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Why not ignore GW and create an atmosphere that encourages community agreed living rules?
So, this thread could be about how to deal with GW faithlessness.
We might suggest alternatives. We can play test them. These and similar adjustments will become common and people will learn to expect them and slowly GW will lose influence.
If they decide to get cocky, then third party minis and home cooked rules may be what saves the hobby.
If they decide to support the effort, then maybe GW will get serious enough to produce a stable environment for serious collectors...

 jeff white wrote:
Why not ignore GW and create an atmosphere that encourages community agreed living rules.

it was tried several times, main problem is that GW rules are that bad to begin with that a community based LRB has no chance because it weill be called out for the low quality and the balance issues

so you have to start with the GW and apply minor fixes at first until you are accepted by the people and can start with the major changes needed
the problem here is, that if you reach that point, GW comes up with a new Editon and everyone is gone because this time GW got it right (and you start from scratch because your LRB, not matter how good it is, is outdated and a legacy system)

another problem is that you would need to clean up the game to get it working, because there are too many similar units, weapons, etc.
so people will be pissed that their favourite unit did not make it or got merged with another one (main problem here, Old- and Nu-Marines)

Nah, the main problem with 'community rules' is the inevitably start favoring the armies played by whoever's leading/hosting the project. And armies that they dislike for no apparent reason get worse.

Plus it doesn't solve the low quality or balance issues, just adds new ones.

Voss wrote:
Nah, the main problem with 'community rules' is the inevitably start favoring the armies played by whoever's leading/hosting the project. And armies that they dislike for no apparent reason get worse.

Plus it doesn't solve the low quality or balance issues, just adds new ones.

Because GW certainly doesn't have a favored faction, and others get left behind. That'd be insane!

 JNAProductions wrote:

Voss wrote:
Nah, the main problem with 'community rules' is the inevitably start favoring the armies played by whoever's leading/hosting the project. And armies that they dislike for no apparent reason get worse.

Plus it doesn't solve the low quality or balance issues, just adds new ones.

Because GW certainly doesn't have a favored faction, and others get left behind. That'd be insane!

Strangely, I didn't say that.
I just don't find any value in adding new problems that people are going to argue over. Especially since the usual mode of argument for these thing is just post _more_, until the people who disagree give up.

House rules work for small, regular groups that play together often and know what they all want. They don't work over the internet.

Voss wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Voss wrote:
Nah, the main problem with 'community rules' is the inevitably start favoring the armies played by whoever's leading/hosting the project. And armies that they dislike for no apparent reason get worse.

Plus it doesn't solve the low quality or balance issues, just adds new ones.

Because GW certainly doesn't have a favored faction, and others get left behind. That'd be insane!

Strangely, I didn't say that.
I just don't find any value in adding new problems that people are going to argue over.

House rules work for small, regular groups that play together often and know what they all want. They don't work over the internet.

The way you said it implied that those were issues exclusively in homebrew rulesets. That GW did not and does not do that.

Voss wrote:
Nah, the main problem with 'community rules' is the inevitably start favoring the armies played by whoever's leading/hosting the project. And armies that they dislike for no apparent reason get worse.

I think it has less to do with that and more to do with the inability of the community at large to agree on anything, even something as simple as to the scope of changes. That's why we have to get rulings on high from GW for any change to the rules.

I mean, even the most simple of changes like community-rules Matched Play points would be stymied by simple things like what is the minimum points value for a model just existing on the table? GW says 5.

House rules is what ITC was. It worked because GW's rules in this case (specifically, missions and terrain) were not only bad, they were virtually non-existent and completely unsuitable for competitive play. So it can happen.

But it definitely won't happen because Death Guard players are angry that they have to rip the arms off some of their models. House rules only take off when they address something that is screwing everyone over, because you need buy-in from everyone.

ITC and INAT FAQ are good examples. Ironically, they are both instances where GW absolutely failed to meet the customer's needs in mass for an extended period of time and even then a portion of the population wouldn't accept them as not official GW rules.

Community rules simply do not have the same legitimacy and spread of GW ones. They are an optional sign-on and any changes made will inevitably result in some members of the community not liking them and preferring to use the regular GW rules instead. New players coming in are also going to broadly be familiar with the GW rules and not a given fan ruleset. Some people will be perfectly happy with the GW ruleset in the first place and not even look to change. At the end of the day a fraction of players will know the community rules, but all the players will know the GW ones. That 'common ground' element has extremely powerful inertia.

And that is assuming there is just -one- community ruleset which has broad support and coordinated dispersal. Which is already unrealistic to begin with. As for each area just going with its own house rules; people can do that now with little effort. Sometimes they do. But usually not because again, the inertia of common ground. So many players would rather play games using a ruleset they have problems with but has an easily accessed community than fail to find games with a ruleset they really like but has a small following.

The only way a community ruleset works is when GW does not provide rule support in the first place. ITC rules happened because GW did not provide any tourney support, AoS fan-comps happened when GW wasn't providing any balance mechanism. And even then finding agreement on what needed to be changed, how, and how much was difficult to the extreme.

I've had posts of mine replaced with 'PLEASE DON'T ENCOURAGE PIRACY!" noticesbefore.

Now it looks like GW is doing it's damnedest to encourage it.

At this rate dakka is going to have to ban discussions of gw policies as part of the 'Dont't encourage piracy" policy.

Personally, i find the situation somewhat amusing.

I don't think it's an anti-third-party-bits thing, because if it was, they would have covered normal space marines with it - they are by far the biggest source of sales for third party bit providers.

The fact that space marines were spared it makes me think it has to be just a case of GW's right hand not talking to its left hand and some "genius" getting the idea that since the plague marine set is kinda like an AOS set they should do the same thing they do in AOS and limit weapons by what's in the kit.

GW not knowing what they are doing or having a specific plan for an Edition that get changed with each new book is nothing new

could also be that those who wrote the Codex thought only kids play it who are not able to convert their models
not needing to think too much about list building and useability while building the models is an important part of nu-GW anyway (and the adults all play Marines, so for those this is not an issue)

for community rules, ITC are a very good example:

Community rules that were gone as soon as GW made a new Edition, close to the original without changing major things and you still have to care about new GW models released

Plenty of people were complaining about not having enough bits in the box though.

GW just took the worst possible route to fix the problem. Instead of selling upgrade sprues for more wargear, they decided to curb all the kitbashes.

This kind of reminds me of the picture where people complained that a window was broken and caused a draft, and they just walled the window shut in response.

 Jidmah wrote:
This kind of reminds me of the picture where people complained that a window was broken and caused a draft, and they just walled the window shut in response.

Or when we wished GW would release minis for the things in their books, and their solution was to cut the things in the books rather than release minis for them.

GW's tagline might as well be "Be careful what you wish for!".

Somehow that really strikes home as prime GW logic right there or lack of it as the case may be.

GW, the real Wishmaster. " So you wish you had all the options in the box ? Granted ! Now you have all the options in the box, they are the only options you can use mawahahaha ! "

" Nooooo That isn't what I wanted ! "

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Limiting those models with what's in their box would invalidate the unit...

How?

Weapons all work with different ranges, which is big for a glass cannon unit. Some want the bearer to get close (18'' assault + melta Heat Lances or 12'' assault Shredders), some prefer the mid range (36'' rapid fire Splinter Cannons or 18'' assault Blasters), Dark Lances (36'' heavy 1) are for long range with a penalty if the bearer moves.

You'll never see a unit of Scourges with mixed weapons, while Plague Marines don't really care if they lost a few special weapons, they're basically the exact same unit that is played in the exact same way than before.

Devastators would work much better with mixed weapons as they all have mid to long range, except for multi meltas. A unit with lascannons, heavy bolters, plasma cannons and missile launchers will still be very functional as everything is heavy 36'' or more. And yet they kept freedom of choice for the unit's wargear.

If scourge units come out like that, I will rage like never before. I actually do own them, and that would be so bad for them.

I did think of that horror story chance, oh god they'd be an awful unit then, who in their right mind would run them if they needed to take one of each weapon in the kit ?

Not that I want Scourges with only one special weapon, but the fact that you have to buy 20 models to build a 5 man of your choice is a mess. I like variety as much as the next guy, but I also think that kits out of the box should be usable wihtout crippling yourself.

If Scourges had good rules (actual mobility and something that makes them survive a turn) and a good basic weapon, I could see Dark Eldar armies running them with a couple special weapons as we do now with Kabalites.

TBH it's a catch 22 for GW if they give units lots of variety in options.
Either the sprues are 90% optional weapons that won't get used by most players (and make the kit a minefield for newbies building invalid models).
Or they only include a few options. In which case players are left to source bits elsewhere.

One option is having a few options in the box, and then having separate upgrade kits with more options.
Although this doesn't work so well with GW's newer lines with less modular parts.
It also has the disadvantage that these upgrade kits won't be that appealing for someone that wants just a few bits within them. Do I want to buy an entire upgrade kit for two plasma guns?
For us experienced players that's all well and good. We probably have the collections to make good use of those bits.

But I think the newbie's perspective is very important, especially for GW. Getting told that just buying the box isn't enough, you also need an upgrade kit, is quite off-putting.
I think a lot of GW's moves are specifically at encouraging new players into the hobby. Us veterans don't really matter, we've already spent the money. In fact, invalidating our current collections is more likely to squeeze more out of us than letting us reuse them.

While I get that, I would also say GW also has a certain identity crisis that it probably needs to address aswell.
They still seem to believe that 40k is a game accessible to children.
Most of the people I see at events and clubs are younger-middle aged guys, aka the guys that have a hobby budget of a hundred or more pounds a month easy.

Those people arn't interested in having units on the table with non functional rules.

Yeah while some people might want to run just what's in the kit, guess what you can already do that. What a lot of people don't want is the time wasting of a unit of 5 models taking 10 minutes per shooting phase as they all have different weapons and have to split fire like crazy to be remotely effective.

I got started in 40k as a 12yr old, I know people who started younger. I think this is quite common.
There's often a dip at ~university age when girls and booze capture people's interest.
And then people return to 40k once they've matured and settled down.

So I think appealing to children is a profitable endeavour for GW.

Phases taking forever because of ridiculous bloat is nothing new to 40k though.
When shooting you've got to consider your stratagems and 3 different buffs so you're rerolling half your dice and some are exploding. Then you need to roll a second handful because you can't fit enough dice from your basic grunt squad in one hand.

 Denegaar wrote:
Not that I want Scourges with only one special weapon, but the fact that you have to buy 20 models to build a 5 man of your choice is a mess. I like variety as much as the next guy, but I also think that kits out of the box should be usable wihtout crippling yourself.

If Scourges had good rules (actual mobility and something that makes them survive a turn) and a good basic weapon, I could see Dark Eldar armies running them with a couple special weapons as we do now with Kabalites.

It's extremely easy to equip all of the with the same weapon though. Kitbashing is a thing, and any drukhari player with a complete army will always have enough spared weapons to equip them properly. The only gun that is hard to get is the haywire one, but it can be obtained thanks to a super easy conversion: a talos comes with two of those, just cut their barrels and stick to splinter cannons. Done, that's how I made my 4 haywire scourges.

Of course it's not easy for starting players or people with small armies to equip scourges exactly as they want but models can always be magnetized or even played without their arms, waiting to complete them as soon as the player manages to grab the appropriate bitz.

Yeah of course Blackie, I did the same with mine, and I agree with you that right now is the way we play with Scourges and changing it would wreck the unit.

But I was pointing out that maybe GW wants to move from a super-specialized unit to just a better one. We'll have to wait a month or two I guess, I, for sure, I'm going to wait on my next 5 Scourges.

As I never really saw something like this happen before, does happen often with GW? I wouldn't want to wake up one day and get told that there can be 2 halabards per unit of GK, because the new box has that many and all my metal models come with 4 per unit. Or that heavy weapons can be only on dudes with nemezis hammers . I get that if someone has a 6000pts collection, then making a 2000pts army is easier. But for people with 2000pts or just starting to collect this is brutal. If someone has 1000pts, they are not going to be happy about hearing that their army is now not even 500pts, because all the units have illegal weapon load outs.



Also about WAAC thing, isn't it just efficiency? I don't think anyone would want to run a unit with mixed load outs. If someone wants anti horde or anti tank they don't want to have one heavy bolter and one multi melta in the squad. Unless it is super cheap or something.

Karol wrote:

As I never really saw something like this happen before, does happen often with GW? I wouldn't want to wake up one day and get told that there can be 2 halabards per unit of GK, because the new box has that many and all my metal models come with 4 per unit. Or that heavy weapons can be only on dudes with nemezis hammers . I get that if someone has a 6000pts collection, then making a 2000pts army is easier. But for people with 2000pts or just starting to collect this is brutal. If someone has 1000pts, they are not going to be happy about hearing that their army is now not even 500pts, because all the units have illegal weapon load outs.

Ding ding ding, hence why a lot of people are justifyably salty right now... However some factions are as allways better off then others, in this case SM dodged once again the bullet... If the smaller SM subfactions aka Grey knights and DW get this treatment, yeah i am unsure.

If i were you i'd wait and see , but if you'd play Dark eldar, oh well, then it's basically a given, from the simple fact how GW treats them .

Also about WAAC thing, isn't it just efficiency? I don't think anyone would want to run a unit with mixed load outs. If someone wants anti horde or anti tank they don't want to have one heavy bolter and one multi melta in the squad. Unless it is super cheap or something.

WAAC =/= Competitive.

WAAC isn't necessarily competitve, all he want is to win, but not in a way that requires necessarily skill. He is just as happy crushing noobs with his net list as he is cheating in tournaments for the win. Basically the win is all that matters to him.

Competitve players also want to win, but for them the challange of getting that win, fair and square is the actual draw. The challange with the goal to win is what matters to him.

Well it did happen before. Plague Marines could equip 2 Plasmapistols and give their champion all kinds of kombiweapons or powerweapons up until 8th Edition. That's what makes people angry I think, they already adjusted to the new kit, because the aforementioned options never had models, but now restricting the new kit and arbitrarily changing its options is just stupid.
What's even better is that our HQs apparently still have access to a weapon that doesn't have a model - the Balesword. So why is that possible but not two guys with knifes?

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Well it did happen before. Plague Marines could equip 2 Plasmapistols and give their champion all kinds of kombiweapons or powerweapons up until 8th Edition. That's what makes people angry I think, they already adjusted to the new kit, because the aforementioned options never had models, but now restricting the new kit and arbitrarily changing its options is just stupid.
What's even better is that our HQs apparently still have access to a weapon that doesn't have a model - the Balesword. So why is that possible but not two guys with knifes?

Because GW does GW things.

Why is the point update, that is free, full with what can only be assumed obvious typos, f.e. like reaper CHAINcannons for chaos terminators and free reaper autocannons.

The quality control GW puts in their FAQs is really bad.
In the Necromunda FAQ the person that wrote it clearly didn't understand what the convention of pink text meant, and used it wrong.
It's just those little things that shows you GW doesn't particularly care.

Not Online!!! 795404 11032104 wrote:
Ding ding ding, hence why a lot of people are justifyably salty right now... However some factions are as allways better off then others, in this case SM dodged once again the bullet... If the smaller SM subfactions aka Grey knights and DW get this treatment, yeah i am unsure.

If i were you i'd wait and see , but if you'd play Dark eldar, oh well, then it's basically a given, from the simple fact how GW treats them .

I wonder if GW kind of a know this. Imagine if 8th ed was an actual reset or time jump like AoS. And all classic marine stuff went in to legends and the armies ended up with just primaris. People would go for aggro on GW. They still had it to a degree when intercessor squads suddenly got the option to take vet sgts with hammers, fists etc. People had to buy extra boxs to make new sgts, and then edition changed and all those expansive Thunder hammers had to be replaced with chainswords and fists. Still it is way better then getting a box of 7 dudes costed like 10 dudes, and then not making a proper squad anyway. I think the csm box is like that too. Split in half between bolter and melee dudes, so if someone wants 20 csm with either weapon set up, and they don't have a bucket of spare parts, they have to buy 4 boxs to make make two units.