those environs, then it loses its veracity and "realness".

And it comes up a lot because a lot of American players frequent this board and a lot of American players are within the ITC competitive spheres. LVO matters to my meta since a lot of the guys go up their to compete (it's only a 5-6 hour drive depending on how close to the speed limit you drive), so bringing up ideas to work within that would make sense.

I don't think that anyone bringing them up are trying to force you to play in that sphere, yet, a lot of those treating it with derision are almost acting as if they are, and I tend to see more European "old world" mentalities associated with it.

 Charistoph wrote:
I remember GW coming out and stating that ANY tournament rules were house rules, so calling ITC house rules would be redundant.

However, keep in mind that when you play in their house, i.e. their tournaments, that is the real 40K in those environs. Outside of those environs, then it loses its veracity and "realness".

And it comes up a lot because a lot of American players frequent this board and a lot of American players are within the ITC competitive spheres. LVO matters to my meta since a lot of the guys go up their to compete (it's only a 5-6 hour drive depending on how close to the speed limit you drive), so bringing up ideas to work within that would make sense.

I don't think that anyone bringing them up are trying to force you to play in that sphere, yet, a lot of those treating it with derision are almost acting as if they are, and I tend to see more European "old world" mentalities associated with it.

It's a typical case of projection. The people who are trying to 'abolish' the ITC are unhappy with some aspect of the game or their local community, or even just their own lives and have projected that unhappiness onto the ITC format.

Removed - Rule #1 please

Exactly. People can pretend it affects balance, but the truth of the matter is GW handles balance so terribly the inherently bad armies will stay bad.

T1nk4bell wrote:
Wy people think that garage hammer can't be same as competetiv as tournament?
I know a lot people at my player base the only play hard style competetiv garage hammer.
The fault is that some people think a tournemnt is the only competetiv way to play.
It's just the only public way to play competetiv nothing else.
There are more players out there who play competetiv than players that play tournament I bet!

I mean there are million players out there around the world how naiv can someone be to think that something like lvo with less than 0,1% of all players is representing anything? That's a self made illusion

No, tournament's are the only way to play competitively that MATTERS. And it doesn't even matter all that much, just for the prize money and the pride that comes with knowing you went up against 500 people dedicated enough to spend the time, money, and effort necessary to make it to the LVO and won. Oh and the miniscule, tiny amount of celebrity that comes with being known as an LVO, Adepticon, Nova winning player.

People claim they play 'competitively' in their garage's all the time but A. No one cares because it's impossible to verify and even if it wasn't you'd be playing against 10 people total, ever. and B. Whenever people start talking about their competitive garage hammer they inevitably follow it up with things like 'my triple outrider assault marine list is 75-0 and would totally win LVO every year but I don't play netlisters!'

Finally, yeah, of course there's more people who play competitively than people who play competitively in tournaments. You included the entire subset in your new data set. There are more people swimming on earth than their are people swimming in Florida too.

But the people swimming in Florida don't get to then influence how people swim across the rest of the world.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
But the people swimming in Florida don't get to then influence how people swim across the rest of the world.

What if they are the ones who keep winning the Olympics? An American changed how the high jump was run for everybody from the Olympics to high school methods, because it was effective.

And if GW chooses to make changes to their rulesets based on a (relatively) large tournament set, that is THEIR decision, and one I don't hold them to be making one way or the other, honestly.

Itc isn't the olympics. Its just a format amongst many.

It is not the first time a set of house rules is more popular than the main rules and/or people refer to that set of house rules as the real game

and this also affects how people remember those times and also how they see the rules of the next edition.

Lore of Akito was the main set of house rules in central Europe for Warhammer 7th, no one played anything else (and 8th edition solved problems that did not exists with those rules) and taking anything from those games to adjust the main rules would be flawed.

there was a different set of missions and tournament point calculation together with some house rules in Austria during 5th edition, that is why a lot of problems others had were not a thing there

7th, with GW refusing to do Errata/FAQ's, there was the Grundmann FAQ heavily used in German speaking countries so that everyone could play by the same rules.


All those things were born out of the need to solve the flaws of the main game as GW refused to do anything about it (the famous "we don't make mistakes so there is no need for Errata/FAQ's" quote)

Now GW releases Errata/FAQ's on time, also releases adjustments and new rules/missions for matched play once a year and technically there is no need to make country wide accepted house rules so the game is playable.


But still, I don't see a lot of tournaments playing the original game, most are using different missions, nearly all of them using different terrain rules, and a lot of them using different victory conditions for tournaments (there is this small problem in some countries that people winning 3 out of 5 games still can win the tournament over players who won 5 out of 5 games because of how victory points are calculated)

all those things make any adjustment that GW is doing pointless anyway, because either it is ignored because it does not fit the local house rules (like a new set of missions) or it solves problems that did not exists in the local meta while ignoring others.

and the players just taking those rules they like anyway while ignoring everything that does not fit "their" game.

there is no real 40k out there

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Exactly. People can pretend it affects balance, but the truth of the matter is GW handles balance so terribly the inherently bad armies will stay bad.

The number of 'Inherently bad' is significantly less than 'everything other than IH' yet anyone using only ITC results from the past few months wouldn't know that's the case. That's the biggest symptom of the problems people have with ITC

 Lance845 wrote:
Itc isn't the olympics. Its just a format amongst many.

It is when you consider this: The Olympics is just one format among many, not the only format. The rules for the Olympics do not apply to professional clubs like FIFA, NHL, or NBA, or the school organizations like the NCAA or state/province organizations that handle primary competitions. They even keep Olympic records separate from World Records set in competitions that are held in between Olympic events. That is the point that you are trying to ignore in this that I keep pointing out.

 Charistoph wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Itc isn't the olympics. Its just a format amongst many.

It is when you consider this: The Olympics is just one format among many, not the only format. The rules for the Olympics do not apply to professional clubs like FIFA, NHL, or NBA, or the school organizations like the NCAA or state/province organizations that handle primary competitions. They even keep Olympic records separate from World Records set in competitions that are held in between Olympic events. That is the point that you are trying to ignore in this that I keep pointing out.

No it isn't. The Olympics is meant to be a gold standard (whether it is or isn't you can debate if you want). The Olympics has world wide agreement and participation. It has money, resources, and sponsorship. ITC isn't globally recognized or sponsored. There is no money behind it. The company that makes the game doesn't recognize it and shouldn't. ITC is like if me and the local community decided to run our own league for football separate from the state or schools or country and the format we used people liked so other groups of people decided to do the same by downloading a 3 page "packet" pdf off the internet. And so, across 1 country (primarily) a format took off as a way for individuals to organize and play football.

Equating that crap to the Olympics takes a massive inflation of self importance.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Itc isn't the olympics. Its just a format amongst many.

It is when you consider this: The Olympics is just one format among many, not the only format. The rules for the Olympics do not apply to professional clubs like FIFA, NHL, or NBA, or the school organizations like the NCAA or state/province organizations that handle primary competitions. They even keep Olympic records separate from World Records set in competitions that are held in between Olympic events. That is the point that you are trying to ignore in this that I keep pointing out.

No it isn't. The Olympics is meant to be a gold standard (whether it is or isn't you can debate if you want). The Olympics has world wide agreement and participation. It has money, resources, and sponsorship. ITC isn't globally recognized or sponsored. There is no money behind it. The company that makes the game doesn't recognize it and shouldn't. ITC is like if me and the local community decided to run our own league for football separate from the state or schools or country and the format we used people liked so other groups of people decided to do the same by downloading a 3 page "packet" pdf off the internet. And so, across 1 country (primarily) a format took off as a way for individuals to organize and play football.

Equating that crap to the Olympics takes a massive inflation of self importance.

Again, missing the forest because of a bush. It isn't the level of recognition that matters in this comparison (as I have stated), it matters that it is one standard of many. More importantly, if that standard is theoretically being used as a standard of rule setting for other formats. Since that is actually one of the complaints (GW using ITC to balance their basic ruleset), it is a rather poignant comparison.

There is money behind it since the ITC group have and do run their own tournaments.

Since we have numerous people here from almost all over the world who know what it is without explanation, then it has reached global recognition (if not yet reaching global approval at this point). Even then, the Olympics does not have worldwide agreement and participation. Some deliberately leave themselves out because of venue (see 1980 Winter and 1984 Summer as two examples) or because they were rejected because of certain actions of their government.

Any way, the fact that it is still one format of many AND has people discussing its balance points does make it a valid comparison in that field. Now, if you want to consider them more NCAA than Olympics level of approval, I can't disagree, but when people change their habits in a game because of what happens in one format or rules get changed in another format to counter them, then you can't really say that it doesn't have global influence.

I know about the AFL in Australia but I have never seen a game and soccer (what we call everyone elses football) doesn't mean gak in America. Just because people in the rest of the world know what ITC is doesn't mean anything.

The question this thread asks is "Should ITC be considered "real" 40k". And if the argument in support of it being considered "real" is equating it to the Olympics then my argument is that that comparison is ridiculous.

GW should not, on any level, look to ITC for statistics to balance and change it's game. As mentioned a lot, ITC is a set of house rules not even equivalent to the NCAA, but instead equal to the YMCA running a dodgeball league.

It doesn't and shouldn't count for anything other than what it is. A way some people like to play the game. What GW SHOULD be doing is hiring actual game designers and testers to balance their game off actual design and testing. Fire Robin Cruddace for his years of bad work and hire real game developers to do a good job. Switch their focus from an ever changing balance to sell models to a solid foundation for steady sales of all product.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Exactly. People can pretend it affects balance, but the truth of the matter is GW handles balance so terribly the inherently bad armies will stay bad.

Well, if it doesn't affect the balance, then it certainly is completely unnecessary.

 Lance845 wrote:
I know about the AFL in Australia but I have never seen a game and soccer (what we call everyone elses football) doesn't mean gak in America. Just because people in the rest of the world know what ITC is doesn't mean anything.

The question this thread asks is "Should ITC be considered "real" 40k". And if the argument in support of it being considered "real" is equating it to the Olympics then my argument is that that comparison is ridiculous.

GW should not, on any level, look to ITC for statistics to balance and change it's game. As mentioned a lot, ITC is a set of house rules not even equivalent to the NCAA, but instead equal to the YMCA running a dodgeball league.

While I don't disagree in some sense, at the same time it should also be noted that said YMCA dodgeball league is, in this instance, the most popularly played and followed and discussed event format around, even if all else holds true, and that gives it a measure of relevance above and beyond others.

I'm not the biggest fan of ITC, and I consider it absolutely to be a house rule set, but at the same time to just ignore it flat out (and the reasons for its creation) would be a mistake, because it does have a wide reach among the playerbase.

Ultimately however I think people are dancing around the same ultimate point, and few think ITC should be the primary standard by which the game is judged and viewed.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I know about the AFL in Australia but I have never seen a game and soccer (what we call everyone elses football) doesn't mean gak in America. Just because people in the rest of the world know what ITC is doesn't mean anything.

The question this thread asks is "Should ITC be considered "real" 40k". And if the argument in support of it being considered "real" is equating it to the Olympics then my argument is that that comparison is ridiculous.

GW should not, on any level, look to ITC for statistics to balance and change it's game. As mentioned a lot, ITC is a set of house rules not even equivalent to the NCAA, but instead equal to the YMCA running a dodgeball league.

While I don't disagree in some sense, at the same time it should also be noted that said YMCA dodgeball league is, in this instance, the most popularly played and followed and discussed event format around, even if all else holds true, and that gives it a measure of relevance above and beyond others.

In America, for the tournament going population who do not make up the majority of players. It is NOT the most popularly played, and followed and discussed format in the world. Tournament going players don't make up a majority of anything and it's only a single country where this format is all those things while the rest of the world mostly doesn't give a gak. I would argue that the most popularly played, followed and discussed format in the world is probably the missions out of the BRB and the codexes since thats what the vast majority of the people playing the game are actually playing.

I'm not the biggest fan of ITC, and I consider it absolutely to be a house rule set, but at the same time to just ignore it flat out (and the reasons for its creation) would be a mistake, because it does have a wide reach among the playerbase.

Ultimately however I think people are dancing around the same ultimate point, and few think ITC should be the primary standard by which the game is judged and viewed.

I think it's very important to pop the self importance bubble that tournament players have. You (Not YOU Vaktathi. Tourny players.) are a minority. And you are a minority who are good at finding flaws and developing strategies that capitalize on those flaws but you are a minority none the less. Your data point is important but it is a data point that is equally important to the same scale of any other data points. With the caveat that once you start diverging from the actual game into house rules you become LESS valuable of a data point. Not more. Take the data point. Use it. Value it correctly.

You're the one not valuing data points.

Not all data points are of equal value. While still perfectly valid ways to play 40k, games that rely on house rules aren't as useful for balance decisions as games that don't rely on house rules.

 Melissia wrote:
Not all data points are of equal value. While still perfectly valid ways to play 40k, games that rely on house rules aren't as useful for balance decisions as games that don't rely on house rules.

As discussed, ITC doesn't affect balance that much though. The top codices will still continue to be at the top. Therefore the data collected (army traits, maxed out units, strats) can be used for balancing decisions.

However the issue is that GW just kinda throws darts.

 Melissia wrote:
Not all data points are of equal value. While still perfectly valid ways to play 40k, games that rely on house rules aren't as useful for balance decisions as games that don't rely on house rules.

Exactly. Tournament Data is good data. But it isn't the BEST data and it isn't even the majority of data points. It's just some data. And ITC inherently devalues it's data by playing something other than strictly 40k. Made worse by being highly regional.

So why should it be the defining factor in anything?

Lance845 wrote:I know about the AFL in Australia but I have never seen a game and soccer (what we call everyone elses football) doesn't mean gak in America. Just because people in the rest of the world know what ITC is doesn't mean anything.

The question this thread asks is "Should ITC be considered "real" 40k". And if the argument in support of it being considered "real" is equating it to the Olympics then my argument is that that comparison is ridiculous.

GW should not, on any level, look to ITC for statistics to balance and change it's game. As mentioned a lot, ITC is a set of house rules not even equivalent to the NCAA, but instead equal to the YMCA running a dodgeball league.

It doesn't and shouldn't count for anything other than what it is. A way some people like to play the game. What GW SHOULD be doing is hiring actual game designers and testers to balance their game off actual design and testing. Fire Robin Cruddace for his years of bad work and hire real game developers to do a good job. Switch their focus from an ever changing balance to sell models to a solid foundation for steady sales of all product.

So do you often talk to people about the AFL rules when you're discussing FIFA? Yet, ITC is the only tournament format that is easily recognized and commonly brought up here. So saying it isn't real is just blinding yourself to the reality that it has a significant following and influences how many people play. Even this thread here is an example of its level of influence.

Note, I am not arguing whether GW should or should not look to ITC results in balancing their games, as that is THEIR decision. ITC will restructure their ruleset around whatever GW chooses to do regardless of using their data or no. People will or will not play ITC formats depending on where they choose to go.

I have zero dog in this fight, as I am not a competitive player in any form, but I have had people be very specific about using ITC rules in their 40K games because training for the next tournament was all that mattered to them. I find ITC to be real in that it exists and is important to certain groups of people just like I find the NBA and Olympics to be real because they both exist and are important to certain groups of people. I am not going to dismiss their views just because I don't play that format, especially when such views are part of abstract concepts regarding formats and organizations.