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 Arachnofiend wrote:
...Frankly I'm more interested to know why GW decided they didn't want to push Intercessors until a full year after they were released.

Overcorrecting. They pushed Sigmarines too hard when they did AoS and a lot of people got annoyed and left, so they decided to try and back off and not make Primaris Marines render the rest of the game utterly irrelevant to the same degree, and ended up making them underwhelming at launch.

Then they came back with the second book and the supplements and made them render the rest of the game utterly irrelevant.

Its very important to the business that people buy the right plastic and not the wrong plastic.

Moreso its important to the business that people continue to buy plastic. And by cycling power game ratings on units, they can get the meta chasers to continue to fork over cash for new armies and new units to stay relevant.

 auticus wrote:

Its very important to the business that people buy the right plastic and not the wrong plastic.

Moreso its important to the business that people continue to buy plastic. And by cycling power game ratings on units, they can get the meta chasers to continue to fork over cash for new armies and new units to stay relevant.

And honestly GW does it very well. It never feels super overtly pay-to-win because the random units you've had in your collection for years will suddenly become OP. I certainly prefer this model over something like say, MtG, where cards get phased out on a regular schedule.

The other thing I love about 40k? Narrative play. There are a lot of factors that allow GW to be less heavy-handed about adjusting rules to control sales.

Well I'd disagree. I had 9 40k armies at one time and about the same number of fantasy armies when I was a tournament player.

It feels very pay-to-win. I have had few random units in my very deep collection suddenly become OP and useful. I have shelves of plastic that are pretty to look at that were once pretty competitive that are now all fairly useless.

You come to a decision sooner or later to either abandon ship or keep forking money over.

Fair enough. I suppose for any hardcore tournament player over the long term there's no avoiding that feeling of pay-to-win. I don't know if there will ever be such a thing as having an entire wargaming collection remain competitive for decades. That's just not how the business model works.

If a company can't keep making money off their game, there is no reason to continue supporting it.

The game design purists here need to remember that the business always comes first, then the game. If the business model doesn't work, it doesn't matter how perfectly balanced the game is. There will be no game. And if at any point in the company's life cycle they have to choose between the better business decision, or the better game design decision, it would be foolish to choose anything but the former.

In a perfect world this wouldn't be the case. I'm certain if GW could find a way to create a sustainable business while also delivering a perfectly balanced, competitive game experience, while also releasing dozens of new products year, without invalidating all of your old models, while also designing new rules that are balanced and interesting, etc... I'm sure they would do so. That is what every company wants.

Unfortunately, no one has managed to figure it out. And those that have tried... well, they are mostly dead now aren't they? Are there wargaming companies that have succeeded and survived as long as GW? I'm not aware of any. Certainly none that don't incorporate at least some aspects of pay-to-win, indirectly or not.

And obviously I am discounting traditional board games like Settlers of Catan or something. Those operate under a completely different business model, one that allows for (comparatively) perfect balance for the entire product life cycle.

Ok, my two cents here. I think balance doesn't sell. Excitement for things being strong, exciting, player power fantasy is real. If they make things balanced, there isn't easy to find or abuse outliers, people don't get excited and that doesn't move product.

Now before I'm drown in.." No way, they care for our happy ! " No they don't. They care we are moved to buy, or happy to indulge in heavy spending. They only care about imbalance if it threatens the bottom line. They aren't altruistic in their design choices or decisions.

You can't look at the first born v primaris situation and not see clear trends towards pressing first born to be pointless and primaris just flat out better, not different, better. That isn't a balance choice, that is a sales choice.

Taking that to be true and if they would do that to their previous favored fan base how can you honestly believe any balancing is more than marketing given game rule form ? I know I can't and that situation has divorced me from any idea they actually are a legit game company, they aren't.

Now do they always get it right ? No, sometimes they release bad models, rules and in part I think that comes from they think it will be good but don't honestly know how the game runes at the higher levels. Maybe those units are great for casual play but fall flat for competitive scenes.

Eventually though, usually they get it right. Like the first primaris models weren't hands down better than first born kin. Eventually, that changed and the gap just grows now and new units just come out as better, more well costed versions of old choices. Now either these rules makers are dumb as a sack of old socks or they are making purposeful choices to nerf one and raise up another.

Whole factions seemingly can mire away for long times waiting for something to help them, other ones get multiple new books making them stronger and stronger. Some get no new excitement for years, others see a release every couple months pretty much.

From the foundation this game isn't really made to be balanced. All we can hope for is the favor can swing your way for awhile before it swings away. Like beginning of last edition Guard was great, many nerfs later most you saw of them was the loyal 32, this edition who knows ? Probably back to middle of the road. Such is the way balance bounces in a fundamentally unbalanced game. That is literally made to burn it itself out every few years and reboot but no reboot ever leads to balance just a fresh new hell of broken gak.

I think it's more accurate to say that, especially for the factions that are already popular, balance is basically irrelevant to how well a faction sells. The launch primaris sucked and they still sold like hotcakes. On the other hand, no matter how many times they break elves the models clearly aren't selling enough to justify a big release. Now that Necrons have joined the party those finecast aspect warriors are looking pretty lonely in the needs-an-update section.

I'm sure they sold a fair amount of Eldar stuff, just select models of course. However I wouldn't hold breath for any big release as we still have a lot of Marines++ units to come out yet. Who knows it we'll ever get through a year without marines releases being about 60% of the kits released if not more.

I'd also like to add, the premise of the thread is correct. Competitive play and casual (or narrative) play are two different things that are only somewhat related.

It comes down to these two groups of players having very different sets of values. Optimizing too far for what competitive players value, say, something like mathematically perfect 50% win rate across all factions, will likely eventually detract from things that narrative players might value, such as the ability to take a bunch of fun units without relying on a handful of niche combos.

I think balance doesn't sell. Excitement for things being strong, exciting, player power fantasy is real. If they make things balanced, there isn't easy to find or abuse outliers, people don't get excited and that doesn't move product.

You are spot on. Balanced games are seen as "boring". Few people really want balance. The proof is in the pudding. The community forklifts crates of cash to the company for producing bad balance. They don't care.

When I was doing one of the big fan comps for AOS in 2015, we got hammered a LOT by people angry that we had "ruined list building" by making things balanced because since everything was viable, listbuilding min/max didn't mean as much. So erego list building was "worthless". I even had a guy on facebook message me to wish that I got cancer because I ruined his gaming group because they were using my AOS comp.

2015 was a big eye opener for me in terms of what the community was really after.

The game has never been anything close to balanced, there's just too much stuff. And even if you somehow got the points to balance, the dumbed-down mechanics would still be a bad vehicle for competitive play.

As for competitive players, they've never balanced anything. They just patch issues with the rules that they discover and exploit in first place. See the giant laser tag walls that they crowd behind because all the lists are so destructive that you have to make terrain specifically to keep the game going for more than 2 turns.

At the end of the day people just want to be entertained. Balance or perceived balance can be a big part of it, sure. But the reality is a lot more complex.

This thread is useless. Just a rant by the op to complain that a faction—at this specific instant in time before the edition is even released—doesn’t play how he likes. Allegedly, I might add.

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure the rules are just coincidentally structured like ITC, and ITC is just coincidentally deciding to stop houseruling and fold in to the default missions and rules.

They had nothing to do with 9th I'm sure.

also you:

the_scotsman wrote:

Cons: Multicharge, changes to "always fight first" rules and coherency changes make screens even more difficult to deal with as a melee army - their advice was, huddle around KFFs and Painboyz and let the enemy come to you! Also, as one of the three factions in the game that will be bringing 11+ model squads, a lot of enemy lists will gain arbitrary power spikes against you with blast weapons they would be including in their armies.

I'm sorry, what is the connection or structure to ITC here? Taaaaaaalk about reach. You don't like the rules. So because of that, you've singled this stuff out as "competitively driven" when it seems like the opposite.

"Balance doesn't sell." Unfortunately, I think this is true.

People want the power fantasy, yes.

The tastes of gamers have also changed, however. Especially among people my age and younger, the desire to put effort into succeeding at a game simply isn't there. Players prefer to minimize the effort they put into their own fun time, and rely on OP stuff or rules/game system abuses. It's easier, and it's "the way" to play. This is certainly what LOL does. They pay lip-service to balance while releasing new champions every month who are nearly always OP for several weeks before the inevitable nerf. Their business is selling RP to players, and using flashy gameplay in Esports games as advertising.

I hate it. I've moved away from many games for this exact reason. Using OP units, characters, weapons, whatever- does not appeal to me. I want to make the effort, and to be mentally engaged. I'd rather lose badly because I screwed up than win by being cheap. Close, tense, hard fought battles are what excite me. Or exploration, adventure, puzzle-solving..... Yet most mainstream video games are button-mashy stim-fests infested with microtransactions.

40k, well......... I still watch the occasional bat-rep, and all I see are two forces standing in their deployment zones shooting each other off the table, or maybe a blob somewhere of melee with hit, wound and save rolls being made for several turns in a row. How is that fun? Yet I think that is part of the success of the game, 8th edition even more so. People just want to see stuff die and pat themselves on the back for being so "smart" to use that busted unit, stacking buffs, or whatever.

 catbarf wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
For all we know Ork Boyz went down 3 points a model.

Here's another great example of why raw competitive balance isn't the be-all and end-all: For Orks it's expected that they'd be a cheap horde, but what about Eldar Aspect Warriors or Chaos Marines? Players who are invested in their fluff as veterans and specialists will be disappointed by their ostensibly elite units getting points cuts to make them competitively viable, turning them into a horde army.

If you solicit general feedback focusing on competitive balance, and use tournament players as your player sample, you will never hear that this is a problem. Those players have no investment in the fluff concept of Aspect Warriors and don't see it as an issue. Using more narrative-focused players may not yield optimal results for balance, but it will tell you when a faction doesn't feel right.

OP's point about Orks winning through holding objectives is much the same: Competitively, it may be balanced for Orks to win through camping objectives in defensive auras. Narratively, that doesn't feel right at all.

It's not like this is an insurmountable problem- even just asking competitive players 'we expect an army to look like such and such, and plays in such and such a way, does it work?' would tell you whether the result matches the intent. Pair that with a cadre of casual playtesters to try out the game and report back on whether the mechanics as implemented are fun, and you cover all bases. The key is recognizing that competitive balance is not the only goal, and structuring the playtesting accordingly.

Minimum Guardians unit plus support platform = horde. Total bs.

Quasistellar wrote:
This thread is useless. Just a rant by the op to complain that a faction—at this specific instant in time before the edition is even released—doesn’t play how he likes. Allegedly, I might add.

Not a baseless rant, though, given he's working from a video provided by people who I believe were involved in the playtesting process (though a link to the specific video would probably have helped this discussion).

It is interesting that their advice doesn't mesh with what was covered in the Faction Focus by a "Longtime Grand Tournaments player and Orks expert" - again, note yet another tournament player being used for one of these articles, rather than someone with a narrative focus - though there is the possibility that the FF article features marketing spin rather than substance. At least it wasn't Reese writing it, so it might be trustworthy...

Blastaar wrote:
"Balance doesn't sell." Unfortunately, I think this is true.

People want the power fantasy, yes.

The tastes of gamers have also changed, however. Especially among people my age and younger, the desire to put effort into succeeding at a game simply isn't there. Players prefer to minimize the effort they put into their own fun time, and rely on OP stuff or rules/game system abuses. It's easier, and it's "the way" to play. This is certainly what LOL does. They pay lip-service to balance while releasing new champions every month who are nearly always OP for several weeks before the inevitable nerf. Their business is selling RP to players, and using flashy gameplay in Esports games as advertising.
.

There is also the fact that if GW puts out your codex as a balanced one, 6 months later it is no longer balanced, because in the mean time they put out 3-4 new books out of which two are maybe more powerful, and one is a lot less powerful. Having an unbalanced, externaly, codex gives it more life.
Eldar for example, required a full blown faction kill switch nerf and they still were okey as a core faction codex. They just wasn't the best.

Something like DG on the other hand went in to obscurity very fast. So it is not just a power fantasy, where you plow through opponent after opponent. Some of it is thinking of the future of what you are going to play in 6 or 12 months time.

There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

8th was the most balanced edition of 40k. In fact its probably *the only edition* where GW actively tried to bring balance to the game. Obviously its not perfect - but its infinitely better than the older method of "here's a codex, oh it sucks? Well, see you in some years time".

All the evidence is that 8th is also the most commercially successful edition. Admittedly this could be due to various other factors unrelated to how the game plays, but its a strange coincidence just to shrug off.

Are GW actively making the game worse by having CA points changes each year?

I guess for people who buy the current hotness and want that to remain the current hotness until the heat death of the universe - but I'm not convinced they make up a huge percentage of the playerbase.

Tyel wrote:
There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

8th was the most balanced edition of 40k. In fact its probably *the only edition* where GW actively tried to bring balance to the game. Obviously its not perfect - but its infinitely better than the older method of "here's a codex, oh it sucks? Well, see you in some years time".

All the evidence is that 8th is also the most commercially successful edition. Admittedly this could be due to various other factors unrelated to how the game plays, but its a strange coincidence just to shrug off.

Are GW actively making the game worse by having CA points changes each year?

I guess for people who buy the current hotness and want that to remain the current hotness until the heat death of the universe - but I'm not convinced they make up a huge percentage of the playerbase.

I wouldn't call 8th the most balanced edition of Warhammer. STRETCHES of 8th? sure. The current state of 8th? No way. And this currently shift in focus seems to be lining GW's pockets with that PMarine money very effectively, and seems to be slated to keep up extra hard in 9th.

I hadn't considered the idea that balance may not be what the playerbase actually wants.... but it's been some pretty good arguments put forth as to why that may be, so I remain undecided. Is balance less profitable though? Well, almost certainly. You can't write extremely OP rules to shift units, without causing an imbalance.

 auticus wrote:

Knight meta? Nobody bought one of the big knights.

Im jealous. My last 40k game was two summers ago at our for fun narrative campaign we run every year.

Let me bold for fun. FOR FUN and CASUAL NARRATIVE which was made very apparent to everyone.

I brought my casual narrative FOR FUN rubric marine army.

I was paired with dude that brought... his ITC all knight army. This was his for fun army. (this is a lot of the people in my area not just bad luck to pick this one guy)

I was tabled in 2 turns. Thats the type of rules disparities I'm talking about. (I know you know, I'm just highlighting what I mean lol)

His exact words that day: "its not my fault you don't know how to build lists."

This attitude right there.

I think in general "competitive" play is toxic, personally. I don't really see the fun in it, at least not anymore. I used play it that way back in 4th and 5th, and I found it made me hate myself, and the hobby as a whole. I've largely moved onto other games, but I still collect GW minis because I like painting them. Overall, I'm not a fan of most of their 'balance' design still. I keep up to date, just because it is the biggest game.

The last time I ran anything was an excitedly narrative campaign I ran. What did I find? The first four people who entered? Awesome. Then others found out and wanted to join, no one wanted to be the people to say 'no', so slowly more people joined. As more people joined, they had different ideas of what they wanted, and many of them were 'competitive'. Or through narrative campaigns just meant... test games? I'm not sure. But people started bringing increasingly hardened lists, avoiding things that were the basis of the campaign, IE, trying to have relatively soft, fluffy lists. A few bad apples basically came into the group, stomped people, accelerated an arms race, and turned the friendly narrative campaign into an unfun nightmare. Before people say anything, I mostly ran the campaign, I only played if someone's opponent couldn't show up. I wanted to build something for me and a few friends that was about following a narrative campaign.

I've kind of just given up on 40k being that experience. So, I'll just paint my minis. But I complete agree with the first post in this thread, and posts like the one quoted above.

And I'll point out, saying that you want to run your campaign narratively is great, but people who don't want that will show up, and will ruin it to basically just shot on other people's armies because they just care about winning.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
I wouldn't call 8th the most balanced edition of Warhammer. STRETCHES of 8th? sure. The current state of 8th? No way. And this currently shift in focus seems to be lining GW's pockets with that PMarine money very effectively, and seems to be slated to keep up extra hard in 9th.

I hadn't considered the idea that balance may not be what the playerbase actually wants.... but it's been some pretty good arguments put forth as to why that may be, so I remain undecided. Is balance less profitable though? Well, almost certainly. You can't write extremely OP rules to shift units, without causing an imbalance.

I'll admit a seeming year of Marine buffs has sort of undermined my point - but I still think Ironhands today is less obnoxious than "can only bet hit on 6s, have a rerollable 2++ save" from 7th.

GW did at least do a week 2(?) nerf to Iron Hands - and the subsequent Marine FAQ in February. The former obviously wasn't enough, and measuring the second has been made difficult by the collapse of game playing across the world, but in older editions you would have just seen them shrug, leave it for two years and then bring out something even more powerful.

Marines *were* bad for about 18 months. I think this is a massive overreaction, caused by no one thinking about what happens when you add all the marine buffs on top of each other.
I don't think it will last forever, even if the first 6 months of 9th exacerbate these trends.

But maybe that's just me. I like balance, and I remain a lot more optimistic about the game today than I was 10 years ago.

Drakthul 789752 10857967 wrote:

I've kind of just given up on 40k being that experience. So, I'll just paint my minis. But I complete agree with the first post in this thread, and posts like the one quoted above.

And I'll point out, saying that you want to run your campaign narratively is great, but people who don't want that will show up, and will ruin it to basically just shot on other people's armies because they just care about winning.

There is also the question of tiers, as much as people dislike them to exist, of armies. An IH player could bring an army with little to no tanks, no FW dreads, no special characters, leave the super relic at home. Not max out of eliminators or multiple heavy options, and have a casual army . Only that casual army of his, is going to be beating tournament armies of other players, and it those players bring their factions versions of a casual list, the IH player becomes the WAAC god.

The gaps between some armies are huge in w40k. Doesn't matter as much for tournaments, specialy the top tables, where everyone is expected to play against the best armies and best builds. At the store among 3-4 new players that start at the same time it is huge problem. If 6 months ago three people started to play and build armies, and two went orc , gsc, etc and one went marines, there is a good chance that some of them were no longer playering in january, and a few will not come back when the corona ends.

 slave.entity wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

I would buy this a little bit more if GW were actually consistent about making new units OP. The thing is though, they tend not to be. Everyone remembers instances when they are (Like, say, now, with the new primaris stuff) and forgets the instances when they invested huge money releasing stuff that was hot garbage (like say, all the other primaris stuff when it came out. Remember that time GW released more kits in 2 years for the faction that had the most kits already than any other faction got combined, and all of it was hot trash on release?)

It would be too obviously pay-to-win if every new unit was OP. The trick is to release new units all the time, make SOME of them OP every once in a while, and save the rest for later, giving them the OP treatment in the future depending on a variety of (likely external) factors such as overall sales history of a particular kit, remaining stock, plans for future products, etc.

Obfuscating a pay to win scheme over the long term really doesn't seem that hard when you have years or even decades to do it.

So, you're saying that in an incredibly cunning maneuver, James Workshop has taken a look at their game where, overall, about 1 in 4 units are competitive level strong, and has decided that the best way to create a "pay to win" scenario is to release models and ensure that about 1 in 4 is competitive level strong.

Well in that case, I hope they keep doing it that way? This is one of those conspiracies like "Obama creates the weather". Like, if it's true, I hope he keeps doing it then??

There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

Spend a year doing game design. You won't get another chance to fill in for GW like I did with the AOS initial release, but general game design in competitive style game like wargames will show you what people really want.

I've been doing game design, mainly video games but I have a shelf full of my own wargame supplements and alternate rulesets as well, for many years and I will say that there are designer conferences where this topic comes up and is talked about.

From a commercial standpoint, balance does not sell. I have seen the backlash of balance with my own eyes, and even if you aren't in game design you can look out at the other wargames on the market today that are mostly touted as being a lot tighter (no i'm not saying perfect balance) that have a very small fan base, yet the most imbalanced game also dominates the market. Imbalance sells because imbalance is exciting. Its exciting to chase after the imbalance. Its exciting to get the imbalance and win with it. It gives the rush of winning. (is this universal? am I saying EVERYONE is like this? Obviously no, it repels me to my core, and I know there are people like me but we are not in any way very well represented)

Because balance is not a primary concern for most people playing games, even if they say it is something they care about. So long as their faction can do well, they really don't care about the necron players getting their nose ground into the table. Thats the necron players' fault for liking necrons and they need to get good and buy a better faction.

To put it back on topic... competitive players (of which I used to belong to that group so I am speaking from my own desires and experience as one) want the opposite of balance. They actively seek imbalance, they build lists to skew balance so hard in their favor that they win by virtue of their list. Thats the goal of listbuilding and a game that reinforces listbuilding. To skew the game as hard as you can in your favor. To actively IMBALANCE the game as hard as you can.

Want to try an experiment? Make a tournament, supply the armies, and have the armies be the same. Thats as balanced as you can get. Everyone has the same tools, like a chessboard. And you will see it raged on and dismissed. You'd think tournaments should be about showing skill and who can play better, but we have infused listbuilding skews as equally tactical as playing the game. And that will NEVER change.

Drakthul wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Knight meta? Nobody bought one of the big knights.

Im jealous. My last 40k game was two summers ago at our for fun narrative campaign we run every year.

Let me bold for fun. FOR FUN and CASUAL NARRATIVE which was made very apparent to everyone.

I brought my casual narrative FOR FUN rubric marine army.

I was paired with dude that brought... his ITC all knight army. This was his for fun army. (this is a lot of the people in my area not just bad luck to pick this one guy)

I was tabled in 2 turns. Thats the type of rules disparities I'm talking about. (I know you know, I'm just highlighting what I mean lol)

His exact words that day: "its not my fault you don't know how to build lists."

This attitude right there.

I think in general "competitive" play is toxic, personally. I don't really see the fun in it, at least not anymore. I used play it that way back in 4th and 5th, and I found it made me hate myself, and the hobby as a whole. I've largely moved onto other games, but I still collect GW minis because I like painting them. Overall, I'm not a fan of most of their 'balance' design still. I keep up to date, just because it is the biggest game.

The last time I ran anything was an excitedly narrative campaign I ran. What did I find? The first four people who entered? Awesome. Then others found out and wanted to join, no one wanted to be the people to say 'no', so slowly more people joined. As more people joined, they had different ideas of what they wanted, and many of them were 'competitive'. Or through narrative campaigns just meant... test games? I'm not sure. But people started bringing increasingly hardened lists, avoiding things that were the basis of the campaign, IE, trying to have relatively soft, fluffy lists. A few bad apples basically came into the group, stomped people, accelerated an arms race, and turned the friendly narrative campaign into an unfun nightmare. Before people say anything, I mostly ran the campaign, I only played if someone's opponent couldn't show up. I wanted to build something for me and a few friends that was about following a narrative campaign.

I've kind of just given up on 40k being that experience. So, I'll just paint my minis. But I complete agree with the first post in this thread, and posts like the one quoted above.

And I'll point out, saying that you want to run your campaign narratively is great, but people who don't want that will show up, and will ruin it to basically just shot on other people's armies because they just care about winning.

Yup.

One of the rules of managing a thing is sometimes you gotta be the donkey-cave. I have found that a better expectation to set up up front than "You should bring a light, fluffy list" is "the intended experience is that you will win some games and lose some games."

When someone competitively minded wants to bring a more competitive list than the average, make it clear to them that the campaign, for them, will be about going up against overwhelming odds, and that you are going to set up increasingly unfair scenarios to challenge them, if their goal is a challenging, competitive experience.

More often than not, I've found that that either does one of two things: one, they think that kicks ass, and you have a fun time playing out the whole "battle school" segment from ender's game where the competitive player encounters some fresh challenge every game, or two, they tell you they'd be happier just being a regular player and they tone their lists down.

People create these one-sided stomp scenarios like you said: By nobody being willing to say no. It's much more comfortable for everyone when we all pretend we're just going to adhere to this neutral third-party of the Games Workshop Official Rules TM, and if imbalance happens, we can either get mad at GW or we can grumble anonymously online behind the offending player's back.

If you manage a group, you already know who is going to be rocking a crazy winrate and who tends to lose every game. You know who you're going to have to talk to right at the outset. And for gods sake, stop writing campaign systems that include

1) Huge bonuses to winning that make it way more likely you'll win the next game
2) Stupid maps that do nothing but limit your opponent pool so the same players end up playing against each other game after game. It's 40k! Everyone has teleporters and space ships and airplanes and tunneling drills and roks and spores and webways! Why do campaigns play out like risk?

WHen I did campaign events I had to write houserules to curb the powergaming. Of course that leads to the age old chestnut of "who are you to rewrite the rules and make my army less effective? HOW DARE YOU!" arguments and screaming matches that can take place down at the good ole game store.

I mean I have had a guy almost flip a table and storm out because I was using a warhammer world scenario which wasn't "real 40k" (wasn't an ITC tournament scenario) and another guy flip his **** at a campaign event because we were using Forgeworld campaign and those weren't "real 40k". Then there was the guy that wanted to go out into the parking lot to fight because houserules were toxic and ruined the community and he felt VERY strongly about that.

So if you're going to do campaigns I'd definitely say keep it restricted, keep it small, and yes you have to put your foot down and say "this isn't the time and place for your ITC tournament list, please change things out or go play down at the store where everyone else is doing ITC practice games".

I think at this point I've garnered enough of a reputation as someone who will reach in to the core rules and do a quick hand-jive in there that when people show up to something I'm running they know it's going to be fairly homebrewed. At one point we did a "everybody bring a single Knight sized model or bigger we're gonna do a giant stuff fight" game that involved me adding in a whole 2nd ed style critical damage table to the game. And also alternating activations. And also entirely new terrain rules that included destructible terrain.

If you be crazy for long enough people learn to start expecting crazy.

Sounds like you and me do very similar things.

40k with alternate activations is actually a game I kind of enjoy. Spent a few years doing it even though people warned it would "imbalance the game severely (lol)".

Tyel wrote:There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

He's not wrong though. People say they want balance, but despite the words, what they often mean is they want the illusion of balance. What's more important than fair rules or balanced rules are official rules. Especially a lowest common denominator, minimum effort plug in and play that cannot be deviated from and which can be exploited. Competitive listbuilding is ultimately about squeezing five thousand points of power into a two thousand point list, but still claiming you are within the rules.

Drakthul wrote:
I think in general "competitive" play is toxic, personally. I don't really see the fun in it, at least not anymore. I used play it that way back in 4th and 5th, and I found it made me hate myself, and the hobby as a whole. I've largely moved onto other games, but I still collect GW minis because I like painting them. Overall, I'm not a fan of most of their 'balance' design still. I keep up to date, just because it is the biggest game.

Competitive play is not necessarily toxic. Competitive-at-all-costs play is toxic. Competitive play, with zero empathy or willingness to account for other approaches is toxic. 40k is a bad competitive game, full stop. It's never been good for it. I played WMH for years, competitively. Even claimed some scalps from folks who went on to win national masters. I was decent, have some medals, and could have been 'good'. And there was a time when I enjoyed the white knuckle excitement of the tournament scene immensely. I lived and breathed it. I get it. I do. There's nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of thing. But insisting only that kind of thing has value is where I draw the line. Dismissing other approaches as 'casual' grates - the opposite of competitive is not casual, it's non-competitive. The opposite of casual is serious. And you can be a serious player and seriously invested in the hobby and game who is simply uninterested in the top tier lists.

Drakthul wrote:
The last time I ran anything was an excitedly narrative campaign I ran. What did I find? The first four people who entered? Awesome. Then others found out and wanted to join, no one wanted to be the people to say 'no', so slowly more people joined. As more people joined, they had different ideas of what they wanted, and many of them were 'competitive'. Or through narrative campaigns just meant... test games? I'm not sure. But people started bringing increasingly hardened lists, avoiding things that were the basis of the campaign, IE, trying to have relatively soft, fluffy lists. A few bad apples basically came into the group, stomped people, accelerated an arms race, and turned the friendly narrative campaign into an unfun nightmare. Before people say anything, I mostly ran the campaign, I only played if someone's opponent couldn't show up. I wanted to build something for me and a few friends that was about following a narrative campaign.
And I'll point out, saying that you want to run your campaign narratively is great, but people who don't want that will show up, and will ruin it to basically just shot on other people's armies because they just care about winning.

Learn to say no. Our girls learn it early in life. Us nerds need to do the same.

In some ways, this was on them. In others, This was on you. You did the wrong thing for all the right reasons. With respect, the number one rule for wargsming need some to be 'play with likeminded individuals'. You need honest, open and up front communication. You need to be clear what' it entails. Too manyou people, it gets unwieldy. Different people want different things, often at different times. This is ok. Nothing wrong with it. But when tournament players come in, bring tournament lists to your grass leagues soft fluffy lists, whilst neither side is strictly wrong in the type ps of games they want to play, nonetheless there is a problem. For both camps. Not everyone needs to play together, you're not doing people favours saying yes just because. It's like an RPG, you need to be on the same page with the type of game you want. That may mean gate keeping. Its ok to say 'no'. It's Not necessarily a bad thing, but it is necessary for its long term health.